We Can Never Be China's Friend

asiatimes |  Trump’s real liability isn’t impeachment. It’s China and the economy. What the Trump administration has been doing so far, vis-à-vis China, is an own goal — ein Eigentor [“an owner”].

Why is it an eigentor?

Because the effect of the tariffs on the US economy is at least as bad as the effect of the tariffs on the Chinese economy. American export orders are collapsing. We have the weakest industrial reading since June of 2009. We are in a manufacturing recession, according to the Federal Reserve. Factory output is contracting. Trump won in 2016 by carrying key manufacturing states like Pennsylvania,

Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin. This blunder could lose him the election. This is much more dangerous than the impeachment masquerade. China’s also suffering, but appears to be suffering less.

And the big difference is Xi Jinping [China’s president] doesn’t have a presidential election in 2020 and Trump does.

In fact, President Xi will never face an election. He is elected for life.

That is true. But all that can change if he fails to succeed.

You have compared the situation that the US is facing toward China to the siege and conquest of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258.

The Mongols, by themselves, did not have the capability to penetrate the twelve-foot-thick walls of the city of Baghdad. But they hired a thousand Chinese siege engineers. Within three weeks, the Chinese mercenaries breached the walls, at which point the Mongol horsemen went in and killed the entire population of Baghdad.

Who are today’s Chinese siege engineers who are breaching the American fortress?

Huawei very much is the spearhead, because in the Chinese model of economic expansion and the development of world economic power, broadband is the opener to everything else.

It’s a company with a lot of very talented people. Ten years ago – if you asked people, “What Chinese products do you buy?” – you wouldn’t mention a single brand name. But everyone now knows Huawei. They produce the world’s best smartphones. They certainly dominate 5G internet. But Huawei is not a Chinese company. It is an imperial company.

The Chinese empire is doing better than us because it’s absorbed the talent of a very large number of others.

As Important as Preference Falsification - The Overton Window

oftwominds |   If you're truly interested in finding solutions to humanity's pressing problems, then start helping us pry open the Overton Window. 

The Overton Window describes the spectrum of concepts, policies and approaches that can be publicly discussed without being ridiculed or marginalized as "too radical," "unworkable," "crazy," etc. The narrower the Overton Window, the greater the impoverishment of public dialog and the fewer the solutions available. Those holding power in a socio-economic-political system that's unraveling devote their remaining energy to closing the Overton Window so that only "approved" narratives and policies that support the status quo are "allowed" into the public sphere.

Everything outside this narrow band of status-quo-supportive narratives is immediately disparaged as "fake news," "Kremlin talking points," or other highly charged accusations designed to close the Overton Window--a process Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman called manufacturing consent: if no "outside" ideas are allowed, people accept the status quo as "all there is and all there can possibly be." 

This narrow Overton Window benefits those in power who are "legally looting" the system. There is another source of a narrow Overton Window: the cultural, social and political elites have no new ideas and so they cling to doing more of what's failed, relying on the past successes of now-failing strategies to cement their power. 

Michael Grant described how this failure of imagination and devotion to the past leads inevitably to decline and collapse in his excellent account The Fall of the Roman Empire, a short book I have been recommending since 2009:

Round this Trash Up On Its Way Back Into the U.S...,

NYTimes |  Speaker Nancy Pelosi has traveled to Jordan to meet with the Jordanian king for “vital” discussions about the Turkish incursion into Syria and other regional challenges, amid uncertainty about whether an American-brokered cease-fire with Turkey in northern Syria was holding.

The visit by senior United States officials came as sporadic clashes continued on Sunday morning along the Turkish-Syrian border, where, according to the Turkish Defense Ministry, a Turkish soldier was killed by Kurdish fighters in the Syrian border town of Tel Abyad. 

Confusion and continued shelling have marred the cease-fire deal announced by Vice President Mike Pence last week, with both Turkey and Kurdish leaders accusing each other of violating the truce.

Ms. Pelosi, a California Democrat, led a nine-member bipartisan congressional delegation to Jordan that included Representatives Adam Schiff, Democrat of California; Eliot L. Engel, Democrat of New York; and Mac Thornberry, Republican of Texas. The group met with King Abdullah II of Jordan on Saturday evening.

Take Back Apokolips

Tulsi Schmacked the Stank Clean Out of Hitlery's Girdle

tomluongo |  Tulsi Gabbard has stones. She has the kind of stones born of a life dedicated to the cause of serving others. 

She is the direct opposite of Hillary Clinton, for whom all causes serve herself and her enormous narcissism and pathology.

So seeing Gabbard go directly after Hillary Clinton after her debate performance the other evening where she explicitly called out both the New York Times and CNN (the hosts of the debate) for the hit jobs on her puts to rest any idea she’s someone else’s stalking horse.

Two weeks ago I asked if five tweets from President Trump changed U.S. foreign policy for good, Gabbard does him two better with these three tweets of absolute, Oscar Wilde-like beauty.

Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a ...

— Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) October 18, 2019

 

... powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose.

It’s now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don’t cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly.

— Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) October 18, 2019

There is so much goodness to unpack in these tweets it is almost beyond my ability to do so.
 

Tulsi Gabbard Kicking Ass, Taking Names, and Looking Good....,

Tulsi Gabbard calls The New York Times and CNN — the hosts of the debate — "completely despicable" for alleging she is a Russian asset and Assad apologist. pic.twitter.com/0pzpA4nvRo

— Axios (@axios) October 16, 2019

But perhaps the highlight was her directly calling out the very sponsors of the debate, CNN and the New York Times, for their “despicable” and baseless attacks. 

“Just two days ago, the New York Times put out an article saying that I’m a Russian asset and an Assad apologist and all these different smears. This morning, a CNN commentator said on national television that I’m an asset of Russia. Completely despicable,” she said.

The CNN charge specifically referenced comments made by Bakari Sellers on New Day on the morning of the debate. He said Gabbard is the “antithesis” of what the Democratic Party and the other candidates stand for, adding, “There is no question that Tulsi Gabbard, of all the 12, is a puppet for the Russian government.”

