Monthly Archives: July 2017

The poppies may be monochromatic, but they’re still fun!

On 38 North, Leon Sigal comments on the recent South Korean summit in Washington and the overall situation concerning North Korea. I found this of interest:

Meanwhile, North Korea has continued to launch ballistic missiles and to test-fire rocket engines. Pressure alone will not compel it to stop without giving it something in return, most likely a scaling back of joint US-ROK military exercises. It is utterly unrealistic to think that the North can be compelled to suspend arming up without having some of its security concerns satisfied.

Indeed, Washington has adjusted the intensity and scope of joint exercises over time to the perceived threat from North Korea. It beefed up the size and intensity of joint exercises after the 2010 sinking of a South Korean navy corvette, the Cheonan, and resumed flying nuclear-capable B-52s into Korean airspace only after the North conducted nuclear tests. In a subtle response to the North’s recent restraint on testing, however, it substituted B-1s, which are not wired for nuclear delivery, for the B-52s in recent flights.

Indications are that a suspension of North Korean missile and nuclear testing and fissile material production may yet prove negotiable. Moving beyond a suspension to dismantle the North’s nuclear and missile programs will take much more of an effort. Past attempts at denuclearization foundered when Washington proved hesitant to move toward full political and economic normalization and Pyongyang resumed arming.

So how will the North Koreans respond to a subtle change such as flying B-1s rather than B-52s? The ICBM launch makes me wonder if that’s a return remark in the dialog – or an exclamation point. Defense Secretary Mattis put his best face forward on the subject, as noted by ABC News:

He repeatedly said that the Trump administration will use diplomacy first in dealing with North Korea’s new ICBM capability. Though he noted that the U.S. military stands ready “to provide options if they’re necessary, but this is purely diplomatically led, with economic sanctions and buttressed by the military position, that we’re taking right now.”

Asked about such diplomatic efforts, which have so far proved unsuccessful in containing North Korea’s missile program, Mattis referred to comments made yesterday by Gen. Vince Brooks, the commander of U.S. troops in South Korea.

“Diplomacy has not failed,” Mattis said. “As Gen. Brooks said it so well, it is our self-restraint that has prevented war in the face of provocations.”

“As [Winston] Churchill put it, it’s better to jaw-jaw than war-war,” said Mattis.

Supposedly, US and South Korean forces responded with missile fire into the sea off North Korea’s coast. Perhaps a couple of missiles should hit a beach. We can call it a test.

Former White House Counsel Bob Bauer on Lawfare has little use for President Trump’s “modern Presidency,” nor comparisons to earlier Presidents:

It also stands to reason that Trump would express his unhappiness with CNN by retweeting a bit of staged violence at a professional wrestling show. Edward Luce has recently written about the president’s fascination with this brand of entertainment, and he notes a change over time in the stylized drama offered the audience: “Good and evil were replaced with dramas based on nasty personal disputes.” This is how Trump perceives his conflict with the media, as he does other conflicts he encounters in his public role—nasty personal disputes, and to be portrayed as such to his public. The president’s response that he is defending against personal attacks on him invites the obvious answer he should appreciate: he’s president and they’re not.

The presidency as an institution, rather than as a vehicle for the incumbent’s exercise of personal will, runs on disciplined process. President Roosevelt’s fireside chats, his version of “intimate” dialogue with the public, passed through several drafts as they were “fact-checked and re-written six or more times by a team of secretaries, speechwriters, and press specialists.” Roosevelt worked hard for a personal connection with his audience, but he remained squarely within his official role, supported by advisers and staff. Roosevelt understood that he was discharging a public function, and his process reflected his sense of that responsibility. Contrast with this the early morning Trump tweet bursts: issued at will, notable for misspellings, and marked the occasional deletion of the message from the public record when he concludes he hit “send” in haste.

Trump remains an incurious man with little interest in how the responsibilities of government differ from that of business.

Which does lead to the thought that future Congressional and Presidential candidates should have to face that foundational question: Please detail the key differences between government and business.

Don’t watch Frogs (1972) sober. At least, if you’re sober at the start, don’t be sober at the end. That’s the measure of awfulness of this horror flick featuring the revenge of Nature on polluting ol’ humanity.

Take a drink at every bad costume.

Take a drink at every clumsy death.

And if you like lizards and other cold-blooded critters, stay a little bit sober during the first half, where there’s quite a few good close up shots of monitor lizards, snakes, caimans, alligators, and no doubt a few other things.

