CapitalistImperialistPig

Was anybody surprised by the tapes revealing the sainted Reagan as a virulent racist?  In the aftermath of the Civil Rights Bill, the Republican Party managed to resuscitate itself from the near death experience of the Great Depression by becoming the party of American racism - albeit more of a wink and a nod racism than the old southern racism of lynchings.  So there is nothing surprising about the Party's leading lights talking like this.  Racist Ronnie:  “To see those, those monkeys from those African countries — damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!” Reagan said. Nixon liked the description so much he later repeated it multiple times. It's a party that's been rotten to the core for at least 50 years.

The CNN questioners, especially Jake Tapper, my current favorite for most annoying non-Fox News personality, seemed determined that Sanders and Warren get almost all the questions.  Both made effective opening statements, but IMHO, went rapidly downhill from there.  I was deeply annoyed by their seemingly fanatical devotion to Medicare only.  I'm on Medicare (as well as private insurance) and it is mostly great, but Medicare, like any medical insurance system, limits treatments.  That will not change. Forcing everyone into Medicare is deeply unpopular and the notion that it won't cost anybody but maybe a few rich people is ridiculous.  Warren was my favorite candidate at the start of the debate but she lost a lot of credibility for me with her devotion to Medicare only and the Green New Deal. I imagine Warren had prepared this zinger in advance:  “I don’t understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States just t...

I have always thought that books were a good way to sequester carbon.  Much of a book consists of carbon, and books can last a long time.  My faith in this possibly crackpot idea has been slightly shaken by some calculations showing that the carbon cost of making a book can be rather high - in one case as much as 34 kg/kg of book. Carbon footprints have always looked more like superstition than science to me, especially when the estimates differ by a factor of 30 or so.  In the case cited, much of the calculation seemed pretty dicey - the carbon cost included the carbon incorporated in the book plus the carbon that the tree cut down might have taken from the atmosphere in the future.  Oh please!  Trees grown for fiber are going to be cut down sometime and wouldn't live forever anyway.  Also, they will be replaced by new trees that will in turn grow and take up carbon, and the carbon taken from the tree is now a durable book. Of course I now buy most o...

Nature has a review of a new boo k called Skin Deep: Journeys in the Divisive Science of Race , by Gavin Evans.  The US now has a frankly racist President, and by it's cowardly acquiescence, a frankly racist political party, the Republicans.  All indications are that the 40% or so of the population that identify as Republicans buy fully into Trump's resurgent racism.  So the topic remains as relevant as ever. Nonetheless, I can't say that I'm very impressed by Angela Saini's review.  There are just too many places where weak endorsements take the place of fact and logic.  She rightly notes that biology has not been kind to conventional definitions of race - differences among individuals are mostly not correlated with so-called races.  However, when it comes to specifics, she, and perhaps our author, seems confused and dogmatic. Consider: Evans zooms in on two focal points of racial stereotypes: sport and intelligence. His section on the success of Ke...

What is modern?  The root of the word modern seems to mean "of the present time," so in that sense both the hipster living in a NYC condo and the hunter gatherer in the Amazon rain forest today are equally "modern."  Like nearly all words, though, the word has many meanings, some of which are intended to praise new or approved changes in society. I will use it in just that sense. To me, one of the dominant social changes of the past couple of hundred years has been the emergence of rights for marginalized social groups and especially for women.  It's easy to forget that less than 100 years ago, women could not vote in most of the US, couldn't vote even a few decades ago in even such a modern state as Switzerland.  Of course women remain severely restricted and oppressed in much of the world even today. The change has been traumatic for many traditionally male dominated societies.  The Ayatollah Khomeini  apparently became exercised enough to enter p...

One of the mysteries in the Jeffrey Epstein case is how he made his money.  Allegedly a hedge fund guy, he seems to have left almost no visible trace of his investing.  One popular theory is that he made his cash as a pimp/blackmailer. Given this suspicion, the fact that Epstein turned up severely injured in his cell suggests either unconscionable carelessness or complicity on the part of the prosecutors and jailors.  His list of powerful and wealthy friends, including accused pervs, Clinton, Trump, Prince Andrew, Woody Allen, Bill Cosby, Alan Dershowitz and many others suggests that there are many among the rich and powerful who would rather have him dead than talking.  He should be in isolation and under twenty-four hour surveillance.

The NYT Magazine has an article entitled: I Wanted to Know What White Men Thought About Their Privilege. So I Asked.   The subtitle is: "My college class asks what it means to be white in America — but interrogating that question as a black woman in the real world is much harder to do." So much so, evidently, that in a very long article ruminating on the question she almost never asks the question, much less gets an answer.  I suppose I got off on the wrong foot by wondering why a Yale professor of poetry would use the word "interrogate" in such a strange way.  In my dictionary, questions are asked and persons are interrogated.  The root of the word interrogate means to ask a question of someone. I also think that the whole concept of "white privilege" is a bad idea, but not because persons of color don't experience lots of outrages and inconveniences that whites usually don't.  It is a bad idea for a few reasons, one of which is that the roo...