Very Interested in These Lost Red-Headed Stepchildren....,

ineteconomics |  Under the shadow of a future darkened by climate crises, political instability, inequality, and super-human machines, how to best proceed? For some, the answer is more technology and scientific advancement; for others, better policies and political arrangements. Or some combination of these. 

Not enough, warns Jeremy Lent, author of The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning. First we’ll need to confront something deep in our psyches that prods us toward destruction. 

To get at that something, Lent traces a “cognitive history” of the human species in a book delivering big, sweeping ideas and a discipline-hopping approach drawing from neuroscience, archaeology, linguistics, and systems theory, the study of complex living systems. 

Lent argues that how we view the world arises out of language, specifically core metaphors that shape our values and culture, which in turn mold history in a reciprocal feedback loop. Cultural templates are often long lasting, but can also shift dramatically, sometimes in a generation or two. The process of cultural evolution, Lent observes, determines how well humans fare as much as the genes we inherit (there’s a feedback loop between culture and genes, too). 

As Lent sees it, you and I are in the midst one of history’s great transitions — a process which could lead to conditions far less hospitable for most, or even a total collapse of global civilization. To avoid these dire fates, we can train our brains to adopt alternative metaphors that allow us to live less destructively. 

So which metaphors are causing the trouble? For one, Lent faults a tendency to conceive a dualistic universe of binary categories, like mind and matter, reason and emotion, self and other. This framework, as the postmoderns observed, drives us to favor one category over the other and to build societies based on hierarchy and separation. 

The pattern is not universal: Lent presents evidence that early hunter-gatherers emphasized connectivity rather than separation, a mindset that engendered a more egalitarian social structure. (Unfortunately, they also lived by a metaphor of nature as an endlessly giving parent, resulting in problems like overhunting, which illustrates that even seemingly harmless metaphors can eventually lead to catastrophe).

To What Extent is Color a Physical Thing in the Physical World?

bbc | Depending on what language you speak, your eye perceives colours – and the world – differently than someone else. The human eye can physically perceive millions of colours. But we don’t all recognise these colours in the same way. 

Some people can’t see differences in colours – so called colour blindness – due to a defect or absence of the cells in the retina that are sensitive to high levels of light: the cones. But the distribution and density of these cells also varies across people with ‘normal vision’, causing us all to experience the same colour in slightly different ways. 

Besides our individual biological make up, colour perception is less about seeing what is actually out there and more about how our brain interprets colours to create something meaningful. The perception of colour mainly occurs inside our heads and so is subjective – and prone to personal experience.

Take for instance people with synaesthesia, who are able to experience the perception of colour with letters and numbers. Synaesthesia is often described as a joining of the senses – where a person can see sounds or hear colours. But the colours they hear also differ from case to case.

Another example is the classic Adelson’s checker-shadow illusion. Here, although two marked squares are exactly the same colour, our brains don’t perceive them this way.

Since the day we were born we have learnt to categorise objects, colours, emotions, and pretty much everything meaningful using language. And although our eyes can perceive thousands of colours, the way we communicate about colour – and the way we use colour in our everyday lives – means we have to carve this huge variety up into identifiable, meaningful categories.

Painters and fashion experts, for example, use colour terminology to refer to and discriminate hues and shades that to all intents and purposes may all be described with one term by a non-expert.

What Preference Falsification Hath Wrought

Preference Falsification

wikipedia |  Preference falsification is the act of communicating a preference that differs from one's true preference. Individuals frequently convey, especially to researchers or pollsters, preferences that differ from what they genuinely want, often because they believe the conveyed preference is more socially acceptable than their actual preference. The idea of preference falsification was put forth by the social scientist Timur Kuran in his book Private Truth, Public Lies as part of his theory of how people's stated preferences are responsive to social influences. It laid the foundation for his theory of why unanticipated revolutions can occur. It is related to ideas of social proof as well as choice blindness. 

Exemplars or Mutant Fakirs?

wikipedia |  David Goggins (born February 17, 1975) is an American ultramarathon runner, ultra-distance cyclist, triathlete, motivational speaker and author. He is a retired United States Navy SEAL and former United States Air Force Tactical Air Control Party member who served in the War in Afghanistan and the Iraq War. He is a former world record holder for the most pull-ups done in 24 hours. His self-help memoir, Can't Hurt Me, was released in 2018. 

wikipedia |  Dean Karnazes (English: /kɑːrˈnɛˈzɪs/ car-NEH-zis; born Constantine Karnazes; August 23, 1962), is an American ultramarathon runner, and author of Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner, which details ultra endurance running for the general public.^[3][4]

When Will the Sub-Two Hour Marathon Happen in Open Competition?

wired |  On Saturday morning in Vienna, Austria, Eliud Kipchoge, the world's finest marathoner, became the first person in history to run 26.2 miles in under two hours. His time of 1:59:40 required him to maintain an average pace of just under 4:35 per mile. That is, to put it mildly, soul-searing speed. Even a supremely fit person would struggle to run at so aggressive a clip for more than five or six minutes in a row. On Saturday, Kipchoge held it for just shy of 120.

But Kipchoge's performance will not be recognized as an official world record. The event was not an open competition; it was held for Kipchoge and Kipchoge alone. What's more, a rotating cast of pacers shielded him from wind throughout the run, and a bicycle-riding support team was on hand at all times to deliver him water and fuel. It was not so much a race, in other words, as an exhibition event designed for speed. A one-man, all-or-nothing time trial.

Eliminate Carbs for 3 Days - Use Protein and Fat for Energy Instead - See What Happens...,

healthline |  A no-carb diet is a way of eating that eliminates digestible carbs as much as possible.

Carbs are your body’s primary source of energy. They’re found in grains, beans, legumes, fruits, vegetables, milk, yogurt, pasta, bread, and baked goods.

Therefore, someone on a no-carb diet must avoid most of these foods and instead eat foods that contain primarily protein or fat, such as meats, fish, eggs, cheese, oils, and butter.

