Why are we here?
Billy the dog when he was young.
Billy and I go for a long walk almost every day. He tries to be around me as much as he can. When I’m at the computer he lies on the floor right behind me. He’s been that way ever since his buddy Boris died suddenly (a stroke) two years ago. He appeared on our driveway in 2016, about a month before I had spinal surgery (August 7). Boris was a dog that was supposedly owned by a lady who lived across the street, but Billy lured him away when we went for walks past his house. We never trained either dog to do anything but sit, and they were never interested in playing fetch. Billy is a very intelligent dog just the same. Boris was very loyal to him (and us).
But that’s not what I want to talk about. No. I want to know, why do we exist? Well, if we didn’t exist, we wouldn’t be here to think about it.
On the other hand, Copernicus (a Polish astronomer from the 1500s) suggested that the Earth revolves around the Sun rather than the Sun revolving around the Earth. This thought started a landslide that has resulted in the opinions of astronomers and cosmologists in the 2020s being a little different. We now hold that not only are we not at the center of the galaxy, much less the Universe, but that in fact the Universe has no center.
Thoughts of this sort are addressed in an article by Tim Andersen published online in Popular Mechanics on May 10, 2024. His conclusions are a little surprising.
Tim Andersen first addresses the tension between the so-called anthropic principle and the Copernican principle. The anthropic principle holds that we are here, i.e. we exist, because the Universe is specially tuned for our existence. All of the basic physical laws and measurements, such as the weight of the neutron and the speed of light, are that way because they make it possible for us to exist.
The Copernican principle demotes us to a not-special place and its mechanism for producing us is natural selection or evolution– notoriously a blind, stochastic process. The principles of natural selection were formulated by Charles Darwin in the 1800s. The beauty of natural selection is that it inevitably produces more and more complex organisms over time, eventually leading to us (and possibly beyond in the future, if we don’t blow ourselves up).
Tim Andersen says this tension can be explained by using the concept of the multiverse. In multiverses, there are infinitely many possible “setups” for the cosmological constants, and we just happen to live in a multiverse that supports human life. There are many multiverse theories, but the one he wants to explore uses what is called the theory of cosmological natural selection. This was first proposed by physicist Lee Smolin in 1992.
In this theory, the appearance of a black hole actually enables the birth of a baby universe. In this new universe, time stands still and the density of matter is infinite at the central point (the only point that exists initially). The point immediately begins to expand, “creating new matter and energy.” (In fact, the infinitely dense matter degenerates to finite density and releases energy from the transition.)
Just as our universe started at a single point as the Big Bang, every black hole starts anew. In the baby universe, black holes appear which are yet new universes, and so on. This is a bit speculative.
Andersen goes off on another tangent: carbon. Carbon monoxide is the second most common molecule in the visible universe, after molecular hydrogen, even more common than water.
In collapsing proto-stellar clouds of space gas formed in supernovae (explosions of large stars), stars form from the hydrogen and the carbon monoxide acts as a coolant, keeping the star from igniting until it is large enough. (Graphite– pure carbon– is used in nuclear reactors to slow down energetic neutrons resulting from fission and thus keep the reactor cool.)
It happens that carbon is also essential for all known life. Our bodies are mostly made of long chains of carbon with hydrogen on the side. So Andersen says that life is a byproduct of the formation of stars, which is a consequence of the universe’s evolution to create more black holes.
This is all a little hard to understand. At the end, Andersen says that it is possible that the Universe itself is alive. It’s like artificial intelligence (AI) in a way, only in a universe, not in a computer. At least it sounds good, better than an old man with a long white beard called G-d.
Two Thousand Pound Bombs
vector graphic from pixabay.com
Will someone please explain to me what is the practical use of a 2,000 pound bomb in urban warfare?
Until it is explained to me, I have to assume that the purpose is to destroy an entire multi-story apartment building, or at least to render it uninhabitable.
