Monthly Archives: February 2017

Daniel Byman comments on Lawfare concerning the difference between the public perception of the danger of terrorism attacks in the United States, and the public’s perception:

The public’s perception of the danger of terrorism is far worse than the reality. Even after fifteen years of a relentless global counterterrorism campaign, 40 percent of Americans believe the ability of terrorists to launch a major attack on the United States is greater than it was at the time of the 9/11 attacks, and another 31 percent believe it is simply the same. There is no evidence for either of these propositions.

Some of this misperception stems from the post-9/11 media environment. After the towers fell, reporting of terrorist plots, let alone actual attacks, has skyrocketed, particularly if the perpetrators have even weak connections to jihadist groups like al Qaeda or its even more evil spinoff, the Islamic State. The globalization of media meant that Islamic State attacks in Dhaka or al Qaeda attacks in Bali receive considerable press coverage, to say nothing of the attacks in even more relatable and accessible locales in Europe. All of this makes Trump’s claim that the media have neglected terrorism seem bizarre to terrorism experts, where the normal complaint is that the media do the terrorists’ job for them by giving them so much free publicity. Indeed, although the terrorism problem in Europe is more severe than that facing the United States, it too has not surged dramatically compared to past decades. The 1970s and 1980s saw many attacks. Recent years have seen bloody and horrific attacks, like the 2015 shootings and bombings in Paris that killed 130 people—but 1988 saw 440 people die, most of whom perished when Libyan agents bombed Pan Am 103.

Just like the Web, don’t go believing what any politician wants you to believe. Indeed, in an ideal democracy, the politicians would take the findings furnished by experts and use them when setting priorities, deciding on funding sources, and that sort of thing. When a politician rejects the findings of experts, the odds are you’re looking for someone grasping for power.

And be wary.

This started with the GOP rejecting various parts of science over the last few decades; Trump is merely the next step. He’s not new, but there may be one new facet: a news media willing to expose him. They need to keep on doing that, keep calling him a liar, and if & when he starts to fail to come through on promises, advertise that as well.

And keep working on his tax returns.

Sami Grover on Treehugger.com notes another blow struck against the coal miners:

The latest piece of evidence, reported over at AZ Central, is about the major utilities which own the massive 2,250 megawatt Navajo Generating Station in Arizona—described in the report as one of the largest polluters in the nation. The plan, according to AZ Central, is to shutter the plant by 2019, when one of the three turbines will have to be retired anyway.

And I see Sami has the same concerns I have – but for the Navajo who are losing a major revenue source:

Given the astounding economic, health and environmental impacts of coal, this decision is a major win for environmentalists. But as with any such closures, we should all be calling for support for the communities who have relied on this project—and a nearby coal mine—for income.

In much the same way that Australian unions have joined forces with environmentalists to demand a “just transition” away from coal, we need to make sure that in the shift away from fossil fuels, we create opportunities for all communities to benefit.

A “just transition” in Australian lingo, to me, just means the recognition that we are all in this together; there is nothing wrong in helping out those who are hurt by our transition to cleaner energy sources. In fact, failing to do so is really a betrayal of them. We are not a some faux-Darwinian society in which hell takes the losers, because the losers may rise up and batter down the winners. We originally built societies to hold back forces that could not be handled by individuals, and that rule still holds true.

Disney’s Moana (2016) is its periodic issuance of an animated inspirational youth movie, one in a long line, including the recent Frozen (2013), and it’s technically quite a movie. The animation is, as one might expect from Disney, virtually flawless, achieving blue oceans and skies which are a step up from what has come before – at least in my experience. The water seems crisper and bubblier, and the outrigger canoes seemed to be just a bit more realistic than I would have expected, the larger versions moving with a majestic grace across the oceans.

The movie’s name is eponymous to the main character, an island chieftain’s daughter who wants the one forbidden thing – to go out on the ocean. When her village faces extinction due to the spoilage of all of the food sources, Moana listens to her grandmother’s stories concerning the rot poisoning the world, and goes out beyond the reef, onto the wild ocean, in search of the demi-god who caused the rot to begin. Facing obstacles both internal and external, they return an island goddess to her old self, and the rot disappears.

This is an old story format for Disney, now part of a story from the Polynesian cultures, and Disney uses it to inspire a new generation of children. They know how to draw sympathetic characters, and mostly succeed in this story, although one character, a giant crab who has collected an artifact, a magical hook previously owned by the demi-god for its own collection, unused and but a prize, is too much of a buffoon to be anything but a cardboard character. With some work I could see the symbolism of the dangers of an obsession with things for their own sake, but the problem with such an interpretation is that the character doesn’t really suffer for the obsession; he may lose the artifact, but in the end he’s simply a singing, homicidal crab. This criticism also applies to the coconut pirates, who could have been more if we’d known more about them. Were they simply metaphorical? Were they creatures of the Gods, sent to test Moana? Or are the Gods competitive

Another minor flaw in execution lies in the behavior of the demi-god, who, finding his magical hook is cracked and fading, gives up, leaving his task for Moana to complete; later, he returns, but we don’t really get to experience the why. Adults can certainly guess why, but the children who are there to learn lessons about life lose the opportunity to see why someone might risk their most valued possession. The movie’s emotional impact would have been boosted if his decision to risk his most treasured possession had been illustrated.

