Haterade

Tonightly who knows?  We may be stuck on the Rainbow Ruling or we could talk about the fat petty dictator of New Jersey.  Our panelists are Alona Minkovski, Chris DiStefano, and Boy George.

Continuity

Today is some of the darkest 24 hours in our nation’s history

This week’s guests-

• Tuesday 6/30: Jon Hamm
• Wednesday 7/1: Kirsten Gillibrand
• Thursday 7/2: Sarah Vowell

I was about to say that Jon Hamm was just another unemployed SAG member like Jon (Stewart) but as it turns out he does some voiceover work in Minions.

The real news below.

While I don’t think the U.S. Women’s Team looked quite as impressive as some people do they were certainly good enough to beat China who, as predicted, showed very little offensive spark indeed.  It was certainly Team USA’s best game of the Tournament so far.  The only score came 51 minutes in from Carli Lloyd, but the U.S. dominated shots on goal, 17 – 6, and possession time.

Tonight’s opponent, Germany, the Number One team in the world right now, looked incredibly vincible in their match against France.  They were only able to eke out a tie during regulation and extra time and scored their salvation goal with but 6 minutes to play.  Admittedly the French were much higher ranked than China, but winning on penalty kicks hardly cements Germany’s reputation.  You may hear a lot about their goal scoring prowess, well, 10 of those came in a devastating shutout of Ivory Coast. Likewise I’ve read some negative commentary that Hope Solo, the U.S. Keeper, has hardly been tested, yet her 11 saves are the most in the Tournament.

Against China, Team U.S. had to start substitutes for Lauren Holiday and Megan Rapinoe who were carded in the match against Colombia.  Tonight they are back at full strength and it’s entirely possible that they could win against Germany and advance to the Final against Japan (defending champion) or England (Cinderella).

Results of the Quarterfinals

Game start is at 7 pm ET on Fox.

Something that’s been clear for a very long time now

Tonightly It’s Big Gay Monday with the New York City Gay Chorus-

Our panelists are Janet Mock, Jordan Carlos, and Guy Branum.

Continuity

Religion and Science are not contradictory

This week’s guests-

• Monday 6/29: Taylor Schilling
• Tuesday 6/30: Jon Hamm
• Wednesday 7/1: Kirsten Gillibrand
• Thursday 7/2: Sarah Vowell

Taylor Schilling is best known for her work in Orange is the New Black, but if you’re not a Netflix subscriber you’ve never seen it.  Do not forget however that she was also Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged: Part I.

Richard Lewis’s web exclusive extended interview and the real news below.

It’s another of those busy summer weeks where I am away and my writing and reading time (which is just as, if not more, important) is dependent on spotty WiFi and finding a hidden corner away from the Gilmore clan.

I’m also missing my customary naps which leaves me irritable, ennervated, and unfocused.

And so sucky blogging returns.  Truthfully I haven’t been able to find much of interest during my cursory scans and what I have I don’t have time to give the treatment it deserves.  Still, the purpose of these pieces (outside their entertainment value of which I’m sure you’re getting enough at my expense) is to alert you to stories and sources to which you might otherwise not be exposed.

Therefore it is more important than ever that you click the links.  I will not be able to summarize, merely to sum up-

Buttercup is marry Humperdinck in little less than half an hour. So all we have to do is get in, break up the wedding, steal the princess, make our escape… after I kill Count Rugen.

Obligatories

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

I would never make fun of LaEscapee or blame PhilJD.  And I am highly organized.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.

