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In the Trump Administration, Science Is Unwelcome. So Is Advice. (nytimes.com)
Anonymous readers share a report: As President Trump prepares to meet Kim Jong-un of North Korea to negotiate denuclearization, a challenge that has bedeviled the world for years, he is doing so without the help of a White House science adviser or senior counselor trained in nuclear physics. Mr. Trump is the first president since 1941 not to name a science adviser, a position created during World War II to guide the Oval Office on technical matters ranging from nuclear warfare to global pandemics. As a businessman and president, Mr. Trump has proudly been guided by his instincts. Nevertheless, people who have participated in past nuclear negotiations say the absence of such high-level expertise could put him at a tactical disadvantage in one of the weightiest diplomatic matters of his presidency.
"You need to have an empowered senior science adviser at the table," said R. Nicholas Burns, who led negotiations with India over a civilian nuclear deal during the George W. Bush administration. "You can be sure the other side will have that." The lack of traditional scientific advisory leadership in the White House is one example of a significant change in the Trump administration: the marginalization of science in shaping United States policy. There is no chief scientist at the State Department, where science is central to foreign policy matters such as cybersecurity and global warming. Nor is there a chief scientist at the Department of Agriculture: Mr. Trump last year nominated Sam Clovis, a former talk-show host with no scientific background, to the position, but he withdrew his name and no new nomination has been made.
"You need to have an empowered senior science adviser at the table," said R. Nicholas Burns, who led negotiations with India over a civilian nuclear deal during the George W. Bush administration. "You can be sure the other side will have that." The lack of traditional scientific advisory leadership in the White House is one example of a significant change in the Trump administration: the marginalization of science in shaping United States policy. There is no chief scientist at the State Department, where science is central to foreign policy matters such as cybersecurity and global warming. Nor is there a chief scientist at the Department of Agriculture: Mr. Trump last year nominated Sam Clovis, a former talk-show host with no scientific background, to the position, but he withdrew his name and no new nomination has been made.
That expire in 6 hours, time to use them!
The people giving advice on Korea have been fucking it up for 60-ish years, and REALLY fucking it up for 25 resulting in a viable nuclear program. So I wouldn't listen to them either.
The only thing Trump believes in is money, and money has "In god we trust", so who the hell needs science. And the problem with science advisors, they know WAY too much that Trump does not understand. And as for all the GREAT PEOPLE that Trump knows....he'll probably end up pardoning most of them, including himself.
White House science adviser or senior counselor trained in nuclear physics.
Why would you need EITHER of those people to meet with someone like Kim Jong-un?
They are not going to meet about science. They are not going to talk about how nuclear weapons are constructed.
They are going to meet for the purpose of North Korea *giving up* nuclear weapons and rejoining with the south.
What kind of "experts" can really help you here? Kim Jong-un is not exactly well balanced. What you need is someone who can steer a power-mad and basically unbalanced person into doing something you want them to do, to point out how it's really in their best interests also.
Trump is probably the ONLY president who can pull this off. Because unlike any of the past presidents for many decades, he will speak plainly, and as a result he actually will be more trusted and respected by someone who doesn't really know who to trust.
Trump also has the experience in handling unbalanced megalomaniacs in spades, thanks to his working with real-estate construction all around the world, but most especially New York City. I defy anyone to claim that Kim Jong-un is harder to work with than the upper echelons of the Teamsters.
One last point - the very LAST person you want to bring to a nuclear disarmament party is a nuclear weapons expert, that just screams you are not truly serious about them getting rid of nuclear weapons and they would act accordingly.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
When the effects of poor policy start to take effect, like the unwinding of a tightly coiled spring, who will he blame?
...if this meeting was something other than a photo-op. I don't think anything of substance will be discussed, and the only question is when exactly will the name-calling start again.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
One way or another, I have a sneaking suspicion he'll be the last, "businessman" to be "elected" to be "president" of the "United" States.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
science was also unwelcome when it came to facts like sexual dimorphism, the 'wage gap', and 'patriarchy theory.'
Ideologues hate inconvenient truth.
Trump is anti-science. Science ia the driving force of technology. This article is in the right place. Trump can and does do wrong. Thats reality. Deny it if you want.
Many people like to blame Trump, but he is a symptom of the US Environment. When Education is constantly cut for a period of 40 years and constant hate towards educated people, this is how things end up.
On TV you see nothing but Reality Shows and shows talking about Ancient Aliens and other such things. You end you with a population that believes Science is fake and thinks Angels and other such things will come and 'save us'.
More people seem to believe in pseudoscience (wikipedia) than anything else, thus you get a Trump and I do not see that changing
First comes the actual agreement, then come the steps two get rid of the nuclear weapons in many later steps... as I said, it sends a bad signal to assume and indicate anything about the deal, or to indicate what boundaries of a potential deal you are willing to accept ahead of time.
You are not thinking about this at all rationally, only peering through a tiny lens of science-religion onto a vastly complex landscape that is negotiation at a country level. You may as well be demanding Trump include a four leaf clover in his underwear.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
... because the Americans are anti-science, anyway.
