While we figure out how to save the forward-looking, scientific, open-minded, fact-facing civilization that's been so good to us... let's have a look at some recent news. Reasons to save it!
== Medical Wonders ==
Progress toward fighting Parkinson's: After finding two surface antigens that might be important in the disease… “(T)argeting this interaction with drugs could significantly slow the progression of Parkinson's disease and other neurodegenerative diseases." Wow.
Side note: A combo of both human history and sci fi suggest that Covid was very mild compared to some future pandemic… and truly shook us awake and likely left us vastly better prepared for when one does come. Like the swift rollout of RNA vaccines. Though long Covid revealed a whole other layer to this one, alas.
And here's another wow. A now ten year-old boy was born in 2014 after his mother, a 35-year-old woman who had been born without a uterus, received a donated uterus from a 61-year-old close family friend. A decade on, over 135 uterus transplants have been performed globally, resulting in the births of over 50 healthy babies.
== Incredible views of the past ==
Much farther back… Among many insights in this interview with David Reich, about the incredible new science of forensic paleontological genetics, revealing so much about past human migrations, cultures, replacements and waves of disease and repercussions. For example, all through Latin America, the Y chromosomes are 95% European and the mitochondria and 95% native. And yes the somewhat unpleasant implications are the same as the Y bottleneck 8000 years earlier.
Along such lines... I just attended the annual CARTA Symposium (The Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny) this time about what recent DNA studies can tell us about our past. And the incredible details we now can perceive about the flow and ebb of Neanderthals, Denisovans and so many sub branches of ortho humanity! It's like we've suddenly developed a backwards time viewer!
And EARTH has been around even longer! Not my novel by that name, but the planet! To which the next pertinent link…
Anton Petrov runs a daily science series on YouTube that’s way above average. And overall very informative about fascinating science news. In this one, he relates experiments with bacteria in slushy/icy water, to simulate conditions during the Kirschvink Eras… also called Iceball Earth… occasions when nearly all the planet was ice-covered, and the high viscosity gave a huge advantage to eukaryotes who clumped together into multi-cellular organisms. Which correlates with the known huge outburst of multicellular life, just after the Final Big Melt. See A New History of LIfe: Radical New Discoveries About the Origins & Evolution of Life on Earth, by Ward and Kirschvink.
Meanwhile, microbial life has been found in one of Earth's harshest environments - a deep sea ecosystem where the pH is as high as 12. These microbes survive the highly alkaline environment by metabolizing methane and sulfate.
== Good – possibly great – tech news ==
Way cool. Geothermal has long been the way to go, a la Iceland! (With a side benefit of lots of minerals like lithium.) And no reliance on fickle sunlight or wind. MIT spinout Quaise Energy hopes to save a lot of infrastructure costs by drilling next to now-dormant former coal power plants, using existing generators, power lines & permits, with plenty of love from the locals.
Won't such sites be less than ideal for drilling? What's got me awhirl is the drilling tech, using microwave gyrotrons to heat & blast rock ahead of the drill-bit. That *ought to* make hot rock accessible. Hey, I had that idea back in the 80s and failed to get anyone interested! Where are my shares, please?
"The company plans to begin harvesting energy from pilot geothermal wells that reach rock temperatures at up to 500 C by 2026. From there, the team hopes to begin repurposing coal and natural gas plants using its system," reports MIT News.
… and along related lines…
If this pans out, maybe Denmark+Greenland will buy Alaska! “Copenhagen Atomics is a Danish molten salt technology company developing mass manufacturable molten-salt reactors. The reactor type invented by Copenhagen Atomics is a thorium molten salt breeder reactor, which fits inside a custom built 40 foot shipping container and can be mass manufactured on assembly lines with an expected output of minimum 1 reactor per day (per assembly line). The target customers are large plants producing commodities such as aluminum, ammonia or hydrogen.”
== Fun (and messy) Miscellany ==
A study out of Finland looks at different types of love in the human brain, including parental, romantic, pets, friends, nature, and strangers.
Apparently a dormant U.S. military outpost was wrecked just a couple of years ago by a huge tsunami way up in northern Greenland, propelled by a giant landslide… that no one noticed.
“Sunflowers Dance to Prevent Throwing Too Much Shade on Each Other.”
Far more intriguing… and I am a bit skeptical… is this news from the site for the IgNobel Prizes… a rain forest parasitical plant that mimics the leaves of its varied hosts. The amazing thing is that it can mimic even a plastic plant it is placed next to, and hence it is not pre-programmed of based on chemical signals. So what… a vision system? Sonar? Or a fake story? You tell us in comments!
Other IgNobels: Researchers found that hair whorls in children from the Southern hemisphere were oriented counterclockwise more frequently than in children from the Northern hemisphere, indicating possible environmental factors, although the team could not rule out genetic effects from specific population characteristics. Another team found that test animals with arrested breathing could get sufficient oxygen if it is pumped in anally – helping motivate me to keep up my covid shots! (And yes, there's that Japanese company described on Colbert. Calling Jim Carrey and Le Petomane!)
