Trofim Lysenko Is A Perfect Cautionary Tale For 2̶0̶1̶8̶ 2025 (Forbes)

Kiona N. Smith
Contributor
I cover the history of science, technology, and exploration.
Dec 31, 2017,05:33pm EST
Updated Dec 31, 2017, 06:42pm EST

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Colonel Kanatzhan "Kanat" Alibekov, who has since changed his name to Ken Alibek, wrote a detailed history of the Soviet biowarfare agency Biopreparat. His book, Biohazard, is a fascinating and deeply unnerving read, but the most frightening story Alibek tells, however, isn't about anthrax or smallpox. It's an account of how one man stifled the study of biology in the Soviet Union for over twenty years.

"We had gone from being one of the world's powerhouses of immunological and epidemiological research to a backwater of demoralized and discredited scientists," wrote Alibek. "The cause was one man - a Russian agronomist named Trofim Lysenko."
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By the 1940s, Lysenko had gained the ear, and the support, of Joseph Stalin. Lysenko's powerful connections propelled him to the top of the Soviet scientific community, where he imposed what Alibek describes as "an iron brand of political correctness" on Soviet biologists. Genetics or evolution were not to be studied, discussed, or published. It sounds crazy, but it worked terrifyingly well. Scientists who so much as dabbled in the "bourgeois discipline" found themselves facing public ridicule, and some even ended up in Stalin's infamous prison camps. Journals bold enough to publish research that mentioned genetics or evolution got shut down, one way or another.

And Alibek wasn't talking about some ultra-specific line of research -- altering human pathogens to make them more dangerous, for instance. It's almost impossible to do biological research of any kind without starting with at least the basics of genetics and evolution. Lysenko and his political patrons had blocked access to the fundamental science needed to make advances in agriculture, ecology, medicine, and other vital areas. By the 1950s, the whole broad field of Soviet biology was in the tank, and it remained decades behind the rest of the world until the early 1970s. That's roughly 20 years of lost time when Soviet scientists could have been developing new vaccines or treatments for diseases, or breeding more resilient and productive crops.
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a little more: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kionasmith/2017/12/31/trofim-lysenko-is-a-perfect-cautionary-tale-for-2018/

What Can a Satire from the 1950s Tell Us About Holiday Commercialism?

by Addison Del Mastro | December 10, 2014

Two holiday seasons ago, I wrote about the 1996 film “Jingle All the Way,” a corny Schwarzenegger comedy that pokes fun at the holiday shopping rush and the mayhem that often ensues. I noted that nearly every over-the-top depiction of craziness in the film – including shoppers pepper spraying each other and brawling in the aisles – has since actually occurred.

This year, I’d like to remember a much older and more obscure, yet perhaps more substantive critique of holiday commercialism. It’s an incredibly prescient 1956 short story by the late science fiction writer Frederik Pohl titled “Happy Birthday, Dear Jesus.”

This story is all-but-forgotten, perhaps because science fiction was not considered true literature in those years, or because it simply came too early: with memory of the Depression still looming in people’s minds, few were ready to criticize consumerism. But the story is prophetic to the point of nearly being a description of today’s commercialism, and it deserves a wide reading.

In a humorous segment that sets the story’s tone, the main character, George, recites this brilliant re-imagining of “The Night Before Christmas” in an attempt to impress the family of a young woman he’s trying to court (I’ve copied only part of it):

So much for the bedroom, so much for the bath,
So much for the kitchen, too little by half!
Come Westinghouse, Philco! Come Hotpoint, G.E.!
Come Sunbeam! Come Mixmaster! Come to the Tree!

And out of the shops, how they spring with a clatter,
The gifts and appliances words cannot flatter!
The robot dishwasher, the new Frigidaire,
The doll with the didy and curlable hair!
The electrified hairbrush, the black lingerie,
The full-color stereoscopic TV!
Come, Credit Department! Come, Personal Loan!
Come, Mortgage, come Christmas Club –”

"Those who make peaceful change impossible, make violent change inevitable."