The People voted and it's their right to reject science.
They have the right to want coal and oil jobs, and to prevent nuclear power plant shutdowns.
They have the right to elect politicians who will deregulate industry so sales will go up.
Americans want to be an isolationist, nationalistic, under-educated, Evangelical Christian, English-speaking country and that's their right.
If and when Americans decide to change direction, they will communicate such via the election booth.
Until then, all's right with the world.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
AND if/when they get there, the US has many thousands of 'Nuclear scientists' at its disposal (You know because the US has nuclear weapons) that can be used for the 'mop up duty'. Do you REALLY think this summit is about the 'nitty-gritty' of disarmament...if that's what you think YOU'RE the moron.
This is exactly the discussion the leaders of the G7 are having today about Donald Trump.
And what luck are they having? None at all it would seem. Trump steamrolled them at the G7 summit and uncovered a lot of uncomfortable facts about a long-time status quo the G7 would rather have remained obscured (like a 270% tariff on dairy going into Canada, a very real and chilling fact about which I had no idea previously).
Meanwhile Trump has actually gotten the U.S., NK and SK together in a room to talk for the first time in decades.
So many Trump knows something the megalomaniacs running the EU (if you don't think every single person running each country is a kind of megalomaniac you are an idiot) do not. It's not like their own countries are faring well enough they make great examples to point to for how to run anything.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You must not have been paying much attention. People are hoping for the best, but they have already seen over a year of this president's behavior and words.
Are even the most ardent Trump supporters nervous-as-fuck that this is just going to be yet another embarrassment, or is there something about this story that makes you think he'll finally get something done correctly for the first time in his presidency? WTF is so bogglingly different about the Korean problem that makes it so much easier than the American problems that he keeps fucking up?
This is coming from the New York Times. Keep that in mind as you read this article.
;)
Just my 2 cents
Yeah I'm sure that South Korea had nothing at all to do with the peace talks. Of course it was God Emperor Trump that scared Kim Jong-Un into submission.
When North Korean re-joins with the south, taking away a huge potential problem for much of the world - who will you *thank*?
Kenny Rogers had a #1 hit in 1978 with a song that could provide you with some valuable and much needed advice.
The only way North Korea will rejoin with the south is if Kim Jong-un is allowed to rule it. Will you consider that a victory? I certainly would not.
I wouldn't consider that much of a victory but I also don't consider it a possibility so it really doesn't warrant any thought.
Kim Jong-un isn't going to give up control of the North
Oh, you didn't mean ALL of Korea. (or did you? Not very clear). Nor does he have to, he just has to open up borders and trade between the two countries. That *is* very possible. And is very much a massive victory.
Trump might, however, create some kind of deal. The only leverage he has is lifting economic sanctions or war.
"The only advantage Trump has are these giant massive levers here". Um, yes, those are actually two massive advantages. NK is dying as a country, Kim Jong-un knows this, all he needs is a path to a graceful exit rather than a blaze of glory - and Kim Jong-Un as crazy as he is, obviously is a person who wants to live in luxury rather than die in fire. Have you paid no attention to how he lives?
There's no guarantee that the North would either negotiate in good faith or adhere to the "new rules".
Oh they will not, but long term it will not matter if the people of the two Koreas are allowed to freely mix.
The problem isn't the intelligence, prior attempts, or the people who worked on the problem before...
Then why have there never been talks like this before? Instead all we saw, was countries getting played via telephone from North Korean leaders. Trump is not someone you can play like that because he knows the game, and is will to actually pull the levers unlike previous leaders who NK knew would never ever touch them - even in the face of nuclear weapons being built by North Korea.
All politicians are sociopaths.
Yes, but Trump is actually a strong sociopath unlike presidents for decades before him.
That doesn't guarantee intelligence or good decision making.
Neither does it preclude the same; Not having a nuclear war is great for Trump, it just also happens to work out for everyone else really well. Obama invited conflict (like invading Libya) so he could prove how tough he was. Obama really was the ultimate God of War.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Only when it served them, othertimes Republican fascism was enough.
Of course they do but South Korea credits Trump for talks with North Korea - wouldn't they be in a little better position to know who to credit than you?
I mean, for decades there has been the opposite of progress, with North Korea developing nuclear weapons unchecked, killing soldiers from South Korea and America without repercussion. The government of South Korea has been as it is for a very long time.
The only variable in this large equation that has changed is the introduction of Trump. So yes South Korea aided this by being open to talks, but it would not have happened (because it DID NOT HAPPEN) without Trump. End of story.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...and the story it is in response to somehow is not? You're a strange one, slashdot.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
If he's unsure of who to trust, perhaps he should look at how Trump treats his allies.
You mean actual U.S. allies like Israel, India, Saudi Arabia, or Japan?
Yes, yes it would make pretty clear how the U.S. treats real allies instead of bullshit artists who want nothing to do with possible U.S. success and work hard against it.
I'm sure Kim has factored this in as well; for as crazy as he may be he's also been pretty shrewd.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If only we had a Nobel Peace Prize Winner in office, who bombed the fuck out of a place like Libya for giving up their weapons years ago and failed to protect the Ukraine (after they agreed to give up weapons for our support), then we'd be able to inspire trust and honest bargaining.
