This piece by Jill Filipovic on the latest “cancel culture” flap hits on a number of important issues that I think are worthy of airing. I don’t weigh in on this stuff a whole lot because we’re in a period of rapid social transformation that I may not be the best person to interpret. I’m old, I have lived my life in a period of free-wheeling discourse that has had both good and bad effect and I’m frankly not entirely sure of myself. The very definition of academic freedom is being re-defined on a daily basis, for good and ill. My instincts may not be reliable in this area. I’m taking all that in, trying to balance the new information and attitude with my reflexive opposition to restrictions on thought and speech. Having said that, I am not in the least bit insecure about saying that liberals must stand up to religious authoritarianism. If not that, then what? Filipovic gets to that and more. It’s a very thought-provoking read: There’s been a viral story making the rounds over the past week about a truly egregious incident at Hamline University, a small liberal arts college in Minnesota.
Reading
And thinking otherwise is tiresome and delusional. From Nature:
Young Chinese scientists who got their PhDs overseas and returned to China as part of a state-run talent drive published more papers after their return than did their peers who stayed abroad. The productivity bump can be explained by returnees’ access to greater funding and an abundant research workforce, according to the authors of an analysis published in Science1. The findings come as geopolitical competition between the United States and China mounts.
The images were eerily similar: Insurrectionists were storming the halls of Congress, beating police officers...
The Truth About Corporate Subsidies
Why won’t big American corporations do what’s right for America unless the government practically bribes them?
And why is the government so reluctant to regulate them?
Prior to the 1980’s, the U.S. government demanded that corporations act in the public interest.
For example, the Clean Air Act of 1970 stopped companies from polluting our air by regulating them.
~ Today's Water Cooler ~
CNN reports: Rep. James Comer, in one of his first moves as House Oversight Chairman, is seeking information from the Treasury Department about the Biden family’s financial transactions and calling on a handful of former Twitter executives to testify at a public hearing. The new round of letters from the committee come as House Republicans are looking to flex their investigative might and make good on promises to delve into the Biden family finances and alleged political influence over technology companies after Twitter temporarily suppressed a 2020 story about Hunter Biden and his laptop. “Now that Democrats no longer have one-party rule in Washington, oversight and accountability are coming,” Comer said of his panel’s investigation into Hunter Biden and the Biden family’s business dealings. “This investigation is a top priority for House Republicans during the 118th Congress.” They had zero concerns about this: Donald Trump Jr. arrived in India on Tuesday for a week-long visit, and his trip has already revealed a couple of things.
Extra resources put in to cope halved waits, showing again that NHS crisis is Tory-created Statistics gathered during strike action by paramedics have made a mockery of the Tories’ transparently ideological attack on workers’ right to strike. While Rishi Sunak and his partners in crime claim their plan to force unions to maintain services during […]
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This started off with me doing a joke about the Dostoyevsky quote, in which humans, knowing that all things are permitted, are depressed to find their behavior unchanged.
Today's News:
When Elon Musk suggested that he would step down as CEO of Twitter due to widespread dissatisfaction with his leadership within and outside the company, many hoped for a seasoned executive to replace him to steady the ship. Now, due to a series of tweets from Mr. Musk that included a photograph of himself next to a floating orb, an artist rendering of cranes hatching inside the orb, a string of indecipherable glyphs, and the sentence, “You will obey Them,” we know that isn’t the case. Our advice:
Don’t panic
If you are like many Twitter users, you are asking yourself several questions. What does the orb want from me? When will the cranes be born, and when they are born, what will they know? How many Orb Units must I acquire to advance in my profession? These are all important questions, but until we know more about what dimension the orb came from, and the true identity of the crane lord, we won’t have answers. So sit tight and try not to catastrophize simply based on the horrifying events of Cranecon 2019.
