Jesse Watters may be stupid and juvenile but he is dangerous

Fox News personality Jesse Watters has a juvenile sense of humor that he should long have outgrown. He is the kind of grown person who still thinks that childish pranks are funny.

At a gathering of young right-wingers organized by the group Turning Point, he took aim at Anthony Fauci, the highly respected infectious disease specialist who has become a prime target of anti-vaxxers because of his relentless urging of people to take safety precautions such as getting vaccinated, wearing masks, and avoiding large gatherings.

Speaking on Monday at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest conference, Watters encouraged attendees to rhetorically “ambush” Fauci with dubious questions about the National Institutes of Health allegedly funding “gain-of-function” research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

“Now you go in for the kill shot. The kill shot? With an ambush? Deadly. Because he doesn’t see it coming,” Watters said.

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The growing divide within the American evangelical movement

CBSN looks at the growing split within the evangelical movement between those who take extreme ideological stances and those who try to provide a more unifying message.

Vice News looked at the rise of evangelical churches that echo the conspiracy theories of Q. This has alarmed some evangelical leaders who see this as a dangerous trend. One of them said that it used to be that evangelicals looked for churches that reflected their theology and beliefs about God. But he says that now some are looking for churches that reflect their political ideology. They want to hear their political views affirmed from the pulpit and this has given an opening to some preachers who are willing to go all in on extremist views and thus garner followers.

One thing that immediately strikes you when the camera pans over the congregations of these extreme churches is that they are almost exclusively white.

Another thing is that at one of the churches that is heavily featured in both clips, there is not a mask to be seen in the crowded tent where about a thousand people crowd together to hear the pastor say that he will throw out anyone who wears one. They are practically begging to be an Omicron superspreader source.

Such reckless behavior truly boggles the mind.

Radiation paradoxes 6: Getting rid of gravity

(Previous posts in this series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5)

The fact that all masses accelerate at the same rate when subjected to purely gravitational forces but do not do so for any other type of force indicates the singular nature of gravity. Another peculiarity of gravity is that although we can shield bodies from the effects of other forces, we cannot shield them from gravitational forces. Although the concept of gravity has been around for a long time and we have used it to explain so much, from the motion of planets to terrestrial events, gravity remains a somewhat mysterious force, difficult to incorporate into more general schemes. Attempts to create unified theories of all the forces have been foiled by gravity. Trying to unify quantum mechanics with gravity has also proven to be extremely difficult, resisting the most determined efforts from some the best minds in physics, including Einstein. This is partly because gravity, unlike electric and magnetic forces, is a non-linear force and non-linear forces are notoriously difficult to handle mathematically.
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The variable rate of the Earth’s rotation

Recall how in one of my recent posts on the radiation paradoxes, I spoke about how you can measure the spinning rate of the Earth by looking at the stars and also by measurements taken purely on the Earth and that these two methods produce results that are remarkably close. This was used in support of the claim by Bishop Berkeley that it was the stars that exerted a dynamical influence on the Earth and that our motion was relative to, not space itself as Newton thought, which he felt was an unobservable entity and thus had no relevance.

The rate at which the Earth is spinning on its axis is not fixed though. Over time it has been slowing down, meaning that the days have been getting longer. Around 600 million years ago, the day was about 21 of our present hours. But a new wrinkle appeared in the last half century in that the rate of rotation was increasing slightly and this caused problems. As our ability to measure time became more accurate with the adoption of atomic clocks, this required the regular adoption of the so-called ‘leap second’, which was a second added to clocks to bring them back into sync with the time as measured with respect to the stars.
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The reactionaries are in decline, not ascendant

It is easy to feel a sense of despair at the news these days. The coronavirus seems to once again have defied predictions and infections are on the rise with the new omicron variant. We have ignorant but influential people still discouraging people from taking vaccines that could save their lives. We have a Republican senate, aided by Democratic senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema block legislation that would improve the lives of so many people. And we have a US Supreme Court seemingly poised to roll back the right to an abortion and otherwise advance a reactionary right wing agenda.

Rebecca Solnit is one of the most thoughtful writers and analysts and she has come out with an opinion piece that suggests that what we are witnessing is not the rise of a major reactionary movement but the dying gasps of a desperate minority waging a bitter rearguard battle against historical forces that they realize are going to overwhelm them and take away the power they have held for so long.
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Military looks askance at religious exemptions for vaccines

Some people who do not want to get the vaccine but are required to do so because of their work are claiming the right to a religious exemption. At least when it comes to the military, they are finding that a very tough sell.

