Monthly Archives: May 2016

The Killer that Stalked New York (1950) is a movie that has a tense plot, well-drawn characters, and a climax that was hard to see coming.

Except for the part where the movie makers explicitly tell us what to expect.

This is a clumsy ménage à troi of a fairly well done medical sleuthing story, a diamond smuggling tale featuring a conscienceless womanizer, and a documentary about the potential dangers of smallpox when vaccinations are no longer administered. The result is the ruination of the first story, the trivialization of the second, all as the third plays the part of the E. Coli that ruined dinner by killing half the diners at your birthday dinner. And it’s really a shame as a clutch of excellent actors bring the stories to life, primary being the emotional journey of a woman so in love she’s blind to the fatal flaws of her husband. He’s convinced her to smuggle diamonds out of Cuba; along with the diamonds she brings smallpox, and soon people are dying in her wake.

His betrayal of her, seducing her sister while she was away, transforms that love to burning hate, so hot that even the smallpox that tries to drag her into Hell is impotent in the face of her fury; she hangs on as her beautiful face deteriorates, waiting for her husband to reappear so she can have her revenge. Meanwhile, she’s avoiding the Customs Inspectors who’ve trailed her from Cuba, as well as the Health Department workers desperate to find the source of the smallpox, as it appears at apparently random spots throughout the city. Immunizing an entire city is their Herculean task if they can’t find her, so they spare no effort on either vector: as this is a scratch on vaccine, rather than injected, even the sewing machine companies are requested to chip in.

I’ve made clear my disappointment with the movie. But there are two facets I found interesting.

First, even in a movie from 1950 we see an appearance by the anti-vaccination crowd. Brief and not intrinsic to the story, but it provides verisimilitude. The most basic objection is given: “You’re not going to inject germs into my family!” the man snarls at the health worker before slamming the door in his face. It’s an objection which makes intuitive sense to those with no familiarity with the workings of vaccines and the body’s immune system, and a reminder that we are all responsible for having a grasp of these high level concepts.

Second, a message about the role and efficacy of government. Over the last thirty years, if not more, government as an institution has been under attack. We have all seen the humor about government workers, waste, impotency, etc, abetted by the occasional true horror story. These horror stories are the exceptions, not the story itself, and yet there has been a sustained effort to assert the exceptions are the entire story. But anyone who has seriously studied the role of government knows that Reagan’s politically motivated statement, “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,” was a miserable lie that has done more damage than we can know. It has motivated the reduction in budgets until programs no longer function, slowed reaction times when moments count (just think Hurricane Katrina), and inspired distrust of a government trying to safeguard a country from enemies foreign and domestic, human and non-human, even animated and non-animated.

But when the Mayor of New York is presented with the problem of immunizing an entire city, there is no shilly shallying, nor pushing the decision off, or worrying about money. We get to see government performing at the moment of crisis, as only a government really can:

Mayor: “How much money do you need?”

Doctor: “A million.”

“You got it. What else do you need?”

etc. And then later, when informed that vaccine supplies are exhausted, the heads of the vaccine supply companies are brought to the Mayor’s office.

“How many can you supply?”

“Maybe 20,000 units.”

“It’s 30,000.  And you, sir, how many can you supply? 30,000, that’s how many you’ll supply. And you?”

“But Mayor, we cannot supply that many, it’s not possible!”

“Why?”

“Because they must be individually packaged! It’s medical regulations!”

“Ignore the regulations. Deliver them in beer bottles, we have lots of those. And these don’t need to be injected, right? Just scratched on? [turns to an assistant.] Call the sewing machine companies, have them send all their needles. We’ll sterilize them.”

No mucking about with private sector perogatives. People are dying, and the Mayor, as the top political dog, knows who to talk to and when to tell them they either deliver or we all die. It’s a reminder that the government sector is neither evil, trivial, nor an inevitable dunghill of incompetence and corruption. In moments of emergency, it supplies the coordination, authority, and manpower to safeguard the disorganized, poorly informed citizenry from threats outside of the usual realms of danger. Of all the themes of this movie, that might be the most important.

With the ascension of candidate Trump to the throne of presumptive nominee, certain Republican conservative elements remain unreconstructed in their feelings towards the real-estate developer cum Presidential wannabe. Leon Wolf on RedState.com makes a tactical recommendation:

Republicans must know that there is absolutely no chance that we will win the White House in 2016 now. They must also know that we are likely to lose the Senate as well. So the choices, essentially, are to confirm Garland and have another bite at the apple in a decade, or watch as President Clinton nominates someone who is radically more leftist and 10-15 years younger, and we are in no position to stop it.

Steve Benen @ MaddowBlog remarks on this change of heart:

Or put another way, just how sure are Senate Republicans that Trump is going to win in November? If the answer is “not very,” Merrick Garland is going to start looking far more appealing to GOP senators.

Of course, Republicans have been loath to even pay Garland the courtesy of a confirmation hearing, fearing a right-wing backlash from their own party’s base, but that’s what makes the RedState commentaries so important. Conservative activists may now be far more tolerant of the Senate process now that they know who their party’s presidential nominee is going to be.

HuffPo reports Senator McConnell is standing firm:

But the calculus hasn’t changed for McConnell, who has kept his conference in line.

“While I’m glad to see Democrats concede that there won’t be a Democrat in the White House next year, Republicans continue to believe that the American people should have a voice in this decision and the next president should make the nomination,” said Don Stewart, a spokesman for McConnell.

“Despite the White House coordinating with liberal groups and millions of dollars in special-interest ads, no Republican has moved from their principled position,” he added.

Indeed, a spokeswoman for New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte, a vulnerable moderate Republican up for re-election in November, on Wednesday confirmed the senator “plans to support” Trump in the general election.

It occurs to me that President Obama could, at this time, withdraw the nomination and nominate someone younger and more liberal. This would put the GOP in a real bind. However, insofar as I can read anyone’s character, would not be in character with the President. Using anyone, much less a respected jurist, as a mere chess-piece doesn’t seem to be part of the President’s modus operandi. This would also undercut the strategy mentioned by Steve Benen and explained by Politico’s Edward-Isaac Dovere:

They’re calling it the 9-9-9 campaign: nine states, over nine days, to push for a court with nine justices. (No apologies to Herman Cain, who coined the term for his 2012 tax plan.)

More and more, though, they’re going to be talking about Donald Trump, tying in Republicans’ discomfort with the largely unpopular likely Republican nominee to say that refusing President Barack Obama’s nominee amounts to enabling a would-be President Trump’s.

The plans represent an unspoken acknowledgment that the Supreme Court fight is less about actually trying to get Garland on the bench before November, and more about turning the Republican resistance into a campaign issue to maximize GOP losses in the Senate, and even in the House. The recess efforts are both a shot across the bow from Democrats, and a test run for some of what they’ll be ramping up through the fall.

Pulling the nomination would seriously damage this strategy, so don’t look for a change in nominee.

A few days ago my Arts Editor and I finished watching Yongary, Monster from the Deep (1967), a South Korean monster movie, and ever since I’ve been awaiting that moment of inspiration that will let me build the proper review of this … this …

It didn’t come.

Apparently inspired by the classic Godzilla, I’m completely bewildered as to its artistic purpose. Godzilla, and to some extent the other Japanese kaiju flicks, often had a message at their heart. Godzilla was awakened by nuclear bomb testing and laid waste to the Japanese as if in punishment. Rodan was more environmental, as a toxic mine shaft is driven to the lair where the eggs containing the Rodan monsters have survived, ready to hatch and dine upon the monstrous caterpillars killing the miners. (OK, so the message is a bit mixed.)

But in Yongary, the monster is released upon South Korea due to nuclear activities in the Mid East – not connected to the Koreans. The monster sports a fiery breath reminiscent of Godzilla’s, and adds in a laser beam emanating from his nose horn. People die from its actions, especially one poor chap who Yongary picks up for particular attention and a curiously bland death.

And our attention is not drawn to anything that might be considered a message, but instead to a young boy who has no impulse control, apparently can breach security perimeters at will, as well as the laws of space & time, not to mention my own sense of propriety when it comes to child management. At one point, for no particular reason, the monster breaks into what might be charitably described as a dance, and the child dances, too; based on this sentimental attachment, the kid later advocates for letting the monster go, rather than exterminating this critter that has rampaged through a couple of cities, drank fuel oil like a cocktail, and sprayed various military personnel with a spectrum of awful death. Since we can credibly say Yongary is not part of the ecological cycle, having slept underground for an unknown number of millennia, it’s thoroughly reasonable to leave its bloody corpse for the seagulls.

So … this is a four beer movie. You’ll need to drink at least four beers before you can even hope to enjoy it. The best I can say is that the dubbing is well done. After that, it’s a charity case.

From this CNN report:

It will mean that searches at depth, or underwater work on, say, oil rigs, is not limited by the time divers can stay down or how deep humans can go — around 40 meters (130 m) for recreational divers.

Back when I picked up my diving license (never used), we were told 100 ft was the limit for recreational divers. Now it’s 130 miles?

It’s actually a cool report about a robot diver. Includes haptic hands! I want one for my birthday!

Continuing this thread on AI-directed warfare, I ran across an opinion article in NewScientist (16 April 2016, paywall) by David Hambling on self-charging drones and couldn’t help but combine these capabilities with the hypothetical combat-oriented AI we’ve discussed earlier:

Air power is often the only option when it is politically unacceptable to deploy soldiers – but aircraft cannot hold ground. Wars cannot be won without “boots on the ground”, say military analysts and critics of the Allied air campaign against IS.

Long term, that may change with efforts like the US air force’s Micro Munitions Program, which is developing small, lethal drones able to occupy an area and hold it. Drones like the 2.5-kilogram Switchblade used by US special forces have already proven effective against light vehicles and people. The new models will be just as deadly, but able to stay in action for weeks or months.

Resembling the beetle and bird drones deployed in the film Eye in the Sky, which examines the moral case for drone warfare, at least two prototypes have been built. An insect-like 1.5-kilogram drone made by AetherMachines of New York perches on power lines to recharge while sending video. Its rotors turn into wheels, allowing it access to buildings.

Much like the AI “Mike” in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and its collection of directed space rocks with which it threatens the cities of Earth, it is less accurate to think of an AI and its potential collection of drones as an army than as a single entity with a large number of sacrificial, closely directed arms. The arms may have brains of their own, but they will be severely limited, while the central AI would (at least in my design) provide target selection and fire control. This is C³ taken to an entirely new level. Mr. Hambling thinks about replacing infantry with drones:

The technology expands the potential for intervention without foot soldiers, but it may lessen the inhibitions that can stop military action. Do we want every foreign policy issue to be settled by sending in the drones?

Better yet, do we want to consider the possibility of a single combat entity with highly superior C³ capabilities, such as hard to spot directed or automated drones with a mission to take out high value targets? Analogies with the kamikaze attacks of World War II would not be inapt, except it’s quite probable that the success rate of the drones would be much higher than that of the kamikazes (11% according to this article), although such would be dictated by defensive tactics, which are hard to predict.

Back in December I noted a study wherein two thirds of a representative sample of published psychological studies could not be replicated. NewScientist (16 April 2016, paywall) has more dirt in “The Unscientific Method” (Sonia van Gilder Cooke):

Science is often thought of as a dispassionate search for the truth. But, of course, we are all only human. And most people want to climb the professional ladder. The main way to do that if you’re a scientist is to get grants and publish lots of papers. The problem is that journals have a clear preference for research showing strong, positive relationships – between a particular medical treatment and improved health, for example. This means researchers often try to find those sorts of results. A few go as far as making things up. But a huge number tinker with their research in ways they think are harmless, but which can bias the outcome.

Science defenders often note how it’s self-correcting, which makes it better than “competing” ideologies. So this is rather dismaying:

Traditionally, once results are published they tend to go unchecked. “The current system does not reward replication – it often even penalizes people who want to rigorously replicate previous work,” wrote statistician John Ioannidis of Stanford University in California in a recent paper entitled “How to make more published research true”. Proponents of a new discipline called metascience (the science of science) aim to change that, and Ioannidis is in the vanguard.

Part of the problem is simply we’re trying to do difficult things:

Some fields of research are less susceptible than others, though. In astronomy, chemistry and physics, for instance, “people have a very strong tradition of sharing data, and of using common databases like big telescopes or high energy physical experiments”, Ioannidis says. “They are very cautious about making claims that eventually will be refuted.” But in fields where such checks and balances are absent, irreproducible results are rife.

Take the case of cancer researcher Anil Potti when he was at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. In 2006, staff at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, wanted to investigate treatments based on Potti’s published work on gene expression. Before pressing ahead, they asked their colleagues, biostatisticians Keith Baggerly and Kevin Coombes, to look over the findings. Their efforts illustrate how hard it can be for peer reviewers to pick up on mistakes. It took them almost 2000 hours to disentangle the data and reveal a catalogue of errors. It later transpired that Potti had falsified data, but in the meantime, three clinical trials had been started on the basis of his research.

Bold mine. 2000 hours is 50 man-weeks of 40 hour weeks. I get the impression that the breadth of the field and a relative dearth of competent personnel makes it difficult for self-correction to occur, when the fields themselves are difficult – and personnel may be more interested in the creative, exploratory part of science, and not the replicative side of things. Those researchers who want to build on novel results, as above, are those most likely interested in replication – but that’s not their commercial goal, it’s simply part of the process responsible researchers should follow, and not all researchers will be as responsible as this group, as evidenced by the last clause noting that three clinical trials were underway. I always wonder how scientists like Dr. Potti (is it possible to retract a PhD?) feel when they realize their false research is used for building treatments.

Gilder Cooke goes on to note responses from the various subfields of science, including registration of studies, including the analysis methods to be used once the data is collected, on an online platform by the Center for Open Science. In a sidebar, she notes this:

Blindfolding – Deciding on a data analysis method before the data are collected.

This serves to safeguard researchers from cherry-picking statistical methods for the one which gives the most significant results. By selecting the analysis method before hand, hopefully the researcher will justify why it’s the appropriate method.

Which reminds me of the struggle in software engineering between sitting down and hacking out a solution, and putting together a formal design that analyzes the requirements, anticipated data quantities, etc. I usually fall somewhere in the middle – the document exists, but only in my mind.

Advertorial:

An advertorial is an advertisement in the form of editorial content. The term “advertorial” is a blend (see portmanteau) of the words “advertisement” and “editorial.” Merriam-Webster dates the origin of the word to 1946. (Wikipedia)

Why bring it up, besides being new to me? Because I spotted it in NewScientist (16 April 2016, p 42) headlining a page containing an article named “A career at the frontier of immunotherapy.” Why not just call it an advertisement and be done with it?

Just to finish it off, this is from a 2009 editorial from the same magazine (6 June 2009, paywall):

This blurring of the boundaries between independently refereed publications and advertorials is unacceptable. Promotional material should be clearly marked and easily identifiable. The production of drugs and the production of reliable knowledge about their safety and use must be kept separate.

Not that I’m condemning NewScientist, but rather marking an evolution in publishing in which advertising is moving from single image, single message to a more nuanced approach. It’s clearly marked as advertising (in this case, trying to attract medical talent to the advertiser), but is intermixed with editorial content traditionally kept separate from advertising.

We’ve discussed a closely related subject here.