Mr. Science

Democracy in the U.S. is on the ropes, the UK has left the European Union, and almost all the news is depressing.  The best thing in the New York Times is the Science section every Tuesday.

This week I learned that an African grey parrot who has access to a token that will be rewarded with a walnut but can’t reach the human with the walnut will actually pass the token to another parrot who is able to reach the human.  It is the first time a non-mammal individual has been observed deliberately helping another.

Another article noted that in an experiment, three out of 13 wolf pups learned to play fetch.  Many scientists assumed that dogs descended from an ancient strain of wolves now extinct.  Instead it may be that dogs really did descend from the same type of wolves running around today.  

A third article talked about how Chinese children two years old were learning both Chinese and English in a day care center.  Not only were they learning the two languages, but they were also having fun.  

A fourth article noted that a team of researchers at the University of Colorado were developing bricks made of photosynthetic microbes that could reproduce.  The mix formed “concrete” blocks in whatever form it was put in.  After a few days of drying the blocks hardened, and the team was able to build structures.

Not only did I learn interesting (if useless) facts, but it certainly beats reading about craven Republican Senators and the so-called president.

PennEast loses big

For years we have been told that the PennEast pipeline was necessary to bring fracking gas to the East Coast.  It was vital to New Jersey and New York.  When PennEast was stymied by New Jersey environmental regulations, popular opposition, and a less-than-enthusiastic Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the company changed its mind.  It now says the gas is needed in eastern Pennsylvania, and it will build a “phased” pipeline, starting only in Pennsylvania.

Since the pipeline is no longer interstate, it no longer needs federal approval.  The Pennsylvania legislature, where many of the members receive large contributions from the gas and fracking industries, has always been less protective of Pennsylvania’s environment and public safety and will go along with Penn East.  

A few groups, of course, are delighted with the new strategy of Pennsylvania only.  The stockholders in PennEast, the Blue Mountain Ski Resort which will be allowed to connect to the pipeline, and UGI, which is allowed to raise its rates to pay for the pipeline, are very happy.  

Nonetheless, those of us who are fighting this unnecessary pipeline should celebrate a victory.  New Jersey has been saved.  New Jersey’s wetlands and preserved farmland have been saved.  We won a huge battle, and the war is not over.

Your Credit Score

It is amazing how many aspects of our lives are outside of our control.  The Fair Isaac Corporation is a company that creates a three digit FICO score, which is used to rank your credit.  The higher the score, the better your credit.

These scores are not only used for loans, but may affect your ability to rent an apartment or determine how much you pay for insurance.  Now FICO is adjusting its scores.  You may not have changed your behavior one bit, but your credit score may change.  

According to the New York Times, “...about 40 million people who already have favorable scores are expected to gain about 20 points, while another 40 million with lower scores will probably see a drop.”  

Do you have any say in this?  Of course not.  And, as I found out, you can’t even use “PayPal” to pay for a poetry submission to some of the journals if you don’t have a credit card.  You can’t buy an airplane ticket with cash any more.  I have no idea what my credit score is, but it might have just moved up or down without any action on my part.  I’m at the mercy of forces over which I have no control.

See Bernard, Tara Siegel, “FICO Tweak May Change Credit Scores,” New York Times, (Jan. 27, 2020), pp. B1, B4.

John Bolton, my new BFF

A few weeks ago I was very angry with John Bolton.  I never did like the guy, but I thought he was holding back on what he knew just to sell more books.  Maybe that was the case, but dropping the bomb on Trump during the impeachment hearings was just the right timing.  And while I didn’t hear exactly what Gen. Kelly said today, he evidently backed up Bolton’s  remembrance.

Trump will still win the Senate vote.  No question about that.  What he won’t win is the election.  This might be one of those realigning elections like 1860 or 1896 or 1932.  The vote in the Senate will be a pyrrhic victory for Trump.  

No law, no order

An article in the Morning Call noted that the impeachment trial is drawing a very small audience.  I’m surprised anyone is watching.  We know the outcome.  We know the Republicans aren’t serious.  We know Trump’s team is full of mountebanks and charlatans who will try to obfuscate and misdirect.  Why would we bother watching that?  The old movies on TCM are more interesting.  Better yet, read the Federalist Papers.  

Traumatic Brain Injuries in Iraq

Many American soldiers who fought in Iraq suffered from either Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  Many of the those diagnosed with TBI were close to large explosions or to Improvised Explosive Devices, or IEDs.  Basically, a TBI can be compared to a concussion, and like a concussion, it is sometimes difficult to diagnose.  

Over 30 soldiers were diagnosed with TBI after the Iranian missile attack.  Some have gotten better and have returned to active duty.  Some have gotten worse and are being treated in Germany and in the U.S.

Trump said the injuries were not serious and used the word “headaches” in discussing the injuries.  Evidently TBI is not as serious as bone spurs.

The pros and cons of capitalism

Pro:  

Mad fabulous parties with delicious, complex cuisine, rare wines, and rested people in beautiful clothes.

Con:

You won’t be invited.

(from I.E. Skin, East Bay Express, c . 1993)

Parasite

The continuous destruction of the environment, the deepening corruption, the on-going suppression of votes, the supine Republican senators–it just got to me, so I went to the movies to see “Parasite” directed by South Korean director Bong Joon Ho.  

I give it two thumbs up.  Funny and scary by turns, it is a favorite to win an Academy Award for best picture.  I was amazed that in a county with about 60,000 people, there were only two people in the theater on the night it opened at the Mahoning Theater.  That would be Linda and me.  

Maybe the subtitles scared people off.  Maybe it’s because nothing blows up.  Nobody gets shot, although people do come to bad ends.  But see it for yourself.  

Note:  When a reader comments, I almost always respond.  Ever since I had the computer cleaned out of “cookies” and a new operating system installed, I can no longer post comments.  I did some research and found I need an app called RSS.  I have no idea how to get that.

Thomas Railsback, 1932-2020

Back in the day there were Republicans who had integrity and courage.  I know this is hard to believe given the anti-democratic tendencies of men like Mitch McConnell and William Barr, but I am not kidding.

There were men like Tom Railsback, a Congressman from Illinois, who worked with a small group of Republicans to craft articles of impeachment that would get bi-partisan support.  The first article concerned Nixon’s coverup of the break-in; the second accused Nixon of abusing his authority.  Six of the Judiciary Committee’s Republicans, led by Railsback, voted for those articles.  

Later, of course, when the tapes surfaced and Nixon was heard plotting the coverup, all the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee agreed that Nixon had to go.  Today’s Congressional Republicans would have voted not to hear the tapes.

Local government in action

I’ve been attending meetings of local government officials in Carbon County on behalf of Fair Districts, a group dedicated to reforming the methods by which Pennsylvania draws legislative districts.  I don’t know if Pennsylvania is the worst gerrymandered state (it might be North Carolina), but it is definitely in the top five.

I encourage the township supervisors or borough council members to adopt a resolution calling for an independent commission to draw the lines and to support legislation that would do this.  So far I’ve visited Towamensing, Lower Towamensing, Mahoning, East Penn and Franklin Townships and Bowmanstown, Lehighton, and Nesquehoning Boroughs.  

The first thing I would note is that I can’t tell who are the Democrats and who are the Republicans.  The second thing I would note is that some of the meetings are not exactly well run.  Discussions wander and get side-tracked, and the agenda is sometimes not helpful.

The most important thing I noticed, however, is that these are ordinary citizens doing their best to govern their communities.  They may not get everything right, they may stumble a bit, they may argue, but they are making a good faith effort on behalf of their fellow citizens.

If you are as disgusted as I am with Mitch McConnell and Trump and his toadies and sycophants in Washington, go to a local government meeting.  It may help to restore your faith in democratic government. 

Gun Nuts Speaking Latin

A picture on the front page of the Morning Call showed a gun nut at the Virginia Capitol holding up a sign that said “Sic Semper Tyrannis.”  Does he really know Latin?  Has he been staying up nights to read Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic Wars?  

On the other hand, maybe he learned that John Wilkes Booth yelled that when he assassinated President Lincoln.

Which scenario do you think more likely?

Note:  I am not about to waste your time or mine discussing the sham impeachment “trial” in the Senate.  That whirring sound you are hearing is the Founding Fathers spinning in their graves.

Republican Senators

It is difficult to imagine that many spineless people in one room.  If you got 50 people on a bus, or in a prison, or a from a high school senior class, or drinking in a biker bar, you would find more people with integrity and courage than you can find among the Republicans in the U.S. Senate.  

These are people who are sworn to uphold the Constitution. 

Guns at Trump rallies

Tomorrow a big demonstration is scheduled at the Virginia state Capitol to protest a new law that forbids carrying weapons on Capitol grounds.  Thousands of gun nuts may show up.

Here is what I don’t understand.  Trump favors guns, right?  And yet people are not allowed to carry guns, loaded or unloaded, into Trump rallies.  Why aren’t the gun advocates protesting that?  Why doesn’t Trump welcome open carry people into the rallies?  What a hypocrite.

