Doctor Science

Is Parliament Burning?

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by Doctor Science This is a thread for our UK friends. It’s going up later than I hoped because I’ve been watching live-blogs of our own Constitutional crisis. Perhaps the most distressing part is that Republican members of the Judiciary Committee are laughing during the markup hearing. I suppose this is tactical, to convey that … Read more

Sodom and Sarcasm

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by Doctor Science

I don’t seem to have talked about it here before, but last year (5779) I leveled up significantly in my Jewish practice by reading the Torah portion (Parsha) every week, and discussing it on Twitter under the #ParshaChat hashtag (usually on Wednesday evenings, though it was on Thursday last week).

Last week’s parsha was Vayeira (Genesis 18:1 – 22:24) , which includes the destruction of Sodom. In thinking about Vayeira last year, I realized that there’s an interpretation in which everyone’s behavior makes a lot more sense and is more relatable than in the interpretations that have been standard for, um, well, thousands of years. Despite the incredible weight of tradition that’s against me, I kind of think I’m right:

The men of Sodom are asking for ID, and Lot replies with a sarcastic pun. Nothing in this is actually about sex, it’s about immigration, about how you treat outsiders.

Note: the following includes discussions of rape, abuse, and homophobia. Take care of yourself.

521px-Henry_Ossawa_Tanner_-_Sodom_and_Gomorrha

Sodom and Gomorrah (1920) by Henry Ossawa Tanner, the first African-American artist to achieve international fame. (image source)

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Fifty Years Ago Today

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by Doctor Science I was twelve. It was the day we arrived back to our house in Illinois after a year in Dijon, France, where my father had an exchange professorship. We rode down the familiar streets, but it was almost like a dream or a Twilight Zone episode, because there was almost zero traffic. … Read more

Breaking the Dictionary

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by Doctor Science The Scripps National Spelling Bee Thursday night ended in an 8-way tie, when the competition ran out of sufficiently challenging words. “We’re throwing the dictionary at you. And so far, you are showing this dictionary who is boss,” they told the contestants. The eight final-round words were: auslaut, erysipelas, bougainvillea, aiguillette, pendeloque, … Read more

A first-hand description of a dragon

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by Doctor Science There’s a lot of good stuff in The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China by Mark Elvin, which I just finished reading, but I want to pull out one especially notable passage: Elvin’s translation of a first-hand description of a dragon. Part of the 1244 C.E. scroll Nine Dragons, … Read more

Paris burning

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by Doctor Science Notre Dame de Paris, one of the greatest artworks and religious monuments of European culture, is in flames as I write. None of my words are adequate. In the first campaign of the web D&D series Critical Role, Percy (a human aristocrat and fighter) is asked by an elf how long he’ll … Read more

In the beginning: some Bereshit parsha thoughts

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by Doctor Science My Jewish New Year’s Intention is to try to read the weekly Torah portion or parsha. I’m getting a big push from the twitter group #ParshaChat, which discusses topics selected by the moderators every Wednesday evening (Eastern time). Coincidentally, Mr Dr Science teaches fencing classes on Wednesday evening, so I can participate … Read more

A Good Cat

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by Doctor Science Sneakers September 1999 – June 15, 2018 We had to say good-bye to Sneakers on Friday. He’d clearly reached the end of the line, he wasn’t eating and was down to skin and bones. He had a really good run: more than 18 1/2 years is a full life for a cat, … Read more

Google’s Calico project may be alchemy

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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

Springing up

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by Doctor Science It’s really been Spring here for the past week. I kind of melted down from medication-, Tax-, and Seder-related exhaustion last Monday, but within the last few days I’ve really perked up. And so has my yard! We have Goldfinches that come to the feeder all winter, but within the past few … Read more

Last Minute Hugo Artist Nominations

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by Doctor Science Just a few hours to go! Don’t forget you have to save each category individually! Check under your seat for any stray personal items! Best Professional Artist Kathleen Jennings Her illustrations are good, but her papercuts are *outstanding*. This is from “Tremontaine, Season 2”. Victo Ngai Cover of “Everfair” by Nisi Shawl. … Read more

Last Minute Hugo Nominations

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by Doctor Science I really dropped the ball on Hugo nominations this year. Or, to be fair to myself, the time and energy I had expected to spend on the Hugos turned out to be needed for historic levels of political action (and anxiety). Nominations will close on 2017-03-18 06:59 UTC (at 11:59 pm Pacific … Read more

A field guide to #TheResistance

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by Doctor Science If #TheResistance is a parade, some people are trying to jump in front of it and be called “leaders”. Michael Moore is the most egregious, but there are others, too. I’m the equivalent of the third piccolo player in this parade, which means I know enough to say where the movement came … Read more

The United States has no national security

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by Doctor Science

This is not a drill, and I am not speaking rhetorically. I think the evidence shows that, at the White House level, the United States has *no* functioning national security, as the national security and intelligence communities understand it.

Most of the talk, as in the previous post, about the growing conflict between Trump and NS/IC is about Trump and his associates’ ties to Russia, and the extent to which they may be acting as Russian assets.

This is obviously a very serious charge that has to be investigated, post-haste. But a lot of us have been screaming our fool heads off about this for *months* without NS/IC going this far, so why now? What took them this long?

I wonder if the reason this has broken out now was the apparent use of the Mar-a-Lago terrace as a Situation Room. At Mar-a-Lago Trump and his staff showed themselves incapable of acting as part of a national security system. The whole intelligence community, the national security apparatus, and the military now saw, publicly, that classified or sensitive material given to the Trump White House will not be treated as such. It’s not as specific as “this particular person is compromised by Russia”, it’s a general failure to acknowledge that national security issues have special significance.

I’m cutting here because this post is long and has embedded tweets and other slow-down factors.

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Hacking Trump’s Brain

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by Doctor Science A few days ago media guru Dan Pfeiffer tweeted: Trump might be the most predictable human on earth https://t.co/GmmtMlM4j6 — Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) February 6, 2017 So-called President* Trump is also easily influenced (especially by the last person he spoke to), and is, of course, probably the most influential person in the … Read more

Blinding myself with science

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by Doctor Science I’m finding the news so depressing/enraging/flabbergasting these days that I’ve taken refuge in the pursuit of scientific knowledge. Specifically, helping citizen science projects at the Zooniverse. It’s been years since I talked about them, and I’m working on different projects these days. When I’m in the mood for picking a project, I … Read more

So far so good

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— as the man said as he fell past the 25th floor. by Doctor Science Welcome to 2017. Make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their fully upright and locked position, we may experience some turbulence. As usual, we at Casa Science hosted a New Year’s Eve party. At about 11:50, Mr … Read more

Sundown Towns and Trump’s America

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by Doctor Science Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism by historian James Loewen is one of the two books I think are most necessary to understand the 2016 election results (the other, as I've said before, is Sady Doyle's Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock, and Fear… and Why). It's necessary … Read more

Explaining Hillary Hate

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by Doctor Science A few weeks ago Sprog the Elder, who was born in 1989, asked me to explain why some people hate Hillary Rodham Clinton so very, very much. She knew that it went back to the Bill Clinton administration, but had no idea what it was based on. This is more or less … Read more

Boots on the ground

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by Doctor Science The second weekend in October I went down to Philadelphia with a bunch of other NJ Clinton volunteers to do Get-Out-The-Vote (GOTV) canvassing. PA, of course, is a “battleground” state, and NJ is not. We don’t even have a Senate seat up this year. It turns out I’m not a cost-effective canvasser … Read more

Shelter from the Storm

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by Doctor Science Hurricane Matthew is nearing Florida. I really hope everyone who lives on Florida’s Atlantic-side barrier islands has evacuated. I don’t know if any of the regulars here are in the strike zone, but my best web-design client is an antique store in West Palm Beach. I really hope they got their stock … Read more

Humans never migrated out of Africa

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by Doctor Science Carl Zimmer is a great science writer I’ve been following for years. It’s not really his fault that his latest NY Times article on human evolution was the last straw for me, finally breaking my ability to quietly tolerate a particular turn of phrase. The headline for Zimmer’s article is: “A Single … Read more

Summer’s end book round-up

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by Doctor Science Between preparing for, going to, and recovering from Worldcon, it’s been a while since I wrote about what I’ve been reading. This round-up covers several weeks, and includes novels by Genevieve Cogman, Laura Anne Gilman, Jo Walton, N.K. Jemisin, and Mary Robinette Kowal. huh. I didn’t plan to read only books by … Read more

Pro-Life Science and Abortion

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by Doctor Science Shannon Dingle posted I’m Pro-Life and I’m Voting for Hillary, because she thinks “pro-life policies” should mean support for all kinds of children and parents, not just opposition to abortion. It’s a very thoughtful, nuanced post in general, but includes this statement: I believe life begins scientifically at the moment of conception … Read more

Hugo Award for Best Fan Artist candidates

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by Doctor Science Continuing from the previous post about the Best Pro Artist nominees, here are the candidates for Best Fan Artist. Four of them are from the Rabid Puppy slate, one is not. “Scars”, by Matthew Callahan. “A reflection of the fatigue and doubt troopers may have when faced with back-to-back deployments to a … Read more