Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
The Watergate scandal begins to unfold; The Battle of Bunker Hill during the American Revolution; O.J. Simpson arrested in the slayings of his ex-wife Nicole and Ronald Goldman; Singer Kate Smith dies.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.
Unless he cooked an extra-juicy steak, how does Snowden “have blood on his hands” if there is “no evidence of anyone being harmed?” As one observer put it last night in describing the government instructions these Sunday Times journalists appear to have obeyed: “There’s no evidence anyone’s been harmed but we’d like the phrase ‘blood on his hands’ somewhere in the piece.”
The whole article does literally nothing other than quote anonymous British officials. It gives voice to banal but inflammatory accusations that are made about every whistleblower from Daniel Ellsberg to Chelsea Manning. It offers zero evidence or confirmation for any of its claims. The “journalists” who wrote it neither questioned any of the official assertions nor even quoted anyone who denies them. It’s pure stenography of the worst kind: some government officials whispered these inflammatory claims in our ears and told us to print them, but not reveal who they are, and we’re obeying. Breaking!
The first clue of the pope’s interest in the environment came when he chose his name in honor of St. Francis of Assisi, the 13th century friar who dedicated himself to the poor and is considered the patron saint of animals and the environment. Francis had shown interest from his days in Argentina, when he was Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the archbishop of Buenos Aires.
There, he played a major role in convening different leaders to seek solutions for Argentina’s social ills. Francesca Ambrogetti, who co-wrote a biography of Francis, said he pushed for scientists at the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina to investigate the impact of environmental issues on humanity. As far back as September 2004, Cardinal Bergoglio cited the “destruction of the environment” as contributing to inequality and the need for social reforms. At a 2007 meeting of Latin American bishops in Aparecida, Brazil, he oversaw the drafting of a broad mission statement that included an emphasis on the environment.
Pablo Canziani, an atmospheric physicist who researches climate change, said Francis, who had once trained as a chemist, became very interested in the links between environmental destruction and social ills, including a dispute over paper pulp mills on the border with Uruguay, which Argentina claimed were polluting local drinking water.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
Breakfast Tune: Stars And Stripes Forever by Roger Sprung on 1963-64 Folkways LP.
Today in History
Nazi Germany’s troops enter Paris during World War II; TWA Flight 847 hijacked; Stars and Stripes adopted as official U.S. flag; Leftist guerrilla Che Guevara and real estate mogul Donald Trump born. (June 14)
What?! Is this a Science Saturday? I wish, since the pickings are slim for stories. There is only the one, TPP, but it kind of encapsulates everything that is bad and wrong with political society today.
And as for Music all I can think of at this moment (despite a half done piece about Player Pianos and the Analog/Digital divide) is contemporary Opera and how timely is it? Pink Floyd was my transition to popular music from long hair MBB (Mozart/Bach/Brahms) and while it was pivotal for me (as well as elevating my status on the Goth/Geek scale from actively bullied to pointedly ignored and that’s a big step up) but how long ago was it? Forty Years? And based on a book by George Orwell over 70 years old that metaphorically deals with events about a century ago.
Death is everywhere.
You see the thing is that people don’t change. Since the moment we started slaughtering other animals to create a comfortable micro-climate around ourselves we’ve stopped evolving. This is why studying at Clio’s feet is so instructive. You have exactly the same brain as Socrates, if you’d use it.
Yesterday the animals rose up. What it signals is an opening for a new Napoleon because sheep will be sheep even if the fancy themselves wolves and pigs will be pigs however many monocles they wear and whatever dances they do on their trotters.
I wish I were less cynical. There are sunny days to enjoy and I observe them with a darker tinge because I know we have traded essential liberty for an illusion of security and become a nation of cowards. I constantly mourn the days when 1984 was a cautionary tale and not an instruction manual.
Il faut étouffer les ennemis intérieurs et extérieurs de la République, ou périr avec elle ; or, dans cette situation, la première maxime de votre politique doit être qu’on conduit le peuple par la raison, et les ennemis du peuple par la terreur.
…
Le secret de la liberté est d’éclairer les hommes, comme celui de la tyrannie et de les retenir dans l’ignorance.
