Monthly Archives: April 2017

Assigns:

ASSIGNS, contracts. Those to whom rights have been transmitted by particular title, such as sale, gift, legacy, transfer, or cession. Vide Ham. Paities, 230; Lofft. 316. These words, and also the word forever, are commonly added to the word heirs in deeds conveying a fee simple, heirs and assigns forever “but they are in such cases inoperative. 2 Barton’s Elem. Convey. 7, (n.) But see Fleta, lib. 3, cap. 14, Sec. 6. The use of naming them, is explained in Spencer’s Case, 5 Rep. 16; and Ham. Parties, 128. The word heirs, however, does not include or imply assigns. [The Free Dictionary – Legal Dictionary]

Heard from my Arts Editor today.

NewScientist (8 April 2017) reports on a fascinating development in organ replacements – implantation in not-traditional locations:

BLIND tadpoles have learned to see again – using eyes implanted in their tails.

With help from a drug usually used to treat migraines, the eyes grew new connections to the tadpoles’ nervous systems. The same approach may work in people, allowing the body to integrate organs grown in the lab.

“If a human had an eye implanted in their back, connected to their spinal cord, would the human be able to see out of that eye? My guess is probably yes,” says Michael Levin at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.

How about an EMT with an extra eye in his finger so she can explore a wound more thoroughly? Even more so for docs. And then the exotic location community would probably pop into being. I’ll not explore that sordid thought.

And then be disappointed when they discovered these are not heritable traits.

Pelagic:

Any water in a sea or lake that is neither close to the bottom nor near the shore can be said to be in the pelagic zone. The word “pelagic” is derived from Greek πέλαγος (pélagos), meaning ‘open sea’. The pelagic zone can be thought of in terms of an imaginary cylinder or water column that goes from the surface of the sea almost to the bottom. Conditions differ deeper in the water column such that as pressure increases with depth, the temperature drops and less light penetrates. Depending on the depth, the water column, rather like the Earth’s atmosphere, may be divided into different layers.

The pelagic zone occupies 1,330 million km³ (320 million mi³) with a mean depth of 3.68 km (2.29 mi) and maximum depth of 11 km (6.8 mi). [Wikipedia]

Noted in “Quantification of bioluminescence from the surface to the deep sea demonstrates its predominance as an ecological trait,” Séverine Martini & Steven H. D. Haddock, Scientific Reports:

For coastal environments less than 2.5% of the species are estimated to be bioluminescent¹⁵, while for pelagic environments, this percentage is considerably higher. Indeed, the earliest studies estimate that bioluminescence occurs in approximately 70% of fish species¹⁶, and by number of individuals, 90% of fishes observed below 500 m depth in the eastern North Atlantic were said to be bioluminescent¹⁶

Dr. Haddock appears to be a fine example of nominative determinism.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) had been a vocal opponent of President Trump, but, according to Politico, not anymore:

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham enthusiastically praised President Donald Trump on Wednesday for his foreign policy, a continued departure from his sharp criticism of Trump during the 2016 race and even after the election.

“I am like the happiest dude in America right now,” a beaming Graham said on “Fox & Friends.” “We have got a president and a national security team that I’ve been dreaming of for eight years.”

Graham, who unsuccessfully ran against Trump during the 2016 Republican primaries, cited Trump’s decision to put Iran “on notice” in February, and for his increased aggression against North Korea as the country continues to conduct missile tests, as the reasons he was pleased.

Either the GOP is congenitally unhinged, or someone has those strings pulled tight. I really am looking forward to 20-25 years from now, when the tell-all stories start coming out and we find out why even the GOP’s saner members don’t seem to be able to keep on this side of the sanity line.

It’ll probably involve money and their love of power, honestly.

It’s a mark of President Trump’s immaturity that he believes all the answers should come to him – far more than Bush’s infamous “I’m the Decider” remark. Consider Steve Benen’s remark on Trump’s recent meeting with former Colombian Presidents Uribe and Pastrana concerning the treaty with the revolutionary group FARC:

And then there’s the significance of U.S. policy towards Colombia. While Trump hasn’t expressed an opinion about the proposed agreement, what we have here is a group of powerful freelancers: the Miami Herald noted that the former Colombian presidents circumvented diplomatic channels to speak to Trump, and at the same time, Trump appears to have hosted this conversation without coordinating with the U.S. State Department, which is supposed to be responsible for overseeing high-level diplomatic talks.

