MrG's Blog & Notes

* This is an archive of my own online blog and notes, with weekly entries collected by month.

[MON 03 MAY 21] THE WEEK THAT WAS 17

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: On the evening of 28 April, US President Joe Biden addressed Congress, summing up his first 100 days in office. Biden was in good form, outlining his initiatives and promoting his proposal to raise taxes on the wealthy. It was symbolic that, for the first time, an American president had two powerful women sitting behind him, looking over his shoulders: Vice President Kamala Harris on his right, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on his left.

The address was widely viewed, and approved of, on the Left; not so much on the Right. During the 2020 primary season, even Biden's supporters didn't see him as any ball of fire, but now he is widely admired -- except by the Troglodyte Right who find him, as a likeable old white guy, frustratingly difficult to smear. Of course, 100 days amounts to little in a presidential term, and there's so much more to do, some of the more troublesome things being:

• A new Voting Rights Act -- which is almost guaranteed to happen, given the ham-fisted efforts to pass laws restricting voter access in Red states.
  
  
• Cut the filibuster down to size by making it harder to use. There's a lot that can be done to make it harder, and might as well make it as hard as possible.
  
  
• Impose term limits on the Supreme Court. Polls show this to be a popular idea, and much more straightforward than packing the court with additional justices.
  
  
• Figure out some way of putting a leash on Fox News and the other peddlers of Kremlin-flavored subversion.

It was noted that, while Biden mentioned Franklin Roosevelt in the address, he did not mention Barack Obama. What to read into that? Probably nothing. The Biden Administration is heavily populated by veterans of the Obama Administration; it seems more likely that Biden doesn't want to be seen as a tool of Obama. In fact, I suspect the two men often talk to each other, and agree much more often than not.

Oh, and then there's the big issue of bringing Donald Trump to justice. However, Trump's fate is in the hands of Congress, Biden not being in a position to direct action against him. Things are moving along slowly, but they are moving along -- one significant piece of evidence being a raid on Trump henchman Rudy Giuliani's apartment by the authorities. Trump could not have slept well after hearing that news; it was only one step, but it was one step in his direction. A lot of people on Twitter refuse to believe that Trump will ever answer for his crimes, but I find it impossible to believe he won't be. It's not something that could happen right away; until the other shoe drops, we're still stuck in the phony war.

Another sign of the fading away of Trump was the announcement that work on the Trump wall across the southern border was being given up. The funds for the wall had been grabbed from military facilities projects; what's left over will go back to them. Of course, even at its peak, the wall-building was nothing of the scale that Trump had promised in 2016; indeed, only a fraction of the walls built, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) was new, the rest being enhancement of existing barriers. There's long been barriers along the border, there was bipartisan support of them -- but Trump wanted to extend them to places where they simply did not make sense.

* For the moment, the Republicans remain in a Trump frenzy. Utah Senator Mitt Romney, once the GOP's presidential candidate, was heavily booed at a conference for being the only Republican to vote to impeach Trump. It is very difficult to see that the extremist hysteria that has seized the party is sustainable. [ED: On re-reading this in 2025, it's more like it's hard to see the GOP is sustainable.]

Colorado went decisively Blue in 2018, with Democrats in control of the governor's office and the state legislature. The MAGAbots immediately tried to get a recall election going, which would require a petition with 630,000 signatures, a quarter of the election vote. I told a friend: "They'll be lucky if they get half that." They claimed they got 300,000 when they timed out and had to give up -- only about 12% of the vote, and less than a third of those who had voted for the Republican candidate for governor. Recently, the MAGAbots tried again, on protests against lockdown rules, with the effort simply timing out, this time in silence.

What seems to be the case is that only about half the Trump voters were crazy about him; the rest voted for him because they were lazy and found him amusing. They are people who normally don't vote, and only turned out for Trump. The Republican focus on courting the extreme is an inversion of traditional political sense, which focuses on the middle "because that's where the votes are."

As a demonstration of this inverted mindset at work, Iowa Republican Senator Joni Ernst gave a presentation that featured a placard describing "Liberal Fantasy Island", featuring a list of alleged Democrat priorities:

   EXPAND THE COURT
   TAX INCREASE
   DEFUND THE POLICE
   MAKE WASHINGTON DC A STATE
   END THE FILIBUSTER
   GREEN NEW DEAL
   ABOLISH ICE

As Never-Trump conservative Bill Kristol pointed out, the only item in this list that Biden mentioned in his speech was TAX INCREASE, and even then it was conditional. The rest of the list ranged from "some shade of truth" to "no truth at all". Right-wing troll Dinesh D'Souza said: "Ernst hilariously mocks the Democrats for their radical agenda." -- and it was indeed hilarious, but not in the way that D'Souza thought. One Jodi Beggs commented on Twitter: "This is fine, and not completely unhinged." -- and, reflecting on the cheesy placard Ernst used, shopped it a bit:

I had been wondering about the tweets I saw concerning SEX BLIMPS. Although the text was changed, the placard did indeed look like that; I was reminded, if anyone catches the reference, of amateur Geocities websites from 20 years ago, with animated dancing bears and the like. Yes, I started out with a Geocities website.

