Is Life on Earth Premature from a Cosmic Perspective?: Life as we know it first became possible about 30 million years after the Big Bang, when the first stars seeded the cosmos with the necessary elements like carbon and oxygen. Life will end 10 trillion years from now when the last stars fade away and die. Loeb and his colleagues considered the relative likelihood of life between those two boundaries.I am going to tell this to the kids over dinner tonight. My daughter will respond "when are getting me a new mobile phone?" and my son will say "hurry up, you have to drive me to the party." But I try...
The dominant factor proved to be the lifetimes of stars. The higher a star’s mass, the shorter its lifetime. Stars larger than about three times the sun’s mass will expire before life has a chance to evolve.
Conversely, the smallest stars weigh less than 10 percent as much as the Sun. They will glow for 10 trillion years, giving life ample time to emerge on any planets they host. As a result, the probability of life grows over time. In fact, chances of life are 1000 times higher in the distant future than now.
The smallest stars are the red dwarfs, these start at 50% the mass of the Sun, and can be as small as 7.5% the mass of the Sun. A red dwarf with only 10% the mass of the Sun will emit 1/10,000th the amount of energy given off by the Sun. Furthermore, red dwarfs lack radiative zones around their cores. Instead, the convective zone of the star comes right down to the cure. This means that the core of the star is continuously mixed up, and the helium ash is carried away to prevent it from building up. Red dwarf stars use up all their hydrogen, not just the stuff in the core. It’s believed that the smaller red dwarf stars will live for 10 trillion years or more.
The latest report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, incorporating data from 47 states, said the abortion rate for 2013 was 12.5 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44 years. That's half the rate recorded in 1980.It's mildly amusing watching pro-life organisations claiming all the credit for this. While there are several articles around saying that there is no single factor at play, there are certainly good reasons for rejecting the pro-lifers "it's all our great work" claim. Last year, for example, fivethirtyeight had an article arguing strongly that fewer pregnancies - almost certainly related to better access to contraception - is behind the lower abortion rate:
Although it’s impossible to attribute the decline to a single factor, the data shows that better contraception — combined with a bad economy and a falling teen pregnancy rate — is largely responsible. Abortion rates did fall in many of the states with new restrictions, but they also dropped in others, such as New York and Connecticut, where access to abortion is relatively unobstructed. In fact, some of the states with the biggest declines — Hawaii, Nevada and New Mexico — have enacted no new abortion laws in recent years, suggesting that something other than reduced access is spurring the trend.
Elizabeth Ananat, an associate professor of economics at Duke University who studies the economics of fertility, said the data also contradicts the notion that more women are rejecting abortion and choosing to stay pregnant. “If women’s attitudes were really shifting, we should see the birth rate go up,” she says. “Instead, birth rates are falling, too.” (The birth rate reached a record low in 2013, according to the CDC. It fell by 2 percent between 2010 and 2013, and by 9 percent between 2007 and 2013.) According to Ananat and other experts, the decline in abortions is a symptom of another trend: Fewer women are getting pregnant in the first place.With the distinct possibility that Republican changes to the health system will lead to more expensive contraception, and harder access to abortions, who knows what will happen to the rate in future.
What’s behind the declining pregnancy rate is more difficult to pinpoint. One clear factor, said Joerg Dreweke, a spokesman for the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights, is the teenage pregnancy rate, which has been falling steadily since the early 1990s. According to Dreweke, this is partially due to better contraceptive use among teenagers. Other research on teen fertility rates supports this: In a paper published earlier this year, economists Phillip Levine and Melissa Kearney found that other policy changes — such as sex education, whether it was comprehensive or abstinence-only — couldn’t explain the decline. Because the vast majority (82 percent in 2010) of teen pregnancies are unplanned, a reduction in teen pregnancy overall will have an effect on the abortion rate. Since teenagers account for only about 18 percent of abortions, though, their effect is limited.
Eli Rabett
http:/rabett.blogspot.com2016/11/24
Idiot, what makes you think the pie won’t shrink to nothing?
The Republicans tried to take out NSF geoscience sciences last year along with cuts in NOAA and NASA climate sciences, Took a lot of work to hold the cuts in check. There is nothing holding them back this year and they are quite likely to try and shift programs without shifting money or people,And, the other one:
Amused and amazed.2016/11/23I think you don’t understand Donald J Trump.