Try not to mistake Ray Milland for a lizard. I know, I know, in this one he has about as much affection for humanity as a dodo might. But save a drink for the death of his character. Lord knows, he deserved it.

Gak.

Insert snide remark here. At your own risk.

Skiptracing:

Skiptracing (also skip tracing, or debtor and fugitive recovery^[1]) is the process of locating a person’s whereabouts for any number of purposes. A skiptracer is someone who performs this task, which may be the person’s primary occupation. The term “skip” (as a noun) refers to the person being searched for, and is derived from the idiomatic expression “to skip town”, meaning to depart (perhaps in a rush), leaving minimal clues behind to “trace” the “skip” to a new location. [Wikipedia]

Noted in an interview with Frank Ahearn, NewScientist (24 June 2017):

How did you become a “skip tracer”, finding people who have run out on their lives?

I was doing undercover work for a detective agency in the 1980s when I saw the skip tracer at work and it fascinated me. I told my boss I wanted to do the job, and he said, “Sure, if you can get me a copy of my phone records.” That night I went to a payphone, called the phone company pretending to be my boss and said I needed to go over my calls. They told me every place my boss had called in the last few months. The next day I became a skip tracer.

I got really good at “pretexting” – essentially tricking people into handing over information. Later, I had my own firm of skip tracers.

In the arena of arbitration replacing civil litigation, Nicholas Bagley on The Incidental Economist notes how the Obama Administration decided to handle arbitration requirements in contracts in the arena of nursing homes – and the reaction of the Trump Administration:

In October 2016, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) decided to push back on mandatory arbitration. By rule, CMS adopted a novel “condition of participation” for Medicare and Medicaid. Nursing homes that participate in the programs—which is to say, all nursing homes—could no longer ask their residents to sign away their right to sue upon entering the nursing home. (The rule covered only pre-dispute arbitration; residents could still agree to arbitration once a dispute arose.) …

Predictably, the nursing home industry sued, arguing that the rule exceeded CMS’s authority. In November, a federal judge in Mississippi sided with the plaintiffs, and entered a preliminary injunction prohibiting CMS from applying the rule. The agency promptly appealed. In the meantime, for reasons I don’t fully understand—and perhaps for no good reason at all—the agency chose not only to comply with the ruling in Mississippi, but across the country.

Then President Trump took office. In early June, with little fanfare or notice, the administration dismissed the appeal and proposed to undo the change altogether. “Upon reconsideration, we believe that arbitration agreements are, in fact, advantageous to both providers and beneficiaries because they allow for the expeditious resolution of claims without the costs and expense of litigation.” The comment period is open through August 7, and the rule is likely to be finalized in 2018.

With health reform dominating the news, this volte-face has been overlooked.

Nicholas plans to explore the academic research on arbitration and nursing home safety, so if you’re looking at a nursing home in your future, you may wish to keep an eye on Nicholas. I know that no one wants to go into a nursing home, but for some of us this will be an inevitability. I’d certainly be OK with a consumer option of using arbitration; but a contractual requirement just sticks in my craw. If nursing homes are not faced with the possibility of being sued out of existence, well, I fear there is not an over-supply of ethics in this country.

At least, not based on the current crop of officials in the White House.

The nonsensically titled^[1] Blood & Chocolate (2007) was a frustrating mix of promise and predictability, with a nice plot twist from which the screenwriter shrank. Vivian is a young and unhappy Loup-Garou, the Romanian version of a werewolf, with its apparently only variance from the traditional werewolf being an inability to make anyone else a Loup-Garou. According to the tradition of the pack, they are descended from the royal line of Romania. The Loups-Garous have been mercilessly hunted and are down to a couple dozen, occasionally taking a human victim for a ceremonial, if vicious, hunt, run by Gabriel, their pack leader.

Vivian helps her aunt, a pack member, run a chocolate shop, an occupation of little impact to the story. One night, as Vivian meditates in a church, she crosses paths with an American graphic novel artist, Aiden, who is fascinated by the wolf-associated iconography in the church. Over the next few days, he pursues her in a gentlemanly manner. Gabriel, learning of his interest in the Loups-Garous, decides he must be frightened out of Romania, or killed, and dispatches his own son to do the job.

