Ever more it is a world where biology becomes the foremost science. That is, if we can save science (and all other fact professions) from those seeking to impose a new Dark Age.
For starters:
== Biotech updates ==
In the journal Neuron, a team of researchers expected to show biological neurons are more complex—they were surprised at just how much more complex they actually are. They found it took a five- to eight-layer neural network, or nearly 1,000 artificial neurons, to mimic the behavior of a single biological neuron from the brain’s cortex. They called this an upper bound to complexity, but I doubt that aspect, and predict we will find computational aspects to the glial and astrocyte cells that surround neurons in a functioning brain.
Meanwhile, the origins of some of our ‘junk DNA” may go back to the origins of mammals, in ways creepily like my chilling-creepy story “Chrysalis.”
== More bio wonders ==
A decade after gene therapy, children born with deadly immune disorder remain healthy.
An anti-aging vaccine? Japanese researchers are developing a vaccine to remove "zombie cells," senescent cells that accumulate with age - can can harm nearby cells by releasing chemicals that lead to inflammation.
Researchers discovered a bizarre way that a cancer cell can disarm its would-be cellular attackers by extending out nanoscale tentacles that can reach into an immune cell and pull out its powerpack mitochondria. One more reason to believe there must be something more to cancer than just wild, malfunctioning reproduction. Again, see my story "Chrysalis" for a theory about that... one that triggered correspondence with researchers!
Almost yearly, we learn of yet another promising treatment for spinal injury and paralysis. This one using ‘dancing’ molecules appears to have truly breakthrough effects on neural connection restoration.
The rise of multidrug-resistant bacteria has already led to a significant increase in human disease and death. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that approximately 2.8 million people worldwide are infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria, accounting for 35,000 deaths each year in the U.S. and 700,000 deaths around the globe.
Researchers at Vanderbilt University have identified nanoparticles released from cells - supermeres - which transmit chemical 'messages' between cells. These may serve as biomarkers for disease.
Nanome is a UCSD spinoff that uses VR and Augmented Reality to visualize complex molecules for science, pharma and other advanced uses. Take a look at their great new demo video. Full disclosure: I am on the advisory board.
Gradually, some companies are coming to realize what some of us forecast long ago, e.g. in novels of Vernor Vinge – that the ‘neurodivergent” or folks along the autism spectrum often have traits that make them superior employees at many kinds of tasks. Adjustments to interview processes have opened doors and assessments show good results and now the trend is growing in India. Oh, but there are five very different "spectrum people" with roles in my novel EXISTENCE.
Can poor nutrition and ultra-processed foods contribute to irritability and outbursts of angry rhetoric?
== Adaptive animals ==
And finally....
The rapid progress true Science now makes, occasions my Regretting sometimes that I was born so soon. It is impossible to imagine the Height to which may be carried in a 1000 Years the Power of Man over Matter. We may perhaps learn to deprive large Masses of their Gravity & give them absolute Levity, for the sake of easy Transport. Agriculture may diminish its Labour & double its Produce. All Diseases may by sure means be prevented or cured, not excepting even that of Old Age, and our Lives lengthened at pleasure even beyond the antediluvian Standard. O that moral Science were in as fair a Way of Improvement, that Men would cease to be Wolves to one another, and the human Beings would at length learn what they now improperly call Humanity.
—Benjamin Franklin
76 comments:
Dr Brin in the main post:
While it’s long been known that some fish and amphibians can do parthenogenesis… females producing young without contributions from a male… it is very rare among warm-blooded creatures. But lately it’s proved that California Condors have done it recently, much as in my novel Glory Season.
I thought that in Glory Season, they still did need a male as some sort of catalyst, even though he didn't contribute genetically to the child.
—Benjamin Franklin
I well remember that you used Benjamin Franklin as an avatar for Enlightenment thinking in one of Gordon's fever dreams in The Postman. And that Nathan Holn, in his writings, had derided modern civilization as "Franklin-stein" society.
I have to say you had right-wing-speak nailed way back in the '80s.
O that moral Science were in as fair a Way of Improvement, that Men would cease to be Wolves to one another, and the human Beings would at length learn what they now improperly call Humanity.
But it IS!!
We ARE getting better - generation by generation!
Duncan,
Niven's trumpet works over short time ranges and demonstrates the illusion rather well. There are a few ways to describe an orbit, but most space people are familiar with the Keplerian elements. The trumpet applies to all of them just as much as it does to the phase space description of an incoming comet. Ignoring singularities (like when eccentricity is zero two of them are undefined) most people feel intuitively that unknowns at the beginning of an integration lead to uncertainties later and that there should be some kind of polynomial relationship between the two.
That isn't how it really works, though. Consider an inbound comet wandering through one of Jupiter's lagrange points with respect to the sun. There are some paths that are more sensitive to uncertainty and imprecision. That won't shock anyone who has looked at the N-body problem, though. We are taught it is chaotic. Everything's fine so far.
In every path prediction problem, though, we know the underlying rules. We can write out the PDE's. We know what variables are in play and what things get get conserved. Chaos exists in the prediction of solutions, but we can still discover solutions. If we are trying to work near chaos boundaries we can still pull out Monte Carlo algorithms and make probabilistic statements. We can do that because we KNOW the PDE's and the state function being differentiated.
Turns out that the N-body problem doesn't permit that polynomial relationship between initial uncertainty and final state errors. We still pretend it does by avoiding chaos boundaries, but most of us have malfunctioning intuitions for that problem that don't matter much in the real world. (When humanity is out there between the planets it will begin to matter.)
The problem I hammer on here is that for markets, we do NOT have the state function, the PDE's are illusions because of how we simplify the immense number of independent variables in the problems, and we CAN'T know all the information we already know is needed to do the integrations. It's not that we can't know the initial conditions with high precision. It's that we can't know some of the values of the variables at all. *
The models in use are vastly simplified in ways that make them unfalsifiable and prone to misuse by people who really, really, really want to believe we know more than we do. You're a nice guy and not inclined to do us any harm, but you are imagining markets to be described by a model you understand from elsewhere rather than questioning whether the model even applies. I'm telling you it doesn't apply.