JFK -- hardly a bloodthirsty warmonger, or fan of violence otherwise -- uttered those words at a time when smaller countries around the world were falling to Communist insurrections, or in danger of doing so. I'm sure he didn't mean it as a threat, but a warning -- advice which was sincerely intended to be heeded. Those in power must meet the demands of their people, or their people will depose them; the more violently they try to hold on to power, the more violence will be brought against them. That doesn't guarantee by any means that their successors will be white knights or angels of mercy, only that they will get their chance to hold the levers of power. If they fall back on the methods of the departed oppressor, they, the new oppressors, are likely to meet the same fate.

Currently, we're not talking about just countries and popular revolutions -- but those who benefit/profit from the current system, directly or indirectly, without ever having been elected, must be able to examine the consequences of their actions for the public and consider what resentments they may have engendered in the process of pursuing their personal rise to the top, or their corporation's business model to which they attribute their success. The recent killing of a greedy CEO whose business model was to deny (often life-saving) medical care to millions -- a perversion of traditional models where profits depend on providing something of value, not denying it -- should lead to some genuine soul-searching on the part of business "leaders" and organizations to whatever extent they are capable of it. Unfortunately, for many that may be no great extent at all, or even zero. Corporations, of course, despite putative claims that they "are people too", lack souls utterly. Morally, they are much less than the sum of their parts. So I wouldn't expect much change there, even if there are more examples of such killings, which will only confirm their ultimate futility (at least in a practical sense).

Only regulation can force proper behavior on corps whose self-declared sole purpose is profit at anyone else's cost. And until we can find politicians who won't sell out for a cut of those profits, we won't see change.

Health insurance, of course, is a uniquely dreadful example, because it differs from other forms of insurance in that it does not insure concrete, replaceable objects for the cost of replacement, but claims to insure an intangible, almost indefinable abstract condition of "good health", whose meaning is time- and context-dependent, and for which there is no off-the-shelf plug-in replacement. Such ambiguity allows those drawing up the contracts to determine whether they have or have not delivered what customers paid for -- an inherently bad design in very principle, which no amount of patching will ever render fully functional.

It's generally thought best to avoid having all three branches of gov't "turn over" at the same time.

That's part of the reason Reps, Senators, and the POTUS all have different term lengths. Since both POTUS and Reps are up for re-election every four years, this leads to some discontinuity and uncertainty in itself. Adding a court turnover on top of that would be chaos, and could render gov't ineffective at crucial times.

Most suggested term lengths for SCOTUS avoid such predictable, coincident turnovers. Perhaps the best choice would be term lengths where the no. of years is 'co-prime' to as many other term lengths as possible -- i.e. they do not have common divisors, so that a coincidence of end-of-terms would happen as seldom as possible. Hence terms of seven and nine years have both been suggested, as have ten year terms, which would coincide more often, since that would be another even number.

Of course, there is the possibility of staggering terms, as is done with the Senate (one-third up for election every two years, never all at once), or of limiting appointments to, say, odd years only (would need other adjustments to make that work).

Personally, I favor longer, say nine-year, terms, since longer terms means less politicking by, or in favor of, the candidates. Notice I say terms, not term limits -- personally, I think reappointments should be possible, to retain experienced judges with proven track records. POTUS and advisors will have to make a choice between keeping judges they like, and setting up a potential opportunity for their successor(s) as the re-appointed judge, necessarily older, is more likely to die in office or resign due to health. Uglicans like to appoint ridiculously young, inexperienced but dogmatically agreeable judges in the hope they will stay a very long time. If they are unlikely to be reappointed, particularly when more experienced candidates are available, that strategy loses its power.

I have my own reasons for limiting SCOTUS terms, which I haven't seen discussed much elsewhere. Might post those at some other time, realizing that it's probably just another fart in a perpetual windstorm, and won't likely affect anyone's thinking.

