In Memoriam

All New York Times obits

• George Romero, filmmaker (Night of the Living Dead, et al.)
• Martin Landau, actor (AETA:  Mark Evanier on his first career)
• Maryam Mirzakhani, mathematician
• Meechy Monroe, natural hair tutorials on YouTube
• ETA:  Bob Wolff, long-time sportscaster

Today

March for Science.

And if I (who does not do political action stuff on days ending in 'y') can do this, so can you.

Stand or walk or roll in support of research, facts, and understanding the physical world.  Because right now the folks in power value ignorance and stupidity and want everyone to be as ignorant and stupid.  And this is becoming a rant.

And We Have Anti-Science People in Power

Woman died from extremely antibiotic-resistant bug.

We may soon return to the days when pneumonia was usually fatal.

Haystacks, Calhoun

There is no theme.  There are only links.  Tabs have to be closed.  It's all the wrong Ring cycle.

• Robert Reich (AlterNet) advises Ms. Clinton and Mr. Sanders to kiss and make up face some hard realities about their respective campaigns.
• Karoli Kuns (Crooks and Liars) on the Benghazi time-wasting probes and Trey Gowdy.
• Is America sliding into fascism?  (Robert Kagan, Washington Post)

  This phenomenon has arisen in other democratic and quasi-democratic countries over the past century, and it has generally been called “fascism.” Fascist movements, too, had no coherent ideology, no clear set of prescriptions for what ailed society. “National socialism” was a bundle of contradictions, united chiefly by what, and who, it opposed; fascism in Italy was anti-liberal, anti-democratic, anti-Marxist, anti-capitalist and anti-clerical. Successful fascism was not about policies but about the strongman, the leader (Il Duce, Der Führer), in whom could be entrusted the fate of the nation. Whatever the problem, he could fix it. Whatever the threat, internal or external, he could vanquish it, and it was unnecessary for him to explain how. Today, there is Putinism, which also has nothing to do with belief or policy but is about the tough man who single-handedly defends his people against all threats, foreign and domestic.
  
  To understand how such movements take over a democracy, one only has to watch the Republican Party today.
  
  [...]
  
  What these people do not or will not see is that, once in power, Trump will owe them and their party nothing. He will have ridden to power despite the party, catapulted into the White House by a mass following devoted only to him.

  Read the whole thing. Really.  Although you may want to read this post by Yastreblyansky afterward.
  
• A little lawsuit in Wisconsin.  (capper, Crooks and Liars)
• The self-stinging scorpion strikes again.  (Karoli Kuns, Crooks and Liars) (Southern Beale is also on the case.)
• Steve M. (No More Mr. Nice Blog, although I first saw the article at Crooks and Liars) on John ("Torture Fan") Yoo's approval of Donald Trump's Supreme Court possibilities.  (Warning:  Not for anyone with a working imagination.)
• Anti-biotic resistant bacteria are here.  Well, in the United States.

  Even more alarming, the MCR-1 gene can transfer resistance to other bacterium through small bits of DNA called plasmids, meaning the gene can pass between species of bacterium as opposed to remaining contained to one species.
  
  “The fear is that this could spread to other bacteria and create the bacterium that would be resistant to everything,” Dr. Beth Bell, director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, told ABC News.

  (Elizabeth Preza, AlterNet)
• Taking on Megan McArdle's state of denial, in this corner, Susan of Texas (The Hunting of the Snark).
• Pruning Shears:

  The right wing commentariat has responded to all of this by literally ignoring it. [...] He’s unelectable, they say. Boorish, immodest, not a conservative, doesn’t support traditionally conservative principals, and so on. All true, but irrelevant. They’re basically saying they’re mad at the voters, which, who cares? Work that out with your therapist, not your audience.
  
  What’s relevant is what they literally cannot bring themselves to look at how a Republican party that prioritizes their ideals could nominate Donald Trump. I understand why they can’t bear to grapple with it, because the answer is a very unhappy one for them: The party, as represented by its base, does not actually prioritize any of those things. Perhaps it hasn’t for a long time; Donald Trump is just the first to test the hypothesis.

