Monthly Archives: February 2017

This perhaps obscure 4th Circuit Appeals court loss for the GOP I found interesting as a reflection of their strategy of straight ticket voting – a strategy which I’ve discussed before and have concluded that it is damaging to the American polity. From the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

A federal appeals court has dismissed a challenge to a Virginia law prohibiting partisan labels on ballots in local elections.

In an opinion published Tuesday, the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the case brought by a group of Powhatan County Republicans and found the state has a legitimate interest in minimizing political partisanship in local races.

“While party identifiers do not appear on the official ballot for Virginia’s local candidates, the candidates still have every other avenue by which to inform voters of this information,” Judge Paul Niemeyer wrote in the three-judge panel’s unanimous opinion affirming a lower court’s earlier ruling. “Political parties and their nominees are entirely free to publicize their association with each other.”

The plaintiffs argued the ballot rules serve little real purpose because, in many cases, local races are nonpartisan in name only and nothing in state law prevents political parties from nominating local candidates or making informal endorsements. The lack of party information on the ballot, they argued, only sows confusion.

The plaintiffs, the Powhatan County Republican Committee and four candidates it endorsed in a 2015 Board of Supervisors election, claimed the ballot rule violates constitutional rights to freedom of association and equal protection.

Seeing the above on Facebook (from PBS) reminded me of a story I was listening to on NPR this morning – Big Business is having a grudge match in the Texas Legislature, their opponent being religious conservatives. The issue? The above. Business – especially those in Houston, hosting an upcoming event (NCAA basketball, maybe?) – are concerned that overturning the transgender bathroom law will cost millions of dollars as events and businesses pull out.

Religious conservatives are afraid that men will dress in girly clothes and traipse into the women’s restrooms and rape the 9 year olds they find in there.

I’m sure you’ve all heard that explanation before, but I am compelled to say, I KID YOU NOT.

You boys in Texas, you need to think hard about this: No Rapist Is Held Back By A Lack Of Girly Clothes. In fact, we can assume that restrooms, particularly in busy venues, are simply not good for rape. Tragically, it happens – but permitting the transgender to use the one that makes them comfortable isn’t going to lead to mass rapes.

It seems the problem here is that the conservatives chose to take control of the argument, and no one challenged them where it hurts – in the illogic of their base argument. It’s pathetic that is the best they can do, and that so many people listen to it. No doubt it’s because everyone hears R A P E and stop reading. And thinking.

So everyone, THINK. Transgender bathrooms, involving as few people as they do, are a truly trivial issue. The question for religious conservatives is What makes you afraid of doing the right damn thing? ‘cuz it sure isn’t rape concerns. That’s just damn silly.

Pareidolia:

The ability to see pictures in random forms – as in clouds, tea leaves, and inkblots – is known as pareidolia; the images themselves are called simulacra. Some publicized examples I have made pilgrimages to to [sic] examine include the face of Jesus in the skillet burns of a tortilla; … [“Investigative Files“, Joe Nickell, Skeptical Inquirer (March/April 2017, not online)]

You see pareidolia used relatively frequently in SI.

Echoing my thoughts of yesterday, Mustafa Akyol in AL Monitor connects the fearful collapse of a satirical magazine to the collapse of Turkey into a second-rate power:

In short, a Moses cartoon brought about the demise of a satirical magazine [Girgir] even without a political or legal decision having been made. Was this the intention of everyone who condemned the cartoon? Not really. Molinas, a Turkish Jewish businessman who also is editor-in-chief and a writer for Shalom, told Al-Monitor, “The cartoon went beyond the freedom of expression and no wonder its artist made a strong self-criticism.” However, he added, “The closure of Girgir is very saddening for Turkey’s satirical culture.”

What is also sad is that Turkey, once again, is heading toward being a closed society where a dominant point of view intimidates and silences whatever it finds disrespectful. Even mild satires about Ottoman history can be banned — as happened recently to a new film by a prominent actor/director. Religious conservatives now think that they own the state, and they seem quite willing to use it to suppress any form of speech they dislike.

Little do they realize that the more closed a society is, the less dynamic, creative and intelligent it becomes. Little do they realize, in other words, that if they go down this road, Turkey will not become the great power that they dream of. It will become a dull, monotonous and parochial nation producing not much other than mediocrity and conformity.

Not that the leader will admit to it, of course. In his eyes the State will be exalted and first-class.

Because of himself, of course.

A friend sent me this animated map by Metrocosm of immigration to America over the centuries. Here’s a snapshot:

Snapshot of US Immigration, 1899, from Metrocosm.

Fascinating data viewer, which I’ve only looked at briefly. They appear to have some other animated maps, which I have not yet examined.

But what I want to know is, why are all the immigrants going to Omaha? More seriously, they could have shown the most popular ports of entry for each year, although I suppose that would been New York and Los Angeles.

Former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran is supposedly out of the race for President of Iran, but that apparently doesn’t mean he can’t meddle via the candidacy of one of his aides – in revenge on the conservatives who once supported him. Rohollah Faghihi reports in AL Monitor:

During his second term (2009-13), Ahmadinejad repeatedly appointed figures and adopted policies that were considered to be against the views of the supreme leader. As such, conservatives who were once supporters of Ahmadinejad turned against him and labeled his entourage — and especially his senior aide Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei — as the “deviation current.” Indeed, conservatives demanded the dismissal of Mashaei, who was believed to have “deviated the thoughts of Islam,” but Ahmadinejad strongly resisted these calls, saying, “Mashaei means Ahmadinejad, and Ahmadinejad means Mashaei.” …

It is believed that [Ahmadinejad aide] Baghaei’s candidacy is Ahmadinejad’s plan to take revenge on his former friends in the conservative camp by splitting their vote.

Apparently Baghaei’s candidacy is given little chance to succeed, but this was true of the Ahmadinejad run in 2005 as well – and he won. On the other hand, accusations of election rigging are not uncommon, and even credible, so Baghaei’s results may depend more on who he knows than his appeal to voters. Iranian conservatives – particularly leaders – will need to read the tea leaves with great care, otherwise if Baghaei does win, they will face a bitter victory, as they’d risk being shut out of power.

Alabama may see a political novice on the ballot for Governor at the next election, and here’s CBS Sport‘s (that’s right) Dennis Dodd to tell you about Tommy Tuberville, former coach of Auburn. The fun part? It’s all about who you root for:

Celebrities, actors, athletes and — of course — reality show hosts have already won office seats at state and national levels. Few have experience dipping their toes into the roiling waters of Alabama politics where the conversation starts with one basic question: Who ya pullin’ for?

Another Alabaman’s perception of you depends on the answer: Bama or Auburn.

So you can see why a Tuberville candidacy would be so divisive, uniting, inspiring, perspiring — anything but boring. For 10 of his 21 years as a head coach, Tubs had his greatest success leading the Tigers to an 85-40 record and an SEC title….

Fifty-eight percent of the state’s elected officials are Republican. It’s no secret the majority of state’s fans support Alabama.

“If you can connect with voters on an education message, that’s a big plus,” French said. “Tommy has recruited. He’s seen underprivileged youth come into his program and go out the other door and be a successful professional the rest of their life.

“Those are powerful messages. It’d be fun to package him, to be honest. I might want to dust off my credentials and go with him.”

Sounds like it might be a fun campaign. Would he be like former Governor Ventura and take it very seriously and honestly? I still remember ol’ Jesse saying, “I don’t know, but I’ll hire the best expert in the field to answer that question.” His simple honesty about not knowing everything, contrasted with the highly doctrinaire answers of the other two candidates (Coleman and Humphrey), won it for him. The relative lack of ideology was quite entrancing. His rough edges were less so.

She should be muttering “dickheads!” under her breath.