He has no idea about any subject, other than how great Donald J Trump is. And how Donald J Trump is going to win every time. And how everyone is going to love Donald J Trump.
Climate? Ideas will depends on who he is talking to. If he can see how Donald J Trump can win by supporting a carbon tax, he is for a carbon tax. If he can see how Donald J Trump can win with cap and trade, he would be for cap and trade. If removing regulations like soot emission limits from burning coal is a winning subject, he is for that as well. And for clean air, he is for that at the same time. If green energy technology is the wave of the future, and Donald J Trump can win by promoting it, he is for green energy technology. You can’t agree with or disagree with his views, as they change, sometimes in the middle of a sentence. He will be for or against the Paris agreement, depending on who he is talking to, where he is talking, the phase of the Moon, and probably other factors.
Don’t think his advisers know any better what he is going to say or do. Quoting them is a waste of bytes. Please don’t waste bytes.
As for should NASA be doing climate change research? Other than giving business to letterhead printing companies, I don’t see what possible advantage moving climate change research elsewhere would have.
Or stopping climate change research, for that matter. What we don’t know about can and will hurt us.
Activists Urge Hillary Clinton to Challenge Election Results: Last Thursday, the activists held a conference call with Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and campaign general counsel Marc Elias to make their case, according to a source briefed on the call. The academics presented findings showing that in Wisconsin, Clinton received 7 percent fewer votes in counties that relied on electronic-voting machines compared with counties that used optical scanners and paper ballots. Based on this statistical analysis, Clinton may have been denied as many as 30,000 votes; she lost Wisconsin by 27,000. While it’s important to note the group has not found proof of hacking or manipulation, they are arguing to the campaign that the suspicious pattern merits an independent review — especially in light of the fact that the Obama White House has accused the Russian government of hacking the Democratic National Committee.Even if an audit did not show hacking across enough States to make a difference to Trump getting at least 270, it would be a sensational development if there were any hacking done to favour him.
Still missing the obvious after all these years. What about those of us who simply do not care if the planet is warming up, or cooling down, or going side-ways; we simply do not want to pay more tax. Or incur higher utility bills.
It has always struck me that this is the ultimate cause of so-called climate scepticism. Except few people want to say so. Lord Stern famously argued that if we don’t care about future generations, we won’t care about climate change. If we stop and think about how we treat other people living and breathing today, why imagine that we care about people who are yet to be born? Now this is a positive statement, not a normative statement. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t care about future generations, I’m suggesting that we don’t care about future generations.As is not uncommon with SD, however, by the time you get to the end of an explanation, it can be hard to tell exactly what his position is...
The homosexual bonds between samurai meanwhile, nurtured in the relationships between a wakashū (adolescent boy) apprenticed to an older man, were considered ennobling to both and the foundation of lifelong friendships — and used to bolster existing power relationships, giving young samurai added motivation to lay down their lives for their lord. One of the most
famous examples, later depicted in the kabuki plays of writers such as Tsuruya Namboku IV, was the devotion of the 17-year-old youth Mori Ranmaru (1565-1582) to the brutal warlord Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582). It was so intense that he died alongside his lord — possibly by his own hand.
When wakashudō (the pursuit of young boys) fanned out to the more commercially minded and fun-loving middle class in the Edo Period, the number of male prostitutes soared and young kabuki actors often moonlighted as prostitutes, desired by both men and women.
There is a temptation though to see the sexual attitudes of this period as relaxed and open compared to later repressions of the Meiji Era. But it should not be forgotten that this seeming “liberalism” was operating within highly prescriptive power structures controlled by a patriarchy. Relaxed attitudes to sex and gender did not extend to anything that might have disrupted the social order — women were subservient to their husbands and adultery was a criminal offense
punishable by death (for both men and women).
The oppressive aspect of Edo Period morality is acutely depicted in the bunraku and kabuki plays of Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725). Also, the horrific consequences of adultery have been depicted in classic films, such as Kenji Mizoguchi’s “The Crucified Lovers” (1954), based on a 1715 Chikamatsu’s play.
During this period, so-called pleasure quarters were demarcated as the only acceptable areas for men to relieve sexual frustration and energy with prostitutes before returning to the fold of social conformity. Falling in love with an indentured prostitute often had fatal consequences — the plot of many tragic works including Chikamatsu’s 1720 play “Shinju Ten no Amijima” (“The Love Suicides at Amijima”).
