A Disgusting Spectacle

Leave a reply

It’s striking how the police in Uvalde were intimidated into inaction by a teen-aged shooter armed with a controversial weapon used in the manner for which it was designed- the projection of overwhelming power and violence. While children in the classroom pleaded for help on 911, armed and trained police and terrified parents stood outside and waited while children and teachers inside each died a bloody, violent death. Their last moments of consciousness were saturated with blood, gore and terror.

In the follow up, the Texas Republican political apparatus has struggled to respond to the slaughter while being careful not to alienate their macho gun totin’ Texas cowboy conservative voters. Meanwhile, in Houston at the NRA convention, and while musical acts were fleeing from the event, the show must go on. The convention was an opportunity gladly taken by #45 to pontificate at length to core voters and amplify all of the worries he himself planted.

School shooters tend to be young males so perhaps there is a tendency to blame “toxic masculinity”. We cannot blame men for displaying at least some amount of masculinity. However, when we show it by strutting around like a peacock in an ostentatious display of weaponry and decked out in militia costumes, we are beaming a stark message to those around us to beware. Its intent is always to intimidate. It is an asymmetry in power- a necessary condition for many.

Nothing new is to be said here about gun rights vs gun control. Weapons culture and politics will have to evolve for a few generations before that can be reasonably addressed. Many more mass murder scenes will come and go before shoot ’em up cowboy masculinity fades away, if ever. In the near term, however, we can do something about our exposure to violent entertainment.

We Americans entertain ourselves with movies, television and videogames that feature gunplay as a plot device and an easy form of conflict resolution. We love to see the good guys hand out 9mm justice with righteous gunplay. American movie makers know full well the attraction of audiences to gunplay in a storyline. What better way is there for screenwriters to keep the energy going in a screenplay than to throw in scenes with shootouts. And how do characters gain absolute power over someone? They point a gun. Is it any wonder that now and then a few kids obtain easily available firearms and try shooting as a way to vent their rage and frustration? How do we learn to be adults? We mimic.

The entertainment industry needs to account for their part in the poisoning of our civilization with highly detailed dramatic portrayals of violence. The excuse that viewers have free will and should be able to discriminate between reality and fantasy is only partly valid. There can be no denying studio influence over impressionable young people. It is human nature to learn from and mimic what we see, even from film. The entertainment industry has normalized gun violence in the minds of our population. Behind the glitzy facade of show business is a deadly serious capitalistic enterprise that banks on whatever it takes to sell ads and tickets. And, if violence sells, they’ll crank out more of it. We need to quit buying so much violent content.

Chaos at the EPA

Leave a reply

It’s difficult to describe how badly the New Chemicals division in the Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT) at EPA is performing these days, but let me try. The commercialization of new chemicals (not on the TSCA Inventory) not otherwise regulated requires that new chemical substances (NCS) be reviewed and granted following a Pre-Manufacture Notice (PMN) or a Low Volume Exemption (LVE) submission under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), should they meet internal criteria regarding safety. Exposures and doses to workers or the environment may be measured by the applicant or modeled using EPA in-house software. R&D only chemicals are exempt from such evaluation no matter the scale.

The application process requires the disclosure of the NCS composition and structure, the manufacturing and/or use operation in considerable detail, physicochemical properties and, if available, a wide range of worker and environmental hazards. Imported chemicals not on the TSCA inventory also require TSCA approval just as though they were being manufactured in the USA. Food, drugs and pesticides are not controlled under TSCA. Under penalty of law, all submissions must have the best and most accurate available information, particularly with regard to hazard information. No fibbing allowed.

The issues I’m about to recount started sometime in early 2021. Some speculate that a particular interpretation of the law promulgated by TSCA was adopted. I can’t provide references, however.

By statute, an LVE filing for instance, must be examined and be given a grant, conditional grant, or denial within 30 days. It is currently taking much longer than that: 60 to 100 days or longer. I have some that are still pending after 7 months. PMN filings take longer to process, about 9-12 months. or worse.

Aren’t these delays just a petty annoyance? Well, no. Part of a new product development timeline is getting regulatory approval. If this approval is subject to large delays with uncertain outcomes, then the launch date can become very fuzzy. The consequence for the end user is that scheduling their production activity becomes impossibly vague. Denials of LVE and PMN filings are not uncommon. Don’t expect a lot of sympathy from customers about EPA problems.

