Former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore won the GOP primary leading to the seat formerly held by current Federal AG Jeff Sessions last night, and did so handily, according to NBC News:

Moore’s victory over Strange was a landslide — 54.6 percent (262,204 votes) to 45.4 percent (218,066 votes), with 100 percent of the vote counted — despite Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell having taken extraordinary measures and spending millions of dollars trying to knock back the twice-removed former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court.

So what are the motivations of the primary voters. Does Moore’s strong religious predilections suggest the Alabama GOP wants to replace American government with a Christian theocracy?

Or is this more properly a rejection of President Trump’s selection of Strange, indicating a waning of Trump’s influence? Despite Trump backing Strange, Moore indicated he is loyal to Trump, so this scenario may be somewhat problematic. NBC News reports on this topic:

Cygnal, a GOP consulting firm based in Alabama, commissioned a poll and found that “Trump’s endorsement does not appear to have impacted the race,” the firm’s Matt Hubbard wrote in a memo shared with NBC News.

Most voters polled said they were not influenced by Trump, and those that did were equally likely to say it pushed them toward Moore — perhaps because of Trump off-hand comment at the Huntsville rally last Friday to back Strange that he “might have made a mistake” in supporting him.

Still, comments like that let Trump hedge his bets considerably and convinced Moore supporters that he only backed Strange under duress from McConnell.

Or a dislike of the manner in which Strange acquired the job in the first place, in which as Alabama AG he was investigating the then-Alabama governor, who then appointed him to the post? In this scenario, we’d have to accept that twice being ejected from the Supreme Court for ethics violations is better than accepting the bribe of the Senatorial seat – the latter an unproven charge.

Or was it merely another incident of an intensely interested faction overwhelming the general good sense of the electorate because the latter couldn’t be bothered to actually vote?

But in an election in which fewer than three in 20 voters were expected to turn out, according to the secretary of state, the anti-establishment mood and Moore’s enthusiastic base, including the evangelical community, trumped Trump’s endorsement.

“Roy Moore, at least to a very large minority of the Alabama population, is an absolute folk hero,” said Quin Hillyer, a conservative commentator and former Alabama congressional candidate.

In the end, that may be the most accurate evaluation. Moore will now have to campaign for the entire electorate, not just the GOP voters, and the substance of his campaign should be quite interesting. Will he continue to exhibit the attitude that his religious beliefs trump Federal law? If so, then the result of the election campaign against Democrat Doug Jones, a former U.S. attorney, may signal how Alabama’s feeling about being part of a secular union – if significant numbers of voters turn out. But, since this will be a special election, I suspect the numbers will be low.

I expect Moore to defeat Jones as those who think we need Yet More Religion in government will turn out en masse, and too many of the voters in Alabama who do not share this fascination with the deeply religious will find something better to do that day.

Tawdry:

cheap and gaudy in appearance or quality; also :ignoble

• tawdry attempt to smear his opponent

[Merriam-Webster]

Just for fun, since I used it in this post.

Think buying in bulk is a good thing? Think again, says Lloyd Alter on Treehugger.com:

The whole system is designed for and biased toward people who live in suburbs.

They are big boxes surrounded by a sea of parking and if you don’t have a car you are really out of luck. But out there, the bigger the SUV, the luckier you are; you can fill it with bargains.
…

It’s grossly unfair to poor people.

They often don’t have cars, and they often live day to day, so they can’t plan on buying a year’s worth of toilet paper. So they go to the bodega and pay ridiculous prices. Sure, it costs more to run a small store downtown than a big box, but the difference in price per unit that people pay shopping for small packages in the bodega compared to the big package in the big box is shocking.

A lot of it is wasted, a lot of it is second rate, and doesn’t save you any money at all.

We have this jug of dishwashing detergent from Costco that my daughter bought last year and it smells so toxic we won’t use it and I am taking it to the dump. This isn’t saving money. Katherine made suggestions for buying in bulk but, over time, some of them deteriorate; beans get stale, pasta gets bugs, and olive oil is better fresh.

If you don’t already have it, you can’t get it, in some ways.

A friend sent this to me:

And the text at this heretofore unknown web site for Minnesota?

