The U.S. Constitution as of 1791 held that:
- Slavery was legal;
- For census purposes, slaves counted as ⅗ of a person;
- Slaves and women were not entitled to vote;
- People had the right to bear muzzle-loaded firearms.
The only “Arms” covered by the Constitution’s 2nd Amendment were single shot weapons that had to be manually reloaded from the end of the barrel after each shot. A significant portion of militia training sought to increase the rate that the recruit could reload and shoot again. Four shots per minute was exemplary.
The CDC released results from their research on gun deaths. Of note: firearm homicides of Black males aged 10 to 24 years is 21 times higher than for White males of the same age range.
Lessons in evolution:
- I just learned that male cockroaches ‘seduce’ females with sugar, but since cockroach poisons are sweet, females are losing their “sweet tooth.”
- As you know, salamanders live on the forest floor and in streams & ponds – except when they don’t. Aneides vagrans, the Wandering Salamander, lives its entire life high up in redwood trees! Although redwoods are a westcoast species, a biologist from Florida wondered if Aneides vagrans was adapted for flight, sorta like flying squirrels and colugos. The answer: not yet but they seem to be getting there.
- ¿Are we still evolving?
As Bob mentioned last week, folk under 50 likely have no immunity to monkeypox. However, unlike COVID-19, people normally cannot spread monkeypox prior to obvious symptoms and the virus is spread only by contact. Therefore, a monkeypox pandemic is not anticipated.
Space Aliens:
- After the UAP/UFO Congressional Hearing this May, Republican Representative Tim Burchett of Tennessee opined, “We just got hosed. On some level I think it is a cover-up. I have a T-shirt I sell on my website. It says, ‘More people believe in U.F.O.s than believe in Congress.’”
- The radio signal most resembling one we might expect from an advanced alien civilization was detected 45 years ago and is known as the “Wow! Signal.” An astronomer published a paper in May showing that there is indeed a star resembling ours ‘only’ 1,800 light-years away in the direction the radio antenna was pointing. Leonard Tramiel noted there would be numerous ‘candidate’ stars since the radio antenna collected emissions from a relatively large swath of the sky. Rebecca Charbonneau at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics noted that an advanced civilization might not require a sun similar to our own.
- A problem facing civilizations forced to leave their home star system is the immense distances typically separating star systems and the universal speed limit: the speed of light. Irina Romanovskaya suggested another possibility: hitchhike on a rogue planet. There just might be a rogue planet passing by that they/we could reach and use to set up housekeeping. Since rogue planets by definition do not belong with a nice warm sun, the folk would need to possess the means to create great gobs of energy – perhaps using fusion power. And who knows, the rogue planet might just pass near a suitable star system after a few million years where they could disembark and set up home again.
- Dr. Becky (Smethurst) of Oxford would like the James Webb Space Telescope to study the atmospheres of four planets orbiting Trappist 1 for the possible detection of biological systems existing there.
NASA’s Martian helicopter, Ingenuity, phoned home and apologized for being late. It had been out of contact due to dust and cold which led to a computer re-boot that made it miss curfew. NASA and Ingenuity are now back on speaking terms, but the Martian winter will likely lead to more troubles.
I discovered something that may interest you. It is a YouTube collection of science videos hosted by Rick Loverd called, “The Science & Entertainment Exchange.” Another good collection is “SkepTalk” which emphasizes science skepticism.
A Denisovan tooth was found in Laos, 1,700 kilometers from the next closest Denisovan discovery in Tibet. Laos makes sense because southeast asian groups are known to share some DNA from Denisovans, just as Europeans share some DNA from Neanderthals.
I believe it is safe to say that computer chips are no longer programmed by tweezers
Hey! Here is a good video on carbon nanotubes, especially if you are comfortable with electron orbitals. (Or if you aren’t comfortable with electron orbitals, maybe you’re masochistic.)
Overwintering? Various plants, insects, and mammals overwinter via seeds, eggs, hibernation, etc., but fire?? Apparently that was the case in New Mexico.
Scientists are wrong far more often than they are right. That’s the nature of scientific progress. As the journalist Ed Yong opined, science is “an erratic stumble toward gradually diminished uncertainty.” Here are 10 examples of (some) scientists getting it wrong.
Here is a story of observation, research, reaching out to experts, feet on the ground, and – finally – success. Enjoy.
I didn’t mention the heat waves occurring around the world. I did that last time. This time i’ll leave you with “What extreme heat does to the human body.”
Try feeling a little compassion for the Russian soldiers risking – and giving – their lives for a lie.
David Almandsmith, Bay Area Skeptics
“It’s very dramatic when two people come together to work something out. It’s easy to take a gun and annihilate your opposition, but what is really exciting to me is to see people with differing views come together and finally respect each other.”
― Fred Rogers, (1928 – 2003) The World According to Mister Rogers
Why don’t we just cherish and care for the wondrous planet we live on along with the myriad of other species? There is no other planet like ours and if there is something similar it’s so far away that generations would perish on space ships before finding it. Let us care for our blue jewel!
Actually, the Constitution in 1791 did not hold/state that slavery was legal; it implicitly left the legality of slavery to the states.
Similarly, the Constitution did not bar slaves and women from voting; it was left to the states. Indeed, the original Constitution nowhere affirmatively stated who was entitled to vote and the 15th, 19th and 26th amendments don’t affirmatively grant the right to vote to Blacks, women and citizens 18-21, respectively, but state that the right to vote shall not be denied or abridged with respectsto citizens by reason of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” “sex” or “age” (if 18 or over).
Contrary to the wishes of slave-holding states, slaves (“all other persons”) were counted as 3/5ths of a person for purposes of representation (not the census):
“Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.” Article 1, Section 2
In 1791, the Second Amendment prohibited the federal government from infringing “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,” but the states could and did. Slaves were “people” who did not have a right to bear muzzle-loaded firearms. And in some states even free Black persons were not allowed to own or possess firearms.
Hey Ted, yours is a critique worthy of your profession, and very much appreciated.
Since representation depends on the census, i took the ‘liberty’ to express the 3/5ths rule as it affected the primal action, i.e. census.
As i am not in the profession, it is peculiar that actions banned by our Constitution (e.g. infringement upon the right to bear arms) may be allowed by the States. ¿Why does that logic not apply to the 13th Amendment? ¿Must a proscription or permission in the Constitution require a phrase such as “within the United States” in order for it to apply to the States? Odd that.
Perhaps the topic at hand – right to bear arms – should be scrutinized not with originalism, but with ‘likely attitudes’ of the Constitution’s framers had they access to the modern world. E.g., if at the time the Constitution was drafted, “arms” used metal-clad cartridges that could be fired semi- or fully-automatically, how likely would the framers have worded the 2nd Amendment as they did? Also, prior to the 19th century the term, “bear arms,” almost exclusively alluded to the activities of people in the context of troops and militia; not to individual carry.
In the (in)famous Heller decision, in which the Supreme Court held for the first time that the Second Amendment established an “individual” right to keep and bear arms, Justice Scalia recognized that the right was not absolute and that there could still be “reasonable” restrictions on that right. But first Congress has to pass such restrictions — that’s a political and not a constitutional or legal obstacle. If and when such restriction(s) are enacted and then challenged in the Supreme Court, the justices will have to decide the “reasonableness” of the restrictions. To the extent that they rely on the words and/or history of the Second Amendment, to my mind they will just be rationalizing/supporting their own philosophical/ideological position.
(FYI: As a result of the 14th Amendment and a host of Supreme Court decisions over many years interpreting it, virtually all of the rights (restrictions on Federal power) set forth in the Bill of Rights, including the individual right to bear arms, now apply to the states as well.)
Dang! I’m learning stuff. Thank you.