Monthly Archives: December 2016

(A forgotten post, a little late.)

The mission to make judges the plaything of the masses continued unabated this election season, as Christie Thompson of The Marshall Project reports:

Outside groups spent more money on campaigns for seats on top state courts nationwide than ever before, an analysis by The Brennan Center for Justice shows. At least one seat was at stake in 27 states on Election Day.

Special interest organizations — most of which don’t have to disclose their donors under campaign finance laws — put a record $19.4 million into TV ads for judicial candidates, over half of all TV spending in these races. The Republican State Leadership Committee spent the most of any group, putting $4 million into eight different races as part of its stated effort to elect more conservative justices.

The spending largely failed to unseat the judges it targeted. In Kansas, Washington and Mississippi, for example, justices held onto their jobs despite costly efforts to remove them.

But spending by outside groups isn’t expected to drop off. As some experts pointed out, many judges were able to win re-election because they had plenty of money in their corner, too. “I think it can be misleading to just look at money going to challengers who lose and then concluding the money had no impact,” said Alicia Bannon, who closely follows judicial elections as senior counsel for the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program. “I fear the lesson is that money is important and may encourage more spending.”

And the idea that judges need money to remain judges is a very poor proxy for quality judicial results. In the Kansas retention battle, previously mentioned on this thread, Christie has some numbers for us:

The four justices targeted by the ads won their retention election with support from roughly 56 percent of voters. But Justice Caleb Stegall, who was not targeted in the ads, won with 71 percent.

Ya know, the whole idea of appointed judges, unaffected by the latest opinion polls, is a profoundly conservative, and I think good, idea – but if we trace the money, we find it’s conservative PACs and individuals who tend to throw money into these elections, and who appear to agitate for elected judges. Of course, the signal outrage are claims of “legislating from the bench”, and, according to Wikipedia, this goes all the way back to Thomas Jefferson, if under different phraseology. But sometimes decisions that go against you are simply decisions that go against you. Continuing to fight a legal battle by changing how the referees are picked, to be honest, smacks of sore losers who are stubborn because that’s how they were brought up, not to respect justice and the law.

Stanford scientists are trying to work out how birds fly:

From the press statement:

As a graduate student working with Stanford mechanical engineer David Lentink, Eric Gutierrez trained this member of the second smallest parrot species in order to precisely measure the vortices it creates during flight. Their results, published in the Dec. 6 issue of Bioinspiration and Biomimetics, help explain the way animals generate enough lift to fly and could have implications for how flying robots and drones are designed.

“The goal of our study was to compare very commonly used models in the literature to figure out how much lift a bird, or other flying animal, generates based off its wake,” said Diana Chin, a graduate student in the Lentink lab and co-author of the study. “What we found was that all three models we tried out were very inaccurate because they make assumptions that aren’t necessarily true.”

Fortunately, it only took a goggle-eyed mini-monster to show them the way.

In November, NASA & NOAA launched the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite — R series. Its purpose?

GOES-R launch. Credit: NASA/NOAA

GOES-R series satellites will provide images of weather pattern and severe storms as frequently as every 30 seconds, which will contribute to more accurate and reliable weather forecasts and severe weather outlooks. GOES-R’s environmental data products will support short-term weather forecasts and severe storm watches and warnings, maritime forecasts, seasonal predictions, drought outlooks and space weather predictions. GOES-R products will improve hurricane tracking and intensity forecasts, increase thunderstorm and tornado warning lead time, improve aviation flight route planning, provide data for long-term climate variability studies, improve solar flare warnings for communications and navigation disruptions and enhance space weather monitoring.

Gotta wonder if this would be going up under a Trump Administration. I wonder if this is going to contribute to the predicted problem with overloaded computer resources, as discussed here.

