开云体育

Buffalo

Referencing the last one, I can contribute some packages of Kool-Aid. Can you chip in some cyanide to help with that effort? :) And if you aren't old enough to understand the meaning in that last one, then we will wait for you to look it up! Try Google and "jim jones guyana". For whichever person volunteers to check those boarding against the list, please be sure Rudy G and Mitch M are in the crowd and board. Ken -------- Forwarded Message -------- The World According to Jambo: 12-10-2020 The fake news written and published today by satirist James Schlarmann. ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? And one more just in case you missed it: -- "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." -- Bertrand Russell, British philosopher and mathematician

“The vote is the most powerful nonviolent tool we have.” — John Lewis, member, US House of Representatives, civil rights leader

"What I like in a good author isn’t what he says, but what he whispers." -- Logan Pearsall Smith, American/British author/essayist (1865-1946)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/43GjCh72bxWVSqSB84ZDJw0/reith-lectures-2020-how-we-get-what-we-value If you aren't familiar with the Reith Lectures, you have been missing out on some true gems of thought. Yearly, the BBC sponsors an expert in some area to talk about that subject and how it applies to today's world. The 4th of four hasn't been delivered yet, but the first three are good. You could do a lot worse than spending time listening to them. To get the full value, you should consider appropriating an hour four separate times. It's a commitment for sure but you will realize that you know more about the world when you finish listening to each one. The current one (#3) is about the value of human life and starts with Hobbes' idea that protecting its citizens is the highest duty of government. He approaches the current Covid pandemic through that lens. The last one will be released next week. Ken ======= How We Get What We Value Mark Carney’s Reith Lectures will chart how we have come to esteem financial value over human value and how we have gone from market economies to market societies. He argues that this has contributed to a trio of crises: of credit, Covid and climate. And the former Bank of England governor will outline how we can turn this around. Lecture 1: From Moral to Market Sentiments (9am, Wednesday 2 December 2020, BBC Radio 4) In this first lecture, recorded with a virtual audience, Mark Carney reflects that whenever he could step back from what felt like daily crisis management, the same deeper issues loomed. What is value? How does the way we assess value both shape our values and constrain our choices? How do the valuations of markets affect the values of our society? Carney argues that society has come to embody Oscar Wilde’s old aphorism: “knowing the price of everything but the value of nothing". Mark Carney Lecture 2: From Credit Crisis to Resilience (9am, Wednesday 9 December 2020, BBC Radio 4) Dr Carney takes us back to the high drama of the financial crisis of 2008, which ended a period when bankers saw themselves as unassailable Masters of the Universe. More than a decade on, how much have the bankers changed their ways? How far has the financial sector changed? Carney says that we must remain vigilant and resist the “three lies of finance". If we don’t, he warns, we will live with a system which is ill-prepared for the next crisis. Lecture 3: From Covid Crisis to Renaissance (9am, Wednesday 16 December 2020, BBC Radio 4) Dr Carney observes that the pandemic has forced states to confront how we value health, wealth and opportunity. During the first few months of the crisis, most states chose to value human life more than the economic well-being of the nation-state. But if that seems to be changing, how do we assess value in this sense? Carney elucidates surprising differences in the financial value put on a human life in different nations and goes on to argue that this reductionist approach fails to take into account deeper thinking about the worth of human existence. Lecture 4: From Climate Crisis to Real Prosperity (9am, Wed 23 Dec 2020, BBC Radio 4) In this final lecture, Dr Carney turns his attention to climate change, arguing that the roots of our environmental emergency lie in a deeper crisis of values. He suggests how we can create an ecosystem in which society’s values broaden the market’s conceptions of value. In this way, individual creativity and market dynamism can be channelled to achieve broader social goals including inclusive growth and environmental sustainability. The series is chaired by Anita Anand. And for the first time, you will be able to watch all the lectures on BBC iPlayer. -- "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." -- Bertrand Russell, British philosopher and mathematician

-------- Forwarded Message -------- Today's best political cartoons Artists take on anti-maskers, the Pfizer vaccine, and more Dave Whamond Copyright 2020 Cagle Cartoons Steve Sack Copyright 2020 Cagle Cartoons