In the name of order, the ruling shogunate watched these quarters closely to ensure they did not exceed certain bounds. The Edo Period saw a long stream of edicts by the shogunate proscribing immoral behavior, including the banning of licentious books and art works
Yes, for those keeping count at home that’s the fourth timeHow the hell does anyone expect this weird President elect to be able to keep things in perspective?
the president-elect took to Twitter in a span of 24 hours to hit out
against a Broadway musical that has received lots of praise for, among
other things, bringing some much-needed diversity to a Broadway stage.
Someone seriously needs to take away Trump’s iPhone or Droid and never let him touch it again. His demand of an apology from the Hamilton creators and actors is rather #headdesk inducing, because there’s no need for it. Trump is going to have to get used to being criticized or this is going to be a long four years for him. If anything, Trump’s thin skin and hyperbolic statements will only enhance the fear from his detractors that he’s some dictator in waiting, looking to crack down on dissent whenever possible.Actually, as it helps remind the world that it's dealing with an emotionally needy nitwit, perhaps it's best that he be allowed to continue to tweet.
And as for cannibalism at sea: this review in The Economist of Philbrick's book indicates he talks in detail about it:In fact, nearly 200 years after the Essex went down, a huge mystery still hangs over the story: Was the sperm whale that attacked the Essex actually acting out of vengeance—and are these great animals even capable of such calculated violence?Not just the Essex
It might seem that way given that the Essex was hardly the only whaleship to be rammed by a sperm whale. Others include the Pusie Hall in 1835, the Lydia and the Two Generals in 1836, the Pocahontas in 1850, the Ann Alexander in 1851, and the Kathleen in 1902 (all except the Pusie Hall and the Pocahontas sank). Another, the Union, went down near the Azores in 1807 after running into a whale in the night. These perilous encounters with sperm whales ended abruptly after the mid-1800s, thanks in part to the discovery of petroleum in Pennsylvania in 1859—a substitute for whale oil—as well as to rising wages, as Derek Thompson explained in The Atlantic. Another factor was that after 1850 most new ships were built not with wood but iron, which even an 80-ton whale can’t splinter. Tellingly, the last ship that sank due to a run-in with a sperm whale, the Kathleen, had been built in 1844, and was therefore made of wood.The mystery of Mocha Dick
However, there might have been other sperm-whale attacks than just these seven—particularly if the legend of Mocha Dick is true. The story, first recorded by newspaper editor Jeremiah Reynolds, tells of a mammoth white whale near Isla Mocha, off the Chilean coast, that was famed for assailing whaleships. (As you probably have guessed, Melville took even more of his inspiration from the Mocha Dick legend than the story of the Essex.) The whale was said to have sunk some 22 whaleships between 1810 and 1830.
With almost voyeuristic minuteness he has found out that when a body is deprived of water, the lips shrink as if amputated, the gums blacken, the nose withers to half its length, and the skin so contracts round the eyes as to prevent blinking. He has discovered that the fat on starving bodies turns to a “translucent gelatinous substance” and that the meat such a body could yield would be of doubtful nutritional value without fat to accompany it. He can tell us too about the psychological effects of starvation, and the descent into “feral” behaviour as evidenced by Auschwitz survivors.On that gruesome note, I'll end.
Update: wow, look at what CNN's reporting about the right wing social media nuttiness of Flynn's son, who works closely with Dad.Colin Powell wasn’t pulling punches.“I spoke at DIA last month,” the former secretary of state wrote
in a hacked email released this summer. “Flynn got fired as head of
DIA. His replacement is a black Marine 3-star. I asked why Flynn got
fired. Abusive with staff, didn’t listen, worked against policy, bad
management, etc. He has been and was right-wing nutty every [sic] since.”
The former general– who GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump considered for his running mate, and who last week delivered a primetime speech to the Republican National Convention– was responding to accusations by the Clinton campaign that Russia was behind a hack of the Democratic National Committee, and a subsequent leak of e-mails, in order to help Trump's candidacy.
Flynn wrote that "the corrupt Democratic machine will do and say anything" to get Clinton elected. "This is a new low," he said, retweeting a message that read: "Not anymore, Jews. Not anymore."
He has since apologized for the retweet, calling it "a mistake."
