Monthly Archives: June 2015

Samir Patel of Archaeology Magazine writes a report on how the Romans might have designed their transportation network:

… Physarum polycephalum, consists of a single large membrane around many cell nuclei, and has drawn the attention of a wide range of scientists because of its uncanny ability to solve almost impossibly complex computational problems.

It’s a fascinating sentence: impossibly complex recalls a previous discussion of free will.  If a problem not solvable through mathematics is solvable through some other means, what does this say about the strictly mechanistic view of the universe when mathematics cannot resolve problems directly resolved by the Universe?  Does the slime mold prove free will?  Well, as usual I’m probably a little too far out on a limb here, but I do find the idea of a slime mold solving difficult computational problems to be fascinating.  It’s difficult to make a brain think in new ways, but perhaps the visual image of a slime mold solving problems may spark new ways of thinking about certain classes of problems.

Through rhythmic contractions of its membrane, called shuttle streaming, the slime mold grows out in search of food. If you put a P. polycephalum into a maze with two food sources in it, over a few days the organism will grow toward the food sources and retract from everywhere else except the shortest path between them. Mathematicians and network analysts call this the “shortest path problem.” When presented with additional food sources, the slime mold forms ever more complex and efficient networks. These “Physarum machines,” as they are known, may help in the understanding of communication, road, and transport networks, which also, over time, come to balance complexity and efficiency.

The new study applied the power of a Physarum machine (and a computer program that simulates its behavior) to landscape-scale archaeology, specifically Roman roads in the Balkans. Researchers placed a P. polycephalum in a petri dish containing 17 little bits of food representing 17 urban centers in the Balkans from the Roman imperial period. The slime mold “imitated rather spectacularly the two main military roads of the area, the Via Egnatia [across Macedonia] and the Via Diagonalis [from central Europe to Constantinople],” says archaeologist Vasilis Evangelidis of the Hellenic Ministry of Education. This was a test case, but future experiments with P. polycephalum might reveal previously unobserved patterns in complex networks of human settlement, trade, and migration.

I wonder if, and how, they simulated geographical features as well.

I managed to get ahead of myself yesterday and had not finished reading the article before posting this.  Current hypothesis on the original wall is that it stood 12 feet tall, was 200 feet long, and contained 25,000 words; this is extrapolation from the discovered fragments.  The discovered fragments criticize the Stoics, and argues the Gods are indifferent to human affairs.  Archaeology does provide a short online slide show of this site.

A final quote from Diogenes (the article is not entirely clear as to whether it’s from the inscriptions or another source), concerning his motivations for setting up the wall:

Not least for those who are called foreigners, for they are not foreigners.  For, while the various segments of the Earth give different people a different country, the whole compass of this world gives all people a single country, the entire Earth, and a single home, the world.

– Diogenes of Oinoanda

Wassim Bessem of AL Monitor reports on the termination of the hand-woven carpet industry in Iraq:

“I’ve been weaving for many years. I employed some workers and together we would make three or four carpets per month. Work was profitable and in high demand to the extent that buyers would order carpets in advance,” she said. According to Umm Hassan, completing the work on a carpet took about two weeks and in the ’80s and ’90s the carpets cost about $40 each, a relatively expensive price at the time.

However, time and circumstances conspired against Umm Hassan, and she got tired. She was no longer able to work, except for limited periods, given the absence of opportunities that could capitalize on her expertise and train a new generation to master the skills of this traditional industry.

The destruction of culture appears to be taking place.  It’s unsettling to realize that this happens because of our bloody removal Saddam Hussein, a dictator.  As with Marshal Tito, he provided a source of stability amongst factions who hated each other.

The majority of people suffer from a common disease, as in a plague, with their false notions about things, and their number is increasing … I wished to use this stoa [covered walkway] to advertise publicly the [medicines] that bring salvation.

– Diogenes of Oinoanda

Found this in Archaeology (July/August 2015, print edition only).  Applicable then, applicable now.  The idea that the great mass of humanity isn’t as smart as ourselves appears to be a long standing attitude.

The medicines Diogenes advocated was the philosophy of Epicureanism.  The author of the article, Eric. A. Powell, explains further:

It was grounded in physics, held that the pursuit of pleasure is the highest good, and eschewed belief in divine intervention.

The Wikipedia link clarifies the pursuit of pleasure:

Epicurus believed that what he called “pleasure” is the greatest good, but the way to attain such pleasure is to live modestly and to gain knowledge of the workings of the world and the limits of one’s desires. This led one to attain a state of tranquility (ataraxia) and freedom from fear, as well as absence of bodily pain (aponia). The combination of these two states is supposed to constitute happiness in its highest form.

As the story of North Carolina continues, we discover that the Legislature’s Republicans have overridden the Republican governor’s veto and passed legislation that … well, the local ABC affiliate, ABC11, has the facts:

A measure allowing some court officials to refuse to perform gay marriage responsibilities because of their religious beliefs became law in North Carolina on Thursday, with the state House voting to override the governor’s veto of the bill. …

The law, taking effect immediately, means some register of deeds workers who assemble licenses and magistrates to solemnize civil marriages can decide to stop performing all marriages if they hold a “sincerely held religious objection.”

Most of the Democrats and the Governor have expressed their disappointment. Steve Benen @ MaddowBlog points out the vagueness of the new law:

The goal, not surprisingly, is to stand in the way of same-sex couples who want to wed, but the measure doesn’t specify that, which raises the prospect of some pretty broad problems. If a county magistrate has a religious objection to an interracial couple getting married, he or she can refuse.

The same is true if the local official objects to a couple from different religious backgrounds. If the local official objects to marrying someone who’s been previously divorced, the same thing.

Another writer comments about Kansas:

I liked the recent study which showed that standard Republican policies (cut income taxes, cut corporate taxes, reduce regulations, etc.) actually result in a poorer business climate. Strangely, it seems that happy, healthy employees and productive, non-economically stressed customers and local citizens are actually better for business than a tax cut. Who would have guessed? Certainly not the Republicans, apparently. Which is why Wisconsin is dead last for creating new businesses.

Since the tax cuts benefit the rich far more than the poor, the economy’s improvement would depend on the greater spending of the rich.  But do the rich need to spend?  No – they have what they need in terms of long-term purchases, and how much more can they buy in the area of consumables?

Chris Reeves @ The Daily Kos has some juicy quotes from the more conservative Republicans:

In the Kansas House last night, Rep. Rubin (R-Johnson County) spoke up and said “Taxes are evil. They are evil” at one point, which brought strong approval from the anti-tax ralliers in the balcony.

I asked them as the debate wore on what they thought and their position was clear “Taxes like this are the things socialists do, not a free country.” …

Kasha Kelley (R-Ark City) in her speech to the floor earlier: “This is the first step toward socialism”. (House)
Greg Smith (R-Johnson County), Senator, “Taxes are thievery, nickel and dime thievery.”

