Monthly Archives: August 2017

Pictures from Rarig Center last Sunday while attending the Fringe. Not bad for a smartphone, I thought. The second one is nicer. All very bland for a post-food-poisoning episode.

Benjamin Wittes and Nora Ellingsen on Lawfare discuss former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, now Assistant Director, who Trump doesn’t like because of political contributions to McCabe’s wife from prominent Democrats, and how newly confirmed FBI Director Christopher Wray can and cannot handle the situation:

Removing McCabe would face certain legal complications. McCabe is a career FBI special agent, not a political appointee, and he’s a member of the Senior Executive Service. Civil service rules prevent a simple firing, and while McCabe can be reassigned or encouraged to retire, he cannot be reassigned for four months after installation of a new agency head without his consent. More broadly, to reassign a 21-year veteran of the FBI for political reasons would send a strong message that the FBI is no longer an apolitical organization, an identity of which FBI employees are fiercely proud, even if it doesn’t run afoul of civil service protections—at least if it were done without McCabe’s cooperation.

The problem for Wray is that Trump might not care about any of these niceties: not about whether he’s making his FBI director look like a political toady, not about how the workforce understands the director and certainly not about compliance with civil service protections.

So what happens the next time Trump tweets about the deputy director, suggesting he be replaced? Does Wray replace McCabe? Does he rope-a-dope and not comply but also not say anything? Does he quietly over time install his own team and ease McCabe out in a graceful fashion? Or does he speak up in response to political pressure and become the next law enforcement leader at whose hands Trump feels unprotected and betrayed?

I vote for the latter. I think it’s necessary to publicly and loudly correct Trump every time he tries to run roughshod over political norms. Political norms exist for a simple reason – they ameliorate some sort of problem that cannot be regulated away. I won’t say they fix them, because some of these are extraordinarily difficult problems, such as who should have hiring / firing control over the Director of an Agency responsible for investigating the activities of government.

But these norms exist for a reason, and they are not bad reasons. They are not norms for covering up corruption, for example. So Trump doesn’t understand them – he has no training, no intellectual curiosity. So smack him in the nose like a bad puppy every time he transgresses, remind him that President is not King, and try to get him to grow up. A little.

I must be the slowest on the uptake in the world. A while ago I discussed why progressives are likely to stay in a political ghetto, but I didn’t really get to the heart of the matter – their communications style. What’s going on there? It finally occurred to me while mowing the lawn.

Politics is about governance.

Governance is about dominance.

And part of dominance is the language used in communications. After all, if you’re going to be the alpha male gorilla, you have to let the rest of the troupe know you’re the top gun. And your supporters will communicate your dominance as well, because it’s of benefit to them to assert that dominance. And part of that dominance, at least as humans, is having better ideas, and, conversely, spitting on those of everyone else.

So what we end up with is a bunch wannabe politicians who are asserting their desperately desired dominance through their language, and that is almost inevitably a disdainful, even alienating style. And they don’t seem to get it.

Glad this Slow Joe finally got it. And all you anthropologists can just nod and pat me on the head.

It occurred to me the other day that an aphorism is an attempt to distill the disparate experiences of a multitude of people into a single phrase epitomizing some insight or rule.

Put that way, it sounds like every aphorism is false. For some people.

Noted near my workplace.

Today’s childish tantrum from the President,

In chilling language that evoked the horror of a nuclear exchange, Mr. Trump sought to deter North Korea from any actions that would put Americans at risk. But it was not clear what specifically would cross his line. Administration officials have said that a pre-emptive military strike, while a last resort, is among the options they have made available to the president.

“North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States,” Mr. Trump told reporters at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., where he is spending much of the month on a working vacation. “They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” [NYTimes]

This simply leaves the United States in a lose-lose situation. North Korea has already taunted the United States over our President’s intemperance, as the NYTimes notes in the same article:

Undaunted, North Korea warned several hours later that it was considering a strike that would create “an enveloping fire” around Guam, the western Pacific island where the United States operates a critical Air Force base. In recent months, American strategic bombers from Guam’s Andersen Air Force Base have flown over the Korean Peninsula in a show of force.

