Monthly Archives: March 2017

It sounds like a silly experiment, but the results are fascinating. NewScientist (4 March 2017) reports that you can train bees:

IT’S a hole-in-one! Bumblebees have learned to push a ball into a hole to get a reward, stretching what small-brained creatures were thought capable of.

Previous studies showed that bees could do smart things to objects directly attached to a food reward, such as pulling a string to get at food. Olli Loukola at Queen Mary University of London and his team decided the next challenge was to get bees to learn to move an object not attached to a reward.

They built a circular platform with a small hole in the centre filled with sugar solution, into which bees had to move a ball to get a reward. A researcher showed them how to do this by using a plastic bee on a stick to push the ball.

The bees did learn, and even minimised the effort needed by choosing the ball closest to the hole (Science, doi.org/bz98).

From the abstact of the academic article in Science:

Bees that observed demonstration of the technique from a live or model demonstrator learned the task more efficiently than did bees observing a “ghost” demonstration (ball moved via magnet) or without demonstration.

I’m not entirely certain if this suggests a limitation of the bee’s cognitive abilities – it has to see a creature just like it in order to recognize its own potentiality – or a demonstration that it can recognize a creature like itself, which seems unremarkable. The first link in the article selection, above, is to a video of the bees demonstrating their string pulling ability, a  previous achievement.

Muppets From Space (1999) focuses on the loneliness and quest of Gonzo for his own kind. The late Henson’s ensemble focuses on contrasting Gonzo’s plight with the Muppet theatrical company of Kermit, Miss Piggy, Fonzie, and the rest of the gang, as well as a family of lab rats, and how such families come together to face down threats to the individuals that make up such families, even as they wrangle and annoy each other.

It’s a sweet, frazzled movie, climaxing with the appearance of Gonzo’s kind from outer space. True to form, they are supportive and happy to find Gonzo, even when he realizes his real family has been there for him all along: Kermit and the gang. Sweetly instructive for children, this movie has less to offer the adult viewer, but is a reminder of the glory of The Muppet Show (1976-1981), which charmed children and adults alike during its run.

Berkefeld filter:

A Berkefeld filter^[1] is a water filter made of diatomaceous earth (Kieselguhr). It was invented in Germany in 1891, and by 1922 was being marketed in the United Kingdom by the Berkefeld Filter Co.^[2] Berkefeld was the name of owner of the mine in Hanover, Germany, where the ceramic material was obtained.

The Berkefeld is a good bacterial water filter used in microbiological laboratories, in homes and out in the field. [Wikipedia]

Seen while trying to track down how to make insulin, mostly in survivalist forums (I’m not a survivalist). Much of it seems to be copied from a single source. As an example:

After passing through the filter the Insulin is retested carefully to determine its potency. There is practically no loss in berkefelding. The tested Insulin is poured into sterile glass vials with aseptic precautions and the sterility of the final product thoroughly tested by approved methods.

I believe this is an outtake from the original publication from the 1920s.

A little more on Arrival:

Was she the leading linguist in the world? Or just the best one the military could get their hands on and who would cooperate? The former is certainly less ordinary. But the leading woman was also not some super model of beauty, and an amazing cook, and an athletic dynamo, and and and …. as all too often not-old female stars are portrayed. She has exactly 2 hair styles. Her make up is subdued. She wears ordinary clothes. She tires. She has bad dreams. She has questions. She’s not super-human. The ordinariness was more my wife’s view, but I mostly agree.

I took her as at least one of the top cadre in the language world – in most fields there’s always room for argument over who’s the best.

In the larger picture, I suppose it depends on how the movie focuses your attention. I thought this was clearly an “intellectual puzzle” movie, so I only paid enough attention to her appearance so I could identify her from scene to scene. I suppose she wasn’t an outstandingly beautiful woman in this movie – but put her in Moulin Rouge! and perhaps she’d have been a knock out. But making her that in Arrival would have detracted from the planned impact of the movie.

While I was writing a response to a conservative friend concerning the ACA, it suddenly occurred to me that the entire debate (it seems like such an inadequate word) over the ACA, should we “replace it” with a GOP alternative, or just repeal the ACA, or whatever, whatever, anyways, it tends to lead a trifling bit more of credence to one of my favorite hobby horses: the sectors of society.

Hey, I write this blog to expiate my demons, not feed yours.

So, let’s throw some facts against the wall. First, the GOP would prefer to let the free enterprise / private sector take care of the health sector, on the basis of their faith that the private sector makes everything more efficient, and on a hidden assumption that everyone’s motivated by money, since that’s the grease of the private sector machine.

So, presumably all those money-motivated medical professionals should be against the ACA, no? After all, in the long run it promises to shrink the revenue to the medical sector. Why? The ACA brings insurance to everyone, one way or another, and part of that insurance is to make it quite cheap to get regular medical checkups; by doing so, many diseases and even injuries are caught earlier, and it’s a common rule of thumb that catching a problem early means fixing it is cheaper.

A lot cheaper. And this will important because, demographically, we’re aging, and medical care costs more as we grow older.

But those medical professionals, are they happy about the proposed demise of the ACA? From WaPo:

Major associations representing physicians, hospitals, insurers and seniors all leveled sharp attacks against the House GOP’s plan to rewrite the Affordable Care Act on Wednesday, as some Republicans publicly questioned whether the measure can clear the House of Representatives.

While industry groups warned that the proposal could leave vulnerable Americans with fewer protections than they now have, GOP leaders pressed ahead, bringing legislation before two key committees that are expected to approve the bills by week’s end. They were also working in concert with the White House to win over conservatives, who have complained that the proposal preserves too much of the current law.

In order for a sector, in the theory I’ve tried to articulate on this blog, to have a purpose, a goal, the members of that particular sector must share that purpose. Not necessarily unanimously, but certainly overwhelmingly. So if the motivator of most medical professionals was money, you’d expect to see them applaud the GOP‘s proposal to repeal the ACA and let the free market deal with the health sector.

But medical professionals won’t have anything to do with it. Their purpose isn’t to make money; oh, sure, it’s fine to do so, but in most cases that’s secondary. Their purpose is to fix people. As an example, I have a family member who’s a medical professional, and she says that when she was in college, she was just looking for some way to help people as her career, and that’s how she ended up as a psychologist. It wasn’t the money, it was the chance to help. To fix people.

So when I say that different sectors have different purposes, the reactions of the various medical groups is one of those little bits of proof. And it doesn’t take an overwhelming amount of intellectual effort to realize that the methods of one sector are optimized to accomplish the purpose of that sector – and may actually be completely inappropriate to another. In fact, I think it takes some sadly magical thinking to believe that privatization of legitimate functions of other sectors is a good idea as a blanket policy. Each scenario needs examination; perhaps folks brighter than I (or at least who are being to think about it 🙂 can work out theories and guidelines for making those judgments.

OK, I’m in the saddle and off to heard the cattle about.

The extent of the budget cuts – and their locations – reflect the origins of Donald Trump in the business world, exclusively in the business world – and with no apparent capacity for thinking non-private sector parts of the world should operate in any other manner than how the private sector operates. Jack Goldsmith does Lawfare‘s preliminary analysis of the State Department’s apparent gutting:

The State Department runs U.S. diplomacy and oversees the operation of U.S. international agreements.  The Trump administration is trying to gut State Department capacity across the board.  This is evident in its proposal to cut sharply the State Department and USAID budgets, in its failure to nominate (much less get confirmed) anyone yet for senior Department posts other than Secretary of State Tillerson, in the general slowdown of State Department operations, in Tillerson’s very low-key tenure thus far, and in its proposal to kill a number of State Department initiatives and funds, including the Global Climate Change, the Green and Strategic Climate Funds, the Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance Fund, and the East-West Center.  It is unclear at this point precisely how a reduction of State Department capacity will impact U.S. international law commitments and U.S. participation and influence in international institutions.  But Tillerson wrote to State Department employees yesterday, the budget cuts are “an unmistakable restatement of the needs the country faces and the priorities we must establish.”

One result will be a lessening of oversight of corporations across the globe – no doubt viewed by folks who think the private sector is the be-all, end-all, and that the libertarian dream that free enterprise is entirely self-correcting, but for those not sharing in the dream – and who’ve had to clean up after the private sector’s excesses – a nightmare.

Fortunately, when the these folks leave office, what I might call “true conservatives” will have a template on how to return to shepherding the private sector along. True conservatives are folks that liberals can get along with – not the current radical right circus show.

