Showing posts with label Science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Science. Show all posts

Monday, March 18, 2024

The Republican Party: A Puppet On Many Strings

"Republicans have been trending toward Putin fandom for more than a decade but with each passing year the stakes get higher, the propaganda gets more brazen, and what they're willing to support gets more grotesque."

Click on the link below to get the full picture of what is controlling the US Republican Party presently:




Sunday, March 17, 2024

The USA Is Rerunning The 1850s

"I have wondered lately if the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision isn’t our era’s version of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, sparking a countrywide backlash." - - -

"March 15 is too important a day to ignore. As the man who taught me to use a chainsaw said, it is immortalized by Shakespeare’s famous warning: 'Cedar! Beware the adze of March!'

"He put it that way because the importance of March 15 is, of course, that it is the day in 1820 that Maine, the Pine Tree State, joined the Union.

"Maine statehood had national repercussions. The inhabitants of this northern part of Massachusetts had asked for statehood in 1819, but their petition was stopped dead by southerners who refused to permit a “free state”—one that did not permit slavery—to enter the Union without a corresponding “slave state.” The explosive growth of the northern states had already given free states control of the House of Representatives, but the South held its own in the Senate, where each state got two votes. The admission of Maine would give the North the advantage, and southerners insisted that Maine’s admission be balanced with the admission of a southern slave state lest those opposed to slavery use their power in the federal government to restrict enslavement in the South."

Click on the link below for the rest of the story:


Friday, March 15, 2024

Medical Regulation: Just Another "Protect Your Own" Establishment?

"John Oliver discusses state medical boards, how they often fail to protect patients from bad doctors, and what it all has to do with Melrose Place."

Click on the link below for the sad reality of failure to rid medicine of harmful practitioners: 


Thursday, March 14, 2024

Donald J Trump: The Dullest Knive In The Drawer (BUT - - -)

"But hold on. I ask myself: How could Trump have become president, and now clinch the Republican nomination for the presidency for a third time, if he doesn’t have something in the brain bank? Even if Trump doesn’t read, can’t follow a logical argument, and has the attention span of a fruit fly, I keep believing he must have some intelligence.

"Well, it turns out there’s another form of intelligence, called 'emotional intelligence.'

"Emotional intelligence is a concept developed by two psychologists, John Mayer of the University of New Hampshire and Yale’s Peter Salovey, and popularized by Dan Goleman in his 1996 book of the same name.

"Mayer and Salovey define emotional intelligence as the ability to do two things: 'understand and manage our own emotions,' and 'recognize and influence the emotions of others.'

"True, Trump hasn’t displayed much capacity for the first. He’s thin-skinned, narcissistic, and vindictive. As dozens of Republican foreign policy experts have put it: 'He is unable or unwilling to separate truth from falsehood. He does not encourage conflicting views. He lacks self-control and acts impetuously. He cannot tolerate criticism.'

"Okay, but what about Mayer and Salovey’s second aspect of emotional intelligence — influencing the emotions of others?

"This is where Trump’s brain outperforms the brains of ordinary mortals. He knows how to manipulate people. He has an uncanny ability to discover their emotional vulnerabilities — their fears, anxieties, prejudices, and darkest desires — and use them for his own purposes.

"To put it another way, Trump is an extraordinarily talented conman."

Click on the link below for the full picture of his stupidity:

Seriously, again, how dumb is Trump?

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

An Evangelical Pastor Helps In Getting Democratic Party Votes

"Our guest this week recently traveled down to the border to confront the so-called “Army of God” as part of a larger project of providing alternative ideologies to Christian nationalism. Doug Pagitt is a pastor, author and the executive director of Vote Common Good, an organization aimed at influencing evangelical Christians. His group has been on a nationwide tour focused on directly engaging evangelicals in key swing states with the hope of swaying a critical percentage of them against former President Donald Trump. Pagitt believes a small portion of these voters are swayable and that if they are engaged, election outcomes can be flipped. He joins WITHpod to discuss the trajectory of evangelical politics, what he’s learned on tour, and what’s at stake in this year’s election."