A member of the Scene Stealer’s Guild

But Moana’s part of the story is spot-on, as is the comic relief of her chicken. The music is quite striking, and is mostly sung quite well. The characters mostly work. But perhaps most telling was my reaction:

I wanted to be there on the outrigger canoe.

Recommended.

Encaustic painting:

Encaustic painting, also known as hot wax painting, involves using heated beeswax to which colored pigments are added. The liquid or paste is then applied to a surface—usually prepared wood, though canvas and other materials are often used. The simplest encaustic mixture can be made from adding pigments to beeswax, but there are several other recipes that can be used—some containing other types of waxes, damar resin, linseed oil, or other ingredients. Pure, powdered pigments can be used, though some mixtures use oil paints or other forms of pigment. [Wikipedia]

Noted in Nadia Alenov’s Artistic Statement:

Encaustics helps seal in the intrinsic qualities of an image and elevates the piece to a state of timelessness.

Maybe.

According to the local news, the Trump campaign rally in Florida was well-attended, mostly by those hoping the aviation industry jobs return. Unlike manufacturing, that’s not so hard to do.

I do find it appalling that he can’t put together a decent Cabinet, but he can run out and start campaigning for the next election. Already. Hasn’t he heard of being competent?

Seriously, probably not.

National Review republishes a column by Matthew Continetti of the Washington Free Beacon which includes a throw-off line he may regret:

The last few weeks have confirmed that there are two systems of government in the United States. The first is the system of government outlined in the U.S. Constitution — its checks, its balances, its dispersion of power, its protection of individual rights. Donald Trump was elected to serve four years as the chief executive of this system. Whether you like it or not.

The second system is comprised of those elements not expressly addressed by the Founders. This is the permanent government, the so-called administrative state of bureaucracies, agencies, quasi-public organizations, and regulatory bodies and commissions, of rule-writers and the byzantine network of administrative law courts. This is the government of unelected judges with lifetime appointments who, far from comprising the “least dangerous branch,” now presume to think they know more about America’s national security interests than the man elected as commander in chief.

I bolded the part that I nearly burst out laughing at. Did this guy really buy it when then-candidate Trump declared himself much smarter than the generals who run the wars we stumble into?

But, more importantly, we elect Presidents as managers and leaders – not deep experts on national security, foreign relations, and all the other responsibilities of the Executive. We expect them to hire experts to take care of those areas. We do expect a certain familiarity with all those issues – it’s almost staggering how much – but I don’t expect them to be deep experts. Indeed, an election selects the person who best convinces the people who are geographically important (in our system, at least) that the general policies they support are best for the nation.

That’s a far piece from being a national security expert.

So, yes, some of the judiciary may in fact know more than the President. But, more importantly, they appear to think Trump didn’t follow the proper legal rules when he created the travel ban executive order – me, I’m not a lawyer, so I’ll defer to those experts. So this has the tone of the outraged Trump partisan, not the sort of sober analysis we need.

Kevin Drum beats his, er, drum a little bit on his favorite topic – leaded gasoline:

… Britain’s violent crime rate peaked about 15 years after it did in the US. Second, it dropped a lot faster than it did in the US. Why?

Because, first, Britain adopted unleaded gasoline about 13 years after the US (1988 vs. 1975). And second, because it phased out leaded gasoline a lot faster than the US. Within four years Britain had cut lead emissions by two-thirds, which means there was a very sharp break between infants born in high-lead and low-lead environments. Likewise, this means there was a sharp break between 18-year-olds with and without brain damage. In 2006, nearly all 18-year-olds had grown up with lead poisoned brains. By 2010, that had dropped substantially, which accounts for the stunning 40 percent drop in violent crime in such a short time.¹

This is one of the reasons the lead-crime hypothesis is so persuasive. Not only does recorded crime fit the predictions of the theory—both in timing and slope—but it does so in many different countries. What other theory would predict a gradual drop in violent crime between 1991-2010 in the US and a sharp decline in violent crime between 2006-10 in Britain? Especially considering that the US and Britain have entirely different policing, poverty rates, race issues, etc.?

Is there a similar hypothesis with regard to lead paint?

This is a bit new to me, so I decided to look at a similar cause-effect argument for the drop in the crime rate, this regarding a drop in the 1990s – the abortion legalization argument of Steven Levitt (of Freakonomics fame). Basically, he correlates the legalization of abortion in certain states and countries with a drop in the crime rate 20 years later – when the aborted fetuses would have begun committing the crimes which were not committed. A defense of this hypothesis by Levitt in 2005 is here.

