In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. Crichton
Yesterday was Murphy's 9th birthday.
Mom and I celebrated at Senti.
Industrial progress, mechanical improvement, all of the great wonders of the modern era have meant relatively little to the wealthy. The rich in Ancient Greece would have benefited hardly at all from modern plumbing: running servants replaced running water. Television and radio? The patricians of Rome could enjoy the leading musicians and actors in their home, could have the leading actors as domestic retainers. Ready-to-wear clothing, supermarkets — all these and many other modern developments would have added little to their life. The great achievements of Western capitalism have redounded primarily to the benefit of the ordinary person. These achievements have made available to the masses conveniences and amenities that were previously the exclusive prerogative of the rich and powerful.--Freidman
From 1990 to 2019, right-to-work states represented the top four US states for employment growth (Nevada +134%, Utah +118%, Idaho +100% and Arizona +98.7%), seven of the top eight states (the four states above plus Texas +82%, Florida +68% and North Dakota +66%), and 14 of the top 20 states. In contrast, all ten of the US states with the weakest employment gains since 1990 were forced unionism states (over most of the period): Connecticut (weakest job growth at only 2.5%), Rhode Island +9%, New Jersey +14%, Michigan* +14%, Ohio +15.5%, Maine +16%, Pennsylvania 16.5%, Illinois +17.5%, New York +18%, and Massachusetts +21%. Of the 20 US states with the weakest job growth since 1990, 15 of those 20 were forced unionism states (the exceptions were West Virginia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and Iowa).
From an interesting article on the politics of science by Brown:
There are several aspects of the contemporary global warming narrative that align well with an anti-hierarchy, collectivist worldview. This makes the issue gratifying to the sensibilities of the Left and offensive to the sensibilities of the Right.
Global warming is a tragedy of the commons, in which logical agents act in ways that run counter to the longterm interests of the group. These types of “collective-action problems” usually call for top-down government intervention at the expense of individual action and responsibility. Furthermore, the longterm nature of global warming demands acquiescence to collective action across generations. This natural alignment of the global warming problem with collectivist themes makes the issue much more palatable to the Left than the Right.
On this day in 1914, four days after Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, Germany and Russia declared war against each other, France ordered a general mobilization, and the first German army units crossed into Luxembourg in preparation for the German invasion of France. During the next three days, Russia, France, Belgium, and Great Britain all lined up against Austria-Hungary and Germany, and the German army invaded Belgium. The “Great War” that ensued was one of unprecedented destruction and loss of life, resulting in the deaths of some 20 million soldiers and civilians.
Russians
We have come a long way from laughing at Romney's concern about the Russians.
There is a theme in the election of 2016 that has lasted over two years. It was floated by the Clinton campaign after the Clinton loss, it has been worried to death since in the strange Mueller investigation triggered by a Clinton opposition research paper and continued on in the Mueller redux when the poor man was dragged back to the Congress to testify with the hope of innuendo. The theme is this: The Russians influenced the 2016 election.
Now we all know the Russians try to influence what they can. The have a large disinformation program and have had so for years. They bribe and compromise and they deceive where they can. It seems they had a $100,000 budget to tamper in Facebook postings. But did they do anything substantive? With all the accusations against Trump, did the Russians influence anything?
In 2016, Obama said they didn't. “We were frankly more concerned in the run up to the election to the possibilities of vote tampering, which we did not see evidence of,” he said. “And we’re confident that we can guard against.”
During an interview with the Daily Show’s Trevor Noah, Obama downplayed the hack of a private email account of Clinton campaign chief John Podesta, defending his administration for revealing in October that the Russian government was connected. “None of this should be a big surprise,” Obama said, “Russia trying to influence our elections dates back to the Soviet Union.....What’s happened to our political system where some emails that were hacked and released ended up being the overwhelming story, and the constant source of coverage – breathless coverage – that was depicted as somehow damning in all sorts of ways when the truth of the matter was it was fairly routine stuff?” he said.
When Rothstein indicted the 13 Russians for interference with the electoral process he gave an interview and prefaced it with this:
"Now, there is no allegation in this indictment that any American was a knowing participant in this illegal activity. There is no allegation in the indictment that the charged conduct altered the outcome of the 2016 election."
So, we should be annoyed and indignant. Vigilant. Angry, maybe. But what is the source of the hysteria?
Yesterday was Murphy's 9th birthday.
Mom and I celebrated at Senti.
More than 8 million people tuned into Night 1 of the second round of Democratic primary debates for the 2020 cycle, according to preliminary numbers from Nielsen. It was a significantly smaller audience than that of the first round of debates that aired in June — which drew 15.3 million viewers on Night 1, while the second totaled 18.1 million viewers.