But his son fails and dies. A thoroughly frightened Aiden is taken prisoner and subjected to the ceremonial hunt, but survives it. Vivian attempts to defend him at its termination, and is accidentally injured with a silver knife. Aiden helps her survive by taking her for special treatment, but they are pursued. In the climactic ending, a number of pack members die, including Gabriel. Vivian and Aiden escape.

From that summary we can see the surprises are the survival of the fully human being Aiden, refusing to succumb to the sudden attack of Gabriel’s son, and ultimately winning the inevitable  knock-down drag-out fight. That was the exciting, interesting part, as humans don’t win such fights. In fact, at that point, as the Loup-Garou panted his last breaths, I waited to see if Aiden would save him, perhaps starting his own mutant pack. But, no. The scriptwriters suffered a failure of imagination, perhaps only capable of that one little surprise, and the Loup-Garou dies.

And, from then on, the movie is as dull as my plot summary – there’s a lot of action, but nothing new, no commentary on how relations between differently capable groups might be harmonized – or how such is not possible. Instead, it’s just a lot of running and knifing and even shooting.

And that’s a shame. It was nicely set up to take a standard werewolf tale down a different, thought-provoking, even wickedly smart path. Instead, the most clever thing is a concealed knife. And that’s awfully dull.

All the other facets were adequate or even good – visuals, audio, acting. Too bad the story couldn’t jump from its ruts.

¹Since we saw this on TV, it’s possible the title made sense without the inevitable TV editing.

Kaggle remains a public center of big data training through public competitions. I participated a few years ago, despite a nearly complete absence of domain-specific knowledge, by working on their introductory problem of predicting Titanic survivors and, if I recall properly, working on one of the challenges with a prize. Between lack of knowledge and an insistence in coding in Mythryl, I had a big hill to climb, and never really made it up the first ridge. A lack of time and other interests finally won the day, but if I were still a young programmer, with lots of free time, I would have pursued it with great interest.

But I do occasionally take advantage of the tutorials offered by the leading Kagglers. This month the Kaggle blog has an interview with one of their top members, Marios Michailidis, and his description of using a stacking strategy when solving big data problems, an approach he believes has become dominant, is interesting:

Can you give a brief introduction to stacking and why it’s important?

Stacking or Stacked Generalization is the process of combining various machine learning algorithms using holdout data. It is attributed to Wolpert 1992. It normally involves a four-stage process. Consider 3 datasets A, B, C. For A and B we know the ground truth (or in other words the target variable y). We can use stacking as follows:

1. We train various machine learning algorithms (regressors or classifiers) in dataset A
2. We make predictions for each one of the algorithms for datasets B and C and we create new datasets B1 and C1 that contain only these predictions. So if we ran 10 models then B1 and C1 have 10 columns each.
3. We train a new machine learning algorithm (often referred to as Meta learner or Super learner) using B1
4. We make predictions using the Meta learner on C1

For a large scale implementation of stacking, one may further read or use stacked ensembles.

Stacking is important because (experimentally) it has been found to improve performance in various machine learning problems. I believe most winning solutions on Kaggle the past 4 years included some form of stacking.

Additionally, the advent of increased computing power and parallelism has made it possible to run many algorithms together. Most algorithms rely on certain parameters or assumptions to perform best, hence each one has advantages and disadvantages. Stacking is a mechanism that tries to leverage the benefits of each algorithm while disregarding (to some extent) or correcting for their disadvantages. In its most abstract form, stacking can be seen as a mechanism that corrects the errors of your algorithms.

So, given enough test data with a known solution, segment it randomly, build predictive functions using one segment, and use another segment to evaluate the performance of each of the functions. Correct the performance as possible.

And hope your data sample is representative of the entire dataset.

I particularly liked his example:

I often like to explain stacking on multiple levels with the following (albeit simplistic) example:

Let’s assume there are three students named LR, SVM, KNN and they argue about a physics question where they have different opinions of what the right answer might be:

They decide there is no way to convince one another about their case and they do the democratic thing via taking an average of their estimates which is this case is 14. They used one of the simplest form of ensembling–AKA model averaging.

Their teacher, Miss DL–a maths teacher–bears witness to the argument the students are having and decides to help. She asks “what was the question?”, but the students refuse to tell her (because they know it is not in their benefit to give all the information, besides they think she might find silly they are arguing for such a trivial matter). However they do tell her that it is a physics related argument.