Though there’s apparently a better way to stay younger. Giving blood regularly may not just be saving the lives of other people, it could also be improving your own blood's health at a genetic level, according to a new study. (Working on my 108th pint next week.) ...Oh and honey is supposedly good. I just charged my hives rent!
Caltech aims to promote the development of alternative natural rubber production from plants that can be grown in the U.S., including guayule, a plant native to the desert Southwest; certain species of dandelion; and mountain gum. Part of the trend of the last few years to encourage in-sourcing and reducing supply chain vulnerabilities and rendering obsolete the vast fleets of polluting freighters out there (as I depicted in Existence.)
The Gila River Indian Community, in south-central Arizona, plan an experimental effort to conserve water while generating electricity: floating solar cells. Between its canal canopies and the new project that would float photovoltaic panels on a reservoir it is building, for power and to preserve water from evaporation.
And yes, next time I may start my big posting about how and why Democrats should study Newt Gingrich's so-called "Contract With America."
Yes I mean it. And one of the reasons? Use that polemically successful yet ultimately deceitful set of promises to do a major judo move and (among other things) save science!
87 comments:
You have a number of link failures in this post. They point back to blogger instead of where I'm sure you mean them to point.
Geothermal - if you pump water down to get heated in some cases it is bringing a LOT of CO2 back with it
Not sure how common this is but it does need to be considered
Alas I see the errors in blogger links. Shall try to do something about it.
Makes sense. That's what we get for using a universal solvent. 8)
Much better. I'm able to follow the floating solar link now. I've liked the notion of floating panels for a long time, but I hope they work out a way to have very minimal infrastructure. We don't need high efficiency panels since they double up as shade to reduce evaporation. Water savings offsets lost kW production.
Oculus and Anduril founder Palmer Luckey is several mushrooms… a fun-guy… who roams, irrepressibly far and wide on Joe Rogan’s show. And starting at this linked portion, he refers avidly to the Uplift Trilogy – having forgotten the author’s name! Ah well ;-) Alas, while 90% of the exchanges – and yes, remarks by Rogan – range from gosh-wow real science through legit sci-fi speculation, there’s at least half a dozen places where they tip into woo-woo territory. That’s no sin! But alas, it is not helpful at a moment when the very notions of scientific grounding and falsifiability are under siege. Still, a fun episode. https://youtu.be/-9LFj6YOK2U?si=J2x2AJ-K4jbcKvS_&t=7323
Re: anthropology, archaeology, anthropogeny, etc
You cannot see the future if you cannot see the past
- from DUNE part 2 (paraphrased from memory, may not be exact quote)
Other tools are on the horizon too, such as computational psychohistory.
Lot of talk lately on orbital AI data centers.
Great video on the hard engineering numbers for a 250 server AIDC with solar power arrays and radiator cooling (for both arrays, about 4 square meters per server is a good rule of thumb).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAcR7kqOb3o
Bottom line: 57 tons total weight (maybe 50 tonnes with some clever engineering), which can be launched by a Falcon Heavy (60 tonnes launch capacity) or 3 to 5 such data centers at once with a Starship (capacity of 150 metric tons in a reusable configuration and over 250 metric tons in an expendable mode).
Cost for Starship launch into Earth orbit is about $100,000 per tonne, or $5 million per AIDC.
For both terrestrial and orbital AIDC, the servers themselves are the most expensive item, $6.25 million - $100 million+.
For terrestrial AIDC, facilities (land, building, infrastructure) with power and cooling infrastructure runs from $5 million - $15 million+
A conservative estimate places the total initial investment at a minimum of $12 million to $25 million for a large terrestrial AIDC, with potential to exceed $100 million if using top-tier, fully-loaded AI server systems and a high-redundancy facility.
Hard to compare terrestrial fiber optic connections with orbital satellite arrays like Starlink, but Starlink already exists and data signaling can be piggy backed onto them easily.
Orbital AIDC will need batteries for shadow times in orbit or be supported by a ring of SPS that can beam energy to them when they are in the Earth's shadow.
However, orbital AIDC have to be re-orbited like the ISS with continuous resupply of fuel or placed initially into high (expensive) orbits - costs not incurred by terrestrial AIDC.
But then orbital AIDC won't cause everyone's electrical bill to double, suck cooling water away from farmers' irrigation systems, or face zoning regulations and NIMBY protests (which are starting).
Since the server costs themselves are comparable for both cases, proper comparison would be between ground infrastructure and orbital launch costs plus space specific hardware.
Conclusion: Orbital AIDCs appear to be cost competitive and worth looking into.
Meanwhile, back on the ground, terrestrial AIDC could spark a boom in small modular reactors supplying center specific power without needing to access the grid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPcemHez_4g&t=49s
And the increased price of electricity makes rooftop solar much more attractive for Joe Homeowner.
