DayVectors

* 22 entries including: weary brain; tanks to Ukraine | Russian energy fail | Google Assistant; GDLS-MPF tank | drone-killing drones | Nautilus for air freight; electric cable bacteria; Trump frivolous suit | non-compete clauses | Alexa adventures; Paxlovid bust?; Ukraine supporters | my new Torchlet lamp; French solar carparks | inductive roadway | bone-like materials; EMF quackery; Bradley IFVs to Ukr | Kevin McCarthy as Speaker; improving yams | galactic Fermi bubbles | slow pulsar; air war Ukr; lame Durham investigation | Biden on a roll | Thunberg owns Tate.

[TUE 31 JAN 23] THE WEARY BRAIN

* THE WEARY BRAIN: As discussed in an article from ECONOMIST.com ("The Brain At Work", 11 August 2022), everybody knows how tiring a day of heavy mental activity can be, and how our "cognitive control" -- the ability to think and act clearly -- fades with exhaustion. However, exactly why this happens is unclear.

It has been long thought that brain fatigue is much like muscular fatigue. Muscles need glucose to run, and we get tired when we run low on glucose. Shouldn't it be the same thing for the neurons in our head? Actually, they don't use that much glucose; one study suggested that cognitively overworked and "depleted" brains use up less glucose than could be restored by sugar on a wet fingertip.

If cognitive fatigue is not caused by a lack of energy, then what does cause it? A team of researchers by Antonius Wiehler of Pitie-Salpetriere University Hospital in Paris examined the issue from a "neurometabolic" point of view -- postulating that results from an accumulation of "glutamate" in the region of the brain underpinning control. Glutamate is an excitatory neurotransmitter widespread in the central nervous systems of mammals and plays a role in a range of activities, such as learning, memory, and the sleep-wake cycle.

The researchers worked with a group of participants who were asked to perform just over six hours of various tasks that involve thinking. Half were given easy things to do, the other half hard ones. For example, in one task, letters were displayed on a computer screen every second or so. Those in the easy group had to remember whether the current letter matched the previous letter or, for the hard group, the one shown three letters earlier.

At intervals through the experiment, participants were asked to make decisions that could reveal cognitive fatigue. They might be asked whether they would want to earn money for cycling on an exercise bike for 30 minutes at power level six -- a high-cost, high-reward task -- or less money for 30 minutes at power level two -- low-cost, low-reward. Participants who were assigned the more challenging cognitive-control tasks were more likely to opt for the low-cost, low-reward options, particularly towards the end of the six hours. In addition, the hard-task participants spent less effort in making that decision. That was determined by observing their eyes: the pupil initially constricts when participants were shown the two options, and dilates again when they made a decision. The pupil-dilation times of participants assigned hard tasks fell off significantly as the experiment progressed.

During the experiment, the scientists used magnetic-resonance spectroscopy to scan the brains of the participants for activity patterns. They focused on the lateral prefrontal cortex, a region of the brain associated with cognitive control. They found higher levels of glutamate in hard-task participants. The researchers suggest that drugs could be developed to help get rid of the glutamate -- but until that happens, the only cure is to sleep it off.

[MON 30 JAN 23] THE WEEK THAT WAS 04

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: The big news for the Ukraine war this last week was that Germany, after prolonged argument, decided to authorize shipment of Leopard II tanks to Ukraine. This was predicated on the USA deciding to ship Ukraine M1A2 Abrams tanks, which they had been reluctant to do, since it was a pain to support. It appears the gifting of the Abrams was mostly symbolic, since they may well not arrive before the fighting is over.

There was a puzzle as to why the Germans were so reluctant to allow other European countries to send Leopard IIs to Ukraine, with much talk about a German tilt towards Russia. On consideration, that seems to be an extreme read on the issue. World War II crushed German militarism, and comments by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz indicated that the main concern was the Germans didn't want to be seen as too militarily assertive -- which is why they pressured the USA to take the lead.

The impatience with the Germans is understandable, since Ukraine needed everything yesterday -- but the reality is that they can't get everything, and they can't get anything yesterday. Many of the critics do not seem to understand that providing massive shipments of munitions is not like ordering gadgets from Amazon.com, there being a long list of details to address for every shipment in order to get it done.

* Another kindly thing to say about the Germans is that, as discussed here in December, have been energetic about weaning their country from Russian gas shipments -- even though the German government has a reputation for sluggishness. As discussed in an essay titled from PUCK.news titled "The Putin Super Power Myth" (24 January 2024) by Julia Ioffe -- a Russian-born American journalist who is focusing on the war in Ukraine these days -- it was one of Vladimir Putin's many serious misjudgements to think he could really intimidate Europe by throttling gas supplies:

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That's not at all what happened: "A warm winter, low energy prices, and Europe's rapid turn away from Russian energy have revealed that the balance of power wasn't quite as durable as the Kremlin had predicted." Add to that the price cap placed on Russian energy exports in early December that ensured Russia would be starved of funds to prosecute the war. Putin said he wouldn't play along, but he found that he didn't have a choice. Oil producers formed a cartel, OPEC, that worked; it turned out oil consumers could establish a cartel of their own, and get it to work.

The Russians have tried to get around the consumer cartel by creating a shadow fleet of several hundred tankers, but that's not enough to compensate -- with the overhead of transport cutting further into Russian profit margins. They might be able to make it work, if they had three or four years, but they don't. The results are dire for the Kremlin:

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One of the big impacts of the war was to teach the West the dangers of economically relying on authoritarian states. This lesson applies to China as well as Russia. The war has also given a big push to the drive to shift the world away from fossil fuels. This is not a world war, but it is a war with global consequences.

* In very late-breaking news, a wave of air attacks was carried out on Iranian armaments plants and other military-related facilities -- including, it seems, Islamic Revolutionary Guards facilities -- apparently by kamikaze drones. For the moment, nothing is known for certain, though Israel is generally assumed to be responsible. That's very plausible, but Iran has no shortage of enemies. If the Israelis were indeed behind the attack, it seems also plausible that the Americans, annoyed over Iran's supply of k-drones to Russia, and the Saudis, similarly annoyed over Houthi / Iranian k-drone attacks on their oil facilities, provided enthusiastic assistance.

* Regarding my push to use Alexa on my Fire TV Cube, discussed here last week, I mentioned I wanted to get it on a smartphone, too. Alexa didn't work on my old smartphones, so I considered an alternative named Databot. That didn't work out either; not only did it come across as klunky, it had intrusive advertising, and they wanted a subscription service to get rid of the ads.

That was no good, but what else could I do? I suddenly realized I was missing the obvious: Google Assistant. I found it on Google Play and downloaded it to my smartphone without much trouble -- the only difficulty being that the installation didn't tell me it had worked and was completed. It took a bit of puzzling around to find out it had, and it came up with no difficulty. I'm going through a tutorial video to dope it out.

I wanted to set up the smartphone next to my PC so I could leave voice memos to myself while I was working. On fiddling with that option, it didn't seem satisfactory, primarily because the speaker on the phone wasn't loud enough to be workable for a "voice computer". I had a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7-inch tablet -- over ten years old, running Android 4, compared to the current version of Android 13 -- that had been gathering dust, so I decided to try it instead. Unfortunately, its operating system had been reduced to a state of unworkability, and I threw it aside in disgust, thinking I should just junk it. It didn't seem compatible with Google Assistant anyway.

I continued to plug away with the Galaxy Tab 2 in hopes of getting it to work in some way. After much frustration, I realized: nothing works with Android 4 any more, it was designed with a less secure internet in mind and it can't even communicate effectively -- so the tablet is nothing but a pretty paperweight now. It's a pity, it's actually still a nice little toy, but I can do nothing with it, and so I junked it.

[FRI 27 JAN 23] CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (31)

* CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (31): The US election of 1960 led to John F. Kennedy (1917:1963) defeating Richard Nixon and becoming president. "JFK", as he was popularly known, has been stereotyped as an ultra-liberal, but that is an exaggeration: he didn't rock the boat. Economically, his most significant action was to cut sky-high marginal tax rates for the wealthy, but not by that much. When inflation started to rise he tried to hold the line, leaning very hard on steel industry executives when they attempted to raise prices.

He was most notably a Cold Warrior, pursuing a nuclear arms buildup, while he attempted to get an arms-limitation deal with the USSR -- though the most he was able to do was obtain an agreement for an end to above-ground nuclear testing, which contaminated the atmosphere with radioactive fallout. The space race accelerated under JFK, with both sides sending men into space -- only one woman flew in space in the 1960s -- and JFK committing to sending men to the Moon by the end of the decade. In the meantime, both sides more quietly flew spy satellites to keep an eye on what the other side was doing, and the first civil applications of space, including weather and communications, emerging.

Relations with the Soviet Union remained troublesome, with Khrushchev building a wall between East and West Berlin to prevent defections to the West. JFK promoted NATO, with had a heavy reliance on nuclear weapons to deter a Soviet assault. By that time, Western Europe had generally recovered from World War II, and was moving towards greater socio-economic integration -- most notably establishing the European Economic Community in 1957, then the European Parliament in 1958.

In the Western Hemisphere, US relations with Latin-American nations ended up being dominated by worries over the island of Cuba, which had established a communist government under Fidel Castro (1926:2016) in 1959 that enjoyed Soviet support. The US government saw Castro as primarily a nuisance, to become very alarmed when Khrushchev tried to sneak nuclear-armed long-range missiles into the island in 1962. A nerve-wracking confrontation followed, with the Soviets backing down and removing the missiles.

After the crisis, relations between America and Cuba settled down to a state of ongoing mutual hostility, with the Castro regime attempting to export revolution to other Latin-American states, while the US backed governments opposing communist advances. Some of these governments were Right-wing military dictatorships, but in the Cold War, that wasn't seen as an obstacle. The same mindset held in Africa, where the two sides worked to bring the various post-colonial governments into their camps -- often being manipulated by unscrupulous authoritarian leaders, known as the "Big Men", who played the two sides off against each other. Similarly, in the Middle East the US tried to straddle the fence between supporting Israel and working with Arab governments, with the Americans having better relations with Saudi Arabia and other autocratic monarchies, while the Soviets had better relations with Egypt, Syria, and other autocratic Arab nationalist governments.

The big flashpoint for the US at the time, however, was Southeast Asia, where the collapse of the French colonial regime in Indochina had led to the emergence of communist North Vietnam and anti-communist South Vietnam, with North Vietnam seeking to re-unite the country by force. The Kennedy Administration was uncertain about supporting South Vietnam, which had an unpopular and corrupt government, with the prospect of the US being dragged into an interminable and unwinnable war -- but in the Cold War environment, it was politically dangerous to be seen as "soft on communism". [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 26 JAN 23] WINGS & WEAPONS

* WINGS & WEAPONS: As discussed in an article from THEDRIVE.com ("The Army Just Selected Its First Light Tank In Decades" by Joseph Trevithick, 28 June 2022), the US Army has now selected an offering by General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS) as a solution for the "Mobile Protected Firepower" program competition.

The MPF program began in 2015. The GDLS MPF design -- it doesn't have a formal designation yet -- is based on the company's Griffin II armored vehicle, derived in turn from the Austrian-Spanish ASCOD armored vehicle series. Its main armament is a 105-millimeter gun, with images showing a sensor turret and remotely-operated machine gun or cannon on top. The MPF features a turret design and fire control system derived from that of the M1 Abrams tank. It weights about 60% as much as the M1. An Air Force C-17 cargolifter will be able to carry two MPF tanks.

The last Army light tank was the Vietnam-era M551A1 Sheridan, retired in 1997 after an undistinguished service career. One of the problems with the Sheridan was that it was supposed to be parachutable, which imposed unfortunate constraints on the design. The MPF will not be parachutable. The Army contract specifies an initial low-rate production batch of 96, towards a paper total of 504, with initial deliveries in late 2023 and introduction to service in 2025.

* As discussed in an article from FORBES.com ("Shahed Catchers" by David Hambling, 2 November 2022), the Russians have taken to using Shahed-136 kamikaze drones against Iran. These k-drones are cheap, accurate, and destructive -- but they are also not very hard to shoot down. The problem is having interceptors that are as cheap as they are.

Ukrainian operators flying quadcopter drones have already intercepted a few Russian quadcopters with ramming attacks. Taking this idea a step further, US startup Anduril has developed an anti-drone system based on quadcopter interceptors. A ground station detects a threat and launches an interceptor from a box launcher, with the interceptor turning to face its rotors to the rear for speed, and then ramming the target to take it down. It can destroy both quadcopter and fixed-wing drones.

The MARSS company, headquartered in Monaco, offers a conceptually similar system, but its quadcopter interceptors are bigger and have ducted fans, making them more survivable after an impact. It is not clear if either company has fielded its systems, but the Ukrainians are saying they are acquiring a fleet of interceptor drones, possibly built by Ukrainian firms.