In this scenario, the teacher does not have access to the initial data as she does not know what the question was. However she does know the students very well–their strengths and weakness and she decides she can still help in solving this matter. Using historical information of how well the students have done in the past, plus the fact that she knows SVM loves physics and always does well in this subject (plus her father worked in a physics institute of excellence for young scientists), she thinks the most appropriate answer would be more like 17.

And there’s more to that example, but in the interests of fair use, I shan’t tell it. Go see the Kaggle blog link.

Columbarium:

A columbarium (pl. columbaria) is a place for the respectful and usually public storage of cinerary urns (i.e., urns holding a deceased’s cremated remains). The term comes from the Latin “columba” (dove) and originally referred to compartmentalized housing for doves and pigeons called a dovecote. [Wikipedia]

Encountered in the Wikipedia entry for actor Gerald Mohr:

Mohr flew to Stockholm in September 1968, to star in the pilot of a proposed television series, Private Entrance, featuring Swedish actress Christina Schollin.^[4]

Shortly after the completion of filming, Mohr died of a heart attack in the evening of November 9, 1968, in Södermalm, Stockholm, aged 54. Mohr is interred in the columbarium of Lidingö Kyrkogård on the island of Lidingö, Sweden.

CNN is reporting that 44 states are rejecting, whole or in part, the request of a Presidential commission on electoral fraud for detailed voting information.

Forty-four states have refused to provide certain types of voter information to the Trump administration’s election integrity commission, according to a CNN inquiry to all 50 states.

State leaders and voting boards across the country have responded to the letter with varying degrees of cooperation — from altogether rejecting the request to expressing eagerness to supply information that is public.

This reminded me of a report from local news station WCCO on the subject, which left me vaguely disturbed. It included a brief interview with a certain Andy Cilek, the executive director of the Minnesota Voters Alliance (MVA). Here’s his comment:

“Our goal is to suppress illegal voting. We don’t want illegal voting,” Cilek said.

Which according to President Donald Trump, totaled in the millions in the last election, preventing him from winning the popular vote. While Cilek believes the number is significantly lower.

“Would I say hundreds of thousands? Yes,” Cilek said.

Cilek said he thinks it’s wrong that Minnesota Secretary of State Scott Simon won’t fully cooperate with President’s Voter Fraud panel.

Now I’ve isolated why I’m upset. This is actually a fairly underhanded move on Cilek’s part. Now, before I go any further, making that sort of statement based purely on a news report is somewhat risky, although the reporter should have followed up. What has my ire? What we’re seeing here is congruent with a fairly classic maneuver in which the moral high ground is taken in order to advance a real agenda of a dubious nature. In this case, it’s hard to argue about voting irregularities; that is, we should all want a fair voting procedure. So, in that regard, MVA is supposedly for a public good.

But Mr. Cilek now indulges in the logical fallacy of appeal to authority – specifically, his own. After all, he’s director of the MVA – so he can make this claim of “hundreds of thousands” of illegal ballots being cast. Much like President Trump, he offers no evidence for this claim.

And if he has such evidence, it is incumbent on him to submit that evidence to law enforcement in order to follow up on the commission of crimes against the Republic. If he has submitted this evidence, my apologies – but he should provide this evidence for public consumption, then.

Think about that. This guy, who wears the robe of authority, suggests that hundreds of thousands of crimes have been committed, yet he’s not submitting the evidence. Thus, his appeal to a fallacy, and why he shouldn’t be trusted. Is this another plot to undermine public confidence in our electoral system? Or, as progressives often claim, is his hidden agenda simply to work on suppressing votes which often end up with the Democrats?

In any case, unless he has evidence, his claim of hundreds of thousands of illegal votes is irresponsible. Provide the evidence or resign, Mr. Cilek.

Moving on, I had to laugh at Trump’s reaction to the refusal of the States, red and blue, of his panel’s demands:

Numerous states are refusing to give information to the very distinguished VOTER FRAUD PANEL.

Bold mine. So who are these panelists? MVA itself lists the following:

The commission will include two Republicans, former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell and Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson, and two Democrats, New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner and Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap.

Christy McCormick, a former Justice Department attorney and a member of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, will also be on the panel, and others will be named soon.

We have a bunch of minor-league politicians so far. Another source includes Kansas Secretary of State Kobach as vice chairman, a politician who made his name in GOP circles in Kansas for his claims and prosecutions of voting irregularities. When faced with the claims of Dr. Clarkson concerning systematic voting irregularities, he refused to share critical data, and a judge agreed with him, so that was that. His reputation appears to be of great energy; this does not make for any claims of being distinguished, however.