But for the moment, Trump will see the restraints of government to be unnecessary – because his God is money, now isn’t it?

I have nothing against retro. In fact, in the right circumstances I like it a lot. But this tidbit from Jonathon Keats in Discover Magazine, well, the retro seems a bit out of context:

The Automaton Rover for Extreme Environments (AREE) [a proposal for a Venus probe – HW] — which recently received a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts grant — is built entirely of hardened metals and guided by a clockwork computer. The rover is still far from a planned mission, but it would be able to collect weeks’ worth of climate and seismic data from Venus’ surface, all recorded on phonograph-style records that periodically would be lifted by balloon to an overhead drone. Then NASA just needs to salvage an old Victrola.

Is it the old phonograph records? The balloon? An alternative they’re considering is to use reflectors to send the data via visible light. Maybe they can just send a one-way Navy volunteer who happens to know the old flag signals.

Many organizations issue voter’s guides, from political orgs to even churches, skirting the rim of the Johnson Amendment. But in 2018 we may see a new variety of candidate in some of those guides – working scientists. BuzzFeed has the word:

On Tuesday, [volcanologist Jess Phoenix] will announce her latest extreme endeavor, running for a spot in Congress. Her campaign joins the efforts of the science advocacy group 314 Action to inject better scientific thinking into government, by pushing actual scientists to ditch their field jackets and lab coats and run for office. Along with one other candidate, Phoenix will run to unseat a member of the group of politicians most notorious among scientists: the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, also known by some as the House “anti-science” committee. Her official paperwork will be filed in early April.

The Representatives they are trying to replace — Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, who chairs the committee, and Rep. Steve Knight of California — will both be up for re-election in 2018, and 314 Action wants to make sure they don’t come back. (The group also wants to unseat another committee incumbent, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California, but hasn’t yet confirmed a candidate.)

The races are just another symptom of bubbling scientific discontent with US politics, best seen with the hundreds of thousands of supporters for a March for Science in Washington, DC, in April, as well as “rogue” Twitter accounts for national parks and federal science agencies gaining large followings. Trump’s introduction of vaccine opponents and climate deniers onto the political stage has spurred scientists, usually insistent on staying out of political disputes, to speak out.

An interesting activity. Certainly, the mindset of a scientist is not guaranteed to resonate with the mindset of politicians, as one looks for answers, while the other – until the advent of Gingrich – looks for compromise. Since Gingrich, it’s more a search for power and the implementation of ideology, no matter what the consequences (see Kansas for an example of such a disastrous approach). But scientists can certainly learn – they spend tremendous amounts of time doing exactly that – and so the question is whether they have the cast-iron stomach to do that.

314 Action is located here. One of their declarations:

Our mission is to put members of Congress who are anti-science under the scope. By scrutinizing their actions and voting record that go against the facts and data, we will bring attention to practices and policies that are decidedly anti-science. It is no longer the time to sit idly by as partisan motives are promoted in direct opposition to leading scientific consensus on topics such as climate change, clean energy and evolution. 314 Action is committed to holding these members accountable for their actions and their votes.

The BuzzFeed article claims 314 Action will only support Democratic candidates, which may be a theoretical mistake. BuzzFeed did find at least one opposition voice:

But others are skeptical about whether getting scientists to run for office in this way will ultimately be good for politics — or for science.

“There’s no shortage of scientific information in Congress. They’re not using it, and it’s not because they don’t have access to it, it’s because the politics of the situation is not incentivizing them to use it,” said science and society professor Daniel Sarewitz of Arizona State University, who previously served on the staff of the House science committee.

“The calls for more scientific thinking are naive. They misunderstand how politics works, and I also think they misunderstand what it takes to be effective on behalf of science in Congress.”

By only running Democrats for office, he added, a group like 314 Action also runs the risk of further stoking mistrust of science among Republicans.

“The danger is you have a self-fulfilling prophecy where Republicans start to look at science as nothing more than Democratic politics by another name,” Sarewitz told BuzzFeed News.

I’m a little puzzled by the objection raised by Dr. Sarewitz. After all, politicians are elected to Congress  in order to shape policy based on the knowledge of experts on national issues – not necessarily their own knowledge base. The fact that the GOP politicians scream Conspiracy! when their delivered wisdom is denied by a scientific conclusion is the basis of the objection to having them in Congress at all.