The Civil War movie Belle Starr (1941) is a mediocre tale of the real-life Belle Starr. Portrayed here as a Southern belle of Missouri, dispossessed of her home by a childhood friend who joined the Yankees, this story ignores a number of problems, such as the fact she still have slaves after the Civil War has finished, that her slaves would much rather stay with her than enjoy freedom, and, frankly, she’s a spoiled brat with a vision of southern culture quite at odds with the fact that it was built on the backs of slaves.

She’s a fire-breathing, bullet-spitting bride of Sam Starr, the leader of the post-Civil War rebels in Missouri, but when their Army starts abusing the loyal southerners, she’s had quite enough, only to fall prey to a bounty-hunter.

There’s little to like here, although the cinematography is nice. Characters make idiotic decisions, embrace causes divorced from justice, and mouth dialog that can be a trifle clumsy. They don’t even kiss very well.

Sort of like real life.

But, unless you really are devoted to Randolph Scott or Gene Tierney, or absolutely have to see all the movies made with a character named Blue Duck in them, don’t waste your time with this clunker.

Moiety:

“The Pueblo leaders were proselytizing in the aftermath of the Revolt, trying to convince people that after kicking out Spanish authority, they needed to live by the laws of the ancestors,” says Preucel. “So they left the mission villages, which were polluted, and built these mesa-top villages.” Hanat Kotyiti, with six-foot-high walls, was organized around two plazas with underground chambers known as kivas, an ancient arrangement with strong ties to the dual social structure that existed in many Pueblo societies before the arrival of the Spanish. Even today, Cochiti is organized into Pumpkin and Turquoise paternal lineages, known as moieties. [“The First American Revolution“, Archaeology (March/April, 2017)]

Also noted in Citizen of the Galaxy, by Robert Heinlein.

Bob Bauer addresses the situation of White House Counsel McGahn in the Trump Administration on Lawfare:

This was exciting to see on CNN today:

Astronomers have found at least seven Earth-sized planets orbiting the same star 40 light-years away, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The findings were also announced at a news conference at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

This discovery outside of our solar system is rare because the planets have the winning combination of being similar in size to Earth and being all temperate, meaning they could have water on their surfaces and potentially support life.

The star? “… an ultracool dwarf star called TRAPPIST-1.” And a friend points out that there’s now a web site dedicated to that star here. For a comparison of our star to Trappist-1:

Source: Trappist-1 website.

They promise to keep the site up to date. About all I can add is that this inevitably reminds me of the background of The Demon Princes novels by Jack Vance. Part of the human species is now hosted on the 26 planets of The Concourse, all in orbit around Rigel. It always seemed so unlikely to me; now it appears that it may not be impossible.

Cool.

It’s unusual to see something this symbolic, and it’s rather tragic for Turkey. Sibel Hurtas of AL Monitor reports on Turkey apparently deciding that the future isn’t all that important:

On Feb. 10, a big demonstration was called on the university’s campus in the capital’s Cebeci district, which houses the faculty of political sciences and several other faculties. This time, riot police greeted the expelled academics and their supporters, using dogs and pepper gas to disperse the crowd. Some academics were manhandled and dragged on the ground. But the most memorable moment was perhaps when the police trod under their boots the black gowns the academics had laid down in protest.

Commenting on the episode, Albayrak said, “Nothing could have illustrated better how we are faced with a government that cares nothing about students and universities and takes interest in education only in terms of controlling it. By blocking our entry to the campus and treading on the gowns with their boots, they showed that the academia they want is not only an academia they can control but also one they can crush and overrun.”

Without education, especially in today’s world of challenges both natural and man-made, Turkey will have little choice but to buy solutions from other, more enlightened countries. The Turks’ fascination and support for Erdogan will leave them in a very unfortunate situation eventually. The interesting part is how Erdogan’s putative fear of Gulen, a religious leader, and his followers is the primary motivation for this anti-education drive. The nature of Gulen is not certain – Turkey claims he’s a terrorist, while non-Turks doubt it.

Allison Bailes on Energy Vanguard discusses a possible replacement for your air-conditioning:

The peer-reviewed journal Science this month published an article with a convoluted title, Scalable-manufactured randomized glass-polymer hybrid metamaterial for daytime radiative cooling (behind a paywall; sorry), but a simple message. The researchers have developed a material that can radiate heat away at night and during the daytime. And it does so with an impressive cooling capacity.

The photo at the top of the article shows the material, a translucent film. It’s basically a plastic film with tiny silicon dioxide spheres embedded in it. (Silicon dioxide is what quartz is made of, the main component of a lot of the world’s sand, and used to make glass.) The spheres play a critical role in tuning the material to emit infrared radiation while not absorbing any of solar radiation that hits the material during the daytime. The paper goes into the the physics, including a discussion of phonon-enhanced Fröhlich resonances of the microspheres and extinction cross-sections, but I’ll let you read you that those details if you choose. …

What could turn out to be a really exciting discovery for the building community is their measured cooling capacity. They set up the film outdoors and measured how much heat it could radiate to the open sky. They used an electric heater to pump heat into the film and adjusted the rate to keep the film at the same temperature as the surrounding air. By adding just enough heat to keep the temperatures equal, the researchers say the “total radiative cooling power is therefore the same as the heating power generated by the electric heater.”

Interesting – and I’d love to stop hearing the air conditioning humming along.

As climate change continues to disrupt agriculture, another industry may be in trouble – supermarkets. Katherine Martinko on Treehugger.com looks forward to the failure of supermarkets:

Supermarkets have got it all wrong. The model on which they operate, offering a vast selection of fresh fruits and vegetables imported from distant places year-round, is simply unsustainable. It depends on great quantities of fossil fuels to heat greenhouses and to fly or truck long distances, and precious resources like fresh water, often taken from places that don’t have much water to begin with.

The precariousness of this model became apparent earlier this winter, when the UK experienced shortages of lettuce, zucchini, spinach, and other green vegetables. Because of severe flooding in Spain, these foods were not available to import. Suddenly UK supermarkets were scrambling to fly produce across the Atlantic, all the way from California, at a tremendous financial loss to themselves. Why? To maintain the status quo, to stock shelves the ‘usual’ way, because shoppers have come to expect iceberg lettuce in January.

And given how migrant labor is important to the export of foodstuffs, Trump may be another nail in the coffin:

Closer to home, in America, it is difficult to imagine how the agricultural system will work without the assistance of the migrant workers that the new president is so eager to repatriate. It seems unlikely that a great number of Americans will want to take over those back-breaking, low-paying jobs.

A beekeeper-hobbyist friend of mine was recently telling me that the professionals send all their bees to California in the spring for a mass fertilization of the crops – and this results in the inadvertent transmission of bee-specific diseases all over the country when the bees are returned to their keepers. (As a hobbyist, he doesn’t participate, but suspects that soon hobbyists will be asked to send their bees as well.) I wonder if the collapse of the supermarket system – if it ever happened – would be beneficial to bees as well, since food growing might then devolve back to greater local control.

Via snopes:

I think, somehow, the Lord’s plan is being put in place for America and these people are not only revolting against Trump, they’re revolting against what God’s plan is for America. [Pat Robertson on a broadcast of the 700 Club.]

People wonder why churches must not endorse political candidates or lose their tax-free status? It’s because of the apocalyptic pronouncements from prominent clerics. This is little less than a call to arms for Trump, backed by the word of God. For those who are enveloped in such a belief system, it may seem wonderful; for the rest of us, atheists or not, it’s a threat, a chance to be burned at the stake. And that’s not hyperbole; just read English history, starting with King Henry. Which sect is right, which is wrong?

You can’t tell.

And that’s why the Founding Fathers, in their wisdom, refused to favor any religion. And the Johnson Amendment helps guarantee that wisdom.

The wake of the Stumpf debacle has not smoothed over yet, as four Wells Fargo executives have been fired, and their bonuses clawed back. WaPo reports:

The four executives are current or former senior managers of the megabank’s community banking division. They will not receive their 2016 bonuses and will forfeit the stock and stock options they were awarded, Wells Fargo said in a statement.

