Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.- Margaret Mead

It’s too early to celebrate the end of TPP (secret meetings next week) or the stopping of Keystone XL (sure, Hillary’s against it… now) BUT Shell Oil is done drilling in the Arctic this season and says they’ll never come back.

Shell abandons Alaska Arctic drilling

Terry Macalister, The Guardian

Monday 28 September 2015 04.27 EDT

Shell has abandoned its controversial drilling operations in the Alaskan Arctic in the face of mounting opposition.

Its decision, which has been welcomed by environmental campaigners, follows disappointing results from an exploratory well drilled 80 miles off Alaska’s north-west coast. Shell said it had found oil and gas but not in sufficient quantities.

…

The company has come under increasing pressure from shareholders worried about the plunging share price and the costs of what has so far been a futile search in the Chukchi Sea.

Shell has also privately made clear it is taken aback by the public protests against the drilling which are threatening to seriously damage its reputation.

Ben van Beurden, the chief executive, is also said to be worried that the Arctic is undermining his attempts to influence the debate around climate change.

His attempts to argue that a Shell strategy of building up gas as a “transitional” fuel to pave the way to a lower carbon future has met with scepticism, partly because of the Arctic operations.

A variety of consultants have also argued that Arctic oil is too expensive to find and develop in either a low oil price environment or in a future world with a higher price on carbon emissions.

In a statement today, Marvin Odum, director of Shell Upstream Americas, said: “Shell continues to see important exploration potential in the basin, and the area is likely to ultimately be of strategic importance to Alaska and the US. However, this is a clearly disappointing exploration outcome for this part of the basin.”

“Shell will now cease further exploration activity in offshore Alaska for the foreseeable future. This decision reflects both the Burger J well result, the high costs associated with the project, and the challenging and unpredictable federal regulatory environment in offshore Alaska.”

Shell Will Stop Drilling In The Arctic

by Samantha Page, Think Progress

Sep 28, 2015 9:25am

“This is a victory for everyone who has stood up for the Arctic. Whether they took to kayaks or canoes, rappelled from bridges, or spread the news in their own communities, millions of people around the world have taken action against Arctic drilling,” Greenpeace USA executive director Annie Leonard said in a statement.

…

Leonard took the opportunity to call on President Obama to prohibit any future drilling in the area.

“Today, President Obama can also make history by cancelling any future drilling and declaring the U.S. Arctic Ocean off limits to oil companies. There is no better time to keep fossil fuels like Arctic oil in the ground, bringing us one step closer to an energy revolution and sustainable future,” she said.

Shell backtracks on controversial Arctic drilling plan

By Yanan Wang, Washington Post

September 28 at 6:37 AM

(A) serendipitous moment arrived for environmentalists early Monday, when Shell announced that it will abandon its drilling venture in the Arctic waters off Alaska’s coast for the “foreseeable future.”

“Shell has found indications of oil and gas in the Burger J well,” said a company statement referring to its exploration in the Chukchi Sea, “but these are not sufficient to warrant further exploration in the Burger prospect. The well will be sealed and abandoned in accordance with U.S. regulations.”

…

“That’s incredible. That’s huge,” the Anchorage World Wildlife Fund’s Margaret Williams told the AP. “All along the conservation community has been pointing to the challenging and unpredictable environmental conditions. We always thought the risk was tremendously great.”

Or not (sigh).

You know, whenever one of these warnings about the end of the Universe, or Earth, or even just the Tri-State area (were you aware that we got issued an erroneous Tsunami alert last week?), and I have a deadline, there is always a fair part of me that hopes it’s true just so I can avoid writing.

It’s a hateful, horrible task that sucks out your soul photon by photon and I do love it so.

The ‘Super’ Blood Moon Non-Apocalypse Is Upon Us

By Chas Danner, New York Magazine

September 27, 2015

(M)uch of the U.S. will be able to witness the rare convergence of a total lunar eclipse and a so-called “supermoon,” which is when the moon appears a whopping 7 percent larger because it’s at the closest point of its orbit of the Earth.

