Telephone Behavior

For a long time now, I have wondered about the strange phenomenon of people pretending the person on their cell phone is in front of them. As they speak (usually in a loud voice) they smile and frown and gesticulate. They even wave their arms to make a point. But there is no one there!  The person is perhaps a thousand miles away probably going through the same contortions as they speak on their cellphone. It is bad enough that you have to hear every one-sided intimate detail of their life and pretend that you are not hearing it, but this interacting with invisible friends gives me the willies.  I do admit that it is next to impossible to talk with someone on the phone and not do all these antics. I feel my mouth go into a spontaneous smile or grimace and my arms move of their own volition to make a point. I am not sure if this is  just a bizarre American cultural mystery, or is it common to other cultures. I can just see the Frenchman giving a French shrug of the shoulder in response to a comment of his invisible friend. Perhaps I will  get some comments on my posting from people in different countries speaking different languages and I urge you to let me know.

But admit it, you must find this somewhat creepy. 

Like the Frog in the Pan

Like the Frog in the Pan

It is very hard to place a time when climate change suddenly became real for people. The reason of course is that change is gradual and occurs in different parts of the world at different times, like the frog who does not realize that the water in the pot is slowly being heated up until the he dies of the heat. 

Last month Australians and Alaskans realized that their pot is being heated very fast. An article in Huffington Post by Nina Golgowski entitled "Temperatures in Alaska and Australia hit record-breaking highs last month". In Alaska multiple cities had record-breaking heat. For example Fairbanks had the warmest March on record, and Klawock, a town in the southeast experienced 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Even places in the North Slope were more than 20 degrees Fahrenheit above normal. And Anchorage had the fourth earliest snowmelt in April. Also retreat of sea ice, a rise in storm surge, coastal flooding and erosion have also occurred throughout the north of Alaska.

 And then there is Australia, a country that exports most of the world’s coal. Temperatures in the west and central regions reached 118 degrees Fahrenheit in March, and Sydney had 117 degrees Fahrenheit. Roebourne, a town in western Australia, hit 118.6 degrees Fahrenheit on March 10, which was the highest March temperature anywhere in the world.

Canada warmed twice as fast as the rest of the world. Even the Canadian arctic had 4 degrees Fahrenheit warming.

All climate scientists state that the changes are effectively irreversible.  And Trump and his Republican zombies make fun of the “Green Deal” and claim that there is no man-induced climate change. Perhaps it is the children who must try to grow up in the catastrophic conditions caused by climate warming will become the saviors of the world. Already they are leaving classes and marching to try to convince the politicians to do something.

Why I Hate Bicycles

I almost lived on a bicycle the first 18 years of my life. The bike was a no gear no hand brake, foot brake cycle. One time the brake locked and I went over the handle bars and landed on my face, providing work for my cousin, the family dentist, to replace my two front teeth. And when I went to Princeton University, weekends I often rode my bike home to Philadelphia, of course without a helmet. Just with the right leg of my Levis rolled up so as not to get tangled in the gears. Then of course I learned how to drive and purchased an old Chevrolet, and alas, there went bike riding.  When I went to Bruxelles as a post doc I became a Vespa rider. I had some fantastic trips in Europe on the Vespa but that is another story.

The first few years I was an Assistant prof at UCLA, I rode my bike (10 gear, hand brake) to school, until the day I face planted on the inside of a car door that suddenly opened. Then we moved to Mandeville Canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains, which turned out to be the premiere 5-mile-long uphill and then downhill at top speed. Unfortunately, we had to go to the market, to restaurants and live a normal life in the city at the bottom of the race track. Often, I had to pass sometimes up to 10-20 bikes (many more on weekends and holidays) who rode in groups and refused to give way for a car. Slowly my anger at these bikes and their drivers increased, which was not decreased by angry bicyclists pounding on the side of my car and cursing. The feeling of estrangement increased as I realized that these bicycles never stopped for red lights or stop signs. In fact one time I did a California stop at the only stop sign on Mandeville and did not see the police car waiting to write me a ticket. I actually made the mistake of saying that they should give tickets to the bicyclists who bombed through the signs and the red lights. Not good at all. I think they actually increased the infraction.

I believe that this is when my bicycle costume irritation was born and increased. Full disclosure: I truly hate uniforms, from Boy Scouts in their Hitler Youth khaki uniforms, to tennis players wearing cute white uniforms, and football players covering their massive bodies with tight shirts and knicker pants and helmets that disguised the identity of the player  and with strange metal objects extending from the front of the helmet which I guess were for the opponents to grab onto while tackling. I also find coat and ties annoying. And I refuse to wear a yarmulkes in a synagogue. 