There is no strict rubric for a no-carb diet. Some people who follow it eat nuts and seeds, non-starchy vegetables, and high-fat fruits like avocado and coconut.

Even though these foods have some carbs, they’re high in fiber. Therefore, they have only a minuscule number of digestible or net carbs, which is calculated by subtracting the amount of fiber from the total number of carbs (1).

A no-carb diet resembles a ketogenic diet, which limits your carb intake to fewer than 30 grams per day and encourages you to get 70% or more of your daily calories from fat (2Trusted Source). 

Depending on what you choose to eat, a no-carb diet can be more restrictive than keto.

FOH with Caloric Restriction! Ashy-Assed Betas are Simply Ashy-Assed Betas...,

technologyreview |  My bitterness peaked midway through day four of the “Fast-Mimicking Diet,” when a parent arrived at my daughter’s softball game with doughnuts. As little girls and fellow coaches crowded around the box, I stood apart, glumly sipping out of my special water bottle with its “proprietary” blend of nutrients.

For breakfast, I’d consumed a nut bar the size of a small cracker and a couple of vitamins. Lunch was five olives from Seville.

Frankly, I’d begun to resent Valter Longo, the inventor of Prolon, the five-day, $250 fad diet causing my misery. True, the Italian-born biochemist had seemed perfectly nice when I’d reached him at his office at the University of Southern California’s Longevity Institute a few days before to speak with him about the science behind the diet and what it might do for my general health and longevity. He had patiently explained how the diet would temporarily shift my body into a starvation state that would prompt my cells to consume years of accumulated cellular garbage before unleashing a surge of restorative regeneration. Getting rid of garbage had sounded like just what I needed. But now I blamed him for my predicament. I wanted a doughnut.

My Prolon “meal kit” had arrived in a white cardboard container a little bigger than a shoebox. Inside I’d found a meal program card spelling out the menu, a large empty water bottle emblazoned with the word “Prolon,” and five smaller cardboard boxes, each labeled with a corresponding day. I opened the box for day one, billed as a higher-calorie “transition day,” and was pleasantly surprised. It didn’t look so bad. I’d be sampling many of the diet’s highlights: a small packet of kale crackers, powdered tomato soup blend, algae oil supplements, a bag of olives, herbal tea, and not one but two nut-based bars (albeit distressingly small).

When I opened up day two, however, I began to get a better sense of what I was in for. One of the puny nut bars had been replaced by a glycerin-based “energy” drink, which I was instructed to add water to and sip on throughout the day. There was more herbal tea—hibiscus, mint, and lemon (I don’t even like herbal tea)—plus a couple more powdered-soup packs and two tiny packets of olives. Where was the rest of it?

Cosmic Longevity - Prerequisite for the Conquest of Space

technologyreview |  Izpisúa Belmonte believes epigenetic reprogramming may prove to be an “elixir of life” that will extend human life span significantly. Life expectancy has increased more than twofold in the developed world over the past two centuries. Thanks to childhood vaccines, seat belts, and so on, more people than ever reach natural old age. But there is a limit to how long anyone lives, which Izpisúa Belmonte says is because our bodies wear down through inevitable decay and deterioration. “Aging,” he writes, “is nothing other than molecular aberrations that occur at the cellular level.” It is, he says, a war with entropy that no individual has ever won.

But each generation brings new possibilities, as the epigenome gets reset during reproduction when a new embryo is formed. Cloning takes advantage of reprogramming, too: a calf cloned from an adult bull contains the same DNA as the parent, just refreshed. In both cases, the offspring is born without the accumulated “aberrations” that Izpisúa Belmonte refers to.

What Izpisúa Belmonte is proposing is to go one step better still, and reverse aging-related aberrations without having to create a new individual. Among these are changes to our epigenetic marks—chemical groups called histones and methylation marks, which wrap around a cell’s DNA and function as on/off switches for genes. The accumulation of these changes causes the cells to function less efficiently as we get older, and some scientists, Izpisúa Belmonte included, think they could be part of why we age in the first place. If so, then reversing these epigenetic changes through reprogramming may enable us to turn back aging itself.

Izpisúa Belmonte cautions that epigenetic tweaks won’t “make you live forever,” but they might delay your expiration date. As he sees it, there is no reason to think we cannot extend human life span by another 30 to 50 years, at least. “I think the kid that will be living to 130 is already with us,” Izpisúa Belmonte says. “He has already been born. I’m convinced.”

Psyche - Foundation of Our Level II Constructions

Forbes |  NASA is preparing to explore a world made of metal. Confirming that the exciting Arizona State University School of Earth and Space Exploration-led Psyche mission is now entering the build phase, NASA’s probe is now set to visit a mysterious asteroid between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It could be nothing less than the exposed core of a dead planet, with some suggesting that it could be worth a staggering $10,000 quadrillion.

What is asteroid Psyche?

While most asteroids are rocky or icy bodies, Psyche is thought to be a stripped planetary core, a very rare object in the solar system. While NASA missions like InSight drill into Mars to discover the origins of planets, Psyche offers an opportunity to inspect and study a planetary core up close. It appears to be the exposed iron-nickel core (just like Earth’s) of a proto-planet, a small world that formed early in the solar system's history, but never reached planetary size—much like Vesta and Ceres, which NASA's Dawn spacecraft explored. Could asteroid Psyche be the heart of an early planet as big as Mars that lost its rocky outer layers? Was it involved in violent collisions? NASA will help planetary scientists find out, and so tease-out lessons for how the solar system’s planets likely formed.

With or Without Compact Fusion - Mankind IS ALREADY WILL GET Permanently Off-World

energy.gov | NNSA and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) joined forces to address a unique challenge: developing a power source able to support deep space travel and outlast existing fuel sources. NNSA came through with the technical expertise required to achieve this goal.

“The relationship between NNSA and NASA is a ‘win-win’ partnership,” said Patrick Cahalane, NNSA’s Principal Deputy Associate Administrator for Safety, Infrastructure and Operations. “NASA gets a prototype demonstration for a kilowatt-range fission power source, and NNSA gets a benchmark-quality experiment that provides new nuclear data in support of our Nuclear Criticality Safety Program.”

