Monthly Archives: March 2017

It can’t be good when you make it into this column, and Wells Fargo did make it there. Chuck Shepherd of News of the Weird notes how suspension of access to the judicial system is impacting the recent Wells Fargo debacle:

Wells Fargo Bank famously admitted last year that employees (pressured by a company incentive program) had fraudulently opened new accounts for about 2 million existing customers by forging their signatures. In an early lawsuit by a victim of the fraud (who had seven fraudulent accounts opened), the bank argued (and a court agreed!) that the lawsuit had to be handled by arbitration instead of a court of law because the customer had, in the original Wells Fargo contract (that dense, fine-print one he actually signed), agreed to arbitration for “all” disputes. A February Wells Fargo statement to Consumerist.com claimed that customers’ forgoing legal rights was actually for their own benefit, in that “arbitration” is faster and less expensive. [Consumerist, 3-1-2017]

Perhaps Wells Fargo will consider returning to the name of one of its earlier incarnations after this tar baby of a mess becomes part of the public consciousness: Norwest. Escaping bad publicity may become a necessity.

I’d never thought about this before, but accounting for all trade and then balancing it across the border … isn’t that easy. From WaPo:

But don’t assume the import/export data we have is accurate

Critics miss a less flattering truth about trade statistics, however: Import and export data are much more messy than their champions suggest and millions of users assume.

In principle, all trade flows are recorded twice. The exporter counts when goods leave the country and the importer counts the goods when they arrive at their destination. As mirror statistics, Mexico’s exports to the United States should not differ very much from U.S. imports from Mexico. Here’s the trouble — the gap in these figures is huge, and it has been growing, rather than shrinking.

Take merchandise trade with Mexico, roughly 90 percent of total trade across the United States’ southern border, and much easier to measure than trade in services. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the 2015 U.S. trade deficit with Mexico was $63.4 billion. The Mexican government, in contrast, put the figure roughly twice as high, at $122.1 billion (the import figures are here, the export ones here).

Makes it a little harder to plunge into international trade arguments with gusto, doesn’t it?

John Bellinger III explains on Lawfare why the Guantanamo Bay facility should be closed:

Although it may be politically popular with some of the Administration’s supporters, it would be a mistake for the Trump Administration to try to repopulate Guantanamo with new detainees from the Islamic State or Al Qaida-affiliated groups, as President Trump and Attorney General Sessions have said they want to do.   The Trump Administration should learn from the bitter legal and policy experiences of the Bush Administration: adding new detainees to Guantanamo will produce more (and more risky) lawsuits; difficult practical problems down the road as to what to do with the detainees; and unnecessary friction with allies.  Guantanamo detainees have prevailed in numerous challenges to their detention in federal courts (including four cases before the Supreme Court).   Any new ISIS detainees in Guantanamo would undoubtedly claim in habeas petitions that the 2001 AUMF does not authorize their detention because it is limited to the organizations responsible for the 9-11 attacks.  As Jack Goldsmith has pointed out, “it is easy to imagine a habeas court ruling that the President does not have the authority to detain a member of ISIL because the 2001 AUMF does not extend to ISIL.”   And as I explained in my Lloyd Cutler lecture last fall, our allies are likely to cut back on intelligence, law enforcement, and military cooperation if they believe the United States is not acting consistent with international law and our shared democratic values.

I’m sure tired of seeing it as a political football rather than a sanely managed facility. John blames both Democrats and Republicans; I don’t care. It does more damage to our reputation than any positives it may bring to the table.

Remember the North Korea missile launches from last week? John Schilling on 38 North notes this occurred at the same time of joint South Korean – American exercises:

This was probably the point of the latest exercise. Foal Eagle is a training exercise aimed at maintaining and demonstrating the ability of the US-ROK alliance to wage war against North Korea. They’ve just demonstrated that they can wage war right back, with weapons they have in operational service today. And the trajectory also carried a not-very-subtle message to Japan: that North Korea understands the role Japanese ports and airfields play in allied plans for war on the Korean peninsula, and that Japan will be a battleground if those plans are carried out.