But this has not gone undisputed. Besides the hate mail Steven and his co-writer, Stephen Dubner received¹, there’s also been scholarly argument (good!). Psychologist Steven² Pinker has attacked the hypothesis and favored a crack cocaine hypothesis, instead. From an undated post (perhaps 2013) on the Uncertainty Blog, which I copy mostly for my own benefit, is a quote from Pinker’s book, The Better Angels of Our Nature:

To begin with, the freakonomics theory assumes that women were just as likely to have conceived unwanted children before and after 1973, and that the only difference was whether the children were born. But once abortion was legalized, couples may have treated it as a backup method of birth control and may have engaged in more unprotected sex. If the women conceived more unwanted children in the first place, the option of aborting more of them could leave the proportion of unwanted children the same. In fact, the proportion of unwanted children could even have increased if women were emboldened by the abortion option to have more unprotected sex in the heat of the moment, but then procrastinated or had second thoughts once they were pregnant. That may help explain why in the years since 1973 the proportion of children born to women in the most vulnerable categories – poor, single, teenage, and African American – did not decrease, as the freakonomics theory would predict. It increased, and by a lot.

I wonder what women – especially mothers – think of that criticism.

Mostly, the point I’m making is that the leaded gasoline hypothesis is interesting – even fascinating – but at best I suspect it’s just one in a suite of causes, some Nurture, some Nature. I don’t think this hypothesis is a settled question just yet. In fact, in my mind it raises questions of a more basic nature – that is, if our minds were totally undamaged by the environment (and our families), would we be more or less likely to engage in anti-social behaviors? (This is an appeal to the old philosophical position that we were perfect, even angelic, before we were stained by “progress” – advanced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. I find it dubious myself.)

Heck, get right down to it: what constitutes “not damaged”? Can this be defined without reference to social agendas? Can it be defined in terms of evolutionary biology? Is there a completely objective definition / framework?

¹Which was unsurprising, although I recall hearing an interview, way back when, with Levitt in which he admitted to a great deal of surprise when the hate mail started arriving. Since abortion is considered to be evil incarnate by a sizable percentage of the population, its employment should never have a good result. Some folks can’t stand results that upend principles, and don’t react in a rational manner. C’est la vie.

²All of this correlates with the Stephen Colbert principle, elucidated last night, that the world is run by, err, Stephens. No doubt assisted by Stevens. He cites senior President Trump aides Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller as at least two examples to bolster the obvious.

Actually from 2009, but I was fascinated – how to assemble a Boeing 737.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=SE71NJl-naY%3Fautoplay%3D1

We were introduced to the work of The Four Humors several years ago at the Minnesota Fringe Festival when they put on a screamingly funny rendition of Lolita. It played with tropes of Lolita, which is about a middle-aged professor’s sexual obsession with his step-daughter, by casting as Lolita a 6 foot tall, 260 lb man, half-shaven, who wore a shirt about a size too small, and was suitably coarse about the whole thing. The entire audience was caught on the horns of a man who wanted to make passionate love to a virginal young girl, who just happened to be represented by a man who makes no apologies for who he is. The cognitive dissonance provides the humor.

So we were looking forward to seeing what The Four Humors would do with the Oscar Wilde classic The Importance Of Being Earnest. This is the classic broad Victorian farce of two London men with convenient lies, who find those lies no longer so convenient when it comes to courting women with arbitrary requirements. There is much to and fro as the men attempt to satisfy their women, all while dancing around the impositions of the imposing Aunt Augusta.

In retrospect, the fact that Earnest is already a farce should have been a clue – achieving the same heights of surprise attained in Lolita might be more difficult. And, in fact, our expectations were not satisfied.

Which is not to say this is an unworthy production! If you simply desire to see Earnest, this is certainly a competent production of the classic. There are minor problems, of course – Wilde’s dialogue is nearly a “patter”, if you take my meaning, and several times the cast wasn’t quite up to the task – enunciation was slightly off. Fortunately, there was only a small attempt from the cast of producing a British accent. The casting of Christian Bardin, a female actor, as Jack was certainly interesting, but we found the contrast in heights between her and Ryan Lear, who plays Algernon, to be distracting, although at one point the two exchange an accidental kiss, which I do not believe is part of the script. I wondered if there was going to be a subtext to this production, perhaps playing off of Wilde’s predilection for homosexual behavior, for which he was infamously imprisoned and broken.

On the other hand, the butlers (played by Jason Ballweber) were quietly delightful, and Brighid Burkhalter’s disinterested delivery of her dialog declaring her passion for Jack was a lovely descant to the lively exclamations of Jack and Algernon. And the staging of the play at The Southern Theater consisted of adding a temporary audience area opposite the traditional seating, effectively turning this into a thrust stage, and adding an important element of intimacy for the audience.

In retrospect, the only real problem with the play was our own too-high expectations of what this troupe might produce.  When faced with a play which is a farce already, making a farce of a farce is a challenge which might wilt the strongest spear of broccoli. So ultimately the fault lay with us. Having already seen what may have been their best work (Lolita), we now saw them try a different path to the same pinnacle, and they didn’t quite get there.  Don’t get me wrong – it was still a pleasant romp on a warm winter’s night.  Perhaps the fault lies with the selection of play.  Maybe if they had selected a more serious or mundane play and applied their magic, the result would have showed more of the Four Humors spark.

Might we suggest a Four Humors adaptation of Oedipus Rex?

The Importance of Being Earnest plays at The Southern Theater February 17-25, 2017.

Late this evening CNN/Money is reporting that The Trump Organization has won an important legal victory in China – control over an important trademark:

China legal experts say they think Trump’s political ascendancy most likely played a role in the trademark decision.