Anyway, it seemed more like a "Fantasy Liberal Island". As a hint of the departure of Republican voters from reality, there was a number of comments about how indignant people living in trailers were over Biden's proposed hike in the capital gains tax. In contrast, most other Americans are almost effusively enthusiastic about Joe Biden. I suppose it's overdone, but after four years of Trump, getting someone who acts like a human being is a relief.

* I'm always busy at the end of the month, getting things tidied up from the last month, and ready for the new month. One errand I had to was my quarterly master recharge of all my gadgetry. The handful of gadgets I use all the time I recharge once a week, the some that I use occasionally once a month -- but every three months I make sure everything I can think of is recharged. Amazing how many gadgets I've acquired. Oh yeah, I didn't recharge my Logitech wireless keyboard, I forgot that one, I'll have to take care of that.

Another monthly thing is getting uploads to my websites logged. That turned out to be much more troublesome than usual. I always have to check the directories on my website to see if the files tally; I usually just used the Firefox browser to get the directory listings, but this time Firefox was acting balky and crazy. I suspected it was having troubles with a recent update, so I decided to re-install. I checked online, and it seemed like updating wouldn't wipe my bookmarks, so I went ahead.

I was wrong. I lost all my pile of bookmarks, and worse, FTP to my website still wasn't working. I got to wondering if the Windows command-line FTP utility could do directories to a file, and it turns out it can with:

   dir . <filename.txt>

Well DUH, why didn't I do that ten years ago? As far as losing my bookmarks went, experiments showed they were truly gone, so now I am reconstructing them. My real error was not saving my bookmarks to a file before I updated -- which I knew could be done, but never had done. I got to tinkering with Firefox, and found out I could save the bookmarks to an HTML file -- which I could access as a web page to use the links. Double DUH, I should have been doing that ten years ago, too. Overall, I'm better off than I was, but improvements shouldn't have to be so troublesome.

* As discussed in an article from INDEPEDENT.co.uk ("Animatronic Creature Was Built With The Support Of Animal Rights Group PETA" by Anthony Cuthbertson, 16 October 2020), Edge Innovations of Hayward, California -- which develops high-tech products such as animatronics for the video industry, theme parks, and research -- has developed a convincing robot dolphin.

The dolphin has a length of 2.5 meters (8.5 feet), weights 250 kilograms (550 pounds), and has skin made of medical-grade silicon. The pricetag is in the $3 million to $5 million USD range, the intent being to sell it to be used in Hollywood movies and aquatic theme parks in place of living animals. Edge Innovations founder and CEO Walt Conti says: "There are like 3,000 dolphins currently in captivity being used to generate several billions of dollars just for dolphin experiences. And so there's obviously an appetite to love and learn about dolphins."

The work was assisted by animal-rights group PETA. Edge has previously made robot sea creatures for films, such as a robot orca for the movie FREE WILLY, and sees the robot dolphin as leading to other marine animatronics, such great white sharks, or even reptiles that roamed Jurassic-era seas millions of years ago.

[MON 10 MAY 21] THE WEEK THAT WAS 18

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: The big news of last week was a monster dust-up among the Republicans that began when Liz Cheney -- the third most-senior GOP among the House of Representatives -- decided she'd had enough of Trump Mania, and spoke out against it, tweeting:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

As a result, it is likely that Cheney will be booted out of her leadership position. What she will do then is not clear to anyone but herself. It may be interesting. Certainly, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's response in her blog was interesting, dripping with acid:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

The term "non-threatening female" does not describe Pelosi. Anyway, Pelosi's entry into the picture suggests an answer to the puzzle as to why she's been slow to put together a 1-06 Commission. The GOP has been stalling, so why hasn't she just bypassed them and gone forward? It would seem Pelosi saw this coming -- as Speaker, of course she knows what goes on across the aisle in the House -- and is waiting on Cheney. Once the dust settles, it is very plausible that Cheney will drive the 1-06 Commission from the Right side of the aisle, with GOP leadership in a very awkward position to push back against her.

The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson defended Cheney, in his usual style, in a conversation with Bill Maher:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

At a press conference President Joe Biden commented, much more mildly:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

* Trevor Noah's DAILY SHOW ran a video titled: "Shhh -- It's Quiet Time With Joe Biden" -- with slumberland graphics overlaid. What? I turned on the sound, to find it was a compilation of Biden publicly speaking in ... stage whispers. I laughed; Biden does that for emphasis, I've seen it, but never paid it any mind. Beats "Air Horn" Trump.

And then there's Major, one of the Biden's two dogs, who has had trouble adapting to life in the White House, occasionally taking a nip at people. THE ONION reported on the latest trouble he got into: "Major Biden In Trouble Again After Burying Antony Blinken In Rose Garden!"

