Monthly Archives: October 2017

Luthier:

A luthier (/ˈluːtiər/ LOO-ti-ər)^[1] is someone who builds or repairs string instruments generally consisting of a neck and a sound box. The word “luthier” comes from the French word luth, which means lute. A luthier was originally a maker of lutes, but the term now includes makers of stringed instruments such as the violin or classical guitar. A luthier does not make harps or pianos, as these require different skills and construction methods because their strings are secured to a frame. [Wikipedia]

This word was mentioned by my Arts Editor during lunch today.

Sami Grover on Treehugger.com has more news on this recent sub-thread concerning electric jets. I found his report on the strategy of Zunum to be of more interest than the propulsion itself:

The first story, reported by Fast Company and others, suggests that Zunum—a Seattle-based start-up recently out of stealth mode, and backed up by Boeing and JetBlue—is gunning for hybrid-electric passenger flights as early as 2022, and 100% battery electric flights not so long after.That’s a pretty astounding ambition. Key to it, though, is understanding that Zunum isn’t trying to just superimpose electric propulsion over our current inefficient, centralized hub-and-spoke model for passenger air travel. Instead, Zunum is developing smaller, nimbler aircraft with between 10 and 50 seats that are capable of utilizing America’s network of regional airports to service point-to-point trips of 700 miles and less, slashing journey times in half and offering competitive pricing of somewhere around 8 cents per passenger mile. The model, they say, is capable of delivering an 80% cut in emissions on regional air travel.

So just why do we have a hub and spoke system right now, anyways? Kevin Bonsor’s answer on How Stuff Works:

The hub-and-spoke system became the norm for most major airlines after the U.S. federal government deregulated the airlines in 1978. Under the direct-route, or point-to-point, system used prior to deregulation, airlines were forced by the federal government to fly directly between two small markets. This resulted in many flights that were routinely half empty, which resulted in airlines losing money. Today, most airlines have at least one central airport that their flights have to go through. From that hub, the spoke flights take passengers to select destinations.

It would be interesting to see a graph of the efficiency of flying passengers as passenger count varies for a generic fossil fuel jet, and then the same graph for these projected, small electric jets.

If you want a more technical approach to the subject of hub and spoke vs point to point, MS&E 135 @ Stanford has some material, which I did not read thoroughly, but I do take their points concerning the vulnerability of the hub & spoke model to weather incidents – and how a  point to point system can work around it.

I see President Trump has made today’s rescue of a family held hostage by the Taliban all about himself:

An American woman, her Canadian husband and their three children have been freed from captivity by Pakistani security forces, nearly five years after being taken hostage by the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani Network in Afghanistan. …

“This is a country that did not respect us, this is a country that respects us now. The world is starting to respect us again, believe me,” Trump said appearing to reference Pakistan and that country’s role in bringing about the the recovery of the four hostages. [CNN]

The sad thing is that he’s probably more or less right. A world leader as erratic and, to be honest, ignorant and inexperienced as Trump must be treated with far more caution than, say, a far more respected leader such as Obama, because the latter is far more predictable and temperate, while Trump has repeatedly demonstrated flares of temper inappropriate to a leader that controls a nuclear arsenal. It’s true that Trump backs down just about all the time, but it’s still a stomach-churning worry to wonder if he’ll go after you if you don’t cooperate.

If you’re worried that the clashing horns of Kim and Trump might lead to a nuclear exchange, then you won’t want to hear Debra MacKenzie’s report on the breakdown of the MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) doctrine in NewScientist (23 September 2017, paywall):

But beyond that headline news lies a less well-known, but potentially more disturbing, story. A series of seemingly minor technological upgrades have been destabilising the foundations of deterrence, sparking a new nuclear arms race with unforeseeable consequences. “The danger of an accident leading to nuclear war is as high now as it was during periods of peak crisis during the cold war,” says Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists.

The rules of deterrence as formulated in the cold war depend on guaranteed retaliation to any nuclear strike. If an enemy can knock out your ability to retaliate by launching a surprise first strike on your nuclear missiles – called a counterforce attack – deterrence fails (see “Will they, won’t they?”). …

Just because the US may now be more able to take out another country’s nuclear deterrent doesn’t mean it plans to, of course. But in the game of deterrence, what matters is perceptions. James Acton of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think tank in Washington DC, thinks the US would be very unlikely to try a first strike. It would not find and destroy all of Russia or China’s mobile land-based or submarine missiles, and those that survived would be used to retaliate. “But many experts [in Russia and China] are deeply, genuinely worried about the survivability of their nuclear deterrent, and even if such fears are exaggerated they can drive escalation.”

The growth in US missile defence systems is also stoking these fears. These undermine deterrence by, in theory, allowing a country to launch a first attack safe in the knowledge that it can intercept any retaliatory strikes. In May this year, apparently in response to accelerated nuclear missile development by North Korea, the US conducted the first successful test – against a simulated ICBM – of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system it has been developing since 1999.

In response, China made angry accusations that this would “start a new arms race”. Last year the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, made the same charge, naming US “high precision weapons” – an apparent reference to the super-fuse – plus missile defence as the reason.

I’m not a military historian, but the perpetual arms race can often lead to destabilization when some countries fall too far behind the leaders. Of course, considering these facts in isolation is a mistake; it’s feasible to make the argument that America’s vulnerability in the cyberwarfare sector balances the nuclear weapons advantage -except cyberwarfare only has an outside chance of destroying the world.

So against this backdrop, reports that President Trump thinks the United States has fallen behind in the nuclear weapons department are particularly startling.

President Donald Trump said he wanted what amounted to a nearly tenfold increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal during a gathering this past summer of the nation’s highest-ranking national security leaders, according to three officials who were in the room.

Trump’s comments, the officials said, came in response to a briefing slide he was shown that charted the steady reduction of U.S. nuclear weapons since the late 1960s. Trump indicated he wanted a bigger stockpile, not the bottom position on that downward-sloping curve. [NBC News]

I suppose it’s a graphic example of taking data out of context. I don’t know what was on the slide mentioned above, but here’s a graph from the Arms Control Association:

And here’s some context, same source:

What this doesn’t measure, of course, are relative technological achievements. If that were factored in, apparently the United States would be towering over Russia and China.

And while Trump would consider that good, I’d have to wonder if that tends to destabilize world peace.

Sami Grover on Treehugger.com relays his discussion with the owner of the Mayton Inn, a provider of electric charging stations, concerning her experiences:

Unlike some locations, which restrict access to hotel or restaurant guests, The Mayton has made their charging stations available free to use by any member of the public. I ask Deanna about this and she’s very frank with her answer:

“Why would I restrict it? The cost is next to nothing. Nobody would pay attention if I did try to police it. And folks are likely to come in and have a drink as a goodwill gesture anyway.”

I can confirm that I validated Deanna’s point, staying for an extra hour over a pint of delicious ESB in order to charge our plug-in hybrid for the journey home. …

Overall, this is just one more example among many that the scare stories about a lack of charging infrastructure are overblown, at best, and complete nonsense at worst. The infrastructure is there. You see the results of it every time you flip a light switch. It’s simply a question of providing access. As more businesses install Level 2 charging as a perk for customers, employees and guests, I suspect range anxiety will rapidly become a thing of the past.

Of course, we’ll still need truly fast, scalable charging infrastructure for the occasional road trip—and there’s work to be done there. But pressure on those stations will be greatly reduced by the fact that most of us will be setting off with a “full tank”, even if we’re on the road and have stayed overnight at a place like The Mayton.

The less anxiety, the more quickly the technology will be accepted.

THE FALL season is busy trampling us under foot. In response, some plantings are putting up a valiant defense, while others are having a last orgasmic growth spurt, soon to be followed by dank death. Or at least slothful sleeping.

Ever wonder how to measure and localize the anti-vaxxers? Here’s the map for you:

Courtesy Professor Chris Vargo of the University of Colorado-Boulder. The above is just a snapshot; follow the link for a real-time interactive map of Tweets with anti-vaccination content, expressed as a percentage of total Tweets. He used this to write up a paper on ScienceDirect. From the Highlights section:

• 272,546 tweets contained anti-vaccine beliefs from 2009 to 2015.
• Anti-vaccine tweets in five states were higher than the national average.
• Anti-vaccine tweet volume increased with news coverage of vaccine-related events.
• Anti-vaccine tweets clustered geographically based on census characteristics.
• Monitoring social media is beneficial to curtail anti-vaccine beliefs.

An article from CU Boulder Today on the subject has some interesting information:

In Colorado, Fort Collins ranked particularly high for the prevalence of anti-vaccine tweets. Regions around the country with high affluence and/or a large number of new moms were most likely to be hotbeds of anti-vaccine Twitter users, the study found.

“The debate online is far from over. There is still a very vocal group of people out there who are opposed to vaccines,” said study co-author Chris Vargo, an assistant professor in the College of Media, Communication and Information. “Half of the talk online that we observed about vaccines was negative.” …

Between 2010 and 2015, the study found anti-vaccine tweets became, overall, more common nationwide. As the number of households that made over $200,000 annually increased or the number of women who had delivered a baby in the past 12 months increased, so did the amount of anti-vaccine tweets.

Within states, sentiment varied widely from city to city.

For instance, in Denver, 24 percent of tweets over the course of five years were anti-vaccine while in Fort Collins, 59 percent were.

As affluence increases, so does the likelihood that you think you know better than the experts. So does money make you smarter, like Trump seems to think?

I suppose the long time persistence of anti-vaccination tweets may indicate centers of the people having those beliefs, but I’m not sure how well Twitter works as a proxy for monitoring such beliefs – perhaps it’s just one person with a bit of an obsession for some areas.

The Observer reports on a recent international conference on antibiotic resistance. Much of it is old-hat, but this is an effective paragraph:

The danger, say scientists, is one of the greatest that humanity has faced in recent times. In a drug-resistant world, many aspects of modern medicine would simply become impossible. An example is provided by transplant surgery. During operations, patients’ immune systems have to be suppressed to stop them rejecting a new organ, leaving them prey to infections. So doctors use immunosuppressant cancer drugs. In future, however, these may no longer be effective.
Or take the example of more standard operations, such as abdominal surgery or the removal of a patient’s appendix. Without antibiotics to protect them during these procedures, people will die of peritonitis or other infections. The world will face the same risks as it did before Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928.

“Routine surgery, joint replacements, caesarean sections, and chemotherapy also depend on antibiotics, and will also be at risk,” says Jonathan Pearce, head of infections and immunity at the UK Medical Research Council. “Common infections could kill again.”

One of the contributors to the problem is over-population, at least to my mind:

The position is summed up by Lance Price, an antibiotic researcher at George Washington University in Washington DC. “Superbugs are gaining strength because we continue to squander these precious medicines through overuse in human medicine and as cheap production tools in animal agriculture.”

And why did we need to use antibiotics in agriculture? Because it spurs growth and keeps more animals healthy – ideal for a predatory population that is out of control. But ideal only in the immediate context; disastrous in the greater context brought on by the introduction of the time element and the ability of microbe populations to adapt to the antibiotics.

I’ve been meditating on the vulnerabilities unique to religious folks, and sort of deciding not to follow that thought too far, when I ran across something from centuries ago. In NewScientist (23 September 2017, paywall) Michael Brooks has published an extract from his book about Jerome Cardano, who in 1526 was working in the nascent field of probability. I thought this passage was telling:

It was as a student, during one of many nights in the local tavern playing dice and cards, that Cardano realised his time could be spent much more lucratively if he thought about stakes and the likelihood of certain numbers coming up when rolling several dice at once. Especially since everyone else was working under the assumption that dice rolls were determined by the Almighty and thus couldn’t be predicted.

It’s a lovely summing up of how belief in a supernatural being can unexpectedly leave the believer vulnerable, not only to those with a better view of reality, but even scam artists.

Alphasyllabaries:

Chinese is the only major language with nothing like an alphabet. Unlike Thai or Japanese, it doesn’t even use consonant-vowel sequences written as a unit – alphasyllabaries – but consists of many and varied characters. The typewriter jokes derive from 19th-century social Darwinists who saw Chinese as more primitive than Indo-European languages, and the opposite of English, with its neat set of 26 characters. And printers long complained about the incompatibility of Chinese script with movable type, forgetting it was invented in China 400 years before Johannes Gutenberg introduced it to Europe. [“A typewriter like no other,” Douglas Heaven reviewing The Chinese Typewriter: A history, by Thomas S. Mullaney, NewScientist (23 September 2017)]

Into the dull and illogical bin tumbles The Whistler (1944). An important and successful industrialist, fresh from his latest conquest, is not feeling well. His doctor prescribes a vacation, but on his way to the ferry that’ll take him to Duluth (I kid you not), he falls badly ill and the taxicab driver takes him home, instead.

To his own home.

Mistake #1.

The taxicab driver is part of a healthy, sociable, bubbling community of people, including a medical clinic for the poor, so the taxicab driver takes the industrialist there. That doctor gives a prognosis for the industrialist that is terminal, but in the meantime the industrialist, who has neither family nor friends, finds himself falling for the nurse, who happens to be engaged to the junior doctor. Persuaded to return to the clinic for a followup, the doctor prescribes a trip to Maine, and the industrialist decides to augment his treatment and proposes marriage to the nurse, who’s been waiting on loverboy-doc for four years and is getting itchy, so she …. oh …. accepts. After all, he’ll be dead in six months.

Mistake #2.

Loverboy-doc isn’t particularly nice about it.

Mistake #3. I mean, the rich guy’ll be dead and then he can marry the grieving widow – she promises him – and become rich himself.

In Maine, they rent an out of service lighthouse that is out in the middle of nowhere, and life rapidly sours for the nurse – after all, rich husband isn’t dying on schedule, he’s even getting better, and there’s nothing much to do at the lighthouse, miles from town. However, the taxicab driver just up and comes out with them, so he’s around for comedy relief. Then loverboy-doc shows up and proclaims all is well, and all he can think of is her.

Industrialist tells loverboy-doc exactly how he’d kill him if, you know, it came to that. This comes after observing a necking session out on the rocks of the coastline, so he’s feeling a bit peevish about the wife. The plan involves alleged sleepwalking and the windows at the top of the tower – and the rocks below.

In about the only clever bit, loverboy-doc asks the taxicab driver to get window locks from the hardware story, because he says the industrialist was sleepwalking and nearly tumbled out, but it’s Saturday night, meaning the store is closed Sunday. During the inevitable confrontation on Sunday, loverboy-doc gets brained, but when the industrialist tries to toss him out the window, it doesn’t work – the taxicab driver, without locks, decided to be safe and nailed the windows shut. Before the industrialist can find another way to make it all look like an accident, the cops show up, industrialist is arrested, and that’s the boring story. Bad pacing, bad behavior by people purportedly part of a good community, mediocre acting – it doesn’t really work out.

And the title? It refers to the narrator, who really adds nothing to the story.

Ho-hum.

Back in the Mideast, it looks like maybe the Saudis have caught on to the tricks of manipulating President Trump. From Jack Detsch in AL Monitor:

The Donald Trump administration’s approval of a long-delayed, $15 billion missile-defense sale to Saudi Arabia is widely seen as a way to thwart a rival Russian bid.

The State Department announced that it had approved the sale of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) on Oct. 6, barely a day after the Saudis signed a preliminary deal for Russia’s S-400 system during King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud’s visit to Moscow. US experts say the Saudis would have great difficulty operating both.

Deploying both systems would mean “having two maintenance systems that can never cross paths, and having two spare parts pipelines,” said Dave Des Roches, a former Defense Department and White House official who now works at the National Defense University in Washington.

“They would be seriously challenged to employ those two systems simultaneously,” Des Roches told Al-Monitor. “They would have profound institutional challenges in fielding the S-400, THAAD and Patriot [air and missile defense system] at the same time.”

You have to wonder if Trump or one of his appointees (Tillerson, perhaps, given that the State Department is cited as giving approval) saw the news, realized profit was slipping away, and decided to shitcan any national security concerns that might have been holding up the deal.

While I won’t go so far to say Once a businessman, always a businessman is a good general rule, it does appear to apply to Trump. He betrays no notion of the role of government in society.

If you count Obama and Clinton as part of the Democratic leadership, the delay in their individual responses to the Weinstein revelations – Weinstein being a big Democratic donor – is quite disappointing. CNN reports it took five days for Clinton to issue a statement:

On Tuesday morning, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, the Democratic party’s 2016 vice presidential nominee, sat down for an interview on CNN’s “New Day.” Asked about the allegations of sexual harassment against Harvey Weinstein, the deposed Hollywood mogul, Kaine said: “Any leader should condemn this. These allegations are low-life behavior.”

By that definition, the last two Democratic presidents as well as the party’s 2016 nominee are not leaders.

If the Democrats are reaching for the position of moral authority – an easy grab, given GOP behaviors – they appear to be dropping the ball at the very top, although the other Democrats are scrambling to disassociate themselves from Weinstein via statement and donating the money he gave them to various charities.

But it remains disappointing.

Remember the painted ladies we photographed earlier this summer? This makes them look sick:

A lacy, cloudlike pattern drifting across a Denver-area radar screen turned out to be a 110-kilometre-wide wave of butterflies, forecasters say.Paul Schlatter of the National Weather Service said he first thought flocks of birds were making the pattern he saw on the radar Tuesday, but the cloud was headed northwest with the wind, and migrating birds would be southbound in October.

He asked birdwatchers on social media what it might be, and by Wednesday had his answer: People reported seeing a loosely spaced net of painted lady butterflies drifting with the wind across the area.

Schlatter said the colours on the radar image are a result of the butterflies’ shape and direction, not their own colours.

Midwestern radar stations occasionally pick up butterflies, but Schlatter believes it’s a first for Denver. [thestar.com]

Wow.

[Via Walter Einenkel on The Daily Kos]

A reader helps me realize my idea:

I dunno. Would Godzilla be so delicate about it?

Shibley Telhami offers up a definition of terrorism vs mass killings in Lawfare that I found interesting but muddled:

Regardless of the legal distinctions, I suggest that there is a prevalent sense that terrorism occupies a higher order of immorality, and offer reflections on its origin and justifiability.The definition of terrorism includes both ends and means, but moral judgment is principally based on the means. People can morally sympathize with the motives behind some ends of terrorism—freedom, self-determination, etc.—while rejecting the means. With “hate crimes,” on the other hand, both ends and means are objected to, by definition. “Mass murder” is at least as morally objectionable as terrorism, and sometimes more. Yet “terrorism” adds an irrational stigma that elevates moral objections.

There is a similar stigma associated with “suicide terrorism.” All terrorism is morally objectionable based on its targeting of civilians/noncombatants. The “suicide” part adds little value to the moral objections.  Without the objectionable targeting of noncombatants, sacrificing the self for a higher cause is celebrated by almost every society. Yet for some, this form of terrorism seems to occupy an even higher level of immorality.

I would look at acts as having two parts – the goal, and the activity that is implemented to move the state of the world closer to that goal, which is to say, many actions are merely part of a larger campaign; although none by themselves is adequate to the goal, as a cumulative effect they will accomplish the goal, at least in the minds of the planners.

So we can classify goals into at least two categories. First, there are those which are putatively political in nature, whether it’s the assertion that a different party should be in power, the revolt of the oppressed in order to relieve themselves of an oppressive regime, etc. At their heart, they are about who will control the community, even unto definition of community, and they can be thus classified as apparently social. I say apparently because these sorts of actions may mask the personal ambitions of one or more people, who intend to use them to implement those ambitions with little regard to the impact on the community. These are moral judgments.

The second category of goals is the explicitly selfish, where society’s state is not considered or is deliberately and negatively impacted. This can contain such diverse goals as buying a refreshment to deliberate Acts of War up to and including insanity.

The activity implementing the goal will also have a moral dimension; whether it is unmodified by the goal is up for debate.

To my mind, terrorism is that collection of goals and activities implementing goals wherein the goal is of the first category, i.e., an attempt to influence a society for a political goal, while the activity is of a negative moral dimension – in this case, mass killings of civilians.

Thus the Twin Towers and the various incidents in Europe over the last few years are terrorism, as well as the Oklahoma City bombing (an anti-government goal) and the tragedy at the AIM church in Charleston. The Unabomber was a serial but not mass-killer, but we could argue that is terrorism as well, if we expand the definition of the necessary activity slightly.

On the other hand, without any information as to the Las Vegas shooter’s motivations, we must conclude it was some internal, selfish motive, and simply call it a massacre; ditto the Valentine’s Day massacre, Ted Bundy, etc.

Getting back to Shibley, he says ‘Yet “terrorism” adds an irrational stigma that elevates moral objections.’ I’m not quite sure how to take this, but I think irrational may be a strong word, if only within my informal attempt at systematization. Terrorism, in my definition, implies a certain coordinated, shared idea among a group with greater resources than a single person. Is it irrational to fear them more than mere greed-borne violence, or that originating in essential malice? I would have to question that thought.

But, in the end, Shibley’s concerns are somewhat beside the point in the eye of the political hurricane, especially that of Trump. Politicians often have little but words, and they seem prone to use them to advantage, rather than to convey truth. For his community on Lawfare, I am sure they are valuable; but will those who truly need to understand them even hear of them?

Trophic cascade:

Trophic cascades occur when predators in a food web suppress the abundance or alter the behavior of their prey, thereby releasing the next lower trophic level from predation (or herbivory if the intermediate trophic level is a herbivore). For example, if the abundance of large piscivorous fish is increased in a lake, the abundance of their prey, smaller fish that eat zooplankton, should decrease. The resulting increase in zooplankton should, in turn, cause the biomass of its prey, phytoplankton, to decrease.

The trophic cascade is an ecological concept which has stimulated new research in many areas of ecology. For example, it can be important for understanding the knock-on effects of removing top predators from food webs, as humans have done in many places through hunting and fishing. [Wikipedia]

Encountered in this video.

On 38 North, Andray Abrahamian analyzes how Trump’s insults of Kim Jong-Un has substantially increased tensions:

Aside from the confusing signals he’s sending to Pyongyang by undermining the credibility of negotiators, the escalation towards personal insults carries several real downsides. First, he’s clearly upset Kim Jong Un, potentially clouding decision-making in the ongoing crisis. Second, in a system where the “dignity” of the state is prize above all else and conflated with reverence for the leader, policy-making elites around Kim will find it harder to advocate for discussions or compromise as long as the symbolic and practical heart of their country is being insulted. Ordinary citizens will have to be seen rallying around their leader, also. …

The seat of practical power [Kim Jong Un] is also the embodiment of political and social life. Thus, when Donald Trump took to personally insulting Kim Jong Un, he crossed a rhetorical line that Pyongyang will take more seriously than he could possibly imagine. Trump’s condescending “rocket man” swipes were in a sense assaults at the heart of North Korea, far graver than bombers flying off the coast in a show of force.

Every North Korean—regardless of how he or she actually feels—must publicly push back against such slurs. As long as insults continue, it is difficult to imagine anyone in Pyongyang considering meaningful talks to diffuse this crisis. In a fast-moving situation, any time lost could be catastrophic.

Kim Jong Un upped the ante, too. After all, he is not just a symbol but also apparently a quite prideful person. To defend his “dignity,” he slung his own insults back in the Rodong Sinmun [North Korean newspaper].

In doing so, Kim not only forced English speakers to look up the word “dotard,” but also made it clear to every one of his citizens that he took Trump’s insults very personally. Fortunately, he was light on prescriptions for action: statements by the Kims tend to become orthodoxy. But still, in a system where every person—certainly anyone near the top—competes to show loyalty to the leader, Kim has reduced the prospect of people close to him suggesting negotiations or compromises. Debate at the very top of North Korean politics does exist, but it comes prior to the leader’s decision. Kim has now narrowed that debate. Who could be seen to be advocating a softer line, when the dignity of their leader continues to be impugned?

If a cataclysm on the Korean peninsula is to be avoided, President Trump must dial back the personal nature of his rhetoric. What worked well on the campaign trail will not yield results with Kim Jong Un. Kim will push back. He may even stumble into a war for the sake of his personal pride.

Which I sense complicates the question of the impeachment of Donald Trump. Could he claim that by impeaching and convicting him, we’re playing into the hands of Kim? Showing ourselves to be “soft” in front of a second-class power?

What am I thinking – of course he would. He is one of the most unprincipled American politicians ever, and I think that means he’ll do anything to deflect attempts to remove him from power – and thus put a blot on his honor.

As if his tie isn’t already completely obscured by the blots.

But, to explain the title of this post, by impeaching and convicting Trump, it might put Kim in a position where he’s less likely to “… stumble into a war …” The question isn’t who loses face next week, but whether or not you country is still intact next year. Are we willing to sacrifice Los Angeles to feed Trump’s pride?

You’ve been a bad, bad boy! (Warner Bros via Vox)

The reason Blade Runner (1982) sits atop many science fiction film lists is because it excelled in nearly every area of movie making, from the story to the special effects to the movie score. But this review is not about Blade Runner, but its sequel, Blade Runner 2049 (2017), and the inevitable question: how does it stack up? And how do you write a review without giving away the plot (a point of little consequence in a Belated Movie Review)?

Technically, it’s somewhat inferior. The musical score, while referential to the original, is its own thing, and not quite as well done. The original’s score clearly cast the pall of a doomed and decaying world across the actions of the small, petty creatures that insisted on pursuing their small objectives across the canvas of that world. The new movie’s score is less complex, more prone to simple volume that nearly drove us to distraction. Perhaps it was meant to supply hope, a central theme of the movie, but I was uncertain on that point.

The special effects were a wonder in the original, but they coordinated with the score in that they underlined vastness, whether of world or of the city, by placing small, futuristic vehicles in a context where they flew in straight lines, subtly emphasizing the contrast and setting, and if that was a limitation of the special effects of the era, it was a fortune one. In the new movie, one might say that the effects are better rendered, yet with a little less effect. In particular, the flying cars now maneuver like planes and land with a flourish, which I felt was at odds with a world falling into cold death. Indeed, unlike the original, where many characters are clearly physically flawed, we do not generally see that many such characters – and yet this is a blighted world that has not been miraculously saved from the foolish ways of its inhabitants. Indeed, the presence of a single, beautiful flower draws immediate attention in a world struggling to survive ecological collapse. Still, there are some good technical marvels, including a sequence in which an artificial intelligence with a projection system is trying to coordinate with a flesh and blood prostitute in order to conjugate with her master.

The original’s story asked interesting questions about future scenarios – what happens when we can construct thinking, living creatures that are better than us, and seek to limit them? The sequel also has its questions, the quite natural ones concerning slavery – and, perhaps, in an underhanded way, divinity. But the approach to those questions isn’t as driving as those of the original, where Deckard is fighting to put to death those who are most passionately asking Why should we be limited? – and Deckard’s lack of an answer is torturing him. The lead in the sequel, Joe, is less tortured, and his lack of reaction to most stimuli, while predictable and expected, lets out much of the emotional impact of the movie. Even his loss of the closest thing to a mate provokes little, even if he is just about dead at that point.

Is the story interesting? Sure. Is it as good as the original? No. Especially the transcendent climax of the original, which would be difficult to match. To remind the forgetful reader, at that point, we expect Deckard to finish killing the replicants, and he manages to kill Pris, much to his own horror, but after an epic battle with Roy which reveals more about both men than most fights, Deckard is overwhelmed. He doesn’t die, but only because Roy finds he loves life more than anything, and if he must be deprived of it through the cold decision of a corporation, he won’t perpetuate such a cruel decision himself – even if his opponent hasn’t reached the moral level of Roy, the replicant.

You won’t find any such transcendence in the sequel, although it is an intense scene.

In the end, I felt there were a few too many explosions and not enough attention paid to the story. It’s fun, but not mind-expanding.

Sure, go see it – but it’s no Blade Runner.

The continual struggle over abortion rights is the reflection of the fight to convert the secular United States into a Christian theocracy – whether or not the anti-abortion activists realize it. But there are other religions than Christianity, and a member of – ironically – the Satanists may have found a crack in the attack strategy of the Christian theocrats, as her case has won a transfer to the Missouri Supreme Court. From The Kansas City Star:

The Western District Court of Appeals ruled in her favor Tuesday, writing that her constitutional challenge — rare for its basis in religion — presented “a contested matter of right that involves fair doubt and reasonable room for disagreement.”