President Biden made a decision, announced this week, to no longer supply Israel with 2,000 lb. and 500 lb. bombs. He is also, apparently, going to embargo 155 mm howitzer and tank cannon rounds. He is applying the only form of leverage available to our government. Previous Presidents have done the same thing to signal their displeasure to Israel.
If you consider refusing to support Mr. Biden in November because of the plight of Gaza, be aware that the former guy would be immeasurably worse. He was, after all, the guy who moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem and called Democratic Jews “traitors” to Israel.
The pro-Palestinian bias of Tik Tok (which is only natural because Tik Tok is so popular in Arab countries) accounts for the striking disconnect between young American’s attitudes towards Gaza and the attitudes of adults who don’t watch Tik Tok. Remember, there are only 170 million Americans who watch Tik Tok versus 2 billion people worldwide.
You could say that the unrest on campuses is a direct result of Tik Tok and the reactions of school authorities to anti-semitic protests.
Robert F Kennedy Jr photo by Gage Skidmore
Here’s the thing. Mr. Kennedy is seventy years old. Mr. Trump is 77. Mr. Biden is 81. Actual comparison shows that Mr. Biden is the sharpest of the lot. Watch his State of the Union speech if you don’t believe me.
I am 70 and I wouldn’t take the job if you paid me. I would suck at it.
Mr. Kennedy, on the other hand, is apparently keen on becoming president.
There is, however, a small problem. It seems that he has a dead worm in his brain. This does not explain his affection for conspiracy theories. He did complain in a divorce action in 2012 that it was impairing his ability to think and do his job, i.e. deliver speeches.
Now, neurocysticercosis (having a dead worm in your brain) is not rare. The common pork tapeworm will do that sometimes, penetrating into the brain and encysting itself before dying. Usually this does not cause mental problems. If the worm should happen to penetrate one of your muscles, however, it will cause intense pain. This should give you a motivation for cooking your pork dishes thoroughly.
Mr. Kennedy, however, believes that this and other matters, like mercury poisoning (which he apparently really has, from eating too much tuna) have affected his ability to think.
What is worse, he has spasmodic dysphonia, which periodically makes him so hoarse he can barely speak. It is said that he had titanium implants in his vocal cords to counteract this. At his recent interview on Bill Maher’s show, his hoarseness was so bad even I could hardly understand him. So I don’t think the titanium implants are helping much.
Why, then, would he even consider running for President? He has to self-reflect a little bit, and realize that he’s not a good candidate. He has a florid case of narcissism that is driving his quixotic quest.
Another lump
Here’s the thing: I have this lump on my finger that appeared one morning about a month ago. It’s raised, about 1×2 cm, on the proximal phalanx of my left second finger. It’s hard, smooth, and it hasn’t gotten bigger in the last month.
I went to the doctor and he said, “I don’t know what it is either.” He ordered an Xray, which just showed arthritis in the base of my thumb. No calcifications in the lump, which is just barely visible as a soft tissue shadow.
So he sent me to a hand surgeon. I haven’t seen him yet.
Eventually, someone is going to have to cut it off and look at it under the microscope.
It doesn’t act like a malignant tumor; it’s not growing nor painful.
Just one more consequence of having turned 70 years old on April 26.
A personal note #9
There’s a long list of reasons why I haven’t posted since September 2022. Let me count the ways:
- The risk of getting threatening emails or worse. This risk may seem extremely slight since no-one reads my blog, but things have changed a lot in the last few years. Especially since the presidential election in 2016 and worsening since 2020. This year is already setting records for online abuse. Even right-wing Republicans have been subjected to torrents of abuse for deviating from the party line.
- The COVID pandemic is officially over (although in reality, it has only mutated). So I don’t need to post about new research and other developments. See also 1., where there could be trolls putting down what I say about COVID.
- I’ve been sick. I won’t go into details on that now.
- I’ve been depressed. I won’t go into that now.
- My cats require attention.
- My dog requires attention.
- I have to go for a walk. This is usually good for a couple of days, repeat as necessary.
- I’ll be right back. [never comes back.]