I continue to be amazed that anyone with half an IQ could believe in the "trickle down" myth. This piece pretty much puts nails in the coffin for those beliefs. Ken ========== https://popularresistance.org/huge-study-of-50-years-of-tax-cuts-for-the-wealthy/ Huge Study Of 50 Years Of Tax Cuts For The Wealthy By Grace Dean, Business Insider. December 16, 2020 | Educate! Above photo: Rogelio V. Solis/AP. Suggests ‘trickle-down’ economics makes inequality worse. “Cutting taxes on the rich increases top income shares, but has little effect on economic performance,” the researchers concluded. Large tax cuts for the rich don’t lead to economic growth and employment but instead cause higher income inequality, a new study that examined tax cuts over 50 years suggested. A recent paper by David Hope of the London School of Economics and Julian Limberg of King’s College London found that tax cuts for the rich in 18 countries predominantly benefited the wealthy. “Our analysis finds strong evidence that cutting taxes on the rich increases income inequality but has no effect on growth or unemployment” in the short and long term, the researchers wrote. After major tax cuts for the rich were introduced, the top 1% share of pretax national income increased by almost 1 percentage point, they found. Their findings counter arguments that tax cuts for the rich “trickle down” to benefit other people — which the researchers noted have been part of the rationale for major tax reforms in the US. Supporters say tax cuts for the rich can lead wealthy people to put in more hours and effort at work, boosting economic activity, the researchers said. Other arguments for trickle-down tax cuts include that they allow wealthy people to invest more and benefit the economy. Hope and Limberg analyzed major tax cuts for the rich in 18 countries that are part of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, including the US, Japan, and Norway, from 1965 to 2015. Top incomes have risen rapidly since the 1980s — and as they grew, more tax cuts for the wealthy were introduced, the researchers said. The researchers said their results were in line with a 2014 paper published in the American Economic Journal that suggested that lower taxes for the rich caused high earners to seek pay raises. “Cutting taxes on the rich increases top income shares, but has little effect on economic performance,” Hope and Limberg concluded. Taxes have been scrutinized during the pandemic as countries look for ways to fund COVID-19 relief efforts. Earlier this month, Argentina enacted a one-off “millionaire tax” to help pay for its pandemic response. Fewer than one in 100 earners will pay the tax, which the government hopes will raise $3.78 billion. UK experts have also called for a similar one-time wealth tax, which the Wealth Tax Commission has said could raise ?260 billion, or about $348 billion, in five years. In July, 83 millionaires — including the Ben & Jerry’s cofounder Jerry Greenfield and the Disney heiress Abigail Disney — signed a letter asking for higher taxes on the superrich to pay for COVID-19 relief. In an opinion article for Business Insider in August, Max Burns, a veteran Democratic strategist, said President Donald Trump’s COVID-19 relief proposal with a 50% cut in weekly unemployment payments and a payroll-tax cut was “just another tax cut for the wealthy in disguise.” Finance and the Economy Taxes wealth inequality Wealth Tax -- "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." -- Bertrand Russell, British philosopher and mathematician

The numbers in here don't make sense if you wish to point a finger of fraud at Dominion. It takes a special type of mathematical innumeracy to keep positing the fraud they claim. And I will keep repeating this fact: One supporter of "THE STEAL" hypothesis, when asked for evidence, insisted with a straight face that there was no evidence since the fraud committed by the Democrats was so good as to be undetectable. OK, that's laughable on the face of it when you really think about it. If the Democrats are so good that they can perpetrate fraud to that extent without being detected, then the Democrats deserve to win based on pur intelligence differences. And for such a fraud to be undetectable, you need to see the 7 million vote surplus Biden had over Trump and ask if there's any way on Earth for that many people to keep a secret of this sort. The odds of a secret of that extent staying secret are so infinitesimal as to be zero in anyone's book. Ken ============ https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/trump-biden/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=6141 Dominion Voting Systems fires back with legal action against Sidney Powell Photo via Screengrab. Meaghan Ellis December 17, 2020 Dominion Voting Systems is now taking steps toward legal action against Sidney Powell. Dominion and its voting machines have been at the center of several conspiracy theories and falsehoods surrounding the 2020 presidential election. Although President Donald Trump initially spread misinformation about mail-in voting, he and his allies began circulating falsehoods targeting Dominion voting machines as election results proved favorable for Biden. Since then, Dominion Voting Systems claims it has been subjected to a "'relentless and reckless disinformation' campaign, led by Powell, Rudy Giuliani, other allies of President Donald Trump, and Trump himself," according to Law & Crime. The election technology company Smartmatic has also released a similar demand letter seeking a retraction from Powell. On multiple occasions, she has insisted the company has ties to Dominion. Powell also claimed conspiracy insisting a ploy to rig the election was funded by "communist money." "The Dominion Voting Systems, the Smartmatic technology software, and the software that goes in other computerized voting systems here as well, not just Dominion, were created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chavez to make sure he never lost an election after one constitutional referendum came out the way he did not want it to come out," Powell claimed. Despite Powell's claims and the long string of conspiracy theories and falsehoods circulating on social media, Dominion has adamantly insisted that the claims are false. In fact, Trump managed to win the vast majority of the counties that used Dominion technology in various swing states. A review of 10 key states (Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) finds that Dominion systems were used in 351 of 731 counties. Trump won 283 of those counties, 81 percent of the total. He won 79 percent of the counties that didn't use Dominion systems. In counties that used Dominion systems, Biden got 888,259 votes to Trump's 851,069. In counties that didn't use Dominion systems, Biden got 1.54 million votes to Trump's 1.52 million. In other words, if you eliminated every county that used Dominion systems, Biden still got more votes. Biden won Dominion-using counties by about two points overall compared with his 0.5-point margin in non-Dominion counties. On Monday, Dec. 14, the Electoral College affirmed President-elect Joe Biden's win as Trump continues to insist he won the election. -- "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." -- Bertrand Russell, British philosopher and mathematician