* This is easily shown using a resource optimization problem. We solve those with linear algebra and large matrices. As long as your matrix connecting inputs to outputs is invertible, you can (theoretically) compute solutions. The issue in markets is we can't know some of the values of inputs even though we know they are inputs. It's not about precision. It's about impossibilities.
I love the Franklin quote. It is especially wonderful since we've cut the labor in agriculture by about a factor of 50 and increased output by some other factors more than once through history. When science found a way to measure what the plants were not getting from the air and water, we got fertilizers and BOOM went production.
Yah. And all the other things too. 8)
Der Oger,
Heh. Maybe I'm too much of an American (USian), but most of those evils you list are to me not evil. Some of them are potentially good or at worst neither.
Partisan Media Companies are evil? Our press has always been partisan even when they pretend they aren't. Always. If being a partisan is evil, then taking a side in a decision is evil… which it isn't. Partisan media companies are a danger, but that's why we have our first amendment in the first place. They are a danger primarily to elites in power and only become a danger to us when the elites own them all preventing the function we wanted to protect with that amendment.
Corporations and brokers investing in companies with the goal to plunder them like a biblical swarm of locusts? Evil.
Nah. Corporations must face the possibility of being killed in a competitive market. I see markets as ecosystems. Those locusts provide an unpleasant service much like real locusts do.
Investing in property
Oh boy. There are ways to be evil when doing that. There are ways to be angelic too. I'd argue it's not the investment that is evil. Look to the hearts of those doing it to find it.
Whether we agree on these things doesn't matter, though. I thank you for putting yours out here. I wish others would too. It's in the debates that we DISCOVER the rules of expectations that are at the heart of our concept of justice. Like common law, the rules are already written in our hearts and actions. We can know them consciously if we ponder and talk.
Many of the rules are common enough between us we can easily agree to restrain markets. No poisons in the milk supply? Sure. I'd bet we'd get a super-super-majority for that one and a lot of others.
Companies damaging the environment and lobbying for less regulations? Evil.
See? I'm inclined to agree on that, but there are devils in the details. What counts for 'environment'? What counts as 'damage'? How do we know that more regulations are better than less? I'd bet that you and I would agree on quite a few details, but I'd shy away from generalities. For example, I'm not sure that seeding iron into antarctic waters would always be damage.
I say 'Show Me' a lot, but not to bog down debate in details. I'm pointing out that the details ARE the debate. Justice means what we mean it to mean. When we socialize, we discover the many facets of this gem of virtue. In that understanding, our efforts to restrain markets have meaning on which we can search for consensus.
Oligarchs don't want us talking about this stuff. They want us hearing THEIR speech, but not engaging our brains in talking about what WE want.
Fyi, Your article's link for the fascinating cancer cell tendrall research needs to be modified, (at least for me) from id=4032, to id=4031, i.e.:
https://www.brighamandwomens.org/about-bwh/newsroom/research-briefs-detail?id=4031
You forgot a couple... United Heathcare's CRISPR pig! Xenotransplantation now possible! A pig heart has be successfully transplanted into a human being. As Blastoctyst complementafion technology improves, we will be able to grown human organs within more humanized animals. Then with Next generation sequencing technology and modified mRNA vaccines we finally developing extremely precise methods of focusing the immune system to fight cancer. Good stuff!
Alfred
The point that you KEEP missing is that in the short term we CAN predict/react to changes
There is no point in that orbit that we cannot predict a few seconds ahead and as we move along the time line that prediction distance moves ahead with us
Modifying the economy is like driving a car - we are continually observing the results of our actions and then modifying our actions as we see the situation unfolding
We can go hard into the corner and then balance the car on the throttle as we exit the corner
I'm NOT saying that we know enough to make changes and then go into the back of our camper to make a cup of tea
We need to stay on board and drive this sucker
NOT driving it is a decision in itself and THAT decision falls foul of your lack of an overwhelming theory
For a bit of light relief this is me doing exactly that at yesterdays autocross
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E95_RuClLh0&t=109s
In the last post, in advocating for a tax system that favours societally-useful investor risk, David drew a distinction between "trusts/etc used as tax shelters" and "charitable foundations".
It's worth pointing out that "charitable" foundations are notorious for being used as tax shelters. They're essentially a tax free investment fund, with only a trivial percentage of income/profit (not wealth) being required to go to a charitable purpose (which can include going to another "charitable foundation"). And the means of getting money out of the foundation without it being counted as personal income are numerous. Only the arrogantly stupid get caught, and, even then, the punishment is usually trivial. (See the "Trump Foundation".)
David,
Typo in the second sentence: "That is, if we can sace science"
(Or I just learnt a new four letter word. It's always funny when fairly simple, pronounceable letter combos (like "sace") haven't been picked up as words.)
Alfred Differ:
If being a partisan is evil, then taking a side in a decision is evil…
A small point, but I see a difference between "taking a side in a decision" vs "lining up on a side regardless of the circumstances of the decision."
In 1984 terms, asserting "Two plus two equals four, not five," is taking a side in a decision. Asserting "Two plus two equals whatever the Party says it is," is partisan.
Our press has always been partisan even when they pretend they aren't. Always.
It's the "pretend they aren't" that skews things toward evil.
An openly partisan press functions like prosecuting attorneys and defense attorneys. Each side argues its own best case. The reader/viewer can decide which arguments are more plausible.
An ostensibly neutral press sets itself up more like a judge. And so an ostensibly neutral but clandestinely partisan press is engaging in a form of cheating--like coaches or managers disguised as umpires. I'm willing to consider that to be evil.
@Alfred & Duncan
All this discussion of PDEs, polynomials, variables/initial conditions, N-body problem, economics, constant trimming (driving), and even Ben Franklin* forces me to ask this question:
Have either of you done any ruminating on computational psychohistory?
(because you're drrned close to it)
* Scottish Enlightenment, self-government, citizen science, etc
Tell me and I forget
Teach me and I remember
Involve me and I learn
-and-
When you're finished changing, you're finished.
(which sums up introspection, cybernetics, and science over romanticism)
Recent advances in biotech too. Bigly.
@ Alfred Differ:
Heh. Maybe I'm too much of an American (USian), but most of those evils you list are to me not evil. Some of them are potentially good or at worst neither.
