Thurs Blogcast: Henry Kissinger RIP, Musk says FU; pick up your clothes!

Henry Kissinger, RIP

Just One Thing: Biden vs Boebert

Joe Biden came to Colorado to trumpet his disastrous so-called Inflation Reduction Act which isn’t about inflation but, if anything, would increase it slightly. Of course he took a shot at Donald Trump. I won’t bother quoting it. But he also seems intent, as long as he’s in the 3rd Congressional District, on going after Lauren Boebert, mentioning that she, along with other Republicans, have vowed to repeal that ridiculous boondoggle of subsidies.

Here's the thing though: Boebert is already in big trouble. She could easily lose the Republican primary. And at this point, you’d have to think she’d be less than 50/50 to win the general election if she did win the primary, even in a pretty good Republican year. But the more Biden attacks her, the better it is for her, at least in the primary. But maybe that’s exactly the plan.

Today's Guests

Roger Pielke Jr. is a tenured full professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder where he teaches about often controversial issues at the intersection of science and public policy. He's the proprietor of an excellent and successful Substack called The Honest Broker.

We'll discuss a few climate and climate-policy related topics including:

U.S. Hurricane Overview 2023 - by Roger Pielke Jr. (substack.com)

And today's beginning of the massive international climate conference that President Biden is not attending...it's called COP28.

To save the planet they'll have lots of great ideas like this one: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-26/eat-less-meat-is-message-for-rich-world-in-food-s-first-net-zero-plan?utm_source=website&utm_medium=share&utm_campaign=copy

From Axios (which is much worse on climate stuff than on other stuff): 1 big thing: What to watch at COP28 -

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Ken Goldberg is an artist, inventor, roboticist, and Distinguished Chair in Engineering at UC Berkeley. Aviv Adler is a post-doctoral student in Ken's lab. And Ayah Ahmad is a senior in Berkeley's Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department.

They've collaborated on the development of a robot...still very much in its early stages but fascinating from a logic and training perspective, that aims to solve "The Teenager Problem", meaning how to pick lots of clothes up off the floor in the most efficient way possible.

Hate tidying? Scientists develop a cleaning ROBOT that can pick up messy clothes strewn across the bedroom | Daily Mail Online

Here's the research paper: 2310.16951.pdf (arxiv.org)

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Tech entrepreneur and savior of struggling but interesting restaurants Danny Newman has created Denver's first permanent food truck location: Denver's first permanent food truck park rolls out on West Colfax (denverpost.com)

(Story about Danny from last year: What's next for Danny Newman, owner of My Brother's Bar, Mercury Cafe? (denverpost.com))