Awwww, a homeless ex-President? Let's have a pity party! Ken =========== https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/mar-a-lago-problem-just-got-even-uglier-for-him/34858/ Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago problem just got even uglier for him Shirley Kennedy | 7:30 pm EST December 17, 2020 Palmer Report ? Analysis When and if Donald Trump tires of fighting the inevitability of his departure from the White House, he will have plenty left to fight, including criminal charges awaiting him in New York. One of the most contentious fights for Trump will occur when he moves to Mar-a-Lago, where neighbors are letting Trump know he is not welcome. The Washington Post is reporting that Trump put himself in this position. He signed an agreement in 1993 that made him choose between declaring Mar-a-Lago a home or a private club. Because he chose the club, his neighbors, the DeMoss family, allege that Trump lost his legal right to live at the club. Whoever thought a defeated president would have to fight to live in the place of his choice? This is certainly not a normal occurrence, but then, nothing is normal when it comes to Donald Trump. New York does not want him — well, the New York Attorney General does — and Palm Beach does not want him either. Where on Earth will he go? Not our problem. We did not want him in the White House, and we’ve accomplished that mission. It seems that the DeMoss family is fighting as hard as we did. The family’s attorney sent a demand letter, requesting that Trump be notified that he cannot use Mar-a-Lago as a residence to save him the embarrassment of having to leave. “There’s absolutely no legal theory under which he can use that property as both a residence and a club,” according to Glenn Zeitz, another neighbor who has joined in the fight. Trump did it to himself, out of desperation. According to WaPo, Trump signed the agreement to help pay for the staggering costs of maintaining Mar-a-Lago because his finances were not in good shape. That should not be much of a surprise, as Trump has never properly handled his businesses and quickly turned them into money-bleeders. Under the agreement, members were banned from spending more than 21 days a year at the club and could not stay longer than 7 consecutive nights. To get Palm Beach to agree, Trump’s attorney claimed that Trump would never live at Mar-a-Lago. My, how times have changed, and Trump is scrambling for shelter. WaPo revealed that yet another agreement may preclude Trump’s residency at Mar-a-Lago: Trump deeded development rights to Mar-a-Lago to the National Historic Trust, a non-profit centered around preserving historic sites. Since Trump served as president, Mar-a-Lago could be considered an historic site, further limiting Trump’s ability to do much of anything with the property. In signing this deal, Trump agreed to “forever relinquish his rights to develop Mar-a-Lago or use it for any purpose other than club use.” Oh, well. Once again, Trump stepped on his own foot. Now, he wants to change things. Trump is in for a fight. The neighbors have already vowed to sue to uphold the agreement between Trump and the city. When asked about the demand letter and suit, Reginald Stambaugh, counsel for the neighbors said, “Palm Beach has many lovely estates for sale, and we are confident President Trump will find one which meets his needs.” -- "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." -- Bertrand Russell, British philosopher and mathematician

