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JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
 
Hour One
Friday  29 July  2016 / Hour 1, Block A: Josh Krauhaar, National Journal, in re:  With the Democratic National Convention officially wrapped, Josh Kraushaar opines that lack of originality aside, it was a successful night politically for Hillary Clinton. He writes: "All told, the bar for Democrats in Philadelphia was fairly low. They needed to improve Clinton's weak favorability numbers by showing a more personal side of her lengthy political career. And they had to disqualify Trump as an acceptable alternative to a dissatisfied electorate. On both counts, they succeeded."
Friday  29 July  2016 / Hour 1, Block B:  Sam Baker, National Journal, in re: While Clinton still must win the election, Ben Geman and Sam Baker report that many lawyers, liberal advocacy groups, and lawmakers are already thinking about what they would want to see in Hillary Clinton's possible Supreme Court nominees—and if she wins, she'll have a hard time pleasing them all. They spoke to several strategists, including David Axelrod, who believe that Clinton will renominate Merrick Garland to fill Scalia's seat, especially since she will most likely make at least, and perhaps as many as four, Supreme Court appointments.
Friday  29 July  2016 / Hour 1, Block C:  Sean Wilentz, in re:  The Politicians and the Egalitarians: The Hidden History of American Politics.
Friday  29 July  2016 / Hour 1, Block D:  Adam Wollner, in re: Looking ahead to the general election, Adam Wollner discusses how Colorado, a traditional battleground state, is falling out of reach for Donald Trump. According to Wollner, Colorado is among the fastest-growing in the country and rich in the sort of voters that been most resistant to Trump's candidacy: Hispanics, women, millennials, and the college-educated. Alongside these changing demographics, the rocky relationship between Trump and the local Republican activists hasn't been repaired since he blasted the state convention process as "rigged" in the spring.
 
Hour Two
Friday  29 July  2016 / Hour 2, Block A:  Michael E Vlahos, Johns Hopkins, in re:  If the Republican candidate for president can be “bait[ed] with a tweet,” as Clinton so memorably put it—if that disqualifies him from handling nuclear weapons, as she said—then the risk of World War III should be an issue in the 2016 campaign. Beyond his manifestly unsuitable temperament, Donald Trump will “endanger the world as we know it,” as Sen. Cory Booker put it. If you bust up the architecture of the postwar world—as Trump is threatening to do, either intentionally or out of ignorance—the war-and-peace conversation is not only fair, but necessary.
In that sense, this election may be a bit like 1964, when President Lyndon Johnson ran an ad against Republican challenger Barry Goldwater of a little girl picking a daisy while a mushroom cloud explodes in the background. It was a harsh attack, and only ran once, but it reflected deep unease about Goldwater undermining the structure of global relationships that kept the peace. “These are the stakes,” LBJ intones, as a nuclear weapon detonates.  (1 of 2) http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/29/hillary-clinton-is-righ...
Friday  29 July  2016 / Hour 2, Block B:  Michael E Vlahos, Johns Hopkins, in re: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/29/hillary-clinton-is-right-donald-trump-threatens-world-war-iii.html (2 of 2)
Friday  29 July  2016 / Hour 2, Block C:  Joshua Green, in re:  Wall Street’s Not Welcome at the 2016 Political Conventions. Democrats and Republicans don't agree on much...besides bashing banks  . .  .Were it not for Melania Trump’s plagiarism, Ted Cruz’s betrayal, Donald Trump’s doomsaying, hackers’ infiltration of the Democratic National Committee’s servers, the fall of DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the revolt of Bernie Sanders’s supporters, and a half-dozen or so lesser scandals -- gasp for breath! -- the major story coming out of the Republican and Democratic conventions might well be the sudden and pronounced move by both parties against Wall Street.  http://twitter.us13.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=a0fd6f3f123ded4f1a883...
Friday  29 July  2016 / Hour 2, Block D:  James Aloysius McTague, Barron’s Washington, in re: Declining business investment is hobbling an already sluggish U.S. expansion, raising concerns about the economy’s durability as the presidential campaign heads into its final stretch.
Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services produced across the U.S., grew at a seasonally and inflation adjusted annual rate of just 1.2% in the second quarter, the Commerce Department said Friday, well below the pace economists expected.
Economic growth is now tracking at a 1% rate in 2016—the weakest start to a year since 2011—when combined with a downwardly revised reading for the first quarter. That makes for an annual average rate of 2.1% growth since the end of the recession, the weakest pace of any expansion since at least 1949
 