Blogger sued

No, not me.  It was in Lehigh County, but first some background.  Large corporations and wealthy and powerful people often sue or threaten to sue individuals to shut them up.  These lawsuits generally have little chance of winning; the purpose is to bankrupt the people being sued or to scare them into stopping whatever they are doing.  These kinds of lawsuits are called “Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation” or SLAPP suits.  Many states have outlawed them, but not, of course, Pennsylvania.

Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin has sued a blogger named Bill Villa, who was critical of the D.A.’s handling of drunk driving cases, including the one in which a man who killed Villa’s daughter got a five and a half to 12 year sentence.  He also sued radio station WAEB, but that suit was settled.  The suit against Villa will proceed.

The District Attorney won’t win.  He’s an elected public official who can be harshly criticized.  I don’t know D.A. Martin personally, but in my opinion he is a real jerk.  Just my opinion, so don’t sue me.

School Board bad behavior

Carbon County schools are governed by five boards.  (A small sliver in the northern part of the county is part of the Hazleton District.)  The Palmerton school board recently settled a protracted legal issue involving administrators.  Two of the boards, Lehighton and Jim Thorpe, are currently involved in intra-board legal disputes.  In the case of Lehighton, the battles have been multi-year.  The one in Jim Thorpe just started earlier this month over a dispute about the presidency of the board. 

I don’t know what is at fault here.  Are the voters electing bad people?  Are we electing fanatics who put personal grudges above the interests of the students?  I know we live in a litigious culture, but that is ridiculous.  These are small districts in small communities.  Seven high school seniors could do a much better job.

Might I also mention that the Tamaqua school board is flirting with the idea of arming teachers?  Tamaqua, however, is in neighboring Schuylkill County.

Trump Snowflakes

I’ve noticed that someone has been putting up signs that say “Lock Him Up” in Carbon County.  The signs look professionally made, and they feature bars behind the words.  I’ve also noticed that the signs disappear after a few days.  One of them at the corner of Hahns Dairy Road and Forest Inn Road was gone in less than a day.

It is interesting to me that during the campaign in 2016, there were signs all over the county with “Lock Her Up.”  No one took them.  Evidently these Trumpists can’t take it.  I believe the word for people who are politically correct and go all whiny when they are criticized is “snowflake.”

Anti-vaxxers

They won another one.  In New Jersey a bill to require all students to be immunized with no exceptions for religious beliefs went down to defeat this week when the anti-science whack jobs protested in Trenton.

The bill had been amended to permit private schools to allow kids to forego vaccines, but that made the bill worse.  

Parents do not have the right to deliberately expose their kids, and by extension, our kids, to diseases.  Where does this anti-science stuff come from?  I just hope these parents don’t let their kids get too close to the edge of the earth where they might fall off.

Photoshopping Pelosi

There is no bottom to Trump’s depravity.  On Monday he retweeted a photoshopped picture of Nancy Pelosi wearing a hajib and Chuck Schumer wearing a turban in front of an Iranian flag, claiming it showed the Democrats supporting the Ayatollah.

This wasn’t some punk teenager blogger.  This was done by the President of the United States.  

He is supported in these actions by my U.S. Senator Pat Toomey and my U.S. Representative Dan Mueser.

Trump cures cancer

The mortality rate for cancer has experienced the sharpest one-year drop ever recorded. 

Who is responsible?  Here’s Trump’s tweet:  “U.S. Cancer Death Rate Lowest In Recorded History!”  A lot of good news coming out of this Administration.”

Unfortunately, the cancer rate will probably rise again if we don’t get rid of those cancer-causing windmills.

Yorktown

We visited the battlefield at Yorktown this weekend.  The Interpretative Center at the battlefield made clear that Washington could not have won this victory and hence the American Revolution without the aid of the French fleet.  

Here is a rule to follow:  Whenever you visit a historical site run by the National Park Service, always watch the film first.  The films are always well done, and they will make the history clear.

Yorktown also has a completely separate (and expensive) Museum of the American Revolution.  Some of the exhibits were misleading.  For example, they stressed that African Americans fought on the side of the Americans.  They did, of course, by the thousands, but even more thousands fought for the British.  The British promised freedom to any slave who joined their cause.  If you were a slave, would you have fought for the Americans?

That museum also had material on the Indians, and again, some Indians, including one of the Five Nations, were pro-American.  However, if you were an Indian, you might have been aware that the British tired to keep the Americans east of the Proclamation Line.  Americans wanted to invade Indian territory.  The Declaration of Independence lists this restriction as one of the grievances against the Crown.

