World's Largest Extant Viking Ship Visits Rekjavik
Looks like a good time, although I imagine it's usually easy to find a good time in Iceland.
Always Remember that "Epi-" Is A Handwave
When someone tells you that a phenomenon is "epigenetic" -- or "epi-" anything else -- bear in mind just what "epi-" means.
When someone tells you that something is "epigenetic," what they mean is, "I'm sure it's something to do with the genes, and while it isn't the genes themselves (or I'd say it was genetic, and be expected to prove I was right about that), I'm sure that the cause has got to be around the genetics somewhere."
Very often this is a completely unproven assumption. It strikes people as plausible because (a) we don't fully understand how genes work, but (b) we do know that various factors seem to 'turn on' or 'turn off' their functionalities. The implication is meant to be that some factor -- we don't know what or how -- is acting on the genes somehow. But in fact, we often can't really say that the genes have anything to do with it.
With all that said, read this article.
The prefix epi, or ep if followed by a vowel or the letter "h", is derived from the Greek preposition ἐπί meaning: above, on, over, nearby, upon; outer; besides, in addition to; among; attached to; or toward.Thus, when someone describes some phenomenon as being caused by "epi-*," it generally means "I am sure the cause is around * somewhere."
When someone tells you that something is "epigenetic," what they mean is, "I'm sure it's something to do with the genes, and while it isn't the genes themselves (or I'd say it was genetic, and be expected to prove I was right about that), I'm sure that the cause has got to be around the genetics somewhere."
Very often this is a completely unproven assumption. It strikes people as plausible because (a) we don't fully understand how genes work, but (b) we do know that various factors seem to 'turn on' or 'turn off' their functionalities. The implication is meant to be that some factor -- we don't know what or how -- is acting on the genes somehow. But in fact, we often can't really say that the genes have anything to do with it.
With all that said, read this article.
Savchenko Released by Russia
Ukrainian pilot Nadia Savchenko has been released by Russia in a prisoner exchange, though she had been sentenced to 22 years. We talked about her case last in March of this year.
Nice Bit from McSweeny's
A set of statements that are made by both the most and least privileged people in the world.
Speaking of voting, which they do in passing, Georgia had its non-Presidential primary yesterday. For reasons I have yet to see discussed anywhere, but that I imagine have something to do with a desire to keep turnout low, Georgia held its primary for everything except the Presidential election approximately three months after the Super Tuesday primary. Since many of the elections in Georgia are merely endorsements of the Republican candidate, in many ways yesterday was the most important election day of the year. Incumbents had a very good day, for whatever that's worth in measuring the mood of the extremely small part of the electorate that participated.
I myself even voted for two incumbents, although I otherwise voted only for insurgent candidates. In the Mighty 9th Congressional District, I voted to keep Doug Collins as our representative. Paul Broun's district was combined with the 9th, which meant that he was also running in this district this year. Broun is the 'evolution is a lie from the pit of hell' guy.
Georgia will not be returning him to Congress next year. Doug Collins, who was endorsed by Zell Miller in spite of being a Republican, will be our Congressman instead.
I also voted to retain our current sheriff, who pleases me consistently by not patrolling the Western end of the county where I live. I go months without seeing anyone trying to give me a speeding ticket or otherwise interfere with my day. That election resulted in a runoff, so I shall have to arrange to vote again in July.
Speaking of voting, which they do in passing, Georgia had its non-Presidential primary yesterday. For reasons I have yet to see discussed anywhere, but that I imagine have something to do with a desire to keep turnout low, Georgia held its primary for everything except the Presidential election approximately three months after the Super Tuesday primary. Since many of the elections in Georgia are merely endorsements of the Republican candidate, in many ways yesterday was the most important election day of the year. Incumbents had a very good day, for whatever that's worth in measuring the mood of the extremely small part of the electorate that participated.
I myself even voted for two incumbents, although I otherwise voted only for insurgent candidates. In the Mighty 9th Congressional District, I voted to keep Doug Collins as our representative. Paul Broun's district was combined with the 9th, which meant that he was also running in this district this year. Broun is the 'evolution is a lie from the pit of hell' guy.
Georgia will not be returning him to Congress next year. Doug Collins, who was endorsed by Zell Miller in spite of being a Republican, will be our Congressman instead.