The last quote reminds me of holding a similar, if less extreme, position twenty years ago.  I bring this up to observe that part of the problem (and it’s a hard one) is a moral system in which goods & services are either obtained through trade (good), or they are taken by force (evil). In at least my educational venues, very little attention was given to any other economic transaction and its moral/ethical facet, such as whether or not taxation falls in the good or evil. Since taxation doesn’t immediately fall into the category of good, it must be evil, no?

Well, no. Senator Smith has evidently not given any thought to the positive contributions of government to the citizenry, from defense to services; his assertion, if indeed a true quote and not out of context, would leave me shaking my head and suggesting it’s time to replace them.

But the real point is a more nuanced discussion about the role of taxation in society, how it benefits society, and how they can be misused – this sort of thing is far more necessary to counter the mindless mantra that

TAXES ARE EVIL!

Some folks may be wondering why a deal is necessary, why the Israelis didn’t just knock out the nuclear facilities in Iran when they began to worry about them.  Israeli columnist Ben Caspit, writing for AL Monitor, reports on that recent history from a Jerusalem Post conference in NYC this past June 7th:

The much talked-about argument broke out toward the end of the discussion, when [Senior Columnist Caroline] Glick, who is known for her hawkish, right-wing views, claimed that in 2010, two members of the panel “were given an order to prepare the military for an imminent strike against Iran’s nuclear installation, and they refused.”

Quick to protest these allegations, [Maj. General] Dagan got into a vociferous argument with Glick. “It was an illegal order,” he said. “You were not there. You don’t know what happened there.”

Glick refused to concede: “Had you not brought in your expert legal opinion to determine whether or not the prime minister of Israel and the defense minister of Israel have a right to order Israel to take action in its national defense, then we would not be where we are today.” She blamed Dagan and [Lt. General and Chief of Staff] Ashkenazi for the current situation, which, according to the Israeli right, leaves the country with no way out. What she was effectively saying is that the heads of Israel’s security forces conducted a quiet putsch against the political leadership, preventing them from launching an Israeli assault against Iran’s nuclear facilities following plans prepared well in advance. …

Were they refusing a direct order? Was this a mutiny, or possibly a military putsch against the country’s political leadership? The answer is no. Glick’s question focused on a very specific incident, which occurred at the end of a meeting of the Septet, Netanyahu’s ministerial forum for strategic consultation. It was a private forum of ministers, without any statutory standing and therefore unable to make any decisions. …

Netanyahu is an overly cautious prime minister with an aversion to military adventurism, for reasons of personal political survival. He knew that if something went wrong with the attack and it then became public that he gave the order despite the recommendations of all of the professionals in the security services, it would be the end of his political career. At first, he invested enormous energy in trying to convince some of the defense chiefs to adopt his position. The event reported here occurred when he finally gave up.

The question that the Israeli right should ask Netanyahu is why he didn’t attack Iran in the summer of 2012. As far as Netanyahu was concerned, that summer was seemingly the ultimate moment: The heads of the security forces had left the IDF and were replaced with a new crop of generals lacking experience, charisma or influence among the public. At that time, Netanyahu had a weak and anonymous chief of staff in the person of Benny Gantz, a novice director of the Mossad with Tamir Pardo, a new chief of military intelligence and a new director of the Shin Bet on the way. At the same time, the United States was caught up in a bitter presidential election, in which President Barack Obama was fighting for his second term. Netanyahu was seemingly free to act. There was nothing to prevent him from attacking Iran in July, August or September 2012, but he hesitated and eventually put his dream aside. At the time, however, there was no one to interfere in any significant way.

So why didn’t he go through with it? First of all, because Netanyahu was afraid. Second, Barak [Obama] made a sharp, last minute U-turn and switched to the opponents’ side. And there must be other reasons.

Interesting.  One must assume that Mr. Caspit is fairly right-wing, if he’s willing to label Netanyahu as overly cautious.  A report to be read with some caution, with a feeler out for just what sort of political waters are swirling about, unseen.

Get a flu vaccination:

[Chris Reiber at Binghamton University in New York and Janice Moore at Colorado State University in Fort Collins] have found that people were far more sociable in the 48 hours following their annual flu vaccination than in the 48 hours preceding it. “This is highly suggestive that the virus is manipulating human behaviour for its own ends; that is, to spread itself to other potential hosts,” says Reiber. Another possibility, however, is that humans subconsciously become more sociable in anticipation of needing help and support ahead of disease.

The main article suggests there may be a link between Toxoplasma gondii and schizophrenia.

NewScientist (30 May 2015, paywall)

A FB correspondent remarks:

The trouble is, presenting facts doesn’t work. They ignore their failures, and just repeat their mantras. Bah. I wonder if the people of Kansas will bother to notice.

Let’s look at what we can know, which is the results of surveys.  Governor Brownback, former Senator for Kansas, was elected in 2010, winning a four way race with 63% of the vote, according to Ballotpedia.  At the time, cjonline.com (Topeka Capital-Journal) reported,

Immediate priorities in the Statehouse will be cutting state taxes and regulations in an effort to spur private-sector job growth, Brownback said. He vowed to reduce state government spending.

“My vision for Kansas is to see our economy grow so we will be able to fund the state’s core services,” he said. “My economic growth team and I are working hard to develop a balanced budget and tax plan, which will release the entrepreneurial spirit of Kansans and create the economic environment necessary for Kansas to become more globally competitive.”

Taking his vote percentage as an approval rating is probably a dubious practice, but it’s indicative of his dominance (second place had 32%).  What happened in the 2014 election?  Again, according to Ballotpedia, this time he won 49.8% to 46.1%, with a libertarian candidate taking the rest.  His approval rating in 2011,  according to local news station KWCH, was 51%, but in 2013 fell to 35% ; during the 2014 race, polling seemed to show he was frequently behind his opponent, to the extent that his campaign protested the cjonline.com poll, conducted by SurveyUSA:

In the midst of a challenging re-election campaign in 2014, Brownback’s staff now takes a disparaging view of SurveyUSA’s capacity to sample the public’s political pulse. The Clifton, N.J., company’s latest poll in Kansas’ race for governor, revealed Tuesday, had Democrat Paul Davis leading 48 percent to 40 percent for Brownback.

“SurveyUSA has a history of inaccurate polling,” said John Milburn, a spokesman for the governor and former Associated Press reporter who covered Brownback and other Kansas politicians for more than a decade. “This latest release from the organization is more of the same.”

Brownback campaign manager Mark Dugan, who worked for Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer, discounted SurveyUSA’s work product as “another absurd poll showing the governor losing.”

Was the polling inaccurate?  Biased?  FiveThirtyEight had forecast Brownback to lose – big:

Republican Gov. Sam Brownback is in trouble for three related reasons: a Republican party split, economic woes and education. For as long as most of us have been alive, Kansas has leaned to the right, practicing its own brand of moderate Republicanism. Brownback, though, has governed as a pure conservative.