…

A lunar eclipse is also referred to as a “blood moon,” due to the reddish-brown color the eclipsed moon gets after the sun’s light is filtered through the particulates in our atmosphere. Put another way, as Plait adds, “If you were standing on the Moon, it’s like you’re seeing every sunrise and sunset on Earth all at once,” or put even another way, its like projecting all the crap in our atmosphere onto the surface of the moon. Bonus: Tonight is a harvest moon as well.

Tonight is thus a harvest-super-blood moon, as well as the possible end of the world if you’re a believer of fringe religious theories suggesting that. But while astrophysicists are certain the world will end some day, NASA insists that won’t be tonight.

And here we all are still, fixed in our orbits like the Moon.  This is what I did for entertainment last night-

Yup.  Four hours doing squats behind a camera in the dark only it wasn’t so dark because I was in a parking lot behind a school that was brightly lit and under 24 hour a day surveillance as the helpful sign informed me.  I only got busted by the cops twice.

The first time they came by it was me and my camera and the Officer very helpfully suggested I must be out to watch the Blood Moon.

Why yes.  Yes I am.  Pay no attention to my home made digital clock (I’m not the tidiest of solderers).

I got there early, but right on time the SUVs with the kidlings arrived to see the show.  They paid very little attention, preferring to play flashlight tag (very distracting) and throw balls (even more distracting if you weren’t ready to think quick).

I admit it’s a rather slow moving event for a child, I on the other hand was quite busy, especially during those times when it was too dark for the viewfinder and you had to take Aperture Priority shots just to line up the camera.

I took over 300 photos of which I’ve identified 5 that are almost acceptable.  In addition to the pointing problem focus is also an issue, as far as I know my camera decides what it likes.

10:45 was peak eclipsish and everyone packed up the rug rats and headed home.  I bitter ended because I was (correctly) not confident in the quality of any of my shots.  The cops rolled around again when everything was as desolate as it was when I arrived.

How did it go?

Ok I guess.  Don’t believe them when they say that this is it until 2033.  There will be other Eclipses and other Super Moons, just not the two together.

Sports AND Entertainment

My family reads my blogs (yes, I have one) and my cousin’s kids as I think I’ve mentioned are big Nationals fans.  Therefore I will just quietly mention that The New York City Metropolitans are National League East Champions and link to this.  

It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt.  Then it’s just fun.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. –Aristotle

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

So 1 year ago Jules Bianchi died on this track.

Not to bring you down and all, just that you’ll be hearing a lot about it.

Last week’s debacle (well, for Mercedes) at Marina Bay gave rise to some conspiracy theories (remember, it stands for completely true) about Pirelli messing with the silver ones’ tires.  Well, that wasn’t the problem at all.  Their engine management software was wonky which has happened to every team this year it seems.  Oh, and that guy on the track?  Just some dumb British fan, not a repeat of 2000 at all.

Or that’s what they would like you to believe.

This week Mercedes is back to form and it’s Verstappen with gremlins.  Kvyat parked hard at the end of Q3, is going to need a new chassis at least, and will start from the pit.  Rosberg was on the pole at the time with Hamilton beside him, otherwise it’s as you have come to expect.  Suzuka is one of the longer and faster tracks so the Mercedes power advantage should be decisive if the cars don’t break.  We’ll be going on Hards and Mediums.

In news of the ‘Hmm…’ Toro Rosso will probably go Honda next year, doubling the number of teams with that power plant.  The reason is that since Red Bull is determined to sever all ties with Renault and a set of Ferraris is committed to Haas, Maranello can’t meet the demand.  The only other game in town is Honda.