I also voted to retain our current sheriff, who pleases me consistently by not patrolling the Western end of the county where I live. I go months without seeing anyone trying to give me a speeding ticket or otherwise interfere with my day. That election resulted in a runoff, so I shall have to arrange to vote again in July.
DB: Obama Ends Vietnam Tour With Ceremonial Rooftop Helicopter Evacuation
According to Obama, the evacuation ends what had become his 48 hour-long “national nightmare,” although some Vietnamese officials have privately said Obama was politely asked to leave after he and Secretary of State John Kerry had proceeded to raze their hotel room in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan."Jenjis Khan," even.
The Weekly Standard on Vince Foster
I'm not sure I agree with their analysis that Trump's play here is inferior to what a "a more responsible opponent" could do. A more responsible opponent could raise the question the Standard wants to discuss, which is whether or not the Clintons behaved improperly in the wake of the death of a friend. There is a classic Clinton two-step dance around such a question: (1) That's a private matter, and (2) "Politics of personal destruction." By election day all anyone would remember is that the responsible opponent made a boorish attack. Trump, on the other hand, will have people remembering that they thought they heard Hillary had somebody killed, but if they think to check the record they'll find that Trump technically said that while it was fishy, it wasn't fair game and he wouldn't raise it as an issue.
All the same, the Standard does bring up an interesting fact I did not know:
And that's really the point: it's why Washington loves her and why Wall Street loves her. She makes the money flow, from the People to the people. From the taxpayer people, that is, to the loyal people. The ones who belong to the club.
The ones who do what they're told.
All the same, the Standard does bring up an interesting fact I did not know:
As if that wasn't bad enough, in 1995 the New York Times reported an aide, Sylvia Matthews, was dispatched to go through Vince Foster's trash:Makes that $75,000 in Justice Department investments seem like a wise use of one's money, if one was a ranking government bureaucrat.The committee also focused today on Mr. Foster's office trash. Members questioned Sylvia Mathews, a former White House aide, in laborious detail about what she had found in Mr. Foster's garbage on the night he died. Other than a few routine documents, the garbage contained nothing that shed light on Mr. Foster's thinking, said Ms. Mathews, who is now chief of staff at the Treasury Department.Miss Matthews is now Mrs. Burwell. That's right: Sylvia Burwell, the current Secretary of Health and Human Services who is now busy sorting out Obamacare's refuse, is the same aide that went through Foster's trash the day he died. Loyalty to the Clintons has a generous rewards program, as the quasi nationalization of health care means that Burwell is now pulling the strings on a sixth of the national economy. And whatever lobbying gig is sure to follow will no doubt be extremely lucrative.
And that's really the point: it's why Washington loves her and why Wall Street loves her. She makes the money flow, from the People to the people. From the taxpayer people, that is, to the loyal people. The ones who belong to the club.
The ones who do what they're told.
Putting Down a Marker
Here's an opportunity to apply a partial test to the idea -- very common on both Right and Left -- that corporations and big banks own the political system. A new poll by the Financial Times shows that these firms have a very clear favorite to win the Presidency: Hillary Clinton.
Now, if she gets elected, that doesn't prove that the banks and corporations own the political system.
If she loses, however, with these figures? We'll have to put aside the notion that banks and corporations are all that influential. 71% of these corporations prefer her on immigration, compared with zero percent preferring Donald Trump. 63% prefer her on trade, compared with zero percent on Trump. And 25% of them prefer her on taxes, the only category she (narrowly) loses to Trump.
She is clearly the candidate of the corporate establishment, as she is the candidate of the political establishment. If she loses, we'll have to accept that Americans are still in charge of our own destiny.
Now, if she gets elected, that doesn't prove that the banks and corporations own the political system.
If she loses, however, with these figures? We'll have to put aside the notion that banks and corporations are all that influential. 71% of these corporations prefer her on immigration, compared with zero percent preferring Donald Trump. 63% prefer her on trade, compared with zero percent on Trump. And 25% of them prefer her on taxes, the only category she (narrowly) loses to Trump.
She is clearly the candidate of the corporate establishment, as she is the candidate of the political establishment. If she loses, we'll have to accept that Americans are still in charge of our own destiny.
Oops!