I was certainly hyperbolic, and many of my fellow citizens would agree with you, but it was the word "evil" that triggered me. I usually don't use it.
What I'd like to point out is that I perceive Americans as a whole regard the Capitalism-Socialism thing as an "good-evil"-axis, when in reality, it is much more complex. Any state, culture and place has it's own form of economic system leaning more to the one or the other side. While many people over here don't want to repeat the errors of communism, many also see current form of "Corporate America" as a form of economic and political extremism best to be avoided. (And we drank the cool-aid merrily and heavily in the early years of the century ... and slowly start to sober out and de-americanize our economy. At least, that is what I am telling to myself.)
Nah. Corporations must face the possibility of being killed in a competitive market. I see markets as ecosystems. Those locusts provide an unpleasant service much like real locusts do.
I reluctantly agree that it would be so in a balanced ecosystem, with healthy predators at the top. Yet, modern day biological and economic locusts lack the natural limitations that makes their swarms so destructive.
Alfred,
Re hostile takeovers of public companies (especially by asset stripping private companies), I regard it as an unnecessary and dangerous development. It means that the outcome of management strategies are prejudged by lenders. By all means losing strategies may result in bankruptcies but that seems to me the right way to make the judgement. Believing that that financiers always know what will happen is a fairy tale and the opposite of scientific method. I like to call it the triumph of hubris over experience. Hostile takeovers should simply be banned. Let history decide the winner not big finance.
Came here to say this.
Xenotransplantation is a big deal
Xenotransplantation is a big deal
Yep. More, anon.
And thanks lurker. Fixed. CITOKATE.
"Gradually, some companies are coming to realize what some of us forecast long ago, e.g. in novels of Vernor Vinge – that the ‘neurodivergent” or folks along the autism spectrum often have traits that make them superior employees at many kinds of tasks. Adjustments to interview processes have opened doors and assessments show good results and now the trend is growing in India. Oh, but there are five very different "spectrum people" with roles in my novel EXISTENCE."
See also Elizabeth Moon's The Speed of Dark
Another big deal: links between Epstein-Barr virus and Multiple Sclerosis have been reported.
Electoral-Vote.com and a NYT columnist agree with me...
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2022/Senate/Maps/Jan17.html#item-7
Donald Trump is suddenly boosting boosters. What happened?
...
Anyhow, given his poor track record, numbers-wise, we are dubious that Trump has conducted a detailed analysis of the pandemic trends. Our guess is that somebody on his staff pointed out that the people dying of COVID-19 are largely his voters and losing 1,000+ voters a day to the disease isn't going to help his 2024 chances much.
We have had many questions about this very issue, but other people are also doing the math, including a recently retired New York Times reporter, Donald McNeil Jr. He agrees with us that someone must have clued Trump in on what's going on.
...
Can the same genetic engineering used to make pig hearts acceptable to the human immune system be used to make pancreatic transplants viable (no need for immunosuppressant drugs - which can be worse than taking insulin) and thus provide an effective cure for Type 1 diabetes?
A piece about dogs without humans and you don't mention "City"?
Philcycles, a completist? Sigh. Right of course.
@Daniel Duffy: Found something:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-22651-w
From past showing, the ex-resident's nature will reassert itself as the memory of what was said about who's dying of Covid fades.
To fill the time, an MLK Day comment from the Twitter feed of "The Rude Pundit"
Emphasis mine:
Listen, racists who use MLK's judge by the "content of their character," not "the color of their skin" to justify your racism: King wasn't talking about your children. He was talking about his children. He was saying that whites judge them by skin color and whites need to change.
The full line: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." Stop forgetting about that first part like it's the beginning of the 2nd Amendment.
That line is actually specifically about white privilege, that white kids get judged in a way that benefits them and non-white kids, again, specifically, his non-white kids get judged in a way that harms them.
The dream is that whites will evolve, not that non-whites will shut up about wanting equality and about wanting their history told truthfully. That's the dream of racists. Leave Martin Luther King out of your dreams.
LH I agree with all of that. And yet, to deny there are sanctimony junkies on our side who are HARMING the cause by howling righteous insults AT ALLIES and at the very people we do not want fleeing to Fox land would be disingenuous.
I will pay 10x more to boost poor kids than I ever will for 'reparations" for crimes that I never committed, nor any of my ancestors going back ast least to 71 CE.
We are caught between two pools of the symnbolism-obsessed. One of those pools is vastly bigger and more toxic! But the smaller pool is less helpful in making a better world than they think they are.
Reparations
We (the whites) have overall benefitted from the evils of our ancestors
But reparations by "race" are simply impossible - we have let too much time churn the waters
AND reparations by race would simply feed the racists
Instead we should be looking at reparations by "wealth" - we should be spending the money on todays poor
A modern country should NOT have any "poor children" - we should take some of the wealth that we all have and use that to ensure that ALL of the children are looked after and given the opportunity to flourish
Duncan, exactly. Adam Smith himself would want us to tax the uber rich and uplift every single poor child to be a skilled, confident and eager market participant/competitor. The 'stop wasting talent!" argument is the one for Liberalism that has no answer from the right... and it depresses me that it is used so seldom.
Watched "Don't Look Up " last night.
Assuming you aren't at ground zero suffering a direct hit, where would you hide to survive the initial blast and heat wave?
Nuclear subs (crews and their families) hiding at the bottom of the ocean?
Military bunkers (old ICBM missile silos, old Soviet command centers under the Urals, my personal choice - the NORAD command center at Cheyenne Mountain)?
Natural caverns and abandoned coal mines in Appalachia or Wales (or those salt mines under Lake Erie, deep diamond mines in South Africa)?
Would the subway system of a major city be safe (New York subways, Paris Metro, London tubes, Moscow metro)? Mao's regime built a lot of deep underground tunnels to protect the Chinese people from nuclear war, would these work?
Would a typical underground parking garage, suburban basement or a simple tornado shelter at a farmhouse in Kansas be enough?
Assuming you have enough stored freeze dried food (30 year stable shelf life) and a source of clean groundwater, how long before the Earth begins to recover?
Or would the atmosphere be unbreathable and the survivors doomed to suffocate anyways? Then again, the small mammals that survived the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs had to breath, so oxygen levels may still be sufficient until vegetation begins to regrow.
