Monthly Archives: October 2017

We took these pictures a week or two ago, as we liked the contrast.

In ongoing coverage of the arbitration issue, wherein private companies usurp the role of the judiciary, the companies have won a victory – temporary as it may be – in their war against anything which may give consumers protection against minor corporate fraud. NBC News reports:

The Republican-led Senate narrowly voted Tuesday to repeal a banking rule that would let consumers band together to sue their banks or credit card companies to resolve financial disputes.

Vice President Mike Pence cast the final vote to break a 50-50 tie.

The banking industry lobbied hard to roll back the regulation, which the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau unveiled in July. The rule would ban most types of mandatory arbitration clauses found in the fine print of agreements that consumers enter into when opening checking accounts or getting credit cards.

It appears the Republicans are indulging in bad math:

“The effort to try to characterize this as some devious system that has been created to try to stop consumers from having access to fairness is simply false,” said Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, chairman of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. “We have a very fair system that has been working for over 100 years in this country.”

Crapo said that the average pay-out for consumers in class-action lawsuits against financial companies was just $32 but that lawyers stood to make millions.

Democrats argued that consumers generally don’t have the time and means to pursue claims in arbitration and that because most disputes revolve around small amounts, they typically just give up. They said banks and other financial firms know that, in the end, they won’t have pay a real price for taking advantage of a consumer.

That’s the key – the Republicans holding a dependent variable constant, when the fact of the matter is that a class action suit is far more likely to be pursued than an arbitration claim. I wonder if the Republicans believe what they say. It’s lose-lose for them, for if they believe that, then we can conclude they, and their staff, don’t know how to think, and if they do understand it, well, they’re four-square on the side of the companies and not for protecting the consumers from the predations of the ethically challenged banks and other interested entities.

That is, they’re abandoning their responsibilities.

In fact, there’s a second issue that both sides are ignoring. Will corporate pay attention if they’re forced into arbitration by, say, 5% of their clients over some minor fraud^[1]?

No, corporate won’t give a shit. It’s part of doing business.

But class action suits can exact a real pound of flesh from companies, because that postcard announcing the action arrives in your mail, and I’ll bet more than 50% of those eligible to join the class will actually do so, more if the lawyers are smart enough not to write the note in legalese, but instead in emotionally charged language.

And the kinds of losses that can be exacted in a class action suit are just the kind needed to get corporate’s attention and discourage minor corporate fraud.

Or even major white collar crimes.

It’s not so much the actual punishment as the potential punishment which is important here – and the GOP is completely ignoring it by focusing on the numbers. And it appears the Democrats have let themselves be mislead, although I don’t know that NBC has given us the complete story here.

So I’m seeing the C-suite denizens waiting at their telephones for their lobbyists to report victory when Trump signs the bill, then turning to authorize the first scalping of their victims clients.

I wonder if my bank – one of the smallest in the state, I should imagine – well, no, not according to this list, I guess having a grand total of two branches is a poor way to estimate – is involved in this mess. I wonder if they’d tell me if I called and asked.

¹For corporate fraud, 5% seems a likely number, although I’m really just hand-waving  here.

The hotter it gets, the cooler you are. NewScientist (14 October 2017) reports on a new house paint:

The paint the team came up with has an outer layer that filters out some of the sun’s rays and an inner one that absorbs heat and emits higher-frequency light, cooling itself below the ambient temperature.

The material has passed tests in the lab. “Heat could be absorbed and re-emitted as light,” Shenhav says. “As long as the sun is shining on it, it would be continuously cooled.” Simulations show that a room on the top floor of a house will feel up to 10°C cooler with the paint applied to the roof than without it. The team now plans to conduct pilot tests on buildings within two years.

Although existing cooling paints are used to scatter and reduce the amount of heat buildings absorb, they can’t actively lower the temperature inside. SolCold’s paint can, says Eran Zahavy at the Israel Institute of Biological Research. But it isn’t cheap, costing about $300 to coat 100 square metres. Shenhav and his team think the early adopters will be shopping malls and stadiums.

A fascinating material. I’m not sure a mass consumer product is the proper venue for a material which may still require analysis as to its negative effects on the environment – for example, what does it decay into?

But the odd things you can do with materials these days!

Another batch of fall colors, fresh from the distribution center.

