A creeping authoritarianism

Dec 27th, 2016 8:08 am | By

Uri Friedman at the Atlantic talks to Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, about the Russian hack and the abject failure to do anything about it.

Well before the White House or U.S. intelligence agencies publicly blamed the Russian government for interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, two members of Congress did. Back in September, Adam Schiff, the leading Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, and Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, released a statement accusing Russian intelligence agencies of hacking Democratic Party institutions. “Americans will not stand for any foreign government trying to influence our election,” they declared.

Ha. If only that had been true. Many Americans were and … Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 2 comments
Tags:


Many attributed the oversight to gender bias

Dec 27th, 2016 7:03 am | By

The Washington Post on Vera Rubin:

Dr. Rubin’s groundbreaking discoveries, made primarily with physicist W. Kent Ford, have revolutionized the way scientists observe, measure and understand the universe.

The concept of “dark matter,” an unknown substance among stars in distant galaxies, had existed since the 1930s, but it was not proved until Dr. Rubin’s studies with Ford in the 1970s. It is considered one of the most significant and fundamental advances in astronomy during the 20th century.

“The existence of dark matter has utterly revolutionized our concept of the universe and our entire field,” University of Washington astronomer Emily Levesque told Astronomy magazine this year. “The ongoing effort to understand the role of dark matter has basically spawned entire

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 2 comments


Where did all the women go?

Dec 26th, 2016 5:24 pm | By

Susan Cox argues that lesbian spaces are still needed.

We’re told we live in an era of greater acceptance of homosexuality, yet the loss of hard-won lesbian spaces and events is a growing trend. San Francisco, known as one of the most prominent LGBT communities in the world, doesn’t have a single lesbian bar, and New York City’s lesbian spaces have dwindled severely. There are no explicitly lesbian bars in Vancouver (Lick — once the city’s only lesbian bar — closed in 2011), though there are a number of bars for gay men and “queer nights” that take place within various venues.

Well you see gay men need to have bars but lesbians don’t. Lesbians are women, and women … Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 15 comments


Observations

Dec 26th, 2016 5:01 pm | By

Jennifer Ouellette remembers Vera Rubin:

Astronomy lost a great scientist today.

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 1 Comment »
Tags:


Twitter nuclear war

Dec 26th, 2016 4:24 pm | By

Is Trump’s use of Twitter to air his thoughts about nuclear weapons at all dangerous? Yes it is. Greg Sargent at the Washington Post talked to some experts on the subject and they said yes: dangerous is what it is.

As we prepare for President Trump to take near-unchecked control of our nuclear machinery, his nuclear Tweet is best seen as a window into his temperament. Trump still does not appreciate that every word he utters carries tremendous weight and could have dramatic, untold, far-reaching, unpredictable consequences — something that is especially true in the nuclear arena. Or, perhaps worse, Trump may be entirely indifferent to this fact.

It’s probably both. He doesn’t fully grasp it, because he … Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 1 Comment »
Tags: ,


Don’t forget to marvel

Dec 26th, 2016 3:26 pm | By

Vera Rubin wasn’t very active on Twitter, in fact she sent only six tweets, all on February 6 this year. But they’re good ones.

That’s what she did. … Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 1 Comment »
Tags:


Vera Rubin

Dec 26th, 2016 3:09 pm | By

The BBC:

Astronomer Vera Rubin, whose pioneering work on galaxy rotation rates led to the theory of dark matter, has died at the age of 88, her son says.

Allan Rubin said she died on Sunday of natural causes, AP reported. She was living in Princeton, New Jersey.

Her studies earned her numerous honours, including being the second female astronomer to be elected to the US National Academy of Sciences.

But many questioned why she was never awarded a Nobel Prize.

I bet I know. I bet you do too.

In 1974, Rubin discovered that the stars at the edges of galaxies moved faster than expected.

Gravity calculations using only visible matter in galaxies showed that the outer stars

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 2 comments
Tags:


How are ya

Dec 26th, 2016 11:43 am | By

I wrote this column for the Freethinker. Barry found a couple of great cartoons to illustrate. I chose the tweet at the end, because it’s so very Hitler.

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 2 comments


Beyond narcissism

Dec 26th, 2016 11:05 am | By

Trump the narcissist.

I recently spoke with former FBI agent Joe Navarro about Donald Trump. Navarro was one of the FBI’s top profilers, a founding member of their elite Behavioral Analysis Unit, and author of several books on human behavior, including Dangerous Personalities: An FBI Profiler Shows You How to Identify and Protect Yourself from Harmful People.

To be clear, at no time did Navarro diagnose Trump as having a narcissistic or predator personality. He says we should leave formal diagnoses to professionals …

Formal diagnoses, sure, but “narcissist” is also an ordinary vernacular descriptive word. Of course Trump is a narcissist in that sense.

Navarro’s book warns that if a “person has a preponderance of the

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 7 comments
Tags:


Does Erdoğan have any skin?

Dec 26th, 2016 10:36 am | By

Turkey doesn’t allow any lèse-majesté when people mention Erdoğan. People who lèse the majesté of Erdoğan get busted.

The boss of a cafeteria at a Turkish opposition newspaper has been detained after saying he would refuse to serve tea to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Senol Buran, cafeteria head at Cumhuriyet, was remanded accused of insulting the president. He denies the refusal was an insult, his lawyer said.