So what do we do? Back down? Rain hell-fire down on a nation merely for mouthing off? Clearly, Kim Jong-un is laughing at the elderly child currently in the Oval Office.

With each passing day, the danger posed by our amateur President continues to grow, and there’s little reason to think he will grow up, or he’ll hire better advisors – not given his spotty track-record so far.

So the question isn’t in Trump’s lap, or his advisors’, or even the generals occupying civilian offices. The question is in Speaker of the House Ryan’s lap, and he should be urgently addressing it: When do impeachment proceedings begin, sir? This is a Nation urgently in need of better leadership, and only the House can begin the proceedings.

Once Trump is gone to pout on his golf course, then we can evaluate Pence.

We may have to consider visiting the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta. As reported by Ed Yong in The Atlantic:

Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology

In March 2011, a construction worker named Shawn Funk visited an impressive dinosaur collection at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta. As he walked through halls full of ancient bones, he had no idea that a week later, he’d add to their ranks by finding one of the most spectacular dinosaur fossils of all time. It’s an animal so well preserved that its skeleton can’t be seen for the skin and soft tissues that still cover it.

When we look at dinosaurs in museums, it takes imagination to plaster flesh and skin on top of the bones. But for the dinosaur that Funk unearthed—a 110-million-year-old creature named Borealopelta—imagination isn’t necessary. It looks like a sculpture. And based on pigments that still lurk within the skin, scientists think they know what colors the animal had. “If someone wants to come face to face with a dinosaur, and see what it actually looked like, this is the one for that,” says Caleb Brown from the Royal Tyrrell Museum, who has studied the animal.

It’s on display, although I can’t find anything on the Royal Tyrrell website. Lots more in The Atlantic article, though.

Looks almost like a fake. If it weren’t for the fact the paleontologist and oil mining personnel were present as it was uncovered, I’d ask how they assure authenticity.

So damn cool.

For those who perform podcasts, this TechCrunch report will no doubt come as a relief:

A year after taking up the case, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled in favor of the Electronic Frontier Foundation in its challenge against podcasting patent troll, Personal Audio. The decision is a massive relief for the vibrant and ever-growing medium, which has been operated under the threat of lawsuit for a number of years. …

The case involves Personal Audio’s broad patent for a “System for Disseminating Media Content Representing Episodes in a Serialized Sequence,” which the company used to levy suits against a number of podcast providers, including Adam Corolla, HowStuffWorks, CBS, and NBC. The EFF filed a petition challenging the patent in 2013, urging the US Patent and Trademark Office to take another look at the broad ruling.

You just have to wonder what societal purpose these patent trolls serve.

And, no doubt irrelevantly, don’t the old-time radio programs serve as prior art? Or is that something too different to apply? 

Rent-seeking:

“ Rent seeking” is one of the most important insights in the last fifty years of economics and, unfortunately, one of the most inappropriately labeled. Gordon Tullock originated the idea in 1967, and Anne Krueger introduced the label in 1974. The idea is simple but powerful. People are said to seek rents when they try to obtain benefits for themselves through the political arena. They typically do so by getting a subsidy for a good they produce or for being in a particular class of people, by getting a tariff on a good they produce, or by getting a special regulation that hampers their competitors. Elderly people, for example, often seek higher Social Security payments; steel producers often seek restrictions on imports of steel; and licensed electricians and doctors often lobby to keep regulations in place that restrict competition from unlicensed electricians or doctors. [David R. Henderson, The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics]

I present the fruits of the latest research:

Amused? Appalled? I’m resorting to ridicule, and if you consider yourself a Trump voter, then you need to consider this result from Public Policy Polling in May of 2016 – I doubt a renewal of the poll in question would have much changed in the results:

There continues to be a lot of misinformation about what has happened during Obama’s time in office. 43% of voters think the unemployment rate has increased while Obama has been President, to only 49% who correctly recognize that it has decreased. And 32% of voters think the stock market has gone down during the Obama administration, to only 52% who correctly recognize that it has gone up. In both cases Democrats and independents are correct in their understanding of how things have changed since Obama became President, but Republicans claim by a 64/27 spread that unemployment has increased and by a 57/27 spread that the stock market has gone down. “It’s a fact that unemployment has gone down and the stock market has gone up during the Obama administration,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling. “But GOP voters treat these things more as issues of opinion than issues of fact.”

