Steve Benen on MaddowBlog notes that one of the salient features of Mr. Trump’s campaign is its complete lack of policies and plans if it should win the Presidency:

“I think the American people, the American voter, will be bored to tears if that is in fact the way [i.e., detailed plans and policies] this thing goes,” [top Trump campaign advisor Sam Clovis] said.

It’s a valuable insight, if for no other reason because Clovis’ comments make clear that Team Trump is deliberately avoiding a substantive campaign debate over the issues. For the Republican candidate and his team, it’s a feature, not a bug.

In May, Politico quoted a campaign insider saying Trump didn’t want to “waste time on policy.” The Trump source added at the time, “It won’t be until after he is elected … that he will figure out exactly what he is going to do.”

A month later, the candidate himself added that “the public doesn’t care” about public policy.

Which leaves me with the odd vision of two candidates of this type slugging out, differentiating on … just exactly what? Who can make the biggest promise? Who can shout out bizarre promises the loudest?

Sounds like Extreme Populism, a position that the GOP would have disdained just years ago.

Wait, that’s sort of what happened during the GOP primary. And Trump won that, mostly through crude, even ludicrous promises, and by promising all over the map – from increasing the military while cutting taxes to building the biggest wall ever seen. He overwhelmed the media and his opponents by being outlandish.

Here’s the thing. I remember watching that field of candidates grow to 17, and hoping SOMEONE acceptable would show up. What did I see? Failed corporate executives, a Dominionist, a governor under investigation for corruption, another who left office after destroying all of his office computers (and then he tried to ride the Kim Davis spectacle to victory), a wet-behind the ears Senator with no, Z E R O accomplishments … ok, I admit to a brief moment of hope when Dr. Carson joined the fun, but he swiftly proved that, no matter how bright his medical accomplishments glinted, they did not translate to political wisdom – just another fringe-right flake.

But – they were all appealing to a conservative base that has not been trained to think rationally. Those who can have been chased from the party. This lead to the acquisition of the nomination by someone who best appealed to a base who feels, rather than thinks.

And that characterization does not apply to the rest of America. While some of us are even flakier than the GOP, most of us think. And Clinton has come forward with policy specifics that can be considered, evaluated, and judged. From that, we can deduce she was not lying when she said she was prepared to be President.

That willingness to act like a mature political candidate, aware of the tough job ahead of her, should be enough to get the votes of not only those who think Clinton really is the best, but from those who were disappointed that Bernie didn’t win, from the ex-Republicans tossed from their party, even from those considering Gary Johnson as an alternative – because Governor Johnson has been flubbing his big chance to shine.

American’s perception of crime rates may be completely off, but according to the Pew Research Center, support for the death penalty has dropped:

Even as support for the death penalty has declined across nearly all groups, demographic differences remain: Men are more likely to back the use of the death penalty than women, white Americans are more supportive than blacks and Hispanics, and attitudes on the issue also differ by age, education and along religious lines.

More than half of men (55%) say they are in favor of the death penalty and 38% are opposed. Women’s views are more divided: 43% favor the death penalty, 45% oppose it.

A 57% majority of whites favor the death penalty for those convicted of murder (down from 63% last year). But blacks and Hispanics support it at much lower rates: Just 29% of blacks and 36% of Hispanics favor capital punishment.

Which is interesting in how to explain it. Is it an advance in moral thinking by a significant number of Americans? Or – due to the misperception of skyrocketing crime – have many Americans concluded that harsh punishment actually doesn’t work? And the racial gap is interesting, if explainable – if you don’t trust law enforcement to arrest the proper person for a crime, then why ask for harsh punishments for the probable innocents?

Or perhaps the existence and publicity surrounding The Innocence Project, and those who’ve been proven innocent by them, has served to remind folks that enforcing a death penalty against those who may be innocent is risking the greatest injustice of all.

Limnology:

… is the study of inland waters. It is often regarded as a division of ecology orenvironmental science. It covers the biological, chemical, physical, geological, and other attributes of all inland waters (running and standing waters, both fresh and saline, natural or man-made). This includes the study of lakes and ponds, rivers, springs, streams and wetlands.^[1] A more recent sub-discipline of limnology, termed landscape limnology, studies, manages, and conserves these aquatic ecosystems using a landscape perspective.

(Wikipedia)

We saw this sign on the north side of Duluth, Minnesota.

Wondering where the candidates stand with regard to science? SciienceDebate.org stands ready with some collected answers. An example:

3. Climate Change

The Earth’s climate is changing and political discussion has become divided over both the science and the best response. What are your views on climate change, and how would your administration act on those views?

…

[Gary Johnson (L)] We accept that climate change is occurring, and that human activity is contributing to it, including through greenhouse gases like methane, nitrous oxide, and carbon dioxide.

Unfortunately for policymakers – the very activities that appear to contribute to climate change also contribute to mankind’s health and prosperity, so we view with a skeptical eye any attempts to curtail economic activity. We believe that a motivated and informed market will demand efficiency and reduced greenhouse gases, mitigating at least some of mankind’s effects. It is a virtual certainty that consumer demands and the marketplace will produce tangible benefits. It is not, however, certain that unilateral regulatory approaches by the U.S. will, in fact, produce benefits that are proportionate to costs. Nor is it certain that international treaties will produce benefits as developing nations have the most at stake to continue industrialization.

