A good Bump

 

Philip Bump is still a Washington Post columnist. Despite the attrition at the paper, there are still people with good insights, as in the following. 

The right-wing media machine is hitting a wall
The right is doing a good job convincing the right that Trump is doing a good job. But only the right.

"Consider recent polling conducted by YouGov for the Economist. It found that only about a third of Americans supported the Trump-Musk push to fire hundreds of thousands of federal workers. Among Republicans, more than 6 in 10 supported the idea. Among non-Republicans, though, fewer than 1 in 5 did."

"Last week, Fox News host Jesse Watters offered a succinct and accurate explanation of how the right elevates stories.

“We are waging a 21st-century information warfare campaign against the left, and they are using tactics from the 1990s,” he said, mocking Democrats’ reliance on news conferences and traditional media stories. “What you’re seeing on the right is asymmetrical. It’s like grassroots guerrilla warfare. Someone says something on social media. Musk retweets it. [Joe] Rogan podcasts it. Fox broadcasts it. And by the time it reaches everybody, millions of people have seen it.”

"This, he insisted, reflected the right’s interest in “expressing information” in contrast to the left’s “suppressing information.”

"The important thing to remember is that what Watters is describing is unreliable or inaccurate information, claims that are compelling to the right. What media outlets outside of the right’s bubble try to suppress, by our own admission, are false or dishonest claims. Democratic officials still rely on the traditional media as conduits to the public in part because we serve as validators of accuracy — validation that is (lamentably) less valuable in politics today."

Well, who would try to do this?

 

A Lithuanian attempting to row across the Pacific Ocean was rescued when he ran into a bit of trouble. 

AU Air Force, Navy rescue Lithuanian hit by cyclone while rowing Pacific Ocean

"Lithuanian national Aurimas Mockus, aged 44, was attempting to row from San Diego, United States, to Brisbane, Australia, when he hit Tropical Cyclone Alfred.

The cyclone caused the rower to be stranded for three days in the Coral Sea, located roughly 740 kilometers from the Queensland state coastal city of Mackay.

Mockus activated his emergency beacon on February 28, 2025 after rowing into stormy seas with rough winds of 80 kph.

Mockus began his 12,000-kilometer journey in October 2024, and was days away from Brisbane when he ran into the tropical cyclone."

Here's what the rowboat looked like:

Even in the rain, spinners keep spinning

 

Fascinating paper and article about studies of maple samaras (also called "spinners" or "copters") -- the way that maple trees spread their seeds. The winged seeds spin their way to new places to put down roots.

The study looked at whether rain significantly affected their spinning and their overall travel distance. It did, but because the seeds can rapidly shed (even destroy) a raindrop and get back to spinning, it was only about a 10% difference.

One could ask if this is important research. Well, it has a lot to do with how plants reproduce and proliferate. Plus, it also has to do with aerodynamic stability under stressful weather conditions, like high winds and rain, and if I'm on that plane or helicopter in a storm, I want it to stay stable.

Maple seeds’ unique spinning motion allows them to travel far even in the rain, a new study shows

"From an engineering perspective, the insights gained from our study could inform the design of new types of aerial vehicles that use autorotation to ride the wind without a motor. Mimicking the shapes of these seeds could help such vehicles quickly recover from disruptions to flight." (Recovery is good.)

Stop-motion views of a samara getting hit by a raindrop and recovering its spin. (There's a video in the article.)

 

Of course it's horribly bad

 

It has been awhile now, but the Trump Administration of Disaster is taking the disastrous step of overturning (or un-finding, maybe) the endangerment finding of climate change.

I'm going with the Daily Mail on this one, but there's been a lot of reporting on it, naturally.

Trump to tear up 'holy grail' regulation that will free up trillions in taxpayer cash... but could spell global disaster

" "EPA administrator Lee Zeldin has reportedly lobbied to strike down the scientific finding so the White House can more easily repeal regulations which fight climate change"

Earlier this month, the Trump Administration notified more than 1,100 EPA employees that they could be dismissed 'immediately' at any time.

That group included scientists and experts who research and enforce policies related to air pollution, hazardous waste cleanup, and environmental emergency response.

