SeniorJunior

More Outraged Than His Olde Man Number One Son Guy gets his teeth in a subject and tears it apart. He uses the most credible sources and looks for the logic and illogic in what they report.  He writes more extensively than I do, and I come away from his treatises better informed. Many of the heartfelt opinions in this long running blog were influenced by Guy's research and opinions.  So here is a new one, unfiltered through my inclinations.  You will come away better informed about the Qatari mess, the demonization of the Muslim Brotherhood and some historical antecedents. Scooter * See how outraged he looks?  A Guy Duff Observation Russian Psychological Warfare Hacking, Qatar, Oil, Neoconservatives and False Flags, Fake News and the Trump Legacy.  Terror at it’s worst. The Propaganda that Qatar sponsors terrorism is ludicrous to anyone concerned with facts. The United States is spending billions of dollars a year at the Qatar military base and is using the mo

Better Than Average Conversation I've told you redundantly of my  writing in the "Comments" sections of various news sites. Since I'm of the liberal persuasion, my opinions in the rightwing comments get hearty disagreements, about half thoughtful and half insulting. My favorite of those was "Die in boiling pig shit, commie." Probably a bot. So today, I wrote a comment in Breitbart about Senator McCain's senior moment at the Comey hearing. You know I stand up for my fellow olde farts. I was pretty un-political in this. seniorjunior (scooter duff) • 13 hours ago Hey, fellow old folks, stand up for Sen McCain! We all have a "senior moment" now and then, but that's just a little turbulence on top of our deep rivers of experience and judgement. All those young farts waxing superior are so far behind in actually knowing what's up will change their minds as they mature... if they last that long. • CHyatt responds right awa

Fossil Fuel Generated Electric Power...         ..... GUILT FREE! [Have you noticed a bug/feature on this elderly blog? I'm frequently picking stories, usually science, that I think are Big Deals, way undercovered by the press - I'm talking MSM. Examples: Pain killers ; Insect depletion ; Youthiness pills ; Dark matter, etc. I honestly believe the Big Media types have a blind spot for world shaking science news.] "Clean Coal," is that technology so hard to do it makes the term an oxymoron. But it was in pursuit of just such technology (unsuccessful) that led to what just may be the perfect bridge energy source between dirty fossil electricity generation and fully renewable generation. In fact, it might be so good it will be blessed as an "almost renewable" base-load generator, at least until we run out of natural gas. Science Magazine - the mag with the most cred, IMHO - did a piece on this wonder.  Read their article here . Reporter Robert F. Se

Truth, Facts, Data (For the War on Same) [[Have I told you  about my latest fixation of writing in the "Comments" sections of various news sites?  (I  have )   I do NYTimes.com, WashingtonPost.com, Breitbart.com, & DailyCaller.com. Balance, y'know.]] So I am arguing with a Anthro-Climate-Change denier on DailyCaller, and he tells me there has be no - NO decrease in the Arctic ice cover, Greenland isn't melting AT ALL, etc. and gives me links to a couple anti-science, God-will-fix-it websites. (I do not doubt God's ability to fix it, but I hear He's taking a hands-off position on this mess.) Then I see a piece on Greenland ice sheet measurements by NASA, and the project is called, wait for it.... ... Don'tcha know. It's an interesting piece of science on the march. But OMG! how fitting.

Son of Blackbird (SR-71) There I was,  worrying  about the Chinese passing us in hypersonic aircraft, when Lo & B, here comes the news that the U.S.of A. has not been sitting on its duff on this after all. In good old " Aviation Week " (also  Popular Mechanics ) the news is that Lockheed Martin is almost ready to test the Mach 6  SR-72 . I am relieved. One less thing to worry about in the Chinese/USA race for air superiority. Who knows what it will really look like? Now (thank you President Trump) I am worried that the Chinese are set to shoot past us in all things renewable-energy related. Oh and world leadership in the overall fight against climate change.  And influence in Africa and Latin America. And Asian trade. And  who  knows what else?.....

Lotta Smart People Think It’s Going to Get Dangerous Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Stephan Hawkings, among the Earth’s smartest people, are warning that A.I. has the potential to eat its creators. Sci-fi types (I admit guilt there) have been saying it for decades. Remember HAL-9000’s, “I’m sorry, Dave, I can’t let you do that.”  Then give the A.I. weapons and we have SkyNet, killing off the vermin humans in all the Terminator movies. Grandmaster Isaac Asimov was the center of a cluster of sci-fi authors who recognized the threat back in the ‘40s and before. (Ahead of our time, we are.) Back here in reality, we are already on (or over!) the cusp of giving weapons to A.I.s.  HAROP DRONE AT THE 2013 PARIS AIR SHOW The Harop Drone is a "loitering munition," drone that flies until it finds a specific kind of target, and then turns into a kamikaze missile. Julian Herzog, via Wikimedia Commons,  CC BY 4.0 So what’s a wetware (human) to do???? S

Science Might Save Us Again Killing more Americans than guns or auto accidents, the opioid epidemic is a  monster in our midst. * As I noted below , there are promising scientific advances in pain killers (and if you've experienced serious pain, you surely want to kill it!) that might help, big time. This article in Science News covers research in this vital matter in clear, layman-readable prose, as usual.  It also summarizes what's happening in pain research on the controversial substances, kratom and cannabis, which certainly ought to be in the discussion. I'm encouraged.  ** My pessimistic side fears Prez Trump will cut research money or tighten the regulatory screws and make research on weed and kratom even more difficult.  * pix credit ** pix credit