Links for you. Science:
Why the ‘Mother of the Atomic Bomb’ Never Won a Nobel Prize
Evelyn Fox Keller, Who Turned a Feminist Lens on Science, Dies at 87
Bizarre Cancer Has Been Spreading Among Shellfish for Centuries, Studies Find
Characterization of the antispike IgG immune response to COVID-19 vaccines in people with a wide variety of immunodeficiencies
Covid hunters: the amateur sleuths tracking the virus and its variants
ARPA-H announces award to address the rapidly growing threat of antimicrobial resistance and drive antibiotic discovery to improve health outcomes
Other:
Settle for what? Phoebe Maltz Bovy on a Jewish existential dilemma (“Where, on planet Earth, would a Jew not be considered a settler? This is a serious question, one to which I have yet to get a satisfactory response.”; excellent, must-read)
The Limits of Outside Opinion in Gaza: A lot of my colleagues want to walk Israel back from the abyss. That is not going to work well.
Catch-404: The digitization of our lives and livelihoods is leaving millions of Americans—particularly the elderly—on the wrong side of the digital divide. Is it possible to age-proof Silicon Valley?
Almost 9 years ago, I broke the story about Steve Scalise attending & speaking at a white supremacist conference in 2002. Given the renewed attention, I think it’s important to correct a few things the media continues to misreport.
How the Media Turns Extremists Into “Moderates”
Borrowed to the Hilt: SAVE is not going to save us
Local newspapers are vanishing. How should we remember them?
Best Buy to End DVD, Blu-ray Disc Sales
Elections: domestic edition
What Will Be the Destiny of Netanyahu?
Covid deaths are on the rise again, so what happens? Mask-wearing in hospitals is scrapped
No More Special Privileges for Social Media Giants: Reform Section 230
Millions of archived VOC documents now searchable online, including slavery records
Across Israel, Jews and Arabs Join Forces to Help War Victims and Prevent Riots
Dysfunction in Congress could put federal food safety programs at risk
Marjorie Taylor Greene and the lingering belief that truth is partisan
Scholastic’s “bigot button”
At hotels sheltering migrants, fears about neo-Nazis grow
For Hostages’ Families, an ‘Endless Loop of Hope and Despair’
Piling Horror Upon Horror
Rachel Maddow Asks Disturbing ‘Open Question’ About A Jim Jordan Speakership
The Strange Decline of the Pax Americana
Modest Credit Where Credit Is Due File
6% of Workers’ Comp Cases Are for Long COVID, But Many Can’t Collect
Invited Guests
Small business owners say they’re pressured to hire off-duty MPD cops for security (shakedown)
mikethemadbiologist
Lise Meitner may never have won a Nobel Prize, but if you look at the August 8th, 1945 front page of the New York Times, she’s given credit as being “the principal character in the dramatic story of the long search for a method of releasing atomic energy”. They mention Einstein and her collaborators, but apparently the War Department gave her the lead in their press release. It would be a while before the public would get more of the story and learn about Fermi, Oppenheimer and the rest of the gang.
I have an old early 1930s textbook on quantum theory based on Bohr’s theory of weird looking orbitals. The whole theory is obsolete, but there’s a marginal note on the back piece to the effect that an atomic bomb would be impossible, but a partial atomic bomb could be built. I assume this meant that converting 100% of the matter into energy would not be possible but it would be possible to convert some fraction large enough to release a lot of energy.
I’ve been following Phoebe since the early 2000s. She went to my high school and wrote about it on her What Would Phoebe Do? blog. That essay you cited is excellent. It gets right to the point. The common anti-Zionist arguments are essentially anti-semitic despite all sorts of rhetorical dancing about to separate the two. There are anti-Zionist arguments that aren’t anti-semitic, but you don’t tend to run into them. What usually happens when you start asking for clarification you wind up in the usual thicket. Anti-semitism is a lot like misogyny in that they both put the victims in a no-win, no-break even situation and both anti-semites and misogynists tend to be in denial.