n2doc

n2doc's Journal

April 21, 2017

Paul Ryan Wrote an Essay About the Greatness of Donald Trump

BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
APR 21, 2017
The annual Time magazine—Motto: Hey, y'all still around?—list of the 100 greatest humans is always good for a chuckle or two. If it's not praise heaped on awful people, it's celebrities trying actually to write something and falling flat on their syntaxes. This year's installment is better than most. The selections are by and large undeniable—I don't get Ed Sheeran, but that's just me. Some of the writer-subject match-ups are fascinating: Russell Crowe on Leslie Jones; John Cusack on Theo Epstein; Lin-Manuel Miranda, energy operating well past the red line as usual, on Riz Ahmed, and Pulitzer winner and former U.S. poet laureate Rita Dove on LeBron James.

But then you get to the entry on the president*, which is written by Speaker Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver from the state of Wisconsin, and, whoops, there go the rails again.

A businessman always willing to challenge convention, he has shaken up Washington and laid out an agenda of generational proportions. Never afraid of a battle, he has made it his mission to fight for those who feel forgotten. Where others would pivot, he stays true to who he is. Where others would turn back, he forges ahead. Up close, I have found a driven, hands-on leader, with the potential to become a truly transformational American figure.

There are not two consecutive words in that paragraph that are remotely true. But, if I were a speaker whose party caucus is in open revolt, and I were writing about a president* who at the moment has to dial one-and-an-area-code to reach mere incompetence, this is the kind of thing I would write. Let's all watch them try to pass a healthcare bill again.

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a54676/time-100-paul-ryan-trump/

April 21, 2017

Senate may jam health-care bill through really fast after House passage

Once the House passes the Republican health-care bill, it could become law very quickly, Larry Kudlow said on Thursday.

According to sources, Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows has "been in discussion and successfully negotiating" with Sen. Susan Collins, a moderate Republican from Maine, and they have been agreeing on a number of issues, Kudlow reported.

"So for the first time, as this person reported to me, if the House can get a vote next week or soon after, the Senate may jam it right through fast. It won't take weeks and weeks and weeks," the senior CNBC contributor said on "Closing Bell."

The GOP has a new plan to repeal and replace Obamacare that aims to bridge the gap between the conservative Freedom Caucus and moderates, according to a document obtained by CNBC. A Freedom Caucus source told CNBC the new health bill would get "very close" to 216 votes.

more
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/20/senate-may-pass-health-care-bill-fast-after-house-passage-kudlow.html

April 21, 2017

The Night a Bunch of Low-Class People Took Over the White House

by Michael Tomasky

It’s one of the simple realities of American politics that conservatives get to make fun of liberals’ folkways without penalty, but when liberals belittle conservatives over theirs, they’re being out-of-touch elitists.

There was a famous attack ad against Howard Dean made by the Club for Growth back in 2004, in which an older white couple deliver themselves of the opinion that Gov. Dean should take his “tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving left-wing freak show back to Vermont where it belongs.”

The ad was credited as damaging Dean badly in Iowa. No liberal group, needless to say, has ever made an ad that I’m aware of advising that some Republican candidate should take his rich-worshipping, government-killing, moonshine-swilling, steak-eating, pickup-driving, Guns & Ammo-reading, arm-tattooing, Jesus-loving right-wing freak show back to Alabama where it belongs. Such an ad would be considered one of the most boneheaded plays of all time.

So I know what I’m walking into here, but the hell with it. Sarah Palin, Ted Nugent, and Kid Rock are totally classless people. First of all, hats in the Oval Office. I think that’s appalling. I’ve been in the Oval Office (though not while a president was there). It’s awe-inspiring to walk into that room. Peopled though it’s been with crooks and drunkards, it’s humbling. I could no more wear a hat in that room than take a piss in Chartres Cathedral. They’ll say this means I don’t understand their culture. I say it means they don’t understand respect. What a couple of low-rent mofos.

more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/04/21/the-night-a-bunch-of-low-class-people-took-over-the-white-house.html

April 21, 2017

Origins of Indonesian Hobbits finally revealed

The most comprehensive study on the bones of Homo floresiensis, a species of tiny human discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003, has found that they most likely evolved from an ancestor in Africa and not from Homo erectus as has been widely believed.

