#spurious acronyms

[todays-xkcd]

'Lever' was originally an acronym for Load Emplification by the Vimulated Emission of Radiation.

Easily Confused Acronyms [Explained]

[sca-nerd]

Why ViVat and Not Huzzah?

By Thomas Richardson

I wrote this for the Dec 2018 Cascadian (The news letter for the Shire of Glenn Linn) If you visit the North Country Medavielists facebook group and check the file section you can check out past editions of the Cascadian.

If you are in the SCA and live in the East Kingdom you have likely encountered the cheer of ‘ViVat!” (or “ViVant”) when an individual is celebrated for some form of achievement. On the other hand, if you have had the opportunity to visit several kingdoms during your tenure in the SCA, or ever simply visited a Renaissance fair, or seen an old medieval movie, you may also be more familiar with the oft used cheer of “Huzzah!” The cry of vivat (singular) or vivant for several people means “Long Life” (from the Latin) and is attested as early as the De Brevitate Vitae of 1287 (“Vivat academia!” ,“Vivant professores!” etc.). Huzza'ing was an established custom by Elizabethan times and may have originated as a sailor's shout of exaltation, encouragement, or applause. It appears in In Shakespeare's Henry IV (1591): “Huzza! Huzza! Huzza! Long live the King!”

The first time you heard vivat you may have thought, as I did, “Huh...strange” and just went along with the crowd not giving it much thought. I was well acquainted with the occasional hardy huzzah, and when exposed to the, in my opinion, less exuberant and more equivocal vivat, I began to wonder why. As all who have ever asked the question “why?” about any SCA subject knows, the answer always starts with a history lesson...

Once upon a time there was the West, and the West was what there was because there was nothing else. That was the SCA. But in 1968, the lands east of The Great Muddy was declared The East. So, now we had West and East. But the West also had the BOD (Board of Directors) and the East... well, the East did not, and was just a kingdom.

In 1969, both the Kingdom of the East and the Kingdom of the West (in the guise of the BOD), chartered groups in the middle, as it were. There was some confusion about exactly who was empowered to charter new groups. And while the East struck first in the region, the BOD struck last. Luckily, the two newly formed groups chose to ignore the politics of their parents and joined together to become the Kingdom of the Middle. Keep in mind that there were not exactly a lot of feet on the ground back then, so having a cluster of folk brave enough to dress up, run around acting silly, and hit each other with sticks, was reason enough to become a kingdom. In this case, a kingdom made up of lands granted from both the East and West, proud parents of their new offspring.

Two years later, in 1971, the West (or BOD, if you prefer) decided to both thumb its nose at the East and git rid of some potential trouble makers from Arizona and created the Kingdom of Atenveldt, which stretched from Arizona straight across the country to the Atlantic coast, absorbing large chunks of both the West and East kingdom (proving that the BOD could do what they want, even taking land back away from a kingdom).

At this point the SCA had created its four great incubator kingdoms- West, East, Middle, and Atenvelt. Every other kingdom from this point on would originate from one of these four kingdoms or from one of their offspring Kingdoms. Let us keep that in mind.

So in the West, when everything was new, ‘Hip hip hooray’ was the cheer of the day. The East, born of the West followed its traditions, also crying ‘Hip hip hooray’ for a while until the reign of King Gyrth and Queen Melisande (04/01/1978 - AS XII). Upon concerns that the term was significantly post-period, and that there was some speculation (now considered spurious) that its origin is anti-Semitic with the word word "hip" stemming from a medieval Latin acronym, "Hierosolyma Est Perdita" ("Jerusalem is lost"), Gyrth asked the people to switch to “Vivat/Vivant,” (as told to me by Melisande). Incidentally, it was never their intention to have it chanted three times – that being a carryover from the older cheer. It would appear that around this time, perhaps under the same concern over anti-Semitism, the West switched to ‘Huzzah’.

Now this is where the linage of each kingdom comes into play. In 1978, the Kingdom of Meridies was formed out of Atenveldt lands and invested by the Atenveldt court. As Atenveldt was a huzzah kingdom, so also became Meridies. Also in 1978, the Kingdom of Caid was born from the West, inheriting the use of huzzah. In 1979, Atenveldt created another huzzah kingdom with the birth of Ansteorra. 1981 brings us the Kingdom of Atlantia, which separated from the East and therefore cry's “ViVat!” Another huzzah kingdom is created in 1982 by the West in the form of An Tir and then comes an odd ball.

