Monthly Archives: July 2017

NewScientist’s Adam Popescu (15 July 2017) reports on a tsunami off the coast of Greenland – and its motivating force:

… it was a surprise when a magnitude 4.1 “quake” struck Nuugaatsiaq, a tiny island off Greenland’s west coast on 17 June. It triggered a tsunami that smashed homes, leaving at least four people dead. But what residents – and seismic equipment – initially labelled as a quake may be nothing of the sort.

“Everyone was fooled by the collapse of a mountain,” says Martin Luethi, a glaciologist at the University of Zurich, who has been studying Greenland’s glaciers since 1995. “The tsunami wasn’t triggered by an earthquake.”

Luethi thinks the culprit was a landslide at nearby Karrat fjord. As the falling mountain hit the ocean, it created enough seismic noise to dupe sensors and generate the waves that inundated Nuugaatsiaq. He blames melting ice for destabilising the rock below.

And why did the mountain collapse?

“Ice cannot hold a mountain together if the ice flows,” says Luethi. “Melting and freezing cycles mean rocks are getting destroyed. There’s so much unstable rock in Greenland and they have no earthquakes to shake it down.”

This triggers a memory from years ago about some study done on evidence of a huge tsunami, thought to be triggered by an underwater landslide.

Looks like climate change is going to be triggering all sorts of interesting – if horrifying – mysteries to explore. Just like there may be more Lyme disease.

Chelsea Whyte in NewScientist (1 April 2017 – sheesh, how did I miss this?) reports how the anti-vaccination crowd has had a tangible impact on public health, by suppressing the manufacture of a vaccine for Lyme Disease:

The best approach would be to vaccinate people at risk – but there is currently no vaccine. We used to have one, but thanks to anti-vaccination activists, that is no longer the case.

In the late 1990s, a race was on to make the first Lyme disease vaccine. By December 1998, the US Food and Drug Administration approved the release of Lymerix, developed by SmithKline Beecham, now GSK. But the company voluntarily withdrew the drug after only four years.

This followed a series of lawsuits – including one where recipients claimed Lymerix caused chronic arthritis. Influenced by now-discredited research purporting to show a link between the MMR vaccine and autism, activists raised the question of whether the Lyme disease vaccine could cause arthritis.

Media coverage and the anti-Lyme-vaccination groups gave a voice to those who believed their pain was due to the vaccine, and public support for the vaccine declined. “The chronic arthritis was not associated with Lyme,” says Stanley Plotkin, an adviser to pharmaceutical company Sanofi Pasteur. “When you’re dealing with adults, all kinds of things happen to them. They get arthritis, they get strokes, heart attacks. So unless you have a control group, you’re in la-la land.”

But there was a control group – the rest of the US population. And when the FDA reviewed the vaccine’s adverse event reports in a retrospective study, they found only 905 reports for 1.4 million doses. Still, the damage was done, and the vaccine was benched.

I’ve had Lyme disease. I was diagnosed three or four days before my wedding. The UC doc took a close look at this big red bar across my groin and said, Oh, yeah, that’s Lyme disease – we’ve been diagnosing this for a couple of years down here [in the Twin Cities] now. Go get some doxycycline.

And I was lucky. A big, visible symptom and a doc who recognized it immediately.

But this is a dangerous disease if not caught early, and it makes me a little bitter that a bunch of amateurs, a bunch of yahoos, let themselves be led around by their ignorance and panic and managed to ground an important vaccine. Granted, there are five strains of Lyme disease and Lymerix only works for one of them, but still, this is unacceptable.

Kevin Drum, who pointed at this article, remarks:

All of you who have had Lyme disease should know this. You could have avoided it if not for the ravings of the anti-vax nitwits and the gullibility of the mainstream TV talkers who give them a platform. It’s long past time to put an end to this idiocy.

Amen. And a new vaccine is in development for all five variants.

I will also tie this to the DTCA (Direct To Consumer Advertising, wherein pharmaceutical companies make commercials to market drugs to consumers) idiocy, because the direct appeal to consumers by drug makers makes the consumer think they have some sort of inherent expertise in the evaluation of drugs & therapies, which in turn contributes to the current amateur hour in the White House and across the nation – not to mention inflating costs for Big Pharma. Without that encouragement, perhaps we’d have consumers who would just not engage in this damn bit of silliness – or could be told to go get some education in biology and statistics before shooting their damn mouths off.

