RFK Jr. Has Turned Fake Science into America's Reality

If Trump did nothing more than appoint RFK Jr. as Health and Human Services Secretary, Trump would be the worst President in American History. 

The following is by Jonathan Cohn of The Bulwark. 

Last Tuesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that the Trump administration was canceling about half a billion dollars of federal contracts with companies and institutions that have been working to develop the next generation of mRNA vaccines.

MRNA stands for messenger RNA, the naturally occurring genetic material that cells use as their guide for making proteins. Vaccines with mRNA have a synthetic version of the material, with “coding” instructing cells to manufacture proteins that are part of viruses or other hostile elements, so that the body’s immune system can learn to recognize and fight them.

Research in this field goes back decades, with the first clinical trials of an mRNA vaccine (for a cancer treatment) in 2008. In early 2020, when COVID hit, the technology was ready for primetime. Scientists developed, tested, and mass produced mRNA vaccines that contained instructions for a protein spike on the coronavirus surface.

The process took about eleven months—a medical miracle given vaccines usually take years to develop¹—and it worked, saving literally millions of lives worldwide. Now the hope is to improve on that progress, making it possible to develop and deploy mRNA vaccines even more quickly in response to future outbreaks and to other medical threats, as well.

To realize that potential, the Biden administration decided to invest heavily in mRNA research, much of it through an agency called BARDA, which is the federal government’s R&D division when it comes to pandemic and bioterrorism preparedness. But BARDA is part of HHS, which means it’s now under the control of Kennedy, whose hostility to vaccines generally—and mRNA specifically—is no secret.

In May, he announced that he was canceling a contract with Moderna—which produced one of the original COVID shots—to develop mRNA vaccines for other purposes. Now he’s canceling nearly two dozen more.

Kennedy made the announcement in a two-and-a-half minute video and accompanying press release, in which he stated “we reviewed the science” and “listened to the experts.” Several days later—after repeatedly declining to answer inquiries (including mine) about just what science and experts he had in mind—HHS updated its online press release with a link on the word “data.”²

The link is revealing, though more for what it says about Kennedy than what it says about mRNA technology. It goes to a page with a long list of studies that purportedly show the harms of the vaccines. But, notably, the page itself is not a government website, nor is it from a peer-reviewed journal or some other reputable source. Rather, it’s a storage page on an open website where anybody can post data, coding, or other research tools for sharing.

And what you’ll find on the website is exactly the sort of stuff you’d expect to find on a site with no gatekeepers. The authors listed on the mRNA page include a scientist who has touted the benefits of hydroxychloroquine and another who has claimed the COVID vaccine creates toxins in the body. According to the listing, they and two collaborators originally compiled the citations for Toxic Shock, an independently published 2024 book that claims that mRNA vaccines “are the real menace to our country’s long-term wellbeing.”

That book, by the way, has an introduction by Ron Johnson, the Wisconsin Republican senator known for spreading vaccine misinformation. It also includes a chapter from author Naomi Wolf, who famously claimed (among many other things) that COVID vaccines were causing miscarriage.

To say these views are out of step with the scientific consensus would be an understatement.

Here, for example, is what top researchers have actually found when it comes to the claim on vaccines and miscarriage.

And here’s a Factcheck.org overview of some other misleading or false claims that show up regularly in anti-mRNA rhetoric.

And here’s an article from STAT³ on all the experts who think mRNA vaccines look like the best weapon against future pandemics.

But you wouldn’t know any of this by listening to Kennedy speak. That’s because he has perfected the art of undermining public confidence in vaccines by leaning on a tiny handful of fringe researchers and then sounding “sciencey”—throwing around bits of medical jargon—to give the impression he’s an expert himself.

“This is what upsets me about him the most—and believe me, there are a lot of choices—but what upsets me most about him is that he couches his reasoning in scientific terms,” Paul Offit, physician and director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania, told me in a phone interview. “It makes it sound like he knows what he’s talking about when he doesn’t know what he’s talking about at all.”

Offit is one of the most widely respected, widely quoted vaccination experts on the planet. So in order to get a reality check on Kennedy’s rhetoric—and some perspective on his decision to pull mRNA funding—I asked him and a few of his peers to evaluate some of the key claims from last week’s HHS video.

Here’s what they had to say.

Kennedy Claim 1: “MRNA vaccines don’t perform well against viruses that infect the upper respiratory tract.”

The idea that the COVID vaccine didn’t work is a staple of anti-vaccine rhetoric. And it is plainly not true. Studies have shown convincingly, unequivocally that taking the shot reduces your chances of getting very sick—and, ultimately, of dying.

“They probably saved 3 million lives in this country—and an estimated 250,000 people, roughly, lost their lives because they chose not to be vaccinated,” Offit said.

One reason Kennedy’s argument might sound convincing is that it gestures at somewhat complex reality: The vaccine did not stop transmission or prevent disease altogether. People were expecting a total eradication, the kind the polio vaccine delivered. They didn’t get it.

But while that’s partly a result of experts and public health officials overpromising—a mistake they’ve hopefully learned not to make next time—it’s also a result of people like Kennedy pretending there’s no difference between getting sick from COVID, which still happens all the time, and getting sick enough to die, which happens a lot more rarely.

“MRNA vaccines against COVID are very good at preventing people from dying from COVID and very good at preventing people from being hospitalized due to COVID,” said Adam Ratner, a pediatric infectious diseases physician in New York City and the author of the book Booster Shots. “That’s really, really important.”⁴

Plus, Ratner said, there’s always the chance that mRNA vaccines could become more effective after more research—for example, the type that the United States had been funding until Kennedy canceled it.

“I just don’t think you can extrapolate to what mRNA vaccines will do in all infections based on what they do for COVID,” Ratner said.

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Kennedy Claim 2: “One mutation and the vaccine becomes ineffective. This dynamic drives a phenomenon called ‘antigenic shift,’ meaning that the vaccine paradoxically encourages new mutations and can actually prolong pandemics as the virus constantly mutates to escape the protective effects of the vaccine.”

It’s true that respiratory viruses can mutate quickly, reducing the effectiveness of vaccines. That is precisely what has happened with COVID, as it moved through variant stages from “Alpha” to “Omicron.”

But even with Omicron, “we still saw very strong [vaccine] protection against serious illness, hospitalizations and deaths,” said Michael Osterholm, professor and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota.

Osterholm, another widely respected scholar who is coauthor of a forthcoming book called The Big One, was especially exasperated by Kennedy’s use of the term “antigenic shift.”

“This is a classic example of someone who has no idea what he was talking about,” Osterholm said, explaining that what’s actually happening is antigenic “drift”—the phenomenon of viruses mutating incrementally in ways that reduce but don’t eliminate vaccine effectiveness.

“This is what he’s really good at, throwing words out there,” Osterholm said. “The level of protection against clinical illness and infection—meaning transmission capacity—is reduced over time, yes. But the level of protection against serious illness, hospitalizations, and deaths actually is quite sustained with these vaccines.”