I'm not sure which God this guy is hearing, but he/she/it/them got it wrong. If God wanted Trump to be President for life, he/she/it/them would have done more than whisper in some idiot's ear. At the least, a full page ad in the NYTimes would have appeared with no one having placed it there or paid for it. That would be enough for me to believe this load of crap. As it stands, I hark back to my youthful days when I enjoyed using some drugs. I want some of what Johnny Enlow is taking! Ken ========== https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/god-told-johnny-enlow-trump-got-88-million-votes-won-45-states-including-california-and-new-york/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=rww&utm_campaign=bestof God Told Johnny Enlow Trump Got 88 Million Votes, Won 45 States Including California and New York By Kyle Mantyla | December 14, 2020 11:30 am QAnon conspiracy theorist Johnny Enlow appeared on the Elijah Streams YouTube channel Friday, where he declared that he had been told by God that any presidential election vote total showing President Donald Trump receiving fewer votes than he has followers on Twitter is fraudulent. Enlow, who is a leading proponent of Seven Mountains Dominionism, spun a convoluted conspiracy theory alleging that there was a “red tsunami” in the 2018 midterm elections in which Republicans made massive gains, only to have those gains wiped out by Democratic voter fraud. Enlow claimed that the Trump campaign was aware of the rampant fraud, and rather than contest or expose it, they set up a “sting operation” for the 2020 election. According to Enlow, the Trump campaign did not want to win the presidential election outright because that would have foiled its plans to expose the widespread fraud. And Enlow knows this, he claims, because God told it to him. “It was a sting operation,” Enlow said. “They knew [the Democrats] had to cheat, and they knew they had to cheat a lot. They already knew they were going to cheat at least 15 percent, because that’s what they did last time. What they ended up having to do is to cheat by every means known to man. They had to do the Dominion software, they had to enter into the new algorithms, they had to freeze the election, produce new ballots, pull them out of suitcases. It’s the most flagrant cheating in history.” “Until we see at least 88 million votes show up for Trump and 45 states, it will not have been [legitimate],” Enlow added. “The numbers are actually greater than that. I don’t know why the Lord gave me two sets of numbers, but he just says, ‘You’re not even seeing close to the truth unless you see at least 88 million.’ He told me in a weird way: ‘If you don’t see at least as many votes as he has followers on Twitter’—88.6 million followers on Twitter, and that has been squelched as well. And then the states, he went through just one by one with me and was telling me who was where. And so here’s the big news: California and New York both went red.” Tags: Johnny Enlow Election 2020 -- "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." -- Bertrand Russell, British philosopher and mathematician

-------- Forwarded Message -------- The UN’s World Happiness Report Ranks “Socialist Friendly” Countries like Finland, Norway, Denmark, Iceland & Switzerland as Among the Happiest in the World The UN’s World Happiness Report Ranks “Socialist Friendly” Countries like Finland, Norway, Denmark, Iceland & Switzerland as Among the Happiest in the World Posted: 22 Dec 2020 01:00 AM PST https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3vsGlAvr04 One of the most pernicious, “dangerous, anti-human and soul-crushing” myths in the business world, writes Liz Ryan at Forbes, is the “idiotic nostrum” that has also crept into government and charitable work: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” The received wisdom is sometimes phrased more cynically as “if you can’t measure it, it didn’t happen,” or more positively as “if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” But “the important stuff can’t be measured,” says Ryan. Don’t we all want to believe that? “Can’t Buy Me Love” and so forth. Maybe it’s not that simple, either. Take happiness, for example. We might say we disagree about its relative importance, but we all go about the business of trying to buy happiness anyway. In our hearts of hearts, it’s a more or less an unquestionable good. So why does it seem so scarce and seem to cost so much? Maybe the problem is not that happiness can’t be measured but that it can’t be commodified. Buddhist economies like Bhutan, for example, run on a GHI (Gross National Happiness) index instead of GDP, and pose the question of whether the issue of national happiness is one of priorities. In other words, “you get what you measure.” In March, Laura Begley Bloom cited the 20 happiest countries in the world at Forbes, using the UN’s 2020 World Happiness Report, “a landmark survey of the state of global happiness,” as the report’s website describes it, “that ranks 156 countries by how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be.” Happiness is measured across urban and rural environments and according to environmental quality and sustainable development metrics. The report uses six rubrics to assess happiness—levels of GDP, life expectancy, generosity, social support, freedom and corruption, and income. Their assessment relied on self-reporting, to give “a direct voice to the population as opposed the more top-down approach of deciding ex-ante what ought to matter.” The last chapter attempts to account for the so-called “Nordic Exception,” or the puzzling fact that “Nordic countries are constantly among the happiest in the world.” Maybe this fact is only puzzling if you begin with the assumption that wealthy capitalist economies promote happiness. But the top ten happiest countries are wealthy “socialist friendly” mixed economies, as Bill Maher jokes in the clip at the top, saying that in the U.S. “the right has a hard time understanding we don’t want long lines for bread socialism, we want that you don’t have to win the lotto to afford brain surgery socialism.” This is comedy, not trenchant geo-political analysis, but it alludes to another significant fact. Most of the world’s unhappiest countries and cities are formerly colonized places whose economies, infrastructures, and supply chains have been destabilized by sanctions (which cause long bread lines), bombed out of existence by wealthier countries, and destroyed by climate catastrophes. The report does not fully explore the meaning of this data, focusing, understandably, on what makes populations happy. But an underlying theme is the suggestion that happiness is something we achieve in real, measurable economic relation with each other, not solely in the pursuit of individualist ideals. Related Content: How Much Money Do You Need to Be Happy? A New Study Gives Us Some Exact Figures Creativity, Not Money, is the Key to Happiness: Discover Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihaly’s Theory of “Flow” Albert Camus Explains Why Happiness Is Like Committing a Crime—”You Should Never Admit to it” (1959) Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness The UN’s World Happiness Repo