Not to mention the inflationary potential of Trump’s promised $US550 billion ($735bn) infrastructure binge financed by a huge tax cut.Sarcasm? With small government, libertarian-ish economists, and their fondness for Lafferism, it can be hard to tell...
Data Scientists Chart the Tragic Rise of Selfie Deaths: The team also found that the most common cause of death was falling from a height. This reflects the penchant for people taking selfies at the edge of cliffs, at the top of tall structures, and so on.
Water also accounts for a large number of deaths. And a significant number involve water and heights—things like jumping into the sea from a height and so on.
Interestingly, in India, trains feature significantly as a cause of selfie death. “This trend caters to the belief that posing on or next to train tracks with their best friend is regarded as romantic and a sign of never-ending friendship,” they say.
Another feature is the significant proportion of selfie deaths in the U.S. and Russia caused by weapons. “This might be a consequence of the open gun laws in both the countries,” the team suggests.
Louisiana’s governor is among the most powerful chief executives in the nation, a legacy that dates back to Huey Long’s administration, and under Governor Bobby Jindal’s dictatorship, between 2008 and 2016, the state’s prospects declined with unprecedented severity. After he reduced corporate income taxes and expanded the exemptions granted to oil and gas companies, the state’s revenue tumbled roughly $3 billion. He transferred $1.6 billion from public schools and hospitals to oil companies in the form of new tax incentives, under theAnd yet I see that Louisiana just voted 58% to 38% for Trump!
theory that the presence of oil and a robust petrochemical infrastructure were not incentives enough. (The Louisiana Legislature is not only soaked with oil and gas lobbyists—during a recent session there were seventy for 144 legislators—but many lawmakers themselves
hold industry jobs while serving in office.) Jindal fired 30,000 state employees, furloughed many others, cut education funding by nearly half, and sold off as many state-owned parking lots, farms, and hospitals as he could.
Despite these punishing cuts, he managed over the course of his administration to turn a $900 million budget surplus into a $1.6 billion deficit. National agencies downgraded the state’s
credit rating. The damage was so great that it helped to bring about one of the most unlikely election results in recent American history. Jindal’s successor is John Bel Edwards, a Democrat—the only one to hold statewide office. Edwards is vehemently pro-life and agnostic about climate change, but he is determined to hold the oil and gas industry responsible for funding their share of coastal restoration. He currently enjoys a 62.5 percent approval rating. Almost a year into his first term, however, despite several emergency measures, the state remains in arrears.
The deep story that Hochschild creates for the Tea Party is a parable of the white American Dream. It begins with an image of a long line of people marching across a vast landscape. The Tea Partiers—white, older, Christian, predominantly male, many lacking college degrees—areAll very interesting...
somewhere in the middle of the line. They trudge wearily, but with resolve, up a hill. Ahead, beyond the ridge, lies wealth, success, dignity. Far behind them the line is composed of people of color, women, immigrants, refugees. As pensions are reduced and layoffs absorbed, the line slows, then stalls.
An even greater indignity follows: people begin cutting them in line. Many are those who had long stood behind them—blacks, women, immigrants, even Syrian refugees, all now aided by the federal government. Next an even more astonishing figure jumps ahead of them: a brown pelican, the Louisiana state bird, “fluttering its long, oil-drenched wings.” Thanks to environmental protections, it is granted higher social status than, say, an oil rig worker. The pelican, writes Hochschild,
needs clean fish to eat, clean water to dive in, oil-free marshes, and protection from coastal erosion. That’s why it’s in line ahead of you. But really, it’s just an animal and you’re a human being.Meanwhile the Tea Partiers are made to feel less than human. They find themselves reviled for their Christian morality and the “traditional” values they have been taught to honor from birth. Many speak of “sympathy fatigue,” the sense that every demographic group but theirs receives sympathy from liberals. “People think we’re not good people if we don’t feel sorry for blacks and immigrants and Syrian refugees,” one Tea Partier tells Hochschild. “But I am a good person and I don’t feel sorry for them.”
When Hochschild tells her deep story to some of the people she’s come to know, they greet it rapturously. “You’ve read my mind,” says one. “I live your analogy,” says Mike Schaff. She concludes that they do not vote in their economic interest but in their “emotional self-interest.”
What other choice do they have?