The last thing you want is some plebe right out of school with no professional experience in commerce to be handing out the regulatory death penalty to your expensive new technology. Handling hazardous materials safely and without environmental harm is done all day every day all over the world. There is a saying in the chemical industry: If you think safety is expensive try having an accident. There is considerable financial incentive to running a chemical plant safely and within regulations.

There seems to be a troubling issue involving the assumptions that EPA makes in regard to handling the NCS. The feedback I receive suggests that the engineers and toxicologists are ruling based on the worst case exposures that they imagine are going to happen. They imagine that workers and the environment will be exposed to the NCS as if workers aren’t wearing personal protection equipment (PPE) or there was no barrier to the environment. You can plainly state that these exposures won’t happen and state why, but they want evidence evidence that they cannot define that something will not happen. In other words, they want proof of a negative.

Another problem with EPA seems to be the sophomoric view that chemical hazards can always be abated by using safer chemicals. There may be a speck of truth to this generalization. In the formulations industry, for example. Replacing hazardous ingredients in mascara or shampoo with those that are less hazardous may be quite uncomplicated. Reducing chemical hazards is part of ethical business operations and is expected with ISO 9001 registration. The catch for chemical manufacturing is that the chemical features that make chemicals reactive and hazardous are usually the same features that make them essential to synthesis. Except for solvents and filter aid, unreactive chemicals are not very useful in synthesis. Synthetic chemistry is about manipulating the reactive features of one molecule with another to yield a useful product.

The delay issue is not unknown to EPA. In fact they are painfully aware of it all the way up to the EPA administrator. The good folks at EPA are doing their best with absurdly limited resources. We’re told that the TSCA division is 50 % understaffed, and many of the staff they do have are inexperienced. They have a computer system that is obsolete by many generations. You can see this by filing on their website. They have taken to denying submissions that are flawed in a minor way rather than continuing to work with the applicant to fix the problem. This excess fastidiousness ratchets down their backlog, at least in the short term.

The problems at EPA stem from the inability of congress to buckle down and provide proper funding. Only congress can act to boost staffing or computers. Lobbyists are working on it but, unfortunately, this is not an appealing issue for a congress person to take up and run with. Maybe we can get that cancerous A-hole Tucker Carlson to howl about it on the tube. Then we might see some movement.

Replacement Theory on Ice

1 Reply

I’ve been marveling at the current social phenomenon of “Replacement Theory” and all of the fear and loathing these words can generate. Anything that could plausibly rile up white folks is being scooped up and slung at the wall to see what sticks. The Republican fear machine needs and thrives on this kind of stuff. Fox News “Speaker to Animals” Tucker Carlson has been slopping it around the swill bucket lately as is customary for him to do. It’s become a meme with news coverage like a new Disney on Ice show.

Peering out from under my rock along the riverbank, it appears to me that there are a great many citizens in the U.S. of A. who enjoy nothing more than to get lathered up and vent their rage at the bogyman of the month. Some folks seem happiest and most alive when they are really hacked off.

I wonder how these folks will react when someone reminds them that social replacement is not new. After all, what happened in the forced removal of the Native Americans over the last 400 years? How many countries have we attempted to reconfigure to something more politically subservient by force or subterfuge? History is one long, highly blemished series of one people replacing another. Notice the irony? Historically, most change has been quite violent. Many nations have been complicit in the forced swapping of ethnic groups in the social and economic order in someone else’s land. It seems to be a natural turn of events.

If it is happening to the US right now, it seems to be relatively peaceful and quiet, except for the angry white nationalists out shooting people. More than a little change going on is merit-based selection in job placement and by the hard work of immigrants. If you are angry about being replaced by non-whites, first try not to murder people. Murder is the answer to a whole slew of poorly formed questions.

Oxy CEO on Oil Production

2 Replies

The CEO of Occidental Petroleum, Vicki Hollub, said an interesting thing last week as reported by Reuters. The article begins with a quote by Hollub.

“HOUSTON, May 11 (Reuters) – Oil companies worldwide have been trying to increase production, but are struggling to balance increases without undercutting shareholder returns, Occidental Petroleum (OXY.N) Chief Executive Officer Vicki Hollub said on Wednesday.” [Italics mine]

The effect on executive decision makers of “undercutting shareholder returns” is not to be underestimated. When margins are high, why voluntarily reduce them with increasing production?

She goes on to say-

“”It is almost value destruction if you try to accelerate anything now,” Hollub said during a conference call to discuss the company’s first quarter results.”