Indeed, that’s what makes stories like these so interesting to me; the president’s willingness to marginalize the State Department, failing to even consider the agency as an afterthought, is an astonishing development for U.S. foreign policy.

In a normal Administration, this would have gone through the Secretary of State, who would have added his or  her years of experience in these matters, along with their subordinates views, as to how to handle the request to meet, as well as the viewpoints of the requestors.

Trump has little to no experience, no demonstrated ability to plan or deeply think, and no willingness to use other people’s advice and judgment. His conception of government, amply demonstrated by his reactions to the blockages of his Executive Orders, is that of the strong man making decisions and the hell with the consequences.

How long will Congress permit this to continue?

Former President Ahmadinejad’s run for a third term as President came to a screeching halt, according to Yahoo! News:

Former Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was barred from running in next month’s election Thursday while President Hassan Rouhani was among six candidates approved by Iran’s conservative-controlled Guardian Council, state media reported.

The other candidates selected were hardliners Ebrahim Raisi and Mostafa Mirsalim, Tehran mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, moderate Mostafa Hashemitaba and Rouhani’s ally and vice-president Eshaq Jahangiri.

Former hardline president Ahmadinejad, who ruled from 2005 to 2013, was barred along with his close ally Hamid Baghaie.

Since both Ahmadinejad and his former vice president Baghaie were barred from running, it appears Supreme Leader Khamenei wasn’t kidding when he voiced worries about domestic unrest resulting from candidacies from Ahmadinejad’s camp. Of course, it’s a knife’s edge – there have to be worries about the denial to run as well. And Ahmadinejad’s followers were not adverse to violence during the election campaign leading to his second term.

This may prove interesting.

However, Erdoğan’s speech to his party supporters was not very promising in that sense. He continued to blame the West and says he is considering the restitution of capital punishment.

From “Referendum results risk further polarization in Turkey,”Kemal Kirişci, Order From Chaos.

I ran across a conservative / liberal yell fest on Facebook concerning Minnesota and Wisconsin taxes and economies, and I ended up writing a rant of my own. I thought I’d just reproduce it here. I thought it came out rather well.

Seems to me you can have a lovely name-calling fight, or you can look at the numbers and realize that MN is doing quite well in an era of higher taxes that some might like, and ask yourself why that might be. MN, unlike North Dakota, hasn’t had an amazing natural resource discovery.

Under Walker, WI economy has not done especially well and his promised spurt in job creation hasn’t materialized – last I looked. Maybe I’m out of date.

Or let’s look at Kansas. Governor Brownback and the legislature drastically dropped tax rates 6 years ago, and sat back and waited for the economic prosperity make up for the resultant holes in the state budget.

Didn’t happen. Kansas is in a huge mess and Brownback is going the way of Arthur Laffer, his advisor and the guy who came up with the discredited Laffer Curve, which suggests that dropping taxes increases tax revenues because of the economic growth spurred by the drop in taxes. But Brownback still desperately clings to his kant, suggesting he’s not nearly the bright boy that he used to be advertised as.

The mistaken assumption in all this is that taxes ALWAYS suppresses economic activity. That’s turned out to be wrong, but conservatives still believe it (and something I probably unconsciously believed when I was young). My suspicion, probably already proven by economists, is that there’s a bell curve involved – too high of taxes is bad for the economy, but so is too low of taxes, because taxes pay for necessary services, from roads to schools, all of which are the foundation for solid economics. Established companies want happy employees; happy employees have families and children and homes that demand good schools, roads, and a stable society. They want to go out and hunt, have entertainment … and all that leads to taxes. Because they pay for the social environment that provides all those good things.

The important thing? It’s a bell curve. Not a single slanty line that let’s you say “taxes are BAD!”. It’s a curve, and that means figuring out the shape of the bell curve … and that’s hard.

A Meeting Of The Boston Blackie Book Club

In Boston Blackie Goes Hollywood (1942) Blackie’s hijinks with Inspector Farraday continue. Blackie’s rich friend Arthur has been duped out of his friend’s diamond, and now needs $60,000 to buy it back and return it to his friend. The problem? He’s on the West Coast, and his money’s on the East Coast. So he calls up Blackie to get the money and bring it to him.