Having scientists occupying elected office is important in that they understand the methods of science, when a hypothesis is trustable and when it’s still debatable – on its own merits. Indeed, in an idle moment I might suggest that scientists, by studying reality, which is the fundamental basis of all science, they become grounded in science.

On his other objection, it’s a good theoretical objection, but I think in reality the GOP has mostly gone anti-science anyways.

Keep an eye open. Maybe your district will have the pleasure of evaluating a scientist for office. We certainly don’t have good representation at the present time – perhaps you can help with that.

A reader remarks on the review of She:

And is that a black tube top pictured, or some strange in-the-film censoring?

I believe it’s a tube top. I refuse to watch it again just to confirm that, though.

I do have standards. I do! I do!

Regarding the review of Arrival, a reader writes:

It was good but I was disappointed in the flaws, many of which could have been easily avoided. There was too much “confuse the audience for the sake of confusing them” for one. There should have been one scene showing at least the father’s back, to show that he had been present for the girl’s childhood. Instead, it made him look like a complete jerk for the entire movie, only to insist you believe otherwise at the very end. My understanding is that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is fairly discredited now. It’s novel on first discovering it, and seems to explain many things. But apparently it’s not how humans really work. We liked that the lead was portrayed like a fairly ordinary woman.

There was some deliberately introduced confusion, but attempting to show how the flow of time is running through her mind isn’t an easy task. More importantly, though, the complaint about the portrayal of the father brings into sharp focus my central disturbance concerning the movie: that could have all been avoided just by telling the father that he was going to be disappointed in her because she foresaw her child’s early death and went ahead. This is all stuff that could have been avoided by a little conversation – but if you have that conversation then the future is disturbed, and so you don’t see it, ad infinitum. My credulity ligaments begin to snap.

And the lead was an ordinary woman?! The leading linguist in the world? Whose predecessor was carted off to the insane asylum?

Regarding the President’s changing stance on sources of facts as they benefit or hurt him, a reader writes:

Not to worry – he’ll revert to form and denounce the numbers as soon as they begin climbing again. Trump doesn’t have a relationship with truth.

Heh.

Concerning the President’s admitted lie concerning immigration policy, a reader writes:

No, they’re not that desperate. No, it’s not lack of planning (although they may well lack that ability). It’s completely in line with narcissistic behavior. The media are worried they may not trust him again? Hello? Under which rock have they been the past decade? Journalists continue to amaze me for how incredibly STUPID they can be.

I think they’re paranoid sociopaths who are afraid of the prescriptions of experts.

On the other point, journalists, by the nature of their job, must exercise a certain a priori restraint in order to retain credibility and build readership; but their ire at being misled should be equal in magnitude to their restraint. It is in the latter aspect that they’ve fallen down – every single lie should have been identified and roundly shafted right on the front page, leaving no doubt as to his mendacity.

It’s easy to know where to begin with She (1982): start with the best the film has to offer, and work your way down.

So … I have this lurking admiration for the costumes and makeup in this movie. Clearly, in the hurly-burly of planning, an allocation for the budget of makeup and costumes was forgotten, but that didn’t stop those critical people from coming through in the clutch. Digging up old prom dresses, Halloween costumes, and (more likely) bridesmaids’ outfits, along with the assorted contents of garage sales and dumpsters, the characters in this movie are entertainingly clothed; each group of characters clearly cohere based on the thematic vision of their tribal costumes.

I particularly liked the 6’4″ guy, a real bear, in what appeared to be a pink tutu. It was a good match for his boss, who was also fairly far-fetched in his attire, although not to the same extent as his underling.

In a similar vein, the cinematography, staging and use of sweeping vistas had a nearly competent feel to it; the use of abandoned industrial plants, both cheap and effective, while hardly unique, at least conveyed a flavor of ruined industrialization key to the background of this movie.

Moving down our hierarchy, as it were, the sound quality was occasionally smudged, and certainly without insight and innovation. The sound waves were captured, in some form or another, on the media of the day, and conveyed to our ears. Let not originality mar this exercise in sound conveyance.

Sadly, to suggest the acting in this movie approached adequate would be to commit a deception unforgivable even in a casual movie critic such as myself. To be honest, my Arts Editor and I marveled at the sheer lack of competency: poor stage combat, lack of chemistry between characters, nearly no expression of emotion through dialog, even mere movement seemed a problem sometimes. For example, when one of the Amazons was trying to look like she had finally become interested in one of the guys, it came out looking like gross repulsion, soon to be followed by physical illness.

It couldn’t have gone well for him that night.

But, in defense of the actors, they had to wrestle with some truly wretched dialog. It had no sense of originality, of purpose, of conveyance of multiple meanings. When a character is being tortured on the wheel, screaming “No! No!” over and over and … isn’t dialog. It’s laziness. Not a single profanity uttered, not a humorous aside, observation on the depraved nature of the torturers, or the futility of their tribal superiors, not to mention the inevitable moral failings.

Even the “No!”s began to sound bored after a bit. And that joke about her seeming a bit taller afterward? Not clever. Humor works when it’s not obvious, even the tenth time you hear it. This was obvious before it was ever uttered. Not to put too fine a point on it.

But even if the dialog had been innovative and inspirational, this joke of a story would still have dragged all down under the waves and left the whole kit & caboodle, characters, dialog, and costumes bubbling haplessly, trapped in the coral reef. Characters disappear and reappear with nary a reason why, a tribe of vampires wander through, we run into a God with flashing green eyes who easily overcomes the Goddess She, for who the movie is named (her superpower seems to be screaming “I’m She, the Goddess!”). Perhaps this dreck reaches for the high mount of surrealism, but it doesn’t get there. We wander on some odd quest, I think it was to find someone’s sister, but I’ll tell you –

I could call this all putting lipstick on a pig, but that would be an insult to lipstick.

Recommended, if you’re a film studies major surveying some of the worst movies out there. Otherwise, only watch while impaired.

Salwa Samir reports on AL Monitor about the garbage situation in Egypt:

Source: Egypt Independent

An estimated 75 million tons of trash end up on Egypt’s streets every year, according to local media. The trash includes industrial waste, some of which eventually makes it into the Nile. To get rid of this waste, the country needs 2 billion Egyptian pounds ($111 million) every year. The Egyptian capital alone produces 19,000 tons of waste daily that is thrown onto the streets.

That sure seems like a lot of garbage, doesn’t it? Salwa gives a short history on Egyptian garbage collection:

Between the 1940 and 1990s, waste collection in Cairo was based on garbage collectors known as the Zabaleen, who hailed from rural areas and settled in a slum settlement at the base of Mokattam Hills on the outskirts of Cairo.

Since then, the Zabaleen have been roaming Cairo using their donkey carts or trucks to collect rubbish either from the streets or by knocking on the doors of residents to take their waste in return for a humble sum of money.

Then they bring the collected trash to their neighborhood, which is named after them, and sort it out. They sell anything that can be recycled and leave the organic leftovers to feed their pigs.

And then swine flu hit, and the pigs were ordered killed by the government. And then another blow:

In 2003, waste management faced another problem when the government contracted foreign companies to collect garbage. The doormen of each residential or office building collected the rubbish and put it in large refuse bins in front of the buildings so the foreign contractors’ garbage trucks could pick it up.

However, after 10 years of participation in solid waste management in Cairo, the companies’ performance has been nothing but a dismal failure.

The balance of the article concerns the attemtps of a local NGO to promote recycling and other uses for waste. I wonder if the Zabaleen could be returned to service, though.

lunch today it occurred to me to wonder if there is a slash fiction community focused on Donald Trump.

Continuing in question mode concerning the dictator’s half-brother’s death, NewScientist (4 March 2017) indulges in a bit of speculation:

Malaysian authorities have said Kim was killed with VX nerve agent, but chemical weapons experts are less convinced. VX is the most toxic substance known – 10 milligrams of the oily liquid on your skin is lethal. But Kim took some time to show symptoms, which include convulsions and frothing at the mouth. What’s more, the poison was handled by unprotected assailants and didn’t contaminate other people.

But it might just be that VX from North Korea – which is suspected of carrying out the attack – is losing its punch.

Perhaps he had an allergy to some ordinarily harmless substance, and the assassins knew about this.

