Monthly Archives: November 2016

But Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight is more than willing to talk about what went wrong – like any good scientist:

We also received a lot of criticism from Democratic partisans in the closing weeks of the campaign — more than we did from Trump supporters — because they thought we didn’t have Clinton as a heavy enough favorite. That’s unusual. We’ve forecasted enough races over the years to have taken criticism from almost every side. But in the past, it’s always been the trailing candidate’s supporters who gave us more grief.

In this respect, there’s another parallel between Trump’s victory on Tuesday, and the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union in June. Brexit polls showed the race almost tied, with “Remain” leading by perhaps half a percentage point. In fact, “Leave” won by about 4 percentage points. The polls took a lot of criticism even though they’d shown “Leave” at almost even-money, whereas betting markets — and the conventional wisdom from London-based reporters — had “Remain” heavily favored to prevail. Londoners may have interpreted the data in selective ways because of the “unthinkability” of Britain’s leaving the EU to people in their social circles.

Tuesday’s results were similar. We strongly disagree with the idea that there was a massive polling error. Instead, there was a modest polling error, well in line with historical polling errors, but even a modest error was enough to provide for plenty of paths to victory for Trump. We think people should have been better prepared for it. There was widespread complacency about Clinton’s chances in a way that wasn’t justified by a careful analysis of the data and the uncertainties surrounding it.

Complacency? Or distaste? Is this a matter of the underdog doing its utmost and coming through in the clutch? I have trouble with such large composite creatures coming up with a coordinated action, although admittedly voting doesn’t require much coordination. Where was the supposed Trump dampening effect, wherein his proponents would be so depressed by the common wisdom that they wouldn’t bother to vote? The progressives were banking heavily on this supposed tendency, and fell hard because of it.

Another presumptive champion chokes in the clutch.

And does this mean next time the presumptive favorite will be posturing as if their throat’s about to be ripped out? On the one hand, it feels like one more slick politician’s trick … and I have trouble getting beyond it. It tends to mask any honest evaluation of the problems the Democratic Party may have; it blames the voters for not showing up, rather than asking whether the Democrats gave voters a reason not to show up. And the longer they delay fixing the problem, the harder it’ll be to fix.

Yes, I’m a giant chicken doing battle with SpaceGodzilla
Source: Head Injury Theater

Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla (1994) features the iconic rubber suit monster in a three way cage match against SpaceGodzilla, Godzilla‘s outre clone from outer space (involving black holes, white holes, worm holes, and plot holes), and Mogera, the Japanese built (and, no doubt, predecessor to Pacific Rim) monster robot. But before that, we get many meaningless plot twists and turns involving a man with a grudge against Godzilla (a little like a grudge against the Moon); a team working to control Godzilla via telepathy (I do hope there’s no feedback, kids); the Mogera team, out to kill Godzilla; the Yakuza (maybe they funded the picture and were looking for some positive publicity), who see Godzilla in a junior role in the organization; and perhaps one or two others I missed. And, for some reason, Godilla, Jr, with hugely adorable eyes and a developmental problem with his superpower.

But after a lot of running around (hey, it’s a monster movie – he who walks gets squished), it all comes down to a climactic battle between the three heavyweights. As little can be made of the arbitrary battle as that of the plot twists; perhaps the most memorable part of the entire movie is the uncanny resemblance of Mogera to a giant … chicken. Right down to the wattles. That’s right, it even tries to peck SpaceGodzilla to death.

If you’re six years old and love Godzilla, this is for you. Otherwise, just turn your head and don’t watch this train wreck.

For FiveThirtyEight, Oliver Roeder reports on the current World Chess Championship from New York City:

The two grandmasters play alone in a separate room, accompanied only by two stoic match arbiters. On the inside, the room resembles the bridge of a sci-fi spaceship. To the spectators on the outside, though, it evokes a reptile house in a zoo. You enter the dark, hot and humid viewing gallery through thick black curtains. You’re hushed as you enter and reminded to silence your phone. The lights inside are dimmed, and an eerie purple light glows from behind the thick glass of the one-way mirror. You can see Carlsen and Karjakin, leaning in close to each other over the board in deep thought. They can’t see you.

And along with all the spectators, ruminating over the game strategies employed by the masters, is this monster:

The computer chess engine Stockfish was in full agreement [concerning the first two draws], seeing both games as nothing but deadlocked.

Ya gotta wonder how American chess whiz Bobby Fischer would have reacted to a computer critiquing his play. I haven’t paid a great deal of attention to the social consequences of computers taking over our favorite intellectual games, such as Chess and Go. Will, or even have, leagues develop in which computers are either banned, or are exclusive, or an intermixture of human and computers? Will the progress of a human in a computer league be followed with rapt attention? Or would that progress never occur?

Daniel Byman provides a handy guide to interpreting terrorism over the last century or so:

Terrorism has changed over time. David Rapoport, an influential scholar of terrorism, argues that we’ve seen four waves of terrorism so far: an anarchist wave at the turn of the last century; an anti-colonial wave that began in the 1920s and continued for four decades; a leftist wave that declined with the fall of Communism; and an Islamist wave that arose with the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran and continues to present, taking different forms, such as that of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, in the years since. These waves all featured different types of terrorism: anarchists assassinated prime ministers and presidents, leftists kidnapped industrialists and attacked military targets, and anti-colonial movements used terrorism as part of revolutionary warfare, along with guerrilla tactics and political mobilization.

It would be interesting to take a representative of each of these waves and ask them to re-characterize the activities used to distinguish each wave. Is it terrorism from their point of view as well? Or a justified war to throw off the colonial yoke? I just have to wonder if the word terrorism is being overused at this juncture, or if we’re really stuck with our viewpoints. Is there a universal term (or plural) for these activities, one which provides accurate descriptions and interpretive power, or are we inevitably stuck with our parochial viewpoints?

Whatever the answers, Daniel’s summary is a handy guide.

Paths of Glory (1957) is fictional non-entertainment. Legendary director Stanley Kubrick’s movie of a minor attack by the French during World War I, and its fallout, focuses on man’s inhumanity: the ambition of one general, even in the face of overwhelming odds; the pettiness of another in assuming the idealistic actions of a colonel actually provide cover for his ambition; the cowardice of a lieutenant, and how he covers it.

There’s a story, but it’s not conventional. We do not see the sympathetic protagonist triumph over the antagonists; the smoke and awfulness of war serve to cover up the banal evil that envelops the French High Command, a command group with an old-fashioned morality which has little basic human respect for the infantry man, for the man who used to hold a pike or a lance, but is now equipped with far more firepower – and is far more vulnerable than ever before.

So this is a story of the clash of moralities; the old morality where the State subordinated all to its needs, and therefore those who controlled the State could indulge their foolishness with little more than worry than that their ambitions might not be slaked; and the new morality, newborn and struggling, trying to value the individual, to treat each other personally with honor – and the results when the two clash, and neither is served well.

Men struggle and fall in this great clash, of Powers and of moralities, and nearly all is distress, until in the final scene, at a bar, a troop of men, battle-hardened and weary, having just carried out an execution, sit in a bar, drinks in hand, and are at their raucous worst as a young, lost German woman is paraded out by the bar owner. They hoot and yell and abuse her for her nationality.

Until she begins to sing. Poorly, haltingly. And the men stop their ribaldry, and soon they’re humming along with her, reminded of better times, when foolish pride and rivalry had not yet led powerful States into unnecessary Wars with each other. Before losing face meant the sacrifice of the little man. Back when men & women need not struggle against each other in more than gin rummy, perhaps, as peaceful friends. Before it became necessary to shoot a man strapped to a stretcher.

You will not enjoy this movie, but it may move you. Kubrick was a master, and this is a masterpiece, from dialog to make up, from cinematography to audio, from the chatter of weapons while men obliviously make plans in the trenches that may become their tombs, to the irritated general, distressed by impertinent questions from the press and his subordinates, striding through the ballroom as general officers and their wives and mistresses dance to gay tunes. Kubrick’s carefully chosen contrasts illuminate the sad lack of necessity of the Great War, and the distressing evil lust of those who call for more of it, even today.

You get this:

Here’s a mushroom I bought at Byerly’s before prep:

Why do I bring this up? Because it’s been stemmed – and my recipe calls for using the stems to build the mushroom stuffing.

In essence, this is probably food wastage. Unless the stems were used in other food products, I just have to shake my head at this particular preparation and suggest that wasting food is really a tacky sort of thing to do – and immoral.

Granton edge:

A slicing knife serves a similar function to a carving knife, although it is generally longer and narrower. Slicers may have plain or serrated edges. Such knives often incorporate blunted or rounded tips, and feature kullenschliff (Swedish/German: “hill-sharpened”) or Granton edge (scalloped blades) to improve meat separation. Slicers are designed to precisely cut smaller and thinner slices of meat, and are normally more flexible to accomplish this task. As such, many cooks find them better suited to slicing ham, roasts, fish, or barbecued beef and pork and venison[.] [ Wikipedia]

Referenced on a recent episode of Cook’s Country.

If you want your floor lamps to make an impact, you may wish to talk to Nacho Carbonell:

© Nacho Carbonell, image from designboom

More of Carbonell’s work is on designboom.