Full disclosure: I also  hate rituals, including weddings and funerals.

But most of all I began to hate bicycle uniforms, with their tight short sleeve T shirts covered with advertisements for existing and I believe imaginary companies, and their tight black short pants with little pads allowing the bicyclers backsides to sit on the tiny little bike seats without too much pain.

 And the helmets, my God the helmets, that looked like aliens come to earth. Why oh why, these esoteric helmets? Full disclosure: I actually bought one of the little black shorts with the little pads for the sake of my bony ass. But I only wore this one time, so don’t think badly of me.  And the bicyclists actually shave their arms and legs to get some extra speed coming down my hill.

 

Finally I tried to ban our street to the bicyclists by circulating a petition among residents and sending it to our invisible City Council Member. Never heard a word back.

Well, I keep telling my wife that we must move somewhere to escape bicyclists (perhaps Lombard Street  in San Francisco?) a fantasy idea that went nowhere.

 Incidentally, I plan to sell my bicycle in a garage sale. Any offer considered

Idiot hires Idiot to head the EPA

Andrew Wheeler, Trump's new Head of the Environment Protection Agency, is as much an idiot as Trump himself. You can see this just by looking at the photo of this ex-lobbyist for the Coal Industry (see below). He recently said to CBS News that climate change is “an important issue” but most of the threats it poses are “50 to 75 years out” and it’s “unreasonable” for the 2020 Democratic candidates to focus so much on it. Unbelievable! He and Trump will always be remembered (if there are people around to remember) to be either amazingly evil people who are unfortunately currently in power in our country, or total idiots to allow the coming climate change catastrophe to make life hell for their own children and grandchildren. He argues that a lack of drinking water is the real problem today. Yes, this is certainly a problem but if warming of the world continues and even increases as predicted by the scientists, that will be the least problem for those who will be trying to survive the hell hole that the earth will become. And as to the 2020 Democratic candidates for President, the Democrats will thank god almost certainly take over the Federal Senate, the Presidency and also most if not all the State elected positions in the 2020 elections. But it may be too late for them to make the difficult cultural and environmental changes necessary not only in the US but also in all other countries to even decrease the rate of change. If there are history books written in the next few years as the various catastrophes ensue, they will state that Trump and all his people are responsible in large part for what will be happening world- wide.

Raving of a Madman

I want to copy parts  of a  review of the  Trump “speech” at the CPAC convention by Amanda Marcotte in Salon. I could not  have said it  better so let me let Amanda say it. The title is: Trump appeared to be losing his mind in a delusional CPAC speech – Why didn’t media cover it that way?

First let me excerpt some of her comments on the speech:

“Trump unleashed a  two-hour-plus rant that sounded at times, more like the delusional ramblings of someone hopped up on drugs or suffering a mental breakdown than anything resembling a  normal political speech.”

After actually hugging an American flag with a weird smirk on this face, “Trump pinged wildly, from topic to topic, ranting about how Democrats want to take away electricity and murder newborns. He engaged in a lengthy rape fantasy about how female immigrants take massive amounts of birth control because they supposedly get raped so much. …he raved about now unfair it is that he is now under investigation for possible criminal conspiracy with Russian intelligence to throw t he election, and wined about it should be easier for him to obstruct justice. “

“There’s simply no way to accurately describe Trump’s behavior without sounding hysterical or, heaven forbid, “biased.” So most media outlets resort to euphemistic language or focus on technically true observations — it’s accurate that Trump criticized special counsel Robert Mueller — while sliding past the more relevant detail, such as the fact that the president of the United States was babbling like a man who hasn’t slept in days.”

”By far the most important takeaway from Cohen’s hearing should have been the pathetic display by Republican members of the House Oversight Committee. With the sole exception of Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, every single Republican avoided asking substantive or serious questions of Cohen. They simply impugned his character (which isn’t difficult), lied in Trump’s defense and teed up excuses for their voters to ignore the growing evidence of the president’s criminality.”

“To put it bluntly, Democrats spent the Cohen hearing trying to expose crimes and Republicans spent it trying to cover them up. To simply describe the difference as “partisan” is to fail readers by drawing a false equivalence between moral and immoral behavior, and to suggest that doing right and doing wrong are equally dirty, if there’s any political gain to be had from either. This kind of coverage portrays political grandstanding, a venal sin, as no better or no different from actively covering up criminal activity.”