"Willkomen, Bienvenue, Welcome..."

In Memoriam

• Edgar D. Mitchell, astronaut who walked on the Moon.
• ETA:  Dan Hicks, musician and influence on musical San Francisco of the '60s.

Mixed Bag

The Union of Satirists and Surrealists would like to protest the following:

• Mike the Mad Biologist on "the Flint, MI mass poisoning" and the educational effects of lead poisoning.

  Snyder needs to be impeached* and federal** [footnotes in original] and state dollars need to get to Flint, not just for the short term but the long-term (that’s the problem with brain damage). Less obviously, the state-appointed dictator who controlled Flint (aka ’emergency manager’) while the mass poisoning occurred also needs to be removed from his new job of…running Detroit’s public schools.
  
  And the next time, a subset of technobrat pundits complain about there being too much democracy at the local level [cough Yglesias cough], the one word response is “Flint”.

• Eric Lander and Big Science.
• Funding neo-Nazis in Ukraine.  And why that is a bad idea.

  The reason the Pentagon is playing such a dirty game with Congress on funding the neo-fascist elements in Ukraine is not hard to deduce. Neo-Nazi militias, like the Azov Battalion, are the most dedicated and fierce killers, driven by racial bloodlust and unmoored to civilized thinking or conduct. Azov and their comrades are anxious to get into the fight and spill blood whereas many other Ukrainians are doing everything they can to avoid the war in the east.
  
  What the Obama Administration will soon learn, as the government in Kiev knows now, is that the rabid dog you release on your enemy can just as easily bite your own hand. Empowering the neo-fascist militias today may lay the groundwork for another coup tomorrow.

  Let's not even mention the mujaheddin and Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in the '80s.  Mmmmmkay?
  
• Speaking as a surrealist, the proper response to these people would be shaving cream pies with a touch of butyl mercaptan.  Speaking as a normal person, the proper response is shunning.  And becoming more like Denmark.  [Addendum:  The event was cancelled, and Anonymous is on the case.]

In Memoriam

In which NYTimes obits are finally used.

• David Stoliar, survivor.
• Yvonne Chouteau, ballerina
• Marvin Minsky, artificial intelligence expert

In Memoriam

First report, which I saw because I worry occasionally about sibling and spouse.

Follow-up, today.

John F. Nash, Jr., mathematician.

Paging King Canute...King Canute, To The White Courtesy Phone, Please...

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection commands the sea level not to rise has an unwritten policy forbidding the use of the terms "global warming" and "climate change." Story (not written by Dave Barry) originally from the Miami Herald.

More Indignation

1. War and culpability:
   • Because I've wondered too:  Where is the antiwar movement we should be having?  I mean yes, it was noticed that that stuff worked last time.  Nevertheless.

     In the last six decades, the American national security state has succeeded strikingly at only one thing (other than turning itself into a growth industry): it freed itself of us and of Congress. In the years following the Vietnam War, the American people were effectively demobilized, shorn of that sense of service to country, while war was privatized and the citizen soldier replaced by an “all-volunteer” force and a host of paid contractors working for warrior corporations. Post-9/11, the citizenry was urged to pay as much attention as possible to “our troops,” or “warriors,” and next to none to the wars they were fighting. Today, the official role of a national security state, bigger and more powerful than in the Vietnam era, is to make Americans “safe” from terror. In a world of war-making that has disappeared into the shadows and a Washington in which just about all information is now classified and shrouded in secrecy, the only way to be “safe” and “secure” as a citizen is, by definition, to be ignorant, to know as little as possible about what “our” government is doing in our name. This helps explain why, in the Obama years, the only crime in official Washington is leaking or whistleblowing; that is, letting the public in on something that we, the people, aren’t supposed to know about the workings of “our” government.

     Tom Englehardt, TomDispatch, republished at AlterNet.  Note the last several paragraphs.
     
   • Deconstructing pastoral metaphors.

