TheVat

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/putin-ukraine-democracy/621465/ Looks at what motivates Vlad, and why he might not want a democracy on his doorstep. Or have the USA continue as a functional democracy.

There seems to be some skipping over the fact that one does not APPLY for a job on the supreme court. It is an appointed position, by the President with the advise and consent of Congress. It is a POLITICAL appointment, every time, and thus driven by the choices and objectives of elected officials. If Americans voted for Biden because he said he would put a professional juggler on the SCt, then he can search only for jugglers and keep his promise. Congress can affirm or not, depending on how they juggle their constituents and donor base (heh). Labor laws regarding nondiscrimination on the basis of juggling ability do not apply. The criteria that would exist for "best" for that niche would be applied to the field of jugglers and might include many who left the circus and went on to law school. As @CharonY and I earlier noted, there is no single criterion that constitutes a best person and it often comes down to gut feelings. Where is the outrage for past appointments that specifically looked to include new demographics? Curiously the RW rage machine is quiet about Louis Brandeis, Thurgood Marshall, Sandra O'Connor, Sonia Sotomayor, et al. Weird that they accept the methods that made the Court more inclusive UP TO RIGHT NOW, but suddenly when faced with a black woman they all embrace their previously well concealed idealism.

It was a useful topic, not least in that it raises the question of what people mean by that nebulous term "best." On a team, there is no ideal best, just people who are more or less able to fill a particular spot on that team. One of the helpful observations here (INow, iirc) was that it is rather Orwellian to take a process that increases inclusion and call it "exclusionary." A bit like calling the appointment of a library acquisitions board exclusionary because they specifically sought candidates with varied reading backgrounds rather than just stuffing the board with fans of bestsellers. The RW objections are kind of like, in my example, someone saying "well, most people like bestsellers, so how dare we exclude people, on this particular search, who just read bestsellers?" Anyway, if you believe the US Constitution is a living document, then you may need people who have lived in many ways to interpret and apply it. Personally, I feel the best appointments are the ones who see the SCt as above politics and partisanship and truly set aside their own past politics. That IS what the highest court is supposed to do, in all deliberations. They are supposed to owe the POTUS who appointed them NOTHING. That was the specific intent in designing out justice system.

(Replied before reading whole thread) I think some of those slinging AA at the process may not fully understand the principle at work here. The race and gender, in this context, are visible markers for finding jurists who have a diversity of upbringing and life experience and resultant perspective to bring to the panel of nine. Like others, I think that diversity should include not only women and PoC, but those who didn't attend Ivy League schools (currently 8 of 9 attended Harvard or Yale), for example. (And one of the candidates went to a state university -- good for her!) Most of the past minorities who made it on the Court, traditionally a club of white Protestant men, did so because a POTUS made a conscious selection of someone outside that group. Starting with Louis Brandeis in the early 20th century. In any case, Biden's goal is not to exclude white men but rather to continue the process of having the SCt be more a cross section of the real America. Growing up black and female does give you a perspective on the law and justice that is quite valuable when you are part of the highest court, that will rule on cases that impact the most vulnerable populations. In this regard, being black and female is a uniquely powerful qualification in bringing balance to the SCt. When you look at the current Court, you will not have any impression that whites or males are being excluded.

This, on radiative forcing of CO2, and the use of simulations, may be helpful. https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/atmosphericwarming/radiativeforcing.html#:~:text=Thus CO2 concentration is,3.53 W·m–2. The computations to determine the radiative forcing for a greenhouse gas require a detailed knowledge of its IR absorption and emission properties. These are available from the HITRAN database. “HITRAN is an acronym for high-resolution transmission molecular absorption database. HITRAN is a compilation of spectroscopic parameters that a variety of computer codes use to predict and simulate the transmission and emission of light in the atmosphere. The database is a long-running project started by the Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories (AFCRL) in the late 1960's in response to the need for detailed knowledge of the infrared properties of the atmosphere,”

The rice mold toxin is one to add to my list of rice negatives. Others are (for white rice, the most commonly eaten form): very high glycemic, very constipating, potential arsenic residues, and nutritionally meager. I tried a gluten free diet for six months, which tends to lead to lots of rice consumption (most GF breads are mainly rice flour) and felt so better when I returned to wheat. Tea bags? Let me sing the praises of loose tea. Better flavor, better control of brew strength, and no plastic nanoparticles from the bag moving through your gut villi. You can now find bags made with plant fibers, but it's usually more expensive.

Looking in again. To be clear, I was not really "naysaying" this scenario, which is somewhat different from what was proposed earlier in the thread. Truly pristine barren planets could be seeded, and extend the reign of DNA life and its survival chances. Any such world will, of course, diverge from our biota as it develops, and could well become quite hostile to humans over time. So it would not really be something that could serve as a backup for humans in case of terrestrial disaster. Having a biotically similar backup Earth, a quite different feat of planetary bioengineering, seems reasonable if it has fully developed ecosystems that would be compatible with human colonization. However, it's hard to see this project working out well on a newly formed planet, and we wouldn't likely have several billion years to bioengineer it the slow old-fashioned way, building up an Earth Two from stromatolites and cyanobacteria while we just hang out in space arks. So how would you get a mature planet and make it Earth Two, without squashing indigenous life? I would think you would he limited to planetary systems near recent supernovae which had been completely sterilized by an intense gamma burst and proton shock wave.

Just found this thread. Count me as a vote for probes. I lean toward KenF et al. idea that we should be humble learners, be open to other possibilities of abiogenesis and exotic ecologies, or... who knows... planets where exotic crystals spread and have slow piezoelectric thoughts. I find the seeding concept too embedded in a sort of corporate "branding" to trust. It is tainted with Terran biochauvinism.

I'm a fact supporter, period. If you were interested in basic experiments, and data from such, then perhaps you followed up on the US Air Force Geophysical Laboratory lead I offered. I don't have links to whatever they documented, but I feel it is pretty likely they did the kind of research you seek.

A man who had visited Israel proudly described his adventure riding on a male camel. How did you know it was male? his pals asked. Because, said the man, everywhere I rode people kept calling out, "hey, look at the putz on that camel!"

I would guess that he is continuing down the road of circumcision jokes. A double entendre on "complete prick." ☹️ I only gave the post a passing glans...

I wondered about that, too. Until I read the second joke, which it seemed could be misunderstood as anti-Semitic. Though I lived in a Jewish community for a couple years, I confess I didn't quite get the point of the joke, either. (ETA: which I now see is an amusing way to put that! LoL!) Ok, kind of letting that Rabbi joke sink in, I wonder if someone though it was based on some stereotype of Jews conning people and thieving from them? That's all I can come up with. Ahh. Figured out the joke, which I see is easier to understand if you're British. In America, "nicked" doesn't have the double meaning it would in, say, south London. Also a weird joke in the US, where circumcision was nearly universal and had nothing to do with being Jewish, in many states.

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1076246311 (Excerpt from NPR's transcript, which is available from the top of the article Inow posted, NPR being a radio network. At the right-hand side of the click-bar for the audio file, there are three dots, which clicked on will offer a text transcript) INSKEEP: People inside told Rob they did not know when they would be released. They said they'd been sent to reform their thoughts. Here in Washington, Ambassador Qin described this as an opportunity for Uyghurs to change. QIN: We give them a chance. We use a measure to correct them. It's a preventive measure. INSKEEP: A preventive measure? QIN: Preventive measure because... INSKEEP: Preventing them from having terrorist thoughts before they have them? QIN: Before they have them, you know? Those people - not every Uyghur was sent to the school, but when we found some people more or less influenced by extremist ideas. So before they are getting worse, we send them to the school, giving them educations of language, of law and vocational training so that when they finish, they can get a decent job. INSKEEP: Is part of the goal assimilation? QIN: The goal of this policy is to make the society stable and safe.

CO2 has been thoroughly examined by physical chemists via spectroscopy, and its interaction with a variety of forms of energy has been excruciatingly examined by a number of scientists and groups. One example of this being the Air Force Geophysics Laboratory, in Hanscom MA. Back in the 1950’s (a century after Eunice Foote’s and John Tyndall's work) the Air Force had a problem; the newly developed technology of “heat seeking missiles” did not work. They could not distinguish hot targets from the ambient IR in the atmosphere due to CO2 and other greenhouse gasses. This forced the geophysicists and geochemists at the laboratory to rigorously document not only the magnitude of IR downwelling caused by CO2 and other greenhouse gasses but the precise wavelengths and properties of the IR interactions of those gases. Having conducted a rigorous campaign of observations and testing, the sensors on those heat seeking missiles were redesigned to ignore the specific IR wavelengths CO2 and other greenhouse gasses re-emitted so that they could actually function. Here is a good review, including spectral data from Earth and also Mars and Venus: https://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/papers/PhysTodayRT2011.pdf As others note, it is water vapor that amplifies the GH effect of CO2, something I pointed out to you, @Doogles31731, on my old science forum.

James Hamblin (@jameshamblin) Tweeted: So we're all supposed to "prepare for blizzard conditions" just because the scientific establishment and the media say so? And anyone who says it will be sunny and 70 is canceled? All's I'm saying is, lots of $ changing hands in snow shovel industry. Do your own meteorology. https://twitter.com/jameshamblin/status/1487159729315008523?s=20&t=7NshBlM4nDJ_vd3J32P2-w

While your example of poor translation is relevant, I should note that the quote I was referring to was when the Chinese ambassador to the USA (Qin) told an NPR correspondent that the Uighurs suffered from "inappropriate thoughts." I am sorry if my post did not make that clear. IIRC, China's ambassador to the USA speaks English fluently and is apt to choose his words with some care when addressing such hot button issues. (otherwise, one wonders why he was picked for the job) Perhaps he was the victim of the same company that sold John Cleese a criminally inaccurate Hungarian to English phrasebook, in that famous Monty Python sketch. If he starts telling us that his hovercraft is full of eels, then we will know.

My impression of Qin, from the quotes of him in that article, is that he's made a rookie error in how to talk to the west. His phrase in describing Uighurs and those with "inappropriate thoughts," seemed poorly chosen. Does he realize he's talking to a nation which holds free thought (and personal sovereignty over one's thoughts) to be sacrosanct? That phrase made my blood run a little colder.

One wonders what other debt/credit systems were available for career whores. Let's take the case of Alice. At some point, she's going to have all the goats she needs. So the next client, Bob, who offers a goat payment, she needs him to provide some sort of IOU instead. Then, say, she needs a new bed a while later. She's a whore, so her beds wear out. She takes the one-goat paper to the carpenter, Ray. He can be compensated by transferring the goat paper, which he can take to Bob and get a goat. But what if Ray is also not needing a goat? Then he will trade the Bob IOU to someone else. Anyway, biblically, it all works out ethically because there is no usury - i.e. interest. The debt, however it transfers, remains one goat. This seems important here, since you don't want Lucille the seamstress (who is the seventh recipient of the Bob goat IOU) to show up and say, gosh Bob, this IOU is dated over a year ago....maybe we take an extra leg off one other goat, too?

An adjacent atom can make a measurement. Schrodinger himself was annoyed that people focused on the cat, when his point was about Copenhagen and its antirealist implications. And its awkwardness in defining an observer or measurement. He could just as well have had a box with a sheet of paper and a bottle of ink that's broken if a particle hits the detector. Would have saved us a lot of pointless fuss about cat consciousness. Is the paper white or ink spotted? Same deal. Decoherence has happened, it's one or the other.

Yes, very likely. Joe was outlining a stepped-up cyberwar capacity last spring, which was to include clandestine "warning shot" intrusions onto Russian networks. The thinking IIRC was that economic sanctions have limited power, so we needed a bigger stick (as well as developing better shields) if Putin escalated. At that time, Biden was concerned that these kinds of cyber attacks not cross certain lines. Meaning, I think, how to inflict pain on bad actors without, say, shutting down hospitals or turning traffic lights all green all day. I remember a couple/three years ago, our cyberwar division made incursions into the Russian power grid, as a warning to Putin. Given the possible consequences for civilians during a Russian winter, I wonder if Biden might be more reluctant to escalate that.

That was disturbingly on-topic for an off-topic rant. You keep veering into relevance. Plus one. What always amuses me is that people laser-focus on dangerous side effects of a technology when they already have an axe to grind. Cellphones, when held to the ear in extended use, have been linked to brain cancer and acoustic neuromas, and I have seen not one placard-waving fist-shaking demonstration against cellphones. And no one has refused to use a cellphone when their occupation requires it. What further erodes the honesty of the mRNA bogeyman argument is that there are other Covid vaccines that use a more traditional simian adenovirus vector, like JJ and AZ, so the mRNA resistant do have options that will not cause the dreaded butt wings or whatever the trending phobia is. I live in the boondocks, and pretty much every pharmacy in the area had the option of a non mRNA vax.

I suspect one way we come to understand meaning is when isolated sentences present as ambiguous, like "The bark was painful." Someone rubbed against a rough tree, or a dog's vocalization conveyed its distress? To find meaning we seek a context that we share with the speaker. When we read a story, we tend to be fascinated by ambiguity. Like the conclusion of The Lady or the Tiger. The short story ends at this point when a man has either chosen a door behind which waits a tiger or a beautiful woman. His lover, the princess, has indicated which door he should choose, but it’s up to the reader to decide if she wants him alive and married to another woman, or is jealous enough to prefer his death. Meaning, for humans, is interesting when we are made uncertain as to what a word or gesture signifies in another person's mind - what was the true motivation of the princess's gesture towards one of the doors? There does seem to be an underlying logic that appears in all human languages, which clarifies meaning and removes ambiguity from ordinary sentences. When I say "my house is yellow," any human listener infers that I am speaking of the exterior of my house, not its interior walls.

I've noticed the faraday cage idea keeps cycling to new generations. When I was young, I knew someone who had an orgone box (he was also big on magnetic shoe inserts) and followed the theories of Wilhelm Reich. Now I notice that faraday cages are again popular among new age health nuts, but less elaborate than Reich's design, and without the orgone theoretic basis -- now the claim is simply that it's shielding your delicate tissues from excess EMF. And, as always, the reason we haven't heard of these dangers is because powerful people are suppressing the TRUTH! ( the conspiracy notion helps the faithful promote this pseudoscience, since there are genuine instances of corporations and governments who do withhold facts from the public)

I hope the at-home antigen tests can keep improving, given how immediate results are often extremely helpful. I have had a nasty bug since Friday, which matched the symptoms of omicron, so I took a rapid antigen test and got a negative. But now am hearing that it's less sensitive to omicron, so false negatives are higher, so I feel the need to take it again. In the UK, they recommend you do the second one with swabbing your throat instead of your nares, because omicron seems to concentrate there more. (my USA test instructions rule out throat swab, but I've seen a couple preprint studies saying omicron may be three times as concentrated in throat!) I want to get this right because the spouse has an important meeting this week and she does not want to be a spreader. And there is a pregnant woman in the group that's meeting. (The PCR test does me no good, because results here in the American outback take 3-5 days, and the meeting is in two days)