In sad news it looks like this may be Jenson Button’s last season.  His negotiations with McLaren are not going well, most of the top spots are locked up and the only team below McLaren is… well, Manor.  If you’re hopeful maybe Haas will decide they need an experienced driver, a former World Champion and marquee name on the team to get the first season sorted out, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.  Button is reportedly very unhappy and even the encouragement of his fellow drivers who like him a damn sight better than ‘Crash’ Maldonado has been insufficient.

Normally the beat of my Tech Dirt homes, this one struck me because I’m a sucker for Gummy Bears.

Lindt wins legal battle after court rules Haribo claim does not bear up

by Sean Farrell, The Guardian

Wednesday 23 September 2015 12.21 EDT

The decision ended a dispute between the companies that started in 2012 when Haribo accused Lindt & Sprüngli of copying its Gold Bear trademark by launching a foil-wrapped teddy.

Haribo, which invented gummy bears in the 1920s, said shoppers would confuse the two products, even though Lindt’s bears are made of chocolate and gummy bears are a jelly sweet.

Lindt argued that its bears were a variation on its Easter rabbit chocolates. Both are wrapped in gold foil with a red ribbon. Haribo’s gummy bear marketing is fronted by a yellow cartoon bear with a red ribbon round its neck.

…

Last week the European court of justice failed to uphold Nestlé’s attempt to protect its four-fingered KitKat in another long-running dispute between the Swiss company and Cadbury. Cadbury tried to thwart Nestlé’s attempt to trademark KitKat in 2010 after Nestlé blocked Cadbury’s effort to trademark the shade of purple used for its chocolate wrappers.

Georgie Collins, a partner at the law firm Irwin Mitchell, said: “The confectionery industry is extremely competitive so it’s not surprising that you often see these rivals coming up against each other.

“The cost of these cases is significant, but it’s about being seen to take action and ringfencing your brand and intellectual property rights as much as you can.”

Why this is at once hilarious and very, very wrong is a little too involved to go into right now, but you should really read Tech Dirt.  And now, a recipe to make Gummy Bears at home-

Take one 3 oz. box of any flavored jello and add sugar according to directions if required (not usually).  Add 7 packs of unflavored gelatin and 1/2 cup of water.  Heat over low in a pan until everything is completely dissolved.  Pour into molds (available at most cooking stores) and chill in freezer for 5 minutes, then refrigerate until very firm.  If you coat the molds with a little flavorless cooking oil spray (canola works) you can remove them easier.  Let them continue to dry unrefrigerated until they have the chewiness you like.

It’s been a while so let’s review-

The Rules of Opera

1. It must be long, boring, and in an incomprehesible foreign language (even if that language is English).
2. The characters, especially the main ones, must be thoroughly unsympathetic and their activities horrid and callous.
3. Everyone must die, hopefully in an ironic and gruesome way.

Ballet is the same, but with more men in tights and without the superfluous singing.

The case in point is Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas.  It’s sometimes called the first English Opera but while it is very early indeed (1689) that honor probably belongs to his teacher John Blow’s Venus and Adonis.

Aeneas you may recognize as the “hero” of Virgil’s Odyssey rip off The Aeneid.  The Roman source is actually kind of a great screaming neurotic rant of self justification about why exactly Romans were such bloodthirsty assholes.

First of all let’s talk about the psychological depravity and inferiority complex that would lead you to rewrite the seminal national text of your cultural superiors who’s land you had violently conquered and whom you were still dependent on for intellectual talent because you’re basically a bunch of frat boy barbarians so that the bad guys were the good guys and the founders of your own state.

Then let’s add the seduction and abandonment of the Queen of the nation that was your chief rival.

I think we’re in Operatown Jake.

So Aeneas, noble warrior of Troy cruelly cheated and defeated by those perfidious Greeks, especially Odysseus who’s story he’s stealing, is sailing with a boatload of refugees to find someplace new to settle down when they are blown off course and shipwrecked due to internecine disputes among the Gods related to the Judgement of Paris.

Oddly enough for this ancestor of the founders of Rome (who were raised by wolves in a sterling example of good parenting) he ended up at the gates of Rome’s great future rival- Carthage.

Dido Queen of Carthage, a widow, falls in love with him and fixes up his ships.  Witches plotting against Dido conjure up a storm and when the couple is temporarily separated one of them, impersonating Hermes, tells Aeneas that he simply must hit the road and found that New Troy in Italy he’s been planning.  Aeneas, being a cad in addition to a credulous dope, promptly shoves off.

Dido, despondent, kills herself.  The End.

Now there were in fact heavy political subtexts to both The Aeneid and Dido and Aeneas.  Virgil was not just stroking the Roman sense of entitlement and righteous justification but, because of Ceasar’s reputed descent from Aeneas, sucking up to the Julio-Claudian Emperors (it was written between 29 and 19 BCE).

With Dido and Aeneas Purcell is alluding to the (for him) recent events of the English Civil War.  Aeneas is said to represent James II and the Witches Roman Catholicism while Dido represents Britain, abandoned due to deception.

Like many early compositions it’s not entirely complete and for performance various arrangers fill in the gaps in a variety of ways.  This particular version is from the San Francisco School of the Arts.

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

So it’s been 3 weeks, hardly seems it.  I think we know pretty well by now what Stephen’s format is going to be- dancing, a little monologue/guest intro/joke, the playover, a longer desk monologue, break, another monologue/sketch, break.

That’s the first half hour.

Then first guest, break, second guest, break, musical guest.

Unfortunately it is likely that all the good parts are going to be in that first half hour which goes head to head with Larry.  I’m more conflicted than before about what to pay attention to.

Next Week’s Guests

• Monday 9/28: Michelle Obama, Mindy Kaling, and John Legend
• Tuesday 9/29: Ellen Page, Jesse Eisenberg, and Dominic Wilcox
• Wednesday 9/30: John Oliver, Elizabeth Gilbert, and Bill Withers and Ed Sheeran
• Thursday 10/1: Claire Danes, Evan Spiegel, and PewDiePie
• Friday 10/2: Morgan Freeman, Ruth Wilson, and Sean Murray

Of that lot the one I’m really excited about is John, but clearly Stephen is downshifting into production mode and not every night is going to be ‘must see’ TV, at least for me.

Tonight we have Malala Yousafzai, Kerry Washington, and the Arcs.

The New Kid

I don’t know what to expect from Trevor and neither I suspect do you.  He’s diversified the writing and correspondent teams.  Most of the senior production team has stayed though there have been some shifting of responsibilities and promotions.  He has a new “social media” co-ordinator who’s supposed to be very good (maybe he can talk to Larry about his terrible site).

He’s been hated on by professional racists his whole life and there are indications he views the United States as amateur hour.  His political orientation is literally unAmerican (in that peculiar way we’ve adopted a term that spans 2 continents to mean only the United States) and says that he’ll be non-partisan.

Less confrontational too and I must say it amazes me that this meme that Jon Stewart was some kind of raving, rabid, radical Lefty has in such a short time become conventional wisdom.

Or maybe not.  That someone as weak tea as Jon (remember his bi-partisany bits?) should be cast this way serves the interests of the neolib consensus “centrists” that pervade D.C. and the corporatist whore Media.

We have always been at war with EastAsia.

Here are some pieces to read-

• Trevor Noah’s Daily Show – what to expect next week, by Lanre Bakare, The Guardian
• Trevor Noah’s learning curve: How “The Daily Show” host plans to turn his “clean slate” into success, by Anna Silman, Salon
• ‘Wild card’ Trevor Noah ready to revamp the Daily Show with an outsider twist, by Lanre Bakare, The Guardian
• Trevor Noah on “Daily Show” diversity, P.C. outrage and racism: “America suffers from a level of institutionalized racial segregation”, by Anna Silman, Salon
• Trevor Noah on His Version of ‘The Daily Show’, By Jonah Weiner, Rolling Stone

His initial guests are-

• Monday 9/28: Kevin Hart
• Tuesday 9/29: Whitney Wolfe
• Wednesday 9/30: Chris Christie
• Thursday 10/1: Ryan Adams

If you follow my Formula One coverage you’ll remember that at the Marina Bay race last week Singapore had to resort to cloud seeded rain to reduce the level of particulates and general air pollution enough so that divers could see all the way down the straights (not to mention the breathing problems).