-- "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." -- Bertrand Russell, British philosopher and mathematician

https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/dear-trump-supporter/35038/ Dear Trump Supporter… Robert Harrington | 3:00 pm EST December 26, 2020 Palmer Report ? Analysis Dear Trump supporter, I know, you’re unhappy. And I also know, many of you don’t accept the final outcome of the 2020 US presidential election. This is ironic when you think about it, because the last time people like me were in your position, your only advice to us was, “Too bad. Get over it.” Then you spent the next four years reminding us to get over it pretty much every day. In fact, you spent the next four years telling us Donald Trump was our President — whether we liked it or not. Well guess what? I guess the tables have turned. You got your comeuppance. You got your John Podesta moment. You now know how it feels to have defeat snatched from the jaws of victory. But I’m not going to do to you what you did to me — and people like me. I’m not going to gloat. Instead, I’m going to ask you a question. That question is this. Why do you let Donald Trump decide what’s morally right and what’s morally wrong for you? Can’t you decide those things for yourselves? Permit me to give you an example. Donald Trump almost never wears a mask. He frequently supports the narrative that masks are optional and he even supports people who rebel against wearing masks entirely. As a result, his people almost never wear masks either. Even members of his own staff pay lip service to mask-wearing as well. But do you understand why wearing a mask is important? Do you know what a mask is for? Do you know what a mask does to keep us safe? Take a guess. Chances are you’re wrong. The actual reason for wearing a mask isn’t to protect you. It’s to protect others. You see, carriers of coronavirus can have no symptoms at all for a very long time. Sometimes they can have no symptoms for as long as they carry the virus. So if everyone wears a mask, especially these coronavirus carriers who don’t know they are coronavirus carriers, the chances of coronavirus spreading are drastically reduced. Think of that. Think of the hundreds of thousands of people who would be alive today, or the millions who would have never gotten sick in the first place, if only we’d done the right thing from the very start. Other countries did it. Many other countries saved lives and saved businesses because their people cooperated. In fact, this kind of thing only ever happens when people cooperate. This was our chance to shine, to show how through cooperation we can all save lives. Cooperation, in short, is the kind of thing democracy was born to do. You see, when we stand together against a common enemy, only then can we make America great again. And there has never been an enemy quite so relentless, quite so implacable, quite so indifferent to politics or religion than coronavirus. Instead we used the pandemic as another way to hate each other, another way to divide each other, another way to make America smaller, more petty. Another way to make America less great. Donald Trump used coronavirus to divide us. On the one hand, after calling coronavirus a hoax, his administration finally got around to telling us to wear masks in its official guidelines. On the other hand, he continued to support people who rebelled against mask-wearing. He took his mask off, as if taking off a mask is a form of macho defiance, as if it was something to be proud of. And a lot of people did the same. And a lot of people died. It’s unfortunate that the wearing of masks has become political. Many Republicans encouraged by Donald Trump think it’s okay not to wear a mask. Some Republicans refuse to wear masks at all. Some are even violent about it. Take a look at an average Trump rally and see how many people aren’t wearing masks, including Trump. Yet every time Donald Trump holds a rally, a firestorm of coronavirus is started. Many people die as a result, including Donald Trump’s personal friend Herman Kane. Imagine if Donald Trump had started out with a consistent message that everyone should wear a mask. Imagine how different things wou

