Brain-to-computer interface

Elon Musk's Neuralink Says Brain-to-Computer Interface Has FDA Approval for Clinical Trial

Device would be surgically implanted into patients' brains, with the idea that it would connect with computers to decode brain activity.

FRIDAY, May 26, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- It may sound like the stuff of science fiction, but Elon Musk's company Neuralink announced Thursday that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved a human clinical trial of a device that may restore or enhance function when implanted in a human brain.

"We are excited to share that we have received the FDA's approval to launch our first-in-human clinical study!" the company said in a statement on Twitter Thursday. It is "an important first step that one day will allow our technology to help many people."

The device would be surgically implanted into patients' brains using a robot. The idea is that it would connect with computers to decode brain activity, The Washington Post reported, but the FDA did not announce the trial approval or respond to requests for comment.

This is not the only implantable device under study. Blackrock Neurotech and Synchron have already implanted their devices in people for clinical trials, according to The Post.

There are at least 42 people in the world with brain computer implants, The Post reported, including a quadriplegic patient walking and an ALS patient typing by thinking about keystrokes.

While other companies have been focused on restoring function in people who have lost it because of health diagnoses, Neuralink has tweeted previously, "We want to surpass able-bodied human performance with our technology."

The concept is that a computer chip with electrodes would be sewed into the brain's surface by a robot and then regularly updated. "I'm pretty sure you would not want the iPhone 1 stuck in your head if the iPhone 14 is available," Musk said at an event in late November.

Neuralink, founded in 2016, has 400 employees and operates out of Fremont, California, with a campus under construction in Austin, The Post reported. It has raised at least $363 million, according to data provider PitchBook.

Multivitamin shows memory benefits in older adults

 Compared with placebo, multivitamin use tied to better immediate recall over three years.

FRIDAY, May 26, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- Daily multivitamin supplementation improves memory in older adults compared with placebo, according to a study published online May 24 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Lok-Kin Yeung, Ph.D., from Columbia University in New York City, and colleagues examined the effect of daily multivitamin/multimineral supplementation on memory in older adults. The analysis included 3,562 older adults randomly assigned to either a multivitamin or placebo.

The researchers found that compared with placebo, multivitamin supplementation was associated with significantly better ModRey immediate recall at one year, as well as across the three years of follow-up. There were no significant associations observed between multivitamin supplementation and secondary outcomes of episodic memory over three years or changes in performance on neuropsychological tasks of novel object recognition and executive function over three years. The estimated effect of the multivitamin intervention on memory performance improvement was about 3.1 years of age-related memory change above placebo.

"Most older adults are worried about memory changes that occur with aging," Yeung said in a statement. "Our study suggests that supplementation with multivitamins may be a simple and inexpensive way for older adults to slow down memory loss."

Mpox warning

 More Mpox Cases Reported as Health Officials Fear a Summer Resurgence

U.S. cases are still at less than three per day, with 32 infections diagnosed in May so far.

THURSDAY, May 25, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- U.S. health officials are bracing for the possibility that mpox could surge again this summer as cases mount in several states.

On Thursday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 21 more cases of mpox, with Illinois, New York, and Maryland reporting the most new infections. Illinois had nine, while New York and Maryland reported three each. Several other states -- Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, Texas, Utah, and Virginia -- each reported one new case, CBS News reported.

The CDC is already investigating a cluster of cases in the Chicago area, which have predominantly been reported in men who have sex with men and include several cases of individuals who have been vaccinated. It is possible the virus has evolved with mutations that evade the two-dose vaccine.

Other mutations have been seen in the virus that causes mpox, according to the CDC. Some strains of the mpox virus also showed signs of resistance to the antiviral drug tecovirimat (TPOXX), the CDC noted in a study. The study was posted on a preprint server online and has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

A shift in vaccine strategy is now being considered, the experts said. "We've already, really immediately after seeing the Chicago cluster, convened folks within the U.S. government to discuss what the data is that we have and if there needs to be any change," said Demetre Daskalakis, M.D., deputy director of the White House national mpox response, CBS News reported.

Americans should still get the two-dose Jynneos vaccine to guard against mpox infection, Daskalakis said, because it is still expected to be able to limit a resurgence. "We are on it, from the perspective of having the scientific discussions and are obviously, as sort of demonstrated in the track record of the response, really adjust[ing] our strategy based on what science is showing us," he added.

U.S. cases are still at less than three per day, with 32 infections diagnosed in May so far. A total of 41 mpox cases were diagnosed in April, CBS News reported.

BLM in perspective

 Jonathan Turley is on target about BLM.

This is no surprise - it's been obvious for a long time to anyone with a modicrum of objectivity that BLM was, to put it diplomatically, seriously flawed.

The preferential treatment by various Districts Attorney, such as Letitia James, has also been obvious.

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“What’s More Tragic is Capitalism”: BLM Faces Bankruptcy as Founder Cullors is Cut By Warner Bros.

Two years ago, I wrote columns about companies pouring money into Black Lives Matter to establish their bona fides as “antiracist” corporations. The money continued to flow despite serious questions raised about BLM’s management and accounting. Democratic prosecutors like New York Attorney General Letitia James showed little interest in these allegations even as James sought to disband the National Rifle Association (NRA) over similar allegations. At the same time, Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors cashed in with companies like Warner Bros. eager to give her massive contracts to signal their own reformed status. It now appears that BLM is facing bankruptcy after burning through tens of millions and Warner Bros. cut ties with Cullors after the contract produced no — zero — new programming.

Some states belatedly investigated BLM as founders like Cullors seemed to scatter to the winds. Gone are tens of millions of dollars, including millions spent on luxury mansions and windfalls for close associates of BLM leaders. The usual suspects gathered around the activists like former Clinton campaign general counsel Marc Elias, who later removed himself from his “key role” as the scandals grew.

When questions were raised about the lack of accounting and questionable spending, BLM attacked critics as “white supremacists.”

Warner Bros. was one of the companies eager to grab its own piece of Cullors to signal its own anti-racist virtues. It gave Cullors a lucrative contract to guide the company in the creation of both scripted and non-scripted content, focusing on reparations and other forms of social justice. It launched a publicity campaign for everyone to know that it established a “wide-ranging content partnership” with Cullors who would now help guide the massive corporation’s new programming. Calling Cullors “one of the most influential thought leaders in American public life,” Warner Bros. announced that she was going to create a wide array of new programming, including “but not limited to live-action scripted drama and comedy series; longform/event series; unscripted docuseries; animated programming for co-viewing among kids, young adults and families; and original digital content.”

Some are now wondering if Warner Bros. ever intended for this contract to produce anything other than a public relations pitch or whether Cullors took the money and ran without producing even a trailer for an actual product. Indeed, both explanations may be true.

Paying money to Cullors was likely viewed as a type of insurance to protect the company from accusations of racial insensitive. After all, the company was giving creative powers to a person who had no prior experience or demonstrated talent in the area. Yet, Cullors would be developing programming for one of the largest media and entertainment companies in the world.

One can hardly blame Cullors despite criticizism by some on the left for going on a buying spree of luxury properties.

After all, Cullors was previously open about her lack of interest in working with “capitalist” elements. Nevertheless, BLM was run like a Trotskyite study group as the media and corporations poured in support and revenue.

It was glaringly ironic to see companies like Warner Bros. falling over each other to grab their own front person as the group continued boycotts of white-owned businesses. Indeed, if you did not want to be on the wrong end of one of those boycotts, you needed to get Cullors on your payroll.

Much has now changed as companies like Bud Light have been rocked by boycotts over what some view as heavy handed virtue signaling campaigns.

It was quite a change for Cullors and her BLM co-founder, who previously proclaimed “[we] are trained Marxists. We are super versed on, sort of, ideological theories.” She denounced capitalism as worse than COVID-19. Yet, companies like Lululemon rushed to find their own “social justice warrior” while selling leggings for $120 apiece.

When some began to raise questions about Cullors buying luxury homes, Facebook and Twitter censored them.

With increasing concerns over the loss of millions, Cullors eventually stepped down as executive director of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, as others resigned. At the same time, the New York Post was revealing that BLM Global Network transferred $6.3 million to Cullors’ spouse, Janaya Khan, and other Canadian activists to purchase a mansion in Toronto in 2021.

According to The Washington Examiner, BLM PAC and a Los Angeles-based jail reform group paid Cullors $20,000 a month. It also spent nearly $26,000 on meetings at a luxury Malibu beach resort in 2019. Reform LA Jails, chaired by Cullors, received $1.4 million, of which $205,000 went to the consulting firm owned by Cullors and her spouse, according to New York magazine.

Once again, while figures like James have spent huge amounts of money and effort to disband the NRA over such accounting and spending controversies, there has been only limited efforts directed against BLM in New York and most states.

Cullors once declared that “while the COVID-19 illness is tragic, what’s more tragic is capitalism.” These companies seem to be trying to prove her point. Yet, at least for Cullors, Warner Bros. fulfilled its slogan that this is all “The stuff that dreams are made of.”

The IRS shows its colors

 Kimberley Strassel at the Wall Street Journal.

It's no longer "our government".

I like the idea of a tax that does not require a huge IRS to keep track of. Flat tax, sales tax, value added tax look good to me. Just think - all those IRS people that could be doing something useful - like producing products.

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IRS Needs a Cage, Not More Cash

The cases of the whistleblower Gary Shapley and journalist Matt Taibbi show why the GOP should claw back that $80 billion infusion.

As House Republicans and the White House wrangle over a debt-ceiling deal, one GOP demand ought to be nonnegotiable. A politicized Internal Revenue Service has no business keeping its untrustworthy fingers on last year’s $80 billion cash infusion.

This week brought two more examples of IRS roguery that build on its already unsavory record of leaks, incompetence and partisan behavior. The first is the alarming story of journalist Matt Taibbi, who may have been targeted by the IRS in retribution for documenting the joint censorship efforts of Big Tech and the federal government.

Mr. Taibbi in March told the House Judiciary Committee a disturbing tale: an IRS agent had made a surprise visit to his New Jersey residence on March 9—the same day Mr. Taibbi testified before another House committee about censorship at Twitter. The journalist was subsequently told there were “identity theft” concerns with his 2021 and 2018 tax returns. The 2018 claim particularly troubled Mr. Taibbi, since his accountants possessed documentation showing the return had been electronically accepted, and neither they nor he had ever received notification of a problem. Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan demanded the IRS explain.

The IRS earlier this month provided Mr. Jordan documents that only add to the appearance of targeting. It seems the IRS officially opened its examination of Mr. Taibbi’s return on Dec. 24—not only Christmas Eve but a Saturday. What could be urgent enough to inspire a government employee to work overtime? That was the day Mr. Taibbi capped three weeks of reporting with his ninth installment of the Twitter files, an exposé of a wide sweep of federal agencies working with social-media companies to censor online speech.

Documents also show that in addition to the unannounced house call, an IRS agent dived deep into Mr. Taibbi’s personal life, compiling a file of his voter-registration records, whether he had a concealed-weapon permit and even whether he possessed hunting or fishing licenses, among other data. The file contained his Wikipedia page detailing his Twitter files work. The IRS launched this excavation even though Mr. Taibbi didn’t owe the IRS any money.

More notable is what the IRS didn’t provide the House: any proof of letters it claimed to have sent to Mr. Taibbi alerting him to the purported 2018 problem. It also failed to cough up internal communications related to the case, despite Mr. Jordan’s demand and Mr. Taibbi’s signed waiver to allow Congress to see information related to his return.

Whether Mr. Taibbi is a target of harassment or not, these IRS tactics ought to alarm lawmakers. How many other Americans—those who don’t even owe the feds money—have an IRS file detailing their gun-permit status? How does that relate to tax liability? Federal tax forms require preparers to list their names and phone numbers. Is it IRS practice to jump to an investigation before picking up the phone? Is it now standard for an agent to show up unannounced at your door—in absence of any proof of lawbreaking?

Then there’s IRS Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley, the congressional whistleblower who this week went public with his claims of Justice Department political interference in the Hunter Biden probe. A 14-year IRS veteran, Mr. Shapley oversees a team that specializes in international tax and financial crimes. He says he was assigned control of the Biden investigation in 2020, but again and again watched prosecutors engage in “deviations” from the normal process, in ways that “seemed to always benefit the subject.” He explained he “couldn’t silence my conscience anymore.”

Mr. Shapley’s attorneys informed Congress that their client and his team had recently been yanked off the probe “at the request of” the Justice Department—which looks like clear (and forbidden) retaliation for his speaking out. IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel will undoubtedly try to slough this off on Justice, but a request is only a request, and nothing excuses Mr. Werfel from his own obligation to see tax justice done or protect whistleblowers. The IRS can hardly claim to need more money to pursue tax cheats when it is sidelining top investigators pursuing tax cheats.

No agency with this track record deserves last year’s $80 billion reward, especially as the IRS is openly promising to use the cash to hire tens of thousands of new agents for draconian enforcement activity. If Democrats are so concerned about discretionary spending cuts, they ought to be forced to choose between a cash infusion aimed at taxpayer harassment and the domestic handouts they claim are vital.

Meanwhile, look to see which enterprising GOP presidential candidate strikes on the obvious answer to the forever IRS mess: a flat tax. A vastly simplified system wouldn’t only strengthen the economy but carry the side benefit of completely eliminating the positions of legions of IRS employees, whose power rests in the gray area of a tangled tax code. Starve the beast—for now. Ultimately, put it in a tiny cage.

Merrick Garland shows his colors

From Jonathan Turley.

It is now clear enough that the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the IRS have been politicized to the point where they have become tool of the power elite so that a belief otherwise can be viewed as evidence of delusion.

The US is looking less exceptional every day - thanks to all its many citizens that value getting their own way over freedom -  and the decline of intellect in favor of emotion throughout the educational system.

Here is JT's column.

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“I Don’t Want to Do Any of This”: IRS Whistleblower Defies the Biden Administration and the Media

Below is my column in the New York Post on the most recent whistleblower coming forward to publicly accuse the Biden Administration of “slow walking” the investigation of Hunter Biden. The source of the interference with the IRS investigation, according to Gary Shapley, was the Department of Justice. It is the latest chapter in the story of “The Incredibly Shrinking Merrick Garland.”

Here is the column:

“I don’t want to do any of this.”

Those words from 14-year IRS veteran Gary Shapley may be the most important line in his CBS News interview this week.

After weeks of Democrats dismissing whistleblowers alleging the president’s administration interfered with investigations of Hunter Biden, Shapley had enough.

Putting his career and much of his life at risk, Shapley came forward to say he and others believe Hunter is being protected and identified the Justice Department as the source of the protection.

Shapley has every reason not to want to do any of this.

After all, as President Joe Biden stated last year, “No one f–ks with a Biden.”

For years, a Democrat-controlled Congress refused to investigate Biden family influence-peddling, and the press dismissed people raising Hunter’s laptop as spreading “Russian disinformation.”

The media have worked hard to minimize the blowback after acknowledging the laptop’s authenticity and the growing evidence of millions in influence-peddling.

Part of this effort at “scandal implosion” has been to dismiss any criminal charges as relatively minor tax violations unconnected to the president.

Indeed, when the president recently agreed to a rare sit-down interview, the White House chose MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle.

Before asking about his son Hunter’s scandal, Ruhle emphasized it was “something personal” with “no ties to you.”

Many of us guffawed at the claim given multiple references on the laptop to President Biden, including possibly sharing in the proceeds from influence-peddling with foreign governments.

The problem is Shapley suggests some uncomfortable questions on how Biden’s administration may have worked to minimize charges against his son and, according to Shapley, “slow-walked” the investigation.

His interview explains why the Justice Department can indict figures like Rep. George Santos (R-NY) on a variety of fraud and money-laundering charges in a few months while spending years investigating Hunter Biden with no conclusion.

Shapley made clear he had never seen this level of interference in his long service at the IRS and said it was done “at the direction of the Department of Justice.”

And he said the interference began as soon as he “took control of this particular investigation”: “I immediately saw deviations from the normal process. It was way outside the norm of what I’ve experienced in the past.”

Shapley did not rush forward or leak to the media.

Rather, after watching decision after decision made to benefit Biden, Shapley reached a breaking point in what he called his “red-line meeting” when he and his team were removed from investigating the president’s son.

The interference came from a familiar source.

The Justice Department under Attorney General Merrick Garland has been criticized for his refusal to appoint a special counsel to investigate the expanding allegations of Biden family influence-peddling — which include possible criminal charges from bribery to tax violations to money-laundering.

The laptop included references to Joe Biden getting a 10% cut of one Chinese deal.

Biden associates are warned not to use Joe Biden’s name but to employ code names like “the Big Guy.”

At the same time, the president and first lady are said to have benefited from public office and received payments from Hunter.

The emails also contradict the president’s repeated public declaration that he had no knowledge of his son’s foreign dealings — including by photos with his business associates and an actual audio tape referring to the deals.

Garland refuses to appoint a special counsel who would then have the ability to write a report on the alleged massive influence-peddling operations the Bidens run.

It is all part of the “incredible shrinking Merrick Garland,” who promised to prevent any political influence over his department.

We now have multiple whistleblowers alleging interference from the Justice Department to slow-walk investigations or shield the president’s son.

We also have questions raised by IRS agents’ visit to the home of Matt Taibbi, who helped expose the government-Twitter censorship program.

They appeared on the very day Taibbi appeared before Congress and was attacked by Democratic members as a “so-called journalist.”

(The subcommittee’s ranking Democrat, Delaware Stacey Plaskett, later called for Taibbi’s possible arrest.)

The IRS opened its probe of him on a Saturday — Christmas Eve last year, just weeks after his exposé.

With the GOP controlling the House, there will now be congressional investigation and oversight into these allegations.

But Shapley and other whistleblowers will soon learn that when it comes to many in the media and Congress, they also “don’t want to do any of this.”

Rallying: The Killer Years

 Here is a link to a good documentary about Group B rallying - essentially supercars.

Physicians vs Chatbots

 From jamanetwork.com

I don't vouch for the statistics. Let's say that it is "interesting".

It does not indicate that Chatbots are better physicians than physicians.

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Original Investigation
April 28, 2023

Comparing Physician and Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Responses to Patient Questions Posted to a Public Social Media Forum
John W. Ayers, PhD, MA1,2; Adam Poliak, PhD3; Mark Dredze, PhD4; et alEric C. Leas, PhD, MPH1,5; Zechariah Zhu, BS1; Jessica B. Kelley, MSN6; Dennis J. Faix, MD7; Aaron M. Goodman, MD8,9; Christopher A. Longhurst, MD, MS10; Michael Hogarth, MD10,11; Davey M. Smith, MD, MAS2,11
Author Affiliations Article Information
JAMA Intern Med. Published online April 28, 2023. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2023.1838

Key Points

Question Can an artificial intelligence chatbot assistant, provide responses to patient questions that are of comparable quality and empathy to those written by physicians?

Findings In this cross-sectional study of 195 randomly drawn patient questions from a social media forum, a team of licensed health care professionals compared physician’s and chatbot’s responses to patient’s questions asked publicly on a public social media forum. The chatbot responses were preferred over physician responses and rated significantly higher for both quality and empathy.

Meaning These results suggest that artificial intelligence assistants may be able to aid in drafting responses to patient questions.

Abstract

Importance The rapid expansion of virtual health care has caused a surge in patient messages concomitant with more work and burnout among health care professionals. Artificial intelligence (AI) assistants could potentially aid in creating answers to patient questions by drafting responses that could be reviewed by clinicians.

Objective To evaluate the ability of an AI chatbot assistant (ChatGPT), released in November 2022, to provide quality and empathetic responses to patient questions.


Design, Setting, and Participants

In this cross-sectional study, a public and nonidentifiable database of questions from a public social media forum (Reddit’s r/AskDocs) was used to randomly draw 195 exchanges from October 2022 where a verified physician responded to a public question. Chatbot responses were generated by entering the original question into a fresh session (without prior questions having been asked in the session) on December 22 and 23, 2022. The original question along with anonymized and randomly ordered physician and chatbot responses were evaluated in triplicate by a team of licensed health care professionals. Evaluators chose “which response was better” and judged both “the quality of information provided” (very poor, poor, acceptable, good, or very good) and “the empathy or bedside manner provided” (not empathetic, slightly empathetic, moderately empathetic, empathetic, and very empathetic). Mean outcomes were ordered on a 1 to 5 scale and compared between chatbot and 

physicians.

Results

Of the 195 questions and responses, evaluators preferred chatbot responses to physician responses in 78.6% (95% CI, 75.0%-81.8%) of the 585 evaluations. Mean (IQR) physician responses were significantly shorter than chatbot responses (52 [17-62] words vs 211 [168-245] words; t = 25.4; P < .001). Chatbot responses were rated of significantly higher quality than physician responses (t = 13.3; P < .001). The proportion of responses rated as good or very good quality (≥ 4), for instance, was higher for chatbot than physicians (chatbot: 78.5%, 95% CI, 72.3%-84.1%; physicians: 22.1%, 95% CI, 16.4%-28.2%;). This amounted to 3.6 times higher prevalence of good or very good quality responses for the chatbot. Chatbot responses were also rated significantly more empathetic than physician responses (t = 18.9; P < .001). The proportion of responses rated empathetic or very empathetic (≥4) was higher for chatbot than for physicians (physicians: 4.6%, 95% CI, 2.1%-7.7%; chatbot: 45.1%, 95% CI, 38.5%-51.8%; physicians: 4.6%, 95% CI, 2.1%-7.7%). This amounted to 9.8 times higher prevalence of empathetic or very empathetic responses for the chatbot.

Conclusions

In this cross-sectional study, a chatbot generated quality and empathetic responses to patient questions posed in an online forum. Further exploration of this technology is warranted in clinical settings, such as using chatbot to draft responses that physicians could then edit. Randomized trials could assess further if using AI assistants might improve responses, lower clinician burnout, and improve patient outcomes.

Defensive Gun Uses By People Legally Carrying Guns

 From the Crime Prevention Research Center.

33 cases of defensive gun use.

Here is the link.

A good autobiography by a pilot

 Title: Dancing with the Devil

Author: Dexter Cox

Link to Amazon.com

This book provides great perspective about flying - and people. In particular, the various engine out experiences and the sometimes idiocy by rich people who own jets - and their pilots - are particularly insightful.

Lightening strikes thrice: lessons from one officer’s shootings

 Massad Ayoob at American Handgunner.

A good perspective on the risks of law enforcement.

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Situation: Over a span of years, a lawman is forced to fire at three violent, armed criminals.

Lesson: Action beats reaction, so you must be committed to reacting immediately. The more intelligence you can gather before a confrontation, the better. And sometimes, the way your department treats you can be more traumatic than the incident itself.

I met Richard Rippy when I was an expert witness working for the defense in the United States v. Richard Palmer case. It was a Federal criminal case against a Lake County, Fla., sheriff’s deputy charged in a furtive movement shooting. Rippy had been the accused officer’s firearms and deadly force instructor. His input had been pivotal in allowing a defense team led by Attorneys Alan Diamond and Kepler Funk to win a total acquittal. Rippy had helped us to establish that in a dangerous incident in the darkness, Palmer had done what he had been trained to do, and what he had been trained was in keeping with best practices.

In the course of preparing for the case, I learned Rippy himself had been involved in three fatal line-of-duty shootings during his own 32 years of service, first as a municipal police officer with the City of Eustis, Fla., from which he retired as a sergeant and then with the Lake County, Fla. Sheriff’s Office, retiring for good with the rank of lieutenant in 2019. I suspected his experiences would impart valuable lessons to our readers. That turned out to be the correct assessment.
Background

As a young U.S. Marine, Rippy had gone through Primary Marksmanship Instructor School. When he left the USMC to enter domestic law enforcement in 1987, he joined the 25-man police department of the City of Eustis in Lake County, Fla. It was policy that an officer had to serve on the job for years before being considered as an instructor, but his USMC background earned him a waiver, and he was soon a police firearms instructor, taking every advanced course he could find.

He started out with the department issue service revolver, S&W’s Model 19 .357 Combat Magnum. In 1991 Eustis PD joined the rest of the nation in the switch to the semi-automatic service pistol, and he was issued a 16-shot .40 caliber GLOCK 22. Shortly after that transition, the GLOCK would be used in his first officer-involved shooting.

Madman With A Knife

December 23, 1991, 7:47 p.m. Rippy is one of several officers dispatched to a call at an apartment complex. A citizen has reported an emotionally disturbed person has been shaking people down in the hallways with a large knife. Lt. Mike Whittaker, the watch commander, leads Rippy and Officers Joel Tart and Jeff Breedlove to the top of the stairs in time to see the suspect running toward them.

The man ducks into an apartment, from which the legitimate resident emerges on crutches moments later, shouting, “He’s got a knife!”
Hoping he can reason with the suspect, the lieutenant leads from the front as the officers make entry, single file, with Rippy second in line behind the lieutenant. Passing through a narrow hallway into the living room, Breedlove flanks to the left behind their leader and Rippy to the right.

And suddenly, the knife-wielder is coming toward them. Rippy, thoroughly familiar with Dennis Tueller’s research proving the average adult male can close seven yards with a knife in a second and a half, instantly realizes the maniac is way too close to the lieutenant, who attempts to backpedal to create distance. But the lieutenant’s rearward path is blocked by a coffee table, and he loses his balance, and the six-foot, 200-lb. assailant is barely more than a step away from him, lunging with the big knife upraised in an icepick hold.

The room erupts into gunfire.

Rippy’s GLOCK is in a two-handed Weaver stance, and he is looking over the top of the pistol, not trying to aim, as he unleashes four rapid shots. Breedlove is firing also. The knifeman collapses before he can reach the lieutenant.

The officers secure the blood-soaked would-be cop killer and attempt first aid, but it proves useless. Rippy’s 165-grain jacketed hollow points have hit “center mass,” and a bullet from Breedlove’s G22 has destroyed the thumb of the knife hand. The deceased, John Lemberg, turns out to have no criminal record but a long history of serious mental health issues.

It was over for Lemberg but not for Rippy. He would remember later, “We didn’t have a lot of officer-involved shootings back then, and the department didn’t have a protocol in place. We were placed on administrative leave. FDLE (Florida Department of Law Enforcement) investigated the shooting and we were cleared by them and even by the Grand Jury. During that time, they sent us for psychological evaluations. They told me I had failed without telling me why and the department didn’t seem to know what to do. Finally, they sent me for a second psych eval, and I was told I had passed. I was finally back at work after being out on leave for two months and never having been told why I hadn’t passed the first evaluation.”

Murderer With A 9mm

March 11, 1996, 5:11 a.m. It has been a busy few shifts in Eustis and surrounding areas. There have been too many BOLOs (Be On the Lookout) alerts for all the officers to read, but Rippy has learned that earlier in the night, another officer had taken a burglary report that sounded more like a drug rip-off. Later the department received an anonymous tip that the suspect was at the Caramar Hotel in Eustis. Rippy is one of the officers who responds.

The plan is a “knock and talk.” When the hotel room door opens, Rippy is surprised to see not a stereotyped “drug thug” but a well-groomed black man about 5’10” and 170 lbs. wearing a suit and tie. The cop’s first impression is “preacher or businessman” and he wonders if the tip was bogus.

He does not know he is face to face with Derrek Williams, who has come to the city to do a burglary and rob people of drugs. Moreover, Williams has done a carjacking in nearby Lakeland in which he has shot and killed an elderly man and woman and has shot and wounded another victim in a drug transaction not far away in Leesburg.

And Williams is carrying a loaded S&W 5906 9mm under his impeccable suit.

Out of habit, Rippy politely asks Williams if he could put his hands on the dresser so the officer can pat him down. The unexpected response is, “I’ve been doing drugs tonight.” Rippy responds placatingly, “I’m not concerned about that.” A seemingly compliant Williams places his hands on the dresser as told.

As Rippy’s hands go to Williams’ waistband, so, suddenly, do the suspect’s own hands. And the killer explodes into movement, spinning to his right, away from Rippy — and coming up with the silver-colored semiautomatic. The muzzle of the S&W is at Rippy’s forehead in an instant. He is staring down the barrel. And he sees Williams’ finger pull the trigger.

There is no shot. Rippy explodes into defensive action, shoving Williams away from him and reaching for his own pistol. Williams turns and runs toward the bathroom. Rippy follows his GLOCK up now, firing. The gunman disappears into the bathroom.

Rippy hears the “tap-rack” sound of his deadly opponent manipulating his pistol and then a single muffled gunshot and a thud.
It is over almost as quickly as it began. Derrek Williams has shot himself in the head. His death was instantaneous.

Reconstruction would show the would-be cop killer had apparently been nervously manipulating his pistol earlier in the evening, taking the loaded magazine in and out of the 9mm. The Model 5906, like all commercially sold third-generation S&W auto pistols, had a magazine disconnector safety that would not allow the chambered round to fire unless the magazine was fully seated. When Williams pulled the trigger on Rippy, the magazine had not been locked into place. That saved Rippy’s life.

Rippy was shocked to discover none of his bullets hit the offender. He fired while both men were running. He had not tried to use his sights because he hadn’t thought there was time.

Once again, the investigation showed the officer had acted properly, but the department’s psych eval came back saying Rippy had failed. He would tell American Handgunner years later, “They never told me why I had failed. I was asking myself, ‘Do they have some preconception of what I’m supposed to say, and I’m not saying it? Do they think I’m being too matter-of-fact about it?’ I did what I had to do, and I told them so. I had a conversation with the department, was told I was cleared to come back to work, and that was that.”

Abuser With A .45

Rippy had transferred from Eustis PD to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office, a larger agency headquartered in Tavares, Fla., employing more than 500 sworn personnel. LCSO issued the same service pistol, the G22, but with 180-grain jacketed hollow point .40 S&W ammunition.
August 26, 2011, 5:01 p.m. William Hall, a ruggedly built blond-haired white guy weighing about 185 lbs., has barely been out of prison after serving a drug-related sentence when his wife calls in a domestic abuse complaint. Rippy and other deputies determine Hall has gone to a neighbor’s house.

As they approach the dwelling, Hall unexpectedly emerges. Rippy can see the man is holding a 1911 pistol to his own head as he approaches the deputies. Rippy draws his GLOCK and yells at him repeatedly to drop the gun.

The distance closes quickly. Rippy shouts a final command to drop the gun.

Instead, Hall swings the pistol down and points it at Rippy.

The lawman fires first. Two-handed, point shoulder rather than aim, indexed on center mass. The bullets strike the center torso, and Hall falls heavily to his side, down before he can trigger what turns out to be a Springfield .45. Hall will not survive.

It is over, just that quickly. More than a decade after this, his last shooting, the retired lieutenant will tell American Handgunner, “I’m sure it was a suicide by cop. I couldn’t let him get any closer. We were five to seven yards apart when I shot him. The Sheriff’s Office had a better protocol than the city did when I worked there. FDLE conducted the investigation, and it was also cleared by the State’s Attorney’s Office. This time, there was no psych eval, though LCSO encouraged us to seek psychological counseling if we wanted it.”

Lessons

Most law enforcement officers will go their careers without having to fire their duty weapons at anyone. But obviously, most is not all. When we outsiders analyze these cases, we learn a lot. One thing we learn is that the involved officer himself is a priceless resource for lessons because no one will have thought about it so much as the individual who lived through it. Given his extensive training and experience as an instructor, Rick Rippy is positioned to provide particularly valuable insights into the three fatal shootings he personally experienced.

Proximity can be deadly. In each of these three shootings, a call for service brought Rippy and his brother officers to the scene, and in each case, the perpetrator’s actions “closed the gap.” Action beats reaction. The offender gets to be the actor and forces you to be the reactor. The closer he gets, the less time you have in which to react. This means you must be committed beforehand to look for and react appropriately to deadly stimuli — if this, then that! In each case, Rippy’s ability to do so saved his own life and the lives of other officers present. It is a lesson he has emphasized to the many officers he trained throughout his long career.

Those who may face homicidal criminals need to be familiar with the physio-psychological aspects of violent encounters. In every one of his shootings, Rippy experienced tachypsychia, the sense of things happening in slow motion. The word translates to “the speed of the mind.” As our brain goes into a hyper-speed survival mode, processing input much faster than usual, it creates that sense of slow motion. Says Rippy, “I always felt things slow down. I felt anxiety going into the call; then, in all three of them, it was like slow-motion movies. In all of them, though, it was a matter of two to four seconds.” Having been trained that this might happen, Instructor Rippy was not distracted when it did, and he stayed focused on what he needed to do to solve the lethal problems he was facing.

“You can’t read enough; you can’t train enough. Don’t take it for granted that you’re going to go home,” Rippy wants you to know. “If you don’t educate yourself on current trends, you’re making a mistake.”

Gather as much intelligence as possible beforehand about the situation you may be entering. Says Rippy, “After the Williams incident, in particular, I kicked myself for not having found the time to read the BOLOs. It would have given me warning that we might be going up against a multiple murderer, not just a burglary suspect.”

Train for worst-case shooting problems. Note that when he stood in place and delivered fire, Rippy had a high hit ratio and quickly stopped the fights, but when he had to run while shooting at a running man, he missed. It’s harder to hit a moving target than a standing one. It’s harder to hit a standing target when you are moving than when you are standing still. When you and the target are both moving, as in the Williams shooting, the marksmanship element becomes exponentially more difficult, even for expert shooters like Rippy.

Prepare for post-traumatic issues. Post-event symptoms such as insomnia due to adrenaline dump are virtually universal. Remember so-called “post-shooting trauma” is less a reaction to your having to shoot a criminal than it is your reaction to how your world has treated you for doing it. Rippy told me, “After the first one, I had insomnia bad. A lot of that was the anxiety of not knowing what the department was going to do. It’s not normal if you don’t replay it in your head. It helps train you for a future situation. Taking a life is not exactly a normal thing.”

Consideration must be given to the person who was forced to shoot. The failure of not one but two psychologists to tell the involved officer why he “flunked the psych test” is almost unforgivable. Such evaluations must be objective, not subjective; those doing the evaluations must be cross-trained by such organizations as the Force Science Institute to understand the unique ramifications of having been forced to kill in defense of self and other innocent parties.

Consider legal aftermaths. Rippy’s last two shootings were so obviously justifiable neither criminal nor civil liability evolved. In the first shooting, the estate of the deceased sued the department, resulting in a “chump change settlement” of $35,000, but at least the City of Eustis explained to Rippy they settled because it was cheaper than going to trial and winning. This was cold comfort to the involved officer, who understandably thought the settlement was a slap in his face.

And one more often-overlooked consideration. When Rick Rippy retired, he had severe hearing loss. While some might associate this with a lifetime of being a firearms instructor, Rick feels at least part of it was having had to fire a gun repeatedly in close quarters without hearing protection in the line of duty. He notes, “They give us all kinds of documented physical evaluations when we come on ‘The Job,’ but not usually a hearing test. Thus, the officer has no baseline to show how much hearing he or she lost in the line of duty.”

Let us close by thanking retired Lieutenant Richard Rippy for his many years of service and for the insights he has shared with American Handgunner’s readers.

Richard Feynman: Fire

 Here is the link.

Richard Feynman: On religion

 Here is the link.

The Unbearable Whiteness of Being

 Here is an article at quillette.com written by Lawrence Krauss.

Lawrence Krauss is a theoretical physicist.

Here is a link to the article. The text follows.

The real pandemic is the current cultural insanity that knows no bounds.

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A little over a year ago, I tweeted about what seemed to be a ludicrous article that had just been published in the prestigious physics journal Physics Education Review (a Physical Review journal) titled “Observing whiteness in introductory physics: A case study” (Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res. 18, 010119 (2022)). The article claimed, among other things, that the use of whiteboards was an example of “whiteness” in physics. It seemed so silly that when I wrote about it again a month later in a Substack post, I stated that when I had first read it, I thought it was a spoof paper written by Peter Boghossian or one of his colleagues, to see whether this kind of content could now make it through the refereeing process today, even in hard science publications.

I wasn’t alone, and the paper generated a reasonably large negative outcry from the physics community, so much so that the journal Physical Review Physics Education Research (PRPER) felt the need to publish an editorial defending the article, arguing that “advancing equity is critical for physics.” In response to the current of negative responses, they added, “The Physical Review invites constructive and respectful criticism of published articles in the form of Comments.” (Comments are short articles published in the journal that respond to previously published articles.)

But that wasn’t enough. The American Physical Society, which publishes Physical Review, went much further. On the back page of their monthly APSNews (The Back Page) in May, titled “Productive scientific discourse demands respect,” the editors stated, “we condemn the highly inappropriate and harassing emails and social media responses to the paper, some of which appear to have little basis in the content of the article.” They then issued a threat: “The APS Ethics Committee regularly reviews and responds to allegations of harassment and related misconduct. In some cases, these behaviors may lead to the revocation of APS awards, prizes, leadership positions, and/or disqualify candidates from consideration. Individuals who violate the APS Code of Conduct may be excluded from participation in APS meetings.” As a palliative, they reprinted the statement from Physical Review inviting “respectful” Comments.

Shortly after that, several physicists wrote to the authors of the APSNews piece, including the then APS president, Frances Hellman, expressing concerns about its tone, which seemed to suggest that any discussion of the paper on social media would be interpreted as harassment, and questioning whether a Comment in PRPER was an appropriate forum for fully discussing the paper. Their objection notwithstanding, the APS president nevertheless urged them to submit an article to Physical Review for publication as a Comment, which they then agreed to do. But what eventuated is like something out of Joseph Heller’s novel Catch-22.

In June, four physicists from Los Alamos National Laboratory and Cal Poly Pomona submitted a Comment for publication. As per normal procedure, the journal sent this Comment to the original authors to review.

A month later, the original authors had not yet responded, which is somewhat unusual. The Comment was then sent by the journal to two referees, both of whom wrote reports, one of which was longer than the Comment itself. In response to these reports, the editor rejected the Comment on the grounds that it was “framed from the perspective of a research paradigm that is different from the one of the research being critiqued.”

This is a remarkable statement. Essentially, the editor’s rejection implied that while the Comment was written from a scientific framework, the PRPER article, despite being funded by the National Science Foundation, was not. Yet, somehow, this fact had not disqualified the original article from being published in PRPER in the first place. Moreover, it also effectively immunized it against scientific criticisms in a scientific journal! It is worth noting that neither of the referees who had rejected the Comment addressed any of the technical issues it raised about problems with the methodology described in the original article.

The authors of the Comment were undaunted, however. They contacted the authors of the APSNews Back Page article, including the APS president, complaining that despite the fact that the PRPER editorial, the Back Page article, and the APS president all indicated that the appropriate forum for discussion was through Comments, this forum was not being made available by PRPER.

The APS president suggested that the Comment authors appeal the editor’s decision. The authors then submitted a formal appeal to the PRPER’s editor-in-chief, who sent it on to an editorial board member and one of the original referees. However, the appeal was rejected, and the claim that a scientific critique was not appropriate for a non-scientific paper was upheld.

Finally, as a last-ditch effort, they appealed the rejection to the editor-in-chief of all of Physical Review. He, too, rejected their appeal with the statement “the role of Comments in the Physical Review is to refute or correct specific results in the articles upon which they are focused. In this case, your Comment was a broader commentary on the nature of all studies conducted like those in the original article. For that reason, I do not believe that your concerns should appear in this context.”

At no time did any of the editors or referees address any of the scientific or technical details in the Comment itself. Rather, all parties at the APS and Physical Review argued that scientific analysis could not be used to critique papers that weren’t scientific—even though, presumably, all papers that appear in PRPER should, by definition, be scientific.

In their appeal, the Comment’s authors had tried to circumvent this ridiculous inversion of logic by arguing that even if the original paper did not use scientific paradigms, there was significant value in using a scientific paradigm to critique it in order to highlight possible weaknesses or problems with the original argument. Even that didn’t fly.

In a masterstroke of suppression of speech, the American Physical Society and Physical Review have together devised a strategy to ensure negative comments about this paper cannot appear officially anywhere in print. The American Physical Society decided that The Back Page was not an appropriate place to write a critique, because only scientific critiques were deemed sufficiently respectful, and those should be published as Comments in Physical Review. Physical Review, in turn, decided that a scientific critique of the paper was not appropriate for publication because the original paper wasn’t scientific.

This is what I meant by the Physical Review version of Catch-22. If you critique the scientific basis of a paper claiming that “White Privilege” exists in physics teaching, then you are being scientific; but if you are being scientific, you cannot critique a non-scientific paper!

Out of frustration, the Comment’s authors have posted their paper to the public physics archive, along with a history of its attempted publication.

What is unfortunate about this bit of nonsense is that Physical Review serves as a sort of officially sanctioned scientific archive in Physics. When a (flawed) paper that suggests “White Privilege” is endemic in physics teaching is published in Physical Review without any subsequent refutation, this gives additional ammunition to those who, without an otherwise firm scientific basis, continue to try to paint Physics as systemically racist.

America’s State Media

 Jonathan Turley assesses the current state of the mainstream media.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University

It goes beyond the media. Thanks to our educational system, the elites, and too many non-think citizens, our society no longer has much integrity.

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America’s State Media: The Blackout on Biden Corruption is Truly “Pulitzer-level Stuff”

Below is my column in The Hill on the continued media blackout on evidence of influence peddling and corrupt practices by the Biden family. The coverage of the recent disclosure of dozens of LLCs and bank accounts used to funnel up to $10 million to Biden family members captured the growing concerns over a de facto state media in the United States. Under the current approach to journalism, it is the New York Times that receives a Pulitzer for a now debunked Russian collusion story rather than the New York Post for a now proven Hunter Biden laptop story.

Here is the column:

This week, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) tried to do the impossible. After he and his colleagues presented a labyrinth of LLC shell companies and accounts used to funnel as much as $10 million to Biden family members, Donalds tried to induce the press to show some interest in the massive corruption scandal. “For those in the press, this easy pickings & Pulitzer-level stuff right here,” he pleaded.

The response was virtually immediate. Despite showing nine Biden family members allegedly receiving funds from corrupt figures in Romania, China and other countries, The New Republic quickly ran a story headlined “Republicans Finally Admit They Have No Incriminating Evidence on Joe Biden.”

For many of us, it was otherworldly. A decade ago, when then-Vice President Joe Biden was denouncing corruption in Romania and Ukraine and promising action by the United States, massive payments were flowing to his son Hunter Biden and a variety of family members, including Biden grandchildren.

Last year, I wrote a column about how the media were preparing a difficult “scandal implosion” to protect the Bidens and themselves from the backlash from disclosures of this influence peddling operation.

The brilliance of the Biden team was that it invested the media in this scandal at the outset by burying the laptop story as “Russian disinformation” before the election. That was, of course, false, but it took two years for most major media outlets to admit that the laptop was authentic.

But the media then ignored what was on that “authentic laptop.” Hundreds of emails detailed potentially criminal conduct and raw influence peddling in foreign countries.

When media outlets such as the New York Post confirmed the emails, the media then insisted that there was no corroboration of the influence peddling payments and no clear proof of criminal conduct. It entirely ignored the obvious corruption itself.

Now that the House has released corroboration in actual money transfers linking many in the Biden family, the media is insisting that this is no scandal because there is not directly proof of payments to Joe Biden.

Putting aside that this is only the fourth month of an investigation, the media’s demand of a direct payment to President Biden is laughably absurd. The payments were going to his family, but he was the object of the influence peddling.

The House has shown millions of dollars going to at least nine Bidens like dividends from a family business. As a long-time critic of influence peddling among both Republicans and Democrats, I have never seen the equal of the Bidens.

The whole purpose of influence peddling is to use family members as shields for corrupt officials. Instead of making a direct payment to a politician, which could be seen as a bribe, you can give millions to his or her spouse or children.

Moreover, these emails include references to Joe Biden getting a 10 percent cut of one Chinese deal. It also shows Biden associates warning not to use Joe Biden’s name but to employ code names like “the Big Guy.” At the same time, the president and the first lady are referenced as benefiting from offices and receiving payments from Hunter.

Indeed, Hunter complains that his father is taking half of everything that he is raking in.

None of that matters. The New York Times ran a piece headlined, “House Republican Report Finds No Evidence of Wrongdoing by President Biden.” That is putting aside evidence against all the family members around Joe Biden. It also ignored that other evidence clearly shows Biden lied about this family not receiving Chinese funds or that he never had any knowledge of his son’s business dealings.

The fact is that the Times may indeed be trying for another Pulitzer Prize. The newspaper previously won a Pulitzer for the now debunked Russian collusion story. It was later revealed that this story was based on a dossier funded by the Clinton campaign and placed in the media by Clinton officials. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bob Woodward warned the co-winner The Washington Post that the story was unreliable but was ignored. The Pulitzer Committee refused to withdraw the award.

What Donalds fails to appreciate is that this is sometimes how Pulitzers are made. Roughly 100 years ago, New York Times reporter Walter Duranty won the Pulitzer for his coverage of the Soviet Union despite serving as an apologist for Joe Stalin. Duranty refused to report on actual conditions from mass killing to starvation in the “worker’s paradise.”

Thus, when the Soviets were starving to death as many as 10 million Ukrainians, the Times ran a Duranty story with the headline “Russians Hungry but Not Starving.” He not only spinned Stalin labor camps that killed millions but also attacked reporters who sought to uncover the truth.

Years later, Ukraine and various groups demanded that Duranty’s prize be rescinded, but the Committee insisted that there was no “clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception.”

What is most impressive about this week is that all but a few outlets seem to be angling for the next Duranty Pulitzer.

In discussing modern Russian propaganda, researchers at the Rand Corporation described it as having “two distinctive features: high numbers of channels and messages and a shameless willingness to disseminate partial truths or outright fictions.”

Sound familiar?

Today we are seeing a much more dangerous phenomenon. The coverage this week has all the markings of a state media. The consistent spin. The almost universal lack of details. The absurd distinctions.

It is the blindside of our First Amendment, which addresses the classic use of state authority to coerce and control media. It does not address a circumstance in which most of the media will maintain an official line out of by consent rather than coercion.

The media simply fails to see the story. Of course, it can always look to the president for enlightenment. Just before his son received a massive transfer of money from one of the most corrupt figures in Romania, Biden explained to that country why corruption must remain everyone’s focus. “Corruption is a cancer, a cancer that eats away at a citizen’s faith in democracy,” he said. “Corruption is just another form of tyranny.”

It is just a shame that no one wants to cover it.

Climate: IPCC AR6 - riddled with errors and biases

 From Judith Curry.

The report referred to can be found here.

JC's comment follows.

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CLINTEL’s critical evaluation of the IPCC AR6

Posted on May 13, 2023 by curryja | 22 Comments

by Judith Curry

Clintel has published a new report entitled “The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC: Analysis of the AR6.”

“The new Report provides an independent assessment of the most important parts of AR6. We document biases and errors in almost every chapter we reviewed. In some cases, of course, one can quibble endlessly about our criticism and how relevant it is for the overall ‘climate narrative’ of the IPCC. In some cases, though, we document such blatant cherry picking by the IPCC, that even ardent supporters of the IPCC should feel embarrassed.”

Climate Intelligence (CLINTEL) is an independent foundation that operates in the fields of climate change and climate policy. CLINTEL was founded in 2019 by emeritus professor of geophysics Guus Berkhout and science journalist Marcel Crok.

The CLINTEL Report is edited by Marcel Crok and Andy May, with contributions from Javier Vinos, Ross McKitrick, Ole Humlum, Nicola Scafetta, and Fritz Vahrenholt.

The Chapter topics are:

No confidence that the present is warmer than the mid-Holocene

The resurrection of the Hockey Stick

Measuring global surface temperature

Controversial Snow Trends

Accelerated sea level rise: not so fast

Why does the IPCC downplay the Sun?

Misty climate sensitivity

AR6: more confidence that models are unreliable

Extreme scenarios

A miraculous sea level jump in 2020

Hiding the good news on hurricanes and floods

Extreme views on disasters

Say goodbye to climate hell, welcome climate heaven

The key issue is this: the IPCC focuses on “dangerous anthropogenic climate change,” which leads to ignoring natural climate change, focusing on extreme emissions scenarios, and cherry picking the time periods and the literature to make climate change appear “dangerous.”

“The IPCC ignored crucial peer-reviewed literature showing that normalised disaster losses have decreased since 1990 and that human mortality due to extreme weather has decreased by more than 95% since 1920. The IPCC, by cherry picking from the literature, drew the opposite conclusions, claiming increases in damage and mortality due to anthropogenic climate change.”

With regards to IPCC AR6’s error ridden assessment of extreme weather events, see also this analysis by Roger Pielke Jr that demonstrated egregious errors in incorrectly reporting the conclusions from papers that were actually cited by the IPCC.

With regards to ignoring natural climate variability, Chapters 1 (mid-Holocene), 2 (Hockey Stick) and 6 (the sun) are excellent.

I’ve looked at the AR6 WGI Report fairly thoroughly, focusing mainly on specific material that was relevant for my new book Climate Uncertainty and Risk. I am familiar with nearly all of the issues raised in the CLINTEL Report, but the material in Chapters 2 (Hockey Stick) and 4 (snow trends) was new to me. The next section focuses on the Hockey Stick.

Zombie Hockey Stick

Shortly after publication of AR6 WGI, I spotted some comments in twitter regarding the resurrection of the Hockey Stick. After wondering “what fresh new Hockey Stick hell is this?”, I didn’t investigate further.

Well the Clintel Report did the work for me. Subtitle for Chapter 2:

“A big surprise in the new IPCC report is the publication of a brand new hockey stick. The IPCC once again has to cherry pick and massage proxy data in order to fabricate it. Studies that show larger natural climate variations are ignored.”

Excerpts from the Chapter:

<begin quotes>

The PAGES 2k group is specialised in climate reconstructions and back in 2013 was comprised of the majority of all active paleoclimatologists. The PAGES 2k Consortium (2013) published a reconstruction in which parts of the first millennium were occasionally as warm as present-day

In 2019, PAGES 2k published a new version of the temperature development of the past 2000 years (PAGES 2k Consortium, 2019)11. Surprisingly, it differed greatly from the predecessor version. Even though the database had only mildly changed, the pre-industrial part was now suddenly nearly flat again. The hockey stick was reborn.

The new hockey stick was immediately incorporated into the AR6 report (IPCC, 2021). Among the lead authors of AR6 chapter 2 is Darrell S. Kaufman who is a co-author of the new hockey stick in the PAGES 2k Consortium (2019). This is probably not a coincidence.

Evidence suggests that a significant part of the original PAGES 2k researchers could not technically support the new hockey stick and seem to have left the group in dispute. Meanwhile, the dropouts published a competing temperature curve with significant pre-industrial temperature variability (Büntgen et al., 2020). On the basis of thoroughly verified tree rings, the specialists were able to prove that summer temperatures had already reached today’s levels several times in the pre-industrial past. However, the work of Ulf Büntgen and colleagues was not included in the IPCC report, although it was published well before the editorial deadline.

Like its predecessor, the new hockey stick by PAGES 2k 2019 is based on a large variety of proxy types and includes a large number of poorly documented tree ring data. In many cases, the tree rings‘ temperature sensitivity is uncertain. For example, both PAGES 2k Consortium (2013) and PAGES 2k Consortium (2019) used tree ring series from the French Maritime Alps, even though tree ring specialists had previously cautioned that they are too complex to be used as overall temperature proxies.

In contrast, Büntgen et al. (2020) were more selective, relied on one type of proxy (in this case tree rings) and validated every tree ring data set individually. Their temperature composite for the extra-tropical northern hemisphere differs greatly from the studies that use bulk tree ring input.

In some cases, PAGES 2k composites have erroneously included proxies that later turned out to reflect hydroclimate and not temperature. In other cases, outlier studies have been selected in which the proxies exhibit an anomalous evolution that cannot be reproduced in neighbouring sites (e.g. MWP data from Pyrenees and Alboran Sea in PA13). Outliers can have several reasons, e.g. a different local development, invalid or unstable temperature proxies, or sample contamination.

Steve McIntyre has studied the PAGES 2k proxy data base in great detail and summarized his criticism in a series of blog posts on his website Climate Audit. For example, the PAGES 2k Consortium (2019) integrated a tree ring chronology from northern Pakistan near Gilgit (“Asia_207”) which shows an extreme closing uptick. Incorporation of data series like this strongly promote the hockey stick geometry of the resulting temperature composite. McIntyre analysed the original tree ring data and found that the steep uptick in the Asia_207 chronology is the result of questionable data processing. When calculating the site chronology using the rcs function from Andy Bunn’s dplR package, the uptick surprisingly disappears. In fact, the series declines over the 20th century.

Conclusion: The resurrected hockey stick of AR6 shows how vulnerable the IPCC process is to scientific bias. Cherry picking, misuse of the peer review process, lack of transparency, and likely political interference have led to a gross misrepresentation of the pre-industrial temperature evolution.

<end quotes>

JC reflections

The CLINTEL Report provides a much needed critical evaluation and intellectual counterpoint to the IPCC AR6.

There is a lot of good material in the AR6 WG1 Report, but there is also a lot of cherry picking and flat out errors in the Report (the AR6 WG2 Report is just flat out bad). With any kind of serious review, or if the author teams have been sufficiently diverse, we would not see so many of these kinds of errors. Unfortunately, the IPCC defines “diversity” in terms of gender, race and developed versus underdeveloped countries; actual diversity of thought and perspective is dismissed in favor of promoting the politically mandated narrative from the UN.

The consensus disease that that was caught by the IPCC following publication of the First Assessment Report in 1990, combined with pressures from policy makers, is resulting in documents that don’t reflect the broad disagreement and uncertainties on these complex topics. The IPCC’s mandated narrative has become very stale. Worse yet, it is becoming increasingly irrelevant to policy making by continuing to focus on extreme emissions scenarios and the embarrassing cherry picking that is required to support the “climate crisis” narrative that is so beloved by UN officials.

In any event, UN-driven climate policy has moved well past any moorings in climate science, even the relatively alarming version reported by the IPCC. The insane policies and deadlines tied to greenhouse gas emissions are simply at odds with the reality of our understanding of climate change and the uncertainties, and with broader considerations of human well being.

Advocacy Journalism is alive and well in the media and academia

 Jonathan Turley gets it right again.

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“Maybe Its Just Me.” CNN Political Analyst and Brio White House Correspondent Repeats False Whipping Claim

April Ryan, CNN political analyst and White House correspondent for The Brio, has long been known for raw political statements in press conferences. She is an example of the “advocacy journalism” movement that is sweeping the industry with the rejection of “objectivity” as a core value. Nevertheless, she has been repeatedly honored by the media, including her selection as “Journalist of the Year” by the National Association of Black Journalists. That brand of journalism was on display yesterday when Ryan shocked many by repeating the proven false allegation against border agents accused of whipping migrants.

Ryan was repeating a false story from 2021 that has been debunked over and over again. The media went into a frenzy over a false story accusing mounted officers of whipping undocumented migrants near Del Rio, Texas, on Sept. 19, 2021.

A photographer captured the scene, which showed agents using bridle reins to guide their skittish horses. The entire videotape clearly shows the agents using the reins on their mounts, not on the migrants. Not only did the photographer quickly deny seeing any officers whip migrants, the videotape clearly refuted that allegation. However, for many in politics and the media it did not matter because it played into a racial-justice claim of the “whipping (of) Haitian asylum seekers.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) condemned “the inappropriate use of what appear to be whips by Border Patrol officers on horseback to intimidate migrants.” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) decried “images of inhumane treatment of Haitian migrants by Border Patrol — including the use of whips.” Vice President Kamala Harris emoted on “The View” about how the brutality “invoked images of some of the worst moments of our history, where that kind of behavior has been used against the Indigenous people of our country, it has been used against African Americans during times of slavery.” Reps. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) described the incident as “worse than what we witnessed in slavery” and “white supremacist behavior.”

President Biden rushed to express his own revulsion and rage, too: “It was horrible what — to see, as you saw — to see people treated like they did: horses nearly running them over and people being strapped. It’s outrageous. I promise you, those people will pay.”

At the time, some of us objected that the president had, once again, declared the guilt of accused persons without evidence or investigation. The possible innocence of these officers simply did not matter to the president or to many in the press.

Despite being tasked with an investigation, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas joined the condemnations of the agents, saying that their conduct “defies all of the values that we seek to instill in our people.” He then promised swift justice with an investigation that would take “days, not weeks” — yet the investigation dragged on for months.

The Administration delayed the results of the findings but eventually admitted that there was no such whipping. It still said it would punish the agents for other violations in what some of us viewed as a face-saving measure for President Biden.

The media quickly gave grudging acknowledgment that it had pushed another false story and moved on. But not Ryan. After all, why should media and government investigations block a false story when it advances a useful narrative?

U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was discussing the surge of migrants at the border when Ryan offered a signature moment in asserting that agents were found to be “whipping” Haitian migrants crossing the U.S. southern border in 2021.

Even Mayorkas, who joined the mob in presuming the guilt of the agents, balked at the fact that Ryan was repeating an allegation that colleagues now admitted was absolutely false.

Ryan stated “the southern border is not just Mexicans. It is Haitians, it’s Africans, as we have seen, particularly with that issue with the Haitians being whipped with the reins on the horses.”

Mayorkas gently noted that Ryan was repeating a known false story: “Well, let me just correct you right there because actually the investigation concluded that the whipping did not occur.”

Ryan appears incensed and stated “I’m sorry, I saw it differently. They were whipped with something from the horse – reins from the horse. Maybe either the video or picture was fixed, but what I saw was totally different. I’m sorry.”

Mayorkas again noted “Yeah, I’m gonna leave you as corrected.”

Ryan did not back down. It appears that facts have become entirely immaterial to media coverage.

After going back and researching, Ryan again told her readers that the whipping occurred, posting a photo from the 2021 encounter, saying, “Maybe its [sic] just me but!”