The experiment, nicknamed KRUSTY (Kilowatt Reactor Using Stirling TechnologY), was part of NASA’s larger Kilopower project. KRUSTY was designed to test a prototype fission reactor coupled to a Stirling engine. Stirling technology is efficient, doesn’t require significant maintenance, and does not degrade in performance over time.

Scientists from NNSA’s Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and Nevada National Security Site partnered with NASA to develop and test the KRUSTY design at the National Criticality Experiments Research Center (NCERC).

Researchers designed and performed initial testing of the KRUSTY reactor design using a surrogate, or non-fissile, reactor core and resistive heating elements. Experts from NNSA’s Y-12 National Security Complex manufactured the uranium reactor core, which was delivered to the NCERC in the fall of 2017. 

Let's Act Brand New and Pretend We Don't Already Know....,

Soft Disclosure? Limited Hangout? Age of Star Trek Discovery?

thedrive |  The War Zone has been reporting on a set of bizarre patents assigned to the U.S. Navy that describe radical new technologies that could absolutely revolutionize the aerospace field, and frankly, the very way we live our lives. These include high-energy electromagnetic fields used to create force fields and outlandish new methods of aerospace propulsion and vehicle design that basically read as UFO-like technology. You can learn all about these patents, their viability, and the issues surrounding them in these exclusive features of ours. Now, the same mysterious Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division engineer behind those patents has produced another patent—one for a compact fusion reactor that could pump out absolutely incredible amounts of power in a small space—maybe even in a craft. 

Energy dominance has become a cornerstone of American military policy as laboratories seek to develop the ‘Holy Grail’ of power generation: nuclear fusion. These attempts at developing stable fusion reactors utilize incredibly powerful magnetic fields in order to contain the nuclear reactions occurring inside. Creating a stable fusion reaction is difficult enough, but some laboratories are going even further by attempting to create compact reactors small enough to fit inside shipping containers or even possibly vehicles.

While Lockheed Martin’s CFR designs have garnered quite a bit of media attention and internet buzz in recent years, it appears one of the Skunk Works' major clients is also hard at work in this field. The U.S. Navy has filed a potentially revolutionary patent application for a radical new compact fusion reactor that claims to improve upon the shortcomings of the Skunk Works CFR, and judging from the identity of the reactor’s inventor, it's sure to raise eyebrows in the scientific community.

This latest design is the brainchild of the elusive Salvatore Cezar Pais, the inventor of the Navy’s bizarre and controversial room temperature superconductors, high energy electromagnetic field generators, and sci-fi-sounding propulsion technologies that The War Zone has previously reported on. The patent for Pais’ “Plasma Compression Fusion Device” was applied for on March 22, 2018, and was just published on September 26, 2019. 

We Won't Pretend Biden is Turd Solo if You'll Admit He's a Big Stinky Floater

"The fact that my predecessor had a son who was paid $50,000 a month to be on a Ukrainian board, at the time that vice president Biden was leading the Obama Administration’s efforts in Ukraine, I think is worth looking into." - VP @mike_pence

theintercept |   The problem for Democrats is that a review of Hunter Biden’s career shows clearly that he, along with Joe Biden’s brother James, has been trading on their family name for decades, cashing in on the implication — and sometimes the explicit argument — that giving money to a member of Joe Biden’s family wins the favor of Joe Biden. Democrats have been loath to give any credibility to the wild rantings of Trump or his bagman Rudy Giuliani, leaving them to sidestep the question of Hunter Biden’s ethics or decision-making, and how much responsibility Joe Biden deserves. Republicans, though, have no such qualms, and have made clear that smearing the Bidens as corrupt will be central to Trump’s reelection campaign. The Trump approach is utterly without shame or irony, with attacks even coming from failson Eric Trump.

Biden has been taking political hits over of the intersection of his family’s financial dealings and his own political career for some four decades. Yet he has done nothing publicly to inoculate himself from the charge that his career is corruptly enriching his family, and now that is a serious liability. By contrast, one of his opponents in the presidential primary, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., went so far as to refuse to endorse his son Levi Sanders when he ran for Congress, saying that he does not believe in political dynasties. In defending the Biden’s nepotistic relationship, Democrats would be forced to argue that, to be fair, such soft corruption is common among the families of senior-level politicians. But that’s a risky general-election argument in a political moment when voters are no longer willing to accept business-as-usual. For now, Biden’s opponents in the presidential campaign appear to all hope that somebody else will make the argument, while congressional Democrats don’t want to do anything to undermine their impeachment probe. And so Biden skates.

Heed the Words of the Weinstein!

apple |  In this episode of the Portal, Eric checks in with his friend Andrew Yang to discuss the meteoric rise of his candidacy; one that represents an insurgency against a complacent political process that the media establishment doggedly tries to maintain. Andrew updates Eric on the state of his campaign and the status of the ideas the two had discussed as its foundation when it began. Eric presents Andrew with his new economic paradigm; moving from an 'is a [worker]' economy to a 'has a [worker]' economy. The two also discuss neurodiverse families as a neglected voting block, the still-strong but squelched-by-the-scientific-establishment STEM community in the US, and the need to talk fearlessly - and as a xenophile - about immigration as a wealth transfer gimmick. 

Did China Just Niggerize Do to the NBA What America Did to Johnson Publishing?

foxnews |  In recent years, the NBA has become famously political. During the heyday of the Black Lives Matter movement, the NBA permitted players to wear slogan-printed T-shirts in support, and stars like LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Paul spoke out loudly on the issue.

The Sacramento Kings actually announced a partnership with the local branch of the movement. And NBA players have had little problem denouncing President Trump, whom James called a "bum."

In 2017, Commissioner Adam Silver actually tried to blackmail the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, by pulling the All-Star Game, all in an attempt to restore the so-called "bathroom bill" for transgender people.