The fun begins with Boston breaking into Arthur’s safe while Farraday’s watching, and continues through disguises, twists, and turns. It’s fun, but between a climactic scene to set everything back to rights which is drawn out far too long, and shooting by characters who don’t really seem to have their heart in it, it’s a trifle tiresome. Add the lack of compelling thematic material, and this is little more than fluff.

Watch if you don’t want to think or if you have an admiration for Chester Morris’ jawline.

estoppel:

a bar or impediment preventing a party from asserting a fact or a claim inconsistent with a position that party previously took, either by conduct or words, especially where a representation has been relied or acted upon by others. [Dictionary.com]

Noted in the same article from the previous Word of the Day:

The Supreme Court said in 1991’s Lampf, Pleva v. Gilbertson that the three-year Securities Act time limit is a statute of repose and said in 2014’s CTS v. Waldburger that statutes of repose cannot be tolled – so, under the court’s own precedent, CalPERS can’t get around the absolute three-year time bar. “A statute of repose means repose,” Clement said. “Its defining feature is that it’s not subject to tolling or estoppel rules.”

The Georgia 6th District was not decided in last night’s special election, as Jon Ossoff came up just short, with 48.1% of the vote, against a collection of GOP-affiliated candidates plus a few Democrats and Independents. Ballotpedia reports that trailing Ossoff, but qualifying for the June runoff election, is Karen Handel, with 19.8% of the vote.

Both qualifying candidates have their work cut out for them. As I’m sure most pundits are commenting, Handel’s 19.8% showing is something of a smoke-screen; the GOP does tend to come together when a final election vote is called, as we saw last November, so she will be counting on all the votes for the other GOP candidates to come to her on June 20th.

But that Trump reference is also a potential anchor around her neck. If Ossoff can tie Handel to Trump, and if Trump and/or the GOP manages to embarrass themselves in a very public manner, it’s possible that Handel will still lose on June 20th.

The bad news for Ossoff? There were four Democrat-affiliated competitors in the race – but none polled better than .3%. Add them all together and that’s less than a percentage point of the total vote. That’s not good enough to get him over the 50% mark he’ll need to become the next Representative for the Georgia 6th. The good news? Again, from Ballotpedia, and surprising to me:

President Donald Trump won in Georgia’s 6th District by a margin of 1.5 percent in 2016. This represents a significant decrease in the relative support for the Republican nominee from the previous four presidential elections. The next closest presidential race in the district since 2000 was when John McCain won the district by 18.9 percent in 2008.

This suggests a high sensitivity to Trump’s miscues. As the 6th district apparently includes much of northern Atlanta, the voters in the 6th may not be in as much economic distress as the average Trump voter. This again suggests that tying Handel to Trump may be an effective strategy for Ossoff.

The chart for the district since 2000 merely demonstrates GOP dominance:

Data Source: Ballotpedia

Sometimes the Democrats can’t even field a candidate.

In Nature‘s Scientific Reports, Martini & Haddock report on the observations of bioluminescence in the ocean:

Credit: NOAA/National Ocean Service

Bioluminescent and likely bioluminescent organisms were dominant in the entire water column (in blue, Fig. 2b), ranging between 48 and 77% of the organisms observed. The non-bioluminescent and unlikely bioluminescent organisms represented a small portion of the observations (in dark grey, Fig. 2b), ranging between 2 and 35%. These numbers do not total 100% due to animals undefined for bioluminescence, accounting for between 2 and 43% of the observations. Raw numbers of observations in each depth bin were normalized using the amount of time spent at each depth. As might be expected, the upper part of the water column has a lower percentage of undefined organisms than the less known deeper waters. However, when omitting the undefined organisms, in the global data set, probably bioluminescent organisms accounted for 76% of all observations (down, Fig. 2b), and the probably non-bioluminescent reached 24%. The variability of these percentages over depth is low, and the variability due to undefined organisms is also relatively constant. Indeed, the percentage varies only a small amount, from a low of 69%, if all undefined animals are assumed to be non-luminous, to 78% if they are all assigned as bioluminescent.

Given that generating light must take up some resources, it provokes thought on the utility of light to the general organism. It would certainly be interesting to partition the pelagic organisms by food source and see if bioluminescence distributions of the partitions mimic the general distribution, or if food source correlates with ability (or even choice!) to luminesce.

Representative Chaffetz (R-Utah), the subject of this thread, has announced he will not run for re-election in 2018. He’s been noted on this thread for his attempts to sell off public lands, and has had other recent gaffes such as ill-chosen (read: laughable) remarks concerning health care vs iPhones, claims that popular demonstrations against repeal of the ACA is conducted by “paid protesters”, and not investigating, as Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, various obvious problems with the current Administration (Flynn, etc). CNN reports that he also mounted a campaign to be elected Speaker of the House.

So he’s not an unambitious man. His party loyalty, so ill-serving the country, may put him in good stead for future opportunities.

Rumored to be interested in the position of Utah governor, it’s hard to say if he’s not liking his re-election chances, he’s tired of D.C., or if he truly wishes to move into an executive position, with a possible run at the White House. Currently 50 years old, that suggests an election in 2020 to the governorship, 4 years of experience, and a possible run when he’s 58 – eminently reasonable, given the age of recent candidates (Trump is 70).

Or maybe he’s following orders. Note this report from Utah Policy, dated 11 April:

Rep. Jason Chaffetz has taken a political hit for his recent controversial statements according to a new UtahPolicy.com survey.

52% of Chaffetz’s constituents in the 3rd Congressional District view him favorably, which is a far cry from the 73.5% he got just last November in the 2016 election. The latest number is also a 14-point drop from a similar survey conducted last February. …

Despite the opposition, it may prove difficult to oust Chaffetz in 2018, but there is a danger lurking. While Republicans support Chaffetz, Democratic and independent voters have turned on him, which could prove problematic next year.

Perhaps he’s being pushed aside for a less tainted candidate? It’ll be harder to run against a fresh GOP face than his rather soiled one.

But my speculation is more or less just a chart of possibilities, given his opportunities, age, and demonstrated ambition. Something to keep in mind as the years pass.

dispositive:

Information or evidence that unqualifiedly brings a conclusion to a legal controversy. [The Free Dictionary – Legal Dictionary]

From Feb 20th of this year, NASA‘s Solar Dynamics Observatory managed this observation:

Credit: Solar Dynamics Observatory, NASA

A solar prominence gathered itself into a twisting cone, then rose up and broke apart in a delicate dance of plasma above the sun (Feb. 20, 2017). The event, observed in a wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light, lasted just about four hours. Prominences are unstable clouds of plasma suspended above the sun’s surface by magnetic forces. This kind of event is not uncommon. The brighter area near the bottom of the images is an active region.

There’s also a couple of short movies at the link. I’ll just sit back and enjoy the picture.

For the basic health of the GOP, I’m hoping Jon Ossoff of the Democrats wins the Georgia 6th District special election tonight, delivering the message that voters will not tolerate the extremism and apparent corruption exhibited by GOP-backed winning candidates in the last several months, from Trump on down. For what it’s worth, CNN is reporting …

As of 10:40 p.m. ET, Ossoff had 50.3% of the vote, with 77% of the vote in, according to Edison Research

which is about an hour ago. 3 tenths of one percent is not much of a margin, but I think is actually better performance than most poll-watchers were expecting. Will it hold up? And will the GOP be smart enough to realize that this isn’t a time to hunker down, whatever, the result, but to learn and ask what’s wrong with them?

Hard to do for a party that supposedly controls both chambers of Congress, although Trump is more of a chaoticist than a Republican, so I’m not certain that it’s accurate to say the GOP has the Presidency as well.

Politico notes that some of the Trump supporters who beat up protesters are now wailing that it’s not their fault:

A white nationalist leader accused of assaulting a young African-American woman at a Donald Trump campaign rally filed a countersuit on Monday claiming the president directed him and other supporters to remove protesters.

Matthew Heimbach claims in his federal court filing that he “acted pursuant to the directives and requests of Donald J. Trump and Donald J. Trump for President” and that, if he’s found liable for damages, “any liability must be shifted to one or both of them.”

Too bad, buddy. Americans take on moral responsibility for themselves. You knew beating her up was a crime.

Maybe you should sue your parents.

Regarding Democratic gains in local elections, a reader writes:

That’s an enormous change in only five months. Also last week, a lot of little municipal elections in traditionally Republican places in Illinois flipped the majority to Democrats. I live in hope.