I’d be far more impressed with this panel if there were some academics on it, rather than just a bunch of politicos of uncertain motivation. Perhaps Professor Clarkson, for example.

The spring loaded steel trap that is my friend Libby appears to have eaten one of those amoral scammers who call looking to gain access to your computer under the false color of malfunction. I love the climax:

Perhaps ToddNotTodd made a tearful plea to his God for a moment or two because there is a long pause before he speaks again. In very careful and measured tones, he starts again, enunciating every instruction as clearly as he possibly can while I make him repeat every single direction three times before acting on it. I make him start over twice. I believe ToddNottTodd has begun drinking from a hideout flask at this point because all the life has gone out of his demeanor, he seems sad and a little defeated. I ask him if he’s accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. ToddNotTodd does not respond. I tell him I accidentally turned to computer off again and ToddNotTodd becomes more than a little put out. By now, we’ve been at it for almost 30 minutes and I have an appointment in less than an hour. While ToddNotTodd weeps and bangs his head on his desk, I reveal my true nature and tell him that there was no way in hell this was going to end with a success on his part. I tell him I hope I gave him a migraine and he should find a more honest way to make a living. ToddNotTodd called me a foul name and hung up on me. I don’t think we’re friends anymore.

I once asked if the caller’s mother (he was Indian) was still around, and if she was heartily ashamed of him. He immediately responded he was filled with shame but desperate to make a living. I didn’t give him anything, and anyways I run Linux, not Windows.

Then I could attend, in person, this offering from the University of Washington. From the syllabus:

We will be astonished if these skills do not turn out to be among the most useful and most broadly applicable of those that you acquire during the course of your college education.

What’s the name of the course? “Calling Bullshit in the Age of Big Data.” Just one of their goals – but perhaps the most important:

Provide your crystals-and-homeopathy aunt or casually racist uncle with an accessible and persuasive explanation of why a claim is bullshit.

In today’s world of fake news, this may in fact be one of the most important courses available. But it has more applicability than just detecting a fake news article designed to influence your political views. As my occasional references to Skeptical Inquirer should make evident, I have a long standing interesting in how false, outrè claims are accepted by large segments of American society, and how it damages us, from casual belief in homeopathy to the rabid trust in Creationism, and the concomitant disbelief in evolutionary science – as if science were a buffet table. I don’t know if this course treats the psychological underpinnings of disbelief in the study of reality, but it does sound fascinating.

In all seriousness, and especially if recent politics has appalled you as a member of the left, right, or middle, I do suggest investigating this course, and proctoring it if it seems to have any applicability to your outrage. Even though I haven’t, yet. Maybe you can let me know how it goes.

This is fun, and a reminder.

(h/t zenbassoon on The Daily Kos)

Grandma rescued from Hell? Or just moving to another circle?

Everyone has a list of favorite movies, and on mine is the animated film The Triplets of Belleville (2003). I recall reading a dictum once, from Roger Zelazny or Robert Heinlein, that if you’re going to break a rule, break it big and make it a virtue. Sylvain Chomet, the force behind this French movie, indeed does that through his dogged employment of stereotypes, pushing, exploring, magnifying, and eventually even mutating them until they begin to return to life.

The plot may not be classic in itself, but it touches on a central pillar of the mythos of Western culture: family. Grandma finds herself with the responsibility of raising her young grandson, Bruno, already adorned with a stately Gallic nose, while the great city of Paris overtakes their quiet village. She eventually discovers what will be his great passion: biking.

We jump forward in time to see his training for, of course, the Tour de France (or its equivalent in Chomet’s world), and here we’re introduced to one of Chomet’s predilections: to go over the top with all flags flying. Grandma still cares for Bruno, from monitoring his practices by following him madly on a tricycle, to his post biking cool off period, using a lawnmower to administer a bone crunching back rub.

Then comes the great race. Grandma employs a small panel truck to follow her grandson through the race. But evil lurks, and it has a handful of tacks, strewn in the panel truck’s path. As she and her driver labor to change the tire, her grandson, who has exhausted himself and must drop out of the race, is kidnapped (along with other racers) by a mysterious pair of henchmen.

When Grandma realizes Bruno has disappeared, they hurry along the race course, and then employ the family dog, Champion, to find Bruno. The trail leads to an immense ship, just exiting the port, but is Grandma foiled? No. She scurries down to the beach and rents a pedal boat, and Champion and she follow the great ship across the ocean.

