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 Three Standard Deviations Off "Normal" Describing our lame duck Prez with distribution curves "Bell" Curves, "Clappers," get it? Ding dong? Oh, forget it. Lame Duck President Trump is on the far ends of these distributions. Way weirder than most humans, and in ways that make him dangerous. I left out the killer curve, "Charismatic Cult Leader". He's clear to the right, "very high" on that one. Maybe that's why he's so interesting to watch.   So I suggest we watch the heck out of him through this lame duck period. And after!

... And More Doubles and Triples GREATEST POLITICAL CARTOONIST OF OUR TIMES* *My "times" are long enough to remember Bill Mauldin, Herblock and a ton of others.  Toles still gets my vote.  So very sorry to see him fading into the eraser crumbs. ...Oh, and I felt a throb of brotherhood with Toles at:                                  ...Since I wrote a book about exactly that. https://amzn.to/2ZRzqPo  

Is Roger Stone Trump's Heinrich Himmler? Or Just His Joseph Goebbels? OK, this is terrifying. But at least it answers the question of why the President commuted Stone's sentence. One good story on this madness.

The Daily Pandemic Report always has an unexplained Number. And it's always BIG. Here's a typical daily report from a small state (NM)  TOTAL  NUMBER OF CASES       26,268 TOTAL RECOVERED                    -13,928                           12,340 (47%)   NOT Totally Recovered Only 77 people are currently hospitalized (and 813 poor souls died). SO what about those NTR (not totally recovered) folks? It's starting to come out. An awful truth is emerging. It's not just about how many die, it's about Covid-19 being a terrible ailment that has many really rotten long term effects. Italy is calling back coronavirus survivors.  About half say they haven’t fully recovered. Washington Post headline 9/8/2020 Other than that, I feel fine. That's about half.  And it sounds pretty bad: "(Some) ...

Imagine the Blue Ribbons Since the flower shows are canceled - even the NM State Fair - we are blessed with a new crop of prize dahlias every day. They soften the pain of isolation. We coulda been contendahs. Wife Dorothy has so many blue ribbons already we won't notice, but I sure notice this rampant beauty.  (And we have a house full of orchids to boot!) Upbeat, I am. 

Cheered Up, I Am Two bits of good news in one day in these times will do it. 1. Our garden is lush this year and the daily harvest is big - and beautiful . Thank you stored rainwater . 2. NPR is kicking arse ! I'm a happy man.

I wrote a book about her,  (She's a dead ringer for) a cave lion cub named Cubby. The poor baby is long dead. 38,000 years long. My fictional Cubby lived 125,000 years ago, and I lived in her cave with her and her mom. Time travel, of course. Now there's a bit of sci-fi fer ye.   "I" was my character Daryl Streeter, and I lived his adventure vicariously as I wrote the book, MIZ, Time Tripping With Amazing Females. It's a thrill to read about  this  DNA discovery, because in 2017 I made the assumption that the girls were unique, which allowed me to give them unique talents. We sci-fi guys love it when one of our predictions pans out in real life. Here are some highlights of the book. If you like audiobooks, here's the address for a YouTube "playlist" to listen to free. Just click "Play All," or click any chapter that looks interesting. Here's the Gizmodo story  about the amazing paleontology discovery.

Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas: (R) "The founders said 'Slavery was the necessary evil ' upon which the union was built.”                                            Campaign Pix                             Senatorial Pix                                                            This Senate work is exhausting . Senator Cotton, in an interview he gave to the  Arkansas Democratic-Gazette , in which he criticized the New York Times’ proposed school curriculum linked to its  1619 Project  that would reframe the national historical narrative to highlight slavery in U.S. history lessons. He tweeted the quotes were "fake news." E...

And there are things we can do about it. It's complicated, but what else are you doing these days? I got behind in my reading Science Magazine s from cover to cover. Then I caught up last night. And wowie, zowie! In the 17 July edition, page 256, is: PERSPECTIVE VIEWPOINT: COVID-19 Aging immunity may exacerbate COVID-19 Arne N. Akbar ,  Derek W. Gilroy   See all  authors and affiliations Science   17 Jul 2020: Vol. 369, Issue 6501, pp. 256-257 DOI: 10.1126/science.abb0762  It's kind of a heavy read, lotsa medical and pharmacology, like:  " A key hallmark of severe disease is exuberant inflammation in the respiratory tract of patients ( 1 ). Older healthy individuals (60 years and above) exhibit chronic low-grade sterile inflammation (not caused by a pathogen) characterized by high baseline serum concentrations of C reactive protein (CRP) and cytokines." Got that? We oldies - lots but not all - have "IN...

