Lionel Mandrake
Lionel Mandrake's Journalmealy-mouthed creationists
Many people mistake pseudoscience for science, and always have done so. For example, "Intelligent Design" (ID) and other forms of creationism are now recognized as pseudoscience, and evolutionary biology as science, in the courts as well as in the academy. For another example, astrology is now recognized as pseudoscience, and astronomy as science, but until the 17th century astronomy and astrology were generally viewed as equally respectable parts of a single science. In both examples, the proponents of pseudoscience used to say what what was really on their minds. Proponents of astrology still do so, but nowadays creationists say one thing to each other and something else to the public. A paradigmatic example of this is the infamous Wedge Document perpetrated by the Discovery Institute (DI) in 1998, which outlined their public-relations strategy. The DI tried to keep the Wedge Document secret, but it was leaked in 1999.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_strategy
A new law in West Virginia provides another example of mealy-mouthed creationism:
https://apnews.com/article/west-virginia-intelligent-design-religion-teaching-e01560041051a061c65a83f4129e0993
Further examples will be found on social media (e.g., Facebook), where a great many posts are promulgated by DI avatars like the “Center for Science and Culture” and “Evolutionnews”. The sheer volume of this disinformation guarantees that many people will mistake ID pseudoscience for science.
Silo (with spoilers)
"Silo" is a science-fiction series streaming on Apple TV+. It's excellent. If you haven't started watching it, do so now, and don't read any further!
I find some aspects of the plot puzzling.
Why is there a rule against microscopy?
Do the people who go outside really die quickly, or is this just part of the deception? If they really die quickly, what is killing them?
After a power outage the view from the cafeteria briefly showed the outside as it really is, all green and nice, before the deceptive view kicked in. Did any of the characters notice this?
In the most recent episode, things are looking very bad for Juliette. The mayor and the boss of "judicial" captured her and made a veiled threat to send her outside, whereupon she broke away and leaped into the central core of the Silo. How can she possibly survive? 
Being arrested on UK cop shows
On this side of the pond we speak of Mirandizing the suspect: "You have the right to remain silent ... ."
The Brits do it differently, according to shows like "Vera". Part of their warning goes something like this:
"You don't have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if you fail to mention when questioned something you later rely on in court."
Huh? I can parse the sentence, but I don't understand its implications. What's the story here?
"For All Mankind"
This TV show is an alternative history in which the Soviets landed a man on the moon before the USA did. It includes this howler: von Braun says he originally intended the V2 to enter low earth orbit but was ordered to make it a ballistic missile. The show could have used a science advisor.
Four officers who responded to U.S. Capitol attack have died by suicide
That's the headline of a Reuters story (see below).
I find this very disturbing. These officers were severely traumatized. It's a tragedy that they took their own lives instead of seeking help.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/officer-who-responded-us-capitol-attack-is-third-die-by-suicide-2021-08-02/
YouTube TV is confusing.
I recently signed up for YouTube TV, which is a streaming service that I can get through my Roku device. But I'm finding it very non-intuitive. Stuff that should be easy isn't.
Sometimes I stop watching in the middle of a movie or in an episode of a TV show. When I come back, I would like to continue from where I stopped, but that doesn't seem to happen. Instead, I have to start from the beginning and fast forward through what I already watched. Grrrr.
replacement for cable TV
I hear there's a streaming service that does just about everything cable does but costs less. What's the name of it?
Days of the Week
The seven-day week has two unrelated sources. On the one hand, there’s the Hebrew Book of Genesis, according to which God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh day. On the other hand, there’s the Babylonian and Greek tradition of associating gods with planets, of which seven were known in ancient times. There was also an association between planets and days, hence the seven-day week, which became customary, first in the Roman Empire, and later world-wide.
What the ancients called planets is different from what we call planets. For the ancients, the sun and moon were planets, but the earth was not.
The names of the days of the week reflect a polytheistic past with astrological overtones. For reasons to be explained later, I'll start with the day corresponding to the outermost planet known the the ancients.
1. Saturday < Saturn
2. Sunday < Sun
3. Monday < Moon
4. Tuesday < Tiu (Norse god of war)
5. Wednesday < Woden or Wotan
6. Thursday < Thor (Norse god of thunder)
7. Friday < Frigga (Norse goddess of love)
Most of us are less familiar with Norse mythology than with Greek and Roman mythology. The names of certain days in Romance languages can tell us which Roman god was identified with a particular Norse god. For example, in French some of the days are
4. mardi < Mars
5. mercredi < Mercury
6. jeudi < Jove (Jupiter)
7. vendredi < Venus
Now we have a complete list of planets corresponding to days:
1. Saturday → Saturn
2. Sunday → Sun
3. Monday → Moon
4. Tuesday → Mars
5. Wednesday → Mercury
6. Thursday → Jupiter
7. Friday → Venus
The order of the planets should seem strange at first glance. For example, why should the sun follow Saturn? To explain the peculiar order of planets, I will eventually cite the marvelous book by George Sarton:
A History of Science: Hellenistic Science and Culture in the Last Three Centuries B. C. (1959)
That book is a sequel to an earlier book:
A History of Science: Ancient science through the Golden Age of Greece (1952)
First let me introduce the author. George Sarton (1884-1956) invented History of Science as an academic discipline. He was equally at home in each of C. P. Snow's two cultures. Unlike most so-called historians of science nowadays, he believed it was necessary to know something about science before writing its history. Sarton's explanation (on page 322) is as follows:
"The astrologers ... divided the [day] into 24 equal hours. Each hour was dedicated to one of the seven planetary gods, and each day was called after the god of its first hour. Let us begin with the day of Saturn (Saturni dies), so called because its first hour was dedicated to Saturn; the second hour was the hour of Jupiter; the third, of Mars; the fourth, of the Sun; the fifth, of Venus; the sixth, of Mercury; the seventh, of the Moon. Not only the first hour, but also the 8th, the 15th, and the 22nd were dedicated to Saturn. The 23rd and 24th hours were dedicated to Jupiter and Mars, and therefore the first hour of the following day belonged to the Sun, and that day was called Solis dies. Therefore the astrological order of the planets:
Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon,
was replaced by a new order obtained by jumping two items after each item of the first series. One thus obtains
Saturn, Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus,
which is the order of our days.”
You can find out more about the author from his Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Sarton
marginalization of astrology
During the seventeenth century astrology became disreputable. It ceased to be studied in the universities. The upper classes came to despise it. I've often wondered how this came about. It certainly had something to do with Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton. To those who agreed that the earth orbits the sun and revolves on its axis in 24 hours, there was no longer any need for a crystalline sphere to carry the fixed stars. Those stars had fixed positions and could be at various distances from us. The stars in any particular constellation are not physically close to each other. The idea that a constellation exerts any influence on people is not even plausible. Thus astrology deserved the disrepute into which it had fallen by the time of Newton.
The CDC has people confused about COVID.
The CDC reports two different COVID statistics with similar sounding names for each county in the USA.
The statistic most commonly reported is called "Community Level" and measures the strain on hispitals. Right now Los Angeles County has a LOW "Community Level", but unless you work in a hospital this information is of no use to you.
The statistic most of us should worry about is called "Community transmission level”. Right now Los Angeles County has a HIGH "Community transmission level”. That means your chance of catching COVID-19 is high.
To find the transmission level in your county, click on the arrow under "Data Type" and scroll down to "Community Transmission" (the last item in the menu) on this webpage:
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/?fbclid=IwAR1d1DFhKrbVTzAzCrHP_17wDFu0y6EMmI72gJPtAxnEyyJDD6vL0_NQlWI#datatracker-home
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