Assuming you don't want to wait 100,000s of years for evolution to create new animal species and fill up all the available environmental niches, what's the best Noah's Ark for repopulating animals and birds (instead of "two by two", just females with enough frozen species sperm to impregnate them)?
Would the seed bank at Svalbard island in Norway survive (again assuming no direct hit)?
Storage of data and knowledge for rebuilding and survival is easy enough via thumb drives. Tool and die machines and basic tools are easy to store. Power supplied by solar cells (or small nuclear reactors at military facilities or submarines) is easy enough. But how do you stay in contact with other survivors around the globe?
Would Elon Musk save his own skin via deep underground shelter built by his Boring Company, or would he catch an orbital flight on Space X and stay in orbit until it was safe to land? Would anything in orbit survive the ejecta hurled into space by the impact? Would the rich survive in their luxury New Zealand bunkers?
What else have I forgotten?
The 'stop wasting talent!" argument is the one for Liberalism that has no answer from the right... and it depresses me that it is used so seldom.
They don't see it that way. Unless "talent" happens to be white, male, straight, rich and aligned with their sociopolitical interests, they tend to downplay, ignore and ridicule it, or find excuses ("Federalism" and "States Rights" are quite popular over here, as is "There is no money left"). Besides, "Talent" can be translated into "Geeky Ivory Tower Egghead" in right-speech -something to watched suspiciously.
They don't care about talent, they care about power.
Dr Brin:
"The dream is that whites will evolve, not that non-whites will shut up about wanting equality and about wanting their history told truthfully. That's the dream of racists. Leave Martin Luther King out of your dreams."
LH I agree with all of that. And yet, to deny there are sanctimony junkies on our side who are HARMING the cause by howling righteous insults AT ALLIES and at the very people we do not want fleeing to Fox land would be disingenuous
I'm not arguing at cross purposes with you. The point of the Rude Pundit quote, as I saw it anyway, was that right-wingers have a lot of nerve using that one quote they love of MLK's to condemn liberals for mentioning race at all in any context. He rightly points out that MLK's point was to imagine a future in which black children wouldn't be unfairly maligned because of their race, not one in which white children would be "protected" from knowing the worst parts of America's racial history.
He had a dream--a hope--of an eventual color-blind society. We don't honor that dream by pretending we're there already, let alone that we always have been.
duncan cairncross:
reparations by race would simply feed the racists
Reparations sounds good (to proponents), but I don't see any way it could ever definitively work. Is there a dollar amount that "whites" could pay to "blacks" which would balance the scales? A point at which we could say "Now, we're even" and really have no more talk about racial disparities? I don't see how that could ever happen. More likely, it would become obvious that no amount is ever enough, which (as you say) would feed the racists.
But reparations by "race" are simply impossible - we have let too much time churn the waters
Churning the waters is a good thing. It means there does not continue to be a stark line between racial "haves" and "have nots", which (we hope) allows the traditional have-nots more access to equality over time.
Isn't that the true path to redemption? Reaching for, and ultimately achieving, a society in which the heirs of slaves and the heirs of masters really do engage on equal footing? I'd argue that the accurate teaching of history is one step toward such "reparations" in a manner which costs white people nothing other than indignation.
"Stop wasting talent" More like this please. To simplify matters it seems desirable to me to attempt to improve the lot of all the working class families, since genetics likes to surprise us, and to complicate life for the lobbyists of the malefactors of immense wealth. Genius can have an outsize effect, so it's okay if we only find a few. Salvaging more tax paying citizens is also a plus.
DD for every asteroid survival scenario there's always a bigger rock to cancel it. The comet described in DLU was at the larger end and would certainly have slain billions with its climate and other effects. But it would have Left standing many structures at the impact antipodes and nuclear subs and SOME mineshaft refuges would mostly do fine. It might trigger an ice age, but the skies would likely clear within a year.
The starship was a great metaphor! But 22,000 years? By that time (much sooner) Earth would be the best choice. So if you have hibernation...
---
"They don't see it that way. Unless "talent" happens to be white, male, straight, rich and aligned with their sociopolitical interests, they tend to downplay, ignore and ridicule it, or find excuses..."
Der Oger, I believe you are failing to 'know your enemy. Racist assholery has mutated. They are still racist assholes. But now they LOVE Uncle Toms! They would probably vote in one as a Republican nominee. The GOP is rife with them and they kvell "See? We're not racist ast all!"
Anyway, the racists aren't my target with "stop wasting talent." It's the libertarians who get skewered with the hypocrisy that their supposed love of creative competition has mutated in defense of inherently UNFAIR competition. Smith & Hayek both demanded max number of skilled competitors for markets to work. They writhe when I point that out.
---
Tim H as Huxley pointed out in Brave NW, a population of geniuses is a real problem. And as we know from the whole Huxley family, geniuses marrying geniuses can be really dangerous, genetically.
Der Oger:
Besides, "Talent" can be translated into "Geeky Ivory Tower Egghead" in right-speech -something to watched suspiciously.
You've got that right. One need look no further than our own regular poster, locumranch, to see how "Knowing how things actually work" is synonymous with tyranny, as if pointing out the fact that he can't have babies ("Where's the fetus going to gestate? Are you going to put it in a box?") is trampling on his rights. Some day, he's going to exact revenge on those elite scientists who subject him to the law of gravity.
Dr Brin:
Der Oger, I believe you are failing to 'know your enemy. Racist assholery has mutated. They are still racist assholes. But now they LOVE Uncle Toms! They would probably vote in one as a Republican nominee. The GOP is rife with them and they kvell "See? We're not racist ast all!"
Maybe, but she's coming from a German perspective, which isn't the same as the American one.
It took me a while to notice that leftists actually have some power in her country.
Dr Brin:
geniuses marrying geniuses can be really dangerous, genetically.
Uh oh.
DD: Storage of data and knowledge for rebuilding and survival is easy enough via thumb drives.
That's how the conversation at CollapseOS begins. What exactly would you plug the thumb drives into? The currently discussed basis is simple, robust 8-bit CPUs (small supply kept on-hand). All else is bootstrapped from scrap. Forth helps.
The acrylic Help Box at my local Walmart had $hundreds in it this morning. An aged woman (obviously struggling with life) was trying to stuff a $10 bill into it. I used to say, "God Bless You", but I today I said, "Shorten the Darkness". I don't know who felt sorrier for who :)
scidata... oy....
I don't expect additional geniuses, the goal is training to make that brain work positively for them and us.
Compare the skill set of the average Montana rancher with that of the average billionaire hedge fund manager. The latter is skilled at bullshitting and dicking around with spreadsheets. The former can weld, fix tractors, diagnose sick animals, analyze soils, understand weather reports, understand markets, and dick around with spread sheets.
President Biden finally acknowledges the obvious (emphasis mine) :
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2022/Senate/Maps/Jan20.html#item-3
Biden's bully pulpitting was very different from that of the previous occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The President started out by admitting he had made a mistake. His predecessor never, ever admitted to mistakes, even when they were there for all to see, written with a Sharpie. Biden said that he thought by being reasonable, accommodating, and talking to the Republicans, they could work together for the good of the country. He admitted that he was wrong thinking that, saying: "One thing I haven't been able to do so far is get my Republican friends to get in the game of making things better in this country." He also said the entire party is thoroughly cowed by Trump, adding: "Did you ever think that one man out of office could intimidate an entire party where they're unwilling to take any vote?" He repeatedly said that the Republicans have no leader except Trump (take that, Yertle), no goal except opposing the Democrats, and no agenda. Literally he said: "What are Republicans for? What are they for? Name me one thing they are for."
@Don Gisselbeck,
The Montana rancher probably knows a bit about bullshit as well.
:)
Re: Montana rancher
There was a farmer next to us that I would always pester for a job as a kid. He knew lots about lots. He would spend 20 minutes rubbing and sniffing a single handful of soil. He analyzed and studied it like his family depended on it. That's why I admired the soil guy in FOUNDATION'S TRIUMPH so much.
"A nation that destroys its soil destroys itself." - FDR
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/18/opinion/biden-failed-presidency.html
With the White House legislative agenda in shambles less than a year before the midterm elections,” my colleagues Lisa Lerer and Emily Cochrane reported last week, “Democrats are sounding alarms that their party could face even deeper losses than anticipated without a major shift in strategy led by the president.”
Some of us have been sounding that alarm for months.
I know it's out there, but I can't understand the attitude of voters who--to punish Democrats for not getting their agenda passed--will willfully elect Republicans in their place. Republicans who not only will never pass any elements of a progressive agenda, but who block Democrats from doing so even now.
Those voters may be punishing Democrats, but they are also rewarding Republican obstructionism, and that's all the Republicans care about. Republicans hear "All we have to do is obstruct Democrats, and the Democrats' voters will then vote them out of office*".
It makes no sense to punish the Democratic Party for the intransigence of Manchin and Synema. Rather, one must make Manchin and Synema irrelevant by electing more Democrats to office. But no one seems to think that way in the voting booth. Which is why we can't have nice things.
Progressives who care about abortion rights, voting rights, and the ability of government to fight a global pandemic had better re-visit the idea that a Hillary presidency would have been "just as bad" or worse than what we got. Because of Wall Street. Or her e-mail server.
* Or not vote at all, or vote for Jill Stein, which as far as the Republicans are concerned are all great options.
Brin:
The racist response to "stop wasting talent" is to deny that anyone with dark skin-tint has talent. Their response to evidence to the contrary is 1) to cite differences in economic achievement, and 2) to deny the authority of evidence. 1 is a direct result of the injustice that it justifies, so the argument is circular. 2 adds insanity to injustice.
One of the many problems with skin-tint-based reparations is that the federal government cannot be trusted to administer it. To run such a program it would have to compile a database which includes names, photos, addresses, other contact information, bank routing numbers, and 'racial' classification. Such a database would be racially discriminatory by definition. What happens when (not if) a racist is elected President? (Probably by promising to 'take it back'.) He would abuse that database; probably to take back the funds redistributed, plus interest, plus other oppressions that the database would simplify.
Also, how is 'race' to be defined? By family trees? They are not always available. By genetic testing? But 'race' is skin-deep; it is not a biological category, it is a social construct. By color swatches? Will the one-drop rule apply? Which way?
Much safer, effective, and to the point would be class-based reparations, a.k.a. UBI. Racism is just the method of injustice, but classism is the motive. It's not about white or black or brown; it's about the Long Green.
Manchin's refusal to consider a talking filibuster, an idea that *he* suggested a year ago, is clear proof that he was not negotiating in good faith over BBB and voter rights. Both I and our host had given Manchin the benefit of the doubt. Last night showed that he was a turncoat the whole time. The Senator from Exxon has made his great betrayal.
Sinema made her stance much clearer as well when she told staffers that "she was having Joe Biden for breakfast." Guess that no one met her asking price. She apparently thinks that she is a leading candidate for a "moderate, centrist president." Seems in character for centrists to betray a nation for more exposure and cash.
They both are now dead to me. Just a matter of time before Sinema announces a party charge to Independent, caucusing with the GOP to hand over control of the Senate to Mitch.
What can be done? Register, vote, build. Get ready to fight the inevitable GOP minority takeover of the US.
This Congress is done and over except for committee hearings in the House.
matthew:
Get ready to fight the inevitable GOP minority takeover of the US.
The thing is, they will eventually fall from power. It's just that you (I'm guessing) and I (definitely) probably aren't young enough to live to see it. I hope my daughter is, and for her sake I have to persevere as if there is a future.
Meanwhile, I'm grateful that we don't have artificial immortality yet. Donald Trump, Clarence Thomas, Mitch McConnell...I expect to live long enough to dance on their graves. That's an unworthy attitude which also does little practical good, but one must take small satisfactions as they are offered.
matthew:
Both I and our host had given Manchin the benefit of the doubt. Last night showed that he was a turncoat the whole time. The Senator from Exxon has made his great betrayal.
...
Just a matter of time before Sinema announces a party charge to Independent, caucusing with the GOP to hand over control of the Senate to Mitch.