Incidentally, the mild-mannered Secretary of State Blinken is getting great reviews from our allies, who of course find him a refreshing change from the belligerent Mike Pompeo, and who are relieved not to be treated as enemies any more. There's been talk that the Trump Administration did American foreign relations long-term damage, but that seems overblown. Obviously, our allies welcome a friendly face; as far as disagreements go, we've always had them.

In the meantime, the USA is trying to get vaccinated, the process being undermined by an unfortunately large number of antivaxxers -- all long on hysteria, short on sense. It takes a dysfunctional mind to think that COVID-19 isn't a problem, while a vaccine to deal with it, is. Other people on Twitter are just as annoyed:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

Another ongoing lunacy is the determination of the MAGAbots to prove Trump really won the 2020 election. They've been pushing a recount of the vote in Maricopa County, Arizona -- with one of their efforts being to determine if there is bamboo in the paper used for the ballots. It seems the Chinese use bamboo for wood pulp, and the story is that tens of thousands of ballots were flown in from China ... OK, I'll stop there. One of the tricks of conspirobots is to sucker people into arguing about preposterous ideas, and then talk them in circles indefinitely.

Along closely related lines, Mike Lindell -- the "MyPillow Guy" of the MyPillow Company, and a 100% MAGAbot -- is still hammering on Dominion voting machines, insisting that they cooked the 2020 vote. Dominion has already replied to Lindell and others making such claims by suing them for staggering sums; Lindell, undiscouraged, says he has the goods on Dominion, and "it's over for them." Jeff Timmer, a member of the Lincoln Project, replied:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

Oh yes, and last week included Star Wars Day, which is a nice note to end on: MAY THE 4TH / BE WITH YOU. I passed that around on one of my email lists, suggesting to a relative that it was something of a thing these days to have something cheerful to say -- though conditions are improving.

* As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("World First: Dutch Brewery Burns Iron As A Clean, Recyclable Fuel" by Loz Blain, 04 November 2020), the Swinkels Family Brewers in the Netherlands has become the first business in the world to use powdered iron as a fuel.

It is generally known that some metals -- magnesium and zirconium, for example -- will burn. Iron is well-known to oxidize, rusting when wet, but it will actually burn in powdered form. The end product is still rust, iron oxide, with no other emissions, at least in principle. Better yet, an electrolyzer, using electricity from renewable sources, can separate the rust back into iron and oxygen again. It is, in principle, a highly efficient energy storage scheme.

As a fuel, iron powder's advantages include the fact that iron is cheap and abundant, easy to transport, has a good energy density, and has a high burning temperature of up to 1,800 degrees Celsius (3,272 degrees Fahrenheit). In storage, it doesn't need to be cooled or pressurized; it only needs to be kept dry. Chan Botter -- of the Technical University of Eindhoven in the Netherlands, leader of the student team SOLID, which investigates metal fuels -- says:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

[MON 17 MAY 21] THE WEEK THAT WAS 19

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: The big news of this last week was yet another outbreak of violence between Israelis and Palestinians, with Israelis pounding Gaza, and the Palestinians launching scores of rockets into Israel. It's hard to say much about it, other than we'd rather such things didn't happen -- but they do, and it's hard to think of what to do about them.

Videos of the little Israeli Iron Dome interceptor missiles maneuvering to destroy the rockets were very impressive -- somebody on Twitter said it was like the old MISSILE COMMAND game, but for real. The Palestinians launched rockets in barrages in hopes of overwhelming Iron Dome; the Israelis responded by moving up more batteries. They're working on lasers now, which would be even harder to overwhelm, and are likely to field them before very long.

In the meantime, the Palestinians have been conducting a massive propaganda offensive on Twitter. One tunes it out. Hard-hearted? Everybody uses Twitter for propaganda, it all sounds the same after a while -- and it's easy to guess that quite a bit of it is dishonest, some of it even outright scams. Twitter leaves something to be desired as a medium for for getting the message out.

* Back in the USA, as predicted, Liz Cheney was booted out of her leadership position with the House Republicans. As also could be predicted, she was hardly contrite -- even taking the offensive to go on Fox News to call out the GOP leadership, and telling Fox anchor Bret Baier: "We all have an obligation, and I would say Fox News especially, especially Fox News, has a particular obligation to make sure people know the election wasn't stolen."

It was a fractious interview, with Baier and Cheney talking over each other continuously. Nobody pushes the Cheneys around. A woman on Twitter linked Liz's dad Dick to Darth Vader; I replied with a GIF of Darth Vader saying: YOU HAVE DISAPPOINTED ME FOR THE LAST TIME. The Cheneys are not particularly likeable people, but they command respect. Anyway, I will be most surprised if Liz Cheney doesn't start pushing for a 1-06 Commission in the coming week. She's already dropped hints. We'll see.

