StrictlyRockers
StrictlyRockers's JournalGOP could be near Trump breaking point; frustration abounds
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"He can't simply continue to preach to the choir and think he's going to put together a coalition that will win the White House," said Ryan Williams, a party strategist and former aide to 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney. "He's essentially guaranteeing that he will lose by refusing to clean up his mistakes and stop committing future ones."
The mistakes do keep coming.
Trump this past week stuck by a patently false claim that President Barack Obama founded the Islamic State group. The candidate made an off-handed remark about Clinton that was widely condemned by critics as an invitation to violence. He even acknowledged that losing might not be so bad.
"I'll just keep doing the same thing I'm doing right now," he told CNBC on Thursday. "And at the end it's either going to work or I'm going to you know, I'm going to have a very, very nice, long vacation."
All of it, to some Republicans, should lead the party to give up on its nominee.
More than 100 GOP officials, including at least six former members of Congress and more than 20 former staffers at the Republican National Committee, have signed a letter asking the party chairman, Reince Priebus, to stop helping Trump's campaign.
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http://bigstory.ap.org/article/2faea10578944e11be20eb4824cd29ad/frustration-abundant-gop-could-be-near-breaking-point-trump#
Nate Silver of 538.com speculates on what a huge Clinton landslide would look like
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-a-clinton-landslide-would-look-like/?ex_cid=2016-forecastWhat A Clinton Landslide Would Look Like
By Nate Silver
AUG 12, 2016 AT 1:40 PM
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But there’s another possibility staring us right in the face: A potential Hillary Clinton landslide. Our polls-only model projects Clinton to win the election by 7.7 percentage points, about the same margin by which Barack Obama beat John McCain in 2008. And it assigns a 35 percent chance to Clinton winning by double digits.
Our other model, polls-plus, is much more conservative about Clinton’s prospects. If this were an ordinary election, the smart money would be on the race tightening down the stretch run, and coming more into line with economic “fundamentals” that suggest the election ought to be close. Since this is how the polls-plus model “thinks,” it projects Clinton to win by around 4 points, about the margin by which Obama beat Mitt Romney in 2012 — a solid victory but a long way from a landslide.
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Perhaps the strongest evidence for a potential landslide against Trump is in the state-by-state polling, which has shown him underperforming in any number of traditionally Republican states. It’s not just Georgia and Arizona, where polls have shown a fairly close race all year. At various points, polls have shown Clinton drawing within a few percentage points of Trump — and occasionally even leading him — in states such as Utah, South Carolina, Texas, Alaska, Kansas and even Mississippi.
Just how bad could it get? Let’s start by giving Clinton the 332 electoral votes that Obama won in 2012. That’s obviously not a safe assumption: The race could shift back toward Trump, and even if it doesn’t, Clinton could lose states such as Iowa or Nevada, where her polling has been middling even after her convention bounce. But as I said, we’re going to focus on Clinton’s upside case today.
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Ok, that is fun and interesting. Thanks, Nate. Now back to working hard to get Hillary elected, running THROUGH the finish line and pushing for a progressive agenda.
What Are the Most Dangerous Sports at the Summer Olympics?
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/soccer-taekwondo-top-the-list-of-most-dangerous-events-at-the-summer-olympicsWhat Are the Most Dangerous Sports at the Summer Olympics?
Written by IAN BIRNBAUM
August 12, 2016 // 01:13 PM EST
One week into the 2016 Olympics, we’ve already seen a highlight reel of awful injuries. We’ve seen a busted weightlifter, two major cycling wrecks, and a gymnast’s shin broken cleanly in half. The same morbid fascination that draws eyes to car wrecks keeps us reading about and watching the injuries online, even if broadcast cameras cut away.
Only the gnarliest of injuries get media attention, but the actual rates of injury for Olympic sports vary widely between individual events and the summer and winter games. Softball is more dangerous than judo, amazingly, and ski jumping is safer than baseball.
