I grew up in Oak Ridge TN, the “atomic city.” It was where the uranium was enriched for the Hiroshima bomb. After the war, uranium enrichment found peaceful application in nuclear power plants. Many of the kids I knew growing up had dads who worked at one of the plants–X-10, Y-12, K-25–that researched and developed uranium enrichment and power plant design.After initial enthusiasm for power that would be “too cheap to meter,” nuclear power plants eventually fell on hard times. The plants were expensive and perceived as terrorist magnets. In the wake of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, they fell out of fashion.With growing concerns about global warming and decarbonization, nuclear power is again finding favor. Bill Gates is crowing about a next-gen

In her book “The March of Folly,” Barbara Tuchman uses the myth of Laocoön as her first example of folly. The Trojans ignored Laocoön’s warning not to admit the Trojan horse. That didn’t end well for the Trojans. Ignoring Laocoön was folly.In his recent substack essay, The Coming Alliance Between Billionaires, Tech Giants, and MAGA-Ideologues, Vindman is a modern Laocoön, warning us of the WhatsApp group “Off Leash.” Created and managed by Blackwater founder Erik Prince, Off Leash is ca. 400 individuals in government and tech, who with a wider network of right-wing thinkers and pundits are conspiring against the “Biden Regime,” “globalists,” and liberal democracy as a whole. Vindman paints a frightening picture:“According to [Ken Silverstein, writing

Russ Vought is a Trump loyalist who believes we live in a “post-Constitutional” nation:““We are living in a post-Constitutional time,” Vought wrote in a seminal 2022 essay, which argued that the left has corrupted the nation’s laws and institutions. Last week, after a jury convicted Trump of falsifying business records, Vought tweeted:

“Do not tell me that we are living under the Constitution.”‘Post-Constitutional’ sounds suspiciously similar to the post-Tsarist vision of the Bolsheviks in 1917: forget the past, ignore the evidence of your eyes and ears, and let the ends justify the means. That didn’t end well for Russia, and I don’t think we should be turning to Lenin and Stalin for models of political change.WRT immigration and the Constitution,

The Biden Administration executive order setting a numerical threshold to shut down asylum is a performative exercise in futility. It is also cruel.“This “asylum shutdown” will deny, in most cases, the right to seek asylum for migrants apprehended on the U.S. side of the border with Mexico. It goes into effect at 12:01 AM on June 5, and will remain in effect until two weeks after Border Patrol’s weekly average of migrant apprehensions drops below 1,500 per day. That hasn’t happened since July 2020, in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic; in fact, 58 percent of all months this century (172 of 296) have seen daily averages above 1,500.“Even then, the “asylum shutdown” would resume should the daily average again exceed 2,500 per day. It is over 3,500

One of the major considerations for us in where to settle when we moved to New England was being near high end health care. We lived for 40 years in St. Louis, which has multiple tertiary/quaternary care hospitals, including two academic health care centers. On the other hand, I watched as my parents, who lived for 20 years in rural upstate New York dealt with community hospitals, and when my mom was treated for multiple myeloma, she traveled four hours to Dana Farber in Boston.While we are only about an hour from Boston, there are several hospitals here in Rhode Island, with physician groups affiliated with Brown University. But the façade of healthcare security is starting to crumble. Roger Williams and Fatima hospitals have been hemorrhaging money

Another stupid climate change denialist troll trick is to point out that volcanos also emit carbon dioxide and therefore volcanos, not human activity, are the cause of the current climate change crisis. While vulcanism has shaped the climate during earth’s history, it is not a significant contributor today. Human activity-associated CO2 generation dwarfs volcanos. Again, Google is your friend:“Volcanic eruptions are often discussed in the context of climate change because they release CO2 and other gases into our atmosphere. However, the impact of human activities on the carbon cycle far exceeds that of all the world’s volcanoes combined, by more than 100 times.“To put it in perspective, while volcanic eruptions do contribute to an increase in

A favorite canard of climate change denialist trolls is to trivialize the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; how could something that is only 0.04% of the atmosphere drive global warming? Well, Google is your friend:“About 99 percent of the atmosphere is made of oxygen and nitrogen, which cannot absorb the infrared radiation the Earth emits. Of the remaining 1 percent, the main molecules that can absorb infrared radiation are CO2 and water vapor, because their atoms are able to vibrate in just the right way to absorb the energy that the Earth gives off. After these gases absorb the energy, they emit half of it back to Earth and half of it into space, trapping some of the heat within the atmosphere. This trapping of heat is what we call the

In a rebuke to the standard economic model that demand drives supply, housing prices in the US these days continue to rise. How much of this is due to local regulation vs cost of new home construction is above my pay grade. But the claim is that 3D printed homes can mitigate shortages in affordable new home construction:“Dozens of 3D-printed homes have been built across the world – to house a family in the US state of Virginia or members of an impoverished community in rural Mexico. The world’s largest 3D-printed neighborhood is currently under construction outside of Austin, Texas.“The technology could be especially handy in a place like the US state of Maine, where approximately 80,000 new homes will be needed by 2030 to address a shortage, according

When I started attending departmental faculty meetings in 1987, there was an emeritus faculty, Harold Katzman, who went to most of the meetings. He rarely said anything, but he did make the effort to show up, perhaps out of personal loyalty. Dr. Katzman was the first graduate student of our department’s founding chair, Dr. Edward Doisy. After he graduated in 1928, Dr. Doisy hired him as a faculty.Shortly before Dr. Katzman died, my then-chairman, Dr. Sly, visited him in the hospital. They got to talking about the early days in the department, and Dr. Katzman recalled a time early in the Great Depression when he was summoned to Dr. Doisy’s office. Doisy told him that there was no money to pay faculty salaries that year.Dr. Sly: “How did you feel about

We’re seriously considering a hybrid for our next car. One species of the hybrid genus is the “plug-in hybrid,” which seemed appealing to me, both from the standpoint of gas economy and to reduce our carbon footprint. Caveat emptor:“In one study from the ICCT published in 2022, researchers examined real-world driving habits of people in plug-in hybrids. While the method used to determine official emissions values estimated that drivers use electricity to power vehicles 70% to 85% of the time, the real-world driving data suggested that vehicle owners actually used electric mode for 45% to 49% of their driving. And if vehicles were company-provided cars, the average was only 11% to 15%.“The difference between reality and estimates can be a problem for

If you or your loved one had successful brain surgery, you can probably thank my colleague, Dr. Richard Bucholz, Professor of Neurosurgery at Saint Louis University School of Medicine. Dr. Bucholz pioneered and invented the image-guided surgery navigational system marketed by Medtronic as the “Stealth Station.” It is standard equipment in nearly every neurosurgical suite in the world.When Dr. Bucholz was first trained in intracranial surgery, the positioning of surgical instruments in the skull was done by approximation, a word that no surgical patient wants to hear. Dr. Bucholz decided it was time to exploit the rapidly advancing laptop computers to design a kind of GPS for real-time intracranial instrument placement. His initial strategy was to

Kevin Drum has a post up showing that EV sales have plateaued recently in the US. It’s not clear to me whether that’s all EVs or just Teslas, but since Teslas remain the dominant EVs in the US, that’s a distinction without a difference.I’d be happy to see more EVs on the road. But what would make me buy one? Well, one issue is price. I’d consider an econobox EV under $30K, but auto makers seem mostly to be slotting EVs as luxury purchases. Then there’s charging stations. My Tesla-owning friends shrug that off: there’s software to map the stations, you just have to plan. Well, I can’t recall a time since the gas shortages of the 1980s when I’ve had to plan my route around gas stations, and from what I’ve read, many charging stations are either broken or

Our first car was a Mazda GLC. We bought it new in 1981, after living without a car for four years. It was a stick shift, front wheel drive ICE car. It got about 32 mpg in town and about 38 mpg on the highway, driving at 55 mph. Since then, we’ve owned four other cars (two that we still have); all were ICE cars and none topped that GLC for mileage. “Great Little Car” indeed.With my wife’s 21 y.o. Pontiac Vibe ticking over 100,000 miles, we’ll probably be in the market for a new car in the near future. We’re not ready for a EV, but would consider a hybrid. The reports I’ve read on mileage for hybrids have been mixed. But then I saw this:“BYD claims that the Qin L in particular is good for a maximum range of 2,100 kilometers from both a full battery and

When I was in high school and college in the 1970s, marijuana was (a) illegal and (b) plentiful. I may or may not have inhaled, but people I knew were certainly growing, drying, selling and buying dope at the time. From a public health standpoint, marijuana is more benign than alcohol and tobacco.I’m happy to see the cannabis industry taxed. Cannabis, while organic, isn’t exactly health food and certainly isn’t the staff of life. But from an economic standpoint, legalization is a win, win, win.“Companies that grow, manufacture, and sell their own cannabis products can fold more expenses into the “cost of goods sold,” the only allowable deduction under the current tax code. But they still often struggle, said Tracy LeMaire, co-founder of TAC CPAs, an

I seldom eat at chain restaurants, and I’ve never set foot in a Red Lobster. So the latest bankruptcy of Red Lobster doesn’t affect me personally, but it does serve as yet another illustration of pernicious consequences of vulture capitalism.When the private equity firm Golden Gate Capital bought Red Lobster, the chain was already beaten down by the COVID pandemic and rising operating costs. “Typically, when a private-equity firm takes over a company, it finances the acquisition by loading the company down with debt, which makes the deal cheaper for the PE firm but also makes it harder for the company to thrive. In Red Lobster’s case, though, the problems went beyond that. While Golden Gate Capital did add debt to Red Lobster’s balance sheet, it also

Some history: For the longest time Michigan districts were gerrymandered in favor of Republicans. Since the 1980s, Republicans had control of the Michigan Senate. On and off, Republicans had control of the House for 22 times. A trifecta in favor of Republicans was in place 14 times. It was not until voting districts were decided by Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission. made up of citizens were the districts competitive. For the first time in 2023, Democrats had control of the Governorship, the House and the Senate.

This story is about one Michigan Republican who voted to impeach trump. It is a long article and interesting. Hope you read it. Angry Bear is posting this for Joel.

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Inside the Michigan GOP’s MAGA Meltdown

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Let’s be very clear: in vitro fertilization (IVF) results in far more zygotes than will ever be implanted. Further, pre-implantation testing means that some zygotes will be rejected. In the end, this means that millions of fertilized eggs will be discarded. That was always baked in the IVF cake.

For reasons that escape me as a PhD geneticist, some people believe that the cluster of cells that we call “zygotes” are the moral equivalent of a fully developed human being. For those folks, destroying zygotes is murder. In the Republican states that have declared that life begins at conception, IVF is ipso facto illegal. Which means that the “pro-life” right is anti-life.

Look, most human conceptions do not progress to live birth, which means that

My dissertation research was published in 1983 in a two-author paper in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. JBC is the house journal of the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. After your referees and the editor approved, the manuscript was published with the payment of “page charges,” to cover the journal costs since it didn’t take advertising. JBC is a stolid publication; it has a reputation for rigor, if not excitement.In my 40+ years of science publication, I’ve usually had to pay page charges, and sometimes color plate charges. Fortunately, I’ve had the funding to pay when I needed to. And my most cited publication has been cited over 700 times, so visibility hasn’t been a problem for me as a scientist. But baked in the cake of

Here’s Jerome Adams, MD, former Surgeon General, now outraged at the absurdity that is the American “healthcare” system:“Numerous Americans have found themselves ensnared in analogous predicaments while seeking medical attention, as evidenced by the myriad stories shared in response to my tweet. The opacity surrounding healthcare pricing makes it difficult for patients to ascertain the cost of their care upfront, engendering bewilderment, frustration, and financial distress when confronted with unexpected bills. Although the No Surprises Act (NSA) was passed to address just this issue, its implementation (beginning in 2022) has been contentious and some hospitals are still not in compliance.“In my case, had I been aware that I would be charged $10,000

I was a graduate student in a STEM program when Reagan was elected and the Laffer curve was used to justify tax cuts. The problem that immediately stood out to me at the time was that neither the ordinate nor the abscissa in the Laffer graph had scales, so it was impossible to assess where, exactly, the inflection point occurred. Based on the symmetrical drawing, we’re meant to infer that a 50% tax rate is the point after which government revenue would fall, but Laffer wasn’t even willing to support that inference by showing the scale on the X axis!From the Wikipedia page on the Laffer curve:

” . . . however, the curve might not have only a single peak, nor must it peak symmetrically at whatever value maximizes tax revenue. . .”The Laffer

My wife drives a 21 year-old Pontiac Vibe (= Toyota Matrix). It could fail at any time, and the question of what she’ll replace it with is on our minds. EV or hybrid? I personally know some Tesla owners who are happy with their choice, but I remain concerned about range and charging stations. Thanks, Elon, for warning me off EVs!“The day before Elon Musk fired virtually all of Tesla’s electric-vehicle charging division last month, they had high hopes as charging chief Rebecca Tinucci went to meet with Musk about the network’s future, four former charging-network staffers told Reuters.“After Tinucci had cut between 15% and 20% of staffers two weeks earlier, part of much wider layoffs, they believed Musk would affirm plans for a massive charging-network

We are not the typical American car buyers. In 40 years, my wife and I have owned exactly five cars, two of which we still drive: one is 21 years old and just ticked over 100K miles, while the other is 10 years old and will soon hit 50K. But who knows how much longer the 21 year-old Pontiac Vibe will last? When it dies, we’ll consider an EV or hybrid. There are certainly a lot of Teslas on the road, and there are other EVs that are cheaper than Teslas. The future of EVs looks pretty bright. But apparently, the Chinese are leading the way. From a recent review:“I spent a week in China for the Beijing Auto Show, the country’s biggest car industry event. As a guest of the Geely Group along with a few other international journalists, I drove more than a

Since many AB readers are either retired or about to be:“Looking solely at the trust fund that covers retirement and survivor benefits, Social Security will only be able to afford scheduled payments in full until 2033, roughly the same projection as last year. At that time, the fund’s reserves will be depleted, and continuing income will only cover 79% of benefits owed.”*snip*“As for Medicare, its hospital insurance trust fund, known as Medicare Part A, has a few more years before it runs dry. But in 2036, Medicare will only be able to pay 89% of total scheduled Part A benefits, which also cover hospice care, short-term skilled nursing facility services and home health services following hospitalizations.”Don’t look for the current GOP Congress to act.

A comment on an AB thread recently reminded me that I needed to update my understanding of the economics of long-distance travel by plane vs car:“In 1970, flying was twice as energy intensive as driving, but that has reversed. In 2012, the most recent year counted, driving one person one mile took 4,211 BTUs, while flying required just 2,033.“The numbers for driving are based on the average fuel economy of all light-duty vehicles (that’s passenger cars, SUVs, pickups, and vans, which averaged 21.6 mpg), using data from the US DOT. Sivak counted only cars with internal combustions engines—no plug-in hybrids and EVs, which comprise less than 1 percent of the American fleet. The flight figures count major, large national, and large regional airlines,

And the grift goes on:“Jerry Dean McLain first bet on former president Donald Trump’s Truth Social two years ago, buying into the Trump company’s planned merger partner, Digital World Acquisition, at $90 a share. Over time, as the price changed, he kept buying, amassing hundreds of shares for $25,000 — pretty much his “whole nest egg,” he said.“McLain, the tree service owner in Oklahoma, said he believes the stock could “go to $1,000 a share, easy,” once the media stops writing so negatively about it and the company works through its growing pains. The company’s leaders, he said, are being “too silent right now” amid questions about the falling share price, but he suspects it’s because they’re working on something amazing and new.“McLain is an amateur

In many capitalist European countries, college students do not have to pay tuition fees out of their own pockets. Here in America, most students have to fund their own college costs, which for many students means student loans. Whether or not they complete the degree, student loan borrowers can’t discharge these loans through bankruptcy.Of course, college isn’t free in Europe, it’s paid for by taxpayers. Presumably, those countries believe the benefits of an educated citizenry repays the investment. I guess Americans don’t.But in Massachusetts, they’re taking a small step towards the European model. MassReconnect offers free community college to any student over the age of 25:“Less than a year after the Healey administration launched the program,

Decades ago, the artificial sweetener cyclamate was banned because it caused bladder cancer in rats. Later, it turned out that this was an artifact of (1) the tendency of cyclamate to form a precipitate with the male rat urinary globulin in the bladder, which leads to inflammation and promotes cancer, and (2) the fact that experiments were only done with male rats. Are cyclamates dangerous for humans? Who knows? The lesson here is not that we should ignore animal testing. The lesson is that we should be careful about extrapolating from animal testing.It has long been known that acrylamide, a neurotoxin and possible carcinogen, is generated by ordinary baking and frying. Studies in rat cells and whole rats implicate acrylamide in DNA damage of the sort

Look, Mike Johnson is a right-wing Christianist theocrat, but he did the right thing on Ukraine aid. I get it. This was partly a power play on his part to show that he, and not MTG, is in control of the House. And if the deal was that Democrats will vote against a motion to vacate in return, I’m OK with that transaction. Mike Johnson and the politics of compromise
Tags: Mike Johnson, the politics of compromise, Ukraine aide

When I was growing up in East Tennessee in the 1960s, there was a local grocery chain owner and right-wing politician named Cas Walker who railed about, among other things, water fluoridation. Water fluoridation was alleged to be a communist plot. If so, then God must be a communist, since water in some parts of the country is naturally fluoridated. In fact, that natural fluoridation, and its correlation with lower incidence of tooth decay, helped lead to the widespread use of artificial fluoridation.“The CDC maintains that community water fluoridation is not only safe and effective but also yields significant cost savings in dental treatment. Public health officials say removing fluoride could be particularly harmful to low-income families — for whom

Most students who attend medical school in the US do so with student loans. Yes, some have military scholarships and some have wealthy parents, but most don’t. I’m guessing that most students reckon they’ll easily pay off the loans with the income that an MD or DO degree commands, and so far, they’ll be right.But the immensity of these loans has negative externalities. Here are two:1. It affects the residency choices of graduates. Students with large loans (not just med school but college loans) are incented to choose highly compensated specialties like surgery, dermatology, cardiology and ophthalmology and not the less well-compensated fields of family medicine, pediatrics and geriatrics;2. It affects decisions about whether to promote academically