The Middle Kingdom, the love child of bickering parents, repudiated both and uses either huzzah or vivat. Instead, they yell "hoobah" as an expression of acclamation and joy. Why? Well, legend has it that an early king of the Middle, upon being presented with a troupe of belly-dancers, exclaimed "Hubba hubba!" In 1984, the Kingdom of Calontir, born from the Middle, became the second "hoobah" using kingdom. In 1985, we return to the normal order with the creation of the Kingdom of Trimaris out of the huzzah using Meridies. The huzzah using Kingdom of Outlands separated from Atenveldt in 1986 and Drachenwald, being born of the East in 1993, carried on the vivat tradition.

In 1997, we encounter another odd bird. The Kingdom of Artemisia is formed out of Atenveldt, with bits of the kingdom of Outlands and the Middle thrown in. Among all the confusion, they become a vivat kingdom. Why? Go ask them. Also in 1997, Æthelmearc is spawned as a vivat using child of the East. Ealdormere separates from the Middle in 1998 and, being completely against the grain, immediately begins using “ Wassail”. The year 2002 sees the creation of Lochac out of the West and Ciad, both passing along the use of huzzah. Northshield, created from the middle in 2004, is a vivat user because the first Prince by right of arms was nurtured in Atlantia, a vivat kingdom. Gleann Abhann, which sprang from Meridies in 2005 is on the huzzah standard, while the final kingdom, Avacal adopted huzzah from its parent An Tir, when created in 2015.

For those who were keeping count, that is ten for huzzah, six for vivat, two hoobahs, and a single wassil, most of whom were predictable based upon their linage. So, now you know.

Note: There is at least one anecdotal reference to the Barony of Carolingia using vivat prior to the request of King Gyrth, however no evidence has been presented to substantiate the claim.

[gatheringbones]

[“…the primary source of this anti-LGBTQIA+ prejudice is the fact that many people view us as “fakes” and “deceivers” who breach the roles and rules of Predator/Prey. This is what leads people to sexualize us. And that sexualization—the fact that we are reduced to the status of “sexual deviants”—is the reason why we have been historically ostracized and demonized.

Mainstream gay rights activism has largely sidestepped this central issue of sexualization. Its respectability politics stance requires us to hide or play down our queer sexualities if we wish to be accepted, not unlike how women are expected to hide or play down our sexualities if we wish to be seen as “respectable.” Throughout the media, straight sexual desires and encounters are everywhere, whereas the few positive queer characters and couples that exist are almost always depicted as chaste or platonic, so as not to offend straight sensibilities. And while mainstream gay rights activism did alleviate some of straight people’s concerns about being “turned queer” via gay teachers, coworkers, or neighbors, it flat-out failed to challenge their fears that they might become “corrupted” by queerness if they find us sexually attractive or have intimate interactions with us.

If we truly wish to eliminate anti-LGBTQIA+ prejudice, then our activism must confront sexualization head-on. Rather than attempting to appease the mainstream by keeping our sexual desires, relationships, and bodies out of sight and out of mind, we should instead challenge their tendency to relentlessly reduce us to these attributes. But this isn’t merely an “us versus them” endeavor. Intracommunity sexualization is also quite pervasive, whether it be the gay men who deride women as “fish,” the trans-exclusionary lesbians who wield the “sexual predator” trope against trans women, the self-identified “true transsexuals” who demean their nonbinary and nonheterosexual counterparts as “fakes” or “perverts,” or the people across the LGBTQIA+ spectrum who dismiss asexual and bisexual individuals as merely “sexually confused.” Not to mention the countless instances in which LGBTQIA+ individuals sexualize one another because of their race, class, ability, or other factors. Sexualization cuts across all demographics. While it mostly flows down social hierarchies—men tend to sexualize women, white people tend to sexualize people of color, straight people tend to sexualize queer people, etc.—it is also something that marginalized people routinely do to one another. And its constant presence hinders all of our social justice movements.

