Vive la France!

par japonicus liberal I’ve been working on the handbook for a conference and have just finished it, barring any last minute changes, so I’ve not been able to really do anything else. I really don’t want to post over the good Doctor’s fascinating thoughts about alchemy and the Calico project (please check them out below), … Read more

Google’s Calico project may be alchemy

by Doctor Science Vox reporter Julia Belluz wonders what’s going on with Google’s Calico project, launched in 2013 “to harness advanced technologies to increase our understanding of the biology that controls lifespan.” I recently started poking around in Silicon Valley and talking to researchers who study aging and mortality, and discovered that four years after … Read more

Pluto as a Phoenix

by wj Last week’s Science News included an article It’s time to redefine what qualifies as a planet. The proposal, by Will Grundy of Lowell Observatory and other planetary scientists: “It’s any round object in space that is smaller than a star.”** That returns Pluto to the fold. Also about a hundred other objects in … Read more

AHCA, Trump, Comey, Taxes, Twitter -GAH!

by Ugh

This is an open thread for all the nuttiness this week. New and Improved AHCA – now with more pre-existing conditions, bankruptcies and moral monstrosities.

Trump is trumpernating.

Comey is testifying.

Taxes are taxing – my call is no tax reform this year. Interesting note, if the budget window is 10 years, they can only do a two year temporary corporate rate cut under reconciliation because scoring says it increases the deficit outside that window. New to me! I just thought they could do a temp cut for 10 years and hope it sticks down the road, but no. Of course, they can open up the budget window to 10, 20, 30 or even 1,000 years (or 1,000 generations, like the Jedi). So who knows what sh1t the GOP will pull if they can ever get their sh1t together.

Also, I set up an account at the twitter and it is probably not a good thing but why not.  I will put the handle below the fold if anyone is interested (it sort of links back to here, hope that is okay with the other front pagers and I have not mentioned that I post here in the bio or a tweet).  

Oh, I forgot, potential rollback of LGBT protections via EO tomorrow. Feh.

Only 1300+ days of this to go!

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Modern Life

by janiem I have a huge topic in mind that maybe someday I’ll boil down into a coherent post. It involves the misuse of technology, community, and each other implied by — the constant barrage of spam email (which requires various kinds of investments, whether time or $, to deflect); — the increasing number of … Read more