Click on the link below for an hour podcast that delves into what one evangelical pastor is doing in an attempt to get fellow evangelicals who are wavering over Trump/MAGA to see enough reality regarding the 2024 vote to do the right thing:


Monday, March 11, 2024

Enneagrams: Another Failure Of A Horoscope Wannabe

"Today we're going to open a drawer in our cabinet of New Age psychometric modalities — as one does — and flip to the folder for enneagrams. For years, this has been growing in popularity as a way to understand our own personalities, and the personalities of those around us, and how we might interact. Some would argue that it's like a blending of Myers-Briggs, numerology, and horoscopes; others would claim that it has solid science behind it. What is the truth of enneagrams? Do we each have an enneagram number that tells us useful things about ourselves, or can it be dismissed as glorified numerology?"

Click on the link below for an analysis of an ancient pseudoscience that just will not go away:


Sunday, March 10, 2024

Dispelling Stereotypes Of Memory & Aging

"President Biden's self-assured delivery of the State of the Union address challenged doubts about his age. Since the start of his presidential campaign, Biden’s every slip-up has been under the microscope, from momentary forgetfulness to misspoken words. Neuroscientist Charan Ranganath believes that we have been oversimplifying the way we think about age and memory. In his new book "Why We Remember,” the author shares years of his research. He discusses with Hari Sreenivasan."

Click on the link below for some science on memory and aging:

Memory Expert on Biden, Trump, and the Stereotypes of Aging

Saturday, March 9, 2024

Leaky Gut: More Fantasy Than Real

"In her 2023 book Doppelganger, Canadian author Naomi Klein, often confused with conspiracy theorist Naomi Wolf, uses the concept of the Mirror World to describe the alternate reality in which many people seem to live these days. In the Mirror World, our reality’s reflection gets distorted. Two Apple employees sitting in a restaurant and discussing the Apple Watch’s “Time Travel”, a since-abandoned feature allowing you to scroll through upcoming events and weather forecasts on your smart watch, becomes an overheard conversation about vaccine nanoparticles that let you travel back in time (true story). Everything gets misinterpreted in the Mirror World in the service of paranoia, distrust, and magical thinking.

"There is a kernel of truth to the leaky gut theory, but what you’re likely to see online is its warped, outsized funhouse-mirror twin."

Click on the link below for the details:

You Probably Don’t Have a Leaky Gut


Friday, March 8, 2024

Free Speech: IT IS NOT ABSOLUTE

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

There has been a consistent interpretation of the concept of the First Amendment to the US Constitution since its inclusion in the Bill of Rights as the FIRST of ten amendments: it is not absolute. A traditional phrase to teach this reality is: "You can't yell fire in a crowded theater.". In other words, if it incites harm, it is not constitutional. 

Given the above, it is objectively evidenced that many (? most) statements from every present-day conservative/MAGA Republican are unconstitutional. So, the question is: WHY ARE THEY ALLOWED TO USE MEDIA UNOPPOSED CONTEMPORANEOUSLY?  It is more than time to not only restore the Fairness Doctrine but make it inclusive of ALL media, with the requirement of instant/immediate fact-checking. With the wide knowledge base easily accessed by media today, this is now possible - - - use it!!!

Thursday, March 7, 2024

The Trend For The USA Is Not Good

 Click on the link below for a sobering projection regarding a significant decline for the USA and the rest of the Western World. Science-based thinking is a MUST for any nation and the planet as a whole:

Neil deGrasse Tyson: How AFRICA Will Run The World (And Beat USA)

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

Suicide And The Media: A Lesson In Failure

"After a long hiatus, Dr. Alan Smerbeck AKA Stormy Decisis is back to cover a topic we've been talking about discussing for a while. What does the research tell us is the responsible way to cover death by suicide? What kind of impact can the media have on the greater population if they get it wrong? And how many different ways did 13 Reasons Why completely screw up?"