Everyone knows there is widespread public anger and distrust simmering on the matter of high gasoline prices in the US. Fuel prices are at a reported 14 year high and are helping to drive inflation. Everyone is feeling the pain either directly as a tank full of 85 octane or in the inflated price of widgets elsewhere.

Oil producers are feeling the heat but are reluctant to increase production. Hollub said “There are a lot of headwinds to increasing production worldwide,”

Unfortunately, the only market lever consumers have is to reduce fuel consumption.

.

Oxybenzone and Coral Reefs in the Light of Day

Leave a reply

In a recent issue of ChemistryWorld, an online publication of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a revealing article on work first published in Science describing how the combination of the UV sunscreen active ingredient oxybenzone and UV light together produce something that is toxic to corals reefs.

Researchers (paywall) at Stanford University found in their sea anemone model studies that in the presence of UV light, oxybenzone is modified by the attachment of glucose, forming a water soluble glycoside conjugate. This is a not an uncommon event in metabolism. The oxybenzone-glycoside conjugate was found to be a potent photo-oxidant and quite toxic to the algal symbionts of coral. A methoxy analog proved to be much more potent.

Benzophenones, of which oxybenzone is a variety, are well known photosensitizers and photoinitiators.

Locations like Hawaii and Palau have banned the sale of oxybenzone-containing sunscreens due to the harm they cause to coral reefs.

Black Hole Imagery

3 Replies

An image of Sagittarius A*, the black hole in the center of the Milky Way galaxy, has just been published. This is only the second such feat. The first image was of the central black hole of the galaxy M87. The images were captured through the collaboration of 8 synchronized radio telescopes around the world called The Event Horizon Telescope. It is an impressive technical problem to solve. Seeing something the apparent size of the M87 black hole as viewed from earth is said to be like trying to see a bagel on the surface of the moon. And they did it with sub-millimeter radio waves.

The color of the objects is interesting. I wonder how many folks out there think that radio telescopes can record the visual color of an object?

The Chair

3 Replies

I was trapped in the chair. There was no polite escape. As I sat there staring at the floor and biting my tongue, my hair stylist went on an extended harangue about the abundance of lazy and unmotivated Millennials and Gen-Xers. Her words issued forth like a stream of shiny mercury, glistening from years of practice and heavy with resentment. I marveled at how so many words could come from so few breaths. Luckily, during this session I was spared the usual lecture on the horrors of COVID masks and vaccination.

She was a blond, attractive 70 year old standing about 5″6″ with bright, lime green glasses. She wore a dark green smock with the hair of many clients on it. As she rambled and snipped at my hair, I withdrew into memories of my childhood in the late 1960’s. Back then, Americans were in a lather from a social step-change that was happening. The continuing Viet Nam War had polarized Americans broadly between two camps- the younger and more liberal antiwar tribe and the large population of older America-love-it-or-leave-it fans of John Wayne.

Prominent among the antiwar group were the hippies. Broadcast news loved to televise rampaging hippies protesting and rioting against the establishment. It made for compelling television. They were often dressed in a provocative way that was unfamiliar to the older generation and, perhaps worst of all, the men had shockingly long hair. Older generations took it as a personal affront to their established social norms. Rightly or not, hippies were notorious for radical beliefs, rampant drug use and moral depravity. They became larger than life in the minds of the older generation.

As a skinny 10 year old growing up along the cornfields of Iowa, I was like a Hobbit isolated from the troubles of the day both in distance and time. Geographically, the nearest center of counter-culture trouble was hours away in Chicago. We were also lagging behind the times culturally. While Iowa may have had leading edge farm implements and thriving agribusiness, we were not at the leading edge of pop culture in the 1960’s. The Lutheran and Baptist adults in my family circle were firmly against the hippie movement and despised communism. Somehow hippies and communism were entangled in their minds. They were fearful of the Domino Theory and strangely quiet about the great loss of American lives in Viet Nam. They would seek reassurance by frequently asking what we kids thought of hippies. Of course, we parroted back that we didn’t like them or their drugs. Today I believe that the “hippie movement” in total was part of a needed and valuable change going into the future.

In my experience as a baby boomer, every generation looks at the younger generations with skepticism. Will they be ready to guide civilization when their turn to lead comes around? Do they have the moral certitude and the grit to do what is necessary? If the question really means, will they continue the older generation’s norms going forward, then I think the answer is no. But if they take the challenge to continue the advance of technology for the benefit of all, then they’ll probably do a good job. Sadly, my Boomer generation is leaving them a fine mess.

