Monthly Archives: September 2016

A reader remarks on my email rebuttal:

Too bad there’s not enough time to rebut every trash email like this.

Regarding the racist/religious-bigot aspect included in this email, the most recent issue of The Economist has an article about research they did to find out the nature of supporters of Donald Trump. To my surprise, the factors I thought would be top were not, but instead racist, religious bigot tendencies came out on top. Trump is the new dog whistle, according to the article.

Yes, what Donald has to say dovetails neatly with what they want to hear – which are promises of how he’s going to return them to greatness, without the burden of actually explaining how he’ll get there. Couple this with the current pack of journalists tendency to chronicle Hillary’s every coughing fit as if it were somehow relevant to her explicit priorities and plans of how to implement those priorities, and it’s keeping Donald somewhat close in the race.

I still believe that every time a journalist catches Donald in a lie or is trying to put forth a bit of fantasy, they should just start jeering, “Liar, Liar!” Just do it. Teach him to quit trying to lie his way to victory.

Wondering about Francis Scott Key and his famous composition? Scott Chamberlain lays out its history and an interpretation sensitive to complexity:

There has been much criticism recently that the song is a bit of a johnny-come-lately as far as national symbols go.  It only became the official anthem in 1931, right?

Well, yes… but that overlooks its long patriotic history.

In the wake of the War of 1812, The Star-Spangled Banner quickly became established as a popular patriotic song, joining other important tunes of the time like Hail Colombia andYankee Doodle.  It was a mainstay at military parades and historical pageants throughout the country.  During the Civil War-era it was somewhat overshadowed by more topical songs that spoke more explicitly about freedom and union, like The Battle Hymn of the Republic  or Rally ‘Round the Flag.  Even so, The Star-Spangled Banner continued be used by the union army, and in 1861 poet Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote a new verse to support the Union cause in the Civil War and denounce “the traitor that dares to defile the flag of her stars.”

As usual, Scott covers the entire issue in detail. Why? He used to be a historian.

WaPo reports on Russian attempts to influence, or even usurp, the U.S. citizenry:

U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies are investigating what they see as a broad covert Russian operation in the United States to sow public distrust in the upcoming presidential election and in U.S. political institutions, intelligence and congressional officials said.

The aim is to understand the scope and intent of the Russian campaign, which incorporates ­cyber-tools to hack systems used in the political process, enhancing Russia’s ability to spread disinformation.

The article goes on to concentrate on the upcoming elections with attention to vulnerabilities in computer election systems as well as the use of filched data to sway voters.

While this is all worrying, I have to wonder if they’re missing the bigger strategy: the use of subtle cyber strategies, people, leaks (including contaminated leaks, by which I mean a leak of filched information is then subtly modified for some end of the criminal, be it individual or state-level). There is a certain level of distrust of government at all levels that is quite beyond what it should be, in my mind. Granted, this is the height of subjectivity, but honestly the paranoia about government, from UFOs to Jade Helm 15 to the paranoid fantasies of the gun lobby has started me wondering whether the Russian (and Chinese?) goals are not so much to disrupt elections and the economy so much as to make us distrust our own institutions, until we’re willing to abandon proven leaders for walking shams (read Clinton and Trump, respectively). The puzzling behaviors of certain institutions, such as the NRA, the GOP, anti-abortion groups, anti-science groups such as the Discovery Institute – are they really just Americans with honestly acquired lunatic fringe opinions, or are they subtly influenced into paranoia and distrust by contaminated information distributed by enemies of liberal democracies?

Given how badly Russia has suffered from the precipitous decline in oil prices over the last few years, it wouldn’t be at all surprising if Russia was involved in such an effort. At one time a superpower, no doubt the Russian leadership would prefer to ascend back to the heights of world domination, as illustrated by their recent contention with Ukraine.

But it could be any of a number of actors, requiring subtlety and determination. Or it could be no one but my paranoid imagination.

This is amazing, if not of necessarily huge impact. From Phys.org:

Large quantities of fish are consumed in India on a daily basis, which generates a huge amount of fish “biowaste” materials. In an attempt to do something positive with this biowaste, a team of researchers at Jadavpur University in Koltata, India explored recycling the fish byproducts into an energy harvester for self-powered electronics.

The basic premise behind the researchers’ work is simple: Fish scales contain collagen fibers that possess a piezoelectric property, which means that an electric charge is generated in response to applying a mechanical stress. As the team reports this week in Applied Physics Letters, they were able to harness this property to fabricate a bio-piezoelectric nanogenerator.

To do this, the researchers first “collected biowaste in the form of hard, raw fish scales from a fish processing market, and then used a demineralization process to make them transparent and flexible,” explained Dipankar Mandal, assistant professor, Organic Nano-Piezoelectric Device Laboratory, Department of Physics, at Jadavpur University.

The collagens within the processed fish scales serve as an active piezoelectric element.

“We were able to make a bio-piezoelectric nanogenerator—a.k.a. energy harvester—with electrodes on both sides, and then laminated it,” Mandal said.

I wonder if there are any applications of this collagen directly as medical materials, such as building the framework for heart muscle. Given the electrical requirements for heart muscles to work…..

(h/t Megan Treacy @ Treehuggers.com)

I remarked to my Arts Editor that sometimes “… tilting at windmills is a necessity.”

Here’s her reply.

Iranian Presidential elections are coming up, spurring speculation that President Rouhani may not receive a second term. Chief amongst his problems? The Great Satan, of course, from Saeid Jafari in AL Monitor:

Speaking about the nuclear deal, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Aug. 1, “Was it not agreed that the unjust sanctions be lifted to have [positive] effects on people’s lives? Is any tangible impact seen on people’s lives after six months?”

Day by day, it appears that Khamenei’s viewpoint is gaining more and more momentum across Iran. Rouhani’s critics are continuously asking why the sanctions have not been lifted in effect. Parliamentarian Mohammad Soleimani, who served as minister of communication and information technology under Ahmadinejad, has said, “The government must explain to the people why sanctions and threats have not been removed and are becoming more intense every day.” On a similar note, in an interview on Iranian state television, Mehdi Mohammadi, a member of the team of former chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, said, “None of the big European banks will work with us. They have zero dealings with us. At the moment, no dollar transaction is being conducted with Iran, and this has created problems in all of our business dealings.”

Whether this is a problem or not is yet to be seen.

But to what extent are these sentiments shared among the Iranian public? [Saeed] Laylaz, the [Iranian] economist, said, “Very little. The Iranian people, in the [Feb. 26] parliamentary elections, once again voted in favor of Rouhani’s discourse. This shows that they are content with his management. Therefore, the opposition’s criticism of the nuclear deal and its economic achievements is not serious.”

However, anecdotal evidence suggests otherwise, and especially among the lower classes. Phrases such as “Rouhani hasn’t been able to do anything either” or “the nuclear deal has had no effect on people’s livelihoods” are quite common among the Iranian public these days.

Who will the conservative hard line opposition run? Former President Ahmadinejad doesn’t appear to have the kind of support required, not least because he reportedly offended Supreme Leader Khamenei during his term in office. And will enough of the public cotton to a hard line candidate to defeat Rouhani? What’s worse, apparently ineffectual or someone with terrifyingly conservative views?

A reader remarks about commercial breaks:

It doesn’t have to be that channel. Sometimes depending on the channel I watch, I get at least a good 10 minutes or more worth of commercials. You pay for cable then have to put with all these worthless commercials and at times its a repeat of the same ones over and over again….Sickening!

I’m old enough to remember that cable was advertised as TV without commercials, because you’d already paid for the programming via cable. That didn’t last long, did it?

The Japanese classic Kaiju movie Rodan (1956) is a queer mixture of the cheesy and the believable which, to some extent, actually works in its construction of a cautionary tale concerning the use of powers beyond belief releasing horrors also beyond belief.

The concept of a creature with a 500 foot wingspan and the ability to cruise at speeds greater than Mach 1 is, of course, laughable, although I did consider that, since the Rodans don’t flag their wings at high speeds, they must propel themselves through extreme flatulence. On the other hand, much of the balance of the science was at least credible, especially since the large insects which first inflict themselves upon the local populace have their counterparts in respectable paleontology. Because we’re talking about a fable, faking a bit of credulity in the interests of poetic license is not beyond the pale.

The opportunity to marvel at the models employed by the film makers is also something of a pleasure, even as the models implode, collapse, blow around, and are otherwise deconstructed by nature and monster. While the humans are mostly interchangeable, at least some ingenuity is displayed in the struggles against the various feral critters that appear to lust after human flesh, and this helps us swallow the more extreme elements of the story, bringing a certain human empathy to the victims, indirect as they may be, of the American’s hydrogen bomb that is said to awaken the creatures.