So if you identify the above chart as Fake News, you may take it that I’ve aimed it at the biggest consumers of Fake News on the planet – the GOP base and the Trump voters who cannot accept the realities of life.

If you’re looking for an exotic place to stay, but find the Swedish ice hotel a bit too spendy, then maybe Helicopter Glamping is more to your taste:

Source: Helicoper Glamping

… Scotland’s most unusual place to stay is now ready for take off!

Ever wonder what it would be like to sleep in a helicopter? Well now you can!

We have transformed a Sea King helicopter into a stunning luxury overnight accommodation complete with mini kitchen and shower room.

It’s a lovely way to reuse a used-up helicopter, one that has no doubt served honorably. While anthropomorphizing vehicles such as ships and helicopters is really a bit of an intellectual error, it does turn one’s thoughts to those who’ve served in it to protect their country. It’s one thing to protect yourself and your family, but putting yourself on the line for, let’s be honest, a pack of strangers shows a real dedication to a higher morality.

Unless you’re just a serial killer looking for opportunity. Not having served, I can only say I suspect most serial killers couldn’t withstand the grind.

In any case, I gotta say this is a lovely, cozy idea.

Steve Benen strains a ligament reaching for a vivid phrase:

Conway has earned a reputation for someone who lies routinely and brazenly, and Donald Trump has broken new ground in the area of presidential dishonesty, to the point that his truth allergy has led to awkward questions about his tenuous relationship with reality.

A variety of other high-profile members of Team Trump – Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, et al – have been caught delivering an embarrassing number of whoppers.

If any group of people on the planet should want to steer clear of even mentioning lie-detector tests, it’s Trump and his senior aides.

Sadly for Steve, lie detector tests, by which I believe they mean polygraphs, have a long history of failing their purpose. While it’s not surprising that the Administration of Ignorance would at least mention them as if they have any utility, it’s too bad Steve is credulous enough to believe they work.

On Lawfare former Deputy Director of the National Security Agency Rick Ledgett discusses the faulty premise behind calls for the US Government agencies to release to the public all knowledge concerning software vulnerabilities:

WannaCry and Petya exploited flaws in software that had either been corrected or superseded, on networks that not been patched or updated, by actors operating illegally.  The idea that these problems will be solved by the U.S. government disclosing any vulnerabilities in its possession is at best naïve and at worst dangerous.  Such disclosure would be tantamount to unilateral disarmament in an area where the U.S. cannot afford to be unarmed.  Computer network exploitation tools are used every day to protect U.S. and allied forces in war zones, to identify threats to Americans overseas, and to isolate and disrupt terrorist plots directed against our homeland and other nations.  It is no exaggeration to say that giving up those capabilities would cost lives.  And this is not an area where American leadership would cause other countries to change what they do.  Neither our allies nor our adversaries would give away the vulnerabilities in their possession, and our doing so would likely cause those allies to seriously question our ability to be trusted with sensitive sources and methods.

A simple but effective observation – sometimes it’s not the knowledge of the attackers which is the most dangerous, but the negligence of the victims that accounts for the losses. However, I think he makes a dangerous moral error in his conclusion:

As for blame, we should place it where it really lies: on the criminals who intentionally and maliciously assembled this destructive ransomware and released it on the world.

This ignores the fact that ransomware is a subcategory of the larger category of malware; malware contains the category of weaponized software (for lack of a better term). The two subcategories share a number of operational techniques, but the purposes of the two are dissimilar. Ransomware is overwhelmingly a criminal activity, although a government could use it to, say, financially disable a corporate entity deemed critical to the functioning of an adversary. But, in general, ransomware is used by criminal elements to extract resources from other entities, ranging from corporations to individuals.

Weaponized software is generally used by a government or country to advance its national interests. As such, that lies under a different, more poorly defined moral order.

