I worked for WYSO briefly in the mid 1960s while it was still owned and operated by Antioch College.  This was way before NPR and PBS; and WYSO was still a little 10W station with a studio and a control room in a second floor corner of one of Antioch’s administrative buildings.  I had a show in which I played classical music because I could pronounce the composers’ names.  (Yes, I was a geek before that was cool.)

I can still remember the control room…the board with all the knobs and switches, a couple of turntables to the left, a couple of Ampex 350 tape machines to the right…it was all broadcast quality equipment.  My only memory of the town is a bar and restaurant a short walk from the college that had really bood pizza and where an 18 year old could buy 3.2 beer.

For many crops, self-sustainability with seeds is perfectly doable, as long as a few precautions are observed. I will illustrate some of those precautions with various crops.

There are multiple species of edible beans; probably the most important are runner beans (Phaseolus coccineus) and common beans (Phaseolus vulgaris). The species do not hybridize, but they both have multiple cultivars. And here the first care needs to be taken – in any given season, only one cultivar of each species should be grown to avoid cross-pollination. Otherwise, the cultivars lose their properties and, for example, one ends up with neither white nor red beans, but with black ones with white spots. Also, bush beans can cross-pollinate with climbing beans, resulting in freaky plants with unpredictable growth. Thus, if multiple cultivars were to be grown together, it would not be possible to save seeds for the next season. But dry beans and canned bean pods both have a long shelf life when stored properly, so it should not be a problem to grow one variety per species per year and still maintain a good variety of colors and shapes.

Potatoes do not hybridize and produce seeds; they are grown from cloned tubers. In theory, it is possible to keep growing different varieties together in perpetuity, as long as one manages to keep the tubers separated. And herein lies the problem of volunteer potatoes. Those are plants that grow here and there from tubers that were accidentally left in the ground from the previous season. A tuber the size of a pea can survive in the ground and the next year produce tubers the size of a fist. And even with crop rotation, it can happen that these volunteers spread underground, and thus the varieties get mixed up a bit. It would never be a big problem, but it can lead to slight inconveniencies, like firm salad potatoes getting mixed in with soft potatoes for mash.

Spelta, wheat, oats, and other grains are generally grown in stable varieties, so saving one’s own seed should not be a problem.

Peppers and tomatoes are a bit tricky. There are stable varieties, and the plants mostly self-pollinate, so it is possible to save seeds. However, cross-pollination is possible, and thus contamination can occur when multiple varieties are grown together. Moreover, there are multiple F1 hybrid varieties that do offer significant benefits, with one downside: saving seeds is impossible, and they need to be bought. Overall, it might be best to find one-two varieties that work best in a given environment, and ignore the rest, if saving your own seeds is a must.

Pumpkins are a headache. There are multiple species, each with multiple varieties, and the species can hybridize together, producing infertile and/or freaky offspring. If wild gourds are in the area, they can introduce genes producing bitter tastes, etc. Saving one’s own seeds is thus inadvisable, unless one pays care to isolate desired flowers, prevent insects from accessing them, and pollinate them manually.

All these problems or lack thereof apply to a wide variety of plants, so a 100% seed self-sufficiency is not as easy to achieve as one might think. But it is possible for the main foodstuffs grown on the five big fields with minimal effort.

The question of when it is justifiable to use force and violence is one that transcends religion and is problematic for everyone. This is one of those areas that the church has studied quite deeply and it has arrived at the so-called ‘just war theory’, of under what circumstances going to war is defensible. The originator of this theory was St. Augustine of Hippo in the 4th century, and it was developed further by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. Pope Leo is a member of the Augustinian order, the first person from that order to become a pope and is currently visiting the site of Hippo, where Augustine was bishop for 34 years in order to pay homage to founder of his order.

Leo, the first pope to be a member of the Augustinian religious order inspired by the saint, traveled to Algeria to visit the site of ancient Hippo, the Roman city where Augustine was a bishop for 34 years.

Celebrating Mass in the Basilica of St. Augustine in Annaba which overlooks the ancient site, the pope said “the guiding principle above all for Christians is charity.”

Before becoming a bishop, Leo was head of the global Augustinian religious order inspired by the life and teachings of the saint; he wrote his doctoral dissertation on St. Augustine’s understanding of authority.

All of this is to say that Leo is very likely to be very well-versed on issues of theology and particularly the Catholic doctrine of just war.

JD Vance, on the other hand, converted to Catholicism just six years ago. But he is one of the biggest ass-kissers of Trump, willing to say the most absurd things in his defense even when he does the indefensible like posting images of himself as Jesus. When Leo criticized the current wars being waged as immoral, Vance condescendingly suggest to Leo he did not know much about just war theory and that he should stay in his lane.

“I think one of the issues here is that if you’re going to opine on matters of theology, you’ve got to be careful. You’ve got to make sure it’s anchored in the truth, and that’s one of the things that I try to do, and it’s certainly something I would expect from the clergy, whether they’re Catholic or Protestant,” he added.”

Even Republican senate majority leader John Thune sounded incredulous that Vance would say this and suggested that it was he who should ‘stay in his lane’..

Asked about Vance’s comment that the pope should be “careful” when discussing “matters of theology,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Wednesday, “When he talks about matters of theology? Isn’t that his job?”

He added, “I’d stay focused on the administration, on the economic issues, the pocketbook issues that I think most Americans care about, and let the church be the church.”

Vance is like the student that all teachers have encountered, who confidently and smugly asserts a half-baked idea they picked up somewhere and says it in class in a manner that is meant to show everyone that they know more than the teacher. But they are almost always quite wrong. I have had such students and try to gently correct them without making them look stupid in front of their fellow students.

But the Catholic bishops in the US have no such scruples and they pretty much told Vance that he was talking through his hat and should get lost.

America’s top Catholic bishops have slammed Vice President JD Vance’s attempt to lecture Pope Leo XIV on the religion he converted to six years ago.

Bishop James Massa, 65, issued a statement on behalf of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine on Wednesday after Vance, 41, tried to school the pope on what defines just war theory during a Turning Point USA event the day before.

“For over a thousand years, the Catholic Church has taught just war theory and it is that long tradition the Holy Father carefully references in his comments on war,” Massa’s statement begins. “A constant tenet of that thousand-year tradition is a nation can only legitimately take up the sword ‘in self-defense, once all peace efforts have failed’ (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2308).”

“That is, to be a just war it must be a defense against another who actively wages war, which is what the Holy Father actually said: ‘He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war,’” the statement continued.

“When Pope Leo XIV speaks as supreme pastor of the universal Church, he is not merely offering opinions on theology, he is preaching the Gospel and exercising his ministry as the Vicar of Christ. The consistent teaching of the Church is insistent that all people of goodwill must pray and work toward lasting peace while avoiding the evils and injustices that accompany all wars.”
…

The just war theory in Catholic doctrine was developed by Christian minds such as St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine; the latter, Vance says, he has adopted as his patron saint.

Leo has a much closer connection to the Catholic philosopher, given that he previously served as the Prior General of the Order of St. Augustine for more than a decade and is the first-ever pope from his order.

Leo himself is not backing down.

Perhaps Vance, instead of pontificating to the pope about theology, should take up the study of poetry. He could learn a lot from reading the poem An Essay on Criticism by the coincidentally named Alexander Pope where, among other useful bits of advice, Pope says:

A little learning is a dang’rous thing;

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:

There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.

Vance is one of those hapless losers who has got where he is by a combination of luck and unprincipled ambition, propelled by an extreme right wing billionaire in Peter Thiel and who keeps embarrassing himself. He struck out in the peace talks in Islamabad and then scolded the EU for interfering in Hungary’s elections while he was himself in that country campaigning for Orban, who then lost ignominiously.

He reminds me of another young midwestern senator who was plucked out of relative political obscurity to become vice-president and then went on to do nothing while committing a series of gaffes. Dan Quayle then faded into obscurity. We should hope that that is the fate that awaits Vance. ]]> 320213 https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/04/16/the-loons-have-been-handed-the-control-of-science/ Thu, 16 Apr 2026 15:51:32 +0000 http://3.79052

I lost all respect for Matt Ridley years ago, when I wrote:

Matt Ridley is definitely a smart guy, and he also writes well. I enjoyed some of his earlier books, like The Red Queen and Genome, but I became less appreciative as he became more openly libertarian, and espoused a Whiggish view of the world that was only a rationalization for why he was so wealthy and privileged (he’s kind of the British version of Pinker, only worse). He’s the 5th Viscount Ridley, don’t you know, he is to the manor born (Blagdon Hall, Northumberland, specifically), he’s a member of the House of Lords, he endorsed Brexit, he owns coal mines, he used to own a bank, but he ran it into the ground and it was taken away from him and nationalized. On climate change, he’s argued that global warming is going to be a net benefit, increasing rainfall and the growing season, and that human ingenuity will overcome any minor disruptions. He even coauthored a book with Anthony Watts and Bjorn Lomborg and a host of the usual denialist suspects, Climate Change: The Facts 2017, which ought to alarm anyone who wants to think he’s just being objective. I guess that comes of owning coal mines and being an enthusiastic endorser of fracking — when your prosperity is a product of spewing as much fossil carbon into the atmosphere as you can, your very smart brain will work very hard to find excuses.

At this point, he is an irredeemable kook — but a well-connected and wealthy one, who gets invited to all kinds of events hosted by the corrupt, criminal kooks in charge of the US government. He was recently invited to address the NIH on the “lab leak” hypothesis, the discredited conspiracy theory that China intentionally engineered the COVID virus to wreak havoc on the West, but accidentally released into their home territory of Wuhan. It’s absurd. No one who knows anything about virology or molecular genetics thinks it is at all plausible, or credits it as valid in the face of all the evidence that it originated naturally from wild populations, or zoonosis.

Nevertheless, Ridly got invited to present his innuendo, lack of evidence, and leaps of illogic at a major meeting of the formerly prestigious NIH.

Must Trump get his face put front and center of everything?

Don’t trust me that the “lab leak” is a garbage hypothesis? Larry Moran and Lindsay Beyerstein both shredded these “lab leak” claims years ago, but conspiracy theories seem to be invulnerable to little things like evidence and reason.

Add another critic to the long list of knowledgeable scientists who find Ridley risible: Angela Rasmussen. She gives five really strong reasons why the “lab leak” nonsense is wrong, and also seems to have even less respect for Ridley and Bhattacharya than I do.

I don’t know Ridley’s motivation besides being a pompous literal coal baron who led the UK into the 2007 financial crisis with the first run on a British bank in 130 years, and who expects to be taken seriously despite the fact that he seems like a foppish secondary antagonist in a forgettable Dr. Who episode. Unfortunately, Ridley is taken seriously by his fellow pompous, insubstantial windbags, and even more unfortunately, they are the windbags in charge who invited him.

It is no mystery why Podcast Jay [Bhattacharya] rolled out the red carpet for the distinguished Viscount despite his lack of qualifications or relevant expertise on the topic. He knows that Matt Ridley is writing fiction. He shows up to launder conspiracist lies through an indignant upper class British accent in service of Bhattacharya’s ultimate goal: to declare all NIH research reckless, dangerous, and absolutely the worst thing we could possibly do. Better redirect the money for these irresponsible Alzheimer’s, HIV, and diabetes treatments to the White House. President Donald Trump and Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought will know what to do with all those funds.

I don’t see enough news and criticisms of Bhattacharya — he’s in charge of the NIH, he’s an idiot, he’s busy dismantling the American scientific institutions, but mostly what gets into the press are the disastrous decisions of the bigger fools in the cabinet. Make no mistake, though, he’s one of the nastier parasites gnawing at the foundations of our science establishment.

And now he invited Ridley to speak. The Ridley who makes these kinds of ludicrous accusations:

You can tell what kind of man he is by the people he lumps together as enemies with Hamas: a couple of credible, qualified scientists and trans people. His right-wing politics are showing.

I needed a morning shot of cynicism, so naturally I turned to stderr, where I learned all about bunkers.

As a former security guy, it’s hard to imagine an end-user who’s worse than the current dumbass-in-chief. He’s the kind of idiot who would post photos including the GPS co-ordinates. Not because he’s a 5G warfare expert, but because he’s 6G stupid. The 5G AIs are still cycling in tight loops printing “brain hurts brain hurts brain hurts brain …” over and over.

So, it looks like Turnip has completely blown the cover of an extremely expensive op that was going to be concealed as a ballroom with cost and labor overruns, while building a new continuity of government/nuclear bunker AKA “bolthole for the idiots who started a nuclear war.” This all started to go into overdrive during the Eisenhower administration. That was when Camp David was turned into a nuclear bunker (or, more precisely, the golf course covers a nuclear bunker). You can learn a lot more about this in the book [wc] Raven Rock, which does not talk much about Raven Rock, but talks a lot about Mt Weather, and Camp David and The Greenbrier. The Greenbrier, now, is mostly declassified and you can even visit it. It’s on my list of things to do, someday, but I am trying to find suitable company – you can’t go to that kind of place alone, you need someone with you who can look at the hinges you are pointing to and nod and whisper, “overpressure relief.”

I can appreciate that. I’d want Marcus Ranum as my tour guide at any government facility. Go read the rest to learn more about these depressing monuments to smug futility.

I needed more — it’s warm, the sun is shining, but my knees are aching and I need the grimness so I don’t try to dance — so I read about the wedding industry on TikTok. If you really want to harsh your mellow, it’s a tossup whether nuclear war bunkers or wedding influencers are worse.

There are a few industries that prey on emotion particularly brazenly. The funeral industry is one. The wedding industry is another. I knew this going in. I thought I could defeat hundreds of years of socially ingrained pressure backed by a multi-billion dollar consumer machine. No problem.

That got me thinking…if I really want regular reminders that the world sucks, I just need to tickle the algorithm just right. There’s no way I could convince TikTok or Instagram that I’m a blushing bride, but hey, I could easily induce funeral TikTok to lavish some attention on me.

If you suddenly see my instagram feed filling with posts about death and funeral planning, don’t worry — I’m feeling fine. I’ll be teasing the ghouls, nothing more.

If you have suggestions for better topics to fuel a morbid streak, do let me know. Not politics — I already know what a graveyard of hope that is right now.

A few Democrats have grown a spine. They’ve filed articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth. There is a long list of good reasons to kick his evil ass out of office.

The House Democrats also pointed at a growing number of boat strikes in the Caribbean. The military has repeatedly sought to frame individuals on the vessels as “narco-terrorists”.

House Democrats also accused Hegseth of compromising national security through “careless and improper conduct”, citing an episode where classified information was shared on Signal in 2025.

The defense secretary was embroiled in controversy last year after the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was added to a Signal group chat about a planned airstrike on Houthi fighters in Yemen. Hegseth, vice-president JD Vance, and CIA director John Ratcliffe were also in the chat.

The articles also continued on to include Hegesth’s “efforts to withhold material facts relating to civilian casualties and operational conduct in Iran and Venezuela”; his attempt to punish the senator Mark Kelly, a retired US navy captain, for reminding service members that they can refuse illegal orders; and forcing transgender service members from the military.

“Pete Hegseth did not follow his oath to the US constitution,” Ansari told the reporter Pablo Manríquez. “He committed a war crime in Iran with the attack on a school that killed over 160 children. So not only do we need to end this war, but we need to hold accountable and prosecute anyone in the US administration who may have committed war crimes.”

Not to mention that he’s an incompetent boob who only got the appointment because he was a suck-up to Trump.

This motion will go nowhere, because the Democrats don’t have the votes, yet. It is encouraging, though, that some of them are stirring themselves to fight back against this outrageous and wicked administration, and it will highlight all those Republicans who so conscientiously neglect to recognize the deep harm their party has done to the country.

I’m remembering this because I’ve been saying “huzzah” to low-key good news for long enough that my husband and mother-in-law have noticed, without me noticing I was doing this weird thing.  And I wondered if I got it from the episode of China, IL where Baby Cakes started thinking he was Kevin Hood, which consisted of medieval violence and saying “huzzah” whenever he appeared.  Then I just remembered that moment.

My family watching the shit out of that movie on VHS.  The soundtrack dominating the airwaves.  Not a negative word in sight.  Everybody was hyped for that goofy shit, and then it was gone, leaving a hole in our little hearts.  Dredge up your VHS player and watch it again.  You know you wanna.  Huzzah!

–

So, for example, take the bet that the US and Iran will agree to a permanent peace deal by a specific date, where the options for dates are April 22, April 30, May 31, and June 30. How would one judge that? The rules state it as follows.

This market will resolve to “Yes” if Iran and the United states agree to a permanent peace deal by the specified date, 11:59 PM ET. Otherwise, this market will resolve to “No”.

A permanent peace deal refers to any agreement which explicitly indicates that military hostilities between the United States and Iran have ended or will permanently cease, or uses equivalent language clearly signaling a lasting end to military hostilities between the United States and Iran. Agreements that are explicitly temporary or which do not include a definitive agreement to end military hostilities between the US and Iran on a lasting basis (e.g. a temporary extension of the two-week ceasefire agreement announced on April 7, 2026), will not qualify.

A qualifying agreement will be considered to have been established if either of the following conditions are met:

– The United States and Iran each sign or formally adopt a written agreement (e.g. a treaty or multi-point agreement) which meets the above criteria.

– Both the governments of the United States and Iran provide clear public confirmation that a qualifying agreement has been definitively established. Negotiations, statements of progress, or other statements which do not constitute a definitive announcement that a qualifying agreement has been reached will not count.

The primary resolution source for this market will be official information from the governments of the United States and Iran; however, a consensus of credible reporting may also be used.

I can see many points of contention that can arise. The words ‘explicit’, ‘clear’, and ‘definitive’ are all open to interpretation. The sources for resolution as stated in the last sentence is also problematic. In the case of the US, Trump is notoriously fickle and a liar, who can say one thing and then switch to the opposite without compunction.. Hence any statement from him is not worth anything. But what about ‘credible’ reporting? Furthermore, this kind of thing is ripe for people with insider information to bet on that knowledge, And we know that the venality that runs through the Trump circle will not hesitate to use it.

As a result of this kind of ambiguity, it can lead to aggrieved bettors who lose a lot becoming disgruntled.

“Horekunden” was rapidly losing patience.

His frustration was with the Institute for the Study of War, a US thinktank which produces a daily map of the frontline in Ukraine.

For Horekunden, and other anonymous gamblers, the map was a “disjointed, incoherent mess … like the painting of a five-year-old”. Therefore it was no use to them in their aim: to settle a bet on the online prediction market Polymarket.

The map they were unhappy with depicted the city of Kostyantynivka, which Ukrainian troops have been holding for five months amid shelling and swarms of drones. Thousands of civilians still live there.

There is now more than $500,000 (£371,000) staked on whether Russia will capture Kostyantynivka this year . These bets will be settled if the ISW releases a map showing Russia holds the city’s train station.
…

But longtime users say it increasingly resembles a casino – where everything, from Trump’s fury to the second coming of Jesus Christ can be monetised. So where they can, players in this powerful “casino” have started trying to shape the world to secure a payday.

Some may resort to threats of violence to change the outcome.

Polymarket gamblers recently threatened an Israeli journalist, demanding he change his copy so that they could win a bet over whether Iran had struck Israel on a given day. Experts say that users on Polymarket might be able to manipulate broader markets, with effects that could ripple out to institutions and pension funds.

Now that gambling has become legal in the US, the existence of apps on one’s phone where one can place bets at any time means that it has become so easy to bet that we have seen an explosion in the number of ways that people can gamble and the things that they can gamble on. It has resulted in a raising of the stakes as people bet more than they can afford and where losing can be devastating.

In the early days of the 20th century, organized crime was heavily involved in gambling because it could generate huge amounts of revenue for the people running the gambling operations with very little overhead costs. There were no tangible goods like drugs and stolen merchandise to be moved around, lowering the risk of apprehension. I suspect that it is only a matter of time before crime syndicates enter these new betting markets and then try to ‘work the refs’ in much more effective ways than hapless individuals. I would be surprised it it has not happened already.

As always, gambling is a mug’s game where the odds are almost always stacked against you.