It has hurt him; Democrat Paul Davis has been endorsed by scores of moderate Republicans upset by cuts to education necessitated by Brownback’s large tax cuts.

According to SurveyUSA, taxes and education remain among the most important issues to voters in 2014. The result has been disenchanted Republicans. The share of registered Republicans in Kansas was 9 percentage points higher than the share of self-identified Republicans, according the latest Marist College poll. Many of these Republicans now identify as independent, a group Davis is winning by a 26-point margin.

Although polls have narrowed from a few months ago, most surveys have Davis riding Republican discontent to a lead. He’s an 82 percent favorite.

However, they do not appear to have conducted any polls of their own, just relied on others.  I found this courtesy Kevin Waisfeld, who goes on to enjoy a bit of schadenfreude.

So, back to the original question: do people learn?  I think they do.  Not enough, in this case; or perhaps they decided to accept the Governor’s assertion that he just needs more time.  That might be understandable, although in four years a lot of damage can be done.  But I think that electing a governor involves issues that are close to home: highways and education.  Let’s be honest: even WAR seems far away and irrelevant if you don’t have family members in the service – and there’s no draft to spread fear and discontent amongst the eligible; foreign policy?  For wonks.  Social Security and MediCare – hardly anyone touches those any more, and if they do they get to retire.

But when it’s close up and personal, then people do learn.  Which, of course, doesn’t really explain the Minnesota experience of an improved economy resulting in the Democrats losing the state House of Representatives.

American artist Bruce Shapiro combines motorized sand tables and ball bearings with computer programming to demonstrate what he calls the “art of motion control.”

See more here

The States which make up the United States of America are, famously, the laboratories of democracy, and Kansas is another state electing officials who hew to the Republican orthodoxy: cut taxes and watch the resultant prosperity generate more than enough revenues to cover the resulting budget deficit.  Or, as former Kansas Budget Director (12 years, 3 governors) Duane Goossen puts it on The Kansas Budget blog:

The selling point for hefty Kansas tax cuts was irresistibly seductive.  Kansas can lower income tax rates, exempt business profits from the income tax entirely, and state revenue will still remain the same, or maybe even grow, and the state economy will prosper.

But this premise proved to be completely false. General fund revenue did not replenish. It fell $700 million (11 percent) in one year, and the recently revised official revenue forecast now predicts that receipts will stay at that low level into the future. Nor did the economy prosper. The Kansas economy is plodding along, but growing at a rate below our surrounding states and the national average.

Peter Roff at USNWR wishes to disagree concerning Kansas, Paul Krugman, and appears to be ignoring the Louisiana story as well:

Then there’s Kansas, where Republican Gov. Sam Brownback has put the state on the path to abolishing its income tax. It was a bold move, one that required him to recruit candidates to run for the state legislature against members of his own party in order to get the votes to do it.

He won the policy battle and – if he wins re-election – he’s established a model other Republicans can and no doubt will follow going forward.

This, of course, is the most dangerous development of all. The modern Democratic coalition is based on the idea that the revenue the government collects will be spread around among its constituent political parts. It’s a kind of “share the wealth” program on steroids that allows for everyone to get along because no one walks away from the table without their share of the vigorish, which justifies the amount of money that the unions, the environmental groups, the trial lawyers and the civil rights groups take from their members to get Democrats elected in the first place.

If Brownback triumphs, the pie shrinks – which means there just won’t be as much taxpayer money to divide up in the future. So the Democratic coalition groups have to win and make sure no one ever tries to abolish a tax again, even if they have to stretch the truth to do it.

The article is somewhat old, so perhaps he’s since revised his thinking.  The Atlantic has published this:

The yawning deficit is widely blamed on the deep income tax cuts that Brownback, along with a Republican legislature, enacted during his first two years in office. They not only slashed rates, but more importantly, they created a huge exemption for business owners who file their taxes as individuals. By Brownback’s own description, the tax plan was a “real live experiment” in supply-side economics, with the idea being that lower taxes would spur investment, create jobs, and refill Kansas’s coffers through faster growth. Yet even under the most charitable analysis, revenue has plummeted much faster than the economy has expanded.

So how are the anti-tax pledges doing?  The Wichita Eagle has the low-down:

Gov. Sam Brownback, who pushed for those deep income tax cuts, wants fellow conservatives to ignore the no-new-tax pledges many of them have made since 2012.

He proposed higher taxes on cigarettes and alcohol, an idea that has been coolly received in the Legislature. The governor’s budget also depends on a $136 million tax increase on health maintenance organizations.

Leading lawmakers have entertained their own ideas, including increases in sales or gas taxes or a tax on “passive income,” including earnings from rent.

Another proposal would close a loophole that lets wages go untaxed for owners of limited liability companies, sole proprietorships and the like. Although income from those businesses was supposed to be tax-free, the wages paid from that revenue were always still intended to be taxed, lawmakers said.

But efforts to raise taxes run headlong into opposition from conservatives who ran for office touting anti-tax credentials.

About of a third of the 125-member Kansas House has signaled an unwillingness to raise taxes when revenue falls short of spending. Almost half of the 40-member Kansas Senate is on record as opposing new taxes.

The article goes on to note that some members are ready to toe the line, while the others are having an unhappy meeting with reality.  The New Republic notes that Kansas’ reserve fund is becoming depleted:

On Tuesday, Brownback signed legislation that would balance the budget by diverting money from other funds, particularly one for highway projects, to the general fund. It would also reduce contributions to pensions for teachers and government workers, pushing those costs into the future. It’s a deeply irresponsible budget that hides the costs of the tax cuts with short-term patches. But this is just the beginning: Kansas faces a projected $600 million budget shortfall in the 2016 fiscal year—and now there is no money in the reserve fund to cover any of it.

Mother Jones has a nice, if partisan article, subtly entitled, “Kansas Is Totally Screwed“, concerning the general situation and, in particular, education.  Kansas’ constitution guarantees an adequate education, but ….

The [state Supreme] court said the government had failed to allocate enough money for its students, and the justices tossed the decision back to a lower panel to determine what exactly would constitute a sufficient level of spending. Last week, that lower court ruled that funding for students “is inadequate from any rational perspective of the evidence presented or proffered to us.” The three-judge panel held that per pupil spending should be between $4,654 and $4,980 per year. Either number would be a huge jump over the $3,852 per student that the state currently spends.

The current Kansas Budget Director Shawn Sullivan was sent to warn recalcitrant lawmakers, KMBC-TV notes:

Kansas would likely be forced to lay off prison guards, cut aid to public schools and reduce payments to health care providers and nursing homes if legislators don’t increase taxes, Republican Gov. Sam Brownback’s budget director told GOP lawmakers Monday.