* As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("Natilus Freight Drone's Blended Wing Design Packs In 60% More Cargo" by Nick Lavars, 31 January 2022), California aerospace startup Natilus (not "Nautilus") is now working on development of a series of drone air cargo transports.

Natilus is focusing on the "blended-wing body (BWB)" configuration for their drones -- the BWB amounting to a "flying wing", somewhat reminiscent of a manta ray. The pilot Natilus design is the "N3.8T", powered by twin pusher turboprops, capable of carrying loads of 3,850 kilograms (8,500 pounds) a distance of 1,665 kilometers (1,035 pounds). Company officials say it will be able to carry 60% more cargo than a traditional cargo aircraft of the same size, while cutting air freight costs and emissions in half.

The Natilus is targeted for small package delivery within a continent, with deliveries slated for 2025. If Natilus can make a go of it, the company will move on to more ambitious BWB drone designs, up to the giant "130T", designed for intercontinental service, with a range of 8,220 kilometers (5,110 miles).

[WED 25 JAN 23] THERE & BACK (6)

* THERE & BACK (6): On the morning of Friday 7 October, I got breakfast at the McDonald's again, and cruised on to Dayton to the WINGS OF DAWN airshow. I had nailed down the route before I left the hotel and had no navigation problems. The airshow was a low-key affair, not heavily populated, with a fair number of re-enactors in WWI uniforms -- German, British, Australian, American -- plus at least a dozen WWI aircraft replicas, and to my surprise a good number of large RC models.

The aircraft were not all full-scale, some being about 75% or 80% scale replicas. I'd read about their construction, knowing that they were built of metal tubing with nylon fabric skinning, and using flat-four engines instead of radials -- the flat-four engines were hidden well enough not to be noticeable. I got a lot of pictures, but wasn't too interested in the aerial displays, for the simple reason that my camera gear isn't good enough to take good aerial shots.

I left at about noon, and drove across the Indiana border to the Hampton Inn in Richmond, which was a short trip. That left a long trip for the next day; I'd wanted to stay in Terre Haute again on the way back, but for some reason all the Hilton hotels in that area were booked up solid. I ate at a Fazoli's there, finding out they'd changed the menu a bit. They traditionally sold a big plate of spaghetti and meatballs as normal, but they had changed to a small plate at the older price and the big plate at a higher price. Worked very well for me, since I couldn't easily eat the big plate.

For lack of anything better to do, I binge-watched anime episodes on my notebook computer, at the hotel in Richmond, then got 9 hours of sleep -- haven't done that in years.

* Next morning, Saturday 8 October, I hit the road for Topeka, the drive being long and uneventful. Saint Louis traffic was a little crazy, but no problems; I ate once more at a Fazoli's, on the outskirts of town. Nothing of much interest but fuel prices: $3.99 USD a gallon in Ohio, $4.28 in Indiana, $3.20 in St Louis, $3.50 in Topeka. No rhyme or reason to it. I checked into the Topeka Hampton Inn and got to bed.

I ate breakfast at the Hampton Inn and hit the road early on Sunday, 9, October. I certainly had no doubts I was headed west: the full Moon was setting directly in front of me. The drive was uneventful as the trip out, the only thing to do was check the mileage meter as I drove along. I had been averaging over 42 miles per gallon on the trip, but in eastern Kansas the short-term average began to decline steadily down to 41 MPG and less. Once I got to western Kansas, it started to climb again. I figured that the mileage was an indicator of the rate of continental uplift towards the Rocky Mountains, with the rise being steeper in eastern Kansas. It started to fall again when I passed into Colorado, but came back up as I approached Denver.

Getting through Denver traffic was a bit nerve-wracking, but I handled it without trouble. However, as I was headed north out of the city, I increasingly had to make a relief call and was in growing distress. I had to get well out of town before I could get off Interstate 25 and make a relief call at a McDonald's -- I didn't dare get off I-25 without knowing where to stop, since I could end up driving in circles. I had a vague memory of having the same problem going north out of Denver some years back and stopping at the same McDonald's, but I couldn't validate it.

After I got relief, my way out of the McDonald's was obstructed by a woman with kids, noticeably a cute but hyperactively cheerful little girl. The woman apologized, but I replied: "That's okay, I find it amusing."

She said: "Their sugar fix hasn't worn off yet." Myself, I was still kind of nursing a thumping headache that had been contributing to my distress, but I'd just taken a painkiller, and it gradually kicked in.

It was interesting to notice that there was no decline in mileage as I went north, paralleling the mountains -- which reinforced my continental uplift idea. Anyway, I got back into Loveland at a reasonable hour, and stopped at the Kroger supermarket to get milk, as I always do coming back from a trip. I'd also got a taste for Froot Loops cereal from the hotel breakfasts, and picked up a big box -- the Kroger store brand, much cheaper than the Kellogg's brand but otherwise indistinguishable from it. I went home, unpacked, cleaned up the car, and went to bed. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[TUE 24 JAN 23] LIVE WIRES

* LIVE WIRES: As discussed in an article from SCIENCENEWS.org ("Electrical Bacteria May Help Clean Oil Spills & Curb Emissions" by Nikk Ogasa, 29 July 2022), the discovery of bacteria that have electrical capabilities has led to research on them.

Sairah Malkin -- a biogeochemist at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science in Cambridge -- likes to take a boat out onto Chesapeake Bay every now and then to take mud samples. The mud is loaded with sulfides, giving it a sulfurous smell and making it toxic. As it turns out, however, it is a happy for mud dwellers named "cable bacteria". The name is apt, not just because of their long threadlike appearance, but because they are "living wires", capable of channeling bacteria.

The sulfides in the mud are produced by other microbes in the mud; the cable bacteria use their electrical powers to remove them, and prevent them from being released into the water, where they could poison marine organisms. Filip Meysman -- a biogeochemist at the University of Antwerp in Belgium -- says: "They're kind of like guardian angels in these coastal ecosystems."

Researchers believe that cable bacteria could be put to wider use. Laboratory experiments show that cable bacteria can support other microbes that consume crude oil, meaning the cable bacteria could help clean up oil spills. Other studies have shown that they could help cut emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.

About a decade ago, a team of researchers discovered cable bacteria in sediment collected from the bottom of Denmark's Aarhus Bay. Since then, they've been found over most of the world, in streams, lakes, estuaries and coastal environments. Meysman says: "Name me a country, and I'll show you where the cable bacteria are."

Under a microscope, cable bacteria look like long sausage links. Their multicellular bodies can grow up to 5 centimeters (2 inches) long. Embedded in the envelope of each cell are parallel "wires" of conductive proteins, which the bacteria use to channel electrons.

Cable bacteria typically live in sediments, with one end near the surface where there is oxygen and the other end plugged into deeper, sulfide-rich zones. The bacteria grab electrons from the sulfides and then transfer them to oxygen, which is an enthusiastic electron acceptor. The bacteria get their energy from this electron flow.

While studying cable bacteria in a brackish body of water in the Netherlands, Malkin and her colleagues discovered a thin layer of rust coating the lake's bottom. As the cable bacteria pulled electrons from sulfides, converting the toxic chemicals into less-harmful sulfates, the water within the sediment became more acidic, which dissolved some minerals containing iron. The mobilized iron percolated upward in the sediment, until it interacted with oxygen to form rust. This layer of rust could capture sulfides that would otherwise flow into the water, acting as a "firewall" that could delay their release into the water, or even prevent it completely. Even when the cable bacteria's population dropped, the rust layer persisted, protecting other aquatic creatures from sulfide exposure.

Oil spills are of course another threat to marine life. Oil slicks on the surface of the water are confined with booms and cleaned out with skimmers -- but the oil can also wash onto beaches, mix with sediments in shallow waters and aggregate onto sinking particles of organic debris, hitching a ride to the seafloor. Ugo Marzocchi -- a biogeochemist at Aarhus University in Denmark -- says that this poses a big problem: "I am not aware of a very effective way to remove hydrocarbons from the seafloor," he says. "In inland freshwater systems, what is generally done is to dig out the sediments." This is troublesome and expensive.

There are soil-dwelling microorganisms that can live off hydrocarbons, and there is interest in using them to clean up contaminated sediments. However, as they break down oil, they generate sulfides that poison them. Marzocchi and his team thought that cable bacteria might be able to help.

They filled containers with oil-contaminated sediment from Aarhus Bay, which contained naturally occurring oil-eating bacteria. The group then injected a few containers with cable bacteria and monitored the degree of hydrocarbon degradation in all of the containers over seven weeks, to find the hydrocarbon concentrations had declined by about 30% -- compared to 9% for control samples. Cable bacteria helped boost the metabolic activity of their oil-eating neighbors by converting the toxic sulfides into sulfates -- which were actually useful to the oil-eating microbes as fuel.

The researchers are now trying to develop methods to promote cable bacteria growth in the field and see if it's possible to enhance their effect on oil degradation. One problem is that in oil-contaminated sediment, oxygen is quickly used up by the microbes that break down hydrocarbons -- and the cable bacteria need oxygen to offload their electrons. Salts that slowly release oxygen or nitrate, which cable bacteria can use in place of oxygen, might help drive the electrical organisms' growth at oil spills. More work needs to be done.

And then there is the problem of methane. One of the major sources of methane is rice paddies, which are loaded with "methanogens", microbes that produce methane -- with the result that rice fields are estimated to generate about 11% of all human-induced methane emissions.

Fortunately, cable bacteria like paddies too. In 2019, Vincent Scholz -- a microbiologist, also at Aarhus University -- and colleagues reported that cable bacteria could flourish among the roots of rice plants and a number of other aquatic plant species. The researchers then grew its own rice plants, some potted in soils with cable bacteria and some without, and monitored methane emissions.

It turned out the rice plants grown with cable bacteria produced 93% less methane. It was the ability of the bacteria to produce sulfates that was the key, since the sulfates promoted the growth of microbes that consumed them, and crowded out the methanogens. They also inspected genetic data collected from rice paddies in the United States, India, Vietnam and China, to find cable bacteria at all four sites -- though it's not clear how much impact they have on methane emissions. Further work is being done to see how to best make use of cable bacteria to reduce emissions from rice paddies.

[MON 23 JAN 23] THE WEEK THAT WAS 03

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: As discussed in an article from MSNBC.com ("Foolish Anti-Clinton Case Leads To Steep Penalty For Trump, Lawyers" by Steve Benen, 20 January 2023), Donald Trump has long been fond of frivolous lawsuits, pressing them at every opportunity to wear down his many enemies. The courts seem to be running out of patience with this game.

In March 2022, Trump decided to sue Hillary Clinton and several other Democrats, alleging they tried to rig the 2016 presidential election by bringing attention to his Russia scandal. The case alleged "racketeering" and a "conspiracy to commit injurious falsehood", among other things. Trump claimed the Russia scandal cost him more than $24 million USD, and he wanted his legal targets to pay far more than that. In September 2023, US District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks of Southern Florida dismissed the suit with prejudice, saying:

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Middlebrooks wrote that Trump's attorneys had a "cavalier attitude towards facts." He hit them with a $50,000 USD penalty and told them to pay $16,000 USD to cover legal fees of the defendants. Some of the defendants asked the judge for additional sanctions -- and he was agreeable, this last week issuing an order directing Trump, lead attorney Alina Habba, and Habba Madaio & Associates to pay $937,989 USD. Middlebrooks wrote:

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The judge added that the actions taken by Trump's lawyers were so egregious that they might very well lead to attention from "the bar and disciplinary authorities." There has been much fuss about Trump running for the presidency in 2024 -- but it's no longer credible. He's dug a hole for himself the size of an open-pit mine, and he's not getting out of it.

* In a loosely related article from ECONOMIST.com ("America's Trustbusters Plan To Curtail The Use Of Non-Compete Clauses", 12 January 2023), "non-compete clauses (NCC)" in employment contracts, specifying restrictions on employees leaving a company to work for competitors, have been becoming more widespread in recent years, and are going out of control. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is now working with antitrust law to leash them in.

Of course, companies tend to like NCCs. They aren't happy to see star employees that the company has trained to leave and hire on with a competitor, taking clients and possibly trade secrets with them. On the other hand, why would an employee want to leave if the company if a competitor didn't offer a better deal? From that point of view, NCCs are an attempt to compensate for mismanagement. More generally, how does it help society to idle an ex-employee who could otherwise be keeping the economy in motion? As for trade secrets, they can be protected by intellectual-property law and non-disclosure agreements.

NCCs have also become increasingly petty. In 2014 Jimmy John's, a chain of sandwich shops, was found to have inserted a two-year NCC in its employees' contracts which barred them from seeking employment with any nearby rival business. Once the clause went public, Jimmy John's backtracked and dropped it. However, franchises often stop employees from going to work at other outlets of the same franchise, reducing their bargaining power. It appears that firms use non-compete clauses to drive down wages by lowering the value of workers in the job market.

About half of people with non-compete clauses in their contracts work in states where they cannot legally be enforced -- and employers only get away with it because low-paid workers do not usually know their rights. Washington State, home to Amazon and Microsoft, restricts non-compete clauses to the contracts of high-earners; California bans them completely. The FTC, which has become much stronger in the Biden era, may well follow California's example.