Expansion of nuclear AND rooftop solar makes global warming far easier to handle.
And orbital AIDC could bootstrap space industry based on lunar mining operations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLNrYwx0th0
A healthy competition between terrestrial and orbital AIDC might be a good thing.
A very good thing.
I’ve seen a few proposals, but none go into detail about who buys these services and what the service experiences would be.
Meanwhile, what the hell does Christmas Island need a data centre for?
That geothermal power idea is exciting! Best idea yet for clean power.
That geothermal power idea is exciting! Best idea yet for clean power.
David Roberts (aka drvolts) recently did a podcast about the microwave drill for geothermal (which he's also enthusing over).
The idea was mooted about 15 years ago in Australia. It sounds like fracking, but isn't because a) it's much deeper, and b) doesn't involve injecting nasty chemicals to force the gas up (along with aforesaid nasty chemicals)
OK, in no particular order.
That drill looks interesting, but does it have the unfortunate side-effect of making it more economical to drill really deep oil/gas wells?
I seem to recall that vacuum is a sufficiently good insulator that cooling for orbital AIDCs might be a non-trivial exercise.
The acronym for the CalTech rubber project is TARDISS! Is that some nerd in California having a lend, or do we have a secret Dr Who cell in research land? (Or both, of course?)
It's CalTech. Of course there is a Dr Who cell there. 8)
Also, cooling any AIDC is a non-trivial exercise.
I suspect the trade-off goes something like this...
On the ground, your AIDC can be reached by hurricanes/typhoons and angry mobs with pitchforks and torches.
In space, your AIDC just has to deal with the angry mob of charged particles slashing through the circuitry.
If anyone is actually serious and spends money putting them up there, we are going to need to deploy hardware for depleting Earth's radiation belts. Doable... if there is a customer who wants it bad enough.
Trivia: I gather that data centres have so much on-site memory store that the error detection/correction systems can detect cosmic ray showers. This was 10-15 years ago.
Honestly? If we *really* need so many of the darn things, they could just as easily set them up in the middle of the deep ocean using those floating solar cells Alfred mentioned. I think that would be missing the point, though.
Hi JV
Geothermal MAY be a nice clean energy option - But the amount of CO2 released from deep underground needs to be measured and taken into account
A slightly more expensive option may be to have heat exchangers underground rather than relying on the water that is pumped down to be heated up by the hot rocks
Orbital AI? I just feel reminded of Anomalous Subsurface Environment, a D&D gonzo setting module wherein the gods are AI inhabiting satellites.
Change of subject.
Today is the 50th anniversary of the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
https://shipwreckmuseum.com/edmund-fitzgerald-memorial-ceremonies-on-november-10-2025/#:~:text=IMPORTANT%20INFORMATION!,tickets%20are%20needed%20to%20attend.
The Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society will hold an outdoor public remembrance service for the 50th Edmund Fitzgerald Memorial at Whitefish Point on Monday, November 10th, 2025 at 2:00 PM.
Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
The searchers all say they'd have made Whitefish Bay
If they'd put 15 more miles behind her
They might have split up or they might have capsized
They may have broke deep and took water
And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters
My dad had the Gordon Lightfoot album with that song on it when I was a teenager in the 1970s, but it wasn't until much later that I learned how recent the incident had been at the time. I originally thought the song was about something that happened way back when, not "last Tuesday".
Since the subject has been changed once already...
WTF, Democratic Senators? Are they being blackmailed too? What else is the upside for bailing out Republicans on the shutdown in exchange for a promise to vote ("no") on the ACA benefits some time in the future?
The pessimist in me says they just killed their momentum toward a blue wave next year.
The not as pessimistic view:
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2025/Items/Nov10-1.html
...
And now, let's address a couple things the Democrats got that they cannot necessarily announce publicly. The vote on the subsidies is known, and it certainly seems like a loss, since a vote on the subsidies is not the same thing as restoring the subsidies. However, for those who would call it a loss, consider that maybe the blue team (the five new aisle-crossers, at least, and very possibly other Democratic members like Hickenlooper) are actually playing the long game. Well, not exactly long, but maybe the short-to-medium game. There are only three outcomes when it comes to the promised vote: (1) The subsidies are restored, or (2) The Republicans vote down the subsidies (again), either in the Senate or the House or (3) Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) refuses to hold the vote.
In the first case, the Democrats get what they want. In the second and third cases, they get crystal-clear proof that the Republicans are the ones who don't want poor people to have health insurance, which the blue team can then wield as a club in the 2026 elections. Oh, and if things don't work out to their satisfaction, the Democrats can resume their resistance on January 30, when the government will shut down again if there is no bill. In that scenario, the blue team will have even more political cover AND they won't have to worry about people who need SNAP going hungry, or veterans going without their pensions. In short, the Democrats got some pretty good stuff from a politics perspective without actually giving all that much up.