And the Japanese Embassy in Canberra is leading the anti China campaign in Australia. Penny Wong should have a serious discussion with the Ambassador. With QUAD and maybe JAUKUS, Japan is anxious to recruit us and others as spear carriers against China. As Michael Auslin in the AFR put it, ‘A new QUAD is coalescing Continue reading »
Just in time, the fundamental faults of AUKUS are being exposed in Canberra and Washington. This development is not only due to the mounting concern among Australian civil society groups. The Australian mainstream media are now discussing the hitherto unmentionable drawbacks of AUKUS. But it’s because two US Senators, Democrat Jack Reed and Republican James Continue reading »
For those of us focused on sustainability, we wonder what it would take for a progressive government to wake up and smell the evidence. In other words, how close to collapse does Australia and the world need to be before the government (including its public service) decides it should take the issue seriously? Would you Continue reading »
Recent commentary has suggested politics in 2022 witnessed a “progressive wave” – a global trend towards parties of the Left. While this is legitimate if you are content to look at just the UK and USA, the global picture is much more complex. I noticed George Megalogenis’ recent article about the possibility of a “progressive Continue reading »
I have long been a fan of the British parliament’s system of having independent commissioners for standards who review complaints that MPs have breached their Code of Conduct or the Nolan Committee’s set of standards of public life. By comparison, the Australian way — privileges committees, or ad hoc bodies of officials chosen just for Continue reading »
Why was Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani assassinated by the US? His visit to Venezuela in 2019 may provide some answers. Published in The Cradle on January 3, 2023 On 3 January 2020, the US military assassinated Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the elite Quds Force in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Continue reading »
The American republic morphed well over a century ago into an empire of many endless wars. With U.S. troops still in Syria, Iraq, Somalia and numerous African countries, with over 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and a war budget of roughly one trillion dollars a year, it’s no surprise that one of Continue reading »
Guantánamo Bay “is the iconic example of the abandonment of the rule of law,” the letter argues.
The post More Than 150 International Organizations Call on Biden to Close Guantánamo on 21st Anniversary appeared first on The Intercept.
Meet the MAGA JFK and Jackie With all the hoopla in Washington since the Republican House majority came to town, it’s easy to forget that clown car is only performing in one ring of the GOP circus. Hard as it is to take your eyes off that show, it’s also important to pay attention to some of the other acts in state houses around the country — and none is more riveting than what’s going on down in the laboratory of anti-democracy known as Florida. Gov. Ron DeSantis was sworn in for his second term last week in Tallahassee with a two-day extravaganza that guests called “DeSantis-Palooza.” It featured an ostentatious outdoor inaugural ceremony on the steps of the Old Capitol preceded by a prayer meeting with 80 to 100 people from the faith community, followed by a “Toast to 1 Million Mamas” hosted by Casey DeSantis at the governor’s mansion.
Here is a clip from one of our live songwriting sessions on our Twitch channel. We just turn on the camera and try out ideas and see where they take us.
This clip from one of those sessions we posted to our YouTube Channel.
Play a hypnotic keyboard (Live Stream Clip)
I had a hypnotic keyboard part I was messing around with.
I wanted to try it out with the band to see if we could come up with anything for it that we might be able to use for a song.
-Tom
Conspicuous Consumption in the US & Germany
By at least one measure, China now leads the world in producing high-quality science. My research shows that Chinese scholars now publish a larger fraction of the top 1% most cited scientific papers globally than scientists from any other country.
I am a policy expert and analyst who studies how governmental investment in science, technology and innovation improves social welfare. While a country’s scientific prowess is somewhat difficult to quantify, I’d argue that the amount of money spent on scientific research, the number of scholarly papers published and the quality of those papers are good stand-in measure…
Today, China is second only to the US in how much it spends on science and technology. Chinese universities now produce the largest number of engineering PhDs in the world, and the quality of Chinese universities has dramatically improved in recent year…
Our research also found that Chinese research was surprisingly novel and creative – and not simply copying western researchers. To measure this, we looked at the mix of disciplines referenced in scientific paper…
Why does the apparently prescient and correct “key currency” view remain an embattled minority view?
In his June 1945 Congressional testimony in opposition to the new Bretton Woods institutions, John H. Williams outlined his own “key currency” view of the postwar international monetary system, which he explicitly tagged as quite definitely a “minority” view (1947, p. 266). Money is inherently hierarchical, not multilateral, and the central monetary problem for postwar reconstruction was to stabilize the dollar-sterling exchange rate as the core of a new global dollar system, which other currencies could join as they were able.
Things are going to break and central banks are going to have to respond, but the mental frame that most people will be using is not well suited for understanding how the world now works