The appointments planned by Trump continue. Lawfare‘s Christopher Mirasola evaluates the two latest:

[Marine General John] Kelly [for DHS] has spent his entire professional career in the Marines. Until February 2016, General Kelly was the commander of U.S. Southern Command, overseeing military operations in South and Central America. Unlike other regional combatant commands, Southern Command is known for emphasizing “soft power,” and playing a particularly active role in humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, and local military training. Before his time at SOUTHCOM, Kelly previously commanded forces in Iraq and was an aid to Defense Secretaries Leon Panetta and Robert Gates. …

General Kelly is likely to face an easy confirmation. Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson told reporters that Kelly “would be an outstanding pick.” Former Obama administration Defense Secretary Leon Panetta also endorsed Kelly, saying that “he has led our women and men in uniform and understands what it takes to keep our nation safe.”

And for ambassador to China?

[Iowa Governor Terry] Branstad has had experience with China, and Chinese President Xi Jinping in particular, over the course of his governorship. He first met Xi in 1985 during Xi’s visit to Iowa as a provincial agricultural official. The pair subsequently reconvened in 2012, when Xi was vice-president of China. …

Branstad’s appointment has been met with expert approval, and he is likely to be easily confirmed. China scholar Bonnie Glaser said that the appointment “means that the Trump team understands that it is important to have an ambassador who has access to Xi Jinping.” Obama administration Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack also commented that Branstad is “tenacious, and trust me, with the Chinese, you need to be tenacious.”

These two seem a little more reasonable than most.

NewScientist (26 November 2016) reports that SpaceX is planning to put thousands of communication satellites in orbit in order to enable a faster Internet:

The satellites will orbit at between 1150 and 1275 kilometres above Earth. SpaceX plans to kick things off with an initial constellation of 1600 satellites followed by a further 2825, all of which will be put into four orbital shells to improve coverage.

Geostationary orbit is at an altitude of 35,786 kilometres, so we’re not talking about a relatively high orbit, which would also engender high latency on the network; the article doesn’t say so, but perhaps concerns about high latency motivated the relatively low orbit. This is also more than the total number of satellites currently in orbit. But the real surprise?

Similar projects are being developed by Airbus, Virgin Galactic and Boeing, among others.

Source: NASA

I am led to speculate as to the average cost of putting a single satellite in orbit, and to wonder if this is potentially a spectacular waste of resources through duplication of effort. NewScientist notes that at the 800 satellite mark, SpaceX will be able to put the majority of the world online, and, if you think about it, thus begins the growth of dependency. This reminds me of a bit of history: J. J. Hill, a railroad baron, developed his empire in part by buying the land around the railroad as he laid the track and then gave it, or sold it cheaply, to immigrants who would then require the services of the railroad in order to get supplies and ship their crops. Could a similar scheme have been hatched at SpaceX? I think of this in connection with satellite replacement, because that’s a non-trivial cost – but if SpaceX can build the demand for the communications, they may be able to cover replacement costs easily.

Speaking of, I am unsure as to the lifetime of these satellites, and the possibilities of collisions with current and future satellites. Presumably, SpaceX has given this some thought …

The old horror classic Donovan’s Brain (1953) came across our plate recently. Starring Nancy Davis (Reagan) and Lew Ayres, it starts with a scientist, his wife (a nurse), and his alcoholic assistant, who happens to be a surgeon. They are experimenting on monkey brains at the home lab when a plane crashes nearby. The lone survivor’s brain is saved; it¹ recovers, and then begins to grow and exhibit powers, now that it’s been loosed of its burdensome, failing body. Eventually, it tries to take over the scientist and implement its ambitions.

Sounds awful, doesn’t it?

It’s not. Once the concept of working telepathy is accepted, the rest of the story falls into place. The dialog is good, including a number of unexpected, yet logical responses which indicate the writers dealt in more than canned phrases. The story features ambition, setback, reaction to the setback, surprise twist. The characters are well-drawn, and the acting, if not stellar, is good enough to support the movie. The technical aspects are adequate to the demands of the movie. The brain is pleasingly cheesy.

In the end, it disappoints a little as the ending seems predictable, yet it had to end somewhere. Themes might have been more deeply explored, it could have been darker, and yet, it … was good enough.