Reconceptualizing LGBTQIA+ activism as a movement to end sexualization has numerous advantages. For starters, if we are successful, then we will no longer be saddled with spurious accusations that we are “sexual deceivers,” “deviants,” and “predators”—charges that have long been used to justify our exclusion from society. And since our movement’s focus would be on sexualization rather than on any specific identity, there would be far less identity-policing and infighting among various LGBTQIA+ subgroups. Furthermore, sexual minorities that are not explicitly named in the LGBTQIA+ acronym but that significantly overlap with our communities—such as people who are sex workers, polyamorous, or HIV-positive (to name a few)—would not be abandoned for being “too disreputable” this time around. The same holds true for other multiply marginalized queer people. In fact, an LGBTQIA+ movement that challenged all forms of sexualization would actually benefit all of its constituents and could facilitate coalitions across multiple social justice movements.”]

julia serano, from sexed up: how society sexualizes us, and how we can fight back, 2022

[feelingbluepolitics]

Highest recommendation.

"Senate Republican leaders, under pressure from [t]rump to install an ally who would dictate more favorable news coverage of his administration, are moving to swiftly confirm a conservative filmmaker to lead the independent agency in charge of state-funded media outlets.

"Senator Jim Risch of Idaho, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, has scheduled a committee meeting next week to advance the long-stalled nomination of Michael Pack, a close ally of Stephen K. Bannon’s and a favorite of conservative activists, to lead the U.S. Agency for Global Media.

"The action came after [t]rump pressed Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, during a recent call to speed up Mr. Pack’s nomination, according to three people familiar with the private conversation who discussed it on the condition of anonymity.

"[t]rump’s personal intervention to push through his favored nominee illustrates his determination to install a sympathetic figure at the parent agency of broadcasters, which includes the Voice of America, the largest American international broadcaster and one that has recently provoked his ire.

..."The U.S. Agency for Global Media, formerly known as the Broadcasting Board of Governors, oversees news organizations that together make up one of the largest media networks in the world. V.O.A. is the most prominent, but the agency is also in charge of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks, among other groups. Many journalists in the organizations are nervous about whether Mr. Pack — following the lead of the White House — will try to curb or assault their editorial independence, according to people with knowledge of the newsrooms.

"'There has been great apprehension,' said Brett Bruen, who worked with the agency as the director of global engagement on President Barack Obama’s National Security Council. 'Pack threatens to shred their credibility, both in Washington and worldwide.'

"'It will become a taxpayer-funded extension of OANN and Breitbart, spinning out spurious stories,' Mr. Bruen added, using the acronym for One American News Network and naming two news conservative news outlets that churn out glowing coverage of [t]rump."

[rigatoni-madmax]

The ALMA proposal deadline is coming, bring out your spurious acronyms!

[peakwealth]

The PLUCC Factor

Observable fact. (Azulejo, Museu Berardo, Estremoz, Portugal 2020)

I had barely finished my rant about the corruption of the news and the underlying issue of reality-fatigue when I came across a similar analysis but in a different context.

The forces behind the coronavirus disinformation are complex, perhaps more so than those that triggered the great eruptions of populist discontent in recent years, Brexit and Trumpism. They are intertwined, cross traditional political divides and bring together activists from opposing corners of society. Some wave crucifixes, some are white supremacists, some are environmentalists, while others are antivaxxers, anarchists or climate-change deniers. A common denominator can be hard to figure out. Apart from the so-called 'negative solidarity', it seems to thrive on alienation and disenchantment, or simply on vengeful resentment directed at the elites.

This particular analysis goes some way to untangle the web of deceit that surrounds the coronavirus pandemic and the efforts to bring it under control. It is an attempt to reverse-engineer, as it were, the why and the how of the science-denial, the disinformation and intellectual dishonesty that have distorted the public COVID debate.