Oh, and just for a little kick in the teeth, the article notes that climate change is greatly increasing the effective range of Lyme Disease. Here’s an effective time series map for the United States, provided by NewScientist, illustrating the change:

Gah. This leaves a bad, bad taste in my mouth.

Or at least that’s my Arts Editor name for it. We found it while on our recent vacation trip to Traverse City, MI.

Back in June, Benjamin Radford of The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry published a report on the Blue Whale game:

Over the past few months scary warnings have been circulating on social media asking parents, teachers, and police to beware of a hidden threat to children: a sinister online “game” that can lead to death! Some on social media have limned their reporting on the topic with appropriate skepticism, but many panicky social media posts plead for parents to take action.

He identifies this as a moral panic:

Moral panics such as the Blue Whale Game are part of a very old tradition. These scary media stories are very popular because they are fueled by parents’ fears and wanting to know what their kids are up to. Are seemingly innocent role-playing games and entertainment leading to unspeakable evil, in the form of Satan or even death? We saw the same fears decades ago about Dungeons and Dragons, heavy metal music, and violent video games. Now it’s online games and social media.

Indeed, the Blue Whale Game has all the hallmarks of a classic moral panic. Familiar elements and themes include:

1. Modern technology and seemingly benign personal devices as posing hidden dangers to children and teens;
2. In classic “Stranger Danger” fashion, the threat is some influential evil stranger who manipulates the innocent; and
3. There is an element of conspiracy theory to these stories: it’s always a “hidden world” of anonymous evil people who apparently have nothing better to do than ask teens to do things for fifty days before (somehow) compelling them to commit suicide.

And, every once in a while, some horrible crime does happen that fits in one of the above categories. Consider the Slender Man stabbing:

The Slender Man stabbing occurred on Saturday, May 31, 2014, in the city of Waukesha in Waukesha County, Wisconsin, just west of Milwaukee, when two 12-year-old girls allegedly lured another girl of the same age into the woods and stabbed her 19 times, purportedly in order to impress the fictional character Slender Man. [Wikipedia]

However, Slender Man doesn’t even exist:

Slender Man is a fictional entity created for a 2009 Photoshop contest on Something Awful, an online forum, the goal of which was to create paranormal images. The Slender Man mythos was later expanded by a number of other people who created fan fiction and additional forged images depicting the entity.

Sometimes the world is more awful than you can imagine. The problem, though, is statistical – the vast majority of the time kids are not in any danger at all, but the protective urges of parents actually contributes to xenophobia – a negative phenomenon in itself.

And, if you’re a new parent, go read the article on the Blue Whale. There’s lots of good information on kids and these oddball rumors. Or see this article in Motherboard, which includes the charming word creepypasta.

Note: Spoilers Rampant.

In the popcorn movie category comes Despicable Me 3 (2017), the latest in this profitable franchise. I loved the first two entries, thought the third, Minions (2015), lacked both focus and theme, although the Minions remained amusing, so I had some trepidation over this entry.

And, yes, it’s disappointing. The charm of the first two movies may have been the Minions and their interactions with their leader, Gru, but the engine of both was the personal growth of Gru, as he transforms from villainy to grumpy goodness through the magic of the children he adopted for nefarious purposes, and then the growth of his love for the new woman in his life, Lucy.

In 3, the engine is Gru’s twin brother, Dru, who lusts to be a criminal, but is far too ADHD to accomplish much beyond running the family pig farm. And it’s only a little putt-putt engine, because Dru is really living off the glory of their father, from whom he’s inherited the equipment and desire for villainy. Unlike Gru, who had built his felonious empire from the ground up and earns our respect for his industry and cleverness (remember his original motivation for adopting the girls?), and then through his wholesale change of heart as he learns the importance of family, Dru has no achievements, and thus little to sacrifice. Does he grow? Sure. But the transformation can be partially ascribed to his chaotic ADHD. It’s not as satisfying as his arch-criminal brother’s transformations in previous stories.