It’s not earth-shattering, but on a cold January afternoon, when the snow is blowing and you’re wondering if the Arctic is taking up residence on your porch, you could do worse than to watch Donovan’s Brain.

¹Do brains have gender?

… and agree to treat President-elect Trump in a singular way. This occurred to me as I was reading Steve Benen discussing, One More Time (yeah, I’m crabby about it now), how Trump likes to lie. In this case, it’s about all the illegal votes supposedly cast against him:

… it was just last week when the president-elect raised questions about the validity of his own election, insisting via social media that he secretly won the popular vote he lost “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”

A wide variety of Republican officials, each of whom know Trump was lying, have defended the falsehood. Vice President-elect Mike Pence went so far as to say it’s “refreshing” to hear Trump speak his mind, even when he’s making demonstrably false claims.

But now we have evidence that even the president-elect’s lawyers have no use for their client’s dishonesty. Trump may claim there were “millions” of fraudulent ballots cast, but Trump’s legal filings say the exact opposite.

Trump’s attorneys went on to complain in its filing that Jill Stein “aims to sow doubts regarding the legitimacy of the presidential election.” And that, evidently, is problematic – because it’s Donald Trump’s job to sow doubts regarding the legitimacy of the presidential election.

The interviewers would agree to a simple protocol. During the interview, on his first attempt to assert a whopper, the interviewer stands up, and politely says, “That’s a self-serving lie, Mr. Trump. That’s unacceptable in a President. You are dismissed from this interview. Leave now.” And then have him escorted out while the interviewer turns his back.

Yep. Shame him. Note that self-serving is emphasized; I can accept that a President lies for purposes of foreign relations, although I would hope such a tactic is used sparingly. But for self-aggrandizement? To make himself feel better about his second-place finish in the popular vote?

Shame him.

It may not correct his behavior, but it would certainly make me feel better.

And for the interviewer who worries about losing access to someone who thinks he’ll soon be the most powerful person on Earth, just remember: Donald Trump is just another American citizen. Temporarily, he has a little more power, a little more influence. But it excuses nothing. Just as we might do this to our neighbor, it should be done to him.

Here in Minnesota, until today it’s been a comfortable and warm fall. But apparently all that heat’s going to head north and displace a lot of cold, cold air, according to NewScientist (26 November 2016):

SOMETHING is rotten in the state of the Arctic. Temperatures there have been an extraordinary 20 °C higher than the norm at this time of year.

For a few days, the sea ice began melting at a time when it should have been forming fast. And even before this melt, the ocean had been freezing over so slowly that the seasonal extent of sea ice over the past month was already the lowest ever recorded at this time of the year.

These unprecedented events are the result of unusual weather. Cold air from the Arctic has spilled south as far as Beijing, resulting in unusually cold weather across large parts of Asia, while warm air has flowed north to replace it. Climate change may be increasing the likelihood of this kind of event, by weakening the fast winds that circle the Arctic and keep the cold air locked in.

They end by noting a meteorologist commenting that this may indicate “all bets are off”. Earlier today I noted a report on the next few weeks weather being colder than usual, so this may be taken as a bit of confirmation. Right now we lack the required snow cover for the perennials to survive the winter, to cushion them from the occasional crossing over the freezing mark. Will we get that? We have been fortunate in getting some precipitation during this unusually warm start to the winter, as a former farmer has pointed out to me – rather than running off in the spring, as it might normally do, it’s soaking into the ground and, hopefully, reaching the aquifers.

Although I wonder if that’ll have an impact downstream (that is, down the Mississippi River), or if the precipitation amount doesn’t really matter that much.

Concerning lies on the Web, a reader writes:

When I cite Snopes.com as a reality check to some online they generally dismiss it as liberal lies. So…

Yes, I’ve noticed during the searches that some lead-ins suggest that Snopes is liberal and untrustworthy as well. I could dismiss this as the conservatives running around with cotton in their ears, screeching to avoid reality.