The acute levels of toxicity had to do with massive fires in Indonesia, how’s that working out for them?

Smoke from Indonesia fires puts Singapore’s air at ‘hazardous’ level

Al Jazeera

September 24, 2015 12:28PM ET

Air quality deteriorated to officially “hazardous” levels Thursday in Singapore – a key Southeast Asian business and transit hub – as choking smog blew in from Indonesia’s neighboring island of Sumatra, where forests and brush are being illegally burned to clear land for oil palm plantations and other farming.

The Singapore government’s three-hour Pollutant Standards Index (PSI) hit 319, its highest level so far this year, around midnight local time. The country’s National Environment Agency lists a level of 201-300 as “very unhealthy,” and above 300 as “hazardous.” Thick gray smoke shrouded the island city-state’s gleaming skyscrapers and crept into homes, even as many residents were staying indoors in attempt to escape the pollution.

…

For the past two decades, smoke from Indonesia has been spreading to other parts of Southeast Asia during the region’s annual mid-year dry season, when plantation owners and other farmers deliberately start brush and forest fires to clear land.

Southeast Asia’s most damaging cross-border haze came in 1997 and 1998, when the smog caused an estimated $9 billion in losses in economic activity across the region.

I mean c’mon, look at the guests-

• Andrew Sullivan
• Maria Shriver
• Jim Gaffigan
• Thomas Wenski

The musical guests are the YMCA Jerusalem Youth Chorus and the Choir of St. Jean Baptiste.

What do you think they’re going to talk about?

Oh, Liz.  Well I’d show it to you but only 2 minutes are available in any but the poorest quality.  Screw you CBS, when Trevor gets here next week we’ll see how interested I am.

And the show will be late because- Throwball!

Yawn.  I might not even stay up.

The New Continuity

Clock Boy

The story of Ahmed Mohamed is this in brief.

He’s 14 years old and very bright.  He built himself one of those old timey digital clocks out of a 555 timer chip (I’m so old I know what those are) soldered together with some Resistors and Capacitors and LEDS on a Breadboard.  He used a pencil case as a case.

In terms of sophistication this is one step above a Potato Clock because you have to be careful not to burn yourself with the Iron or stick the Drill through your finger.  Seriously, it’s like project 1 or 2 in Beginner’s books of Electronics, “Hello World”.

His Science Teacher was not much impressed and gave it back to him and later that day another teacher saw it and ran to the Principal who called the Police who led Ahmed away in handcuffs.

Frankly you’d soil your pants if I told you about the truly dangerous stuff my friends and I were doing at that age and we weren’t considered the “bad crowd” even.

So why do you think that happened?  Does it have anything to do with the fact that Ahmed is brown and Muslim?  If you see something say something.

The correct answer is that this is sheer Islamophobic bigotry of the worst stripe.  Teacher who narced- bigot.  Principal- bigot.  Police- bigots.

And the Faux Noisemakers who are defending this as a fair cop- bigots.

You stop being racist and I’ll stop talking about it.

Ahmed, if you’re reading this, sell the damn useless Apple Watch (top of the market and yours has an interesting provenance), keep the prop as a memento, and put the money in your college fund or blow it on pizza with your friends.

Thursday Nightly Bag-O-Grab.  The panel is Andrew Rannells, Kerry Coddett, and Will Forte.

It’s kind of a parody of the Nobel Prize, the stated goal is to make you laugh, then think.