The four-rocket salvo was likely intended to demonstrate the ability to saturate allied missile defenses, such as the THAAD anti-missile defense system that the US recently started to deploy to South Korea. THAAD, in conjunction with the existing Patriot system, should have no difficulty stopping a four-missile salvo at a high-value target; it has successfully stopped a five-missile salvo in tests. But four missiles at once almost certainly isn’t the limit of North Korea’s capabilities, nor is it in their interest for us to know what those limits are. We don’t know how many missiles they can launch simultaneously, or from how many sites. They don’t know how well our missile defenses can deal with large salvos. Even we are not absolutely certain.

John also notes no new capabilities were revealed by this launch, making it more likely to be a message than a true test.

Pimpernel:

a plant belonging to the genus Anagallis, of the primrose family, especially A. arvensis (scarlet pimpernel) having scarlet or white flowers that close at the approach of bad weather. [Dictionary.com]

Mentioned in The Court Jester, and part of the title of The Scarlet Pimpernel.

Yeah, I don’t see a them, either.

In the vein of very light entertainment comes The Court Jester (1956), a medieval England romp, perhaps a cross between Robin Hood and the infamous deaths of the two Princes (Edward V and Richard of Shrewsbury). Danny Kaye stars as a common man tasked with spiriting the royal heir, an infant, away from the man who murdered the royal family and usurped the throne. Through misfortune and broad farce, the baby ends up at the usurper’s castle during a gathering of attractive wenches, Kaye is knighted and fighting for his life in a duel with Griswold while being hypnotized by a witch, and eventually fighting a duel with Basil Rathbone.

And rescued by dwarves.

This is entertainment that doesn’t stick to the ribs, but it’s a pleasant way to pass a couple of hours, I suppose. And it does appear that Danny Kaye learned fencing at one time. Or, unsurprisingly, stage combat. Keeping Basil at bay while drinking a mug of beer was impressive.

I couldn’t help but notice CNN reporting Breitbart speculating that the Trump Administration is lying:

My friend (even if I haven’t seen her in years) Dr. Amy Myrbo is fighting for the future of science by spreading the message Strong Science == Strong America, which is, to my mind, very true. From her organization’s web site:

Our main purpose is to spread the message that public funding of science is good for the US economy, quality of life, competitiveness, and future.

Where do the proceeds go?
Right now, we’re plowing everything back into printing more stickers and buttons.

And it’s certainly very true that publicly funded science has been a priority of the US Government for decades – regardless of the party in power. (I recall my father, a liberal hawk for his time, arguing very quietly – because he’d been ordered not to my by sister – with my sister’s father-in-law, a card carrying Republican who insisted the Republicans had been more generous with government funding of basic science than Democrats.) The ideology that free enterprise will cover basic science has failed over and over during the years, as the financial profits from basic science are a chancy business, unpredictable, “lumpy” – and it’s a rare business who can invest with a 20 – 40 year horizon. There’s simply too many shorter term opportunities available for the limited cash available. Then there’s the problem of markets that appear and disappear like flowers in a desert after a once-a-decade rainstorm.

I urge you to consider her plea.

UPDATE: Forgot they also have these links:

https://www.facebook.com/strongsciencestrongamerica
http://z.umn.edu/strongscience

Mark Sumner on The Daily Kos writes a love letter to the coal miner – and bids them good luck in the future in new occupations:

But the reason miners are so passionate about their job goes beyond just that close bond with fellow miners. It’s that thing at the top of the article. That “work of the world waits on him” bit. There are songs about how “coal keeps the lights on.” There’s a romance that wanders through “16 tons” and past a lot of coal miner’s daughters. From the stickers on the hardhats to the banners in the mine parking lot, miners are reminded every day that what they are doing is important, vital to the nation. They are still Wilson’s “great service army.”

They’re not just risking their lives. They’re risking them for you, America. Only … that’s no longer true. And I’m sorry. Really sorry. But it’s not.

Mark says he used to work in the industry. I found this bit interesting as well:

In fact, the regulations that Trump is repealing will make [coal miner job losses] happen faster. The rule that was changed on allowing more coal waste in streams won’t make new coal jobs. It will allow mining companies to replace underground mines with mountaintop removal mines. Those mines use far fewer people. When Trump signed that document and handed you the pen, what he was repealing was coal jobs.

Clearly a guy who knows and loves the coal miner families. And I agree with him, they once did crucial work and deserve honor for it. But natural gas is replacing coal for free enterprise reasons – and coal carries a load of environmental problems as well. This doesn’t impact the honor of the coal miners, which remains intact. But it’s time to move on.

Eric Levitz in New York Magazine reveals a dirty little corporate secret – attempting to use the stick and carrot to improve employee heatlth didn’t actually work in one celebrated case:

Burd explained that, in 2005, Safeway had instituted a “voluntary” wellness program, which gave employees the opportunity to undergo tests of their tobacco usage, body fat, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels. If they passed all four tests, their annual premiums were reduced by $780 for individuals and $1,560 for families.

Or, put another way, if Safeway employees failed any of the tests — or refused to participate in the “voluntary program” — their premiums were increased by $780 for individuals and $1,560 for families.

This system allowed Safeway to achieve the unthinkable: Between 2005 and 2009, the company kept its per capita health-care costs flat, even as most American companies saw theirs increase by 38 percent. …

There is no evidence that this new rule produced a significant drop in America’s health-care costs. And that isn’t terribly surprising — since Burd’s column was composed almost entirely of lies.

“[A] review of Safeway documents and interviews with company officials show that the company did not keep health-care costs flat for four years, the Washington Post reported in January 2010. “Those costs did drop in 2006 — by 12.5 percent. That was when the company overhauled its benefits … the decline did not have anything to do with tying employees’ premiums to test results. That element of Safeway’s benefits plan was not implemented until 2009.”

In other words, Safeway reduced costs for a single year by raising its employees’ deductibles. It didn’t save money by encouraging its workers to lead healthier lives — it saved money by making its workers pay a larger portion of their health-care costs.

Something to keep in mind the next time your company calls up and asks you to certify that you exercise. Or announces a brand new innovation in their health benefits … and that also raises the question: how many folks have the time to exercise properly? Between 50-60 hour work-weeks (thank goodness my lack of ambition lets me skip out on that), children, hobbies, keeping up on government follies (you do do that, right? Right?), extended family care-taking, and being online at 3am in case the customer needs you, who has time to exercise?

At least at places that would consider this crap? After all, the places that make ridiculous demands are also those most likely to have out of shape employees. Unless it’s construction.

So, along with being an infringement on our freedoms, it also feels like a dead-end, both path way and company.

If you’re in North Korea and want to use some North Korean branded hardware known as the Ullim, be aware that there’s a level of control to which we’re unaccustomed to in the West. Martyn Williams on 38 North notes the changes that, beyond a hardware modification, falls into 4 categories: Constant Surveillance, Approved Apps Only, File Watermarking, and Restricted Media Compatability. Martyn’s thoughts:

Taken together, the various systems and software on Ullim represent a significant barrier to activists who are hoping the greater spread of portable electronics will increase the ability of North Koreans to freely access information.

“If you do manage to get an app on there and try to install it, it won’t work because the signature is wrong,” said Grunow. “The [Android file] must be signed with the government key. Additionally, there is a check to see if the app is in the whitelist and a normal user cannot get into the code to add to the whitelist.”

“This basically finishes all of your efforts to be a normal user in the DPRK,” he said. “It’s virtual[ly] impossible.”

Unfiltered information is one of the biggest enemies of the North Korean regime so it’s no surprise that engineers have gone to such lengths to lock down the tablet.

This brings a couple of thoughts to mind, the one triggering the second.

First, how much data concerning usage does North Korea face? If tablets and other mobile computing is perceived as a positive by the North Korean dictators, then equipping many citizens, military or not, would be expected – and the amount of information to analyze from these modifications might fall into the same league as that of the British spy cameras, initially feared but perhaps impotent because of the sheer volume of data to analyze.

Which leads to the second question: can they cut down the data volume through simple analytical techniques, or will we be seeing the dark side of Artificial Intelligence developed and deployed to retain control over the North Korean populace? I doubt they would develop a truly independent, sentient AI, so it would be a tool, and thus devoid of moral attributes – and moral choices. So we’re deprived of wondering whether an AI developed in an authoritarian country would develop a morality in favor of command and control, or freedom and (to use an unexpected adjective) chaos.

… leads to this:

Keep that hand back when your opponent attacks!

Arrival (2017) tackles the difficult subject of realistically deciphering the script of aliens who suddenly appear in our skies. Depicted against the background of a world that is undergoing a collective nervous breakdown, and military leaders who are increasingly panicky, the American team battles fatigue, pressure, and what seems to be incipient madness of both themselves and their military escort while desperately learning a script with no connection to any Earthly script, which has facets to it never seen before.