What a coincidence that this kind of thing keeps happening whenever there's an investigation.
The CIA's inspector general is claiming it inadvertently destroyed its only copy of a classified, three-volume Senate report on torture, prompting a leading senator to ask for reassurance that it was in fact ‘an accident.’”Really, just an amazing series of coincidences. Here's a song from back when it was just the IRS drives:
...[T]he CIA’s “accident” was only the latest in a long rash of “accidental” losses of incriminating information in this administration. The IRS — whose Tea Party-targeting scandal is now over 1,100 days old without anyone being charged or sent to jail — seems to have a habit of ”accidentally” destroying hard drives containing potentially incriminating evidence. It has done so in spite of court orders, in spite of Congressional inquiries and in spite of pretty much everyone’s belief that these “accidents” were actually the deliberate, illegal destruction of incriminating evidence to protect the guilty.
Then there’s Hillary’s email scandal, in which emails kept on a private unsecure server — presumably to avoid Freedom of Information Act disclosures — were deleted. Now emails from Hillary’s IT guy, who is believed to have set up the server, have gone poof.
DB: Sec. Mabus “Just Hates the Navy.”
“Women on submarines?” he asked. “Check. Politically correct renaming of the ranks, check. The USS Carl Levin? Carl is a buddy of mine and I forgot to get him a birthday present. Boom. Name on a ship. And it didn’t cost me a dime.”
The Secretary went on to describe how his favorite activity was throwing a dart at a large board filled with uniform ideas every three months, then forcing the service to add that item to the sea-bag.
“If that’s not bad enough, I actually made them wear water-colored uniforms... Now if someone falls overboard it will actually be harder to find them. And the boot-licking admirals were so eager to please me that they approved it...”
Mabus ended the conference by saying he’s considering making consumption of alcohol at any time a UCMJ offense, and adding “a purple top hat with 13 solid-gold buttons to the uniform list.”
A Good Piece on Anti-Racism
So, we all hate racism. At some point, the efforts to quash racism became racist. I mean this in the sense that they force you to focus on belonging to a race, confronting the fact that you are a member of that race, and then accounting for whatever privileges or violations attach to you because of your membership in that race. This is at best counterproductive because it preserves the idea that "race" is something important. In fact "race" is a fiction dreamed up in the early Renaissance to justify the re-introduction of slavery to Europe. We should be striving to eliminate the concept, not further ingraining it into students.
Here's a piece by David Marcus that takes on the idea that everyone should be made to accept their race and confess their privileges. It's a very solid article on why this approach is backwards, and is actually making racism worse.
It's similar to the way in which the Democratic Party's electoral strategy of focusing on advancing the interests of minorities paved the way for Trump's electoral strategy of consolidating the white vote as a bloc. Indeed, many of the things Marcus warns against are much further along than he himself seems to believe.
Here's a piece by David Marcus that takes on the idea that everyone should be made to accept their race and confess their privileges. It's a very solid article on why this approach is backwards, and is actually making racism worse.
It's similar to the way in which the Democratic Party's electoral strategy of focusing on advancing the interests of minorities paved the way for Trump's electoral strategy of consolidating the white vote as a bloc. Indeed, many of the things Marcus warns against are much further along than he himself seems to believe.
It's Because She Is Spectacularly Corrupt
"Why do people hate Hillary so much?" asks a writer at the Sacramento Bee. He answers: gotta be misogyny.
I wrote about sexism and Clinton back during the 2008 primary, when she was facing some pretty nasty coded attacks from the Obama campaign. At the time, I was trying to be very careful to criticize her policy positions without saying things that would be generally offensive to women.
Yet when I think about why Clinton herself is so particularly offensive, it is a fact about her that the author of this latest piece seems simply to ignore: her and her husband's spectacular corruption. They have vastly enriched themselves through a set of "speaking fees" given by corporations, banks, and governments who either had business before Secretary Clinton or expect to have business before President Clinton. When I say "vastly enriched," I mean that the amount of money is truly incredible.
She is a corrupting influence, too. Her presidential ambitions stand on the concept that the Department of Justice won't accept an FBI recommendation that it indict her for her numerous and manifest violations of the law. And, indeed, it seems likely that they won't -- top Justice Department officials have invested $75,000 in her career by donating to her political campaign this year. What do you suppose those officials expect to receive if President Clinton is elected? High public postings, obviously, from which they will more than recoup their donations. They'll have earned it, not so much for the cash donation as for the 'payment in kind' they will have provided if they succeed in blocking her indictment.