Hour Three
Friday  29 July  2016 / Hour 3, Block A: Dr. Antone Martinho, DPhil, University College, Pembroke College, Magdalen College, University of Oxford; in re:  Ducklings imprint on the relational concept of “same or different"  The ability to identify and retain logical relations between stimuli and apply them to novel stimuli is known as relational concept learning. This has been demonstrated in a few animal species after extensive reinforcement training, and it reveals the brain’s ability to deal with abstract properties. Here we describe relational concept learning in newborn ducklings without reinforced training. Newly hatched domesticated mallards that were briefly exposed to a pair of objects that were either the same or different in shape or color later preferred to follow pairs of new objects exhibiting the imprinted relation. Thus, even in a seemingly rigid and very rapid form of learning such as filial imprinting, the brain operates with abstract conceptual reasoning, a faculty often assumed to be reserved to highly intelligent organisms.  http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6296/286.full    (1 of 2)
Friday  29 July  2016 / Hour 3, Block B: Dr. Antone Martinho, DPhil, University College, Pembroke College, Magdalen College, University of Oxford; in re:  Ducklings imprint on the relational concept of “same or different"  The ability to identify and retain logical relations between stimuli and apply them to novel stimuli is known as relational concept learning. This has been demonstrated in a few animal species after extensive reinforcement training, and it reveals the brain’s ability to deal with abstract properties. Here we describe relational concept learning in newborn ducklings without reinforced training. Newly hatched domesticated mallards that were briefly exposed to a pair of objects that were either the same or different in shape or color later preferred to follow pairs of new objects exhibiting the imprinted relation. Thus, even in a seemingly rigid and very rapid form of learning such as filial imprinting, the brain operates with abstract conceptual reasoning, a faculty often assumed to be reserved to highly intelligent organisms.  http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6296/286.full    (2 of 2)
Friday  29 July  2016 / Hour 3, Block C:  Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack, in re:  The Lie that Is Orion  Several weeks ago NASA put out one of its periodic press releases touting the wonders of the engineering the agency is doing to prepare for its future missions to Mars. In this case the press release described a new exercise device, dubbed ROCKY (for Resistive Overload Combined with Kinetic Yo-Yo), for use in the Orion capsule.
“ROCKY is an ultra-compact, lightweight exercise device that meets the exercise and medical requirements that we have for Orion missions,” said Gail Perusek, deputy project manager for NASA’s Human Research Program’s Exploration Exercise Equipment project. “The International Space Station’s exercise devices are effective but are too big for Orion, so we had to find a way to make exercising in Orion feasible.
As is their habit these days in their effort to drum up support for funding for SLS and Orion, the press release was filled with phrases and statements that implied or claimed that Orion was going to be the spacecraft that Americans will use to explore the solar system.
“. . . [E]ngineers across NASA and industry are working to build the Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System rocket that will venture to deep space for the first time together.”   “. . . Over the next several years, NASA’s Human Research Program will be refining the device to optimize it not only for near-term Orion missions with crew, but for potential uses on future long-duration missions in Orion . . .”
These are only two examples. I’ve clipped them because both were very carefully phrased to allow NASA deniablity should anyone question these claims. For example, in the first quotation they qualify “deep space” as specifically the 2018 unmanned lunar test flight. And the second quotation is qualified as referring to missions to lunar space. Nonetheless, the implied intent of this wording is to sell Orion as America’s interplanetary spaceship, destined to take us to the stars!
Don’t believe me? Then take a look at NASA’s own Orion webpages, starting with the very first words on their Orion Overview page.   http://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/essays-and-commentaries/the-lie-that-is-orion/  (1 of 2)
Friday  29 July  2016 / Hour 3, Block D:   Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack, in re:  Philae. Comet 67P, from Kuyper Belt or farther; two objects joined gently in the very early ages of the Solar System.  ExoMars 2016 – first of two missions jointly European-Russian. Orbiter, the Trace Orbiter(?) will land. Mid-course correction this week to improve correct landing.  Probably intend to send Curiosity between the two mesas where Balanced Rock is. Tricky journey – not necessarily smooth ground, and piles of sand in which to get stuck. Debris and rock fall between the mesas. Seattle mtg on astronomy; coming decades most exciting topic will be exoplanets.  (2 of 2)
 
Hour Four
Friday  29 July  2016 / Hour 4, Block A:  Donald G. McNeil, Jr,  Zika: The Emerging Epidemic     A gripping narrative about the origins and spread of the Zika virus by the New York Times science reporter Donald G. McNeil Jr.
Until recently, Zika―once considered a mild disease―was hardly a cause for global panic. But as early as August 2015, doctors in northeastern Brazil began to notice a trend: many mothers who had recently experienced symptoms of the Zika virus were giving birth to babies with microcephaly, a serious disorder characterized by unusually small heads and brain damage.
By early 2016, Zika was making headlines as evidence mounted― eventually confirmed ―that microcephaly is caused by the virus, which can be contracted through mosquito bites or sexually transmitted.
The first death on American soil, in February 2016, was confirmed in Puerto Rico in April. The first case of microcephaly in Puerto Rico was confirmed on May 13, 2016. The virus has been known to be transmitted by the Aedes aegypti or Yellow Fever mosquito, but now Aedes albopictus, the Asian Tiger mosquito, has been found to carry it as well, which means it might affect regions as far north as New England and the Great Lakes. Right now, at least 298 million people in the Americas live in areas “conducive to Zika transmission,” according to a recent study. Over the next year, more than 5 million babies will be born.
In Zika: The Emerging Epidemic, Donald G. McNeil, Jr., sets the facts straight in a fascinating exploration of Zika’s origins, how it’s spreading, the race for a cure, and what we can do to protect ourselves now.   https://www.amazon.com/Zika-Emerging-Donald-McNeil-Jr/dp/0393353966/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1469836619&sr=1-1  (1 of 4)
Friday  29 July  2016 / Hour 4, Block B: Donald G. McNeil, Jr,  Zika: The Emerging Epidemic (2 of 4)
Friday  29 July  2016 / Hour 4, Block C: Donald G. McNeil, Jr,  Zika: The Emerging Epidemic (3 of 4)
Friday  29 July  2016 / Hour 4, Block D: Donald G. McNeil, Jr,  Zika: The Emerging Epidemic (4 of 4)