The terminations are just the latest effort by the San Francisco-based bank to move beyond a scandal that has already led to the departure of longtime chief executive and chairman John G. Stumpf. The over-100-year-old bank has been battered by lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle for a five-year scheme in which thousands of employees, to meet aggressive sales goals, set up sham accounts that customers didn’t request. Wells Fargo admitted that it fired 5,300 employees for the conduct and has eliminated the aggressive goals that some have said drove the behavior.

But the bank has seen the number of customers signing up for new accounts tumble and it continues to face pressure from lawmakers who say the bank needs to do more to rectify the matter. It is unclear whether the board’s unanimous decision to fire four executives will be enough to quiet Wells Fargo’s critics.

It’s not entirely clear to me how important the general consumer business is to Wells Fargo, nor how news of the firings will shine up their image. Perhaps they should consider actually holding discussions on what makes for a responsible banking institution.

Maybe they should start with my Arts Editor’s opinion.

Kevin Drum continues down the leaded gasoline path, this time hybridizing it with the Muslim travel ban, version 2:

But here’s the funny thing: Gorka might well be right but for entirely the wrong reasons. Young men who live in a wide swath of the world stretching from North Africa to Central Asia probably are more prone to violence than they are in the developed North. But it has nothing to do with Islam. That’s just the handiest thing to latch onto. It’s all about lead:

The Trumpies got struck down for temporarily banning immigration from a set of seven seemingly arbitrary countries, so instead they should create a rule that temporarily bans immigration from any country that phased out leaded gasoline later than, say, 2001. They might have to fiddle a bit with the numbers, which they have plenty of experience doing, and maybe add some weird second condition in order to get only the countries they want, but with a little creativity they could make it work. And it’s not based on ethnicity, religion, or even nationality. You’re welcome!

Don’t give them ideas. And don’t think this is a trap – the Trump Administration doesn’t seem to comprehend the meaning of the word contradiction. They just sail right through without embarrassment. Thus all the fantasized massacres. In the meantime, Trump’s approval remains embarrassingly high – embarrassingly high for the United States, that is.

I suppose Russia finds his performance a bit frustrating. The Chinese? They’re still gnashing their teeth at the apparent failure of their little ploy.

I’d never heard of vernacular architecture, but here it is, from Ariana Zilliacus on ArchDaily:

“Vernacular architecture can be said to be ‘the architectural language of the people’ with its ethnic, regional and local ‘dialects,'” writes Paul Oliver, author of The Encyclopaedia of Vernacular Architecture of The World’. Unfortunately, there has been a growing disregard for traditional architectural language around the world due to modern building technology quickly spreading a “loss of identity and cultural vibrancy” through what the Architectural Review recently described as “a global pandemic of generic buildings.” People have come to see steel, concrete and glass as architecture of high quality, whereas a lot of vernacular methods including adobe, reed or peat moss are often associated with underdevelopment. Ironically, these local methods are far more sustainable and contextually aware than much contemporary architecture seen today, despite ongoing talks and debates about the importance of sustainability. As a result of these trends, a tremendous amount of architectural and cultural knowledge is being lost.

I’m sort of interested in more detail on why Ariana thinks vernacular architecture is more sustainable than modern architecture – that strikes me as an argument that requires a lot of support, given that many of the examples she cites later in her article were not developed in a context of high population densities – or simply high populations. For example, this:

Found in what is possibly the wettest human-inhabited place on earth, during monsoon season in Meghalaya the rivers grow to become far more violent and powerful than in the dry season. To cross, the Khasi tribes that lived in the region would build bamboo bridges, however they were not strong enough to last the monsoon. Around 180 years ago they experimented with a new technique, pulling the roots of a rubber tree across a river the slowly grew into a bridge that is now capable of sustaining the weight of 50 people. The living root bridges of Meghalaya take around 25-30 years to grow, and they only grow stronger with time. There are a few living bridges that have had enough time to grow into fully functioning structures, but over the last 25 years this practice has begun to die out. Waiting decades for a bridge to form is far too long in our modern day world, especially when a steel or concrete alternative can be constructed in a fraction of that time—although they certainly aren’t as magical.