The second thing the Democrats got is pressure on Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to reopen the House. If he does it, then Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ) will have to be sworn in, and then Rep. Thomas Massie's (R-KY) Epstein files bill would have the necessary signatures to be brought to the floor of the House. If Johnson doesn't re-open, then he will open the Republicans up to withering criticism that they care more about protecting sexual predators than they do about hungry children. That is not a political winner.
Ultimately, many Democrats, including some who voted to hold the line (like Hickenlooper) concluded that the White House was never, ever going to give in on the subsidies. Shaheen, for example, concurred that "this was the only deal on the table." If that is true, then the blue team got about as much as they could have hoped to get, and they made the correct tactical decision—to cash out. If it is not true, and there was a real possibility of Trump caving, then the Democrats should have pushed all-in. That's really the crux of the matter; readers can decide for themselves if Hickenlooper, Shaheen, et al., assessed the situation correctly when they decided this was the best deal possible.
God, I hope so.
Re: Lightfoot
We used some of those songs for wash-wash time and lullabies 30 years ago. Especially "Railway Trilogy" ("Wreck of the Edmund F." was too dark). And Stan Rogers, especially "Northwest Passage". I miss my pre-stroke singing voice. Gosh, I'm such an old Canuck.
Re: Excited States
The House returning is the other shoe of course. He who shall not be named looms like a Dementor.
I used Jesus's Soliloquy from Superstar as a lullaby, at least until my daughter was old enough to understand the words. :)
Also Jim Croce's "I've Got A Name", which is still the only song my daughter allows me to sing in front of her. "Daddy, don't sing," was her catch phrase for years, but that one got a pass.
I would like to donate blood. I suffered hepatitis A (contagious hepatitis) when I was 11 years old and was told I could never donate blood. I would regularly volunteer at blood banks. Recently it seems that I am no longer prohibited from donating as long as I don't show active symptoms of hepatitis. I may start donating at age 66.
I've scheduled my first appointment to donate for 7:00 pm EST tonight (4:00 pm PST). Yay.
GMT good for you. Always tell them, though, in case filtering is involved.
The new dem governors in VA & NJ are both congress reps and hence the dems will be weakened in the House in January. Until 5 (then 7) house goppers find their souls.
Possibly the dems held out to ensure air traffic remains screwed up till Thxgiving.
added point. Paying what's left of the Protector Caste makes sense since DT is clearly clearing paths for a 9/11 to hit us before Epstein
Well, they're paying ICE and the Border Patrol, but I'm not sure that "protector" is the right word.
A thought on Corinthians 13:13: "And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity." (Charity now interpreted as "love.")
Well, I'm not a big admirer of Paul, an admitted murderer who only took over Christianity because James and the Jewish Christians all died defending their assigned section of Jerusalem's wall in 70 CE. Still, Sure. Love is paramount only consider that:
Love is for the 'other.'
Faith is for the self... as is Hope... (they are pretty much the same thing.)
But CURIOSITY is the gift that Paul never mentions. No surprise, since curiosity undermines Authority, his real goal.
Curiosity is independent of fear. It rises above Faith and Love by demanding no favors, for either the self or another. Simply light. Curiosity is collegial, respecting the Creator and the Creator's creations, like an apprentice asking "How?" And it has been rewarded - via science - out of all proportion to the others gift, since its fruits can be passed along and then built upon by new generations.
The laboratory of creation was left open for us, the doors unlocked, the lights on, reagents all on the shelves and bunsen burners lit. And though we burn our fingers, we also learn so, so much.
If you were the Creator of a trillion galaxies, but could hear all prayers, which would please you more?
-- "Oh you're so big and great; please don't crush or torment me... but give me stuff!"
or else
-- "You mean this experiment does THAT? Oh, wow, that is so, cool!"
At last, after 14 billion years, someone who notices really excellent, world-building craftsmanship!
"Why ... thanks. I was kind of proud of coming up with that one. But now see where it leads..."
Maybe it is just semantics, but:
I just started to wonder if we do any good if we accept protectors as a caste (with own rights and rules), or if the ideal should be "Citizen in Uniform" and a higher standard of accountability.
I'm with you regarding how Curiosity should be seen as a virtue. We should add it to the list.
Faith and Hope aren't pretty much the same, though. Faith looks inward and backward. It says "Remain loyal to who you are". Hope looks forward and out. It says "Believe and Become". They aren't the same, but do overlap for curious souls.
Overlap is typical among the virtues. 8)
Faith is for the self... as is Hope... (they are pretty much the same thing.)
To me, faith implies more certainty than hope.
I hope there will be a blue wave election next year, but I wouldn't claim to have faith that it will happen.
If you were the Creator of a trillion galaxies, but could hear all prayers, which would please you more?
-- "Oh you're so big and great; please don't crush or torment me... but give me stuff!"
...