The study by The Australian National University (ANU) found Homo floresiensis, dubbed "the hobbits" due to their small stature, were most likely a sister species of Homo habilis -- one of the earliest known species of human found in Africa 1.75 million years ago.

Data from the study concluded there was no evidence for the popular theory that Homo floresiensis evolved from the much larger Homo erectus, the only other early hominid known to have lived in the region with fossils discovered on the Indonesian mainland of Java.

Study leader Dr Debbie Argue of the ANU School of Archaeology & Anthropology, said the results should help put to rest a debate that has been hotly contested ever since Homo floresiensis was discovered.

more
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170421084917.htm

April 21, 2017

BP oil spill did $17.2 billion in damage to natural resources, scientists find

The 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill did $17.2 billion in damage to the natural resources in the Gulf of Mexico, a team of scientists recently found after a six-year study of the impact of the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

This is the first comprehensive appraisal of the financial value of the natural resources damaged by the 134-million-gallon spill.

"This is proof that our natural resources have an immense monetary value to citizens of the United States who visit the Gulf and to those who simply care that this valuable resource is not damaged," said Kevin Boyle, a professor of agricultural and applied economics in the Virginia Tech College of Agriculture and Life Science and one of the authors on the paper.

Findings from the study are published in the issue of Science released Friday, April 21.

more
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170420141825.htm

April 21, 2017

Naked mole-rats 'turn into plants' when oxygen is low

Deprived of oxygen, naked mole-rats can survive by metabolizing fructose just as plants do, researchers report this week in the journal Science.

Understanding how the animals do this could lead to treatments for patients suffering crises of oxygen deprivation, as in heart attacks and strokes.

"This is just the latest remarkable discovery about the naked mole-rat -- a cold-blooded mammal that lives decades longer than other rodents, rarely gets cancer, and doesn't feel many types of pain," says Thomas Park, professor of biological sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who led an international team of researchers from UIC, the Max Delbrück Institute in Berlin and the University of Pretoria in South Africa on the study.

In humans, laboratory mice, and all other known mammals, when brain cells are starved of oxygen they run out of energy and begin to die.

But naked mole-rats have a backup: their brain cells start burning fructose, which produces energy anaerobically through a metabolic pathway that is only used by plants -- or so scientists thought.

more

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170420141844.htm

Pretty amazing critters....

April 21, 2017

Pioneering computer scientist Harry Huskey dies at 101

Source: AP

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (AP) — One of the last surviving members of the team that created the pioneering ENIAC computer in the 1940s has died. Harry Huskey was 101.

The University of California-Santa Cruz says Huskey died April 9 at his home in the city. Huskey was a professor emeritus at the university.

Huskey was teaching mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1940s when he joined the ENIAC team. ENIAC made its public debut in Philadelphia in 1946 as one of the world's first electronic computers. It weighed 30 tons and was 150 feet long.

Huskey later designed the Bendix G15 in the 1950s, which was billed as the first personal computer.

Read more: https://apnews.com/ed6b754c443848c59a3572836bd85a8c/Pioneering-computer-scientist-Harry-Huskey-dies-at-101

April 21, 2017

Memo to Homeland Security: Marijuana is not a gateway drug. Science says so.

BY PAUL ARMENTANO,

Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly alleges that marijuana is a “dangerous gateway drug that frequently leads to the use of harder drugs.”

In fact, the available science concludes just the opposite.

More than half of American adults have tried cannabis, according to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control. Statistically, the overwhelming majority of these individuals never go on to try another illicit substance, an empirical reality that persuaded investigators at the RAND Corporation to conclude, ”[M]arijuana has no causal influence over hard drug initiation.”

Moreover, by the time these individuals reach age 30, most of them have significantly decreased their cannabis use or no longer indulge in the substance at all.

Even more noteworthy is the reality that cannabis appears to act as a substitute or, in some cases, an exit drug for those struggling with drug abuse.

more
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/crime/329728-memo-to-homeland-security-marijuana-is-not-a-gateway-drug-science