Because Mr. Ledgett is discussing operationality rather than morality, his conclusion becomes confused, and results in a faulty implied directive, which is to condemn the opponents who use these techniques.

As Mr. Ledgett should know best of all, governments & countries must advance their national interests, and using the software vulnerabilities of adversaries against them is simply the latest in a millenia long practice of advancing interests. You can’t condemn that unless you want to condemn the entire system of national entities. And the concrete results of this mistake, besides a certain general attitude of unearned victimhood, is the dissipating discussion such as the one he addresses, when everyone should understand that the context includes aggressive nations which will use our mistakes against us.

For those who care, we Fringed yesterday and found the plays Pope Joan and The Memory Box of the Sisters Fox to be memorable. Dick White: Ghost Detective and Playwrights on the Train had their moments. Finally, The Intrepid needs a lot of work.

No doubt a well known tree, given its outré growth pattern. However, my Arts Editor amped up my little smartphone effort by turning the result black & white in two different modes.

And here’s the original color shot. Not nearly as striking.

And, finally, another shot of the tree.

I’ve been giving some thought to acquiring a Canon D6, as my brother-in-law describes it as a good starter camera, but I’m not sure I want to assume a photography hobby, even if it no longer requires darkroom chops.

In an unsigned column entitled “China, China, China,” on 38 North, the writer suggests there’s a lot of silly ideas being proposed for dealing with the North Korean problem:

The suggestions range on a scale of one to ten, with ten qualifying as “magical thinking” down to one, “nice try, but impractical.” Top prizes in the “magical thinking” category go to the neocon duo, John Bolton and Jay Lefkowitz. Appearing on Fox News a few days ago and writing in the Wall Street Journal today, Bolton, who has a long history of magical thinking on a wide range of issues, argues that the only diplomatic solution left is “to convince China that it’s ultimately in their interest to reunite the two Koreas,” adding “the way you eliminate the North Korean nuclear program is to eliminate North Korea.” To be fair, Bolton admits “it’s a hard argument to make,” but then adds that “it’s doable.”

So let me get this straight. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson would fly to Beijing and convince Chinese leaders that the United States has their back when it comes to the Korean peninsula. Not only would Washington support an effort—peaceful or by force—to eliminate the North Korean regime, but would also allow China to determine the fate of the peninsula. Whether Tillerson would stop in Seoul and Tokyo before or afterwards to inform our allies that the US had decided to acquiesce to Chinese domination of Northeast Asia would be his call. Doable? Not in this lifetime.

No surprise from Bolton. He may not qualify as an amateur, but I can’t say I’ve ever heard him make sense. He’s always struck me as a provincial nationalist in the skin of a diplomat. In order to be an effective diplomat, you must understand the needs of those you deal with. You can’t just represent your own interests and consider them paramount.

Jay Lefkowitz, in an opinion piece in the New York Times, recommends that the United States abandon its decades-old support for reunification of the Korean peninsula. This would assuage Chinese fears that US influence would spread to its borders if North Korea collapsed because of overwhelming pressure from Beijing. Based on the US pledge, China would abandon its national interest and carry Washington’s water and somehow eliminate the North Korean threat. Furthermore, if the situation devolved into collapse and chaos, China would have a free hand to deal with the turmoil and establish a new client state in the North. I wonder if Lefkowitz could sell ice to Eskimos?

I have not heard of Lefkowitz, but it sounds like more neocon drivel. How they have not been utterly discredited by the travesty of the Iraq War and the ongoing oozing wound in Afghanistan is quite beyond me.

Conclusion:

If [former Ambassador] Steve Bosworth^[1] were here today, he would repeat his admonition about the folly of Washington telling other countries where their national interests lie. He would add that the only way to deal with the North Korean challenge is to recognize reality—that is, understanding what our interests are and what China, North Korea and others view as their own interests—and to try to take them all into account. Having spent 15 years working on the North Korean challenge, Steve would be the first to admit that crafting such a solution through diplomacy will be difficult and maybe impossible. But given the alternatives, it is worth a try.

The alternative is military strikes which would cost many lives on both sides of the war, and quite possibly embitter millions of more people towards the United States and our systems of government and economics. It doesn’t matter what Americans might think in that circumstance; proof is in the pudding is what counts. One of the dangers of our system of government is the accession of provincials to the levers of power. The creation of a corps of experts in the form of the federal bureaucracy is a bulwark against the folly of such people.

How long will it hold against the combined foolishness of both Trump and Kim Jong-un?

Meanwhile, the U.N. has passed a new sanctions resolution. Via CNN:

The UN Security Council unanimously voted to impose wide-ranging sanctions against North Korea on Saturday for its continued intercontinental ballistic missile testing and violations of other UN resolutions. The sanctions resolution targets North Korea’s primary exports, including coal, iron, iron ore, lead, lead ore and seafood. The sanctions also target other revenue streams, such as banks and joint ventures with foreign companies.

Haley praised the unanimous vote on the resolution, saying that the UN “spoke with one voice.”

“To have China stand with us, along with Japan and (South Korea) and the rest of the international community telling North Korea to do this, it’s pretty impactful,” Haley said. “This was a strong day in the UN, it was a strong day for the United States and it was a strong day for the international community. It was not a good day for North Korea.”

North Korea has been sanctioned before. How will this direct assault on them persuade them to abandon nuclear weapons again? I hope it works – but I don’t expect it to work.

¹I added the link to Bosworth’s Wikipedia biography. HW

Kevin Drum is having trouble with Uber‘s future:

I’ve always been sort of puzzled by the idolization of Uber. The problem it faces is one of the most common in the tech industry: once you’ve spent a ton of money to buy eyeballs (or riders), how do you then leverage that into something profitable? Facebook did it. Twitter (so far) hasn’t. So will Uber be another Facebook or another Twitter? What’s the story they’re telling investors about why they’ll be one vs. the other?

In any case, as near as I can tell they’ve basically admitted that their business model is unsustainable. That’s why they’re betting the company on driverless cars. But if you want to run (or invest in) a driverless car company, would Uber really be your first choice? I’m not sure why. Nor am I sure that Uber can keep those subsidies going long enough to get to the promised land. Driverless cars are coming, but they’re still several years away. It’s all very strange.

Perhaps Kevin should consider the Netflix business model. While I’ve never used or invested in Netflix, I did have the benefit of some insights from The Motley Fool, or more precisely the Gardner brothers, who were (and are) big cheerleaders for Netflix and delineated the Netflix plan to use the Post Office and outside investors to keep the business going while developing the technology, or in some cases waiting for others, that would enable their ultimate goal – replacing the Post Office with Internet-based streaming. It’s a business model that employed bridging, if you will.

So Uber may be trying to bank on that same approach, getting the company into a position to capitalize on cost reduction once riderless driverless cars (Freudian slip, anyone?) are properly developed. But it’s a harrowing row to hoe. Back in November of 2016, the Naked Capitalism blog investigated, and came up negative:

By virtue of steamrolling local taxi operations in cities all over the world, combined with cultivating cheerleaders in the business press and among Silicon Valley libertarians, Uber has managed to create an image of inevitability and invincibility. How much is hype and how much is real?

As transportation industry expert Hubert Horan will demonstrate in his four-part series, Uber has greatly oversold its case. There are no grounds for believing that Uber will ever be profitable, let alone justify its lofty valuation, absent perhaps the widespread implementation of driverless cars. Lambert has started digging into that issue, and his posts on that topic have consistently found that the technology would be vastly more difficult to develop and implement that its boosters acknowledge, would require substantial upgrading in roads, may never be viable in adverse weather conditions (snow and rain) and is least likely to be implemented in cities, which present far more daunting design demands that long-distance transport on highways.

Tellingly, earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank turned down the “opportunity” to sell Uber shares to high-net-worth individuals. The reason? The taxi ride company provided 290 pages of verbiage, but would not provide its net income or even annual revenues.

I’m not sure how much credibility to give to this blog, and I did not read the full entry. But most telling is that last quoted paragraph wherein they report JP Morgan and Deutche Bank declined involvement.

BTW, if you click through to Kevin’s post, you’ll notice he talks about Uber subsidies. I investigated that, and that can be partly put down to the Uber outside investors, whose money provides subsidies to Uber drivers, and partly down to some cities paying Uber to help them with last mile passenger delivery, as noted in this Business Insider report.

It’s a puzzle, it is: What would be a better title for Curse Of The Undead (1959), which tells us absolutely nothing, doesn’t function as a post-coital insight, or even coy word play. But what of the tale, you ask?

This is a hybrid Western-Vampire flick. In the midst of a struggle over ranching land in the old West appears a gunfighter dressed in black, perhaps attracted by the poster advertising for a gunfighter to take revenge for the deaths of the town doctor and his son. His first fight goes well, shooting the gun out of the hand of a man, who later swears he hit the man in black. But he survives, which is more than can be said for others, who start dying with the tell-tale mark at their throat.

The woman who advertised for the killer is persuaded not to follow through, but hires the man in black as a ranch-hand. The gunfighter is, of all things, falling in love with his employer. But as he pursues his love, he runs into the woman’s fiancee, the town preacher. As Dan the Preacher searches for the doctor’s will, he runs across an old Bible dating back to Spanish times, a Bible containing a hand-written story from a Spanish don: how a man’s son killed his brother and, through this evil act, became a vampire, and how to destroy the vampire.

Skipping some plot twists, the preacher and the vampire have it out in a gunfight, but the preacher employs a nice trick to kill the previously immune vampire.

This is one weird collage of good and bad elements. On the good side? Most of the acting is quite good, as the actors take their roles seriously, and these are professionals. The story is organic, by which I mean, given the premises and motivations of the various characters, it follows logical steps. I can believe most of these characters might have existed and done what they did. This is critical for those of us who think the evolutionary theory of story-telling applies.

And that leads to a couple of fascinating scenes, such as the colloquy between the preacher and the vampire concerning the moral virtues of their respective positions. Pursued with vigor and enthusiasm by the characters, and culminating in a fight, I thought it was a highly appropriate and believable praxis of the issues involved – and how such issues, perhaps considered abstract, are actually quite concrete and impact people’s lives.

On the negative side, some of the acting was not up to par. The character of Tim, the son of the slain doctor, really chewed the scenery; we cheered his early termination. The aggressor in the land wars, Buffer, merely lived up to his stereotype, unfortunately; I suspect this was more a problem with the role as written than the acting. But it was a little frustrating every time he appeared in a scene. A dreary predictability.

But more importantly was issues of credibility. At least one death by vampire was credited to death by Colt .45. Really? The marks were clear, with just a little dribble of blood. A Colt .45 to the carotid artery should have left quite a horrific wound. But on this point half of the story pivots.

And the undead, by tradition, cannot stand the sun or hallowed ground, yet our vampire tramps about in the sun and sleeps in a mausoleum. While an artificial mythos can certainly be modified at will by story creators, one must take care not to stretch the meaning of a previously defined term, such as undead, too far, or otherwise the audience gives up in terms of trying to predict the progress of the story, and that is an integral part of experiencing a new story. If there are no rules to an entity’s actions, then you might as well call him God and be bored with him^[1].

I cannot recommend this movie because of the issues I mention, but I do not regret the time spent watching it. It was intriguing at its best.

But a replacement for that title is a humdinger of a conundrum.

Postscript: We watched this via the Svengoolie show, our first experience with such. The entire Svengoolie experience can be dropped into the ocean, so far as my Arts Editor and I are concerned.

¹I see the Wikipedia page claims this is the European tradition of the undead, not that of Dracula. Hmmmf.

Hermeneutics:

Biblical hermeneutics is the study of the principles of interpretation concerning the books of the Bible. It is part of the broader field of hermeneutics which involves the study of principles of interpretation for all forms of communication, nonverbal and verbal. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “Huckabee Sanders–Poster Child for Something even Uglier than Racism that Rose from Antebellum South,” Constance Hilliard, The Daily Kos:

It was a worldview built on an invented moral authority. Southern evangelicals had fought the abolitionism of their northern evangelical counterparts by creating a new hermeneutics — Biblical literalism. It proclaimed that anything theologians found in the world of 2,000 years ago as having made its way into the Bible could be declared sacrosanct and God-inspired. Critical thinking skills, even personal observation were disdained for the proclamations of the patriarchal leader. In that context, lies were whatever liberals said, and the truth was the patriarch’s mumblings. White House press secretary, Sarah Huckebee Sanders, thinks of herself as a good Christian because she is faithful to the truths of Donald Trump. If this poison isn’t worse than racism, then it certainly runs a close second.