That said, the many solutions to the problem of housing in the face of limited resources are fascinating, as are the stories that accompany them.

 On the island of Læsø in northern Denmark there is a longstanding tradition for seaweed roofs, made using eelgrass. A successful salt industry on the island meant that most of the trees were used to power kilns for salt refinement, leaving residents with little to construct their homes. As a result, they used driftwood from shipwrecks and eelgrass from the ocean that were able to withstand decay for hundreds of years, thanks to the fact that they were impregnated with saltwater. Unfortunately a fungal disease wiped out over 200 of the existing buildings in the 1930s, leaving only 19.

Sort of like black mold, maybe.

Spolia:

Some of the most interesting of the Nimes tombs are made of reclaimed materials, or spolia, from the ruins of an older Roman necropolis that once lined a main road south fo the city. [“Memento Mori“, Jarrett A. Lobell, Archaeology (March/April, 2017), print only.]

A reader sends an update on teacher pay in the benighted state of North Carolina:

Gov. Roy Cooper proposes a major, multi-year investment in North Carolina teachers. 5% average raise this year and next year. Under his plan, NC would rank best in the Southeast in 3 years and reach at least the national average in 5 years. He also proposes a teacher supply stipend to be paid directly to the teacher at the start of the school year.

Sounds like Governor Cooper didn’t get the memo about throwing the teachers under the bus. How will he finance it? According to The Charlotte Observer, some promised tax cuts may not occur, but given GOP dominance in the legislature, that will be a tussle, so Cooper is hoping to bring in some unusual allies:

“I’m going to be asking the business community to go the General Assembly and say, ‘Don’t cut the corporate tax rate again. Instead, raise teacher pay,’ ” Cooper said at a January gathering of education advocates in Raleigh.

I expect the smart businesses will work with him on that.

It makes me sad to have to say it, but since President Trump wants to take a dump on the press in the best Nixonian tradition, I think it needs to be said.

One of the absolutely most important tools of a free people is information, full & complete. Not what’s convenient to their biases, left or right, but as complete as possible.

So when President Trump pronounces,

I also want to speak to you without the filter of the fake news. The dishonest media which has published one false story after another with no sources, even though they pretend they have them, they make them up in many cases, they just don’t want to report the truth and they’ve been calling us wrong now for two years.

he’s talking about news organizations that dare to call him out on verifiable lies – by claiming they don’t have the sources. But they do, they’re more than willing to make them available.

So here’s the struggle for the heart and soul of the United States – good information, and the willingness to act. For President Trump, his actions betray his greatest enemy – accurate information about himself. The free press, the media, finds itself under attack from two sides. The first is a President who, with no training and no apparent ideas as to the role of the press in the nation, cries out in anger every time he is found out. Truth has nothing to do with him, it slipped out of his car in the dead of the night. And now he assaults the free press, a press that has saved this nation countless times over the centuries, he assaults one of our pillars.

Second, a lesser, but more subtle attack is mounted by the ownership of the press. Let’s face it, it takes a special ownership of a news organization to do it right: not to slant the news, not to strip context from news they don’t like, to just investigate, investigate, investigate, and then present it so the audience can judge. We know, from Bruce Bartlett’s investigations, that Fox News has failed that test. I suggest another approach to detecting such news organizations is to search for Trump endorsements, and know them as big red flags.

This is one of the most important issues facing American citizens today, and if you’re a conservative who is considering taking the President seriously, then be serious about it. Ask about it! Ask for specific examples, and ask for a hundred of them! If the White House won’t respond, ask the local GOP. If they won’t deliver, either, then there’s your answer. Walk away.

But if they do, good! Now follow through and check them. Call up your friends, divide up the allegations, and follow through. Did the mainstream media really make all this shit up?

But if they don’t, do you have the honesty to call him on it? Or are his promises too alluring still?

NBC News reports on an early statement on the Obama Administration:

Barack Obama ranks as the 12th best leader in U.S. presidential history, according to a new survey of 91 presidential historians conducted by C-SPAN.

The panel placed the 44th president just below Woodrow Wilson and just above James Monroe.

I think Obama will end up even higher – but I think there’s little point in taking this survey seriously. First, there just hasn’t been time to adequately analyze and digest Obama’s policies and their results; second, some of the results of his policies will not be apparent for years or decades – case in point, the Iran nuclear deal. Perhaps in two decades it’ll be time to analyze its final results – and reorder the list in that light.

But now? Must be a slow news day on President’s Day.

We used to dig arrowheads and spears, old swords and bits of armor.

Then came the old bombs, the landmines, devices that malfunctioned and threatened descendants three generations later than the old warriors who had hated, fought, and left their debris behind to threaten those who hardly comprehended the motivations of those who did this.

Now it’s happening again, in Iraq. Adnan Abu Zeed reports in AL Monitor:

Radiation levels in parts of Iraq — including the heavily populated capital — are an environmental disaster that must be investigated and remedied, parliament member Hassan Salem and his Iraqi National Alliance electoral coalition maintain.

The level of contamination actually rises at times as more radioactive remnants of war are uncovered. Children, unaware but fascinated, find and play with irradiated leftovers, such as abandoned vehicles and military equipment. ​Scrap metal dealers, some of whom are children, contribute to the spread of contamination, and unsuspecting factory workers actually burn contaminated bricks in furnaces for fuel.

According to Salem, this explains how radiation levels reached 62% above the “normal” reading in the Kasra wa Atash district, near Sadr City in northeast Baghdad. …

Speaking to Al-Monitor about pollution in combat areas and leftover radioactive military equipment, Ministry of Environment Undersecretary Jassim Abdul Aziz Hamadi al-Falahi said the situation is under control. He added, “These areas are classified and isolated, and most of them are monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency.”

Falahi noted, “The Iraqi state is not standing idle, as several specialized bodies are monitoring radioactive contamination rates and the surface area of contaminated sites, including the Iraq Radioactive Sources Regulatory Authority, the Radiation Protection Center and the Radioactive Waste Treatment and Management Directorate affiliated with the Ministry of Science and Technology.”

Another enduring legacy of the Bush Administration and its unnecessary war. Perhaps it would have been worse if we had not invaded, but I find it hard to justify. Very, very hard to justify.

Otherlab has solved the problem of dead-heading in a slightly different way, as noted by Seeker:

Otherlab’s team, led by Mikell Taylor, made the drone in response to a DARPA call for disappearing unmanned systems as part of the agency’s Inbound, Controlled, Air-Releasable, Unrecoverable Systems (ICARUS) program. It’s designed to land within about a 33-foot (10-meter) radius of a pre-programmed GPS spot.

ICARUS: great spot of humor there. Continujng:

Currently, dropping emergency supplies like blood and vaccines from the air is messy and inefficient with plenty of loss, Taylor explained. Sending regular drones is expensive because they have a bad habit of crashing and turning into trash. Airdropped cargo attached to a parachute can break apart in mid-air, land in a pond or end up in the wrong hands.

“DARPA was interested specifically in something that could degrade fairly quickly so when you deliver your supplies with a hundred of these, you don’t have drones littering the ground for the next 20 years,” Taylor said. To that end, her team constructed the body from flexible cellulose-based material. Inside were off-the-shelf electronics, although DARPA has a separate program for electronics that dissolve on impact.

If we add a self-aware AI to the drone, then we’d have a scenario reminiscent of Blade Runner (I never read the P. K. Dick story Bladerunners originated from), in which an artificially sentient organism has a very short lifespan. And there might be a temptation to add that capability, if ever developed, since that would give the drone more flexibility.

There’s a short story in there somewhere.

But at the moment you have to like the idea a lot, once the dissolving electronics are “perfected.” And it occurs to me – dissolution does not mean traceless dissolution. What if, say, the jungle floor was discolored where a drone crashed and dissolved? Would this amount to art? Perhaps if done purposefully by an artist?