This post is exactly right, and a great indicator why the talks will be a success. Because NK knows more than anyone the costs of the talks failing.
There may yet be a bit more drama and back and forth, but ultimately NK can't realistically fight a war of any kind for more than about an hour and at this point probably cannot hurt SK very much. So Kim Jong-un will take the path that lets him continue to party and live the high life.
More than anything it would also play so well to his ego...
As you say it is amazing to think what an economic powerhouse a unified Korea would be.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sorry for bringing logic to a shit-flinging party, can't help myself.
Unfortunately, you didn't. You have to look at absolute numbers, and not percentages, because the subsidies have a multiplicative effect. They not only change the profitability of milk, but they encourage overproduction (because the subsidies are based on production), which drives down prices.
Indeed, according to government numbers, the US has a 5-1 price edge against Canada in dairy pricing due to subsidies. That should call for a 500% subsidy to fully correct for, and yet we only charge a 270% tariff.
You'd expect if the tariffs were completely out-of-line that nobody in Canada would import dairy form the US, and yet in 2016 alone we imported more than $631 million in dairy from the US. For a population smaller than that of California.
Again -- talk to your own government first. I'd be more than happy to see both of our countries (and the EU, which has the largest dairy subsidies in the world) drop dairy tariffs -- but the unfair subsidies have to come down first. It's the subsidies that have caused the tariffs, not the other way around. Canada is hardly in some power position where we can drop our tariffs and hope for some form of "general goodwill" that the US will stop unfair subsidies and attempts at dumping. The Canadian Government has been clear in the past that if the subsidies go away, we won't need the tariffs anymore.
Yaz
Well, at least they haven't started WWIII over the issue up until now.
They very much did by allowing to let North Korean (and Iran) get within one launch or a smuggled shipping port nuke away from starting WWIII (or at least a nuclear conflict).
You can start wars through inaction as well action, you know.
Just because the nuclear shot has not been fired does not mean the war has not begin.
I mean, we have dead U.S. soldiers (from Iran and North Korea) and everything... how is that not a war?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What I find odd is that there's so many pro Trump folks on /. (which is ostensibly a site for pro-science nerds)
Many folks here on /. are indeed pro-science nerds. Many are also libertarian and don't like government regulation. Of the viable candidates, Trump was the most likely to reduce government regulation. Personally I am not a big fan of the president, but his election wasn't a surprise to me, nor is the support for him here on /.
until Saddam & Gaddafi. In both cases we secured promises, backed up by extensive international inspections, that they would not develop weapons of mass destruction. And in both cases we proved to be untrustworthy and brutal and arranged for both men to be murdered (Gaddafi died with a bayonet twisting in his gut).
Kim would be a real mad man if he stopped trying to get nukes after seeing what we do to people who relinquish them
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See recent Slashdot submission titled Petroglyph Explanation Remains Ignored After 15 Years. This situation with Trump lacking a science advisor is not especially different in that the person making these petroglyph claims, Anthony Peratt, is a government scientist specializing in high-energy density plasmas and nuclear physics, and has even advised the US government on the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The Submission ...
The Slashdot community does not itself seem especially concerned about warnings from nuclear scientists, as the submission has had plenty of time by now to make it to the homepage.
who can speak intelligently about nuclear weapons vs nuclear power?
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The summit only exists because of Trump because he is the only one reckless enough to agree to it. This is what the North Korea's want, to be at the big boy's table, a respected and legitimate nuclear power, but what does it give us? Other presidents could have easily done if they wanted to, if they thought it would have accomplished anything for us.
I know we are in a 1984 post truth age and have always been at war with Eurasia, but the relationship with North Korea has always fluctuated up and down because they are duplicitous and skilled at using extortion to extract concessions. Trump's policy towards North Korea has been similarly schizophrenic, talking about "little Rocket man" and threatening with nuclear war, now switching back and forth to the nice nice, but what makes you think that if this doesn't provide the magic results that only those in the cult of personality seem to believe will occur that we won't go back to "fire and fury" on failure. John Bolton seems to have been brought in explicitly for the purpose of fire and fury.
The gratuitous f-bombs and hostility about posters on this subject suggest to me that the parent may just be a troll and treating it in good faith is a foolish endeavor, but if this what represents a widespread consensus of thought then we are in serious trouble.
Do you have any examples (specific quotations would be awesome but I think that might be asking too much) of bad science advice people have given with regards to Korea?
Well the scientists working with intelligence agencies have been wrong about the speed at which North Korean could develop nuclear weapons and delivery technology basically forever - from the most recent example:
" At the start of Donald Trump's presidency, American intelligence agencies told the new administration that while North Korea had built the bomb, there was still ample time - upward of four years - to slow or stop its development of a missile capable of hitting an American city with a nuclear warhead."
But this kind of terrible under-estimation goes back decades.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
As long as the re-unification creates a democratic state, I for one would be be quite happy.
My worry is that with Trump involved he might mix up the 'good' and 'bad' Korea and give control to the North.
and there's plenty to support Trump being anti-science. To wit:
His EPA chief is ignoring air and water quality research and reducing controls on water and air quality
He called Global Warming a Chinese hoax, despite the overwhelming condenses of peer reviewed science recognizing it
He opposes Net Neutrality and ignores studies that show eliminating it would have negative effects on the free exchange of ideas.
He and his VP support Abstinence based education even though it's been shown to be completely ineffective (again, by science).
Two words: Clean Coal.
Two more words: Betsy Devos
I could go on and on. The scientific position to take is that Trump is, in fact, anti-science. He doesn't believe in evidence and facts, preferring the "I substitute your reality with my own" school of thought. To call him anything but anti-science is itself anti-science. It's an attempt to ignore or refute reality itself.
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...oh really.. by all means tell us about history's great scientists and what they were trying to sell?
..right up there with your red herring...
You seem to confuse production efficiency with subsidy, correcting for subsidy is one thing, correcting because your own farmers can't produce milk at the same price because they are more inefficient is very much protectionism (and a kind of subsidy all by itself on the part of the Canadian government, very telling you cannot or will not admit that).
I think at this point it's important to let readers read facts about the matter rather than your own un-substnatiated figures, I think I'll leave the discussion at that - facts on which people can decide, rather than the emotion of only one side supposedly subsidizing an industry.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
correcting because your own farmers can't produce milk at the same price because they are more inefficient is very much protectionism
Canada has higher food quality regulations than the US does. We don't permit the use of recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST) in milk producing cows for one. We also don't permit the high levels of antibiotic use the US dairies are allowed to use in the US. The maximum Somatic Cell Count permitted in Canadian milk is nearly half that allowed in US milk.
So yes, in some ways Canadian dairy production is slightly less efficient, but only because we don't feed our cows growth hormones which are detrimental to both bovine and human health, and don't allow all the blood and pus and other non-milk cellular material the US permits in their milk products.
But again -- if US dairies are willing to meet our dairy requirements and stop with the subsidies worth more than the entire Canadian dairy industry is worth -- you'll find Canada ready to talk. Again -- the tariffs were in response to continued US Government subsidies, and not the other way around.
Yaz
I would save the celebration for a while. Absolutely nothing has been solved thus-far. America is increasingly isolated by the antics of your glorious leader, including his pursuit of Russian interests while he is being investigated for collusion with the Russians.
Your crapflood is boring. Weak. Pathetic.
You embarass the balanced and rational people who oppose Trump. They wish your kind would just shut up.
Out and out editorials, no facts, nothing at all. Just a pure, garbage opinion piece.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Oh, shut up little trumptard snowflake. If we'd elected Harvey Weinstein for president we'd never hear the end of it. And yet you freely, willingly and knowingly elected a narcissist, psychopath, pedophile, sexual predator and con-man who's accumulated more than 1300 civil lawsuits against him in his carreer, and we should just let it slide ?
Not only are you as dumb as we think you are, but since the last election, you've proven that you're even dumber than that.
Now watch those who keep blaming the liberals for trying to take away their free speech downmod this post to hell. Typical conservative hypocrisy. Typical, but not surprising.
The reaction of people like you is an excellent indication that something right is going on. It's probably too late in your life to get a fucking clue, so enjoy your grumbling. Stay outta the road, tho.
"Get rid of" - eliminate. No longer possess.
"Cease production" - stop building new ones.
You're welcome. Sheesh, it's politicians who love debating what the meaning of is, is. A different approach here is at least moving the process forward, a process that has seen 3 Administrations, over 24 years, basically appease North Korea and fail to control anything.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
We almost did elect Weinstein into the White House. He was attached at the hip to Hillary. Her kind of guy. Look who she picked for a husband, for petes sake.
I'll thank Beijing for summoning Kim by train and explaining exactly what was going to happen to him if he kept his shit up.
Trump didn't accomplish a fucking thing.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
NAFTA doesn't allow you to use food regulations to ban or add tariffs to products. If they meet the agreed-to standards per NAFTA guidelines (and rBST was not considered) then you cannot place a tariff on the product. Canada may have higher milk standards, but per the NAFTA treaty they cannot add tariffs on milk. Canada is actually violating NAFTA.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Ice cream isn't gay.
I can definitely visualize in my mind, though, a Bill Nye TV show episode (he's a tv actor, like Captain Kangaroo or Big Bird) where the experiment is making ice cream out of tomcat milk (with lots of hormone therapy involved).
There's not going to be any re-unification, perhaps some opening up of the borders.
North and South Korea have diverged enough that even the language is hard for each to understand, the young S. Koreans aren't interested in re-unification and it would be as expensive as shit (see Germany), though with Trump's understanding of finances, perhaps America will borrow more and underwrite the cost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Stop the presses!
Breaking news:
> In the Trump Administration, Science Is Unwelcome. So Is Advice.
Who knew?!?
Where is the science that any of that is actually bad for either cows or humans? The FDA has some of the strictest regulations in the world, yet you say they're letting farmers poison the population with milk?