But perhaps most interesting was the ending: the Japanese, having located the sleeping monsters in a dormant volcano, proceed to bombard their quarters with such fury that the volcano itself awakens. As the two Rodans (or, as my Arts Editor was heard to mutter, “the rubber bats”) fluttered above the bubbling lava, rather than attacking their tormentors, they proceed to execute a sort of monstrous suicide, flinging themselves into the lava while bewailing their fates, all to the narration of one of the humans. It’s not entirely clear why the former rulers of the world have chosen to die rather than face down their restive prey, but perhaps it rang true for the Japanese culture of the 1950s. Perhaps they symbolized something important – the virtual fall of the Japanese dynasty (made impotent by the Americans after World War II), or how the Japanese are seeing change in everything, how the old can no longer cling to its old power and will now be discarded.

Or it’s just a silly ending to a silly movie. Your mileage will vary.

While watching a movie on the Comet Channel, a commercial break of 13 minutes was observed.

I think the mutations are out of control.

On Lawfare, Paul Rosenzweig addresses the topic of Critical Infrastructure, its Constitutional realities, and how, really, this is not an attempt to rig the Electoral system:

So … what does it actually mean in practice to be designated as CI? It means that a sector of the economy is so important that the Federal government will work to provide as much support as it can to the sector through cooperative public-private interactions. The overall structure of the CI program is governed by Presidential Policy Directive-21. As the policy puts it, the main role of DHS is coordination and assessment, not direction and control:

[The] Secretary of Homeland Security evaluates national capabilities, opportunities, and challenges in protecting critical infrastructure; analyzes threats to, vulnerabilities of, and potential consequences from all hazards on critical infrastructure; identifies security and resilience functions that are necessary for effective public-private engagement with all critical infrastructure sectors; develops a national plan and metrics, in coordination with [Sector Specific Agencies] SSAs and other critical infrastructure partners; integrates and coordinates Federal cross-sector security and resilience activities; identifies and analyzes key interdependencies among critical infrastructure sectors; and reports on the effectiveness of national efforts to strengthen the Nation’s security and resilience posture for critical infrastructure.

…
The result of a designation as CI is that the Federal government will provide assistance in coordination and assessment functions to members of the sector. For example, DHS conducts assessments on infrastructure and communities to help businesses and local government officials make decisions about where to put resources to enhance security before an event and improve recovery after an event. In the context of elections, DHS (along with other Federal agencies involved in elections and/or cybersecurity) might help state and local election officials with an assessment of whether or not they are actually vulnerable to attack and if so, offer advice on how best to mitigate that vulnerability.

What does it mean for the next election?

One final point: The way the system of designation works, none of this, NONE, will happen before the next election. Not the designation; not the formation of the ES-ISAC and not the training, assessment or review.

In short, the Obama “takeover” of the electoral system is just another bug-a-boo scare tactic unworthy of serious consideration. Worse yet, the myth’s propogation is itself a further cause of eroding confidence in our electoral system. The only appropriate response is to drive a stake through its heart as quickly and thoroughly as possible—an endeaver to which I hope this blog post contributes.

If conservatives want to worry about the corruption of the electoral system, this might be the place to start:

These are poll numbers from a democratically blue state. A liberal state. A progressive state. And yet our state Senate is 71% Republican (74% if you include Virgil Smith) and the state House is 57% Republican (59% if you include Harvey Santana.) In other words, the state of Michigan is being run by people who do not represent the views of the citizens of the state of Michigan and they have systematically put in place safeguards to ensure that they hold onto that power. [EclectaBlog]

And – unless you’re a conservative who thinks a racism is a compatible co-philosophy – this law, fortunately struck down by the courts, should also worry you:

A federal appeals court has struck down North Carolina’s voter identification law, holding that it was “passed with racially discriminatory intent.”

The ruling also invalidated limits the same state law placed in 2013 on early voting, same-day registration, out-of-precinct voting, and preregistration.

The three judges assigned to the case — all Democratic appointees — were unanimous that the Republican-controlled North Carolina legislature violated the U.S. Constitution and the Voting Rights Act three years ago by enacting the measure requiring voters to show certain types of photo ID at the polls.