* In the meantime, the Troglodyte Right has been sniping at the Biden Administration for "trouble every day" -- the crisis at the southern border, the fighting in Israel, a shortfall in jobs growth, and a spike in inflation, though the last two are likely to be short-lived. In a particular irony, they even throw rocks at Biden for "mishandling" the COVID-19 pandemic. Some people have conveniently short memories.

Biden's first priority right now is to push through his infrastructure program, which will require raising taxes on the wealthy. Congressional GOP leadership has made it clear to Biden that they won't accept any increase in taxes. Speaking for the administration, White House press secretary Jen Psaki shot back: "The President's red lines are inaction, and are anything that would raise taxes on people making less than $400,000 a year."

Biden is not budging on that issue, telling reporters: "We're not going to deprive these executives their second or third home, travel privately by jet. It's not going to affect their standard of living at all. Not a little tiny bit. But I can affect the standard of living that people I grew up with."

Biden's talk of raising taxes on the wealthy goes over well with the public, and of course the taxes are essential to his ambitious plans. However, he's got a bigger agenda -- in effect, to end the Reagan Era and rethink America's economy. Biden told the nation on a prime-time address: "Trickle-down economics has never worked, and it's time to grow the economy from the bottom and the middle out." As David Brooks of THE NEW YORK TIMES wrote:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

Ronald Reagan started out in the White House by saying: "The government is the problem." Reagan was by no means a bad person, and having been elected to the presidency, had the right to conduct an experiment, taking America down the Right path. Unfortunately, that experiment led in the end to Donald Trump, who Reagan himself would have recognized as a crooked loser -- indeed, it can be argued that Trump has driven the tectonic shift more than Biden.

Reagan's experiment failed. It is now up to Biden to take the lessons of bitter experience, and begin a new experiment. Of course, there's the irony that the Right tries to make him out as a wild-eyed radical, when he's nothing of the sort, and his policy ideas are not really extreme or unprecedented.

* The employment shortfall was discussed in an article from THE NEW YORK TIMES ("Unemployment Is High -- Why Are Businesses Struggling to Hire?" by Neil Irwin, 7 May 2021). The article began by suggesting that a continuing hiring shortfall would, of course, bog down the economy over the longer run. Yeah; so why aren't people getting jobs when unemployment is high? There are four competing explanations.

The first is the one favored by the far Right: unemployment benefits are too generous, and so people aren't eager to find jobs. There is some truth to this, with the generous US economic stimulus checks correlated to some disinterest in finding jobs. However, they were at a time when jobs were hard to find.

Arindrajit Dube, an economist at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst who studied the impact of the 2020 stimulus payouts, doesn't buy the "freeloader" hypothesis, noting that US companies have been hiring at record rates -- it's just that the demand for workers is particularly steep right now. Dube says this won't be a problem for long: "Maybe an unemployed person spends several additional days unemployed because of the $300. But if it's a problem, it takes care of itself. It's nothing compared to the broader trajectory of the reopening, which swamps anything on the unemployment insurance front."

Second, people are scared about picking up COVID-19 by getting a job. They may not be so worried about it for themselves, but they may be worried about passing it on to family members who are more vulnerable. One item of evidence in support of this idea: there appears to be correlation between vaccinations and a rise in employment rates.

Indeed, this last week the US Centers For Disease Control issued new guidelines, saying people didn't have to wear masks if they had been vaccinated -- but added a long list of qualifications, suggesting no real practical change in guidelines. States that have been good about pandemic control are continuing on track for the time being, states that aren't are going to shrug and go ahead in any case. The US has seen a dramatic slowdown in the vaccination rate, even though much of the population hasn't been vaccinated. It appears the CDC's announcement was simply an indirect appeal to Americans to get vaccinated.

Along much the same lines, many states are now curtailing jobless benefits, with President Biden effectively endorsing them. It's not very hard to get vaccinated now, while the vaccines are proving highly effective, with an excellent safety record. The simple reality is that the USA won't get back to normal until people get vaccinated, and so they are being encouraged to do so.

Third, and this seems to be a big problem, the pandemic has interfered with schools, day care, and care-giving for elders -- meaning people have had to stay at home to take care of their children or elders. Based on surveys taken in late March, over 8 million Americans had to stay home to provide care, and these numbers are not declining for the moment. As long as schools, day care centers and elder care are still limited, businesses will find it harder to find workers.

Fourth is the question of pay. The sectors that have done well during the pandemic have been on hiring binges. Amazon alone added 500,000 employees in 2020, with a wage floor of $15 USD an hour. Companies like Walmart, Target and home-improvement and grocery chains have been similarly hiring aggressively with wages about at that levels.

Restaurants typically don't offer such money, particularly to tipped employees. They have hiring shortfalls because people are getting better jobs. Dube says: "When certain sectors have disadvantages like not enough tipped earnings or worries about the pandemic, you would expect reduced labor supply to those sectors and greater labor supply to other sectors that have experienced increased demand, like logistics."