References to the original (in German) are at the bottom of this post. *

Although far from complete, it provides a useful set of analytical factors, grouped under the acronym PLUCC. (**)

PLUCC stands for - P pseudo-experts - L logic failure - U unrealistic expectations - C cherry picking - C conspiracy thinking

P s e u d o - e x p e r t s. Faced with complicated scientific matters, beginning with epidemiology and statistics, the media call on experts, doctors and professors to explain things as they see fit. There is a lot of name dropping. The professors are often 'affiliated' with prestigious institutions and big-name teaching hospitals. Harvard here, Stanford there. But that does not mean they are ipso facto qualified to hold forth on the specifics of the pandemic. The credibility game can be opaque and partisan. The fact is that some experts lack the actual knowledge or the right credentials. Except that the viewers and readers cannot be expected to know this. To put it differently, television talk shows, split-screen discussions on youTube or elsewhere are not the best place to shape public policy or to further the understanding of the pandemic.

Some concepts have found their way into received coronavirus knowledge (the ‘hair salon’ variety) without medical logic to support them. This includes false analogies, such as comparing COVID to influenza, or the idea that we "will just have to learn to live with the virus". Oversimplification is common, like sealing off retirement homes, advocated early on to allow the rest of society to get on with life.

Another instance of L o g i c   F a i l u r e  showed up in the USA as a spurious consensus idea that may have seemed plausible but made little sense. The 'Great Barrington Declaration' (***) got a lot of uninformed (and ultimately deceptive) media play when it was released with academic fanfare last October. It opposed lockdowns and proposed instead that "Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal." What this actually suggested was deliberate manipulation for political purposes.

Time and again, wave after epidemic wave, we have seen that there are no quick fixes. Yet the search for easy solutions and bite-sized explanations is part of a pattern of  U n r e a l i s t i c   e x p e c t a t i o n s.

Some news media insist on (or are tricked into) presenting 'both sides of the coin', i.e. they will cover both the scientific and the unscientific perspective of, say, vaccination. It is a ploy well known from the evolution vs. creationism debate, or from climate change denial. It suggests that factual and counterfactual information both deserve a fair hearing, or that both might be valid and legitimate. It opens the door wide to quacks and to 'alternative' or selective explanations that are not rooted in reality. This can take the form of  C h e r r y   p i c k i n g  of data or findings taken out of context (read: misleading news headlines) or from 'pre-published' studies (not peer reviewed) driven by poltical agendas or personal ambitions.

Beyond that lies the deep end of the public debate, far removed from scientific fact.  C o n s p i r a c y  t h i n k i n g  about the epidemic is fed by paranoia, religious faith, wanton rejection of reason and a belief that everything is rigged by the establishment, Bill Gates or other incarnations of evil. Little distinction is then made between science and Big Pharma and their corrupt underlings in government.

That disinformation and suspicion on this scale should have become so widespread raises questions that go beyond the pandemic, questions about education and disenchantment or about the pushback against authority and against the complexity of evidence-based knowledge.

____________________________________________________________ * NDR Info. Das Coronavirus Update,  episode # 82 with professor Christian Drosten, head of virology at the Charité hospital, Berlin. (German public radio podcast.) Drosten has been influential in formulating German COVID policy.

** PLURV in the original German version. 

https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/info/82-Coronavirus-Update-Die-Lage-ist-ernst,podcastcoronavirus300.html#Argument

*** https://gbdeclaration.org/

[thisdaynews]

Impeachment: US Judge Delivers Double Blow To Trump

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/impeachment-us-judge-delivers-double-blow-to-trump/

Impeachment: US Judge Delivers Double Blow To Trump

A U.S. judge on Friday validated the legality of the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump and ordered his administration to hand over an unredacted copy of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report detailing Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, handing a major victory to the Democratic-led House of Representatives, undercut an argument that Trump’s fellow Republicans have made in attacking the impeachment inquiry. The judge said the House need not approve a resolution formally initiating the effort.

The U.S. Constitution gives the House wide latitude in handling impeachment. Democrats began the inquiry without putting such a resolution to a vote.

The judge gave the Justice Department until next Wednesday to provide the blacked out material from the Mueller report that was subpoenaed by the House Judiciary Committee.

“The reality is that DOJ and the White House have been openly stonewalling the House’s efforts to get information by subpoena and by agreement, and the White House has flatly stated that the Administration will not cooperate with congressional requests for information,” the judge wrote, using an acronym for the Justice Department.

The department had argued that the redacted information could not be disclosed because it contained material from grand jury proceedings that was required to be kept secret, but the judge strongly disagreed.