Why hasn't Manchin done that second thing yet? If he's a complete turncoat, why not go all the way and flip the Senate? No matter that he casts votes like a Republican, as long as he doesn't make McConnell into majority leader, he's doing some small good. And remember, there isn't a single other Democrat who could win that seat in West Virginia. So without Manchin, Republicans would hold the Senate.
I'm not entirely sure why Sinema hasn't already done what you suggest. She's either playing five-dimensional chess, or she's a complete psychopath.
Personally I'm hoping that some of the GOP Senators will be arrested and jailed over the January insurrection
That could give Biden enough to get the voting act passed
Well, that was the most Dorian Grayish Macbeth ever.
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
scidata, you mean the Denzel? Looking fwd to it.
--
No matter how much evidence, Duncan, that would set off hot civil war. There is ONLY one way to accomplish that, and it is by getting the blackmailed ones to fess up and resign. And that will only happen if JoeB offers advance clemency for transparency. And no one (who matters) listens to me.
--
Matthew you are right about the solution... though Manchin is not Satan. He is a dem senator from the reddest state! He made Schumer maj leader, neuteredMcConnell and made dems all Senate committe chairs, including Liz & Bernie. Withouit him, the $2Trillion we DID get would not have happened.
So yes, build and fight for the coalition! And remember it IS a coalition! And the way to weaken M&S is to add a majority.
--
Paradoc: "The racist response to "stop wasting talent" is to deny that anyone with dark skin-tint has talent. " Yes, but those kinds of racists are NOT the problem! They are a small minority. The vast majority of MAGAs point to their favorite blacks etc and say "I'd support him through hell! So I'm not racist!"
They admit skin color is not the determinant, but rather cult loyalty. Ironically, that opens a wedge for "stop wasting talent."
We might be a few weeks or days away from a chain of events that all our hopes and fears for the future might not matter anymore. Ironically, it might be Putin who saves Biden and the Dems (and the rest of the West) when or if he invades Ukraine.
First, it might become a very costly long-term engagement for the Russians. While the regular army will likely be defeated fast, the Ukraine is already training stay-behind forces to disappear into the hills, and he will have to content with a population that does not support him. Together with sanctions from the rest of the world, except very possibly China, this will force him to end engagements elsewhere, eventually. Leaving Power Vacuums and increased chances of success there.
Second, if or when American and Allied forces are sent more and more into the region, it might suddenly become very important if a person or party had cozier relationships with Moskau than it would be advisable. It could cost them dearly. Unity in times of war and crisis could help to heal the wounds he was partly responsible for. The same could be true for Europe, and increase the number of countries that suddenly want to join the NATO and pay their agreed-upon sum for their defense budget. Much of the year-long labor of FSB and GRU to keep us apart and divided might be undone in a few weeks.
That is, unless nuclear weapons start flying ... in that case, everyone will loose.
Too busy to read all comments so far, but I thought I would give an update on a personal matter:
We just closed on the house purchase today. We will be celebrating with the sellers tonight. It is exactly 3 weeks since we got into contract (and 3 weeks and 2 days since we saw the “for sale” sign in their yard.” The realtor/agent was amazed and happy too…he said this was the easiest transaction he has ever worked on in 35+ years in the profession. He was worried about having two lawyers involved as seller and buyer; but we were happy to leave everything to him rather than try and make it up ourselves.
As for Duncan’s comment, that would be a very unwise thing for the Dems to do. They would be creating a precedent. They might assume that their party will always control both houses of Congress and the presidency, but the public is not strongly identified with the Dems. They might enrage the public so much that you end up with a GOP wave and, even with a bunch of Senators and House members removed from office, the GOP still regains control of both houses. Then those precedents would come back to haunt the Dems.
Maybe, but she's coming from a German perspective, which isn't the same as the American one.
It took me a while to notice that leftists actually have some power in her country.
Also note that the American "left" is to the right of what's generally considered left-wing in most of the world. Enough so that your "socialist" Bernie Sanders would be on the right of the average left-wing party, yet is apparently considered to be radically left in American politics.
https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2020
Come to that, the political right is also different.
https://www.politicalcompass.org/counterpoint-20211001-german-election
GMT congratulations on the home purchase!
re Ukraine, Norman Spinrad concocted a win-win deal he has promulgated that would leave Ukraine in the lurch.
Here's how I responded:
“The Spinrad Solution to the Ukraine Crisis,” offering what would seem a formula for a ‘win-win’ outcome for all sides. Alas, almost nothing that you assert or propose in that offering is true or plausible
1. I notice that you, like Putin, make absolutely no mention of the right of the Ukrainian people to choose or vote on their own future. You act like these are pieces on a bargaining table or a game of Risk. This is in contrast to your laudable mention of positive sum games and win-win options... a concept that doesn't fit the 'chess-player metaphor.
In any event, the concept of democratic self-determination must be our central emphasis, just as it is the one concept that is most poisonous to Putinism, which now raises giant statues to glorious past Czars. In order to better grasp his goal, do read Vladimir Sorokin’s chilling novel THE DAY OF THE OPRICHNIK.
Did you read Putin's recent essay on shared Slavic history that justified forcing Kyiv back into the Motherland, where she belongs?
2. You don't mention Russia's demographic and economic death spiral. Or that in a year US methane shipments to Europe will rise hugely. The next time that oil and gas prices slump, there could be great pain over in Moscow’s oligarchy.
3. Nor do you mention the desperate straits Putin faces, now that he no longer has a Quisling in the US White House to prevent our agencies from fighting back. In fact, I would lay betting odds that right now there are acts of reciprocal sabotage taking place in shadows, perhaps even resembling what the great Sci Fi author Frederik Pohl depicted so chillingly in his amazing novel THE COOL WAR. And earlier Brunner, in STAND ON ZANZIBAR.
Combine desperation with Putin's known propensity to be a gambler, and an impulsive one, at that, and yes, I perceive real danger of intemperate action.
4. But I doubt many Russian generals are eager for an invasion, in an era when the technological advantages go to a prepared defense. And each day that Ukrainians prepare in Polish training camps with flown-in NATO weapons makes that invader disadvantage worse.
(Russian military doctrine for a century has called for devastating artillery preparation. This may not play well in plain sight of world media.)