Up Your Game in Demonstration Coverage THE BET: I have a standing bet with several conservative friends. I bet that "when the truth comes out" (Har, har), it will be proven that most of the non-peaceful, burning-looting stuff was done by right wing radical groups like the Boogaloo bunch, The Proud Bois, and various "militias." But how much of that violence really happened? THE SEARCH:  I spent almost an hour Google/Bing/Yahoo-ing trying to answer one question, "What proportion of the huge BLM demonstrations were actually violent?"  VERY hard to find that information. Lots of folks; no smoke Then I saw this article on the NeimanLab site.   ...One line caught my attention: "There’s been little coverage that quantifies the proportion of protests that are violent versus those that are peaceful." Duh. So yeah, journos, don't just aim our attention at the violence without including the vital context of how big a deal it ...

UPDATE 11 am 7.23.20   (colorful edits ) Trump throws wrench into coronavirus bill negotiations with Senate Republicans Republican senators balk at White House’s insistence that next coronavirus bill include  a payroll tax cut   IT'S OUT!   and cuts to funding for testing and contact tracing. Still unsettled but Republicans (!) are confident they'll get $25 billion. OK, the Solomon thing doesn't work anymore, but I will leave it in for archival purposes (and I like the woodcut). SO....                                      Defund Covid Testing and Tracing, or...                  ....Sabotage Social Security and Medicare ? Solomon says:   NEITHER!  Either kills the baby. Scooter says: So, Solomon, what's the answer? Solomon says:  Fund testing to the fullest extent!  And ELIMINATE ...

But I Have to Say... Don't eat that amazing, tremendous, beautiful apple ...this could start a conspiracy theory or two. [OK, malicious photog? Accidental juxtapose?]    Actually, this picture accompanied a story about how President Trump's visit to Arizona convinced Governor Ducey to "open" Arizona too early and that resulted in the awful current Covid super hot spot catastrophe.  One might say that was 'devilish,'  but that sounds playful.  I can safely say our current President is not playful.

Lost Your Job? Lost Your Job-supplied Health Insurance? Caught Covid-19, and Had To Be Hospitalized? Seen the bill yet? How Bad Could It Be? I'm bad. Really Bad. That smarts.  Granted, this fellow in Seattle had CV-19 about as bad as you can have it and not die. (Had he died, his family would still get the bill.) This bill made the news*, but how many (almost all) of the other huge bills haven't made the news - yet. The Cares Act will help to cover hospital losses, but for the life of me I can't find the part where it will cover your losses if you've lost your insurance.  It's a looming "second wave" after hospitalization, and 20+ million people lost their employee health insurance when they lost their jobs. When on top of that you lose your health and a ton of money, what's going to happen to you and yours? Why aren't our favorite news sources covering these looming financial catastrophes? Just asking. *Seattle Times st...

Fixing capitalism for the richest country in the world When all this Coronacrap is over, and we have the vaccine and herd immunity has come about, and when we the herd can congregate any damn way we want to, there are still going to be millions of us out of work. Unemployed, busted, homeless, turning to crime or living with our relatives, not to put too fine a point on it. The muscle of capitalism is its workforce.  Ours is in terrible shape, even without the Virus. That really needs to be fixed. We need a healthy, stable, motivated, well trained work force. That's not what we've got right now. Confidence is rattled. Well deserved fear is about.  It's not everybody, but there many million of our fellow citizens who see they are in deep trouble. For capitalism to survive, this has to be fixed. In the days of Roosevelt, there was a functional majority of the nation that decided to support the New Deal. It was proof that government can respond - if imperfectly, p...

MASKS THAT ONLY DO HALF THEIR JOB The masks with an exhaust valve are all the rage because the air in the mask stays less hot/humid if you don’t have to exhale through the filter body; BUT only your inhalation gets filtered.   THIS PROTECTS ME FROM YOU, BUT NOT YOU FROM ME OK, I'm really, really selfish. Got a problem with that? It’s being  Exposed*  that this kind of mask only does half the job. It protects you but does not protect others from you. Your aerosols escape unrestricted, unfiltered and as infectious as if you had no mask. There will be a huge stink about this disclosure. EVEN THE MIGHTY N-95 IS DEEPLY FLAWED BY AN EXHAUST VALVE Ahead-of-the-curve magazine,                                                                        ...

ARE WE ALL RACISTS?   It takes a high mind to control low instincts.  1. Evolution has rewarded “tribalism” with survival and breeding opportunities over the millennia, from way back in our pre-homo sapien forebearers’ time.  When one troop of primates fought with another troop for food, territory, females, etc., the troop that stuck together the tightest usually won. When we evolved into sapiens, troops became tribes, and the tribes who fought the hardest because they feared and hated the other tribe usually won. Those of our ancestors who became leaders instinctively exploited the danger of “the other."  The millions of years of tribalism being a survival positive trait gradually infused the genetics of all humanity with tribalistic instincts.  These instincts are deep, way below our cognitive mind.   “Otherness = threat/rage” is a reflex response deep in our primitive brains. 2. RACE IS A CLEAR “TRIBAL MARKER,” at least to our primitive inst...