There's a clear connection here with the push towards a $15 USD minimum wage. Some businesses, like Amazon, have accepted it. Once it becomes a custom, even without a government mandate, businesses that don't meet it will find it hard to hire help. In any case, the pandemic threw shocks into the US economy -- and though there's every good reason to expect an economic boom this year, we're not back to normal yet, and the new normal may have significant differences from the old.

* As discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("This Powerful Observatory Studying The Formation Of Galaxies Is Getting A Massive, $54 Million Expansion" by Sarah Wild, 7 February 2020), South Africa's MeerKAT radio telescope array went into full operation in 2018, and has since proven a very useful probe of the Universe. It has obtained the most detailed radio image of the center of the Milky Way and discovered giant radiation bubbles within it.

MeerKAT -- the "KAT" stands for "Karoo Array Telescope" -- consists of 64 steerable radio dishes, each standing 20 meters (65 feet) tall and with a dish 13.5 meters (44.3 feet) tall, in an array about 8 kilometers (5 miles) apart. 20 more dishes are now to be added, at a cost of $54 million USD, to be split evenly between the South African government and Germany's Max Planck Society. The new dishes will be improvements on the originals, with diameters raised to 15 meters (49.2 feet). New electronics will be obtained for all of MeerKAT as well.

MeerKAT will eventually become a component of the Square Kilometer Array (SKA), which will be the largest radio telescope in the world. SKA will comprise thousands of dishes across Africa and a million antennas in Australia, and a sum collecting area of 1 square kilometer. The SKA project was formally organized by a treaty among seven countries, and funding is now being arranged. It won't go online until about 2030 at earliest, with the COVID-19 pandemic possibly impacting schedule.

[MON 24 MAY 21] THE WEEK THAT WAS 20

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: A vote on 1-06 Capitol Riot Commission successfully made its way through the House of Representatives. 35 Republicans voted for it, which was good in itself, but they were only a fraction of the GOP in the House. Democrat Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio got up and thanked the Republicans who voted for the bill -- but then lit furiously into the rest: "To the other 90 percent of our friends on the other side of the aisle, HOLY COW! Incoherence! No idea what you're talking about!"

He recalled how the GOP had gone aggressively after Hillary Clinton following the 2012 Benghazi attacks: "BENGHAZI! You guys chased the former Secretary of State all over the country -- spent millions of dollars! We have people scaling the Capitol, hitting the Capitol Police with lead pipes across the head, and we can't get bipartisanship?"

Ryan said the GOP failing to support the commission was a "slap in the face" to America's cops, and concluded: "If we're gonna take on China, if we're gonna rebuild the country, if we're gonna reverse climate change, we need two political parties in this country that are both living in reality -- and you ain't one of them!"

Now the bill goes to the Senate, where the GOP seems strongly inclined to shoot it down. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that if it was, the Democrats would put together an investigation based on existing committees, presumably with sympathetic Republicans prominently involved. It is not easy to know if Pelosi ever really thought the 1-06 Commission would get through the Senate, or if she was just calling out the Republicans before moving on anyway. What happens next is not clear.

* In related news, comments from one Matt Shuham, writing on TPM.com, discussed how Jacob Chansley -- the infamous "QAnon Shaman", caught on video in the Capitol riot -- suggested to the court that, maybe, Donald Trump deserved some of the blame for what Chansley had done. The court, not surprisingly, did not buy that. Harry Litman, a former US attorney and deputy assistant attorney general, said: "It doesn't matter if they were answering [Trump's] call in terms of their own guilt or innocence. The law doesn't recognize it as an excuse. Whatever brought them there, whatever they were spurred on to do, social media postings or whatever, they're equally guilty under the Federal statutes."

However, Chansley's not the only one who's made that argument -- and a number of lawyers, including some defending Capitol rioters, said that though it wouldn't get the defendants off the hook, they could get a lighter sentence out of it. With over 400, going on 500, people facing Federal charges, the prosecutors will be inclined to go easy on most of the defendants, so they can focus on real troublemakers. Harry Sandick, a Former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, said:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

Chansley's attorney, Albert Watkins, said his client had Asperger's syndrome, adding that Chansley's mental state, and the impact of Trump's "propaganda" efforts, would play a role in his case:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

Commentary on Twitter could not agree on whether Watkins is incompetent or brilliant. One particularly remorseful defendant, Anthony Antonio, was similarly described by his attorney, Joe Hurley, as suffering from "Foxitis". Hurley said that, for months, stuck home due to the pandemic, Antonio watched endless hours of the cable television station, and eventually came to accept Trump's bogus claims of a stolen election. Hurley added that the "Foxitis" claim wasn't a defense in itself, but instead crucial context, an explanation of why his client marched to the Capitol in the first place:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

Sensible people would have to think: "There's definitely some truth in that." However, relative to GOP claims that the rioters were merely "tourists", a comment on Twitter put that in perspective:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

* President Joe Biden has continued to push his big infrastructure plan. According to REUTERS.com, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has thrown her considerable influence behind the plan, telling the US Chamber of Commerce in an online conference that the plan, despite its tax hikes, will improve the profitability and competitiveness of American corporations.