Andrew Sullivan is just full of bad news:

And then the worst news on this front all year: “Nearly half of voters, 46 percent, believe the news media fabricate news stories about President Donald Trump and his administration.” That rises to 76 percent of Republicans. Twenty-eight percent of all voters — and 46 percent of Republicans — believe that the government should be able to remove the licenses from outlets that criticize the president. The First Amendment lives; but the beliefs and practices and norms that buttress it are atrophying very fast.

Which is flabbergasting, and suggests the people have lost track of what has made the United States great throughout all these years – freedom of the press.

And on what evidence do these doubters of the media base their opinions? Can they point at massive fraud at newspapers with decades of experience and prestige?

Has it ever occurred to them that just because they don’t like the news, it doesn’t mean it’s fabricated?

Many of them may think they’re tough conservatives, but from here, all I see are lazy sods who are too weak to accept that we do have an incompetent Administration bent on enriching the head honcho while kowtowing to extremist sensibilities. These tough guys want to come forward with some evidence of fraud? Fine, leap forward with it. Maybe you’ll convince someone.

But it must be done with a willingness to be convinced themselves.

I do appreciate Andrew equating the left and the right when it comes to curtailment of free speech:

Or look at what happened to a speaker from the ACLU at the College of William & Mary in Virginia a couple of weeks back. She came to give a talk about — yes! — free speech, only to be shouted down by the usual mob, who were at least honest enough to chant: “Liberalism Is White Supremacy,” and “The Revolution Will Not Uphold Your Constitution.” They physically prevented the speaker from even talking one-on-one with those who were interested in a dialogue.

The unity of the far left and the Trump right on this is as striking as it is depressing. What they share is a contempt for liberal democracy. Truth to both of them is merely an instrument of power. Instead of relying on an open exchange of ideas in order to determine the always-provisional truth, both sides (yes, both sides) insist that they already know the truth and need simply to acquire the power to impose it on everyone else. Somewhere, Thomas Jefferson weeps.

Which is reminiscent of Michael Gerson’s WaPo editorial of yesterday. If we discard one of our unifying principles, then when shall the rest go? Will the replacement unifying principle be He with the biggest mob in the street wins? How does that improve all of our lives?

It doesn’t. It pleases those demagogues and master manipulators who are pulling the strings, but it will irretrievably ruin the lives of those who they pretend to lead. The great achievement of liberal democracies is moderation, the great enemy of the power-hungry, the zealot, and the absolutist. For decades these sorts of unhappy people have been mostly suppressed, not by the government so much as the willingness of reasonable citizens to examine the arguments this lot have put forth, and give it the belly laugh it largely deserves. Add in the gatekeepers that so many have railed against, and those whose lust for certainty or power were left with bitter failure.

But no longer. Many Americans, perhaps faced with so much information and choices supplied by the Internet that they’re worn out, have chosen to belong to tribes, where they may think they’re thinking, but in the end they’re just sopping up the soggy white bread, full of milk, for their intellectual sustenance, and occasionally stampede here and there at the hint of their hidden masters.

A sad depth to which the far right and far left have fallen. But you can take this as a signpost in the barren wastes – if you feel sympathy for the positions of the far left or right, then it’s time to limber up the mind again. How to do this? Pick that issue of which you’re most certain, and try to pick it apart. Don’t be shy or slothful about it, really go at it. Take that shovel to the foundations on which it rests and ask yourself how to falsify those foundations. Really try to persuade yourself that you’re wrong.

And if you can’t do it, don’t take it as encouragement that you’re right. Tomorrow, do it again with a different issue.

And again.

And so long as you fail to change your mind, I’ll tell  you again and again and again – you’re intellectually failing. You’re a wussy tribe member. You receive your orders and you march on them because you’re intellectually atrophied.

And do you know how I can say this with complete certainty^[1]?

Because there are so many issues out there that it’s inevitable that you’ll be able to persuade yourself to change your mind on one of them. Sound weak? It’s not. It’s the truest thing in the world – managing in the modern world is hard and we often get things wrong. Even the big things.

And the most important part of this exercise isn’t changing your mind.

It’s learning uncertainty. It’s realizing that we can’t be certain about many things, so compromise is not a bad thing – it’s the sign of mature adult minds coming to an understanding.

And that’s really the point of this entire post. Compromise is not weakness. Whoever said that should have his fingers broken. Compromise is the acknowledgement that the modern world, for all that we aren’t dying of tiger attacks, scarlet fever, or smallpox, is still a hard place to navigate, and not all the lessons you learned at your never-wrong leader’s knee are actually right.

So go out there with that jackhammer and whack away at your most cherished beliefs. I try to do this all the time, and it’s quite invigorating. I’ve been changing my mind about gun control over the last decade, for example, from anti- to some form of pro-gun control.

And you can make those changes, too. If you’re willing to return to being a thinking American, instead of retreating into tribalism and spinning on command.

Let me know how it goes.

¹Yes, go ahead and chuckle.

Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ) has chosen to retire rather than engage in a 2018 primary tussle with Kelli Ward. From CNN come his and other Senator’s remarks:

“If I have been critical, it’s not because I relish criticizing the behavior of the President of the United States,” Flake said. “If I have been critical, it is because I believe that it is my obligation to do so, as a matter of duty and conscience.”

He continued, “The notion that one should stay silent as the norms and values that keep America strong are undermined and as the alliances and agreements that ensure the stability of the entire world are routinely threatened by the level of thought that goes into 140 characters — the notion that one should say and do nothing in the face of such mercurial behavior is ahistoric and, I believe, profoundly misguided.”

He is following his colleague Senator Corker (R-KY) to the retirement door. The reaction from his colleagues:

McCain and Corker were both in attendance of Flake’s Senate floor speech Tuesday and gave him a standing ovation at conclusion of his remarks — as did Wyoming Republican Sen. John Barrasso.

“One of the greatest people I’ve served with,” Corker said after the speech, describing Flake and adding later, “He’s what I would call a real conservative.” …

Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia left the floor in tears following Flake’s speech, calling it “depressing.”

“When someone as good and decent a person as Jeff Flake does not think he can continue in the body, it’s a very tragic day for the institution,” Kaine said.

While I have very little opinion of Senator Flake, I do note he has a Trump Score of 90% as of this writing, and he was not one of the Senators who broke the GOP‘s disgraceful boat of healthcare “reform” on the rocks of honor – so he’s not entirely the most decent of the GOP Senators, an honor that goes to McCain, Collins, and Murkowski.

However, that doesn’t mean he hasn’t redoubled the pressure on the GOP Senators to return to a generally honorable manner of conducting business. He’s basically declared that he may join the Democrats in voting against legislation which is developed in an inappropriate, dishonorable manner.

And that can only be a good thing.

But I am puzzled that someone who has at least Senator Kaine’s respect is choosing to bow out rather than fight the good fight. Of course, there may be family illnesses and that sort of thing operating behind the scenes, but to leave the field open to right-wing extremists is a discouraging move by someone who at least is saying the right things, even if he’s not backing this up with words.

Conservative Michael Gerson writes about the damage Trump is inflicting on the GOP in WaPo:

But here is the cost. When there is no objective source of truth — no commonly agreed upon set of facts and rules of argument — political persuasion becomes impossible. There is no reasoned method to choose between one view and another. The only way to settle political disputes is power — determined by screaming mobs or because “I’m president and you’re not.” Politics becomes an endless battle of true believers, conditioned to distrust and dismiss every bit of evidence that does not confirm their preexisting views. The alternative to reasoned discourse is the will to power.

This is the frightening direction of Trumpism. It is the corruption that good men such as White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly are enabling. And it is a source of enduring shame for many conservatives. “Sycophancy toward those who hold power,” said Bloom, “is a fact in every regime, and especially in a democracy, where, unlike tyranny, there is an accepted principle of legitimacy that breaks the inner will to resist. . . . Flattery of the people and incapacity to resist public opinion are the democratic vices, particularly among writers, artists, journalists and anyone else who is dependent on an audience.”

I don’t know how much Michael has written on this, as I don’t read WaPo much. He is, of course, right, as long time readers know I would say, having written on the effects of such mendacity since Trump won the nomination.

But I do notice Michael doesn’t want to go too far with this. For example, he continues to laud the nomination of Gorsuch to SCOTUS, along with various other judges to Federal seats, with nary a thought as to how Trump’s polluted thought processes may have resulted in the selection of people unfit for their positions – as has been thoroughly documented in a number of places and for a number of those so nominated and, tragically, confirmed.

So while it’s good to see a conservative recognize the long-term ill effects of Trumpism, it’d be good to see them acknowledge all of the problems, and not give those issues they favor a pass.

More of our local fall colors.

Hey, ya wanna go out for a drink after this scene? Say ‘yes’, or I’ll force another retake!
Gods can be such jerks.