Is there some lurking sexism in the depths of my subconscious that allows me to look on the Clintons with horror while ignoring similar transgressions from others? I don't know -- is there anyone else in government who has personally profited to this degree off the sale of their use of the American office with which they were entrusted? How can we compare such peerless individuals as these two?
UPDATE: David Brooks says it's because she works too darn hard. Maybe she needs better creases on her pants, too.
I wrote about sexism and Clinton back during the 2008 primary, when she was facing some pretty nasty coded attacks from the Obama campaign. At the time, I was trying to be very careful to criticize her policy positions without saying things that would be generally offensive to women.
Yet when I think about why Clinton herself is so particularly offensive, it is a fact about her that the author of this latest piece seems simply to ignore: her and her husband's spectacular corruption. They have vastly enriched themselves through a set of "speaking fees" given by corporations, banks, and governments who either had business before Secretary Clinton or expect to have business before President Clinton. When I say "vastly enriched," I mean that the amount of money is truly incredible.
Mandatory financial disclosures released this month show that, in just the two years from April 2013 to March 2015, the former first lady, senator and secretary of state collected $21,667,000 in “speaking fees,” not to mention the cool $5 mil she corralled as an advance for her 2014 flop book, “Hard Choices.”Bill Clinton's totals since leaving office, just for speaking fees, are over a hundred million dollars according to the first of the two sources I just cited. Much of that money, as much as three-quarters of a million dollars for a speech, came from foreign governments and corporations while his wife was Secretary of State.
Throw in the additional $26,630,000 her ex-president husband hoovered up in personal-appearance “honoraria"...
She is a corrupting influence, too. Her presidential ambitions stand on the concept that the Department of Justice won't accept an FBI recommendation that it indict her for her numerous and manifest violations of the law. And, indeed, it seems likely that they won't -- top Justice Department officials have invested $75,000 in her career by donating to her political campaign this year. What do you suppose those officials expect to receive if President Clinton is elected? High public postings, obviously, from which they will more than recoup their donations. They'll have earned it, not so much for the cash donation as for the 'payment in kind' they will have provided if they succeed in blocking her indictment.
Is there some lurking sexism in the depths of my subconscious that allows me to look on the Clintons with horror while ignoring similar transgressions from others? I don't know -- is there anyone else in government who has personally profited to this degree off the sale of their use of the American office with which they were entrusted? How can we compare such peerless individuals as these two?
UPDATE: David Brooks says it's because she works too darn hard. Maybe she needs better creases on her pants, too.
Clarence Thomas Is The Only One Thinking Clearly
In a seven-to-one ruling, the US Supreme Court threw out a Georgia State Supreme Court ruling and granted a new trial to a black man convicted by a jury that prosecutors had carefully constructed as all-white. The sole dissenting voice was Clarence Thomas.
You can imagine the hateful rhetoric that is being poured on his head this afternoon. However, if you follow the link above you can read his dissent. The media reports I read before I found a link to the actual ruling suggested that Thomas sets a ridiculously high bar before he will accept that race has anything to do with a conviction. The argument actually goes something like this:
1) Our laws say that Federal courts should only overturn state courts where there is a clear Federal law issue.
2) The argument being forwarded by the majority is that the racial bias in jury selection is a Federal issue that gives the Supreme Court jurisdiction.
3) That is only true if there is some reason to think Georgia's courts didn't adequately address the issues of bias in their own consideration of this case.
4) Georgia's State Supreme Court ruled that this jury construction didn't plausibly affect the outcome of this case.
5) They're almost certainly right about that, because the murderer confessed to the murder, as well as to sexually violating his victim before killing her.
Thomas may be the only one thinking clearly about the issues of race in this case. Everyone else is blinded by the fear that America's original sin, racism, may have been a factor in the prosecution's conduct. Thomas is calmly pointing out that there's little doubt that nearly any jury would have convicted him and sentenced him to death.
More to the point, he's right that -- given the facts of the case -- death is the correct penalty for this murderer. The Court is merely delaying the application of justice. They are doing so, as he says, without adequately grappling with the question of whether or not they have any legitimate authority to interfere.
