Tag Archives: universe

The GOP Candidates React to the Supreme Court’s Obamacare Ruling

by MarshallMattes Posted on June 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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In a 6-3 ruling, the US Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Americans buying insurance on the federal health care exchange can receive subsidies through the Affordable Care Act, essentially upholding one of the most critical aspects of the law. The ruling is a major blow to Republicans who have spent years trying to tear down the law, and a political win for Democrats and President Obama. Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton seemed pleased:

The GOP candidates, meanwhile, took to Twitter to blast Obamacare and the Supreme Court’s ruling:

Jeb Bush:

Ted Cruz:

Marco Rubio:

Rick Perry:

Mike Huckabee:

Carly Fiorina:

Scott Walker:

And then there’s Donald Trump, talking about Miss Universe:

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The GOP Candidates React to the Supreme Court’s Obamacare Ruling

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Contact: Gene Ween Grows Up

by NydiaI55htoavia Posted on July 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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Ween co-founder Aaron Freeman in Brooklyn. Jacob Blickenstaff


Puss n Boots


Holly Williams


Ben Watt


Joe Henry


Gabriel Kahane


Jolie Holland


Rodney Crowell


Jill Sobule


Benmont Tench


Leyla McCalla


Keith & Tex


Declan O’Rourke


Michael Daves

As Gene Ween, Aaron Freeman was the co-leader of the long-lived alternative cult band Ween, which he started with friend Mickey Melchiondo (a.k.a. Dean Ween) when they were middle-school students in New Hope, Pennsylvania. In 2012, after more than 25 years of recording and touring, Freeman left the group as part of his effort to get sober.

Freeman, out this week, is his first album of original songs since leaving the band. It is an openly biographical and personal album that nonetheless utilizes Ween’s ability to inhabit numerous styles and eras of pop music. The musical reference points of post-Beatles John Lennon and Paul McCartney (“All The Way to China”), Donovan (“Black Bush”), and Cat Stevens (“Golden Monkey”) indicate inspirations that helped carry Freeman through his escape from addiction. I photographed him in Brooklyn, and we spoke again by phone from his home in Woodstock, New York. The following is in his words.

Going through the Ween breakup was really tough. Getting sober was a whole different thing. So there were two levels of it.

For me it’s a lot of patience, because I honestly didn’t know whether I was going to write again. When I write, it always kind of happens all in about a three- or four-week period, where I’ll just go into the zone. A lot of musicians talk about that. I think Bruce Springsteen said that no matter what’s going on in your life, it’s important to keep that one little radar up, because you don’t know when the universe is going to hit you with stuff to write. I really stuck to that concept, and I just waited, and waited, and waited. I would write little things, and record them on the voice memo on my iPhone, little scattered ideas. Then it came.

Last summer I was just sitting around, doing my thing, and then all of a sudden I picked up my guitar and boom! The obvious thing would be to put pressure on yourself, like, “Is this record going to be good? It’s the follow-up to 27 years of Ween, and now I’m doing this—what if it sucks?” When I finally got to the point where my subconscious could free itself of that, and it took a while, the songs started coming. I’d go into my room—the typical fucking artist thing—and scream and play my guitar, then come out six hours later, frazzled hair, not showered. My wife and son would look at me like, “Oh hey, he’s out. Do you want any food?” And I’d be like, “Aaaagh, gotta go back in!” That’s how I worked.

I’m thinking, “If I get one song, at this point in my life, that’ll be fucking amazing for me and my journey.” That one concept led to a whole record. I’m really proud of it, and really grateful I wrote it. It’s stripped down, no bells and whistles to it. I just wanted to go in, pay attention to the songs, get ’em on tape, and then move on.

No matter what goes on, I’ve written the songs that I love. They’re not very complex. I like to keep the words simple so they’re not too identifiable, and so they’ll last longer. I’d like to think that a kid could listen to it, or a bunch of old bums gathered around a trash can fire keeping themselves warm, they would both fully get it.

One of the things I’ve wanted for years, especially during the last five or so years of Ween, was more honesty. For me, it wasn’t getting sincere. We’d just put on our token songs that were kind of goofy, like “My Own Bare Hands.” Toward the end, it was just kind of…mundane. It would distract from the best parts of Mickey’s and my music.