As a writer, you must appreciate that you create characters in order for them to act out stories. They don't always do what you originally intend for them--sometimes these things "write themselves"--but you would find it quite frustrating if your characters discovered your existence and decided that they should be worshipping you and telling you how wonderful you are instead of proceeding with the story.
Sometimes I think that God would be similarly frustrated about religion.
LH please read "Stones of Significance" for exactly that scenario.
Alfred respectfully disagree. You HOPE for the future and you have FAITH that your future is what you hope it will be, either for self or for others. Which does overlaps with LOVE.
All of them are a little bit (or a lot) grabby. All of them assume importance of the individual, when clearly He has little need to care about individuals.
Consider the notions of His purpose in making Creation. We're not supposed to ask about that because it leads to inconvenient ruminations.
- If He knows in detail what's going to happen - the total omniscience notion most explicitly held by Calvinists but also by everyone who clutches the sadistic Book of Revelation - they WHY? We're just in a simulation then. Time is an illusion and nothing matters. This may be run fifteen jillion and twenty-three but the only conclusion is nihilism.
- Or maybe He's curious and wants to see how it all turns out? Which violates theological flattery inflation. (Of course He's UTTERLY OMNISCIENT and knows all! A conclusion without any evidence.) In this case, of what importance is any one individual? I care about my beehive, not individual bees... though I'll fish one out of the pool if I see one drowning.
- A variant on #2 is that He wants to make something that can only be produced via time and a whole lot of individual pain. Again, the Big Picture - e.g. humanity as a whole - is far more important than I am individually. (Hard for an egotist to say, but there it is.) Egocentric prayer seems kinda pathetic either way.
Is the Big Plan 'ineffable', despite my attempts to eff it? Sure, maybe so. Still, I see little point in whining and nagging. If (when) I get in trouble - or someone I love does - I expect to get from prayer the only thing that ever has been repeatedly verified that people get from it.
Some strength. Thanks in advance for that.
From an evolutionary standpoint, there is a single virtue that comprises all the others: survive.
And as with evolution, it's not the individual that survives, it's the genes.
You HOPE for the future and you have FAITH that your future is what you hope it will be,
That's a very specific application of more general concepts.
Some people have faith that God has ordered the universe in such a manner that many of their own loved ones are damned to hell. I doubt that they actually hope for that outcome, even if they believe it to be so.
Me personally, I have faith that gravity works. Were I to find myself falling out of a 20-story window in Moscow, I might hope that it would pause, but I wouldn't have faith in such a miracle.
Religion--at least the American Christianity that I'm familiar with--emphasizes what I can only call faith in faith. It's not simply that one has faith in God or God's plan. One also is required to have faith that his own faith is righteous. When explaining why I am not a Christian (along with being Jewish), the way I put is that I can't find it in me to have faith that:
I have to believe that I have to believe in Jesus in order to get into heaven in order to get into heaven.
And that's not a typo.
Yes, but...
Calling survival a virtue is kinda like having your goal in life "maximizing happiness", or your goal in business "maximizing profit." The next question has to be, "Ok, but what does it take to maximize those things?" And it's the "what it takes" details that are then regarded as virtues.
On the other hand, survival can't be ridiculed as virtue signaling. What I meant was that faith, hope, charity, love, curiosity, Forth, etc are virtues that contribute to survival, again not of the individual, but of the gene/meme/dream.
Because of course, they did.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/10/us/politics/senators-shutdown-smith-phone-searches.html
A spending package expected to be approved as part of a deal to reopen the government would create a wide legal avenue for senators to sue for as much as half a million dollars each when federal investigators search their phone records without notifying them.
The provision, tucked into a measure to fund the legislative branch, appears to immediately allow for eight G.O.P. senators to sue the government over their phone records being seized in the course of the investigation by Jack Smith, the former special counsel, into the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
...
The language of the bill states that “any senator whose Senate data, or the Senate data of whose Senate office, has been acquired, subpoenaed, searched, accessed, or disclosed in violation of this section may bring a civil action against the United States if the violation was committed by an officer, employee, or agent of the United States or of any federal department or agency.”
Because the provision is retroactive to 2022, it would appear to make eligible the eight lawmakers whose phone records were subpoenaed by investigators for Mr. Smith as he examined efforts by Donald J. Trump to obstruct the results of the 2020 presidential election.
...
Because the provision is retroactive to 2022, it would appear to make eligible the eight lawmakers whose phone records were subpoenaed by investigators for Mr. Smith as he examined efforts by Donald J. Trump to obstruct the results of the 2020 presidential election.
...
Where's DOGE when you really need it?
Donation completed in 4 minutes 28 seconds. I intend to make a habit of this. I volunteered for blood drives when I was a teenager to make up for not being allowed to donate. 520 ml of high quality, B+ Kosher blood. Made the staff laugh with my joke about the name of the attending physician: Dr. Acula, M.D.