As for the idea that the vaccine has caused the virus to mutate more rapidly, that didn’t make a lot of sense to Kathryn Edwards, an internationally respected infectious disease professor at Vanderbilt.

“There is a natural mutation of viruses,” Edwards said. “Flu changes every year, and that’s clearly not a function of the vaccines—not enough people are vaccinated for that to be the case.”

Offit ticked off a list of technical reasons why he thought Kennedy’s theory about the vaccine accelerating mutation of the virus was wrong.⁵ “I don’t think there’s any evidence that is what’s happened,” Offit said, noting that COVID has been stuck in its Omicron phase for a while now.

“We’re still in the Omicron era,” Offit said. “So where is Pi?”⁶

Kennedy Claim 3: “MRNA technology poses more risk than benefits for these respiratory viruses.”

The specter of awful side effects is probably the one that fuels vaccine skepticism the most, in no small part because figures like Kennedy have repeatedly insisted certain kinds of shots cause autism, despite mountains of research debunking that theory.

But while all vaccines can cause mild reactions and some can, on rare occasions, cause more serious side effects—as all medical interventions do—“hundreds of millions, probably billions of people got the mRNA shots,” Edwards noted, “and the reactions really were quite minimal.” If there were serious, widespread risks associated with the vaccines, she noted, the evidence of it would be everywhere.

It’s one more area of broad consensus among scientists—including Ratner, who called Kennedy’s claim “wildly disingenuous. There are some side effects of the vaccines, but those are greatly outweighed by the protection that you get against COVID.”

The condition that frequently comes up in these discussions is myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart, which monitoring showed was a rare side effect of the shots (and one that appeared mostly just for adolescent boys and young men). Moreover, myocarditis is substantially more likely to occur—and to cause serious harm—for unvaccinated people who get COVID, Offit noted.

“I would argue,” Offit said, “this is one of the safest vaccines ever made.”

THESE WERE JUST THREE of the specious claims Kennedy made; there were others, too. But it’s likely that for many people who viewed the video—especially RFK Jr.’s most dedicated MAHA acolytes and longtime admirers of his anti-vaccine activism—hearing fact-checks from the likes of Offit, Osterholm, and the others may not make much of an impression.

That’s not true for everybody, however. Lots of people actually do listen to the most credentialed, most highly cited experts, because they assume those are the people who know best. It’s a good assumption—and all the more reason to worry that Kennedy is ignoring them so brazenly, in ways that could hurt so much in the future.

1 That speed is one reason why the scientists behind the vaccine were awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine three years later.

2 The online press release as it was originally published, without any link on the word “data,” can be seen backed up here and here. So much for Kennedy’s pledge, during his confirmation hearings, to usher in an era of “radical transparency” at HHS.

3 The STAT article is by Helen Branswell, one of the most trusted journalists on this subject, who called Kennedy’s decision to pull mRNA funding a “crippling blow” to pandemic preparedness.

4 The idiosyncrasies of respiratory disease do have implications for vaccination, Offit added, but not in the way Kennedy explains it. Upper respiratory diseases tend to have short incubation periods, which will always make blocking infection more difficult. But that’s hardly the same as rendering them ineffective. “The goal of the vaccine for a short-incubation-period disease is to prevent serious illness,” Offit said. “That’s the goal—to keep you out of the hospital, keep you out of the intensive care unit, keep you out of the morgue.”

5 Among the reasons that Offit cited was the role of cytotoxic T-cells in the immune response—which, Offit said, remained able to do their jobs of fighting infections even after viruses have mutated.

6 Although the COVID variants are named after the letters of the Greek alphabet, a couple of letters have been skipped. 

"Colossus" at 20: How Niall Ferguson's American Empire Became Reality

 

Colossus by Niall Ferguson (2005)

The Republic Is Dead. Long Live the Empire.

In Colossus, Niall Ferguson strips away the post–Cold War illusions of American restraint and neutrality. He lays out a blunt thesis: the United States, for all its protestations, has always functioned like an empire. What makes America different, Ferguson argued in 2005, isn't a lack of imperial ambition—it’s the country’s refusal to admit it.

Ferguson saw America as an “empire in denial.” It had military bases across the globe, economic leverage everywhere, and cultural influence that dwarfed that of past empires. What it lacked, he claimed, were three key ingredients to make that empire sustainable: the will to act long-term, the cash to pay for it, and the people willing to run it.

He was half-right.

The 20 years since Colossus hit shelves have been a case study in imperial evolution. Ferguson's warnings have aged better than most predictions from that era. The United States didn’t withdraw from empire—it doubled down. But it didn’t become Rome or Britain 2.0. It became something uniquely American: an empire without borders, without colonial offices, and without a consistent moral compass.

The Will:

What Ferguson thought America lacked—imperial will—turned out to be plentiful. Not in the form of long-term strategic planning, but through endless war and intervention dressed up as counterterrorism, humanitarian action, or “democracy promotion.” Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, drone strikes in a dozen countries. The will wasn’t missing—it just wasn’t honest about its goals.

The Cash:

Ferguson worried about imperial overreach breaking the American bank. Instead, the empire learned to run on debt. Trillions spent, deficits shrugged off. Military budgets climbed while bridges crumbled. The financial system became an extension of the empire—Wall Street as colonial administrator.

The People:

Ferguson thought Americans wouldn’t want to run the empire. But who needs boots-on-the-ground administrators when you have surveillance tech, global finance, and client states? A handful of military contractors and NGOs filled the gap. It’s empire by proxy.

And Now, 2025:

Two decades later, America looks less like the “shining city on a hill” and more like the imperial core Ferguson predicted—overextended, bureaucratically sclerotic, and increasingly indifferent to the ideals of the republic it once was. Domestic surveillance, a permanent war state, and a foreign policy driven by commercial interest (and Trump's infinite personal greed) rather than democratic values have become normalized. The line between citizen and subject is blurry. Elections feel ritualistic. Congress is performative. The courts are political. Empire has swallowed the republic.

Ferguson’s biggest miss was that he still wanted to rescue the project. He saw imperial America as a potential force for good—if only it would admit what it was and act with competence. But competence wasn’t the missing piece. Integrity was. By 2025, it’s clear: America isn’t an empire in denial anymore. It’s just an empire run by a pathetic wannabe dictator. 

Death Camp Visits Resume: Treblinka and the Warsaw Ghetto

Memorial at Treblinka Death Camp in Poland

In November, I will resume my visits to Nazi Death Camps. This time I will travel with my friend Cliff, my usual partner on these journeys, and Emily, a friend who is currently serving as a medic with the U.S. Army in Europe. 

I will meet Cliff in Germany where he is Bruder Timotheus at the Land of Kanaan monastery in Darmstadt. We will drive to Berlin, pick up Emily and go to visit the Warsaw Ghetto.  The next day will be Treblinka. Possibly the day after we will visit Sobibor. 

On the way back to Darmstadt, Cliff and I will go to the Sachsenhausen and Bergen Belsen Death Camps. We will also visit the Deutsche Panzer Museum near Bergen Belsen.  

Some of my previous visits to Nazi Death Camps:

Auschwitz my first visit 2017

The first concentration camp in Nazi Germany.

