Lunch at the Labs

Various web links I found to be of interest recently.

• Two not so horrible assessments of Donald Trump's victory from the left:
  • Barney Frank Looks for the Bright Side of Trump's Win

    But the election of Donald Trump has not shattered his confidence about the nation's political future. "This was not a wipeout. People will tend to overinterpret it. Remember, we got more votes than they did," he said, in an interview this week. "And there is one silver living for us. They have succeeded in blaming us for everything that goes wrong in the world. From now on, anything bad that happens is on them.

  • UpFront special: Noam Chomsky on the new Trump era

    I wouldn't compare it with Wedemark Germany. Hitler was a sincere dedicated ideologue. Trump isn't. He has no known ideology other than ME.

    ... But on the other he's also talked about reducing tensions with Russia which is probably the most dangerous flashpoint in the world on the Russian border. So it's hard to predict. In fact the most predictable aspect of Trump is unpredictability. I think it's dangerous.

    ... There's been real gains in the protection of freedom of speech and I think they're pretty deeply embedded and my suspicion is that though there will be attacks on freedom of speech, my own feeling is they are not likely to get very far.

• Reelection Rates Over the Years

  If US citizens are really unhappy with their government, why are reelection rates for U.S. House of Representatives and Senators reliably above 90% and 80% respectively?
  See the bar charts at the above link.
  

• How Steve Bannon and Breitbart News Can Be Pro-Israel -- and Anti-Semitic at the Same Time

  Some on the alt-right, the emerging group of racist activists who support Trump, oppose the close U.S.-Israel relationship as part of a broader critique of U.S. interventionism abroad. Yet they admire Israel as a "model for white nationalism and/or Christianism," according to the right-wing online encyclopedia Conservapedia. Some also see Jewish immigration to Israel as helping their cause of a Jew-free white America.

• Why Steve Bannon Hates Paul Ryan

  Perhaps, the most critical disparity between the two men's worldviews is the way they conceptualize the relationship between working people and America's economic elites. While Paul Ryan champions our nation's corporate titans as "job creators" -- whose prosperity is inextricably linked with that of the middle class -- Bannon paints them as rootless, godless elites whose wealth is harvested from the exploitation of ordinary people.

• Recent pause in the growth rate of atmospheric CO2 due to enhanced terrestrial carbon uptake

  Here using global carbon budget estimates, ground, atmospheric and satellite observations, and multiple global vegetation models, we report a recent pause in the growth rate of atmospheric CO2, and a decline in the fraction of anthropogenic emissions that remain in the atmosphere, despite increasing anthropogenic emissions. We attribute the observed decline to increases in the terrestrial sink during the past decade, associated with the effects of rising atmospheric CO2 on vegetation and the slowdown in the rate of warming on global respiration.

• Why America Is Rich, at Least for Now

  The U.S., along with a handful of European nations, has had solid, fairly consistent economic growth for more than two centuries (with, of course, some notable dark times), and for most of that period economic growth has benefitted poor and rich alike. That growth is best understood by pulling the focus far back from the narrow lens of one election. What matters most are those things that endure for decades and centuries: democracy, rule of law, a civilian-led military, political stability, and freedom of speech and movement. America is a rich country not because of what the Democrats or the Republicans did separately. It is successful because of those things that the parties share, national values and institutions.

• US dementia rates drop 24%

  A new study finds that the prevalence of dementia has fallen sharply in recent years, most likely as a result of Americans' rising educational levels and better heart health, which are both closely related to brain health.

  Dementia rates in people over age 65 fell from 11.6 percent in 2000 to 8.8 percent in 2012, a decline of 24 percent, according to a study of more than 21,000 people across the country published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine.

• The MMR vaccine and autism: Sensation, refutation, retraction, and fraud

  The next episode in the saga was a short retraction of the interpretation of the original data by 10 of the 12 co-authors of the paper. According to the retraction, "no causal link was established between MMR vaccine and autism as the data were insufficient". This was accompanied by an admission by the Lancet that Wakefield et al. had failed to disclose financial interests (e.g., Wakefield had been funded by lawyers who had been engaged by parents in lawsuits against vaccine-producing companies). However, the Lancet exonerated Wakefield and his colleagues from charges of ethical violations and scientific misconduct.
  ...
  The final episode in the saga is the revelation that Wakefield et al. were guilty of deliberate fraud (they picked and chose data that suited their case; they falsified facts). The British Medical Journal has published a series of articles on the exposure of the fraud, which appears to have taken place for financial gain. It is a matter of concern that the exposé was a result of journalistic investigation, rather than academic vigilance followed by the institution of corrective measures. Readers may be interested to learn that the journalist on the Wakefield case, Brian Deer, had earlier reported on the false implication of thiomersal (in vaccines) in the etiology of autism. However, Deer had not played an investigative role in that report.

• New Measles Study Shows Why Anti-Vaccination Thinking Is Deadly

  Since the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine isn't recommended for children under 12 months, the only effective way of preventing it and fatal post-measles disorders like SSPE is through "herd immunity" --vaccinating enough people to prevent the spread of the disease even among those too young to receive the vaccine.