The NBA has reaped the benefit from its benevolent attitude toward left-leaning social activism, too. Silver, like former Commissioner David Stern before him, has been praised ad infinitum by the press, compared favorably to that alleged corporate hobgoblin Roger Goodell of the NFL.

Silver told CNN just last year that "part of being an NBA player" is social activism and a "sense of an obligation, social responsibility, a desire to speak up directly about issues that are important." Silver stated the league wants players to "be multi-dimensional people and fully participate as citizens." He specifically explained that the league had a role in ensuring that the situation remains "safe" for players afraid of suffering career blowback.

Then the NBA came up against its own corporate interests.

And the NBA caved.

Late last week, Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeted an eminently uncontroversial statement: "Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong." That's about as milquetoast a statement about Hong Kong as it's possible to make. But that didn't matter to the Chinese government, which immediately stated that it would cut relations with the NBA and the Rockets in particular.

Speculation quickly ran rampant that Morey might lose his job. Morey was forced to delete his tweet and walk it back: "I did not intend my tweet to cause any offense to Rockets fans and friends of mine in China. I was merely voicing one thought, based on one interpretation, of one complicated event. I have had a lot of opportunity since that tweet to hear and consider other perspectives." James Harden, star of the team, tweeted, "We apologize. We love China. We love playing there." Silver's NBA put out an apology in Chinese saying (as translated), "We are extremely disappointed in the inappropriate comment by the general manager of the Houston Rockets."

We'll Be Right Back After A Brief Message About What Really Matters

theconversation |  Research we have just had published sheds new light on this Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis. We focus on what platinum can tell us about it.

Platinum is known to be concentrated in meteorites, so when a lot of it is found in one place at one time, it could be a sign of a cosmic impact. Platinum spikes have been discovered in an ice core in Greenland as well as in areas as far apart as Europe, Western Asia, North America and even Patagonia in South America. These spikes all date to the same period of time.  

Until now, there has been no such evidence from Africa. But working with two colleagues, Professor Louis Scott (University of the Free State) and Philip Pieterse (University of Johannesburg), I believe there is evidence from South Africa’s Limpopo province that partly supports the controversial Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis.

The new information has been obtained from Wonderkrater, an archaeological site with peat deposits at a spring situated outside a small town to the north of Pretoria. In a sample of peat we have identified a platinum spike that could at least potentially be related to dust associated with a meteorite impact somewhere on earth 12,800 years ago. 

The platinum spike at Wonderkrater is in marked contrast to almost constantly low (near-zero) concentrations of this element in adjacent levels. Subsequent to that platinum spike, pollen grains indicate a drop in temperature. These discoveries are entirely consistent with the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis. 

Wonderkrater is the first site in Africa where a Younger Dryas platinum spike has been detected, supplementing evidence from southern Chile, in addition to platinum spikes at 28 sites in the northern hemisphere. 

We are now asking a question which needs to be taken seriously: surely platinum-rich dust associated with the impact of a very large meteorite may have contributed to some extent to major climatic change and extinctions?

Joe’s Ambition Trumped Joe’s Desire to Protect Hunter

neweconomicperspectives |  Goldberg’s column is unusually honest for a Democrat like Goldberg.  It includes two important admissions about Joe and Hunter Biden’s poor judgment in dealing with Ukrainian matters.

As all this was happening, Biden’s son, Hunter, sat on the board of Burisma Holdings, a natural gas company that Zlochevsky co-founded, at some points earning $50,000 a month. Zlochevsky might have thought he could ingratiate himself with the Obama administration by buying an association with the vice president. All available evidence suggests he was wrong.

We need to put Hunter Biden’s $50,000 per meeting in perspective, he began receiving it in 2014, when the purchasing power parity (PPP) per capita GDP figure for Ukraine was slightly over $8,500.  In a single month, Hunter Biden received fees over six times what a typical Ukrainian received in a year.  Hunter Biden had no relevant expertise to be on the Ukrainian firm’s board of directors.  The only disagreement I have with Goldberg’s description is her use of the word “earning” instead of “received.”  Hunter Biden does not “earn” his money.  He makes money off those who seek to get in good with his dad.  The Trump children, of course, have super-charged this sleaze.

Hunter’s one real job miraculously led to his ludicrously rapid promotion to EVP of a major bank.  The bank, of course, was a major contributor to his dad.  Hunter’s miraculous advancement to EVP is a typical sleazy payoff to elite politicians’ kids.  Both parties do it.  The sole reason Zlochevsky hired Hunter was to try to influence favorably his dad and the Obama administration.  This too is typical elite sleaze.  Yes, we should remember that Trump’s spouse, children, and their spouses, make Hunter look like a highly competent saint when it comes to cashing in on their tawdry Trump ties.

Goldberg correctly notes the modest nature of the sleaze in the Bidens’ case.  There is no evidence that hiring Hunter Biden ingratiated the Ukrainian firm with the Obama administration.  There is no evidence that hiring Hunter Biden ingratiated the Ukrainian firm with Joe Biden.  Joe Biden’s successful effort to fire the corrupt non-prosecutor increased the chances that the Ukrainian government would sanction the firm.  Trump’s claim that the fired prosecutor was an anti-corruption hero investigating Hunter’s purported corruption is a double lie.  Trump’s attacks on Joe and Hunter Biden are lies.  This should not surprise us.  First, Trump always lies.  Second, Joe and Hunter Biden’s sketchy actions are not crimes or ethical violations.  They may be ‘corrupt’ in the broad sense of that word in everyday usage, but not in the legal sense of statutes against corruption.  Trump, therefore, has substituted lies for the nuanced reality.

Too Complicated - I Think The Classholes Did It

quillette |  Understanding American politics has become increasingly confusing as the old party labels have lost much of their meaning. A simplistic Left vs. Right worldview no longer captures the complexity of what’s going on. As the authors of the October 2017 “Pew Survey of American Political Typologies” write, “[I]n a political landscape increasingly fractured by partisanship, the divisions within the Republican and Democratic coalitions may be as important a factor in American politics as the divisions between them.”