Buchenwald visit in 2019

Dachau in March 2020 while Covid-19 swept the world 

Flossenburg in July 2021

Second visit of Auschwitz

Terezin Death Camp in Czechia

In My Time of Dying by Sebastian Junger

 

In My Time of Dying is the fifth book I have read by Sebastian Junger since I met him almost a year ago. He was the opening keynote speaker at the Hannah Arendt Center Conference in October 2024. 

In all of Junger's books and films, death hovers in the background when it is not the main topic. As the title says, this book is about Junger's near/almost death from abdominal bleeding. The cause is complex and rare.  He was close enough to death to have the haunting experience of his (dead) father beckoning him into the world beyond this life.  

Reading the book, made me look at my own brushes with death differently. I thought before reading this book I had three near-death experiences. Now I think it was one. Two of them, a missile explosion and a 75-mph motorcycle crash, left me badly injured and temporarily unconscious, but I was still (painfully) aware.  The 50-mph bicycle crash in which I broke my neck, I have no recollection of and near total memory loss for months.

And each of my brushes with death was a sudden bone-breaking crash or explosion. I have never had brush with death that was from disease or internal organ failure.  

Life gone wrong in an instant brought me to death's door, not a slow aching internal failure as was the case with Junger. The book is precise and vivid on the small arteries and ligaments that conspired to nearly kill Junger. It also chronicles current research and experiences of those who are near death or actually dead for a short time and revived.  

Shortly after finishing the book, I had elevated heart rate in the night for five days.  Two of those days I woke up feeling my heart pounding in my chest.  After the second night, I went to the emergency room and then to a cardiologist.  It was probably a virus--I had very high rest heart rates when I had covid. I might not have gone to the emergency room, but after reading how Junger put off finding the cause of his abdominal discomfort, I decided to get checked by doctors.  Also in my mind was a friend whose rest heart rate raced to more than 150 beats per minute for no apparent reason.  

I strongly recommend In My Time of Dying as a story very well told and a cautionary tale if you have any tendency to ignore medical problems.

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Junger's other books, as I noted above, have the life/death theme:

War about a year with several months at the most dangerous forward outpost in Afghanistan. Junger also co-produced the documentary Restrepo about that year in Afghanistan.

Freedom about a long and occasionally danger walk along hundreds of miles of railroad tracks in Pennsylvania.

A Perfect Storm about a fatal shipwreck.

Tribe about, among other things, who we will give our life for.

The next book by Junger I will read is A Death in Belmont about murder in a small town near Boston when I was a child.  

 

I Dumped T-Mobile Because of Their Extreme Roamer Policy

 

I was a fan of T-Mobile even before I was a customer. Until this year I had very  reliable service fromT-Mobile.  

Then I ran afoul of the T-Mobile "Extreme Roamer" policy.  If a T-Mobile customer is out of the country more than two billing periods in a year, all international roaming service is blocked for a year. 

Once the restriction goes into effect it is for a full year.  In my case from February 28 of this year until February 27 next year.  

I could have avoided the problem by unlocking my phone or getting a differentphone with an international plan.  But unlocking would have cost several hundred dollars at the time, and I assumed I could get around the restriction.  

I couldn't.

It turns out even Canada is overseas. I was in Canada in June and had no service. So I changed my cell phone service provider to Verizon. They have no restrictions on international usage although their overseas plans are a little more expensive.  

In 2026 or 2027 I was thinking about spending a month or two in South America.  Depending on the dates of the billing cycle, I could end up in T-Mobile extreme roamer jail again if I continued with their service.  

By the way, the reduced service from T-Mobile did not reduce the monthly bill. 

Full price, no service.  

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

I grew up near the sea, several miles from the Atlantic Ocean north of Boston.  While the sea was always near, it was also remote for me. Our family went to the beach once or twice a year. I did not learn to swim until I was 59 years old.  Until I retired, the ocean was something I flew over.

Then a friend told me that the movie Master and Commander was based on a series of 21 novels.  I started reading them and was hooked. I read them all.  I am slowly re-reading the whole series on the Kindle when I travel.  

Then we moved to Panama for a year.  The Panama Canal connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. I rode along canal or the Pacific shore almost every day.  

In Panama I met Roger who retired at 51 and spent 21 years sailing around the world on a sailboat.  Roger loves the Master and Commander series, but his favorite sea novel is the Old Man and the Sea. I had never read it, but I had a copy with me. I read it and loved it.   

The old mariner goes far out to sea, alone. In his 80s he is still strong enough to fight the great fish day and night, a fish so big he can't get it in the boat. A fish torn apart and eaten by sharks so he returns with only a skeleton. But everyone knew he caught a great fish. 

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Only once did I go fishing on the ocean. I was seven years old. A neighbor who had a boat took me.  We fished form mackerel by dropping lines with a half-dozen hooks wrapped in orange tape.  I cleaned dozens of fish.  We took a couple barrels of fish back to Stoneham and cooked fish on a grill.  To this day I love mackerel.

My oldest daughter Lauren became obsessed with fishing when she was 11 and 12 years old. I would take her to a farm pond to catch carp which we always threw back.  

 

My Never-Published Pittsburgh Post-Gazette OpEd

I wrote this article at the request of David Mills of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.  It was never published.  I wrote the article after reading Tribe by Sebastian Junger. That book confirmed for me that while it seems my life is devoted to thrill seeking, it was really a life of looking for my tribe.  The thrill seeking was part of the tribes I joined: tank commander, soldier, missile technician, and bicycle racer. The tribe was the point. Thrills and 41 broken bones were part of my tribal membership.   

A friend sent me an article about a 42-year-old guy who crashed his mountain bike in a volcano and consequently decided to throttle back his thrill seeking.  I smiled and thought ‘So young!’ Half of the forty-one bones I have broken were cracked, crunched or splintered since my 40th birthday.  One vast difference between the reformed thrill junkie Gary and me is that I don’t remember my accidents, but he has a vivid memory of his big crash into the volcano. When he contemplates the next adrenaline adventure he can see his crash in his mind. I have no such hindrance. 

My most recent big crash, at age 54, happened so fast I have no memory of it. In fact, I have little memory of the half year that followed.  I was in a downhill race on a long, steep winding descent.  I started at the back of a dozen riders and, according to the other riders, I was just about to pass the racer in front when we touched wheels. I flipped into the air and landed headfirst at 50 mph.  My seventh vertebra was smashed. The first and second vertebra were cracked.  My forehead peeled up to my hairline. Four ribs, my right collarbone, shoulder, and nose were broken. 

Surgeons reattached my forehead and replaced my seventh vertebra with a bone from a cadaver.  Three months later, the doctor cleared me to take off the neck and chest brace I’d been wearing to stabilize my neck.  The next day, I rode down that same hill I’d crashed on with two of my riding buddies who were in the pack when I crashed.  They were worried for me. I was fine. No memory. They told me they could see the crash clearly in their minds.  Two other guys who had seen my crash had already decided to quit racing. I returned to racing, but only intermittently. 