But that ignores the legitimate, and ancient, question: Who watches the watchers? Or, more to the point, who fact-checks the fact-checkers? How do we know Snopes is trustworthy? They have a long and respected history, but, like professional sports, what have you done for me lately? As questions about fact-checkers become more acute, we may see services which spot-check the various fact-checkers, perhaps randomly selecting entries. But then who checks … never mind.

But that lets me transition to the next question: for those who refuse to accept as true certain conclusions, no matter how well supported, what then do we do? While I think that, in the long run, such folks’ divergence from reality will gradually lead them to disappointing results, even to spectacularly tawdry endings (such as the fellow who invaded the pizzeria to start this thread), in the short run the cultural cognitive dissonance is certainly unsettling, much like the science denied by those Congresscritters who dislike having their favorite preconception destroyed, whether it be climate denial or various new-Age medical approaches.

But to my mind, there’s two things at work here. First, there are facts: whether or not there’s evidence of, say, a child-sex operation, or temperatures rising around the world. And then there’s the conclusions to be drawn – we didn’t investigate enough, or someone spread lies maliciously; the temperature rise is caused by human activity, or by solar activity. The fact-checkers do need to constrain their statements to the first group, since that’s how they describe themselves; the second group should be handled by advanced experts, although these days just about anyone with a keyboard will render an opinion, and often will be outraged when they’re told they don’t have the expertise to have an opinion.

Such is life today.

I haven’t paid a lot of attention to Tor, the anonymous communications tool, but this post by Nicholas Weaver on Lawfare remains interesting:

I have a strong civil liberties streak, but I cannot defend Tor hidden services.  The Tor project claims that hidden services, servers that only exist in the Tor network and act to hide the server’s IP, can protect activists and whistleblowers.  This is false.  Truly hidden Tor services (unlike Facebook which, although reachable as a “hidden service” does not actually attempt to hide the server’s IP address) are only useful for content that is unhostable anywhere on the general Internet.

If I want to host contact [content?] that annoys the Chinese I can use Amazon or even my home connection.  If I want to host content that annoys the United States I simply place my server in Russia.  It is only content which no country will tolerate and not even a “bulletproof” hosting provider like CyberBunker will host that benefits from hidden services.

Fortunately, I believe that there is a way around the problem of hidden services.  It is an open secret in the Tor community is that Tor is simply not designed to withstand global adversaries: someone who can see all the traffic as it enters and leaves the Tor network is assumed to be capable of deanonymizing the traffic.  This also implies that Tor is not capable of protecting against an adversary who generates the traffic which enters Tor and sees where the traffic leaves Tor.

He concludes:

Tor provides significant uses for those legitimately seeking anonymity or censorship resistance.  But hidden services represent a plague not only on the world at large but Tor itself.  “Tor is the tool of drug dealers and pedophiles” is powerful rhetoric that limits Tor’s more general appeal.

Powerful rhetoric indeed. It would make me pause thoughtfully before using Tor if I had such a need. Such services as Tor, if they’re to reach their potential, must be sensitive to the political winds. A whistleblower who feels the need for anonymity has to consider the possibility that they may yet end up publicly exposed, and if that happens they certainly don’t need false attributions that will cloud the issue they’re involved in.

So, if Nicholas is technically correct in his Tor assertions, it would probably serve Tor well to remove hidden services from their capabilities.

If they can. It’s possible that criminals have forced Tor developers to create hidden services.

Yesterday we took a little trip down to Owatonna, MN, to visit a Wells Fargo Bank branch.

Source: Public Domain, Link

Yeah, more than an hour’s drive.

The trick? The building it’s housed in is the first of the “jewel box” buildings built by the architect Louis Sullivan, originally constructed to house a branch of National Farmer’s Bank. To the right is the pic of the outside from Wikipedia. It’s certainly an unusual structure; decorated to convince its depositors that their treasure was safe inside this ornate chest.

A walk north up the street (a cold, windy walk) revealed a couple of other buildings with pretty awesome art deco detailing as well.  We saw the same art deco fruit and nut border motif on the Federated Insurance HQ building across the street from the bank, albeit the borders were not of the same quality as those they were imitating.