“DOJ is wrong,” Howell said, adding that the committee’s need for disclosure of the materials “is greater than the need for continued secrecy.”

“Impeachment based on anything less than all relevant evidence would compromise the public’s faith in the process,” added Howell, a former federal prosecutor appointed to the bench by Trump’s Democratic predecessor Barack Obama.

Howell also ruled that the House has undertaken a legal and legitimate impeachment inquiry and criticized efforts by the Justice Department and the committee’s ranking Republican Doug Collins to argue that Democrats had not met the legal threshold.

“Blocking access to evidence collected by a grand jury relevant to an impeachment inquiry, as DOJ urges, undermines the House’s ability to carry out its constitutional responsibility with due diligence,” the judge added.

The Democrats sought access to the redacted materials as part of their effort to build a case for removing Trump from office.

The committee, Howell ruled, “has presented sufficient evidence that its investigation has the preliminary purpose of determining whether to recommend articles (of) impeachment,” referring to formal charges that the House could approve that would trigger a trial in the Senate on whether to remove Trump from office.

A Republican resolution introduced in the Senate on Thursday criticized the process that House Democrats are using in the impeachment inquiry. It argued that a resolution is needed to initiate such an inquiry. The judge disagreed.

“Even in cases of presidential impeachment, a House resolution has never, in fact, been required to begin an impeachment inquiry,” the judge wrote.

‘THOUGHTFUL RULING’

Democrat Jerrold Nadler, the panel’s chairman, lauded the ruling.

“The court’s thoughtful ruling recognizes that our impeachment inquiry fully comports with the Constitution and thoroughly rejects the spurious White House claims to the contrary,” Nadler said.

Kerri Kupec, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said the department is reviewing the decision.

Mueller submitted his report to U.S. Attorney General William Barr in March after completing a 22-month investigation that detailed Russia’s campaign of hacking and propaganda to boost Trump’s candidacy in the 2016 election as well as extensive contacts between the Trump campaign and Moscow.

But when Barr, a Trump appointee who Democrats have accused of trying to protect Trump politically, made the 448-page report public the following month, some parts were blacked out, or redacted.

[bpdjennamaroney]

Your post about people criticizing allies for not speaking out when the effectiveness is questionable and not everyone is in a position to speak out is SO TRUE...however I would argue that it is also a good argument for why Ally isn't a part of the letter soup of the LGBTQIA+ community. Because allies have the ability and privilege to determine if it is worth speaking out

i don’t know where that second part came from and i’d never argue that ally should be in the acronym but i think this specific reasoning is spurious, everyone has the ability and privilege to determine if it’s “worth speaking out” and the generalization that allies won’t suffer repercussions from speaking out is kind of what my original post is about. the difference is allies know the prejudice isn’t about them, even if they are mistaken for a marginalized sexuality or gender or whatever. and the defense of identity isn’t inextricably tied to their safety or survival. that’s one of the reasons why ally shouldn’t be in the acronym–because ally isn’t an identity-based, it’s action-based. but “allies will never suffer any repercussions from speaking out ever” is not.

[sciencespies]

How Ancillary Technology Shapes What We Do In Physics

https://sciencespies.com/news/how-ancillary-technology-shapes-what-we-do-in-physics/

How Ancillary Technology Shapes What We Do In Physics

Rubidium fountain clocks at the US Naval Observatory

Chad Orzel

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I went to DC last week to give a talk for the Smithsonian Associates lecture program, based on my most recent book, Breakfast with Einstein. One of the examples I used for how quantum physics shows up in an ordinary morning was my alarm clock, which ultimately traces its time back to the definition of one second as 9,192,631,770 oscillations of light emitted as a cesium atom moves between two particular energy states (discussed in more detail in this old post).

During the question-and-answer period afterwards, somebody asked a really good question: Why cesium? That is, of all the atoms in the periodic table, why pick cesium, specifically, as the basis for our definition of time?

There are a bunch of features of cesium that you can point to as being attractive for making an atomic clock: it’s a heavy atom, so at any given temperature it’s moving relatively slowly, reducing any Doppler shifts you might encounter; and the particular state pair chosen has the highest energy difference of the analogous states in the other alkali metals, and all else being equal, states with a bigger energy difference and thus higher frequency get you better accuracy.

