Bill Nye Tries to Beam Light in Great Darkness

It seems like, for about a decade or so, Bill Nye has been on a lonely crusade. I've seen him popping up in random places on TV like CNN and National Geographic, trying to maintain energy, patience, enthusiasm and thoughtfulness with an unmistakable undercurrent of exhaustion at the aggressive persistence of scientific illiteracy among the public and the powerful.

Like many people my age, I remember him initially as Bill Nye the Science Guy, a quirky bow-tied entertainer in the 1990s with an engineering background trying to make science fascinating and fun for then-young people like me. I was not an avid viewer of his show, I seem to remember an episode or two being shown in my high school science classes and finding them entertaining to the extent I could given that I was sitting in a high school science classroom.

Bill has been doing more or less the same thing for the last decade or so, except he is more serious, as the problems he is addressing are incredibly serious, and he is trying to reach a broader and different audience, though due to the passage of time that audience includes many of the same people that it did in the 90s: pretty much everyone with the right to vote, Americans in particular. Yet, while the problems are very serious, he knows that engaging the voting layperson to care about and understand it all is hard. He continues to use his skills as a scientist and entertainer/public figure to spread scientific literacy about controversial issues.

His newest effort states its intention plainly: Bill Nye Saves the World. It barrels on the scene via Netflix, the massively popular medium of streaming entertainment, delivering ~25-minute episodes devoted to the big public issues in modern science. Episode 1 comes right out swinging on the biggest issue: climate change. The show sets Herculean goals: distill confoundingly complex problems into digestible, entertaining bits that fairly reflect the state of modern science.

The show, its host and his guests and sidekicks are at turns or simultaneously thoughtful (as is his panel discussing GMOs), whimsical (as is the guest-appearance by Zach Braff in the first episode devoted to climate change), odd (as is the song about panspermia), funny (as is the show's writer who comes out to speak "to my fellow Asians" about their proclivity for promoting alternative medicine, and report filed by a correspondent who visits a looney-tunes "sound therapy" office in San Francisco), confusing (as are a lot of explanations about what exactly NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab is trying to do on Mars- especially when they try to explain what exactly it would mean to "find life" and what even might define "life"- and its connection to panspermia), profound (when discussing the possibility of finding life on other planets), illuminating (the whole episode on GMOs), impassioned (nearly everything Bill says), awkward (some of the attempts at humor), awe-inspiring (the expert panel discussing climate change and the solutions that exist right now), and more.

Coming out in the same year that a poster boy for scientific illiteracy has taken the oath of office for President of the United States and is naming like-minded illiterates to the highest posts in the land, we need all the help we can get- and Bill Nye and Co.'s latest effort is most heartily welcome.

A Step Back From the Abyss

For several reasons I stepped away from this blog for most of April. I have been a rather obsessive consumer of the news since the November election and that and a number of more personal matters contributed to a deteriorating mental and emotional state with me.

I changed the name of the blog from Drumpf Diaries, inspired by a good suggestion from a friend which resonated with me. Drumpf is the focus of so much and it is nauseating. His place in the world and his personality seem to make the obsessive media focus on him inescapable. But the world and what is going on with it is way more than just Drumpf. I wanted to acknowledge that and the blog name change is in that spirit.

The new blog title is a feeble attempt at irony, in that the spirit of this blog has been an attempt to move away from strong opinions. It's the oldest Washington D.C. trope that we need get past bickering and listen to each other, reach across the aisle, whatever. Well, it might be true. The end of bipartisanship, and the end of intra-party factions and division is almost certainly an impossible utopia. Perhaps it is not to be a destination, but a journey. Getting past divisions is never something we arrive at permanently, but a constant direction to go.

I've found that those divisions, for me, feel like the most dispiriting and personally hurtful aspects of being an "activist," or at least someone who pays close attention to world affairs, invests in them emotionally, and wants to make a real positive difference. I have unfriended people I really like on facebook. I have gotten in angry text exchanges with family and friends- those exchanges (so common on social media) where it doesn't really feel like either of us are listening to each other, only enough to try to one-up each other as if it were a boxing match. I once said something that (unexpectedly, in my defense) made my normally very-level-headed and even-keeled wife cry and storm out of the room.

I have also had extremely cordial and respectful conversations on political issues with people who share almost none of my opinions. These are among the best moments of activism, where it feels like a real human connection is made across divides that are supposed to be impassable. Even when you don't change someone's mind, just humanizing yourself to the other person and humanizing them to you is fulfilling, which is a wonderful end in itself. It also often opens the door to "your side" which maybe someday they will then walk through, and you will have guided them there.

Or maybe you are wrong, will realize it, and can now walk through the door to join them.

So, anyway, while having opinions will persist, the new blog title is meant to inspire me to walk in the direction of thoughtfulness as much as possible, and hopefully encourage readers, if I ever have any, to do the same. It's also lifted from a line in Pulp Fiction.

My Heart is Full

My heart is full. For the last four days I have been paying about as little attention to the news as possible. I spent a lot of time with family and friends, I went out to eat, I saw a movie, I went to a concert, I watched a lot of sports on TV. My favorite sport, baseball, began its regular season today. Instead of reading deeply into the epic tragedies of today's world, in what spare time I had I immersed myself in preparing a fantasy baseball team. I had fun with my kids.

The emotional and psychological impact of staying informed and aware of the tragedies constantly befouling the earth sneaks up on me in ways I can't see until I am able to step away from it. I feel guilty stepping away from it. Stepping away is a privilege. The people of South Sudan, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Palestine, Somalia and Somaliland, and elsewhere... they can not step away from it. It is their existence. They need people to not step away or to look away.

But this is our reality. It has been created for us. Reading and listening to Noam Chomsky for almost two decades now has me aware that the distractions are all there because the American populace, and any world populace, is a powerful force when it awakens. It needs to be tamed and the constant distractions are good to tame us, to keep us from exercising our strength to change things for the better.

But this is the challenge. Psychologically, emotionally... it is so much easier to forget, to look away from the starving black child or the traumatized (or dead) Syrian child. To look towards them is to stare into the pit of a sense of individual powerlessness. Individually I can do nothing. Collectively, we could save them. We could take our minds, our creative energies, our dollars, our time... away from the concerts, the ballgames, the fantasy sports teams, the tv shows, the movies... we could redirect them towards food and shelter for the least of our brothers and sisters. Or we could redirect them towards creating an economic system that does not embed such criminal disparities in wealth.

To varying degrees, Americans and westerners in general choose to look away. Maybe it is not such a conscious decision, but we do. In this way we are complicit in the destruction.

So often when I try to speak out about important issues it feels like I am calling out into the darkness. Maybe this is a skewed perception created by social media, where my posts about climate change are met with crickets and tumbleweed, but a post about attending concerts with my daughter receives 70 likes and 20+ comments.  People talk about all kinds of personal problems among friends and at work, but we don't much talk about the 6th mass extinction in the world, or the civilization-threatening spectre of climate change, or what the U.N. is calling the greatest humanitarian crisis since World War II, all things that are part of the world right now. They are not part of polite conversation at the office. I can be having an emotionally difficult day as a result of reading about these things but I won't even tell my wife I am having those feelings, let alone my co-workers or my friends.

I don't know how to begin overcoming the stigma. I don't know how you psychologically prime people to turn away from the glitz and glamor and stare meaningfully at the abyss. When an earthquake destroyed Haiti, or a tsunami destroyed Indonesia, mass media gave the story to the west and we opened up our wallets to help. People are capable of helping. I guess it just seems like the right alarms are not sounding. I watched the NCAA Men's College Basketball Championship Game tonight and there was an ad for the local news- the stories it advertised were a turkey that somehow got into a family's house, and it was captured on home video, and how people are chosen to sing the national anthem at baseball games. This is supposed to the fucking news. There is a humanitarian crisis in Africa right now. Millions of children are at risk of starvation.

I don't know. My heart grows empty.

Drumpf Diary 3/27/17 - Medicare for All

With the AHCA defeated, progressive legislators and organizations are setting their sights on a push for Medicare-for-all, single-payer universal health insurance. The Huffington Post article linked notes that it is a non-starter in a Republican-controlled congress, "[b]ut the proactive strategy speaks to increasing confidence among progressives that if they stick to their ideals and build a grassroots movement around them, they will ultimately move the political spectrum in their direction."

It may also open a window for meaningful, positive steps in that direction to be enacted, such as allowing older Americans to buy into Medicare, which could have positive impacts on the ACA health exchanges because the costliest clients may leave the insurance pools.

Michael Moore observed on MSNBC that it is not time for Democrats to be complacent because Republicans and health insurance companies are now essentially counting on the ACA imploding, eating itself, and they will do what they can to essentially make it happen. "These people are out to make your lives a living hell," he tells Drumpf supporters in Michigan. "Democrats, you have to get this fixed."

Bernie Sanders, of course, will introduce a Medicare-for-all bill in the Senate. He previously introduced similar legislation in 2009 and 2011, to no avail.

Drumpf Diary 3/24/17 - The Fart of the Deal (RIP AHCA)

The American Health Care Act suffered a dramatic defeat today. House Republicans failed to finagle enough support among members of their own party to pass the legislation, and Drumpf had it tabled. The bill came up against opposition from extreme conservatives such as those in the House Freedom Caucus, and even powerful Republican donors led by the Koch brothers, who felt it didn't go nearly far enough in Obamacare repeal, and also from moderate Republicans concerned about the new bill's impacts on their constituents. This came after the vote was initially slated for yesterday, March 23rd, and Drumpf issued an ultimatum to Republicans: vote to pass the bill today, March 24th, or he would move on. When it became apparent that the Republicans didn't have the votes, instead of voting on the bill, the legislation was tabled.

My Facebook news feed was fairly alight with celebration.

"Obamacare is the law of the land... we're going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future." Those are the words of Paul Ryan after the bill was tabled.

Drumpf and Ryan have both said they are done with health care reform for the time-being and moving on to tax reform. It's damaging to Drumpf's image as a successful deal-maker, and to Ryan's as the Speaker of the House, whose job is to whip up support to get bills like this passed.

Matthew Yglesias over at Vox thinks Democrats should now propose their own alternative Obamacare replacement. He stops short of saying go for a single-payer, Medicare-for-all type of plan even though his last line in the 3rd paragraph suggests he might see it as the best plan in the long run, he certainly thinks Democrats feel that way. He thinks a replacement could be drafted which echoes things Drumpf himself claimed to support on the campaign trail, in that way, offering such a replacement would be holding Drumpf's feet to his own fire.

Ryan Cooper over at The Week goes you one better and says now is the time for Democrats to push for Medicare-for-all. Unlike Yglesias, he offers almost no practical advice on how exactly to get such a thing passed when Republicans control Congress and the Presidency. The piece is otherwise sound enough that I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he knows it is not going to happen. He mostly argues that it Medicare for all is the way to go based on its relative simplicity to understand. He compares it to the 2010 attempt to pass the Affordable Care Act and how the ACA was so convoluted that the idea that it was laced with "death panels" and other such horrible fantasies was an easy sell. Trying to find such a boogie-man with a simpler-to-understand concept like Medicare for All would not be so easy. Medicare is already a functioning and relatively popular method of health insurance delivery in the United States. As Cooper observes, most people know someone who is on Medicare or who is counting down the years until they can get on it. It is only for people 65 and older right now, though.

One unique thing about Cooper's piece is that it makes an attempt to address the one major criticism that Democrats have used as a defense against pursuing Medicare-for-All: it would be "too disruptive." Exactly how the disruption it would cause would be worse than the current system which allows people to be priced out of pursuing important medical care or go bankrupt pursuing it, not clear to me, but Cooper suggests it be passed in a package with some kind of labor market support to ease transition for people who may lose their jobs when insurance companies go out of business.

Again, exactly how this is to pass in a Republican-controlled federal government is very unclear. But it seems like there would be plenty of reason for Democrats to pursue it, anyway. It is a popular proposal that would help a lot of people. Making the Democrats the face for it and making it one of the tenets of the party could help (or, at least, couldn't hurt) in future elections.

Drumpf Diary 3/22/17 part 2: Notes on the American Health Care Act

1.) LOOKING AT THE AMERICAN HEALTH CARE ACT (AHCA)

The Kaiser Family Foundation, an excellent source of information about healthcare in the United States, offers interactive maps detailing the changes in costs expected for people under the AHCA (the new Republican plan) vs. the ACA ("Obamacare").