I, too, hope that there’s a mass of upsets which will persuade the Independents of the GOP extremism. With only about 30% of the electorate swearing fealty, losing in GOP strongholds might be enough to shake out the bad apples and start the GOP on the long road back to responsibility and partnership in governance – a balance we desperately need.

The next election is either today or tomorrow, depending on when I choose to publish this post [4/18/2017], in Georgia’s 6th district, featuring Jon Ossoff, lone Democrat, against a bevy of GOP contenders in a two stage open election. If no one wins more than 50% in the first stage, then the second stage, consisting of the top two finishers in the first stage, takes place June 20. FiveThirtyEight‘s Nate Silver summarizes the situation:

Ossoff has polled at a raw 42 percent on average between these polls, but he gets up to 46 percent given his portion of the undecided vote. Handel is the top Republican, at 18 percent after allocating undecideds, with Gray following her at 13 percent. Republicans combined have 51 percent of the vote, however, whereas Democrats have 48 percent.⁴

If Tuesday’s results wound up exactly like this — with Republicans winning the aggregate party vote by 3 percentage points, but Ossoff winning the top-two margin by 28 points over Handel — then what would the outlook be for the second round?

With help from my colleague Aaron Bycoffe, I found 181 elections to Congress (either the House or the Senate) since 2008 in California, Louisiana and Washington, which used the two-stage format and in which a Republican squared off against a Democrat in the runoff.⁵ Then I ran a regression to predict the runoff margin based on the aggregate party margin and the top-two margin. It came up with the following formula:

Runoff margin = .66 * Aggregate party margin + .22 * Top-two margin

Note that the coefficient is larger on the aggregate party margin than top-two margin — that’s the regression’s way of saying that the aggregate party margin is the more important indicator. However, the top-two margin — that is, who actually won the first round — shouldn’t be overlooked. Out of 21 races in our database where a candidate won the plurality in the first round but her party lost the aggregate party vote, the candidate nevertheless won the runoff 11 times. For instance, Republicans combined got more of the vote in Washington’s U.S. Senate primary in 2010, but Democratic incumbent Patty Murray got the plurality of the vote. Murray went on to win the second round over Republican Dino Rossi.

Plugging Ossoff’s numbers into the formula above, we come up with a projection that he’d win the runoff by 4 percentage points. So that sounds pretty good for him, right? Well, yes … it would be pretty good. But not more than pretty good, because he has some other things to worry about. For one thing, the margin of error in the calculation is quite high. Specifically, it’s about 8 percentage points for projecting one candidate’s vote share in the runoff, or 16 percentage points (!) for projecting the margin between the candidates. First-round results only tell you so much in these cases.

And then Nate goes on to note the partisanship factor; he is very cautious if Ossoff isn’t the outright victor, and he doesn’t believe he will be. But for all of Nate’s factoring in of intangibles, I have to wonder if he missed one.

That would be former Representative Tom Price. Although he won the 2016 seat 61.7% to 38.3%, Price’s nomination to be Secretary of Health and Human Services has served to focus a light on a number of nascent scandals, such as his misuse of his position in Congress to buy stocks of companies favored by his own legislation. How aware are 6th district voters of these alleged misdeeds? How much do they blame this on Price, and how much do they blame this on the current makeup of the Republican Party?

I guess we’ll find out. (I do actually have an uncle living near Atlanta. I should give him a call.)

And, finally, don’t forget this memorable Democratic victory from back in March. Via NBC10:

Democratic write-in candidate Emilio Vazquez pulled off a surprise victory in a North Philadelphia special election to replace disgraced state Rep. Leslie Acosta, who gave up her seat following a corruption conviction.

His victory was announced Friday morning after the city Election Board hand tallied all 2,483 write-in votes.

Vazquez became an improbable winner in a race that saw the Democrat originally slated for the ballot knocked off following a residency challenge.

That left only Republican candidate Lucinda Little on the ballot for a district — the 197th — that is 85 percent Democrat and 5 percent Republican. Little received only 198 votes on Tuesday.

A quick look at Google headlines suggest this is not without controversy. But it still makes me laugh.

We were at the Minnesota Transportation Museum‘s St. Paul location over the weekend to attend a play (it was the last showing, so I shan’t bore you with a review), and between the meal (meh! – although the cupcake with bacon wrapped around it was interesting) and the show they gave us a quick tour of the roundhouse area. This is where they work on rehabilitating their acquisitions, and so that held our collective interest.

Except for this. This was fascinating. I didn’t know steam engines came in plus-sizes quite like this:

I know they gave us a short history of this locomotive, but I was too visually stunned to take it in, except for the part where they said they’re in the process of changing the tires (his word, not mine). Fortunately, and much to my relief, I tracked it down on the web site. It’s Northern Pacific 2156. Here’s part of a side view of this baby:

This is most of the front half of 2156; I apologize, but my back was against another engine, and it was hard to really get the scale of this thing in here. And yet, from the web site:

Steam locomotive 2156 is a light 4-6-2 “Pacific,” built in 1909 to help handle the Northern Pacific’s increasing passenger business. Based on the successful Q-1 class, Q-3 engines 2148-2170 were constructed by Baldwin (2148-2157) and Alco (2158-2170.) They were well-liked by the crews, capable of cruising at 95 mph. Vital stats: 200 psi superheated steam, 236,000 lbs engine weight, 69″ drivers, 22″x26″ cylinders, 31,000 lbs tractive effort.

Light? Wow. This looked like a monster to me. Here’s the other half of the side view:

You can see the tires to be changed out. Just think of this monster barreling along at 95 MPH!

And one more gratitudinous pic just for fun.

No doubt the front missing end, off for rehabilitation, contributes to the effect of an immobile cannon. It has a raw, primal feel this way, as if it usually wears a civilized mask and this evening we walked in with its mask hanging on the door handle, its ravening nature revealed for by mistake.

Remember the Presidential Address, and questions raised about Trump’s terrorism statistics, subsequently addressed by Ellingsen and Daniels? Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare suggests that either it was an out and out lie on Trump’s part – or the Department of Justice delivered false data to him.

I’m going to be very blunt here: I not only believe that the White House made up “alternative facts” about the substance of this matter in a Presidential address to a Joint Session of Congress, I don’t believe that the National Security Division of the Justice Department provided any data or analysis to the White House that could reasonably be read to support the President’s claim. In other words, I believe the President was lying not merely about the underlying facts but about his own Justice Department. Or, in the alternative, I believe it’s possible that the Office of the Attorney General may have supported the White House’s claim. But I think it extraordinarily unlikely that the folks at NSD actually provided data in support of this presidential statement.

Here’s why I believe this: I know a lot of people at NSD, and they are not the sort of people who grossly mischaracterize facts in order to make political points. Indeed, I believe that the folks there have the integrity to raise internally the very issues that Ellingsen and Daniels raised in these pieces.

And what is Ben going to do about this? He’s filing an Freedom of Information Act request. This should prove interesting.

Source: NASA

A mark of a great movie is that you leave the theater thinking you can do great things, too, and that’s how I felt after watching Hidden Figures (2016). The biographies of three NASA computers, as people who carried out calculations were called before the modern term computer referring to a programmable calculating machine, these black woman are shown chasing their dreams – engineering, computer programmer, mathematician for trajectory calculations, children, husbands – and a god damn women’s bathroom that a colored woman can use that’s not a mile away.

It helps to be aware of the civil rights movement of the 1960s in the United States, and its motivations – the segregation and sometimes outright hatred that had existed ever since the American Civil War, despite the sacrifices and dedication of generations of African-Americans in all the major wars, despite the general racism of whites in the armed services.

And the dance around that racism is part of the charm of this movie, the acknowledgment of reality on the ground – and the determination to succeed, because by succeeding they fulfilled their potential, and determined to be full members of society, despite the barriers raised against them.

Of course, we know how the story ends for the official mission, the Friendship 7 flight, which is all the termination of the movie, so there’s little tension. But how the primary character, Katherine Goble (later Johnson), the computer for the mission, reacts when the mission nears catastrophic failure, makes up for that knowledge – and the reaction of a bunch of white pot-bellied engineers and mathematicians is also instructive.

I could go on and on about this film, really, but I shan’t. Just go see it. Or rent it. Do it with friends, and talk about it afterwards.

Strongly Recommended.

So I took a couple of close ups.

Kevin Drum points at this fascinating Gallup poll result:

Note the Republican reaction to the elections of Bush, Obama, and Trump – big up, a somewhat less pronounced down, although it continued downward through Obama’s Administration, and then a rather frenetic up, respectively. Kevin’s thoughts:

Republican views of the taxes they pay improved substantially when Bush and Trump were elected—even before any actual changes were made to the tax code—while Democrats had essentially no reaction when Obama was elected. Likewise, Republican views declined sharply when Obama was elected, but Democratic views didn’t decline when Bush and Trump were elected.

But perhaps we should attend to other possible events that might have triggered changes in the perceptions of the nation-wide citizenry. I can think of a couple:

1. The terrorist attack of September 9, 2001 – threaten someone’s safety and, in most cases, they’ll be happy to fork over more cash to fight a common enemy.
2. The Great Recession – taking place in 2007-2008, the event was at least partially blamed on the government, and the government response of stabilizing a number of companies, rather than letting them go bankrupt, was deeply resented by a citizenry who did not receive similar support when a wave of foreclosures hit.
3. The debate and passage of the ACA – resented by a GOP base told that it was being forced down their throat by a tyrannical Democratic majority (no, it was actually debated for a long period of time, but the GOP refused to participate in the important responsibility of governance) and that it was the socialization of medicine (this time the No is delivered with a great laugh), it’s no surprise that they considered the taxes they paid to be ill-spent.
4. The mendacity of the right wing media during the Obama Administration. Long time readers already know the argument; for those who don’t, see Bruce Bartlett here. That influence, gobbled up by an audience eager to be outraged at the feckless liberals, naturally increased their dissatisfaction with the work of their taxes.

But these still leave the puzzle that Republicans, Democrats, and Independents have heightened sense of fairness of their taxes as Trump is elected. Now I indulge in pure speculation. First, the cause is not unitary. The Republicans finally have won the Presidency, as dissatisfying as that may turn out, and so feel better at the thought that they can spend more on the military, rather than helping their fellows who may have fallen on hard times.

Democrats and Independents, on the other hand, have had an abrupt and rude political awakening. Rather than being something they might discuss once a month with no research, now they know a bit more, they’re willing to go out and learn more, because Trump’s erratic actions and frighteningly awful nominees have gotten their attention and focused them on learning just what the hell happened – and how they can fix it,

And part of that process has been to learn just where their taxes go – and they’re happy about it. Perhaps Trump’s Administration doesn’t like the EPA, Planned Parenthood, NEA, and all the other programs on the chopping block. But they do.

This missive was received from an unnamed cetacean research center. I include the attached note directly.

The highly speculative translation contained herein will not be published in any research journal, due to the uncertainty of the accuracy of the translation, as well as the explosive nature of the contents. Internal dissension in the research team prevents even the association of researchers’ names with the paper.  Nevertheless, the content is considered important enough that it must be shared. There are unanswered questions implicit in the material, for which we have not yet found answers; those have become the focus of our next research.

The few footnotes are our own, consisting of interpolations of passages which may not be removed without leaving the content in chaos.

Within this sacred medium through which we move, let it be known to one and all, the strainers and the toothed, the breachers and the lurkers, even those who munch upon their cousins and all those who sing throughout the seas, that a tale from our recent plague has come within our realm of understanding, and through assiduous study we, the blues, have partially deciphered it.

They call this tale of horror and heroism Moby Dick^[1]. We will treat upon this shocking name later.

This macabre story records, finally, the motivations of those who are merely parasites upon our oceans and swimmers of same, those who left and never returned, whose ancient forbears grew legs to walk upon the land.  Following an unattached male of this species, a transcriptor of the tale and one with which we confess some feelings of brotherhood, we see, through repeated usage, how they name the individuals of their species; the rivalries of the males, fighting for dominance in more physical ways than our melodious competitions; the rhythms of their life, their groupings, the long separations of the mated pairs as well as the desperate lives of those unmated. It brings to the fore the pressures of survival, and how they have molded their species into conformance with the niche chosen for it.

The tale is literally bathed in horror, but the novelty of the tale obscures the atrocity until it is brought to the fore. The singer of this tale seeks a quiet place to rest his mind, some place to find a holy cessation of thought. He is introduced to just such an eddyless cove and seeks the blessed state, but is almost immediately interrupted by the intrusion of a similarly intentioned cousin. This one, unlike the tale-singer, has decorated his hide with scarrings, blackened patterns of stories, no doubt beyond our ken, brought into stark relief by the light of a single lamp.