5. Yes, we should listen to Putin's complaints about NATO! From his perspective, Obama and HClinton 'stole' Ukraine, breaking our promise to leave his buffer alone. To him, the fact that this arose from clear preferences of the Ukrainian people is not a legitimate factor. We broke our word and he took revenge with Trump. (Look at the infamous photo when President Trump with the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, left, and the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, at the White House, almost immediately after he took office.)
From Putin's perspective, we betrayed a promise, aggressively. And we need to take his perspective into account - while despising its inherent rejection of popular will. He will NEVER accept a Ukraine capable of democratic self-governing sovereignty. He has said so.
I do not conclude with a prediction but with odds. There is a chance for a temporary face-saving gesture, allowing a pullback by all forces. I give that maybe 30%. But Biden cannot give VP what he demands. And that makes things dangerous, indeed. And each day that passes means more Ukrainians who have trained in Poland to use Javelin missiles and anti-aircraft systems.
There is a factor no one discusses. And that is Putin using earlier preparations to strike at us at home. And another factor: that he may receive help from another rising power to whom (I speculate) he has already surreptitiously sold large swathes of Siberia.
Too much? Well, I am paid to speculate. Do not encourage.
Re: Ukraine. The wife of the seller is from Ukraine; she married my former co-worker Dave back in 2003 and she came to the US with her young son (who is now a Julliard graduate and a magnificent concert pianist).
Russia may be a corrupt oligarchy run by mobsters, but it still has valid interests. I will look up Spinrad’s solution. There are ways to negotiate with corrupt, unscrupulous opposing parties. It’s not easy, but it is possible.
Re: sold large swathes of Siberia.
Not too much speculation at all. In 1867, Canada was confederated and Russia sold all of Alaska and a chunk of British Columbia to the US for pocket change.
BTW Denzel is wonderful as Macbeth.
Larry, a quisling Manchin succeeded in tying up the Dem Senate in negotiations for nearly a year, reneging on his word multiple times. The time and political capital wasted are a huge loss for the Dems. A GOP Manchin would be just another back-bencher, and would be considered a RINO by many in the party. He would be not nearly as effective for Exxon, committee chairs notwithstanding.
Der Oger, do you have any insight on why Germany is halting weapons transfers to Ukraine? Is natural gas enough explanation?
https://www.euractiv.com/section/defence-and-security/news/germany-continues-blocking-arms-exports-to-ukraine-due-to-new-foreign-peace-policy/
Matthew, again BAH! The good Manchin has done VASTLY outweighs the bad! Do I wish he weren't obstructing many good things? Hell yeah! But I will not cotton to screaming at a democratic senator from West f---- Virginia. My dream? That he leave the DP to start a new party with TWENTY GOP Senators who then negotiate like actual citizens.
The arms to Ukraine that matter are being flown into Poland by the US. Let the Germans step in as peacemakers after dust has settled.
I’ll join that party, David.
Mike Flynn caught gathering blackmail material against fellow Republicans in order to get them to back fraudulent voter "audits."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/21/michael-flynn-allies-allegedly-targeted-republicans-back-election-audits
Dr. Brin, show your work regarding Manchin.
Are you claiming that Senate committee chairs and a few judges outweigh *all* Biden's legislative agenda during his honeymoon first year?
Manchin dictated the whole pace and tone of the Senate this year. I see an argument for it being a wash either way.
I strongly disagree that committee chairs and a year worth of judges are "vastly" (your word) more important than the entire Dem legislative agenda. Manchin laid waste to any idea of centrist negotiation for the rest of Biden's term, and if the Dems lose either house in 2022, Manchin will be directly to blame.
matthew:
Dr. Brin, show your work regarding Manchin.
Are you claiming that Senate committee chairs and a few judges outweigh *all* Biden's legislative agenda during his honeymoon first year?
No, I'm pretty sure he's saying that without Manchin filling what would otherwise be a Republican seat, Mitch McConnell would control the Senate, and that none of the Dem's legislative agenda would have passed anyway. Instead, they'd be holding hearings investigating Hunter Biden and Dr Fauci.
Matthew,
Yes. Dem control of the Senate is worth the loss of the entire Democratic agenda... which didn't happen. Some of it, but not all of it.
Y'all need a few more Senators to get what you want, but at least the other guys didn't get what they want.
Der Oger,
There won't be any nukes flying from over here. Only the truly, utterly stupid would take us on that way nowadays.
You'll see lots of scary rhetoric and maybe more shooting. Maybe the war already happening in Ukraine will escalate. We shall see.
What you'll see from over here (assuming we maintain our sanity at the DoD) are moves that cost Russia more money than they can possibly afford. That will pressure them to extract cash out of markets near them... which means you.
If you can avoid funding them, this all goes the same damn way it did with the Soviets. Putin eventually does something smart (and pulls back declaring a fake victory), something dumb (and gets displaced by people who don't want to die stupidly), or kicks that can down the road and spends his nation into bankruptcy again. Unfortunately, before that happens, a lot of Russians will suffer the usual secret police ghastliness.
No nukes, though.
That would be stupid.
Der Oger, do you have any insight on why Germany is halting weapons transfers to Ukraine? Is natural gas enough explanation?
Maybe. Cutting down the pipelines will hurt us very badly economically. But Chancellor Scholz has already mentioned that he might do it. Maybe he just tries to prepare the public, or buys time.
Also, it is quite illegal to export weapons to instable non-Nato countries. Heckler & Koch found that out when they exported small arms to Mexico that originally were intended for the police force but ended up in the hands of the cartels. (By contrast, as long as the country is stable, the law does not differentiate between democracies and autocracies, so we are apparently totally ok with selling arms to countries like Egypt. That might change, though.)
Maybe it is the fact that we have 5 million people of Russian descent in the country.
Maybe it is our special history with Russia, and the fact that we are in no shape to wage a continental war with it.Maybe it is just not wise to poke the bear.
Maybe, if the continental war becomes inevitable, it might be wiser to keep the weapons for yourself, stockpiling them instead of selling them abroad.
Maybe it is even blackmail (though I think it might be very unwise to try to intimidate the "Scholz-O-Mat").
But maybe it is something entirely else. Maybe it is Blinken's masterpiece.
See, part of Lawrows job is to provide a pretext for invasion. To this end, he tried to narrow the playing field to a negotiation with the US he intended to fail. But Blinken and the others might play a massive "Good cop/Bad Cop" game.
The UK and Tschechia deliver weapons. The Canadians send in and train commandos. The US do what they do. Germany keeps an outstretched hand. Multilateral action that keeps Lawrow spinning.
Something about the press conference of our Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and Lawrow was odd. Baerbock was very focussed, cold and determined. A very different appearance when compared to the electoral campaign. Lawrow, on the other hand, looked somewhat befuddled, as if he had expected something different. In contrast to the press conference he had after he met Blinken. It was almost funny to watch him reinvent reality and spinning lies and half-truths into a tapestry of illusions.
Maybe Lawrow has realized he has "lost" the diplomatic game. He cannot declare "Negotiations with the US have failed, we see no other way than to invade" because he now has to talk with all those who have a stake in the game.
Apropos nothing much,
I'm watching a Netflix series about WWII which describes Hitler's deteriorating mental state as the war goes badly by 1943. According to this documentary, Hitler was under the care of a physician who prescribed increasingly bizarre medications such as (not making this up) bull semen to increase his virility. So the whole Trump thing about hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin is not without precedent.
More to the point, though. Back in grade school, when I was first exposed to filmed records of Nazi atrocities in the concentration camps and the like, I always wondered just what the Nazis were thinking when they filmed themselves committing such atrocities. Only now do I put it together that those films were the YouTube/Twitter/Parler of their day--their primitive version of modern day criminals posting their own bank robberies, carjackings, and invasions of the US Capitol to social media for all to see. Once again, Plus ca change, plus la meme chose.
Also note that the American "left" is to the right of what's generally considered left-wing in most of the world. Enough so that your "socialist" Bernie Sanders would be on the right of the average left-wing party, yet is apparently considered to be radically left in American politics.
I sometimes think that over here, the parties moved with the center, while in the US, it might have been vice versa.
Currently, the "burgeois" parties have more seats in the 20th Bundestag than the "left" ones; the FDP has switched camps, though.
Last week, a member of the AfD faction left the party because it had became to radical for him, taking his seat to the ... Deutsche Zentrumspartei. The Party that lifted Adolf Hitler into power. Left me with a shudder. Did not know they still exist.
Larry,
What I am saying is hearings about Hunter Biden and Dr. Fauci and fewer judges are not "vastly" worse than our current outcome.
We would have gotten infrastructure anyway, probably in the 1T range instead of 2T. The narrative in the press would be about GOP intransigence instead of the lack of Dem leadership. Senate approval for Biden's cabinet, including the AG, would not have been given.
The House would still be running the Jan 6th investigation. The DoJ would still be charging the insurrectionists, even without Garland in charge because the non-political appointees would go after the low-level coup plotters regardless of who was in charge.
But the narrative would not be "the Democrats control both sides of Congress, why aren't they doing anything," it would be "the GOP refuses to work with a popular president." One of these things is a win for the GOP, one of them is not.
If the goal is to protect our democracy, then having a quisling like Manchin sabotage the *entire* agenda of the Democratic party is worse than having a visible foe like the GOP.
Manchin has made the POTUS look like a fool for trusting Manchin at his word. The GOP does not have the same power as Manchin's lies.
Focus on the outcome of saving democracy in the US, and Manchin's betrayal has bigger consequences than having a GOP Senator from red West Virginia.
Oh such nonsense! Bernie & Kiz as committee chairs MATTERS. And GOPpers made it a tradition to mock "infrastructure Week" every year for the last ten, faking interest then dropping it. They would never have given Biden a victory. The rest of your 'would have' is dazzling! Utterly mind-blowing!
--
re: Germany and Ukraine, Have you ever heard of good-cop/bad-cop? Germany cannot play bad cop with countries where they have such history.
The clown-car fascists, pillowguys, rabid godheads, indicted fugitives, and dead enders must rely on dodgy hokery-pokery and desperate Hail Marys to seize history*. A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Macbeth, and much of Shakespeare, in one line: you can't murder your way to paradise. I long ago threw my lot in with the rational west, citizen science, and the enlightenment, together with many millions of others. Humanity, industry, forbearance, and posterity are our values.
* And are thus doomed to repeat it. Santayana, Boas, Kroeber, et al. All history is psychohistory (especially Sinema :)
matthew:
We would have gotten infrastructure anyway, probably in the 1T range instead of 2T.
No, we wouldn't. If that were the case, we would have gotten infrastructure during the Trump years, either when the Republicans controlled congress or when the Democrats did. If the Republican minority successfully obstructs anything that would be a "win" for Biden, what makes you think a Republican majority would even bring it to the floor, let alone pass it.
The narrative in the press would be about GOP intransigence instead of the lack of Dem leadership.
Again, if that wasn't the narrative in 2009, what makes you think it would be different now?
But the narrative would not be "the Democrats control both sides of Congress, why aren't they doing anything," it would be "the GOP refuses to work with a popular president." One of these things is a win for the GOP, one of them is not.
I agree with your statements of fact, but disagree with your conclusions.
Yes, the narrative today is "the Democrats control both sides of Congress, why aren't they doing anything," but that's the fault of the media and of the Democrats themselves for failing to mention the power that the Senate minority has to obstruct. It was even worse in 2009 when the only thing that Republicans had was 41 Senators, and yet they were able to parlay obstruction into a massive electoral win in 2010 and again in 2014. Because if your only goal is obstruction, then a single lever of government is enough to get your way all the time.
And what makes you think the media would portray President Biden as "a popular president" (and the Republicans as bad for obstructing him) than they do now? Bill frickin' Maher, who has no love for Trump, just quoted that weird Quinnipiac poll that the rest of the media keep touting which shows Biden at 33% approval. Every night I am inundated with stories about inflation, empty store shelves, and why Biden hasn't beaten COVID yet. You think they would be treating him better if Republicans had the Senate?
Dr Brin:
Germany cannot play bad cop with countries where they have such history.
Especially with countries they've lost World Wars to.
(Sorry, just sayin')
"Especially with countries they've lost World Wars to" It's not their losing that means they must take care with Russia & Ukraine. It's what preceded those losses.
onward
onward
Post a Comment