Semiotics:
: a general philosophical theory of signs and symbols that deals especially with their function in both artificially constructed and natural languages and comprises syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics [Merriam-Webster]
Referenced in the previous Word Of The Day.
From WaPo:
Seeking to prove that a conspiracy of astronauts fabricated the shape of the Earth, a California man intends to launch himself 1,800 feet high on Saturday in a rocket he built from scrap metal.
Assuming the 500-mph, mile-long flight through the Mojave Desert does not kill him, Mike Hughes told the Associated Press, his journey into the atmosflat will mark the first phase of his ambitious flat-Earth space program.
Hughes’s ultimate goal is a subsequent launch that puts him miles above the Earth, where the 61-year-old limousine driver hopes to photograph proof of the disc we all live on.
“It’ll shut the door on this ball earth,” Hughes said in a fundraising interview with a flat-Earth group for Saturday’s flight. Theories discussed during the interview included NASA being controlled by round-Earth Freemasons and Elon Musk making fake rockets from blimps.
Ya gotta admire a guy ready to put his life on the line for a long disproven theory. You could even say he’s just participating in scientific research, attempting to disprove a hypothesis first formulated by ancient Greeks.
Hope he doesn’t become an object lesson.
Ostension:
The word ‘ostention’ comes from the Latin ‘ostendere’, to show.
It was used by semiotician Umberto Eco to refer to moments in oral communication when, instead of using words, people substitute actions, such as putting a finger on your lips to indicate that someone should be quiet.Folklorists Linda Dégh and Andrew Vázsonyi appropriated the term in their 1983 article “Does the word ‘dog’ bite? Ostensive Action as a Means of Legend-Telling” to refer to ways in which real-life actions are guided by legends.
For instance, legends of contaminated Halloween candy predated the finding of actual contaminants in treats by at least ten years (Dégh and Vázsonyi, 1983). Individuals who placed needles, razor blades and other dangerous objects in treats as pranks engaged in a form of ostension. The theory of ostension explains how easily certain elements can pass from legend to ritualised action. [ostension.org]
Noted in “Pizzagate and Beyond: Using Social Research to Understand Conspiracy Legends,” Jeffrey S. Debies-Carl, Skeptical Inquirer (November / December 2017, print only):
In doing so, participants enter into the legend itself, acting out a part of it as one of its characters, and thereby “telling” its narrative through the process of ostension – through their behaviors rather than through words.
Movant:
One who makes a motion before a court. The applicant for a judicial rule or order.
Generally, it is the job of the movant to convince a judge to rule, or grant an order, in favor of the motion. Rules and legal precedent within particular jurisdictions, as well as the type of motion sought, dictate the burdens of proof and persuasion each party must meet when a court considers a motion. [TheFreeDictionary.com]
Noted in “Burlington lawyer joins U.S. Supreme Court Bar,” Isaac Groves, The Times-News of Burlington, North Carolina:
Campbell actually recruited Berry and a few other graduates to apply to the bar. She was one of the dozen or so who made the cut. It was not a difficult process to apply, Berry said. She had to contact the N.C. Supreme Court and get her standing in this jurisdiction to show she had no disciplinary actions or grievances against her professionally.
The induction was done at the Supreme Court itself earlier this month before the nine justices, with all the legal pomp the high court is known for, where a current member of the bar — a movant — requested Berry be admitted.
“Your movant introduces you to the Supreme Court by name,” Berry said, “and then you stand and you look down at all nine justices, or rather you look up at all nine justices, and they look down at you, and the chief justice says, ‘You are so affirmed.’”
Palimpsest:
- :writing material (such as a parchment or tablet) used one or more times after earlier writing has been erased
- :something having usually diverse layers or aspects apparent beneath the surface
Canada … is a palimpsest, an overlay of classes and generations. —Margaret Atwood
too short a time to get to know the palimpsest of Genevan societies, let alone those of Switzerland —George Steiner
Noted in “Editing the Human Germline: Groundbreaking Science and Mind-Numbing Sentiment,” Kenneth W. Krause, quoting Jennifer Doudna, CRISPR gene-editing pioneer, Skeptical Inquirer (November / December 2017, not apparently online yet):
Humans had never before had a tool like CRISPR, and it had the potential to turn not only living people’s genomes but also all future genomes into a collective palimpsest upon which any bit of genetic code could be erased and overwritten depending on the whims of the generation doing the writing …
[Typos mine]
Opening the old email bag with shaking hands (nyah, just sick) revealed this bit of trash:
72 years later!
THE 5 STATEMENTS AT THE END SAY IT ALL!
—————————— ————–What happened to the radiation that’s
supposed to lasts thousands of years?
This isn’t really relevant, but HuffPo treated this question here.
HIROSHIMA (1945)
We all know that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed
in August 1945 after the explosion of atomic bombs.However, we know very little about the progress made
by the people of that land during the past 72 years.HIROSHIMA – 72 YEARS LATER
DETROIT – 72 YEARS AFTER HIROSHIMA
What has caused more long term destruction –
The A-bomb,Or
Government welfare programs created to buy the
votes of those who want someone to take care of them?Japan does not have a welfare system.
( READ THIS SENTENCE AGAIN AND ASK, ‘WHY NOT?’ )Work for it or do without.
These are possibly the 5 best statements you’ll ever read and
all applicable to this social experiment:1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.
2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!
5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.
Can you think of a reason for not sharing this?
Neither could I . .
I’ll just stipulate the pictures because I’m sick and tired and not very good at tracking down picture provenances. And they are not the issue here, of course. The author of this bit of trash is frantic to push out a bit of conservative kant (it has a small helping of libertarianism in it as well), but he’s really on slippery ground right the get-go. The situation in Japan, which was the recipient of massive American aid in response to the start of the Cold War for both tactical and strategic reasons, as well as having an extremely cohesive population. This is far different from Detroit, which has had poor leadership over the decades, a leadership that often depended on the new big plant by one of the automakers to advance its fortunes. When they decided to move away, the lack of alternative commerce was a real problem.
And then, of course, came the Great Recession.
But here’s the kicker, the thing I look for in these emails that swim the conservative bloodstream:
The outright lie.
So what’s the lie du jour?
Japan does not have a welfare system.
Um, no. Sorry, maybe you can play again when you’ve learned the difference between a truth and a lie. From the The Japan Times:
Welfare system not faring well
BY PHILIP BRASOR
SEP 25, 2011Ten years ago, in her book “Nickel and Dimed,” Barbara Ehrenreich chronicled her own experience as a subsistence-level American wage-earner during a period of relative economic vigor. She found a whole class of workers who lived — and would always live — from paycheck to paycheck. In the afterword to the recently published tenth-anniversary edition of the book, Ehrenreich says that in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown, these people now have to compete for minimum-wage jobs. Ever since President Bill Clinton overhauled the welfare system, many poor Americans no longer qualify for assistance, which means they have nothing to fall back on. The “safety net” has turned into a “dragnet,” since, in line with the contraction of welfare eligibility, many state and municipal governments have effectively “criminalized homelessness.”
In spirit, Japan’s public welfare system is closer to America’s than it is to Europe’s. Citizens do not have a right to be supported by the government. Some claim they do and as proof point to Article 25 of the Constitution, which states that all people have the right to “maintain the minimum standards of wholesome and cultured living.” But Article 27 states that people have the right “and the obligation” to work. What this means in practice is that a person who applies for welfare must pass a rigorous screening process that can include personal disclosures, such as whether or not the applicant has access to support from a relative or even a lover. The applicant has to conform to certain notions of impoverishment. I’ve heard that in the 1960s and 70s, potential welfare recipients would hide “inessential” possessions like color TVs when a case worker visited.
Differences, obviously, inevitably. But welfare.
And this isn’t some minor mistake, which I would forgive. This is the pivot on which this ghoul of a writer would invoke the demons of Hell on the souls of those poor folk who grew up poor, who were provided bad schools, ran into rampant racism, and vigilantism (fortunately, while not gone it has decreased greatly in virulence, but when you grow up with it, the intensity of today is less relevant than you might first assume – think PTSD, not to mention the economic damage already suffered).
In essence, this is bigotry, employed by someone who appears to really prefer to worship at the altar of his money rather than a more forgiving master who preaches brotherhood. This is a guy who doesn’t have the common good at heart. If he did, he’d be advocating for better schools.
But this is what the conservatives are being fed: thin ideological broth, thickened with lies.
I haven’t known much what to say about the news that Senator Al Franken (MN-D) has been credibly accused of sexual harassment on two occasions. After all, it hurts to hear someone that you consider to be a good guy. But it’s important to understand how these accusations play out in the greater context of the United States.
That context, for those not paying attention, includes the accusations of harassment and rape against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, and his subsequent removal from the board of directors of his own company; accusations of sexual harassment by President Trump, as well as his own taped admission that he had engaged in same (which he characterized as “locker-room” talk, much to the amazement of locker-room denizens); the accusations of sexually inappropriate behavior by Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, such as exposing himself to a 14 year old, and dating or attempting to date teen age girls when he was in his thirties; and accusations against lesser political lights.
The reactions have been diverse. Both Democrats and Republicans have denied charges, at least here and here in Minnesota, while Weinstein was leveraged out of his company, but Franken did not deny the accusations and issued an immediate apology and called for an investigation of himself. Even more interesting? How those who control the fates of these men have also reacted.
We have one: Trump is President.
The other accusations are too new to gather definitive results, but there are smoke signals on the horizon. In regards to candidate Moore, we’ve seen some Republicans throw up their hands and form the Republicans for Doug Jones group (Jones is the Democratic opponent in the special election for the Alabama Senatorial seat, and the group has a cool pic) to Republicans stating they will vote for Moore – despite believing the accusations against him. Franken, on the other hand, has drawn mixed fire, from those calling for his resignation from within the Democrats, to others for whom he has been an honorable warrior in the political warrior and should be excused.