“The biggest takeaway from Trump’s speech at CPAC was that the president of the United States is acting as if he were losing his mind. That’s not all that surprising when you consider that his former right-hand man just accused him, under oath, of committing numerous crimes. But someone who takes in the news the way most Americans do — by checking out headlines and reading a few paragraphs of a story, at most — would just assume that Trump was angry this weekend, rather than monumentally unhinged”.

Some relevant Twitter postings by Amanda

AmandaMarcotte

Watching Trump rant incoherently for two hours and reporting only that he appeared angry is a little like watching someone swallow a whole kitten live and only wondering if it will make his throat itchy. Okay, I’ll stop now, but seriously. The situation is bad.

AmandaMarcotte 

Watching that bizarre debacle of a speech and headlining it with “Trump criticizes Mueller” is like watching someone set themselves on fire and focusing on what brand of lighter fluid they used.
‏AmandaMarcotte 

Watching Trump rave like a madman for two hours and reporting only that it was “blistering” is a lot like seeing someone running down the street naked and observing only that his junk is probably cold. Technically accurate, but perhaps not the most relevant issue at hand.

Poor Australia

Who would have thought that Australia, one of the most advanced countries in the world, would be so backward on fighting climate warming. It is also ironic that this country has already suffered more than any other country the terrible effects of global climate change. The problem is mainly their archaic backward political system, which for example rewards companies for using taxpayer funds dedicated to fight climate change for building new coal-powered plants. Their specious reasoning is that the new plants will be more efficient and burn less coal than those being  replaced.  Even China, the world’s major polluter, has decided that “clean coal” plants as green technology investments. In Australia the rot starts at the top. The last 7 prime ministers were essentially climate change deniers, which caused a lot of political turnover  but no change  in policies. Australia is the world’s leading producer and exporter of coal.

Canada used to be my favorite country. It had ocean coasts, boreal forest, indigenous native people, and polite educated people. No more, however, Canada is the only modern country other than Australia that pretends to regard climate change as a  major global problem and yet has a ultra-massive project actually the size of Florida in pristine boreal forest in Alberta to mine shale oil, the most polluting oil ever at every stage of its production. Alberta is essentially a petro-state that produces immense amounts of the greenhouse gas, CO2. The climate scientists have stated that almost all known fossil fuel world-wide and especially tar sand oil in Canada  must remain in the earth if we want to limit global warming to “only”  2 degrees centigrade. At the current rate of CO2 production, the world is heading for a 5 degree warming, which will be a catastrophe for our civilization.  In fact, financial experts believe that all existing fossil fuel projects will become worthless due to the need to leave most if  not all fossil fuel deposits in the earth to limit climate warming.

Australia  is definitely the canary in the global mine to monitor the effect of climate warming. The summer of 2012-13 was the hottest summer since records started in 1910.  In fact, this was  called the “angry summer” and two new color categories had to be added to the weather maps to cover the temperature records set in every state.   It was also the greatest bush fire season in Australian history and the weather people coined a new term to describe these fires - catastrophic. Major flooding also occurred in Queensland and northern NSW caused by evaporating from the warmer ocean.

In order to limit the increase in global temperature increase to 2 degrees centigrade, it was hoped to limit the concentration of CO2 to 350 ppm. However the graph shown below shows that little has been accomplished and the CO2 concentration in June of 2018 was already 410.79 ppm.

The climate scientists point out that the world only has around 10  years left to stop the increase in CO2. And even if this is accomplished, the increase in global temperatures will continue rising due to heating of the ocean.

Melt-Down

I have maintained multiple web sites for some time. These included my old lab home page, a complete bibliography of my published papers with clickable PDF files, an Online Course on Molecular Parasitology, a lecture from my undergraduate course at UCLA (2013) and links to a site with a database of sequences of U-insertion/deletion edited kinetoplast genes, Recently, after a computer web server meltdown, I discovered that the sequence database has actually been quite useful to several colleagues, and perhaps also to others in my field of research.

It also has links to (embarrassing) photos of old (I should say young) lab members and, last but not least, a site with astroimages from my amateur astronomy days.

I also maintain a Blog on Google Blogger at https://larry-thoughtsandmusings.blogspot.com/

I have now moved most of these sites to another web server. Clicking on my old lab home page at http://164.67.82.204/simpsonlab/ will provide links to all these sites. Be sure to inform me of any errors or missing information.

Enjoy!