In honor of Thomas Paine and other Founders & Immigrants. In memory of my daddy Horst Bingel
Thursday, December 31, 2020
Rep. Louie Gohmert’s Lawsuit Explained; What Will Happen on Jan. 6?—Rick Green on the 2020 Election
Pharma Looks to Outer Space to Boost Drug R&D
Minnesota legislators say COVID-19 death totals have been inflated in their state, call for an audit
The immense potential and challenges of multimodal AI
In multimodal systems, computer vision and natural language processing models are trained together on datasets to learn a combined embedding space, or a space occupied by variables representing specific features of the images, text, and other media. ..."
As an infant, she was airlifted to safety. Today she's bringing Ethiopian culture alive in Tel Aviv
Graduating at the top of her class as a lieutenant paratrooper in the Israel Defense Forces, much of Ashager’s tenacity springs from time spent in a male-dominated unit. ..."
Wirtschaftsweise Veronika Grimm: Industrie hat Klimaschutz aufgehalten
Latest YouTube censorship of U.S. President Trump
Here is the what I saw today (12/30/2020) in my daily YouTube notifications of channels I am subscribed to:
What China's Space Ambitions mean to the US with Gordon Chang
Wednesday, December 30, 2020
Boston Dynamics Dancing Robots: Do You Love Me?
U.S. and Western countries biggest foreign policy challenge: Irredentism by Michael Rubin
Want cheaper nuclear energy? Turn the design process into a game
Exelon is now testing a beta version of the AI system in a virtual environment that mimics an assembly within a boiling water reactor, and about 200 assemblies within a pressurized water reactor, which is globally the most common type of reactor. Based in Chicago, Illinois, Exelon owns and operates 21 nuclear reactors across the United States. It could be ready to implement the system in a year or two, a company spokesperson says."
Germany ranks only 8th in per capita Covid-19 vaccinations
Life in the banana republic with SED chancellor Merkel!
How is it possible that Israel, Bahrain, Denmark, Portugal, Canada are all in front of Germany? Not to mention the UK and the U.S.
Israel has given most Covid-19 vaccines per capita
Meet Joe, the drone that herds cattle (or camels)
“They have a problem of camels crossing the highway [in Dubai] and people crashing into them,” ... “With a few adjustments, we found that our system can herd camels, too.” ..."
Left-Handed DNA Has a Biological Role Within a Dynamic Genetic Code
So-called Z-DNA is now thought to play roles in cancer and autoimmune diseases, and last year scientists confirmed its link to three inherited neurological disorders. ..."
DeepMind's big losses, and the questions around running an AI lab
In a first, a person’s immune system fought HIV — and won
Analysis of more than 1.5 billion cells taken from a patient known as EC2 showed no functional HIV copies in any of them, researchers report August 26 in Nature. The person still had some nonfunctional copies of the virus. ...
Those two people are part of a rare group of people known as elite controllers, meaning they are able to maintain very low or undetectable levels of HIV without antiretroviral drugs. These people have no symptoms or clear signs of damage from the virus. ..."
Die Inflation ist nicht tot, sie schläft nur
The first room-temperature superconductor has finally been found since 1911
[researchers] formed the superconductor by squeezing carbon, hydrogen and sulfur between the tips of two diamonds [diamond anvil cell] and hitting the material with laser light to induce chemical reactions. At a pressure about 2.6 million times that of Earth’s atmosphere [267 ± 10 gigapascals], and temperatures below about 15° C, the electrical resistance vanished. ...
If a room-temperature superconductor could be used at atmospheric pressure, it could save vast amounts of energy lost to resistance in the electrical grid. ..."
Kostenlose Tampons für alle? Debatte um Hygieneartikel
Ronald Reagan's Remarks "The Myth of the Great Society" 1966
Tuesday, December 29, 2020
About 400,000 Arizonans or 6% of Arizona's Population are naturally immune to Covid-19 as of 12/29/2020
Good news! Or about every 17th person in Arizona is naturally immunized by now. Thus, natural immunity has already reached a high level in Arizona and probably in many other parts of the world! Let's not forget SARS-CoV-2 is overall a fairly harmless virus!
I did a very rough back of the envelope calculation. Why is the general public not provided with similar and much better model projections about the trajectory of Covid-19? Why this public misinformation!
Main presumptions:
- An infected person is infectious for 10 days
- On average there are about 6,000 new confirmed cases per day that translates into 60,000 infected people in Arizona on any given day
- I assumed for this calculation, there would be 100,000 total infected persons in Arizona on 12/29/2020
Population | 7,400,000 |
Confirmed Cases | 507,000 |
Active Cases | 100,000 |
Recovered | 407,000 |
Recovered/Pop | 6% |
‘Last Jewish cowboy’ of Arizona passed away
Statue of freed slave kneeling before Lincoln is removed in Boston
Freed Black donors paid for the original in Washington; white politician and circus showman Moses Kimball financed the copy in Boston. The inscription on both reads: “A race set free and the country at peace. Lincoln rests from his labors.” ..."
Ideological and political indoctrination by Node.js
Today, I looked into downloading the open source Node.js, a major Javascript runtime environment, for my current Google Apps Script programming tasks! To my horror, I was confronted with following ideological indoctrination (see roughly center of screenshot below)! Node.js is sponsored by many well known corporations! Among the Open JS Foundation (Node.JS is a project of this foundation) Platinum Members are Google, Microsoft, IBM ...
I blogged here about a Black Lives Matter retort!
Nutella, Ferreros wichtigstes Produkt, wird 75 Jahre alt
Altenheime als Hotspots - „Die Verordnung über Schnelltests für Mitarbeiter kam viel zu spät“
Video: Pelosi's Bizarre Meltdown on CNN
ConocoPhillips makes Norway oil discovery of up to 200 million barrels
AfD-Chef Tino Chrupalla: «Der Staat bezahlt Spitzel, die die Opposition ausspähen, das erinnert mich an die DDR»
Our Upside-Down Postelection World by Victor Davis Hanson
Vote Manipulation Michigan Style-8: Election Workers Testimony 3
Prager University: What Is Big Green?
Donald Trump - Mainstream Media Nightmare
Pardoned By Trump, Former Border Patrol Agent Speaks Out: 'I'd Do It Again, Exactly The Same Way'
Monday, December 28, 2020
The 1657 Religious Magna Carta of the New World by Lawrence Reed
This was a defiant shot across the bow of the state, personified by Governor Stuyvesant. It was an act of resistance and an early declaration in favor of the freedom of peaceful worship. Moreover, it was not a self-serving stand for the freedom of those who signed it (none of them were Quakers), but rather a defense of the freedom of others. ...
If you are inclined to stop reading because freedom of peaceful worship is not important to you—perhaps you are not of any faith or you believe your faith is not threatened—think again. Freedom in one sense is indivisible; a successful attack on one of its elements invites assaults on the others. Allow the state to breach one wall of freedom’s fortress and you have invited it inside, where its agents will work to bring down the remaining walls. ..."
China Sentences Citizen-Journalist Zhang Zhan For Years in Prions For Challenging China’s State COVID-19 Narrative
Why is Dr. Fauci getting a Covid-19 shot for himself as one of the first?
It is incredible! He was one of the first to receive a Covid-19 shot on December 22, 2020! Given that he is 80 years old, but why him? This life-long director man has been such an embarrassment, such a clown since the outbreak of Covid-19! Of course, it had to be the chief of the NIH Occupational Medical Service to administer this shot to him!
"... The shot, which Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, received in the left arm, was administered at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, by Dr. Heike Bailin, chief of the NIH Occupational Medical Services. ..."
Hamas feuert Raketen auf Israel - was macht die deutsche Presse daraus?
Oddities in the high level statistical analysis of the 2020 U.S. presidential elections
There are indeed some significant oddities that make you wonder about election integrity and whether Joseph Biden indeed won fair and square! It is strongly advisable to fully investigate the November 2020 elections!
I am not sure that the impromptu and massive switch to mail-in voting due to Covid-19 excuse can easily explain all these oddities. Or was it the Covid-19 pandemic. Or were there so many GOP voters frustrated with President Trump that they split their votes ...
The only other period since 1960, where we observe comparable dramatic voting results were the 1964 (assassination of John F. Kennedy), 1968 (Vietnam war, assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.), and the 1972 election (Nixon, who faced a then quite extreme and negative news suffering Democratic opponent whose name barely anyone remembers).
My limited scope high level statistical analysis is based on following data:
- Total votes for the entire country for the Republican and the Democratic candidate
- Voting age population as a rough proxy for the total number of eligible voters (As a footnote: actual data of eligible voters (citizens) for the entire U.S. is hard to come by, which surprised me)
- All presidential elections since 1960 or the 16 most recent elections were included in the study
- The voting age population turnout rate was very high at 61%. Very high in historical context. Only the three 1960s elections reached >= 60%. For comparison, the Obama 2008 election achieved just under 60% turnout
- Both presidential candidates had excellent results in 2020. Trump achieved the 4th best voting result relative to voting age population of any Republican candidate since 1960 with 29.1%. However, for Biden it was the 2nd best for any Democratic candidate since 1960 with 31.8% (Johnson with 37.9% was the best in 1964, third best was Kennedy with 31.6% in 1960).
- About 26.5 million more votes were cast in 2020 compared to 2016. That is equivalent to about 10.4% of voting age population. This is by far the largest difference between two elections ever observed since 1960. The 2nd largest change was only 8.9% in 2004. The average is 4.2% since 1960.
- Biden won with about 81.3 million votes total and by about 15.4 million more votes (or about 6% of the voting age population) than the winner by popular vote of the 2016 election. This is another historically astonishing result. The last time a candidate reached 6% or higher was Reagan's reelection in 1984 with 6.1%. The average over the 16 elections since 1960 is only 4.3%. There were only three other elections over 5%, i.e. 1964 with 7.8%, 1968 with 9.4% and 1972 with 11%.
- Comparing the ranking of both candidates by political party in terms of total votes received relative to voting age population, one discovers that they were only 2 apart (Trump's 4th best result compared to Biden's 2nd best result, see above). When one of the candidates has an exceptional voting result, the other one usually does not. When you look at the four best results for any candidate since 1960, then you get in 1960 a difference of 1 (i.e. Kennedy ranked 3rd, Nixon ranked 2nd), in 1964 the difference was 13 (Johnson ranked 1st, Goldwater ranked 14th), in 1972 it was 15 (Nixon ranked 1st, McGovern ranked 14th), in 1984 it was 12 (Reagan 3rd, Mondale 15th) and in 2008 it was 6 (Obama 4th, McCain 10th)
- Biden won 15,4 million more votes than Hillary Clinton in 2016 equivalent to about 6% of voting age population. Only two other Democratic candidates since 1960 pulled off a better result: Johnson (1960 with 7.8%) and Carter (1976 with 7.8%).
History's Forgotten Impressionists with Waldemar Januszczak
Sunday, December 27, 2020
Video shows officials can change votes; Election witnesses alarmed by irregularities
Steigende Kosten: Bundeswehr gibt weiteres Drohnen-Projekt auf
Trump Urges GOP Senators to ‘Step Up and Fight for the Presidency’
Saturday, December 26, 2020
Tucker Carlson: The Most Brilliant Prediction of 2020
Brain Co-Processors: Using AI to Restore and Augment Brain Function
Verband der Stahlverarbeiter warnt: Der Stahl ist knapp
Aus Sicht der Stahlverarbeiter wird die Lage für sie dadurch erschwert, dass die Einfuhr von Stahl aus Drittländern begrenzt beziehungsweise mit Einfuhrzöllen belegt wurde. Das heize die Situation zusätzlich an. „Stahl ist weltweit in kürzester Zeit zum knappen Gut geworden“, sagte Vietmeyer. Einen so starken Umschwung habe es zuletzt nach der Finanzkrise 2009 gegeben."
ISS: Beim 3D-Druck im Weltraum passiert Erstaunliches
Turbinenteile, die auf diese Weise hergestellt werden, dürften eine höhere Festigkeit und geringere Eigenspannungen aufweisen, weil durch die Schwerkraft verursachte Defekte wie Ablagerungen und Zusammensetzungsgradienten beseitigt werden."
Distinct Microbiome and Metabolites Linked with Depression
Furthermore, we identified a combinatorial marker panel that robustly discriminated MDD from HC individuals in both the discovery and validation sets."
Friday, December 25, 2020
Coffee and the Maya in Guatemala
Machine learning and big data are unlocking Europe’s archives of handwritten documents
This platform could also be a gift to amateur historians with shoeboxes full of their forebears’ diaries, documents, and love letters."
Insects Pass Antiviral Immunity to Offspring
Here, we show that Drosophila melanogaster and Aedes aegypti transmit antiviral immunological memory to their progeny that lasts throughout generations. We observe that TGIP, which is virus and sequence specific but RNAi independent, is initiated by a single exposure to disparate RNA viruses and also by inoculation of a fragment of viral double-stranded RNA. The progeny, which inherit a viral DNA that is only a fragment of the viral RNA used to infect the parents, display enriched expression of genes related to chromatin and DNA binding. ..."
Israel on the verge of 4th election in 2 years
New Protocol Advances Toward Lab-Made Universal Red Blood Cells
We have developed a scalable suspension agitation culture platform for differentiating hiPSC-microcarrier aggregates into functional RBCs and have demonstrated scalability of the process starting with 6 well plates and finally demonstrating in 500 mL spinner flasks. ..."
Wie MacKenzie Scott ihre Amazon Milliarden einsetzen will
A new iron-based catalyst converts carbon dioxide into jet fuel
The Three Degrees - When will I see you again
Tulsi Gabbard slams COVID relief bill as a 'slap in the face' to Americans
CO's Lauren Boebert: 2nd Amendment Not for Hunting — Maybe for "Hunting Tyrants"
Thursday, December 24, 2020
This only happens when no one is watching | Rod Blagojevich
Phill Kline: New Amistad Project Election Lawsuit; $500 Mil to Increase Votes in Dem Strongholds?
MuZero: Mastering Go, chess, shogi and Atari without rules
MuZero ... by learning a model that focuses only on the most important aspects of the environment for planning. By combining this model with AlphaZero’s powerful lookahead tree search, MuZero set a new state of the art result on the Atari benchmark, while simultaneously matching the performance of AlphaZero in the classic planning challenges of Go, chess and shogi. In doing so, MuZero demonstrates a significant leap forward in the capabilities of reinforcement learning algorithms. ..."
President Trump pardons fake news
There at least two main stream media articles about the latest presidential pardons, which claim something like following:
"An analysis by Harvard Law professor and former Justice Department official Jack Goldsmith found that 60 of the 65 pardons Mr. Trump granted before Wednesday went to individuals with personal or political connections to the president. Mr. Trump has bypassed the normal Justice Department process for reviewing pardons, frequently hearing appeals for clemency directly from celebrities or other friends, business associates or political allies." (Wall Street Journal)
"A tabulation by the Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith found that of Mr. Trump’s 45 pardons or commutations before Tuesday, 88 percent went to people with personal ties to the president or to people who furthered his political aims. The pardons “continue Trump’s unprecedented pattern of issuing self-serving pardons and commutations that advance his personal interests, reward friends, seek retribution against enemies, or gratify political constituencies,” Mr. Goldsmith said Tuesday. “Like his past pardons, most if not all of them appear to be based on insider recommendations rather than normal Justice Department vetting process.”"
Unfortunately, neither of these articles contain a link to the so called "analysis" or "tabulations"! When you Google it you will not find it (as of 12/24/2020).
"Jack Goldsmith is a professor at Harvard Law School and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He was an assistant attorney general in the George W. Bush administration." (Source) From his list of publications you could get the impression he is a never Trumper!
As a contributor to the Lawfare website, it is more than astonishing and a contradiction that Goldsmith criticizes President Trump's pardons in such a way! Perhaps, Goldsmith does not even understand how much lawfare was applied against President Trump!
If indeed President Trump pardoned so far many that were connected to him, then this is a just reaction to the egregious, relentless, and unprecedented 4 years long coup attempts against a U.S. president by the swamp! Entrapment and coerced statements from people close to President Trump were means of the these coup attempts!
Physicists fine tune chemical reaction rates for ultracold molecules
This has led to some fascinating discoveries. In ultracold quantum bosonic or fermion-pair quantum gases, for example, all the atoms in a trap can simultaneously occupy the quantum ground state, resulting in a wavefunction that is macroscopic. ...
Cooling and trapping molecules is much trickier because they are inherently more complex than atoms. Whereas atoms can only contain quanta of energy in electronic excitations, the chemical bonds in molecules can stretch, rotate and bend – and cooling molecules involves removing energy from all of these degrees of freedom. ...
they applied an electric field to compress potassium and rubidium atoms in a 3D optical trap, inducing the atoms to pair up and thereby forming a 2D cloud of polarized potassium-rubidium molecules. Side-to-side collisions were elastic, whereas the head-to-tail ones were inelastic. As the molecules were polarized and confined to two dimensions, they were much more likely to collide side-to-side than head-to-tail. This allowed the researchers to achieve about 200 elastic collisions for every inelastic one, driving out the hotter molecules and cooling their sample to quantum degeneracy. ..."