Monthly Archives: March 2016

Speaking of the “landscape of fear“, I found this bit from Scientific American fascinating:

Florida’s Everglades are home to lots of large wading birds, like egrets and herons. But the ‘Glades also have lots of raccoons and possums. The birds’ nests are an all-you-can-eat buffet. And when an invasion occurs,

[Lucas Nell:] “sometimes thousands of birds will abandon their nests, and just leave, and there’s littered remains of dead chicks and eggs that have been eaten.”

In order to seek protection from their furry foes, birds actually prefer to build their nests in plots of swamp with a resident alligator.

So the birds, who do fall victim to their alligator from time to time, prefer to hatch and raise their chicks near a vicious predator, which will also lunch on those same chicks. What does this do to the concept of landscape of fear? Should it be considered overridden by the deterrent the alligator provides to the little league predators? And you have to love the closing thought:

I liken it less to a bodyguard situation, more like keeping some psychopathic murderer in your yard, to keep out cat burglars.

When The Gamma People (1955) came across our screen, my Arts Editor and I didn’t know what to expect. To our burning, frightened eyes were revealed: vile attacks on innocent journalists; packs of rampaging children; grotesque carnivals; and mad scientists. What fun! But is this a progenitor film? Consider:

It takes place in a fictional European country named Gudavia, numbering amongst its inhabitants a Colonel Koerner, whose bearing and activities might be best employed in the movie The Mouse That Roared, or, stepped up a trifle, grouped with the antagonists of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang; if neither of these movies have passed your optic nerve, then think of bumbling, narcissistic fools occupying high places with low faces, in countries that never existed …

We encountered a group of men, and possibly women, with horrible, frozen faces and unreasoning motivation for destruction, controlled by a whistle.  I thought we might be seeing the predecessors to zombies, those speedsters from Zombieland, not the slow, inevitable creatures from the original Night of the Living Dead; not being a scholar of zombies, I cannot say how the cladistics work out…

Upon command, a group of children attacked a man with little mercy, upon which my Arts Editor remarked, “Oh!  Reminds me of Star Trek.  He must be a Grup!”

And yet another Star Trek reference: the grotesque masks worn at the carnival brought to mind the horrible video visage seen in The Man Trap.  Since this film predates the original Trek, I can only assume that the costumes were mothballed after the movie was released and later resurrected to be used as props in other productions.

All the comparison was just for fun; we were confused from the beginning, in the collision of farce with mad scientist, zombies and packs of feral children, rounded out by a gruff American journalist, and his slick, somewhat swishy British colleague who stumble into this circus of a country.

And for all of it, it’s not badly acted. In particular, Michael Caridia as Hugo, the obnoxious, Nietzsche-like boy who undergoes conversion to, well, humanity, actually pulls off the entire ridiculous role rather well. And the British journalist was played by Leslie Phillips, who went on to provide the voice for the Sorting Hat in the Harry Potter series. So we can see there is some talent here.

Unfortunately for this film, in the end the actors’ talent was eclipsed by the unfocused randomness of the plot.  All in all, a merry little romp that I can’t quite recommend.

And the Spring of Corporate Outrage looks set to continue as Mississippi readies to pass its own legislation, as reported by The New Civil Rights Movement:

The GOP-controlled Mississippi Senate is expected to vote today on House Bill 1523, which has already cleared the House. Gov. Phil Bryant told Mississippi News Now he would sign the measure.

“I don’t think it’s discriminatory,” Bryant said. “I think it gives some people as I appreciate it, the right to be able to say that’s against my religious beliefs and I don’t need to carry out that particular task.”

By “that particular task,” Bryant ostensibly means treating LGBT people with any shred of dignity whatsoever. But it’s not just LGBT people who’d be affected. HB 1523 would also open the door to discrimination against anyone who’s had extramarital sex — a category of people which, according to one study, includes 95 percent of Americans.

(h/t Libby Summers)

This serves to remind me of a YouTube of Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell.

It’s a little hard to understand, but as I hear it, he suggests that without the money from New York and other liberal, northern states, southern states such as Alabama and Mississippi would be pretty much in the same boat as Bangladesh.

(h/t Egberto Willies @ The Daily Kos)

Let me set the stage. If you consider energy consumption and economic productivity, it seems reasonable to assert that as productivity rises, so does consumption. This has been studied, and here’s a summary from Energy Consulting Associates, with a useful tidbit quoted here:

Access to modern forms of energy, even though it is not by itself a panacea to economic development, is believed to be a pre- requisite for alleviating poverty, increasing employment and, in general, promoting better living standards (IIASA 2012).

While there is no Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on energy, the access to modern and reliable energy services is an essential input to achieving most of the MDGs, including poverty alleviation, productivity, health, education, communication services and gender equality governance (UNIDO 2011; Modi 2006). According to DFID (2002), increased energy access directly contributes to freeing up women’s time that was previously wasted in gathering fuelwood and cooking with inefficient stoves and alleviates adverse health impacts related to burning of wood and dung. The extra time created as a result of higher energy availability provides the opportunity for women to get involved with income generating activities and ultimately leads to higher gender equality (Kanagawa 2005). Figure 3 , below, illustrates the relationship between energy access and the MDGs. [figures omitted]

Another study published on the Social Science Research Network in the context of Africa:

Abstract:

It has been suggested that Africa’s growth is principally driven by natural resource rents. This is at variance with the growth in countries such as Korea and Taiwan where productivity has been identified as the main driver. In this study, the effect of energy consumption, investment, productivity on per capita growth in oil producing African countries is examined by employing a dynamic simultaneous panel data model. The simultaneous panel data model is able to examine the three-way causal relationship between energy consumption, productivity and economic growth. The results confirm the importance of income, productivity, price and investment influence the demand for renewable end non-renewable energy. The study recommends that there should be investment in productivity to enhance economic growth and minimize energy consumption.

Another from the Journal of Economics and International Finance in an African context:

This article investigates the relationship between energy consumption and the Nigerian economy from the period of 1970 to 2005. The energy sources used to test for this relationship were crude oil, electricity and coal. By applying the co-integration technique, the results derived infer that there exists a positive relationship between current period energy consumption and economic growth.

So my point?  NewScientist (12 March 2016) caught my attention with this simple statement:

“This is a big shift in how China is thinking about its economy,” says Kate Gordon of the Paulson Institute, a think-tank in Chicago. “It’s an attempt to decouple economic growth from energy consumption.”

That’s rather huge on the face of it, even if it’s characterizable as simply better energy efficiency. But Jeff Spross, back in 2014, writing for ThinkProgress, pointed out that the United States has been moving towards breaking that link for years now:

That’s arguably been a critical part of a remarkable trend the Natural Resources Defense Council noted last year. Up until the late 1970s, energy consumption grew in tandem with the economy. But after that, the two trends split, with economic growth continuing to go up and energy use increasing at a far lower rate.

At this point, America’s energy consumption is well below where it was predicted to be in the 1970s. The Coalition quoted Duke Energy CEO Lynn Good that “improvements in energy efficiency for buildings and appliances appear to have broken the traditional connection between electricity demand and economic growth.”

I am curious about the details, though. There’s a difference, for example, between temperature control for your house, and the energy required to run a semi-conductor plant. What consumes more energy? Where should the focus be for energy reduction?

North Carolina, who called a special session just to implement their “religious liberty” law, is now feeling the heat, as documented by Steve Benen @ MaddowBlog:

While the governor gets up to speed on the specifics of the law he created, he should also prepare for some economic fallout. The city and state of New York, for example, announced yesterday that all non-essential state travel to North Carolina has been scrapped because of the new measure that “creates the grounds for discrimination against LGBT people.”

What’s more, as we discussed yesterday, film director Rob Reiner has said he won’t produce projects in the state until the measure is repealed, and he urged others in the entertainment industry to follow his lead.

ESPN, which was eyeing North Carolina as a possible host of the summer X Games, may now look elsewhere, and the same is true for the NBA, which planned to hold the 2017 All-Star Game in Charlotte, but which may now seek a new venue.

Wow.  NewScientist (12 March 2016, paywall) first caught my attention on this one:

Images released publicly by the New Horizons team have already shown off Pluto’s surprisingly complex atmosphere, featuring many layers of haze rising above icy mountains. But in emails and images seen by New Scientist, researchers on the mission discuss the possibility that they have spotted individual clouds, pointing to an even richer atmospheric diversity.

The first sign of clouds came on 13 September last year, a few days before the public release of the haze pictures. Will Grundy of the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, sent an email to a discussion list dedicated to analysing New Horizons results about Pluto’s atmosphere. “There’s a few fairly localized low-altitude features just above the limb that I’ve drawn lame arrows pointing to, but also a few bright cloud-like things that seem to be above and cutting across the topography in the circled area,” he wrote. Grundy had spotted features in the haze on the edge – or “limb” – of Pluto that seemed to stand out from the distinct layers. But intriguingly, he had also seen a bright feature crossing different parts of the landscape, suggesting it was hovering above.

But this isn’t actually new.  Back in 2009 ScienceNews published speculation (must pay to see the entire article) that clouds on Pluto could exist:

Clouds in Pluto’s atmosphere may be composed of tiny frozen spherules of nitrogen or carbon monoxide, rather than snowflake-like clumps of tiny particles as previous research had suggested, new analyses suggest.

Information about Pluto’s atmosphere is, like that atmosphere itself, exceedingly thin because no space probes have yet visited there. So most speculations about the dwarf planet’s atmosphere stem from analyses of light passing through that tenuous shroud on the rare occasions when Pluto passes in front of a distant star, says Pascal Rannou, a planetary scientist at the University of Reims in France.

Discovery.com covers the more recent news:

The picture above shows sections of an image attached to an email sent by Southwest Research Institute scientist John Spencer, in which he noted particularly bright areas in Pluto’s atmosphere within a New Horizons image.

“In the first image an extremely bright low altitude limb haze above south-east Sputnik on the left, and a discrete fuzzy cloud seen against the sunlit surface above Krun Macula (I think) on the right,” Spencer wrote.

While it was quickly determined after New Horizons’ July 2015 flyby that Pluto is enveloped in a complex atmosphere comprising layers of blue-tinted haze, individual clouds couldn’t be resolved. That may have changed as high-resolution data continues to arrive on Earth from the still-moving spacecraft, now 1.9 AU — or approximately 180 million miles — past Pluto.

Fabulous!

A reader comments on placebos:

A sample size of one — so it appears — seems like a weak case. How can the placebo affect be an affect since by definition it results from you believing you are being treated when you are not?

I see being the soul of brevity can lead one down the path to hell. One more quote from that NewScientist article:

Even when the results go your way, it’s hard to understand why. In the small trial Buonanno participated in, 59 per cent of the honest-placebo group felt better. It wasn’t much better than… placebo?

And I agree that they shouldn’t have used the word placebo. However, talking about the sugar-pill effect isn’t nearly as sexy. Although the Authority Figure in Treating Patients study might make for a better title.

A reader comments on Oregon and China regarding coal:

Pretty radical move by a state government, although the 20 year phase in gives opponents plenty of time to lobby for its reversal. Meanwhile, big bad coal user China is rapidly embarking on a program to eliminate coal as well. Won’t it be embarrassing in 20 years to have China be the clean energy leader, and the USA to be some second class nation unable to clean up its act.

Yes, quite embarrassing, unless we pull off some miraculous technology that lets us leapfrog them. Not a good bet in my opinion. I also think Oregon is being a trifle timid with its 20 year phase in and 25 years to achieve the renewables goal. But it’s a start, and as even hardened opinion is forced to change, perhaps the timetable will move up.

NewScientist’s (12 March 2016, paywall) Shannon Fischer reports on using placebos on the placebo-aware:

LINDA BUONANNO had been sick with irritable bowel syndrome for 15 years when she saw a TV advertisement recruiting participants for a new study. Desperate for help, she signed on, even after learning that the potential treatments she would be offered consisted of either nothing – or pills filled with nothing.

When the experiment ended, she begged the researchers to let her keep the pills. “I felt fantastic,” Buonanno says. “I felt almost like I was before I got sick with IBS. It was the best three weeks of my life.”

She has been trying to get her hands on more ever since. A replication study will start later this spring, and Buonanno is desperately hoping she gets in.

This is the placebo effect in action, and it may come as a surprise to learn that it works even when people know they are being given a sham treatment. That finding has brought with it the possibility of using placebos as therapy. The vision is of a future in which clinicians cajole the mind into healing itself and the body – without the drugs that can be nearly as much of a problem as those they purport to solve.

Fascinating stuff. The researchers are trying to understand this using a psychosociological model as the trigger for the body’s self-healing efforts, such as ordering the pills be taken on a tight schedule. I’ve never experienced a placebo effect myself, not having been seriously ill – unless they’re handing out sugar pills for Lyme’s Disease. The implications for our mental stability are not really explored, but are equally fascinating.

Georgia’s governor capitulates (or, perhaps, agrees with) to corporate pressure, according to CNN:

While I claim no influence from my expired petition, news has come that Oregon is banning the use of coal in power generation in the State. From The Guardian:

Oregon has become the first US state to pass laws to rid itself of coal, committing to eliminate the use of coal-fired power by 2035 and to double the amount of renewable energy in the state by 2040.

Legislation passed by the state’s assembly, which will need to be signed into law by Governor Kate Brown, will transition Oregon away from coal, which currently provides around a third of the state’s electricity supply.

At the same time, the state will also require its two largest utilities to increase their share of clean energy, such as solar and wind, to 50% by 2040. Combined with Oregon’s current hydroelectric output, the state will be overwhelmingly powered by low-carbon alternatives to fossil fuels.

Monetary impact on the consumer?

State Republicans claimed the bill would drive up energy bills for households while resulting in a negligible impact upon the environment. “You don’t have to be a climate denier to dislike this bill,” said state senator Ted Ferrioli.

Pacific Power, one of the largest utilities in Oregon, said the shift would raise costs by less than 1% a year until 2030 and would reduce carbon pollution by 30m metric tons.

Pacific Power is not the only energy supplier.  OregonLive reports on PacifiCorp’s reaction:

“Its going to be in the billions and billions of dollars and how that breaks out for Oregon, it’s inestimable,” said PacifiCorp spokesman Paul Vogel. “It’s not the right way to go about this transition that we all agree that we need to be on.”

The sponsors of the bills are Sen. Chris Edwards, D-Eugene, and Rep Tobias Read, D-Beaverton. But the source of the legislation is the Sierra Club, the Oregon Conservation Network and and Renewable Northwest, which have been pushing a “Beyond Coal” campaign in Oregon for some time. Oregon’s residential ratepayer advocate, the Citizen’s Utility Board of Oregon, is also endorsing the bill despite the fact that no cost estimates have been produced.

“Ultimately we’re going to have to reduce our emissions and close the coal plants,” said Bob Jenks, CUB’s executive director. “The theory here is let’s phase these out in a reasonable timetable of ten years and do this in a way that’s least cost to ratepayers.”

To which I have the reaction of “so what?” The harder you hit the ratepayers, the more it’s brought to their attention that their use of energy may be unconscionably high. The real trick, though, is to hit those energy users who can do something about it, while not impacting those who have no alternatives (I’m thinking primarily of those in the lower income brackets).

EcoWatch reports on more utility reactions:

… the utilities impacted by the law support the measure.

“Our company has been reducing reliance on coal generation and expanding our renewable energy portfolio for the past 10 years as market forces, regulation and evolving customer preference continue to drive change in the way electricity is generated and delivered,” stated Stefan Bird, president and CEO of Pacific Power. “This landmark legislation allows us to effectively manage Oregon’s transition to a clean energy future in a manner that protects customers from cost impacts, ensures grid reliability and allows us to meet all of our responsibilities to the communities we serve.”

This sentiment was echoed by Jim Piro, president and CEO of Portland General Electric, the state’s largest electric utility.

“The path forward was forged through a collaborative process where we all tried to balance stakeholder needs,” said Piro in a statement. “We look forward to working with the Public Utility Commission and all of our stakeholders to implement this policy in a way that benefits the environment, manages price impacts for our customers and ensures that the reliability of the electric grid is not compromised.”

OregonLive goes on to ask this:

The cost is a big, unanswered question, as is whether the legislation would have any practical effect in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Oregon can’t legislate the closure of out-of-state coal plants, which could simply dispatch their output elsewhere. And in reality, it’s not possible to reject coal-based electrons at the state border or always discriminate between resources when making purchases in the wholesale power market.

Which is technically true – but short-sighted. By passing this legislation, Oregon now has the potential to provide leadership on this issue to the rest of the Nation, or, if you prefer, put pressure on the balance of the Nation to follow their lead. By doing so, they’re doing their best to improve the future of their State – and the rest of the nation.

Wondering about Oregon’s current mix of power generation? Courtesy Oregon.gov:

Obviously, they have much more hydro capacity than many other states. More work for engineers, I suppose.

(h/t NewScientist, 12 March 2016)

A reader reacts to my suggestion that we move ecological concerns to a higher position in society:

But that’s long-term thinking, of which we are woefully short. If Big Corp can make a zillion dollars by plundering the environment over the next 20 years, every executive and investor will cheer them — even if it means societal collapse after that. “Aw, that’ll never really happen. Prove it!”

A valid point. For all that we have lifetimes now in the eighties, we are not built for long term, deep prediction: our evolution did not call for it.  For millions of years, our individual capacity for destruction, or evolutionary suicide, was quite meager, and even ambiguous.  For example, a forest fire could conceivably be started by a single prehistoric human, and yet this might be a positive for the forest, given recent advances in understanding the role of fire in forests.

But then our historical progress in working together in larger and larger groups has led to the development of technologies by the aggregate which may be directed by single, foolish human beings. By “foolish”, I mean people whose personal experience, and family experience, doesn’t have evidence of the enormous destructive potential we, in the corporate sense, now control; we have shoveled our garbage into Nature for centuries with, generally, few consequences, and this is the primary example from which we’ve learned. While there are certainly isolated instances of ecological disaster, perhaps dating back into prehistory, I’d like to suggest that the detonation of the first nuclear bomb makes for a convenient marker for world-wide potential disaster, with which we have little personal connection, and therefore requires the ability to intellectually assess the situation – rather than our standard intuitive approach.

And most corporations are not run by science-oriented folks, but rather by people who do things by gut and by golly; the pressures of fiduciary responsibility subsume any other motivations, and so we often see, among other negative consequences, an abdication of the responsibility for caring for Nature.

Of course, we’re not blind to this, and that’s the motivation for the EPA, which has been under increasing attack of late, under cover of denying climate change. And some corporations do practice conscious capitalism. Current examples include Starbucks (assisting employees in furthering their education) and Chipotle (sourcing ethical materials). These can be viewed as just good public relations, but what of it? It indicates that customers and employees are becoming more conscious of the companies’ place in the entire system, both eco and socio.

But the fact remains: our evolution has not prepared us for the energies and materials with which we now work. What works in our favor? Our great wildcard: our brains. With these we may yet be able to overcome our short-term foolishness.

This evening we finished up Sherlock Holmes and the House of Fear (1945), based, rather loosely, off the Doyle short story “The Five Orange Pips“. Starring the traditional Rathbone and Bruce, we follow the deaths of members of the club The Good Companions at Drearcliff, a mansion by the sea.

The plot is actually rather nice, as the members are notified of their imminent demise through the delivery of envelopes full of orange pips. The deaths continue even after the arrival and efforts of Holmes and Watson, and later Lestrade. Eventually, one Good Companion is left, with all the murders pinned on this unfortunate and inoffensive man. Until Watson notices an empty tobacco container…

Speaking of Watson, he is ill-used in this picture, a posturing buffoon who cannot execute a duty competently, nor follow a chain of logic from beginning to end. In an otherwise competent, even interesting movie, his appearance (as well as Lestrade) causes more and more wincing as the movie goes on. I can only recommend this movie if Watson can be removed bodily from the movie.

Ever wonder what Congress did in response to the San Bernardino terrorist massacre? Lawfare‘s Jack Goldsmith and Amira Mikhail happen to mention one of the items in a larger context:

Last November, in response to the San Bernadino attacks, Congress enacted the Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015.  Among other things, the 2015 Act excludes from the VWP [U.S. Visa Waiver Program] [old link invalid, here’s the new link – U.S. Visa Waiver Program – thanks to an observant reader] those travelers from VWP countries who are also Iranian citizens or who have traveled to Iran since March 1, 2011.

Iran. So the terrorists, must have been from Iran, right? No. Rizwan Farook was born in Chicago to Pakistani parents, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, emigrated from Pakistan, after spending time in Saudi Arabia.

It’s interesting how Congress remains fixated on Iran in relation to events that have no apparent relation to Iran. Goldsmith and Mikhail mention the Iranian reaction to the VWP in passing; AL Monitor covers it in more detail:

“Now it is clear that this new legislation is simply absurd because no Iranian nor anybody who visited Iran had anything to do with the tragedies that have taken place in Paris or in San Bernardino or anywhere else,” Zarif said. “But they’re being the targets. I think it discredits those who pass these legislations, those who adopt them and those who implement them more than anything else. And it sends a very bad signal to the Iranians that the US is bent on hostile policy toward Iran, no matter what.”

Another article from AL Monitor clarifies the Congressional intent:

The House Foreign Affairs Committee is scheduled to vote Jan. 7 on legislation to create a plan to combat international travel by terrorists and other foreign fighters. The bill, from panel member Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., notably requires the State Department to single out at-risk countries that fail to meet “minimum standards” for combating travel by foreign fighters.

“The vulnerabilities that currently exist with international security abroad pose a concerning threat to our homeland,” Zeldin said in a statement. “The development of international border security standards is critical. With the rise of terrorism at home and around the world, it’s essential that we work together as a global community to monitor and stop the movement of terrorists.”

So perhaps Congress is prudent after all. Or would be, if they could write a decent bill, as documented by Goldsmith and Mikhail. But that’s a different topic.

[EDIT updated an out of date link 2/7/2018]

I found some time to watch the Steiger version (teleplay) of Marty while sitting with my terminally ill cat. I was a little distracted by the technical problems, the worst of which was the audio track, fading in and out and distorting the dialogue into illegibility; I was more able to negotiate the video quality, which occasionally overexposed.

The content differences: the teleplay does not contain the subplot in which Marty contemplates buying the butcher shop; Angie’s role is much smaller in the teleplay.

The jarring problems with the teleplay: Marty complains of being short, fat, and ugly. Steiger may not be a model, but he’s none of those, especially the fat part. Borgnine comes closer, although he’s just somewhat plump.

Secondly, Marty’s paramour (okay, that’s a jest) is oddly non-reactive. I’m not sure if the actress is simply trying to play a woman who has no idea of how to react when a man starts to fall for her, or if she just finds the entire character baffling. Granted, the movie’s version of the paramour was also somewhat of an enigma, but not to this magnitude.

And the shared baffling subplot: Aunt Catherine and Marty’s mother, Mrs. Piletti, discussing the woes of widowhood, and the dangers of sons marrying. In the teleplay, it’s like a wart on the side of an otherwise svelte cougar: what’s that doing there? In both productions it has an engaging quality of an authentic, and little-discussed, problem for women who no longer have children to raise, but in the teleplay it serves as little more than a reason for Mrs. Piletti to desperately disparage the focus of her son’s attention – and that, in turn, goes nowhere.

But the movie version permits us to see her regret at her impulsive action and how it may negatively impact her son’s future; her moment of selfishness could lead to a lifetime of aloneness for him. The same actress plays the role in both productions, and she does a fine job in the movie, her wordless acting beautifully conveying her realization of the potential consequences of her momentary indulgence of her future fears. However, exactly why this is necessary – unless it’s just part of the slice of life to which we are a witness – is somewhat unclear to me.

I know my reader prefers the teleplay, but I find it hard to see Borgnine’s Marty as more charismatic than Steiger’s; if anything, he’s less so, as I can see Borgnine himself as being so unsure of himself, while Steiger just doesn’t strike me as someone so underconfident as to think he’s an ugly toad. In the end, while buying the butcher shop might be extraneous, I much preferred the movie paramour to the teleplay’s version, and Ernest, ever so slightly, over Rod. While I appreciate both productions, I like the movie somewhat more.

No doubt more about persistence than anything more useful, but I see from the archive I began this exercise in mental hygiene a little more than  a year ago. For those of you who read, thank you, and don’t hesitate to send me comments via mail (link to the right) or Facebook.

In a suburb of Newcastle, Australia, in February, workers using a crane extracted a 1-ton snake-like mass of sewage (mostly “wet wipes” unwisely flushed down toilets) from an underground pipe — with the gummed-together sludge reaching a height of more than 20 feet when the crane finally yanked the whole thing up. Said a representative of the water company, “(Y)ou’ll flush the toilet, and the wet wipe will disappear,” and you think (wrongly) it’s therefore “flushable.” [Australian Broadcasting Corp. News, 2-25-2016]

A warning to all you wet wipe people.

(News of the Weird)

Accompanied by the text “Very touching and oh so true”, but honestly, I think this is a despicable piece of claptrap humbug hiding behind patriotism. The efforts of most politicians (exempting the current House & Senate leadership, who seem to deserve a lot of loathing) are honest attempts to improve the lot of the nation. To use the honorable duty of the soldier to rain loathing and disgust down upon all public servants is to dishonor both the public servant and the soldier. Don’t let the slick production values, professional narrator, and soft, beautiful music fool you. This is political propaganda at its absolute worst.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=eEs4ke7cdNQ%3Ffeature%3Dplayer_detailpage%2525

I’ll also point out the ranks of ex-soldiers are more likely growing than thinning, given our war-like ways of late.

A Facebook correspondent writes about The Lone Wolf Takes a Chance:

I love your belated movie reviews! Thanks for the warning about this Lone Wolf movie – my train-mad husband wants to see all movies with a train theme or plot element, but I’ll try to steer him away from this one. Tonight we watched a WWII movie (his secondary film passion): The Spy In Black. Have you seen it? If not, I highly recommend it. Conrad Veidt is wonderful, as always.

No, I have not seen The Spy in Black, but it sounds interesting. (I should add that a very young Lloyd Bridges plays the small part of the inventor in The Lone Wolf Takes a Chance.) Another reader responds on the train theme:

Classic movies? WWII? Trains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_z_9w-Ffmo

Well, Burt Lancaster. How can it help being good?

ScienceNews provides a picture of a fossil of unearthly beauty:

The fossilized remains of an about 520-million-year-old creepy-crawly provides a portrait of an ancient arthropod’s nervous system.

Researchers first described Chengjiangocaris kunmingensis — an ancient relative of spiders, insects and crustaceans unearthed from a fossil bed in southern China — in 2013. Further imaging and investigation of five new fossilized specimens reveal exceptionally well-preserved soft tissue and a ropelike structure running down the animal’s belly. That structure is the remains of a ventral nerve cord, Xi-guang Zhang of Yunnan University in Kunming, China, and colleagues explain February 29 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Just so cool.

(h/t NewScientist 5 Mar 2016)

China’s latest coal consumption numbers come in via NewScientist (5 March 2016):

CHINA is surging ahead in its switch to renewables and away from coal – a move it claims will allow the nation to surpass its carbon emissions targets.

The country’s solar and wind energy capacity soared last year by 74 and 34 per cent respectively compared with 2014, according to figures issued by China’s National Bureau of Statistics this week.

Meanwhile, its consumption of coal dropped by 3.7 per cent, with imports down by a substantial 30 per cent.

Digging into that link at Climate Home is this disturbing, confusing tidbit:

The government had investments of $628 billion in the green economy planned up to 20301, Xie said, but admitted more support needed to be directed towards emissions data reporting, which experts say is unreliable.

“It is a question of ability … At every level of statistics there are exaggerations added to the data. Everyone knows that, and everyone is anxious [to fix it],” he said.

“We have set up a system to calculate and monitor energy saving and emission reduction, and are gradually improving it.”

Nevertheless, it appears it’s good news coming out of the second most populous country in the world – and one of the biggest polluters.

Meanwhile, the United States is also making progress, according to the Energy Information Agency Administration (EIA):

EIA estimates that U.S. coal production for February 2016 was 54 million short tons (MMst), a 4 MMst (7%) decrease from the previous month and 18 MMst less than in February 2015. Forecast coal production is expected to decrease by 111 MMst (12%) in 2016, which would be the largest annual percentage decline since 1958. In 2016, forecast Appalachian and Western region production declines by 9% and 17%, respectively, and Interior region production falls by 4%. Total coal production is expected to stabilize in 2017, increasing by 16 MMst (2%).

However, I am wary of taking production as an accurate proxy for consumption, i.e., take care when reading government reports. Further down the page is the information of interest:

EIA estimates that coal consumption decreased by 13% in 2015, mainly as a result of a 13% drop in electric power sector consumption. Coal consumption in the electric power sector is forecast to decline by 29 MMst (4%) in 2016 as a result of mild winter weather and continuing competition with natural gas generation. Electric power sector coal consumption is forecast to increase by 10 MMst (1%) in 2017 primarily because of rising natural gas prices. Retirements of coal-fired power plants, because of increased competition with natural gas generation and the industry response to the implementation of MATS, reduce coal-fired generation capacity in the forecast period.

While the estimated fall in consumption in 2015 is encouraging, that it’s due to milder weather is a little discouraging; it’d be better to know it came from retirement of coal-fired plants. This EIA page covers power plant retirements:

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Preliminary Monthly Electric Generator Inventory

Nearly 18 gigawatts (GW) of electric generating capacity was retired in 2015, a relatively high amount compared with recent years. More than 80% of the retired capacity was conventional steam coal. The coal-fired generating units retired in 2015 tended to be older and smaller in capacity than the coal generation fleet that continues to operate.

In The Lone Wolf Takes a Chance (1941) we see a plot with potential ruined by some ill-considered choices when it comes to character. The basics are good: the inventor of a railcar which emits poison gas when broken into is kidnapped by those seeking the combination, yet the kidnapping is clever enough that no one but retired diamond thief Lone Wolf (Warren Williams) realizes a kidnapping has taken place. The plot has enough twists to make it interesting, and the antagonists are not without smarts, as the the mastermind also masquerades as a doctor unconnected to the kidnappers, stationed to conveniently diagnose the victim as being quite ill. In the plot we can see the back and forth of resourceful people competing to reach a goal.

But the movie falls apart in character selection. The police are mostly buffoons or egotists to a degree unbelievable and very, very annoying. This is not unusual for the Lone Wolf series. However, the Lone Wolf’s butler (odd, that, eh?), played by Eric Blore, who in previous outings has shown a degree of wit and ingenuity, in this entry merely competes with the police for foolishness and fearfulness. He becomes a major disappointment, compounded by his better appearances in other parts of the series.

As my Arts Editor points out, add in the element of knowing all will be in well in the end, and the movie fails to compel one’s attention honestly; indeed, I’m tempted to condemn the “happy ending” tradition out of hand. Only the interest in the complexities of the plot kept my attention; I actively squirmed whenever the police occupied the screen, and nearly wept when the butler displayed his incompetence and lack of charm.

Hard to recommend this go.

Zeffie Gaines publishes a good piece on how the rural areas have changed somewhat since Trump began pursuing the GOP Presidential Nomination:

The air is charged with danger.

I’m at the pump filling up my tank. The gas, with my big supermarket discount, is $1.22 a gallon. I fill up my car for under $20. THANKS OBAMA! (No, really, thanks Obama.) 

A guy, a white guy, across from me at the other pump glares at me, staring uncomfortably. I smile at him and nod, a universal gesture of neighborly friendliness. He keeps staring at me as if I just stole his last $20 bill.

I’m a black woman.

Another white man, at another pump, sees this and nervously starts making small talk with me. I’m nervous too. The other white guy finally relents in his gaze and gets back into his Dodge Ram or Tundra or whatever big ass truck he is driving (he really is driving a big ass truck).  He drives off and I exhale, realizing I’d been holding my breath for a long time. I live in Ohio, Southwestern Ohio, in a rural county. I’ve lived out here in the boonies for 5 years and never had a problem, never felt much discomfort. But since Trump came on to the scene, dominating the Republican primary, the whole energy has shifted.

There’s more, all well-written and providing interesting insights. It appears the bigots haven’t been disappearing, but just keeping their heads down. It really provokes … disappointment in your fellow Americans.