This week's stories of note. Optimist; notable dates; US House; nationalism; ionic wind; separation of powers; noted passing; upcoming year; climate change; a different immigration battle; good and bad in metro Denver; designer babies.

Optimist. 25 November, link here. Eat your bananas, mother; they have the potassium that will save your life. A son, Daniel Krauthammer, remembers the advise of his well known, columnist father, Charles. Three very bright, tough budding scientists

Notable Dates.
     21 November 1927: In Serine (northern), CO, at the Columbine coal mine, six striking miners were killed by state police. The more infamous "Ludlow Massacre" had occurred in 1914, leaving 20 dead (men, women, and children).
     22 November 1906: SOS was officially adopted by the International Telegraphic Convention in Berlin.
     22 November 1963: JFK was assassinated and, for those of a certain age, the "Where you when...." question was born.
     24 November 1859: Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published.
     26 November 2018: After the dreaded "7 minutes of terror," [radio silence occasioned by Mars' 100M+ miles distance] at 12:01PM EST NASA's InSight probe seems to have successfully landed. Now for more checks of the satellite and its instrumentation and then on to the remainder of the mission. Sarah Kaplan's story notes that "the last 3 billion years have been a slow-motion disaster for the Red Planet. The dynamo died, the magnetic field faltered, the water evaporated and more than half of the atmosphere was stripped away by solar winds. The InSight mission is designed to find out why."

US House. It was the Constitution that mandated a two-year term for US representatives, keep them close at hand and accountable. Federalist, 52 and 53. In 1787, the pace of politics and communications was much slower, the viewpoint of representatives much more parochial. The need to raise money for re-election much less.
     Now, in the 21st century, all that has changed, especially the money required to win. House winners this past 6 November were already having to think about how much money they would have to raise to win again in 2020. Even if you had a so-called "safe seat," dollars were intruding on your dreams. Perhaps it is time to lengthen a House term to four years.
     Check the nonpartisan site, 538, for their 2016 predictions. The map which shows the number/location of solidly Democratic and Republican seats is instructive.

Nationalism. Much ado about nothing? Or more of a loaded word.
     George Orwell. [A]uthor of “Animal Farm” and “1984,” described patriotism as a benign “devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life” with “no wish to force [it] on other people.” Nationalism, he argued, was the malign “habit of identifying oneself with a single nation … placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests.”
     President Trump. "America first." "I'm a nationalist." Who is included or who is excluded?
     President Marcon, France. Stiring “the old demons” that had contributed to two world wars.

Ionic Wind. A model airplane whose propulsion system has no moving parts. Perhaps, just maybe, who knows? Just remember, more than a few people thought the Orville brothers were a bit off. See the following story.
Star light, Star bright....[Anonymous] The third brightest object in the night sky is the ISS (International Space Station), now in its 20th year circling the globe, 16 orbits each day. There have been 230 ISS residents from 18 nations. Over the years, ISS projects have been big and very little, mechanical to biological.

Separation of powers. Apparently it remains an unknown concept for President Trump. The president's recent remarks about "Obama and Bush judges" drew a swift and unusual public rebuke from Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts. “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges...What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them." Amen!

Noted passing. Ray Chavez, widely recognized as the oldest survivor of the attack on Pearl Harbor, died at the age of 106. At 0345, 7 December, Chavez's ship dropped depth charges on a suspected Japanese submarine just east of Pearl Harbor. He was asleep later in the morning when his wife awoke him with news of the attack.

Leonardo, 500 years on. This article from the Economist notes how different 2019 will be from 1519. Supposedly, a page from a newly discovered journal of Leonardo da Vinci relates a visit to him by a "time traveler" who took him 500 years into the future. (Note in the picture, the Master's two 21st century accoutrements.)

Climate change. The president's contrarian thoughts not withstanding, a National Climate Assessment was released on the day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday. Fridays are the preferred choice when an official agency hopes a necessary, but unwelcome news item, will be "lost" in the upcoming weekend rush. The tactic is called a "Friday news dump." The Trumpians obviously did not remember another so-called "Black" day from American history: the stock market crash in 1929.
     The predictions of the upcoming climatic changes were dire, to say the least. The Atlantic article reports that the study was "endorsed by NASA, NOAA, the Department of Defense, and 10 other federal scientific agencies— [and] contradicts nearly every position taken on the issue by President Donald Trump." Without major worldwide modifications/changes Planet Earth faces a precarious, most uncertain future.
     “Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization, primarily as a result of human activities,” declares its first sentence. “The assumption that current and future climate conditions will resemble the recent past is no longer valid....Without substantial and sustained global mitigation and regional adaptation efforts, climate change is expected to cause growing losses to American infrastructure and property and impede the rate of economic growth over this century"
     From Mother Jones comes this article, echoing other reports.

Japanese immigration. Here the controversy is not about whether or not to admit immigrants. Japan, with an aging, declining population, is in dire need of immigrants. Rather, the concern is for the treatment of its guest workers.

Metro Denver: NCAA and the arts scene. Two very different stories. First, the good. In metro Denver, the SCFD (financed by sales tax revenues) has been supporting arts, science, and culture for 30 years. Organizations large and small, in the city and surrounding areas, receive support. The more troubling story surfaced when it became known that the University of Colorado's head football coach had been fired, but would receive his multi-million dollar "golden parachute." Questions now abound about the taxpayer and/or booster money involved.

New friends? Remember Mr. Rogers? When Great Britain leaves the EU, one has to wonder who will be the US's new best friend. Michael Burnbaum notes, "A once-indispensable proxy in Europe no longer has clout that it can exercise on Washington’s behalf." Indeed. President Trump has heaped scorn on NATO and many of its EU members, leaving a wake not unlike Sherman's fabled scorched-earth march from Atlanta to the sea.

Your special baby. It had been talked about, worried over, and now it has apparently happened. A doctor in China claims to have created "gene-edited" babies. Now the scientific and ethics debates have a new reality with which to deal. The AP story noted that "[a] U.S. scientist said he took part in the work in China, but this kind of gene editing is banned in the United States because the DNA changes can pass to future generations and it risks harming other genes."

Unaffiliated, but unelected. In CO, unaffiliated voters outnumber either registered Democrats and Republicans. However, as Anna Staver reports in the Denver Post, candidates who ran as unaffiliated were not successful. "Ken Bickers, a political science professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, noted 'The proportion of true independents is relatively small...There’s not a third party in the state that’s larger than Democrats or Republicans. That’s a very different kind of thing.' ”

Thank you for reading.