Saturday, April 14, 2018

Reverie

There is no place for dogma in science.--J. Robert Oppenheimer



Researchers  publishing in the  journal Science say they've determined that the idea that the only source of nitrogen for plant life came from the air is wrong. There are vast storehouses in the planet's bedrock that plants also feed on.

Climate scientists have long known that plants offset some of the effects of climate change by absorbing and storing CO2. But climate scientists assumed that the ability to plants to perform this function was limited because the availability of nitrogen in the atmosphere was limited.

As a 2003 study published in the same Science journal put it, "there will not be enough nitrogen available to sustain the high carbon uptake scenarios."

In the wake of the latest findings, Ronald Amundson, a soil biogeochemist at the University of California at Berkeley, told Chemical and Engineering News that "If there is more nitrogen there than expected, then the constraints on plant growth in a high-CO2 world may not be as great as we think."

In other words, with more nitrogen available, plant life might be able to absorb more CO2 than climate scientists have been estimating, which means the planet won't warm as much, despite mankind's pumping CO2 into the atmosphere.




John Tierney, who's written about science for The New York Times for 25 years and now writes for the Manhattan Institute's City Journal, said recently,"The real war on science is the one from the left."



Some research on genetically modified foods became taboo because of protests from the left. That may have prevented a second Green Revolution to feed Africa.

Scientists can't even talk about whether genes affect intelligence without being threatened by the left. Political scientists who continued to investigate the topic are screamed at on college campuses, the way Charles Murray, author of "The Bell Curve," has been.

Tierney adds, "The federal government stopped funding IQ research decades ago."

Likewise, researching gender differences is dangerous to your career.
And millions of people die of malaria today partly because many countries believed leftist junk science and needlessly banned DDT. Many were influenced by Rachel Carson's scientifically challenged book "Silent Spring."







Why is the great and noble work of The Clinton Foundation no longer needed? I suppose it must be all done.

"Some of our more sanguine friends see the tariffs and tweets as Mr. Trump’s familiar negotiating bluster, but we wouldn’t be too sure. Protectionism may be his only real policy conviction, and his tweet confirms he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. This is what the equity markets are saying as they discount trade-dependent companies." (wsj)




Quick. Who is the president of Switzerland?

Former Russian spy Sergei Skripal is in critical condition at a hospital in the United Kingdom after being exposed to an unknown substance. The Russians offered to help in the investigation.
Sort of like Hollywood helping to solve sex abuse.


Re: why I think the Hope Hicks problem is dangerous. That interview she had with the intelligence committee was secret, isolated testimony and the questions about what she said were asked by the press as the meeting broke up. That means the press was getting the info from the committee almost in real time. There was no embarrassment, no reluctance. This dismissive attitude about security--which seems to stem from a righteous animosity toward T-rump--is really scandalous. But the righteous can do what they want.

Ans: The Swiss presidency rotates. Last year it was Doris Leuthard; now it is Alain Berset.


In 1857, the United States Supreme Court, the Taney Court, issued a decision in the Dred Scott case, affirming the right of slave owners to take their slaves into the Western territories, thereby negating the doctrine of popular sovereignty and severely undermining the platform of the newly created Republican Party.



Inscape: n:





A people has two ways of procuring something. The first is to make it; the second is to make something else and trade it. It is certainly better to have the option than not to have it. Let us therefore have the freedom to trade.--Bastiat


 
Two UPMC doctors have been charged with criminal conspiracy for allegedly prescribing thousands of opioid painkiller pills in the past two years to a handful of people.
 
This Hope Hicks thing is worse than ugly, it is dangerous.
That interview she had with the intelligence committee was secret, isolated testimony and the questions about what she said were asked by the press as the meeting broke up. That means the press was getting the info from the committee almost in real time. There was no embarrassment, no reluctance. This dismissive attitude about security--which seems to stem from a righteous animosity toward Trump--is really scandalous. But the righteous can do what they want.



In 1820 Congress passed The Missouri Compromise. Although criticized by many on both sides of the slavery debate, it succeeded in keeping the Union together for more than 30 years. In 1854, it was repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which dictated that slave or free status was to be decided by popular vote in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska; though both were north of the 36th parallel. Then the shooting started.
Remember, though this was a slavery issue, it also was a states' rights issue, an issue connected to, but not integral to slavery.



I have become a bit sensitive about all the negative comments from Europeans about the American heath care, a system that really does not translate well to Europe. The comments always center on lifestyle and cost, as if the lifestyle and costs in Europe over the last generations did not threaten the world, cause mountains of debt and death and continue to threaten the world now.

The AP (3/5, Tanner) reports researchers found that a growing number of minors in the US are being hospitalized because of opioid poisonings or overdoses, according to a study published in Pediatrics. The study found that such “hospitalizations were most common among kids aged 12-17 and those aged 1 to 5.”
CNBC (3/5, Lovelace) reports that the researchers found that “the number of pediatric opioid hospitalizations requiring intensive care nearly doubled to 1,504 patients between 2012 and 2015, from 797 patients between 2004 and 2007.”


“The 2017 Scorecard reports that one in four jobs in the U.S. is in a low-wage occupation, which means that at the median salary, these jobs pay below the poverty threshold for a family of four.” --Community Advisory Council. Read that again.





AAAAAAAaaaaannnnnnddddd.....a bar graph:
Gun Deaths in the U.S., 2012-2016


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