The Land of 10,000 Lakes is consistently included in the list of least tax-friendly states for retirees. The state even taxes social security benefits. Even other retirement income like military, government, and private pensions are taxable. While the average household income for individuals 65 and older, which is at 13.7% below the U.S. average, is beneath the thresholds for highest tax bracket, the cost of living in Minnesota is way above average. Even lifetime health care and median home value for people 65 and older are higher than the national average.

To which I think the best reply is TANSTAAFL –There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. In other words, if all you do is focus on your money and how much taxes are in various places, you might as well go live in a sod hut in East Bumphuck, North Dakota, where the night’s entertainment consists of shooting at the pocket gophers. You can keep all your money and you might as well sleep in it, too, because that’s all it gets you.

Or you can live here in Minnesota, where there are farms, fair-sized cities, cinemas, theatre, and all sorts of things to do – and you don’t end up dealing with hurricanes and earthquakes.

At least, not yet.

Peevish, I am, about the constant worship of money, and the bulging eyes about taxes like these guys. No sense of proportion.

If you haven’t heard about the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, it’s a way to get around the requirement to amend the Constitution in order to abolish the Electoral College. Instead, once the winner of the national popular vote is known, states that are part of this Compact will automatically allocate all of their electoral votes to the winner.

Once enough states have joined the compact to constitute 270+ electoral votes, game over for the Electoral College. I assume there’s something in the compact about “faithless electors”.

Minnesota is not part of the compact.

More here.

Something new in the garden this year is Pumpkin on a Stick.

They’re a little shy, but it appears the wildlife like them, judging from a few losses we’ve suffered.

Plasmonics:

Plasmonics is the study of the interaction between electromagnetic field and free electrons in a metal. Free electrons in the metal can be excited by the electric component of light to have collective oscillations. However, due to the Ohmic loss and electron-core interactions, loss are inevitable for the plasmon oscillation, which is usually detrimental to most plasmonic devices. Meanwhile, the absorption of light can be enhanced greatly in the metal by proper designing metal patterns for SP excitation. [Melosh Research Group/Stanford University]

Noted in the biography of Lauren Otto, Ph.D. in EE,  Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, CSE, University of Minnesota:

Lauren completed a portion of her doctoral research at the Molecular Foundry, which is a nanoscience research facility at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (a DOE supported national laboratory). There she focused on developing materials called synthetic metals (for instance, a conductive ceramic like titanium nitride) using ALD-based techniques, which allows for the coating of arbitrary surfaces conformally one atomic layer at a time. For Lauren, her goal was to create a materials platform that was well-suited for industrial use and could enable mass-produced plasmonic devices such as the nanoantennas in HAMR hard drive heads.

A reader asks about the wreckage:

Um, what was that, and why does it look that way?

It was a building, located slightly north and east of the Red Robin at 694 & Lexington Ave, being torn down for unknown reasons. Here’s a picture of it from the front, courtesy Google Maps:

And here’s the rear shot, corresponding to the wreckage in yesterday’s post.

Sort of on the corner of Gramsie and Chatsworth.

On 38 North Joseph DeThomas renders a gloomy reading of President Trump’s iron-fisted Executive Order:

And Why It Is Unlikely To Work …

• First, the US will have to make its unilateral embargo stick globally. To do so, it will have to enforce its will and it is not certain it can do so only with secondary sanctions. (China is a master of finding small-scale banks and other entities with no stake in the US financial system to trade where it needs to trade in the face of US secondary sanctions.) There will be a temptation if things get frustrating either to expand the reach of secondary sanctions to whole countries or to enforce an embargo with military means such as a naval “quarantine” or blockade.

What comes next?

If President Trump’s semi-worship of the military services gives you heartburn, you may wish to pay attention to this post by Steve Vladeck on Lawfare:

On Monday, as part of its annual “Long Conference,” the Supreme Court will consider three petitions (in each of which I’m counsel of record) raising the question I wrote about back in February: whether an important but little-known 1870 statute that prohibits active-duty military officers from holding most “civil offices” in the federal government applies to the Article I Court of Military Commission Review (CMCR), the intermediate appeals court that sits between the Guantánamo military commissions and the D.C. Circuit. At first blush, this may seem like a hyper-specific (and, thus, not especially cert.-worthy) question. But as I explain in the post that follows, thanks to how the lower courts have ruled in these cases (and how the government has argued them), the three petitions—Dalmazzi v. United States, Cox v. United States, and Ortiz v. United States—are actually about much, much more than the CMCR.

Indeed, if the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces (CAAF) and the government are correct about the 1870 statute, there would be no legal impediment to appointing active-duty military officers to almost every civil office in the U.S. government—even though, as the Ninth Circuit has explained, the law was intended “to assure civilian preeminence in government, i.e., to prevent the military establishment from insinuating itself into the civil branch of government and thereby growing ‘paramount’ to it.” Thus, although I think it’s clear that CAAF and the government are quite wrong on the merits, the one point on which I hope all can agree is that the issue is of sufficient importance for the future of civil-military relations in this country to warrant the Justices’ attention—and grants of certiorari.

Between this and attacks on the Johnson Amendment, it feels like some of the most important institutions of American life are under attack.

Greg Fallis rejects mysticism for personification:

It’s become popular among some Republicans to claim Comrade Trump isn’t really a Republican at all. They act like he’s some sort of chimera — a semi-mystical, implausible synthesis of disparate bits of different animals. Part liberal, part conservative, part patriot, part iconoclast, part traditional, part unconventional, part who the fuck knows. A new type of politician, they say.

Bullshit. Trump is the distillation of everything the Republican party has become in the last couple of decades. He’s selfish, self-centered, cruel, mean-spirited, fearful of anything different, completely unscrupulous, alienated from reality, dismissive of science, contemptuous of facts, mercenary, fundamentally dishonest, sneering, arrogant, judgmental, and too privileged to give a shit about anybody or anything that isn’t useful to him.

Love it.

Let me add that the repeated attempts by libertarians to suggest that markets will self-correct, that government regulation is largely unneeded, seems more and more obviously a simple cover for the selfish or lazy.

Self-interest is easy. You get a simple, well-defined goal that applies to you, such as make more money, and you chase it without regard for more ill-defined problems. And this actually isn’t the worst approach to running a society when government is properly understood to have the responsibility and the power of safeguarding the greater good, whether it be the poverty-stricken or the environment.

But the libertarians became fixated on taxation, because that has a direct impact on the wealth accumulation drive, so towards the end of reducing taxation, they came up with ideas about why the government didn’t have to regulate. Some seem reasonable on their face; a few others didn’t seem to understand the phrase irremediable harm, such as whoever it was writing the mimeographed The Utilitarian. Or perhaps it was Utilitarianism. Their bit? Criminal law was unnecessary.

Back to the point, I have to wonder if the members of the GOP echo chamber would actually recognize the essential truth of Greg’s description. The conservative kant, as Greg describes it, if taken as such would blind the believes to the rather crass truth of Trump. And the GOP is too often fixated on fixed positions rather than principles. You can see it in their fruitless attempts to make the charge of hypocrisy stick:

Jefferson owned slaves.

Yes, a terrible thing in the 19^th century.

Oh, wait, he lived in the 18^th century. Was it still awful? Yes. But it was also part of society and, in fact, Jefferson was developing the higher principles that would lead the North to eventually reject slavery. Decades later, in the 19^th century, the American Civil War erupted because slave owners, faced with a civil society consensus, a morality, which forbade slavery, revolted rather than conform to the principles of morality which had evolved in so many other countries, and had, at least, gained ascendancy in the backward United States. Why? Because their society might change; because their wealth might decrease.

We can reduce this to a principle, but it would be a tawdry principle suggesting that the accumulation of wealth takes precedence over the guarantees of liberty for all.

For people fixated on positions, the actions of Trump may indeed seem mystical, or at least inscrutable. For folks who function on principles, though, it becomes a matter of recognizing the principles of Trump. And that’s where liberals and most independents become sick of him, once they’ve studied him.

Why?

See Greg.

I just liked how the tomatoes looked on the counter.

Maybe I should have tried the under cabinet lights as well.

Venery:

the gratification of sexual desire.
the practice or sport of hunting; the chase. [both archaic; Dictionary.com]

I was just curious, given this previous entry in this feature.

Joseph DeThomas on 38 North notes how the sanctions put in place against North Korea has inadvertently crippled the research sector devoted to North Korea:

YouTube’s decision to delete North Korean YouTube channels has served to highlight the sometimes-unintended consequences of sanctions and the absolute power enjoyed by Internet companies over their users. In doing so, the company has cut off a vital supply of video used by open source researchers, which means there is now less visibility into what’s happening in North Korea. The Western world’s understanding of North Korea is limited to begin with, cutting off access to these few windows into North Korean thinking and life further hampers our knowledge of the country.

On September 8, some in the open source intelligence community logged on to YouTube to find the “Uriminzokkiri” (우리민족끼리) channel was gone.

The only explanation from Google was a simple notice: “This account has been terminated for violating YouTube’s community guidelines.” At about the same time, the same message appeared on the “StimmeKoreas” YouTube channel.

Both had been on YouTube for about 7 years, each had thousands of archived videos and millions of views, and had become essential references for video from the DPRK. There were hours of news videos, documentaries and military programming that had enabled researchers to uncover numerous secrets about the DPRK over the years. Needless to say, those researchers were not pleased.

A multitude of viewpoints is vital to understanding enigmas such as North Korea, and by losing their access to the information on the Internet because of a simple decision by Google, a number of viewpoints are lost. Don’t just think the United States government, or for that matter the UK or Chinese governments, are on the ball and have everything under control; difficult to crack nuts often require expertise from academic and independent experts.

And all of them run on information.

This isn’t a call to nationalize the Internet, but it is a salutary example of how the Internet must be managed carefully in order to not lose information which has national and international security facets to it. If there is a threat of war, private companies are not going to have the firepower to make North Korea back down.

[EDIT: Added forgotten link to source article]

And so they’re building cities, which might bewilder some folks who believe in the sanctity of nature. On D-brief, Nathaniel Scharping reports on the discovery of two octopus cities:

Both communities were also built near dense populations of scallops, and the bounty of food both enables the octopuses’ sedentary lifestyle and could convince them to play nice with each other. Indeed, the rich prey availability has enabled a sort of cyclical expansion of the cities. As more shellfish get eaten and discarded, the midden grows, allowing more octopuses to build dens and begin discarding shellfish in turn.

Geoffrey-Smith refers to the octopuses in the two cities as “ecosystem engineers,” given that they have essentially landscaped their surroundings to create a more hospitable environment. The urban development has itself attracted a much more diverse assemblage of sea life, he writes, expanding the effects of the octopuses labors beyond just their species.

Of course, it is a bit of stretch to call Octatlantis a community in the traditional sense. Octopuses are not obligated to live together, and given the unique advantages of this particular area, it seems they’ve simply chosen to put up with each other’s presence rather than embrace togetherness wholeheartedly. Nevertheless, the advent of communities and social life is theorized to have spurred our own development, and these gatherings give researchers the chance to observe the beginnings of what could be a long-term experiment in octopus cultural evolution.

Very interesting. The next step along the escalator to greater sophistication? If they’re not spending all their time eating and hiding from predators, what might an octopus invent?

Business Insider has a video, which I have yet to view, here.

Deconstruction, Arden Hills, Minnesota.

From the other side it looked just fine. Wish I’d gotten a few more photos from other angles, but the weather was a discouragement.

Coming back to revisit Trump’s position on the Dreamers (DACA) and his tentative agreement with the Democrats – has it destroyed him in the polls? Nope:

Of course, this simple poll aggregates all of the issues and therefore could conceal important changes in the composition of his support. For example, perhaps his core was badly damaged by his association with the Democrats, but enough Democrats or Independents approve of it to more than make up for the damage to his core. NBC News and the Wall Street Journal did a poll specifically on DACA, which is interesting if unsurprising:

We can see there’s a basically humane center to most of America when it comes to people brought to the United States before they could make their own decisions. Only among Trump supporters does opposition to giving them a reprieve approach 50%, and given the misinformation on which that group often seems to operate, one has to wonder how that would change if they were given more accurate information or not^[1].

Whether this can be applied to my speculations is unclear.

But the first poll certainly indicates Trump’s move on DACA has not further damaged the Trump Administration’s reputation on an overall basis; it may have improved it. And if the core splits over this question, then Trump is necessarily moving off his core into the sea of independents, who are necessarily less than dependable for unquestioning support. As Trump continues to blunder along as the permanent amateur, one has to wonder how long before the independents abandon him.

¹I do wish the poll numbers had included what percentage of the total poll each of the groups made up.

Andrew Sullivan is developing an inadvertent feature of commenting on the antifa movement in his once a week missive. Here’s his latest:

I wish I could say I’m shocked by new polling on college students’ views on free speech. But if you’ve been following the culture these past few years, you could see this coming. Today’s students neither comprehend nor support the very concept of free speech, which is foundational to a liberal democracy. A full 19 percent even believe that physical violence is now justifiable to shut down speakers who engage in the vaguely defined term “hate speech.” That’s one in five students endorsing physical coercion. Antifa really is making headway, isn’t it? A small majority, 51-49, supports shouting down speakers you disagree with — and that goes to 62 percent of students who identify as Democrats.

Back in ’80s at the University of Minnesota, I recall reading in the University newspaper, The Minnesota Daily, about a non-violent movement to control speech, to find a way to outlaw “bad speech”. The soft science professors were spending many hours on this, talking to student leaders, formulating approaches, etc. And the paper then talked to a physics professor who had been involved.

Apparently, the whole thing was laid out to him, he said, “Free speech is absolute,” and walked off. That was it for him. He recognized the moment you start qualifying speech, it’s a vulnerability that can be turned on the very people who urge it. I don’t think today’s antifa adherents have figured that out.

No surprise. They’re still learning.

But what gets my attention about the movement from thirty five years ago and the antifa movement of today is the failure to understand how to define success. For that physics professor, he seemed to realize that there’s no endpoint, no time where the last brick is laid and you declare the church has been completed.

Free speech has a purpose, and that’s to facilitate the marketplace of ideas. It has no place in judging those ideas, for otherwise it becomes worthless, it becomes a political tool for those who find advantage in silencing opponents with cunning and smiles; judging must come from those who participate, willing to judge honestly and with justice in their hearts, and not from those who willingly manipulate the process in order to benefit from hidden agendas.

But, critically, it’s an ongoing process, and until we find the answer to every last question, it will always be an ongoing process.

The antifa think limiting free speech, the great oxymoron, solves a problem, but in reality it merely cripples the most important process of liberal democracies.

And that’s why this violent, illiberal antifa movement, despite any high and noble goals, is a failure from the get-go.

Terms of venery –

Appears to be a synonym for collective noun:

Collective nouns are nouns that refer to a collection or group of multiple people, animals, or things. However, even though collective nouns refer to multiple individuals, they still function as singular nouns in a sentence. This is because they still are technically referring to one thing: the group as a whole. [The Free Dictionary]

Noted in “Chain e-mail claims that when baboons congregate, it’s called a ‘congress’,” C. Eugene Emery Jr., PolitiFact:

The names for collections of animals are called “terms of venery,” and Hargraves said the best reference source for them is the 1968 book “An Exaltation of Larks” by James Lipton, host of “Inside the Actors Studio.”

This is no innocent peek over the ridge!

Either he has cataracts from all that time under water, or it’s the evil Godzilla, and judging from his actions, it’s the latter in (deep breath) Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001). An American nuclear submarine has been lost, and the Japanese find its hulk, along with a mysterious glimpse of something glowing.

Soon, to their consternation, the Japanese government knows that Godzilla is on his way, having fed off the radiation of the power plant of the submarine. One of their leaders wants to know: Why Godzilla is picking on them? On this question pivots the plot of this movie, as it turns out the daughter of one of the military leaders, a photo-journalist working for a company of dubious quality, has run into an old, mysterious man who has some sort of confused story concerning how there are monsters which will reappear when the land of Japan is menaced.

And Godzilla represents the spirits of those who were killed during the ‘Pacific conflict’, who are angry.

I think. It’s a muddle.

Along with the named monsters comes a somewhat smaller one with red skin and a horn, who is never named. Emerging from the ground, he intercepts Godzilla near a resort, but Godzilla tricks him to falling into a hole, and as he tries to escape, Godzilla rather cruelly atomizes him with his trademark bad breath. I felt sad for him.

Then Mothra appears, sans her fairy singers but armed with darts, and meets Godzilla at Yokohama. By this time, the army has been informed that only Godzilla need be fought, and start to work on him while Mothra flaps about. Sometime during the battle, King Ghidorah also appears. It’s an epic battle, and Ghidorah actually manages to die three different times, while Mothra only once – but she resurrects Ghidorah with her spirit. At this point, they’re underwater in the bay and the Japanese army has sent a submersible armed with special weapons, where Godzilla makes the same mistake as will one of the Ogdru Jahad will do in Hellboy, and eventually disappears himself.

For American eyes, the plot seems outlandish, and the land based monsters trudge about like guys in rubber suits, while Mothra is more like a work of art than a monster. On the other hand, the stages are impressive, as are the various explosions, and we see only a few model planes and trucks, for this is mostly about the battle of the spirits of the Japanese homeland against the spirits of those killed by Japanese aggression. The central theme is anti-war. The actors try hard, but when you’re up against monsters, it’s hard to generate that memorable character.

All in all, this entry is not as bad as some in this long-running series.

It turns out Zika causes microcephaly because it can get through the brain’s blood barrier that keeps most pathogens out – and it attacks stem cells.. But this capability, if harnessed, may turn out to be a useful weapon in the fight against the worst of brain cancer – glioblastoma. Clare Wilson of NewScientist (9 September ) reports:

Jeremy Rich at the University of California, San Diego, and his team have tested the Zika virus on glioblastoma, the most common kind of brain cancer. Glioblastoma is one of the most difficult cancers to treat – even after surgery and other therapies, it usually kills people within a year of diagnosis.

The team found that exposing samples of human glioblastoma tumours grown in a dish to the Zika virus destroyed the cancer stem cells. It is these stem cells that usually kill a person, as they can become resistant to all available treatments. …

The researchers have no plans to start testing Zika in people with brain cancer as they are concerned the virus could pass to pregnant women: a mosquito species that carries Zika is found in some parts of the US, and the virus can also be transmitted sexually. Instead, they plan to see if they can genetically modify the virus to be safer, but still work as a possible treatment for brain cancer.

Another team in the UK is planning a test using unaltered Zika. Now if we can find a way to treat individuals with Zika, which is really only dangerous to fetuses and infants, this might be an intriguing approach to the problem of brain cancer.

I see President Trump is off flapping his lips again.

Source: SBNATION

President Donald Trump criticized some in the National Football League Friday night at a rally for Alabama Republican Senate candidate Luther Strange, saying team owners should fire players for taking a knee during the national anthem.

Trump added that if fans would “leave the stadium” when players kneel in protest during the national anthem, “I guarantee, things will stop.”

Trump said NFL owners should respond to the players by saying, “Get that son of a bitch off the field right now, he’s fired. He’s fired!” [CNN]

In a way, this reflects Trump’s views of how his Administration should be treated – no criticism, the institution is far too important to be criticized. In the same way that some think the flag is far too sacrosanct to be made part of a national conversation on how the black minority should be treated by everyone else, Trump’s view of these matters is reflected in his remarks: if the players are indicating that not everything is hunky-dory, then bloody well fire them because it reflects poorly on the institution, and the institution is all. In that way, Trump is protected.

With such sentiments is the path to stagnation and failure paved. Criticism is a way forward, not a way backward.

If President Trump is terrified of having that conversation regarding the treatment of our black citizens by the police, then at least let him have the guts to say he’s terrified. Distractions such as the flag issue or kneeling during the national anthem are just that: distractions. They should be ignored by those who are serious about the future of this nation.

And when will the Vikings wise up and bring in Kaepernick, the guy who started this kneeling during the national anthem, to replace the injured Bradford? Or do they think the current backup is going to be effective? I didn’t watch any of the games so far, but judging from the score in the Pittsburgh game, he was not effective. One data point is not a trend, of course….

It seems to me that the Equifax data breach is quite the egregious breach of business ethics. Most of us do not have a business connection with them; they are in the business of collecting information about the consumers of the nation, summarizing it, and then selling that information to various other entities.

You do not contract with them to do this, and you cannot control that activity.

In case you’re not familiar with this scandal, here’s a randomly selected story on it from the AARP:

With credit-reporting firm Equifax revealing that hackers may have stolen financial and consumer data on at least 143 million customers in the U.S., it’s quite possible that your personal information — including birth date, Social Security number, driver’s license and address — could fall into the hands of criminals.

Equifax said that it hasn’t found evidence of unauthorized activity on its core consumer or commercial credit-reporting databases. But criminals could use the treasure trove of personal information acquired in the breach to apply for credit cards and loans in your name, access your bank accounts and establish a phony presence online with email and social media accounts.

Not because you made a mistake, mind  you. But because they made mistakes.

Well, this sort of problem, as a class, is causing disruptions to American society. It is preventable and is the result of criminal neglect.

It’s not an accident. Someone – some entity, singular or plural – balled things up.