Click on the link below for how not to present suicide to the public:


Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Christian Nationalists: A Wide Demographic

"Based on a substantial survey of 22,000 adults from across the country, new polling from the Public Religion Research Institute on Christian nationalism confirms that Christian nationalism is strongly linked to voting for Republicans, higher church attendance and white evangelical Protestant affiliation. But not for everybody. The poll finds that a substantial percentage of Black and Hispanic Americans are Christian nationalists. It also finds that Black people who identify as Christian nationalists diverge politically from their white and Hispanic counterparts."

Click on the link below for more:


Monday, March 4, 2024

Plastic Recycling: Is There An Easier Way?

"Globally, only 9% of plastic is ever recycled, and even that tiny amount requires some virgin plastic to maintain quality. But scientists have discovered a new way to address this issue: “plastivores”, organisms that have evolved to eat plastic using enzymes in their bodies. Can we harness these enzymes and use them on the macro scale? Or will it not be enough to keep up with plastic production?"

Click on the link below and decide for yourself:


Sunday, March 3, 2024

Naprapathy: Chiropractic's Little-Known Runt Of The Litter

"The little-known manual therapy is an offshoot of chiropractic and its scientific justification is practically non-existent.

"Buried in a court document mentioning Joe Mercola was the first reference to naprapathy I had ever seen. Joe Mercola has made a fortune selling dietary supplements and publishing health misinformation over the past few decades. The court case did not involve Mercola but rather a woman he had treated. In her lawsuit against a life insurance company, the plaintiff is described as having been bitten by a tick and contracting Lyme disease. After seeing Mercola (who tended to her with “diet and herbal treatments”), she went to see a naprapath. I had to do a double take. What exactly was a naprapath?

"Naprapathy is a manual therapy, much like chiropractic, osteopathy, and massage therapy. It’s all about using hands to tug at and massage body parts, although it often also extends to dietary and exercise advice and to non-invasive complements like ultrasound therapy. Its scientific evaluation barely exists, and while some component of it might be salvageable, I’m not sure naprapaths themselves are right for the job."

Click on the link below for more:


Friday, March 1, 2024

Conservative Brains: ARE They Different?

"Do MAGA conservatives’ brains prevent them from changing their minds? Scientists may have proven this in a fascinating study."

Psychological research has previously pointed to the evidence that conservatives and liberals think differently (link). However, I am a case study of being able to change my thinking from very conservative most of my life (just turned 79 years old) to very liberal. It would have been interesting if I had this testing before and after. In any event, the video at the link below is interesting:


Thursday, February 29, 2024

Deep Fakes & AI: Destroying Truth And The USA

"AI-generated deepfakes, entirely fabricated audio and video of recognizable people, are here. They have been on the horizon for years but they have finally arrived during the biggest global election year in history which may prove to be a make-or-break year for democracy itself as we struggle to separate fact from fiction and autocracy is on the rise around the world."

Click on the link below for a problem that society MUST address YESTERDAY!!


Disinformation: Destroying Truth And The USA

"Barb McQuade is the former US Attorney from Michigan, and current University of Michigan Law School professor, NBC legal analyst, and CAFE contributor. She joins Preet to discuss her new book, Attack from Within: How Disinformation Is Sabotaging America, and how false information has become a serious threat to national security."

Click on the link below for a problem that society MUST address YESTERDAY!!

Quantum Reality: What We Know And Speculate About

"Watch some of the biggest names in physics debate the mysteries of the quantum and its future, including Roger Penrose, Sabine Hossenfelder, Avshalom Elitzur, Michio Kaku, Suchitra Sebastian, Priya Natarajan, Joscha Bach, Erik Verlinde, Hilary Lawson and Bjørn Ekeberg. 

"From string theory to quantum gravity and quantum computers, the quantum discourse is all the buzz in physics and beyond. But what is possible and what is mere fantasy? Can we bring together relativity and quantum mechanics? Will we ever find a unified theory to explain our universe?"

Click on the link below for opinions from the best minds in the field of physics regarding the murky world of quantum:


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Choose how you look at reality wisely. Yes, it is a binary choice.

Choose how you look at reality wisely. Yes, it is a binary choice.
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