In mid-October I wandered into a Trump field office in Youngstown, Ohio and met Coni Kessler, a kind 75-year-old Youngstown native with penciled-on eyebrows and a Women for Trump button on her Trump 2016 t-shirt. She sat me down in a chair just beside her, and for more than an hour, explained why she detested Hillary Clinton and was ecstatic to vote for Trump this year.
Clinton, she told me, is an atheist who wears an earpiece during debates so billionaire George Soros can feed her talking points. The day Clinton collapsed into the back of her van when she was sick with pneumonia? According to Kessler, the Clintons hired a young actress to run up and give Clinton a hug for a staged photo after the collapse. Kessler also said she’d seen videos of Bill Clinton raping an underage girl but that the video had mysteriously disappeared. She wondered why no one was talking about Bill Clinton’s illegitimate, half-black son. And she said that whenever she talks negatively about Clinton online, “they”—presumably the technology overlords—shut her phone down.
At some point, I stopped Kessler to ask her where she’d gotten all these stories, stories I knew were false Clinton conspiracy theories. Her answer: “It was on my Facebook page.”
When our meal ended, we wandered over to the front bar room. An hour later, people lined up to see Trump and his family exit. (An NBC video would show him saying “we’ll get your taxes down” as he made his way out.) Only one or two people among the dozens clapped. Many of the others were frantically snapping pictures with their smartphones. One man nearby shouted “Thank you, Donald.”* What's irritating about the Trumpkins complaining about the nation wide protests is that they would have to be fooling themselves (well, they already have, but go with me here) if they were to deny that if the shoe was on the other foot - Trump had lost but with 1,000,000 + of the popular vote - the pro-Trump protests would have been full of armed wingnuts in the streets fully primed by Trump's pre-election "the system's rigged" rhetoric. The situation would have been a thousand times scarier.
Jonathan Haidt
... I’m a fan of the political scientist Karen Stenner, who divides the groups on the right into three: The laissez-faire conservatives or libertarians who believe in maximum freedom, including economic freedom and small governance; the Burkean conservatives, who fear chaos, disruption, and disorder — these are many of the conservative intellectuals who have largely opposed Trump.And then there are the authoritarians, who are people who are not necessarily racist but have a strong sense of moral order, and when they perceive that things are coming apart and that there’s a decrease in moral order, they become racist — hostile to alien groups including blacks, gay people, Mexicans, etc. This is the core audience that Trump has spoken to.That’s not to say that most people who voted for him are authoritarians, but I think this is the core group that provides the passion that got him through the primaries...Sean Illing
What you’re describing sounds like an expansion of the culture war. Is it your view that culture wars have subsumed all of our politics and that policies are just props in this broader battle?Jonathan Haidt
Yes, that’s right. There are existential questions at stake, and this election has felt really apocalyptic for both sides. The right thinks the country is crashing into a void and that Trump, while crazy, is our only hope. The left thinks Trump will bring about a fascist coup, a war with China, or a betrayal of our alliances.So there is an apocalyptic feeling here. Sacred values are at stake. There really can be no compromise between these two visions....
Jonathan Haidt
We haven’t talked about social media, but I really believe it’s one of our biggest problems. So long as we are all immersed in a constant stream of unbelievable outrages perpetrated by the other side, I don’t see how we can ever trust each other and work together again.I don’t know what we’re going to do about social media. I’m hopeful that future generations will learn social media responsibility and somehow manage to communicate without demonizing the other side.We have to recognize that we’re in a crisis, and that the left-right divide is probably unbridgeable. And if it is, we’ll have to give up on doing big things in Washington, and do as little as we possibly can at the national level. We’re going to have to return as much as we can to states and localities, and hope that innovative solutions spring from technology or private industry.Polarization is here to stay for many decades, and it’s probably going to get worse, and so the question is: How do we adapt our democracy for life under intense polarization?Sean Illing
There are some who think we’re not quite as polarized as it seems. The idea is that what often appear to be deep divisions are really just products of people living in echo chambers, and that this amplifies differences and obscures commonalities. I’m not terribly persuaded by this, but perhaps it’s worth considering.Jonathan Haidt
There’s certainly a debate among political scientists about this, but I’m a social psychologist, so I’m not looking at people’s views about policy; I’m looking at their views about each other. And if you look at any measures of what people think about people on the other side, those have become vastly more hostile. That’s what concerns me.In the 1960s, surveys asked people how they’d feel if their child married a Republican or an African American or a Jew, and back then some people really didn’t want their kids to marry someone of a different ethnicity, but a different political party wasn’t as big a deal. Now the opposite is true.So I’m quite confident that there is affective polarization or emotional polarization in recent years.
