You can make a competitive sport out of anything

I have written before at my mystification at the appeal of the various food-eating contests where people compete to see who can eat the most of some item in a given time, or variations thereof. There is something off-putting about seeing people cram food into their mouths. But it seems like you can make a competitive sport out of pretty much anything and once you do, it can draw spectators and media attention

The most famous of these contests is the contest sponsored by a company called Nathan’s where, every July 4th, people compete to see who can eat the most of the company’s hot dogs (and buns) in 10 minutes. The record holder on the men’s side is Joey Chestnut. He has won the title (called the Mustard Belt) 16 times with the record being 76 hot dogs and last year won with a mere 62. On the women’s side, the record holder is Miki Sudo (whose husband competes on the men’s side) who has the record of 48.5 and won last year with 39.5.
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Progress, sort of

The US has been going through a brutal period of cold and snowy weather. Usually this is the occasion when some climate change denying politicians and media figures snicker about how this disproves global warming, like the time Oklahoma senator James Inhofe, after a snowfall in Washington, DC, held up a snowball on the senate floor as evidence that climate change is a hoax.

But I have not heard, as yet anyway, any major figure say such a thing this time, suggesting that even they feel that such a statement would be ridiculous.

So, progress?

The threat of fentanyl

While I was generally aware that the drug fentanyl was dangerous and causing many deaths among users, it took one particular statistic for me to realize the great extent of the danger posed by it, that it kills nearly 200 people per day (which works out to about 73,000 annually) and is the leading cause of death for people under the age of 45.

Congress is debating a bill to try and deal with this problem but it has been stymied because it is running into the issue of congresspersons using one bill as leverage to get other bills passed, which can result in a stalemate where nothing gets done.

Colloquially referred to as the Fend Off Fentanyl Act, the measure proposes to implement sanctions and anti-money laundering strategies to curb the flow of the potent synthetic opioid, which generally comes into the US after being manufactured in Mexico using Chinese precursor chemicals.
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The Senate banking, housing and urban affairs committee voted to pass the Fend Off Fentanyl Act in June. But, as ABC News reported, US House member Patrick McHenry blocked it from inclusion in the National Defense Authorization Act as part of an unsuccessful effort by McHenry, a North Carolina Republican, to get his own cryptocurrency measure added to the NDAA.

While one can hope that this bill manages to reduce the impact of this drug by tackling the supply side, the widespread overuse of opioids such as these points to an even greater problem on the demand side, that so many people seem to have become addicted this drug, well beyond therapeutic needs. That could be much more difficult to deal with.

New speaker’s cynicism already on full display

The new speaker Mike Johnson has wasted no time in showing that he is as much a cynical politician as any in the GOP. Given the enthusiasm with which his election was received by the party, we should have expected no less, but it is still noteworthy.

The Biden administration had asked Congress for $104 billion for aid to Ukraine, Israel, and other causes. Spending bills have to originate in the House of Representatives and Johnson has decided to show his cleverness by passing a bill that would provide just the $14.3 billion for Israel, but require that this spending be offset by cutting the same amount from that dedicated to the IRS to hire new tax auditors in the Inflation Reduction Act passed earlier.

Johnson argues that this proves that the GOP are fiscal conservatives, a blatant lie since they have bloated the deficit repeatedly when they controlled Congress and the White House, by providing massive massive tax cuts for the rich. The Congressional Budget Office says that in reality, this bill would actually increase the deficit since the ‘saving’ of $14.3 billion on IRS agents will actually result in more than $26.8 billion of lost revenue due to inadequate auditing of wealthy people.

This bill is so obviously unserious that it will not even be brought up in the senate and president Biden has said he will veto it anyway. Johnson is trying to make the claim that Democrats prioritize hiring IRS agents over aiding Israel when the reality is that it is the GOP that is prioritizing helping the wealthy over aiding Israel. The devotion of the GOP to preserving and increasing the wealth of the already filthy rich is a marvel to behold.

Meanwhile, while he pursues these stunts, the budget deadline of November 17th is less than two weeks away.

This cartoon perfectly captures Johnson’s logic.

Stephen Colbert on the Maine shooting

He delivers a powerful editorial on the latest mass shooting, this time in Maine where 18 people were killed and many others injured and condemns the weaselly response that people like the new speaker Mike Johnson give after these needless tragedies that keep happening over and over again. The suspected shooter was later found dead, probably self-inflicted.

Controversy over consciousness

The question of what constitutes consciousness arouses quite a bit of controversy, around what is known as ‘the hard problem of consciousness’. Here is a description of what that is.

The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining why any physical state is conscious rather than nonconscious.  It is the problem of explaining why there is “something it is like” for a subject in conscious experience, why conscious mental states “light up” and directly appear to the subject.  The usual methods of science involve explanation of functional, dynamical, and structural properties—explanation of what a thing does, how it changes over time, and how it is put together.  But even after we have explained the functional, dynamical, and structural properties of the conscious mind, we can still meaningfully ask the question, Why is it conscious? This suggests that an explanation of consciousness will have to go beyond the usual methods of science.  Consciousness therefore presents a hard problem for science, or perhaps it marks the limits of what science can explain.  Explaining why consciousness occurs at all can be contrasted with so-called “easy problems” of consciousness:  the problems of explaining the function, dynamics, and structure of consciousness.  These features can be explained using the usual methods of science.  But that leaves the question of why there is something it is like for the subject when these functions, dynamics, and structures are present.  This is the hard problem.
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This does not mean much

Apparently the viewership for the Fox News time slot hosted by Tucker Carlson tanked after his departure. He was replaced this week by Brian Kilmeade, the doofus who used to be on the Fox and Friends morning show where his purpose seemed to be to make his two co-hosts look smart in comparison.

Every night viewers have given an unforgiving verdict on Kilmeade’s efforts: by turning off in their droves.

It’s a shame for Kilmeade, but a clue as to how he might be received had already come early on Monday.

“Join me tonight at 8 pm!” he tweeted an hour before his show started a now Tucker-free Fox News line-up. It turned out that not only did people not want to join Kilmeade, they were furious that he was going to be on air in place of their fallen hero.

“Not a chance in hell ya sellout,” was one of the more polite online responses, while someone else noted: “I’d rather watch grass grow.”
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On Monday the audience for Kilmeade, a less angry, less charismatic, apparently less race-obsessed host, was 47% of the number Carlson had attracted a week earlier, according to the Los Angeles Times.

It isn’t just that Carlson’s departure has turned off viewers. The hastily renamed Fox News Tonight show appears to have actively driven people to Fox News’ competitors, with Newsmax in particular, seeing record ratings.

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“Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad”

The sentiment “Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad” has ancient roots but was perhaps most famously found in the poem The Masque of Pandora written in 1875 by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who put these words into the mouth of Prometheus. How I interpret it is that if you make people mad, they will destroy themselves, saving you the bother of doing so.

I was thinking about these words while pondering the actions of three people: Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Donald Trump since all three seem to be on the path of self-destruction. I am not implying that they are mad but they do seem, on the basis of past success, to suffer from an irrational overweening confidence in their own powers, and this has led to rash decisions that threaten to bring them down.
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