COVID-19 was one of the top three causes of mortality in the US and number one in ages 40-54, according to a study of the leading causes of death during the eighteen months starting in March 2020 and ending in October 2021. Out of six million total deaths, over a million were ascribed to COVID. Among the most significant findings:
“Among people who were 85 or older, COVID-19 was the second leading cause of death during the first 9 months and the third leading cause during the second 9 months.”
“Among middle-aged people (age range, 45–54), COVID-19 was the fourth leading cause of death during the first 9 months and the top cause of death during the second 9 months.”
“For every age group from 1 to 44, accidental death was the top cause of death for both time periods.”
So, during the period January-October 2021, the leading cause of death among middle-aged people was COVID-19; accidental deaths outnumbered COVID deaths among younger people. The deaths among those 45 to 54 are partly related to the low uptake of coronavirus vaccines in this age group.
Only 56% of all adults in the US were fully vaccinated by October 2021. The other big cause of mortality was poor compliance with mask-wearing among the middle-aged population (this is my anecdotal opinion.)
Vaccine rates among the elderly have been as high as 92-95%, which helps to account for their dropping death rates from infection despite their poor immune systems and high death rates once infected. Uptake rates among younger adults ranged between 70 to 65%.
That’s good rates, especially among the elderly, but it’s not enough. Experts have estimated that vaccine rates of over 90% are needed to really arrest a pandemic as contagious as COVID. As a result, COVID was the leading cause of death among those 45-54 during January-October 2021. Why has the vaccine not gotten universal acceptance among the young and middle-aged?
One answer is that there is a concerted disinformation campaign by a large group of vaccine deniers, especially on social media and through lawsuits to prevent mandatory masking and shots. Content on social media comes from the opinions, ramblings, and delusions of uninformed people– there is no special emphasis on the opinions of people who really know what they are talking about.
The opinions of those who really understand the underlying science and the hard numbers are not given any platform or special emphasis. Instead, the opinions of ignoramus types are equally represented without any information about whom to believe.
The former guy was a master at exploiting the lack of emphasis on informed opinion on Twitter, for example. He used Twitter and Facebook to spread lies that minimized the risk, failed to push the population to set themselves on a war footing against COVID, boosted useless or dangerous remedies like hydroxychloroquine and bleach injections, denigrated experts like Dr. Fauci, ridiculed masks (and lied that they didn’t work) and on and on.
The former guy could have made a public media event out of getting his vaccinations, but he didn’t– he did it in secret. All the other presidents publicly got their shots and made sure the media was informed.
If you looked in the right place, you could find the warning that everyone should get his shots as soon as possible, and everyone should wear a mask in public. But that information was not emphasized in a consistent way– it should have been presented to all users as soon as they signed in on the web sites. At best, some of the gross disinformation was treated with a tepid warning box that linked to accurate information.
Only the worst of lies about COVID was removed by Twitter “censors”, and even then, the work was spotty and incomplete.
Why didn’t Twitter (for example) put up information boxes for everyone to see first every time they signed on? Before they were exposed to disinformation from all sides?
There are so many simple things that could have been done, that would have made things better. Another example would have been if the former guy took the initiative in March 2020: if he had told everyone to wear masks and took the time to walk around in public with a mask on. Masks would have obviated the need to close down all the schools for so long (another disruptive move, which has resulted in massive losses in education levels.)
That one failure, to promote mask wearing, dramatically worsened the spread of COVID throughout the US. Some countries are accustomed to wearing masks in public (Korea and Japan, for example) and they have had much better experiences with COVID, even without sufficient vaccines. We should have had a big campaign to make masks popular, fashionable, and even de rigueur, led by the President, who should have worn a mask everywhere, even while giving speeches.
Hindsight is 20/20, but we can learn from our mistakes. We can get our shots and wear masks all the time in public. We are facing a potential spike in COVID-19 Omicron B.5 this winter, and the new vaccine just approved by the FDA could arrest it– but only if everyone gets their shots. The only difference with Omicron that we know for sure is that it is much more contagious than the original coronavirus– making cloth masks obsolete and N-95 respirators de rigueur. (sorry, no references at hand for the differences between old and new.)