The antagonist, Balthazar Bratt, is once again clever, but lacks interesting depth. As the vengeful remnant of a once-beloved child movie actor, he might be seen as a commentary on the brutality of Hollywood towards those who ultimately enable that entire enterprise, but this angle is not convincingly explored. He’s all rage, with none of the leavening necessary to make him sympathetic to the audience. The interactions of Bratt with Gru could have been far more interesting if he’d had something to really engage the audience, even if, in the end, we were repelled.

And I was disappointed that the most enigmatic character in the entire series, Edith the middle sister, was not explored. Agnes, the youngest, was the catalyst of the first movie, providing motivations and observations which really entranced the viewer; Margot, the oldest, was a focus of the second, moving from girl to young woman in the second. Meanwhile, Edith has been the tomboy throughout, and received very little attention in 3. I think this is a missed bet, as there may be quite a lot hidden behind that slightly cynical facade.

Not that this is a complete disaster, but there are other flaws as well. I count at least four throwaway characters who could have been memorable, but were not because of the writers. The use of bubble gum as a weapon, while fitting into the tradition of odd weapons in this series, was less inspirational than, say, the piranha gun. (Doctor Nefario’s fart gun is a personal favorite of mine.)

So, if you’re a completist, go see it. This is rather like a lesser 007 movie, put out to harvest some money, but nowhere near as good as it might have been. Another script rewrite or two could have greatly improved this offering.

A fascinating bit from Max Ehrenfreund in WaPo concerning economic activity in free markets:

It’s one of the most important yet least understood sources of ordinary Americans’ economic frustration: U.S. companies aren’t investing as much as they used to.

When corporations don’t invest or invest less, they put fewer people to work building factories, making equipment and conducting research. But investment has slumped in recent years, and researchers say there isn’t any obvious or consensus reason for the investment slowdown.

Now, two economists at New York University, Germán Gutiérrez and Thomas Philippon, think they might have at least a partial explanation. In a paper published this week by the National Bureau of Economic Research, they argue that increasing concentration of economic power in the hands of relatively few behemoth corporations — in some cases to the point where companies enjoy a near monopoly — could explain the pattern: The big firms, unconcerned about their competitors, simply have no need to invest in staying ahead.

“It explains a big chunk of why investment is low in the U.S. today,” Philippon said.

In separate research, the two economists found that market power has not become more concentrated in Europe. As a result, European markets are now more competitive than those in the United States — a remarkable shift in a country where free markets have long been not just a point of pride, but also a priority for national economic policy. “It’s a complete reversal,” Philippon said. “The U.S. has always been the more pro-competition place, but it’s not true any more.”

Now, the libertarians will tell you that in this situation, new competitors will appraise the market and its suppliers, discover inefficiencies, innovate, and attempt to overturn the dinosaurs dominating the niche. However, the “moat”, the barriers to new competition, can stifle those new competitors. Often, behemoths are difficult to even breathe against; the end of the dinosaurs may come about only because it’s the end of that particular market. Think buggy whips.

Kevin Drum remarks:

I don’t have the chops to evaluate this, but I’m sure others will chime in. However, it reinforces my belief that competiton [sic] is good for its own sake, and antitrust law needs to recognize this. We should move away from “consumer benefit” fables that corporations use to justify mergers, and instead insist on keeping sectors as competitive as possible.

And, implicitly, completely free markets are not naturally great economic generators; the quality & quantity of the economic activity will depend on the context. Given a large enough moat, a company dominating its niche can simply become a cash machine for its owners.

And, philosophically speaking, and assuming this research is replicated and generally accepted, it’s a blow to the concept that free markets are naturally self-regulating and well-organized systems requiring little to no governmental supervision. This concept is greatly appealing to programmers, as they find analogs in the problems they solve. Human supervision of computer programs is often a clumsy, discouraging business, as it introduces possible error and even malice. When it can be avoided, there’s a certain satisfaction to completing the coding. Perhaps it’s distantly akin to the physicists’ love of beautiful math to describe reality.