Budget Director Shawn Sullivan said that without tax increases, the most likely option for Brownback is cutting $400 million from a budget approved by legislators for the fiscal year beginning July 1, to avoid a deficit. He said the cuts would most likely be a 6.2 percent across-the-board reduction in their state funds, taking effect in late July or early August.

From The Atlantic article, we get a response from Brownback:

And like any politician on the ropes, he is preaching patience. “These things take time,” he said last month. He also acknowledged the toll his stumbles have taken on his image. “We’re in Lent season, so I’m giving up worldly things, like popularity,” he joked to a small crowd. Brownback has blamed the budget shortfall in part on automatic increases in education spending (a subject of a long-running court dispute), and he’s cited a recent uptick in job growth as evidence that the tax cuts, on the whole, are working. “Kansas is on the rise, and the state of our state is strong,” the governor proclaimed in an annual budget address in January.

Finally, this is surely enlivening discussions at Traditional Republicans for Common Sense.  From their “About Us” section:

Kansas has always been about the people, about doing what’s right and about putting others first. Radical elements and extremist politicians may have taken over our process, but it’s not too late to take it back from them. We must. And, together, we will continue to ensure that Kansas is the best place to live, work and raise a family.

Nice to see some of the old-line Republicans resent the ideologically bound amateurs that have pushed them aside.

Steve Benen at MaddowBlog reports on the effect the Norquist anti-tax pledge is having on one state – Louisiana:

Norquist is an anti-tax crusader who’s convinced all kinds of GOP policymakers to sign something known as “the pledge” – in order to get ahead in their party, Republicans agree in writing never to support raising any tax on anyone by any amount for any reason.

But occasionally, far-right policymakers discover that the mindless, knee-jerk commitment stands in the way of actual governance in the real world. Louisiana’s Republican-dominated state government, for example, is facing an enormous budget crisis, caused in part by Gov. Bobby Jindal’s (R) tax breaks. Now the state can’t get its fiscal house in order, and as TPM reported, it’s asking Norquist to give Louisiana a break.

Grover Norquist and his Americans For Tax Reform group has been around for just about as long as I can remember (the group was formed in 1985, which somehow doesn’t sound long enough), and Norquist populated the pages of REASON Magazine quite often when I was a regular reader – usually as subject.  And he was usually one note.  He didn’t seem interested in questions of governance, simply in reducing the tax burden in any way possible, regardless of the consequences.

The results in the Louisiana case are striking:

– a $1.6 billion budget deficit
– inability to conduct Advanced Placement tests in schools next year
– proposed closing of schools and universities

The above courtesy the Times-Picayune of New Orleans.  They note the contributors to Louisiana’s problems:

With the exception of his first year in office, 2008, Jindal has constantly faced state financial shortfalls. Of course, falling energy prices certainly haven’t helped recently and account for a large portion — $400 million — of the shortfall.

But tracing the origins of Louisiana’s budget crisis is complicated. Lawmakers and economists agree that Louisiana’s finances face a “structural” budget problem that has nothing to do with the energy market. The state simply isn’t set up to collect enough revenue to cover its expenses, even during oil and natural gas booms.

Here’s what that means.

First, more money than the state could spend 

During the last two years of Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s administration, the state budget reached record heights. In the 2007-2008 fiscal cycle, Louisiana had a spending plan of $28.6 billion. That was a major increase from the year before Hurricane Katrina, when total spending was only $16.5 billion, according to the Louisiana Legislative Fiscal Office. And it’s nearly $3 billion more than the estimates for state spending in the current budget cycle.

“In 2007-2008, we were really rolling in money,” said Jim Richardson, a Louisiana State University economist who sits on a panel that oversees state revenue. …

Lawmakers, governors and the voters have constitutionally shielded large swaths of Louisiana spending. Much of the state’s primary and secondary education funding automatically increases — and can’t be cut — if more students enroll. This past fall, voters adopted ballot measures that make it difficult to cut the Medicaid budget.

There are also tax credits that entitle business and individuals to a portion of the state funding pie, or at least make it likely Louisiana won’t collect as much in revenue. Some have grown astronomically. Most prominent is the film tax credit, which requires the state to reimburse certain film and television production costs. Last year, the state paid out around $250 million in film tax credits alone.

The above lovely article goes into quite a lot of detail concerning how Louisiana has begun to approach the status of laughingstock of the nation.

Now, faced with a shortfall through financial mismanagement, the Republicans, according to Benen, ask for permission from Norquist to roll back tax credits or raise taxes.  And didn’t get it.

Gentlemen, it’s called cojones.  (Apologies to any ladies in the Louisiana legislature.)  And maybe a few have some.  The Advocate of New Orleans reprints an AP article from Melinda DeSlatte:

“They’ve used all the smoke that was in the can and all the mirrors that they could buy and now they’re out of tricks. Their solution is to gut higher education like a fish,” said Republican state Treasurer John Kennedy.

But let’s not stop here; speculation on the mindset of Governor Jindal and his fellow Republicans (I’m tempted to call them cultists at this juncture) is interesting as I see this as one of the consequences of team politics, as we’ve previously discussed.  When unnaturally strong hierarchical links are forged between the members of a party, and the folks who’ve clambered to the top (using blatant threats to unseat those folks who displease them, in this case) do not have good judgment, this is what happens: poor decisions, rigid ideologies based on the favored myths of those at the top of the heap, and, generally, disaster.

It’s akin to what happens to dictators who think they’ve slipped the surly bonds of societal norms and can do anything their ideology pleases – eventually, they get dumped in prison, and their damned ideology gets dumped in the river.  Like this chap.

Perhaps this will be an inflection point for the Republicans – if Louisiana legislators get up on their back legs and reject the rigid ideologies that has inflicted great unhappiness on their state, perhaps they will lead the GOP out of its current Dark Age of ignorance and denial, despite their national prominence, and back into relevance where they might be trusted to govern.

If they do, it might be fun to write every Republican state legislator in all 50 states and ask them to reject any allegiance they might have to that pernicious anti-tax pledge – and see how they reply.

And then turns serious during the interview with the spokesman …

John Horgan at the Scientific American blogs interviews George Ellis , a cosmologist who worked with Hawking, physicist, a Quaker, and winner of the controversial Templeton Prize, and in the interview they touch upon, among other topics, the nature of free will, recently discussed here and, briefly, here:

Horgan: In some of your writings, you warn against excessive determinism in physics, and science. Could you summarize your concerns?

Many scientists are strong reductionists who believe that physics alone determines outcomes in the real world, This is demonstrably untrue – for example the computer on which I am writing this could not possibly have come into being through the agency of physics alone.

The issue is that these scientists are focusing on some strands in the web of causation that actually exist, and ignoring others that are demonstrably there – such as ideas in our minds, or algorithms embodied in computer programs. These demonstrably act in a top-down way to cause physical effects in the real world. All these processes and actual outcomes are contextually dependent, and this allows the effectiveness of processes such as adaptive selection that are the key to the emergence of genuine complexity.