Yellen said that the "American Jobs Plan" infrastructure investments would have a direct payoff to the American people, create jobs, and simply "return the corporate tax rate toward historical norms." She said:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

Biden's proposal ranges beyond traditional infrastructure such as roads and bridges, with investments in broadband networks, research and development, modernized schools, and expanded child care to bring more women into the workforce. Yellen said that the package will "make up for lost time" in investing in renewable energy technologies and protecting against cyber threats, concluding:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

The Chamber of Commerce, to no surprise, is unenthusiastic about raising the corporate tax rate, which was cut to 21% from 35% by the Trump Administration and Republicans in Congress in 2017. Biden is proposing to raise the rate to 28%, while negotiating a global minimum corporate tax with major economies.

Yellen also commented that Biden's related American Families Plan will enhance education from early childhood to community college to help build a competitive workforce and fight childhood poverty. The plan would be financed by increases in tax rates for the wealthiest Americans, and higher capital gains taxes for those earning more than $1 million USD a year.

Yellen said that the Biden Administration wants to help American industry by fighting for a level playing field, and will "confront adversaries who take advantage by ignoring or abusing rules and norms of behavior".

Chamber CEO Suzanne Clark replied to Yellen's remarks that that tax hikes would raise barriers to economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. "The data and the evidence are clear, the proposed tax increases would greatly disadvantage US businesses and harm American workers." That's disingenuous: Biden's taxes are lower than those imposed by the Obama Administration, and corporate profits were sky-high during the second Obama term. More disingenuous is the Chamber's belief that, to get funding, the administration should rely on increasing fuel taxes, and other user fees. In short: "Tax consumers, not us." Color me not surprised.

Incidentally, a cease-fire was called in the fighting in Israel this last week, after 11 days of violence. Joe Biden praised the cease-fire, as could be expected, but it was probably according to plan. The Israelis knew they would be under pressure to stop shooting from the moment they started, and kept it up until they accomplished what they wanted to accomplish. Biden had to be relieved in any case: he's got things to get done, and trying to keep things straight in Israel amounts to an impossible distraction.

* I got my second Moderna vaccine shot last Tuesday. I drove out to east of the freeway, at the county fairgrounds, and got shot up. There was a Wendy's nearby, so I experimentally picked up a Wendy's burger. Bad decision.

My arm got somewhat sore, but it started to fade about six hours later. I thought I would be out of the woods by the time I went to bed, but I had an uncomfortable night, and woke up feeling crummy. It's always hard to pick out cause-&-effect with health issues, and I wasn't sure if it was really the vaccine that was the problem or the Wendy's burger, which clearly didn't agree with me. In any case, I didn't feel worse than I would with a case of indigestion.

I cleaned up, exercised, felt a lot better. I felt somewhat run-down later in the day, but the uncomfortable night might have had something to do with that. My arm was a bit sore the next morning, but it faded out during the day. Overall, the vaccination was no huge bother. Two weeks and I'm home free.

That leaves the question of masking. Obviously, I'll have to stop wearing a mask sooner or later, but when? Not just yet. One Derek Thompson, writing in THE ATLANTIC, did a study of what happened when Texas Governor Greg Abbott lifted the mask mandate for his state. There were expectations of disaster, but things did not get worse. Why?

MAGAbots of course said it was because masks don't work, but that's nonsense: studies elsewhere showed they demonstrably work. A more plausible explanation is that good weather and vaccination kept cases down -- but Thompson believed the real reason was because Abbott's declaration did nothing. People who had been wearing masks kept on wearing them, those who weren't, had no masks to take off.

The simple reality is that we can't be waiting on the antivaxxers to get back to our normal lives, since there's no way to coerce them to get vaccinated, and no way of knowing when they will. Once the supermarket staff stops wearing masks, so will I. When people stop wearing masks, it might actually help waverers get vaccinated, since refusing to wear a mask won't be a public statement any more, and so neither will be refusing to vaccinate.

The state of Ohio decided to promote vaccination by offering five million-dollar lottery prizes to those who got vaccinated, with the money provide by Federal COVID relief funds. It was surprisingly effective, with a big jump in vaccinations. There was some exasperation on Twitter that people needed to be bribed to do the sensible thing, but I was casual on the matter: "These people are wishy-washy. They think the pandemic isn't dangerous -- the media is lying when it says it is -- but vaccines are dangerous -- the media is lying when it says they're not. They can be easily swayed by baubles and such." [ED: Not always, it seems, since the incentives didn't get them to vaccinate in any numbers.]

* As discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Lab-Evolved Algae Could Protect Coral Reefs" by Warren Cornwall, 13 May 20) corals have a symbiotic relationship with algae. If seas get too hot, the corals may eject their algae and then die, resulting in "bleaching". Vast stretches of Australia's Great Barrier Reef have bleached, with fears that the entire reef may not survive. In an exercise in "assisted evolution", researchers have grown algae in a lab that can allow corals to tolerate warmer waters and so reduce coral bleaching.