To Belleville. Her adventures in Belleville, home of the fattest Lady Liberty ever conceived, I leave to the reader to discover.

In Triplets, it feels like each frame of this movie has been uniquely imagined, stereotypes recognized studied, magnified, and employed for the messages they implicitly carry. One of Chomet’s frequent methods is to focus on his characters eyes, reflecting their inner mental states through them as they react to food, life, death.

The visuals are frequently beautiful, even in the portrayal of evil, freely breaking the laws of physics to deliver sometimes just stark visuals, and sometimes to suggest the laws of a just society might be more important than the profits of a criminal gang made on the backs of their prisoners. Thus we see a baby in a carriage, struck by a car driven by henchmen of the antagonist, and the result: a crumpled, destroyed car.

The audio is special. First, the songs are catchy and contribute positively to the whimsical atmosphere of this movie. Second, much like the visuals, the background sounds are often emphasized for the small stories they tell. This leaves the final component of audio, the dialog.

It’s non-existent.

This is a wise decision by Chomet. First, it makes the movie far more accessible to non-French audiences; captioning and dubbing are always problematic choices. Far more importantly, though, this lack of dialog forces us to Watch This Movie, to watch it with far greater intensity than we might otherwise employ. This intensity drags us into the world of Chomet, of Grandma and Bruno and immensely fat Americans, who I can see even now. It gives us the internal logic of the plot and the characters simply by forcing us to study the movie more intensely than other movies.

When I began my most recent viewing of Triplets, I was interested in seeing it again because it had been several years, and I wondered how much my imagination and affection for the movie had colored its memory, and how much I would be disappointed in comparing memory with reality.

I wasn’t. It was really as charming and fascinating as I recalled it to be.

Strongly Recommended. If you have and value your sense of whimsy, you should enjoy this.

Cavalcade:

a line of people, vehicles, horses, etc. following a particular route as part of a ceremony [Cambridge Dictionary]

Just a word that came to mind.

Sometimes it seems like one of our favorite collective pastimes is the creation of dams. We use them to collect water, to generate hydropower, to control unhappy flooding, and inadvertently drown archaeological sites. But are they really worthwhile? Fred Pearce in NewScientist (24 June 2017) reports on research on that topic:

Almost a quarter of the global population experiences significant decreases in water availability through human interventions on rivers, says Ted Veldkamp at Vrije University in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Those interventions primarily involve dams that take water for irrigation or hydroelectricity, or to supply cities.

Veldkamp and her colleagues created a detailed modelling study to assess water scarcity between 1971 and 2010. The team found a drastic reshuffling of scarcity hotspots over time, with mostly people upstream benefiting from the damming of river flows, but those downstream left high and dry (Nature Communications, doi.org/b8rs).

The world has spent an estimated $2 trillion on dams in recent decades. But Veldkamp’s startling conclusion is that it has left 23 per cent of the global population with less water, compared with only 20 per cent who have gained.

Which suggests that dams – like most human activities – are about using political power for personal advantage, whether it be the gratification of building something big, or the financial advantages of controlling water supplies. Perhaps future proposed dams should be required to show they will result in better water availability for more people before they receive their permits to build.

In a sign of the passing years, Chuck Shepherd of the venerable News Of The Weird has announced his final column is the current issue. No successor was announced; this may be the sad ending of an era. Much like Gary Larson’s retirement, it feels like a hurdle has been tripped over and the rest of humanity is racing onward as you look up from the track and wonder what happened.

Salutations, Chuck. You helped define a lifetime for a lot of us.

On PrawfsBlog Will Baude discusses the ethics of a practice often used by those going to the Supreme Court – the use of lawyer ghost-writers:

Rumor has it that when a victorious party is trying to convince the Supreme Court not to grant cert. in their case, they will sometimes hire experienced specialists in Supreme Court practice to write the brief in opposition, but then keep their names off the papers, so it looks as if the case remains unexceptional from the respondent’s point of view.

But I’m going to stop right here. When I’m refereeing a fencing bout, I don’t keep in mind who’s fencing – or at least I try not to. I’m simply trying to decide which anonymous fencer has scored each touch according to the rules of fencing.

Similarly, should not SCOTUS be deciding its cases on its merits, including whether or not to accept the case, and not on the identity of the representatives of various parties to the case? Granted, we’re all human – but don’t they at least pay lip-service to this ideal?