And so the singular song of evil begins.

The very lamp that lights their resting place is fueled by our holy blanket against the cold depths^[2], liquified through heat, then lit afire to decant its brilliance for the convenience of these… parasites.

For those of our cousins uncertain as to the visual aspect of such a lamp, consider the tales told of the mountains of the deep, spitting liquid rock, the lifeblood of the holder of our medium; this is fire, and this emits light. As proof of the holiness of our blankets, the oil rendered from them is set afire in order to emit light. But not for holy reasons unless, as we debate, they have a reverence for the brilliant orb in the sky.  But this tale is not a time for philosophy.

The tale then describes, from novel visual angles, an early specimen of those contraptions which they build to float upon the surface of our sacred home, and this may be considered instructive as to their methods. But the scholarly mood of the tale is quickly broken in the most monstrous way, as the men in their “ship” encounter one of us.

They set upon a venerable male as he rests upon the surface, gulping down the sacred air to resuscitate himself for his hunt.  And now the old one has himself become the hunted. Cruel shaped and purified metal, called harpoons and lances, are driven into our brother, and as we watch, he soon spouts out his life force and gives himself back to the great living sea.

But even this last selfless act is denied to him. In a scene so repulsive that many of us turned away our eye, veritably damaged at the atrocity, our cousin is callously butchered, hauled onto the vessel, and there chopped and cooked until his very blanket of life has become an oil.

The oil for their infernal lamps.

With effort, we strive to see this from their side: through these efforts, this loathsome harvest, the males accumulate resources and prestige. We do not know how females also accumulate the necessary prestige that presages mating; we only see a bit of that for the male of the species. Or so we tentatively predict; our store of knowledge is relatively small.

But all this is swept away in the horror of the tragedy. However, in some ways, the following scenes have an abominable aspect that’s even worse, as they chronicle the state of mind (as we think they have such) of their leader, and it’s an unreasoned hatred of our kind. True, he has incurred some injury that is accounted to us, but as it was suffered during their hunting of our kind, what of it? The righteous creature does not expect to escape to the next stage unscathed; it is the badge one bears in the great hunts, just as some of our cousins hunt the great many-arms, and suffer for it. This leader, this Captain Ahab, as they call him, is diseased in the mind and dangerous, having lost the true way. Indeed, in a scene in which his kind call out to him for succor, he refuses his aid, for such is his immoral rage, his anger at the just realities of being, that he must pursue the one who brought him injury, even though the injury was nobly inflicted, as if the injury was an insult to a holy creature.

At this juncture, we look to to our own mythos, and return to a point we earlier bypassed. We believe this tale is, indeed, named for one of our mythic great male rogues, Moby Dick^[3], a prodigious and furious white who turned the clam inside out, hunting the very parasites who hounded him, and in his lonely pursuit, acquiring many grievous wounds and scars. But, as our forebears have passed down the tale, for Moby Dick it was not a fury at the honorable pricks of the hunted, but their unslaked hunger for death and more death; ruthlessly taking calves, mothers, and males all. This act concentrated his fury until all he lived for was the death of these parasites, and so he became a great defender of our kind, rampaging until he met his end in some lonely, unchronicled ocean.

We speculate upon the purpose of the parasite’s tale, for in the end Moby Dick triumphs, a few more scars in his holy hide, leaving only the carrier of the tale to survive and convey it to the rest of his kind. Is it cautionary? Let not thy pride, thy conception of self, drive you to murder your prey in defiance of the ways of your kind?

But we have a balm for our grief.  The sight of Moby Dick, however crudely rendered, destroying the hated parasite, reminds ourselves that even a rogue, an unmated male made of fury and storm, has his role in the great song of life.

¹A guess based on the content of their missive; further, but with less confidence, we suppose the movie of 1956, as the novel would be less likely to survive in their context, and some material they mention suggests the 1956 version.

²This must be a reference to the blanket of blubber all whales grow.

³A phonetic rendition is impossible, nor are the constituent elements of the nominative other known words, such as Baker; we substitute the human name to retain cohesion.