As I sat in the chair with all the snipping and the grey hair falling to the floor, I considered suggesting to the stylist that I know plenty of Millennials and Gen-Xers who are righteous and hard-working citizens who make contributions to society every day. My kid is one. I might have gently suggested that her beliefs were based on hazy exaggeration. But, what does arguing with a fool really get you even if you win? I just wasn’t in a crusading mood.

The Idiot and Poststructuralism

Leave a reply

ANNOUNCEMENT

Colloquium at The Center for Contemporary Idiocy, Rand Paul Auditorium

Poltroon University, Guapo AZ

The Center for Contemporary Idiocy is pleased to announce a lecture and panel discussion on “The Demise of Roe v Wade: Will Anti-Abortion Single Issue Voters Continue to Vote Republican?”

The Idjota Award for Graduate Studies in Western Idiocracy will be given after the speaker.

Guest Speaker: Dr. Horst Statek van Klingenn, Distinguished Fellow, The Institute for Poststructuralism and Malign Idiocy, Pan Handle College, OK.

6:30 PM Refreshments

7:00 PM Speaker

8:06 PM Panel Discussion

Oh Marjorie, What Next?

1 Reply

Warning. If you don’t like liberal political content, then it’s probably best to move along.

Marjorie Taylor Greene was taken to task on her earlier statements suggesting that dark Jewish interests were involved in corruption at PG&E and certain California wildfires. In November 2018, she went on a Twitter diatribe about wildfires in California and how it appeared to some that “lasers or blue beams of light” caused the fires. Earlier in the tweet, Greene said that a PG&E board member was also vice chairman of Rothschilds, Inc., an international investment banking firm, and had provided funding to Gov. Jerry Brown. Brown, she claims, signed a bill that allowed PG&E to pass it’s costs from the fires along to the customers. She claims later that she didn’t know that using the word “Rothschilds” was an anti-semitic dog whistle. There may be elements of truth imbedded in her brain dump of words.

Then Greene strings the “analysis” along to PG&E’s connection to Solaren and space-based solar energy generators. She speculates that the orbital solar energy generator may have mistakenly beamed energy onto California and started the wildfires.

This is a good example of how conspiracy theories get started. There is some foundational truth in her words. PG&E had agreed to purchase energy from the startup Solaren as early as 2009. And Solaren did have technology for the beaming of RF energy from space. However, the story goes non-linear when anecdotal information arises claiming that “lasers or blue beams of light” are seen coinciding with forest fires where inference transmogrified into cause. Greene does not overtly state that energy from space in fact caused the fires. A knot of brain cells somewhere tells her to be careful with that. Greene only has to raise the question to imply it.

This is exactly what Fox News people like Carlson and Hannity do. They misdirect by claiming that they were “only asking the question.” In fact they are asking leading questions. A leading question is one that prompts a desired answer. It is a very effective tool in grooming anger, fear and suspicion in the population as well as bringing profitable ad revenue to Fox. For people who enjoy being lead into the dark side, saying that they are being bamboozled won’t matter. This dark art would not have been unknown to propagandists like Joseph Goebbels.

The question for the rest of us is this- How do we discourage unfounded conspiracy mania in political discourse? Continuous education? Loud denials with stamping of the feet? My feeling is that it only begins early with better secular K-12 education that sharpens analytical skills in young people. But that is the easy part. The harder part would be increasing economic opportunity for a middle class life and affordable housing. If life is a constant struggle to make ends meet, if you have little or no discretionary income, or if you have a go-nowhere job, then anger and despair with “the deep state” will be a constant companion and discolor your outlook. My guess is that most MAGA adults are refractory to persuasion and are likely to live out their lives with their misguided Trump fantasies.

Silent, democracy-minded people out there can help by speaking up and voting, to begin with. False and misleading assertions should not go unanswered. Advertisers who pay for the broadcasting of inciteful and malignant content should be shunned on the large scale. People like Australian Rupert Murdoch must be held accountable for the purposeful and profitable content that damages American culture. True damage to America does not require the breaking of laws. It only requires the loss of faith in democracy.

Ekaterina Schulmann

Leave a reply

Below is a translation of a speech given by Russian political scientist and human rights activist Ekaterina Schulmann, cut and pasted in its entirety from an essay by Alexey Vlasenko who is the translator and a contributor to The Daily Kos. Schulmann has an interesting take on Putin’s motivation for the Ukraine invasion.