Most Olympic injuries are minor, and come in the form of the constant aches, pains, and strains that athletes treat and ignore with an endless list of pseudoscientific cures. According to a meta-study from the British Journal of Sports Medicine, the most vulnerable body part in the Olympics is the knee. Between a fifth and a third of all competing soccer players, snowboarders, skiers, and hockey players (both field and ice) will injure their knees during each Olympics.
The type and range of movements competitors use makes a big difference in their potential for injury. The luge is a horrifying fast descent through a rock-hard ice tunnel, but as long as a luger doesn’t crash, they stay safe. Badminton puts competitors through a ton of diving, twisting, and torquing, making it a bit more dangerous despite the warm connotations of childhood backyard games.
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http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/leg-head-injuries-frequent-at-olympics/
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Badminton is more dangerous than luge?
Trump Spox Katrina Pierson: We Weren’t in Afghanistan Until Obama Decided to Go In
#KatrinaPiersonHistory
AGAIN??
She's dumb.
First US Offshore Wind Farm Will Usher in New Era For Industry
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OFFSHORE_WIND?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULTPROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) -- The nation's first offshore wind farm is set to open off the coast of Rhode Island this fall, ushering in a new era in the U.S. for the industry.
Developers, federal regulators and industry experts say the opening will move the U.S. industry from a theory to reality, paving the way for the construction of many more wind farms that will eventually provide power for many Americans.
Deepwater Wind is building a five-turbine wind farm off Block Island, Rhode Island to power about 17,000 homes. The project costs about $300 million, according to the company.
CEO Jeffrey Grybowski said the Block Island wind farm enables larger projects because it proves that wind farms can be built along the nation's coast.
"I look at Block Island as sort of the key to unlocking the code of how to do offshore wind in the U.S.," he said.
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Alternative energy seems to be taking off in the US. We have some catching up to do, but solar and wind power can help to mitigate the effects of global warming.
The Logic-Defying Double-Slit Experiment Is Even Weirder Than You Thought
The Logic-Defying Double-Slit Experiment Is Even Weirder Than You Thought
The idea behind the double-slit experiment is that even if the photons are sent through the slits one at a time, there's still a wave present to produce the interference pattern. The wave is a wave of probability, because the experiment is set up so that the scientists don't know which of the two slits any individual photon will pass through.
But if they try to find out by setting up detectors in front of each slit to determine which slit the photon really goes through, the interference pattern doesn't show up at all. This is true even if they try setting up the detectors behind the slits. No matter what the scientists do, if they try anything to observe the photons, the interference pattern fails to emerge.
It gets even weirder than that.
A group of scientists tried a variation on the double slit experiment, called the delayed choice experiment. The scientists placed a special crystal at each slit. The crystal splits any incoming photons into a pair of identical photons. One photon from this pair should go on to create the standard interference pattern, while the other travels to a detector. Perhaps with this setup, physicists might successfully find a way to observe the logic-defying behavior of photons.
But it still doesn't work. And here's the really weird part: It doesn't work regardless of when that detection happens. Even if the second photon is detected after the first photon hits the screen, it still ruins the interference pattern. This means that observing a photon can change events that have already happened.
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http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a22280/double-slit-experiment-even-weirder/
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Spooky.
Textbook story of how early humans populated America is 'biologically unviable,' study finds
The established theory about the route by which Ice Age peoples first reached the present-day United States has been challenged by an unprecedented study which concludes that their supposed entry route was "biologically unviable".
The first people to reach the Americas crossed via an ancient land bridge between Siberia and Alaska but then, according to conventional wisdom, had to wait until two huge ice sheets that covered what is now Canada started to recede, creating the so-called "ice-free corridor" which enabled them to move south.
In a new study published in the journal Nature, however, an international team of researchers used ancient DNA extracted from a crucial pinch-point within this corridor to investigate how its ecosystem evolved as the glaciers began to retreat. They created a comprehensive picture showing how and when different flora and fauna emerged and the once ice-covered landscape became a viable passageway. No prehistoric reconstruction project like it has ever been attempted before.