PS: If judges with many productive years still left in them are forced to step down from the SCOTUS, where will they go ? Will they simply become an unused resource ? Or (more likely) will they be returned to lower courts, which will have to adjust to a new dynamic in which judges promoted up the ladder may well come back down, and expect deference to their seniority ? Will this simply shift the battleground, with radical, revisionist judges who legislate from the bench -- as conservatives purport to despise, but actually cherish -- trying to serve as gatekeepers for appeals to the SCOTUS ? Or will they be pastured out to "think" tanks, to influence the judiciary more indirectly, and, all too often, deviously ?

Be careful what you wish for; you might get it.

REMINDER: Egg prices went up because of mass die-offs of laying hens infected with Avian Flu.

This was not a result of any gov't policy or action, or even inaction. It was a virus, which various gov't depts have made great efforts to track and contain, so as to *minimize* its impact.

The dullards of our country just voted in a Leader-In-Name-Only who did absolutely nothing to prevent the spread of a HUMAN-lethal contagious disease. Do you really think he's going to do anything about a virus that kills BIRDS ???

Oh, and there have already been some cases of humans getting Avian Flu. Many variants of the flu emerge from mainland China, because viruses in ducks are transmitted to pigs through contaminated pond water, which ducks, birds, and people all come into contact with. Given enough repeated exposures, sooner or later any given strain of flu will produce that "lucky" variant which is more effective at infecting pigs, whose immunochemistry is closer to humans than birds (we're both mammals, after all). From there it's a shorter hop to a human-infective variant, and so every few years we have a new flu pandemic -- sometimes mild, sometimes (inevitably) not.

The big difference next time will be that the pandemic will be met by gutted gov't agencies like the CDC and Dept. of Agriculture staffed to the gills w/GOP minions who consider gov't regulation a violation of their "freedom" (specifically, their freedom to be irresponsible morons) and will parrot the official line that the new pandemic is no worse than the usual winter flu and any argument to the contrary is all a big hoax and that vaccines are a plot to implant computer chips that take over people's brains (no one on earth has the ability to produce such chips, which would actually improve some people, anyway) and the Sec. of HHS says so, so officially we can't disagree. We face the very real possibility of seeing a pandemic just as bad as COVID-19 (I'll call it COVID-47, or the Trump Plague, regardless of the official name).

DUers and Dems are bracing for a disastrous maladministration under tsf, certain to be much worse than his first. We must keep in mind that this could very well include the loss of friends, family, and loved ones to a disease that could have been contained by a prompt, well-organized response but wasn't because, well, FREEDOM!! as well as a near-shutdown of society (again) as people who know better than their "leaders" self-quarantine because they learned the first time that THAT WORKS. Well, except for the MAGAts, who will once again be begging ICU nurses to please "give them the vaccine now" because they didn't learn a damned thing from the last time. Of course, we could be saved by a vaccine developed in other countries -- maybe less likely if RWNJs take over in Europe as well. Perhaps we'll find ourselves totally dependent on vaccines imported from ... China. Probably with a 200% tariff.

The worst part is that, although there was some speculation that wonderlands of FREEDOM!! ruled by autocrats like DeSantis might lose enough ignorant anti-maskers to (more or less) natural selection to shift the balance in the next election, in actual fact it turned out that MAGAts, being largely uncontrolled breeders, actually increased their margins since the last election. So the chance that the average voter will learn anything from successive pandemics will actually decrease as time goes on -- a seemingly unstoppable tragedy that follows from the premise of "Idiocracy", but without any humorous aspect at all.

Just something to look forward to. Not eagerly, but expect it to happen.

*SHOULD HAVE POSTED BEFORE HALLOWEEN* - Q: What is the difference between a MAGAt and a zombie ?

A: Zombies actually like brains.

Kurt Godel predicted a Fascist takeover of the USA, 76 years ago:

Donald Trump is The Joker but he's not joking (Baptist News Global) {little long, but interesting read}

Opinion
Rodney Kennedy | October 7, 2024

When Donald Trump claimed Tim Walz is a “moron” and Kamala Harris was “born mentally impaired,” Lara Trump said he was “joking around.” In defense of what it means to joke around, I suggest Donald Trump is The Joker and he is not joking.
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Nailing Trump to a particular persona presents extraordinary challenges. He is a Janus-faced politician. One day he is proclaiming he is the only one who can save the world. Like a caring father, he promises to make his children secure. Then the next day he is an authoritarian bully demanding police be given “one rough day” to wipe out crime. He is a chameleon.

My insistence on studying Trump as an evil character, a villain, opens the door to an array of character comparisons. To date, I have found no better movie/television character to describe Donald Trump than The Joker. According to communication scholar Paul Achter, in literary and television terms, “Trump is a shadow figure, a representative of our cultural unconsciousness, the unspoken ‘true spirit’ of life, a character whose actions offer constraints to the thoughtful and democratic people we profess to be.”
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Trump’s tone and demeanor suggest sternness, militancy, violence and authoritarianism. The laughter at a Trump rally is not comedy; it is the jouissance of thousands of people joining Trump in demeaning, insulting and degrading fellow human beings.
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more: https://baptistnews.com/article/donald-trump-is-the-joker-but-hes-not-joking/



Ho Lee Crap, I just posted a link to an article in a religious publication by a religious thinker. Surely that's fodder for the End Times crowd. What's next ? Dogs and cats living together ?

For most of us, there's a lot of background here we already know about, which makes the article seem a little long. But the guy has clearly thought about this a lot, and considers tfg's support by evangelicals to be a travesty, to say the least.

The line in bold above is, IMHO, the best description yet of what binds tfg's followers to him. He doesn't just hate who they hate, he revels in demeaning and degrading them, as they do. Like tfg, they define who they are by who they like to beat up on. That's the central fact of their lives.

How Project 2025 plans to reshape the American family (Velshi/MSNBC) ***IMPORTANT READ***

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who will guard these guardians?)

Although often attributed to a quote or paraphrase from Plato's Republic, it does not explicitly appear in that work. The version we are familiar with is attributed -- with some debate -- to the Roman poet Juvenal, where the guards in question are guaranteeing the marital fidelity of women (apparently men didn't need similar guards, which suggests Juvenal had a thing or two to learn). The question is inherently unanswerable, but for centuries, many have offered their own "solutions". Today's crop of radical reformers, parading under the ludicrously inaccurate banner of "conservatism", includes people like Kevin Roberts, who wants government to decide when women should have children (the more the merrier), and Curtis Yarvin and his billionaire backer Peter Thiel who want to replace American democracy with a (presumably all-wise) absolute dictator. In short, we are to place the power to make all the important decisions in our lives (or at least the most important ones) in the hands of strangers who have been given the power to make these judgments based on --- what, exactly ? Why believe these (mostly) unnamed authorities are more knowledgeable or more capable of good judgment than free adult citizens ? Religions pull the ultimate pass-the-buck here by saying their leaders take orders from an all-powerful, all-knowing deity, but they can't agree on even the basics of what this deity (or deities, depending) has to say. So why should we think some "conservative"-approved functionary -- let's call him (you know it'll be a him) the "National Nanny" -- is going to be better at the job than the people actually doing the job now ? If their choices of leaders so far are any indication, I'd say all indicators are that that would be a VERY, very, very BAD IDEA.

People have been struggling with this idea for millennia. What gives these looniest of the lunatic fringe (i.e. the heart of the current GOP) the hubris to hold that suddenly, they, alone in the history of mankind, have got it all figured out ? That they, have at last, something which they can barely restrain themselves (for now) from calling "The Final Solution"?

I don't often quote scripture, but when I do I look it up first, and sometimes discover that the usual "quote" is in error, or at least incomplete. So this time. The quote I actually found was this: