Lyle Denniston, who’s covered the SCOTUS since 1958, writes about a case not yet accepted by the court – and having problems getting there – at Constitution Daily:

For more than five years, reality TV star Kody Brown and the four women to whom he is married, either legally or “spiritually,” have been trying to gain a constitutional right to that relationship. Their lawyer plans to move the case on to the Supreme Court this fall but, on the path to the Justices, theirs has become a different cause. Now the “plural family” is simply trying to keep their case alive. …

In a multi-faceted ruling last April, the appeals court said the Brown case had become moot – legally, a dead letter. There is no credible threat that they will be prosecuted, it concluded. Also, it said, the family has put down roots in Nevada, raising doubts that they would go back to Lehi. And, further, the appeals court said, even if they did go back, too much time has passed so the county could not prosecute them, anyway.

That was a ruling by a three-judge panel. The Browns’ lawyers attempted to persuade the full Tenth Circuit Court to reconsider the panel ruling, but that failed in May. The lawyers have now obtained a postponement until next month of the deadline for filing their case in the Supreme Court. That, though, is a signal that they will attempt an appeal.

The family had moved from Utah to Nevada to avoid prosecution, and now that they won – they want to lose, so they can raise the issue of polygamy in front of SCOTUS. The maneuverings in law can sometimes be a little odd – and a bit fascinating.

Cadastral. From Wikipedia:

A cadastre (also spelled cadaster), using a cadastral survey or cadastral map, is a comprehensive register of the real estate or real property‘s metes-and-bounds of a country.

Jason Urbanus reports on progress made on what sounds like an extraordinary map in Archaeology (Sep/Oct 2016):

The Forma Urbis Romae was created under the reign of the [Roman] emperor Septimius Severus (r. A.D. 193-211). Measuring 60 feet by 43 feet, the map was incised onto 150 marble blocks arranged in 11 rows, and represented an area of over five square miles at a scale of 1:240. An incredibly detailed plan of Rome, it reproduced every building, house, shop, and monument in the smallest detail, even including staircases.

It has disintegrated since Rome declined. How long have archaeologists been working to recreate it?

Scholars have been retrieving the map’s fragments from locations around Rome and attempting to determine their original positions for the past 500 years. Reassembling the map is slow, painstaking work, further complicated by the fact that thousands of fragments are still missing. However, authorities from the Capitoline and Vatican museums in Rome recently announced the discovery and identification of an important new section of the map, perhaps offering new insights into the topography of the ancient city.

Stanford has a project dedicated to reproducing it digitally here. I do hope they find ways to accelerate progress. I’d hate to be dead before they finish and it goes on display somewhere.

Professor Frank Wu of the University of California Hastings College of the Law remarks on LinkedIn upon the woes of the law profession:

In any event, studies suggest that lawyers making more money report less, not more, career satisfaction. My hypothesis is that those attracted to law for the lucre are disappointed, because they wake up to find themselves toiling for clients who, as businesspeople, make an order of magnitude more. (I have nothing against a young person declaring that they wish to make money — of course they do. My point is if that is the primary consideration in your career choice, there are better methods for doing so. Joining a profession in which you represent someone else entails making a sacrifice in the name of principle.)

The bulk of law school graduates will end up, as they always have, in solo practice or at small to medium firms; or in government, usually state and local rather than the coveted clerkships with federal judges. The figures paid to their peers at the elite end of the bell curve, or those whom they considered peers prior to matriculating in law school, symbolizes nothing. Perhaps it tastes of the bitterness of the contemporary economy.

I’ve been told that a youngster I grew up with, by which I mean someone 6 or so years younger than I, ended up as an investment banker for a few years, then spent some time sitting on an island beach. I’ve always wondered if he was enjoying his Wall Street earnings, or if he was regretting his path in life. I may never know.

Professor Wu’s remark about going to school to make money is the salient feature from the article for me. There are many reasons to go into any profession, from greed to passivity to nobility. Personally, I went into software because of a great lack of confidence in my capability – programming seemed to be easier for me than for many people I saw working on it (for two weeks) in high school. Fortunately, as some readers know, I stumbled into a hobby facet of the industry which led to great personal satisfaction, a chance to contribute to the happiness of many people, to meet them, to know them. Many professions can be greatly satisfying; and some not so much. An inverse correlation between salary and job satisfaction certainly does not correspond to the great American mythic element that money will make us happy; the rumbling counterpoint tends to be ignored, I notice, by the great mainstream. So what should one say?

It’s so tempting to say follow your passion! But I have an odd bias towards finding observations and encouragements which are insensitive to eras, and I fear this is not one of them. Only recently has it become possible for anyone outside of the top 1% to really follow a passion successfully; generally, if you’re mining coal, it’s because it’s the only way to survive, and then it’s usually a slow death.

But what of my bias? Was the coal miner of the 19th century really happy? It’s probably an irrelevancy, but still, follow your passion has its problems. I would say, if money and wealth are your passion, perhaps you should reconsider. Perhaps (American) society should reconsider the reigning mythos. Chunks of it certainly have – simply ask most of the clergy. Perhaps we should recall the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Not the pursuit of wealth, but of happiness. Wealth is measured and present in many systems, but regardless of context brings a set of problems, some unique and some common. Still, it makes some happy. And I do not wish to make the mistake of homogeneity, the idea that the same thing makes all people, even within a comformist society, happy; it just ain’t so.

So what does an unhappy eloquence of lawyers do?

mother nature network‘s Bryan Nelson reports on one of the fascinating activities of humpback whales – interference with the hunting behavior of orca packs:

Marine ecologist Robert Pitman observed a particularly dramatic example of this behavior back in 2009, while observing a pod of killer whales hunting a Weddell seal trapped on an ice floe off Antarctica. The orcas were able to successfully knock the seal off the ice, and just as they were closing in for the kill, a magnificent humpback whale suddenly rose up out of the water beneath the seal.

This was no mere accident. In order to better protect the seal, the whale placed it safely on its upturned belly to keep it out of the water. As the seal slipped down the whale’s side, the humpback appeared to use its flippers to carefully help the seal back aboard. Finally, when the coast was clear, the seal was able to safely swim off to another, more secure ice floe.

The behavior appears to be widespread and involves multiple rescued species. and what’s even more fascinating (if you have the capacity to be more fascinated):

One common feature among many humpback whale rescue efforts is that the humpbacks often work in pairs. Scientists will need to do more research into this behavior, though, to truly understand the significance of it.

I always feel like I’ve been given a gift when the perennial hibiscus blooms.

Dinner plate-sized blooms make for an impressive show.

 Each bloom only lasts a day, so you have to look fast or you’ll miss them.

But it’s totally worth it.

A Nike commercial for the 2016 Olympics.

https://youtu.be/SEf7MoQYgzE

However, as my Arts Editor points out, the commercial has a typo. The good Sister is only 35 years old.

Business Insider is currently running an ad for Sovereign Investor Daily. This ad, and the page it leads to, is as good an illustration as any for the inexperienced of the first rule of the Internet: anything you read about investing should be handled with rigorous skepticism.

By “rigorous” I mean that everything you read should be subject to the same set of rules.

And by “skepticism”, I mean that rather than taking what you read to heart, you should consider it objectively. I tend to do things intuitively, which is to say I have a general list of rules which are not completely formulated and not always followed – but I’d benefit if I had more discipline. So let me dump some rules out of my brain for both my readers’ and my benefit.

1. Are there any checkable claims being made? If so, check a few. Snopes.com appears to be a good source for checking certain claims.
2. Think about the language being used. All articles are meant to be persuasive, but what’s the methodology? Are they presenting facts (which can be checked) in such a way as to guide you to a reasonable conclusion? Or are they using language in such a way as to take you to their preferred conclusion even if it’s not warranted? Extreme adjectives, overuse of adjectives, a breathless tone – all are clues that the snake oil is right behind their back. Beware of emotion.
3. Does it pass the “smell” test? Does it seem ridiculous?
4. Are they making the mistaken argument of appeal to authority? This is a proportionality problem, because there is some warranted credibility in authorities with verifiable track records – but even those need to be examined with a skeptical mind. For example, if an economist or investing professional is credited with predicting market crashes over and over, is he that good – or is he a “permabear”, someone who predicts disaster at every turn and occasionally gets it right, like the old broken analog clock? Asking pertinent questions, such as “Does he also accurately predict market highs?” can be enlightening – if discomforting to your authority. Always be an honest black sheep – not a sheared and frightened normal sheep.
5. Are your emotional buttons being pushed? What are your emotional buttons? If you don’t know them, sit down and figure them out – if you’re married, use your spouse as they’ll know them better than yourself.

So the title of the web page in question is

80% Stock Market Crash To Strike in 2016, Economist Warns

It’s awfully darn late in 2016, now isn’t it? Nothing out in market land appears to warrant a crash of that severity, although I’ll grant the American banking giants are not as well-regulated as they should be. So I read on:

But there is one distinct warning that should send chills down your spine … that of James Dale Davidson. Davidson is the famed economist who correctly predicted the collapse of 1999 and 2007.

Davidson now warns, “There are three key economic indicators screaming SELL. They don’t imply that a 50% collapse is looming – it’s already at our doorstep.”

And if Davidson calls for a 50% market correction, one should pay heed.

Indeed, his predictions have been so accurate, he’s been invited to shake hands and counsel the likes of former presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton — and he’s had the good fortune to befriend and convene with George Bush Sr., Steve Forbes, Donald Trump, Margaret Thatcher, Sir Roger Douglas and even Boris Yeltsin.

They know that when Davidson makes a prediction, he backs it up. True to form, in a new controversial video, Davidson uses 20 unquestionable charts to prove his point that a 50% stock market crash is here.

Most alarming of all, is what Davidson says will cause the collapse. It has nothing to do with the China meltdown, Wall Street speculation or even the presidential election. Instead, it is linked back to a little-known economic “curse” that our Founding Fathers warned our elected officials about … a curse that was recently triggered.

As a skeptic, first I think, Excuse me, who? Never heard of the guy. OK, so off I go to do a little research. Wikipedia lists him very, very briefly. I note the flimsy appeal to authority – well, you shook hands with da President, didja? So did everyone else in those crowds he speaks to! –  as there’s really nothing to back up these claims.

And then a 50%-80% market correction is calculated to hit American investors’ biggest button – the fear of losing money. As researchers have noted, investors fear losing money more than they lust after making money – this is known as risk aversion, as Bankrate.com explains. I have personally eliminated this emotional button and replaced it with Opportunity!, but I know when I see it in an article of dubious worth, it’s a red flag that this is manipulative.

More interestingly is this reference to the Founding Fathers, which suggests this is targeted at the segment of the conservative crowd that tends to worship our Revolutionary War heroes – regardless of how far removed they may be from modern finance. While this is also a big red flag, it’s also worth a giggle as it’s both a little odd, and taking advantage of a blind spot specific to conservatives.

Later we get

(It’s unconventional and even controversial, but proven to work.)

Uh, if it works, it’s not controversial. Simple as that. But it’s an intriguing statement for the uninitiated.

So let’s stop mucking about, put Sovereign Investor Daily on our informal list of manipulative web sites, and as the next question:

Is it ethical for such web sites to exist?

I suppose the defensive strategy would be to invoke the First Amendment and then sit tight, little weasel eyes glinting in the light of the courtroom. After all, this is all opinion and if someone pays more to get more opinion, that’s their right, right? Right.¹ But that doesn’t really address the question, and, if you accept that the Golden Rule is a good ad hoc definition of ethics, then I think it becomes immediately apparent that our little weasels are unethical.

But I don’t really see how to prevent it, on the one hand, and correct it on the other. So that leads to the next question:

Are ethics and the Internet incompatible?

To my mind, if we were all unethical, the Internet would collapse from the sheer weight of scams, on the one hand, and burnt users burning their computers in protest. That’s not happening as the major retailers work very hard to make customers happy – there are tangible consequences to being an ethical entity. Perhaps the tangible benefits of ethics will entice most entities on the web to be middlin’ ethical – and the rest, like this site, will exist and perform the evolutionary duty of eating up the unwary. Or, more accurately, training them in the art of wariness and skepticism² – which most folks could use more training in.

¹Who can resist writing “right” three times in a row? Right. Not me.

² For those interested in skepticism, a subscription to Skeptical Inquirer is not out of line. They do not publish most of their articles online, so far as I know.

CNN Money reports on a new app that business groups hope to use against proposed and impending minimum wage laws:

Looking to “make it easier for small businesses to add their voices to the minimum wage debate,” the Employment Policies Institute recently launched an iPhone app called Wage Engage.

It seeks to alert business owners when minimum wage legislation is introduced in their area — and then lobby against a wage hike measure “at the push of a button” by sending a generic message to lawmakers.

“Please consider the evidence that a minimum wage increase will result in unintended consequences for low-margin businesses like mine,” the template reads.

Nothing magical here, really. And I’m a little puzzled as such laws do tend to impact all businesses. In the end, hiking your prices to cover the wage increase should work in most cases.

But – ignoring the societal case against pumping wages up for entry level positions – the deeper problem is that such an app may serve to antagonize your workers. At least today, workers are still humans capable of many things, from amazing innovation to sulky resentment, and the boss who ignores these attributes does so at their peril. To the obverse, consider the case of Dan Price, CEO of Gravity Payments, who, in mid-2015, instituted a company-wide policy that the minimum wage would be $70,000, resulting in some salaries doubling. Some employees bolted, convinced their contributions were not appreciated, illustrating the perils and pitfalls of compensation plans. But, a year later (which is hardly long enough to really analyze the results, to be honest), his employees have done what? Given him a car. From Business Insider:

Employees at Gravity Payments saved up for months and on Thursday presented their CEO, Dan Price, with his dream car, a Tesla, according to photos he shared on his public Facebook page.

The company is privately held, so obtaining financial results information is not easily done. But obviously his employees appreciate his business strategy and presumably have been motivated to work more effectively¹ , thus possibly making the company more than profitable enough to cover the higher compensation costs.

So is it more effective to fight against minimum wage laws, or to raise wages proactively? I’m not a business owner, but if I were I would certainly want to believe that I’d consider Price’s approach.

¹I am wary of saying “harder”, as it’s a more blunt instrument – working harder just means you’ve sweated, not that you’ve done anything useful.

Pakistan, or more importantly the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, a religious nation, is being torn apart by … religion. Lawfare’s Rishabh Bhandari and Cody M. Poplin report on just one facet of the deliberate disintegration:

Monday’s [bombing] victims were not a random assortment of civilians waiting for medical care, but instead represented Quetta’s liberal elite. More than 200 lawyers had congregated to mourn the murder of Bilal Anwar Kasi, the president of the Balochistan Bar Association, who had been fatally shot earlier that day. A number of journalists had also arrived to cover Kasi’s death when the bomb detonated.

One surviving lawyer Barkhurdar Khan lamented that an entire generation of lawyers in Balochistan—Pakistan’s poorest province and the home of a deep-seated insurgency—had been wiped out. “Everyone who has given me a lift home is dead except for one person,” Khan said. Lawyers throughout the country boycotted court proceedings on Tuesday. …

But lawyers and judges are not targeted solely out of revenge for their role in prosecuting and sentencing terrorists. Instead, Pakistani society is witnessing a systematic attempt to undermine the integrity of its judicial system, drive courts from restive areas, and implement the Taliban’s own form of rough but relatively efficient justice in areas it seeks to control. A Pakistani Taliban spokesman said following an attack three months ago, “Pakistani courts give decisions against the laws revealed by Allah” and suggested that undermining Pakistan’s court system is a central component of establishing a state under the Taliban’s interpretation of Sharia law.

It’s not hard to apply the lessons learned from the behaviors of the English Royal family to the plight of Pakistan today, as I detailed in this Pillar (see the section on English History) but has no doubt been done much better elsewhere: as the members of the various sects fall to fighting with each other, their small differences become magnified by the lens of Faith, and a nation which one might think should exist in easy harmony and solidarity has, instead, become a victim of the trivial differences of humanity. Each sect exists to climb to power, and then to direct its fruits to its members, buoyed by the certain faith that God is on their side. So are barbarous crimes sanctified, so do the winners fall to fighting amongst themselves, as God backs each individually, and so do the innocent fall to the sacred knife of the righteous, the power hungry, the lost.

American fundamentalists, who weep for more power of their own, should soberly assess this lesson from the far side of the world, and perhaps placing God on the sidelines while they reassess how they select leaders and what will serve America best. Even as a secular nation we have a bloody religious history, and we’d best hug our secular, tolerant nature tighter as we continue our tightrope walk.

The first is untouched, the second modified by my Arts Editor.

Actually, it’s just what happens to some of our wall paint when the humidity climbs too high.

I am not a horror movie aficionado and have not given much thought to what makes for a successful horror movie. I suppose, like most storytelling, I expect the characters to behave in a predictable manner, and the horror comes from the disasters these predictable, even reasonable behaviors result in. This is certainly only one way; the movies Alien and its sequel, Aliens, were certainly horror movies, although lacking the noir endings most horror movies employ, and in these the reasonableness of the activities of the characters may be questioned.

From Beyond (1986) doesn’t really seem to feature such characters. From the two psychologists who behave in a most shockingly unprofessional manner to the neighbor with the little dog that bursts in on a horrific scene, these characters seem to indulge in some downright daft behaviors which lead to their downfalls with depressing accuracy. Worse yet, possibly the best-acted character in the entire movie dies halfway through, leaving the less-talented to soldier on.

Then it also makes the mistake of not being familiar with Burke’s idea of the sublime, which includes the concept of implying there’s always more, that the true beauty or horror of something is just outside of perception. Think of the Balrog in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001): as it emerges within the Mines of Moria, we never really see the whole thing, since flames and smoke envelop it. What we see is bad enough, but the hints of what may be far worse are just out of sight. The Watcher in the Lake is another example from the same movie.

But the monsters in From Beyond are presented in loving and complete detail – but it’s not competent. I wasn’t horrified, I was amused as the horrid primary monster tried to be frightening. For a horror movie not to be able to trigger some primal jerk of fear and terror is to admit that it is a failure. And the dated costumes and hairstyles simply add to the disaster.

For all that, there are some clever bits. The cop is played with outsized enthusiasm that I really enjoyed. The logic introduced early in the film in which the monster’s consumption of a victim results in the victim – a depraved scientist himself – taking over the monster is remembered and repeated when a more virtuous scientist is consumed and then attempts his own takeover, lending new meaning to the old phrase, You are what you eat.

And, finally, the emergence of the pineal gland from the forehead really left me thinking: what dickheads!

It’s not a movie I can recommend, although we finished it and were always curious if the movie was going to get better. Unfortunately, it did not.

While thinking about the racial composition of the Twin Cities area and the Castile tragedy, I happened to run across a link to a post on Andrew Sullivan’s The Dish with some slightly out of date relevance – a fantastic map of racial composition in the United States based on the 2010 Census, built by Dustin Cable at theUniversity of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service. Andrew was referencing a Wired article:

White people are shown with blue dots; African-Americans with green; Asians with red; and Latinos with orange, with all other race categories from the Census represented by brown. Since the dots are smaller than pixels at most zoom levels, Cable assigned shades of color based on the multiple dots therein. From a distance, for example, certain neighborhoods will look purple, but zooming-in reveals a finer-grained breakdown of red and blue–or, really, black and white.

“There are a lot of moving parts in this process, so this can cause different shades of color to appear at different zoom levels in really dense areas, like you see in NYC,” Cable explains. “I played around with dot size and transparency for a while and settled on the current scheme as being adequate.” You can read more about Cable’s methodology here, but it comes down to this: When you’re dealing with 300 million dots at varying levels of zoom, getting the presentation just right is as much an art as a science.

So here’s the Twin Cities area, with Lauderdale / Falcon Heights in the center of the picture, at max zoom:

It gives an idea of how white and asian the Twin Cities area remains. Here’s a direct link to the map.

Some news on this long dormant thread from NewScientist (6 August 2016) noting research indicating a lower sperm count for the bees:

Neonicotinoid pesticides, neurotoxins used in agriculture that kill many types of insects, also cut honeybees’ live sperm count by almost 40 per cent, found Lars Straub of the Institute of Bee Health at the University of Bern, Switzerland, and his colleagues (Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, doi.org/bm6x).

However, we can’t yet be sure if this is the main reason behind the major decline in bee populations, he says, because many factors are probably playing a part.

From the cited Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences article we can learn that when we apply a chemical and a bug dies, we’re happy and keep on doing it:

Advances in agrochemical research highlight a lack of knowledge of the sublethal effects of insecticides on their target insect pests [10], as well as on sympatric beneficial insects such as bees that provide vital ecosystem services [11–13]. Frequently applied neonicotinoid insecticides can affect the nervous system of insects by acting as agonists of postsynaptic nicotinic acetylcholine receptors [14–16]. Recently, they have been shown to elicit sublethal effects on several bee genera, such as impairing bumblebee queen (primary reproductive females) production and diminishing honeybee queen reproduction [17,18]. However, to date no data exist on how neonicotinoid insecticides may affect male insect reproduction.

In an odd way, this is similar to the way Israel is threatening its own water supply by punishing the Palestinians.

The tensions caused by the Grand Renaissance Dam in Ethiopia continue to persist as construction continues. AL Monitor‘s Ayah Aman reports:

“One of the key advantages of the dam is to organize the water flow all year long. Hence, we can avoid dangers of a flood and water losses caused by natural flow and evaporation, as well as alluvium accumulation problems. It will also make navigation in the Nile smoother and support peace and regional stability,” [Renaissance Dam project manager Simegnew Bekele] said.

Despite the transparency Bekele showed, as he is responsible for running Renaissance Dam construction and was showing the press delegation around the dam sites all day, he refused to answer pressing questions about when water will be stored behind the dam and the number of years it will take to fill the reservoir. The answers would help determine the amount of water that will flow to Egypt and Sudan, and represent important factors in assessing the risks Egypt might face.

I would think the filling of such a large dam will be tricky since there are downstream users dependent on that output. They probably cannot survive long-term disruptions, and yet since these will be Sudanese and Egyptians, the Ethiopians will not have an intrinsic reason to care for them. Thus the political engagement of the Sudanese and Egyptians – and, no doubt, the implicit military threat that goes with it. This is called the Tripartite Committee.

“The tripartite committee is not concerned about continuing construction or ending the project this year or any time. However, we want to make sure that filling and operating [the dam] will have the least impact on downstream countries, and will have the most benefit for [Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia],” said Saif Hamad, head of the Sudanese delegation.

The impact of the dam is to be assessed by independent French firms, but there have been holdups in signing contracts, as Africa Review reports. They also note the proposed content of the studies:

The three countries have agreed to conduct two additional studies: the first one on the effects on the water quota for Sudan and Egypt and the second on environmental, economic and social impacts of the dam on Sudan and Egypt.

An unofficial translation of the Declaration of Principles is provided by Aigaforum here.

My correspondent responds regarding Trump’s mental condition:

I don’t think Trump is capable of empathy*. It simply would not occur to him to imagine how people (gun lovers or otherwise) would feel if he announced that it was all a joke.

*Not trying to be unkind. I believe he has full-blown narcissistic personality disorder. See symptoms: http://www.mayoclinic.org/…/basics/symptoms/con-20025568

Oddly enough I was just reading about narcissism in NewScientist (9 July 2016, paywall), which was not coincidental given the obvious correspondence to Mr. Trump. This paragraph seems relevant:

Looking at data on 42 US presidents up to and including George W. Bush, Ashley Watts of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and her colleagues found that those rated higher for grandiose narcissism were judged as being greater presidents: they did better on rankings of public persuasiveness, agenda-setting and the initiation of legislation, for example. However, they were also more likely to be seen as impulsive and bullying, and to face impeachment charges. The study suggests that the benefits of grandiose narcissism stem largely from its association with extroversion, whereas the downside is largely due to lack of agreeableness.

But I myself think he may be a psychopath, in which case he’d probably be aware that dropping out would be an upsetting event for his supporters.

A reader writes regarding RINOs:

I don’t think the GOP will die that easily. There’s a lot of diehards out there, and nothing so far has swayed them away from supporting Trump and other extremists like Ryan, Bachmann, etc. Facts don’t sway them in the least.

It’s not so much that the diehards won’t leave the party so much as, to quote President Reagan, the party will leave them. The diehards will be hounded out as apostates and RINOs, despite changing their core convictions not a whit, and those who leveled the accusations will progress from fringe to right wing to solid “conservatives” to slightly suspect to RINOs to having their memberships revoked if they refuse to leave on their own in outrage.

I’ll suggest an estimated lifetime, from one edge to the other, of about 4 years.

I can hear the hooves of this noxious herd now.

A reader remarks on an alluring bit of technology:

Can they make a commercially viable product by next year, please?

No, I’m afraid you’re going to have to stick with your rocks and cute water fountain.

The dangers of talking to your wife while driving somewhere is that sometimes awkward phrases are uttered.

Like Premature Forgetfulness.

This reader suggests I might need the help of some demi-god to keep up this series:

You’ll need to get more server space if you do “Petulance of the day” for the next 3 months.

Another reader has a deeper analysis:

I think I’m starting to understand Trump’s ongoing outrageousness:

If (when) he loses the election, he plans to say that he was just pranking America. “Of course I was kidding,” he’ll say. “I never wanted the job. I just wanted to see how many idiotic, horrible things I could say before people caught on, but they never did. It was the ultimate reality show, and the American voters are a bunch of losers!”

I’m completely serious. It’s a way for him to save face when Hillary shellacks him in November. Plus, we all know how much he loves to joke around.

I almost buy it until I think about the audience to whom he’s playing – they’re not likely to take his jest lightly. I hate to think this of fellow Americans, but they might try to hunt him down for playing with their affections in such a slapdash manner. Is he too egotistical to realize this?

You know the answer.

Attack of the Killer Tomato.

Plants.

Water is imperiled from many sources: weather, neglect, malicious forethought – and sometimes karma. AL Monitor‘s Shlomi Eldar explores Israel’s self-inflicted water wound:

In May, Gaza’s sewage system collapsed, and raw sewage reached the water reservoir of the Hof Ashkelon Regional Council. Gaza’s sewage plants have ceased functioning due to the lack of electricity, and left wastewater flows into Israel untreated.

“Without electricity, water cannot be produced and wastewater cannot be treated,” said Eilon Adar, a hydrologist and the former director of Ben-Gurion University’s Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research, Department of Environmental Hydrology and Microbiology in Beersheba. “An aquifer knows no borders. Water does not stop at a border. At the moment the damage is negligible, but Gaza is now dumping its untreated wastewater near the Beit Lahia wastewater treatment plant. This site, founded a number of years ago with Israel’s agreement, is only about 200 meters [660 feet] from Israel’s border and the [effluent] ‘lake’ seeps into the coastal aquifer.”

According to Adar, when Gaza’s wastewater treatment plant does not function, Israel stands to suffer as well. The ramifications of this can already be seen.

“Gaza sends wastewater to the area of the nonfunctional treatment plant, causing the water level to rise. A virtual mountain of underground water has been created that will flow to the only place in Gaza that still has drinkable water. That water will become contaminated and then disaster will hit. Once [contaminated] water permeates potable water, it will be almost impossible to fix the situation.”

So why the shortage of electricity?

The electricity crisis in Gaza began after former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert instructed the Israel Defense Forces to destroy the transformers in Gaza’s electrical station in retaliation for the abduction of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in June 2006. Although the station was partially restored, it never returned to its former level of performance.

“Today there is only one operating turbine, which supplies a bit of electricity to Gaza residents,” said one of Gaza’s largest fuel merchants, who requested anonymity. He told Al-Monitor that there is just enough fuel to partially operate one out of four small, reconstructed turbines. Before the station was destroyed it supplied some 125 megawatts. The station’s capacity, together with electricity supplied through direct lines from Israel and Egypt, guaranteed a more or less reasonable level of electricity. Now, however, the station provides no more than 50 megawatts, and the direct electricity lines from Israel and Egypt often suffer temporary cuts.

Will Netanyahu work to resolve the problem? If he doesn’t then he hurts his own people as well as inflicting suffering on the Palestinians. Sort of a negative version of the Golden Rule.