To understand our politics, we need to understand the cultural values that drive it. The integral cultural map developed by philosopher Ken Wilber identifies nine global cultural value systems including the archaic (survival), tribal (shaman), warrior (warlords and gangs), traditional (fundamentalist faith in God), modern (democracy and capitalism), and postmodern (world-centric pluralism). When combined with Pew’s voter typologies, Wilber’s cultural levels offer a new map of America’s political landscape.

Of Wilber’s nine global value systems, the Traditional, Modern, and Postmodern categories are most useful to understanding our moment. Traditional culture values disciplined adherence to assigned gender and social roles: men are providers and heads of households, marriage is between one man and one woman, and the institutions of the military, law enforcement, and the clergy are all highly respected. Historically, traditional cultures were monarchies or states ruled by “strongmen.” Modern culture superseded traditional systems in the West during the Enlightenment, and values rationality, democracy, meritocracy, capitalism, and science. Individual rights, free speech, and free markets harness an entrepreneurial spirit to solve problems.

Postmodern culture offers a borderless, geocentric political view that values pluralism. It challenges a pro-American narrative by focusing on the horrors of American history, including the exploitation of Native Americans, slavery, and persistent inequality disproportionately affecting historically disadvantaged groups. Those left behind by modernity and progress now seek recognition, restoration, and retribution via a politics of protest, and show little interest in building political organizations or institutions. We are currently living in a postmodern political moment of disruption, best described by author Helen Pluckrose in her Areo essay “How French Intellectuals Ruined the West: Postmodernism and its Impact, Explained”:

If we see modernity as the tearing down of structures of power including feudalism, the Church, patriarchy, and Empire, postmodernists are attempting to continue it, but their targets are now science, reason, humanism and liberalism. Consequently, the roots of postmodernism are inherently political and revolutionary, albeit in a destructive or, as they would term it, deconstructive way.

When we overlay Pew’s data with Wilber’s Value levels, six cultural political categories emerge: Traditional Left and Right, Modern Left and Right, and Postmodern Left and Right.

Yo Quiero Chalupas

senate.grassley.gov |  Two Senate chairmen want to know whether the Justice Department has acquired information from Ukrainian prosecutors that may contradict the stated reasoning behind former Vice President Joe Biden’s threat to withhold U.S. assistance from Ukraine. They are also renewing an inquiry into the department’s response to reported efforts by Ukrainians, in coordination with Democratic Party associates, to acquire damaging information on Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign. In a letter to Attorney General William Barr, Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) are seeking additional information about the department’s review of the Russia investigation’s origins, including the DNC’s reported work with Ukraine to undermine candidate Trump.   

“Ukrainian efforts, abetted by a U.S. political party, to interfere in the 2016 election should not be ignored. Such allegations of corruption deserve due scrutiny, and the American people have a right to know when foreign forces attempt to undermine our democratic processes,” the Senators wrote in the letter. 

The letter follows a July, 2017, inquiry from Grassley to the department referencing reports that a DNC consultant coordinated with the Ukrainian government to acquire opposition research on Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign. According to a Politico investigation, “Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump” and “helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers…” Though media reports indicate that U.S. Attorney John Durham is investigating whether Ukraine played a role in the counterintelligence probe during the 2016 election, the Justice Department has yet to confirm whether it has begun an investigation into coordination between the Ukrainian government and individuals associated with the campaign of Hillary Clinton or the Democratic National Committee.

Separately, a report yesterday revealed new documents that call into question the stated reasons behind a 2016 ultimatum by then Vice-President Biden to fire a Ukrainian prosecutor who had investigated a company for which Biden’s son was a board member. According to the report, Ukrainian officials have tried to forward documents related to the matter to the department, to no avail. Grassley and Johnson are requesting details on any actions the department is taking to review the material referenced in the report.

Full text of the Grassley-Johnson letter to Barr follows:

Talm'bout a Joker...,

tomluongo |  Trump’s strengths and weaknesses as a political player have been on full display from the beginning. And he’s made a number of errors which have cost him dearly to this point.

Most of these have to do with foreign policy, which I have outlined in gory detail nearly every day for three years. And it was these deals he’s made on foreign policy, outsourcing it to advisers like H.R. McMaster, John Bolton and James Mattis, to gain time to deal with his domestic enemies that have done the most damage.

I think Trump now sees the traps set for him and how badly they will boomerang on him this election season. He’s begun changing course on issues like Iran, Syria and, yes, Ukraine.

And for this he is now being targeted, quite amateurishly, for removal from office. Of this I’m convinced at this point.

Since Ukraine cuts across so many different narratives of the past few years, going all the way back to 2013 EU accession talks, it is no wonder that President Trump calls to the new Ukrainian President, who isn’t one of ‘our guys’ like Poroshenko was, would be heavily scrutinized.

Anything that sniffed even vaguely like Presidential overreach would be used against Trump to remove him from office. This is the standard Alinsky tactic of accusing your opponent of what you are guilty of to de-legitimize any information that comes out of the investigation.

This tactic is nothing new. It’s all they ever do folks, because Trump has already proven he’s immune to ‘Nuts and Sluts.‘

REAL REVOLUTIONARY?

Heed The Words Of The Brother!

Back after EXACTLY one year!

Directed Evolution Via Phage Display

thescientist |  Caltech’s Frances Arnold, who advanced a technique called directed evolution to shape the function of enzymes, has received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry today (October 3). She shares the honor with George Smith, now emeritus professor of the University of Missouri, and Gregory Winter, emeritus group leader at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge, UK. Smith and Winter are both recognized for their work on a lab technique known as phage display in the directed evolution of new proteins—in particular, for the production of antibody therapeutics.

“I’d like to congratulate this year’s laureates for their tremendous breakthrough work in using chemistry to speed nature's own processes,” Peter Dourhout, president of the American Chemical Society, says in a statement. “The breakthroughs from these researchers enable that to occur thousands of times faster than nature to improve medicines, fuels and other products. This is truly directed evolution using chemistry.”

First reported by Smith in 1985, phage display involves the introduction of foreign DNA coding for a protein, such as an antibody, into a bacteriophage—a virus that infects bacteria. That protein is then displayed on the surface of the phage. Researchers can use these protein-displaying phages to screen for interactions with other proteins, DNA sequences, and small molecules. 

Speaking to the Associated Press this morning, Smith emphasized the role of others’ work in his achievement. “Very few research breakthroughs are novel,” he says. “Virtually all of them build on what went before. . . . That was certainly the case with my work.”

Winter, who cofounded the biotech company Cambridge Antibody Technology in 1989, developed the technique for the purpose of finding novel therapeutics. In 1993, his research group used phage display to successfully isolate fragments of human antibodies that could bind specific antigens. The genes for these fragments could be expressed in bacteria, the team reported, and could offer a “promising alternative” to mouse-based methods for the “production of antibodies against cell surface molecules.”

In 2002, adalimumab (Humira), a therapeutic produced by this approach, was approved by European and US regulators for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Speaking in 2006, Winter called the approval “the sort of thing I’m most proud of.” The technique has since been used to isolate molecules against autoimmune diseases, multiple cancers, and bacteria such as Bacillus anthracis—the cause of anthrax.

RIP: The Late Great Otis Rush

Counterpunch |  Otis Rush was born in 1934 in Philadelphia, Mississippi, one of the most racially mixed towns in the Delta. In Rush’s youth the population of Philadelphia was almost equally divided between whites, blacks and Choctaw Indians. As a consequence, Philadelphia was also one of the most racist towns in Mississippi, a hotbed of Klan activity and, of course, site of the 1964 murders of civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner. In 1980, Reagan picked the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia as the locale  to give his first post-convention speech, an attack on the federal government that launched his own race-baiting “Southern Strategy.” J.L. Chestnut, one of two black people in the huge audience, recalled Ronald Reagan shouting  that “‘the South will rise again and this time remain master of everybody and everything within its dominion.’ The square came to life, the Klu (sic) Kluxers were shouting, jeering and in obvious ecstasy. God bless America.”

Like many black youths in the Delta, Otis sat near the radio every day at 12:15, tuning in to KFFA, broadcast out of Helena, Arkansas, for the King Biscuit Time show, hosted by Sonny Boy Williamson and Robert Lockwood, Jr. For half an hour Williamson and Lockwood played live in the studio, often featuring other rising stars of the blues, such as B.B. King, James Cotton and Pinetop Perkins (who was an original member of the studio band, called the King Biscuit Entertainers.) Otis decided he wanted to be a blues player. He began playing the blues harp at the age of six and later his father rigged him a makeshift one-string guitar out of a broom handle and baling wire.

Rush’s father was a sharecropper, toiling in the parched red clay soils of eastern Mississippi. But mechanization was slowly drawing this brutal way of life to a close. In 1948, Rush’s father moved the family (there were 8 Rush children) to Chicago. At the age of 14, Otis began working 12-hour days in the stockyards. At night he played the blues with two other young stockyard workers, Mike Netton, a drummer, and “Poor Bob” Woodfork, a guitar player recently migrated up from Arkansas. The band began to get some paying gigs in some of the new clubs springing up on Roosevelt Avenue.  One night when Rush was 18, Willie Dixon walked into the Alibi club on the West Side of town. Dixon, one of the true geniuses of American music, had just left Chess Records in a bitter dispute over royalties. The great bassist and arranger had taken a job with the new Cobra Records, a small Chicago label run by a TV repairman. Dixon was enthralled by Rush’s uniquely expressive, almost tortured guitar-style and signed him on the spot.

In the studio, Dixon, the real architect of the Chicago Blues sound, assembled a small talented R&B combo to back Rush, featuring Shakey Horton on harmonica, Harold Ashby on tenor, veteran drummer Odie Payne,  Little Brother Montgomery hammering the piano and Dixon himself on stand-up bass. The first song Rush recorded was Dixon’s “I Can’t Quit You, Baby.” Dixon said he wrote the song about an obsessive relationship Rush was having with a woman at the time. Dixon wanted to provoke an emotional response from the singer and he got one. “I Can’t Quit You, Baby” opens with a chilling falsetto scream, then Rush launches into a staccato guitar attack unlike anything heard before it. Led Zeppelin (and dozens of other bands) would cover Rush’s version of the song but never capture the excrutiating fervency of the original. The recording was released in the summer of 1956 as Cobra’s first single. The song hit number 6 on the Billboard R&B charts.

Over the next two years Rush and Dixon would release eight more records, each of them dazzlingly original. The sound was aggressive and confident, like the hard-charging jump blues “Violent Love,” where Rush’s slashing guitar chords seem to be engaged in a romantic combat with the horns. Rush’s own composition, “Checking on My Baby,” is an eerie, minor key blues that sweats sexual paranoia. This is not the blues of despondency and despair, but of defiance and, at times, rage. It’s music with an edge, sharpened by the metallic sounds of urban streets, of steel mills, jail cells and rail yards.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Politics of a $3,000 Suit

NYTimes |  Recently, Interview magazine published a conversation between the actress Kerry Washington and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accompanied by photographs of the young politician wearing a fitted blazer with wide lapels and green piping; a slim, matching set of trousers; and an elegant pair of black stilettos from Manolo Blahnik, the total cost for which was somewhere around $3,500.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez needs the center-left — surely emboldened by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s primary victory last week — to warm to her, to imagine that she isn’t going to tear down the castles. How terrifying can someone dressed as though she had just left a meeting with six venture capitalists with a rare bottle of scotch really be to the occupants of the higher tax brackets?

When the castigating got traction, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez shot back at her critics, pointing out the obvious — that she did not buy the clothes she wore for the shoot. They were lent to the magazine for the purpose of taking pictures.

Speaking of Termites and Tennis Umpires...,

Tennis umpires are reportedly considering a boycott of Serena Williams matches. The public statement of boycotting Serena’s games underscores beyond any shadow of a doubt the specific nature of this particular tempest on a tennis court. Even in the twilight of her career, the disparate economic influence of the GOAT on the worldwide enterprise of tennis  vs. the butt hurt bleetings of some expendable little men - will be most interesting to observe and measure.

There have been rumblings for years about replacing these overpaid and underperforming accessories to the match with computers, taking the element of human error (and human sensitivity) out of the equation. If the umpires go on strike, it will be a perfect opportunity to begin testing a new and improved HawkEye system which does a bit more than accurately track tennis ball ballistics.

In the interim, while the final and permanent disintermediation of highly fallible human umpires is developed, it will not be difficult to find other umpires to replace the ITF's little men with their panties in an ill-considered bunch. Technology has advanced to the point where umpires aren't really necessary. 

The victorian-era rules of tennis are a little archaic and arbitrary to being with, the fact that they are selectively enforced means it's overdue time for a change. 

medium |  Serena’s unhinged outbursts in yesterday’s US Open Championship, was an embarrassment and an eyeopener to who and what she’s become. We can go back and forth on what other male players have said and gotten away with, one has nothing to do with the other in this case. Serena’s issues over her career have not been because she was a woman but because she was Black. It’s disingenuous of those who claim to be woke, to not acknowledge that Serena used every liberal and feminists excuse, except for the real issue that’s plagued her career; her skin color.

This intersectionality game that Feminist play to ensure that White women are the real benefactors in all things related to womanhood and civil rights, is becoming irritating. The fact that Serena did not acknowledge her Blackness as the real issue she has been constantly discriminated against, was a slap in the face for Black women and more importantly Black female athletes. Serena has attempted to use her giving birth and being a mother as somehow a foreign thing in women’s sports. She has also bought into the social media hype and White liberals newfound love and praise for her because she’s a mother.

Democratic Factionalization in the Context of American Property Supremacy

theatlantic |  Madison and Hamilton believed that Athenian citizens had been swayed by crude and ambitious politicians who had played on their emotions. The demagogue Cleon was said to have seduced the assembly into being more hawkish toward Athens’s opponents in the Peloponnesian War, and even the reformer Solon canceled debts and debased the currency. In Madison’s view, history seemed to be repeating itself in America. After the Revolutionary War, he had observed in Massachusetts “a rage for paper money, for abolition of debts, for an equal division of property.” That populist rage had led to Shays’s Rebellion, which pitted a band of debtors against their creditors.

Madison referred to impetuous mobs as factions, which he defined in “Federalist No. 10” as a group “united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” Factions arise, he believed, when public opinion forms and spreads quickly. But they can dissolve if the public is given time and space to consider long-term interests rather than short-term gratification.

To prevent factions from distorting public policy and threatening liberty, Madison resolved to exclude the people from a direct role in government. “A pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction,” Madison wrote in “Federalist No. 10.” The Framers designed the American constitutional system not as a direct democracy but as a representative republic, where enlightened delegates of the people would serve the public good. They also built into the Constitution a series of cooling mechanisms intended to inhibit the formulation of passionate factions, to ensure that reasonable majorities would prevail.

The people would directly elect the members of the House of Representatives, but the popular passions of the House would cool in the “Senatorial saucer,” as George Washington purportedly called it: The Senate would comprise natural aristocrats chosen by state legislators rather than elected by the people. And rather than directly electing the chief executive, the people would vote for wise electors—that is, propertied white men—who would ultimately choose a president of the highest character and most discerning judgment. The separation of powers, meanwhile, would prevent any one branch of government from acquiring too much authority. The further division of power between the federal and state governments would ensure that none of the three branches of government could claim that it alone represented the people.

According to classical theory, republics could exist only in relatively small territories, where citizens knew one another personally and could assemble face-to-face. Plato would have capped the number of citizens capable of self-government at 5,040. Madison, however, thought Plato’s small-republic thesis was wrong. He believed that the ease of communication in small republics was precisely what had allowed hastily formed majorities to oppress minorities. “Extend the sphere” of a territory, Madison wrote, “and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other.” Madison predicted that America’s vast geography and large population would prevent passionate mobs from mobilizing. Their dangerous energy would burn out before it could inflame others.

Factional Discretion in the Context of Narrative Concentration

Sports is one arena where the insistence on some objective fact (the ball was in or out? was it a catch?) has devolved into a set of rules so convoluted as to be indecipherable. We don't trust the discretion and judgement of the human official (in or out, ball or strike, safe or out), and demand something objective like "Hawkeye" to "get the call right" and "make the game fair."

Our enforcement of the law would be quite different if there wasn't the discretion of the arresting officer, the discretion of a prosecutor, and the discretion of a judge involved. We know as fact that more young black men are prosecuted for drug offenses than young white men, even though young white men and young black men use and sell drugs at roughly equal rates.

The bottom line is that we all rejoice when that person gets what he or she deserves, but none of us wants what we really deserve.

ghionjournal |  Aaron Maté is a Beast!
 

This statement was admiringly blurted out by political vlogger Jamarl Thomas on his program The Progressive Soapbox last week. What he was talking about was a recent interview that Aaron Maté, producer, journalist and on-air talent at Paul Jay’s Real News Network, did with veteran journalist James Risen, currently of The Intercept. What did they discuss? The jailing of Reality Winner—Risen’s source for a leaked NSA document about potential Russian digital interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential primary.

It stands to reason that Thomas calls him Aaron “Buzzsaw” Maté. Even during his youthful Democracy Now days, Maté showed a genuine talent for interviewing people with a dogged focus on facts and an absolute inability to let his interviewees get away with bullshit, regardless of their perceived status.

As I listened to this interview with Risen, I started having flashbacks to all the Columbo reruns I watched as a kid. If you’ve ever seen the old detective show with the inimitable Peter Falk, there was a formula: the disheveled working class Columbo would ask an endless stream of seemingly basic questions of his suspects, who were usually impatient and annoyed wealthy white people who thought he was far beneath them in the pecking order. Eventually, they would crack under the pressure of his incessant queries, realizing too late that he’d been amassing reams of factual evidence against them while they’d been too busy feeling superior to notice.