Remember that the more people who get COVID infections, even if they are mild, the more chances the virus has to mutate into a more infectious and more efficient predator. Minimizing the total number of infections is extremely important, even among the very young (who are efficient spreaders because they usually have mild disease and interact with many other children.)
I have an appointment on September 15 to get my fourth vaccine– this time against Omicron. I urge you to do the same, and if your primary series isn’t complete, get that out of the way (although the new shot, given twice, should substitute for the primary series of shots. Sorry, I can’t make the rules about things like that.)
photo by anastasia gepp courtesy of pixabay.com
Taiwan’s defences shot down a drone over a Taiwan-owned island after it ignored several warnings and repeatedly buzzed the island. The drone’s origin has not been specified by either the Taiwanese or Chinese governments.
We suspect that the drone’s controllers were of Chinese origin, but it doesn’t matter: this is one of the earliest examples of shooting in the brewing Taiwan-China war.
A two-front war analogous to World War Two would severely tax America’s resources. Asia now has vastly more technological and production resources than ever it did in the second world war, which ended in a peace overwhelmingly in American and Soviet victory, with the English suffering the second after the French and Dutch the first, not counting Poland and Czechoslovakia, which were not war but armed seizures after a treaty agreed upon by two aggressive, fascistic, and militaristic countries.
I could go on, but the point is, the second world war never ended anything because it allowed for fascist countries like the Soviets and Spain to prevail.
Now the two biggest fascist countries in the world (I think) are China and Russia. Open conflict between us and them is more a certainty than a likelihood, in my humble opinion. We’d better define the lines of conflict between nations: which side are you on? Two Scandinavian countries have already answered in the affirmative by applying for NATO membership.
guns photo by Tumisu via pixabay.com
The former guy is notorious, for among many other things, for building a 30 foot high “unscalable” border wall in places along the US-Mexico border. He had 52 miles of new wall built and supervised raising of portions of the 649-mile wall already in place as of 2011. From Wikipedia:
In May 2011, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) stated that it had 649 miles (1,044 km) of barriers in place.[4]An additional 52 miles of primary barriers were built during Donald Trump’s presidency.[5] The total length of the national border is 1,954 miles (3,145 km). On July 28th 2022, the Biden Administration announced it would fill four wide gaps in Arizona near Yuma, an area with some of the busiest corridors for illegal crossings.[6]
If you want to go around the fence, you might try the mountains or the desert– fifty miles of empty land, finally touching a road on the Totono-O’odham Reservation.
The wall/fence was initially proposed by a Republican Congressman in 2005, who wanted a fence along the entire border. An “electronic fence” was proposed and tested, but apparently never really got off the ground; it was administered by Boeing Corporation, which had “numerous delays and cost overruns” (you could say that about almost every project ever conceived.) The next year, a law was passed and money was appropriated for fencing along about 700 miles of border. Mexico, Central American countries, and even the Mayor of the City of Laredo vociferously objected.
Nonetheless, President Obama announced in May 2011 that the wall was “basically complete.” He said (again, from Wikipedia):
We have gone above and beyond what was requested by the very Republicans who said they supported broader reform as long as we got serious about enforcement. All the stuff they asked for, we’ve done. But … I suspect there are still going to be some who are trying to move the goal posts on us one more time. They’ll want a higher fence. Maybe they’ll need a moat. Maybe they want alligators in the moat.[a] They’ll never be satisfied. And I understand that. That’s politics.[4]
Inevitably, the former guy, engineering and construction genius that he is, demanded that the wall be raised and extended. An entirely new type of “wall”– an open grid of steel bollards 30 feet high in places and with anti-climbing features– was designed and began to be built. It ran into “numerous delays and cost overruns” but construction continued until the last day of the former guy’s presidency.
One of the former guy’s ex-aides participated in a $30 fund-raising fraud advertising “more wall” to the right-wing faithful. He was caught and prosecuted, but surprise, surprise, he was pardoned by the former guy.