“Many people will ponder this question and come up with many different answers, all of which will seem logical.  Naturally, I have my own hypothesis, which I don’t claim is the one truth.  Nevertheless, since we are having such a remarkable discussion, I will share it.

He did this to halt time.  I’ll try to explain what this implies.

I think that these processes which we [political scientists] were observing, including the transformation of values, of worldviews, of public opinion [specifically in Russia], were real.  I do not think that we were all in thrall of illusions when we noted that violence in society is decreasing; that crime rates are falling; that new generations have a new value system; that video games actually reduce violence, rather than increase it; that, in general, the younger the social stratum, the more pronounced the decline in violent crime and in consumption of hard liquor; that imperial nostalgia is fading into the past.

Now, turn this picture around, and imagine yourself on the other side.  There you sit and watch as the sands of time slip through your fingers.  You will inevitably be succeeded by — let’s use his language — traitors.  Your children are traitors.  They do not share your view of life, they do not share your view of the world, they do not see that which you see with such clarity. You are the last defender of the fortress.  They will surrender it to the enemy, because they do not even consider him an enemy, and no matter how much you try to convince them, they still won’t consider.

A sizable, cultured and educated segment of the public sits around you at a safe distance, looks on and says:  “Go on, we’ll wait.  When you die, it will be our turn.  The sympathies of the future are on our side.  The youth idolizes us, not you.  But do go on, sit there for now, why not.  We will not storm the Kremlin, we only need to wait.”

A year passes, and another, then a third.  Everything continues in the same vein.  At the same time, your head is full of geopolitics, and the neighboring country is causing you unease.  It had somehow made progress, which is very disturbing.  And you realize that a little more, just a tiny bit longer, and that’s it, your historical time will end.  Your window will shut.  They will tell you: “Well, that’s enough, get down from there.  The next ones are coming.” And these next ones are unacceptable to you.  From your point of view, they are worse than useless, they will doom everything, they will ruin everything.

“He’ll smash to bits the sacred vessels, he’ll feed the dirt with royal oil, he’ll squander everything – and by what right?” [from The Covetous Knight, by Alexander Pushkin].  Read that again, and realize that this is not about money.  You will be seized with horror, at this hatred for one’s heirs, hatred for the living simply because they shall go on living.  “It’s time for me to rot, and you to blossom.”  A reasonable person can accept this, can caress a baby, understanding that “yes, I will turn to dust, but you will live on and prosper.”

But if you happen to be constituted a little bit differently, and you also happen to hold a great deal of power in your hands, then you can do this trick: onto the heads of all these future generations, you will overturn a heavy concrete slab, which will crush them forever, or least in any foreseeable perspective. That future that they wanted, they won’t get.  Instead, they will get the future your way, even after you are no longer among the living, because you will do such a thing, oh my…

You are inside, you understand?  Yes, inside this fortress that you’re guarding, you will figuratively detonate an atomic bomb.  True, there will be no life left in the fortress, but it will be radioactive and therefore unapproachable, and so it will forever remain “unconquered”, so to speak.

Not to speak of the specific culprit, with all due respect for him and his functions, but of a whole social and demographic stratum. Have you seen our average age figures?  But it’s not just age per se. It’s a certain social affiliation, a certain kind of experience, a certain world view that is formed by this experience.  Anyone who can’t accept the flow of time and come to terms with it, yet possesses power, could do this kind of thing.

This is my explanation.  It’s only a working hypothesis, but that’s how it is.  I do see confirmation from many sources, as well as in very public official pronouncements about how “we need to do this right now, tomorrow would be too late”, just another moment and everything will turn to irrevocable regret and musings of “we should have…”

This sentiment of “time flowing away” is something that I have been hearing for a long time, I think.  I speak about this whenever I discuss generational change.  The feeling that somehow history is not headed “in our direction”, this hatred and disgust for tomorrow, because “it is not what I need”, is clearly audible [in Putin’s speeches].  What was hard to grasp is that someone would go to such ends in an attempt to drown out these apparently unbearable feelings.

The trouble is, of course, that this terrible work of isolation is being done from both sides.  The wall is being built from both outside and inside.  We cannot blame the outside world for wanting to protect itself from, let’s say it out loud, an aggressive regime that is attacking and killing people.  Still, the labor of isolation is being worked by four hands.  It’s horrible.  [To repair the damage] will take a lot of work over a very long time.  Simply returning to a level that, until now, we took for granted, will require an unimaginable expenditure of effort and resources.  

It’s remarkable and tragic how humanity can squander its strength like this.”