How to con scientists and skeptics

When I was in graduate school, magician James Randi gave a performance for the university and then he gave another performance to just the physics department and I attended both. They were both fun to watch, especially the second since I was able to see him in action up close. At the end of his physics department show and after he had pulled off a lot of tricks to the amazement of the audience, he said that scientists were the easiest people to fool because they thought they were so smart that they easily fell prey to the most basic of misdirection techniques. There was some embarrassed laughter from the audience of physicists.
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Hasan Minhaj speaks to Congress about college debt

In testifying before Congress. he comedian who is the host of the informative show Patriot Act clearly had done his homework to show why college debt is a much bigger issue now than when members of Congress and the parents of the current generation went to college.

While testifying before the House Financial Services Committee, comedian Hasan Minhaj called out members of Congress for the student loan crisis by comparing current tuition costs to what they originally paid for the same school, which showed a 110 percent increase in overall tuition costs.

Introducing ‘the Blob’

In an article by Kerry Howley that looks into Tulsi Gabbard’s background, I came across this passage.

The most obvious obstacle between any noninterventionist candidate and mainstream success is D.C.’s foreign-policy Establishment — the think-tankers and politicians and media personalities and intelligence professionals and defense-company contractors and, very often, intelligence professionals turned defense-company contractors who determine the bounds of acceptable thinking on war and peace. In parts of D.C., this Establishment is called “the Blob,” and to stray beyond its edges is to risk being deemed “unserious,” which as a woman candidate one must be very careful not to be. The Blob may in 2019 acknowledge that past American wars of regime change for which it enthusiastically advocated have been disastrous, but it somehow maintains faith in the tantalizing possibilities presented by new ones. The Blob loves to “stand for” things, especially “leadership” and “democracy.” The Blob loves to assign moral blame, loves signaling virtue while failing to follow up on civilian deaths, and definitely needs you to be clear on “who the enemy is” — a kind of obsessive deontological approach in which naming things is more important than cataloguing the effects of any particular policy.

That is a devastatingly accurate characterization of the US foreign policy establishment. I had not heard this term ‘the blob’ used to describe them before but will use it in future because it covers all that I have said in the past about what is wrong about the foreign policy establishment, and is consistent with what what Leslie Gelb said.

The MIT-Epstein scandal gets even worse

The scandal over the effort by MIT to keep secret that they were getting money from Jeffrey Epstein even after his conviction and being branded a sexual predator keeps getting worse. It has already seen the resignation of Joi Ito who was the head of the much-acclaimed Media Lab and now an internal investigation reveals that the president of MIT also knew of the donations and the scheme to keep it on the down-low.

The president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is admitting that not only did the school hide donations from Jeffrey Epstein—he wrote the accused sex trafficker a thank-you letter.

“It is now clear that senior members of the administration were aware of gifts the Media Lab received between 2013 and 2017 from Jeffrey Epstein’s foundations,” MIT President L. Rafael Reif said in a statement Thursday afternoon.

“Because the members of my team involved believed it was important that Epstein not use gifts to MIT for publicity or to enhance his own reputation, they asked [MIT Media Lab Director Joi Ito] to agree to make clear to Epstein that he could not put his name on them publicly.”

Reif said he also was present at a meeting of his senior team where attendees discussed Epstein’s crimes and donations.

The Epstein and Sackler cases had better put college administrators everywhere on notice that they had damn well better make sure that their donors have clean hands. Of course, since many of these wealthy mega-donors do not have clean hands, the money they get will go down. But the rot of nefarious actors whitewashing their actions by giving ‘charitable’ donations has to stop.

What took you so long, Gregory?

Donald Trump’s special black friend has left the Republican party because of Trump’s and the party’s racism. In response to this news Trump does his usual routine, first saying that he has never heard of the guy and then when immediately confronted with the facts, blathers on about how popular he is with black voters.

Gregory Cheadle, the black man President Donald Trump once described at a rally as “my African American,” is fed up.
…

Cheadle became widely known in June 2016 when Trump, then a presidential candidate, pointed to him at a rally in Redding, Calif. and said, “Look at my African American over here. Look at him. Are you the greatest?”
…

Now, the 62-year-old real estate broker, who supported the Republican approach to the economy, said he sees the party as pursuing a “pro-white” agenda and using black people like him as “political pawns.”
…

“President Trump is a rich guy who is mired in white privilege to the extreme,” said Cheadle, of Redding, Calif., who switched from being an independent to a Republican in 2001. “Republicans are too sheepish to call him out on anything and they are afraid of losing their positions and losing any power themselves.”

Thursday afternoon, when asked by NewsHour on the White House lawn about Cheadle leaving the Republican party, President Trump said he believed he has a lot of support from African American voters.

“We have tremendous African American support,” Trump told NewsHour. “I would say I’m at my all-time high. I don’t think I’ve ever had the support that I’ve had now. I think I’m going to do very well with African Americans. African American support has been the best we’ve had,” Trump claimed in the exchange.

When pressed about whether he thought Cheadle was wrong to say Trump was pursuing a “pro-white” agenda, Trump said he didn’t know who Cheadle was. After NewsHour recalled the 2016 moment to Trump, the president continued to tout his popularity among African American voters.

You have to give Trump credit for his consistency when it comes to brazen lying. It has truly reached sociopathic levels. But you have to wonder why it took Cheadle so long to see what was staring him the face. Just being called ‘my African American’ should have told him that he was being treated with deep condescension, as a token to be used.

Here is the clip where Trump praises Cheadle

Brief impressions of the Democratic debate

I watched most of the nearly three hours of the debate involving the ten remaining Democratic primary candidates who qualified for the third round. In watching and listening to them, one is struck by how far superior everyone of them is to Donald Trump merely in terms of the coherence of their thoughts and words. Trump’s policies of course are utterly execrable.

All of them were supporters of increasing healthcare coverage for everyone in some form of single-payer such as Medicare for All, differing only in details. All of them lambasted Trump for being a white supremacist and that we need to address systemic racism in the US.
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The strange appeal of Eastern-styled cults

In an interesting and informative profile of Tulsi Gabbard, Kerry Howley looks at her very unusual childhood and family that are followers of a one-time white surfer-dude named Chris Butler who became a self-styled guru called Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa and founded a group called Science of Identity that has pretty weird beliefs and actions.

I had thought that Gabbard’s father was an Indian-American but it turns out that he is a socially conservative Samoan who grew up as a Catholic before becoming a devotee of the guru. Gabbard calls herself a Hindu though the guru’s sect does not identify itself as Hindu. The article says that “Butler taught vegetarianism, sexual conservatism, mind-body dualism, and disinterest in the material world. He taught a virulent homophobia, skepticism of science, and the dangers of public schools… Whenever Butler traveled, he’d have the homes he stayed in lined with tinfoil, to protect against electromagnetic radiation.” He also thinks the moon landing was a hoax.
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Another way that the insane medical system in the US squeezes money from sick people

Here is another post about the insanity of the US health system, a post that will be utterly incomprehensible to people who live in civilized countries where you are not blindsided by huge bills just because you get sick. It involves the practice of people getting ‘surprise bills’ after treatment. For those of you not familiar with this insane system, in the US your insurance company contracts with a network of doctors and hospitals for your treatment. If you go to those when you are sick, your bill will be lower than if you go to an out-of-network doctor or medical facility (or if you do not have insurance at all) so you always have to check before going to see a doctor.
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