The steps they have to take seem what might happen in reality, and they are only lightly touched on, as they are only faintly related to drama. This approach to solving the problem – without a Rosetta Stone – seems both reasonable and difficult to perform, but lends a good touch of reality to the entire performance.

I appreciate one of the central tenets of the movie, the idea that language shapes our thought patterns and even, to some extent, our abilities (which I’ve just discovered is called the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis). However, the particular ability enabled here (which I shan’t reveal, despite it’s playing a part in the apparent madness of the lead character) annoyed me as it seems plainly ridiculous to me.

My Arts Editor disagrees with me.

Regardless, I think this movie had us on the edge of our seats – not so much for the action as for the intellectual stimulation. The aliens are deliciously depicted in the Burkean manner of sublimity, which is to say we’re always sure there’s more to them than we’re seeing. And if the sudden end action of the aliens bothers me, I can always put it down to Clarke’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Recommended.

Evolution continues on despite the opinions of humanity – especially when it comes to poisons. NewScientist (25 February 2017) reports on the growing ability to tolerate arsenic:

For settlers in the Quebrada Camarones region of Chile’s Atacama desert some 7000 years ago, water posed more than a bit of a problem. They were living in the world’s driest non-polar desert, and several of their most readily available water sources, such as rivers and wells, had high levels of arsenic, which can cause a variety of health problems.

The arsenic contamination here exceeds 1 milligram per litre: the highest levels in the Americas, and over 100 times the World Health Organization’s safe limits. There are virtually no alternative water sources, and yet, somehow, people have survived in the area. Could it be that arsenic’s negative effects on human health, such as inducing miscarriages, acted as a natural selection pressure that made this population evolve adaptations to it? A new study suggests this is indeed so.

The body uses an enzyme called AS3MT to incorporate arsenic in two compounds, monomethylarsonic (MMA) acid and dimethylarsinic (DMA) acid. People who metabolise arsenic more efficiently convert more of it into the less toxic, more easily expelled DMA.

Mario Apata of the University of Chile in Santiago and his colleagues looked at variations in the gene coding for AS3MT in nearly 150 people from three regions of the country. They found higher frequencies of the protective variants in people from Camarones: 68 per cent there had them, as opposed to just 48 and 8 per cent of people in the other two. “Our data suggest that a high arsenic metabolization capacity has been selected as an adaptive mechanism in these populations in order to survive in an arsenic-laden environment,” the researchers conclude (American Journal of Physical Anthropology, doi.org/bz4s).

Too bad about the murder mysteries, though.

Burnt Offerings (1976) stars a house looking to suck up the souls of everyone who comes to live there. Even the unsympathetic family that comes to summer at it.

And it wins.

Fin.

Pan is the innermost known moon of Saturn, with a period of about half a day. The Cassini probe recently took a pic of this oddly shaped chunk of rock:

March 7, 2017. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

But I like this one better.

March 7, 2017. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Makes me ache to go out and actually see it. Where’s the tourism bus?

Ever wonder about the effects of a pandemic other than the deaths? NewScientist (25 February 2017, paywall) mentions the estimated monetary effects:

As global economies become more interconnected, contagious diseases and their knock-on effects spread more rapidly. “Nowadays the biggest risk from epidemics is economic,” says Ramanan Laxminarayan of Princeton University. The 2003 SARS epidemic killed 800 people, for example, but cost the world $54 billion in quarantine measures and lost trade and travel. The World Bank estimates that a flu pandemic as bad as the one in 1918 would lop 5 per cent off world GDP and cause an $8 trillion recession. The faster we respond to an epidemic, the less expensive it will be. So we must be prepared – and that costs. Who will pay?

Probably not the United States. NBC News reports Trump’s anticipated funding of the Prevention and Public Health Fund:

Bird flu has started killing more people in China, and no one’s sure why. Zika virus is set to come back with a vengeance as the weather warms up and mosquitoes get hungry. Yellow fever is spreading in Brazil, and antibiotic-resistant bacteria are evolving faster than doctors can keep up with them.

And the new health care replacement bill released Monday night by Republican leaders in Congress would slash a billion-dollar prevention fund designed to help protect against those and other threats.

The Prevention and Public Health Fund accounts for 12 percent of the budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The 2010 Affordable Care Act set it up specifically to try to lower health costs by preventing diseases before they happen. …

Not only would the proposed American Health Care Act explicitly cut the fund, but President Donald Trump has said his 2018 budget would chop domestic spending and funnel more cash to the Defense Department.

It worries federal, state and local health officials, who have seen their budgets steadily cut over the past 15 years.

Penny-wise, pound foolish. The main article is a survey of the possible next sources of a pandemic and how we will try to respond. As one of the richest nations in the world, the United States is the one that stands to lose the most – and can most afford to put up the cash to prepare for it.

Being more or less disconnected from pop culture, I’m sure all my readers know of this guy, but since my sister just introduced me to one of his performances, I must say Trevor Noah is marvelous, with both great content and superb technique. In this video, pay attention to his command of accent, and how he imagines the voice of Barack Obama was constructed with the help of Nelson Mandela.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mV8OQVqfdg

A reader remarked on missile launch systems before the more recent North Korean launch of 5 missiles:

Wild ass guess on liquid fuel rockets: easier to build, more control over thrust amount and direction might make them more accurate and/or easier to direct to location. Solid fuel is light it and forget it — basically a contained explosion until it all burns up. And often, they explode if not made just right — or even during the making.

Clarification on “easier to build”: liquid handling systems, pumps, plumbing, etc. all complicated to build, but are mostly “knowable” problems of managing liquids. If you use relatively stable things like hydrogen peroxide and kerosene, it’s even reasonably safe (liquid oxygen gets harder, hydrazine is probably entertaining). But solid fuel, while conceptually simply is a bugger to get right: stable mixtures which burn at just the right rate without going boom or burning through the shell (see Challenger). Mixing up that glop without it igniting is a challenge, too.

But I’m not a rocket scientist.

I do recall, during the breakup of the Soviet Union, talking to someone who stated that many Soviet Union missiles had gone stale, meaning that their liquid fuel launch systems had actually deteriorated. They consisted of two separate containers of material; launch consisted of mixing them and, I think, standing back. One of the materials had a very limited lifetime, apparently.

A despicably long time ago, my reader had a rejoinder on the topic of Obama’s mistakes impacting Clinton’s failure:

I mostly agree with you on Obama trying to avoid a greater divide by not prosecuting the misdeeds done by the Bush administration. And maybe that’s the calculus that put him firmly on the side of the banksters. But that specific subject did not have to come up during the campaign for it to be a deciding factor. People felt screwed by the establishment in 2008 and 2009, and remembered that FEELING well in 2016, even if they could not connect the dots to the bank bailout. Trump played into that feeling, and here we are.

Clinton very well described her policies, and on a policy basis, most voters, even most Trump voters, actually agreed with her. But they were not “hearing” policy talk from Clinton. Al they were “hearing” was she was part of the establishment that screwed them the past 8 years. It almost did not matter what she said, because the disaffected voters were not ready to hear it. (I think she could have gone radical, but even then they may not have listened.)

I apologize for forgetting about this reply. I have a couple of thoughts on this matter:

1. The voters had an opportunity to vent their anger in 2012, but … well, at least didn’t enough to toss Obama out of office. There’s certainly many factors in play here – Romney’s Mormonism played against him in a party dominated by evangelicals, as would his government experience (yep, you read this right), as his tenure as Governor of Massachusetts would mark him as part of the establishment – that particular inclination working against Clinton four years later. Not to mention his remark about so many voters latched on to the government teat – that would chase away most potential liberal votes. But Obama did win, and left office four years later on a high note.
2. Clinton, for all her being of the establishment, is not (and I suppose was not is more accurate, as I doubt we’ll see her in a political role ever again) much of a politician. Trump was a far more polished politician than Clinton, although in a mold to which we’re unaccustomed – which is to say, promise everything to the disaffected, discredit the traditional, independent sources of dependable facts when they go against you, and always lie when the lie benefits you, even if you’re caught in it. I despise that particular model. But Clinton’s Deplorables remark was disastrous, no matter how prescient it’s proving to be; her hyper-intellectual approach didn’t play well in a country in which many people put their religious convictions ahead of, even in place of, their intellectual attainments. Starting from a position of dominance twice (2008, 2016), she failed twice. In a way, she campaigned as if she lived in the country she wants to live in, where rationality and intellect are dominant. That’s not what we have, even though she won the popular vote – we have a dismayingly large number of folks who are gullible, who are desperate, and who either did not do the research on the candidates, or didn’t mind having a liar for a President.