Coyotes soon figured out that a battery-powered saw could cut through the bollard in a few minutes (anecdotal information.) A number of locations have had to be repaired after “doors” were cut into them.
The simplest solution, a taller ladder for climbing, was even more popular. This inevitably led to people falling off of ladders and being injured from dropping thirty feet to the ground on the other side. Some people were even killed in this maneuver.
Don’t believe me? Check out this article from a medical ‘zine: “A Trauma Team’s Nightmare: Six Border Wall Fall Patients in Six Hours.” The article says: “Just from Jan. 1 to July 31, [Scripps] Mercy reported treating 141 patients and UCSD [both of San Diego, 25 miles north of the border and the biggest trauma centers in the area] reported 159, putting them on track to beat prior years’ wall-fall counts.”
That’s three hundred people who fell from the wall, survived, and had injuries serious enough to be transferred to trauma centers in seven months. At two trauma centers 25 miles from the west end of the border– never mind the ones further east. Aside from the human toll in serious (possibly disabling) injury and death, there’s the economic injury: none of these patients, including a few with half million dollar bills, had no way to pay either out of pocket or through insurance of any kind.
So the idea of a “great, big, beautiful wall” has become another nightmare for refugees trying to flee disintegrating countries, poverty, heat, drought, and hunger. Such wonderful people we are. Why could we not have seen that an “electronic wall” would be less intrusive, avoid injuries, and provide pictures of everyone who crossed over day and night?
No fence is unclimbable. Has no one ever thought that we need these immigrants for our economy? Has it never occurred to anyone that some of these people will be going to Canada as the world heats up even further?
[Note on the above text: there is overt and implied sarcasm in the comments expressed here. For instance, the former president is referred to as “the former guy” thanks to President Biden’s characterization of him early in his presidency, and this term is widely used.]
photo by Queven courtesy of pixabay.com
I think I’m going to throw up. I am so disgusted by the mob mentality, criminality and sheer chutzpah of this guy. He’s basically extorting the Department of Justice to get out of a felony: removal, concealment, and/or destruction of presidential papers, plus multiple counts of obstruction– of which he is so guilty, I, as a non-lawyer, could probably prosecute him successfully. He was caught red-handed with classified documents in his personal desk on August 8 of this year.
Don’t believe me? Here’s a quote from an email that the Atlantic sent me: “According to Rolling Stone, he’s also told numerous people that should he be indicted, the protests would make January 6 “look small by comparison.” Which is pretty chilling, given, y’know, what happened on January 6.”
All I would have to do is call an FBI agent as my only witness: “Did you search the personal desk of #45 pursuant to this search warrant?” “Yes I did.” “What did you find in the desk?” “These documents, and an empty can of Diet Coke.” “Would you hold them up please?” He does so. “Ladies and gentleman of the jury, you can plainly see that these documents have cover sheets marked Top Secret. I’m sorry that I can’t show you the actual documents until you get a security clearance, which could take three months. In the meantime, I rest my case.”
Should take about an hour, including lunch, to come back with a verdict of “guilty.”
Then there’s Senator Graham, who said there’d be “rioting in the streets.” He’s not wrong, but jeez, is that fully disgusting or what? Go ahead, riot all you want, we’ll pick you up later after going through the security camera footage and using Face Identification.
If we have to try 40% of the adult population of this country for insurrection, then we’ll just have to gird up our loins and do our duty. Plea bargain for probation works for me, but remember, to accept a guilty plea, the judge will make you get up in open court and admit that you did it and you knew it was against the law at the time. Otherwise, it’s a month in jail even if you plead no contest.
Remember, “none dare call it treason” in the mainstream media. But I digress. You can read between the lines, can’t you? Anyone with a high-school education that included a class on ethical behavior can see the crimes he’s committed all his life. The Russians were cultivating him as a “useful idiot” since 2007, but the real criming started when he ran for president.