My high school had blood donations, but you had to be 17, which I only was in my final year. I was determined to give, but knew myself well enough to feel that if I had any kind of problem like fainting, that I would never give blood again. Well, I had no problem and continued to donate through college. It was one way to talk to girls. Plus it felt like being a superhero. Comparable to pushing stranded cars out of snowdrifts.
Those were the days.
I can't describe the song on this video. The caption copy says "second verse on this is one of the funniest things i've ever heard" and that is correct.
https://bsky.app/profile/rudepundit.bsky.social/post/3m5bvgsfkgs2z
Rude Pundit says:
"Sweet Jesus, just crank it somewhere you can cackle freely."
Blood donation
I used to donate regularly - then we had Thatcher removing "unnecessary regulations" which led to the Mad Cow problem and as I was living in the UK at the time I could not give blood in the USA or in NZ
I think this is no longer a problem but I am now a bit old - and the blood donation system here in the boonies......
The only thing I will never do again is watch the needle go in. "This, you only do once."
Huzzah GMT! I truly believe it does the donor a lot of good!
LH thanks for sharing that fun 'song'. Haha. The hosts didn't mention of course (maybe didn't know) this is a mix riff off of Blondie's magnificent "Rapture."
https://bsky.app/profile/rudepundit.bsky.social/post/3m5bvgsfkgs2z
That’s where we differ Larry. I jump less when I see a needle going in. That said, the needle here was a lot bigger than the ones they use for blood samples or for injections. It hurt quite a bit for the first minute or so. But then I got used to it. And it was over pretty quickly. I was expecting to be tapped for 15 to 30 minutes, not for less than 5.
My wife and I listened to the song tonight. Then I read an article in Rolling Stone from 2015 about how the song was recorded. The story is amazing. Gordon wrote the song but only shared the melody with his band, not the lyrics. He booked 5 days of recording studio time and recorded 10 songs for his next album. They finished halfway into day 4. Since they had another day and a half of studio time, one of the musicians suggested they record Gordon’s shipwreck song.
Here’s the amazing thing. The version that was released…it was the very first take. That was the very first time the band had ever performed the song or even heard the lyrics. The spent the rest of day 4 and all of day 5 recording more takes, but none of them were as good as that first take.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/gordon-lightfoot-wreck-of-the-edmund-fitzgerald-story-1235436830/
I first heard the song while I was cruising around in a 1972 Ford Pinto Runabout late one Saturday night. I pulled over to listen to the song. It was kind of magical listening to it alone in my car in the dark late at night. It was a long song and not the kind of song that becomes a hit so I thought I would probably never hear it again so I took care to get the name of the song so I could go get the album.
I used to have it on vinyl; now all I can find is the CD for the album; I must have sold the vinyl when we downsized. Damn. I have a great turntable and amp that I kept since before the dark times, before the digital craze. A vinyl record is an elegant medium of a more civilized age, not as clumsy and random as an MP3.
Re: Scifi: Has anyone seen Pluribus?
Sounds promising.
It was so stupid I couldn't stop laughing. The same reaction that my family and I had when we first saw the David Pumpkin sketch on SNL.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rS00xWnqwvI
And yes, I'm old enough to remember the Blondie song. We used to call it "white rap".
I was expecting to be tapped for 15 to 30 minutes, not for less than 5.
Now, THATS where we differ. My blood flows so slowly that sometimes they despair of reaching a full pint.
Less than 5 minutes? How is that possible?
I've given a lot of blood, and by far the most painful part of the process is the spring loaded blood letting gizmo they use to get a little drop of blood for one of the tests they do before they actually draw your blood. I'd love to know who thought it would be a good idea to fire a lancet into the one little spot with the highest density of nerves in the entire body, just to get one tiny little drop of blood. I'd send them a Christmas card or something.
Funniest time giving blood, I was 18, it was a Sunday morning and I had partied all night into the wee hours. The phone wakes me up. It's someone from the local hospital asking if I can come in and donate blood ( I was on their list for such things) because they were low on my blood type and had a patient that might need it. I was somewhere between still drunk and hungover. I told the lady that. She said no problem, so I got dressed and went in. The nurse drawing my blood teased me the whole time while feeding me a constant stream of juice and cookies.
Worst time, mid 40s, they had a new machine that draws your blood, separates out the plasma and pumps the remaining stuff back into you through another line. They asked if I would try it. The line pumping stuff back into you? You can feel it. Not a steady flow. It pulsates. Over a few minutes time I started feeling nauseous, and other symptoms I was familiar with. I was heading towards a faint. I didn't think it was a big deal since I was lying in one of those nice reclined couches, but when I told them I was going to faint it was like a code blue. Everyone started running around doing things. Never tried that machine again.
Now that I see it again, it might not have seemed so damn funny without the guys in the studio laughing their own asses off at it.
On the question of survival vs. virtue (if you assume a purely materialistic world view without objective morality, souls or God) it is much better to be Genghis Khan than to be Jesus Christ.