The Seinfeld TV series ran from 1989-1996 and it held to the motto, “no hugging, no learning”. The basic idea for each episode was that the main characters would obsess over an inane or innocuous detail to the detriment of their ability to connect in any meaningful way to anyone. Thus, Jerry would break up with a woman with “man hands” and Elaine would dump a “close talker.” When they weren’t obsessing over trivialities, they would bond through their complete inability to respect others. So George and Jerry try to find ways to talk to each other in front of Jerry’s lip-reading deaf date or Jerry would dump his cashier girlfriend, Marlene, because a cashier can’t possibly critique his comedy. The entire show was basically about a group of affectless assholes whose only bond was their dysfunctional, sociopathic connection to each other.
This is where the last episode’s final scene almost seems like foreshadowing. In it Jerry is in jail doing a stand-up routine of prison-related jokes to an audience of fellow prisoners (among them Kramer and George). No one is laughing at Seinfeld except Kramer. No one gets the humor because the irony is lost and the context has shifted. The audience of prisoners doesn’t like prison jokes, but their opinion of Jerry is what is funny. It is Jerry’s lack of self-awareness and disconnect from the audience that is the joke.
There is nothing left but the obligatories since inspiration has failed. Oh, and don’t worry. I expect I’ll be happier once this heat wave breaks.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
I would never make fun of LaEscapee or blame PhilJD. And I am highly organized.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.
You realize of course that we could never be friends.
Why not?
What I’m saying is – and this is not a come-on in any way, shape or form – is that men and women can’t be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.
That’s not true. I have a number of men friends and there is no sex involved.
No you don’t.
Yes I do.
No you don’t.
Yes I do.
You only think you do.
You say I’m having sex with these men without my knowledge?
No, what I’m saying is they all WANT to have sex with you.
They do not.
Do too.
They do not.
Do too.
How do you know?
Because no man can be friends with a woman that he finds attractive. He always wants to have sex with her.
So, you’re saying that a man can be friends with a woman he finds unattractive?
No. You pretty much want to nail ’em too.
What if THEY don’t want to have sex with YOU?
Doesn’t matter because the sex thing is already out there so the friendship is ultimately doomed and that is the end of the story.
Well, I guess we’re not going to be friends then.
I guess not.
That’s too bad. You were the only person I knew in New York.
Umm… what about this is so hard to understand? Women are people (said in his best Chuck Heston impersonation)! I don’t get this delusion of a great divide. The differences between the sexes are 99% cultural and to all you all who claim that this or that bit of psychological mumbo-jumbo points to any other conclusion I say you have not adequately controlled for bias, which is pervasive from birth to death.
And, just as women are not controlled by their stereotypes, men also. We’re not all slaves to our sexual desires. Doesn’t mean we don’t have them, only that it’s perfectly possible to have a professional relationship, even a friendship, with a person with whom you wish you were more intimate. Indeed the body of anecdotal evidence of men wanting to get out of the “friend zone” is vast.
But what about unattractive people? Don’t you want to “nail ’em too”? No. Doesn’t mean I can’t work with them or develop a friendship (unless, of course, the reason they’re unattractive is that they’re a jerk).
How… Vulcan. I have my moments. Every decade or so I get besotted with someone who is completely unsuitable if not borderline psychopathic. I confide this to protest my normality on the spectrum of fictional humanity.
I met her today in the maze. Her name is Billie. She’s of simple folk, fair and true.
You mean she’s stupid?
Do not mock a love-smitten mouse.
For the most part though I keep my eyes up (actually I rarely look at people directly because my eyesight is so bad) and I don’t care what you are provided you fit into my secret hidden agenda.
Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night, Pinky – try to take over the world!
“Let me tell you about my trouble with girls,” Mr. Hunt told an audience at the World Conference of Science Journalists in South Korea on Monday. “Three things happen when they are in the lab: You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them they cry.”
…
“I did mean the part about having trouble with girls,” he told the BBC. “I have fallen in love with people in the lab and people in the lab have fallen in love with me and it’s very disruptive to the science because it’s terribly important that in a lab people are on a level playing field.”
He elaborated on his comments that women are prone to cry when confronted with criticism. “It’s terribly important that you can criticize people’s ideas without criticizing them and if they burst into tears, it means that you tend to hold back from getting at the absolute truth,” he said. “Science is about nothing but getting at the truth and anything that gets in the way of that diminishes, in my experience, the science.”
…
Mr. Hunt’s comments reflected the larger debate about the challenges facing women in science, with research suggesting they are forced to grapple with widespread sexism and gender bias. Referring to Mr. Hunt’s remarks, an article in The Independent newspaper in Britain noted: “With lab rats like him, is it any wonder there’s a shortage of women in science?”
