Ohio anti-vaxxers want the freedom that vaccination brings

Now that the numbers of people who have been vaccinated has reached more than half the US population, there are places that require proof of vaccination before you can enter. Where I live in Monterey, CA, the local bridge club opened for face-to-face play on Tuesday but you have to show proof of vaccination before you are allowed to do so. The first time you go, you show the proof and your name is entered in a register and that eliminates the need to show proof each time. Masks are not required but you can choose to wear one if you like. There are bottles of hand sanitizer at each table and players are encouraged to use it frequently, especially since they are exchanging cards. I went on Tuesday and there were about a dozen people, about half of them being those who had been starved of bridge because they either were not comfortable enough with technology to play online or they had eye issues that prevented them from looking at a screen for any length of time. It was nice to meet them again.
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How could he not realize that he had been pranked?

I have been invited to to give many talks to various organizations. Since I am not famous, it is not clear how many will turn up for the talk. It all depends on how much effort the hosts put into generating interest. Sometimes the audience has been as few as about five people and this can be a little disconcerting if you have traveled a long way to give the talk, especially if the venue is a large auditorium and you are looking out at a sea of empty seats. But the show must go on and I still give it my best shot. The few people who have taken the trouble to come and listen to me, even if it were just a single person, deserve nothing less.
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Socialist set to become mayor of Buffalo

An avowed socialist is poised to become mayor of the city of Buffalo, upsetting the four-time incumbent in the Democratic primary race held on Tuesday. The city is heavily Democratic, so much so that no Republican is even running for mayor so she is almost certain to win the mayoral election in November.

In her lifetime, India Walton has been a 14-year-old working mother, a nurse, a union representative and a socialist community organizer.

…

Walton’s platform outlines plans to tackle a local affordable housing crisis and declare Buffalo a sanctuary city for immigrants, which limits a local jurisdiction’s cooperation with federal enforcement o f immigration law. And also the intention to convert the city’s fleet of public vehicles to electric cars in an effort to address climate change.
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Disgraceful! Biden continues Cuba blockade

Joe Biden has demonstrated that when it comes to Cuba, he is continuing a cruel and outdated Cold war policy of blockading Cuba despite overwhelming opposition from the rest of the world. The increasing isolation is seen by 184 nations in the UN calling for an end, with only the US and Israel voting to continue it.


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The perilous allure of glamor

One of the mystifying things about the Jeffrey Epstein saga is how many well-known scientists were sucked into his orbit even after his conviction for pedophilia. Daniel Engber writes about what it was like to be a scientist in Epstein’s circle.

It’s summer 2010, and Jeffrey Epstein has just returned to New York City after serving out an 18-month sentence in Palm Beach, Florida, including parole, for soliciting prostitution from a minor. He’s hosting dinner at his townhouse on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. To his left is John Brockman, the literary superagent who seems to represent every scientist who’s ever written a bestselling book (Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Jared Diamond, Daniel Kahneman, and so forth). Brockman has brought along a client—a young professor whose line of research interests Epstein. Across the table, and to Epstein’s right, is an aspiring fashion model and her companion.
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How effective are voting restrictions in restricting voting?

It has long been conventional wisdom that having more people vote is good for Democrats while having fewer people vote is good for Republicans. How strong the empirical basis for this belief is is not clear but that seems to no longer matter because the Republican party especially is committed to this idea and Donald Trump’s loss has just cemented it further. As a result, Republican controlled legislatures across the country are changing rules and enacting laws that make voting harder. In particular, they are taking measures that are targeted towards making voting more difficult in areas that are predominantly minority.
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The origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus

Recently there has been an upsurge of interest into the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the one that causes covid-19, with speculation that it may not have originated by mutating spontaneously into a form that could transfer from animals to humans but that it may have been leaked from a research laboratory that does work on such viruses. Most proponents of the lab leak theory have suggested that the leak was accidental but a few have suggested a darker possibility of deliberate release.

I have been trying to make sense of the debate and found this article by Mara Hvistendahl to be helpful in sorting through the various claims. Hvistendahl had been in China when the avian flu virus broke out in 2013 and she had visited the lab of a prominent researcher and avian flu expert Chen Hualan who had been doing the so-called ‘gain of function’ research that is seen by some as an indicator that the covid-19 virus did not come about by accident.
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Fujimori follows Trump’s lead in Peru

As it becomes increasingly clear that leftist Pedro Castillo has won the presidential election in Peru, losing right wing candidate Keiko Fujimori has gone full Trump in denying her loss, demanding that some votes be cancelled, and claiming to be the rightful winner.

The prospect of the son of illiterate Andean peasants becoming president as his rival cries fraud has shaken Peru’s entrenched class system and its fragile democracy, letting loose a torrent of racism in the bicentennial year of the country’s independence.

With 100% of the official vote counted, leftist Pedro Castillo had 50.12% – and advantage of about 44,000 votes over his far-right rival Keiko Fujimori. But Fujimori has claimed fraud, challenging about 500,000 votes, calling for half to be annulled, and obliging officials at Peru’s electoral board to reexamine ballots – despite the lack of evidence of wrongdoing.
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The Greenwald-Taibbi conundrum

I had long been an admirer and supporter of the work of these two people. Indeed, I first came across Greenwald when he was a mere blogger like me at his site Unclaimed Territory and would financially contribute to him because I found his take on politics to be bracing. It was not surprising that Edward Snowden picked him and Laura Poitras as the conduit to bring his leaks about the national security states to light, and his exposes of the way that Brazilian leader Lula De Silva was railroaded by the Brazilian elite was also highly commendable.

But Greenwald’s more recent stuff has been problematic to say the least. He seems to be spending most of his time and energy attacking people that tilt to the left of the political spectrum and even adopted some right wing tropes in criticizing them. He has become a fixture on Fox News and other right wing media.

Similarly Matt Taibbi was brilliant in the way he dissected Wall Street and the fatuousness of pundits like Thomas Friedman. But he too seems to have joined Greenwald in shifting his focus on attacking the left.
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