* With regards to the Torchlet smart LED lamp I bought last week, I had more fun with it. One issue was that the LED desktop lamp I used along with it for reading had too much glare -- so I bought a new one, twin LED strips in a flexible "vee / rabbit ears" configuration. I could set it to bright, not so bright, and yellow sun operation; it was much more satisfactory.

I also bought a second Torchlet lamp to broadcast to the neighborhood through my front window at night. I ordered it on a morning, Amazon.com said they could deliver by evening -- but I figured next day was fine, I wasn't in that much of a hurry. I got the lamp the next afternoon, assembled it, set it up, used the "Smart Life" smartphone app to set it to "Lightshow" mode, and let it run all night. In the morning, I turned it off with the power button on the lamp base controller. It would come back up in the same mode if I turned the power back on. I could use the app if I wanted to change the mode to "Rainbow" or "Confetti" or "Fire" or whatever.

One issue was that I needed to set the lamp on a short table so it would be fully seen through the front window. I nosed around at Walmart, looking for a little plastic table. I couldn't find one, but I found some stackable plastic drawer modules that looked like they could do the job, and also give me some extra storage space. I bought three modules, though I wasn't sure if three would be too tall; I figured the third drawer would come in handy elsewhere if it was.

Three did turn out to be too tall, but I was right that the third drawer module would still be handy: I used it to raise the height of the rabbit-ears LED lamp, obtaining optimum lighting for reading. The only problem was that the store labels on the drawers were glued on in a way that made them hard to pull off. I finally decided to take each drawer and soak the label in the kitchen sink for an hour, with the paper rubbing off easily if messily then. That left the glue, but I took a can of light household lubricating oil, smeared it over the glue patch, let it sit for a while -- then scratched up the glue with a fingernail, and cleaned it off with a throw-away rag along with paper towels. I might get some more of those drawers. Incidentally, it appears kitchen vegetable oil works on the glue, too.

* The interesting part, however, was that I ended up learning more about the Amazon Alexa assistant app on my Fire TV Cube. I didn't try to set up the front-window Torchlet lamp with Alexa, but she still ended up recognizing it. Alexa didn't turn it on when I commanded: "Alexa, Lights!" -- but when I wanted to turn it off, she got confused, not able to choose between "Smart Lamp" and "Smart Lamp 2".

Okay, so I got into the Amazon Alexa page online -- it was more or less part of my Amazon account, with the same login -- and quickly deleted "Smart Lamp 2", restoring the status quo. Having got into the page, I poked around for what else it could offer. I found a "brief" mode that limited Alexa's replies, often to a simple chime, and enabled it, though I decided to change it back later. I then got to wondering if I could change the "wake word" -- that is, the word that Alexa uses to wake up when she's addressed.

That led to complications, since it turned out that the Alexa webpage was deprecated and had limited functionality. This was the first of petty obstacles that Amazon presented me with while I was trying to get Alexa to sit up and bark. Very well, I downloaded the Alexa app to my smartphone ... after first finding out it didn't work on my old but favored smartphone, a second obstacle. Once I downloaded it to a newer smartphone, I then had some problems figuring out how to get it to work -- but it did, no show-stoppers, nothing very painful. It could do everything I wanted.

Roughly in parallel, I thought of configuring Alexa through my Fire TV Cube, which was complicated by the fact that instructions I found on the Cube told me to download the Alexa app. After fumbling around, the Amazon.com product page for the app flatly told me I couldn't download it to the Cube. It turned out that the Cube's Alexa configuration pages were all that I could get on it for Alexa -- another obstacle. Later, I decided to try to download the Windows Alexa app for my Windows PC to perform configuration on the Cube -- but, after some hassles installing it, I found that, unlike the smartphone app, the Windows app couldn't control other Alexa nodes. Dead end, I uninstalled it. It's the smartphone app or nothing, or at least not enough.

Anyway, while trying to dope out the app, I found out that I could indeed change the wake word -- though only to three other options. I decided to use "Computer" instead of "Alexa", partly as a tribute to STAR TREK: "Computer, Lights!" That was the smart thing to do, since the Cube often didn't recognize "Alexa", requiring me to repeat myself, while it seemed to recognize "Computer" much more easily.

Along with figuring out the wake word, I also found that I could make phone calls with Alexa on the Cube. That wasn't surprising after I realized it, but I'd never thought of it before. First problem was to give Alexa my Google Voice number; investigation suggested Alexa was biased towards Skype, indeed some online commenters saying that Google Voice wouldn't work. That was ridiculous, Amazon would get into antitrust hot water if they didn't support Google Voice, and eventually I found that all I had to do was give the Alexa app whatever phone number I wanted. In fact, it turned out the right number was already there. "Well DUH."

Next problem was getting Alexa to read my Google contacts list, but in the end that was no problem either, I fumbled around a bit and it was there. I was ready to go, with the problem then being to navigate the Cube voice menus. I finally made a test call to my niece Jordy in Spokane -- "Hey, I'm talking to you with my TV set!" She was much amused.

I did find two little loose ends to tie up, one being hanging up the phone; I poked around and found out that I just had to say: "Computer, Hang Up!" -- and it did. The other was that I was getting some feedback distortion talking to Jordy, so I took a pair of cheap chunky-earbud bluetooth earphones that had been gathering dust, and hooked them up to the Fire TV Cube. That should fix that problem. Incidentally, the TV set is shared by the Cube and my Windows gamebox, so I'm going to buy a second set of earphones for the gamebox next month.

* I shot away much of the morning tinkering with Alexa, but no worries -- I had to shovel a lot of snow, so it was shot away in the first place. I got to thinking, on looking over other functions offered by Alexa, that she might be useful for keeping reminders and alerts. That implied having something running Alexa at hand all day long; after considerable puzzling around, I decided to use one of my old smartphones to do the job. Alas, the Alexa app won't install under older versions of Android. What about the Microsoft Cortana assistant? Nope, won't work either.

That led to a search for alternatives, and I finally found a free app named "Databot" that will download to almost anything, with a fun sci-fi TRON-style interface. I haven't played with it yet, and it is said to be limited in functionality. That's okay, I just wanted it for reminders, it should do the job. The fact that it's ad-supported may prove an obstacle, but I'll see.

[FRI 20 JAN 23] CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (30)

* CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (30): The appearance of American economic strength during the 1960s was in part an artifact of the destruction caused in Europe and Japan by World War 2. Through the 1950s, those economies were on the mend, but they still hadn't fully regained their strength. The USA was highly, if not absolutely, self-sufficient in that era, with Americans complacent about the superiority of all things American.

While the USA went from strength to strength in the 1950s, the Soviet Union tried to keep up. Following the death of Josef Stalin, after a struggle for power Nikita Khrushchev (1894:1971) had become the premier of the USSR, quickly scaling back the most brutal elements of Stalin's regime -- though without fundamentally changing the system. When Hungary began to stray from Moscow's line, Khrushchev sent tanks there in 1956 to leash the country back in.

The Soviet Union did appear to be keeping up with the USA, reporting impressive economic growth rates. That was primarily due to the fact that the USSR's economy had been so devastated by the war that there was nowhere for it to go but up, and also due to the fact that the Soviets were inclined to exaggerate or conceal their economic record.

The Soviet launch of Sputnik I in 1957 was a shock to America, the general perception having been that the USSR was backwards and could not keep up with the USA. President Eisenhower was privately annoyed with the public outcry about "the Russians are ahead", knowing that a command economy could, because of its top-down focus, accomplish specific feats out of proportion to its broader capabilities. Khrushchev saw his country's space efforts as an opportunity to score propaganda victories over America.

The clash of systems went on public display in 1959, when the Americans set up a "model home" exhibition in Moscow, as part of a cultural exchange. Richard Nixon (1913:1994), Eisenhower's vice president, had a debate with Khrushchev in front of cameras in the kitchen of the model home, with the two men praising the superiority of their economic systems. Later that year, Khrushchev was invited -- it seems by accident -- to tour the USA, and he used the tour to further promote the Soviet system.

Khrushchev, particularly because of his occasional belligerent public outbursts, appeared to be the spokesman for an international communist conspiracy by the USSR and Red China to take over the world. Few in the West realized that relations between the two major communist powers were not healthy. Mao Zedong, who had never forgotten the snubs handed to him by Stalin, was particularly annoyed at Khrushchev's US tour, since it suggested that the USSR wanted to come to an accommodation with the USA, selling out the global communist revolution. Besides, Mao regarded himself as the true leader of the revolution. The visit to Beijing ended in insults and recriminations, with Sino-Soviet relations then deteriorating.

Mao believed in revolution as a principle, not as a means to an end. He was no technocrat, working on the assumption that revolutionary zeal under the Red banner would overcome all difficulties. The result was the "Great Leap Forward", which began in 1958 and lasted for four years, with forced collectivization of Chinese peasants -- reminiscent of Stalin's forced collectivization -- and similarly forced industrialization -- with an absurd focus on community steel production, that had villages melting down their pots and such to produce low-value ingots. The final result was the deaths of millions, even tens of millions, of Chinese from famine. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 19 JAN 23] SPACE NEWS

* Space launches for December included:

[06 DEC 22] CN JQ / KUAIZHOU 11 / VDES -- A Chinese Kuaizhou 11 (KZ1A) booster was launched from Jiuquan at 0115 UTC (local time - 8) to put "Jiaotong VHF Data Exchange (VDES)" into near-polar low Earth orbit.

Jiaotong VDES AKA "Hangtian Jinzu 1", was to test a next-generation maritime relay system, collecting Automated Identification System (AIS) tracking and emergency signals from ships at sea and transmitting them back to receiving stations. This was the second flight of the Kuaizhou 11 and its first successful mission. The KZ 11 first flew in July 2020, but failed to achieve orbit.

[08 DEC 22] CN TY / LONG MARCH 2D / GAOFEN 5-01A -- A Long March 2D booster was launched at 1831 UTC (next day local time - 8) from the Chinese Taiyuan launch center to put the "Gaofen [High Resolution] 5-01A" satellite into Sun-synchronous orbit. It was a civil Earth remote sensing satellite with hyperspectral and infrared imaging systems, plus an absorption spectrometer to analyze atmospheric compositions. It followed Gaofen 5, which was launched in 2018, and joined the Gaofen 5-02 satellite, launched in 2021.

[08 DEC 22] USA-C CC / FALCON 9 / ONEWEB 15 -- A SpaceX Falcon booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 2227 UTC (local time + 5), to perform the "OneWeb 15" launch, with 40 OneWeb low-orbit comsats. OneWeb plans to put a constellation of hundreds of comsats into near-polar low Earth orbit, at an altitude of about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles). This launch brought the total number of OneWeb satellites to 504, towards an initial target of 648.

OneWeb selected Airbus to build the satellites in 2015. Airbus built the first set of satellites at their factory in France before the satellites' primary production moved to Florida. OneWeb satellites are small, about 150 kilograms (325 pounds) and use electric propulsion to raise and keep their orbits. Twin solar panels power the spacecraft and its Ku-band antennas.

The booster first stage landed on the SpaceX barge in the Atlantic. This was the first OneWeb launch on SpaceX; previously, OneWeb had primarily launched on Russian Soyuz boosters, but sanctions put a stop to that.

[09 DEC 22] CN YS / JIELONG 3 / CENTISPACE 1 S5 & S6 -- A Chinese Jielong 3 booster was launched from a barge in the Yellow Sea at 0635 UTC (local time - 8) to put a set of payloads into low Earth orbit.

Seven of the rideshare payloads were "Jilin Gaofen (High Resolution)" remote sensing satellites 44 through 50. They were part of a remote sensing satellite constellation operated by Chang Guang Satellite Technology, which is part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). There was also a multipurpose "Jilin 1-01A1" satellite in the launch.

The launch also included a "Tiangi" internet of things satellite, part of a constellation that began launch in 2018. In maturity, the constellation will feature 38 satellites. In addition, the launch included the "Fengtai Shaonian 2" studentsat, three "Dongpo" Earth surveillance satellites, the "HEAD 2H" Automatic Identification System (AIS) receiver, two "Jinzijing" Earth remote sensing satellites, and the "Huoju 1-01" research satellite.

Jielong (Smart Dragon) 3 is a four-stage solid-fueled rocket developed by the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) and marketed by its commercial arm, Zhongguo Changzheng Houjian. It follows on from the smaller Jielong 1 which made a single flight from Jiuquan in 2019.

[08 DEC 22] USA-C CC / FALCON 9 / HAKUTO R & -- A SpaceX Falcon booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0738 UTC (local time + 5) to send the "Hakuto R" lander to the Moon. "Hakuto" means "White Rabbit" in Japanese; it was a privately-funded mission by the ispace firm of Japan. The lander was built at ArianeGroup GMBh's facility in Lampoldshausen, Germany. It was 2.3 meters tall (7.5 feet), 2.6 meters wide (8.5 feet), and has a dry mass of 340 kilograms (750 pounds). It landed at Atlas Crater 4.5 months after launch. The launch also included:

• A small lunar rover named "Rashid", developed by Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center in the United Arab Emirates.
  
  
• A baseball-sized robot from the Japanese space agency JAXA.
  
  
• A Moon-orbiting CubeSat from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory named "Lunar Flashlight", which had a highly elliptical orbit that took it close to the Moon's surface, where it hunted for ice with a laser sensor.

The Falcon 9 first stage performed a soft landing at Cape Canaveral.

[12 DEC 22] CN JQ / LONG MARCH 4C / SHIYAN 20A,B -- A Long March 4C booster was launched from Jiuquan at 0822 UTC (local time - 8) to put the "Shiyan 20A" & "20B" satellites into orbit. Their mission was not disclosed.

[13 DEC 22] / ARIANE 5 ECA / GALAXY 35 & 36, MTG I1 & -- An Ariane 5 ECA booster was launched from Kourou in French Guiana at 2030 UTC (local time + 3) to put the "Galaxy 35" & "Galaxy 36" C-band / 5G geostationary comsats into orbit for Intelsat. They were built by Maxar and weighed about 3.15 tonnes (3.45 tons) each.

The launch also included "Meteosat Third Generation (MTG I1)", an advanced European weather satellite. The MTG system will allow European meteorologists to monitor the full life cycle of storms across Europe and Africa for the first time. MTG-I1 provides images of Europe and Africa every 10 minutes with the 16 spectral channels of the "Flexible Combined Imager", while the "Lightning Imager" will continuously map lightning flashes.

MTG is a partnership between the European Space Agency (ESA) and EUMETSAT and is part of an overall six-satellite fleet, including four total MTG-Imager series satellites and two MTG-Sounder series satellites. MTG I1, manufactured by Thales Alenia Space, had a launch mass of 3.76 tonnes (4.14 tons) and a design lifetime of eight and a half years.

[14 DEC 22] CN JQ / ZHUQUE 2 / JILIN GAOFEN & (FAILURE) -- A Chinese Zhuque 2 booster was launched from Jiuquan at 0830 UTC (local time - 8) on its maiden flight. It featured methane-LOX ("methalox") propulsion. The booster did not make orbit due to a second-stage failure. The payloads for the launch were a variety of rideshare satellites, including a "Jilin Gaofen" Earth remote sensing satellite. There were apparently about 14 payloads on the launch, with all being lost with the booster.

The Zhuque (Redbird) 2 is a private venture from the Chinese company LandSpace. It is 49.5 meters tall (162 feet), with a diameter of 3.35 meters (11 feet) and a mass at liftoff of about 219 tonnes (241 tons).

It can launch payloads of up to 6 tonnes (6.6 tons) to a low Earth orbit (LEO), and up to 4 tonnes (4.4 tons) to a medium orbit. The first stage is powered by four TQ-12 methalox engines. These engines are the first in China to use methane as a fuel and the first time that methalox engines were used on an orbital attempt of a rocket. It is a gas generator open cycle engine, similar to the SpaceX Merlin engine, although using a different fuel, that produces about 658 kN (67,100 kgp / 148,000 lbf) of thrust at sea level. The second stage features a single TQ-12 engine at present, but will use a TQ-15A later, with greater controllability and weight reductions.

LandSpace plans to develop further configurations of Zhuque 2 in the future. ZQ2A would feature a stretched rocket, while ZQ2B and ZQ2C would feature additional side boosters to further increase the capacity of the rocket to up to 32 tonnes (15 tons) to LEO. A timeline for these has not been given. Down the line, ZQ-2 is planned to become reusable.

[14 DEC 22] CN XC / LONG MARCH 2D / YAOGAN 36-4 x 3 -- A Long March 2D booster was launched from Xichang at 1825 UTC (next day local time - 8) to put the secret "Yaogan 36 Group 4" payloads into orbit. It was a triplet of satellites and may have been a "flying triangle" naval signals intelligence payload.

[16 DEC 22] CN XC / LONG MARCH 11 / SHIYAN 21 -- A Chinese Long March 11 booster was launched Xichang 0330 UTC (local time - 8) to put the "Shinyan 21" technology demonstrator satellite into orbit. The CZ-11 is a four-stage solid-propellant vehicle, which can be tube-launched from a mobile launcher. It can also be launched from sea barges in a configuration known as the Chang Zheng 11H. It was developed by the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT).

[16 DEC 22] USA VB / FALCON 9 / SWOT -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Vandenberg SFB at 1146 UTC (local time + 7) to put the "Surface Water & Ocean Topography (SWOT)" satellite into orbit. SWOT was developed by the US National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) and the French space agency Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and United Kingdom Space Agency.

SWOT will cover the entire Earth's surface between 78 degrees south and 78 degrees north latitude at least once every 21 days, sending back about one terabyte of raw data every day. Its primary instrument is the "Ka-band radar interferometer (KaRIn)", which uses a radar with dual antennas, mounted at the ends of a boom 10 meters (33 feet) long, to perform high-precision interferometric measurements of water surface height. It performs observations over two swaths at a time, each 50 kilometers (30 miles) wide, featuring a low-resolution mode for ocean observation, and a high-resolution mode for observing smaller bodies of water surrounded by land.

SWOT will provide data on more than 95% of the world's lakes larger than 62,500 square meters (15 acres) and rivers wider than 100 meters (330 feet). Currently, freshwater researchers have reliable measurements for only a few thousand lakes around the world. SWOT will bring that number into the millions.

SWOT's satellite bus was built by Thales Alenia Space for CNES, with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory providing the KaRIn instrument. SWOT builds on a decades-long collaboration between NASA and CNES from the 1980s to monitor Earth's oceans. This collaboration pioneered the use of a space-based altimeter to measure sea levels with the launch of the TOPEX/Poseidon satellite in 1992. After launch SWOT, the Falcon 9 first stage returned to its launch zone and soft-landed.

[16 DEC 22] USA-C CC / FALCON 9 / 03B MPOWER x 2 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 2248 UTC (local time + 5) to put the first two "O3b mPOWER" comsats in medium Earth orbit (MEO) for SES of Luxembourg.

SES operates a constellation of dozens of comsats, including five for a network called "O3b" AKA "O3b MEO". It was originally devised for a company named "O3b Networks, with "03b" meaning "other three billion" -- the approximately three billion people on the planet who did not have steady access to the internet at the time of the first launch in 2013. The company was purchased by SES in 2016.

The 20 original 03b satellites will remain in their current orbit 8,060 kilometers (5,010 miles) above the equator in MEO ahead of the new network, The 11 second-generation O3b mPOWER satellites are designed to provide high-throughput and low-latency data and internet to governments, telecommunications companies, and commercial companies such as cruise liners.

The idea for the additional network began back in 2016 as a collaboration between SES and Boeing. These particular satellite buses, the Boeing 702X, have a mass of 1,900 kilograms (4,190 pounds). According to Boeing and SES, the new satellites use a "software-defined payload", which will allow them to provide more than 5,000 steerable spot beams per satellite, providing as few as 50 megabits per second and up to multiple gigabits per second per customer. The company also claims roundtrip latency of fewer than 150 milliseconds.

The O3b mPOWER network's 11 satellites will be launched on five different SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets, including the two on this flight. The satellites are designed to be stacked and launched in batches of two or three. SES says the plan is to launch four more satellites on two different launches during the first quarter of 2023. That is expected to be followed by two more satellites launched later in 2023. A final three satellites are expected to launch in 2024, completing the network.

The Falcon 9 first stage landed on the SpaceX recovery ship. The payload fairings were also recovered.

[17 DEC 22] USA-C CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 4-31 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 2132 UTC (local time + 5) to put 54 SpaceX "Starlink" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit. The satellites were built by SpaceX, each having a launch mass of about 225 kilograms (500 pounds). The booster stage landed on the SpaceX drone ship.

After this launch, there were 3,612 satellites launched as part of the Starlink network. Of those, 291 have already re-entered and burned up. With other satellites having already failed or are currently in the process of being de-orbited, that leaves 3,284 working satellites in orbit.

[21 DEC 22] EU KR / VEGA / PLEIADES NEO 5,6 (FAILURE) -- A Vega booster was launched from Kourou in French Guiana at 0147 UTC (previous day local time + 3) to put the "Pleiades Neo 4" & "Neo 5" satellite into orbits, being elements of an advanced Earth-observation constellation. The two satellites were wholly funded and manufactured by its operator, Airbus. They had a launch mass of about 920 kg (2,030 lb) and a design life of 8 to 10 years. The booster did not make orbit.

[27 DEC 22] CN TY / LONG MARCH 4B / GAOFEN 11-04 -- A Long March 4B booster was launched at 1831 UTC (next day local time - 8) from the Chinese launch center at Taiyuan to put the "Gaofen [High Resolution] 11-04" satellite into Sun-synchronous orbit. It was a civil Earth remote sensing satellite.

[28 DEC 22] USA-C CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 5-1 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0934 UTC (local time + 5) to put 54 SpaceX "Starlink" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit. These were the first "Starlink 2" satellites; they were built by SpaceX, each having a launch mass of about 225 kilograms (500 pounds). The booster stage landed on the SpaceX drone ship.

[29 DEC 22] CN XC / LONG MARCH 3B-E / SHIYAN 10-02 -- A Chinese Chang Zheng (Long March) 3B/E booster was launched from Taiyuan at 0658 UTC (local time - 8) to put the "Shiyan 10-02" satellite into orbit.

[30 DEC 22] USA VB / FALCON 9 / EROS C3 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Vandenberg SFB at 0738 UTC (local time + 8) to put the third NG-series satellite in Israel's "Earth Resources Observation Systems (EROS)" network into orbit.

Designed by Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) and based on the OPSAT 3000 class satellite platform, the satellite had a mass of 400 kilograms (880 pounds), and could image a swath 11.5 kilometers (7.15 miles) wide with 30 centimeter (1 foot) image resolution. It also provided 60-centimeter (2-foot) resolution for multi-spectral imaging. The satellite was launched into an unusual retrograde low Earth orbit.

The EROS satellite network is owned and operated by ImageSat International (ISI), with partnership with "e-GEOS," a company owned by the Italian Space Agency and Telespazio. The partnership merged access to other remote-sensing assets, including the COSMOS-SkyMed constellation.

The first satellite in the EROS network, EROS A, was launched in 2000 aboard a Russian Start 1 booster into a Sun-synchronous orbit. EROS-A re-entered Earth's atmosphere in 2016. The second generation EROS B was also launched aboard a Start 1 into SSO in 2006. This satellite, based on the military reconnaissance satellite Ofeq 3, has an improved image resolution. ISI announced the plans for an EROS-C constellation in 2006, but the program was canceled in 2019, to be resurrected as EROS NG,

Three more satellites are expected to join the EROS NG constellation by 2026, including EROS C4, as well as EROSAR 1 and EROSAR 2, both of which will take images in the X-band radio spectrum. For this launch, the Falcon 9 booster soft-landed back at Vandenberg.

[WED 18 JAN 23] THERE & BACK (5)

* THERE & BACK (5): On Thursday, 5 October, I got up and dressed. It turned out that the Hilton Garden Inn had a for-pay breakfast. I didn't bother with it, there being a Kroger supermarket and a McDonald's nearby that suited me better. When I got back to the hotel, I inflated my tires, using an air pump that plugged into the car cigarette lighter. I'd never used the pump before, but it turned out to work very well.

I'd long inflated my tires using an old-style pop-out pressure gauge and an air pump with an analog needle, which was a hit-or-miss procedure, neither tool giving me a clear indication of what the actual tire pressure was. With the new pump, I screwed it up to a tire nipple, and it gave the tire pressure on an LCD display; press a button, and it drove up the pressure, with the LCD display keeping track. No more fuss.

That done, I went over to the Columbus Zoo. Incidentally, I left the bluetooth speaker on in my room; it turned out that playing the space music made the room feel more comfortable and warm to come back to. I only spent a few hours at the zoo. It's an excellent zoo -- many exhibits, nice layout and features, with an emphasis on Christmas lights all over, plus robot dinosaurs -- and I got good pictures, but I was simply not all that interested. I left earlier than I expected to -- getting a bit confused and trapped in a traffic jam for a little while after I took a wrong turn -- and went back to the hotel. There was nothing memorable in the zoo visit.

Back at the hotel, I quick-waxed my Honda. Its gloss-black finish is pretty but a dirt magnet, so I spray-wax it once a month. I waxed it before I left; I figured travel would wear it down fast, so I packed the spray bottle in the car to apply it again in Columbus. I kept the car clean all through the trip, nobody would think I had driven cross-country in it -- except for the Colorado license plates.

Later on in the afternoon, I went over to a Columbus tourist attraction named OTHERWORLD that I'd found online during trip planning. It on the other side of the town, but I had little trouble getting there on the beltway. It was set up in what looked like an old movie theater or such in a run-down shopping mall, and consisted of a maze of rooms, with wild sci-fi props as if from a DRWHO episode. I found it amusing, particularly liking the halls of mirrors, and was able to use my S21 Ultra to take good pictures. It was fun for what it was.

There was a Sheetz outlet not far from OTHERWORLD, and I stopped there for dinner. We don't have Sheetz in eastern Colorado, but I'd read about the chain in an article, it being described sort of half convenience store, half fast-food joint. All the ordering was on touchscreen, which is nothing new anywhere, I do it at McDonald's in Loveland all the time -- but it was a more elaborate system. I got mac & cheese, a mini-pizza, and a vanilla milkshake; the mac & cheese was bad, being undercooked, while the mini-pizza was okay at best, though the milkshake was good. Should have gone for a chili dog or the like. I went back on the beltway to the Hilton Garden Inn for the night, feeling somewhat tired and unenthusiastic. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[TUE 17 JAN 23] PAXLOVID BUST?

* PAXLOVID BUST? As discussed in an article from NATURE.com ("COVID Drug Paxlovid Was Hailed As A Game-Changer -- What Happened?" by Max Kozlov, 3 January 2023), in late 2021, the results of a trial of the antiviral drug Paxlovid showed it to reduce the risk of severe disease or death among COVID-19 patients by almost 90%, with Paxlovid called a "game-changer" that could help stop the pandemic. However, over a year later, COVID-19 is continuing its rampage in many countries; even in the USA, where the public believes the pandemic is over, the disease is killing hundreds of people a day.

The complacency about COVID-19 is one reason Paxlovid, a clearly effective drug, has been neglected, but there's another concern: "rebound", or the tendency of the disease to flare back up again after a patient starts feeling better for a time. Other factors holding back Paxlovid are inadequate funding for distribution, the drug's high price, and the need for it to be taken soon after infection. In consequence, doctors have prescribed the drug in only about 0.5% of new COVID-19 cases in the United Kingdom, and in about 13% in the United States. Some doctors say they have had trouble obtaining it for family members.

Davey Smith -- an infectious-disease physician at the University of California in San Diego -- says that prejudice against the drug has persisted even as regulators all over the world have rescinded authorizations for monoclonal antibodies against COVID-19, since they are not effective against the prevalent Omicron SARS-CoV-2 variants. Smith adds that Paxlovid is a game-changer drug that has good efficacy, even in the setting of Omicron -- but rebound has been tagged as a reason not to take the drug, which is a shame."

Paxlovid is a combination of the oral antiviral drugs nirmatrelvir and ritonavir. In a clinical trial conducted by Pfizer, the company that makes the drug, it reduced the risk of hospitalization or death by 89% in high-risk individuals who took the drug within three days of experiencing symptoms. US regulators first authorized Paxlovid in December 2021, and have since loosened restrictions on who can prescribe it in an effort to make it more broadly available. Nonetheless, uptake has been piddling: about 10 million Paxlovid courses have been delivered to the United States, but only about 6.7 million have been used.

Daniel Griffin -- an infectious-disease physician at Columbia University in New York City -- explains that the disinterest is due in part to misinformation and misconceptions about the drug. Of course, there's the inclination to not take COVID-19 seriously, a bias that even afflicts physicians. Paxlovid works by inhibiting viral replication, which mostly occurs early in the course of the disease, with a window of about five days from the onset of symptoms before the treatment becomes ineffective. Griffin says that doesn't mesh well with the inclination of many doctors to say: "Let's wait and see how you do."

Concerns over "rebound" have made matters worse, fueled by high-profile cases in figures such as US President Joe Biden and former US infectious-disease chief Anthony Fauci. Since they got sick again, people conclude that Paxlovid is useless -- even though Biden and Fauci are elderly and in the high-risk category, and their rebounds were mild. Smith adds that Paxlovid can't be taken with many other drugs and, in some people, makes certain foods taste bitter or metallic, both of which reinforce the perception that it's toxic, Treatment also requires taking several pills twice a day for five consecutive days, and many people can't stick to the schedule.

Anne Sosin -- a public-health-policy specialist at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire -- says that Paxlovid is a victim of systemic problems as well. Paxlovid use is dependent on a strong COVID-19 testing infrastructure and access to primary-care physicians and pharmacies. The big problem is that minorities have relatively little access to testing, and so they aren't prescribed Paxlovid. Sosin says she would like to see health officials mount an "all hands on deck" approach to ensure that everybody has equal access to the drug by engaging local communities and expanding access to testing centers.

Smith concludes that COVID-19 isn't going away, so it's important to develop other antiviral drugs. A new drug named "ensitrelvir" has just been introduced in Japan, while China has authorized use of an existing HIV drug to treat COVID-19. However, new drugs will be of limited value as long as there isn't an effective system to put them to good use.

[MON 16 JAN 23] THE WEEK THAT WAS 02

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: US political news was full of noise and no real motion this last week, and stands to stay that way for a time. The war in Ukraine is similarly busy but largely immobile, as Russian troops throw themselves at the towns of Bakhmut and Soledar, infliction harm on the Ukrainian defenders but suffering much more harm themselves. To the north, Ukrainian forces claim to be retaking the town of Kreminna, on the road to the city of Luhansk.

The Russian missile blitz against Ukraine continues. Many of the missiles are intercepted, but a few get through. On 14 January, Russian Tu-22m3 bombers launched five Kh-22 stand-off missiles against Ukraine -- the Kh-22 being an elderly and inaccurate weapon with a one-tonne (1.1-ton) warhead. One of them hit an apartment block in the city of Dnipro, all but demolishing it, with at least a dozen killed and many more injured. Videos from the scene recorded the cries for help of people buried in the ruins. A photo showed a little girl praying to a Ukrainian icon picture, asking for divine help.

Nonetheless, international public support for the war against the Russians continues. One Ukrainian posted on Twitter:

Ukrainian Front @front_ukrainian: My city Lviv is Western Ukraine. Where do you support Ukraine from?

Of course, I replied: "Loveland, Colorado, USA." The other responses were from all over -- Sydney, Istanbul, Zurich, San Francisco, Brussels, Vienna, Nuremberg, Melbourne, Vancouver, London, Paris, Houston:

Mary Phillips @mpcsg: From Buckinghamshire, UK. Dad was born in Lviv. Waiting for Victory Day so I can visit.

pikkolo @pikkolo85: @front_ukrainian Hello from Germany! You are a true hero. Stay safe and stay strong. God bless you. Good luck to you and to all the brave Ukrainian defenders. Thank you for defending the free world. #UkraineWillWin #StandWithUkraine #ArmUkraineNow #WeAreAllUkrainians

The scene reminded me of John Lennon's IMAGINE, which has become something of an anthem for the war:

   Imagine there's no countries
   It isn't hard to do
   Nothing to kill or die for
   And no religion, too
   Imagine all the people
   Livin' life in peace

   You may say I'm a dreamer
   But I'm not the only one
   I hope someday you'll join us
   And the world will be as one

Getting back to the ugly realities of war, Turkey -- and it seems Pakistan -- are now shipping elderly M483 155-millimeter cluster munition shells to Ukraine. The M483 variant carries 88 grenades, in the form of little cans that throw out a cloth strip to stabilize them nose-first. The shell carries 64 M42 fragmentation / antipersonnel grenades, and 24 heavier hollow-charge / anti-armor grenades.

Cluster munitions of any sort are troublesome to deminers, since they are hard to find and clean up. They can dangerously linger for years, even decades. They are widely banned for that reason; the USA doesn't like them, but hasn't completely abandoned them. It seems the Turks are sending them in behalf of the USA to keep American hands clean. It also seems that they are a response to the "human wave" attacks by the Russians on the Bakhmut-Soledar line, and that the Ukrainians will only use them when they absolutely have to.

The war drags on, but there's little doubt that it will be won, and it won't take another year. The fall of Putin will lead to more war elsewhere, but we'll have to deal with that as it comes.

* I had a five-headed gooseneck floor lamp in my living room that was ugly, but it was useful. The base was poorly designed and broke. I had a triple-spotlight floor lamp that I could use as a replacement, but I didn't like the uneven lighting -- either not enough light or too much.

I thought of fixing the gooseneck lamp, but in the end I concluded that it would be cheaper to buy a new one. I got onto Amazon.com and examined options, to not feel comfortable with them. I started looking around for lamp alternatives, to eventually find a "Torchlet floor lamp" -- an LED lamp with a long tube shade that could change colors, or generate color patterns. It could be controlled by a smartphone app, or even by Alexa in my Amazon Fire TV Cube. The last item hooked me, since it would be nice to be able to say: "Hey Alexa, Lights!" -- and get lights. It was only $73 USD, so I ordered it.

It came in a few days. Assembly was easy, thanks to an instruction video on the Amazon product page, but then getting it to work was a bit trickier. It had a base controller and a little remote, but other than turning the thing on and off, they were tricky to use. One big problem was that the remote was infrared, and it wasn't easy to get a line of sight to the sensor on the base controller. I decided to try the smartphone app, fearing that I would have a hard learning curve.

I downloaded the recommended "Smart Life" app, by an outfit named "Tuya Smart", from Google Play and installed it. I brought it up, and set up an account name with password. There was a "+" symbol on the app's Home panel that brought up a long list of possible types of devices to control -- after puzzling out which to select, I settled on "String Lights / Bluetooth".

To get the lamp to pair, I had to hold down a button on its base controller for like a ten-count, with the lamp then blinking steadily. The app paired up with the lamp, and also asked me for my wi-fi network and password. I wasn't exactly sure why it needed wi-fi, but I entered them, and got an entry in the app for the lamp. I selected the entry, and immediately had full control over the lamp, allowing to turn it on or off, and select functions:

• One panel selected white light, allowing me to change tint (yellowish to bluish) with a wheel widget, as well as brightness.
  
  
• A second panel selected colors, allowing me to control brightness and color saturation -- varying to pure color at the top, down to white at the bottom.
  
  
• A third panel allowed me to select special modes, such as "Lightshow", "Fire", "Confetti", "Dazzling", "Party", "Christmas Candy", and so on. I tried them out, being puzzled by one called "Cylon". Wot? It shuttled light back and forth along the tube shade -- Oh, I get it now.

There was much more to the app than that, such as timer operation and music beat synchronization, but I didn't need more. I was expecting to have a lot more trouble getting it to work, and was entertained to find out how easy it was.

Of course, having to use the smartphone to control the lamp all the time was impractical, so I then jumped into setting up my Fire TV Cube to do the job. That looked like trouble, but I quickly figured out the app could do it all without having to tinker with the Cube. There was a "Me" menu on the app that led to "Third Party Services"; I selected "Alexa", gave the app my Amazon login and password, and that was that. I was astonished that I could then say: "Alexa, Lights!" -- and the lamp went on.

I got to playing with other commands: "Lights Off!", "Lights Red!", "Lights Blue", "Lights Dim", "Lights Bright", and so on. To no great surprise, Alexa couldn't handle any of the special modes. I found out later that Alexa would end with things like: "Have a nice evening!" I missed what she said one time -- then thought to say: "Alexa, say again!" She did.

Again, it was far easier to get the lamp to work with Alexa than I expected, thanks to the well-designed Smart Life app. I was very curious about Tuya Smart, wondering how the company did its business. Did they get payments from device makers to support their products? Did they operate as a standards organization, to make sure different manufacturers played by the same book? Home automation cannot work well without standards. The Tuya Smart website was not very informative, simply describing itself as an "international company", though it appears it's Chinese.

As it turned out, the Torchlet lamp wasn't bright enough for reading without eyestrain, which led to more tinkering. I first tried to stick the triple-spotlight lamp in a corner where it was out of the way, and then shine one of the spotlights on the white ceiling to get the illumination I needed. That worked better, but still wasn't bright enough. However, I'd just bought a new LED desk lamp, replacing one that left something to be desired; I found I could site the old LED lamp to give me optimum lighting. It was a tidy solution. The spotlight lamp stays in the corner until I can figure out what to do with it, one of these years.

I think I'll buy another Torchlet lamp and set it up in my front window to be a "beacon" to the neighborhood at night. I've long wanted to put up a lightshow in that window, but couldn't find anything that seemed a good fit. I can set the lamp to a mode with the Smart Life app as I like; if I turn off the lamp with the base controller and turn it back on later, it remembers and comes back up in the mode. Anyway, I haven't had this much fun in a while. I stayed up late tinkering with my new toy.

[FRI 13 JAN 23] CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (29)

* CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (29): The rise of TV also led to the rise of the media company. It was not entirely a new thing, newspaper publishers having established empires in earlier decades, but it began to take off in the postwar era. From before World War II, animator Walt Disney (1901:1966) had produced cartoons and animated movies, a number of which became classics. After the war, Disney diversified into TV, and later into theme parks, coupled to mass merchandising.

The 1950s was the era of the triumph of the automobile in America, with the popular slogan of "two cars in every garage". Drive-in restaurants and movies were widespread, with "motels" -- motor hotels -- lining the freeways. From 1956, following the vision of President Eisenhower, the Federal government developed the National Interstate Highway System, linking together the USA with a network of interstate highways. The Federal government had helped promote highway construction in previous decades, but nothing approaching the "interstates".

The highways were built by the states, leveraging off Federal planning and funding; they took decades to finally complete. The Interstate Highway System, like the TVA before it, was a demonstration of Federal government power and capability. Eisenhower was a Progressive Republican, who believed that the government should serve the people. He had no interest in rolling back the New Deal, once writing in a letter to one of his brothers:

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Eisenhower did not live to see their numbers and influence grow, leading to a crisis in the next century. In any case, along with the triumph of the automobile, commercial air transport took off, so to speak, in the postwar era. World War II had done much to establish airports around the work, many of which were partly or fully converted to civilian use after the war. Boeing's 707 jetliner made air travel quiet and fast, with the costs of air flight no longer too much for anyone but the wealthy.

There was another revolution in transport in the 1950s: the introduction of the intermodal cargo container, a metal box with a standard length of 12 meters (40 feet) that could be crammed with freight, then loaded onto a ship, to then be transferred to a train, and then to a truck. In time, "container ships" would grow bigger and bigger, reducing international freight rates dramatically.

There was yet another revolution in the 1950s with the introduction of the digital computer. Development of the first such computers had been driven by the military, with these machines being used, for example, to "crunch numbers" for nuclear weapons design. However, big businesses gradually began to adopt them, mostly for mundane applications such as payroll and accounting. Computers got a lot of public attention, but they didn't have much impact at the time, being big and expensive and so not common. The revolution, however, would be ongoing.

Early in the 1950s digital computers were built with vacuum tubes, but by the end of the decade, vacuum tubes were being displaced by transistors and other solid-state devices, resulting in smaller and more reliable computers -- though even the most powerful computers of the era were far less capable than a cheap 21st-century smartphone. The computer industry was dominated by International Business Machines (IBM), with rivals forced to move into niches. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 12 JAN 23] GIMMICKS & GADGETS

* GIMMICKS & GADGETS: As discussed in an article from ELECTREK.org ("France To Require All Large Parking Lots To Be Covered By Solar Panels" by Jennifer Mossalgue, 8 November 2022) the French government is now heavily investing in renewable energy, in a program to increase the amount of solar energy power generation by a factor of 10, and double the power produced by land-based wind farms.

Accordingly, the government has directed that from July 2023, smaller carparks that have between 80 and 400 spaces will have five years to install solar panels. Carparks with more than 400 spaces will need to comply with the new measure in three years, with at least half the area of a lot covered with solar panels. The mandate targets large parking areas around commercial centers and train stations. Parking lots for trucks carrying heavy goods or parking areas in historic or protected areas are exempt. Projections are that the lots could generate up to 11 gigawatts, the equivalent of 10 nuclear reactors, powering millions of homes. Funding and other details haven't been determined yet.

One of the pioneers in the effort has been Disneyland Paris, which is covering their parking with over 67,000 solar panels. France's national rail service SNCF also plans to install some 190,000 square meters of solar panels in 156 stations throughout the country by 2025 and 1.1 million square meters by 2030. The government also plans to build around 50 additional wind farms like the one offshore Saint-Nazaire by 2050 in France. Measures are in place to accelerate implementation of offshore wind farms to build them in six years, and large solar farms in three years. French President Emmanuel Macron has said that any bill passed would need to guarantee money that ensures local communities directly benefit from the energy shift.

* As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("In-Road Inductive Charging Tests Demonstrate Unlimited EV Range" by Loz Blain, 13 June 2022), electric vehicles (EV) suffer from limited range and long recharging times, making them poorly-suited to long-range trips. One scheme for getting around the problem is to build highways with inductive charging built in, with the road powering the EV as it rolls along. Now such a roll-along charging system has been built and tested, sited at Chiari, outside of Milan, Italy. It consists of a loop of road a bit over a kilometer long with wireless EV charging coils embedded under the surface.

The "Arena Del Futuro" project is a collaborative effort, one of the big players in it being Stellantis -- parent company of Fiat, Chrysler, Dodge, Chrysler, Jeep, Opel, Peugeot, Ram, Maserati and others. The test loop uses the Stellantis Dynamic Wireless Power Transfer (DWTP) technology, which is driven by DC electricity.

Following initial tests, Stellantis says the power transfer efficiency is "comparable to the typical efficiency of fast charging stations." Humans in cars or walking on such roads won't notice the fields, and the fields won't cause them any harm. Of course, such a small-scale demonstration is a long ways from a full-scale deployment on national highways, with the scheme also dependent on the ability to bill drivers for use, and the production of cars that can use it.

* As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("Bone-Inspired Materials Offer Light Weight and Tunable Stiffness" by Nick Lavars, 25 April 2022), researchers have long found inspiration from nature in their work. Now a team of engineers studying the porous microstructures of bone and wood has devised a lightweight, porous material that has promise in surgical implants and airplanes, offering a high-degree of stiffness to resist stress.

The new material design was developed by researchers at Princeton University and Georgia Tech. It features what are known as "spinodal" microstructures -- webs of microscopic holes found in natural materials like bone, animal horns and wood that take on shapes such as columns, diamonds or spheres for optimal performance. The orientation, size and shape of pores within the structures can be fine-tuned to provide stiffness in particular directions, for example, or to control the material's density or weight. Fernando Vasconcelos da Senhora, a graduate student at Georgia Tech and study lead, says: "You have the actual structure and the microstructure working together to get superior performance."

The researchers demonstrated the materials by designing and 3D printing a prototype facial implant out of a photopolymer resin. The pores were shaped like columns and lentil seeds, the implant was stiff enough to endure the forces of chewing, while the holes were also sized to promote bone growth and healing by enabling the flow of body fluids.

The researchers say the approach can be used with a wide variety of materials for many applications. These "architected materials", as the research team calls them, can not only be tuned for general properties, they can also have different properties within zones of the same item.

[WED 11 JAN 23] THERE & BACK (4)

* THERE & BACK (4): On Wednesday, 4 October, I ate breakfast at the Hampton Inn, then hit the road and headed for Ohio. Getting around the Indianapolis Beltway proved to be a bit tricky; I had to stop at a hotel to get my bearings, but from then on I was okay.

The route east took me past Dayton. I got to thinking that I had plenty of time, and so I might just drop into the USAF Museum and take pictures. I was planning on doing it after going to the WINGS OF DAWN airshow, but why wait? I hadn't prepared for the visit and would have to navigate by road signs, but I figured the museum route was well marked.

That was another blunder, what is almost guaranteed to happen to me when I improvise -- all the worse because I'd got confused trying to get to the museum in 2016. The route is in fact well-marked, except for near the museum, with wrong turns taking me in circles through downtown Dayton. I finally got myself straightened out, found the museum, and parked there.

Visiting there still turned out to be the right thing to do. The trick was that I finally figured out how to get my Samsung S21 Ultra camera smartphone to work right. It was supposed to have a very nice night / low-level photography mode, but I hadn't been able to get good results with it. I had brought a mini-tripod along to see if that helped, but it proved clumsy.

After going through the World War II gallery at the museum, I finally figured out what I was doing wrong. The S21 Ultra has image stabilization, which hadn't seemed to work -- but that was because I didn't understand it. I had to stand still with the camera in both hands; the image stabilization could compensate for the low-level jittering while I held it, it just couldn't compensate for the wilder gyrations of one-handed shooting. In all the other galleries, I took what seemed, on my display, to be good low-light pictures.

I also remember that when I visited the air museum in 2016, the aircraft were spotlighted but otherwise not illuminated, giving a cavelike environment that made photography difficult. I wasn't quite sure, but the museum exhibits seemed to be much better illuminated than they had been in the previous trip. As it would turn out, this session was the most productive part of the trip.

Anyway, that done, I got back on I-70 and cruised to Columbus, getting off the beltway in the dark at Dublin -- a suburb of Columbus in the northwest. There was a Hilton Garden Inn just south of the east exit, but I couldn't spot it. I pulled into a parking lot and tried to get my bearings -- to look around and notice a discreet sign for the hotel: "Oh, it's right over there."

I would later talk to the desk clerks and figure out that the zoning in the area precluded large bright signs. The hotel was in an office park area, and the clerks confirmed that they were much more focused on corporate customers than tourists. Anyway, I checked in, and went up to my room -- only to notice that the hotel seemed to be piping in the kind of spacey ambient music I'm partial to. I always play it on an illuminated bluetooth speaker while I'm sleeping, and packed the speaker along on the trip.

I thought: "That's cool, they pipe space music into the hallways." When I got into my bedroom, I realized that somehow the bluetooth speaker had got turned on in my athletic bag. Whatever, I cleaned up and went to bed.

[TUE 10 JAN 23] EMF CRAZY

* EMF CRAZY: As discussed in an article from THEVERGE.com ("How Fears Of Electromagnetic Radiation Spawned A Snake-Oil Industry" by Jordyn Haime, 17 May 2022), there is a clique of people who believe that low-energy electromagnetic fields (EMF) -- from phones, wi-fi hubs, and the like -- causes them physical harm. There's no evidence to support that belief, the output of such devices being low-power and "non-ionizing", meaning it does no damage.

However, the belief persists, and to no surprise there are people selling products to meet the supposed need. The pager-sized stainless-steel "Springlife Polarizer" is a small metal box, with the vendors saying it contains "special minerals and Earth substances" that attract and soak up "specific wavelengths of cosmic radiation." It's advertised being able to block electromagnetic fields, though with no particular explanation of how or why. It costs over $200 USD; a bigger model costs over $350 USD.

David Fancy -- a professor at Brock University's dramatic arts department in Ontario -- is a believer, saying it's the only thing, other than isolation from technology, that relieved the blinding headaches, full-body nerve pain, and brain fog he says he'd been experiencing since 2001, a condition known as "electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS)". Controlled studies of EHS show no link between EMF and the sickness; few believe the sickness is imagined, but nobody knows what really causes it.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to a surge in health misinformation and conspiracy trolling, with sales of snake-oil EHS gadgets growing steadily. Kolina Koltai -- a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington in Seattle who researches misinformation -- says: "There's such an appeal to find something that will cure you of something ... because mainstream and modern medicine have not. You felt like you've either been ignored or dismissed. So [profiteers] are coming in to fill that void."

Products claiming to offer protection from EMF have been around a long time. The introduction of radios, microwave ovens, and cell phones each triggered a new wave of fears about radio-frequency radiation. Kenneth Foster -- a professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania who has been studying radiation's impact on humans since 1976 -- says: "Radiation has characteristics that increase people's sense of risk: you can't see it."

One issue is that some forms of invisible radiation, like X-rays, that really are energetic, ionizing, and hazardous. It's a big jump to then conclude smartphones as dangerous, but it's not too surprising. One of the problems is that some studies conducted in the 1970s and 1980s did suggest a link between non-ionizing EMF and health, which manufacturers of quack gadgets were quick to exploit. None of the studies went anywhere, but the perception of some lurking harm lingered.

The issue was further complicated by a 2013 report from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), an arm of the World Health Organization, that timidly called EMF a "possible carcinogen", which peddlers of quack devices were quick to blow out of proportion. They were already selling "protective" cell phone patches and stickers, the US Federal Trade Commission having already issued a consumer warning about the such products in 2011.

That didn't slow down the quack cures much. Consumers can now spend thousands on devices that supposedly "shield" the body from EMFs: radiation-blocking underwear; silver-infused hats; pendants; and cell phone stickers, which are particular popular even though they aren't cheap. Crystals made from orgonite, a substance based on pseudoscientific "orgone energy" quackery from the 1940s, are popular for their claims to "balance out" energy like EMFs. Research conducted on the products shows them to be useless -- with some worse than useless, containing radioactive materials that actually do generate ionizing radiation.

The product push accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, with strong links to anti-vaccine groups. Anti-vaccine influencers like Joseph Mercola and Robert F. Kennedy JR have pushed narratives about 5G and the danger of EMFs alongside vaccine misinformation, and their books and products are supported by platforms like Amazon.

Several companies that sell EMF protective products have received warnings from the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA), including a company called Basic Reset, whose dietary supplements and medical devices were recalled in 2019 after claiming to address a number of ailments from allergies to pain. The FDA recall notice said that Basic Reset's products had "the potential to be unsafe or ineffective for their particular uses, and could lead to adverse health impacts." The company was then ordered to shut down.

It can be and is argued that there's no harm in experimenting, but that is disingenuous: people end up spending large sums of money for worthless products. Worse, the pursuit of quack cures can sidetrack people from getting the help they need. It's tempting to believe in what is said to be a sure cure instead of having to deal with an affliction that is very hard to nail down.

[MON 09 JAN 23] THE WEEK THAT WAS 01

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: This last week, the USA announced another military aid package for Ukraine, this one worth $2.85 billion USD. It included:

• 50 M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles with 500 TOW anti-tank missiles and 250,000 25-millimeter cartridges.
  
  
• 100 M113 armored personnel carriers. The configuration of the venerable M113 track is highly variable, but specifics were unclear.
  
  
• 55 MRAP armored cars.
  
  
• 138 HMMWV "Hummer" light vehicles. It appears Hummers supplied to Ukraine are generally armored and often armed.
  
  
• 18 155-millimeter Paladin self-propelled howitzers and 18 ammunition support vehicles
  
  
• 70,000 155-millimeter artillery shells -- that's not a lot, by the way.
  
  
• 500 155-millimeter Excalibur guided shells.
  
  
• 1200 155-millimeter shells of remote anti-armor mine (RAAM) system, for deploying mines.
  
  
• 36 105-millimeter towed howitzers and 95,000 105-millimeter shells. The US has no guided 105-millimeter shells -- it's not clear if anyone produces them -- presumably because the shorter-range 105-millimeter gun doesn't really need them.
  
  
• 10,000 120-millimeter mortar shells.
  
  
• GMLRS rockets, quantity unknown.
  
  
• RIM-7 Sea Sparrow surface-to-air missiles.
  
  
• 4,000 Zuni 127-millimeter unguided rockets.
  
  
• About 2,000 anti-tank missiles, presumably Javelins.
  
  
• Sniper rifles, machine guns, and small-arms ammunition.

Among the particularly interesting items were the Sea Sparrow SAMs and Zuni rockets. The Sea Sparrow is generally obsolete in the US inventory, but it is still effective, and large numbers are stockpiled. The Ukrainians will use their Buk SAM launcher vehicles to carry them, presumably using Sea Sparrow box launchers mounted on the vehicles. That might possibly lead over the longer run to use of the much-improved Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile (ESSM), which is a new and more powerful missile with a Sparrow seeker head -- and then to the AMRAAM-ER, which is an ESSM with an AIM-120 AMRAAM active-radar seeker head.

The Zuni rockets are traditionally air-launched, so it appears they will be carried by Ukrainian Sukhoi Su-25 attack fighters, and possibly MiG-29 fighters as well. The Zuni can in principle be fitted with a laser seeker, but that option hasn't been fielded.

The most significant part of the deal was the M2 Bradley IFV. Retired US Army General Mark Hertling, mentioned here in the past, was familiar with the Bradley in combat service, and praises it highly:

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Along with the announcement of the delivery of the Bradleys, French President Macron's announced the transfer of its six-wheeled and highly mobile AMX-10RC anti-tank vehicles, while German Chancellor Scholz agreed to provide a number of their Marder Infantry Fighting Vehicles.

This big addition of weaponry has somewhat overshadowed the combat use of battlefield drones, which remain a mainstay of Ukraine's armed forces. A Ukrainian video showed they are now being used to take prisoners. Russian soldiers call in on the "surrender hotline" to the Ukrainians, who give them a time and a place to assemble, then send a quadcopter drone to walk them, presumably safely, to where they can be taken into custody.

* Back in the USA, the Republicans -- now a majority in the House of Representatives -- managed to elect Kevin McCarthy as the new House Speaker, taking 15 ballots to do it. McCarthy made so many concessions to the extremist House Freedom Caucus that it made him likely the most powerless House Speaker ever. The Freedom Caucus is planning to conduct a series of frivolous investigations and generally make a lot of noise.

The House Democrats under Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries steadfastly voted for Jeffries, but only six Republicans abstained from voting for McCarthy, and they couldn't put swing the vote against him. There was criticism of the Democrats for not cooking up a deal to install a moderate Republican, but it seems there was too little interest from Republicans to make it possible. Jeffries made a splash with his speech after the election, most significantly providing an "alphabet lesson" on Democrat values.

While most of the Freedom Caucus theatrics are unlikely to amount to much, they have threatened to perform a government shutdown if the Biden Administration doesn't make massive changes in its policies. That sounds troublesome, but the Freedom Caucus is not very bright, while the House Dems have plenty of brainpower, and very likely have already thought several moves ahead. Most significantly, the changes in rules the Freedom Caucus forced on McCarthy to ensure their control over him can also be used by the Democrats. McCarthy is in an impossible and unstable position, and may be quickly deposed. There is certainly going to be chaos, and it is unlikely that the Republicans will benefit from it.

* A popular Twitter poster named "Jojo from Jersey" -- an amusing and stereotypically foul-mouthed Jersey girl -- popped a surprise question on her followers:

Jo (@JoJoFromJerz): If we had to choose one celebrity to negotiate peace with aliens, who would it be?

I replied:

Patrick Stewart. He does it all the time.

He was one of the more popular selections, but I think Dolly Parton beat him.

[FRI 06 JAN 23] CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (28)

* CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (28): War between the East and West camps finally broke out in 1950, when North Korea invaded South Korea. North Korean forces drove South Korean and American forces into a corner of South Korea, but were then halted -- with an amphibious landing by American forces sending them into panicked retreat. The Americans and South Koreans, aided by some United Nations forces, advanced up towards North Korea's border with China -- with the Chinese then invading and sending them back into South Korea. The battle lines stabilized, with largely static warfare as the two sides jockeyed for political position, and the war dragging on into 1953.

Although the war was a stalemate in the end, it indicated to the world that Mao Zedong's Red China was a force to be reckoned with. Korea remained divided, with authoritarian governments in both parts. Josef Stalin had died in 1952, leading to a struggle for succession -- and giving Mao the belief that he should be the natural leader of the global Communist revolution.

Dwight Eisenhower (1890:1969) -- a Republican, one of America's top generals during World War II -- had become president in 1952; the protracted and inconclusive war in Korea had left the voters disaffected with Truman and the Democrats. As president, Eisenhower diligently stepped up to the Cold War with the supposedly monolithic Communist Bloc, maintaining a peacetime military establishment unprecedented in American history.

Intensive research was conducted on new weapons, notably ever more capable combat aircraft, and in particular ever more powerful nuclear munitions -- with the hydrogen fusion bomb, first detonated in 1952, providing much more yield than the earlier fission bomb. The US acquired a fleet of long-range bombers to deliver nuclear weapons, and worked to develop long-range missiles to deliver them much more quickly. The Soviet Union paced American weapons development, the result being a nuclear arms race in which both sides eventually accumulated enough weapons to destroy each other many times over.

The arms race disturbed Eisenhower, who despite his military career was a man of peace. He was not happy at the way the generals and admirals drove to build up their forces, while defense industries promoted the production of new weapons -- with the president warning of a "military-industrial complex" that needed to be restrained.

The development of nuclear arsenals was paralleled by the development of nuclear power, with the military having a particular interest in nuclear-powered submarines that could roam the oceans for months without refueling. Indeed, the world became somewhat "atom crazy" for a time, with dreams of exotic technologies such as atomic-powered aircraft that could similarly fly indefinitely -- but were quickly recognized as impractical. More persuasively, there was also a global push to set up nuclear reactors to provide commercial power, with advocates seeing unlimited potential in "our friend the atom", capable of providing electricity that was "too cheap to meter".

As a side effect, the development of long-range missiles led to sending satellites into space, with the Soviets launching the first, "Sputnik 1", in 1957. That led to a "space race" between the superpowers to see which could score the biggest triumphs in space the soonest. Although it was kept quiet, the space race had a hidden driver: a push to develop spy satellites that could keep track of the other side's strategic activities.

Although the USA was on a partial war footing, the economy was booming at the time; Americans had never had it so good. The stereotype family of the era had two cars, a ranch house in the suburbs, and a commitment to consumerism. Corporations became bigger and more powerful. Television, which had been introduced just before World War II, spread after the war to become universal. TV service was provided by a handful of major commercial networks, and supported by advertising -- not a new thing in general, advertising had been around a long time, with broadcast radio being supported by advertising as well. However, TV made advertising more widespread than ever before. Advertising agencies similarly became more prominent, with "Madison Avenue" in New York City become the heart of the industry. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 05 JAN 23] SCIENCE NOTES

* SCIENCE NOTES: As discussed in an article from REUTERS.com ("Sequencing West Africa's Yam Belt For Food Security" by Kazeem Sanni, 9 August 2022), the yam is a staple crop in West Africa, being pounded into paste, ground into flour, boiled or fried, providing sustenance and livelihoods across the region. However, growing conditions across the "yam belt" from Guinea to Cameroon are deteriorating, at the same time as prices of other staples soar. Vendor Adewale Elekun of Ibadan, Nigeria, says farmers are having a difficult time as conditions deteriorate: "Today, the quality of the soil has faded." At the same time, global food prices have been sharply increasing.

Elsewhere in Ibadan, molecular geneticist Dr. Ranjana Bhattacharjee is trying to compensate by developing hardier and more adaptable plants. She is working at the city's International Institute of Tropical Agriculture to complete whole-genome sequencing of around 1,000 yam samples. She says: "If you want to make an improvement in crops, then you have to do genome sequencing to understand the genes of your targeted traits like disease resistance (and) quality."

Yams, bigger than their unrelated North American namesake, symbolize prosperity, wealth and even fertility in West Africa. Battacharjee says that the sequencing could help West African farmers, who grow some 90% of all yams worldwide, improve their yield, with researchers using the extensive set of sequences to come up with improved yam varieties: "That will then ultimately lead to food security."

* As discussed in an article from SCIENCENEWS.org ("Clouds In The Milky Way's Plasma Bubbles Came From The Starry Disk, & Far Beyond" by Lisa Grossman, 18 July 2022), astronomers believe that huge bubbles of plasma billowing out from the center of our Galaxy might contain scraps from all over the Milky Way, and beyond.

These "Fermi bubbles" are giant blobs of plasma, tens of thousands of light-years in extent, growing out of each side of the Galactic disk. When the bubbles were discovered in 2010, astronomers thought they could have been formed by newborn stars -- but now the thinking is that the bubbles could have been blown by a massive, long-ago eruption emitted from the supermassive black hole in the center of the Galaxy.

Astronomers have further discovered clouds of relatively cool gas that seem to move around within the bubbles, high above the starry disk. Astrophysicist Trisha Ashley -- of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland -- says: "We call them high velocity clouds, because we're not very good at naming things."

Astronomers had thought the clouds had been torn from the Milky Way's bright starry disk when the Fermi bubbles formed. That assumption has been used to calculate things like the age of the bubbles, which could provide a clue to their origins. However, when Ashley and her colleagues dug into the matter, they got a surprising answer.

Using new and archived data from several telescopes, they measured the "metal content" -- the abundances of all the elements heavier than helium -- in twelve high velocity clouds found in the Fermi bubbles. If the clouds had come from the starry disk, they should have contents like the Sun and other disk stars. In reality, they found a wide range of metals in the clouds, from less than a fifth of the Sun's to more than the Sun's. Ashley says that means "these clouds have to originate in both the disk of the Milky Way and the halo of the Milky Way." -- the "halo" being the chaotic cloud of gas and dust that surrounds the galaxy and provides it with fuel for new stars. How the clouds got their mixed composition is not clear. Research continues.

* As discussed in an article from SCIENCENEWS.org ("A Newfound, Oddly Slow Pulsar Shouldn't Emit Radio Waves -- Yet It Does" by Liz Kruesi, 6 June 2022), "pulsars" are spinning neutron stars, the superdense fossils of dead stars, that emit very regular pulses of radio waves. As a rule, they emit radio pulses early in their lives, when they are spinning rapidly; in time, they slow down and stop emitting.

However, a newly-discovered pulsar, designated "PSR J0901-4046" has a very slow pulse rate of about once every 76 seconds, which is three times slower than any other pulsar ever found. It's in our own Galaxy, about 1,300 Astrophysicist Manisha Caleb of the University of Sydney in Australia and her colleagues found it in data from the MeerKAT radio telescope outside Carnarvon, South Africa.

Close examination by MeerKAT also revealed the rate at which the pulsar is slowing down, which helps determine the strength of its magnetic field. It turns out the magnetic field is extremely strong, in a class with "magnetars", which are highly magnetized neutron stars that occasionally emit violent bursts of X-rays or other high-energy radiation. That hints that PSR J0901-4046 might be a "quiescent" magnetar, in between fits of high-energy emissions. Caleb says: "We're going to need either X-ray emission or [ultraviolet] observations to confirm whether it is indeed a magnetar or a pulsar." Astronomers are modifying the software used to scan sky observations to see if more very-long-period pulsars can be found.

[WED 04 JAN 23] THERE & BACK (3)

* THERE & BACK (3): On Tuesday, 3 October, I ate the free breakfast at the Hampton Inn. I wanted to get a new pair of sweat pants and there was a Walmart nearby the hotel. I didn't find sweat pants, but I did find some black athletic pants that I liked, so I picked them up. That done, I went east on I-70 to Kansas City, my objective being the Kansas City Zoo. It turned out to be a first-class zoo, and I wish I'd been able to stay longer, particular to take the ski-lift ride over the Africa environment.

It was on leaving the zoo that I made the biggest blunder of the trip. I didn't have any trouble getting back eastbound on I-70; the problem was that I wanted to go to a Fazoli's -- a low-cost Italian-food chain I'm fond of -- east of town, and failed to think that the route to it involved navigating a freeway interchange. I ended up going in circles and getting dangerously disoriented and confused. I did get to the Fazoli's, but it was painful.

I would have been much smarter to have taken the next exit to the east, onto a city boulevard; inspecting the maps later showed me it would have been no difficulty -- straight roads, only one turn and then directly to the Fazoli's. The blunder with the interchange spooked me; it didn't ruin the trip, but it gave me hesitations.

Anyway, I cruised east through Missouri, making a stop at Boonville in the center of the state to fuel up at a Love's truck stop. I did find some nice fleece cargo pants there at a good price, so I picked them up, too. While I was fueling up the car, I was approached by two Latins, a lad and his mother -- probably Mexican, with a somewhat beaten-up old van. They couldn't speak very good English, but I thought they were broke, so I asked: "You need some money?"

That got a very confused response, so I said: "You need some money?!" -- and I gave them a $20 bill. They took it. Apparently they were trying to get to Virginia on no money. The mother was overly thankful, which got annoying -- so I gave her a little origami paper cat, and shooed her off. I carry origami pieces in my kit bag for just such occasions.

I've driven through Missouri a number of times, but never remembered much of it; it's kind of nondescript, largely rural and semi-rural, with farms spacing between deciduous forest, the terrain going up and down, up and down, more built-up, then less. I got to Terre Haute, Indiana, after dark, having to deal in frustration with long strings of tractor-trailer rigs hogging the road. Worse, the LOW TIRE INFLATION light kept going on. I thought I'd told the service people to check the tires, but they didn't.

On reaching the Hampton Inn in Terre Haute, I settled down for the night. I tried on the pants and they seemed too short, despite the fact that they were XLs, and that's what I usually bought. Later I would realize that they were okay, but overall the day was discouraging. I didn't feel like giving up on the trip, but I had to reconsider it.

I was to visit the Cincinnati Zoo the next day -- but on inspecting the map, it meant navigating a complex of downtown freeways, and it looked like trouble. Even though I had bought a ticket online before I left, I decided to forget about it, and go straight to Columbus, Ohio. Actually, the change in plans would turn out to be for the best. I went to bed, thinking: This trip is more bother than it's worth. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[TUE 03 JAN 23] AIR WAR UKRAINE

* AIR WAR UKRAINE: The air war over Ukraine remains somewhat mysterious. An article from THEDRIVE.com ("A MiG-29 Pilot's Inside Account" by Thomas Newdick, 15 December 2022) got an inside view of the air battle from a Ukrainian Air Force (UAF) Mikoyan MiG-29 pilot, identified only by callsign "Juice".

Most of Juice's sorties involve air defense of cities and other targets, but he also performs missions to battlefront areas -- for example, providing "top cover" for Sukhoi Su-25 close-support attack aircraft. Keeping a combat aircraft flying is not easy, all the more so because fighter operations were dispersed to locations around the country to frustrate Russian missile attacks. Juice says that there were no "critical problems" and that spare parts supplied by allies had been a major help: "Sometimes it's even better stuff than we had before because sometimes it could involve some modernized systems, but unfortunately, of course, we still have some losses."

Losses mean a drive to refurbish old aircraft that had long been out of service. More fighters became an urgent issue when the UAF received the US-made "AGM-88 High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM)", designed to home in on adversary radars and other "emitters", and destroy them -- with MiG-29s adapted to launch them. Juice hasn't flown a HARM sortie yet, but he is enthusiastic about the missile:

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He adds that there is nothing complicated about using a HARM, that it is "absolutely not a problem." It's clearly had an impact on the enemy, though it's not absolutely miraculous:

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Still, HARM is effective, with Juice saying that "vatnik" -- pro-Putin -- trolls online are furious about it:

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Juice adds that much more beside HARM is still needed: precision-guided air-to-ground munitions, air-to-air missiles with active radar seekers, and advanced fighter radars. Still, he thinks the UAF has come a long way: "We are trying to do our best with what we have and now it looks much, much better overall."

Juice is similarly pleased with the arrival of more anti-air defenses, but knows they aren't enough:

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Despite the improvements, Russian air power still remains a formidable adversary. The Russians still maintain round-the-clock combat air patrols (CAPs) with fighter jets, which are supported by A-50 Mainstay airborne early warning and Il-20 "Coot-A" signals intelligence (SIGINT) aircraft, along with the Il-22PP "Mute" jammer platform. In addition, the Russian electronic warfare fleet includes jamming helicopters, as well as Su-24MR "Fencer-E" and Su-34 "Fullback" aircraft carrying intelligence-gathering and jamming pods. Juice says:

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Another danger posed by Russian fighters is the very long-range R-37M ("AA-13 Axehead") air-to-air missile, carried by the Su-35S and MiG-31BM "Foxhound-C" This weapon wasn't used in the first months of the war, but appeared during the summer and, in Juice's words, is "fucking dangerous." It wasn't used early in the war and its introduction was an unpleasant surprise, but the UAF adapted:

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One advantage for the UAF is that Russian Air Force pilots, having suffered early in the fight, learned not to take risks. However, the Russian Wagner mercenary group has acquired its own little air force, with the aircraft flown by mercenary pilots -- older men who Juice describes as "crazy", taking suicidal chances. They are often shot down, but can cause a lot of trouble before they are.

Juice believes that the UAF needs precision-guided air-to-ground weapons quickly -- after this article was released, the US committed to sending them -- and then a more modern fighter, plus more modern gunship helicopters. Unfortunately, as Juice observes, there can be no quick solution to those issues.

[MON 02 JAN 23] THE WEEK THAT WAS 53

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: As discussed in an article from MSNBC.com ("John Durham's Failed Investigation Comes With A Hefty Price Tag" by Steve Benen, 27 December 2022), the end of the year means "out with the old, in with the new." One item on the discard pile is an extended government investigation by special counsel John Durham, intended to probe into the investigations of the Trump campaign by the FBI.

Durham's "investigation of the investigation" was fall-out of the Trump campaign's Russia scandal, which led to an investigation by then-special counsel Robert Mueller. Mueller's work revealed that Trump's political operation in 2016 sought, embraced, capitalized on, and lied about Russian assistance -- with Trump then obstructing the investigation.

The Mueller investigation led to charges against 34 individuals and three companies, eight guilty pleas, and one conviction at trial. There was much frustration among Trump's critics that Mueller didn't follow the trail back to Trump himself -- but due to presidential immunity, he couldn't, and never intended to. All he could do was leave connections to Trump dangling in his report, and say the report gave Trump "no exoneration".

Trump, of course, said it exonerated him -- and just as predictably tried to discredit the investigation, with the Justice Department's inspector general conducting a lengthy probe of the Mueller investigation. To no surprise, the IG found nothing wrong. Trump didn't give up, with Bill Barr, Trump's attorney general, selecting US Attorney John Durham in 2019 to investigate, raising him to special counsel in 2020. That allowed Durham to continue the investigation after Trump left office.

Durham managed to bring three people to trial: FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, lawyer Michael Sussman, and a Russia analyst named Igor Danchenko. Clinesmith was accused of altering evidence: he had added a clarifying comment to an email. He was convicted and sentenced to a year's probation. Sussman and Danchenko were accused of lying to Federal agents, with both being found NOT GUILTY on all counts. In the Sussman case, one of the jurors publicly mocked Durham's team for having taken the case to trial. At no time, despite all his efforts, was Durham able to trace the Mueller investigation back to wrongdoing by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or anyone else. The final conclusion was that Durham wanted to use the investigation to promote flimsy conspiracy theories.

Durham has not yet given up his special counsel position, but his investigation has lasted three years -- twice as long as the Mueller investigation -- and cost taxpayers more than $6.5 million USD to date. Nobody knows what happens next, but it is unlikely to be consequential. The history books will say that the Russia scandal was for real, and say little or nothing about John Durham.

* As discussed in an editorial from MSNBC.com ("How Joe Biden Got His Groove Back In 2022" by Michael A. Cohen, 26 December 2022), in early 2022 Joe Biden's presidency seemed to be faltering; he was having difficulties passing his legislative agenda, inflation was on a roll, and his approval ratings were weak. Republicans were confident they would take full control of Congress in the mid-term elections -- not just because of Biden's problems, but because the party in power traditionally falters in the mid-terms.

Biden, characteristically, seemed undisturbed, focusing more intently on the job. When the dust settled from the mid-terms, the Republicans were dismayed: they lost a seat in the Senate, they scored a weak win in the House, and lost ground at the state level. Even before the mid-terms, Biden was moving towards passage of major components of his legislative agenda -- most notably in a major spending package that lowers prescription drug prices, reinforces former President Barack Obama's health care law, and pumps close to $370 billion USD into the fight against climate change. The grumbling against Biden in Democrat ranks has faded greatly, and there is no serious opposition to him running for re-election in 2024.

Why the turnaround? It was due to luck, Republican extremism, and the fact that Joe Biden is a highly experienced and skilled politician. It may not have seemed lucky when the Supreme Court decided in June to throw out 50 years of legal precedent and overturn the Constitutional protection for abortion rights -- but Democrats felt, with good reason, they had been handed a cause to fight for, with the decision driving women voters into Democrat ranks.

It was inevitable that the GOP would be heavily represented by MAGA extremists in the mid-terms, but what they ended up with was a list of losers: Kari Lake, Doug Mastriano, Blake Masters, Mehmet Oz, Don Bolduc, and Herschel Walker. The House Committee investigating the 6 January 2021 Capitol riot, now disbanded, did much to discredit Donald Trump with the American people, with only the hard-core Trump enthusiasts still backing him.

That leaves the Republicans in the difficult position of losing if they embrace MAGA and losing if they don't. MAGA GOP representatives believe they can use their majority in the House to pursue dubious investigations of Biden's son Hunter, perform government shutdowns to cut popular social insurance programs, and hold frivolous impeachment hearings on Democrats up to the president himself. Even if they are able to pursue this agenda -- it's not certain yet that they can -- they will simply discredit themselves and strengthen Biden's hand.

As far as political skills go, Biden has been able to appease, even please liberal Democrats, while neatly maintaining the public perception that he's steering a moderate course. Over the past two years, he has followed through on his pledge to work across the aisle with Republicans. First, there was 2021's infrastructure bill. His legislative agenda seemed to grind to a halt after that, but 2022 brought even more bipartisan achievements on gun control, same-sex marriage, veterans health care, and investments in the US semiconductor industry,

Items like same-sex marriage and gun control do seem like solidly liberal positions, but the trick is that they are broadly supported by the American public: they are now centrist positions. More specifically, Biden reached out to liberal Democrats with the decision in August to forgive tens of thousands of dollars in student debt. He has also aggressively moved to load Federal courts with judges, including the historic appointment of the Supreme Court's first black female justice -- and this fall issued a blanket pardon for thousands of people prosecuted for possessing marijuana.

Republican attempts to smear Biden as an "extremist" are going nowhere, only appealing to people who hate him anyway. Efforts by MAGA judges to derail the president's student debt forgiveness program are doing the GOP no favors with swing voters. The Republicans end up being the ones seen as extremists.

Finally, while Joe Biden defers to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as the hero of Ukraine's struggle against Russian aggression, the Biden Administration has resolutely supplied the Ukrainians and done much to plan the war. Zelenskyy's triumphant visit, dressed in field fatigues, to the White House and Congress was a big win for Biden. In addition, Biden's diplomacy with NATO allies in support of the war has been deft. There is little doubt that Russia will lose the war, it's just a question of when -- and then Biden's stature will grow accordingly. Much can happen before the 2024 elections, but for now the forecasts are a strong wind behind Joe Biden.

* In less significant news, after Elon Musk took over Twitter, he began to bring back trolls who had been banned -- one of them being Andrew Tate, a British kickboxer who is fond of being a nuisance. He decided to troll young Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, saying he owned 33 impressive cars, and would like to email her his estimates of their emissions. He got the reply:

   Yes, please do enlighten me. 
   Email me at:  smalldickenergy@getalife.com

There were loud howls of laughter all over Twitter, all the more so because Thunberg's native tongue is not English -- but it didn't stop there. Tate finally was able to come up with a reply so lame that it doesn't bear repeating -- and was then arrested by Romanian police, along with his brother Tristan, on a sex-trafficking rap. There was commentary on Twitter that he had given himself away with the reply, but the police were already closing in on him, and the exchange with Thunberg had nothing to do with his arrest.

Nonetheless, the sense of karma in operation was strong. That might be said of Musk's bungling at Twitter in general. Social media has long had a troll problem; by inflaming it in such a public way, Musk well may be driving its resolution. Social media is a state of transition, and may look very different a year from now.