Happened to notice this Friday night, liked the streaks.

The woes following Wells Fargo’s lust for profits continues as it now admits …

… it forced redundant car insurance on more than 800,000 car-loan borrowers, earning the company $73 million in ill-gotten gains while causing a quarter-million delinquencies and 25,000 wrongful auto repossessions.

That from David Dayen at The New Republic, who goes on to call for the impossible:

We habitually allow giant corporations to harm customers, employees, and the economy with relative impunity. That’s despite the fact that we, the public, give corporations the ability to exist. Every legal corporation must obtain a corporate charter, a written contract detailing the company’s structure and objectives. And the same government that grants charters can take them away, and should, if the corporation repeatedly violates the law.

Though politicians of all stripes claim to support corporate accountability, and those on the left frequently campaign on the issue, calls for a corporate death penalty are extremely rare. But the modern enforcement regime makes a mockery of the law, as governments feign powerlessness against an entity they themselves created by granting it a charter. Simply put, if Wells Fargo keeps using its power as a bank to rip off customers, it shouldn’t be a bank anymore.

David works  hard to justify the call for the death penalty, and ameliorate the consequences, but, unfortunately, there are probably too many unintended consequences for a death penalty decision to be practical, no matter how salutary it might be.

However, David cites the demise of Arthur Andersen as a model for how innocent victims would cope, but I think there’s an important lesson David’s ignoring: Arthur Andersen was terminated because their customers went elsewhere. Based on that observation, the most practical step to my mind is to ask everyone who does business with Wells Fargo to consider these signs of the culture within Wells Fargo and ask if you really want your business entangled with such an apparently toxic culture? It doesn’t matter if you’re commercial or consumer, it’s an important question and one worth pondering in connection with your future.

I know we have a small investment in Wells Fargo and we will be reconsidering it in the light of this latest scandal, based on both measures of return on investment as well as the social responsibility of owning shares in a company which appears to be bent on unethical activities.

Is this a problem you have, dear reader? Let me know what you’re thinking.

The next step up from a motorcycle.

Like many science fiction films, Oblivion (2013) faces the opportunity and the burden to clearly explore some moral question, often with a faux-futuristic facet, with great clarity. Science fiction has this opportunity to a greater extent than some genres because it is not quite as burdened with the trivia of reality; it can draw out the question of interest with perhaps some greater clarity than in other genres.

Consider Blade Runner (1982), which takes on questions of artificial intelligence and how the manufacture of an artificial intelligence – for that is the essence of the rebellious replicants wreaking havoc in the city, even if they have a human ancestor – and deploying them in combat roles with a sharply and shortly defined lifetime ripples through those replicants’ consciousness of themselves as individuals and community – and affects their interactions with their creators.

Or Gattaca (1997) in its study of the ultimate in the ability to shape your offspring, and how that consciousness of this peculiar version of the Greek Fates impacts those who’ve been shaped – and the virtual refuse of humanity, those who came out of the oven without the shaping.

Unfortunately, Oblivion is more interested in the practical problems when faced with an opponent with such power that they, to borrow a phrase from Arthur C. Clarke, appear to be magical. The movie opens with Jack Harper, Tech-49, memory wiped for security reasons, heading out to work on a drone (think something about 20 feet long). The drones, heavily armed, protect great fusion generators powered by the Earth’s oceans, and we learn that Earth, after fighting and winning a war against the invading aliens, are moving to Titan as the Earth was ruined by the war. The energy from Earth’s oceans is transferred to Titan to power those colonies. These installations are under attack by the survivors of the invading force, the scavs. Jack and his partner, Vika, answer to their superiors on the Tet, an orbiting satellite whose crew coordinates the various tech crews responsible for maintaining the installations harvesting the energy.