Members of two influential EPA advisory committees which provide scientific guidance to the head of the agency were ousted in January.

Myron Ebell, the leader of Trump's EPA transition team during the president's first term, noted that striking down the endangerment finding would likely make overturning Joe Biden's climate policies a smoother process.

'If you want to go back and redo one of these rules, you're going to have a very spirited court battle if you ignore the endangerment finding,' Ebell said. 'So I think they really need to do this.'

However, Sean Donahue, an attorney for environmental groups which support the endangerment finding, believes any effort to repeal the 2009 scientific finding would be struck down in court."

We can only hope so.  Because here's the follow-up:

Trump, EPA Aim to Remove Finding That Mandates Action on Greenhouse Gas Pollution

" “The embers of the fires in LA are barely out, and people are still struggling to recover their homes and their livelihoods in North Carolina,” said David Doniger, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, at a rally in front of the U.S. Capitol on Thursday. “And here we have the Trump administration telling the country’s oil, gas and coal magnates that they are free to keep spewing dangerous pollution into the atmosphere.”

He and other environmental advocates argue the Trump administration is likely to lose in court if it tries to challenge climate science. As a peer-reviewed study six years ago put it, “the amount, diversity, and sophistication of the evidence has increased markedly” for every aspect of the EPA’s 2009 finding on the dangers of greenhouse gases.

Many environmental law experts anticipate the Trump administration will aim to overturn the endangerment finding without a fight over science. Instead, Trump’s team could make the case for striking down the endangerment finding strictly on its interpretation of the law. Zeldin signaled as much during his confirmation hearing, when he agreed that carbon dioxide and methane were heat-trapping gases, but raised doubts about EPA’s mandate to act on them."

I wish I could see watching this battle was going to be fun, but it won't be. However, it will be interesting. 

 

A disaster movie about something that could/will happen

 

I happened to accidentally catch the Norwegian disaster movie The Wave a couple of weeks ago. It's about a potential disaster so likely that all of the settings are real. The Norwegian village Geiranger sits at the end of a picturesque fjord (appropriately named the Geirangerfjord), and it looks like this:

That picturesque beauty is also the danger. The danger exists because those steep fjordwalls (I made that up) occasionally experience fjordslides (OK, that's enough), when part of the wall just lets loose and slides into the fjord, making a big fjordsplash. And that splash would travel straight down the narrow walls of the fjord into downvillage Geiranger. 

(Sorry, couldn't help myself, I had to write fjordsplash.)

A better name for fjordsplash is tsunami. And this danger is so real that Geiranger has sirens that are ready to go off in case a fjordslide is detected, to warn the residents to head to higher ground before the landslide-caused tsunami shows up. 

It can happen and does happen (the link goes to an article about the landslide in Taan Fjord in Alaska, which created a wave about 193 meters, about 600 feet, high). It's probably more likely than a massive lahar releasing from the summit of Mt. Rainier, and geologists know that has happened too. (And there are warning systems for communities that might be affected there, too.)

So, yeah, The Wave could happen.  Below is a still that shows the movie's depiction of it happening:

The lead actress was Ane Dahl Torp [IMDb link], shown below. By the way, she was also in a movie called The Quake, about an earthquake hitting Oslo, that doesn't seem nearly as plausible, and I think it's the same characters (her and her movie family), which is even less likely. I'm skipping that one.

Arrogant unfeeling b*stard

 

I am no fan of Mitch McConnell:  far, far from it. But he didn't deserve what the arrogant unfeeling b*stard who is daily reducing the standards we expected the President of the United States to possess said about him.

After McConnell opposes RFK Jr., Trump says he has ‘no idea’ if senator had polio

"Asked about McConnell’s bout with polio influencing his decision to vote no, Trump appeared to question his diagnosis.

“I have no idea if he had polio,” Trump said. “All I can tell you about him is that he shouldn’t have been leader.”

McConnell, who had polio as a child, was the only Republican to vote against Kennedy’s confirmation. The 82-year-old Kentucky senator has written about and publicly discussed the paralyzing disease, the effect on his life — including his childhood days confined to bed or undergoing a strict physical therapy regimen to rehabilitate his left leg — and his ardent support of lifesaving vaccines."