Do you believe in ETs? Do I? My beliefs are not affected by any facts or artifacts (there really aren't any I've seen which stand up to strict protocol examinations) but it's merely a hunch that we are merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg. As for the "dead civilizations" idea, just think back on our history over the past 75 years and how close we've come to destroying each other totally or at least to the stone age level. Ken ========= https://www.space.com/milky-way-alien-life-map?utm_source=notification The Milky Way is probably full of dead civilizations By Rafi Letzter 16 hours ago (Image: ? European Souther Observatory) Most of the alien civilizations that ever dotted our galaxy have probably killed themselves off already. That's the takeaway of a new study, published Dec. 14 to the arXiv database, which used modern astronomy and statistical modeling to map the emergence and death of intelligent life in time and space across the Milky Way. Their results amount to a more precise 2020 update of a famous equation that Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence founder Frank Drake wrote in 1961. The Drake equation, popularized by physicist Carl Sagan in his "Cosmos" miniseries, relied on a number of mystery variables — like the prevalence of planets in the universe, then an open question. This new paper, authored by three Caltech physicists and one high school student, is much more practical. It says where and when life is most likely to occur in the Milky Way, and identifies the most important factor affecting its prevalence: intelligent creatures' tendency toward self-annihilation. Related: From Big Bang to present: snapshots of our universe through time Click here for more Space.com videos... CLOSE "Since Carl Sagan's time, there's been lots of research," said study co-author Jonathan H. Jiang, an astrophysicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech. "Especially since the Hubble Space Telescope and Kepler Space Telescope, we have lots of knowledge about the densities [of gas and stars] in the Milky Way galaxy and star formation rates and exoplanet formation ... and the occurrence rate of supernova explosions. We actually know some of the numbers [that were mysteries at the time of the famous 'Cosmos' episode]." —11 fascinating facts about our Milky Way galaxy —Big Bang to civilization: 10 amazing origin events —5 reasons we may live in a multiverse The authors looked at a range of factors presumed to influence the development of intelligent life, such as the prevalence of sunlike stars harboring Earth-like planets; the frequency of deadly, radiation-blasting supernovas; the probability of and time necessary for intelligent life to evolve if conditions are right; and the possible tendency of advanced civilizations to destroy themselves. Related: 9 strange, scientific excuses for why humans haven't found aliens yet Modeling the evolution of the Milky Way over time with those factors in mind, they found that the probability of life emerging based on known factors peaked about 13,000 light-years from the galactic center and 8 billion years after the galaxy formed. Earth, by comparison, is about 25,000 light-years from the galactic center, and human civilization arose on the planet's surface about 13.5 billion years after the Milky Way formed (though simple life emerged soon after the planet formed.) In other words, we're likely a frontier civilization in terms of galactic geography and relative latecomers to the self-aware Milky Way inhabitant scene. But, assuming life does arise reasonably often and eventually becomes intelligent, there are probably other civilizations out there — mostly clustered around that 13,000-light-year band, mostly due to the prevalence of sunlike stars there. A figure from the paper plots the age of the Milky Way in billions of years (y axis) against distance from the galactic center (x axis), finding a hotspot for civilization 8 billion years after the galaxy formed and 13,000 light years from the galactic center. (Image credit: Cai et al.) Most of these other civilizations that sti

Howdy, plantsman, good to see you here. At the moment we are very small (I believe you are #3 here) but hoping to grow. Invite your friends if you wish. Almost anything goes, if you need your leash to be yanked, I'll do it gently so as not to strangle you ;) I believe this entire site is set up for moderation on at least the first post, and then I will try to remember to remove that from your record. Ken ========= -- "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." -- Bertrand Russell, British philosopher and mathematician