As other countries industrialize, as they have the right to do, we recognize that environmental trade-offs are inevitable.. As extreme poverty wanes in places like India and China, the poor will stop burning excrement or wood. And that will reduce certain types of pollution, while certain greenhouse gases may temporarily increase. But as countries become more developed, industrialized and automated, we believe the marketplace will facilitate the free exchange of new, efficient, carbon-friendly processes and technologies. And a Johnson-Weld administration will facilitate as much knowledge sharing as possible to speed and spread sustainable, cleaner technology as nations develop.

Unfortunately for Mr. Johnson, demonstrably those very activities are contributing to events detrimental to our society. Even more unfortunately, it’s the externalities that cause the problems – and the markets are not structured to even acknowledge them. And the industries concerned are more likely to fight the assignment of externality responsibility than try to use free markets to deal with them. See, for example, the greenhouse gases litigation with the EPA.

There’s much more, worth taking a read if you’re wondering whether your favorite candidate is smart – or not.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu appears to be caught in a bind with regard to the current American Presidential contest, according to AL Monitor columnist Ben Caspit. Israel does not want a UN Security Council Resolution, or anything like it, in which external forces would try to force a resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Obama still has time to introduce such a maneuver if he wishes. But what about his successor? If it’s Clinton ….

In his meeting with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in New York Sept. 25, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu managed to get out of her what he failed to extract from the serving president, Barack Obama. He got her to promise that she would oppose any attempt by “external forces” to force a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, including any resolution by the United Nations Security Council.

And Trump is considered a good friend of Israel. But Ben sees Netanyahu as now being in a bind:

Netanyahu is caught in an amusing conflict of interests.

On one hand, it is obvious that he would prefer to see Trump win the election. The meeting he had with Trump at his home in New York lasted almost twice as long as his meeting with Clinton (close to 1½ hours with the Republican candidate, compared to just 50 minutes with the Democratic candidate). The two men were more intimate; they both remember well the video clip in support of Netanyahu that Trump released before the 2013 Israeli election.

Right now, Netanyahu would love to release a similar clip in support of the Republican candidate, but he can’t. He would love to release it even though no one has any idea what a Trump presidency would be like in terms of Israel.

On the other hand, Netanyahu knows that a Trump victory would only push Obama closer to a UN Security Council resolution and a diplomatic catastrophe for his own policy.

If he did show support for Trump, Obama might unleash just such a maneuver on Israel as retaliation; if Clinton wins, he’s actually off the hook. But his detestation for her is reportedly such that … well, I wonder how he sleeps at night.

Or how much longer he’ll be Prime Minister.

In connection with the debate, a reader writes:

Just watching Cavauto–Andrew Stein (D) is supporting Trump and he’s giving reason why.   I have no idea who he is or where he’s from.

Breitbart.com – possibly looking for that silver lining after the sky fell in on them – has an article on the news that …

New York Dem Andrew Stein Endorses Trump

During the Sunday broadcast of New York AM 970 radio’s “The Cats Roundtable,” former New York City Democratic Mayoral Candidate Andrew Stein endorsed Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, reasoning he was going to “shake things up in Washington.”

“I think the country’s in trouble. Our economic growth is too slow. Our military is being decimated by Obama’s cuts,” Stein told host John Catsimatidis. “Our support for Israel has not been strong. Donald Trump understands all of this. I think he’ll be a strong leader. He understands that America has to be great again. He’ll cut taxes like JFK and Reagan did and stimulate the economy.”

Stein later added, “He’s a real doer. Hillary exemplifies the status quo.”

Military cuts? Well, I suppose it depends on how you measure spending. If it’s purely on a dollar basis, then Mr. Stein is desperately wrong, as demonstrated in this chart from Our World in Data:

See the purple line.

Source: USGovernmentSpending.com

To be fair, if we measure spending as a percentage of GDP then spending might look like it’s dropped. This chart to the left, if read in haste, might look like we’re in precipitous decline.

Then again, our military spending is bloated as it is, and our economy would benefit, long-term, if we cut it by, say, 30%. We’d still be far and away ahead of everyone else in traditional modes of combat – and I suspect non-traditional modes don’t require money so much as brains.

IN ANY CASE, blaming Obama for a budget controlled by Congress simply betrays this guy is basically a zero. The real question here is whether or not the Democrats kick him out of the party for being stupid, or if he rapidly retracts in a probably vain attempt to exit the burning mistake called the Trump Campaign.

A couple of readers sent me this.

Sometimes it takes teamwork!

http://www.wimp.com/brassband/

More information comes to light regarding the pipeline near Standing Rock, ND, courtesy navajo on The Daily Kos:

In a Friday letter to President Obama, the United States Department of Justice, Department of the Interior, the Army Corps of Engineers, a coalition of more than 1,200 archeologists, museum directors, and historians from institutions including the Smithsonian and the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries denounced the deliberate destruction of Standing Rock Sioux ancestral burial sites in North Dakota.

As archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, and museum workers committed to responsible stewardship, we are invested in the preservation and interpretation of archaeological and cultural heritage for the common good. We join the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in denouncing the recent destruction of ancient burial sites, places of prayer and other significant cultural artifacts sacred to the Lakota and Dakota people.

On Saturday, September 3, 2016, the company behind the contentious Dakota Access Pipeline project bulldozed land containing Native American burial grounds, grave markers, and artifacts–including ancient cairns and stone prayer rings. The construction crews, flanked by private security and canine squads, arrived just hours after the Standing Rock Sioux tribal lawyers disclosed the location of the recently discovered site in federal court filings.

Former tribal historic preservation officer Tim Mentz called the discovery of the site “one of the most significant archeological finds in North Dakota in many years.”

The writer has a timeline of activities since August 2016 relevant to the pipeline.

Centaur Warfighting:

The Mythological Centaur

As an alternative to completely autonomous weapons, the report advocates what it describes as “Centaur Warfighting.” The term “centaur” has recently come to describe systems that tightly integrate humans and computers. In chess today, teams that combine human experts with artificial intelligence programs dominate in competitions against teams that use only artificial intelligence.

(The New York Times)

It appears the name of this thread is increasingly becoming a lost cause. Via Lawfare I find Defense One has a report on a study on current AI’s use on the battlefield, by Patrick Tucker:

At their smartest, our most advanced artificially intelligent weapons are still operating at the level of insects … armed with very real and dangerous stingers.

So where does AI exist most commonly on military weapons? The study, which looked at weapons in military arsenals around the world, found 284 current systems that include some degree of it, primarily standoff weapons that can find their own way to a target from miles away. Another example would be Aegis warships that can automatically fire defensive missiles at incoming threats.

An interesting, but inexact, analogy. Are we talking individual insects – or swarms? An ant colony can do interesting things, as this NewScientist (10 September 2016, paywall) article reports:

But then she [a hunting ant of the Eciton species] stops. The ground has dropped away in front of her. There is no scent trail, just empty space. Other members of the colony that were following begin to climb over her. Now, instead of walking in a line, they grip hold of one another using hooks on their feet, adding body after body to build an impromptu bridge. More and more join in, until they traverse the gap. And there they remain until the entire foraging party, numbering hundreds, has crossed. Then, as suddenly as it came into being, the bridge disperses, and the ants continue on their way.

How do these creatures achieve such an impressive feat of coordination with very limited brainpower and no overview of the situation? That’s the question a group of researchers working on Barro Colorado Island set out to answer. Their efforts have revealed how ants use simple cues to organise themselves into complex living structures. It’s a wonder of nature, and it could offer insights for engineers, mathematicians and robot designers. What’s more, it might even shed some light on our own interactions.

Individually stupid, collectively smart – without the integrated consciousness with which we operate. How about those AIs, do they work together as simply? Researchers theorize the ants have evolved a simple set of behaviors (rules) that automatically kick in as cued by their surroundings. Have the AIs been similarly? While evolutionary programming is no longer new, it does require an environment capable of repetition … I think. One of my regrets as a programmer was reading about, yet never trying, evolutionary programming. My point being that evolving behaviors is a time consuming business – just look at how long it’s taken ants.

Back to the Defense One article:

But even if the U.S. military “wins the competition” by producing the best autonomic systems, other nations may yet put AI to unexpected and even destabilizing effect. “It should be noted that the technological incorporation of autonomy will not necessarily come only from the world’s strongest powers, and the balancing effect that may have will not likely be stabilizing. Regional powers with greater abilities in autonomous weapons development, such as Israel, may destabilize a region through their use or through their export to other nations,” says Roff.

A clear recognition that software design and innovation is much more of a non-linear activity than hardware design. Mathematicians of transformational character can come from anywhere, even backward countries, because all they need is their minds … or, more traditionally, paper and pencil. While computers are advanced technology, it’s not difficult to acquire them surreptitiously – and programming is much like mathematics, it only takes a few gifted individuals to make tremendous progress.

That non-linearity can also work against you. One missed end-case, whether in the programming or the machine learning of the AI, and disaster could occur on the battlefield. But this is nothing new – from Napoleon to the Battle of Guadalcanal, mistakes by one side are used by the other to win battles, and sometimes those mistakes can seem minor at the time.

Finally, in view of the current Presidential election, Patrick notes this in regard to an ethical position that might result in defeat:

The observe, orient, decide, and act cycle, sometimes called the OODA loop, is today in the hands of humanity when it comes to warfare. But in other areas of human activity, like high-frequency trading, it’s moved to the machines. William Roper, the head of the Pentagon’s Strategic Capabilities Office, discussed his concerns about that acceleration at the recent Defense One Technology Summit.

“When you think about the day-trading world of stock markets, where it’s really machines that are doing it, what happens when that goes to warfare?” Roper asked. “It’s a whole level of conflict that hasn’t existed. It’s one that’s scary to think about what other countries might do that don’t have the same level of scruples as the U.S.”

It’s also scary to think about what the United States might do if its leaders woke up in a war where they were losing to those countries.

Poorly phrased, but the point is clear and relentless. Exploration of it is essential. It is my position that a philosophical or ethical system – or even just a point- that leads to the destruction of those who advocate that system or point is an unsuccessful, an unworthy system, or point. But is it logical to examine the consequences of an ethical position or point and, based on the calculated results, abandon it? In this section, the ethical position is that if a human life is to be taken, a human should make that decision, not an AI. But if that imperils your capability of winning a war … is it good ethics, or bad ethics? Are ethics based on reasoning, a priori, or results, ex post facto?

A reader has an itch to scratch:

That itch scratching research could actually be useful for those times you can’t reach a certain spot due to injury, etc.

There is a lot to think about, I think, in connection with that research. The plasticity implied – or perhaps the vulnerability of the brain to con men – is fascinating.

My reader explains the UHF reference with a simple picture:

Sure looks like a Nash. Love the colors. OK, I’ll look it up … UHF is a film starring Weird Al and Weird Fran Fran Drescher and others. Oh, my. Never seen it.

A reader writes concerning last night’s debate:

Most of the news I heard this morning declared The Don the winner, but then I hear that that clinton woman was saying she is the winner. Whatever, we’re the losers–or may be.

Which serves to lead in to a phenomenon I’ve noticed over the years of folks with opinions, be it blogs or other – the stubborn practice of staring at every event through the same prism. Here’s liberal Steve Benen of MaddowBlog:

Shortly before the first presidential debate of 2016 got underway, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a prominent Donald Trump ally, insisted that the Republican candidate would “pass the test of being adequately competent” during the showdown with Hillary Clinton. The message drew swift mockery for setting the bar for Trump success at such a woefully low level.

But by the time the dust settled on the debate, Gingrich’s prediction looked even worse – because Trump didn’t come close to demonstrating “adequate competence.”

After the event, Trump told reporters that debate organizers gave him “a defective mic.” He quickly added, “I wonder, was that on purpose? Was that on purpose?” Of course, there was no conspiracy involving Trump’s microphone, though all things considered, the GOP nominee might have been better off if his mic hadn’t worked and the audience didn’t hear what he had to say.

When Trump needed to be honest, he lied. When he needed to be poised, he came unglued. When he needed to appear knowledgeable, he rambled incoherently. When he needed to prove that he’d prepared for the debate, he made clear he hadn’t done his homework.

When Trump needed to change the trajectory of the presidential race, he offered fresh proof that he’s just not ready for prime time.

Dustin Siggins is perhaps a little more honest on The Resurgent, a conservative site:

Donald Trump lost last night. Hillary Clinton looked elegant — others have said “smug,” but who can blame her, given how badly Trump did? — and brevity was her friend. Trump couldn’t talk enough, and he definitely couldn’t talk enough about his businesses, his financial deals, or anything else that focused on him. He was defensive, he interrupted Clinton and Holt, and even his one-liners about Clinton’s record were lost in his ramblings.

As the old saying goes, “if you’re explaining, you’re losing,” and Trump spent a lot of last night explaining. And explaining badly, as Clinton played him like a fiddle for the last hour of the debate.

Then again, it’s easy to put Trump on the defensive when the moderator’s helping you out. This is one of the big talking points out of the Trump campaign post-debate, and it’s a valid one.

So we play blame the moderator. But he still thinks Clinton’s history is as bad as Trump’s. Bill Kristol, a conservative with a marked distaste of Trump, is very predictable in a Tweet:

Sophisticated types who’ve signed on w/ Trump are today grappling w/ the horrifying realization they’ve fallen in behind a con man & loser.

John Hinderaker of Powerline, a conservative blog, who was quite enthusiastic about Sarah Palin, saw the debate this way:

5) There will be lots of discussion about who “won” the debate, and it is easy to say that the winner–the better performer–was Mrs. Clinton. But asking who won the debate is the wrong question. The question is, did watching the debate make undecided voters more likely to vote for Clinton or Trump? My guess is that in that sense, the event was pretty much a draw, and we won’t see much movement in the polls over the next few days.

6) This is why I don’t think the evening was a bad one for Trump: most undecided voters will have seen Hillary as the embodiment of the political class. Smug, smirking, always ready with a torrent of words that can’t quite obscure the fact that to the extent she herself has wielded power, she has been a failure. Hillary Clinton is a walking exemplar of the political class that got us where we are now. A viewer who thinks America is doing great, our politicians are terrific, things have been going well in recent years and we need more of the same will be motivated to vote for Hillary.

Rod Dreher of The American Conservative is more honest, although it sounds like he wishes Trump had done better:

That’s it. Trump blew this thing, in my view. Hillary caught her stride about a half-hour in, and showed herself to be presidential. He came off as extremely unprepared. I cannot believe Trump helped himself tonight, though for all I know, the voters loved him. Hillary didn’t have a big win, but she did win, and I believe that she stopped the bleeding for her campaign.

I know that everybody has a different standard for Trump, but if Trump ends up judged the winner of this debate in the polls, I don’t know what to say anymore. There is no way Donald Trump is ready to be President of the United States. No way. And I don’t believe many undecided voters changed their mind to vote for Trump based on his performance tonight. …

Yes, Lord, yes, it is. With a stake through its heart and a garlic necklace. Ain’t nothin’ left for us religious conservatives but the Benedict Option.

Rod sounds bereft. Was it so important that this man, whose relationship with verity is so distant, should win?

So do I trust Hinderaker or Benen to be more accurate in their assessment? If I may indulge in an odd analogy, I wonder if neither of these guys would make for a good fencing referee. I’ve refereed a little, although I’ve never taken the test or stood for a director’s rating, but I do try to use a methodical, knowledgeable procedure. My approach is to remember that when you’re observing the world in general, your brain isn’t seeing or hearing or tasting everything you think it is – it takes bits and pieces, pattern matches it with stored experiences, and presents you with a good pattern that incorporates some of those bits – you can consider that to be a prism. (This is why sometimes something that is completely outside of your experience will be incomprehensible and require careful study to bring it into your experiential domain, as it were.) But often important details are lost, mutated, lose their chronological ordering, etc.

As a referee, I strive to remove that pattern matching. I try to see everything of importance during a given touch, within the last couple of tempos, without interpretation, until the scoring machine signals that something has happened (unless I see something that calls for a halt, of course). Then I try to replay, in my mind, what really happened – not what my brain wants to guess happened, but what I think I saw, without the prism (or filters, as I usually call them) and how it all fits together. Once that’s done, I apply a confidence level to the assessment, and assign the touch if the confidence level is as high as the “bar” I use, which is usually around, oh, 90-95%.

So are any of these pundits really seeing the true debate, or just what their prism shows them? I’m not sure. As I watched the debate, I was very aware of a struggle between the part of me who wanted to simply judge the debate, and the part of me who finds Trump detestable and untrustworthy. Part of the problem is the immense set of unknowns – how many lies did Trump tell? Is Clinton really crooked, or is that just poison from the GOP? Would immediate fact checking add or subtract from the debate¹?

Another (semi-retired) blogger who did a live-blog on the event was Andrew Sullivan of The Dish, who I’ve mentioned before. I have more respect for Andrew than most because of his expertise (Ph.D. PoliSci – he knows the difference between conservative and fever-swamp fringe, and as a conservative, he loathes the GOP), and because of his mistakes. Why do they matter? Because, back in the day, he didn’t hesitate to acknowledge them, to explore why he made them, to retract positions when it became clear he’d badly screwed up. And he grew because of them. How about these other bloggers? Well, I don’t know. I haven’t read them for long enough. But I know that at least some qualify for the term zealot, so I wonder. But Andrew has displayed some important honorable human qualities which makes him worth keeping an eye on. And what did he say, keeping in mind his loathing for Trump?

10:39 p.m. What can one say? I was afraid that Trump’s charisma and stage presence and salesmanship might outshine Hillary Clinton’s usually tepid and wonkish instincts. I feared that the facts wouldn’t matter; that a debate would not take place. And it is to Clinton’s great credit that she prepared, and he didn’t, and that she let him hang himself.

His utter lack of preparation; his doubling down on transparent lies; his foreign-policy recklessness; his racial animosity; his clear discomfort with the kind of exchange of views that is integral to liberal democracy; his instinctual belligerence — all these suggest someone who has long lived in a deferential bubble that has become filled with his own reality.

Clinton was not great at times; her language was occasionally stilted; she missed some obvious moments to go in for the kill; but she was solid and reassuring and composed. I started tonight believing she needed a game-changer to alter the trajectory of this race. I may, of course, be wrong, trapped in my own confirmation bias and bubble — but I thought she did just that.

I’ve been a nervous wreck these past two weeks; my nerves are calmed now.

In the end, polls may tell the most accurate story. Here’s Benen again with some overnight news:

And though it’ll be a while until we have polling data that shows what effect, if any, last night had on the overall race, overnight surveys suggest the public and the pundits are on the same page about the first Clinton/Trump showdown.

Hillary Clinton was deemed the winner of Monday night’s debate by 62% of voters who tuned in to watch, while just 27% said they thought Donald Trump had the better night, according to a CNN/ORC Poll of voters who watched the debate. […]

Voters who watched said Clinton expressed her views more clearly than Trump and had a better understanding of the issues by a margin of more than 2-to-1. Clinton also was seen as having done a better job addressing concerns voters might have about her potential presidency by a 57% to 35% margin, and as the stronger leader by a 56% to 39% margin.

Also overnight, Public Policy Polling released the results of its own post-debate survey, sponsored by VoteVets Action Fund, which found less lopsided results, but which nevertheless pointed to a Clinton victory, 51% to 40%.

The same poll found most respondents believe Clinton has the temperament to be president and is prepared for the job. A majority said the opposite about Trump.

Republican pollster Frank Luntz hosted a focus group last night and found, by a 16-to-6 margin, participants saw Clinton as the debate’s winner. CNN, meanwhile, organized a focus group of its own in Florida with a group of undecided voters. Of the 20 participants, 18 said Clinton prevailed.

¹If you want to know how many lies were told by the candidates during the debate, here’s a transcript and list from NPR. A screenshot to whet your whistle:

The other night my Arts Editor and I took a couple of pictures of the sunset at dusk. First, the original pictures:

Then our AE enhanced them a little bit..

Kinda brought out the blues, yeah.

So what did the sky actually look like?

All the blue in the sky was medium gray.

So if you’re as camera-ignorant as I, take this as a warning – even an unmanipulated picture can be very misleading.

A long time nemesis of Israel and the United States has bowed out of the Iranian presidential election at the order of Supreme Leader Khamenei, according to Misha Zand in AL Monitor:

On Sept. 27, former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent an official letter to the supreme leader of Iran announcing that he will not run as a candidate in the May 19 presidential election.

In his letter, Ahmadinejad referred to an Aug. 30 meeting with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and wrote: “You recommended that it is not suitable at this time for me to participate in the elections. Therefore, I have declared my obedience. … I have no plans to compete in next year’s election.”

I would have classed him as a hardliner, so this is interesting:

In addition to the media outlets directly linked to Ahmadinejad, a rare unified wave of voices from the Reformist camp and hard-liners dominated the opinion sections and the front pages welcoming Khamenei’s Sept. 26 remarks.

From the context, the remarks might appear unified, but the motivations vary. The Reformists simply didn’t like him or his policy, but the hard liners, for some reason, wanted Khamenei’s remarks to be published before they’d accept that the former President would not be running.

I wonder who Khamenei will favor in that race. I doubt it’d be current President Rouhani, a Reformist.

The Arutz Sheva of Israel elaborates slightly:

Prior to leaving the presidency, Ahmadinejad said he prided himself on his denial of the Holocaust.

Rouhani’s popularity surged after last year’s deal with world powers that lifted most sanctions on Iran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.

Another potential rival, Revolutionary Guard Commander Qassem Soleimani, said this month he would not stand in the vote, according to Reuters.

Are they really unacceptable to Khamenei, or is the field being constricted to give his favorite, whoever that might be, a better chance? The Tehran Times covers the announcement, using some slightly more interesting language:

Ahmadinejad’s tenure was peppered with controversial events and subjective law enforcements, causing distress both nationally and internationally.

During the period, the Iranian economy was grounded by unprecedented inflation rates, 40 percent by one account, considering deteriorating relations with the outside world.

The Ahmadinejad administration, inter alia, cut a state subsidy system not exactly the same way stipulated by law whose negative consequences are still with millions of the people.

In addition to a domestic populist policy, he pursued an imbalanced foreign policy, as well, particularly with European countries who were hostile to Iran’s nuclear program.

phonon:

Take what happens when you set a flame under a lump of table salt. The individual atoms all start rattling around a tad more enthusiastically, setting up waves of vibrations. In 1932, the Soviet physicist Igor Tamm realised he could treat these waves as particles, mathematically at least. He called them phonons.

Phonons have since become a staple, helping us for instance to understand processes such as superconductivity, in which electrons flow through a material with zero resistance, and opening the way for devices that turn heat into electricity (see “Five particles that don’t exist – yet could change our world“). Because they emerge from the movements of more traditional particles, phonons are called emergent particles or quasiparticles. “Phonons are not actually real,” says Jon Goff, a physicist at Royal Holloway, University of London. “They are really just a way of simplifying a very complicated problem.”

A mathematical construct, it seems. But then they jam this into my brain:

Phonons, magnons and the like exist in a kind of twilight world: useful to work out how things work, but doubtful as entities in their own right. But these half-existing particles aren’t even the half of it. Quasiparticles can exist, it turns out, even when nothing is there.

That discovery first came in 1947, with a seminal moment for the history of computing. William Shockley, a solid state physicist at Bell Labs in New Jersey, and his team were trying to perfect the transistor, an on-off switch for electrical current. They were using semiconductors, materials whose atoms are deficient in electrons. It had been known for a decade or so that this would create gaps of nothingness, like the empty square in a sliding puzzle. But no one thought these “holes” were anything more than the absence of an electron. Shockley proposed that the hole was actually a particle in its own right, something like an electron that carried positive charge.

Even when nothing is there. Roll that around in your head for a while.

(“Holes in reality”, Andrea Taroni, NewScientist, 10 September 2016, paywall)

A reader wonders about uses of the car…

It’s a Nash Metropolitan. Pretty sure it’s what Weird Al drives in UHF.

UHF?

8:00 – I’m going to live blog the debate. This won’t be a fact check, just my impressions of the debate as it goes.

Pre-debate, I understand that the campaigns try to set expectations, and that’s understandable – but not acceptable. Each candidate should be measured against a single standard. So I’ll see how I can do without giving either a pass.

8:05 – Questions are not known. Fun!

8:06 – Lester frames the question by giving the economy a positive spin.

8:07 – mentions her interest in children right off the bat. Small business is good. Trump looks shifty-eyed. Standard stump speech.

8:10 – Standard Trump speech – jobs are draining away. But that’s happening for 30 years or more. Will they mention the fact that wage inflation in other countries is slowing down the job drain?

8:12 – ‘trumped-up trickle down’? Is this new? Now she’s pointing out that Trump started from a mountain, while her family is a working class family.

8:14 – 14,000,000 is a small loan?

8:15 – she’s been Secretary for 30 years? But I don’t see how Lester could fact check without bogging down the debate, without submissions from the candidates. But Trump can’t answer the question.

8:17 – Did she pin other people’s misery on Trump? And will people buy it, or just consider it good business? Now she appeals to expert opinion – a tricky thing to do in today’s environment. Emphasizes specific plans.

8:20 – But NAFTA also had GOP support,  I think.

8:22 – But how responsible is State for exports? Not sure.

8:24 – Trump is yelling over her – bullying? And she stands up to him. Good for her. The problem with no fact checking is that it’s hard to judge how well the exchange is really going.

8:25 – Donald, the market is here. And Reagan’s tax cut was followed by the biggest tax increase, so it’s hard to take seriously. But regulations may be a soft spot.

8:26 – the Clinton fact checking website!

8:27 – And Lester tries to hold the horses back!

8:30 – tax cut, tax cut, tax cut. Now he wants to remove the tax on foreign earnings – even though the GOP could have done it but didn’t. Yet we need infrastructure spending now. And if the foreign tax is removed, it won’t be spent on the inner cities – it’ll be sent to shareowners as dividends, or in research & development.

8:31 – Donald has trouble restraining himself. And now he claims Clinton is all talk, no action. Pot-Kettle-black. And, now we’re in a bubble – so that’s how he’ll deal with our current steady success.

8:34 – Still under audit? But the IRS Commisioner says he can release it, the IRS doesn’t care. Holt calls him on it. Oh, he gets audited every year. Happens to him only?  Uh oh. Think about it, Donald. Now he wants to tie it to the deleted Clinton emails.

8:36 – Clinton tries to suggest his taxes show he has few positive qualities.

8:40 – Clinton admits to a mistake with the private mail server. Short and sweet. Donald claims it’s on purpose, not a mistake. Isn’t a mistake a deliberate action that shouldn’t have been taken? Donald falls back to a ragged defense of his taxes. Ah, but it’s good to hear he wants to at least revamp the airports – how bad are they? I’m not sure.

8:42 – Politicians squandering money – like the GOP, who’s controlled Congress for so many years, and couldn’t even submit a budget? Will listeners understand who’s in charge of the budget? It’s not the President.

8:43 – Donald is frantic to interrupt, and Lester’s in a quandary. Meanwhile, Clinton’s taking a shot at his supposed expertise. Now he refuses to address the shots – everything’s unbelievable. Better be careful, unbelievable can have multiple meanings.

8:45 – So is Donald advocating screwing people over as well? Are you under budget because of good or bad reasons?

8:50 – Race in the USA. Clinton speaks in terms of goals, references a plan – limitation of this format. Speaks to the police, who must be on board. Now wants to remove guns from the hands of criminals. Trump speaks of law & order – but we’re not in bad shape overall. Now he wants to use stop & frisk – which reportedly didn’t work.

8:52 – Lester shoots him down – and he disagrees! No they wouldn’t have lost on appeal, he says. Now he wants to blame it on migrants – with stop and frisk. So it’s quiet appeal that only migrants will be frisked. It’s a quiet dance with the NRA, who keep ignoring this anti-NRA stance.

8:55 – Clinton says stop and frisk is ineffective. Clinton has a plan, Donald has a plan – but his is of a dubious history, while hers is more nuanced in this two minutes. “The police are outgunned”, which should frighten the inner city – will that bring votes to Clinton.

9:00 – Both want to support the police. He brings up the term “super-predator”, not sure what that might be. Now they clash over stop and frisk and the current situation in NYC. Donald is now trying to chisel off the african american community, claiming they’ve been betrayed and they’re wonderful people.

9:03 – Now we’re off to the birther wars, sigh. He’s lying through his teeth about his behavior. Lester pushes Donald on it. Clinton smiles like an angel. A wrinkled angel 🙂

9:05 – Donald claims he has a great rep in the black community. Now Clinton fires back – I wonder if she should have just collapsed in laughter – the best way to pop the Big Lie balloon is with the dart of laughter. Now she reminds the audience of his record of racist behavior, the rental scandal. Now she clasps Obama to her buxom, after he claimed that she started the birther controversy. Now Donald worries at the bone.

9:06 – Nearly all of those lawsuits are settled without admission of guilt. So it’s meaningless.

9:10 – Security segment. Clinton leaps onto the pony, identifying cybersecurity as a critical problem. There’s a little knife named ‘Putin’ into Donald’s flank. Unfortunately for both candidates, this is more about knowledge than numbers, so a few people with great knowledge are more dangerous than a bunch of mundane hackers.

9:13 – Donald is hiding his lack of policy by repeating himself, citing support from generals and admirals (Clinton has more), repeating himself some more … it’s a stream of consciousness. He’s done and looks relieved that he doesn’t have to speak for a minute or two. Clinton notes that we’re pushing ISIS back, should have mentioned that Obama is responsible for our success.

9:18 – Donald doesn’t want to deal with the home-grown terrorism, so he blames Obama for Bush’s agreement to leave Iraq – and advocates the theft of Iraqi oil on top of it. Clinton gets to fire back and corrects him…. aaaaand she’s willing to address the original question. A “surge” of intelligence – what does this mean? She thanks police for hard work recently. Clinton advocates for alliances, and points out that Donald alienates those who she wants to work with.

9:21 – Actually, Iran is still choking on banking sanctions, and are generally restive about the entire nuclear treaty. But this is foreign info, so most Americans won’t know that.

9:25 – Donald is desperate to blame Bush’s decision on Obama. Now he denies he ever supported the War in Iraq. He cannot be swayed, despite the official publications. It occurs to me to wonder if this guy ever sleeps, since he goes everywhere and talks to everyone important. No, no, no. Yet it’s a GOP war, which he should be backing.

9:28 – “I have a much better temperament than she has!” Someone’s mad, and she looks mad. Clinton’s fired up and happy, and wants to talk about NATO – she knows that NATO went into Afghanistan with us, leaving Donald looking glum. She addresses the Iranian nuclear problem and pointsout we’ve solved the problem without shooting a single bullet. And she connects that with Donald’s tirade about temperament. Next debate they should turn off the candidate’s microphones when it’s not their turn.

9:30 I’ve fallen behind, so Donald is complaining about our defense treaties. Has he thought about the benefits of not having war for US?

9:35? – Nuclear war policy – Obama considered changing the policy?  Wish I knew more. Donald’s right about China and North Korea. But he’s wrong about the cash to Iran – that was for a weapon system not delivered to Iran, and we owed it to them.

9:38? – Clinton reassures our allies. Will Donald? But will Trump supporters consider this important? They’re more focused on their own problems, and believe he will bring prosperity back to them.

9:40 – ISIS is being pushed back, not growing, Donald. Please stop lying. Business ability is not part of government. Clinton is delighted to hear that she doesn’t have the Presidential stamina and look – because she has the experience. Oh, it’s “bad experience”. Heh. Oh, dear, here comes the mud, everyone duck!

9:45 – oh, Lester wants to know if both candidates will accept the outcome of the election. Clinton says she’ll accept it. Donald found a way to say No, then Yes.

For the traditional voter, Clinton is the clear winner – plans available, unflustered, delighted sometimes. Donald was clawing, interrupting, bullying. But how many traditional voters are there, and how many will be impressed by Donald. How many voters, inclined to Trump, are willing to honestly investigate what he said – and change their minds if he comes up as a liar?

We’ll see how the polls come out in the next week.

A reader comments on participatory democracy:

Sortition sounds like just exactly what this country needs at this moment. Of course, it’ll never happen in my lifetime.

If the idea caught on with one of the two major parties, and that party took control of government, we could see the first toes into the water within a few years, I think. Remember the project to privatize Social Security during the Bush II Administration¹? I recall reading such proposals in the libertarian press during the ’80s – they’d point at Chile with great enthusiasm.

So sometimes these sorts of things – even fairly extreme items – can move quickly if they gain popularity. Whether sortition would prove popular is difficult to say. Possibly more in the liberal camp than the conservative camp.

¹From the Brookings Institute in 1997:

Policymakers and the public show growing interest in the idea of replacing Social Security with a private system of individual retirement accounts. It is too soon to tell whether curiosity will lead to popular acceptance, but it is already plain that many Americans are thinking about private alternatives to Social Security for the first time.

The National Park Service has published a map of the sounds of the continental United States:

Why is the National Park Service concerned about noise?

The 2016 Ig Nobel awards were announced at a ceremony on Sept 22 at Harvard University, a great day for those of us with a mild taste for the bizarre (yes, I read News of the Weird religiously – and I’m well aware there are far more bizarre things out there – like Steam Powered Giraffe). My attention was diverted first by the Biology Prize, awarded jointly to Charles Foster and Thomas Thwaites. Each spent time living as another species, Mr. Foster as a badger, otter, deer, fox, and a bird, while Mr. Thwaites created prosthetics (including a rumen for digesting grass) allowing him to spend three days living as a goat. In the latter case, this is from the man’s website:

I tried to become a goat to escape the angst inherent in being a human. The project became an exploration of how close modern technology can take us to fulfilling an ancient human dream: to take on characteristics from other animals. But instead of the ferocity of a bear, or the perspective of a bird, the characteristic most useful in modern life is something else; being present in the moment perhaps.

The other intriguing research was for the Medicine Prize:

Christoph Helmchen, Carina Palzer, Thomas Münte, Silke Anders, and Andreas Sprenger, for discovering that if you have an itch on the left side of your body, you can relieve it by looking into a mirror and scratching the right side of your body (and vice versa). REFERENCE: “Itch Relief by Mirror Scratching. A Psychophysical Study,” Christoph Helmchen, Carina Palzer, Thomas F. Münte, Silke Anders, Andreas Sprenger, PLoS ONE, vol. 8, no 12, December 26, 2013, e82756.

This reminds me of other research on bending the mind’s perceptions, and adds to a fascinating research body of how the brain can be fooled by its own machinations.

Back in June 2016 a friend provided the link to this The Guardian’s “long read” section, where David Van Reybrouck (as translated by Liz Waters) published an extract of his book in which he criticizes some of the more traditional processes of Western democracies, such as elections and referenda, holding up the results such as Brexit as a condemnation, and suggests a replacement – the idea of sortition.

People care deeply about their communities and want to be heard. But a much better way to let the people speak than through a referendum is to return to the central principle of Athenian democracy: drafting by lot, or sortition as it is presently called. In ancient Athens, the large majority of public functions were assigned by lot. Renaissance states such as Venice and Florence worked on the same basis and experienced centuries of political stability. With sortition, you do not ask everyone to vote on an issue few people really understand, but you draft a random sample of the population and make sure they come to the grips with the subject matter in order to take a sensible decision. A cross-section of society that is informed can act more coherently than an entire society that is uninformed. …

Sortition could provide a remedy to the democratic fatigue syndrome that we see everywhere today. The drawing of lots is not a miracle cure any more than elections ever were, but it can help correct a number of the faults in the current system. The risk of corruption is reduced, election fever abates and attention to the common good increases. Voting on the basis of gut feeling is replaced by sensible deliberation, as those who have been drafted are exposed to expert opinion, objective information and public debate. Citizens chosen by lot may not have the expertise of professional politicians, but they add something vital to the process: freedom. After all, they don’t need to be elected or re-elected.

David may have a little too much faith in politicians’ “expertise” – most are lawyers, few have any notion of science behind high school, and here in the United States there is often a suspicion of science – even as they benefit from it – because it doesn’t correspond to certain of their prejudices.

But it does sound interesting as one method of using the idea of representative democracy to isolate the common citizen from the some obscure decisions that must be taken in the larger world, without necessarily excluding them as a group – and building up resentment. I do think there’d have to be some concern about non-participation – think of how much people generally hate doing jury duty; however,  I had jury duty about 11 months ago, and I didn’t actually notice much resentment.

Perhaps it’s more of a step towards participatory democracy – the idea that there’s more to civic life than just voting once in a while and braying in a blog, with little thought towards consequences.

From NewScientist (10 September 2016, paywall):

PREVIOUSLY, Feedback discussed how scatty naming conventions were confounding attempts to compile stool-related research (27 August).

Now scientists have uncovered a new categorisation error: 20 per cent of scientific papers in genetics journals contain mutations produced by contact with Microsoft Excel.

Writing in Genome Biology, the authors say that the popular spreadsheet program introduces transcription errors to many genes, converting septin 2 (SEPT2) to a date, and so forth.

The bug was most frequently found in files of supplementary data, “an important resource in the genomics community that are frequently reused”. Feedback reminds geneticists that it’s important to sanitise your tables – both in the lab and beyond.

Makes me want to run screaming around the block, bewailing the use of inappropriate tools by supposedly smart people.