At first, I wasn’t quite certain how this is demonstrably untrue.  However, I think he sees the contents of the brain as operating in a reality separate from our tangible reality.  The Wikipedia article on Ellis states that he is a platonist:

… refers to the philosophy that affirms the existence of abstract objects, which are asserted to “exist” in a “third realm” distinct both from the sensible external world and from the internal world of consciousness, and is the opposite of nominalism (with a lower case “n”).^[1]

Keeping that in mind, it becomes clear how he could justify his assertion that free will comes from thoughts in the mind, since they, in his view, are not subject to the laws of physics.  His further assertion that an algorithm implemented in a computer is also in a different realm must derive from the idea that algorithms are a construct of our minds, and an implementation of such also comes from a realm differing from our physical reality.

I am not a platonist, so I find these assertions to be dubious.

As I stated above, mathematical equations only represent part of reality, and should not be confused with reality. A specific related issue: there is a group of people out there writing papers based on the idea that physics is a computational process. But a physical law is not an algorithm. So who chooses the computational strategy and the algorithms that realise a specific physical law? (Finite elements perhaps?) What language is it written in? (Does Nature use Java or C++? What machine code is used?) Where is the CPU? What is used for memory, and in what way are read and write commands executed? Additionally if it’s a computation, how does Nature avoid the halting problem? It’s all a very bad analogy that does not work.

This should appeal to my Arts Editor, who enjoys baiting the occasional mathematician; and it’s true, in my humble view, that mathematics is a subset of logical systems in which the behavior of the operations is chosen to mimic reality.  While it seems like an obvious truism, a few mathematicians have disagreed, suggesting,

Our external physical reality is a mathematical structure.

(from Wikipedia’s article on Mathematical universe hypothesis.)  While that’s a fascinating thought, I currently am inclined to the former view, partially for reasons found later in this post.  Now, with regard to physics-as-algorithm, it’s interesting that he claims physical laws are not algorithms: how does he know that?  He doesn’t say, quite understandably.

But here we might learn something from Noson Yanofksy’s book, mentioned in this post: The Outer Limits of Reason: What Science, Mathematics, and Logic Cannot Tell us.  If we take his assertions to be true, that some problems embodied in physical phenomena cannot be solved using mathematics, then that suggests they are not mathematical at all; their essential nature is only partially understandable through mathematics.  They are something else.  As something else, they may in fact have a stochastic component … thus leading to the unpredictability which would refute the reductionism necessary to proclaim a lack of free will.

Horgan: Einstein, in the following quote, seemed to doubt free will: “If the moon, in the act of completing its eternal way around the Earth, were gifted with self-consciousness, it would feel thoroughly convinced that it was traveling its way of its own accord…. So would a Being, endowed with higher insight and more perfect intelligence, watching man and his doings, smile about man’s illusion that he was acting according to his own free will.” Do you believe in free will?

Ellis: Yes. Einstein is perpetuating the belief that all causation is bottom up. This simply is not the case, as I can demonstrate with many examples from sociology, neuroscience, physiology, epigenetics, engineering, and physics. Furthermore if Einstein did not have free will in some meaningful sense, then he could not have been responsible for the theory of relativity – it would have been a product of lower level processes but not of an intelligent mind choosing between possible options.

I find it very hard to believe this to be the case – indeed it does not seem to make any sense. Physicists should pay attention to Aristotle’s four forms of causation – if they have the free will to decide what they are doing. If they don’t, then why waste time talking to them? They are then not responsible for what they say.

This is a fascinating conundrum – if a physicist truly believes in the lack of free will, then why award them any prizes for their discoveries?  After all, they were predestined.  So why bother?

Of course, one can argue the prizes were predestined as well.  However, at this juncture I’m beginning to feel like an ant in an ant-farm – or part of a large computer simulation (given the similarity of the smartphone addicts to a network of processors, I can say, with nary a grin, that I’m not joking).  We can either begin speculating on the nature and motivations of whatever has set our Universe in motion, or we can accept that free will does exist, but is perhaps not yet understandable, and move on to trying to understand it.

In case you’re interested in Ellis’ thoughts on causation, he discusses this in a separate interview, available at IAI News:

A key question for science is whether all causation is from the bottom up only. If forces between particles are the only kind of physical causation, then chemistry, biology, and even our minds are emergent, bottom-up properties of physics. On the other hand, it might be that these emergent higher level structures, such as cells, neurons, and the brain, have causal powers in their one right.

In the first instance, all the higher levels are epiphenomena – they have no real existence – and so the idea that you are responsible for your actions is false. But in fact top-down causation takes place all the time, with the higher levels controlling the lower levels, not by any magic force, but by setting constraints on lower level interactions. This means that higher levels such as cells, neurons, and your brain have real causal powers, and this means you can indeed be held accountable for your actions.

By whom?

(h/t Discover Magazine)

Related to this topic, concerning declining membership in the GOP, Gallup is now reporting a change in the composition of the GOP:

The percentage of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who describe themselves as both social and economic conservatives has dropped to 42%, the lowest level Gallup has measured since 2005. The second-largest group of Republicans (24%) see themselves as moderate or liberal on both social and economic issues, while 20% of all Republicans are moderate or liberal on social issues but conservative on economic ones.

What does it mean?  Hard to say, since the historical graph indicates an even larger dip in 2005, followed by a local peak four years later.  Gallup still claims, though, that this is symptomatic of the GOP’s oldest voters basically dying off, since conservative on both issues correlates with age.  Given that just a year ago, the percentage was 51, I would want to see a continued trend down next year before declaring a big trend.

However, this does correlate, in some dubious manner, with this Gallup poll concerning general social leanings of voters:

Thirty-one percent of Americans describe their views on social issues as generally liberal, matching the percentage who identify as social conservatives for the first time in Gallup records dating back to 1999.

If these trends continue to hold up, then the GOP is going to have to change in order to remain a nationally important political party – and that can only be a good thing for voters.  As an independent, the ideal situation for myself is to see balance and reasonableness in both parties.  The GOP has not resembled a reasonable party since at least the impeachment of President Clinton, if not longer.  Governance is an important subject requiring intelligent, sober people, not folks like … well, go ahead and supply your own names.  And balance and fair competition – not this (“Court says Va. must end gerrymandering”) – leads to the creativity necessary to survive in this new age of global threats.  Steadfast denial of reality does not count as creativity.

Peter Abrams discusses the Hydra Effect in NewScientist (30 May 2015, paywall):

A decade ago, my collaborator Hiroyuki Matsuda and I coined the term hydra effect to describe all situations where a higher death rate in a particular species ultimately increases the size of its population. We named this phenomenon after the multi-headed serpent of Greek myth that grew two heads for each one that Hercules cut off. The hydra effect is just one example of a more general phenomenon where adverse changes in the environment that reduce the growth rate of a population may ultimately lead to greater numbers.

What could cause populations of animals or plants to bounce back so strongly in spite of a continued higher death rate? When a population experiences increased mortality – due to, say, harvesting – the initial effect is almost always diminishing abundance. However, after this initial decline, other organisms they interact with are likely to change. In most cases the organisms they eat go up in abundance. Diseases and predators that depend on the harvested population decline. Also, a higher risk of death often causes individuals to reduce their activity levels and to spend more time hiding, allowing their over-exploited food species to recover. Tadpoles in ponds with more predatory dragonfly larvae have been shown to end up getting more algae to eat, despite spending less time feeding. In a large food web many other complicated positive feedbacks exist.

The mathematics of populations must be fascinating, mostly in the modeling, so as to best characterize the relationships and how a change at one point in the web of life ripples through the rest of it.

But what about the political dangers of recognizing the hydra effect?

“I don’t know if it’s true, but I hope it isn’t.” This was the response of a fisheries biologist after I gave a talk about the hydra effect a decade ago. He was right to be concerned. If it were widely known that harvesting can potentially increase the size of fish stocks,fisheries quotas might have been raised too rapidly. Fishers may welcome the counter-intuitive idea that catching fish may bump up the population, but hydra effects are not yet predictable. And modelling shows that the harvest rate which maximises a fish population is surprisingly often only slightly smaller than that which results in a dramatic collapse or extinction.

Which leaves me wondering how many Fishing Ministers ponder how to determine that sweet spot, without ever considering how much illegal fishing actually goes on….

Continuing my faintly ridiculous hobby, I thought I’d add a note on XML validity constraints and how they interact with the EBNF of XML: which is to say, they don’t.

Which is reasonable, of course: the point of the EBNF is to specify the syntax, not the semantics.  But this does make validity checking a little more difficult.  Here’s the first example of a constraint:

Validity constraint: Root Element Type

The Name in the document type declaration MUST match the element type of the root element.

And an illustration:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE greeting SYSTEM "hello.dtd">
<greeting>Hello, world!</greeting> 

Note the word “greeting” in the !DOCTYPE and in the XML element.   So what does Production 1 look like?

document ::= prolog element Misc*

element is the important piece here:

element ::= EmptyElemTag | STag content ETag

Both EmptyElemTag and STag reference Production 5:

Name ::= NameStartChar (NameChar)*

And it’s this Name which we’ll match against the DTD’s name.  But, of course, Name is used in many other places, which I’ll omit listing here, so clearly we cannot modify the processing at Name to validate against the DTD; or, more accurately, a hacker might find some way to get there, but that’s not really good enough.

More importantly, the element Production is also referenced from another location, namely Production 43, and again it would be inappropriate to modify the element Production to validate a special case.  So, how to handle this, and potentially other special cases, and properly highlight the purpose of the modification to the EBNF?

I hit upon using the previously described debug mechanism.  First, I defined the notion of a Production Post Processor:

Post_Production_Processor = Handlers -> List(XML_OnePass) -> Dtd -> Int -> Int -> (Handlers, Dtd);

In English, a production post processor accepts all the SAX handlers provided by the user, the current state of processing, the DTD, and (for convenience) the current line and column numbers; it returns potentially new versions of the handlers and the DTD.  (Yes, I’m wondering if returning a new DTD is pointless.)

I added an integer (name of Production) map to Post_Production_Processor map to the internal state of the SAX parser.  This is updated by a new function, validity_constraint, which functions as a parser, accepting a production Name and Post_Production_Processor and modifying the previously mentioned map with the information before executing the success function.

As you might have guessed, then, I’ve modified the p_out function for a match between its name argument and anything in the map from name to Post_Production_Processor.  If one is found, the entry is deleted, and the post processor is executed.  The success function is then invoked, but using the results of the post processor rather than those passed in.

Usage?

vc = validity_constraint;    # purely for readability

…

xml_doc = p_in 1 & start_doc & prolog & vc 5 validate_dtd_name & element & <misc> & one_p & p_out 1;

validate_dtd_name is invoked when Production 5 terminates, and I’ve determined that the next Production 5 will ALWAYS be the outermost element’s name.

For comparison, here’s the original EBNF of Production 1:

document ::= prolog element Misc*

The added implementation elements are p_in, start_doc, vc, one_p, and p_out.  The transformation is rather large, but still straightforward:

p_in is the debug (and now validity constraint) mechanism;

start_doc implements the content handler’s start_document functionality;

vc, as discussed;

one_p, the processor specific to Production 1 – not all Productions have processors, but this one does (it returns the handlers to the caller);

p_out, as discussed.

Most productions only have p_in and p_out additions.  A few have processors.  So far, only Production 1 has a post processor, for which I should probably come up with a better name: validity processor, perhaps.  Let me know if you have a better name.

I should change xml_doc to document, just for consistency.  (Consistency is rarely of interest to me, sadly.)

Testing of this mechanism has yielded positive results, in that I can see the processor invoked.  I have to modify one of my tests to have a DTD in order to really test it, and I haven’t gotten that far; if a DTD is not defined, the requirement is ignored.

I look forward to trying to implement other validity constraints with this mechanism.

A hidden component of the recent agreement between Egypt and Ethiopia in regards to the Nile waters has recently been revealed, reports NewScientist (30 May 2015, paywall):

The solution involves reducing the losses to evaporation from Lake Nasser, the reservoir behind Egypt’s Aswan High Dam in the Nubian desert. Up to 16 cubic kilometres of water evaporate annually from its surface – a quarter of the Nile’s average flow and up to 40 per cent in a dry year.

Storing more of that water in the reservoir behind Ethiopia’s dam could cut those losses, as it is deeper, has a surface area less than a third as great and sits in the cool and wet highlands. But it would also cut Egypt’s electricity generation, so Ethiopia would need to share electricity from its new dam, says Kenneth Strzepek at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Sudan, too, could benefit from the dam and a more even water flow, reducing the risk of flooding and increasing the potential for irrigation. “The government of Sudan is already selling land leases for new farmland by the river,” says Alex de Waal of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University in Boston.

Sometimes the most important news starts out as a couple of short paragraphs; for me, that’s how the Deepwater Horizon disaster began.  I recall reading those two paragraphs, wherever it was, shaking my head and thinking, This is important.

And now I have the feeling again.  NewScientist (30 May 2015, paywall) reports on the sudden deaths of saiga antelopes:

The animals began dying from an unidentified cause around 10 May. The death toll soared within days to 27,000, at which point the Kazakh government requested help from the secretariat of the convention. A team of vets, led by Richard Kock of the Royal Veterinary College in Hatfield, UK, flew out on Friday.

“It’s very dramatic and traumatic, with 100 per cent mortality,” Kock told New Scientist from Betpak-Dala in central Kazakhstan. “I know of no example in history with this level of mortality, killing all the animals and all the calves.” The animals die through severe diarrhoea and difficulty breathing.

100% mortality?  That’s extremely worrying.  Saiga antelope are a critically endangered species,

… that originally inhabited a vast area of the Eurasian steppe zone from the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains and Caucasus into Dzungaria and Mongolia.

They also lived in Beringian North America during the Pleistocene. Today, the dominant subspecies (S. t. tatarica) is only found in one location in Russia (steppes of the northwest Precaspian region) and three areas in Kazakhstan (the Ural, Ustiurt and Betpak-Dala populations).

They also having this charming appearance:

Scientists had come to watch the calving scene, but, according to WBUR, NPR’s Boston, MA station,

… but instead, what they witnessed was the end of life—with the carcasses of tens of thousands strewn over the terrain. Steffen Zuther, acting director of the Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity of Kazakhstan, was among the first witnesses on the scene. On May 10 and 11 and in the days that followed, he observed the devastation: whole herds lying dead—the carcasses of calves curled up at the bellies of their dead mothers.

Nature has a briefing on the event, including some interesting background:

Saigas are known to be prone to massive, as yet unexplained die-offs. These usually occur when the females come together to calve in the spring. In 1984, such an event in the Ural Mountains resulted in the loss of 100,000 animals — 67% of the local population. There were several smaller scale die-offs in the 2000s. But this year’s mass-death event among animals living in the Betpak-Dala region of Kazakhstan is much more significant as entire herds are dying.

“I have worked in veterinary diseases all my career and I have never seen 100% mortality,” says Richard Kock, a wildlife veterinarian at the Royal Veterinary College in Hatfield, UK, who flew out to Kazakhstan last month to assist with efforts to make sense of the devastation. “We had a herd of 60,000 aggregated and they all died. That is extraordinary.” …

The cause is unlikely to have been an infectious agent that was transmitted from one animal to the next. “Epidemiologically, you cannot get a directly transmitted disease to kill a whole population in seven days,” says Kock. “I’d say it’s a polymicrobial disease,” he says. This involves pathogens such as pasteurella and clostridia that are often present in the body but have seized an opportunity to run riot.

The pathogens may have been responsible for the deaths, but something must have caused the saigas to fall victim to them. Given that two discrete sub-populations some 300 kilometres apart suffered similarly and simultaneously, it seems likely that an environmental factor is part of the story.

The speculation, so far, appears to be purely concerning biological factors.

cdub24 @ The Daily Kos has a post entitled “POLL finds 80% of Republicans AGREE with BERNIE SANDERS“, which links to a post at PoliticsUSA:

Sen. Bernie Sanders is often characterized by the media as an out of the mainstream presidential candidate, but a new CBS/New York Times poll revealed that 80% of Republicans agree with Sanders on the issue of getting money out of politics.

The CBS/NYT poll found that:

– 80% of Republicans believe that money has too much influence in our politics.

– 54% believed that most of the time candidates directly help those who gave money to them.

and etc., all related to campaign finance.

So, we can look at this and say, Wow, isn’t this amazing, maybe we should elect Bernie and get things DONE.

But here’s the thing: Presidents are Executives.  They Execute the law.  They don’t make the Law.  They may make War, but even then they are supposed to retroactively get permission – and risk getting booted out, if the Legislature is up to doing its job, rather than playing tribal politics.

The Legislature makes the law.  And that’s where just about all the positions of Bernie’s would need action.  (Constitutional Amendments also start in legislatures.)

So this sort of headline is all hot air and no red meat.  It can be used to embarrass your favorite conservative relative, if that’s your conception of politics – tear up the family and friends, that sort of thing.

But what it really needs to be is the extension of a hand to the family and friends and the remark, Hey, I hear your Representative isn’t in step with the conservative movement, yeah, that one that happens to think there’s too much money in politics, that corruption is rampant – what do you think should be done to correct or replace your Representative?

As entertaining as I find the modern conception of politics to be, the use of embarrassment, contempt, and scorn are the first materials to use – when burning bridges.  What do you think should be used when building bridges?

On this topic, Rolling Stone magazine published a piece by Hannah Gold I missed just about a year ago.  It covers the relationships between private prisons and higher education:

American universities do a fine job of selling themselves as pathways to opportunity and knowledge. But follow the traffic of money and policies through these academic institutions and you’ll often wind up at the barbed wire gates of Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group, the two largest private prison operators in the United States. …

Institutions of higher education have now become a part of what sociologist Victor Rios has called the “youth control complex”—a tightly bundled network of institutions that work insidiously and in harmony to criminalize young people of color. Here are five ways that universities buy into private prison companies.

Slightly conspiratorial, slightly cobbled together – but useful information, all the same.  Hannah finds five connections: The classic investments in private prisons corporations; the use of criminal record information to bar students with records from admission; presence of private prison company executives on the Boards of Trustees of educational institutes; the use of unsavory security giant G4S for campus security; and funding university research.  As a simple minded software engineer, here’s what comes to mind as I read the piece, structured by point:

1. Regarding educational investment/divestment: This is the most important and understandable – but exists on the assumption that the readers are liberals who already understand the inappropriateness of private prisons.  Perhaps there’s an accompanying piece that covers it; but, if not, then the “outraged liberal” tone of the piece comes off as tone-deaf.  How many conservatives are against private prisons?  No luck finding any polls on that precise question; AFSCME has an undated poll that claims only 28% of US citizens are in favor of private prisons, 51% against.  Given the lack of date, I have trouble with credibility – and with the source of the poll.

All that said, higher ed campuses are certainly one of the best places to start protesting against private prisons, as students rarely have vested interests in private prisons and therefore can honestly evaluate, and then act, on issues.  A fallacious focus on the efficaciousness of the divestment should not be permitted; it is the symbolic aspect of the action which is important, the statement that private prisons are inappropriate to democracies.  Naturally, this should be an educational moment – not only for the students, but for the administration, the Board of Trustees, and, of course, the citizenry at large who has, in the average case, not given the issue a moment’s thought.

2. Regarding requiring criminal offense history: A ticklish subject.  Even though the typical college student is no longer a fresh high school grad, we still would prefer the college experience be free of risk (a ridiculous statement itself, but there it is).  However, it’s difficult to think of any reason beyond that to deny someone an education.  Hannah’s point is that requiring that history legitimizes

a juvenile detention system which locks away more young people than that of any other industrialized nation, and institutionalizes inequality and racism in America (black youths are incarcerated at a rate five times that of their white peers; Latinos at two to three times the rate).

However, not asking for it does not delegitimize it; and, further, by not banning violent offenders from, at least, campus, you may be endangering other students.

3. Regarding private prison executives on Boards of Trustees:  I take this as indicative of the responsible body’s ignorance of the issue.  They can also exert undue influence on the institution, which may obscure research that might otherwise undermine private prisons.

4. Regarding campus security: Someone has to provide it.

5. Regarding funding research: This is an important point, given the phenomenona of funding bias and appeal to authority.  For those citizens who’ve not become familiar with the issue, the simple imprimatur of, say, Princeton (or Liberty University) on a piece of research which justifies private prisons can be a legimitizer in many people’s minds.

*   *   *

Eugene Volokh @ The Volokh Conspiracy contributes an overview of research on the efficiencies of prison methodologies, which reduces to the complaint that it’s hard to do and virtually no one has performed such research.  He usefully points to a 2012 Bureau of Justice Bulletin, which in Appendix Table 15 lists how many prisoners resided in private prisons in 2011 – indicating that, at the time, 19 states did not use private prisons.  The highest, at that time: Montana at 40% of total prison population.

But Eugene’s work (and those of whom he surveys) seems a wasted effort.  While to a devoted opponent of private prisons, research on efficiencies may seem another tool in stopping private prisons, I do not think it’s a wise tactic, for you are now risking the sin of biased research, if you reach a finding that supports your position, and risk the sin of omission of relevant facts if the finding is against you, and you choose not to use it (since you really can’t, except in passing).  The point must be kept in focus: are private prisons appropriate in a democracy?  Until and unless that argument is terminated against you, the efficiencies are meaningless: no improvement in efficiency can erase an ethical transgression, but if there is no transgression, quite often efficiency can be improved, or can be used to select which approach to use.

(h/t Kevin McLeod)

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) continues their political push against the deal, reports AL Monitor‘s Arash Karami.  The faculty of a University allied with the IRGC has issued a couple of statements:

The letter accused some officials of advocating a policy that “is opposed to the fundamental principles of Imam [Khomeini] in foreign policy” and ignores “the daily crimes of Israel, America and Saudi Arabia.” The letter rejected that a hard-line foreign policy would allow the West to create an image of Iran seeking war or would increase Iran phobia in the West. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has on various occasions criticized the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad administration for its harsh rhetoric, blaming him for increasing Iran’s international isolation and adding to a negative world image of Iranians. …

The letter warned officials that “before it’s too late, to return to the real path of the people” and those who don’t “are not far away from the eyes” of the IRGC. The rare letter and its harsh language has surprised many, especially since it came one week after an Imam Hussein University public relations statement May 24 that expressed support for Khamenei’s May 20 comments at the university about refusing inspection of military sites or to allow Iran’s nuclear scientists to be interviewed as part of a comprehensive nuclear deal.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran reports,

IRGC Brigadier General Gholamhossein Qeybparavar, the commander of IRGC forces in the Fars province said on Saturday: “You would be wrong to dare to want to inspect our military centers and whoever does look at IRGC centers we will fill his throat with molten lead.”

The Christian Science Monitor has a different view, though:

“I think under the surface a lot of the different businessmen who are connected to the [IRGC] are putting pressure on Rouhani and his team to make sure these [nuclear] deals go through, because it’s hurting their pockets very deeply,” says Narges Bajoghli, a PhD candidate at New York University who interviewed some 150 members of the Guard and affiliated Basij militia over nine years of research.

“Of course, they have an interest in making themselves seem like a very strict organization, but I think when you go into the belly of the whole thing, you realize it’s not like that, especially since they’ve been involved in business,” says Ms. Bajoghli.

While hard-line Iranian politicians oppose any nuclear deal that requires compromise, and dislike even talking to the US and Western powers, whom they accuse of seeking regime change, the IRGC top brass in early April publicly backed the nuclear talks like never before.

“Up until today the nuclear negotiation team have defended the Iranian nation’s rights well, and the nation and IRGC is grateful for their honest efforts,” said IRGC commander Mohammad Ali Jafari.

But the support came with a dose of tough talk. This period of negotiations was a definitive year for Iran, Maj. Gen. Jafari said, and “the enemy” – the United States – was “wrongly thinking” it could change Iran’s behavior through talks and sanctions. Lifting all sanctions was the main demand of the talks, he said, in addition to preserving Iran’s right to uranium enrichment and nuclear development.

However analysts say the IRGC is far from monolithic, and that its own confrontational rhetoric often masks a pragmatic side.

So does LobeLog:

In over nine years of on-the-ground research with different factions of the Revolutionary Guard and Basij, I have found that an underlying concern for many, regardless of political leaning, is a desire to create an Iran with more opportunities for their children, and that means the removal of sanctions and better relations with the world.

After the 2009 crackdown in Iran, I interviewed over 150 members of the Revolutionary Guard and Basij. Seventy-five percent of those I interviewed vehemently disagreed with the conservative turn in Iranian politics during the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Most wanted an easing of relations with the West.

Perhaps a split within the IRGC?  Adroit maneuvering within the political mists of a country effectively several times older than the United States?  It’s all quite interesting.

The conversation about future drug policy continues:

Well, sure, actual legislators who have paid staff ought to be hiring smart, educated, creative staff who are well-versed (or can become so) in the issues to advise them. But does that actually happen? Especially if the hiring boss is a flaming idiot who does not believe in science? Of course not. They hire yes-men and political operatives who are there solely to get the re-elected, and/or stick to the ideology, rather than examine the actual facts. And I still argue, you want a representative who has some native intelligence himself, in order to correctly put both their own staff’s opinions and the public’s into proper perspective. I don’t think the challenge of voting on those issues you mentioned is particularly daunting for someone well- and broadly- educated and well-read.

It’s true, no one can be an expert on everything. And the Venturas of the world are useful, indeed. In your example, he at least realized his lack and was willing to get expert input. All too often, that’s not the case. The expert input comes from the people who contribute most to the re-election campaign.

It’s still my position that we are in a mess because we are governed and “led” by people who are mostly imbeciles, who couldn’t otherwise succeed on their own except by taking advantage of other people (i.e. they seem to have one big skill — the one to schmooze and lie convincingly).

I agree that there are too many folks led by their ideologies, rather than by experts; but then, the whole ‘expert’ game itself is a conundrum that has not yet been solved.

The term limits idea continues to be attractive; the arguments against it presume an active, acute citizenry who can perceive incompetent representatives and refuse to elect them on repeat opportunity.  However, it can be difficult to perceive that, between working for a living and a plethora of irrelevant information conveniently hiding important information.  And, then again, sometimes the electorate simply shares the same superstitions as do their representatives.

It appears corporations have better vision than politicians.  Sami Grover at TreeHugger.com gathers up information about coal starting to fall out of favor, and not just in China:

From Bank of America quitting coal mining to an Australian utility that’s committed to eventual decarbonization, the idea that we might be transitioning away from fossil fuels is rapidly gaining traction in some surprising quarters.

But what fossil fuels will we quit first?

That’s where things are likely to get interesting. Just take this piece from the Wall Street Journal talking about how oil giants are pushing for more gas as a medium-term strategy to cut carbon emissions, with Shell and Total quitting coal mining as part of this effort.