Algae live inside the cells of coral polyps that build coral reefs. The algae, known as "zooxanthellae", use coral waste products to help photosynthesize food, while in turn nourishing the coral host. In a heat wave, coral polyps eject the algae from their bodies -- possibly due to tissue-damaging molecules released by the overheated algae. Without their algae, the corals turn white, and may starve to death.

Coral geneticist Madeleine van Oppen decided to obtain algae strains that reduced the bleaching response. Van Oppen -- a leading advocate of "assisted evolution" at the University of Melbourne -- and her team focused on a common coral alga, Cladocopium goreaui. Starting with clones of a single copy of the alga to make sure they were genetically identical, they raised more than a hundred generations over four years in 31 degrees Celsius (89 degrees Fahrenheit) water, comparable to a heat wave on the Great Barrier Reef.

That done, Patrick Buerger -- a postdoc researcher on the team -- squirted ten different strains of the hot-water algae into separate vials containing coral larvae. The larvae agreeably absorbed the algae into their cells. He did the same thing to algae raised in more typical 27C (81F) water, then stuck the larvae / algae into 31C water for a week. Some of the combinations didn't stop the bleaching, but three of the algae strains did so.

There were genetic clues as to why some algae worked out better than others. In one strain of the bleach-resistant algae, genes linked to converting carbon into sugars became more active after the hot water exposure, while genes related to photosynthesis faded in influence. Van Oppen suggests that the decrease in photosynthesis protected the coral from toxic byproducts known as "reactive oxygen species" that can surge during a heat wave, while the carbon activity helped keep the coral fed.

The results are promising, but not conclusive. Will the adapted algae actually hook up with wild coral polyps? Will the adapted algae lose their new traits in some number of generations? Much more needs to be learned.

[MON 31 MAY 21] THE WEEK THAT WAS 21

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: The exchanges of fire between Israelis and Palestinians early this month have died down. As discussed in an article from REUTERS.com ("Israel's Gaza Challenge: Stopping Metal Tubes Turning Into Rockets" by Jonathan Saul, John Irish, & Arshad Mohammed Parisa Hafezi, 23 May 2012), during the shooting, the Palestinian Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other militant groups fired roughly 4,360 rockets from Gaza during the conflict. About 680 fell short into the Gaza Strip, while Israel's Iron Dome interceptors shot down about 90%. Many of those that got through the Iron Dome shield fell more or less harmlessly into open areas, but about 60 or 70 hit population centers.

Rockets have long been used by Palestinian militant groups. Before Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, its Gaza settlements were often hit by short-range mortar and rocket fire from nearby Palestinian towns. The Palestinians also relied on gunmen and suicide bombers, but from 2003, the Israelis started walling off Palestinian areas, and so rockets became increasing important.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad smuggled in factory-made missiles via the Egyptian Sinai until the 2013 coup that overthrew Islamist Mohammed Mursi, Egypt's first democratically-elected president. The new government under Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Cairo largely shut down that infiltration route by destroying tunnels into Gaza. Palestinian militant groups then began to build their own rockets locally, leveraging off Iranian advice.

The Palestinians now have rockets with ranges of up to 200 kilometers (125 miles), and with warheads with weights ranging up to hundreds of kilograms. It is believed that there are at least three underground factories in Gaza, churning out rockets. A senior European official, speaking anonymously, said of the latest round of fighting: "We were extremely surprised by Hamas' capacities this time around. They had long-distance rockets they didn't have before. That is all down to Iran."

Daniel Benjamin, a former US State Department coordinator for counterterrorism, said of the rockets: "They're extremely simple to fabricate and they use metal tubing, metal pipes. They often, believe it or not, will use detritus from Israeli missiles." They're very cheap to make, and funding their production is not really a problem, militant groups being able to siphon funds off of aid money -- and also obtaining revenue from dozens of businesses they control across the Middle East.

The Israelis inflicted considerable damage on Gaza during the recent fight, and funds are pouring in for reconstruction. The US has sent aid, with President Joe Biden saying that it was being done "in a manner that does not permit Hamas to simply restock its military arsenal." However, without intrusive monitoring, there's very little way of determining where the money goes once it gets into Palestinian hands -- and donors have not yet got to the point of threatening to cut off funds if observers are not allowed in.

* On 23 May, a Ryanair Boeing 737 en route from Athens to Vilnius -- in Lithuania was forced to land in Minsk by a bomb threat and a Belarusian fighter jet. There, Belarusian journalist Raman Pratasevich, who had organized protests against the government, was snatched off the plane and thrown behind bars. International condemnation fell immediately on Belarusian dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka. More practically, most airlines cut their flights to Belarus, and Western governments slammed sanctions on Belarus. Nonetheless, Pratasevich remains in jail.

* On Friday, the Senate conducted a vote on whether to approve a commission to investigate the 6 January Capitol riot. It didn't get the 60 votes needed for approval, which was no surprise to anyone -- certainly not to Democratic leadership, and may have been welcome -- now they don't have to humor the Republicans any more, and can set up a select committee to do the job without interference. There were comments on Twitter, suggesting that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had been extraordinarily agreeable in making concessions to the GOP over the commission, for the simple reason that she knew they would vote it down in the end. The tale of Charlie Brown, Lucy, and the football has not been lost on the Democrats.

The Republicans didn't stop the game, they just dealt themselves out of it; the game goes on without their interference. The committee may well move faster than a commission could, wrapping things up in a report in three to six months, then passing it on to the Department of Justice for action. I would expect that the committee will be set up quickly, though "quickly" doesn't mean the same thing to Congress that it does to most people. Legislatures are like that.

I also expect that the committee will be bipartisan, including Republicans who voted YES on the commission. Those who voted NO will not be able to complain about being excluded -- again, they dealt themselves out of the game.

* Come Tuesday, it will have been two weeks since my second Moderna vaccine shot, and I should be in as good shape, pandemic-wise, as I'm going to get. Nothing much has changed otherwise; I'm still masking and social distancing for the moment. I was pleased to find out that Colorado, along with a number of other states, is conducting a vaccine lottery through June, giving me a chance to win a million dollars. OK, that's a fun idea, but I'm not going to give it much more thought. If I win, great, but the odds are it won't.

America's transition back to normalcy is, unsurprisingly, complicated. On 27 May, while Idaho Governor Brad Little was out of state, conferring with fellow Republican governors, Lieutenant Governor Janice McGeachin issued an executive order repealing all state mask mandates, telling the people of Idaho: "You don't need the government to tell you what to do."

Little returned the next day and rescinded the order, calling it "an irresponsible, self-serving political stunt." McGeachin shot back that Little "chose to revoke your personal freedoms."

I very much doubt that COVIDiocy is a winning strategy over the longer run. However, it remains alive and well on social media. AP reported that French social media influencers were approached by a mysterious ad agency named Fazze, out of London, to perform a smear campaign against the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, implying it was dangerous. French YouTuber Leo Grasset was one of those approached; he rejected the offer, saying: "I can't work for a client that won't give its name and who asks me to hide the partnership." -- and went to the media, telling AP: "Too many red flags."

French Health Minister Olivier Veran commented: "It's pathetic, it's dangerous, it's irresponsible, and it doesn't work." There was no ad agency named Fazze in London. Such leads as could be obtained hinted at connections to Russia. Obviously, there are people who are COVIDiots because they're dimwits, but also obviously, there are multiple organized and funded campaigns to promote it. It would be very interesting to find out exactly WHO is driving these campaigns, and WHY.

* The Eastern USA is now enduring a plague of 17-year cicadas. CNN Congressional correspondent Manu Raju freaked out on camera when one crawled down his collar; it was an undignified, but forgiveable performance. Now cicada recipes are appearing here and there -- cicada tacos, chocolate-covered tacos, and so on. We only rarely see (actually more hear) cicadas in Northeast Colorado. I think I might be willing to try the tacos; not so sure about the chocolate-covered cicadas.

* As discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Giant Virus Genomes Discovered Lurking In DNA Of Common Algae" by Elizabeth Pennisi, 18 November 2020), in 2003, researchers discovered viruses that were so big they could be seen in conventional optical microscopes. "Megaloviruses" were a great surprise, but since that time, have proven to be common. In a new surprise, researchers have found entire giant virus genomes embedded in the genomes of several common algae.

Viruses, by definition, are "obligate parasites", having to infect a host cell to reproduce. Early in 2020, researchers were puzzled to find out that megaloviruses contained genes related to cellular metabolism. What were they doing there? At Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, microbiologist Frank Aylward and his postdoc Mohammad Moniruzzaman decided to probe further by performing a dragnet search for megalovirus DNA in other genomes. They found, as Aylward says, that viral matches "kept popping up in algal genomes." They then zeroed in on the genomes of a group of algae known as "chlorophytes" -- to find that parts of megalovirus genomes were embedded in the DNA of a dozen species. Two of the algae actually possessed complete megalovirus genomes, in one of the two making up 10% of the algal genome. It appears that some of the incorporations are millions of years old.

Why is this so? That's not clear. To make matters even trickier, the viral DNA present in algae can even include genes hijacked from other algae. Andrew Roger, an evolutionary biologist at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, suggests that megaloviruses amount to a way to transfer genes between algal species. That allows the host genome to take on new functions that improve the alga's ability to survive, and may have shaped the group's diversity and distribution.

Cedric Feschotte, a genome biologist at Cornell University, comments that "The sheer amount of DNA and the diversity of genes contributed by these viruses to their hosts is staggering," adding that such a "big injection of genetic material" could influence everything from the host's metabolism to its survival. Might it be a sort of symbiosis, in which the megalovirus supercharges its host?