“I’ve got clients who have fought these same cases time and time again without success. For this rapid turn of events, it does seem to be more than just a coincidence,” said Dan Plane, a China intellectual property expert in Hong Kong. “What’s striking about the Trump decision is the timing. I think it’s reasonable to assume that politics played a part — without Trump even necessarily asking for it.”

The Chinese Embassy in Washington told CNN that the case was handled in compliance with China’s trademark law.

I realize that China claims they followed their normal procedures, including a three month waiting period for competing claims to the trademark. But it’s impossible to forget two facts:

1. Trump has not, as I understand it, severed himself from The Trump Organization. Most importantly, and once again as I understand it,  he is the financial beneficiary. If The Trump Organization has won control of a value trademark in China, that benefits Trump.
2. The Foreign Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which reads
   

   No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.

Taken together, this may possibly be interpreted as putting Trump in legal peril. I have no idea what the punishment might be, but as it may leave Trump with yet more mud on him, it makes it worth speculating on the motivations of the Chinese – if we accept this was an act of malicious aforethought. I think we can at least consider this is a reasonable assertion because the Chinese government, like most governments, has a strong preference for predictable behavior by its peers in other countries. Trump appears to be a random motion machine – it’s not a question of whether he’ll choose between any of five closely related options, but instead whether he’ll choose the forbidden option, such as tossing a nuke at an offshore island.

Or bragging about his electoral victory one more time.

Indeed, we could even consider this a gift from the Chinese, since they are giving us yet another reason to get rid of him, a good sound reason, grounded in the Constitution. That would be the optimistic interpretation.

The pessimistic interpretation? That we’ve officially arrived at banana-republic status. How’s that, you say? Because now we’re a country that’s being batted back and forth by China and … Russia. Think about it. Russia, who is now widely acknowledged to have meddled, at Trump’s invitation, in the last Presidential election. Hard-ass Clinton would have pushed Russia to get out of the Crimea, would have continued to punish them through low fossil fuel prices – she’s smart, knowledgeable, hard driving, and experienced. Russia didn’t want that.

So they arranged for Trump to win, against all odds. This isn’t even controversial.

But China and Russia are rivals. They’ve been rivals for centuries. Even when it was the Soviet Union and Red China, they were rivals. Both have large amounts of national pride.

And I don’t think it’s hard to postulate that China doesn’t like the idea of a United States of America controlled – or at least strongly influenced – by Russia’s Putin. And then Trump’s repudiation of the One China policy shook them up, and while his craven back-tracking may have salved their wounds, the lesson was learned. Trump may hurt China.

And how to spike the gun? Well, supposedly the United States is a nation of laws. So … dump a bunch of money on him and see what happens. They can’t be sure – I kinda doubt it, in fact – that the GOP will start impeachment proceedings based on a violation of the Constitution, but it’s worth a shot, especially if Trump has a legitimate claim on the trademark in question. But they may see this as a good shot, since he’s looking fairly weak right now.

But I’m not entirely comfortable being a shuttlecock in this badminton match.

Have you been exposed to Trump senior aide Stephen Miller yet? For my money, he comes across extremely odd. Consider this statement, provided by WaPo but available from dozens of sources:

The end result of this, though, is that our opponents, the media and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.

If I had to guess, I’d say he’s completely surrendered to the charisma of Presidential power – and is finding quite distasteful the idea that there may be severe limits on what his President can do. This might fit in with the research on personalities attracted to autocratic personalities (I can’t seem to find that link – a little help?). He’s smart, bright, and traumatized – as we find out from Politico‘s in depth report on Mr. Miller:

The 9/11 attacks hit when Miller was a junior at Santa Monica High School. The event shocked him to his core and left him feeling isolated in his patriotism, lost in a sea of peacenik liberalism. “During that dreadful time of national tragedy, anti-Americanism had spread all over the school like a rash,” he reminisced in a column called “How I Changed My Left-Wing High School.” “The co-principal broadcasted his doubts about the morality of the air strikes against the Taliban to the entire school via the PA system. One teacher even dragged the American flag across the floor as we were sending off brave young men to risk their lives for it.” Miller describes contacting conservative talk radio personality Larry Elder, and going on his show to complain about this school. Thus began a cycle that would repeat itself over and over in high school and college: Miller would clash with school administrators over a perceived leftist conspiracy—the school not saying the Pledge of Allegiance, say—then escalate the conflict by taking it to a conservative talk show, infuriating the administrators but yielding a compromise in Miller’s favor. After his appeal to Elder, for instance, the Pledge of Allegiance would now be said twice a week, though that was still not enough for Miller. “Policy dictates it should be said every day,” he wrote in a local paper.

If you want a little deeper look, Andrew Sullivan decides to draw a link between Miller and – himself. It’s an interesting look into Andrew’s mind, at the very least, especially since many on the far left heartily detest the man.

I feel like I know Stephen Miller, the youthful Montgomery Burns who lectured the lügenpresse last Sunday morning in his charm-free Stakhanovite baritone. I feel like I know him because I used to be a little like him. He’s a classic type: a rather dour right-of-center kid whose conservatism was radicalized by lefties in the educational system. No, I’m not blaming liberals for Miller’s grim fanaticism. I am noting merely that right-of-center students are often mocked, isolated, and anathematized on campus, and their response is often, sadly, a doubling down on whatever it is that progressives hate. Before too long, they start adopting brattish and obnoxious positions — just to tick off their SJW peers and teachers. After a while, you’re not so much arguing for conservatism as against leftism, and eventually the issues fade and only the hate remains.