“The record makes clear that the historical origin of the challenged provisions in this statute is not the innocuous back-and-forth of routine partisan struggle that the State suggests and that the district court accepted,” Judge Diana Motzwrote on behalf of Judges James Wynn and Henry Floyd. “Rather, the General Assembly enacted them in the immediate aftermath of unprecedented African American voter participation in a state with a troubled racial history and racially polarized voting. The district court clearly erred in ignoring or dismissing this historical background evidence, all of which supports a finding of discriminatory intent.” [WaPo]

Even in a supposedly secular nation such as Turkey, the tides of religion can be turbulent. The recent coup attempt has stirred up the waters of Islam to an unexpected extent, as Mustafa Akyol reports in AL Monitor:

Those who are broadly called “modernists” lead one side in this debate. They are scholars, most of them theology professors who have reformist views on Islam. To them, the Gulenist problem is the result of a belief in a divinely-guided savior, a culture of blind obedience to a religious master and an esoteric understating of Islam that sees mystical signs everywhere. They argue that other Islamic communities in Turkey — such as Sufi orders or the Nur tradition — also share these “superstitious beliefs.”

One of the scholars who make this argument is Mustafa Cagrici, the former mufti of Istanbul, a professor of Islamic theology and columnist for the mildly pro-Justice and Development Party Karar. He recently wrote a controversial piece on the need to question Islamic communities. He argued that not just Gulenists but also many other Islamic communities in Turkey believe in notions such as the “mahdi,” the savior who will come at the end of times, which does not exist in the Quran. These myths, he wrote, “arise from the crooked religious information produced over the centuries,” and Gulenists turned this into a threat because they were able to acquire immense power.

On the other side, there are more traditionalist Islamists who blame the modernists themselves for the problem. One of the most hawkish voices in this choir, columnist for the hard-core pro-Erdogan Star Yakup Kose, wrote a piece headlined “Who will control faculties of theology?” In this view, the problem was not the mainstream Sunni tradition, but Gulenists’ deviation from it. Kose saw the roots of the problem in 19th-century Muslim reformists such as Jamaladdin Afghani or Muhammad Abduh, “who all claimed to renew Islam.” He also pointed to Gulenists’ “interfaith dialogue” with Christians, which he saw as a proof of their heresy. The real solution for him was to cleanse Turkey’s faculties of theology from all such modernists who deviate from the “pure creed” of Sunni Islam.

The more I see of this, the more I consider it simply maneuvering for power.

Promiscuous teleology:

Psychologist Debora Kelemen of Boston University has argued that young children exhibit “promiscuous teleology” (a phrase only an academic could love), meaning they find goals and purposes in almost everything. [“Fate: Inventing Reasons for the Things Thatt Happen,” Stuart Vyse, September / October Skeptical Inquirer, p. 25]

Oh, I disagree: that’s a cool phrase. From the same article, an example of a teleological explanation is, if Briana’s cat ran away, it’s to teach her that taking care of animals is a big responsibility,” in contrast to the natural explanation “Because she left the door open.”

According to WCCO news, in previous years the attendance at the Minnesota State Fair was calculated by weighing the collected tickets.

This year they were scanning the tickets, so presumably they used a newer technology than a large balance scale.

Sometimes, it’s more about the raindrops on the glass than the view out the window.  Just saying…

Running a blog means posting about what interests and amazes you. Like this, from the Juno spacecraft:

CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM

This infrared image gives an unprecedented view of the southern aurora of Jupiter, as captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft on August 27, 2016.

The above is at infrared frequencies. Here’s another view of the Southern hemisphere in black and white.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS

Several years ago I was experimenting with the new computer language Mythryl, and I conceived of a project to convert the raw data files from the Viking probes into finished picture formats. Unfortunately, my calculus was not up to my ambitions, and after writing a lot of code, and learning a lot about functional programming, I reluctantly shelved the project. It does make me wonder about the calculations necessary to convert Juno raw data into visible pictures, though.

(h/t Spaceweather.com)

Troy LaRaviere has published his resignation letter, addressed to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel. As principal of James G. Blaine Elementary School in Chicago, he had moved it into the #1 slot in the neighborhood school ratings for the city. He explains how he did it:

Behind this significant accomplishment are a series of basic concepts based on empirical evidence regarding effective school practices and thoughtful consideration of how we might apply those practices at Blaine.  One fundamental element of improving the school was ending selective access to advanced curriculum.  When I arrived, less than 30% of students had access to it; today more than 90% have access. As is the case with most CPS schools, Blaine has a talented hard working staff.  Another critical element of our success was to involve that staff in an effort to create systems, relationships, and patterns of collaborative activity that are proven to improve teacher performance, and therefore improve student achievement.  In many ways, that was the easy part.

And why get out now?

I take my profession seriously and I practice it with integrity. I did not succumb to corporate educational fads. I did not pander and I did not bend to the selfish aims of a privileged few. If an idea was not in the interests of the school as a whole, it did not happen under my watch. However, during those first two years I kept my fight behind-the-scenes and between the walls of Blaine.  Like all CPS principals at the time, I took no public stances against your incompetent and uncaring mismanagement of our school system. It was my sincere hope that internal advocacy and leading by example could and would prevail.

Instead, the achievement gap steadily increased under your mismanagement as you and your appointees at CPS made one disastrous decision after another, in defiance of the evidence and research on educational practices.  You have made it increasingly difficult for principals and teachers to provide strong academic programs for our students.

If the balance of his excellent account are true, we’re once again witness to the tensions that occur when democracy and experts clash. Our understandable insistence on keeping local control of educational institutions can make it difficult to keep the ideas of the amateur and the politician out of the loop; and while the amateur may be well-intentioned, the politician is more often looking to make a name for themselves, or to pay off a donor; in any case, the well-being of the program may be secondary to the priorities of the politician. Mr LaRaviere is now making the next move of democratically controlled education: raising the ruckus and pointing out the errors of those who are interfering in effective education.

As advocates of evidence based medicine have discovered, there are a host of methods that may be in common use, yet have little actual positive impact on the educational system. It’s good to see one of our major cities has an advocate for a reality-based approach to education – and not just using it to clamber to power, something Mr. Emmanuel has been accused of in his career.

(h/t Walter Einenkel on The Daily Kos)

Our latest Vincent Price vehicle leads me to wonder: which lead actor has starred in the highest percentage of movies which culminate in the destruction, often flaming, of a castle? In The Raven (1963), using Edgar Allan Poe’s poem of the same name as a jumping off point, Vincent Price is the wizard Erasmus Craven, the husband of the woman who is the subject of the poem and now two years gone. He’s a quiet, underconfident wizard, living with his daughter, his dead wife (preserved in her coffin), and opens the story with the appearance of a talking raven.

Eventually, the raven is returned to human form, a wizard by the name of Bedlo (Peter Lorre), who is in a fury about the transformation, saying he lost a battle with the wizard Scarabus (Boris Karloff), and he had seen Craven’s late, lamented wife, Lenore, at Scarabus’ domicile. Bestirred at the thought of Lenore, Craven decides to investigate by visiting Scarabus’ castle.

The plot continues, at first seeming a bit pedestrian but eventually including unforeseen, yet plausible, convolutions worth the time. The climactic battle is, for all that the film is a bit fluffy, fairly satisfying: leisurely, both serious and comedic; the points it makes are better than many to be found in today’s tense battle scenes.

As the issue is decided,  the castle, built of course of stone, still manages to catch alight and collapse in a fiery burst, much as do similar structures in other Price movies, such as The Haunted Palace (1963), The Tomb of Ligeia (1964), Morella (1962), House of the Seven Gables (1963), and The Fall of the House of Usher (1960) – and perhaps others that I have not yet seen.

The raven is quite remarkable for its training. The three leads are excellent in their performances, and the supporting actors, including a young Jack Nicholson, are adequate in their work. This is a pleasantly entertaining film for those viewers who are not ruffled by the extension of Poe’s famous poem into a lengthy feature film. For those who are appalled at the thought, I can only direct you to this bravura performance:

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLiXjaPqSyY

My Arts Editor draws my attention to a new pipeline under construction in North Dakota. NPR.org provides coverage:

Protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota turned violent on Saturday.

Demonstrators supporting the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe faced off with private security officers from Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners.

Video from the scene showed security officers threatening protesters with dogs.

As All Things Considered reported, hundreds of Native Americans from tribes across the country have set up a camp near the construction site in North Dakota. The Army Corps of Engineer approved the oil pipeline in July allowing it to run under the Missouri river close to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s reservation.

Protesters worry that the $3.8 billion pipeline, which is slated to run through four states, could disturb sacred sites and affect the reservation’s drinking water.

A video of the clash is also provided.

Given the constricted future of fossil fuels, it’s a little frustrating to hear of new pipelines under construction, as well as the failure to consider the concerns of local American Indian residents. It’s tempting to suggest that an alternative energy grid would not cause such uproar, but that unfortunately would not be true. Growing up in Minnesota, I recall the popular health concerns about high voltage lines (as covered in this Forbes article in their Fighting PseudoScience column) and the vandalism occasionally committed against the lines.

Over on LinkedIn, Chevron’s CEO & Chairman, John Watson, makes the case for the continued future of fossil fuels. I suspect the renewables folks would disagree, but certainly there are applications for which the energy profile of fossil fuels is far more appropriate than the electricity produced by renewables. That said, my inclination would be to believe he overstates the case.

Clerestory:

In architecture, a clerestory (/ˈklɪərstɔːri/; lit. clear storey, also clearstory, clearstorey, or overstorey) is a high section of wall that contains windows above eye level. The purpose is to admit light, fresh air, or both.

Historically, clerestory denoted an upper level of a Roman basilica or of the nave of a Romanesque or Gothic church, the walls of which rise above the rooflines of the lower aisles and are pierced with windows. [Wikipedia]

My Arts Editor claims it’s a common word, but it’s new to me, hence this entry. Also from Wikipedia comes this rather majestic example.

With The Secret Life of Pets (2016) it’s clear that Illumination Entertainment has not regained the mojo it lost with the decidedly meh Minions (2015). As in Minions, the problem lies not in the animation, nor the voice talent – but in the story, a formulaic & predictable sequence of events featuring characters who may seem interesting, even edgy in the storybook, but didn’t have it on the screen – including the power-mad bunny.

Documenting how two dogs that hate each other learn to love each other, there’s not a lot of personal growth beyond that statement. Unlike Illumination‘s Despicable Me (2010), which featured a character that gloried in his evil who is then transformed through his discovery of a love for 3 adopted waifs, the dogs don’t have far to go to overcome a personal dislike. Escaping the clutches of a gang of dumped pets bent on revenge on the human race, imprisoned by the local animal control team, while a group of their friends forms a rescue posse to find and rescue them before the owners arrive home from work, various characters are created, sketched in – and then placed firmly in the background to play their parts. Even when Gidget steps forward to take command of the group of pets hunting for their missing friends, it feels like something planned and executed, not an organic part of her character.

The characters could have been important. For example, the hawk, Tiberius, who initially must fight his predatory urges when it comes to the small animals surrounding him. He could have represented some facet of the ambiguity of primal instincts vs how civilization leads us to ignore those instincts, for the betterment of ourselves and those who we don’t attack. But after his initial inner struggle, he simply becomes another member of the pack, with little to distinguish himself.

Other opportunities are lost. Duke, the new dog who inadvertently muscles in on Max’s territory when Max’s owner adopts him, eventually, and through the urging of Max, makes it back to the house of his first owner – they became separated through Duke’s foolish chasing of a toy. But there’s a new family in his house, and the family’s cat informs Duke that the former owner is dead. Duke yells that cats are LIARS!

And then we’re on our way, back on the road.

Imagine if they had ended up at the hospital, in time for reunification as the first owner dies, knowing his Duke is OK. Such are the ties of family. Or at a nursing home, illustrating that even the tightest bonds eventually fray and disappear, that in the face of death even the bonds of love wither.

Here’s the truly sad part of this failure of a movie: it has in its plot an important moral subject of these times, the abandonment of pets, and does absolutely nothing with it. The use and abuse of pets has some predictive value as to the future behavior of children, as does the behavior of their parents, who often hold the fate of pets in their hands. This could have been explored, to illustrate to those people who think pets should be dumped when they become inconvenient that every action has an effect – and it may reflect to their discredit if they are not good keepers of those lives they choose to take under their care. Instead, the fate of the gang of abandoned pets is not explored in the least, and the power-mad bunny that leads them? A few strokes of a child’s hand is enough to soothe him back into submission.

It’s like telling someone this is a fine dark chocolate – and then handing them a wax-cake.

This is a movie of lost opportunities, and cannot be recommended (although young kids should love it). Unfortunately, it’s done quite well at the box-office, which may obscure its failings to management. However, the tension between the art sector and the private sector is a different rant, which I shall not indulge in here. Those interested in the importance of understanding the sectors of society should follow this link.

Fun with liquid nitrogen!

http://htthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfgVk0ZzwBshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfgVk0ZzwBsps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfgVk0ZzwBs

(h/t Maddowblog)

Another little crockpot of doodly came in my email the other day, and it’s time to use it as a demonstration of how not to manipulate someone’s honest actions. Let’s begin with the sage wisdom of another, earlier age:

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. – Samuel Johnson, April 7, 1775

This email attempts to decorate Mr. Kaepernick with mud for his refusal to stand for the National Anthem at the start of a recent NFL game. Unfortunately, it’s mostly done in pictures, so rather than copy the email in its entirety for this dissection, I’ll take selected parts. The interested reader may contact me for  a full copy (use the email link). We’ll start with Mr. Kaepernick’s statement explaining his decision, from Wikipedia:

I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.