And I should point out, McConnell is fully to blame for Trump being President again. He could have led the Senate to impeach him, but said that the courts could deal with him. Clearly that didn't work out. So yes, no fan of MM. But he doesn't deserve to have his childhood battle with polio questioned.

Nuclear refresh in Maryland

 

Good news for nuclear power in Maryland (close to home): Constellation is investing in maintenance and improvements to keep the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant generating for years to come. Good for Maryland, good for the environment. 

Constellation to upgrade Maryland nuclear power station

"The company is also investing USD68 million in 24 state-of-the-art electrical breakers to upgrade the plant's substation and to help enable future customer service on the grid. It said preliminary analysis indicates that further upgrades at Calvert Cliffs could increase electricity production by about 10%. "This would produce more carbon-free power than all the wind and utility-scale solar currently operating in Maryland," Constellation said.

"Calvert Cliffs Clean Energy Center is the largest source of clean, 24/7 power in Maryland and we are making substantial financial investments to keep it running reliably while generating economic development in Maryland," said Constellation President and CEO Joe Dominguez."

That's what we need more of.

Plus, we need more that look as good as this one:

Alysa Liu wins the Worlds

 

You can read a lot of articles about this, but after briefly retiring from the sport of figure skating, Alysa Liu came back to it better and just won the World Championships.  Video and article link below.

Alysa Liu Wins First Women’s World Championships Gold for Team USA Since 2006

"Dressed appropriately in gold, Liu connected on each of her jumping passes – landing seven triple jumps – secured Level 4s on each of her spins and step sequences, and earned positive grades of execution on every element en route the crown. Her free skate score of 148.39 was her best this season by 16.93 points. Her total competition score, 222.97 points, is not only an international personal best but also the second-highest ever by an American woman, making her the one to beat heading into Milano Cortina." 

(Milano Cortina (d'Ampezzo) is the site of the next Winter Olympics, even though it is all over northern Italy and the bobsled, luge, and skeleton might be at Lake Placid, NY.)

Video:

Lighthouse of the Week, March 23-29, 2025: Sanzhiika (Sanzhiiskyi), Ukraine

There's a little bit of a mystery here;  I'm not sure if my pictures are of the old lighthouse or the new lighthouse.  But they look similar.

This is the only the second lighthouse I've done in Ukraine; not for political or military reasons, but because I haven't looked there much. The first one was in Yalta. This one is located just south of Odessa, as you can see on the map here.

This is information from the Lighthouse Directory:

"2010 (station established 1921). Active; focal plane 41 m (135 ft); two green flashes every 15 s. 28 m (92 ft) octagonal cylindrical masonry tower with lantern and gallery. Lighthouse painted white, lantern dome green. In 2010 this lighthouse was replaced by a new tower having the same appearance as the old one, but 9 m (30 ft) taller. ... Located above the beach about 16 km (10 mi) northeast of the mouth of the Dnister and about 15 km (9 mi) southwest of Illichivsk."

That part about the tower being replaced by a new one makes me unsure if the pictures are of the old one or the new one.  It is also on a stamp.

The interview is longer than the race

 

The 100-yard butterfly final at the NCAA Division I women's swimming championships is worth another look.

I guess Gretchen Walsh is proving that 25-yard courses are somewhat outmoded for modern swimming. 

(Virginia won the meet, by the way. I dislike dynasties, but UVA is sure producing fast swimmers.) 

Cleverness at the viral level

 

Wondering why it's so easy to catch the flu (influenza)?  Well, this is one reason.

(By the way, yet another reason not to cut funding to NIH.)

Influenza A Viruses Strategically Change Shape To Infect Cells

The researchers found:
* Influenza A viruses rapidly adjust their shape when placed in conditions that reduce infection efficiency, such as the presence of antiviral antibodies or host incompatibility.
* A virus’ shape is dynamic and impacted by its environment, rather than being fixed by strain, as commonly believed.
* The study assessed 16 different virus-cell combinations that resulted in predictable shape trends.

Well, it sounds scary

 

The short phrase "mutant mosquito" sounds, potentially, like a really scary thing. 

Apparently it's not that scary, but there were concerns that the mosquitoes in the London subway, aka The Tube, were mutants.

And apparently they are, but they mutated a lot earlier than has been thought for quite awhile. They are now found in many underground environments, subways and the like, around the world, with the sinister name Culex pipiens f. molestus. 

So where did it come from?

"Now, an international team of over 100 scientists has traced the mosquito’s origin to a time far before the advent of artificial underground systems, raising further questions about its evolution.

The researchers assessed nearly 350 contemporary and historical mosquito DNA samples and found that C molestus evolved first to live and breed above ground in the Middle East over 1,000 years ago."

(from Study traces origin of mutant London underground mosquito to Middle East)

So it didn't mutate in the Tube. But that's still a good story. It definitely still lives there, and in a lot of other subways, too.

It's Ryann Murphy

 

AI is making it harder to judge who is a "real" person and who isn't. Some of the AI models are very realistic, even with realistic backgrounds, though it's still fairly easy to tell because it's still hard for AI models to be in group settings.

Anyway, putting that aside, I'm sure that Ryann Murphy is real, because for one thing she was on the cover of MAXIM in Australia and New Zealand.  And there are pictures showing her getting her hair done and posing in front of a camera on her Instagram account.

That's where I got the three pictures provided here.  Other than her penchant for frequently having her hair in front of her gorgeous face, I can't find any particular faults here.

(One note: don't confuse her with Ryan Murphy, the multiple Olympic swimming medalist specializing in backstroke.)

Mission to Phobos

 

Japan has not shied away from high-risk, high-reward space missions, and despite some setbacks (like the first Hayabusa just bringing back a few little tiny pieces of its target), they keep trying.

According to this article, they're going to try getting some samples of Phobos, the larger of the two little Martian moons. And they think that might also bringing back some Martian dust as a bonus.

And we don't have to wait too long to see this get started, with a launch in 2026 and arrival in 2027. If they successfully retrieve a sample, it'll come back to Earth around 2031.

Below is a link to a BBC article about the mission. There's a fairly significant mistake in the article; see if you can find it. 

Japan is sending a spacecraft to Mars's moons and returning a sample for study back on Earth

Japan’s Martian Moons eXploration is a daring mission to moon Phobos that will bring back the first-ever samples from the Mars system.

Speaking of the moons, the European mission to check out what the NASA planetary defense impact did to the little moonlet Dimorphos passed by the red planet for a gravity assist, and got this impressive shot of Deimos over the planetary surface.

Lighthouse of the Week, March 16-22, 2025: Faro di Capo Sant'Elia, Italy (Sardinia)

 

I always like finding new lighthouses to feature, and I especially like finding lighthouses that you can see in webcams. So I found this one on the island of Sardinia, way down south on the island.  First I'll locate it, and then I'll show the webcam link, then the history, and then the pictures. 

So, the location is here.

This is the webcam link: Cagliari - Caramosca Beach Live Cam

So now we turn to the Lighthouse Directory, which tells us the following:

"1860. Active; focal plane 70 m (230 ft); two white flashes every 10 s. 21 m (69 ft) round masonry tower with lantern and gallery, attached to a 2-story masonry keeper's house. Lighthouse painted with black and white horizontal bands; lantern dome is gray metallic. ... The Torre di Calamosca, a late medieval watch tower, stands near the lighthouse. This traditional landfall light for Cagliari is located on a promontory on the southeast side of the city, at the end of the Via Faro."

Finally, the pictures:

Climate change coming for African crops

 

We should all be concerned about the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) cuts (to the point of illegally ending the existence of the agency), because the agency distributed food aid to numerous countries. 

So when we read about what climate change (which is happening no matter what any administration says) is doing to African crops, we should be more concerned.

Africa's Mountain Farmers Are Losing Their Crop Yields to Climate Change

"The study found similarities in climate changes and impacts across mountain ranges in all eight countries studied – Cameroon, Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, and Tanzania. Farmers reported increased temperatures, reduced fog, changes in rainfall amount and distribution, and an increase in extreme climate events. The most widespread climate-related impacts were lower crop yields and livestock production, increased pests and diseases, reduced human health and water availability, and more soil erosion."

So that's why food aid is needed. And that's why cutting aid and ending USAID is stupid. 

We don't need it

 

First of all, there is no "energy emergency".  There is a climate emergency. But energy emergency is the premise that the abysmal Trump administration is using to justify opening up wild lands, particularly in Alaska, to oil and gas exploitation, not to mention mineral and ore mining.

Once you besmirch the pristine, you can never go back. This is part of the anticipated Trump presidency nightmare coming true. 

It's disgraceful and disgusting. I hope legal action will slow it down, or that they'll get distracted by other ridiculous priorities.

Doug Burgum Opens Up Millions of Acres of for Drilling to Kick Off Energy Abundance Agenda

"To lower costs, Burgum is focusing on eliminating the Interior Department’s climate policies and reviewing programs that could be responsible for increasing energy prices. Across the board, Burgum’s permissive approach towards energy production and support for streamlining regulations stands in stark contrast to the Biden administration’s hyper-regulation and emphasis on climate change."  [This is from the National Review, if you're wondering about the pro-destruction slant.]

I've got two words up there that start with "d", and one in that last bracketed sentence. Let me add one more:

Despicable.

What's shown happening below is happening because of warming in the Arctic, caused by permafrost melting. Do we really want to make this worse??  The idiot Republicans do. 

 

Hot and pretty, pretty fast too

 

I've been watching the NCAA women's swimming championships these past few days. It's a shame that they share time (and lose it) when men's and women's basketball dominates the sporting news, but that's the schedule, so we have to roll with it.  

There have been some surprise, like Torri Huske winning the 200 individual medley and Alex Walsh winning the 100 breaststroke, and some not-so-surprises, like Gretchen Walsh winning the 50 freestyle and the 100 butterfly. It was a bit surprising that Gretchen didn't set a record/personal best in the 50, but she also led off the 200-yard freestyle relay, and tied her personal best/national record. 

Before the 50, I also noticed the nicely-named Alabama sprinter Cadence Vincent getting ready, and noted her comeliness in the swimming gear. I wondered what she looked like dry and without a swimming cap on.  

Turns out she's worth that look. I included the third one to prove she is a swimmer. She finished 8th in the 50 final, not quite as fast as she was in the preliminaries. She didn't make the championship 'A' final in the 100, which is tonight -- she qualified 10th so she's in the consolation final.

I'll be watching.

Alabama tweet after her first college win

Of course this is news

 

Have to announce (a bit late) that Michelle Keegan and Mark Wright welcomed their baby, a girl, with the first name of Palma.

Rather than rely on the Daily Mail, which I usually do, this time I'll go with an article from Hello! :

Michelle Keegan shares first baby house details in new photos

Yes, they did indeed have a baby.

Technology is not the same as science

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/29/science/trump-science-advisor-michael-kratsios.html

“This is an utter disaster,” said Michael S. Lubell, a professor of physics at the City College of New York and former spokesman for the American Physical Society, the world’s largest group of physicists. “Climate science is dead. God knows what’s going to happen to biomedicine. This marks the beginning of the decline of the golden age of American science.

Virtually all of the nation’s previous science advisers had doctorates, often from elite universities with reputations for producing Nobel laureates. The first, Vannevar Bush, science adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, received his doctorate jointly from M.I.T. and Harvard. He played a central role in persuading Washington to build the first atomic bomb.

In March 2017, early in his first term, Mr. Trump appointed Mr. Kratsios as his deputy assistant for technology policy. He was the administration’s first hire among its many openings for science and technology advisers. In that post he led tech policy initiatives on such issues as A.I., drones, quantum computing and cybersecurity.

At the time, Dr. Lane, Mr. Clinton’s science adviser, referred to Mr. Kratsios in a New York Times opinion piece as “a technologically inexperienced Silicon Valley financier holding just a bachelor’s degree in political science.” The title of the essay was “Trump’s Disdain for Science.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/04/opinion/trump-disdain-science.html

"In an interview, Dr. Lane, Mr. Clinton’s science adviser, said his criticism of Mr. Kratsios in 2018 could not take into account the strides he subsequently made in his tech career. Mr. Trump’s picking him as science adviser, he added, can be seen as warranted given Washington’s current push to beat China in the global A.I. race.

“Technology is a much higher priority for everybody in the White House than in years past,” Dr. Lane said, including in Mr. Trump’s first term. And that, he added, made a science adviser with deep knowledge of technology and its arcane complexities a significant asset."

A more real legendary sword than Excalibur

 

I'm not going to go into great detail about this, because the linked article does that. Here, I will just say that Durandal, the sword of Roland, is much more likely to have existed than Arthur's legendary sword Excalibur.  Whether it first belonged to Hector (famous for getting defeated, aka killed, by Achilles in front of the walls of Troy), that's not so sure. But Roland very likely did exist, and he very likely had a sword.  

Durandal: The Epic Saga of Roland's Legendary Sword

Here is a picture of the sword that was embedded in rock above a chapel in France (but apparently that quite recently went missing, aka stolen), along with the legendary Roland and the legendary sword.

Despite the uniqueness of this particular sword in a stone, I doubt it was the real Durendal, as that one had some Christian relics in its hilt. That is also mentioned in the article.

Lighthouse of the Week, March 9-15, 2025: St. Elmo Lighthouse, Malta

 

Since you've seen the subject line of this post, you'll know that I have to dispense with the obvious first. You have likely heard of St. Elmo's Fire, but did you know that there is also St. Elmo's Light(house)?  If not to this point, you do now.

It's on Malta, guarding the main harbor to the main city of Malta, Valletta. 

So that would be here. Zoom out further to see where it is in relation to the rest of the island of Malta, and zoom way, way out to remind yourself where Malta is in the Mediterranean Sea.  (I had to.)  It's south of Sicily and west of Tunis, if you would like to coordinate yourself quickly.

Now, as for the lighthouse:

"1908 (?). Active; focal plane 16 m (52 ft); quick-flashing green light. 14 m (46 ft) tapered stone tower with lantern and gallery. Tower unpainted, lantern painted green. ... The two breakwater lighthouses stood without their lanterns for decades, but in 2012 replicas of the original lanterns were installed. ... The West Breakwater is detached but joined to the mainland by a bridge seen in David Micallef's photo. It is walkable, but it may take some local knowledge to find a way to the bridge below the ramparts of Fort St. Elmo. Located at the end of the breakwater on the west side of the entrance to the Grand Harbour of Valletta."  (Source: The Lighthouse Directory, of course.)

The bridge is visible in one of the photos below; the telephoto lens effect makes it look closer than it actually is.

Have to pay attention to this

 

The headline is racier than the picture, but the pictures are still quite attention-getting.

Maura Higgins stars in nude campaign as she puts on a VERY risqué display in skimpy lingerie for MAC Cosmetics

"Nude" in this context is nude lingerie. 

Here's a demonstration of the pictures, with and without the MAC Cosmetics ad.

Boom went boom (but not BOOM!)

 

Looking back at my blog, I was surprised to see how many posts I've done about Boom Supersonic, which is a start-up aiming to get a supersonic airplane back into commercial service. One of their milestones was getting their test plane to break the sound barrier.  They've been going ever faster in their test flights, and just recently they made it.

Boom Supersonic’s XB-1 goes supersonic for the first 

This article has full video coverage of the historic flight.

NASA even got a picture of it:

The real significance, if you read this next article (it's short) is that there was no sonic boom heard on the ground. (Hence the title of this post.) That means that they can fly supersonic across the country, something the Concorde couldn't do, and something that makes commercial supersonic air travel much more likely.

Sign me up!

The last part of the article says this:

"XB-1’s second supersonic flight marked the conclusion of its groundbreaking flight test program, and the historic aircraft will now return to her birthplace in Denver, Colorado. Boom will now focus its full efforts on scaling XB-1 learnings and technology to build the Overture supersonic airliner, which already has 130 orders and pre-orders from United Airlines, American Airlines, and Japan Airlines. In 2024, Boom completed construction on the Overture Superfactory in Greensboro, North Carolina, which will scale to produce 66 Overture aircraft per year."

That all sounds great. So here's hoping that Boom doesn't go bust.

Trust in science and where the U.S. ranks

 

Nature had a paper about global patterns of trust in science. Given the attacks on science that are going on in the USA today, it's worth a look. 

It's open access, so anyone can look.

Trust in scientists and their role in society across 68 countries

The abstract:

"Science is crucial for evidence-based decision-making. Public trust in scientists can help decision makers act on the basis of the best available evidence, especially during crises. However, in recent years the epistemic authority of science has been challenged, causing concerns about low public trust in scientists. We interrogated these concerns with a preregistered 68-country survey of 71,922 respondents and found that in most countries, most people trust scientists and agree that scientists should engage more in society and policymaking. We found variations between and within countries, which we explain with individual- and country-level variables, including political orientation. While there is no widespread lack of trust in scientists, we cannot discount the concern that lack of trust in scientists by even a small minority may affect considerations of scientific evidence in policymaking. These findings have implications for scientists and policymakers seeking to maintain and increase trust in scientists."

What about the good ol' United States?

In Figure 1, where the scale is " 1 = very low (trust in science), 3 = neither high nor low (trust in science), 5 = very high (trust in science), the USA scores a 3.86. Which doesn't actually seem too bad. Several countries I'd expect to be higher (like the UK, Canada, the Netherlands, Switzerland) score lower. 

What about political orientation?  That appears more like I would expect.

"Our study also sheds light on individual attributes that are associated with lower trust in scientists—namely, conservative political orientation, higher [social dominance orientation] SDO and science-populist attitudes. Previous studies, which mostly focused on North America and Europe, have found right-leaning and conservative political orientation to be negatively associated with trust in scientists. Our study partly confirms these findings. We found a negative association between trust and conservative political orientation. However, we found a very small, positive relationship between right-leaning political orientation and trust. Given that some recent global social science studies used a left–right measure to assess political orientation while others used a liberal–conservative measure we used both measures and analysed how the results vary depending on the measure in question. We found that the relationships between the two measures of political orientation and trust vary substantially across countries (Fig. 3a,b and Supplementary Figs. 11 and 12). For example, in the USA, trust is associated with a liberal orientation but not with one’s self-placement on the left–right spectrum. More generally, right-leaning and conservative political orientation are negatively associated with trust in scientists in several European and North American countries, so previous research, which has disproportionally focused on these countries, has tended to stress right-leaning and conservative distrust."

But still, it's not as much as I would expect. The following, however, makes a LOT of sense.

"We also found that low trust in scientists is associated with science-related populist attitudes—that is, beliefs that people’s common sense is superior to the expertise of scientists and scientific institutions. This corroborates findings on single countries and provides evidence that populist resentment against science, a prevalent component of the trust crisis narrative, may undermine public trust in scientists."

Populist defines Donald Trump and JD Vance to a T, if I may say so. And I do.  Think COVID, anti-Fauci, RFK Jr., anti-vax, etc. Common sense beats science, and some adherents couldn't let it go even as they died of COVID. 

Then, of course, there's this, underscoring the importance of the denier community:

"While no country has low trust in scientists on average, lack of trust in scientists by even a small minority needs to be taken seriously. Distrusting minorities may affect considerations of scientific evidence in policymaking, as well as decisions by individuals that can affect society at large, especially if they receive extensive news media coverage and include people in positions of power that can influence policymaking. A minority of 10% can be sufficient to flip a majority, and when a critical mass value of 25% is reached, majority opinion can be tipped. In the context of climate change, an agent-based model showed that an evidence-resistant minority can delay the process of public opinion converging with the scientific consensus." 

That last sentence is the truth, right there.

So, my bottom line is that while most people in this country (the USA) generally trust science, the distrustful are more vocal about their distrust, and they have captured the MAGA political movement. Until the MAGA shackles are shaken off, the USA will be a poor environment for science and the nurturing of the next generation of scientific talent. And willy-nilly across the board DOGE budget and staffing cuts certainly don't help that situation.

 

The 747 is big and flexible

 

Yes, the Boeing 747 is a big airplane. And because it is both big and reliable, it has been modified to do many amazing things. 