Think of it in some way as reactionary camp. Think Ingraham and Coulter and Yiannopoulos. They are reactionaries in the classic sense: Their performance-art politics are almost entirely a reaction to the suffocating leftism that they had to endure as they rose through the American education system. As a young, lonely conservative in college, I now wince at recalling, I threw a Champagne party to welcome Reagan’s cruise missiles to Britain. Of course I knew better — and could have made a decent argument for deterrence instead of behaving like a brattish dick. But I didn’t. I wanted to annoy and disrupt the smugness around me. If you never mature, this pose can soon become your actual personality — especially when you realize that it can also be extremely lucrative in the conservative-media industrial complex.

Miller may only last as long as his boss, which I do not anticipate being all that long – although just achieving the Presidency is enough of a miracle to make you wonder if Trump could complete a term. And what can you do about smugness? Part of the makeup of the human race is competitiveness, and the need to broadcast any superiority that you achieve – in order to attract more support and possible mates. So lefty kids who think they have improved on the status quo tend to get a little smug and self-righteous. And then grow up to be the same, even.

But it’s an interesting peek into Mr. Miller. I’ll bet he goes to extreme measures to support and prolong Trump.

In NewScientist (4 February 2017, paywall) Michael Le Page reports on the use of wood burning stoves to avoid fossil fuels – and how they add substantially to London pollution. And then comes the kicker:

Credit: Canadian Off The Grid

So do the health impacts outweigh any climate benefits? Astonishingly, there might not be any climate benefits, at least in the short term.

Burning logs is often touted as being carbon-neutral. The idea is that trees soak up as much carbon dioxide when growing as they release when burned.

In fact, numerous studies show that wood burning is not carbon-neutral, and can sometimes be worse than burning coal. There are emissions from transport and processing. Logs are often pre-dried in kilns, for instance.

Burning wood also emits black carbon – soot – that warms the atmosphere during the short time it remains in the air. Most studies ignore this, but [Eddy Mitchell at the University of Leeds, UK] and [climate scientist Piers Forster, also at Leeds] calculate that over 20 years – the timescale that matters if we don’t want the world to go too far above 2°C of warming – soot cancels out half the carbon benefits of all wood burning.

For home wood burning, the figures are even worse. “On a 20-year timescale, wood stoves provide little or no benefit, but they do on the 100-year timescale as they remove some of the long-term warming effect of CO₂ emissions,” says Forster.

The devil is in the details, evidently, and not, uh, in the stove. The findings are still controversial – but something to think about if you’re wondering about wood burning stoves. Incidentally, the picture source is from a blog posting in early January 2014, complaining that the EPA was preparing to ban wood burning stoves which did not meet standards, and quotes a press release:

The federal Environmental Protection Agency has proposed new standards for wood stoves that would reduce the maximum amount of fine particulate emissions allowed for new stoves sold in 2015 and 2019.

Maximum emissions would be reduced by one-third next year and by 80 percent in five years, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported.

Fine particulate pollution is made up of solid particles and liquid droplets that measure 2.5 micrometers in diameter or less. The EPA currently certifies non-catalytic wood stoves if they produce less than 7.5 grams of fine particulate per hour.

Fine particulate absorbed by breathing has been linked to heart attacks, decreased lung function and premature death in people with heart or lung disease.

The proposed EPA regulations would reduce that to 4.5 grams per hour for stoves manufactured after the regulations go into place next year.

I don’t know if the first set of regulations went into effect, or if the second is still on the specified schedule.

We encountered the work of Nadia Alenov at The Russian Tea House today.

For me, some pictures are lovely for their sense of motion. Nadia appears to go the other way, achieving attractive still lives in her photographs.

More of her work is here.

This time it’s all about word selection. I’m a little shocked to read this passage by Shannon Stirone on Astronomy.com (via 3 Quarks Daily, which I love for its name):

Astronomy may be the oldest natural science in the world. Before humans ever took to systematically studying the skies, we were craning our necks upwards, observing the curious movements of some bright points of light, and the stillness of others. Civilizations around the world have incorporated astronomical observations into everything from their architecture to their storytelling and while the pinnacle of the science is most commonly thought to have been during the Renaissance, it actually began a thousand years earlier and 5,000 miles to the East.

Err, no. Pinnacle means “the highest point of development or achievement” [M-W]. In astronomy, that would be, ah, today.

Now, perhaps Shannon meant a period of time in which the discovery of astronomical knowledge was the fastest relative to what we knew, but even that would be debatable – it could still be today. And, frankly, I don’t know what word to use for that concept, just off-hand.

Sami Grover on Treehugger.com speculates that the oil industry is more vulnerable than is generally acknowledged, based on an analogy of how slashing demand for coal by 10% reduced the industry’s credit-worthiness:

Headlines like these are coming so thick and fast these days that we have to pick and choose which ones we write about. Individually, they are all just a blip in the global picture of oil demand, but collectively it won’t be long before they really start to add up. And when they do start to add up, it won’t take too much cut in demand to radically reshape the future prospects for oil.

Of course, all of the above stories are about adoption of existing technologies at current pricing. But what if prices were to fall further, and faster, than they have so far? Wards Auto is reporting on conversations with auto industry insiders who say electric vehicle batteries should be under $100 per kilowatt hour by 2020, and $80 not long after that. That’s a figure well below the $125 per kilowatt hour that the Department of Energy set in 2010 as a target for cost parity with internal combustion engines.

And once we reach cost parity, there’s little that can be done by dropping tax credits or removing other incentives, to slow the march to electrification.

This sort of ties in with my thought that Americans are not entirely of the subspecies homo economicus – that is, we are not always controlled by the most economical choice, but rather make choices based on other criteria.

Abstractly speaking, the use of economics to guide choice is a common proxy for future survival prospects, but they are only a proxy. Recognition of the importance of the environment, or of climate change, or any of a number of allied topics, in our personal futures, or those of our children, can lead to discarding economics as the primary mode of making a decision in favor of a more direct decision designed to preserve what is perceived as important for future generations.

As this spreads through a substantial, if still minor, part of the American population, I expect more electric cars to be sold, along with other environmentally friendly travel choices, even in the face of higher prices (compared to fossil fuel based choices) for those options. Economics will continue to play a role, especially for those members of the population who remain in the homo economicus group, and an overwhelming role for some, especially those of very limited resources or whose education has been such as to make economics the be-all and end-all of life – but for others who’ve learned there’s more than one way to view the world, they’ll be the ones who discard economics in favor of a more full view of the future.

Hoover Dam – Where the obsessed come to die?
Need to work on our advertising materials.

The flick 711 Ocean Drive (1950) presents itself as a cautionary tale concerning the dangers, both societal and individual, of gambling, claiming that its making was opposed by American criminal elements and required the support of law enforcement. Be that as it may, this is an interesting, but not mesmerizing, tale of an electronics repair man whose understanding of early telecommunications gear permits him to help gambling syndicates better service their customers, from gathering legitimate information for bookies to less savory practices. From their, he climbs the ladder, ever jumpy, always looking for the latest advantage, to the sadness of the various ladies, until he meets a fatal bullet because of his staggering insistence on cleaning up on every last dollar owed him.

There are good elements to the movie, such as the cinematography, story, acting, and dialog. The illustration of how his technical skills and innovation help drive the gambling enterprise are curiously reminiscent of later shows in that it’s more than a wave of the hands, it’s actually quite believable – you end up nodding your head and muttering, Oh yeah, that makes sense.

But the main failing of this movie (besides the puzzling title) are the characters. They differentiate, they’re not hard to tell apart, but they don’t breathe. They don’t engage with the viewer. The lead is not some sympathetic, fatally flawed hero out of Shakespeare, driving us to weep at his mean obsession with money – his obsession with money is his only strong character trait. He abhors love, and the women who try to save them fail. There’s little to sympathize with in this guy. The other characters are similarly unengaging. They have no life outside of the plot, really.

The movie is listed as noir, but it’s not, because a noir film shows believable, likeable characters driven into disaster by the choices of themselves or, even better, others. In 711 Ocean Drive, you only get one of the two.

And it’s not really enough.

How the times change. At one time Netanyahu and the right wing in Israeli politics thought they had a close partisan in the White House. But as Ben Caspit noted two weeks ago in AL Monitor, it’s all been sliding away:

Some in Israel are watching with consternation as the Trump administration takes shape. Almost all of the leading supporters of Israel mentioned as possible candidates for senior positions have been left out of the administration, including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former UN Ambassador John Bolton and former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The only real pro-Israel appointment is David Friedman, and with all due respect to the prospective ambassador to Israel, what Israel actually needs is a presence in the Pentagon and the State Department. Instead, it has Defense Secretary James Mattis, who declared that the capital of Israel is Tel Aviv, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who has never visited Israel and has close ties with the Arab world because of his past work in the oil industry.

The euphoria in Jerusalem is dissipating. On Jan. 28, Netanyahu tweeted his support for the construction of a border wall between the United States and Mexico, writing, “President Trump is right.” Although the tweet got him into hot water with the Mexican government and Mexico’s Jewish community, Netanyahu has no real regrets. It is important for him to stay close to Trump and become his best friend as quickly as possible. Only after the two men meet will it be known if this is possible.

It’s disturbing to me that my first thought was that the two of the three best allies Israel were hoping for are not particularly attractive, physically speaking (I think Romney is quite distinguished looking, but he never had a chance with Trump – he didn’t hand over any green, and rather famously bashed Trump during the campaign, which are the number three and two metrics Trump appears to use in appointments). I mean, regardless of the fact that Guiliani appeared to be a shrill, grasping partisan, rather than a dignified personality appropriate to an important Cabinet post, to me it was his physical deportment which would fail his case with Trump.

And it appears that Netanyahu’s expectations are coming to naught. as The New York Times reports on his very recent meeting with Trump:

President Trump jettisoned two decades of diplomatic orthodoxy on Wednesday by declaring that the United States would no longer insist on the creation of a Palestinian state as part of a peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians.