While it has little impact on the Trump Administration, it’s interesting to hear that Iraqi minority Christian religious groups are beginning to lose faith in him, as reported by Sam Kimball for AL Monitor:

Some 12 miles north of al-Qosh, in the Iraqi Kurdistan city of Dahuk, Father Emanuel Youkhana, an Assyrian priest, explained the logic behind many Iraqi Christians’ support for Trump’s candidacy.

“My grandfather survived the [Ottoman] genocide of Assyrians in 1915, in which hundreds of thousands died,” said Youkhana. “My father survived the massacre of Simele [in Iraq] in 1933. Now 100 years later, people like me and my community are trying to survive IS.”

A history of persecution from Ottoman times to the present and the recent wave of violence across Iraq have made local Christians desperate for anyone who appears to have the power to help them. “So of course [the Assyrians] will live this illusion of a savior,” Youkhana said bitterly.

He dismissed the idea that Trump’s executive order is Islamophobic, claiming that Western countries have been hamstrung in their efforts to combat terrorism because of political correctness. “There is naive thinking among Western countries, who are trying to beautify this thing called Islamic terror,” he said. “But in my country, Islamic terrorism has a name.”

Despite the current situation, Youkhana believes that Christians should be helped to stay in Iraq. Facilitating their resettlement elsewhere, he said, would be aiding the sectarian project of extremist militants, who wish to see the country emptied of minority religious groups.

Trump’s preoccupation with domestic affairs is no service to folks in other countries hoping for help from his Administration, and I suppose those who oppose him domestically – which is more than half the United States – are not doing them any short-term favors, either. But it’s hard to prioritize foreign countries when your own country, a bulwark of freedom, is at risk from within in the eyes of so many American citizens. I hope the best for them, as we all try to get through this life, but I fear for the worst. Trump’s few opportunities in the foreign policy arena haven’t been encouraging in any case.

The Original Party Crew.

Long after I’ve seen Night of the Living Dead (1968), just one question will persist in my mind.

In the meantime, the production values and acting are surprisingly good in this original shock flick. The reference to radiation from Venus struck me as a half-hearted wave at the old “B” sci-fi movies, which was probably just as well, since the movie really didn’t share much thematic material with that genre.

And after that red herring activity of mine, I’m left to return to that question:

Why?

Not, Why didn’t they ever use the word Zombie?

Just Why?

OK, so I’ve read some of the critical reviews and noted how it was supposed to be commentary on the times. I suppose this is why we have film studies, since I was barely coherent when this flick was made.

But I’m still fairly well bewildered by it.

The bounce in water in California has continued. Earlier this year there were reports of a dam causeway being near collapse after historic storms; now NewScientist (4 March 2017) reports the rollercoaster may be getting so high that the air is getting thin – metaphorically speaking, of course:

The drought and floods can be traced to the bands of water vapour being carried up from the tropics, says Michael Dettinger of the US Geological Survey. California gets almost half its rain from these “atmospheric rivers”, but they brought fewer storms than usual to the West Coast over the past few years, causing drought. This year, however, there have been close to 30 such storms already, says Dettinger.

Years of drought have dried up hillsides and killed vegetation, creating the right conditions for mudslides and flooding, says Lynn Ingram of the University of California, Berkeley.

Historically, California often sees periods of drought punctuated by years of intense flooding, she says. “The past really is telling us to prepare for both extremes,” she says.

And I suppose the excess just runs off into the ocean rather than recharging aquifers, as well. Nor is excess water good for crops, although I don’t know if they’ve reached that level just yet – it’s not quite growing season. And while I didn’t run across any before or after pics of Lake Mead, here’s a water level chart from Lakes Online:

Lake Mead Water Levels

That purple junk appears to be a leftover from interactive mode, and I’m up too late to redo it.

Lloyd Alter on Treehugger.com reports on the creation of a bike highway in the sky in Xiamen, China, and hates it:

Image: Dissing + Weitling

Now forgive me for dissing Dissing, but there is something wrong with this picture. Steen Savery Trojaborg of Dissing + Weitling justifies putting cyclists up in the air by noting:

In the densely packed Asian cities, you often experience urban life at different heights. Restaurants and shops are seldom only at the ground floor of skyscrapers, and in compact million cities like Hong Kong and Shanghai, the pulsating skyways often function as entrances to shopping centres and public buildings.