UNITED KINGDOM – JANUARY 22: First caesium atomic clock, 1955. First caesium atomic clock, 1955. Made by National Physical Laboratory (NPL), Teddington, Middlesex. The United States Bureau of Standards built an atomic-type clock using ammonia in

SSPL via Getty Images

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Those are all basically post-hoc arguments, though. The real reason for the choice of cesium is that it was easy to work with in the 1960’s when the choice was made. It’s got some convenient experimental properties—a low melting point that makes it easy to make an atomic beam, and a single stable isotope so you don’t have to worry about spurious atoms in the beam—but the most important factor is that the transition frequency of 9.19GHz is in the microwave region of the spectrum. By 1960, there was already a highly-developed technological infrastructure for generating and measuring microwave frequencies, thanks to the radar development projects that started in WWII. Cesium is also relatively “nice” in a theoretical sense, in that it’s an alkali metal atom with only a single unpaired electron in the outermost shell, giving it a relatively simple energy level structure that makes its properties and interactions easier to understand with the technology of the 1960’s.

As technology has improved, it turns out that cesium has some properties that make it a less than ideal choice for a time standard. Collisions between cesium atoms produce a frequency shift that’s bigger than that for other alkalis, which limits cesium clocks to working with relatively low-density samples. In a lot of respects, despite its lower transition frequency, rubidium would be a better choice for building a stable and practical clock, which is why the clocks in the photo above from the US Naval Observatory use rubidium rather than cesium.

And there are still other atoms that would be even better. The title of “best atomic frequency standard in the world” has passed back and forth between those based on neutral atoms in an optical lattice and those based on single ions held in a trap. (Here’s a news story about a recent advance by the ion clocks, for example, and one from last year about lattice clocks.)These use pairs of states with transition frequencies in the visible or ultraviolet regions of the spectrum, nearly a million times bigger than the cesium transition frequency.

Scientists Soeren Doerscher (l) and Christian Lisdat sitting in front of an optical clock in a laboratory of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) in Braunschweig, Germany, 30 July 2016. PTB scientists have shown that optical clocks are

picture alliance via Getty Images

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But, of course, those advantages and disadvantages are also contingent on technology. You can’t use optical or ultraviolet frequencies to make a clock unless you have some way to convert those to lower frequencies that can be used to drive electronic clocks, something that was supremely inconvenient before the invention of the optical frequency comb (which won a Nobel Prize for John L. Hall and Theodor Hänsch in 2005). And the cesium collisional shift only becomes a disadvantage when you start dealing with laser-cooled samples of atoms held in atom traps, rather than atomic beams.

This is a specific example of a very general phenomenon, where the specific physics effects and applications we choose to study , and the solutions we find, are often determined in large part by ancillary technologies. This isn’t a problem, exactly, just an inevitable fact of life in science: in a universe with a nearly infinite variety of things you might study, it’s natural to start with things that are relatively easy, and don’t require too much ancillary technology development, before moving on to more complicated situations. In the terms of the old joke about lost keys, you start out looking where the light is and only after you’ve exhausted that do you start making new lampposts.

These effects of choices driven by ancillary technology can carry on for a really long time, though, following a phenomenon out of the basic research lab and into practical applications. The fifty-odd years of cesium clocks are one example, and medical technology is another.

Back in April, the APS meeting in Denver included a session on commercialization of physics results, where Ron Walsworth from Harvard gave a talk about various research projects turned products. He mentioned in passing something about a portable MRI scanner being developed by some of his commercial collaborators, which sounded interesting.

A patient undergoes a MRI (“Magnetic resonance imaging” IRM in French) using a new generation of hybrid camera named PET-MRI scanner (‘machine d’imagerie hybride’ TEP/IRM in French) on June 5, 2019 at the Mondor Hospital in Creteil. (Photo by

AFP/Getty Images

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“MRI” of course stands for “(Nuclear) Magnetic Resonance Imaging,” with the “N” absent from the acronym to avoid scaring patients— it’s a technique that exploits the fact that atomic nuclei can act like single spins, with distinct “up” and “down” states in a magnetic field. You can manipulate these spins with radio-frequency light, causing them to flip back and forth, and by playing some clever tricks to measure the frequency of the RF absorbed by these nuclei at particular positions, make a map of where in the body you find the right sort of atoms. As this works particularly well with hydrogen, this is a great technique for distinguishing between different types of soft tissues based on their water content, making it an incredibly useful tool for medicine.