Quartz details how ACA repeal may specifically hurt transgender people, who "rely on the Obama administration's specific, trans-friendly guidelines for hormones and other transition-related care. These crucial services save lives..." This sounds like another example of people who live on the margins and for whom the difference between Republicans and Democrats is very real and life-altering. These are the kinds of people put at risk when one does not vote to block the worst of two likely candidates to win an office. It sounds like trans advocates are specifically concerned about the loss of section 1557 in the ACA, which provides for trans health care rights.

Jason Cianciotto, vice president of policy, advocacy and communications for the HIV advocacy group Harlem United, says the elimination of Section 1557 is a real concern. 

“It would ultimately kick millions of people off their health insurance,” Cianciotto says, “targeting vulnerable communities like transgender people, people of color, and those living with HIV/AIDS. It would be devastating for populations who are already underinsured under the current system and often go without health-care treatment.”

But will the AHCA even pass the House of Representatives? Since the House is GOP-controlled, one would think so. But, as Vox details in this article, "[o]ver the past two weeks, multiple health industry groups and Republicans had come out against the bill." Drumpf has apparently told many in his party that they will lose their seats in 2018 if this doesn't get done. Unclear whether that is meant as a threat to not support them, or simply a prediction of GOP fortunes if they fail to deliver on this key promise of the last 9 years. I find it hard to believe the GOP isn't going to fall sufficiently in line and get behind the AHCA. I guess we will see tomorrow.

Dr. Charles R. Peterson, a retired cardiologist, wrote an informed defense of expanding Obamacare and/or transitioning to a Medicare-for-all healthcare system, published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Dr. Peterson's piece was a rebutal to an articulate and well-argued defense of the AHCA by MN GOP Rep. Jason Lewis (my congressman). This is not to say I now favor the AHCA, simply to say that Rep. Lewis argues his point well.

The NY Times' Upshot column makes a surprising point: that if the ACA were simply repealed, rather than replaced by the AHCA, 1 million *fewer* people would lose insurance coverage. Again, that means simply wiping out the ACA would result in fewer people losing insurance than implementing the AHCA. This is based on different CBO estimates of each circumstance.

Drumpf Diary 3/22/17 - Much Ado About Budgeting

1. Much has been made of the Drumpf budget proposal. It has made headlines for proposals to dramatically cut the EPA budget by 31%, as well as cuts to National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, Public Broadcasting, and other programs that aid the poor, disadvantaged, and sciences. Defense and the military are the big winners, with proposed spending increases. It's also been noted that Drumpf is wasting millions in government funds with his frequent visits to his Mar-a-Logo resort and allowing his wife to remain living in New York City, two actions that cost taxpayers millions. Vox provides some gory details specific to cuts to science.

Sources usually observe that the budget is unlikely to pass as proposed, there are cuts which both Republicans and Democrats find unpopular. It is useful as a reflection of Drumpf's priorities, however. In that respect, it is ugly. It is almost certain that, with congress under Republican control, many unsavory cuts to science and aid programs will pass.

Mother Jones observes, hopefully:

Thanks to the landmark 2007 Supreme Court decision, Massachusetts vs. EPA, the EPA is obligated by law to come up with a way to regulate greenhouse gasses from vehicles, power plants, and other sources. The decision stated: "Under the Act’s clear terms, EPA can avoid promulgating regulations only if it determines that greenhouse gases do not contribute to climate change or if it provides some reasonable explanation as to why it cannot or will not exercise its discretion to determine whether they do."

Snopes reviews some details on the budget, clarifying that the budget calls for complete elimination of funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, as well as the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities. What the federal government spends on those programs is incredibly small. It makes an almost completely imperceptible dent in the debt, especially compared to the tens of billions to be spent on Drumpf's wall. The Snopes article points out that the budget is inspired deeply by a Heritage Foundation 2016 budget proposal which also called for elimination of these programs. The Heritage Foundation didn't necessarily promote the cuts based on the grounds that it would solve debt problems, moreso on philosophical grounds that "actors, artists, and academics are no more deserving of subsidies than their counterparts in other fields; the federal government should refrain from funding all of them."

Drumpf budget director Mike Mulvaney has taken flak from opponents for saying that it's OK to cut funds to Meals on Wheels and after-school lunch programs because "there's no evidence they're helping results."