Astros trade for Zack Greinke.
NASA is serious about creating faster than light travel, and have released a new batch of concept images showing exactly what a spacecraft equipped with a star-hopping warp drive might look like. Created in collaboration between Dutch artist Mark Rademaker and Nasa physicist Dr Harold White, the illustrations show a craft powered by an Alcubierre Drive – a hypothetical engine that was first suggested in 1994 as a way of achieving faster than light speeds. Alcubierre’s device worked by distorting space-time, expanding the space behind a ship and contracting the space in front of it to create a ‘warp bubble’ that essentially moves space and time around the object, rather than actually accelerating the craft to impossible speeds. For all its craziness, physicists conceded that such a warp drive might be theoretically possible but that it would require staggering amounts of power – something equivalent to the mass-energy of Jupiter, a planet 317 times the mass of the Earth. However, in 2012, Dr White announced that he had managed to finesse Alcubierre’s original plans to reduce the amount of mass-energy needed from that of a gas giant to a spacecraft the size of the Voyager 1 – and, even more surprisingly, that he was working with a team from Nasa to further develop his ideas.
Industrial progress, mechanical improvement, all of the great wonders of the modern era have meant relatively little to the wealthy. The rich in Ancient Greece would have benefited hardly at all from modern plumbing: running servants replaced running water. Television and radio? The patricians of Rome could enjoy the leading musicians and actors in their home, could have the leading actors as domestic retainers. Ready-to-wear clothing, supermarkets — all these and many other modern developments would have added little to their life. The great achievements of Western capitalism have redounded primarily to the benefit of the ordinary person. These achievements have made available to the masses conveniences and amenities that were previously the exclusive prerogative of the rich and powerful.--Freidman
In Chicago, one person is shot every four hours and murdered every 18 hours.
From an interesting article on the politics of science by Brown:
There are several aspects of the contemporary global warming narrative that align well with an anti-hierarchy, collectivist worldview. This makes the issue gratifying to the sensibilities of the Left and offensive to the sensibilities of the Right.
Global warming is a tragedy of the commons, in which logical agents act in ways that run counter to the longterm interests of the group. These types of “collective-action problems” usually call for top-down government intervention at the expense of individual action and responsibility. Furthermore, the longterm nature of global warming demands acquiescence to collective action across generations. This natural alignment of the global warming problem with collectivist themes makes the issue much more palatable to the Left than the Right.
On this day in 1914, four days after Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, Germany and Russia declared war against each other, France ordered a general mobilization, and the first German army units crossed into Luxembourg in preparation for the German invasion of France. During the next three days, Russia, France, Belgium, and Great Britain all lined up against Austria-Hungary and Germany, and the German army invaded Belgium. The “Great War” that ensued was one of unprecedented destruction and loss of life, resulting in the deaths of some 20 million soldiers and civilians.
Russians
We have come a long way from laughing at Romney's concern about the Russians.
There is a theme in the election of 2016 that has lasted over two years. It was floated by the Clinton campaign after the Clinton loss, it has been worried to death since in the strange Mueller investigation triggered by a Clinton opposition research paper and continued on in the Mueller redux when the poor man was dragged back to the Congress to testify with the hope of innuendo. The theme is this: The Russians influenced the 2016 election.
Now we all know the Russians try to influence what they can. The have a large disinformation program and have had so for years. They bribe and compromise and they deceive where they can. It seems they had a $100,000 budget to tamper in Facebook postings. But did they do anything substantive? With all the accusations against Trump, did the Russians influence anything?
In 2016, Obama said they didn't. “We were frankly more concerned in the run up to the election to the possibilities of vote tampering, which we did not see evidence of,” he said. “And we’re confident that we can guard against.”
During an interview with the Daily Show’s Trevor Noah, Obama downplayed the hack of a private email account of Clinton campaign chief John Podesta, defending his administration for revealing in October that the Russian government was connected. “None of this should be a big surprise,” Obama said, “Russia trying to influence our elections dates back to the Soviet Union.....What’s happened to our political system where some emails that were hacked and released ended up being the overwhelming story, and the constant source of coverage – breathless coverage – that was depicted as somehow damning in all sorts of ways when the truth of the matter was it was fairly routine stuff?” he said.
When Rothstein indicted the 13 Russians for interference with the electoral process he gave an interview and prefaced it with this:
"Now, there is no allegation in this indictment that any American was a knowing participant in this illegal activity. There is no allegation in the indictment that the charged conduct altered the outcome of the 2016 election."
So, we should be annoyed and indignant. Vigilant. Angry, maybe. But what is the source of the hysteria?
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