Here's a little checklist. It is by no means comprehensive, merely provided to give you a little bit of food for thought. 1) Are you prohibited from owning any sort of holy book, or required to do so, no matter which religion publishes it? 2) Are you prohibited from discussing your religion in public? 3) Are you prohibited from practicing your religion in a recognized church/mosque/temple/synagogue/etc.? 4) Do you believe your religion gives you rights others don't have based on God word to your religion? 5) Do you believe you are inherently better than others based on your religion? I don't even have to give you the "accepted" answers to these questions. You know immediately what the question means and what effect the wrong answer would have on others. And I don't have to be an atheist to receive their newsletter just to keep in touch with the views of others. Of course, should the Christian Nationalists referenced in this email gain enough control, I would become a criminal merely for reading the opinions of those who disagree with the established religion. Is the suppression of others and the denial of their rights commanded by your God? If so, maybe you should be shopping for a different God. Ken =============== -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: What is “Religious Freedom”? Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2021 09:49:00 -0500 From: Nick Fish, American Atheists <info@...> Reply-To: info@... Dear Supporter -- Every year, on January 16, we celebrate the enactment of Thomas Jefferson’s “Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom,” a document that guaranteed equality under the law for both religious and nonreligious Americans. Despite what Christian nationalists would have you believe, religious freedom does not mean special privileges for religious people or legally justified discrimination. Instead, religious freedom means that the government may not treat anyone differently, whether positively or negatively, because of their religious beliefs or lack thereof. And the separation of religion and government is the cornerstone of true religious freedom. This month, as we celebrate Religious Freedom Day, we released the latest edition of our State of the Secular States report to help lawmakers and advocates promote positive laws and fight back against Christian nationalism. We know that 2021 will be a crucial year in the fight to protect true religious freedom. As Alison Gill, our Vice President for Legal and Policy, explained to The Guardian, while 2020 saw very few Christian nationalist laws passed at the state level, primarily due to the pandemic, we expect to see many more dangerous bills introduced in legislatures as things start to return to normal. “Those issues that are contentious in the culture war will continue to move forward this year, and will affect LGBTQ people, religious minorities, and non-religious people, and women, and reproductive access,” she warned. Christian nationalism is a threat to all of our rights. And these extremists don’t limit themselves to introducing bad bills at the state level. Many of the violent rioters at the U.S. Capitol last week were motivated by Christian nationalist rhetoric and beliefs. Today, on Religious Freedom Day, help invest in the state-level advocacy that will ensure we can defeat these Christian nationalist bills that are already being introduced across the country. Whether it’s “In God We Trust” displays being forced into public schools, atheist parents being prevented from adopting or fostering, or abortion restrictions that reflect evangelical theology, Christian nationalism should not define our laws. With these Project Blitz bills, Christian supremacists are trying to subvert the meaning of religious freedom, claiming that it only applies to them. Let’s take back religious freedom from the Religious Right. Let’s use it to guarantee rights for atheists and all Americans, not to excuse Christian privilege and discrimination. Tell your Member of Congress and Senators that religious freedom applies to everyone, including atheists! Then make a tax-deductible donation today to

US Constitution, Article I, Section 3 (http://www.kdebusk.com/const/consti.html) The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present. Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law. As many times as I've read this document, I never before noticed that there is a distinct difference in conviction and judgment. It should have been very apparent to me since that's the way all our other courts operate. The way I read it (and this could very well be disputed), even without a conviction requiring 2/3 or more, a judgment could be issued lesser than the whole enchilada, as it were. This appears to me at least to be a subject wide open for argument and court action if only to solidify definitions. A flawed analogy might be that between citizens and persons in this document, with many saying they should be read as meaning the same thing and most saying the very fact that two separate words are used means there are two separate meanings. Can judgment only follow conviction? Here again, the IANAL (I am not a lawyer) acronym applies totally. To say this all in a different way, judgment in the legal sense follows conviction, but it's optional. We've all seen instances where a guilty verdict was given but there was no punishment other than wearing the metaphorical scarlet letter "I" to bring in a literary reference. Ken -- "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." -- Bertrand Russell, British philosopher and mathematician

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/21/legal-scholars-federalist-society-trump-convict-461089 Legal scholars, including at Federalist Society, say Trump can be convicted Some Republicans have argued a former president can't be the target of an impeachment trial. Former President Donald Trump waves as he disembarks from his final flight on Air Force One. | AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta By NATASHA BERTRAND 01/21/2021 02:01 PM EST Former President Donald Trump can be convicted in an impeachment trial for his role in inciting the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6 even though he is no longer in office, a bipartisan group of constitutional law scholars wrote in a letter Thursday. “We differ from one another in our politics, and we also differ from one another on issues of constitutional interpretation,” wrote the signatories, which include the co-founder and other members of the conservative Federalist Society legal group. “But despite our differences, our carefully considered views of the law lead all of us to agree that the Constitution permits the impeachment, conviction, and disqualification of former officers, including presidents.” More than 150 legal scholars signed on to the letter, which was obtained by POLITICO. They include Steven Calabresi, the co-founder of the Federalist Society; Charles Fried, who served as solicitor general under Ronald Reagan and is now an adviser to the Harvard chapter of the Federalist Society; Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University and adjunct scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute; and Brian Kalt, a law professor at Michigan State University and leading scholar on the specific question of whether former officials can be impeached. The House impeached Trump last week, for the second time, in a 232-197 vote for "incitement of insurrection” following the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob that left five people dead. As the impeachment process moves into its next phase in the Senate, the signatories of the letter are seeking to counter an argument that has been gaining steam among some Republican senators: that it would be unconstitutional for the Senate to hold an impeachment trial for Trump now that he is a private citizen. “The Senate lacks constitutional authority to conduct impeachment proceedings against a former president,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said in a statement last week. “The Founders designed the impeachment process as a way to remove officeholders from public office—not an inquest against private citizens.” Many Republicans have taken a cue from the conservative former federal appeals Judge J. Michael Luttig, who argued in the Washington Post earlier this month that “once Trump’s term ends on Jan. 20, Congress loses its constitutional authority to continue impeachment proceedings against him — even if the House has already approved articles of impeachment.” The constitutional scholars who signed on to the letter disagree with that assessment, arguing that because the Constitution’s impeachment power has two aspects — removal from office and disqualification from holding office again in the future — it must also be extended to former officials who could try to run for reelection. “Impeachment is the exclusive constitutional means for removing a president (or other officer) before his or her term expires,” they wrote. “But nothing in the provision authorizing impeachment-for-removal limits impeachment to situations where it accomplishes removal from office. Indeed, such a reading would thwart and potentially nullify a vital aspect of the impeachment power: the power of the Senate to impose disqualification from future office as a penalty for conviction.” Trump had signaled before leaving office that he might try to run for president again in 2024, and has reportedly mulled forming his own political party. But if the Senate were to hold an impeachment trial and convict him, he would be barred from holding public office ever again. That provision of the impeachment power, the legal scholars wrote, “is an important deterrent against future misconduct.” "If an

