He describes how before, during, and after the debate CNN completely abandoned any pretense of objectivity and neutrality and single-mindedly went after Bernie Sanders, using commentators who all belonged to the political establishment that views Sanders with a mixture of alarm and disdain. He says that CNN ginned up the Sanders-Warren ‘controversy’ in a cynical ploy to boost ratings for the debate.
[Read more…]
This cartoon by Ted Rall describes the process by which the unthinkable slowly becomes the reality.
Nothing embodies the law of unintended consequences more than weapons systems. When drones were first introduced as possible battlefield tools, contractors said that there was nothing to worry about in terms of them being converted into weapons systems. They would only be used for surveillance. Now we’re using them to kill top government officials.
Due to other commitments, I did not watch last night’s Democratic debate and so had to read reports of it. As I expected, much of the media attention on the debate was focused on the Bernie Sanders-Elizabeth Warren tension that CNN, the network that was airing the debate and which provided two of the moderators, did all it could to promote.
Jeet Heer of The Nation says that the blatant nature of CNN’s anti-Sanders bias was obvious and that it clearly has it in for him, a blatant example of which was where the moderator completely ignored Sanders’ denial of the charge made against him and asked Warren as if the charge were true.
[Read more…]
I have written before about the terrible role that some private equity companies play in the economy, taking over businesses, loading them with debt they cannot pay, and then leaving them bankrupt while they walk away with a hefty profit. Emily Stewart has come out with a great explainer about how these private equity firms operate and the destruction they leave in their wake. You really should read the full article but here are some key excerpts.
[Read more…]
I have expressed many times my distaste for the British royal family, or for royalty anywhere in the world for that matter, seeing them as utter parasites who should go out and get jobs. I am puzzled by the fascination that people seem to have about the minutiae of their lives and studiously avoid such stories. But recently I have been inundated with headlines about some split that seems to be happening and finally my desire to be informed about popular culture won out and I caved in to listen to Trevor Noah explain what is going on.
Growing up in the tropics where it was always hot during the day and there were very few buildings that were air-conditioned and ceiling fans were the only cooling devices, we used to perspire a lot. But there was never tall of preemptively hydrating by having a regimen of regular water drinking. We drank when we were thirsty and that was it. So I was somewhat surprised to find people in the US obsessing over drinking water. There was a widespread belief that one should drink at least eight glasses of water a day and that coffee and tea did not count towards that total because they were dehydrating. It turns out that both those things are not true, something that researchers have been saying for some time but the message does not seem to be getting through.
[Read more…]
Political commentators are expressing surprise at the surge in support for Bernie Sanders and already the political and media establishment are trying to find ways to undermine him. His massive fundraising haul from mostly small donations and the endorsements from unions and the rise in polls could not be ignored any longer so now they are trying to foment conflict between him and Elizabeth Warren, a naked attempt to revive the ‘Bernie Bros’ narrative that was used in the 2016 campaign by some supporters of Hillary Clinton to suggest that Sanders’ support came largely from anti-women men.
Establishment columnist Margaret Carlson is urging other Democrats to attack Sanders now “before it is too late” (i.e., before he gets an overwhelming start to the nomination) while they are quick to criticize him if he should dare say the slightest word against their favored candidates like Joe Biden, accusing him of forming a circular firing squad. There have been conflicting recollections about a meeting between Sanders and Warren in 2018, and disputes about what was actually said, especially that Bernie has been on the record for decades saying that women can be president.
[Read more…]
We are the descendants of fish ancestors. Clearly at some point, a transition to land occurred and thus began the process of learning to walk. The question naturally arises of when and why our ancestors made the leap onto land. It is always a tricky to say how any particular feature that is now present evolved in the deep past and there is usually more than one possible explanation.
This caption to the video below explains a possible reason, that moving to land made it possible to see better and farther.
Some 400 million years ago, humanity’s ancient sea-dwelling ancestors made a giant leap to land, sprouting weight-bearing fins that would eventually carry us out of the water forever. So what precipitated this evolutionarily pivotal change of terrain? According to recent research led by Malcolm MacIver, a computational neuroscientist and engineer at Northwestern University in Illinois, the jump to solid ground might have more to do with vertebrates’ eyes than limbs. Testing their theory that exponentially clearer views of bountiful prey above water led our ancestors to select for eyes atop the head, with primitive limbs coming long after, MacIver and colleagues ran extensive fossil-data simulations. They concluded that above-water sight did indeed provide an ‘informational zip line’ out of the water – what they call the buena vista (or ‘good view’) hypothesis. Moreover, they believe that those above-water views would eventually lead our land-dwelling ancestors to select for prospective cognition – the ability to mentally place oneself in the future – while fish were left in the muck of the moment.
Seth Lloyd is a well-known MIT professor who has done important work on quantum computing and information theory. (I quote him in my latest book.) But an internal investigation by the university’s law firm Goodwin Proctor, commissioned by MIT after it was revealed that its highly regarded MediaLab had been getting unreported donations from Jeffrey Epstein, reveals that Lloyd has also been getting secret gifts from Epstein.
[Read more…]
It has always been absurd that the followers of a faith that believes in an all-powerful deity would think that they need to take law into their own hands or to require the government to crack down on what they see as heresy and heretics. If their god is upset, surely he could deal with it by himself? Conversely, the fact that their god did not do anything must be because he was not upset by whatever it was that got his followers all hot and bothered.
[Read more…]