Your SUV Is Helping to Destroy the Planet

Transportation in the US--that includes all our cars plus, of course, trucks, buses, and so forth--is responsible for 20% of greenhouse-gas production. (And, as nearly all scientists will tell you, greenhouse gases produced by burning fossil fuels contribute to climate change.)

And people do not realize that, when they buy a big SUV that is thirsty for gas, they may be producing more than their share of CO₂.

The equation is very simple: More gasoline consumed equals more greenhouse gases out the tailpipe.

So, please, to avoid doing your share to destroy the planet, please think twice when purchasing that SUV. Ask yourself whether you really need such a big one, and look at the gas mileage of any model you're considering.

Copyright © 2018.

The Nomination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court

There was a post here about then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh; but I've deleted it because there's been so much water over the dam since I wrote that. (So this displays with an incorrect date and was actually posted on 10/11/2018.)

There was a complex and emotional story leading up to Kavanaugh's eventual (last Saturday) confirmation to the Supreme Court by the US Senate Judiciary Committee and then the whole Senate--as required by the US Constitution.

Since the story was well reported, even in international news, I will recap it briefly: Kavanaugh was accused of sexually attacking a woman, going back more than 30  years. Both Kavanaugh and his accuser, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, testified in a special Senate hearing. Kavanaugh got very emotional, particularly in relating how the accusations have taken a toll on him and his family--and this probably earned him a good deal of sympathy.

However, he segued into a rant in which he claimed that the whole business was a plot by Democrats to exact revenge for Trump's defeat of Hilary Clinton in the presidential election of 2016. (Had he been coached in this by Trump? Because it sure sounds like one of Trump's paranoid hoax/conspiracy claims.)

Anyway, an FBI investigation was ordered. However, the problem with that is that Trump ordered the investigation and thereby was able to set the parameters and limits of the investigation, and limited it such that the FBI was allowed only a week for the investigation and interviewed only nine people. Probably it was a foregone conclusion that the bottom line to the FBI report contained nothing earth-shaking and was in fact entirely trivial.

(In the Senate vote, Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine widely regarded as a moderate who frequently did not follow Republican or Trump ideology; and Democratic Sen. Manchin from Tennessee, both voted to confirm. This was a surprise (a disappointment, if you were on one side of the issue). So the vote was 50 Yea, 48 No. If one of those two had voted No, there would have been a 49-49 tie; and then Vice President Pence, acting as Senate President Pro Tempore, would have cast the deciding Yea vote--again, all according to the Constitution.)

So Mr. Trump in the end got his extremely conservative nominee confirmed and now, we are told, we have the most conservative Supreme Court in many decades, one which may well reverse such landmark Supreme Court decisions as Rowe v. Wade (which legalized abortion) and Obergefell (which legalized same-sex marriage). The only hope that these decisions will be left alone is if the Court keeps in mind a judicial principle called stare decisis ('let the decision stand').

Copyright © 2018.

A Scholarly Disquisition on "Three Blind Mice"

Three blind mice, three blind mice,/See how they run, see how they run, /They all ran after the farmer's wife,/ She cut off their tales with a carving knife, /Did you ever see such a sight in your life/ As three blind mice?

 --Nursery rhyme/song

This text provokes an astonishing number of questions.

First, how common is blindness among common field mice, genus Mus? Amazingly, rather scant data exists on this important question. And then, since the poem may be ultimately European in origin (as witnessed by a German version, Drei Blinden Mäuse¹), is blindness more common in the common European mouse genus Apodemus? One majorly flawed study of this question suggests that blindness may in fact be approximately 17% more common in the  European mouse.²

Second, why are three blind mice found in association? Is there an advantage to this behavior? Perhaps their pooled sensory capabilities (assuming they can be somehow shared) compensates, to a degree, for their visual deficit.

Next, why are they running? This seems quite inexplicable in an animal that cannot perceive any obstacles that may lie in its path. One would logically expect only slow, tentative exploratory behavior, using smell and/or the feeling capability of their whiskers.

Next, evidently they are chasing the farmer's wife.  Now, even everyday experience tells us that smaller creatures seldom chase larger ones. And a mouse, having an average weight of 118 grams, while an adult human male is presumed to weigh 70 kg (154 lb)³--with, of course, the average adult human female weighing somewhat less--results in a ratio, by weight, of human to mouse of approximately 593.2 to 1.

However, the literature does in fact yield eye-witness accounts of a mouse or mice chasing a human. The earliest of these is by Marco Polo in his Diary.⁴

Now, the matter that, as we are told, a farmer's wife cuts off their tails. What is the function of this caudalectomy? Is it pure animal cruelty? What reasons could the farmer's wife have for preferring that the mice (presumably found about her homestead and/or farm) be tailless?

Next, the reasons for her choice of implement: Why might a carving knife be the instrument of choice for de-tailing a mouse? And, still more puzzling, do the mice stand still for this operation? Would not the squeals of pain of the first mouse to suffer this surgery serve as an effective warning to the other two mice and cause them to get the hell out of there?

Finally, we are asked whether we have ever seen such a sight as three blind mice. However, I do not believe any of the major or recognized polling organizations have ever attempted to gather any data on how many people have in fact seen three blind mice.

1. Gesta Romanorum, III, iv.

2. Podgorny, A., Blindness in European vs. North American Mouse Species, J. A. A., 9. 427.

3. These figures are from JANAF, Some Weights of Common Creatures (New York, UN Fund for Useless Statistics, 1937).

4. Polo, M, Diario, Venice, 1368.

Copyright © 2018.