Author Archives: rdmyers75@hotmail.com

the stats on war and peace

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I seem to be on a peace rant this morning.

In the U.S. we have half a million people unhoused and at risk of freezing to death this winter. We have 1 in 5 children growing up impoverished and hungry, and the federal government tells us there is no money for universal health care, student loan forgiveness, or to house and feed the people. Yet, at $858 billion for 2023, the military budget is at it highest point ever, and ominously increasing every year.

Popular Resistance.org

That $858 billion sounds low to me. That is probably the Pentagon’s budget for the year. Don’t forget the weapons programs under the Department of Energy, the CIA and the rest of the “intelligence community” spread across various agencies, the Department of Homeland Security, and elements within the FBI and other agencies involved in national security. Then there’s the Veterans Administration, which pretty much everyone supports but is a legacy of many decades of past military spending. Active and retired military personnel do in fact have universal health care, and there is a slight irony there. No, we should not take it away from them, we should extend it to everyone else.

Is the U.S. encircling China?

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Caitlin Johnstone is not an unbiased source, but I tend to agree with her statement here.

The US empire has been surrounding China with military bases and war machinery for many years, in ways Washington would never tolerate China doing in the nations and waters surrounding the United States. There is no question that the US is the aggressor in this increasingly hostile standoff between major powers. Yet we’re all meant to be freaking out about a balloon.

Ask me to show you how the US has been aggressing against China I can show you all the well-documented ways in which the US is encircling China with weapons of war. Ask an empire apologist to show you how China is aggressing against the US and they’ll start babbling about TikTok and balloons.

These things are not equal. Maybe Americans should stop watching out for hostile foreign threats and start looking a little closer to home.

Caitlin Johnstone

Well, actually I don’t agree that we should “stop watching out for hostile foreign threats”. That is exactly what our military and intelligence agencies should be doing. Our politicians and diplomats need to be thinking about how hostile and threatening we appear to others, whether their seemingly hostile actions are in reaction to a perceived threat from us, and whether trying to be less threatening would be in the entire world’s interest.

Jupiter and the Sun orbit each other

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This is just a random science tidbit. Two bodies with mass will always interact just a little bit, but in the case of the Earth our effect on the Sun is so small as to be negligible. In the case of Jupiter, it is not. Jupiter is so massive that it moves the Sun just a little bit, so they are actually technically orbiting each other. As for exactly what gravity is and where it came from, I can’t tell you, but I am grateful for it.

January 2023 in Review

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We’re now 1/12th of the way through 2023. Is this really the fabulous science fiction future we were promised? Well, at least the Earth is not a smoking ruin, at least most parts of it.

Most frightening and/or depressing story: How about a roundup of awful things, like the corrupt illegitimate U.S. Supreme Court, ongoing grisly wars, the CIA killed JFK after all (?), nuclear proliferation, ethnic cleansing, mass incarceration, Guantanamo Bay, and all talk no walk on climate change? And let’s hope there is a special circle of hell waiting for propaganda artists who worked for Exxon.

Most hopeful story: Bill Gates says a gene therapy-based cure for HIV could be 10-15 years away.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: Genetically engineered beating pig hearts have been sown into dead human bodies. More than once.

what’s a good U.S. strategy?

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Here are some ideas:

  • Rearm Germany and Japan. Why not throw in some nuclear proliferation while we are at it. Maybe South Korea or Taiwan would like to host some nuclear weapons, if they are not already?
  • Get involved in a land invasion of Russia, preferably in winter. (A convenient way to do this is to start your campaign in the fall or even late summer, and just assume it will be short.)
  • Also plan some Pacific island-hopping warfare.
  • Just assume this will not end with the deployment of weapons of mass destruction by any of the parties involved, especially not the world’s guiding light for peace and democracy.

Pfizer and “gain of function” research

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This Pfizer press release just confirms that the technology to make genetically engineered viruses is widespread:

we have conducted research where the original SARS-CoV-2 virus has been used to express the spike protein from new variants of concern. This work is undertaken once a new variant of concern has been identified by public health authorities. This research provides a way for us to rapidly assess the ability of an existing vaccine to induce antibodies that neutralize a newly identified variant of concern…

In a limited number of cases when a full virus does not contain any known gain of function mutations, such virus may be engineered to enable the assessment of antiviral activity in cells. In addition, in vitro resistance selection experiments are undertaken in cells incubated with SARS-CoV-2 and nirmatrelvir in our secure Biosafety level 3 (BSL3) laboratory to assess whether the main protease can mutate to yield resistant strains of the virus.  It is important to note that these studies are required by U.S. and global regulators for all antiviral products and are carried out by many companies and academic institutions in the U.S. and around the world.

Pfizer

So they aren’t creating genetically engineered bioweapons of mass destruction, but they could if they wanted to. Somebody somewhere probably is. Not the U.S. government, which has no track record of lying or trying to dominate the world, and doesn’t collude with big business entities with the technology to do so.

ChatGPT

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I set up a ChatGPT account and asked it to solve the lily pond problem. If the lilies double every day and will cover the pond in 30 days, on what day do the cover the half the pond. The answer, of course, should be day 29. ChatGPT correctly told me in words that this as an exponential growth problem, then gave me a numerical answer of 15 days (the linear growth answer!). Then it gave me some completely wrong math involving logarithms, after which it gave me two additional different answers that were not 29 or 15, and didn’t seem to acknowledge that it had even given multiple answers.

What scared me most was not the wrong answer(s), but the extremely confident manner in which it gave the wrong answer(s). This could fool people on problems where they don’t know the answer in advance, and the correct answer is not intuitive or obvious.

ChatGPT does tell much better knock-knock jokes that Siri…

As of today, we do not want this thing designing bridges or airplanes or anything else! I do not want it advising my doctor on my course of treatment, mixing my prescriptions at the pharmacy, or managing my retirement account, although these seem like plausible near-future applications once some kinks get worked out. It’s easy to be dismissive of the current state of this technology. But at the same time, it may not be that far off. Right now, it could argue you to a standstill in a barroom political or philosophical debate (you know, where a drunk guy makes a lengthy argument that is as illogical as it is confidently delivered, and since there are no consequences you just give up). In the medium-term future, I could imagine it being a conversational companion for a child or a person with dementia (although, there are some obvious ethical concerns here.) Could it be a best friend or significant other? This is a bit disturbing, because it might be able to always tell you exactly what you want to hear and be 100% impervious to your own annoying quirks, and then you might forget how to deal with actual people who are not going to be so forgiving. It could inhabit a sex doll – now there is a truly disturbing thought, but it will happen soon if it has not already.

Sharrows

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Sharrows are just markings telling bicyclists it is okay to “take the lane”, and telling motorists they have let bicyclists take the lane. In my experience, this can actually work okay on very narrow city streets with very slow traffic. The reason is that speeds here are low. So even if a bicyclist gets hit, that person is unlikely to die. I bike in this way, by taking the lane on relatively low-traffic, relatively slow streets. Surprisingly, the vast majority of drivers will wait patiently or change lanes and pass if they can do that safely. A small handful of psychopathic assholes will lay on the horn, scream, throw things, or spit. I would not let my children ride this way, but I feel safe enough doing it when I really need to. Those same psychopathic assholes are the ones who will kill a child crossing the street legally on foot, so not being on a bike is not going to save you from them.

Now having said all that, I agree sharrows are bad. Speed kills. Twenty is plenty, and anything over 20 mph is simply not safe for the bicyclist to be out there at all. Under 20, the hope is that the bicyclist will suffer only non-lethal broken bones and organ damage. Even in slower traffic, nine out of ten bicyclists don’t understand or don’t feel comfortable taking the lane, so they ride on the edge. Almost all drivers, for some reason, will speed up to pass a bicyclist riding on the edge. There is no room for error in this situation. Anything unexpected like an open car door, the car swerving slightly, or a pedestrian/dog/scooter enthusiast, and the bicyclist is likely to get hit hard and likely killed. If the vehicle is something bigger than a car, as it often is, the bicyclist has even less chance.

So what we need is safe, modern, competent road and street design. That’s it. Safe designs exist. We just have to design them, build them, and maintain them.

But if I were feeling cynical I would say yeah, but this is America, and we can’t have nice things here.

Exxon knew

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Exxon’s climate science was as good as that of government and academic scientists as long ago as the 1970s. They accurately predicted what was going to happen. And then they publicly lied and lied and lied about it. This is one of the most evil things ever done in the history of our world, because it affects every single one of the billions of people on the planet, and tens or hundreds or trillions yet to be born. And they knew exactly what they were doing. These people knowingly conspired to ruin a planet where every living being we know of in this universe live. And they did it for short term wealth and power, I guess.

On the basis of company records, we quantitatively evaluated all available global warming projections documented by—and in many cases modeled by—Exxon and ExxonMobil Corp scientists between 1977 and 2003. We find that most of their projections accurately forecast warming that is consistent with subsequent observations. Their projections were also consistent with, and at least as skillful as, those of independent academic and government models. Exxon and ExxonMobil Corp also correctly rejected the prospect of a coming ice age, accurately predicted when human-caused global warming would first be detected, and reasonably estimated the “carbon budget” for holding warming below 2°C. On each of these points, however, the company’s public statements about climate science contradicted its own scientific data.

Science

Joe Biden releases the hounds

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A Secret Service agent walking into the White House might expect to get an ass chewing on occasion, but not literally… Joe Biden’s dog Major apparently bit Secret Service agents in the White House not once but repeatedly. Happily, the dog was able to go live with a “family friend” and the White House is now home to another, less vicious dog of lower rank, Commander.