And how to fix it? I think someone with a corral full of lawyers should step up to the plate and bring a suit that asks for the dissolution of Equifax as the remedy to the injury to the class of consumers who had their data revealed and are now vulnerable to identity theft and other crimes.

Speaking as a software engineer, the industry has hid for far too long from responsibilities such as these. Industry should have its teeth kicked in over these scandalous, preventable mistakes, because that’s how this works – someone steps in a pothole and breaks their neck in the courthouse, and everyone else finally realizes you can’t dump mercury into the lake any longer. I’ve written about Underwriter’s Software Labs before, a fictional entity that shouldn’t be. How much longer before someone with the resources realizes that software development cowboy style is not resulting in shining examples of software?

Maybe it’s time for the insurance industry to get involved again.

Out of the old email bag comes another shot at dividing the ol’ United States into those who would lead the country, and those who despise them. Here’s an abridged version, since it runs a bit long:

Anthropomorphic Nouns

I thought this might be boring, but stick with it.  You’ll love the ending.

We are all familiar with  a

Herd of cows,

A Flock of chickens,

[omitted]

Now consider a group of Baboons.
Baboons are the loudest, most dangerous, most
obnoxious, most viciously aggressive and least
intelligent of all primates.
And what is the proper collective noun for a
group of baboons?
Believe it or not… A Congress!
(Note: I hadn’t heard that before, so I looked it up. It is correct)

A CONGRESS OF BABOONS!

That pretty much explains the things that come out of Washington ! 

You just can’t  make this stuff up.

Ummmm…. except you just did. I went looking to see if a group of Baboons were a Congress and didn’t find anything in Wikipedia. A wider search yielded up the fact that this email has actually been analyzed and debunked. PolitiFact is on the case:

Two places where we did find it were sources in which virtually anybody could insert a definition on a whim: Wikipedia and UrbanDictionary.com. (In the Urban Dictionary, someone added the definition on Sept. 3, 2011, in response to the e-mail.)

And it’s no longer present in Wikipedia.

So we turned to Orin Hargraves, a freelance lexicographer and president of the Dictionary Society of North America.

The names for collections of animals are called “terms of venery,” and Hargraves said the best reference source for them is the 1968 book “An Exaltation of Larks” by James Lipton, host of “Inside the Actors Studio.”

The first part of the book, which examines real terms, has no reference to baboons. Only in the section that includes whimsical terms that Lipton coined or uncovered is there any reference to the primates. “A rumpus of baboons” is listed right next to “a buffoonery of orangutans.” (One of our favorites: “a prickle of porcupines.”)

For those who love useless bits of trivia:

Shirley Strum is at the University of California, San Diego, and director of the Uaso Ngiro Baboon Project in Nairobi,Kenya. Larissa Swedell is at Queens College of the City University of New York and studies the primates in Ethiopia and South Africa.

Both said the correct term for a group of baboons is a “troop.”

They also note baboons are actually quite bright.

I suppose the next outstanding question is Why didn’t I just direct my correspondent’s attention to the above article?

Here’s the thing: It’s necessary to scrutinize the activities of our individual delegates to the federal government, to evaluate their performance, and to recognize self-interested and/or disinterested behavior. It’s necessary to perform this duty in a thoughtful and honest manner which will yield praise for exemplary service by such members, for which names such as Lugar and Kerry come to mind, and condemnation for such members as Weiner and those who’ve been convicted of corruption.

This mail is not that scrutiny.

This is mail designed to inculcate a general disdain and contempt for one of the most important legislative bodies on the planet. For those Americans who consider themselves patriotic, this mail is an insult, because the structure of our government is one of our strongest safeguards.

Worse yet, it’s a subtle call to treason. For all that Congress often moves at a snail’s pace, it’s better a snail than a Ferrari that races off a cliff. And if it seems like Congress isn’t promoting your favorite business’ interest, my reader would do well to remember that government defends that which cannot defend itself, such as the poor and the environment, the defrauded consumer and the lake shore inhabitant discovering the lake is about to be polluted by industry. Industry rarely needs defense; it needs restraint.

So when I read an email like this, I’m sensitive to how it brings government into general disdain. I’m aware of how this may discourage a person, who may be competent to an elective or judicial post, from pursuing that post – leaving it vulnerable to the ideologically extreme, the avaricious, the dishonorable.

We’ve been seeing that of late.

Spread the word.