Shunpiking:

Shunpiking is the act of deliberately avoiding roads that require payment of a fee or toll to travel on them, usually by traveling on alternate “free” roads which bypass the toll road. The term comes from the word shun, meaning “to avoid”, and pike, a term referring to turnpikes, which is another name for toll roads.^[1] People who often avoid toll roads sometimes call themselves shunpikers. Historically, certain paths around tollbooths came to be so well-known they were called “shun-pikes”.^[2]

Shunpiking has also come to mean an avoidance of major highways (regardless of tolls) in preference for bucolic and scenic interludes along lightly traveled country roads. [Wikipedia]

Encountered in conversation yesterday with my Arts Editor.

And who brought the beer?

The animated movie Igor (2008) breaks up on the rocks of its own plot twist. The primary export of the country of Malaria are the products of its independent Evil Scientists. The class of people known as Igors, complete with humps, are relegated to the jobs of Evil Scientist Assistants.  When an Igor proves inefficient, it is sent to the recycling center to be chopped up for reuse.

We follow an above-average, ambitious but humble Igor who has discovered how to create life. After a couple of his early secretive efforts turn out well, his Evil Scientist accidentally kills himself.  Igor uses the opportunity to go for the big time – creating an immense monster which will defeat all the other Evil Scientist creations at the annual competition, and elevating Igor out of his class rank and into the Evil Scientist rank.

One problem. His monster’s Evil Bone fails to activate, and the subsequent brain wash accidentally results in the creation of… an actress. Who wouldn’t hurt a fly.

The movie hurtles onward, ending in the predictable erasure of the Evil Scientist class and Malaria’s only export (evil), as Igor learns that Evil Scientist status is not really what he wants.

As a plot twist, it’s nice in isolation. The problem is that as a society-wide practice, it’s highly unstable. The practice of assassination appears to be common, and quite honestly this doesn’t lead to a stable, prosperous society. Now, perhaps in a fantasy-parody, it shouldn’t matter. Maybe that’s what the movie creators thought, and proceeded onwards. But the problem is that movies are taken more seriously – even comedies – when the mind perceives that lessons can be learned and new insights gained, and this can only happen in a context which is perceived as realistic in some sense.

And the lessons learned by Igor all go against the culture-wide training of creating and exporting evil. True, we do gain a depiction of evil self-destructing, but as Igor falls in love with his creation, it really brings an inadvertent question to the fore:

How does this society produce babies? If everyone’s suspicious of everyone else, well, what then?  Is it some sort of ritualized rape culture, perhaps reminiscent of that portrayed in Jack Vance’s The Face, in which married couples individually go into their planet’s desert at night, purely to kidnap and ever so politely rape the teenagers of their population?

The more connected the plot mechanism is to the surrounding society, the more leverage it gains; we see the opposite in this story, because the society is really dissolving into an inchoate collection of madness in the back of our minds. As we see the relevance to ourselves retreat, the movie comes more and more to depend on the wry word play of the characters, main and supporting, and it’s not quite up to this gargantuan task, despite some spirited efforts which had my Arts Editor and I groaning (“What, do you think this is the first time I’ve gnawed my legs off?”).

It gets off to a promising start, but the rocks upon which this movie founders is also the foundation on which it is built – if I may mix my metaphors. And that just doesn’t work out.

David Kamper critiques the current incentives of researchers in The Michigan Daily:

Problems have been developing within the world science community, especially in the United States, for the past fifty years. These issues have stemmed from environments at universities and research institutions where the cutthroat settings incentivizes flashy results to improve career opportunities. Additionally, the science publication system has turned into a system remarkably similar to that of Wall Street, where high ranking journals have scientists by the throat, often consolidating the wealth of their organizations and using the science for financial gain, not to benefit the human condition. It is within these confines that science today operates. Science should be about its content and aid to the public, not its monetary impetus.

The observation “… remarkably similar to that of Wall Street …” should send chills up the spines of serious folks everywhere. Science should not be motivated by money, because that pollutes the methods of science. It is impossible to isolate the methods of science from the incursion of incentives – of goals – foreign to science. If the institutions of science are merely focused on making money, then how do the procedures of science which makes it uniquely valuable hope to survive without corruption?

Perhaps a re-examination of science, it’s ideal goals and supporting processes, should be executed, and then that would give ammunition for reforming the institutions which are currently suboptimal. If society thinks science is valuable, then it must be ready to support it in the manner in which it operates optimally – and that doesn’t mean how it makes the most money. If we value scientists who produce reliable research, then our incentives should reflect that; and those scientists who gather mentions on Retraction Watch should be considered the bottom of the dung heap. Other important processes include replication of other studies, peer reviews, removal of journals which do not employ “gold standard” processes, and others.

These processes and incentives have been in place, but I worry that they are slowly being twisted as the private sector mindset invades the educational sector which often supports scientific research. Just being a fan, I don’t have any direct experience with the general education of wannabe scientists – and the private sector values are often pervasive to the point where other sectors’ values are not recognized or known, unless the student happens to come from a family steeped in the tradition.

My reader replies concerning state-based single payer health systems:

It’s all about political will in this case. There’s really no shortage of money, considering how much we waste/spend in other ways. So I believe I’m correct when I say will/way.

I’m also of the mind that the cost, for example, in California would double the state budget. Recall that the point is not just simply cover everyone at today’s exorbitant, extractive insurance rates but rather provide a reasonable base level health care at a more reasonable cost — as well as drive down the cost of delivering health care in general. And note that Medicare has a much lower operating overhead than any private insurance company out there. And I’d never claim Medicare as being a model of efficiency.

There should be significant “cost savings” — money spent in other ways — by providing such universal coverage. They may not materialize in the first 6, 12 or 18 months, and getting to point where they start becoming significant will be a challenge to a state’s revenue/spending balance. But I’m fairly sure that on the whole, covering everyone through single payer will be significantly than what’s spent on health insurance and health care today.

I assume the missing word in the last sentence is “… be significantly less than …”, and I hope that such coverage would be less than the inefficient private market. As one example, lighter use of emergency rooms because folks are getting regular medical checkups would ease the financial burdens which we were having to shoulder prior to the implementation of the ACA.

Unfortunately, as my reader and I share at least some of the same views, it tends to be a monoculture. I am aware of the free market concerns brought up by opponents, as well as concerns which are not as immediate, such as questions of how a single payer system would affect the development of new drugs. It’s a legitimate concern, although in the current market, the worries about development of new anti-bacterials as well as the manufacture of snake anti-venom suggests certain failure as well. But, having dropped my readings in libertarianism several years ago, I don’t know what sort of objections are being raised these days.

I never want this in my nightmares. Unless I AM the monster.

The Angry Red Planet^[1] (1959, aka Invasion of Mars and Journey to Planet Four) concerns the first, disastrous trip to Mars. Mission Control has detected the presumed-lost exploration ship, now in orbit around Earth, and returns it to home base via remote control. Within the rocket they discover the remnants of the crew, and, through flashbacks, one of the survivors offers the story of the trip: the easy flight to Mars, the successful landing, and then the descent into disaster – the eerie feelings, a spectre at the porthole, the wildlife which they kill, and then in turn kills them.

And then the final warning from the masters of Mars to the inhabitants of Earth.

I might also add the boring stereotypes of characters, with the exception of the strong female scientist, wretchedly sexist dialog, the mixture of good and bad science, and, finally, the lack of thematic material, rendering the movie dull on an intellectual and emotional level.

But not all is awful about this flick. The special effects, which I would guess is the stuff of legend within the B-list movie cult, is more than adequate in the case of external views of the rocket (we speculated that it’s simply video of the rockets of the 1950s, played forward and backward), and the scenes on Mars, while perhaps not entirely realistic, were so outré as to excite comparison to avant-garde efforts. Apparently consisting of overexposed film that has been tinted red, the combination of scarlet tone (denoting danger) on landscape and various hideous monsters leaves this audience member wondering if he’s wandered into a painting by Salvadore Dali^[2].

Emblematic of the overall impact of this movie, however, is the lone weapon deployed by the explorers, which, while employed like a laser gun, emits no palpable energy, nor has it gravitas, either metaphorical or physical. Frankly, it looked like it weighed as much an empty toilet paper roll, and its owner’s affection for it is rather creepy.

And so goes this movie. Some interesting flash, but at its core – rotten.

¹This movie seems familiar, but I was unable to discover a previous review.

²With apologies to Emil Ferris.

Seen on a menu for Carol’s restaurant in Blaine, MN:

With and au jus.

Of course, “with au jus” is one of the most common restaurant errors, as au jus translates to with juice. But Carol’s goes one better, as the and should be an.

A cavalcade of errors. Good thing they make good, comfortable food.