Two weeks after I took off the neck and chest brace, I re-enlisted in the Army after 23 years as a civilian. I was, as noted, 54 years old. Soon after, I had deployment orders for Iraq. At the time I re-enlisted, I had four kids and a wife and a good job and a racing team, but three of the kids were in or on the way to college and if I did not re-enlist as soon as I could, I would age out. So I raised my right hand and went from central Pennsylvania to southern Iraq.  

I spent most of 2009 at Camp Adder, Iraq, serving as an Army Sergeant in a Combat Aviation Brigade.  During that deployment, I flew to several bases across southern Iraq in Blackhawk and Chinook helicopters, once in a blackout sandstorm.  I had plenty of thrilling moments on that deployment, but thrills were not why I re-enlisted.  What I really wanted, I recently learned (and could admit to myself), was to have a mission that mattered and to be part of a group of soldiers risking their lives for each other and that mission.

As I learned from reading Sebastian Junger’s book Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, a tribe was what I wanted. The thrills would follow, but my squad, my platoon, my company—my tribe was what I really wanted. I missed being a tank commander with my own crew. I got my tribe in Iraq. I stayed in the National Guard until May 2016 when I aged out. During that summer, soldiers who said Bill Clinton, a draft dodger, should never have been President, became avid Trump supporters.  Now that I was a civilian, my Army tribe evaporated faster than spilled water on an Iraq road in July.

But in November, my new tribe materialized. A former coworker said I should join a protest group in Philadelphia called Tuesdays with Toomey.  They planned to protest Senator Pat Toomey every week until he held a town hall meeting in Philadelphia. We rallied in front of Toomey’s office every Tuesday, rain, shine or snow until January 3, 2023, when he left office. He never held the town hall.

In February 2022, just after Russia invaded Ukraine, another friend who served in the Peace Corps in Ukraine told me how I could volunteer to send medical supplies to Ukraine. I did that until November 2022, then have been going to Congress three times a year to ask for aid.  

My tribe is now those who support Ukraine against Russia and those who support Israel against every form of Jihad. I have friends who have volunteered in Ukraine delivering medical supplies. I thought about going, but I know from deploying fifteen years ago that young people look at 50-year-olds as fragile.  I had to be very fit so as not to be suspect.  At my current age, I would just be a worry to people half my age. The same is true for Israel. I will work with my tribe here in the United States and, as with the deployment, the thrills will be part of the journey.

My FM Metal Music Life in the Early 70s

December 19, 1969, I got my  driver's license. I was so happy with that monumental event that I have celebrate the anniversary of my driver's license every year even though I barely celebrate my birthday.  

Among the many ways having a driver's license gave me independence, it meant I had control of the car radio.  My dad listened to sports and the news when we drove to and from work--I worked summers and Saturdays in the grocery warehouse where he worked.  Now, alone in the car, I could listen to music.

But not my favorite music. Most cars only had AM radios in the 1960s and well into the 1970s. In the car, I could listen to 68 WRKO Boston like everyone else.  

Late at night, I could hang a 3-meter long wire out my second-floor, north-facing bedroom window and listen to The Stones, The Who, The Doors, Boston Band Aerosmith, and other new metal bands that were never played on WRKO.  The two stations that played metal were WBCN and WHRB.  (Broadcast FM signals have a 2.8-to-3.2-meter wavelength.) 

WBCN was founded in 1968 calling itself "The American Revolution."  They played rock all the time mixed with news and antiwar messages.  WHRB played classical and had news broadcasts during the day, but had late-night and overnight broadcasts that played Led Zeppelin, Iron Butterfly, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Cream, Uriah Heep, Steppenwolf, and others.  

It would be years before I owned a car with an FM radio.  And by the time I had FM I also had a cassette player and did not usually listen to broadcast radio.  

Metal dropped out of my music listening until it returned with a jolt in 2007 when I re-enlisted in the Army.  Many of the 20-year-olds in my unit listened to speed metal, death metal and related genres.  After the brilliant lyrics of early Zeppelin and Uriah Heep, this 21st century metal was awful.  

During Covid I was riding and walking alone a lot.  I usually listen to podcasts but decided to listen to Zeppelin and read the lyrics. Brilliant and beautiful.  It was like catching up with an old friend.  

Riding along listening "Heartbreaker," "Whole Lotta Love," "Bring it on Home," and the rest of those songs took me back Stoneham, listening to my favorite music on a little FM radio.  That music came from WHRB on Harvard's campus and from WBCN on State Street south of the Boston Common. 

Now I can listen to music from any time and anywhere on iTunes.  But it was fun to carefully tune the little radio to 95.3 and see what the late night student DJ would spin.   

Seeking Purpose for Life is Dangerous--Just Live: The transcript.

Yogi Sadhguru

Here is the link to my first post after hearing a talk by Yogi Sadhguru on YouTube. 

All around us, those who seek a God-given purpose for their life are maiming and murdering those of us who just want to live. Hamas and their supporters, Christian nationalists spreading hate in Jesus' name, Putin, Hezbollah, and every other hate-filled wretch with believing himself a defender of God.   

Seeking Purpose for Life is Dangerous--Just Live

Isn't it fantastic that if there's no purpose, you have nothing to fulfill, you can just live? No, but you want a purpose? And not a simple purpose. You want a God-given purpose. It's very dangerous. People who think they have a God-given purpose are doing the cruelest things on the planet. Yes or no?

They are doing the most horrible things and they've always been doing the most horrible things because when you have a God-given purpose, life here becomes less important than your purpose. 

What is Life?

My life is important. Life is important. When I say life. I'm not talking about your family, your work, what you do, what you do not do at your party. I'm not talking about that. As life, this is life, isn't it? Life is within you or around you. The ambiance of life. You are mistaking the ambiance of life for life, your home, your family, your workspace, your party. This is all ambience of life. This is not life, isn't it? Yes or no?

The Ambiance of Life is not Life 

You're mistaking the ambiance for the real thing, no? Life is important. Because that's the only thing you know. You don't know anything else. Do you know something else? The rest is all imaginary stuff, isn't it? The only thing is that this is beating and alive and that's all there is. 

You are not Important

So, is this important? It is of paramount importance. Not you as a person. That's not important, but you as a piece of. Life is very important. Because that is the basis of everything. When I say that is the basis of. Everything in the universe exists for you. Only because you are, isn't it? Yes or no?

The world exists for you only because you are, otherwise it won't exist. In your experience. So. In every way. This is important. So, what is the purpose of this? See if you had a purpose and if you fulfilled it after that, what would you do? After that, what would you do? Bored, isn't it? 

Life is Complex

It is just that life is so intricate and so phenomenally intricate. That if you spend 10,000 years looking at it carefully; you still will not know it entirely. If you spend a million years looking at it. With absolute focus still you will not know. It in its entirety. That's how it is. There is. Is there a meaning to it? The greatest thing about. 

Life has no Meaning

Life is that there is no meaning to it. This is the greatest aspect of life that has no meaning to it, and there is no need for it. To have a meaning. It's the pettiness of one's mind. That it is seek a meaning. Because psychologically you will feel. Kind of unconnected with life. If you don't have a purpose. And the meaning. 