A typical commercial MRI unit uses whopping huge magnetic fields (technical term) generated by great big superconducting magnets, which are heavy and expensive and kind of claustrophobic for lots of patients. They also can’t be used in the presence of significant amounts of metal— many hospitals won’t even run MRI scans on people with significant numbers of tattoos, because of the metal in the inks. The standard explanation for this is rooted in the basic physics: the whopping huge field causes more of the spins to line up with the field, getting you a stronger signal out, and thus better resolution.

A portable system would necessarily involve smaller fields, which would seem to create problems with getting a signal out, so I asked Walsworth what the trick was, expecting to hear about some cool basic physics process for generating spin alignments that would give you bigger signals with smaller magnets. But that’s not what’s going on at all, he said— there’s really nothing new in the physics, just the ancillary technology used to generate the images.

Dog MRI

Getty

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As he explained it, the biggest limitation for making MRI images back when these systems started to be made was data processing: interpreting the signals picked up from the machine to generate the maps of different types of tissue. Whopping huge magnetic fields make this a lot more tractable with 1980’s computing technology, because with a very large field you can make a lot of simplifying assumptions that make the signals coming out pretty straightforward to interpret. Going to a lower field violates a lot of those nice simplifying assumptions, so while you can still pick up a signal from your patient, interpreting what it means is much more complicated, and wasn’t really feasible with the limited computing resources available for the early machines.

The trick to making a portable scanner, then, is not a revision of the physics of the core NMR process, but a recognition that high-power computing has gotten cheap. Modern computer processors (and signal-processing algorithms) make it possible to get useful information out of the weaker and more complicated signals you get from using lower magnetic fields in the MRI system. I couldn’t find the specific product he mentioned, but this video with Carl Zimmer gives you some idea. Being smarter about the computing side of the imaging process lets you reduce the requirements for the magnetic field, opening the door to smaller, lighter, and most importantly cheaper systems.

So, in both metrology and medicine, we see the ways that ancillary technology constrains what we do in and with physics. Particularly on the experimental side, we’re very much a tool-driven field, and which pieces of our nearly infinite universe we study depends on what we’ve got on hand to study them with.

#News

[fullspectrum-cbd-oil]

Judge Validates Trump Impeachment Inquiry, Orders Mueller Document Release

A U.S. judge on Friday validated the legality of the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump and ordered his administration to hand over an unredacted copy of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report detailing Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, handing a major victory to the Democratic-led House of Representatives, undercut an argument that Trump’s fellow Republicans have made in attacking the impeachment inquiry. The judge said the House need not approve a resolution formally initiating the effort.

The U.S. Constitution gives the House wide latitude in handling impeachment. Democrats began the inquiry without putting such a resolution to a vote.

The judge gave the Justice Department until next Wednesday to provide the blacked out material from the Mueller report that was subpoenaed by the House Judiciary Committee.

“The reality is that DOJ and the White House have been openly stonewalling the House’s efforts to get information by subpoena and by agreement, and the White House has flatly stated that the Administration will not cooperate with congressional requests for information,” the judge wrote, using an acronym for the Justice Department.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the ruling “another blow to President Trump’s attempt to put himself above the law.”

“This critical court ruling affirms Congress’s authority to expose the truth for the American people,” Pelosi, the top elected Democratic official, said in a statement, adding, “The President will be held accountable – because no one is above the law.”

The Justice Department had argued that the redacted information could not be disclosed because it contained material from grand jury proceedings that was required to be kept secret, but the judge strongly disagreed.

“DOJ is wrong,” Howell said, adding that the committee’s need for disclosure of the materials “is greater than the need for continued secrecy.”

“Impeachment based on anything less than all relevant evidence would compromise the public’s faith in the process,” added Howell, a former federal prosecutor appointed to the bench by Trump’s Democratic predecessor Barack Obama.