As spectacular as the outside of the box is, it’s the inside of the building that really sparkles. The Wikipedia page is quite correct: Wells Fargo welcomes visitors who simply come to gawk.

If your visit happens to be during a quiet period, one of the employees will come and discuss the structure with you. In our case, I think it was the assistant manager, although I could never quite get a look at his name badge.  He seemed to know just about anything – but, he admitted, he’d never tracked down the cost, in 1908 dollars, of putting the structure up. (Our research indicates that Sullivan and his team of craftsmen built the National Farmers’ Bank of Owatonna building in 1908 for $125,000 — more than $3 million in today’s dollars.) Otherwise, our guide had dates, construction and material details, symbology, past and future restoration projects and plans, and an appreciation of this part of his job: he clearly enjoyed the interaction. Better yet, there’s a balcony, positioned directly over the tellers’ station, which provides an excellent view.

All of our pictures were taken of the inside of the bank, and, sadly, some didn’t come out well, so I post those that did only to give a reason for having taken them.  This first one shows the medallion over the entrance to the bank, and while the picture is of not good quality, it does indicate the decorations of the bank are on an intricate agricultural theme: nuts and berries figure prominently.

These next four photos document the lighting strategy of 1908: Electroliers.  Four massive, cast iron, all-electric chandeliers holding numerous lights are suspended from the ceiling, each fixture weighing over two tons.   The detail on these fixtures is amazing, and it continues the agricultural theme (even if I pattern-matched it to sea horses and dragons). The final pictures’ background also provides some feeling for the detail in the decoration of the bank. The borders on the curved arch surfaces are not just paint over plaster; they’re molded, colored terra cotta clay.

These pictures below concentrate on some better views of the accents:

These next photos hint at the two large murals which also decorate the room, which continue the agricultural theme. These are from the Wells Fargo web site.

I’ll leave off trying to elaborate on the content of these pictures, lacking the skill to do so. There’s also some beautiful bronze work at some of the tellers’ stations and on the face of the clock.

While it’s possible to get caught up in the overwhelming detail of the borders and friezes, not all of the inside is this intricate. A substantial portion is simple brick work, and this is important because it gives the eye a place to rest.

If you’re in the area, it’s worth dropping in to see this masterwork of one of America’s first modernist architects.

(A substantial portion of this post was added by my Arts Editor, Deb White.)

Sounds like it might be getting cold, according to FishOutOfWater @ The Daily Kos:

The brutal chill will spread all the way from Anchorage, Alaska to Jacksonville Florida by next Friday while the Pacific coast warm up. Extremely unseasonable warmth will continue in easternmost Siberia and the central  Arctic. This is an absolutely bizarre weather pattern, with the kind of exaggerated waviness that Dr. Jennifer Francis and other scientists have linked to Arctic sea ice loss. This is an extreme example of the warm Arctic / cold continents pattern that Dr. Francis has written about in peer reviewed reports. The weather I am writing about this week direct follows the story I wrote 10 days ago about how warm water in the Barents and Kara seas, where sea ice used to be found this time of year, has destabilized the atmospheric circulation.

Wheee!

For ABC News, George Stephanopoulos interviews Mike Pence about the incoming Administration’s business strategy concerning Carrier and another company moving jobs to Mexico, Rexnord:

STEPHANOPOULOS: So does he now pick up the phone and call the head of Rexnord?

Does he call all these other companies who are going to move overseas?

PENCE: Well, I think what you’re going to see — and the president-elect will make those decisions on — on a — on a day by day basis in the — in the course of the transition and in the course of the administration.

But what you’re seeing emerge here — and I think it’s so exciting for millions of Americans — you should have seen the emotion on people’s faces…

STEPHANOPOULOS: We saw it.

PENCE: — at the Carrier plant, George. I mean this was — and I mean I — it was one of the most emotional experiences that I’ve had in my public career, the way people reached out, grabbed our president-elect by the hand and just said thank you AMB. ), because they see in him someone who’s going to fight for American jobs.