That's what this article is about.

Unusual Queens: Top 10 coolest special mission Boeing 747s

Read the article to see all of them; you can probably guess a couple without reading it. 

One of these missions is carrying the SOFIA telescope. SOFIA is the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, and having it on a plane high above the Earth is the next best thing to being in space.

The picture below shows the plane, the telescope, and a galaxy (M82) that's forming stars near its center, which is what galaxies do sometimes.  (I got the picture from here.)

After 921 flights (Wikipedia told that) the SOFIA mission ended and the plane was put on exhibit at the Pima Air and Space Museum near Tucson, Arizona (Wikipedia told me that, too). 

Monica Barbaro's career on the rise

 

I first noticed Monica Barbaro when she did a short guest star appearance on the one season show Stumptown (and it should have had more than one season). Then she showed up on Top Gun: Maverick as as the one female pilot (not a DEI hire, she could fly), and that also led me to the discovery of her unwatched action series with Arnold Schwarzenegger, FUBAR. 

Most recently, if you've been paying attention, she played Joan Baez in A Complete Unknown, and from most reports and critics, and the Supporting Actress Oscar nomination, did a really great effort. She's also prettier than the original Joan Baez, but I think Joan would still be the better songwriter/folk singer. 

But I digress, because this is all about the dress (that she wore to the premiere somewhere, somewhere being the premiere in London).

Monica Barbaro sizzles in a black plunging figure-hugging gown as she attends the premiere of Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown

Long cool woman in a black dress

Lighthouse of the Week, March 2-8, 2025: Hillsboro Inlet Light, Florida, USA

 

When I saw a couple of pictures of this lighthouse, I was very surprised I had not featured it before as a Lighthouse of the Week. I was fairly certain that I had covered most of the Florida lighthouses. But I was wrong, so this is the Hillsboro Inlet Light on Pompano Beach.

And that would be here.

So let's learn more about it, from my main go-to source, the Lighthouse Directory.

"1907. Active; focal plane 136 ft (41.5 m); white flash every 20 s (not visible from the land side). 137 ft (42 m) octagonal pyramidal skeletal tower with central cylinder; lantern and upper half of tower painted black, lower half white. The original rotating 2nd order Fresnel lens remains in use. One of only three surviving towers of this design. The original 1-1/2 story wood keeper's house and other light station buildings survive, but an assistant keeper's house was demolished in 2005 despite loud protests from preservationists." ... "The Fresnel lens was relit in August 2000 after much hard work to replace the rotating mechanism of the light. In 2003 the gallery was restored. In March 2012 a museum and visitor center for the lighthouse opened on the south side of the inlet in Hillsboro Inlet Park, and in May the Coast Guard repainted the lighthouse. Also in 2012 the Coast Guard asked for comment on whether the light should be extinguished to protect sea turtles nesting in the area. Comment was not favorable and the light remained in service. In September 2017 storm surge from Hurricane Irma partially undermined the foundation of the lighthouse; it was estimated that $500,000 would be needed to armor the site and repair the damage. In 2023-24 a project will replace windows, doors, and electrical wiring, and repaint the lighthouse. Located on the beach, protected by a riprap jetty, on the north side of Hillsboro Inlet."

I'm glad I got to it before it fell over.  Here's a picture of the lighthouse foundation after the storm.

The Hillsboro Lighthouse Preservation Society webpage has live views from the top of the lighthouse; that's new to me.  Click on "Cameras". 

I've got the pictures below, including the lens. As you might expect, there are other webpages out there in webland about this one.

 

So I saw this commercial ...

 

So I saw the commercial shown below on TV one day. 

I wasn't looking for new shoes, but I immediately noticed the comeliness (that's good looks) of the spokesmodel.  So I searched, and she wasn't difficult to find -- her name is Kenzie Harr. She has an Instagram account, a modeling page, and she's gorgeous.  

So I'm going to help out her career with the links to the Instagram page and the modeling page and two pictures that demonstrate the reality of my statements here. I've also included one picture that she posted showing she's gorgeous in just about every way.

The Block Agency - Kenzie Harr

Kenzie Harr - Instagram