Breitbart News isn’t the only place where anti-Semitism and ZionismAnd more:
go hand in hand. Anti-Semitic attitudes abound in Poland, for example,
even as Poland has a strong diplomatic relationship with Israel.
This duality is a central component of “Trumpism,” said Yael
Sternhell, a Tel Aviv University professor of history and American
studies. Though Trump has flip-flopped on the Middle East, he has
professed an ultra-right view of Israel that would seem to outflank even
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He also has a Jewish
son-in-law, and a daughter who converted to Judaism. At the same time,
many of Trump’s followers spout anti-Semitism.
“As long as Jews are in Israel fighting the ‘good fight’ with the
Arab world as a bastion of American ideals and values in the Middle
East, then they are very useful and admirable allies,” said Sternhell.
“Once they are home demanding a multi-cultural democracy, demanding that
the country accommodate their religion, their belief and their custom
that is a different story.”
Some on the alt-right, the emerging group of racist activists who
support Trump, oppose the close U.S.-Israel relationship as part of a
broader critique of U.S. interventionism abroad. Yet they admire Israel
as a “model for white nationalism and/or Christianism,” according to the
right-wing online encyclopedia Conservapedia. Some also see Jewish
immigration to Israel as helping their cause of a Jew-free white
America.
The coexistence of anti-Semitism and right-Wing Zionism “in Trump’s world
make sense,” said Todd Gitlin, the Columbia University sociologist and
cultural commentator in an email to the Forward.
“Anti-Semitism and right-wing Zionism are varieties of ultra
nationalism, or, to put it more pejoratively (as it deserves to be put)
tribalism. They both presume that the embattled righteous ones need to
bristle at, wall off, and punish the damned outsiders. They hate and
fear cosmopolitan mixtures. They make a fetish of purity. They have the
same soul. They rhyme.”
Trump and Trump’s policies are truly ghastly, but you have to face the fact that a very large number of people actually voted for him. What is more, resentment at “the elite” has morphed into a proud contempt for truth, expertise and knowledge – not unlike Michael Gove’s jibe at “experts” before the Brexit vote. And in the broader context of political rhetoric, the idea that he won’t be as bad as he claimed is more, rather than less, worrying. I thought that the conciliatory speech was the worst thing I had heard all evening. The idea that he could be thanking Clinton for her service to the country (“I mean that very sincerely”) and be speaking of “binding the wounds of division” – when only the day before he’d promised to impeach her and poured salt into the very wounds he was now promising to heal – beggars belief. It has nothing to do with being “gracious” (as the television pundits had it), and everything to do with words not meaning anything. It was precisely what ancient rhetorical and political theorists feared almost more than anything else: that speech might not be true, and the corrosive effect of that on popular power.
So if we have a big job in a Trump (and Brexit) world, it is not simply to limit the damage. It is also to restore the place of knowledge as necessary for the political process, and not as something that merely reeks of privilege – and to revalue the nature of rhetoric, from “Crooked Hillary” to “taking back control”. Politicians may always have lied, but at least the Greeks and Romans worried about that. We have come almost to take it for granted.
The Philippines will ratify a global pact aimed at taming climate change,What's it say about the Republicans that nutty and dangerous Duterte accepts this better than they seem able to?
President Rodrigo Duterte said Monday, reversing his opposition to the
historic United Nations agreement he previously dubbed "crazy".
In announcing the decision to sign up to the Paris Agreement, Duterte said he still
had misgivings but his cabinet members overwhelmingly disagreed with
him.
"After so much debate, the climate change (agreement), I will sign it because it was a unanimous vote except for one or two (in cabinet)," Duterte told reporters.
That's a part of the brain that processes touch, and when Ishiyama tickled the rats, it caused neurons in that region to fire. The rats also seemed to giggle hysterically, emitting rapid-fire, ultrasonic squeaks. Earlier research has shown rats naturally emit those squeaks during frisky social interaction, such as when they are playing with other rats.Actually, given that the research involved electrodes being stuck in their brains, I'm not sure if I should feel sorry for the rats. Now I'm feeling depressed again...