Howell also ruled that the House has undertaken a legal and legitimate impeachment inquiry and criticized efforts by the Justice Department and the committee’s ranking Republican Doug Collins to argue that Democrats had not met the legal threshold.

“Blocking access to evidence collected by a grand jury relevant to an impeachment inquiry, as DOJ urges, undermines the House’s ability to carry out its constitutional responsibility with due diligence,” the judge added.

The Democrats sought access to the redacted materials as part of their effort to build a case for removing Trump from office.

The committee, Howell ruled, “has presented sufficient evidence that its investigation has the preliminary purpose of determining whether to recommend articles (of) impeachment,” referring to formal charges that the House could approve that would trigger a trial in the Senate on whether to remove Trump from office.

A Republican resolution introduced in the Senate on Thursday criticized the process that House Democrats are using in the impeachment inquiry. It argued that a resolution is needed to initiate such an inquiry. The judge disagreed.

“Even in cases of presidential impeachment, a House resolution has never, in fact, been required to begin an impeachment inquiry,” the judge wrote.

‘THOUGHTFUL RULING’

Democrat Jerrold Nadler, the panel’s chairman, lauded the ruling.

“The court’s thoughtful ruling recognizes that our impeachment inquiry fully comports with the Constitution and thoroughly rejects the spurious White House claims to the contrary,” Nadler said.

Kerri Kupec, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said the department is reviewing the decision.

A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell sought to minimize the importance of the judge’s comments on an impeachment resolution, saying Republicans had argued that it was “unfair and wrong” but “not unconstitutional” for the House to have failed to pass such a measure.

Mueller submitted his report to U.S. Attorney General William Barr in March after completing a 22-month investigation that detailed Russia’s campaign of hacking and propaganda to boost Trump’s candidacy in the 2016 election as well as extensive contacts between the Trump campaign and Moscow.

But when Barr, a Trump appointee who Democrats have accused of trying to protect Trump politically, made the 448-page report public the following month, some parts were blacked out, or redacted.

Mueller said his investigation found insufficient evidence to establish that Trump and his campaign had engaged in a criminal conspiracy with Russia.

Trump’s administration has refused to comply with subpoenas from House committees in the impeachment inquiry seeking documents and testimony. But some current and former administration officials have defied the White House and testified in the impeachment inquiry.

The impeachment inquiry centers not on the Mueller report but on Trump’s request that Ukraine investigate a domestic political rival, Democrat Joe Biden.

(Reporting by Jan Wolfe and Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Grant McCool and Will Dunham)

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[mariowil]

In more recent times, this strategy of war based on (spurious) justifications has added a new type of ploy that is much more subtle and suitable for imperialist ends. Since Washington has lost the ability to decide the situation on the ground in different war theaters like in Iraq and Syria, it settles for sowing chaos and destruction. This is done through the employment of plausible deniability, which helps mask covert operations. An example can be seen in Syria, where Washington arms the Free Syrian Army (FSA), an insurgency group labelled "moderate rebels", but these weapons somehow seem to find their way into the hands of Al Nusra and Daesh. This situation has been going on for years, with Washington using Daesh and Al Nusra to fight against Assad, being able to plausible deny doing so by professing to be only arming the moderate rebels and not the extremist terrorists. Clearly we are facing an obvious case of plausible deniabIlity. The United States claims to be arming only the "rebels" in its efforts to remove Assad, but in reality these rebels do not exist and are merely different acronyms for various Islamist extremists. It is therefore natural that the arms given to the rebels will wind up in the hands of ISIS or Al Nusra. On the rare occasions that journalists enquire as to how US weapons have ended up in the hands of Daesh or Al Nusra, US authorities can plausibly deny that they are intentionally arming any extremist groups. Plausible deniability and justifications for war are two manifestations of the hallucinatory world in which we live, based on conjurations rather than reality. No newspaper or journalist questions whether the justification given for war is legitimate. No newspaper wonders whether Iraq really was linked to Al Qaeda, preferring instead to repeat US propaganda. No one bothers to dig and ask whether the FSA is just an acronym like the SDF and therefore another way of plausibly denying and covering for America's illegal involvement in Syria.