We Create Purposes

People are constantly trying to create these false purposes. Now they were quite fine and happy. Suddenly they got married. Now the purpose is. The other person. Then they have children. Now they become miserable with each other. Now the whole purpose that I go through, all this misery is. Because of the children. Like this it goes on. These are things that you are causing and holding as purposes of life. And is there a God-given purpose? What if God does not know you exist? No, I'm just asking by chance. I'm saying in this huge. 

Does God Know You Exist?

Which God is supposed to be the creator and the manager of these 100 billion galaxies, in that this tiny little planet? And you suppose he doesn't know that you exist? What to do? Possible, or no? I'm sorry I'm saying such sacrilegious things. But is it possible, or no? What if he doesn't know that you exist? What if he doesn't have a plan for you? Suppose he doesn't have a plan for an individual plan for you. Don't look for such things. The thing is the creation is made in such a way. That creation and creator cannot be separated. Here you are a piece of creation at the same time, the source of creation is throbbing within you. If you pay little attention to this process of life, you would not need any purpose. It will keep you engaged for a million years. If you want.

Seeking Purpose Comes from Inner Need

There is so much happening. So much means so much unbelievable things are happening right here. If you pay enough attention. A million years of existence, it will keep you busy. Or more. Right now the need for purpose is come because you are trapped in your psychological structure, not in your life process. Your psychological structure functions from the limited data that it's gathered within that it rolls. And right now. Your thought and emotion has become far more important than our life, isn't it? So isn't it so? So because of this you seeking. 

Escape the Trap

A purpose as an escape from the trap that you have set for yourself. It is a trap set by you. You can easily come out of it. If the trap was set for you by somebody else, difficult to come out because they'll set the trap in such a way that you cannot come out, isn't it? I'm talking about life, not marriage. That's what I'm saying. That's what time is. So this is a trap set by you. This is easy to come. Out, but that is the whole thing. Why it is so difficult is now you're identified with the trap. You like it. You like it because it gives you a certain sense of. Safety and security and protection and individual identity if you. Build a cocoon around yourself. It gives you safety, but it also imprisons you. 

Walls Can Be Prisons

Walls of self preservation or also walls of self imprisonment. When it protects you, you like it. When it restricts you, you do not like it. That is why we have doors. We lack the wall because it's protecting us. But we have doors, so that way we can open it and get out when we want to. It doesn't matter how nice it is, we still want to go out, isn't it? So that is how it. Is with every trap that you set. It doesn't matter how nice it is, you still want to go out. So the psychological wall that you have built which gives you some sense of identity, which gives you some sense of being a person, an individual person, and which gives you security. Beginning to experience it like a trap somewhere, you want to break it. So one way of not breaking it is to find a purpose. 

If You Lack Balance, Don't Climb

Those who find a purpose in their life, they become so conceited. They will live within their own traps forever, thinking that they're doing the most fantastic thing. First thing you need is balance. If you have balance. Then you can try if you don't have balance. It's better you stay underground. It's not safe for somebody who is not balanced to climb high. It's best you stay close to the ground. You should not climb. So first thing is to establish a balance. Then you're losing your psychological structure. Then it's a wonderful thing if you're losing your psychological structure without balance, which lot of people are doing today. See why does somebody want? To drink alcohol or take a drug. Because it loosens your psychological structure. And makes you feel. Liberated for a moment. But without the necessary balance. You have not worked for the balance, but you got freedom. 

Freedom without balance is destruction.

Freedom without balance is destruction. Anarchy, isn't it? So first thing is to work for. Balance an enormous sense of balance. Where even if you dismantle your psychological structure, you can simply live here, dismantling your psychological. Structure is an important. Process because that is your trap. That is your security. That is your stability. At the same time, that's your trap. Because the walls are set, you feel secure, but that's also your trap. If you dismantle your trap. You also dismantle your security, isn't it? You also dismantle your sense of purpose. You also dismantle everything that matters to you. So that will need balance without balance if you dismantle. You will go crazy. But don't look for a purpose because if you look for a purpose. You're seeking madness. If you find one. You are sure mad? If you think you found a purpose in life you you've for sure gone crazy. Because only the insane people have purpose. Are people who have purpose insane in many ways?

Purpose isYour Own Reality

These are things that you create in your mind and believe it's true, isn't it? Right now, fighting for my country is my purpose. Right now, if it's necessary, I will fight knowing fully well it's an. Unnecessary bloody fight. Just then you will fight only to the extent it's necessary. If you think this is your. Purpose you would want to destroy the whole world for. What nonsense you believe in, isn't it? Something is needed. We'll do it. With absolute involvement, there's no other purpose. The purpose of life is to live and to live totally. To live totally does not mean party every night to live totally means before you fall dead before every aspect of life has been explored. Nothing has been left unexplored before you fall. Dead. Even if you do not explore the cosmos, at least this piece of life, you must know it in its entirety. That much you must do to yourself, isn't it? That's living totally. That you experienced the whole of this, all dimensions of what this is. You did not leave anything untouched. You just do that. That will take a long time. That's enough. Good enough purpose for you.

Ukraine Attacks Russian Air Force--Destroys 40 Bombers

 

In a brilliant and daring raid Ukraine destroyed 40 Russian strategic bombers and other high-value aircraft.  Over the past 18months, Ukrainian forces parked semitrailers with hidden drone compartments near Russian air bases.  

With a coded signal, the top of these parked trailers opened and swarms of attack drones flew toward unprotected Russian aircraft.  In minutes, the drones began hitting vulnerable points on the bombers turning them into flaming pyres of wreckage. 

More than a billion dollars in irreplaceable aircraft were destroyed by about a million dollars worth of cheap drones.  

The owner of the house I stayed in during the past year in Panama followed the War in Ukraine on video every day.  He is a former rocket engineer who knows the technology.  I called him today to share all the happiness and excitement of watching Ukraine kick ass.  

We both had watched Russia's recent attacks on civilians in Ukraine with increasing alarm and sadness.  It was wonderful to see Ukraine strike so effectively. 

Слава Україні

Glory to Ukraine! 

The Bureaucrat of Death: Adolf Eichmann and the Machinery of the Holocaust

(This post is edited and improved by ChatGPT. The original version is here.) 

In 1932, Adolf Eichmann was an unemployed Austrian drifting through a country in political and economic chaos. Desperate for work, he crossed into Germany and joined the rising Nazi Party—more out of need than ideology.

Eichmann soon found employment in the Nazi campaign to make Germany Judenrein—free of Jews. Between 1933, when Hitler rose to power, and the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the regime's goal was deportation, not yet mass murder. During this period, the Nazis expelled Jews from the Reich, often forcing them to navigate a labyrinth of bureaucracy that made escape painfully slow.

Eichmann, however, had a talent for logistics. He centralized the deportation process by bringing all necessary agencies under one roof. What once took months now took days. But the streamlining came at a cost: Jews were stripped of their assets and left with barely enough to reach their destinations. Many ended up in British-controlled Palestine, Spain, or other countries the Nazis never conquered. Though they lost everything, they escaped the coming catastrophe.