My oh my. I wonder how they calculate stability values.

I see on USAA that they believe digital wallets are the wave of the future, and provide a primer:

The digital wallet in your smartphone may soon replace credit and debit cards as the benefits and simplicity of paying with your phone make reaching for plastic or cash inconvenient.

A digital wallet — often called a mobile wallet — is accessed through an app on your smartphone or other mobile device and enables you to digitally store and access items typically found in a physical wallet.

Among their advantages:

By assigning virtual device account numbers to cards, mobile payments are secure and do not use actual debit or credit card numbers when making a purchase. Fingerprint or passcode authentication adds an extra security layer.

But will you have a smartphone? Andrew Sullivan wonders:

Since I wrote about digital addiction, I’ve been constantly and understandably asked what might be the antidote. Well, here’s one: the dumbphone. Nokia is now making the once-beloved 3310 model again — and the new ones look pretty cool. You can call and text but you’re not carrying around that addiction device called a tiny mobile computer. They’re a fraction of the cost of a smartphone — and have a variety of uses, as this great review in The Atlantic explains. You can use it in places where a smartphone might be easily damaged; or as a replacement for the home landline; as a way to stay in touch while staying sane. Sadly, the new ones aren’t yet available in the U.S. — but the demand, I suspect, could be huge. Think of them like the extraordinary revival of vinyl for music — a return to the actual pleasure of a simple activity, a reminder that change isn’t always for the better, that the past is always retrievable in the present. We don’t have to be trapped in our culture. We can choose to defy it. Increasingly, it seems to me, we must.

The Nokia offering will constitute experimental closure: will the utility offered by the smartphone outweigh the distraction that comes with it?

I can’t wear lipstick even?

If you want a lovely bout of creepiness, Die! Die! My Darling! (aka Fanatic 1965) is not a bad choice. Legendary actor Tallulah Bankhead is Mrs. Trefoile, the matriarch, the strait-laced, devout, bitch queen of a vanishingly small family in the British countryside, mourning her dead son, Steven. With her are a nephew (I think) and his wife, Harry and Anna, who function as servants, along with feeble-minded Joseph (an under-utilized Donald Sutherland).

Into their midsts comes Patricia, who was Steven’s fiancee before his death a couple of years ago, paying her respects to the woman who would have been her mother-in-law. It only seems the right thing to do.

Unfortunately, to Mrs. Trefoile, a betrothal is as good as an actual marriage, and an actual marriage is, well, forever. So God tells her, at least. Soon questions as personal as Pat’s virginity come up, and when she’s caught wearing a red blouse, well, it’s clear that she needs to have the error of her ways corrected before she can leave.

This delves into some conventionally creepy territory as we watch Mrs. Trefoile trod the paths of religious madness in her peculiar ways. But rather than your usual movie religious fanatic, we also get to see her moments of self-doubt, and her moments of madness. Is her devotion to reading the Bible a defense against the waves of insanity breaking in her mind? Why does Steven’s sexual purity matter?

And Patricia is not the stereotypical female victim. Stabbed, starved, beaten, even shot, she lays plan after plan for escape, showing admirable spirit in the face of a madness unresponsive to any sort of reason.

But between the sexual urges of Harry and the inexorable demands of her own religious compulsion, soon the old lady is faced with a bitter climax from which even she cannot find solace with Steven, for Pat, truth or lie, has told her a bitter thing. And over the edge she goes.

Quietly well acted, and with only the slightest touch of the British brittleness that has annoyed me in other movies of this era, it’s hard to find fault, from the performances to the technical aspects to the story. In particular, we liked how well the story hung together, with only one very small plot hole – and even that can be easily reasoned away. However, the underuse of Donald Sutherland was disappointing.

While a movie of this sort is not to everyone’s taste, if you like a good creepy movie, then this is Recommended.

And if you like a touch of irony in your movie, consider this: our religious fanatic is played by one of the most notorious libertines of Hollywood. Reputed to throw wild parties in which she’d show up completely nude, Bankhead’s credited with the quote, “I’ve tried several varieties of sex, all of which I hate. The conventional position makes me claustrophobic; the others give me a stiff neck and/or lockjaw.” I wonder if she giggled a lot while reading the script.