–Julius Caesar (I, ii, 140-141)

This Day in History

News and Blogs

• Greek Prime Minister Calls for Referendum on Bailout Terms, By JIM YARDLEY and NIKI KITSANTONIS, The New York Times
• Three depressing lessons from the Greek debt negotiations, by Branko Milanovic, Al Jazeera
• Two rival self-driving cars have close call in California, By Paul Lienert, Reuters
• Delphi says self-driving car didn’t come close to Google’s car, by Paul Lienert and Joe White, Reuters
• Denmark set for Liberal-led government after rightwing coalition talks fail, by David Crouch, The Guardian
• Challenge to U.S. warrantless surveillance on tap after guilty plea, By Joseph Ax, Reuters
• What Is the Big Secret Surrounding Stingray Surveillance?, By Larry Greenemeier, Scientific American
• A former Keystone XL lobbyist just joined Team Hillary, by Lindsay Abrams, Salon
• The Reverse Turing Test: Pretending to Be a Chatbot Is Harder Than You Think, by Uri Bram, Motherboard
• Two Overlooked Aspects Of Those Leaks About NSA Spying On French Presidents, by Glyn Moody, Tech Dirt
• Leaked Damage Assessment Shows Government Mostly Interested In Investigating Leakers, Withholding Information From Public, by Tim Cushing, Tech Dirt
• Sony Pictures Postmortem Reveals Death by Stupid, By Rayne, emptywheel
• The BBC’s Inept but Revealing Attempt at a Game Theoretic View of Greek Crisis, By William K. Black, New Economic Perspectives
• “As You Wish”: Cary Elwes on “The Princess Bride,” doing his own stunts, and whether he’d rather fight with a sword, his hands or his wits, by Gary M. Kramer, Salon

Of the 8 teams left the U.S. Women’s Team is ranked only 4th.  It’s easy to see why this is.  Without the unexpected (but clear) Red Card foul by Colombia keeper Catalina Perez in the 47th minute the outcome of their first knockout match was in serious doubt as Colombia seemingly had them baffled with their ball control offense.

It was doubly significant because the ejection of Perez meant they had to use their last available substitute goalie who was under penalty but eligible.  This however caused a one player forfeit (the substitute was under penalty) and Colombia had to play all but 2 minutes of the second half 10 v. 11.

Also Abby Wambach proved ineffective on penalty kicks and they lost the services of Megan Rapinoe and Lauren Holiday to Yellow Cards.

Fortunately they’ll be facing China, the lowest ranked team remaining.  They play a tight defense but the U.S. does too (top rated defense of all the teams left in the tournament).  What Team USA has that China lacks is a wide variety of offensive options, though you wouldn’t know it from the Colombia game which seemed at times to be loft it to Wambach and hope for the best.  Also China is considered the slowest team still playing and their offense has shown no sparkle.

In short it should be winnable in which case the U.S. will advance to face either Germany (defending champions and, based on their dominant tournament play, the top ranked team in the world at the moment) or France (brilliant at times but inconsistent, currently ranked 5th) in the Semifinals on June 30th.

Win or lose in the Semis you would get to see the ladies play again either in the consolation game or the Championship.

Results of the Round of 16

The best print coverage is from The Guardian (of course).  Today’s matches will be on Fox, Germany v. France at 4 pm ET and USA v. China at 7:30 pm ET.  Tomorrow’s matches will be on Fox Sports One, Japan v. Austalia at 4 pm ET and England v. Canada at 7:30 pm ET.

I may or may not be available for liveblogging.

Cray

Tonightly Robin Thede will be on to reveal a new White House strategy.  Our panel will be Horatio Sanz, Reza Aslan, and Mike Yard.

Continuity

Jessica Williams

Next week’s guests-

• Monday 6/29: Taylor Schilling
• Tuesday 6/30: Jon Hamm
• Wednesday 7/1: Kirsten Gillibrand
• Thursday 7/2: Sarah Vowell

Richard Lewis is on to talk about his new book, Reflections From Hell: Richard Lewis’ Guide on How Not to Live.

The real news below.

GOP’s George Costanza moment: The “Moops” doctrine and the war on Obamacare

by Simon Maloy, Salon

Wednesday, Jul 23, 2014 10:59 AM EST

I’ve been trying to figure out how to best characterize and/or mock the legal reasoning at play behind the Halbig decision, and I think it can be boiled down to one word: Moops.