More than 12,000 military service members refusing the COVID-19 vaccine are seeking religious exemptions, and so far they are having zero success.

That total lack of approvals is creating new tensions within the military, even as the vast majority of the armed forces have gotten vaccinated.

The services, urgently trying to keep the coronavirus pandemic in check by getting troops vaccinated, are now besieged with exemption requests they are unlikely to approve. Meanwhile, troops claiming religious reasons for avoiding the shots are perplexed because exemptions are theoretically available, yet seem impossible to obtain.
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Obtaining a religious exemption is rooted in a process that predates the pandemic and has been used for decisions such as whether troops on duty can wear head coverings or beards for religious reasons.

In addition to discussions with chaplains to determine whether they have a “sincerely held belief,” troops must meet with commanders and medical personnel. The final decision is made higher up the chain of command and is also based on whether the person’s vaccine exemption will pose a risk to mission accomplishment, unit cohesion, the health and safety of the force, and military readiness.

Even in the past, few troops have cleared those hurdles to get religious exemptions. And because the pandemic can directly affect the force’s health and readiness, the bar is even higher, so military leaders aren’t surprised by the lack of approved exemptions.

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Why catalytic converters are being increasingly stolen

It is increasingly common for the catalytic converters on cars to be stolen. This is because the precious metal that forms a key element of the converters has become more expensive. That element is a rare one called rhodium which is, by weight, reportedly the most expensive element on the planet, beating out gold and silver and other precious metals. It is one of the rarest, just one part in a billion, compared with 5% for iron.

The converter on regular fuel vehicles is simple: a stainless steel shell surrounds a ceramic honeycomb monolith— that monolith is coated with three important precious metals: platinum, palladium, and rhodium. 

As the car’s exhaust passes through this honeycomb the metals heat up and act as catalysts: turning carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide, unburned hydrocarbons to H20 and C02, and nitrous oxides into nitrogen and Carbon-dioxide.  

Because these metals, and especially rhodium are so stable and durable they can perform this function over an extremely long lifetime of the car part—suffering very little loss in performance.

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Radiation paradoxes 5: Mass

On the surface mass, like space, seems like a simple and straightforward concept but there are deep subtleties involved here too. In order to bring out the subtleties about mass, I had a practice of asking students in my introductory physics classes to explain what they understood when they spoke of the mass of some object. The would usually give some vague formulation along the lines ‘the amount of stuff’ it has. When I pressed them by asking how that differs from their concept of volume, they would sharpen their answer, usually saying that volume was a measure of the amount of space that was occupied by the object but mass was a measure of how heavy it was. There are teachers who insist that we must emphasize that mass and weight are different but I am not one of them. After all, we all know from experience that objects with greater mass are heavier to lift. The intuitive idea that mass has a relationship to weight is a good enough starting point for learning about the subtleties of mass.
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More obituaries should be like this

Thanks to reader Birger Johansson, I learned of this obituary that celebrates a decidedly unconventional life.

Some obituary notices open with the grand achievements of a life well-lived, or the tender details of a person’s passing with loved ones at their side. The death in El Paso, Texas, of Renay Mandel Corren, however, was marked in somewhat more unorthodox fashion. “The bawdy, fertile, redheaded matriarch of a sprawling Jewish-Mexican-Redneck American family has kicked it,” it read.
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They include her birthplace of McKeesport, Pennsylvania, “where she first fell in love with ham, and atheism”; Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, “where Renay’s dreams, credit rating and marriage are all buried”; and Miami, Florida, “where Renay’s parents, uncles, aunts, and eternal hopes of all Miami Dolphins fans everywhere, are all buried pretty deep”.
…

“Renay has been toying with death for decades, but always beating it and running off in her silver Chevy Nova,” the obituary states.

“Covid couldn’t kill Renay. Neither could pneumonia twice, infections, blood clots, bad feet, breast cancer twice, two mastectomies, two recessions, multiple bankruptcies, marriage to a philandering Sergeant Major, divorce in the 70s, six kids, one cesarean, a few abortions from the Quietly Famous Abortionist of Spring Lake, NC or an affair with Larry King in the 60s.”

It also lists her many talents: “She played cards like a shark, bowled and played cribbage like a pro, and laughed with the boys until the wee hours, long after the last pin dropped.”

“Renay didn’t cook, she didn’t clean, and she was lousy with money, too. Here’s what Renay was great at: dyeing her red roots, weekly manicures, dirty jokes, pier fishing, rolling joints and buying dirty magazines.”