He’s going to fight on the world stage in negotiating trade deals. And he’s going to come here to Washington, DC and he’s going to fight to raised taxes, roll back regulations, repeal and replace ObamaCare and make American manufacturing come back to life.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You say he’s going to make these decisions on a — on a day by day basis.

Isn’t that picking winners and losers?

I mean Sarah Palin calls it crony capitalism?

I think it means there’s going to be significant unhappiness among firms, starting with these, but as the whim of the Administration impacts other industries over imagined or real injustices, it’ll spread to general industry. Can an Administration which targets individual companies, whether with tax incentives or with punishments, remain effective throughout its term? Or will it end up floundering about, looking foolish?

And will it matter to its supporters? I’m not sure Trump really needs the support of all of American and international business, just Wall Street and the health insurance industry may be enough to tide it over. But the business segment may look like someone took a thresher to it.

Before the recent victory for the protesters at Standing Rock, a friend sent me this opinion piece by Paul VanDevelder from High Country News, and it provides some interesting background. A tidbit, confirming what I thought all along:

David Archambault II, the tribal chairman of the Hunkpapa Sioux Nation, has as much legal standing at the United Nations and in international courts of law as any American president.

Legally, Indian tribes are powerful entities. In the matter of the Standing Rock Sioux vs. the Dakota Access Pipeline, I have little doubt that the tribe will prevail. The law of the land is on their side. Pipeline permits issued to oil companies by the Army Corps of Engineers do not trump the federal government’s fiduciary responsibility to the tribes. Claims to the contrary by politicians are so much nonsense. For far too long, this, our “nation of laws, not of men” (in the words of John Adams) has acted with lawlessness and reckless abandon with its solemn responsibilities to the Indian Nations.

usufructuary:

Tonight I heard on NPR that some group in Ghana put together a fake US Embassy, and ran it for – a decade.

Source: Feelgrafix

For about a decade, Turkish and Ghanaian organized crime rings operated a fake U.S. embassy in Ghana’s capital, where they issued fraudulently obtained legitimate and counterfeit visas and ID documents costing $6,000 to people from across West Africa.

That’s according to the U.S. State Department, which detailed how the operation worked.

“In Accra, Ghana, there was a building that flew an American flag every Monday, Tuesday and Friday, 7:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m. Inside hung a photo of President Barack Obama, and signs indicated that you were in the U.S. Embassy in Ghana,” reads an article from the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Bureau. “However, you were not. This embassy was a sham.”

The “embassy” was shut down by Ghanaian authorities this summer, in cooperation with the real U.S. Embassy, following a tip from an informant. Authorities have arrested “several suspects” and confiscated “150 passports from 10 countries,” according to the article. They also discovered a fake Dutch embassy and continue to pursue “several” other suspects.

What gall. I’m sure its purpose was entirely dishonorable, and possibly even people were hurt.

But I can’t help but admire the balls and ingenuity.

We found this out in the garden this morning, decorated in frost …

Ever thought about how to share knowledge about your profession to the general public? Show ‘n Tell just doesn’t rock your world?

How about using puppets to talk about the law? That’s how Rania Refaat talks about the law to the general public in Egypt, as reported by Youssra el-Sharkawy in AL Monitor:

Originally a lawyer, Refaat combines law with art to explain Egyptian law and raise awareness of various issues, including human rights and women’s rights. She uses marionettes as her tool by which she can express her own views.

“Every artist has his ideas, and he searches for the best tools by which he can deliver these ideas. I chose puppets as my tool because they are popular and many people — of different ages — like them,” Refaat told Al-Monitor.

The young artist said, “Young children love to watch the puppets and like the music in the play, while older people understand the deep meaning and receive the message I’m delivering.” …

In her recent show titled “Ana mosh Ayza Atgawez” (“I Don’t Want to Get Married”), which was performed in Cairo during the Children’s Day celebrations on Nov. 20, Refaat discussed child marriage, a major issue in Egypt.

The play is set in what seems to be a village. A teenage girl cries after her father insists that she marry a 60-year-old man with an illegal contract because the girl is underage.

“Egypt is an inspiring country for any artist, and there are many topics that I’d like to raise awareness about through my art, like violence against women, corruption, the relation between people and the government, relation between people and the environment and even the way people raise their children,” she said.

I’m not sure this would make sense for a software engineer to do in the United States, but it might be fun, regardless. But could I see any of the lawyers of my acquaintance doing this?

Not really. But I’d pay real money to see it.

I understand the following item is about “false news” or “fake news”, but I prefer my Arts Editors’ name for it: Lies. From CNN:

A suspect arrested Sunday with an assault rifle at a Washington, DC pizzeria admitted he had come to investigate an online conspiracy theory, Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department said Sunday evening in a statement.

Police have identified him as 28-year-old Edgar Maddison Welch of Salisbury, North Carolina.

“During a post arrest interview this evening, the suspect revealed that he came to the establishment to self-investigate ‘Pizza Gate’ (a fictitious online conspiracy theory),” the police department said in a statement.

“Pizza Gate” is a name given to the online false news stories begun last month that charged the Comet Ping Pong restaurant and its owner were involved in a child sex operation. The owner has vehemently denied the charges, but they continued to proliferate online. The owner and employees said they were repeatedly threatened on social media.

Fake news has always been with us, but computers and the internet are great multipliers, as I’ve said before. Now, CNN has published an allied article on how to be a responsible news reader and sharer here. But is that really the route to go, to make everyone responsible for vetting their news sources? The use of these sites to persecute individuals for political or commercial reasons may eventually lead to the abandonment of those sites, if enough shame is flung at those who make the mistake – honest or not – of believing and propagating the news found on those sites. If they become ineffectual, then they’ll go away.

And that’s why fact-checking sites such as Snopes keeps lists of untrustworthy sites. But will that be good enough? I have to wonder if we’re going to see a slow, but real migration from the great mish-mash of news sites we see today to a core of sites that are consistently trustworthy, until it just about looks like the 1960s – just a few organizations with good reputations and large news staffs, perhaps charging for access, in place of the advertising model. After all, if there are consequences for propagating false news lies,then folks will seek out real news.

The late SF author Jack Vance enjoyed employing the footnote, the aside, and the citation to fill in the background of his many books; but the fact that he (and others, such as Frederik Pohl, who has also used the device) is a fiction author doesn’t suggest any old filler would do. Consider this, the lead-in of Chapter 3 of The Book of Dreams:

From Life, Volume I, by Unspiek, Baron Bodissey:

… I often reflect upon the word “morality,” the most troublesome and confusing word of all.

There is no single or supreme morality; there are many, each defining the mode by which a system of entities optimally interacts.

The eminent entomologist Fabre, observing a mantis in the act of devouring its mate, exclaimed: “What an abominable custom!”

The ordinary man, during a day’s time, may be obliged to act by the terms of a half-dozen different moralities. Some of these acts, appropriate at one moment, may the next moment be considered obscene or opprobrious in terms of another morality.

The person who, let us say, expects generosity from a bank, efficient flexibility from a government agency, open-mindedness from a religious institutions will be disappointed. In each purview the notions represent immorality. The poor fool might as quickly discover love among the mantises.

This ties right in with the behavior of our President-elect, a man who doesn’t seem to understand that different standards of behavior apply when operating in a different sector of society. Why is this a problem? Because each sector has different goals, such as making things (or, for the less subtle of thought, profit), justice, feeding the unfortunate, and each sector’s goal necessitates different behavior patterns in order to optimize our path to the goal.

Unfortunately, these simple observations and conclusions are no longer widely understood. The decades-long push to minimize government had, as its side effect, the minimization of the importance of expertise when running government, to the point where many people believe expertise in some other sector will transfer right over into government.

Thus, Trump.

Given the private prisons debacle, and the recent push (and collapse, sometimes literally) of schools for profit, we need to begin to re-examine the importance of sector expertise in society, and why it actually matters that you understand why we’re not going to give nuclear technology to South Korea, or Japan, or how to run a government bureaucracy, where the rules matter, vs a business bureaucracy, where the rules are quite different – and the goals are different.

In the meantime, hopefully the world will realize that we have a functionally impaired leader and will compensate for it. Which, in a way, I kind of regret since we’re less likely to learn from this mistake – but the alternative is probably too messy to really contemplate.

In some good news (at least for those who cheer for the underdog), the protesters at Standing Rock appear to have won a victory. From CNN:

Plangent:

1: having a loud reverberating sound <a plangent roar>
2: having an expressive and especially plaintive quality <plangent lyrics>

[Merriam-Webster]

Encountered in Jack Vance’s The Book of Dreams.

The debate over saturated fats continues as BMJ issues a press release in relation to the article they previously published, “The scientific report guiding the US dietary guidelines: is it scientific?”, by Nina Teicholz:

Independent experts find no grounds for retraction of The BMJ article on dietary guidelines

•  Formal reviews reject calls for retraction led by Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI)
•  Reviewers say criticisms of methods used by the guidelines committee “are within the realm of scientific debate,” and merit “further investigation of the composition of the committee”
•  The BMJ is publishing a notice of correction and clarification
•  Journal stands by the article and will continue to provide a forum for debate on the science and politics of nutrition

Two independent experts who conducted formal post-publication reviews of an article in The BMJ questioning the science behind US dietary guidelines have found no grounds for retraction. The BMJ is, however, publishing a notice of correction and clarification to the article on the basis of the reviews and internal assessment of the issues raised.

Ms Teicholz comments on the retraction here. There’s a lot, but here’s the part that caught my eye:

A fundamental question is why 170+ researchers (including all the 2015 DGA committee members, or “DGAC”), organized by the advocacy group, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), would sign a letter asking for retraction. After all, in the weeks following publication, any person had the opportunity to submit a “Rapid Response” to the article, and both CSPI and the DGAC did so, alleging many errors. I responded to them all in my Rapid Response. This is the normal post-publication process.

Yet after all this, CSPI returned for a second round of criticisms, recycling two of the issues (CSPI points #3 and #10) that I had already addressed in my Rapid Response (and which had required no correction), adding another 9 (one of which, #4, contained no challenge of fact), and demanding that based on these alleged errors, the article be retracted. CSPI then circulated this letter widely to colleagues and asked them to sign on.

Last spring, a journalist for The Guardian, Ian Leslie, was able to quickly unmask the nature of CSPI’s campaign. Leslie interviewed many of the researchers who had signed CSPI’s petition:

“They were happy to condemn the article in general terms, but when I asked them to name just one of the supposed errors in it, not one of them was able to. One admitted he had not read it. Another told me she had signed the letter because the BMJ should not have published an article that was not peer reviewed (it was peer reviewed). Meir Stampfer, a Harvard epidemiologist, asserted that Teicholz’s work is ‘riddled with errors,’ while declining to discuss them with me.”

Indeed, quite a few sets of emails obtained by a blogger including those by Harvard professor Frank Hu, all obtained via public records requests, reveal researchers passing along the retraction request as if it were a chain letter, agreeing to sign on without asking a single question about the substance of the alleged errors.

Big Sugar conspiracy? Seems unlikely to me. More likely, researchers protecting their turf without being willing to question the very foundations of their field – always a hard thing to do, particularly if they are not truly independent of their funding. But I don’t know, I’m not an expert in the field. BMJ’s decision not to retract after a proper, independent review does suggest there’s something going on, though.

And I know I put on weight when I indulge in carbs, but not when I eat steak. And my last two heart scans actually show my heart is  improving, from a “2” to a “1” – my GP started tearing at his hair when he saw that. “It’s not supposed to get better!” he lamented. I kid you not. I’ve been trying to move away from carbs and sugars over the years, but I do give some credit to the dark chocolate I regularly consume.

Yeah, yeah, just anecdotal. Unless it applies to me.