We’re brought up with this concept of the Scientist as a sort of Warrior/Priest battling space alien buggy things (or making them) and inventing wizzy bang death rays and such, clad in their mystic lab coat ($21 in any Work Clothing/Uniform catalog).  Well, maybe not personally, usually there’s a whole puddle of corpses before the climax of the story when the Scientist is destroyed by his creation (or nemisis) so the hero can get the girl who’s been emotionally conflicted (or mind controlled) up to his timely demise.  The End.

Science is nothing at all like that and is in fact mostly about measuring things and writing down numbers.

Let’s say you’re a swashbuckling Archeologist.  You’ll be stuck in a jungle or desert sure, but you’ll spend all day every day digging, measuring, writing and for every hour in the field you’ll have to work 20 or more to figure out what exactly you found.

Let alone what it means, about which you’re almost sure to be totally, completely wrong.

And that’s if you’re a Lion Tamer, if you’re an Accountant you’ll work your entire lifetime on some quirky subject that nobody understands or appreciates.  Better love it, you’ll be spending a looong time with it.

The thing about the Ig Nobels is that they are, for the most part, genuine typical science.  The subjects may seem odd and funny (see 4 penised Echidnas below.  Relax, only 2 ejaculate at a time) but like the Golden Fleece the projects generally relate to larger and more important goals of which the named research is only a small part.

For instance unboiling eggs, that is so silly.

The chemistry prize went to American and Australian researchers who managed to partially unboil an egg with a vortex fluid device, a high speed machine that converts unfolded proteins into folded proteins.

Their results, published in ChemBioChem, show that the team was able to refold proteins thousands of times faster than previous methods. In theory, the device has far greater application than resetting eggs: it could do everything from revolutionize the manufacturing of cancer treatments to overhaul the industrial production of cheese.

Yup.  So remember that as you consider the 2015 winners.

2015 Ig Nobel prizes: dinosaur-like chickens and bee-stings to the penis

by Alan Yuhas, The Guardian

Thursday 17 September 2015 23.31 EDT

Entomologist Justin Schmidt and Cornell researcher Michael Smith jointly won for their painstaking experiments charting how painful insect stings are, and where the stings hurt worst. Smith pressed bees up against different parts of his body until the insects stung him, five stings a day, a total of 25 different locations, for 38 days. He rated the pain one to 10, and published.

The most painful parts: the nostril, the upper lip, the shaft of the penis.

Smith was joined onstage by Schmidt, who has also sacrificed various parts of his body for science in his decades specializing in stinging insects. Schmidt’s “sting pain index” rates only on a scale of one to four, but also features the entomologist’s descriptions of 78 sorts of stings, written with the flair of a sommelier in a wine cellar with something to prove.

The bald-faced hornet, for instance, is in Schmidt’s estimation: “rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.” Yellowjackets, on the other hand, sting “hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine WC Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.” Both rate a two.

The four-plus-rated bullet ant, in contrast, punishes a victim with “pure, intense, brilliant pain, like fire-walking over flaming charcoal with a three-inch rusty nail grinding into your heel”.

Science Oriented Video

The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations – then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation – well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

–Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1927)

Science News and Blogs

• Coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish can be killed with vinegar, scientists find, by Oliver Milman, The Guardian
• Meteorite from birth of solar system to go on display, by Ian Sample, The Guardian
• Google charges advertisers for fake YouTube video views, say researchers, by Ben Quinn, The Guardian
• Enceladus Is Home To A World-Wide Ocean, by Andrew Liptak, io9
• Human evolution hasn’t been a process of gradual fine-tuning – as finds like Homo naledi in South Africa make plain, by Ian Tattersall, Salon
• How to Not Get Attacked by a Bear, By Christine Dell’Amore and Todd Wilkinson, National Geographic
• The sisters who spoke to spirits: How two mischievous girls gave birth to a religion, by Ada Calhoun, Narratively
• Scientists just smashed the distance record for quantum teleportation, By Rachel Feltman, Wasington Post
• Echidnas’ ‘bizarre’ mating no longer obstacle to successful breeding program, Australian Associated Press
• Edward Snowden: we may never spot space aliens thanks to encryption, by Nicky Woolf, The Guardian
• How the Higgs boson is born and how it dies: the most precise picture so far, by Jon Butterworth, The Guardian
• How different are your online and offline personalities?, by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, The Guardian
• The secret to being a convincing liar? Tell your fibs on a full bladder, by Stuart Heritage, The Guardian
• The nudge theory and beyond: how people can play with your mind, by Nick Chater, The Guardian
• Linking brains: UW scientists say they’ve done it, By Katherine Long, Seattle Times
• We’ve Discovered a Lost World of Snow Dinosaurs, by Maddie Stone, Gizmodo
• Bizarre Giant Hexagon on Saturn May Finally Be Explained, by Charles Q. Choi, Space.com