But free marketeers often ignore the human element, and companies often reflect the personalities and desires of their management and shareholders. I recall a story about my first post-college employer, CPT Corp., whose CEO was characterized as the Ayatollah Khomeni^[1] of Minnesota business. The story went that his VP of Development, a gentleman by the name of Stearns, was developing the very first clone of the IBM PC without notifying the CEO. When he revealed that he had nearly completed what would have been a huge cash cow for CPT, the CEO didn’t thank him – he fired him in a rage.

CPT later went bankrupt, and not much later.

That said, until now competition implied labor – the labor to develop and manufacture new products. But the advent of AI-driven robots may alter this equation, depending on how the long term cost structure for such machinery works out. If so, the greater competition anticipated from successful anti-trust efforts may not appear as anticipated.

¹The Ayatollah, the spiritual leader of the revolutionaries who overthrew the Shah of Iran, was demonized by American politicians, since the Shah was friendly to American commercial interests, while Ayatollah Khomeni’s forces tended to label the United States as the Great Satan.

[EDIT add forgotten word “how the longer term…” 11/15/2017]

Before he was relaxed, now he’s regal.

Perhaps a bit blurry. I need a better camera.

It’s not April 1st, is it? New York’s Andrew Sullivan notes a bill under consideration by Congress (see the third section of the article):

One of the features you most associate with creeping authoritarianism is the criminalization of certain political positions. Is anything more anathema to a liberal democracy? If Trump were to suggest it, can you imagine the reaction?

And yet it’s apparently fine with a hefty plurality of the Senate and House. I’m referring to the remarkable bill introduced into the Congress earlier this year — with 237 sponsors and co-sponsors in the House and 43 in the Senate — which the ACLU and the Intercept have just brought to light. It’s a remarkably bipartisan effort, backed by Chuck Schumer and Ted Cruz, among many solid Trump-resisting Democrats and hard-line Republicans. And it would actually impose civil and criminal penalties on American citizens for backing or joining any international boycott of Israel because of its settlement activities. There are even penalties for simply inquiring about such a boycott. And they’re not messing around. The minimum civil penalty would be $250,000 and the maximum criminal penalty $1 million and 20 years in prison. Up to 20 years in prison for opposing the policies of a foreign government and doing something about it! And, yes, the Senate Minority Leader is leading the charge.

Evidently there’s an entire passel of politicians who need to be reminded that this is the United States, not the Soviet Union. And especially the bit about penalties for inquiring about a boycott – that sounds like Big Brother to me.

In what may or may not be a bit of synchronicity, the Sullivan article happens to also have an advertisement for the Broadway play 1984.

Misandry:

hatred of males [Dictionary.com]

Noted in “The Triumph of Obama’s Long Game,” second section, Andrew Sullivan, New York:

That is the current attempt to deny the profound natural differences between men and women, and to assert, with a straight and usually angry face, that gender is in no way rooted in sex, and that sex is in no way rooted in biology. This unscientific product of misandrist feminism and confused transgenderism is striding through the culture, and close to no one in the elite is prepared to resist it.

I doubt Andrew has many supporters in the ultra-feminist caucus.

I’ve been meaning to talk about this topic and continually forgetting, so forgive me for being a little out of date. The Richard Dawkins Foundation (for Reason & Science, to complete its unwieldy title), among many other outlets, reports on the latest attempts by the GOP to kill the Johnson Amendment, which I’ve written about before – short form, it’s the law that prohibits churches which have tax-free status from advocating for specific political candidates. Here’s the Dawkins Foundation:

Republicans repeatedly have failed to scrap the law preventing churches and other nonprofits from backing candidates, so now they are trying to starve it. With little fanfare, a House Appropriations subcommittee added a provision that would deny money to the IRS to enforce the 63-year-old law to a bill to fund the Treasury Department, Securities and Exchange Commission and other agencies.

First of all, it seems to me that this sort of attack on the law – and that’s what it is – is dishonorable and below the dignity of good-hearted legislators. The fact of the matter is that Congress once decided that the passion and fury of religion should be muted when it comes to politics, for otherwise disaster may come of it. If Congress wishes to retract this judgment, it may do so – but to try to remove the funding for this law, even if it’s only rarely enforced, is underhanded.