This record is very autobiographical, it’s like a journal for me of things that I was really into in the last year or so… spiritual things and severe, gut-wrenching love songs.

That first song, “Covert Discretion,” is absolutely typical of me. There’s always been a whole bipolar thing going on with me: I’m pretty shy, or soft spoken, and then there’s the other part. A friend who does astrology told me, “You’re a Pisces, you’re totally water, and then you’ve got this fire planet.” A lot of stuff at the end of Ween was just brutal. I have to write about that stuff, or else I feel like I’m not being honest. If this is a song that calls for fucking brutal honesty, then the most important thing is to do that, and take it so far over the edge. That’s what people love about Ween, they love the honesty and not being scared to go there.

I was susceptible to hard-core addiction because my personality is that way. I think a lot of addicts, serious addicts, have that. They go full throttle and then they are coming down and they are trying to deal with it in a quiet way. It’s typical: I was either fuckin’ naked with a cowboy hat on looking for cocaine all night or I was just completely quiet in my room. And that’s a scary way to be.

The most wonderful thing about recovery is that you learn to maintain a steady way of being. There is always stimulus, whether it’s positive or negative. Buddhist philosophy really dives deep in to that: You sit with it, you meditate on it, and you let it pass. It is really difficult because you’ve never done that before. In the early stages of recovery, I’d have to go up to my room and just sit there in so much fuckin’ agony and just wait, recognize it, and let it pass. I had this mantra: Just be accountable. I wanted to be accountable for more than a week. It seems so simple, but it’s easier said than done.

In rock music, you don’t have to be accountable for anything! Laughs. It didn’t matter as long as I got on stage. For many years, I was fooling myself into thinking that I was going to lock myself away in my dressing room and help myself, and I never did because deep down I wanted to party just like everyone else was.

I think if this album sounds more derivative in certain ways it was because I was more clear-minded. I leaned on music that I loved. There’s a lot of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, XTC, and David Bowie—the things that I hold dear. The whole point of this record was to chill the fuck out. For some reason something made me want to record doubled vocals on almost the entire album, which is awesome. I’ve always had this weird desire to conquer and make perfect double vocals. To get spiritual on you, I really let the universe dictate how this whole thing was going to turn out.

If the music sounds like something I’m influenced by, I accept that and try to make it as sincere and honorable as it can. If it’s going to sound like John Lennon, I’m going to fucking make it sound like John Lennon. I’ll never say, “Oh, this kind of sounds like a Lennon song, so I better make it sound different.” That’s not the way I look at music. I consider myself as kind of a vessel of all these beautiful things that I’ve always heard, and I let it go through me. Of course, it always has my stamp on it, my creativity, but it honors what I love.

Fortunately, I’ve had the ability to never think too much about where I’m going. In Ween, my thing has always been: It doesn’t matter what kind of song it is or where it goes as long as it’s a good song. That’s what Mickey and I always adhered to.

The foremost thing is just writing music, and I’ve been very lucky to have 25 years of that under my belt. The Ween audience is very loyal and they’re great. I want to keep making music for them. I don’t want a big, bombastic career. I’ve been through that. If people want to come, they come. If they don’t, they don’t. I want to do great live shows, because I love performing, and I hope to write songs and maybe have other people pick them up, and make a living off of doing that.

But we’ll see. I have to pay the bills. When I lost Ween and decided to get sober, I had to embrace the fact that my income was going to be a tenth of what it was, but it was still worth it. I really believe if you do the right thing and you make yourself accountable and available, then good things will happen.

Aaron Freeman Jacob Blickenstaff

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Contact: Gene Ween Grows Up

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New Video: Neil deGrasse Tyson Destroys Climate Deniers

by ChelseaDown Posted on May 28, 2014

Mother Jones

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For 11 episodes now, the groundbreaking Fox and National Geographic Channel series Cosmos has been exploring the universe, outraging creationists, and giving science teachers across the nation something to show in class every Monday. In the process, the show has been drawing more than 3 million viewers every Sunday night, a respectable number for a science-focused show that is, after all, a major departure from what primetime audiences are used to.