She followed with two other tweets, one posting another photo, with her own caption, “And one more the reign is how close or on the person?” She subsequently retweeted herself to cast aspersions on the federal investigation and claim, “Oh let me post this again especially after a White House official just told me they question the report too.”

It is the ultimate example of this universal shift toward advocacy journalism (including at journalism schools).

Recently, the conclusions of a large survey of over 75 media leaders were announced by former executive editor for The Washington Post Leonard Downie Jr. and former CBS News President Andrew Heyward. Objectivity was rejected as reactionary and even harmful. Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle said it plainly: “Objectivity has got to go.”

Downie recounted how news leaders today

“believe that pursuing objectivity can lead to false balance or misleading “bothsidesism” in covering stories about race, the treatment of women, LGBTQ+ rights, income inequality, climate change and many other subjects. And, in today’s diversifying newsrooms, they feel it negates many of their own identities, life experiences and cultural contexts, keeping them from pursuing truth in their work.”

There was a time when all journalists shared a common “identity” as professionals who were able to separate their own bias and values from the reporting of the news. Objectivity is now virtually synonymous with prejudice. Kathleen Carroll, former executive editor at the Associated Press declared “It’s objective by whose standard? … That standard seems to be White, educated, and fairly wealthy.”

While outfits like NPR allow reporters to actually participate in protests and the New York Times sheds conservative opinions, the new poll shows that the level of trust in the media is in an all-time low. However, it does not matter. It remains professionally advantageous to dispense with objectivity in the cause for social justice.

So The Brio’s audience will continue to receive the false story as the better story of what occurred on the border.

However, Ryan can be assured after her latest tweet, It is not “just her.”

NB: For full disclosure, Ryan teaches at George Washington University, where I also teach.

Richard Feynman: Why?

 Here is the link.

Blinken is Biden his time on Afghanistan

 Jonathan Turley updates us on Blinken and Biden and Afghanistan.

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The House of Representatives and the Biden Administration appear in a staring contest waiting for any sign of Blinken.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) warned Secretary of State Antony Blinken that the House Foreign Affairs Committee is moving to hold him in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with subpoena requests related to the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

There is no question that the Committee has a legitimate oversight interest in the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan at a huge loss of life, abandonment of thousands of allies, and seven billion dollars in military equipment. The committee specifically wants to review a full copy of a dissent cable that had been signed by nearly two dozen State Department officials warning Blinken of a Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan a month before the terrorist group’s takeover occurred.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the cable undermines the claims of the Biden Administration that it had no forewarning of the chaos that would unfold in the country.

The State Department has stonewalled the Committee, offering oral testimony and a summary while refusing to turn over the document. In his letter, McCaul warned that “the Department is now in violation of its legal obligation to produce these documents and must do so immediately.”

McCaul added that “It strains credulity to believe that the official responsible for preparing the cable summary and briefing Congress on it would be unable to provide this information.”

This has not been a great month for Blinken. He was earlier identified as the Biden campaign associate who “triggered” the infamous letter of 51 former intelligence officials claiming that the Hunter Biden laptop was likely “Russian disinformation.”

He was then named as a contact of Hunter Biden in the Obama Administration as part of an alleged influence peddling operation. (Blinken previously denied such contacts and was accused of lying under oath).

The withdrawal from Afghanistan has been condemned by Democrats and Republicans alike. Given the loss of lives and equipment (as well as the impact on U.S. standing), there could not be more obvious subject matter for congressional inquiry.

The question is whether Blinken and the Administration really want to test this in court. Attorney General Merrick Garland would likely decline to prosecute Blinken for contempt (despite his green lighting such prosecutions against former Trump officials), but the Congress could go to court to compel production.

The Biden Administration has racked up an impressive line of losses in court. It has already succeeded in looking like it wants to hide the document. If it is classified, it can be handled in a classified setting, but it should be produced rather than trigger a new fight over the separation of powers.

Academic repartee - 1

 Here is a link to a response by Ferguson and Hitzig to a critique of their paper "How to Get Rich Quick Using GAAP" by Sinha.

It was intended to be funny in addition to addressing the issues.

Here is a link to the original paper.

The original paper was intended to be amusing, too.

An efficient stock market? Ridiculous

 One of my early papers. You can tell that I like to be controversial, provocative, and funny.

Here is the link.

How to beat the market – 1

 Lots of people think that they can beat the market. The vast majority of them are deluded. Here is a link to a paper by Ed Thorp, a mathematics professor who beat the market for years.

Here is a link to the paper.

The New Ugly Americans

 Victor Davis Hanson is on target.

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The old cultural imperialism was supposedly greedy corporatism like Disneyland, McDonald’s, and Starbucks sprouting up worldwide to supplant local competitors.

But these businesses spread because they appealed to free-will consumer demand abroad. They were not imposed top down.

The U.S. presence in Afghanistan collapsed in August 2021 amid the greatest American military humiliation in modern history. A billion-dollar new embassy was abandoned. Hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of new infrastructure at the huge Bagram Airbase was dumped.

We still do not know how many billions of dollars of sophisticated new weapons were left to the Taliban and now are making their way through global terrorists’ marts.

Yet, in our skedaddle, the LGBTQ flag still flew high from our new Kabul embassy. A George Floyd mural was prominent on city streets.

And gender studies programs — to the tune of $787 million in American subsidies – were showcased at Kabul University, in one of the most conservative Islamic countries in the world.

Rainbow flags and Black Lives Matter banners have hung from our embassy in South Korea.

Such partisan cultural activism is a diplomatic first.

The woke Left has now weaponized the country’s diplomatic missions abroad to advance highly partisan and controversial agendas that can offend their hosts, and do not represent the majority of American voters at home.

American foreign policy toward other nations seems now to hinge on their positions on transgender people, LGBTQ promotion, abortion, climate change, and an array of woke issues from using multiple pronouns on passports to showcasing transgender ambassadors.

The Biden Administration in January 2022 stopped the EastMed pipeline. That joint effort of our allies Cyprus, Greece, and Israel sought to bring much needed clean-burning Mediterranean natural gas to southern Europe.

Apparently, our diplomats felt it violated our own New Green Deal orthodoxies. So we imperialists interfered to destroy a vital project of our closest allies.

The White House manifesto called the “National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality” offers a blueprint for how to massage nations abroad to accept our values that are increasingly at odds with much of the world’s.

Do Americans really believe that embracing drag-queen shows at military bases, abortion to the moment of birth, transgender men competing in women’s sports, and the promised effort to ban the internal combustion engine are effective ways to ensure good relations with the United States?

No wonder the Biden Administration’s new cultural imperialism is proving disastrous for a variety of reasons.

One, these imperialistic and chauvinistic agendas are pushed abroad at the very time the respect for the U.S. military is at an all-time low. It was humiliated in Afghanistan. It is now unable to recruit sufficient qualified soldiers. Its stocks of critical weapons are depleted.

The Pentagon leadership of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley, along with Joe Biden, do not radiate competence.

But they do exude woke pieties.

While we offend Middle East oil exporters and Central Europeans, China allies with Russia and Iran. India and Turkey triangulate away from the United States. Sanctimonious hectoring while appearing weak is a bad combination.

Two, these warped standards are incoherent. Is an abortion-on-demand, totalitarian China therefore an ally? How could we damn supposedly non-woke Saudi Arabia as we begged it to pump more of its non-green oil before the 2022 midterms?

Some of our most loyal allies are in Eastern Europe — Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Romania. These countries have experienced traumatic histories on the front lines against Islamic Ottoman expansionism, czarist and Soviet aggression, and German Nazi bullying and invasion.

They are democratic and pro-American. Yet they are now targeted by our woke imperialists because they remain steadfast as the most religious and traditional of our European allies.

Yet these nations would be more likely to dispatch credible forces for NATO’s defense than many of our left-wing, woke, and militarily less capable Western European nations.

Three, most of the 7.9 billion people in the world are not woke. They are aspiring to obtain a modicum of the luxury and affluence taken for granted in America.

The rest of the planet worries whether it will have enough food, energy, security, and shelter to live one more day. For most, the incessant, woke virtue-signaling from affluent Americans comes across as the whiny bullying of pampered, self-righteous — and increasingly neurotic — imperialists.

Four, traditionally the party that controls the State Department does not politically weaponize its embassies with wedge issues that have not won majority support among Americans.

Such abject politicalization rattles and alienates foreign nations. They do not want to be drawn into the American Left’s internal propaganda efforts that they know are bitterly controversial inside the United States.

How odd that those on the Left who in the past decried “American imperialism” are now proving the greatest imperialists of all.