I’m referring, of course, to George Costanza’s famous game of Trivial Pursuit against the Bubble Boy, in which Costanza tries to cheat his way out of losing by taking advantage of a misprint on the answer card: “Moops” instead of “Moors.”

“That’s not ‘Moops,’ you jerk. It’s Moors. It’s a misprint,” the Bubble Boy explains, accurately presenting the game manufacturer’s intent in spite of the minor technical error.

“I’m sorry, the card says ‘Moops,'” Costanza replies, adopting an absurdly narrow and nonsensical interpretation of the rules that furthers his own interests. It’s a pretty good match on the logic, and the happy coincidence that the situation pits a whiny, lying jerk against a person in need of substantial medical care only bolsters its relevance.

(h/t Simon Maloy @ Salon)

Jailed for Being Broke

By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

June 23, 2015

It’s not easy to get the public to care about bail. It’s particularly hard for people with little exposure to the criminal justice system to sympathize with those who get arrested, particularly for crimes of violence.

What people forget is that those who’ve merely been charged with crimes aren’t officially guilty yet. And not-yet-guilty people aren’t supposed to go to the hole, except under very narrowly defined sets of circumstances – for flight risks or for threats to the community. It’s certainly not supposed to be a punishment for not having $500.

…

In the wake of Ferguson and Baltimore, there’s been a lot of attention focused on police violence, as a symbol of the unfairness baked into our justice system. But when it comes to civil rights issues and the Wealth Gap, bail is where the rubber meets the road. You can walk into any arraignment court, anytime, and see how bad it is. Is it really that hard to fix?

Sometimes the Science section scares me and I have a hard time coming to grips with issues that are more immediately and politically important like Climate Change and the Environment, instead favoring those that are more esoteric and intellectual.

This is one of those weeks where the news in general has been uniformly depressingly bad and the only place we seem to be making any progress at all is on the silly issue of whether the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia represents racism and should be removed from government sponsorship.

Of course it does.

But it is just another in the littany of Social Issues the Plutocrat thieves and their NeoLib minions use to divide and distract us from the fact they are robbing us blind and destroying the Environment, the Economy, and Peace and Freedom in the process.

I like to think as a writer I’m a positive and cheerful person (and what you think doesn’t really matter to me, I write for myself) so I make an effort to select good news and there is just not as much of it as I had hoped today.

So instead of pointing out how Genetically Modified Organisms are likely to create a world full of health problems and unintended consequences (add ‘Space Germs’ to your reading list), and the pettyness of Scientists (see ‘Jellyfish Gene’ and ‘Sexism in Science’); or talking about the destruction of our environment for marginal monetary gain and the determination of our government to strip us of our last scrap of privacy, freedom, and dignity; I have chosen instead today to focus on just how lucky we are.

Some physicists consider it a puzzle that certain constants they have discovered have the particular values they do because they seem random and arbitrary.  Those who argue this way are fond of pointing out that should any of the values vary the Universe as we know it wouldn’t exist.

There are 3 main camps of thought on this issue.  The first is called ‘Weak Anthropomorphism’ and basically contends the Universe is a fluke and we should all just be happy it is the way it is.  The second is called ‘Strong Anthropomorphism’ which says the Universe responds to observation like the Quantum State of Schrodinger’s cat.

The third, and this is the one to which I subscribe, says simply that if the values were different the Universe would be different.  Everyone pretty much accepts now the idea that the Universe will keep expanding until all the energy in the system is equal and after that nothing much will happen.  It’s called the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

It was fashionable for a time to think this would not occur, that a limit would be reached where the energy expanding the Universe would be overcome by Gravity and it would collapse on itself in another Big Bang.  Indeed for quite a while the existence of a Big Bang was denied entirely and a Steady State Universe was proposed where everything was always the same.

What changed?

Well, as we checked out the values of specific items predicted by each of the discarded theories we found out they weren’t that, they were something else.

But if they were that then that’s the kind of Universe it would be.