The woman, identified as Mary Doe in court documents, argued that her religion [Satanism] does not adhere to the idea that life begins at conception, and, because of that, the prerequisites for an abortion in Missouri are unconstitutionally violating her freedom of religion protected by the First Amendment. …

She claims that “the sole purpose of the law is to indoctrinate pregnant women into the belief held by some, but not all, Christians that a separate and unique human being begins at conception,” according to the court’s opinion. “Because the law does not recognize or include other beliefs, she contends that it establishes an official religion and makes clear that the state disapproves of her beliefs.”

The case would be the first of its kind to be heard by either the Missouri Supreme Court or U.S. Supreme Court, according to the Western District Court.

State supported indoctrination into a religion is definitely an un-American activity.

Let’s talk about this from the view of society, skipping the entire history of abortion, as I’m not up to date on it. As a secular nation, we recognize there are various religions with a variety of tenets, shared and unique, but we decline to recognize any as closer to being accurate than another, including atheists, who would contend that there is not a God and therefore they cannot be a religion; for the purposes of this argument, however, it’s convenient and undamaging to group them as another religion, devoid of insult to them.

Given this noncommittal, Constitutionally-required governmental attitude, the word ‘sacred’ becomes a term of convenience with no force of law, given the inevitable variety of incompatible definitions, and with a force of moral leverage only within the community which promulgates a meaning to it; these communities, being religious by definition, cannot force the term or its meaning into legal vocabularies. And to suggest that life is sacred, then, is meaningless in the governmental context. Any argument involving the concept of sacredness is irrelevant.

But governments have responsibilities to those they govern; they exist to protect and help those societies prosper. But how does one decide whether any activity at all should be illegal, by which I include abortion, murder, fraud, etc? While I do love liberty, all mature members of society admit to limits on liberty: your right to freedom stops where my nose begins, as the old saying goes. It’s a lovely and inspirational phrase, but lacks in analytical power.

So let me suggest that analyzing actions based on their potential to cause negative disruptions for society might be a start. First, a couple of examples.

1. Murder: The use of death to settle minor arguments would inevitably tear families apart, destroy productivity, and dissolve the trust on which society best functions. This is, without a doubt, negative for society.
2. Fraud: The inability to trust a seller to deliver the promised goods would halt the economy and leave us all starving. The importance of honor in transactions is of such importance to the proper functioning of the economy that it is important it be enforced.
3. Theft: The unpredictable loss of one’s goods to a thief would halt the economy, since ownership would become an extremely fluid concept and, no doubt, result in a lot of murders. Again, bad for society.

So, abortion. How does abortion disrupt society? Well, honestly, it’s not clear that it does beyond the disturbance it causes in those whose religion (or, to be properly descriptive, whose religion’s representatives) teaches that it is a sin (another term of no legal significance); and I don’t observe general disruptions due to abortions, I certainly can think of no societies that have failed because of abortions.

In support of the proposition that abortion is not disruptive to society is the libertarian observation that the parents, in particular the women who are quite often responsible for the well-being of these potential children, are also best placed to decide whether or not a child is supportable in the current or most probable future environment. If there are already five children present and a sixth would stretch the resources too much, deciding to abort may be the wisest decision. If abortion is not available, now we have broken families, families in poverty, poorly educated children.

And a nation that may be falling behind rivals, because it’s wasting resources, human or otherwise, on poorly managed families.

There is a hidden factor here, which, if it were to change its character, would precipitate a need for some sort of denial of abortion, and that factor is the natural and fierce affection the normal parents have for their own children. This factor is perhaps the most important, because in its absence, the human species would disappear. Because of this, we needn’t worry about it unless we suffer extreme over-population and discover that, in such an environment, we behave like rats in similar straits. That is, we resort to cannibalism.

Some readers might ask about laws concerning the death of fetuses caused in the course of a crime, such as murder or other felony. Naturally, I could reply that they have been passed under a confused regime and are not germane to my argument, but I shan’t hide behind that legitimate argument. Instead, I would suggest that a fetus is a possession, to be dealt with by the best judgment of those who own it. It qualifies as a possession through the natural investment of resources and the assumption of risk, primarily bodily.

And the transition from possession to person has been, historically, problematic. One might suggest that in more militaristic societies, a person (or at least male) only achieves personhood after successfully finishing public service, and until then the state owns them. My take on it is that this is one of those problematic areas where the intersection between our intellectual concepts of how societies should work and how our biology works shows the unpleasantly ragged, even unfinished, seam. While the concept that life, both actual and potential, is sacred can have its societal advantages, in the end it is not congruent with a reality that makes it abundantly clear that life is merely something that doggedly continues and grows, restricted only by access to resources. It’s not life in itself that is sacred, but rather the desire for a placid and prosperous society which suggests that life should be treated with respect, but with the knowledge that the afore-described society is the sacred thing, and the respect for life the path to that goal.