Cosmos certainly hasn’t shied from controversy; it has taken on evolution and industry-funded science denial, and it has been devoting an increasing amount of attention to the subject of climate change. And apparently that was just the beginning. This coming Sunday, Cosmos will devote an entire episode to the topic. Here’s the episode description from National Geographic:

Our journey begins with a trip to another world and time, an idyllic beach during the last perfect day on the planet Venus, right before a runaway greenhouse effect wreaks havoc on the planet, boiling the oceans and turning the skies a sickening yellow. We then trace the surprisingly lengthy history of our awareness of global warming and alternative energy sources, taking the Ship of the Imagination to intervene at some critical points in time.

Courtesy of National Geographic, above is a clip from the new episode, which should have climate deniers fulminating. In it, host Neil deGrasse Tyson uses the analogy of walking a dog on the beach to helpfully explain the difference between climate and weather (pay attention, Donald Trump) and to outline why, no matter how cold you were in January, that’s no argument against global warming.

We’ve seen the rest of the episode already, and won’t spill the beans. But suffice it to say that it contains some powerful refutations of a number of other global warming denier talking points, as well as some ingenious sequences that explain the planetary-scale significance of climate change. It also contains some in situ reporting on the impacts of climate change, straight from the imperiled Arctic.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson travels to the Arctic to explain global warming, and its effect on thawing permafrost, in this Sunday’s Cosmos episode. Fox/National Geographic

Back in November, I observed that if Carl Sagan, the creator and host of the original Cosmos series, were alive today, he would have been a leader in the charge to address global warming. After all, Sagan, who made his scientific mark studying the greenhouse effect of Venus, was deeply concerned about the mega-forces that determine planetary fates.

In covering climate change so extensively then, the new Cosmos is living up to the legacy of its original creator.

Note: For those who miss it on Sunday, Cosmos also airs Monday, June 2nd at 9 pm on National Geographic Channel with additional footage.

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Yes, "Cosmos" Fans, Creationists Also Deny the Science of Comets

by ArielO42brir Posted on March 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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Last night, Fox’s Cosmos series yet again waded into a bizarre politico-scientific controversy. This time, though, it wasn’t about evolution, or climate change, or even the Big Bang.

No. This time, it was about comets.

The Cosmos episode was about what comets are, and why they are not, as humanity believed until quite recently, evil omens. Before the age of science, explained host Neil deGrasse Tyson, “comets were portents of doom” across cultures. Tyson also pointed out that the word “disaster” itself means “bad star” in Greek. The show then dove into the history of science to tell the story of Edmund Halley, who realized how comets work and that the comet that now bears his name returns roughly every 75 years (most recently in 1986; next up, 2061). Halley also inspired Sir Isaac Newton to publish what may be the most important book ever in the history of science, the Principia Mathematica.

So why does the science of comets irk some creationists?

Edmund Halley and Isaac Newton hanging out on Cosmos Fox

To understand that, you first need to understand that Young Earth creationists don’t just deny the science of evolution; they deny all science that suggests that either our planet or anything else in the universe is more than a few thousand years old. That includes comets, of course, many of which are not exactly young.

On the latest Cosmos, Tyson explained that some comets come from the Oort Cloud, an extremely distant region of icy bodies far beyond Pluto, but still in orbit around our sun. There are as many as 2 trillion of these frozen objects, and occasionally, one will get knocked off its course and travel on a very long journey into the inner part of the solar system. As an object nears the sun and heats up, the sublimation of ice and gases give it a tail, and if it is close enough to Earth, we see it as a comet. Other comets, meanwhile, come from the Kuiper Belt, the neighborhood of Pluto, which also contains a huge number of icy bodies.

But here’s the problem for creationists: According to NASA, “The objects in the Oort Cloud and in the Kuiper Belt are presumed to be remnants from the formation of the solar system about 4.6 billion years ago.” The Oort Cloud extends from about 5,000 to 100,000 astronomical units (AU) from the sun, according to NASA, where each AU is equal to the distance between Earth and the sun, or 93 million miles. That means that it also takes these comets very long periods of time to travel into the inner solar system, earning them the name of “long-period comets.”