A Yale study published in 2012 showed that science professors at American universities widely regarded female undergraduates as less competent than male students with the same skills and accomplishments.
The result, the report found, was that professors were less prone to mentor female students, or to offer them a job. Presented with two imaginary applicants with identical accomplishments and qualifications, they were more likely to choose the man, and if the woman was chosen, she was offered a salary that, on average, was $4,000 lower than her male counterpart. The study concluded that rather than being the product of willful discrimination, the bias was probably an outgrowth of subconscious cultural influences.
Mr. Hunt is not the first high-profile figure to face criticism over comments about women in science. In 2006, Lawrence H. Summers resigned as president of Harvard University following a difficult tenure and some poorly received remarks, including his suggestion in a speech that “intrinsic aptitude” could explain the relative dearth of women excelling in science and mathematics.
Other Nobel winners have faced a backlash for ill-judged comments about women, including the novelist V.S. Naipaul, who explained in 2011 that he regarded female writers as inferior. “I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not,” he was quoted as saying by the Guardian, adding that he thought the work is “unequal to me.”
Science Oriented Video
The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations – then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation – well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
The Six-Day War ends in the Mideast; Yugoslav troops leave Kosovo after NATO’s campaign of airstrikes; Alcoholics Anonymous founded; Actress and singer Judy Garland born; Singer Ray Charles dies.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
What is a soul? It’s like electricity – we don’t really know what it is, but it’s a force that can light a room.
Last summer, scientists recorded the worst sinking in at least 50 years. This summer, all-time records are expected across the state as thousands of miles of land in the Central Valley and elsewhere sink.
But the extent of the problem and how much it will cost taxpayers to fix are part of the mystery of the state’s unfolding drought. No agency is tracking the sinking statewide, little public money has been put toward studying it and California allows agriculture businesses to keep crucial parts of their operations secret.
The cause is known: People are pulling unsustainable amounts of water out of underground aquifers, primarily for food production. With the water sucked out to irrigate crops, a practice that has accelerated during the drought, tens of thousands of square miles are deflating like a leaky air mattress, inch by inch.
Opinion surveys on climate change are often reported as national averages, but national opinion is not the most important thing to most politicians. They respond to regional and local opinion, the opinions of their constituents. With that in mind, a new study attempts to map public opinion on climate change and climate policy in geographic detail, down to the level of counties and congressional districts.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
Breakfast Tune: Tuba Skinny, New Orleans, Mardi Gras 2012
Today in History
James Byrd, Jr. dragged to death in Texas; Communists complete takeover of Czechoslovakia; Israel destroys an Iraqi nuclear power plant; ‘Grease’ opens on Broadway; Singer-songwriter Prince born. (June 7)
Twenty six screaming 7 and 9 year olds. Twenty eight “adult” chaperones.
Nothing will get done. What fun.
I will be wearing very old clothes that I will burn immediately following a very long shower after dealing with many sticky interventions, some of them with children.
How bad can it be? Last year my relative wanted to do toilet paper bowling (you know, toilet paper for the pins). It’s cheap, it’s soft, you need it anyway. What could possibly go wrong?
Toilet paper Dodgeball.
Did I mention the fun?
So forget music. You get music next week. This week you get schadenfreude.
I will be busy this weekend visiting relatives and TMC will be out of town also. Normally (and I’m not bragging or wanting anyone to feel bad about their contribution) these take me from 3 to 4 hours to do, exclusive of the time spent reading to find the material.
What takes the time is writing the front part (sometimes more and sometimes less, depending on the depth of treatment) and expanding the news stories with quotes (always a slog and terrifically time consuming).
Anyway, while I’m on the road I’m dispensing with the tricky and time consuming (and amusing and informative I hope) bits and formating everything as blog posts (title, author, publication) which will save a ton of time better spent on napping or socializing with people who already think I’m a driven eccentric (which is of course, true).
I apologize to you dear reader for this blatant disregard of your needs and feelings and can only promise that I shall return from this exhausted and cranky (I shall be dealing with children and I like them just fine if properly prepared), and resume my normal sub-standard output as soon as I can decently get away with it.
Science Oriented Video
The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations – then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation – well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.
You see the thing is that people don’t change. Since the moment we started slaughtering other animals to create a comfortable micro-climate around ourselves we’ve stopped evolving. This is why studying at Clio’s feet is so instructive. You have exactly the same brain as Socrates, if you’d use it.