You can imagine the hateful rhetoric that is being poured on his head this afternoon. However, if you follow the link above you can read his dissent. The media reports I read before I found a link to the actual ruling suggested that Thomas sets a ridiculously high bar before he will accept that race has anything to do with a conviction. The argument actually goes something like this:
1) Our laws say that Federal courts should only overturn state courts where there is a clear Federal law issue.
2) The argument being forwarded by the majority is that the racial bias in jury selection is a Federal issue that gives the Supreme Court jurisdiction.
3) That is only true if there is some reason to think Georgia's courts didn't adequately address the issues of bias in their own consideration of this case.
4) Georgia's State Supreme Court ruled that this jury construction didn't plausibly affect the outcome of this case.
5) They're almost certainly right about that, because the murderer confessed to the murder, as well as to sexually violating his victim before killing her.
Thomas may be the only one thinking clearly about the issues of race in this case. Everyone else is blinded by the fear that America's original sin, racism, may have been a factor in the prosecution's conduct. Thomas is calmly pointing out that there's little doubt that nearly any jury would have convicted him and sentenced him to death.
More to the point, he's right that -- given the facts of the case -- death is the correct penalty for this murderer. The Court is merely delaying the application of justice. They are doing so, as he says, without adequately grappling with the question of whether or not they have any legitimate authority to interfere.
Ten Bikers Suing Waco in Federal Court
I'd expect a lot more of them to file suit if these cases work out, but these do sound like plausible test cases.
I have a feeling Waco is going to end up paying through the nose for its handling of this matter.
The suit, filed by Dallas attorney Don Tittle, alleges unlawful arrest and due process violations and alleges the plaintiffs were arrested with no evidence that they committed any crimes or had any ties to warring biker groups the Bandidos or the Cossacks.Matcek is apparently also a member of BACA, which is a noble organization.
Matcek and Smith are identified in the lawsuit as members of the Line Riders Motorcycle Club, which the suit says has no affiliation with either the Bandidos or Cossacks. Matcek, according to the lawsuit, was running late and was not even at Twin Peaks at the eruption of the firefight, which left nine bikers dead and more than 20 wounded.
Once he arrived, Waco police allowed Matcek, Terwilliger and Smith to take one of their wounded friends to the hospital, the suit says....
The violence resulted in the arrests of 192 bikers — including 15 who later were named in sealed indictments because they were injured and not arrested May 17, 2015 — and the indictments of 154, all on identical first-degree felony engaging in organized criminal activity charges.
I have a feeling Waco is going to end up paying through the nose for its handling of this matter.
A Third Possibility
Vox considers two options for why Donald Trump is now ahead in the polls:
1) It's just a blip because he's locked up his contest and she's still fighting Bernie.
2) It heralds a "nail-bitingly close" election.
Here's a third possibility you haven't considered: maybe she'll perform exactly the way she's performed against every other opponent, and lose ground in the polls more the longer the contest goes on. Clinton was way ahead of Sanders... but has lost ground steadily against him. She was way ahead of Obama in 2008... but lost ground steadily against him. Now that people are thinking in terms of Trump and Clinton, she's fading against him like she fades against everyone.
He's just now starting to turn his guns on her. By November, this may not be close at all.
1) It's just a blip because he's locked up his contest and she's still fighting Bernie.
2) It heralds a "nail-bitingly close" election.
Here's a third possibility you haven't considered: maybe she'll perform exactly the way she's performed against every other opponent, and lose ground in the polls more the longer the contest goes on. Clinton was way ahead of Sanders... but has lost ground steadily against him. She was way ahead of Obama in 2008... but lost ground steadily against him. Now that people are thinking in terms of Trump and Clinton, she's fading against him like she fades against everyone.
He's just now starting to turn his guns on her. By November, this may not be close at all.
How is this a paradox?
I saw this today in an article talking about difficult paradoxes. But I cannot see how this is difficult to grasp.