     We don’t prepare for war, because we want peace. We prepare for war, because war is exactly what we want. We don’t use violence because it solves problems. We do it even when it creates more problems than it could ever solve – as the most heavily armed nation in human history, whose population is still under threat from prehistoric imbeciles after 14 years of a global campaign of intervention and targeted killing, you’d think that would finally dawn on us. You’d think we’d finally realize that people like putting on uniforms and shooting each other and incinerating each other’s homes, and it’s because of some flaw in our character, some stupid neurological quirk that might have been useful when we stabbed elephants with sticks and worshipped the sun… but is pretty foolish now that we’re smart enough to hit every major population center with a nuclear warhead in the space of a busy afternoon.

      Paul Bibeau, Goblinbooks.  (The comment objected rightly [as do I] to the "prehistoric imbeciles," but the rest of the paragraph is good.)
   • The "right" wing wants you stirred up.

     As Atrios and plenty of others like to remind us, a lot of what Right Wingers say they say just to piss liberals off. But there’s something else at work, as well. They’re trying to piss each other off as well. More to the point, their pundits, their talking heads, many of their politicians, their halfway intelligent bloggers, all following Rush Limbaugh’s lead, are trying to piss off the conservative base. It’s a strategy. Make the yokels boiling mad and keep them mad at those Others and they’ll be too worked up to think about who’s really been screwing them over.
     
     This is an inherent evil of the American Right, an evil it perpetrates upon itself as much as upon the rest of us: its divisiveness.
     
     And this is not an effect of its rhetoric or its politics. It is the intent.

     Lance Mannion on his blog. 
2. On the pro-science front:
   • Libertarian Fail (people who do not know that handwashing, Pontius Pilate notwithstanding, cuts way down on disease transmission [this has been proved with childbed fever and contagious diseases, although because it was not "discovered" in the last ten years, perhaps Mr. Tillis has not run across this information.  Or any other.] should not be allowed to legislate their ignorance).

     See, this is what’s wrong with Libertarians. They think that the glorious unfettered magical free hand of the market makes everything wonderful when all it really does is burden the general public. You know what? I have a life. I don’t want to have to research every fucking restaurant in town to determine if they’re opting out of certain health regulations or not. I’d much rather have a health department fully staffed with health inspectors who enforce our health laws. If we truly did make our restaurant health regulations optional, I’d never eat out again. Because if you’re going to skirt one, you’ll no doubt skirt all the others.

      Southern Beale for the win.
   • Republic of T has a general roundup along with facts:

     Measles, on the other hand, leads to nasty complications, and kills.
     

     • It’s one of the most infectious diseases around.
     • Ninety percent of those exposed to it will get it, if they’re susceptible.
     • It can remain airborne for hours, exposing everyone in the vicinity.
     • Every person who gets it can spread it to 12 to 18 people.
     • For every vaccinated person who gets it (resulting in a mild case), between 40 to 80 people are exposed.
     • Measles is transmissible and virtually undetectable for several days before the red, painful rash gives its presence away.
     • It’s early symptoms — high fever, cough, and muscle ache — so closely resemble the flu that it’s often initially misdiagnosed.
     • One in 1,000 people with measles will get pneumonia. Between one and three in 1,000 will die of pneumonia, brain swelling, or other complications.

     The US declared measles eradicated in 2000. Now it’s back, along with other diseases, because the anti-vaccination movement has grown. A recent survey showed that 30 percent of Americans — especially young people — agree with Chris Christie on vaccinations.

   • Legionseagle at Dreamwidth, warning against demonizing anti-vaxxers. (I've had to catch myself about that.)
3. The New Yorker offers a podcast on Islamic extremism.

There are reasons holing up in a cave looks good.

IMMUNIZE 'EM!

• Measles has reached Marin  and San Mateo Counties.  Parents in Marin are allowed to send their children to school without required inoculations. 
• Measles is highly contagious.
• New Jersey Governor Chris Christie suggests that parents should have a choice in whether to immunize their children.
• Roald Dahl lost a child to measles, and wrote a letter begging parents to immunize their children.
• The Rude Pundit also urges vaccination, and is not at all polite about it.
• P.S.  That "research" alleging a link between MMR vaccine and autism?  Fraud.