Our first exhibit suggests hypocrisy. But on examination, it’s not; this is simply the mistake of believing the whole is the same as the parts. There is not the least doubt in the world that the United States has many good people in it, and Mr. Kaepernick’s obvious affection for his adoptive family in these two shots is not proof of hypocrisy, but of his own human nature to love his family. On examination of his statement, it’s apparent that he’s referencing the well-documented homicides of black men by law enforcement, and the assertions by activists that many of these are murders¹. These are just typical, wonderful family pics.

Our second exhibit is a sly double play on racism (the denigrative reference to Black Lives Matter) and religious intolerance, which is to say that the author of this pic hates the idea that there can be other religions. But it gets even worse. How? First, whoever wrote this has to lie about Mr. Kaepernick’s religious convictions, as Mr. Kaepernick is not a Muslim, according to Snopes.com. Secondly, the attentive, independent reader who refuses to be lead about by the nose will realize that, just from the written text, Mr. Kaepernick is not hypocritical nor ungrateful, but instead is putting his fortunes on the line for a group of people he believes is being treated unfairly – so unfairly, in fact, that in his view they are being murdered. And those doing the killing are official representatives of the American state. He is explicitly identifying with the ideas of justice, self-sacrifice, and the powerful and influential using their positions to do good in the world. Can the author of this piece say the same about himself? His appeal would be, “Hey, you’re comfortable – don’t make waves!”

The admirable Mr. Wilder is used in this third pic to indulge in the error of self-indulgence. As noted earlier, this suggests that Mr. Kaepernick should be grateful for what he has and not pay attention to the suffering and early deaths of others, a self-centered behavior no doubt approved of by the creator of this pic – a despicable emotion. Worse, it attempts to deny a problem which has already been shown to exist through some simple statistics – not to mention some horrific videos.

Indeed. But it helps to understand there are some subtle problems with the list on the left. From Wikipedia:

After attending OTAs minicamp, and two weeks of training camp, Coffee abruptly announced on August 13 that he would retire just before the start of the 2010 NFL preseason.^[20][21] …

Coffee planned to return to the University of Alabama to finish his degree in consumer affairs, with an eye towards graduate school. Coffee confirmed that the reason he retired was that his heart was never in football and that he believed God wanted him to take another path.^[23]

Soon after his retirement, in October 2010, Coffee was arrested for illegally carrying a pistol. He was pulled over for speeding, and when the police discovered he was driving without insurance or registration for his car, they searched it and found the weapon.^[24] The charges were subsequently dropped.

Military service

Coffee enlisted in the U.S. Army in February 2013 to become a paratrooper.^[25][26]

In June 2013, Coffee graduated from United States Army Airborne School.^[27] Coffee is currently a paratrooper at the Ranger School, and works for the 6th Ranger Training Battalion.

It’s apparent he didn’t drop out of football to join the Army, but found the Army after dropping out and getting in trouble. He had no desire to play, no love of the game. He had to find another option, and he did. The unspoken assumption is that everyone is motivated by money; perhaps Mr. Coffee, to his credit, is not.

But it leads to our final exhibit, which may be the most effective. After all, we’ve picked some American vets who happen to be black who have suffered grievous wounds. Alas for the anonymous author, this leads to uncomfortable questions, such as “Are these men who volunteered for love of their country, or did they go in, like my white father did, because he was out of money and options?” I honestly don’t know – but I suspect they suffered their wounds because of decisions made by a faction of US neoconservatives to attack Iraq, an unnecessary and unjustified war. Did they have the option of the NFL, or MLB, or were they unable to attend college because of family poverty, and hoped to use the GI Bill (like my father) to gain higher education goals? Their undeniable service to country is deeply honorable – but we do not require military service at this time (and, as the conservative Mr. Heinlein liked to say, conscription is merely slavery). so if Mr. Kaepernick chose not to serve, he is neither dishonorable nor immoral. Perhaps, to him, the way of the NFL was a safe way to make his fortune in a country in which being black is often a perilous condition.

These grievous words are not those of the true patriot, but of the immature hater who cannot stand the thought that there may be something wrong with the way he or she lives. Mr. Kaepernick has chosen to use his position to throw a light on the uncomfortable proposition that law enforcement is not succeeding in its mission, even that it may have been subverted, and that it’s been very difficult to persuade law enforcement to investigate these incidents in a proper manner. Given the questionable rates at which Black Americans are harassed by police, activists and protesters have good points that must be addressed if we are to remain a society that might be considered just and desirable².