This statement is, by definition, false. Either he has told a truth at some point in the past, or he is telling the truth now. That does not make this statement a lie, merely false (and provably so). Lies may be true (if I say I have a million dollars when I believe I do not, but upon checking my bank account find that I have won the lottery at some point prior to making the statement unbeknownst to me, then the lie I believed I was telling was in fact a true statement; it does not change the fact that I was lying at the time I spoke it), and truthful statements may be false (again, if I say I have a million dollars, but find out later that at the time I spoke that my wife had spent it all prior to my making the statement, then it is a false statement, but one I did not lie about). I suppose the problem comes from language not being a logical construct where lies must always be false and truthful statements must always be true.
Um, Pope Francis...
Wasn't I just saying something about feel-good Hippie nonsense in the Catholic Church?
Perhaps we should be grateful to hear a Western leader say "It is true that conquest is inherent in the soul of Islam." Also, I understand that the Pope is making nice with Islam because he's trying to forestall the murder of Christians in the Middle East. Still, if it's strange to be unable to distinguish between "a strong government" and a murderous tyranny, it's far stranger to hear the leader of the Catholic Church elide jihad and Jesus. This is "the same idea of conquest"? The very same idea? Are we sure it's even a very similar idea?
Christianity and Islam both have a universal mission. That seems to me to be the end of the similarity of their ideas about conquest.
– The fear of accepting migrants is partly based on a fear of Islam. In your view, is the fear that this religion sparks in Europe justified?Saddam's was "a strong government"? I suppose, if the mark of a strong government is widespread torture, murder, ethnic cleansing, and the terror of the mukhabarat. East Germany was a strong government by these standards.
Pope Francis: Today, I don’t think that there is a fear of Islam as such but of ISIS and its war of conquest, which is partly drawn from Islam. It is true that the idea of conquest is inherent in the soul of Islam. However, it is also possible to interpret the objective in Matthew’s Gospel, where Jesus sends his disciples to all nations, in terms of the same idea of conquest.
In the face of Islamic terrorism, it would therefore be better to question ourselves about the way in an overly Western model of democracy has been exported to countries such as Iraq, where a strong government previously existed. Or in Libya, where a tribal structure exists. We cannot advance without taking these cultures into account. As a Libyan said recently, “We used to have one Gaddafi, now we have fifty.”
Perhaps we should be grateful to hear a Western leader say "It is true that conquest is inherent in the soul of Islam." Also, I understand that the Pope is making nice with Islam because he's trying to forestall the murder of Christians in the Middle East. Still, if it's strange to be unable to distinguish between "a strong government" and a murderous tyranny, it's far stranger to hear the leader of the Catholic Church elide jihad and Jesus. This is "the same idea of conquest"? The very same idea? Are we sure it's even a very similar idea?
Christianity and Islam both have a universal mission. That seems to me to be the end of the similarity of their ideas about conquest.
"The Miscarriage of Justice Department"
A Federal judge grows irritated. Sadly, this is not an isolated issue, but the standard practice of the Obama-era Justice Department. Indeed, it's of a piece with the conduct of many other Obama-era departments.
Valheim Hof
A new temple to Odin has been opened in Denmark, for the first time in nearly a thousand years.
I was talking to a friend of mine who is a Greek neopagan about a festival she attended recently. They apparently elected to "reimagine" the blood sacrifice, instead buying snacks from a local grocery. I found that vastly amusing, as the whole point of the particular ritual they were trying to revive was the blood magic. Apparently the danger of the basic tenets of the faith being overwhelmed by feel-good Hippie sentimentalism is not limited to the Catholic Church.
To the credit of these Odhinnic pagans, they did not omit the blood.
R.I.P. Logic Tobola II (FAIA)
I got to walk around in our new church building this week, the concrete having been poured and made it easier to approach without making the workers too nervous. Every space, every transition between spaces, made me happy. I felt I was in the hands of a talented designer. What I didn't realize is that the architect, Logic Tobola, had just died, or was just dying, of cancer. I can't find his obit up on the net yet, but here is a link to an article about a mobile church he designed for the Episcopal Church in Texas, and here are updated snapshots of our new church. We'll be moving in sometime in July; for the first time I feel it will be an improvement over the charming existing building.
I'm sorry Mr. Tobola won't get to see the finished church, but he did get to tour the construction site a month or so, already in a wheelchair. He loved his work and his church.
I'm sorry Mr. Tobola won't get to see the finished church, but he did get to tour the construction site a month or so, already in a wheelchair. He loved his work and his church.
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