Next, Ishiyama pretend-tickled the rats by moving his hand around the cage in a playful manner. Rather than withdraw, the rats sought more contact. Again, he saw the neurons in the somatosensory cortex firing, even though the rats weren't being touched. This suggested to him that anticipation of tickling could trigger the region of the brain that responds to touch — even without the physical stimulus.
Finally, Ishiyama stimulated the somatosensory cortex directly, by sending an electrical signal directly into the brain. The rats squeaked the same way, suggesting that this region really is the tickling epicenter of a rat's brain.
Nationally, third-party candidates did relatively well in this election. With most of the ballots now counted, Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson gained over 3% of the popular vote, and the Green party’s Jill Stein got 1%. Altogether, candidates who did not represent either of the two main parties got around 4.9% of the popular vote (in 2012, third-party candidates only managed 1.7%, and in 2008, 1.4%).Anyway, I was watching this lengthy clip from Colbert's first post election show, and its clear he is emotionally upset about it all. While there are many laughs to be had (I particularly like God's cameo near the end), watching it made me feel more anxious and depressed in sympathy with Colbert, even if, by confirming that the whole of the country hasn't gone nuts, it shouldn't:
It’s easy to see why people point the finger at third-party votes. In Michigan, where the election was so close that the Associated Press still hasn’t called the result, Trump is ahead by about 12,000 votes. That’s significantly less than the 242,867 votes that went to third-party candidates in Michigan. It’s a similar story elsewhere: third-party candidates won more total votes than the Trump’s margin of victory in Wisconsin, Arizona, North Carolina and Florida. Without those states, Trump would not have won the presidency.)
The story is in fact told better than I ever could by Bruce Bartlett, who worked in the Reagan White House and for George HW Bush, so I’ll just summarise it here. The story starts under Reagan, who provided pressure to withdraw the Fairness Doctrine, which was similar to what keeps UK broadcasters from being partisan. Initially that allowed the rise of talk radio, and then Fox News. Gradually being partisan at Fox meant misinforming its viewers, such that Fox viewers are clearly less well informed than viewers of other news providers. One analysis suggested over half of the facts stated on Fox are untrue: UK readers may well remember them reporting that Birmingham was a no-go area for non-Muslims.
But why is this causal, rather than simply being a mirror on the rightward drift of the Republican base? The first point is that there is clear evidence that watching Fox news is more likely to make you vote Republican. The second is that, like the tabloids in the UK, this propaganda machine can turn on party leaders and keep them from moving left. The third is that it is also a machine for keeping the base angry and fired up and believing that nothing could be worse than voting for a Democrat. It is Fox News that stops Republican voters seeing that they are voting for a demagogue, conceals that he lies openly all the time, incites hatred against other religions and ethnic groups, and makes its viewers believe that Clinton deserves to be locked up. Just as UKIP (and perhaps now the Conservative party) is the political wing of the tabloids, so Trump is a creature of Fox news.
The only sliver of hope is that his promises cannot be kept. He cannot bring millions of jobs back if he triggers a trade war. He cannot build a massive new wall across the entire southern border and get Mexico to pay for it. He cannot deport millions of illegal immigrants, without massive new funding from Congress and major civil unrest. He cannot “destroy ISIS”; his very election will empower it in ways its leaders could not possibly have hoped for. He cannot both cut taxes on the rich, fund a massive new infrastructure program, boost military spending, protect entitlements, and not tip the U.S. into levels of debt even Paul Krugman might blanch at. At some point, a few timid souls in the GOP may mention the concepts of individual liberty or due process or small government or balanced budgets. At some point even his supporters may worry or balk, and his support may fade.Actually, given that you can never tell what a bullshit artist like Trump is really thinking, and that the reality of the difficulty of governing is about to hit him like a bus (I thought he even had a look of worry on his face in his victory speech - his Ritchie Rich son* looked definitely regretful), I fully expect disappointment amongst his supporters to start building very quickly. This is usually the case with politicians who are light on policy, but big on "hope and change". (Yes, OK, Obama pretty much fitted that category, but did manage to be a competent and a good president. But he was, at least, a politician who knew the ropes. There is obviously no real reason to expect that the Hollywood scenario of an accidental president turning out to be great in the role and beloved of the people could happen with this buffoon.)