Now those who subscribe to the first two camps (and indeed physicists who insist this is a very important question) tend to dismiss this attitude as a mere multiverse cop out, but it’s much more subtle than that.

In complex equations there are often more than one right answer and their very nature frequently depends on the results of the previous ones.

Our mathematical structure is fundamentally arbitrary and derives it’s validity from internal consistency and practical use.  That means it’s not impossible to imagine a different mathematical structure.

Humankind’s Existentially Lucky Numbers

by George Johnson, The New York Times

JUNE 22, 2015

Rejecting the possibility that this was nothing more than a lucky accident, physicists have been looking for some underlying principle – a compelling explanation for why everything could only have unfolded in this particular way.

…

But physics isn’t played that way: If a number called alpha, which governs the strength of electromagnetism, were infinitesimally larger or smaller, stars could not have formed, leaving a lifeless void.

Alpha’s value seems no more predictable than digits randomly spit out by a lottery machine: 0.0072973525698.

…

Other values, like the mass of the Higgs, or the strength of the force that binds together the cores of atoms, appear to be just as finely tuned. Bump the dials just barely, and nothing like our universe could exist.

…

Finally there are followers of a middle path, who seek to prove that the universe is not accidental but inevitable, with its set of defining numbers as constrained and mutually consistent as the solution to a Sudoku puzzle.

That was the goal of string theory when it rose to prominence three decades ago. The mathematics, with its extra dimensions and pretzel geometries, was so mesmerizing that the theory seemed almost certain to be true – a tightly woven description, when ultimately deciphered, of a universe just like our own.

Instead, string theory spiraled off in another direction, predicting a whole multitude of other universes, each with a different physics and each unobservable except for our own. Maybe some of the other universes have spawned different kinds of conscious beings, made from something other than atoms and just as puzzled (in some unfathomable equivalent of puzzlement) as we are.

What fundamentaly drives this issue is our collossal, egotistical, anthropomorphism that insisted for centuries that the world is flat and the Sun revolves around us.

Plenty of multiverse skeptics remain open to some version of string theory, one that doesn’t require redefining what counts as real. Maybe, lurking still hidden in the thicket, is a magic equation, showing that this universe is, after all, the only one that can be.

See?  It’s the same attitude that faced Copernicus.  What doesn’t change is people and their self centered ignorance.

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

• Could these piglets become Britain’s first commercially viable GM animals?, by Hannah Devlin, The Guardian
• Lamb with jellyfish gene ‘may have been deliberately sent to abattoir’, by Kim Willsher, The Guardian
• G.M.O. Dilemma: Swaying a Wary Public, By CONRAD DE AENLLE, The New York Times
• Scathing Review Says Nicaraguan Canal Project Could Offer ‘Severe Threat To Water Quality’, by Samantha Page, Think Progress
• US, Brit Spooks Bedevil Security Software, By Richard Adhikari, Tech News World
• Sexism in science: did Watson and Crick really steal Rosalind Franklin’s data?, by Matthew Cobb, The Guardian
• Are Any of These Fictional Space Habitats Actually Possible?, Darren Orf, Gizmodo
• Why Scientists Have Been Scared of Space Germs for Almost 50 Years, Kiona Smith-Strickland, Gizmodo
• Precious Time: The Challenge of Building a Better Atomic Clock, by Ivy Kupec, Live Science
• Did you solve it? Are you smarter than Jo Nesbø?, by Alex Bellos, The Guardian

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

California is too dry!

Tonightly?  Who knows, but the panel is Talib Kweli Greene, David Alan Grier, and Bonnie McFarlane.

As a bonus though, you get Poppa Pope-

Continuity

Today Bobby Jindal, tomorrow Chris Christe and Scott Walker!

Still sure you want to quit Jon?

This week’s guests-

• Wednesday 6/24: Andrew Napolitano
• Thursday 6/25: Richard Lewis

Andrew Napolitano will be on to rave about whatever lunacy he’s into today.

Seth MacFarlane’s web exclusive extended interview and the real news below.