Yes, the do this, they fill the roads with cars to that a pedestrian cannot cross them without getting killed (and barricade them too) and stick the pedestrians up in the air where they can suck on all the exhaust fumes. It is not a desirable condition. It is not fair that pedestrians have to climb up and down stairs so that cars can rule the ground plane.

I cannot help but note that cars are even less likely to climb stairs. And, with some luck, the trend towards electric cars will accelerate in countries lacking backwards political movements. Back to Lloyd:

Image: Dissing + Weitling

I was curious to see if Mikael Colville-Andersen, Mr. Copenhagenize [i.e., an admirer of an earlier Dissing + Weitling project in Cophenhagen], had anything to say about this, and Surprise! he does.

An eight kilometer long shelf designed to place cyclists out of sight and out of mind. This is what happens when architecture gets drunk at the christmas party and sleeps with car-centric engineering, without listening to the wise advice of urban planning and anthropology.

An attitude that will get you nowhere for a long, long time. Perhaps they should have engaged Dissing + Weitling in a discussion and published that, rather than coming off as self-appointed Gods. I was all set to be sympathetic until I ran into that expression….

Because tau day isn’t half as cute. I would have let it pass in silence, but Dr. Ogden’s¹ post concerning Buffon’s Needle approach to calculating pi is just too damn cute.

In 1777, a French philosopher called Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, wrote out a very elegant theorem which turned out to be the earliest problem in geometric probability.

Buffon discovered that if you draw a set of equally-spaced parallel lines (say, d centimetres apart) and drop sticks on them which are shorter than the spacing (say l centimetres long, where l is less than d), then the probability of a stick crossing a line is

2l/πd.

This means that if you drop lots of sticks randomly and count how many cross the parallel lines, you can calculate what π is by rearranging the formula:

π=2ls/cd

where s is the number of sticks you drop and c is the number that crossed a line.

Go see Dr. Ogden’s post if you want the footnotes or more commentary. Or learn about the mathematician who gave it a go by spinning in circles.

Deb’s Raised Game Pie

BTW, the second to last pie I baked was supposed to be lemon meringue, but turned into caramel meringue. We discovered squirrels and other local wildlife would actually eat it.

The last pie I baked was an emergency replacement apple pie.

¹Via SciFri via Spaceweather.com.

Sometimes misleading arguments come attached to really pretty things, trying to catch their audience with their critical thinking guards down. This came through my mailbox recently with a lovely story about the Bentley Speed Six, a car introduced in 1928. In fact, the fair body of the mail is available here – enjoy the great lines of the car! (I’d put it in my garage, except it’s bigger than my garage.)

Now we move on to the hookworm (or lamprey) attached to the mail. I’ll reproduce it and then point out its errors:

A guy looked at my Corvette the other day and said, I wonder how many people could have been fed for the money that sports car cost.

I replied I am not sure, it fed a lot of families in Bowling Green, Kentucky who built it, it fed the people who make the tires, it fed the people who made the components that went into it, it, fed the people in the copper mine who mined the copper for the wires, it fed people in Decatur IL, at Caterpillar who make the trucks that haul the copper ore. It fed the trucking people who hauled it from the plant to the dealer and fed the people working at the dealership and their families.

BUT,… I have to admit, I guess I really don’t know how many people it fed.

That is the difference between capitalism and welfare mentality. When you buy something, you put money in people’s pockets, and give them dignity for their skills. When you give someone something for nothing, you rob them of their dignity and self worth.

Capitalism is freely giving your money in exchange for something of value. Socialism is taking your money against your will and shoving something down your throat for which you never asked.

I’ve decided I can’t be politically correct anymore.

Unfortunately for this chap, the money he spent on his Corvette didn’t go to the PTSD-afflicted war vet sprawled in the alley, sleeping off his drunk. It doesn’t go to the woman born without arms, the construction worker with pancreatic cancer, the boy with brain cancer, the infant born with a bad heart to the former coal miners who never had the opportunity to retrain.

But that money does go, in very large part, to the executives at GM, executives who make millions of dollars a year, and yet clamor for their tax breaks, for the muzzling of the EPA, for the unions to go away. Why? Because of the mindless clamor of their shareholders. All those hungry hands, held out for the dollars of the car buyers. It ain’t going to the workers.