GK accumulated the resources of a dozen kingdoms of a vast continent and created a harem so vast that almost 10% of the people of Asian are his descendants.
JC died penniless and never had children.
So, in a purely materialistic, selfish-gene world GK is a shining success and JC is an abject failure.
We should strive to be more like GK.
We should strive to be more like GK.
But was he really happy? :)
Celt,
That parable requires accepting the cliche premise that I like to call the "I'd rather murder and rape all day long but God prevents me from doing so" premise. It's the same premise which underlies the centuries old claim of many believer's that morality comes from, or is imposed by, their God. Lucky for my state of mind I've never seen any evidence that the claim is true, because I think that would be a pretty horrible universe to live in.
From my perspective I think the only reasonable conclusion is that GK and JC were both pretty horrible. Unless you consider only the edited and abridged version of JC that so many liberal Christian, Christianity is a religion of love, folks choose to believe. I'll admit that version is nicer. But not historically accurate, whether one considers the JC of the Bible to have been a real person or merely a literary figure.
I have no desire at all to be either GK or JC.
"Lucky for my state of mind I've never seen any evidence that the claim is true,"
You obviously don't read a lot of history, lack a basic understanding of human nature, realize that a lot a acculturation was required to tame your savage instincts, and have never heard the phrase "nasty, brutish and short".
"because I think that would be a pretty horrible universe to live in."
We actually live in a horrible world when every human is only three meals away from doing something awful - usually at the behest of his/her selfish genes.
Larry, a harem combined with near infinite wealth and absolute power can probably chase the blues away.
And as with evolution, it's not the individual that survives, it's the genes.
Modern Evolution is now formally defined as the genetic change in allelic preponderance within a population over time.
Genes direct primary protein sequence; protein sequence determines tertiary protein structure & functionality; and tertiary protein structure determines the expression of functionality, gender, race & phenotype.
James D. Watson died 4 days ago (on November 7, 2025) at age 97. He discovered the DNA double helix in 1962 with Francis Crick and the duo received a Nobel Prize for their joint discovery which forever changed our definition of evolution.
Once celebrated, James Watson then came under increasing attack by left-leaning science deniers & radical equalists who called him a 'sexist', 'racist', 'nazi' bigot for maintaining that human functionality, gender, race & phenotype (along many other behaviours) were genetically predetermined, so much so that human beings with measurable genetic differences were also measurably UNEQUAL.
Because 'sexism', he was therefore accused of STEALING his theories from a female (and therefore 'more intelligent') researcher named Rosalind Franklin.
And, because 'racism' & other 'isms', he was later called 'NAZI' and stripped of all of his scientific titles & awards...
Proving only that many 'progressives' are science deniers who prefer the politically-correct human equality falsehood over quantifiable fact, actual scientific data and award-winning science.
Best
Yes, yes Celt. You are faithfully sticking to the script of your bronze age religion. So if not for your God preventing it (by slowly enculturating us?, by magic?) we would all, including you, be running around murdering and raping? I don't believe it, sad if you do.
As for your last, perhaps. But we, collectively, are the only ones around to do anything about it. And the world we live in is also full of much beauty and cooperation, which is also a result of our selfish genes.
Watson started outright that he stole Franklin's days without her or anyone's knowledge, and also directly started that without that data, their construction of the DNA model would have been impossible. Locum, what, I wonder, do you hope to benefit with such a lie? Even his fellow Crick denounced Watson's handling of the situation.
Also his arguments against a straw left man. The left well knows that people aren't in full control of their situation. It is the right that generally achieve all failures as moral or effort failings. I'm sorry that your reality is as warped as it is. May you get better. I wonder how Watson would view your situation.
Days = data.
They used to get that drop of blood from the earlobe. Also ver vascularized but less painful. But too hany folks had shirt collars stained, I guess.
Actually, Watson loosing any credit as a person he might have earned through prior achievements by disgracing himself is a good thing. It shows that the system works, and no person is untouchable (unlike in states like the USSR, Nazi Germany, most other dictatorships, the US South and Trumps America, where Status determines touchability).
May you soon join him in his new lair at the 9th circle of hell where traitors reside, in a subportion called the Swamp of the Brown Miasma, the place where all old Nazi farts go.
You might be right. But it is also a skill that needs to be trained: to move the small scalpel deep enough to get a droplet of blood, but not more than you need. Antikoagulants make it more difficult.
So, everyone uses the finger and the autolancet system because it is easier and better to control...until a blood gas analysis has to be made. Then anyone fumbles along again, without the manual skill.
At last, after 14 billion years, someone who notices really excellent, world-building craftsmanship!
Or reminds you of your failure with the hairless apes and that you should have use another template the next time. Maybe Squids? Termites? Furry worms?
David,
I respectfully and cheerfully disagree right back at you. 8)
I also recognize that…
1. I’m probably relying too much on an explanation of the definitions of virtues I got from an Episcopalian who tried hard to turn theological definitions into secular ones.