Hosting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel for the first time since becoming president, Mr. Trump promised a concerted effort to bring the two sides together, suggesting a regional effort involving an array of Arab nations. But he said that he was flexible about how an agreement would look and that he would not be bound by past assumptions.

“I’m looking at two-state and one-state” formulations, Mr. Trump said during a White House news conference with Mr. Netanyahu. “I like the one that both parties like. I’m very happy with the one that both parties like. I can live with either one.”

At the same time, Mr. Trump urged Mr. Netanyahu to temporarily stop new housing construction in the West Bank while he pursues a deal, echoing a position past presidents have taken. “I’d like to see you hold back on settlements for a little bit,” he told Mr. Netanyahu.

While it’s true Trump did not endorse the two state solution disdained by the Israeli right, what he basically said was, I don’t care, you guys figure it out. That leaves Prime Minister Netanyahu with a critical question: Does the United States have my back? The shock of the Obama Administration declining to veto a United Nations resolution critical of Israeli settlement building lead to Netanyahu angrily charging the United States with instigating the resolution. From The Guardian:

Israel has escalated its already furious war with the outgoing US administration, claiming that it has “rather hard” evidence that Barack Obama was behind a critical UN security council resolution criticising Israeli settlement building, and threatening to hand over the material to Donald Trump. …

“We have rather iron-clad information from sources in both the Arab world and internationally that this was a deliberate push by the United States and in fact they helped create the resolution in the first place,” Keyes said.

Doubling down on the claim a few hours later the controversial Israeli ambassador to Washington, Ron Dermer, went even further suggesting it had gathered evidence that it would present to the incoming Trump administration.

How will Netanyahu proceed? What if Trump just ignores Israeli affairs, distracted by his own woeful nuclear meltdown? Is this when the Israeli right wing will just annex all of the lands in question and hope the world will just shrug?

Netanyahu has a lot to think about, now that he’s found that Trump isn’t a mature leader.

Cisgender:

Cisgender (often abbreviated to simply cis) is a term for people whose gender identity matches the sex that they were assigned at birth. Cisgender may also be defined as those who have “a gender identity or perform a gender role society considers appropriate for one’s sex.” It is the opposite of the term transgender. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “Privilege in the land of Sojourner Truth’s slavery,” Rev. James Rowe, Steps Towards Racial Justice, Metropolitan New York Synod, ELCA:

I say occasionally because as a white, male, cisgender person I have the privilege to be able to not think about such things because who I am as considered the norm for our society. And not thinking or speaking about these things is the preferred societal, “normal” thing to do. When I talk about my white privilege in my predominately white privileged world, I get pushback from others.

Having just watched parts of the Trump news conference on Colbert, I can only say that Trump is today’s Yogi Berra, who once famously said

Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.

Trump seems to have the same ability to hold two opposing concepts in his brain at the same time. The mark of idiots, geniuses, and wits.

As it happens, my Arts Editor alerted me to a flagrant case of fragmentary information by the local Fox affiliate, Fox 9. CityPages’ Mike Mullen has the low-down on this low behavior:

To clarify: One set of folks holding signs and chanting was protesting against Planned Parenthood, saying the vilified chain of clinics should no longer receive any federal funding. These people numbered “a couple of hundred,” according to the Associated Press, and as many as 400, the Star Tribune reports. That small crowd says Congress should block Medicaid and any federal grants to Planned Parenthood because providing abortions accounts for some 3 percent of its work.

They were utterly outnumbered by a counter-protest in favor of Planned Parenthood, a neatly aligned demonstration that drew from the massive Women’s March in St. Paul a few weekends ago. On Saturday, that side numbered well into four-digit figures, as high as 6,000, according to a St. Paul Police Department estimate.

It’s in these types of situations that TV stations love to rush to the helo-pad and get the chopper up and buzzing above the crowd — or crowds, in this case. From that vantage point, they’re really the only ones who can take it all in.

You’d think.

Most of the images Fox 9 used to cover Saturday’s rallies showed close-ups of believers on other side, often contrasted with their opposite numbers in the same frame. Then one image depicts an overhead view of both sets of protesters.

And… whoa! From this angle, it looks like the two sides are even!

If you want to see his picture, follow the link. Intriguingly enough, Mike also notes that the local ABC affiliate, KSTP, did not mention the vast disparity in the size of the crowds – and takes them to task. (My favorite channel for news, WCCO, gets kudos on the other hand.) It appears more than one journalist – or editor – needs a refresher course in basic honest journalism.

Now, I could natter on about the basic dishonesty in not providing the complete picture, and how this shapes attitudes which might be significantly different if the full picture was provided.

But Mike does it so much better.

Mathematical accuracy matters in this fact-challenged era, as does pictorial honesty. Give the real numbers and an unvarnished view of the scene.

Let your reader or viewer deny what they’re seeing, turn up their collar to hide from the truth’s chill wind. Some still will. But you owe them a chance to know what’s right.

Go, Mike!

On Lawfare, Jane Chong expresses her anger at the House Oversight Committee, chaired by Rep. Nunes of California:

Nunes’s aggressively pro-administration posture has included over recent weeks hitting out at the IC and downplaying the Russian threat. He suggested back in early January, for example, that partisan politics accounted for the IC’s conclusion that “Putin and the Russian government aspired to help President-Elect Trump’s election.” When, during an interview, Chris Wallace quoted one of Trump’s tweets and pointed out the then-President-elect didn’t exactly sound “ready to crack down on the Kremlin,” Nunes defended Trump’s comments, arguing that “he wouldn’t be the first president to want to be buddies with Putin.”

All this marks a 180-degree turn for Nunes who, as recently as last spring, declared on CNN that “[t]he biggest intelligence failure that we have had since 9/11 has been the inability to predict the leadership plans and intentions of the Putin regime in Russia.” Under the Obama administration, Nunes called out the IC, the White House, Congress and U.S. allies for being suckered into negotiating with Russia and “misjudg[ing] Putin for many, many years.”

And it’s turns like the one Jane describes which are quite baffling to any reasonable person. I can’t help but hope this will eventually be another stake in the coffin of team politics and mindless straight ticket voting, because that’s what I see as the necessary predecessor to the current national debacle taking place not only in the White House, but in the House of Representatives as well.

Jane’s conclusions?

Even now, in fact, key Republicans specifically entrusted with oversight matters are attempting to turn the page on harms that by no means necessarily end with Flynn’s resignation. For example, House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah)—who, like Nunes, was an aggressive proponent of the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails and has been startlingly silent on ethical issues under Trump—declared yesterday that he has no intention of further probing Flynn ties to Russia. “It’s taken care of itself at this point,” he said, just before the Times broke its story. Note how much less careful this comment was than that offered by House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), who stated, in response to questions about whether further congressional investigation is necessary, “I’m not going to prejudge the circumstances surrounding this, I think the administration will explain the circumstances that led to this.”

At some point, the House of Representatives and its House Intelligence Committee chairman are going to need to face the oversight music, however reluctant they are to do their part to orchestrate it.

Unfortunately for those constituents unhappy with his performance, he appears to be in a safe Republican district:

Nunes’ district was renumbered California’s 22nd congressional district after the 2010 Census. With redistricting, Nunes lost most of eastern Tulare County to the neighboring 23rd District. The 22nd also has an Hispanic plurality (44.8%). Based on recent election totals, it remains predominately Republican. In the 2012 and 2014 elections, Nunes won 61.88% and 70.58% respectively against Democratic opposition.^[16]

No 2016 update yet to Wikipedia. However, if a significant number of his fellow Party members were removed from power in the next election, it might serve as a lesson to him.

Which I mean in a most admiring way:

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/8oqPR5-GLuA

So I want to know – is this a result of a diktat from above? Or the result of someone’s artistic vision?

In WaPo, conservative pundit Jennifer Rubin notes how many American international businesses do not find Trump’s Muslim travel ban palatable. Her final thought:

Perhaps this will mark a watershed, the time when businesses refused to be bullied. In the midst of a populist political earthquake, they heretofore have been circumspect in defense of trade, immigration and the rule of law. That may come to an end. They are figuring out that Trump’s strong-arming and irrational policies are bad for the bottom line.

Trump and his low-information voters may not get it, but the U.S. economy is integrated with the rest of the world. Our businesses are global and rely on markets, employees around the globe and smooth travel to be profitable and, in turn, to hire more U.S. workers. That’s the fallacy at the heart of Trump’s know-nothing economics: We can’t turn back the clock, pull up the drawbridge and tell the world to get lost without severely damaging our economy. Maybe one of the billionaires whose wealth far exceeds Trump and who has built an international, public company (where profits and losses cannot be hidden) can explain it to him.

I don’t think this is entirely fair, given the reaction of businesses to the so-called “Religious Freedom” laws passed in Indiana and Georgia, as well as the reaction to North Carolina’s HB-2 law – each state was threatened with the cancellation of business, and North Carolina has suffered quite a lot of business loss.

And we need a metric for measuring just how many businesses are international. Corporations vary in a number of dimensions, so counting on the fingers doesn’t work. Maybe sales, maybe employees (so, not to irritate Constitutional Originalists or anything, but how do you count a robot?), maybe net profits? So does that gas station down the street count?

Or am I picking a nit? I work at a huge international company, but a lot of people also work at grocery stores. Perhaps the big clue here is “Our businesses are global …”, which is a lurking contradiction. As companies go global, the nationalistic urges fade as the potential for profit appears to be everywhere.

Universal Basic Income once again occurs to me, but I shan’t expand on it here, except to wonder if it’s a promise or a mirage. It might allow the free enterprise urge to flourish once again in currently depressed areas, though.

If you have to deny it, you must be doing it.

“I’m not ranting and raving, I’m just telling you you’re dishonest people.” President Donald J. Trump [CNN]

And the idea that CNN, a mainstream media organization, would, even could, put together a “best lines of the President’s press conference” article and fill it this full of embarrassing gaffes, lies, and incoherencies … historians must be drooling to start writing the chapter on the Trump Administration. And the Ph.D. theses … the mind spins!

This feels like it’s coming to a rapid end. Hopefully, he’ll just climb into the Presidential helicopter one day and go vacation on a sleepy island somewhere, never bothering us again. I don’t want a more dramatic ending than that.