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Actually, NAFTA does allow permit this for dairy products:
NAFTA, Annex 703.2, Section B, Part 7 states:
7. Notwithstanding paragraph 6 and Article 309:
a) the rights and obligations of the Parties under Article XI:2(c)(i) of the GATT and those rights as incorporated by Article 309 shall apply with respect to trade in agricultural goods only to the dairy, poultry and egg goods set out in Appendix 703.2.B.7; and
b) with respect to such dairy, poultry and egg goods that are qualifying goods, either Party may adopt or maintain a prohibition or restriction or a customs duty on the importation of such good consistent with its rights and obligations under the GATT.
Appendix 703.2.B.7 lists the specific items which qualify under this part.
Likewise, Article 712 states:
Right to Take Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures
1. Each Party may, in accordance with this Section, adopt, maintain or apply any sanitary or phytosanitary measure necessary for the protection of human, animal or plant life or health in its territory, including a measure more stringent than an international standard, guideline or recommendation.
Right to Establish Level of Protection
2. Notwithstanding any other provision of this Section, each Party may, in protecting human, animal or plant life or health, establish its appropriate levels of protection in accordance with Article 715.
Scientific Principles
3. Each Party shall ensure that any sanitary or phytosanitary measure that it adopts, maintains or applies is:
a) based on scientific principles, taking into account relevant factors including, where appropriate, different geographic conditions;
b) not maintained where there is no longer a scientific basis for it; and
c) based on a risk assessment, as appropriate to the circumstances.
Non-Discriminatory Treatment
4. Each Party shall ensure that a sanitary or phytosanitary measure that it adopts, maintains or applies does not arbitrarily or unjustifiably discriminate between its goods and like goods of another Party, or between goods of another Party and like goods of any other country, where identical or similar conditions prevail.
So in effect, dairy is exempt from most NAFTA rules, and setting human health standards for products is perfectly legal, so long as it is non-discriminatory.
Yaz
he is reducing government regulation. But there's going to be consequences. He's repealing the laws put in place from the 2008 crash. There's going to be another, worse crash. He's rolling back EPA regulations on clean air and water. He's reducing regulations that required schools to teach science instead of religion. Those are the kinds of regulations he's reducing.
Most regulations were done for a reason. They were reactive, not proactive, and they're not just some libtard trying to spoil everybody's fun or some science nerd trying to bilk a paycheck out of the public Universities. There are going to be some nasty consequences for all this deregulation. The annoying part is it'll be like it always is. A Republican deregulates, something blows up and a bunch of awful things happen, then a Dem cleans up the mess. That's where the 'cyclical' nature of the economy comes from.
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Yaz Said..
Sorry for bringing logic to a shit-flinging party, can't help myself.
Unfortunately, you didn't. You have to look at absolute numbers, and not percentages, because the subsidies have a multiplicative effect. They not only change the profitability of milk, but they encourage overproduction (because the subsidies are based on production), which drives down prices.
Indeed, according to government numbers, the US has a 5-1 price edge against Canada in dairy pricing due to subsidies. That should call for a 500% subsidy to fully correct for, and yet we only charge a 270% tariff.
You'd expect if the tariffs were completely out-of-line that nobody in Canada would import dairy form the US, and yet in 2016 alone we imported more than $631 million in dairy from the US. For a population smaller than that of California.
Again -- talk to your own government first. I'd be more than happy to see both of our countries (and the EU, which has the largest dairy subsidies in the world) drop dairy tariffs -- but the unfair subsidies have to come down first. It's the subsidies that have caused the tariffs, not the other way around. Canada is hardly in some power position where we can drop our tariffs and hope for some form of "general goodwill" that the US will stop unfair subsidies and attempts at dumping. The Canadian Government has been clear in the past that if the subsidies go away, we won't need the tariffs anymore.
Yaz
Great post Yaz. Very informative. Surprised someone is trying to mod you down.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
One imagines that psychoanalysts and cultural experts and perhaps defected army officers would be those who might provide relevant insights to help in the denuclearization negotiations. Physicists not so much.
"Oh so the bomb uses an IMplosive mechanism to trigger the critical mass! Oh NOW I know what to say to Kim in the next meeting, we've been doing it all wrong!"
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
*postwar reconstruction
No hard character limit on the mobile site.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Where is the science that any of that is actually bad for either cows or humans? The FDA has some of the strictest regulations in the world, yet you say they're letting farmers poison the population with milk?
Fortunately, Health Canada puts their research online:
Executive summary: it's much worse for cows than for people, but there are still some concerns about immune responses in some people. So it's mostly about the health of the cows (and the milk produced by potentially unhealthy cows) rather than a direct effect of rbST in milk on humans.
Yaz
I stand corrected. Most products do not get such exemptions, so adding duties on them would be, in effect, a violation of the treaty.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
While my own informal observations lack rigor (since I haven't the time or money to make more rigorous observations), it's not necessarily harmful to people, but when the "milk" production is boosted, there is a noticable "watered down" quality to the milk.
Meanwhile, the FDA is hardly infallible.
73% of US dairy farmers' revenue is from subsidies. https://www.realagriculture.co... so, fine to get rid of them, but get rid of crop insurance, Price Loss Coverage, Agricultural Risk Coverage, Stacked Income Protection Plan, Margin Protection Program for Dairy Producers, Dairy Product Donation Program. Then there is below cost (aka subsidized) water for irrigation, subsidized electricity to pump it. "The total value of irrigation subsidies provided by state and local government has been estimated at between US$10 billion and US$33 billion" so pot? meet kettle!
I'll just respond to one of the parrots of this "interesting" talking point being spread by the Hive Mind.
Just because the known facility was destroyed does not mean they could not simply move on to another..
They have a very large one sitting right next door for example. Or the entire ocean... maybe during a training exercise by other nations. Oops!
Basically the thought they would have to be done because one facility is close to collapse is idiotic and ignores the realities of a nuclear weapons program.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Since you seem incapable of understanding simple words, I'll repeat them to you until it percolates through your brain there is a question: How are dead American soldiers, purposefully killed by North Korea and Iran, not part of and cause for a war?
Until you answer that simple question it is you who are trying to hand-wave away the simple facts of the matter.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
when WAS the last Science friendly administration ?
Late 60's ?
It takes resources to do Science; the best thing we've got to create flows of resources is a Free Market.
That's weird, I could have swore that the USSR was the first country in space. I'm also pretty sure that what has made the U.S. such a scientific powerhouse has been tons of federal grant money that flows into our universities for basic research. The free market turns that into money afterward. There's also the issue of all those nifty advancements brought about through NASA's research.
The free market is important, but when you make it the be-all, end-all, you'll find that things don't work out as well as Ayn Rand's stories would have you believe.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Both you and Yaz are falling for Trump's gimmick. If you think this is about DAIRY TARIFFS, you've already missed what happened.
Trump wants to destabilize the existing relationship so he can "renegotiate" a mafia strong-arm position that puts the US in an isolationist posture. He's going to do it on every front, Mexico, Canada, G7, everywhere. The exact tariffs themselves are just dog and pony shows. The fact that you guys are mired in discussions about dairy tariffs shows that you are missing the forest for the trees. Trump would do this NO MATTER WHICH TARIFFS are at issue.
And he insulted Trudeau as part of his bully strategy. Trudeau didn't say anything that he hadn't already said before. Trump would have taken any statement and pretended it was offensive. The goal of Trump is to bully and harass, laws and regulations be damned. He's the King of the US and he doesn't care what you, or any of the voting public think. He can break the law, shoot some guy on the street (his point, not mine), and pardon himself.
You're witnessing the birth of a Putin-esque oligarchic faux-capitalist government with a Supreme Leader. Stop arguing about milk and pay attention to the big picture.
"Get rid of" - eliminate. No longer possess. Sell to the highest bidder
UhOh
I look forward to your death by E. Coli from contaminated food.
Why is Snark Required?
I stand corrected. Most products do not get such exemptions, so adding duties on them would be, in effect, a violation of the treaty.
Agricultural goods are a real problem area when it comes to international trade, and are exempted all over the place because certain regions (like the US and EU) subsidize agriculture very heavily, which distorts the market for agricultural goods globally.
IIRC, there was an attempt during GATT negotiations to fix this global problem, but once the 2008 economic meltdown hit everyone just forgot about it and things remained as they have been for decades, with some countries massively subsidizing agricultural sectors, others putting tariffs and non-tariff protections in place, and others have seen their industries failing and disappearing.
It's a mess. I'm not trying to assign blame -- the US probably feels that they can't drop their dairy, corn, and other farm subsidies because (let's be frank) those are major voting blocs they don't want to piss off. And at the same time, it's an international problem beyond Canada and the US.
Yaz
There is no surface anymore.. Your top security agency warns agains Russian aggression, and your president advocates for them. The smartest thing for any country to do at this point is to have as little as possible to do with the U.S.
Great post Yaz. Very informative. Surprised someone is trying to mod you down.
It's okay -- it's not like a I can exchange Karma for a wheel of cheese anyway :)
Yaz
> I mean, yeah, I don't like Hilary and voted against her in the primary, but she at least has a firm grasp on reality and believes in the scientific method.
Better burn it to the ground than let somebody like Hillary win.
You just don't appreciate how much people dislike her. They dislike her so much that they willingly voted somebody in that they know has no business being there. Trump is just by accident.. if she was competing against let's say a chimpanzee.. you would have first animal for president. You have more chance of winning the presidency.
A different approach here is at least moving the process forward, a process that has seen 3 Administrations, over 24 years, basically appease North Korea and fail to control anything.
It was exactly this thinking said nothing could be worse than leaving Saddam in power...
Bad is only bad if you are too stupid to figure out that things could always be much, much worse.
>>> "Get rid of" - eliminate. No longer possess.
>>> "Cease production" - stop building new ones.
Good god, can anyone on slashdot really be this stupid?
Is removing the firing controller from a nuclear bomb getting rid of it? It's not a functioning bomb any more, but it can be made into again very quickly.