Finally, how to describe infanticide by a mother under my proposal? Is the infant still a possession or a person? I submit the question ignores a probability, and that probability is this: a mother, whose healthy and instinctual urge is to care for the child, from all observation, must be quite dangerous and prone to other crime if she’ll commit infanticide. The murder of the infant should be taken as a symptom of a dangerous personality, who should be controlled (arrested) on detection. For that reason alone, the infant should be a person under law.

And the same goes for the father, or, for that matter, anyone else. Children, once accepted, are the future, and those who would murder such vulnerable people are a danger to all.

Elide:

1. 1. :to suppress or alter (something, such as a vowel or syllable) by elision
   2. :to strike out (something, such as a written word)
2. 1. :to leave out of consideration :omit
   2. : curtail, abridge

[Merriam-Webster]

I used it in this post.

If you think North Korea cannot be influenced, think again. John Feffer on 38 North notes an exception:

North Korea has the worst human rights record of any country in the world except perhaps Eritrea and Syria. There is, however, a curious exception to this record: disability rights. This case offers a powerful counter-example of successful engagement in an arena where the country normally experiences nothing but universal condemnation.

For nearly two decades, outside NGOs have been working with Pyongyang to improve conditions for the nearly two million people with disabilities in the country. Over the course of this engagement, North Korea has altered its conduct in three important ways. It has cooperated with the United Nations to bring its disability policies more in line with international standards. It has permitted the growth of the very first shoots of civil society focused on the rights of the disabled. And it has allowed more contact between its citizens with disabilities and the outside world.

Any particular reason?

“I’ve spoken with many UN officials, and I don’t think anyone is under any illusion of a dramatic sea change in North Korean human rights,” says Greg Scarlatoiu, the executive director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. The country has ignored other issues, he points out, such as “the terrible things done to political prisoners in the camps, the utter lack of freedom of expression, freedom of association, any conceivable human right. But in this case, they selected [disability rights] as a point of contact where they can make some cosmetic changes and get away with it—or who knows, perhaps go a little deeper and make some serious changes and see where it takes them.”

However, organizing international support for human rights in North Korea around disability rights demonstrates that engagement can yield positive benefits for North Koreans and still advance certain US goals. It’s also a good example of how human rights work can promote more connections with the international community rather than fewer. “Especially in the current context of escalating tensions, the human rights system needs to put its energy into promoting dialog and discussion,” says the UN’s Devandas Aguilar. “That is the only way forward to avoid armed conflict or confrontation.”

Which is quite interesting. I wonder if it’s simply the fact that disabilities are not uncommon and can strike regardless of societal status. Add in the fact that in the West it’s a sign of civilization to care for those with disabilities, rather than ignore them.

Or I could be totally wrong.

With regards to JCPOA obligations, this remark by Elena Chachko on Lawfare caught me off-guard:

The Obama administration maintained that the JCPOA was not legally binding and, therefore, did not require Senate approval. The U.S. could stop implementing it at any time without violating its obligations under international law (see Jimmy Chalk’s post). In order to fulfill the United States’s commitment,, the administration relied on pre-existing authorities that gave the president discretion in the application of sanctions against Iran (see Jack Goldsmith’s post and lecture). Specifically, the administration utilized existing waiver authorities that previous sanctions legislation had granted to the president. Executive orders allowed the president to impose other sanctions and could be withdrawn with relative ease.

Which might take some of the stuffing out of my remarks on the matter in the beginning post of this thread. Still, it is an agreement, a matter of honor, and my remarks on Bolton’s intemperate proposal still do apply.

Elena goes on to note that there is no automatic actions triggered by a decertification by Trump. I think this is less important in the United States’ context than the entire JCPOA context: once the JCPOA is abrogated, parties which had sanctions on Iran prior to the JCPOA are not obligated to reimpose those sanctions.

If President Trump decertifies Iran’s compliance without solid evidence, we may find ourselves trying to sanction Iran by ourselves, which will be ineffective. Then we’ll try to bully the other parties to the JCPOA into re-introducing those sanctions.

And the United States’ reputation will take yet another hit, and our influence will continue to wane under this President’s amateur leadership.

I see that Senator Corker, who has announced he will not run for re-election, has become the favorite target of President Trump.

In case you’re wondering abut the Iran deal remark, Senator Corker did not sign the “Letter to Iran” concerning the JCPOA (aka the Iran nuclear deal). Perhaps Trump thinks this is significant in some way.

Corker did respond via Twitter:

It’s a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.

Me? I think Trump is making an example of Corker. Trump’s such a fucking amateur that he thinks a few disagreements makes you a mortal enemy.

And I think Corker should take this nuclear, to utilize a metaphor. For the good of the nation, I think Senator Corker should announce his resignation from the GOP and announce he’ll no longer caucus with the GOP, but rather with the Democrats.

And, for good measure, he should announce he’ll be thinking for himself from now on.

Who knows, maybe we can get Senators Collins and Murkowski to cross the line as well. After all, they’re the next ones on Trump’s Enemys^[1] List.

¹Misspelled on purpose.