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

Sonia Saraiya, Salon-

(I)n the first few minutes of Trump’s interview, I found myself realizing why people have become enamored of him, his contradictory and reprehensible views be damned. Trump has a completely different level of confidence and ease in the public eye than any of the other Republican candidates that have wormed their way onto talk shows; he has nothing at all to lose. He is an out-of-touch crank at Thanksgiving dinner who has accidentally alighted onto a few topics that seem to resonate with his listeners, and the validation is intoxicating.

…

Colbert’s weapon isn’t investigation or blunt questioning. It’s letting ridiculous people be as fully ridiculous as possible, and then turning them over to the national audience. His entire professional philosophy hinges on letting the viewers decide for themselves what to think, because he believes in comedy doing the talking for itself. It’s a clear break from David Letterman-witness this tense interview with Trump from January 2015-but it’s the approach that made Colbert both famous and beloved.

The full interview is available on YouTube in that horrible letterbox format I really hate (14:56), but not at all from CBS who have an awful video page that rarely includes complete clips and only displays whole shows for about 5 days and then you have to pay to view.

In the complete appearance people are making a big deal about this exchange.

“I’m gonna throw you up a big fat meatball for you to hit out of the park right now. This is the last time you ever have to address this question if you hit the ball. Barack Obama – born in the United States?”

“I talk about jobs. I talk about our veterans being horribly treated. I just don’t discuss it anymore.”

“You know that meatball is now being dragged down the steps of the subway by a rat right now.”

I wasn’t that impressed.  Trump didn’t answer but he doesn’t need to.  Substantial majorities (60 – 70% range depending on the poll) of Republicans, not Conservatives, Republicans, think Obama is not a U.S. citizen, a Muslim, or both.

There are a lot of reasons to hate on Obama but those ain’t any of them.

People sieze on that and say- “Racist!” and while they are quite correct in their assessment the reply is- “Yeah. So what?”

Trump, correctly from the standpoint of winning the nomination, doesn’t care about them, he cares about his supporters and, just like the McCain is no hero statement, they won’t be bothered by this at all.  They may in fact admire him more for refusing to back down.

And, were I Trump and confronted with this by types that style themselves mainstream, superior, and elite, I’d simply say- “I don’t talk about it anymore.  Obama is done.  In January 2017 there will be a new President and his name is Trump.”  Cue the balloon dropping applause.

What I did think was more funny and telling is this bit-

How did you score?  The Donald was of course a solid ‘A’.  I was perfect, which I never apologize for.

Stephen’s political guest tonight are Elizabeth Warren and Hugh Evans (Australian humanitarian).  His entertainment guest is Hugh Jackman with musical guest Pearl Jam.

The New Continuity

Women Warriors

If you think women are not as bad ass in combat as men you’ve never faced one.

Tonightly, special guest Ahmed Mohamed who you may know better as ‘Clock Boy’.  This is a HUGE get frankly and perhaps tomorrow I’ll focus on it rather than the Warren unless she’s particularly impressive.

On the panel will be Mike Yard, Naomi Klein, and Derek Waters.