- Vox answers questions about the drones;
- A piece by Rahm Emanual inspires my own thinking about how much it matters which party is in power, every election cycle;
- Trump wants to expel immigrants but is happy to hire them;
- Nancy Mace is worried that the drones might be coming from “outside the universe”;
- Once again about vaccines, safer than they have ever been.
One more piece about the drones, from Vox, which fancies itself a site that “explains” things. (Curiously, it’s filed under “politics.”)
Vox, Li Zhou, 17 Dec 2024: What’s up with all these drone sightings?, subtitled “The 7 biggest questions, answered as best we can.”
So, what’s new here? The article begins with the basics: when the sightings started; if they’re actually drones (no, a mixture of different aircraft), who’s behind them (no evidence they’re nefarious), have they caused any problems (only incidentally), what’s the government doing about this (not enough for some people), and how should people respond (contact law enforcement; don’t shoot them down, despite what Trump said).
Well, nothing really new here. Nothing to challenge the null-hypothesis: that this whole phenomenon is nothing more than people noticing things that have always been there in the sky, and the mere fact news about it spreads causes more people to report they’re seeing things they just haven’t noticed before, and so. One fact: apparently flying personal drones at night has only recently been legalized, so there’s that. Another: Many of the “drone” sightings are within the flight paths of airports. So there’s that.
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This piece inspires big picture thinking. I saw a Fb post about how it’s rare, over the past century, for the same party to win two presidential elections in a row. It’s as if voters — at least the minority of wafflers in the middle, who have no firm convictions and yet who decide the elections — keep changing their minds about what they want. Or are continually dissatisfied, so if they’re not made happy by one party, they try the other, and back again.
Washington Post, opinion by Rahm Emanual (the US Ambassador to Japan), 17 Dec 2024: The road back to power for Democrats, subtitled “It begins with messengers and messages that meet the moment.”
He says that Trump somehow channeled a nation’s fury that the Democratic Party has been blind to.
But this is almost an aside. Big picture thinking: whichever party is in power for four years makes incremental (usually) shifts in policy, backwards or forward. *Compared to the long term.* And the *long term* is that society does gradually become more progressive. This was the message of the 2016 Prothero book (reviewed here.) Society moves steadily onward; conservatives notice only once they’re on the losing side, and retreat to find something else to complain about. Conservatives are not still defending slavery, or objecting to women voting. Most of them, anyway.
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Trump wants to expel all the immigrants, but he’s happy to hire them as needed.
CNN, 16 Dec 2024: Trump vows to ‘hire American.’ His businesses keep hiring foreign guest workers
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Fun.
JMG, 17 Dec 2024: Mace: Drones Could Be From “Outside The Universe”
I know there’s a general lack of understanding among the population about the difference between comets and meteors, stars and planets, galaxies and nebula, and so on — exacerbated by the flimsy science in Hollywood movies and TV — and here’s a good example. This is more about the drones.
“Because my question is about national security, and I hope that it’s us, I hope it’s not our adversaries or something from outside the universe because I have real concerns that if these drones are from Iran or China like some of the rumors have been.
“I pray that they’re ours, but we should also know why they’re out there. Like, are they looking for radiation? Are they looking for a nuclear warhead?”
“Outside the Universe?” What would that even mean? “Are they looking for radiation”?? Why are Republicans so content with morons like this?
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One more for this evening, on a serious, fundamental issue.
NY Times, Apoorva Mandavilli, 14 Dec 2024: Are Childhood Vaccines ‘Overloading’ the Immune System? No., subtitled “Vaccines today are more efficient and contain far fewer stimulants to the immune system than some used decades ago.”
It’s an idea as popular as it is incorrect: American babies now receive too many vaccines, which overwhelm their immune systems and lead to conditions like autism.
This theory has been repeated so often that it has permeated the mainstream, echoed by President-elect Donald J. Trump and his pick to be the nation’s top health official, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“When you feed a baby, Bobby, a vaccination that is, like, 38 different vaccines and it looks like it’s been for a horse, not a, you know, 10-pound or 20-pound baby,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Kennedy on a call in July. “And then you see the baby all of a sudden starting to change radically — I’ve seen it too many times.”
On Sunday, Mr. Trump returned to the theme, saying Mr. Kennedy would investigate whether childhood vaccines caused autism, even though dozens of rigorous studies have already explored and dismissed that theory.
“I think somebody has to find out,” Mr. Trump said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
But the idea that today’s vaccines are overtaxing children’s immune systems is fundamentally flawed, experts said. Vaccines today are cleaner and more efficient, and they contain far fewer stimulants to the immune system — by orders of magnitude — than they did decades ago.
There will always be people with a little knowledge who will be suspicious of people with greater knowledge.
One more quote:
Mr. Kennedy and others have claimed that thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative in some childhood vaccines, causes autism. They have pointed in particular to the combined vaccine against mumps, measles and rubella.
But that vaccine has never contained thimerosal. Even when the preservative appeared in other vaccines, trace amounts were present at about the levels found in a can of tuna fish.
Don’t bother conservatives with facts; they know what they know.