Once the war began, deportations largely halted. For over two years, Eichmann and others involved in Jewish expulsion waited as the Nazi leadership decided on a new direction. In the meantime, local massacres claimed the lives of millions of Jews, carried out near their homes by bullets rather than gas.

Then came January 1942. At the infamous Wannsee Conference, the Nazi regime formally adopted the “Final Solution”—the systematic extermination of Europe’s Jews. Eichmann’s organizational prowess, once used to deport Jews out of the Reich, was now repurposed for industrial-scale murder. He managed the transportation of victims to Auschwitz and other death camps with cold precision.

By 1944, his methods were devastatingly efficient. In Budapest, working with the cooperation of certain Jewish leaders, Eichmann deported nearly half a million Hungarian Jews to their deaths in just three months.

Eichmann was no mastermind of evil in the comic book sense. He was a functionary—a man of forms, files, and timetables. When the orders were to deport, he deported. When the orders were to kill, he ensured the trains ran on time. He was an amoral bureaucrat who helped send over three million Jews to their deaths, not out of personal hatred, but out of dutiful obedience.

After the war, Eichmann disappeared. He hid in Austria before escaping to Argentina through the infamous “Rat Line” — a network assisted by Catholic Bishop Alois Hudal. At the time, Pope Pius XII, whose papacy has been heavily criticized for its silence during the Holocaust, remained in power. In Argentina, Eichmann lived under an alias but eventually bragged about his role in the genocide.

In 1960, Israeli agents captured him and brought him to trial in Jerusalem. He was convicted and executed in 1962.

I've read and reread Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt’s account of his trial. Her concept of the “banality of evil”—that horrific crimes can be committed by ordinary people who simply follow orders—remains controversial. Many critics of her work, both then and now, have not actually read it.

I strongly recommend all of Arendt's works, several of which I've summarized briefly in other posts. Among them, The Origins of Totalitarianism stands out as the most essential for understanding the ideological and structural roots of the Holocaust.

---

Recommended Works by Hannah Arendt:

• 📘 Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Penguin Modern Classics)

• 📗 The Origins of Totalitarianism (Harvest/Harcourt)

• 📕 The Human Condition (University of Chicago Press)

• 📙 Between Past and Future (Penguin)

• 📒 On Revolution (Penguin)

• 📓 Responsibility and Judgment (Schocken)

These books provide not only a window into Arendt’s profound political thought but also a vital lens on totalitarianism, moral responsibility, and the capacity of ordinary people to commit extraordinary crimes.

First Car Purchase in Twenty Years (And a ChatGPT experiment)

 

A New Prius and a Lifetime of Vehicles

Today, my wife and I bought a 2017 Toyota Prius. It replaces our old 2001 Prius, which we donated to a local high school auto shop before moving to Panama in August 2024.

As I logged the new car into the spreadsheet where I track all my vehicles (yes, I’m that person), I realized something surprising: this is the first car I’ve bought since 2006, when I picked up a white 2002 Chevy Malibu. Coincidentally, this Prius is white too.

Since I got my driver’s license in 1969, I’ve owned—or had long-term use of—41 cars, trucks, and motorcycles. With this latest addition, the total I’ve spent on vehicles has officially crossed $100,000. That works out to about $2,500 per vehicle, though like most averages, that number doesn’t really tell the whole story.

The last five vehicles alone cost over $70,000. Once you subtract nine company cars and long-term loaners, that means the remaining 27 vehicles set me back just $30,300—an average of a little over $1,100 each. Safe to say, I bought a lot of cheap cars in the ’70s and ’80s.

To put it in perspective:

• Between 1969 and 1979, I bought 21 vehicles.

• In the 1980s, I added 12 more—six cars and six motorcycles.

• The 1990s? Just one car and one motorcycle.

• Since 2000, I’ve only picked up three cars and a 15-passenger van.

What changed? Somewhere in the late ’80s, I became increasingly obsessed with bicycle riding and racing. That shift gradually replaced my interest in cars—and it shows in the numbers.

Now, with our new Prius parked in front of the house, I’m reflecting not just on the car itself, but on the whole journey—decades of vehicles, roads, and shifting passions. Funny how something as simple as a new car can open the door to a little time travel.

---------------

The essay above was edited by ChatGPT. AI also added the Headline at the top ofthe text. 

The essay below is the original.

---------------

Today my wife and I bought a 2017 Toyota Prius.  It replaces the 2001 Prius we donated to a local auto shop class when we left for Panama in August of 2024. 

When I added the car to the spreadsheet of motor vehicles I keep, I realized this is the first car bought since 2006 when I bought a 2002 Chevy Malibu. Also white.  

In the years since I got my drivers license in 1969 I have owned or had long-term use of 41 cars, trucks and motorcycles. Buying this Prius finally pushed the total I spent on vehicles over $100,000.  That's an average price of $2,500 per vehicle, but as with most averages, the number is meaningless.

The last five vehicles cost just over $70,000.  Removing the nine company cars and long-term loaners, that means the other 27 cars cost $30,300 or just over $1,100 on average.  I bought a lot of very cheap cars in the 1970s and 1980s.

In fact, I bought 21 vehicles between 1969 and 1979.  I bought 12 between 1980 and 1989: six cars and six motorcycles.  I bought just one car and one motorcycle in the 1990s.  Then three cars and a 15-passenger van in this century.     

The difference in my buying habits was my growing obsession with bicycle riding and racing beginning in the late 1980s. 

Ten Countries I Want to Visit

 

Mount Fuji, Japan

My travel is mostly guided by opportunities.  For instance, in the fall, I plan to meet two friends in Europe and travel to several Nazi Death Camps in Poland.  A soldier friend of mine is deployed to Poland for a year and can get a weekend pass. So we can travel together. 

Many of the places I have traveled have been last-minute changes in plan or just following a whim.  But another friend recently reminded me I am older than dirt and if I have places I want to go, I better make plans.  So I made a list:

1. Japan: I have been fascinated with Japanese history and culture for most of my life, but never traveled to this beautiful country.  Top of my list. 
2. Chile: I was there for two weeks in March this year, but only in the north.  I want to go back and see Tierra del Fuego, the Andes and Patagonia.
3. Finland: In 2014, I wanted to ride from Odessa to Finland along the 2000-kilometer route my grandfather walked in 1914 to escape the Russian army. I would like to see the border areas and Helsinki maybe also the arctic circle in Finland. 
4. Ukraine: I want to go to Kiev and Odessa. More than anything, I want victory for Ukraine.
5. Israel: I visited Israel in 2017, 2019 and 2020.  I was planning to goback with my friend Cliff and clear rubble in the north. The trip did not work out this year.  Maybe next year. 
6. Thailand: I was almost assigned there in 1973 in the US Air Force, but the war in Vietnam ended and fewer troops went to Southeast Asia.
7.  Rwanda: I had tickets to go there and ride the first week in March 2020. I  was in Europe and decided not to go to Africa with Covid spreading fast. 
8.  Poland: I rode across southern Poland in 2017. I would like to see Warsaw, Gdansk, and the Baltic coast.
9. South Africa: So much naval history around this huge country when all trade to east Asia had to pass around the southern end of this huge continent.
10. Nepal: I have never been to south Asia, anywhere between the Persian Gulf and Malaysia. I want to visit Katmandu and the lower Himalayas. 

I could add a lot more. Likely I will go other places as I have opportunities. I love travel. 

Flying to the USA Today--With an Unusual Travel Accessory (for me)

Today the nine-month sojourn in Panama ends with two flights back to the USA.  Because the trip was really a temporary move, I had a very unusual travel accessory for me--a suitcase! With all the travel I have had in the last decade, the last time I can remember having a suitcase was a 2017 trip to Europe. I brought a bicycle on that trip--so I definitely had luggage. 

I also shipped the bike I bought here last August back to the USA.  So really two pieces of luggage.  I was going to leave the bike here but it is an aluminum-frame Giant road bike that would be a good travel bike for the future.  There is a possibility we could live in Chile for a month or two in 2026 or 2027. If so, I will take the bike there and leave it when the trip is over.  

 The bike survived here so it should be good for travel anywhere else.  And if Chile doesn't happen, it could go somewhere else.

USA late Today!!!

The Nazi Apprentice: Eichmann Sent Thousands of Jews to Palestine Before He Sent Millions to Death Camps

Adolf Eichmann on Trial in Jerusalem

In 1932, Adolf Eichmann was an unemployed Austrian who went to Germany to join the Nazi Party. He needed a job. 

He eventually found work in the Nazi effort to make Germany Judenrein, free of Jews. From the time Hitler took power in 1933 until he started World War II, the Nazis deported Jews from the Reich, mass murder was still in the future of the Nazi program. 

Eichmann had a gift for logistics, for organizing.  The Nazi effort to deport Jews in the 1930s was slow because those who wanted to get out had to get authorizations from many agencies.  Eichmann brought all of the organizations necessary into one large building and processed Jews for deportation in days instead of months.  

In that process, Eichmann took the property of the Jews: emptied their bank accounts and left them with just enough to get to their destination.  Thousands of those Eichmann processed got to British Palestine, some got to Spain and to other countries the Nazis never conquered.  Although they lost all of their possessions, the Jews Eichmann deported got away from the Holocaust. 

When the war began, deportation stopped.  For more than two years, Eichmann and his fellow Nazis who were deporting Jews waited for a decision about the fate of the Jews and their next mission. During this period millions of Jews were murdered singly and en masse by shooting, but the killings were mostly done where the Jews lived. No need for transportation.

In January 1942, the Nazis decided to kill all Jews within their territories.  The skills Eichmann had sharpened in organizing the deporting of Jews outside the Reich were used to transport Jews to Auschwitz and other death camps.   

Eichmann refined his methods until in 1944 in Budapest, with the cooperation of Jewish leaders, he deported nearly half a million Jews to their death in just three months.  

Eichmann was not a supervillain. He was a skilled organizer of transport and paperwork with years of experience.  When the Nazi policy was deportation, Eichmann got Jews out of Germany.  When the policy was mass murder, Eichmann filled train cars with victims. He was an amoral functionary who obeyed orders to the point of transporting three million Jews to Death Camps.  

When the war ended with Nazi defeat, Eichmann hid in Austria until the Rat Line organized by Catholic Bishop Alois Hudal got Eichmann to Argentina. The pro-Nazi Pope Pius XII was still in power as Nazis slid to South America. In Argentina, Eichmann bragged about his crimes. He was kidnapped by Israeli agents and put on trial on Jerusalem. 

Eichmann was executed for his crimes in Israel. 

I have read and reread Hannah Arendt's report on the Eichmann trial. She had many critics ofher work during her lifetime and still does fifty years later.  then as now, most ofher critics have not actually read her book.

I can recommend all of Hannah Arendt's books, which I did  in brief summaries here. Her book The Origins of Totalitarianism is the most important of her books in understanding the horror of the Holocaust. 

 

Potholes in Panama City, Panama

In 10 days I will end my nine-month stay in Panama City, Panama. I loved many things about my stay here and met many great people.  But riding here was always tense and difficult. 

Today I rode about 20 miles and created a new facebook group to share pictures of Potholes in Panama City.  Sometimes my bike is in the picture. Sometimes just the pothole.  

I ride here because I ride everywhere, but between narrow roads and deep potholes and no shoulders, I will be glad to be home in Pennsylvania.  

https://www.facebook.com/groups/3523199161309187 

Some of my other posts about riding in Panama:

Buying a bike.

First flat in a pothole.

First riding post.

Riding in western Panama.

Trump Fan Suddenly Worried About Liberty: Rod Dreher Realizes Trump Could Threaten White Christians Too!!

Rod Dreher

 I wrote this essay/review after reading The Benedict Option by Rod Dreher in 2017. This tireless exponent of Christian Nationalism is suddenly worried about liberty in America. Or maybe his bank account. It was the worst book I read that year.

When you want to say the nation is going to Hell, you first need a villain. Then you need to say how that villain is going to ruin everyone’s lives. The central theme of The Benedict Option is Dreher predicting the end of Christian culture in America through gay rights and the gay agenda. Dreher is sure that Christian hegemony in America is over. The only option is to withdraw from life in corrupt America into intentional communities of those committed to real goodness. 

The first question I have is, ‘Why will the gay agenda ruin our nation after it flourished with a long history of slavery, Jim Crow and betrayal of Native Americans?’ Is a nation really blessed by slavery and genocide and cursed by gay marriage?

America perpetrated the worst slavery in the history of the world on Africans. They were kidnapped and brought here in chains to be slaves until death for generation after generation. America had slavery with no hope of buying oneself out or getting free. The center of that slavery was the New Orleans slave market.

Dreher grew up in Louisiana and returned there to withdraw from life in big cities.  He is in a state and a region with a horrible history of slavery, followed by 100 years of apartheid called Jim Crow. What could be worse than men who would buy and sell human beings, fight a war to keep their slaves, and then oppress their victims openly for a century after losing the war?

Every confederate battle flag represents unrepentant racism, slavery and murder.  And yet, Dreher says, it is gay rights that will kill Christian faith in a way that Pride, Murder, Rape and Greed could not. Dreher says at the end of the book historians will wonder how a 3% minority killed a great nation like ours.

If America can perpetuate slavery longer than every civilized nation, break uncountable treaties, slaughter Native-Americans, allow Jim Crow laws in the south for a century, and then put a racist sexual predator in the White House with the support of 81% of "Christian" America, can the Gay agenda really trump everything else we have done? Dreher has his enemy.

Dreher begins the book saying he was led to the idea of withdrawal from culture by thinking of his son’s future from the moment he was born.  The book has many instances of Dreher and other Christian parents making what he calls sacrifices for their children.  Dreher writes as if parenting were the central Christian ministry.  As a father of six, I would say parenting is one of the central delights and urges and vanities of the Human Condition.  Can any parent really say that spending their time and money toward the success of their children is a sacrifice?  Does working toward the success of my own children make me the equal of Mother Teresa caring for the poorest outcasts in a Calcutta gutter?  No, it doesn’t. My bright, successful, funny children are a delight, they are not a ministry.  And they in no way set me apart from the world.