It’s a fight between a would-be god and a couple of humans in Lord of Illusions (1995), folks. Substituting blood for a plot clever enough to keep us engaged, and gore for the sense of humor such a ridiculous fight is going to require, this story bumbles along from incident to incident. We’re with private detective D’Amour, sent to Los Angeles from New York to keep tabs on some guy, but when the guy goes to see a fortune teller and leaves as if shot out of a cannon, D’Amour has to investigate. The dying man he discovers in the fortune teller’s den leads him into the tangled web of a ruptured, insane cult, out for revenge for the loss of their leader-god.

Besides the silly, yet not silly enough, violence, the problem is that victory or defeat in each incident appears to be random. No one is particularly clever nor stupid, so it’s difficult to nod and feel a connection, positive or negative, with each crash-bang-thud. How do the good guys defeat the dude who’s a God in the end? It actually beats the shit out of me. Maybe he just tripped and fell down a hole. Or something.

Remember our affection for Dr. Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)? It wasn’t his aura. or his charisma, or his good looks – it was his persistence, his flashes of self-deprecating humor, and his cleverness – even when that cleverness failed – that made us root for him. But the story tellers of Lord of Illusions don’t gift D’Amour with any real feature to admire, and as the only character who we might have sympathized with, it fairly much leaves the audience with a single, dull theme.

Don’t get involved with an insane religious cult, or bad things will happen to you.

And we all knew that already.

If you want to see a young Scott Bakula, this might be worth your time. Otherwise, all I can give it is a bit of a positive on the makeup; between a bad set of characters, some choppy editing (perhaps a result of the random requirements of television), and a complete lack of sense of humor, it’s really a total waste.

Once again, someone has decided to try to drag our society towards militarism and away from peaceful democracy. Unfortunately, this mail is a picture, rather than text, so I’ll reproduce the picture and then address the points en masse, as I can’t interject them.

Let’s start with the petty and mundane. First of all, how many folks are we talking, and how much cost is involved? Something to keep in mind that it’s not just going to be pay, but also housing (which most military personnel get free).

Second, even for the 20 year career soldier, they’re getting out of the service in their forties. How long do you want to pay them?

Third, at least in the United States, they have access to the GI Bill, which helps pay the educational bills, as well as has other benefits. My Dad used this to get his electrical engineering degree. And many veterans come out with skills useful in civilian life.

Fourth, currently those with honorable and medical discharges have free medical care via the Veterans Administration. Additionally, those who are badly injured in American service do get lifelong compensation. An uncle of mine had 100% of base pay, due to a heart attack. My father had something like 60%, due to a heart infection.

But let’s step back and ask ourselves what else would happen if something like this proposal did pass; that is, what are the societal impacts? In my mind, we’d be creating an officially privileged set of people who, through 20 years of service, will then be paid even out of service and therefore will no longer be … citizen-soldiers. See, that’s what gives our society something that resembles cohesion, the idea that we can go into the service, do some work for the polity, and then come back out and be normal citizens. That’s one of our great traditions, the idea that going out and work in defense is something we all can do, through service full time or part time.

And then not be relegated to being peasants if we choose not to do so. Make no mistake, that’s what this is all about – elevating and materially rewarding, open-ended, a group of people for a limited service. That’s a setup for opening a division of mutual dislike between those who have served, and those who chose not to, whether for selfish reasons (such as President Trump), or reasons of principle, such as pacifists.

I’ll not ignore the point concerning those who serve in Congress getting 100% of their pay as a pension, but I’ll also note many of these folks are in the latter portions of their lives when they retire from their positions, so the strain on the Republic may not be great, while on the other hand their sacrifice of working for the Republic – now a full time job – may have eliminated them from contending for full time jobs once their Congressional career has ended. I would like to see those who are independently wealthy decline their pensions, of course, as a matter of honor, but in the end I find it difficult to be upset over this bit of controversial waste when they number so few in comparison to the military members.

I think this is a proposal which should be declined as deleterious to our Republic.

In 1955, after Eisenhower’s poor health required extended hospitalization, the president called on Congress to clarify the mechanisms for handling succession and disability. As the National Constitution Center notes, the Cold War made the possibility of a president who could not discharge the executive powers an even more frightening prospect and may have spurned Congress to act.

– Matthew Kahn, “How ‘Unraveled’ Does Trump Have to Be? Presidential Disability and the 25th Amendment,” Lawfare.

Hmmmm. Maybe he meant “spurred”. The other one only brings on visuals originating from my more incoherent nightmares.

Lloyd Alter on Treehugger.com has a cautionary message concerning Amazon looking to create a secondary headquarters:

It’s almost abusive. After shipping all their retail dollars and after years of losing jobs, sales taxes and so much else to Amazon, Cities are lining up to say hit me, hit me again! Amazon demands incentives to offset the initial costs and ongoing costs, tax credits, relocation grants, fee reductions. They want a “business friendly tax structure.”
The cities want growth. They want the jobs and the well-paid workers. But as Greg Leroy writes in Fast Company, there is no such thing as free growth. Particularly in some of the poorer, rust belt type cities that praying that Amazon will give them a new lease on life, they will have to bulk up on infrastructure and resources to cope.

More families arriving means more teachers to hire; more classrooms, roads, water mains and sewerage to build; more public safety to provide; and more trash to pick up. All of those things cost money. But if Amazon is paying no sales tax, no property tax, no income tax, and is getting cash gifts from its employees and/or the state treasury by selling tax credits, then Amazon won’t be bearing those new costs. Instead, there will be a huge burden shift: Either everyone else’s taxes will have to go up, or the quality of public services will have to go down, or some of both. There’s no such thing as free growth.

This is much like the Foxconn bribe that Wisconsin has issued, and I continue to wonder about the wisdom of trying to lure large companies via tax breaks and other incentives by cities and even states. After all, it really devalues and disrespects the local workforce, because it says We need to bribe these companies to come work in the local area – as if all workforces are interchangeable cogs in the great world-wide machine, or even inferior.

Which is most definitely not true. When education & experience levels and societies differ, inevitably the capabilities of the workforces will also differ – and there’s nothing wrong with acknowledging that. For example, in the computer industry there’s a widespread impression, possibly out of date, that the Chinese are good at replicating technologies and products, but innovation is not their forte. Assuming this is true, and it may not be, does it makes sense for an innovator to setup an office in a Chinese city? Of course not.

But – does it make sense for a company to try to get the best offer they can? You’d think so. Many follow this model. And so it’s incumbent on cities to

1. not permit themselves to get caught up in this whirlwind.
2. develop an able and distinctive workforce.

These are non-trivial undertakings, as the first requires an understanding of how corporations work – often not easy for government officials who may not have corporate experience.

The second is even more difficult in the face of easy nation-wide transport. Back when it was walk, ride a horse, or take a train, workforces would stay put; these days, a sufficient number of similar employers in a single location can attract the desired work force from all over the country – or the world. Meanwhile, cities don’t move and cannot restrain movement, which suggests more indirect strategies must be used, such as provision or encouragement of cultural institutions, entertainments (preferably peculiar to the area), etc.

For those cities which are losing population, this can be a real challenge. But trying to bribe companies to come to their town will have their inevitable – possibly fatal – costs.

And while most of my readers are in the Twin Cities area and so are experiencing the same colors, I can’t resist putting them online. These are all local to our domicile.

Nonce:

noun
1. the present, or immediate, occasion or purpose (usually used in the phrase for the nonce).
adjective
2. (of a word or phrase) coined and used only for a particular occasion: nonce forms such as “paintrix,” meaning “a female painter.”.

[Dictionary.com]

I recently used it and realized I wasn’t quite sure of its definition.

Andrew Sullivan believes the Democrats are in the process of throwing away the 2020 election because of how they are handling the immigration issue:

This is, to be blunt, political suicide. The Democrats’ current position seems to be that the Dreamer parents who broke the law are near heroes, indistinguishable from the children they brought with them; and their rhetoric is very hard to distinguish, certainly for most swing voters, from a belief in open borders. In fact, the Democrats increasingly seem to suggest that any kind of distinction between citizens and noncitizens is somehow racist. You could see this at the last convention, when an entire evening was dedicated to Latinos, illegal and legal, as if the rule of law were largely irrelevant. Hence the euphemism “undocumented” rather than “illegal.” So the stage was built, lit, and set for Trump.

He still tragically owns that stage. …. The most powerful thing Trump said in the campaign, I’d argue, was: “If you don’t have borders, you don’t have a country.” And the Democrats had no answer, something that millions of Americans immediately saw. They still formally favor enforcement of immigration laws, but rhetorically, they keep signaling the opposite. Here is Dylan Matthews, also in Vox, expressing the emerging liberal consensus: “Personally, I think any center-left party worth its salt has to be deeply committed to egalitarianism, not just for people born in the U.S. but for everyone … It means treating people born outside the U.S. as equals … And it means a strong presumption in favor of open immigration.” Here’s Zack Beauchamp, a liberal friend of mine: “What if I told you that immigration restrictionism is and always has been racist?” Borders themselves are racist? Seriously?

And if the left has, in fact, taken up this position, I’d argue it’s intellectually wrong, and I’d suspect it’s a matter of group-think, although the latter is only a suspicion based on the use of the word racism. No one on the left, and few on the right, want to be tarred and feathered with that word. Ever. So you pick a position, associate the opposition with racism, and begin the campaign with your strategy already set out for you.

And the right, and much of the independents, won’t buy it. Indeed, it may repulse the right-inclined independents, who fiercely believe in a United States, but can’t stomach the craven failure of the GOP. That’s the political evaluation of this strategy.

It’s intellectually fucking lazy. If nothing else, nations serve as experiments in how to run societies, and immigrants to tend to mar the experimental parameters.

BUT SET that aside. Let’s analyze this from a more systematic point of view. Let’s try some analysis that doesn’t have us crossing our eyes to stare painfully at the speck on the tip of our nose. I think Andrew missed a bet. The left missed that same bet. The far right’s too incoherent to accuse of missing a bet, it would be unfair. (The moderate right – or true conservatives – I lump with the independents for the nonce.)

The real question to ask is Why is there an immigration issue? What is going on to force people to leave their homelands and come to a foreign land where they have to start all over again, illegally?

Political repression? Asylum is a legal option, so we can toss out those immigrants, who numbered about 25000 in 2014.

How about the rest? Mostly, it’s about economic distress. So what’s causing that?

Could it possibly be … the United States?

This isn’t an attack on the United States, but rather another rendition of the law of unintended consequences.. I recall reading, maybe 25 years ago, about several analyses of the impact of American agricultural exports on the agricultural sectors of the countries receiving these exports. It was apparently quite devastating, especially when those exports received financial support in order to give them a better chance at enduring success.

I’ve done some poking around, but haven’t found much to indicate this research continued. There is this report from The New York Times in 2003:

The more than $10 billion that American taxpayers give corn farmers every year in agricultural subsidies has helped destroy the livelihoods of millions of small Mexican farmers, according to a report to be released on Wednesday.

Prepared in advance of critical trade talks next month, the report by Oxfam International argues that the subsidies given American corn farmers allow them to sell their grain at prices far below what it costs to produce. That has led to cheap American corn flooding the Mexican market and pushing the poorest Mexican farmers out of business, the report said.

”There is a direct link between government agricultural policies in the U.S. and rural misery in Mexico,” according to the report entitled, ”Dumping Without Borders: How U.S. agricultural policies are destroying the livelihoods of Mexican corn farmers.”

I found it hard to find current corn crop subsidies for the current year, which surprised me. And then the export subsidies also must be part of the equation.

So our exports devastate the economies of our neighbors by destroying their agricultural sectors. Should it be a surprise that the result is a tide of economically distressed workers searching for a way to restore their economic fortunes?

Of course, this is all handwaving on my part. My information is old, possibly out of date – and the causal chain may still be up for debate. But stipulate it, and then what do you do? As an engineer, you look at stopping farm subsidies, but the political screams would send our politicians scrambling from rocks to hide under. Ban ag exports?

I think I’d be assassinated.

But I’d rather fix a problem at its source, rather than twist myself into a fatal knot, as the left may be doing.

Sometimes all it takes is a simple arrangement of facts to suggest a slightly different interpretation. I often see endorsements as the endorser actually approving the endorsee, usually for their ideological position, although sometimes simply for competency, and,  yes, I do understand that some of my readers probably consider me naive for it.

But these two notes from Steve Benen, separated in neither time nor space, sort of brought the alternative interpretation to the fore:

* As some Republican incumbents fret over possible even-further-to-the-right primary rivals, Donald Trump has reportedly assured three Republican senators — Nebraska’s Deb Fischer, Mississippi’s Roger Wicker, and Wyoming’s John Barrasso — that he’ll support their re-election bids.

* On a related note, though Deb Fischer is not seen as a vulnerable incumbent, Steve Bannon has reportedly been in contact with former state Treasurer Shane Osborn about a possible GOP primary.

It really sounds like Trump and Bannon are competing for loyalty from these various elected officials. Now, I know this isn’t anything new, but this looks like a big chess game going on out there on the extreme right.

And the question is whether or not the Democrats can find a way to take advantage of this (dare I say it?) inevitable discord on the right.

Heliophysicists (physicists who study the Sun) have coined the term hedgerow prominences, which I find charming, for what we see below. From NASA/JPL/CalTech:

At the edge of the sun, a large prominence and a small prominence began to shift, turn and fall apart in less than one day (May 8-9, 2017). Prominences are notoriously unstable. Competing magnetic forces pulled the plasma back and forth until they dissipated. The images were taken in a wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light. The 18-second video clip is comprised of almost 600 frames being shown at 30 frames per second.

The movies are at the link above. These starkly gorgeous images of that big light in the sky really can entrance me.

Professor Myles Allen of Oxford is an impatient, straightforward man, who’d like to ram the legal code right up the fossil industry’s ass. He recently talked to NewScientist (7 October 2017, paywall) about strategy when it comes to the problems of climate change:

In 2005, he called for action against “the 20 or so coal and oil companies” responsible for most carbon dioxide emissions in New Scientist. Since then, legal cases have been brought, but they have failed “because judges decided that because governments were regulating CO₂, the courts had no role”. …

… he finds an intriguing silver lining in Trump’s crusade against climate science. “The law could come to our rescue. The US withdrawal from the Paris accord may change things for American companies.” Why? If there is no government-level emissions regulation in the US, he says, then legal liability could return. “Concern over that may be why the large fossil fuel companies in the US were arguing against withdrawal,” he says.

So would EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s consistent resistance to doing his job. Indeed, if Pruitt succeeds in dismantling the EPA, if only in spirit, the fossil fuel companies could be wide open to anyone angry enough in the court system. Not to mention that Pruitt’s failure to fulfill his duties could be interpreted as illicit.

But Professor Allen has a wide range on his criticism shotgun:

“Paris was strong on aspiration, but the progress since has been minimal.” He believes more in the power of courts, economics and public pressure – and above all in being direct. For that reason, he is frustrated by the efforts of environmentalists to turn climate change into a grand debate about how the world gets its energy, or the ethics of consumption and capitalism. Just ban greenhouse gas emissions and be done with it, he says, and require those who make and burn fossil fuels to prevent emissions in whatever way they choose – with carbon capture and storage likely to play a key role.

He has no time for gesture politics. “If I had to pick out a group who I am most frustrated with, it would not be the fossil fuel industry; it would be the environment movement for their demonisation of the fossil fuel industry.” Big oil isn’t going away any time soon, he says, so environmentalists need to stop holding their noses and engage with it. When the giant US coal companies Peabody Energy and Arch Coal hit hard times last year, Allen called for one of the many cash-rich environmental NGOs in the US to buy them. “They could have taken a substantial share of coal reserves into the hands of people committed to stabilising climate. Sadly that opportunity passed.”

I couldn’t find anything on why the opportunity passed without anyone taking advantage of it. Sure would love to see the debate on that idea, and why everyone with the power – and how many would that be? – refused to do it.

Last week I managed some pictures from our garden, now in fall decline.

Or, in the case of our front yard peony, in full fall splat. Poor old peony went through the full old age experience.

The grass is far more graceful in the fall dance.

Last week the tomato plants were were nuanced in their reaction; this week, they’re just slumpin’. I’ll spare them the indignity of this week’s pictures.

The echoes from the 2011 East Japan earthquake and tsunami continue to reverberate around the world. This surprises and fascinates me, from Science:

Abstract

A Japanese fishing boat washed away in the tsunami. Later sunk by “naval cannon fire.” Source: NOAA via BBC.

The 2011 East Japan earthquake generated a massive tsunami that launched an extraordinary transoceanic biological rafting event with no known historical precedent. We document 289 living Japanese coastal marine species from 16 phyla transported over 6 years on objects that traveled thousands of kilometers across the Pacific Ocean to the shores of North America and Hawai‘i. Most of this dispersal occurred on nonbiodegradable objects, resulting in the longest documented transoceanic survival and dispersal of coastal species by rafting. Expanding shoreline infrastructure has increased global sources of plastic materials available for biotic colonization and also interacts with climate change–induced storms of increasing severity to eject debris into the oceans. In turn, increased ocean rafting may intensify species invasions.

While in previous eons it was probably more difficult to accidentally encounter debris that could convey inadvertent immigrants across oceans, no doubt it did happen – and explains how many species spread.

If you remember the wind sculptures of Theo Jansen, someone sent me a new (to me) video of his work. The creature at 1:45 is new to me.

CNN is reporting that North Korea has been writing letters to various nations across the world:

In an open letter addressed to parliaments in a number of countries, North Korea has declared itself a “full-fledged nuclear power” and accuses US President Donald Trump of “trying to drive the world into a horrible nuclear disaster.”

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop called the message “unprecedented,” noting that North Korea usually chooses different means to communicate.

Bishop and Australian Prime Minister Turnbull think they know what it means.

Both Bishop and Turnbull said Friday they believe the letter shows that North Korea is getting desperate as the US and its allies ramp up sanctions on the rogue regime.

“I see it as evidence that the collective strategy of imposing maximum diplomatic and economic pressure through sanctions on North Korea is working,” Bishop said.

If this were so, I’d expect more uproar from North Korea, though. Michael Madden on 38 North reports on the recent second plenary session of the 7th Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) Central Committee. There didn’t seem to be chaos or even a lot of concern.

After the second plenary meeting of the 7th WPK Central Committee, the DPRK leadership has subtly and gradually shifted its media messaging and programming (i.e. the propaganda) away from some of the more heated rhetoric and activity^[12] that we have seen during the last six months. Much of Kim Jong Un’s report to the Central Committee and many of the personnel changes to the central party power organizations focused on the economy. While the North will still formulate and release interesting statements, and we might see one or two more ballistic missile tests, the DPRK’s political culture is probably moving on to the KPA’s winter training cycle and preparations for the cold, resource-challenged winter. While one does not doubt what “single-hearted unity” and “Mallima speed” can accomplish, there are limits.

The results of the second plenary meeting are an unfolding event. Kim Jong Un and his image makers have met us halfway by holding a large gathering and revealing who was appointed to what power body. But Pyongyang watchers will need subsequent state media reporting to determine where some of these officials have landed and what policy areas consume their daily lives. It would be unwise, however, and possibly dangerous to read these personnel appointments as simply a matter of reshuffling deck chairs on a sinking. Several elderly officials have been effectively retired. And if the DPRK were embarking on a course of action that might result in the country’s total annihilation or even the strategic shock of a surgical strike, then such things as policy statements and personnel shuffles would be unnecessary. Individuals, and nation-states, with a death wish don’t make long-term plans.

The shift in emphasis to the economy would seem to indicate a recognition of the sanctions, but not an incipient move towards capitulation of any sort.

I think an alternate reading is far more likely than that of the optimists in Australia. Kim obviously recognizes the turmoil Trump has stirred up world-wide with his amateur hour stunts, as well as the obvious ease with which he can be manipulated – he doesn’t have the iron will of, say, Hillary Clinton, Obama, or Bush. Kim may believe this is the time to strike in order to weaken or even break old alliances that otherwise endanger his regime. This letter is written to subtly highlight these worries about Trump, making world leaders reconsider their ties with the United States.

And thus strengthening his position, as well as potentially increase his prestige. In his area of the world, prestige is more important than democracy, and that’s what he’s trying to increase with these moves.

During our recent visit to Seattle, our host impulsively changed one of our destinations from a classic car museum to the Pacific Bonsai Museum, which turned out to be fortuitous because the Pacific Bonsai Museum appears to be in danger of closing, or at least moving – I am having trouble finding information online. I thought we got this information from the information staff.

This is an outdoor museum, hosted on the grounds of a former Weyerhauser campus, and was a very peaceful visit for us, as we were virtually the only guests (a weekday afternoon). I know nothing about bonsai, so I took a lot of pictures, as did our host, and my Arts Editor picked out the best of mine. We were somewhat hampered by suboptimal lighting conditions – it was too bright, the shadows too abrupt.

This first set are classic pictures – the subject centered and presented, almost informationally.

Perhaps to portray a bit of a wind?

Lovely fall foliage.

A lovely image of life and death.

Some of the bonsai had painted backgrounds. My Arts Editor didn’t seem to approve.

I find I prefer more dramatic shots, and here’s what I managed to get by my Editor in that category.

Some OK use of shading.

Then there’s this, just sitting there under the tree. I have no idea as to its nature.

We did run across another visitor, and I’m amazed at how well this shot came out.

All in all, a relaxing and fun time.

I would not have thought the super-powers of evaporation would save us from ourselves, but here we are. From Nature Communications and Ahmet-Hamdi Cavusoglu, Xi Chen, Pierre Gentine & Ozgur Sahin: