Requiem to a Country (and perhaps the World)

Forget the zombie apocolypse and the rapture to heaven, the Republican crazies have taken control of the US Senate and the House. This could be the worst thing that has ever  happened to this country in its not so long history. The American Taliban will do real damage. Ironically it was coincident with the IPCC Report that  use of fossil fuel must drop to "0" by 2100 or there will be devastating irreversible changes. And  now the great denier from Oklahoma, Senator Jim Inhofe himself,  will be Chairman of the Environment Committee. It would be an insult to a doorknob to compare Inhofe to a doorknob and he is on a crusade against climate change. Unfortunately the sun will rise and the the climate will change no matter what Jim Inhofe thinks or does. Combine that with the five Republican Supreme Court Justices who decimated the Voting Rights Act and let Millionaires decide elections. And since Supreme Court Justices are essentially immortal, the damage they do will last a long time.

Just to give a flavor of the newly elected crazies, there is the pig castration woman, Joni Ernst, who wants to do away with the EPA and worse.

Here is one of her conspiracy theories:

All of us agreed that Agenda 21 is a horrible idea. One of those implications to Americans, again, going back to what did it does do to the individual family here in the state of Iowa, and what I've seen, the implications that it has here is moving people off of their agricultural land and consolidating them into city centers, and then telling them that you don't have property rights anymore. These are all things that the UN is behind, and it's bad for the United States and bad for families here in the state of Iowa.

Another:State nullification of federal laws:

You know we have talked about this at the state legislature before, nullification. But, bottom line is, as U.S. senator, why should we be passing laws that the states are considering nullifying? Bottom line: our legislators at the federal level should not be passing those laws. We’re right ... we’ve gone 200-plus years of federal legislators going against the 10th Amendment’s states’ rights. We are way overstepping bounds as federal legislators. So, bottom line, no we should not be passing laws as federal legislators -- as senators or congressman -- that the states would even consider nullifying. Bottom line.

Another: Climate change is not man-made:

Yes, we do see climates change, but I have not seen proven proof that it is entirely man-made. I think we do have cyclic changes in weather, and I think that's been throughout the course of history. What impact is man-made. ... but I do think we can educate people to make good choices.

She loves her beautiful little Smith and Wesson:

I have a beautiful little Smith & Wesson, 9 millimeter, and it goes with me virtually everywhere. But I do believe in the right to carry, and I believe in the right to defend myself and my family -- whether it’s from an intruder, or whether it’s from the government, should they decide that my rights are no longer important.

And Joni Ernst is just one crazy among the many that were elected.

And now I just heard the new Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell,
(don't look at this before you go to sleep at night!)

say that he will stop the gridlock in the Senate, which is amazing considering that he himself blocked every piece of legislation President Obama tried to introduce and was proud of this.

I had told friends that if the crazies took over, we would move to another country. Canada was the obvious choice, until I discovered that their Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, is anti-science, pro-fossil fuels, anti-environment and is just as crazy as any Republican in this country. Australia looked attractive until I discovered that their Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, is as bad as Stephen Harper and that Australia is the major exporter of climate-destroying coal in the world. What is left? New Zealand does have a certain far away charm and gentility, but I refuse to live in any country where they drive on the left. 

Ah well, I will probably just stay here and fight off the zombies.

Existential Angst

I have always been fascinated by Cosmology, the origin and nature of the Universe. To me these are the most significant questions in science (please to pardon me, my fellow Parasitologists!). Every time I looked at the night sky and saw the multitudes of stars and even our Milky Way galaxy, if I was lucky and could get out of Los Angeles for a while,  I was awe struck. And then when I realized that what I was looking at was a panorama of ancient history of the Universe where the light from each star began its journey from a few years to millions of years ago, my level of awe got even higher. This fascination led directly to Amateur Astronomy. However, being a professional scientist in another field I realize that it is really presumptuous of   me to try to do Astronomy at this time in my life in the absence of any formal training, but I have never led not being presumptuous run my life. And it is only money, so I bought a 10 inch Meade telescope with all the goodies - CCD camera, rotator, adaptive optics, etc. And I dug a hole in my back yard and embedded a concrete pier to hold the scope and then built a shed with a sliding roof to hold the scope et al. And finally after several years of learning my way around the sky and learning to use the software for imaging and processing the images, I finally was able to create a plan and tell the scope to automatically find the star, galaxy or nebula and  image it, and then to close the roof and park the scope.

Then came the Cobe and WMap satellite experiments and arose my existential angst. I learned that most of the Universe is a mysterious anti-gravity stuff called dark energy and that a large chunk is also a still mysterious dark matter, and finally only around 5% is what I like to look at and image. I almost went into a deep depression realizing that what I do is a total waste of time and energy. And then I read some current cosmology books (written for parasitologists of course) and learned that there may be a multitude of other Universes out there in addition to our Universe. Wow!!! and double wow!!!  I actually stopped imaging for a while until I could think of a rationale to do it at all. The angst was truly existential.

Finally I retired this year from UCLA and stopped doing  research and teaching, and I decided that even though it was meaningless and climate change was certainly more important and meaningful, I enjoyed it , so I would once again take up imaging the heavens for a few years. So here I am back in my back yard with my new dome and the old telescope imaging my old friends. Life is like that sometimes.

Supreme Court judge is a priest in disguise

I copy below a really interesting article in a series from the people currently making "Citizens United,the Movie".

We have already discussed at modest length why the Hobby Lobby decision is so wrong, just in terms of the reading of previous legal precedents and their definitional terms. So if Alito has no real supporting authority in the the history of legal jurisprudence, from where exactly is he deriving his authority?

The sad answer is found in footnote 34 of the Hobby Lobby opinion, where he cites as a reference a religious tract from 1935, "Moral and Pastoral Theology," for the proposition that when one person helps another to commit a sin in any way, even by a non-sinful act, even if no approval of the sin is implied, is comprises "cooperation" in that sinning. Indeed, Alito unquestionably believes that any ruling contrary to his would be precisely such a sin enabling act.

And this, standing alone, is Alito's sole and naked support for the whole basis for the ruling, that if a corporation provides comprehensive health care, and if some aspect of that health care offends the moral precepts of the owners of the corporation, that those precepts can be imposed on employees of the corporation who do NOT share those precepts.

Leaving aside the fact that a corporation is not a real person in the first place (itself a perverted reading of the constitution), capable of committing a sin in a theological sense, what is a secular law judge doing founding his legal opinion on a religious reference?

And the sad answer to that is that Alito is no justice. He is a religious ringer, put on the bench to impose his moral precepts on the rest of us, just exactly as he would have the corporate board of Hobby Lobby impose their dogma on their helpless employees.

Alito ought to show up for work, not in a judge's robe, but in the ecclesiastical garments of a priest. Because that is what he is, handing down his rulings by divine revelation, immaculate of any actual sensible legal precedent.

And what makes this all so transparently clear is that when challenged by the dissent of Justice Ginsberg as to why other religious objections could not be made as to vaccines, blood transfusions, etc, Alito confesses that his decision "is concerned SOLELY with the contraceptive mandate." (His actual words, opinion p. 46, emphasis supplied.) ONLY when it offends HIS religious beliefs, then secular law must fall that way also, otherwise he'll find some equally ad hoc pretext to rule the other way.

If you happen to agree with his religious result on this one moral issue, you may applaud this decision on that basis as much as you like. Just clearly understand and acknowledge the stark fact that it is NOT a legal decision. It is one strictly from one particular clergy.

A Clear and Present Danger

I link below a recent article written by a group of climatologists.

http://whatweknow.aaas.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/AAAS-What-We-Know.pdf