It’s all very self-satisfying to speak of robbing someone of their dignity, but when that dignity was robbed by society OR Mother Nature (sometimes a cruel, cruel joke), it rings very, very hollow, and speaks to the immaturity of the writer. We do not band together into societies just so we can grow crops and make stuff and trade it with each other, driving out the weak and elderly and unfortunate out into the cold to die lonely deaths.

We come together to protect and care for each other. Mistaking free enterprise or socialism or authoritarianism as the purpose of society is to make the mistake of thinking roads exist so cars can drive on them.

No, they exist so people can travel more conveniently, whether it’s a Corvette, a Tesla, or a horse drawn carriage.

Fortunately, neither participant in this imaginary scenario, annoying as both may be, realizes that we’re not playing a zero-sum game. What this means that we’re a rich enough society that we can buy Corvettes and take care of OUR unfortunates. Remember that phrasing, because it’s very important – from that infant with a bad heart to the veteran who’s thinking of suicide, they are all OUR people, black or white, straight or gay. Not THE unfortunates, but OUR unfortunates.

It may not be as sexy as funding our war machine, but it’s more important.

And, speaking as a free-thinker (the 19th century term for an agnostic or atheist), it seems to me that a good alternative phrase for welfare mentality might be Being Christian. Maybe I’m wrong, but it sure seems like the best Christian message has always been Love Each Other. And that includes the helping hand.

The King and JFK, ready to rumble!
And that’s no typo.

Elvis Presley. Jack Kennedy.

In a nursing home together.

Menaced by a possessed mummy.

Sounds awful. It’s not. It’s Bubba Ho-Tep (2002). Bruce Campbell, real life author of a memoir of B-movie acting, portrays The King, who, in a complicated deal, jettisoned his life style burdens without jettisoning his life. But he awakens in a nursing home, weak and hurt, the victim of an accident – and now the small town hearse is making more than frequent stops at this nursing home as something, heralded by scuttling scarabs of monstrous girth, has begun harvesting the simple souls who have gathered here for their final years.

But Elvis and his buddy, JFK, are a hobbling step faster than whatever it is chasing after them, and soon they’re in full investigative mode, discovering what it might be – and what might best deal with something that can disappear and reappear in its nightly quest for sustenance.

Even this plot summary may sound ghastly, but intertwined are the realizations and regrets that come with 40 or more years of the bigger-than-life living that both men ventured upon – lost connections to loved ones, the relentless chasing after desires vs the responsibilities that could have been their’s to bear – and how those responsibilities might have enhanced their lives. Add in the random humiliations of nursing home living, and this moves from a trite caricature of a plot to an off-beat story that captures one’s interest, makes one think about the choices to be made before the end comes for you – and what you’ll do if that end is a shambling, soul sucking mummy from Egypt.

In the middle of Texas.

Not quite recommended, but chances are you’ll enjoy this if you chance upon it – and give it that chance.

Georgy Toloraya surveys a landscape of question marks when it comes to the assassination of Kim Jong Nam in Malaysia, from 38 North:

This attack also raises a strong doubt that a new, likely liberal South Korean government will start a dialogue with Pyongyang, as was widely expected. Relations with China also suffered, as Beijing immediately punished Kim Jong Un by banning coal exports for the rest of the year. Russia’s hopes for restarting multilateral negotiations were also dashed, quickly dissolving any warm feelings in Moscow. And, of course, North Korea’s relations with Malaysia—one of the few partners and outposts abroad—have been severely damaged over criticisms over the investigation process.

These are just a handful of the questions still to be answered about this ordeal. Numerous theories have emerged thus far about who perpetrated this act, why now and to what ends—everything from Kim Jong Un ordering the hit to something more complex such as some “reactionary” or China-biased forces in the North staging the event to curb Kim Jong Un’s influence. (For example, a group of intelligence people may have felt threatened by the Marshal and instructed their unsuspecting agents to stage the event to undermine Kim Jong Un’s standing both domestically and abroad.) We may never know the full story, but we should be watching closely to both the Malaysian investigations and North Korean responses over the next few weeks for more answers to why Kim Jong Nam was killed.

I hadn’t considered a false flag attack. Certainly, ridding the world of a Kim family member while also eliminating an export market for North Korea might count as a two-fer for certain groups.