"What is veiled now soon will be shown"

(Jefferson Starship, "Stranger," Modern Times.  Because I heard it twice back in the '80s, thought it was called "Familiar Stranger," and that it was by a different group that sounded like Starship.  "Stranger" doesn't atone for "We Built This City," but it lets me bury that crap beneath crunchy bass.  Crunchy bass rules.)

Right.  Where was I?

• Two Scott Horton (Harper's) pieces on Guantanamo:
• Six Questions to Prof. Mark Denbeaux on the Guantanamo "suicides" in 2006;

  The medical history of one detainee was missing from the NCIS file, but we found it in his medical records. His history contained a description of the cause and manner of his death by the senior medical officer who declared him dead at the clinic. The officer’s report did not mention hanging. It stated that the cause of death was asphyxiation caused by clogged airways. That would be consistent with having rags stuffed down their throats, but not hanging.

• Conversation with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!  (YouTube video; apparently isn't loading today)
• Fund-raising banquets and their discontents.
• Via Southern Beale:
• Autism linked to male hormones.  Uh-oh…
• Prototype Flying Saucer from, um, Earth.
• Sappho at Noli Irritare Leones on the stupidity of racism.  Featuring, oh, history.

  In fact, I question whether there are enough people left in the US who are white by this definition that it could be applied and still keep whiteness a going concern. Perhaps you could bar Jews from whiteness and still have a white majority, since Jews are a small fraction of the population anyway, but if you’re barring Jews and many Greeks and many Southern whites, is there really a white majority left? Exactly who was supposed to raise money sufficient to buy out Steve Jobs and send him on his way?

• In memoriam:
• Don Zimmer, literally in baseball before I was born.
• Chester Nez, last of the original Navajo code talkers.

And the Flat Earth Society is Lurking in the Wings...

Because science is just an opinion…  (Sarcasm off.  Spitting commences.)

• Via The Raw Story, apparently there is a movie narrated by Kate Mulgrew with a "geocentric universe" viewpoint.  It's bankrolled by an ultra-conservative.  'Nuff said.  [ETA:  Kate Mulgrew responds (It's Facebook, and I can see it though I don't have an account. Basically, she says:

  I am not a geocentrist, nor am I in any way a proponent of geocentrism. More importantly, I do not subscribe to anything Robert Sungenis has written regarding science and history and, had I known of his involvement, would most certainly have avoided this documentary. I was a voice for hire, and a misinformed one, at that. I apologize for any confusion that my voice on this trailer may have caused. Kate Mulgrew")

  It turns out she was not the only person whose voice was misused; the physicist Lawrence Krauss also has a line in the trailer.]
• No More Mister Nice Blog's Yastreblyansky gets to the point:

  The difference now, because of Obama (and I know he really hates this, but it's true), is that when we call racism people believe it, and they believe it because it can't be rationalized away. The elephant in the room could be a hallucination, but not the dump it just took on your rug.

• Cerberus at Sadly, No! on the rediscovery by conservatives that young people have sex.

  There’s still a lot of work to be done. There’s a number of religious communities (you know, the one’s that are more conservative) that try and demonize safe sex and thus have proliferation of STDs and massive increases in unwanted pregnancies. And there’s all the fallout from the disastrous Abstinence-only education where a bunch of fucks like you demonized condoms and told kids that never having sex was the only way to stay safe. Also all the ways you’ve tried to undermine contraceptive access and sex education at every turn. In fact, I’m having a hard time imagining anyone to be less credible right now giving a lecture on safe sex.

• Drugs.  (Booman Tribune.)
• What, no rock 'n' roll?

Game Over

"First direct evidence of cosmic inflation."

When asked to comment on the implications of this discovery, Harvard theorist Avi Loeb said, "This work offers new insights into some of our most basic questions: Why do we exist? How did the universe begin? These results are not only a smoking gun for inflation, they also tell us when inflation took place and how powerful the process was."