Causes of failure in battle

Recently I listened to a Great Courses lecture series entitled “History’s Great Military Blunders and the Lessons They Teach” by Dr. Gregory S. Aldrete.  The professor examined about 20 battles from ancient times to World War II, and included Napoleon’s March on Moscow, Custer’s Last Stand, the raid on Dieppe, and the Battle of the Crater.

At the end of the course he summed up what could go wrong.  The four failures he cited are applicable to many areas besides battles.  Here they are:

Failures in planning.  Includes failure to define objectives and failure to pay attention to intelligence and the strengths of the enemy.

Failures in leadership.  Includes incompetence, working above one’s ability, and inability to work with other leaders.

Failures in execution.  Includes such problems as splitting one’s forces, moving too early or too late, and not knowing when to cut one’s losses.  Reinforcing failure is a common theme.

Failures to adapt.  Change occurs, and a leader must be ready to adjust to meet those changes.

Mueser's propaganda

Today we received a newsletter for our Congressman touting all the accomplishments of the Trump administration.  What Mueser thinks are accomplishments, I think are disasters.  Also, he had nothing about Trump’s impeachment, nor did he mention Trump’s poisoning our water, taking steps to end medical care for millions, telling literally thousands of lies, increasing global warming, sucking up to dictators, doing Putin’s bidding, and...you get the idea.

Mueser is one of the worst of the Republican House members, and he is my Representative.  And he will probably win again, since we live in Trumpland.  

Guess who paid for that piece of crap newsletter.  That’s right, we did.

P.S.:  Did you ever think that the Iranian government would be more rational and adult than the U.S. government?

A serious question

Of all of the world's presidents, premiers, prime ministers, chancellors, kings, and dictators, which one do you think is most likely to stumble into a war?

Yeah, that's what I think too.

Targeting Cultural Sites

When the Taliban destroyed the two giant Buddhas of Bamiyan, the civilized world was horrified.  Those statues represented part of the world’s cultural heritage.

When Hitler ordered the bombing of Paris, German officers didn’t carry out the order, believing that Paris was a cultural gem that should not be destroyed.

One of the reasons the Truman administration decided not to drop an atom bomb on Kyoto was because of its cultural and historical significance.

Now our own President talks about targeting cultural sites in Iran.  Those sites are not just a part of the Iranian culture, they are part of the world culture.  What is wrong with President Trump?  Really, what is wrong with him?

Not a big football fan, but...

For four years in the Sixties I was a grad student at Penn State, but I never attended a football game.  I lived close enough that I could hear the cheers when Penn State scored, but that’s as close as I got.  I lived in the Bay Area during the Joe Montana/Steve Young era, but I only watched them on television.  Philadelphia is only 90 miles away, but it would never occur to me to buy a ticket to an Eagles game.

So why, tonight, do I feel so sad?

Australia burning

The east and southeast coastal areas of Australia are burning.  Thousands of people have been evacuated, and the fires have not been contained.  Drought, heat, and wind are contributing factors.  These fires are unprecedented.  

58% of Australia’s media is controlled by the Murdoch enterprises, and those papers and tv stations have been denying climate change, as has the Australian Prime Minister.  

Meanwhile, in the U.S., the Trump administration has announced that federal agencies no longer have to take climate change into account when they are assessing the environmental impacts of infrastructure projects.  This includes all fossil fuel projects like coal fired plants and pipelines.  

Idiots

Do you think there is a strategy?  Do you think thoughtful and reasonable people are in charge of American foreign policy?  Do you think experienced men and women discussed options, contingencies, scenarios?  Do you think these actions were done in consultation with allies?

Finally, are you worried?  I certainly am.

The Trump economy

At his campaign rallies (for which we pay the Secret Service to guard his ass), Trump takes credit for the prosperity reflected in the stock market.  News flash:  the stock market is not the same as the economy.

Today’s front page headline in the Allentown Morning Call read:  “Poverty rises in half of Pa counties.”  The poverty rate grew in 30% of the nation’s counties from 2016-18.  The poverty rate is the percentage of people in households earning less than the poverty threshold, $25,750 for a family of four.

Most of the counties across the country that experienced an increase in the poverty rate were rural.  Many of them voted for Trump in 2016 and probably will again in 2020. 

Trump is a putz

Over the years the Trump organization has hired many workers who lack the proper papers, only to fire them whenTrump’s hypocrisy was exposed.  The latest example is at the Trump Winery in Virginia.  On Monday the winery fired a number of workers, but only after the harvest was complete.  

The winery also recently posted that it was seeking foreign workers with guest visas to help with planting and pruning.  

By the way, would you ever buy Trump wine?

Info for this post is from Mike Baker,”Firings at Trump Property In Immigration Crackdown,” New York Times, (Jan. 1, 2019), p.A15.