Comets that are vastly older than creationists believe all of creation to be present a bit of a problem. Hence, if you visit the website of creationist Ken Ham’s Answers in Genesis and search for “Oort Cloud,” you will find multiple articles providing a creationist take on the origins and nature of comets. In one of them you will find the assertion that there is “zero observational evidence that the Oort cloud exists,” followed later by this observation: “but if the solar system is only thousands of years old, as God’s Word clearly teaches, there is no problem.” In another article, you get this:

Actually the Oort cloud, like Peter Pan’s Neverland, has never been observed. The Oort cloud was imagined to provide a birthplace for new comets, since comets like ISON could not exist in a billions-of-years-old universe without some renewable source. The Oort cloud is thus a convenient fiction, but a fiction nonetheless.

In other words, the problem for creationists is the idea that comets are ancient and are sometimes traveling vast distances, from the Oort Cloud, into the inner solar system, a journey that would take a huge amount of time. Now you see why the Oort Cloud is such a threat to their worldview.

Fox

But of course, creationists are wrong, wrong, wrong. If you want an extensive rebuttal of creationist claims about comets, go here. The gist: We have plenty of evidence for the existence of both the Oort Cloud and, especially, of the Kuiper Belt. The Oort Cloud is more distant and dark, and not easily observed. However, notes one NASA site, it is “the best theory to explain how long-period comets exist.”

Anyway, it’s not as if creationists are denying the existence of the Oort Cloud after a careful consideration of the evidence. Rather, they start from an impossible theory, and then dismiss evidence inconsistent with it. What’s truly sad is the smallness of the universe that therefore results.

UPDATE: We got a comment from astronomer and Slate blogger Phil Plait about creationists and comets (and how wrong the former are about the latter). Here it is, in its entirety:

One of the funny things about believing the Earth is young is that sometimes there’s a consistent internal logic to it. That doesn’t mean it’s right, just that it’s self-contained. In this case, astronomers see comets coming in every few months from deep space. We assume there has to be a repository of billions or trillions of them out there, or else we would’ve run out of them long, long ago — that’s because we assume the Earth is old, billions of years old. So the Oort Cloud is where we think those comets are. If you assume the Earth is 6000 years old, you don’t need an Oort cloud to supply you with comets, so some creationists deny it exists.

Problem is, if the Oort cloud is there, then the physics of it demands there should be an intermediate population, out just past Neptune; thousands or millions of icy bodies a few miles across. And lo, we found it: the Kuiper Belt. Quite a few denizens of it have been seen.

So once again, science was right, and creationism wrong. The Earth is old, the Kuiper belt exists, and the Oort Cloud must as well. But somehow I don’t think this rock-solid proof of science will change any creationists’ minds, any more than the thousands of other such pieces of evidence routinely denied by those who feel that reality must bend to belief, and not the other way around.

On a recent episode of the Inquiring Minds podcast, we were thrilled to host Cosmos‘ Tyson, who explained why he doesn’t debate science deniers; you can listen here (interview starts around minute 13):

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Yes, "Cosmos" Fans, Creationists Also Deny the Science of Comets

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Therapist to the 1 Percent Weighs in on the Psychological Hardship of Being Rich

by MichelineConte Posted on January 30, 2014

Mother Jones

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Last week, billionaire investor Tom Perkins of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers sent a letter to the editor of The Wall Street Journal likening criticism of the 1 percent to Nazi attacks on the Jews. He’s not an outlier. As Paul Krugman pointed out on Sunday, the rich have been lamenting the “demonizing” and “vilifying” of the 1 percent for years. “I…suspect that today’s Masters of the Universe are insecure about the nature of their success,” Krugman wrote. But the wealthy are not just afraid of losing their money to an angry middle class. Class warfare also makes the rich uncomfortable because they worry the non-rich are judging their character and personality by how much money they have, according to therapists who counsel the rich.

“I think that with Occupy Wall Street there was a sense of the heat getting turned up and a feeling of vilification and potential danger,” Jamie Traeger-Muney, a psychologist who counsels people who earn tens of millions of dollars a year, told Politico on Thursday. “There is a worry among our clients that they are being judged and people are making assumptions about who they are based on their wealth.”

In 2012, Mother Jones reported on how banks, including Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley, are increasingly hiring psychotherapists like Traeger-Muney to help their extremely wealthy clients deal with the complications that come with being extremely wealthy. Here’s a bit more of what wealth therapists can tell us about how the rich may be feeling right now:

Although wealth counseling has existed for years, the 2008 financial crisis really sent the aristocracy sprinting for the therapist’s chair. The 2010 Capgemini/Merrill Lynch World Wealth Report, a survey that takes the pulse of zillionaires around the world, found that after the crisis, spooked clients were demanding “specialized advice.” Financial advisers must “truly understand the emotional aspects of client behavior,” the report warned…

“Any time there’s an outside focus on wealth,” it’s not fun for the wealthy, Traeger-Muney says. Heirs, she adds, have it the worst: “They feel like they’re in this 1 percent position. They get bad press from people who make fun of them. It feels like their worst nightmare coming true: the idea that they’re now responsible for other people’s unhappiness and lack of wealth, when they didn’t ask for their millions.”

Ultimately, having lots of money shouldn’t be cause for alarm. “There’s a difference between money causing problems and a lack of ability to explore feelings around money,” Traeger-Muney says. “That’s what leads to psychological issues.” She just tries to get her clients to acknowledge the fact that they’re rolling in dough and learn how to enjoy it. “What would life be like if they didn’t have any restraints and could really create what they wanted?”

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Therapist to the 1 Percent Weighs in on the Psychological Hardship of Being Rich

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Planet-Hunter: We’ll Find An “Earth 2.0” Within “10 or 15 Years”

by MeiAllardyce Posted on January 13, 2014

Mother Jones

Last week, a team of astronomers at the Gemini Planet Imager in Chile released the mysterious blue image above. That small bright dot in the lower right of the image is a planet—not a planet in our solar system like Mars or Neptune, but one 63 light-years away. It’s the planet Beta Pictoris b, which orbits the star Beta Pictoris in the southern constellation Pictor. But what’s most exciting about the picture is the technology used to make it, which represents a dramatic improvement in the speed and quality with which scientists will be able to look for other planets—including “Earth 2.0,” a theorized planet much like our own.

The first confirmation that planets exist beyond our solar system came in 1992, when a team of astronomers monitored changes in radio waves to prove that multiple planets were orbiting a small star about 1000 light-years away. Then, in 2005, astronomers created the first actual image of a planet beyond our solar system (the date is arguable because the observation was made in 2004, but not confirmed until a year later). Since then, hundreds more planets have been discovered, and a few others have even been photographed.

So when Gizmodo reported last week that the blue image above was the “first ever image of a planet, orbiting a star,” they didn’t have it quite right. In fact, the image wasn’t even the first time that planet had been photographed. But the GPI images are still extremely exciting: They could mark the beginning of a new era of planet-hunting, thanks to technology developed by a team of astronomers led by Bruce Macintosh of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Frank Marchis, who works for the SETI Institute, a non-profit organization that seeks to explore, understand, and explain the prevalence of life in the universe, is a key member of Macintosh’s planet-hunting team. I met with him in San Francisco last week to discuss the project and the search for Earth 2.0:

MJ: What exactly are we seeing in this image?

FM: Behind this image is a lot of work. This image is simply a planet orbiting around another star. So we call that an exoplanet – an extrasolar planet – because it doesn’t belong to our solar system. It belongs to another planetary system. So this is the grail of modern astronomy. We’re trying desperately now to image those planets because we know they exist. When you observe a planet with the now defunct telescope Kepler, what you’ve been doing is basically detecting the transit – the attenuation of the star’s light – due to the planet passing between us and the star. Now with GPI, the Gemini Planet Imager, which is mounted at the 8 meter class telescope in Chile we’re going to be able to see the planet itself.