Oh, maybe you think disassembling the bomb and destroying the components is getting rid of it? Ok, but what are you doing with the fissile material? The enrichment process is the most difficult, expensive and timing consuming part of a making a bomb.
Even if you destroy everything else, you can get back to a functioning bomb pretty quickly if you keep the pits.
So, you want to get rid of the pits? How are you going to verify this? What costitutes getting rid of the material? Literally handing it over to another country? Which country? Who verifies it? Does blending the material down count as destruction?
Complex topics are complex, even if you would like to pretend they're not.
You probably don't need a team of scientists, but knowing what will show up on satellites, or what the impact of agreeing to X is going to do to their ability to make bombs seems important. Otherwise, how is he going to know if the tradeoffs make sense.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
If Obama hadn't let little Kimmy get Nukes, he would never have had the confidence to meet Trump as an equal.
So all credit obviously goes to Obama for doing all the legwork in setting up the deal for Trump to just swoop in and take the credit.
More people decided that they didn't care enough to even vote for either candidate.
... I'll tell you this: he will also be the first president that will try and may be succeed to enforce a third term for his presidency.
Bach says it all.
severely nerfed the religious conservatives
I'm not seeing it. He has changed the focus from bigotry against gay people to bigotry against Muslims and "Mexicans." That's not at all a blow against religious conservatives, just a change in priorities.
Anything else which might possibly be considered a nerf against religious conservatives? I can't think of anything. He's screwed transsexual people in the military, but that's not really a religious issue in the same way that it is for gay people. Abortion is pretty much the same debate as always... Tax exemptions for churches are the same and don't look like they're changing any time soon. What other political issues are religious in nature?
It's because most of these people are part of a paid Russian attack. The idea being, if you post enough doubt about the other side, the non-paid actors get tired or replying to it, and by sheer mass, it appears that your side is correct. It worked, and you see how Trumps adopted it to be one of his current policies around calling any fact he doesn't like Fake News.
So the trump administration is going to be the first administration in the past few decades to negotiate de-nuclearization in North Korea without a senior White House science advisor at the table (or even in the administration, right?
And every other administration for the last few decades has had a senior White House science advisor at the table for such talks, right?
Well, honestly, every prior administration that negotiated with North Korea got rolled and wound up pouring money, aid on North Korea while they kept working on getting the bomb.
Do we really need to repeat the failures of prior administrations? Why didn't the presence of a senior White House science advisor prevent all the prior administrations from signing flawed agreements?
Ken
I work with a lot of physicists. I have three masters degrees myself. There is no such thing a 'scientist' is the sense that there is someone who is qualified advise on nuclear weapons, cybersecurity and AGW. As I said I work with physicist and to many of them think they are competent to speak on any subject, which is of course bollocks.
If you want to know about nuclear weapons find a nuclear weapons expert, who might be a physicist, but more likely is a nuclear engineer or might even be a historian or a political science major, who has specialize in disarmament and disarmament verification.
if you want to know about cybersecurity ask a cybersecurity expert. Having a physicist science adviser and asking them about cybersecurity makes as much sense as asking a biologist or a philosopher.
As for AGW I'm sure there's a propagandist around to give pointers on how to use panic to transfer wealth or you could find someone who knows statistics and model building to explain to the credulous how science really works.
Who gives a toss? If Canada doesn't want it, then they can quite reasonably stop it. They're not just stopping it from America - no country can sell them stuff that contravenes their rules. America doesn't get a free pass to do whatever it likes.
As for the FDA having some of the strictest regulations in the world... That gave me a good laugh.
For a second there I thought you were talking about Obama.
I saw this bumper sticker on a car a few days ago; "Bernie 2020"
> Lol, the uneducated right winger at his finest, cant spell, doesnâ(TM)t know what grammar is and utterly clueless about history.
Is that you Donnie, perhaps those tiny hands canâ(TM)t make it all around the keyboard.
Your insults don't alter the fact that this is a pre-existing condition. This didn't get solved during your "Age of Aquarius".
Most of the rhetoric regurgitated by partisans on this or any issue these days is just deranged nonsense intended to sell ads. It's pure intellectual garbage of no value (informative or otherwise). It's the intellectual and data equivalent of Twinkies.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The government employs thousands of scientists. I was once one of them. There are high level scientists who have access to white house staff at agencies like NSF, NIH, DOE, CDC, NASA, and DOD. The government still operates government labs through those organizations. There are openings at all of these agencies, but that is nothing new. There are ignored reports coming out of these agencies, but that is nothing new.
The major office that is going unfilled is in OSTP. Perhaps once this office had a great scientific purpose, but it is a political office now. The job of staff at OSTP is to make the president and administration look good. It's a very useful science marketing department, but it is frequently at odds with the people who actually perform science inside the government. This is because organizations like DOE and DOD have a responsibility to get nuclear testing right while OSTP has recently had a responsibility to make it look good. At times, making the test look good is more important than it being done right. However, this function should not be confused with "science." You will generally find great scientists at OSTP, you will also find press briefings given by precocious interns.
Those who have personally worked with her say she did a good job. The political process always nitpicks and magnifies things. I'd rather have somebody with a careful mouth negotiating than a loose one. I don't believe T's Yosemite Sam negotiation style works well, based on personal experience.
As far as "the emails", a lot of politicians bungle technology, including the current crew and the prior crew. Just make sure you hire good tech guidance.
Table-ized A.I.
Which American problems would those be?
The tax cut which resulted in more money in my pocket?
The economy which is finally recovering from the pit that Bush and Obama, two professional politicians, put it in?
The unemployment situation for the majority, African-American and Hispanic communities?
Personally I got the highest pay raise I've had since Bush was in power. Anecdotal sure, but I reject the premise I shouldn't be concerned about my own prosperity.
Finally recognized Israel's capital. Make no mistake I've been to Israel, Jerusalem is the capital. Pretending it's not is like everyone pretending New York is the U.S. capital and putting their embassies there and traveling to Washington every time they want to meet with the U.S. government, which is what has happened in Israel for years.
Is Trump perfect? Hell no. I think that he is crass and in many ways personally and morally repugnant. No more so than the Clintons, but pretty bad. I think Obama was probably a pretty good husband and father. A disaster as a president, but personally probably a pretty interesting guy to have dinner with, though I'm sure we would disagree about just about everything.
The point is when I hire a plumber to clean the s**t out of my toilet I don't really care if he's a nice guy or how crude he is. I want my toilet to work.
When I vote in a president to change the direction of my country from the off the cliff policies of the mainstream Democratic/Republican globalists I don't so much care how much of a toad he is personally, as long as he is effective. And so far, by economic and political measurements that matter to me, he's been pretty effective.
?????
Last I checked we pretty much save their bacon. Twice. Except for those who we beat about the head and shoulders because they decided to conquer Europe, and then helped rebuild.
Not to mention prevented from having to learn Russian as a native language, at great cost, for a period of something like 40 years.
Cost we're still primarily baring.
By and large we can do without those kinds of allies.
It's not like this is a technological problem, or an agreement that hinges on scientific understanding. It's completely political. Time and time again we've signed agreements, given them money, only to have them continue to develop nuclear weapons. What requires a scientist to understand that dichotomy?
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
Trump is an obvious thug, in the likes of John Gotti Sr and Al Capone.
He "rules" by his gut, which, as POTUS, is akin to speculative gambling with non-discretionary monies!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
with a childlike faith reminiscent of a five year old waiting for Santa Clause.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Most religious conservatives I know voted for Trump. If anything he was a blow to the current Republican "free trade" orthodoxy. Republicans could have shored up power (through maintaining demographic advantage) for the next 50 years simply by shutting down immigration. It was a rational move for their party. They chose not to do this however and simply to pay lip service to it because for the Republican party the ideology of free trade trumps everything... until the Trump with a big 'T' was elected.
I've been voting for over 40 years. During that time I have written to every single president. Now, I know that my mail is probably simply categorized and reported in a broad statistic I write to them either to approve or disapprove what they do. However, it is interesting to note that the only president who has not had his staff respond back to me, was Obama. I've "heard back" from Trump every time I've written. It kind of made me wonder. Was the mail I sent to Obama just 86ed? Were they even tallying the information for him?
This "summit" is a meeting between two puppets. Don't forgot that the KGB owned little Kim's father, and probably his grandfather, too. Whoever the KGB owned, he's now Putin's toy.
So what happens when two puppets play? In the few puppet plays I can remember, one of them beats up the other one. Suddenly this makes a lot of sense.
Puppeteer Putin make Trump puppet GREAT again! (First time was in 2016.)
Now a bit of satire for comic relief:
https://www.newyorker.com/humo...
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Where is the science that any of that is actually bad for either cows or humans? The FDA has some of the strictest regulations in the world, yet you say they're letting farmers poison the population with milk?
The antibiotic problem is a huge one. I don't think it affects whether the milk will make people sick, but the this constant dosing of even healthy farm animals with antibiotics assists in the creation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
NK is giving them up. What else do we need to know? NK is really a broken country with no options. Their test site collapsed and is totally useless now. They're just about out of food and out of options. Just bad options and options that get a lot of their people, including KJU killed. China has had enough of them too. Especially after his hits abroad.
Trump is exactly the right guy at the right time to do this. Get us out of another Democratic mess. Just like Nixon got us out of Kennedy's Vietnam mess.
Do you know why the news isn't constantly talking about the war in Libya? BECAUSE THERE ISN'T ONE.
Right. We overthrew the dictator, got our embassy destroyed and people murdered with bad security, and washed our hands of the country. Libya became part of the operating region for the newly reinvigorated Islamists, in the name of ISIS.
You think Romney or McCain wouldn't have put 150,000 boots on the ground? How's that Iraqi and Afghanistan war going for ya?
Bush and Rumsfeld was criticized for trying to do Afghanistan on the cheap. Obama increased troops into Afghanistan.
Democrats, of this decade anyway, are not warmongers no matter how much you stretch your equivocations.
Which candidate was pushing for more involvement in Syria, in potential conflict with Russia? Oh, that's right, it was Clinton.