Art? Architecture? Building technique? Lloyd Alter on Treehugger.com points at the ultimate in green housing – Baubotanik architecture:

image © ludwig.schönle
From designboom

When we first wrote about German architect Ferdinand Ludwig, I noted that Architecture is not a profession for those with short attention spans. Ludwig is in a whole different category- he grows buildings, and needs a very long attention span. His biggest, the ‘platanen-kubus’ won’t be finished until 2028.

Designboom describes it:

The building is a multi-story structure comprising of more than 1000 plane trees that Ludwig has combined into a single living organism. The living building materials overgrow a steel framework and as the years go on, will transcend into the bearing elements.

Hope the inhabitants don’t have allergies to trees. This doesn’t seem to be an Art project, although the whimsical aspect I immediately assumed would indicate so. From the Baubotanik website, here’s a Research statement:

In currently ongoing promotions in the field of research of Baubotanik, botanical, constructional and theoretical aspects of the approach building with living plants are being worked on. All in all, the interdisciplinary supervised projects aim to acquire natural scientific and technical basics as well as to describe the consequences of the approach for the design process and to classify in a culture theoretical way.

There’s at least one Ph.D. thesis involved in the work:

To bring closure to this thread, Kansas voted to retain four of the Justices on the Kansas Supreme Court, as noted in McClatchyDC:

Efforts to remove four of the seven justices started with critics of past rulings that overturned death sentences in capital murder cases. The justices plan to hear arguments in December in the case of a man sentenced to die for killing his estranged wife and three other family members in northeastern Kansas.

Abortion opponents and conservative Republicans also wanted to remove the justices ahead of major rulings on abortion and school funding cases. The court has yet to hear the abortion case, but a ruling on education funding is expected by early next year. …

The court’s critics targeted Chief Justice Lawton Nuss and Justices Marla Luckert, Carol Beier and Dan Biles for removal in statewide yes-or-no votes to determine whether they should remain for another six years. They were appointed by moderate GOP or Democratic predecessors of conservative Republican Gov. Sam Brownback.

Brownback’s only appointee, Justice Caleb Stegall, also was on the ballot but wasn’t a target.

Voters retained all five.

Nuss said in a post-election interview that the ouster efforts would not influence the court and that its rulings would continue to be “based on the rule of law and the constitution.”

“If you were in a lawsuit, would you want a judge who was influenced by anything other than what the law requires?” Nuss said.

As I contemplate this temporary victory for judicial independence, it occurs to me that the procedure of appointments, rather than public votes, also excludes, at least for the most part, the modern phenomenon of outside money, by which I mean money raised by organizations which are outside of the jurisdiction in question. It is perhaps one of the most unfair facets of the modern political scene that great amounts of money is raised and used to target candidates for local seats for defeat by organizations which do not, for the greater part, reside in the jurisdiction in question. This occurs because of national strategies which call for dominance of the local political scene in order to produce the same dominance at the national level.

An appointment method for judges would obviate, if not entirely exclude, external influences; naturally, a weak appointing body would still be vulnerable to those influences, but I think that the appointment method is much less vulnerable, in general, to such deviant approaches.

A slice of someone else’s life often fascinates me, especially if it’s out of my experience – even if it’s probably excruciatingly dull. Here’s Aaron Nielson writing at Notice & Comment, “A Blog from the Yale Journal on Regulation and the ABA Section of Administrative Law & Regulatory Practice“:

… did you know that the word limit for briefs filed in the D.C. Circuit (unlike some other courts) is changing? It’s true: “On December 1, 2016, several amendments to the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure will go into effect. … Among the amendments are provisions that revise the word limitations for briefs; establish word limitations for other documents produced using a computer and require a certificate of compliance for such documents; and eliminate the 3-day grace period for responding to documents served electronically.” Going forward, the length limit will be 13,000 words for a principal brief and 6,500 words for a reply brief; previously, it was 14,000 and 7,000 words, respectively. Earlier this month, the D.C. Circuit formally announced how it will implement these changes.

Why am I writing about this of all things? Well, for three reasons. First, because lawyers should know about the change; I like to help spread the news, and with all the election talk, maybe this latest bit of news has been overlooked. Second, because I think that this word reduction is a bad move. I’ve both litigated in the D.C. Circuit and clerked there, and the cases can be quite complicated. Sometimes — especially in complex cases, and especially because it is hard to know ex ante what will persuade all judges — words are already tight as it is. And third, because doing so hopefully illustrates a point: There is more to life than politics. Why not pause for a moment, take a deep breath, think about appellate word limits, and enjoy the weekend? There will be plenty of time next week to contemplate the implications of the election. But as far as I can see, everyone — those who oppose the new administration and those who support it alike — would do well to slow down and think about something else, at least for a few days. And appellate word limits are something else!

Word limitations for briefs is not politics.

Draw your own lesson.

One of the paramount mysteries of paleontology are the ludicrously small arms of the T. Rex. But plans are in process to investigate with new technology, as Hannah Gavin reports on the D-brief blog of Discovery Magazine:

Carmen Soriano, a resident paleontologist at Argonne, will use a technique called X-ray micro-tomography to examine [A T. Rex named] Sue’s arm, which was removed from her fossil skeleton last week at the Field Museum and temporarily transported to Argonne.

Just like computed tomography (CT) scans at hospitals, this method captures a series of X-ray images and assembles them into a holistic 3-D representation. Importantly, this technique is non-invasive: Just as sections of the brain can be analyzed by CT scan without cutting into a skull, Sue’s priceless arm can be scanned without slicing it to bits.

So many theories, so few facts. Even “totally useless” is a theory that gets tossed around.

How about “wrong arm”?

I look forward to the conclusions.

I must admit my interest is whetted when an article on physics starts out,

YOU are made of carbon. So are your pets and all your houseplants. Every living thing on Earth owes its existence to carbon atoms’ ability to join up with other elements in a bewildering number of ways and form complex molecules. But the abundance of this element in our universe depends on a seemingly miraculous coincidence – an excited state of the carbon nucleus that our best models say shouldn’t exist, but clearly does.

The nature of this weird form of carbon has baffled us for more than 60 years, much to the distress of nuclear physicists. Its existence is so essential in the sequence of reactions making life possible that our failure to explain it is deeply embarrassing. “We need this state to exist for us to be here and yet it is extremely unusual in nuclear physics terms,” says David Jenkins at the University of York, UK. “Cracking this problem has become a matter of pride.” And yet the more we learn, the more confusing things seem to become.

This is from “Life’s subatomic secret: How we’re cracking the Hoyle state,” by Marcus Chown (NewScientist, 22 October 2016, paywall), and I’d never heard of this particular mystery before. It’s fascinating stuff – but, being high energy physics, is way beyond me. I can sort of follow this:

Source: openclipart.org

The first step in carbon manufacture is to fuse nuclei of the lightest element, hydrogen, to make the second-lightest, helium. The next step ought to be for two helium-4 nuclei – each containing two protons and two neutrons – to fuse to make beryllium-8. This would then grab another helium to make carbon-12. Except there is a snag. Beryllium-8 is highly unstable, meaning it decays in the blink of an eye – too quickly to produce the amount of carbon that exists in the universe.

The other possibility is that three helium-4 nuclei come together simultaneously inside bloated, dying stars known as red giants, where all the hydrogen has burned off to leave an extremely dense and hot core of helium. But this process is so rare that even over the aeons since the big bang, it couldn’t have produced enough carbon.

But after that I get lost (why is beryllium-8 unstable?¹ for example) , except to understand they’re using supercomputers to computationally model the problem.

I think there’s two reasons an article like this fascinates me. First, physicists are some of the smartest folks in the world, so it’s good to see them bemused.

Second, the activity of attacking a puzzling mystery often leads to all sorts of interesting knowledge. I can’t wait to see if that’s true of this mystery.

¹The Isotopes of beryllium page in Wikipedia is actually fascinating, not for the why, but the what. For example,

The rate at which the short-lived ⁷Be is transferred from the air to the ground is controlled in part by the weather. ⁷Be decay in the sun is one of the sources of solar neutrinos, and the first type ever detected using the Homestake experiment. Presence of ⁷Be in sediments is often used to establish that they are fresh, i.e. less than about 3–4 months in age, or about two half-lives of ⁷Be.

In the 60 Seconds column of NewScientist (), they mention a new millipede with …

… 14 legs, 200 poison glands and four penises …

ZooKeys has the academic article, in case you’re interested. Here’s some of the commentary:

Source: ZooKeys

A Dorsal view of head, antennae and rings 1–5 of I. tobini sp. n. (scale bar 300 µm) B the same of I.plenipes (scale bar 300 µm) C Lateral (right) view of head and rings 1–5 of I. tobini sp. n. (scale bar 300 µm) D the same of I. plenipes (scale bar 300 µm). Illacme tobini sp. n.: E anterolateral (right) view of head and first leg pair (scale bar 100 µm) F lateral (left) view of head and first leg pair, antennae broken off at base (scale bar 100 µm). (Catalog #s: I. tobini sp. n. MPE00735, I. plenipes SPC000932.)

John Delury has a startling report on the general foreign policy discussion of what to do with North Korea on 38 North:

The Hawks

The most remarkable new feature in the North Korea policy debate is serious contemplation of military force as the only viable option left. Such calls to arms are couched in guarded terms: no one advocates an imminent attack on the Yongbyon nuclear complex, and none dare call this approach for what it would most likely be: the start of a second Korean War. Instead, national security figures such as Mike Mullen,James Stavridis and Victor Cha suggest that a “surgical” or “pre-emptive” strike almost certainly must take place before Kim Jong Un perfects the capability to hit the US homeland with a nuclear missile. During the Obama years, military options were off the table because of the cost that Seoul would have to pay for a strike on Pyongyang. AsPresident Obama put it to Charlie Rose, “we could obviously destroy North Korea with our arsenals but … they are right next door to our vital ally, the Republic of Korea.” But with the South Korean government indulging in extremely bellicose rhetoric, integrated into recent US-ROK joint military exercises, that restraint seems to be vanishing before our eyes.

How might Beijing react to a US pre-emptive or surgical strike on the North? The question is often evaded, perhaps because the answer makes a military solution considerably less attractive. North Korea is, after all, China’s only defense treaty ally in the world, and is obligated to “immediately render military and other assistance by all means at its disposal” to defend Pyongyang if attacked. Their 1961 treaty is often overlooked or trivialized—occasionally by Chinese academics themselves. But the agreement remains in force, underscoring North Korea’s unique place in Chinese foreign relations. To mark the 55th anniversary of the treaty’s signing in July, Kim Jong Un sent Xi Jinping a friendly note praising the pact as a “firm legal foundation” for the bilateral relationship.

And then there are the “boas”, who prefer stronger sanctions, and a great deal more pressure on China. If China could be persuaded to pull the rug out from underneath North Korea, then the boas believe Kim Jong Un would see reason and give up nuclear weapons development. John delivers summary paragraphs, written before the U.S. election, and perhaps assuming Clinton would be the victor, rather than Trump:

Fighting for engagement and negotiation with North Korea in the US foreign policy debate is an uphill battle. But proponents of engagement have one trump card: when Washington engages, the China factor becomes an asset in dealing with North Korea, rather than a liability or roadblock. Beijing, after all, is steadfast in its strategy of engaging Pyongyang, and it is perpetually looking for US openness to negotiation. China’s security policy toward North Korea is unwavering: the goal is denuclearization, the preconditions are peace and stability, and the method is dialogue. If the next US president adopts an engagement strategy, Xi Jinping’s government would likely step up its own work to achieve short-term breakthroughs and long-term solutions. Paradoxically, Washington’s best chance of getting China to apply constructive pressure on its errant neighbor is through a major US initiative to negotiate with Kim Jong Un.

Beijing does not think any amount of sanctions and pressure, including the use of military force, will change Pyongyang’s behavior in the way Washington wants. The firm policy of the Chinese government, supported by most foreign policy experts (though not necessarily the ones most quoted by US and South Korean media), is that only dialogue and negotiation can moderate North Korea’s behavior, and that the best hope for long-term progress lies in the untapped potential of North Korea’s economic transformation and regional integration. Many South Koreans, including the leading candidates to become the next ROK president, would seem to agree.

I’ve heard little more than Trump might be willing to talk to Kim Jong Un, with little detail. How this plays out will be very interesting.

Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes advocate for the retention of FBI Director James Comey on Lawfare:

Whatever you think of Comey’s judgment or conduct during the campaign, his actions have unequivocally demonstrated political independence from his political bosses, as he has in the past. And that is exactly what we will need from the FBI in the coming years.

Throughout his career, Comey has stood up to the political leadership of both parties. During the Bush administration, he offered to resign over questions of law and principle. If the last few weeks demonstrate anything, it is that we can trust him to speak his mind irrespective of the political consequences; in fact, the harshest charge against him is that he cannot be trusted to not speak his mind, even when it might behoove him and when doing so might undermine the fondest wishes of those in power.

If you believe, as we do, that this country has elected as President a dangerous man, one with authoritarian tendencies, having a principled FBI Director willing to stand up to those in power and speak his mind irrespective of political costs is critical.

No doubt many would reject this conclusion, even the reasoning, although getting the final evaluation finished is a point in his favor. But what of the report of Russian contacts with the Trump campaign, despite the denials of Trump? Should they have also been disclosed? That troubles me.

A friend points me, approvingly, at an article by Naomi Klein for Reader Supported News asserting Neoliberalism is at fault for the election results:

hey will blame James Comey and the FBI. They will blame voter suppression and racism. They will blame Bernie or bust and misogyny. They will blame third parties and independent candidates. They will blame the corporate media for giving him the platform, social media for being a bullhorn, and WikiLeaks for airing the laundry.

But this leaves out the force most responsible for creating the nightmare in which we now find ourselves wide awake: neoliberalism. That worldview – fully embodied by Hillary Clinton and her machine – is no match for Trump-style extremism. The decision to run one against the other is what sealed our fate. If we learn nothing else, can we please learn from that mistake?

Here is what we need to understand: a hell of a lot of people are in pain. Under neoliberal policies of deregulation, privatisation, austerity and corporate trade, their living standards have declined precipitously. They have lost jobs. They have lost pensions. They have lost much of the safety net that used to make these losses less frightening. They see a future for their kids even worse than their precarious present.

Unfortunately, just reading her prose tells me she’s hyperbolic and, therefore, wrong. “Sealed our fate“? What bullshit – we all already know Clinton lost by a hair. As Steve Benen points out, if the trivial number of voters who went for Stein and Johnson had voted for Clinton, Trump would have lost.

My conclusion is that she has something against neoliberalism and is willing to use this election result as a tool in attacking it – because Klein’s desperate need to assert the election was a foregone conclusion when it obviously wasn’t is a clear signal that her logic chain is so weak a bird could break it.

Just to put the sharp point of the pencil forward, I didn’t bother reading more than the above paragraphs. Her communications style is so poor, she’s so desperate to assert an insight, she should turn in her pen and pad and go flip french fries. Regardless of whether she’s right or wrong. Given her bright, shiny axe to grind, I can’t possibly trust her arguments. Nor am I able to judge them independently, as I’m a lowly software engineer without the time to analyze what she has to say. Isn’t this pathetic – she may have a point, but right from the get-go all I can say is that’s a knife in her hand, everyone back off.

I wonder what the record is for the number of lawsuits faced by a President or President-elect, because our Donald is facing his first, coming up November 28th. According to WaPo, Trump is looking to delay it:

Attorneys for President-elect Donald Trump went to court Thursday to ask that a civil fraud suit against Trump scheduled to begin in less than three weeks be delayed, a reminder of the unusual complications facing Trump as he shifts from businessman to commander in chief.

Trump’s attorneys said he will be too busy with the presidential transition to participate in the Nov. 28 trial involving his defunct real estate seminar program, Trump University. They asked that the trial be postponed until February or March, after he has taken office. …

[Judge] Curiel proposed potentially having Trump testify by video to make the trial easier on him, but also urged that he settle with former students suing over the real estate seminars.

And I urge those former students to settle with our future President. I suggest a good rate would be 2 or even 3 times the damage they’ve suffered.

Just to make it clear to our Donald that fucking people over is not acceptable. He needs to be bopped on the nose occasionally. If they can get more, good for them.

Leslie Knope writes one on Vox. It’s a little long, so I’ll quote the part that amused me, rather than the other part that inspired me:

When I was in fourth grade, my teacher Mrs. Kolphner taught us a social studies lesson. The 17 students in our class were introduced to two fictional candidates: a smart if slightly bookish-looking cartoon tortoise named Greenie, and a cool-looking jaguar named Speedy. Rick Dissellio read a speech from Speedy, in which he promised that, if elected, he would end school early, have extra recess, and provide endless lunches of chocolate pizzandy (a local Pawnee delicacy at the time: deep fried pizza where the crust was candy bars). Then I read a speech from Greenie, who promised to go slow and steady, think about the problems of our school, and try her best to solve them in a way that would benefit the most people. Then Mrs. Kolphner had us vote on who should be class president.

I think you know where this is going.

Except you don’t, because before we voted, Greg Laresque asked if he could nominate a third candidate, and Mrs. Kolphner said “Sure! The essence of democracy is that everyone—” and Greg cut her off and said, “I nominate a T. rex named Dr. Farts who wears sunglasses and plays the saxophone, and his plan is to fart as much as possible and eat all the teachers,” and everyone laughed, and before Mrs. Kolphner could blink, Dr. Farts the T. rex had been elected president of Pawnee Elementary School in a 1984 Reagan-esque landslide, with my one vote for Greenie the Tortoise playing the role of “Minnesota.”

After class, I was inconsolable. Once the other kids left, Mrs. Kolphner came over and put her arm around me. She told me I had done a great job advocating for Greenie the Tortoise. Through tears I remember saying, “How good, exactly?” and she said, “Very, very good,” and I said, “Good enough to—?” and she sighed and went to her desk to get one of the silver stars she gave out to kids who did a good job on something. And as I tearfully added it to my Silver Star Diary, she asked me what upset me the most.

“Greenie was the better candidate,” I said. “Greenie should have won.”

She nodded.

“I suppose that was the point of the lesson,” I said.

“Oh, no,” she said. “The point of the lesson is: People are unpredictable, and democracy is insane.”

In the epilogue, Leslie suggests donations to several organizations. I will be looking into doing so with our emergency charity budget.

The movie Berserk! (1967), starring Joan Crawford, starts off well, as Gaspar the Great, the high wire act of the Rivers Circus, is unexpectedly hung when his wire snaps and wraps around his neck in front of the audience. The atmosphere of the circus is meticulously recreated, from the elephants to the acts to the labor gang, and soon we feel as part of the family, understanding Rivers (Crawford) to be the dictatorial parent, and the others as anything from lovers to enemies.

Then a new high wire act moves in, starring the Great Hawkins, not only into the circus, but into Rivers’ arms – but it’s an icy (and rather unbelievable) embrace, as Rivers is old enough to be the new act’s mother. But audiences flock to the circus, the circus in which the macabre accident occurred, as they often do, and Rivers is pleased.

Then another death, and another, and the police become an avid part of the audience. For a while the movie remains intriguing, even if we are wrestling with the supposed affair between Rivers and Hawkins, as there’s little else hitting a false note. But as we approach the end, a new character arrives: Rivers’ teenage daughter, unmentioned, rebellious about being sent off to school, and unexpected. Could we have yet another victim, just to needle Rivers about enjoying the receipts generated by the deaths of her employees?

No.

The daughter is the bloody KILLER.

So the audience is treated entirely unfairly. No attempt is made to explain how the murders were accomplished. The motivation? To get her mother out of the circus culture.

It’s like someone put a knife into the center of the painting of Mona Lisa and ripped it right out. OK, maybe not old Mona, but some rather good painting – because it’s a glaring, painful flaw in what was otherwise an enjoyable murder mystery.

See it if you adore Joan Crawford (who’s frankly rather scary) then see this, otherwise you’ll just be disappointed.

Steve Benen on MaddowBlog notes one consequence of the SCOTUS blockade:

Going forward, Americans should understand that rewarding radicalism produces more radicalism. Senate Republicans abandoned the constitutional process, institutional norms, and democratic traditions, rejecting a duly elected president’s high-court nominee – without so much as a hearing – because of his party affiliation. And because that gambit worked, and voters rewarded the scheme, the message for policymakers is, “Go ahead and pursue similarly radical plans. The public doesn’t care. There are no consequences for misbehavior.”

And this is an important result, although I’m not convinced the GOP is going to actually hang together all that much longer. In engineering terms, they’re beginning to look like a positive feedback process, and, if so, their immensely good luck a couple of days ago will be followed by some sort of total catastrophe that will rip the party apart. No inside information here, just observing the outer behaviors, and thinking about how the former inhabitants of the fever-swamps will attack the more moderate members of the GOP.

But there is another result, not necessarily an alternative but parallel. Assuming (and I use that word with a creepy-crawly feeling going right up my spine) Trump nominates someone of far-right tendencies to replace the late Justice Scalia, the opposition, if it so chooses, could apply the label Illegitimate Justice to him or her, and through repetition make it stick.

So let’s consider the temperament of jurists. How many would want that label, perhaps helpfully abbreviated IJ, pursuing them throughout history? Each decision a SCOTUS judge renders is history making, so smart candidates are going to have a finely tuned sense of the idea that they’ll have a big legacy.

Will they want to be known as the IJ of Trump?

Not the smart ones. They’ll decline the nomination. (The patriotic ones will publicly state they do not wish to be the IJ.) Along with concerns about Trump nominating a judge whose chief work will be creating socially conservative law from the bench, I’m also worried that she or he will be a second-rater. Someone, like Trump, who’s hungry for the position, thinking it’ll prove their superiority.

And can’t reason their way out of a paper bag. Or worse, is a bigot whose influence will create racial tensions.

That’s another worry to add to the list.

Some tools are for the California water problem are man-made – and some come from Nature. In NewScientist (22 October 2016, paywall) MacGregor Campbell reports on using Nature’s engineers to solve the complex problems of water in California – beavers:

In 2010, local landowner Betsy Stapleton got in touch with [NOAA researcher Michael] Pollock after reading about some of his research. Pollock was interested in something called beaver dam analogues. Typically consisting of a line of posts set across a stream bed and interwoven with willow and cottonwood branches, these faux dams slow water down and widen out a stream to form a pond. The goal? To attract beavers. Putting one up is like prepping beaver real estate for sale.

In Sugar Creek, much to Stapleton’s delight, the faux dams worked. As she wades through soft muck into surprisingly pristine pond water, she points out evidence of beavers all around. Sticks with chew marks are strewn across the pond bottom. A scent-mound of dried mud stands guard telling interlopers that the pond is spoken for. Vegetation has been stuffed into both dam analogues. “They like to plug every little hole,” says Stapleton.

Of course, there are no guarantees.

[Jimmy Taylor, a wildlife biologist with the US Department of Agriculture] and his students recently trapped and relocated 38 nuisance beavers near the Oregon coast. Sixteen weeks later, more than half had died, many eaten by mountain lions. The dams they built were ephemeral and washed away in the higher winter flows.

Still, phenomenon like this are very encouraging:

USGS / Tanya Dewey University of Michigan Museum of Zoology

Then, in the early 1990s, came an accidental experiment. Fish and game officers in Elko, Nevada, were working with ranchers to restore two dried-up stream basins that cattle had obliterated. To recreate a habitat for cutthroat trout, they put fences up – fish on one side, cows on the other. Willow, a favourite beaver food and building material, took root. By 2003, a colony had moved in and begun damming the streams. Before long, the dry creek beds had sprouted into verdant wetlands, which attracted other animals too.

It was never the officers’ intention to lure beavers to Elko, but the events proved that under the right conditions and with very little money, beavers could completely transform an ecosystem.

That same process is now at play at Sugar Creek. The adjacent, undammed creeks are dry in the summer. When they do flow, in autumn and winter, the water moves fast, washing all the dust and nutrients they pick up out to sea. Come summer, it’s just dry gravel again.

At Sugar Creek, on the other hand, the water gets stuck. Beneath it isn’t just rock but rich soil too. NOAA hydrologist Brian Cluer points out sand and fine dirt that has come from further upstream. In the still waters of the ponds, it settles. Grasses, reeds and other plants take root in the stuff, locking it and its moisture in place. With time, a thick base of rich, moist soil builds up, helping to raise the water table.

Cluer says that all this has a huge knock-on effect. The water seeps down into the ground, recharging underground aquifers. That matters because California is depleting its groundwater at an alarming rate. It is now tapping into “fossil” water that has been underground for tens of thousands of years. Farmland is sinking as aquifers collapse. This is the price you pay for an intensive water management system predicated on drained wetlands and artificial channels, says Cluer.

Perhaps a useful way to think about this is that beavers helped shape the world we evolved to thrive in, so returning them to that environment, in which they are so powerful, should not – but does – surprise us when the result is, once again, a positive for the humans in the environment.

So – put the beavers in an environment where they can thrive, step back and let them do their thing. I think this is quite attractive. Hopefully, beaver pelts are not as alluring as they used to be, which resulted in the beavers in California nearly driven into extinction. Leave them alone and start restoring a critical resource.

Given Trump’s comments about the Iranian nuclear deal, it’s not surprising that speculation has gone through the roof on its future, as reported by Julian Pecquet of AL Monitor:

Lawmakers have introduced a rash of Iran sanctions bills ahead of the election, both to score points with voters back home and to put political pressure on the Obama administration not to go too far with sanctions relief. [Tyler Cullis, a policy associate with the National Iranian American Council (NIAC),] said he now expects the incoming, Republican-controlled Congress to introduce less extreme legislation that may not blatantly violate the deal but could irretrievably harm it.

The pro-Israel lobby AIPAC “will thread that needle,” Cullis predicted. “And then you’re going to have a bill that’s going to be very tough for Democrats to vote against.”

Theoretically, the defeat of deal foes Mark Kirk, R-Ill., and Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., helps provide Democrats with a firewall to defeat problematic Iran bills (most bills need 60 votes to pass, and the Republicans will have 52 Senate seats if they win a Dec. 9 run-off in Louisiana). On the flip side, deal opponent Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is taking over as minority leader, adding to advocates’ distress.

“I think you’re going to see a much more measured approach from Republicans to knock a hole in it,” Cullis said. “And if a bill like that passes, it’s certainly the case that a President Trump will not spurn it, and he will sign it. It will cause immense damage to the sustainability of the nuclear deal.”

That bill would grant various authorities for sanction building to the President. Cullis’ thoughts on that matter?

“A Trump administration will be less reluctant to utilize those authorities,” Cullis said. “It’s a strange thing to say, but I think Donald Trump will be one of the more sane voices in a Trump Cabinet.”

Which is a reminder that the GOP is quite the chaotic entity at the moment, as they RINO-ize themselves further and further to the right – but the one Republican they can’t push out will be Trump.

While predicting Trump is a chump’s game, it’s not impossible that he’ll be more reasonable, in the end, than many members of his Cabinet – early speculation has former NYC Mayor Guiliani (who I think is in early stage dementia) and John Bolton (former UN Ambassador under Bush II), a lawyer and (ahem) diplomat who apparently never understood the Roosevelt dictum that begins “Speak softly …”, and (tellingly) is a commentator at Fox News, as members of the Cabinet. And a bizarre rumor that Palin, the master of incomprehensibility, might also make up a veritable Clown Cabinet. Anyone remember that idiot James Watt? Running a department based on your religious beliefs, rather than scientific evidence, was simply irresponsible – he should have been kicked out on his nose. Palin may do the same thing.

And then there’s the Congressional members themselves, with the usual spectrum of sanity.

Will the GOP put us back in danger by tearing up the agreement and reasserting sanctions? Do they seriously believe the rest of the world would back us?

Do they even care?