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Planet-Hunter: We’ll Find An “Earth 2.0” Within “10 or 15 Years”

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A Year of Miracles – Marianne Williamson

by Myrna Posted on December 31, 2013

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

A Year of Miracles

Daily Devotions and Reflections

Marianne Williamson

Genre: Spirituality

Price: $11.99

Publish Date: December 31, 2013

Publisher: HarperOne

Seller: HarperCollins


Marianne Williamson, author of the bestselling classic A Return to Love and world-renowned teacher, has taught millions around the world an incredible secret: you can transform your life and the world by simply changing how you think. Our thoughts hold our destiny. In A Year of Miracles , she provides 365 reflections and devotions that offer guidance and spiritual support for following the path of love. These readings help you to remember, each day, that you are not alone, that the universe is alive and ready to shower you with help and miracles when you strive to put your best self forward. Reading these daily morsels of wisdom will help you stay focused, hopeful, and centered—and open your eyes to all the ways God wants to help and bless you. Expect a miracle every day!

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A Year of Miracles – Marianne Williamson

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Could This New "Church" Make Atheism Cool?

by Cindy Lin Posted on November 15, 2013

Mother Jones

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Last Tuesday in the basement of a bar in San Francisco’s Financial District, more than 50 people united to celebrate the universe’s godlessness. The group—mostly white, mostly hipster, and one kilt-wearer—congregated over drinks as pop-electronica played in the background. It was San Francisco’s first-ever gathering of the Sunday Assembly, a recently formed organization of atheists who want to participate in “all the best bits of church” but without the believing in God part, according to the Assembly’s co-founder and event facilitator, British comedian Sanderson Jones.

The only prayers to be heard at the event were during a karaoke-style sing-along to Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer.” Later in the evening came a YouTube viewing of Carl Sagan’s atheist anthem, “Pale Blue Dot.”

The Assembly was the idea of Jones, who wore a plaid shirt, a long, scruffy beard and and thick-framed black aviator glasses to the meeting, and his friend and fellow British comic, Pippa Evans, who wasn’t in attendance. The two founded the Assembly to create a global community based on the belief that “we are born from nothing and go to nothing,” according to the group’s website. The Assembly—which has been called by Salon and Time an ‘atheist mega-church’—is currently traveling around the world on its road show. The meetings have already attracted hundreds of attendees and a barrage of media coverage.

Sanderson says that the group has already gotten some flack from “fundamentalist, evangelical” atheists, as he put it, who’ve told him “the way we don’t believe in God is not the right way to not believe in God.” There is some evidence that atheism is becoming slightly more popular in the United States: In 2012 an estimated 2.4 percent of Americans said they were atheists, up from 1.6 percent in 2007. However, according to the Pew Research Center, the meaning of the word atheist is a source of confusion: Although ‘atheist’ is defined as a person who does not believe in God, “14 percent of those who call themselves atheists also say they believe in God or a universal spirit.”

Although San Francisco’s Sunday Assembly did have some serious moments—including a speech by Pixar’s Daniel McCoy about how, like science, storytelling can reveal truth—the overall tone was light and tailored to the crowd, with plenty of Twitter and tech jokes. Sanderson and Evans believe that Sunday Assembly’s tongue-in-cheek tone is part of what will attract followers. At one point during their crowd-funding campaign video, the duo assures viewers that Kool-Aid will not be involved and that “It’s not a cult!” Though, they admit while wearing togas and carrying large glasses of wine, “That’s exactly what we’d say if it were a cult.”

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Could This New "Church" Make Atheism Cool?

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The Particles of the Universe

by Myrna Posted on April 2, 2013

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How NASA Scientists Are Turning L.A. into One Big Climate-Change Lab

by kowalski099 Posted on March 4, 2013

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From airborne to chemicals to sunshine itself, measuring change in the West Coast’s biggest city. Ben Amstutz/Flickr Southern California’s Mount Wilson is a lonesome, hostile peak — prone to sudden rock falls, sometimes ringed by wildfire — that nevertheless has attracted some of the greatest minds in modern science. George Ellery Hale, one of the godfathers of astrophysics, founded the Mount Wilson Observatory in 1904 and divined that sunspots were magnetic. His acolyte Edwin Hubble used a huge telescope, dragged up by mule train, to prove the universe was expanding. Even Albert Einstein made a pilgrimage in the 1930s to hobnob with the astronomers (and suffered a terrible hair day, a photo shows). To keep reading, click here.

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How NASA Scientists Are Turning L.A. into One Big Climate-Change Lab

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