Andrew Sullivan’s latest missive on New York Magazine includes some coverage on the latest craze showing up on a few college campuses. I’d heard about it showing up at Cal State – Northridge when a group of Armenian students shutdown a lecture by a Turkish scholar, as reported here (and by many others) by the Cal State Northridge Sundial:

Scholar George Gawrych got through no more than five sentences during his presentation on his book about Turkish army officer Mustafa Kemal Atatürk before students raised their voices in protest Thursday at the Aronstam Library in Manzanita Hall.

Over 20 protesters stood up from their seats, turned their backs on Gawrych and repeatedly chanted “Turkey guilty of genocide” and “genocide denialist.”

Gawrych waited briefly as other attendees voiced their opinions to let him speak, until he began walking up and down the aisle trying to get the protestors to face him.

I wrote it off as an isolated incident by a group frustrated by either Turkish obstinance or bad history. But now it appears it was a precursor to a more general movement (I’m not sure how many incidents may be tied to it, so I have no estimate on size), as Andrew analyzes:

Source: Middlebury College

Here’s the latest in the assault on liberal democracy. It happened more than a week ago, but I cannot get it out of my consciousness. A group of conservative students at Middlebury College in Vermont invited the highly controversial author Charles Murray to speak on campus about his latest book, Coming Apart. His talk was shut down by organized chanting in its original venue, and disrupted when it was shifted to a nearby room and livestreamed. When Murray and his faculty interlocutor, Allison Stanger, then left to go to their car, they were surrounded by a mob, which tried to stop them leaving the campus. Someone in the melee grabbed Stanger by the hair and twisted her neck so badly she had to go to the emergency room (she is still suffering from a concussion). After they escaped, their dinner at a local restaurant was crashed by the same mob, and they had to go out of town to eat. …

“Intersectionality” is the latest academic craze sweeping the American academy. On the surface, it’s a recent neo-Marxist theory that argues that social oppression does not simply apply to single categories of identity — such as race, gender, sexual orientation, class, etc. — but to all of them in an interlocking system of hierarchy and power. At least, that’s my best attempt to define it briefly. But watching that video helps show how an otherwise challenging social theory can often operate in practice.

It is operating, in Orwell’s words, as a “smelly little orthodoxy,” and it manifests itself, it seems to me, almost as a religion. It posits a classic orthodoxy through which all of human experience is explained — and through which all speech must be filtered. Its version of original sin is the power of some identity groups over others. To overcome this sin, you need first to confess, i.e., “check your privilege,” and subsequently live your life and order your thoughts in a way that keeps this sin at bay. The sin goes so deep into your psyche, especially if you are white or male or straight, that a profound conversion is required.

Like the Puritanism once familiar in New England, intersectionality controls language and the very terms of discourse. It enforces manners. It has an idea of virtue — and is obsessed with upholding it. The saints are the most oppressed who nonetheless resist. The sinners are categorized in various ascending categories of demographic damnation, like something out of Dante. The only thing this religion lacks, of course, is salvation. Life is simply an interlocking drama of oppression and power and resistance, ending only in death. It’s Marx without the final total liberation.

And, as university students and professors (a few were part of the semi-lynching at Middlebury), they should have an allegiance to the free and open exchange of information which is at the very heart of Western higher education. Instead, they have indulged in intellectual and physical violence, attempting to inflict their views by force.

This is surely grounds for ejection from their institutions.

But, on a very fundamental level, this also allies them with the white supremacists. Not on the common level of violence – that’s too general.

No, I’m talking that other, dishonorable trait, which I talked about before.

Laziness.

In essence, these folks are attempting to inflict their view on the world, not through the hard work of research and logic and communications, but quickly, if uncleanly, through some simple violence. For them is not the way of hard work. They want this to be quick, without having to actually justify through reason anything they’re doing.

I can understand the frustration that views they oppose don’t simply disappear, but humanity is not a rational species – it’s merely capable of being rational. By engaging in irrational behaviors themselves, they succeed only in encouraging their critics and opponents to do the same. By abandoning their allegiance to truth and reason, they encourage their opponents to do likewise.

And that’s just not good for anyone. Just as the current GOP dash to the right is destroying the GOP – and possibly the world – this incident shows the left is fully capable of madness as well.