In other words, this is a slyly worded pack of lies and implications designed to play with the emotions of the reader and manipulate them into a position they would not take if they knew the facts. Still angry that he didn’t stand for the anthem? Think of the families of those men, women, and children shot dead by the United States, citizens themselves, armed and unarmed. Think about Mr. Kaepernick putting his fortunes on the line by this simple action, in solidarity with these victims. Ask yourself what you’ve done about the situation?

¹Homicide simply means the death of a human by the actions of another human; murder means an unlawful homicide.

²If the families of law enforcement personnel were subjected to the same harassment, law enforcement would not stand for it.

Ever notice how yesterday’s urgent medical advice is today’s critical error? Kayt Sukel covers the reasons in NewScientist (27 August 2016, paywall), and this particular reason caught me by surprise:

Among them is the fact that you’re often working on a moving target. “Diseases aren’t static – they can and do change over time,” says Gerstein. “Diabetes today is not the same as it was 50 years ago.” The number of people diagnosed with type 2 diabetes has more than doubled in the past two decades, and the age of onset has dropped. He says today’s type 2 diabetes is more likely to come with additional health issues like cancer, kidney problems and heart disease, compared with 50 years ago. “We call it by the same name but it behaves differently,” says Gerstein.

Other reasons include enthusiasm for new therapies from sufferers, poor early study design, commercial influences, and unfortunate use of “surrogate outcomes”, or what I tend to call proxies, rather than actual outcomes themselves. While there has been wide encouragement that all studies be published, regardless of outcome, and that all data be published, along with methodologies of data collection and analysis, I have not noticed anyone suggesting pre-study analyses. That is, every proposed study should also be published, once it reaches a certain point in the process of doing a study. The purpose would be to give peers the opportunity to critique the study’s various facets before they are executed. The advantages would be to eliminate weak and invalid methodologies.

However, this might not fly. Researchers are already extremely busy, and being asked to critique a proposed study may end up at the bottom of the priority list; and people qualified to critique are probably mostly doing research, so it’s unlikely that there’s a cohort of highly qualified scientists and techs who could perform this work.

But it might be worth making it work.

(I’ve also wondered if grad students are taught good study design, or if they’re expected to just pick it up from their advisors. Anyone know?)

Just in case you were wondering, yep, someone in France has latched onto the idea of moving France out of the EU. Specifically, Marine Le Pen, as reported by RT:

With less than a year to go to secure the hearts of the French people, Marine Le Pen, the leader of far-right party National Front, is offering something no other politician has on their agenda – the choice of leaving the EU. She also promised to defend ‘French values’ and ban the burkini. …

“The British had the courage to choose independence despite all the prophets of doom,” she said. “This referendum on France belonging to the European Union, I will do it. Yes it is possible to change things. Look at the Brits, they chose their destiny, they chose independence,” Le Pen said. “We can again be a free, proud and independent people.”

She seems to be building that ladder to the tree fort using the idea of Frexit as a rung. The question is whether the rung will break, and if she does make it to that tree fort, will it fall out of the tree? I also noted how, like other right-wingers, she adores extreme rhetoric:

“All my opponents have contributed to the collapse of France,” Le Pen said before accusing former president Sarkozy of declaring “allegiance to the worldwide leader of Wahabbism,” claiming he is unfit to rule France following his alleged trip to Morocco in August to befriend Saudi King Salman, RFI reports.

Le Pen called the Islamic fundamentalism the “new totalitarianism of the 21st century”, suggested terrorists were hiding among migrants. “The best weapon against terrorism is the ballot,” she said.

And this just sounds Trumpian:

Promising to defend ‘French values’, Le Pen referred to the recent bans on the burkini swimsuit, commenting that women “have the same right to freedom, to respect, the same faculty to benefit from the French way of life on the beach as in the schools, on the street as at work.”

Not stopping at the seaside resorts, Le Pen promised to introduce a nationwide ban on the burkini and extend the ban on Islamic headscarves to educational institutions and places of work.

The same rights to freedom, so let’s take one away, just to prove it.

I’m hoping our oldest and arguably most steadfast ally doesn’t trip over this divot. The collapse of the EU would not be a positive outcome for the world, economically, strategically, for democracy and justice, the environment, and science.