The researchers conclude that while people may well have travelled this corridor after about 12,600 years ago, it would have been impassable earlier than that, as the corridor lacked crucial resources, such as wood for fuel and tools, and game animals which were essential to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
If this is true, then it means that the first Americans, who were present south of the ice sheets long before 12,600 years ago, must have made the journey south by another route. The study's authors suggest that they probably migrated along the Pacific coast.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-08-textbook-story-humans-populated-america.html#jCp
Why ISIS Fears Israel
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-isis-fears-israel-17286A strategy of patient, vigilant deterrence works—and America should take note.
IN THE wake of the Orlando and Istanbul attacks, President Obama reiterated his determination to “destroy” ISIS by executing a strategy that combines air strikes, American special-operations units and support for local ground forces. Both of the candidates campaigning to succeed him insist that the United States must do more: Donald Trump advocates that Washington “bomb the hell out of” the group, while Hillary Clinton promises to “smash the would-be caliphate.” All three, however, are in violent agreement on one point: the overriding objective must be to destroy ISIS.
The insistence on the “destruction” of ISIS has become such a reflexive linchpin of America’s counterterrorism project that few pause to consider its strategic merit. But the nation with arguably the most experience and success combatting terrorism has considered it—and found it wanting.
Israelis live much closer to ISIS than do Americans. ISIS has pledged to conquer the Jewish state and incorporate it into its core caliphate. Yet surprisingly, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has rejected the option of taking the fight directly to ISIS. Instead, faced with an operational threat that could mean the death of hundreds of Israelis at any moment, it has embraced a strategy that has not even been on the U.S. policy menu. Adopting a page from the playbook the United States used to defeat revolutionary Soviet-led communism in the Cold War, Israel is preventing ISIS attacks through a strategy of patient, vigilant deterrence. Obviously, the United States cannot simply adopt the Israeli approach whole cloth. It operates in a different security environment than the Jewish state, which faces a multiplicity of terrorist threats on its borders. But there are important lessons that America can learn to enhance its national security.
Israel’s approach to ISIS is straightforward. Israel seeks to persuade ISIS not to attack it by credibly threatening to retaliate. If you attack us, the thinking goes, we will respond in ways that will impose pain that exceeds any gain you can hope to achieve. As Cold War strategists learned, making this work in practice is demanding. To be effective, deterrence requires three Cs: clarity, capability and credibility. Specifically, this means clarity about the red line that cannot be crossed, communicated in language the adversary understands; capability to impose costs that greatly exceed the benefits; and credibility about the willingness to do so. Failures occur when the deterrer falls short on any one of the three Cs. So, if I draw a red line, you cross it, and I respond with words rather than the decisive punishment threatened, I fail the third C. Whatever excuse I give for not executing my threat, and however earnest my claim that next time will be different, the blunt fact is that adversaries will find my threats less credible.
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Is this article arguing that committing war-crimes like destroying terrorist's family's homes is ok? Because I don't think that's ok.
Our oceans aren’t just rising - they’re accelerating, and that’s even worse
It's been hidden from us for 25 years.
BEC CREW 11 AUG 2016
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On 15 June 1991, Earth sustained the second-largest volcanic eruption of the century - Mount Pinatubo, in the Philippines.
Described by the US Geological Survey as "cataclysmic", the eruption spewed forth more than 5 cubic km (1 cubic mile) of debris, and the resulting ash cloud rose some 35 km (22 miles) into the air above.
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"The scientists estimate as a result that sea level not only fell between 5 and 7 millimetres due to a major ocean cooling event in the eruption’s wake, but then experienced a rebound, or bounce back, of the same magnitude once the influence of the eruption had passed," Chris Mooney reports for the The Washington Post.
This rebound made it look like sea levels experienced a sharp increase, followed by a decline, and then ultimately, it appeared to even itself out, but in reality, the results were completely distorted.
Thanks to the new, more accurate models of what’s actually been going on, we now have the first real evidence that global sea levels have been rising at an accelerating rate - something that scientists have been expecting, given the warming of our planet, but the records have said the opposite.
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http://www.sciencealert.com/our-oceans-aren-t-just-rising-they-re-accelerating-and-that-s-even-worse
http://www.sciencealert.com/this-animation-shows-what-earth-would-look-like-if-all-the-ice-melted
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