But Jack is bothered by dreams. When an old spaceship re-enters Earth’s atmosphere in response to a scav-set beacon, he arrives to find the survivors of the crash are human – and are then exterminated by one of his drones. He saves one of the survivors from the drone and returns her to his base, where he and his partner, Vika, revive her. The survivor, Julia, is unwilling to talk until the flight recorder of her craft is recovered – and she’s a character from his dreams.

Jack, against orders, takes Julia to recover her flight recorder, but they are attacked and captured by the scavs.

Who are human.

The great conspiracy is then revealed. Jack is working for the invaders, and is, in fact, himself an artifact of the invaders. He can’t believe it, but is released by the scavs after they reveal a plan – they have a drone, armed with a nuclear weapon. Its target? The Tet satellite, which in reality is the invading aliens. The problem? Jack has the expertise to program the drone. Jack refuses and, in a great bluff move, the scavs release him. He and Julia return to Jack’s base, only to discover Vika has lost faith in Jack. The Tet satellite orders everyone killed, but the drone is destroyed after killing Vika.

Jack and Vika escape but are trailed by more drones (they’re a bit like locusts, but they only eat each other rarely), and when they’re shot down, Jack runs into … Jack. Jack Tech-52, that is. After some fisticuffs, Jack wins, and Jack and Julia end up at the scav hideout, where Jack programs the drone and the humans win.

Well, not really. The humans win, but there’s some fairly meaningless final plot twists that I find too tiresome to rehash.

So the problem here is Jack, for all the questions about his humanity, isn’t really facing any interesting moral questions. The question of where his loyalties lay, and should lay, are never really explored, and they’re not worth exploring. So this is really just another action movie with little bite to it.

Not to suggest it’s a waste of time. Tom Cruise continues to prove to be an adept actor who, while perhaps not quite as flexible as Hanks or Lewis, is certainly worthy of respect. The visuals were good on our TV, and probably magnificent on the big screen. We did occasionally have problems with the wide range of volume used, but our living room is hardly an ideal theater space.

But don’t go into this one expecting to get knocked on your ass by another Blade Runner or Gattaca. It’s fun, but not that wonderful. And if that dangerous word Why rears its ugly head, look out! The plot may come cascading down around your head. I suggest you just lean back in the barcalounger and enjoy the fun.

President Moon of South Korea faces the same problem as his predecessors – what to do with North Korea and its dangerous, ambitious Kim Jong-un. Joel Wit of 38 North believes the way forward is diplomacy, and in this open letter to President Moon gives a quick overview of the past and why he puts his money on talk, not muscle:

Source: Christian Science Monitor

In view of the deteriorating situation as well as this month’s upcoming joint US-ROK military exercises, which are only likely to result in greater tensions on the peninsula, it is absolutely essential that you and your government immediately engage in serious, detailed talks with President Trump and his top advisors to work out a joint strategy and division of labor so we can move forward together. Without such a strategy, we will have no choice but to acquiesce to a North Korea armed with a growing nuclear and missile arsenal and a Korean peninsula plagued by dangerous tensions for many years to come.

Which doesn’t sound half-bad until you remember the tyro American President and his bumbling incompetence in foreign relations. Even that wouldn’t be so bad if he had the balls to own his incompetence and kept out of the way as his chosen experts work the problem, but as well all know, he doesn’t realize just how awful he has been and, in all likelihood, will continue to be, so we can look forward to him shooting his mouth off at a critical moment, damaging the American and Korean position.

Nor has Secretary of State Rex Tillerson been an inspiration, either, but in the absence of alternatives, we have to hope he takes the problem seriously.

And maybe ignores his boss.

Saccade:

Jennifer Groh at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and her team have been using microphones inserted into people’s ears to study how their eardrums change during saccades – the movement that occurs when we shift visual focus from one place to another. You won’t notice it, but our eyes go through several saccades a second to take in our surroundings. [“Your eardrums move in sync with your eyes but we don’t know why,” Aylin Woodward, NewScientist (29 July 2017)]

An interesting article, although I wondered if they had the horse before the cart.