Antenatal autoeroticism:

The alleged case of antenatal autoeroticism was reported by Spanish gynecologists Vanesa Rodríguez Fernández and Carlos López Ramón y Cajal in September last year. Their paper was called In utero gratification behaviour in male fetus. …

Rodríguez Fernández and López Ramón y Cajal wrote that “This is a very clear sexual behavior ‘in utero’ in the 32nd week of gestation”, speculating that the fetus may have been comforting himself by the behaviour. [“Fetal Onanism: A Surprising Scientific Debate,” Neuroskeptic]

I suppose this will be used by anti-abortion forces in the abortion / right to life debate, although the interpretation is not accepted by all relevant scientists, as some claim the ultrasound has been misinterpreted. Fernández and Cajal have cheerfully returned fire.

Spaceweather.com reports on the effects of a CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) from the Sun:

On July 16th, a CME hit Earth’s magnetic field, sparking two days of geomagnetic storms and beautiful southern auroras. The solar storm cloud also swept aside some of the cosmic rays currently surrounding Earth. Spaceweather.com and the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched a space weather balloon to the stratosphere hours after the CME arrived. We detected a 7% decrease in X-rays and gamma-rays (two tracers of secondary cosmic rays). Neutron monitors in the Arctic and Antarctic recorded similar decrements. For instance, these data from the Bartol Research Institute show a nearly 8% drop in cosmic ray neutrons reaching the South Pole: …

I don’t often consider CMEs as shields for the Earth, but rather assaults on our magnetic shields.

And I fear that his Russian segments, so full of pregnant potentiality, are quite tone-deaf. My Arts Editor and I have been squirming our way through them on the DVR, having returned from a vacation trip, and the first three have just sucked. I shan’t watch the fourth or fifth.

Too bad, Colbert tends to hit his targets more than he misses. But not these.

HuffPo is reporting that Greg Gianforte (R-MT), now the lone Representative from Montana, and who assaulted a reporter the day before the election, doesn’t think the judge’s sentence should apply to him:

Recently I encountered a phenomenon that had, until now, totally escaped my notice — the world of Hobo Nickels. Once you know to look for them, you can find a plethora of websites dedicated to the collecting of these fascinating objects.

In brief, a Hobo Nickel is a coin that has been re-engraved, carved, or augmented on one or both sides. This, in effect, defaces the coin, making it no longer legal tender, but turns the object into a miniature sculpture often given as a keepsake.  The practice was popular as early as 1750, primarily in Britain, France and South Africa.

From Wikipedia:

“The art form made its way to the Americas in the 1850s, where the most common form of coin alteration was the “potty coin”, engraved on United States Seated Liberty coinage (half dime through trade dollar) and modifying Liberty into a figure sitting on a chamber pot. This time period was also the heyday of the love token, which was made by machine-smoothing a coin (usually silver) on one or both sides, then engraving it with initials, monograms, names, scenes, etc., often with an ornate border. Hundreds of thousands of coins were altered in this manner. They were often mounted on pins or incorporated into bracelets and necklaces. ”

The practice eventually expanded to include many different images.   Vintage carvings typically looked a lot like these:

There seems to be a thriving collectors’ community for Hobo Nickels, both the vintage coins and new works being done today.  There is a faithful community of artists producing the miniature bas-reliefs, and some works sell for many thousands of dollars.

Here are some modern examples:

It’s a fascinating world. If you’re interested, you can read more about Hobo Nickels at http://www.hobonickels.org/graphics/tri_fold.pdf  or  http://www.hobonickels.org/what_is.html

Hypergolic:

A pair of chemicals that spontaneously ignite when combined, without a separate ignition souce, is termed hypergolic. A hypergolic pair of chemicals includes a fuel chemical and an oxidizing chemical. [“Fire-breathing dinosaurs?“, Philip J. Senter, Skeptical Inquirer, July / August 2017 (online only)]

An interesting article – I had not heard that the Young Earth Creationist segment had decided they needed to prove that the legends about fire-breathing dragons could be traced to humans and dinosaurs co-existing. The cited article, not yet available online, is a takedown by Ph. D. vertebrate paleontologist Senter of the various theories advanced to justify such an assertion. It’s really like watching someone swatting a bunch of comatose flies.

There is a dark side to the article, and that is the fact that some of these theories are being cited in certain biology textbooks. Given their basic untenability, it’s frankly irresponsible to engage in such citations and theories. If you sit on a PTA board or are in some position of authority over textbooks at some school, you may wish to investigate whether you’re acquiring textbooks from BJU Press, and, if so, DON’T TRUST ME. Do your own investigation into the content of their textbooks. And, if it looks dubious, contemplate further action. These kinds of theories aren’t the type that are interestingly wrong – they’re just wrong. And it’s wrong to be suggesting to children they’re part of the accepted scientific consensus.

I’ve recently been pushing through the book The Persuaders, by James Garvey, a philosopher in the UK. I’ve been meaning to write about his Chapter 1, where he briefly overviews the rational amusements of London back in the 18th century (nyah, not going to explain that one just yet), but that fascinating bit will have to wait, as I’ve just completed the far more relevant Chapter 5, “Lost For Words,” wherein he discusses today’s political rhetoric.

If you’ve been wondering at the emptiness of political speeches, at the disconnect between interview questions and interview answers, this may be the chapter for you. He begins with the Kerry loss to Bush in 2004, the Democratic (and world-wide) shock and anguish at their defeat. He traces it to the messaging efforts of Frank Luntz, a name I’ve encountered a few times during the 2016 campaign as a pollster astonished by the behavior of Trump voters. Luntz works extensively in the proper framing of the messages to be used by Republican candidates. Garvey connects this to the two thinking systems we humans use (from a previous chapter, Systems 1 (fast, a-rational) and 2 (slow, rational)). He also briefly surveys the work of George Lakoff, a Democratic resource who works on similar issues. He covers the company Crowds On Demand, a delightful name for a deceitful company, and how they supply people simply to respond positively to a speech. He meditates on how certain words and phrases become the mantra of politicos, as if they’re magic incantations.

But this is the most interesting, because it’s a personal story rather than the drier facts he’s been explaining – and forms a connection from those facts to personal experience. From pp 132-133:

Framing is of course just a part of the thinking behind modern political messaging. There’s much more to understanding what’s going on when we hear a politician speak. But even with this limited grip on political language, I now find myself turned off by political speeches. I don’t want to hear and be affected by them. Sometimes I look away and hum to myself when a politician appears on television to respond to the news of the day.  I know that I can’t keep this head-in-the-sand solution going for very long, and I know it’s slightly batty, but it’s less painful than the alternative, which is listening to the soundbites and playing political buzzword bingo. The words now leap out at me, and I can’t hear anything other than a communications specialist stressing the repetition of the words ‘freedom’, … [typos mine – HW]

Yes, a communications specialist, permitting anyone who can learn a bunch of phrases and not dribble on themselves at barbecues to become a Representative. To me, the work of the communication specialist is not just another job, but a real step in the dissolution of the Republic, because it’s an enabler of the second and third class personality to come into a leadership position.

A few weeks ago, I recall reading somewhere that a GOP aide had said, paraphrasing, Gosh, we don’t know how to govern! And this rather explains it, doesn’t it? Luntz and his fellows have removed the responsibility of effective communication, of thinking on one’s feet, of being rational, of being smart, from the backs of GOP candidates, and now we’re seeing the results. Representative Gohmert (TX) is, of course, legendary for being an idiot, but just in the last day or two, I read how Representative Dana Rohrabacher (CA) asked if Mars had ever had a civilization.

This all reinforces my worry that the Democrats may go tromping down the same road. After all, the nation is in desperate straits at the moment. Right?

No. Victory at any cost could cost us the Republic; it will almost certainly cost us our first-rank status.

Fortunately, given the approval ratings for Trump and the GOP, the general population of the United States may be figuring this out. I think, though, the media should take this further, by explicitly reprimanding and disallowing the use of framing and messaging by political candidates. A question is asked, then it should be clearly answered – and the candidate will be warned that any framing and messaging which disrupts the interview will end up on the cutting room floor.

Even better might be the warning that if an entire interview must be discarded due to excessive messaging, then a front page story will be run that simply says the candidate engaged in a deceitful interview and the media refuses to run it.

Extreme? Perhaps. But as a Nation we should demand honest and forthright answers to questions – not messaging that means nothing in response to the relevant questions.

I’ve only read about half of The Persuaders, but I think I can say it’s Recommended to readers across the spectrum. In Chapter 5, for conservatives bewildered by the incompetence of their elected representatives, this may be an eye opener; for the lefty, they may find an explanation, if not a solution, for the losses at the ballot box. And while Garvey doesn’t deliver a lot of hope for the future, I’m hoping the general poll numbers both here and in the UK (where the Tories took it shockingly on the nose in the last election) indicate an electorate that’s wising up to the evil of the communication specialist.

In NewScientist (8 July 2017, paywall), Frank Swain gives an overview of the question of whether or not it would be ethical to force everyone to adhere to some definition of normalcy, enforced through medical means. Frank gives the a posteriori answer:

Perhaps conformity isn’t as good for society as we suppose. In 2015, psychologist Jesse Harrington at the University of Maryland published a study showing that highly restrictive societies fared worse in measures of overall happiness, rates of depression and suicide than moderate ones – but then again, so did highly permissive cultures. When it comes to how much abnormality we should tolerate, then, it seems we would be best off having the normal amount.

I think the a priori answer should also be no, based on evolutionary requirements. It’s only through endless variety are we likely to improve our survival capabilities in the current and changing environments. And that last clause brings up the important point that if we define normal as the optimal condition for the current environment, what happens when (not if!) the environment changes? Chances are that the current optimal condition will not be optimal for the new environment – and that the pressure to evolve to the next optimal condition will be too great, resulting in the elimination of most of humanity.

Non-conformity is the general winning long-term strategy.

Reportedly, President Trump’s latest strategy as I write this is to let the Democrats own the ACA, let it fail, and hang it around their necks, under the mask of the Democrats having to go to the GOP to rebuild healthcare. A sound strategy?

There’s more than one risk, though. Assuming the ACA doesn’t fail – and remember that many analysts have reviewed the numbers and concluded the entire death spiral meme is false, including those at Trump’s own Health and Human Services Department – there’s the obvious risk that then the Democrats get to own the successful ACA. But this is just spite.

The real risk is that at the same time the GOP will be seen as having repudiated the ACA, refused ownership. And this is worse than it sounds because the entire reason the GOP has been trying to repeal the ACA has been entirely about the Democrats having been able to take credit for one of the largest social programs since Social Security – and the GOP feared that would make them irrelevant.

That is, the GOP has an existential fear of the ACA, of becoming irrelevant and, eventually, non-existent. And this is exactly what Trump will have embraced. He’s betting he can cause the ACA to fail, to do it without the citizenry noticing that he caused it, all against the GOP becoming an embarrassing, irrelevant political curiosity.

And, given the incompetence of the Trump Administration, well, if I were in the GOP, I’d be shaking in my shoes.

No sad story here. The gray kitty named Mayhem may be getting older and slower, but he’s still with us. And looks good on a pink towel.

Benjamin Wittes on Lawfare is aghast at today’s New York Times interview with President Trump:

Trump’s logic isn’t easy to follow here, but his core claim is unmistakeable—and “interesting” is a generous word for it: the FBI director serves the president. As a matter of constitutional hierarchy, this is of course true. But in investigative matters, the FBI director does not, or should not, serve the president by reporting to him. He serves the president by leading law enforcement in an independent and apolitical fashion. And it is fundamentally corrupt for any president to be asking him to do otherwise.

And what’s to be done?

We are in a dangerous moment—one in which the President, with his infinite sense of grievance, feels entitled publicly to attack the entire federal law enforcement apparatus, and that apparatus, in turn, lacks a single person with the stature, the institutional position, and the fortitude to stand up to him. Sessions has not done so. While Rosenstein did the country an enormous service when he appointed Mueller, he acted as an enabler of the Comey firing in the first instance and did not do himself credit yesterday. Mueller certainly has the stature, but by the nature of his position he cannot say anything publicly; he is investigating the President and thus cannot also confront him. And McCabe, who has been both able and courageous in the aftermath of Comey’s firing, is in an acting capacity.

Even more apropos would be a strong rebuke from Congress. Unfortunately, the leaders of Congress are caught up in their unethical loyalty trip.

streiff on RedState is more annoyed:

It is this kind of lack of self-discipline and the absence of the ability to self-edit that is infuriating. It damages Trump and, worse than that, it damages the ability of his administration to get things done.  Often one is left with the conclusion that Trump does this kind of stuff in a calculated way. He can’t bear the thought of things running smooth because then the media is not talking about him incessantly and if they aren’t talking about him, they are talking about someone else and his self-worth is damaged.

It’s worth noting he thinks Sessions is doing a good job, outside of the civil forfeiture disaster. I don’t know if RedState has backed Trump since the election; I seem to recall they did not back Trump during the campaign. National Review opposed Trump during the campaign, but has switched allegiances since the election.

Chris Cillizza on CNN believes Trump is wasting his time jawboning, and even threatening, the GOP Senators over the ACA repeal and replace effort:

Trump knows exactly what he is doing here. He was making sure not only Heller but everyone else in that room — the wavering or opposed senators were clustered in and around Trump and Vice President Mike Pence — as well as anyone who saw the clip replayed later knew that he had put all of the GOP senators on notice. The threat had been delivered! He was tough!

Here’s the thing: It’s not going to work. Heller knows Nevada better than Trump. (Flashback: Trump saying that the people in the state of Nevada actually mispronounce the state’s name.) Trump saying Heller better change his mind or else isn’t going to actually, well, change Heller’s mind. Same goes for Shelley Moore Capito in West Virginia. Or Susan Collins in Maine.

Trump, in his own reckoning, already tried the carrot approach with senators. Now he’s going to the stick. But this is a lost cause. The Senate will vote next week. Repeal will almost certainly fail. And the Senate will move on — no matter what Trump says.

I don’t think Chris goes far enough. Trump is acting the bully, not the leader – and the Senators will remember this, regardless of whether it works or not. Come Impeachment Day, this incident will count heavily against Trump in their minds. Many of them will realize that kowtowing to Trump will result in a narrower, less democratic GOP, and leave them more and more vulnerable to a dictatorial party.

Of course, the Senate cannot initiate impeachment proceedings. But if Trump perceives this as a successful maneuver – and how can he not, given his ego-requirements? – then he’ll also try it in in the House. And while the House does not have the traditions and institutional memory of the Senate, a few incidents of this sort in the House may motivate such a move on their part as well.

Although given the troubles of the GOP members of the House in terms of popularity since Election Day, as well as simply delivering on anything at all, they may be too distracted to actually pursue impeachment proceedings.

… can be another’s art focus.

On 38 North, Henri Fèron presents an analysis of North Korean tangible, i.e., visible economic activity vs the various analyses produced based on problematic statistics, and comes to a disquieting conclusion:

A Pyongyang full of shiny, new buildings belies the assumption that the North Korean economy is about to collapse under the weight of sanctions. While there are some valid concerns about the sturdiness of these mushrooming high-rise buildings, there are too many of them and they are too central to Kim Jong Un’s propaganda to dismiss them all as shells like the Ryugyong Hotel [a failed development from the post-Soviet era]. Unlike his grandfather, who drew his legitimacy from military achievements, and his father, who drew it from direct connection with the national founder, Kim Jong Un depends much more on his governing performance and popular approval for legitimacy. It should be no surprise then that he focuses on highly visible signs of improving livelihoods, such as prestigious residential complexes. These developments appear to have been enabled by an improved economy, fueled in part by Chinese aid and trade, as well as the reallocation of conventional defense spending. If this interpretation of economic resurgence proves correct, then Pyongyang’s construction boom will be one more reason to doubt the effectiveness of current sanctions.

So we’re faced with the prospect of testing a ruling Republican party, full of aggressive second- and third- raters, with a North Korea which may be finding its stride both economically and militarily. Does the GOP have any concept of managing a problem over the long term, much as we did the Cold War, or will they childishly demand instant solutions?

I don’t know if I want to stay tuned for this one, given their remarkable reactions to the Iran Nuclear deal.