I heard many idiots in focus groups and on the news say one proof that Trump was obviously a good guy because he is a good father whose children love him.  Saddam Hussein loved Uday and Qusay. The worst Roman emperors were the beloved, spoiled children of previous emperors.  Trump is, by his own words, a racist who is willing to grab other people’s children by the pussy. Parenting does not excuse pandering.

Dreher should know well that nothing ties a person to the world like having children.  No actual Benedictine has kids.  The withdrawal from the world with kids that Dreher posits is not a new monastic movement, but a gated community with spiritual decorations on the iron fence. 

Compared to, say, Coptic Christians in Cairo and other believers facing danger and death, the Benedict Option like a military video game, allowing the out-of-shape, pale player to pretend he is a combat soldier while in the comfort of mom’s basement away from the blood and bullets of battle.

I would have called it the book the Benedict Fiction.

Trust the Science: An Atom of Insight About What "Trusting Science" Means

 

The first thing to say about my lovely graphic is that John Dalton 

proposed his theory of atomism in 1803, not 1903.  

The rest of the dates are good. 

I trust science. But when I say that, I know I will be misunderstood by almost everyone. Science is an open, shared enterprise which is the best current understanding of the world around us shared by those trained in the field.

Which means the best science at any time and place could and has been wrong or incomplete and can be changed, refined and improved by the latest research.  But science, unlike religion and other beliefs, is self correcting.  When a scientific theory is wrong, subsequent discoveries will change it or make it obsolete.  Since the corrections are in the hands of people not deities, the discoveries happen slowly or rapidly. But when the change happens, the previous understanding is discarded.

The story of the discovery that atoms are the basic unit of matter shows how convoluted the path to knowledge can be.  

Atoms were first proposed as the fundamental unit of matter in Ancient Greece by Democritus and others.  But Aristotle did not believe in atoms, so reverence for Aristotle held kept alchemy in place as the central understanding of what is now chemistry for two millennia.

Then in 1803 after meticulous experiments John Dalton proposed that each chemical element was a unique particle, an atom. Molecules were compounds of different atoms in fixed ratios.  This understanding was refined and expanded for a century until science could begin to "see" inside atoms.  

When scientists began to see inside atoms, when it became clear that atoms were composed of different particles with different charges, the picture of the inside of the atom evolved rapidly.  A century after Dalton, J.J. Thompson believed the atom had negative particles, electrons, embedded in a positively charged sphere.  

Seven years later Ernst Rutherford created the model of an atom with a positively charged nucleus and electrons orbiting: a tiny solar system.  Neils Bohr refined the model to fix levels or orbitals for the electrons circling the atom.  

In 1926 Erwin Schroedinger applied the new discoveries of quantum mechanics to the atom model which is now seen as a positive nucleus that usually includes neutral particles surrounded by a cloud of electrons. And with many small refinements, that is the current atomic model. 

For those who see science as fixed, this timeline shows that in the past three centuries atoms:

Did not exist (until 1803)

Were indivisible spheres (until 1904)

Were positively charged spheres with electrons inside (until 1911)

Were little solar systems held together by electrical forces (until 1926)

Are a nucleus of many types of particles surrounded by a cloud of electrons (1926 and following)

The leading edge of understanding in any field can always change. If something radical changes in the current understanding of atoms and molecules it will be particle physicists and theoretical chemists who find the new wrinkle in the fabric of the universe. And their colleagues around the world will challenge their insights.

The alternative is the chaos of people sharing ignorance on the internet and turning our understanding of the world into an opinion poll. Or worse, shutting down research by experts. 

The best book I have read on this consensus of science is The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth by Jonathan Rauch. I'm sure I will re-read it soon as we descend further into ignorance and chaos.

Visiting BioMuseo in Panama

Last weekend, I finally visited the Bimuseo on the Amador Causeway in Panama City.  It presents the amazing biodiversity of the newest part of North America. What is now Panama was a gap between the American continents then plate tectonics and volcanos made a narrow east-west bridge between what is now Columbia and Central America.  

Biodiversity followed the formation of the new land as animals and plants great and small made their way to and through the strip land between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.  At the narrowest point in the middle of Panama (No surprise, the location of  the Panama Canal.) the country is less than 50 miles wide, spreading to more than 100 miles wide east and west of the canal.  

When a population is separated and isolated from each other and has different sources of food, new species can form.  In Panama this process formed, for example, two hundred species of bats within the borders of a country just four hundred miles long. Plants, insects, reptiles, birds and other creatures all evolved into new species inside the little country that connects the great continents.

On either side of Panama to the north and south marine species that once swam between the two oceans were separated and formed their own ecosystems in the oceans.  In this sense, the Panama Canal doesn't connect the two oceans. The canal rises from each ocean to Gatun Lake in the middle of the country 26 meters above sea level.  The lake is fed by the Chagres River which empties into the Atlantic Ocean on the north side of the canal.  

The water that fills the locks and floats the ships across the country flows down from Lake Gatun into the locks and out to sea. If the canal had been built at sea level through Nicaragua (one of the plans in the late 1800s) it might have been a path between the seas for marine creatures. But in Panama, the canal is a fresh-water path flowing out to the seas from the lake in the middle.

The biodiversity the Biomuseo presents is evident around me every day I live in this lush country. Animals, birds and plants unique to Panama are visible everywhere and, of course, many more are invisible.  

 

Advocating for Ukraine: Telling Our Representatives That Ukraine is the Front Line of Freedom and Democracy

The Pennsylvania Delegation of the Ukraine Action Summit

At the beginning of April, I flew back to America to be part of the Ukraine Action Summit. The song that turned into an earworm was Hail Night of the Woeful Countenance from the musical Man of La Mancha.  In a Republican-controlled Congress, both the House and the Senate, and with a Putin-loving President, I felt I was tilting at windmills.  

I am an American and can tell my elected representatives how I feel about Ukraine. Which I did.  And have been doing since this terrible war started.  

By the way, in case someone reading this hear Kremlin talking points from Tucker Carlson or Putin-loving minions: 

Russia invaded Ukraine.

Russia kidnaps Ukrainian children.

Russia targets homes and schools and civilians.

Russia betrays every agreement it makes.

Russia does not want peace and American negotiators are idiots.

 
I will keep advocating for Ukraine for as long as Ukraine keeps fighting back against the vile invaders of their land.  

As a veteran who enlisted during four different wars between 1972 and 2016,  the Cold War was the only win America had.  And the Trump Republicans have trampled on that victory and taken Putin's side in this fight.  

Nearly 200 years ago in his book Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville said the leading struggle in the 20th Century would be between Russia and America. He was right, as he was right about so much about America. And yet, that brilliant French writer would never have predicted that an American President would have the spine of a jellyfish and become the willing slave of the Russian President.  But here we are.