This one is so outrageous that I can't do anything except laugh at it. If it's true, then 150 years have elapsed in which no one could do anything about the "mistake" and yet now, it can be changed by an end run around it by some magic we don't know and it can be managed to make it all right. Yeah. Right. You've convinced me. For sure. </sarcasm> Ken ============ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/qanon-conspiracy-theories-trump-tiktok-1118668/ QAnon Believers Are Pushing New Trump Conspiracy Theories on TikTok New theories that Trump will be sworn in as the 19th president on March 4th are swirling on social media By EJ Dickson Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press/AP Over the past few months, as conspiracy theories have circulated regarding the election results and President Joe Biden’s inauguration, social platforms have struggled to keep up with the onslaught of misinformation. Much of these false narratives have been driven by believers of the QAnon conspiracy theory, the baseless idea that President Trump is lying in wait to expose a secret cabal of Democrats engaged in a child sex-trafficking ring. Inauguration Day was supposed to mark the “storm,” or the day of reckoning when Trump would arrest all of his enemies and send them to Guantanamo Bay; when the storm never arrived, many QAnon believers were left angry and confused. In the week since the inauguration, QAnon believers have struggled to reconcile their worldview with the reality that Biden is president, in many cases coming up with new, increasingly bizarre theories to support their belief that Trump will soon take office once again. TikTok, which has a younger-skewing user base and has historically struggled to curb the proliferation of conspiracy theories, is one social platform currently playing host to the baseless belief that President Trump will be sworn into office on March 4th, 2021. Under hashtags like #19thpresident (which has more than 235,000 views), or #march4th (which has more than 1.4 million views) TikTok users are propagating the idea that an obscure 1871 act made the United States a corporation and not a federal government, thus rendering any laws passed after that year moot and U.S. citizens not subject to them. According to this theory, the United States will revert back to its original form on March 4th, the date when presidents were inaugurated prior to the 1933 passage of the 20th amendment. They believe Trump will be sworn in as the 19th president of the United States. (The 18th president, Ulysses S. Grant, served between 1869 and 1877, or the time period when those who cling to this theory believe the United States “became” a “corporation.”) One video linking to a YouTube video that promotes this belief has more than 44,000 views; another, featuring a woman claiming “in March, President Trump will be the original president under the US Constitution,” has more than 442,000 views. Some conspiracy theorists point to the presence of National Guard troops in Washington, D.C. until March as “evidence” to support this theory, or cite the fact that FederalRegister.gov, a database of federal register documents, is not yet listing Biden’s approved executive orders as “evidence” that his administration is a sham. “Listen, patriots, y’all can relax. We’re going back to a republic come March. Trump will be back in the presidency but he will be the 19th president ’cause we’re not gonna be a corporation no more. We’re going back to the republic,” one TikTok creator says in a video that has also been duetted by other Trump supporters. “Your boy will be inaugurated March 4. Period, point blank, end of story,” says another TikTok creator with more than 78,000 followers, in a video that has 15,400 views. (TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.) This conspiracy theory stems from the principles of the sovereign citizen movement, a fringe movement predicated on a slew of bizarre legal interpretations and theories aimed at “proving” that U.S. citizens are not subject to any laws passed after 1871. There has historically bee