2. I’m not even remotely a believer in a Creator of any kind. I can accept many of the smaller ideals to which many of us are loyal, but that last step strikes me as nonsense. Most of the time it matters not in how I choose to behave, though, so life goes on.
I hear your definitions of faith and hope as muddled, but I can see how being loyal to the ideal of curiosity might do that. So while I use different definitions, I think we’d still be inclined to agree at the level of ‘What should be done.”
———
Celt,
We actually live in a horrible world when every human is only three meals away from doing something awful - usually at the behest of his/her selfish genes.
I’m going to disagree with that and admit to being not-so cheerful in it. We have pretty good evidence that many people don’t behave that way. We also have good evidence that after many more missed meals they just might. Some parts of the world are more nasty, mean, and brutish than others… but that kind of inclination toward violence has been on the wane for many generations now. We’ve pushed it back so much that many actually believe in a world populated by people who are inclined to help if they can. Missing three meals in a row happens where it is hard to reach such people OR one’s mental health has deteriorated enough that one is not inclined to ask for it.
There are brutes in the world, but not enough of them anymore to justify your statement.
Celt - you appear to believe in the "Lord of the Flies" world
We have actual evidence - something similar happenned but the outcomes were completely different
https://www.biznews.com/good-hope-project/real-lord-flies-story-survival-solidarity
Scidata,
From an economics perspective, there is only one virtue. Prudence.
It should not have surprised anyone when people who follow that version of Ethics are seen as amoral at best and often as immoral. Such a simplified system has neat mathematical properties, but it describes certain types of ants better than humans. *
I remember when I first encountered the notion that humans were behaving irrationally if they weren’t behaving economically and wondered… WTF?!
* Not even our large markets stick strictly to prudence. Humans are involved. Prudence is at best an approximation to macroscopic behavior, but I don’t have to explain that to a psychohistory fan. 8)
Since fully embracing Bayesian inference, giving up on future prediction, and focusing on history/anthropology/archaeology, I've made both friends and foes. The friends are world-class anthropologists and the foes are Asimov cultists, so I'm not bothered. Any historical model must take human delusion, herd mentality, and confirmation bias into account. We're not (prudent) gas molecules.
I learned that lesson in the 2010s when tulip-level psychosis swept the GPU market (mainly crypto mining) and our team was left with no way to afford Kepler and Maxwell GPUs, eventually dooming us. We missed out on many a pulsar discovery.
PS Today, the chickens are coming home to roost. One of the top anti-GenAI bloggers recently quipped "at this point GPUs have just become a private equity cash burn machine".
Watson and Crick are made to face the music in the oratorio 'Origins' (may contain traces of Franklin)
"It's the thumbs, medammit. I never seem to get them right!"
Japanese giant SoftBank said Tuesday it has sold its entire stake in tech giant Nvidia for $5.83 billion.
Because, as a Vorlon once said, "It is too late for the pebbles to vote once the avalanche has/is started."
As far as I see at present, the humans doing something awful are the ones denying other humans three meals.
Yep... and there are a bunch of us trying to be effective in opposing that even if it means handing over food. I work indirectly for the US federal government. People I know were handing over groceries to those who asked.
Wow. I wasn't paying attention. I knew there was disquiet regarding valuations, but selling all is quite the statement.
For the record, the chunk of my retirement money that I play with got pulled to the sidelines during the month of September. I was getting queasy. I missed out on a few percentage points in October, but the shutdown made me even more ill. I'm still watching.
Cash burn machine is a typical/predictable stage when market disruptions occur. Investors want a piece of the action and BELIEVE they can get out in time. Heh.
I think I'll look into laying in some short positions. (bwa-ha-ha!)
I'm hearing rumors that the Border Patrol might soon be leaving Chicago. No one is saying this part, but I wonder if it has to do with our first snowfall and high temperatures around the freezing mark. Those Texas National Guard warriors probably didn't know what they were in for.
If Trump does pull out, he's going to have to say the mission was accomplished, right? So his line will have to be that there is no more crime in Chicago.
You all keep thinking of humans as individuals.
We act a lot differently when in a mob.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it." - Men In Black
Those Texas National Guard warriors probably didn't know what they were in for.
Aren't they supposed to be "Swift as greyhounds, tough as leather, hard as Krupp steel", as Hitler demanded of the youth?
I am shocked. Shocked, I say! This way, they will never be ready for loosing Stalingrad or being interned in Russian gulags for years./s
I feel the story will have a meaningful Impact in future Space colonization projects, when people are deliberately cast away from Earth and guidelines will have to be developed to keep colonists sane, happy, healthy, at peace with each other and focused at their tasks.
"..."A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it." - Men In Black..."
Depends. society amplifies. And Enlightenment society since WWII was mostly far SMARTER than average people.
But Texans do know about cold winds.
onward to a mid-week rant.
onward
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