SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:55 P.M. ET: 

A GOOD LEARNING EXPERIENCE – From The New York Times:  "Scientists will have to wait a while longer to find out what kicked off the Big Bang.  Last spring, a team of astronomers who go by the name of Bicep announced that they had detected ripples in space-time, or gravitational waves, reverberating from the first trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second of time — long-sought evidence that the expansion of the universe had started out with a giant whoosh called inflation.  The discovery was heralded as potentially the greatest of the new century, but after months of spirited debate, the group conceded that the result could have been caused by interstellar dust, a notion buttressed by subsequent measurements by the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite that the part of the sky Bicep examined was in fact dusty.  Now a new analysis, undertaken jointly by the Bicep group and the Planck group, has confirmed that the Bicep signal was mostly, if not all, stardust, and that there is no convincing evidence of the gravitational waves. No evidence of inflation."   A good lesson in humility for those who feel we've had the last word on global warming.  Science is never settled.

WELL, IT'S A THEORY – From Breitbart:  "Right wing hero Boris Johnson has launched a blistering attack on Jihadi killers, calling them 'losers' who have been 'rejected by women.'  The London mayor, who is the candidate for the West London constituency of Ruislip, cited an MI5 report into Muslim extremism in an interview with The Sun.  'If you look at all the psychological profiling about bombers, they typically will look at porn. They are literally w***ers. Severe onanists' the blond politician said.  'They are tortured. They will be very badly adjusted in their relations with women, and that is a symptom of their feeling of being failures and that the world is against them.  'They are rejected by women, they are not making it with girls, and so they turn to other forms of spiritual comfort – which of course is no comfort.'"  I cannot comment on the accuracy of that.  In this country men who are rejected by women are called liberals.

COLORADO RETHINKS IT – From AP:  "Welfare money or food stamps for marijuana? It's an urban legend that won't go away in Colorado, and state lawmakers this year are poised to pass a law clarifying that public benefit cards can't be used at dispensary ATMs.  A bill facing its first hearing next week in the state Senate would add marijuana businesses and strip clubs to the list of Colorado businesses where electronic benefits cards — called EBTs — can't be used to withdraw cash. Liquor stores, casinos and gun shops already have such limitations.  Republican Sen. Vicki Marble said marijuana dispensaries need to be added to avoid possible federal intervention if there's evidence of public benefits being spent on pot.  'We stand to lose a lot if we don't show we are trying' to prevent tax money for pot, Marble said.  'The growers here put in a lot of time and effort. A raid would be absolutely devastating to our state.'"  Legalizing marijuana has proved to be a lot more complicated than the lawmakers in Colorado thought.

January 30, 2015