Trump would do the same thing if he could, but fortunately he can’t. He can’t stop us calling him a short-fingered vulgarian, a fascist, a bully, an ignorant shallow conceited stupid loudmouth, a tiny-fisted Nazi, a Cheeto, the pussygrabber-in-chief, a sexist racist pig, a fraud, a thief, a very bad man.

Mr

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 4 comments


Desperately seeking Trump fans

Dec 26th, 2016 6:38 am | By

The Washington Post a couple of weeks ago noted the wholly unsurprising fact that it’s hard to find good writers to say friendly things about Donald Trump.

As they discovered during the long campaign season, the nation’s newspapers and major digital news sites — the dreaded mainstream media — are facing a shortage of people able, or more likely willing, to write opinion columns supportive of the president-elect.

Major newspapers, from The Washington Post to the New York Times, have struggled to find and publish pro-Trump columns for months. So have regional ones, such as the Des Moines Register and the Arizona Republic, which has a long history of supporting Republican candidates.

Well of course they have. Trump isn’t … Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 6 comments
Tags:


Right in the kisser

Dec 25th, 2016 3:25 pm | By

Also amusing in Trump: his sweet baby Jesus wishes for us:

Isn’t that heartwarming? He brandishes his tiny fist at us as if he wants to punch us in the face. #MerryChristmas, he explains, festively and piously. #SameToYouDude. #HelloToJesusToo. #ForUntoUsYaddaYadda.… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 4 comments
Tags:


A time to celebrate the good news of a new King

Dec 25th, 2016 3:11 pm | By

The Republican National Committee is very very annoyed with all of you who thought it was calling Trump “the new King.” How very dare you. Just because that’s what they said, is no reason to think that’s what they said. Come on now. Have a little common sense, or faith, or paranoia – one of those. Have a little of it.

Look, here’s what message from RNC honcho Reince Priebus says, so that you can see how totally it did not call Trump the new King:

“Over two millennia ago, a new hope was born into the world, a Savior who would offer the promise of salvation to all mankind. Just as the three wise men did on that

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 6 comments
Tags:


Then there are consequences

Dec 25th, 2016 8:38 am | By

Preening self-admiring piece of shit Julian Assange graces the world with an interview telling us what to think about Donald Trump as president.

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has offered guarded praise of Donald Trump, arguing the president-elect “is not a DC insider” and could mean an opportunity for positive as well as negative change in the US.

Assange described his feelings about the US election results in an interview as “mixed” before going on to sharply criticize Democratic nominee Hillary Clintonand providing a more ambivalent assessment of Trump’s ascent to the White House.

“Hillary Clinton’s election would have been a consolidation of power in the existing ruling class of the United States,” Assange told the Italian newspaper

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 23 comments
Tags:


Just throwing a blanket over them won’t work

Dec 24th, 2016 4:58 pm | By

The reporting on conflicts of interest has finally gotten through to Trump and the Trumplings.

Realizing that his presidency could face potentially crippling questions over conflicts of interest, Donald J. Trump and his family are rushing to resolve potential controversies — like shuttering foundations and terminating development deals — even as the president-elect publicly maintains that no legal conflicts exist.

In recent days, the president-elect and his aides have said that he intends to distribute the assets of his personal charity and then close it down, has examined a plan to hire an outside monitor to oversee the Trump Organization and has terminated some international business projects.

He’s not exactly a quick study, is he. How long has it … Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 12 comments


Salsa

Dec 24th, 2016 4:03 pm | By

A festive treat.

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 2 comments


Placate your abuser

Dec 24th, 2016 12:03 pm | By

Charles Taylor doesn’t buy the story that’s being pushed, that we “elites” mustn’t judge people who voted for Trump on the grounds that “Trump voters are too disenfranchised or despised or dismissed to be held morally responsible for their choices.”

It’s just that they resent us, the story goes. It’s just that they hate us for looking down on them. We must sympathize with them, for the sake of having a dialogue.

Time was when battered women were told by police or by their priests that they must try not to antagonize their abusive husbands. That is exactly how Americans of color, gay Americans, undocumented immigrants, and women are now being addressed: They’re being told they must respect people

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 1 Comment »
Tags:


Always confused

Dec 24th, 2016 11:41 am | By

Giles Fraser sees part of the mistake.

The problem with the person who drove a lorry into a crowded market of Christmas shoppers wasn’t that he was too religious, but that he wasn’t religious enough. It was the action of a half-believer, the sort of thing done by someone who doesn’t so much believe in God – but rather believes in the efficacy of human power exercised on God’s behalf, as if God needed his help.

Of course. Obviously. I’ve said it many times, and I’m sure so have most talkative atheists. It’s absurd that humans who profess to believe in an omnipotent omniscient god think that god needs their help.

It’s a very basic point. The truth of

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 1 Comment »
Tags:


Hatred of women

Dec 24th, 2016 11:08 am | By

Have a disturbing film clip from France24 (in English).

Do not read the comments.… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 8 comments


The Second Amendment people

Dec 24th, 2016 9:12 am | By

A guy in Florida made some Facebook comment threats against Trump, and got himself arrested.

“I’m just glad Obama didn’t take all our gunz! I see a good use for one now,” Krohn wrote online above a picture of Trump that read, “He’s not my president / He’s an enemy of the state,” agents wrote in court records.

Krohn posted his remarks in a thread of comments related to Trump’s holiday season stay at his Palm Beach home, according to court records.

It was in comments on a post, you see, not a post. They don’t say whether it was his post or not; it would be mildly interesting to know.

Agents said they were able to track Krohn

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 5 comments
Tags: