Earlier this year, we saw the unprecedented disappearance of sea ice from the Bering Sea during a time of year when it should be gaining ice. This trend toward plummeting sea ice in the Alaskan and Canadian Arctic continues, this time centered in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas.
They studied two different groups of people—381 in the first sample and 417 in a second batch to try to replicate their results. They gave the first sample a survey that tested how conservative or liberal their political beliefs were. Radicalism exists on both ends of the spectrum; the people at the furthest extremes of left and right are considered “radical.” After taking the questionnaire, the first group did a simple test: they looked at two different clusters of dots and quickly identified which group had more dots. Then they rated how confident they were in their choice. People with radical political opinions completed this exercise with pretty much the same accuracy as moderate participants. But “after incorrect decisions, the radicals were less likely to decrease their confidence,” Fleming says.
The special counsel Robert Mueller ignited a firestorm of controversy on Wednesday by recommending that millions of Americans read. Mueller, seemingly oblivious to the uproar he was about to create, repeatedly commented that there was valuable information available to the American people only by reading a long book. At the White House, sources said that Donald J. Trump was furious about Mueller’s statement because he interpreted the special counsel’s pro-reading message as a thinly veiled attack on him.
The New York State Democratic Party voted unanimously Wednesday to make it easier for registered independent voters to re-enroll as Democrats to vote in next year’s presidential primary — three years after Bernie Sanders slammed the state’s onerous election rules. Under the new rules, a voter not affiliated with a party can re-enroll as a Democrat up to 25 days before the April 28, 2020, election instead of months before. A member of another political party could re-register up to 60 days before the primary election instead of 200 days before.
I think that's really good news for the party, as I think Democrats should be a big tent party, welcoming new voters to their party, allowing them to participate in primary elections.
Last week, I suggested we tax advertising on local news, to pay for the law enforcement and crime costs that the local news media imposes on society, via their glorification of crime and criminal justice system. Stamp taxes aren’t a popular thing, ever since the British imposed it on the American colonies, but I think it may be a necessary thing to reduce crime and rein in the abuse of the first amendment by commercial media.
It’s well documented that the news media should not cover suicide, unless it’s a particularly suicide of a public figure or happens in a public place that impacts a large number of people — like somebody blowing off their head in a community gathering. But even there the news media treads carefully. But I have to wonder if those guidelines mostly exist, because advertisers don’t get the same value out of suicide coverage that they get out of crime. Suicide isn’t particularly scary to people, as only the suicidal individual dies. Without fear, there isn’t the profits.