He denied having any business in Russia when he still had an open line on the Trump Tower of Moscow. His campaign manager gave confidential inside campaign information like opinion polls to a known Russian agent. His son had a meeting with known Russian operatives during the campaign and didn’t report it to the FBI. He allowed the Russians to spread anti-Clinton propaganda on Facebook and didn’t even condemn it.
He spilled a secret he had learned from the Israelis to Russian official visitors in the Oval Office– intelligence that forced the Israelis to recover one of their own moles. He never, ever, said or did anything to cross Putin– in fact, he tried to break up NATO. He’s a traitor.
Even worse, he approved of the invasion of Ukraine. Look it up, I’m too disgusted to spend another second on this bum. Just Google “Trump opinion Russian invasion Ukraine” and you’ll get things like this WSJ headline: “Trump Calls Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine Smart, Blames Biden for Not Doing Enough”.
image courtesy of Christian Dorn via pixabay.com
I don’t know where I found the quote that titles this post; it may have come from a comment on a post on the New York Times in the past couple of days. It relates to the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which abolishes slavery, “except as punishment for crime…”
Googling the phrase, I find the first entry to point to the Wex legal dictionary maintained by Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute and the term “slavery.”
This tome (a Wiktionary-like legal dictionary) states, and I quote (bolding is mine):
“Slavery is the practice of forced labor and restricted liberty. It is also a regime where one class of people – the slave owners – could force another – the slaves – to work and limit their liberty. Throughout history, some forms of slavery existed as punishment for committing crimes or to pay off debts. In the United States, individuals were forced into slavery, born into slavery, and were slaves for life based on their race. Slaves were recognized as [objects or property] of the slave owners. Slavery was widely accepted worldwide, and many countries gained their capital from the practice of slavery [capitalism, you see, is a major feature of slavery], especially from the triangular trade among Europe, Africa, and America. The United States abolished slavery through the 13th Amendment after the Civil War [actually at the very end of the Civil War; Lincoln delayed peace negotiations with the South by a day to ensure that the Amendment would pass the House after triumphing in the Senate– see the recent movie “Lincoln”]. While the practice of slavery is no longer legal, it still does exist. According to the 18 U.S. Code § 1583, individuals may be fined or be imprisoned for life if they kidnap, carry away, or use any other method to hold someone against their will.”
Note that the concept of forced labor is paired with restricted liberty (as well as lack of personal or bodily autonomy.) Also note that the practice is “no longer legal”, which I assume means in the USA and most other countries– surely there are a few countries that do not explicitly outlaw slavery. Also note that you may be imprisoned for life under federal law if you try to perpetrate this crime– perhaps fitting for this transgression.
Restricted liberty means no freedom to travel beyond a certain boundary. Here we mean the household or institution within which the victim is confined.
The definition of slavery, therefore, includes the lack of “freedom to travel.” This point will, I’m sure, be litigated by our revanchist Supreme Court in the near future unless somebody does something about it.
This is because the same forces which want to prevent abortion within certain states are fully aware that a woman can, if she has the means, travel out of state to obtain the procedure if abortion clinics within the state are forced to close. The practice of abortion within the home will also become a target of opportunity for these antilibertarian authorities.
We of the imaginary Democratic Republican Party must band together to make sure that abortion is safe, legal, and rare. We can only do this by ensuring that the State encourages and supports contraception for all who wish to avoid conception– thus the proposal, recently voted in the House with zero Republican support, to legalize contraception by statute rather than depending on the Supreme Court’s fickle good graces.
I would suggest that President Biden use reconciliation to pass contraception in the Senate, since there is little else he can do with the power of the majority and it would make a popular symbolic shot at the Republicans, sure to win votes this fall. Let them try to overturn that law if they get a majority (which so far seems likely.)
By the same token, we must also fully support the growth, development, and especially education of children, and ensure that those who do not have parents able and willing to care for them are fully supported and educated to the greatest extent that they are able to learn (not just in school but throughout life.) We must also encourage the freedom to travel, to the extent possible, for all citizens and residents, legal and illegal, of our great United States.
photo by Dkadume courtesy of pixabay.com
Conrad Theodore Seitz 