These reactions are important for what they say about the state of politics in America today. Why? For most Americans, denial of position, and its concomitant power and prestige, is a punishment for misbehavior. But there’s two unsung notes to this song, and it’s this: with this punishment there’s also the signal that inappropriate behavior (and that’s an inadequate phrase, but I’m too sick to come with something better) is not tolerated and those indulging in it should never be elected. Even more importantly, by signaling that the defective, the criminals if you will, will not be permitted to climb the ladder, you’ve also signaled that this Party is open to improvement.
The obverse side of the coin? That any “perv” (as Alabama governor Kay Ivey memorably put it in the above link concerning Moore), any rapist, any murderer, demagogue, traitor, or pederast can rise through the ranks of the Party, and if they can repeat the Party-sanctioned arguments, if they can pay the right bribes or have the right charisma, they can be your “leader.” Perhaps the next tax proposed by a GOP governor will be that you bring in your teenage daughters one night a year for an overnight inspection by that governor. Purely for ideological purity reasons, boys, and leave them by door, won’t you? Because this sort of Big Green Light will result in a rush of the power-hungry to the GOP (as if that hasn’t already happened).
We may be seeing the GOP starting to shiver into pieces, although I’m not certain. Remember Governor Ivey? Here’s her statement on candidate Moore:
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey says she is still going to vote for embattled GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore, even though she thinks he’s a perv.
“I’m going to cast my ballot on December the 12th, and I do believe the nominee of the party is the one I’ll vote for,” Ivey said Friday while speaking to reporters at the state’s Thanksgiving turkey pardon event.
“I believe in the Republican Party, what we stand for, and most important, we need to have a Republican in the United States Senate to vote on things like the Supreme Court justices, other appointments the Senate has to confirm and make major decisions,” she explained. “So that’s what I plan to do, vote for Republican nominee Roy Moore.”
Ivey claimed that while she does believe the sexual assault and harassment allegations being hurled at the 70-year-old, she feels she must stay loyal to her party.
“I certainly have no reason to disbelieve any of them,” Ivey said of Moore’s accusers. “But at the same time, the United States Senate needs to have in my opinion, a majority of Republican votes to carry the day and when they have to consider other major decisions. So that’s a factor, as well.”
Buried in that statement is the crux of the matter: Party over Country. She’d rather see Moore, a man she believes to be a malignant sexual abuser, who’s been boosted out of judicial office twice for blatant anti-Constitutional actions, whose obvious lust for power should be disturbing to everyone, than Jones, who happens to be a former Federal prosecutor who doesn’t appear to have a hint of scandal on the horizon, or not so that I’ve noticed.
What does that say about her love for her country? Oh, it’s the BGL, now isn’t it? A Big Green Light to every charismatic bum and rapist who can get himself high enough in the polls. Of course, as governor she should be a leader in the state and in the Alabama GOP. She should be leading efforts to discharge the dishonorable from the Party, and, since the Party picked Moore in the primary over Strange (who, admittedly, had his own smell of potential corruption hanging over him), it’s her duty to find a polite but effective way to say What the fuck are you folks doing?
And she’s failing.
But what’s causing the shivering? The many sitting GOP Senators who’ve withdrawn support and called on Moore to step aside.
But back to Senator Franken. It saddens me to say that, as a Senator who has exhibited a lot of leadership for good from his constrained position in a GOP-dominated Senate, I think he should resign. I think what I’ve said so far should make it plain, but I’ll explain anyways. If the Democrats are to exhibit a moral character of any sort – and that’s extremely important to have in the leadership of our nation – then those who’ve transgressed must be stripped of their position and prestige. As a signal that the Party wants to improve.
Now, I’m no legal expert on Minnesota law, but I believe a new Senator would then be appointed by current Governor Dayton. And who should he pick? I’ll spare you the anticipation.
Presenting … Senator Franni Bryson, the wife of the former Senator Franken.
She’ll get excellent advice, she has a great local reputation, and if she’s not quite up to speed to start, no doubt she knows a lot already from her husband.
Don’t pull his finger.
Dark City (1998) is a puzzling movie. Structurally, it’s quite compelling, withholding vital information from the audience, letting them try to work out what’s going on as the protagonist’s world of 1950s America starts out mystifyingly, as he finds himself sitting in a bathtub in a scuzzy hotel room, with no name and nearly no memories, and a dead woman in the corner. The phone rings, he’s warned strangers are coming and he must not be caught, and so he’s off and running.
And then the story starts twisting out of control. Literally. He lucks into learning his wallet is at the automat, and so he learns his name, John Murdock, but little else. And then, while inspecting a billboard that reminds him of something, he runs into three “strangers”, who ask him to sleep and then pull knives. John escapes, but exhibits an interesting power of his own.
In the meantime, the world and its people are changing around him as the Strangers continue their enigmatic experiment on the humans. Each person he runs into adds a bit more to the puzzle, but may also knock a piece loose. The building of the mystery is well done, and despite the fact I’ve seen Dark City a number of times, I find it compelling.
Which makes the fact that the ending is less than compelling an intrigue in itself. I think the problem lies in the setup, because the Strangers, and eventually John himself, end up possessing immense powers with which they do battle. But if the Strangers have these immense powers, why are they having trouble resolving the problem motivating their research? And in the end, after John triumphs, it’s not at all clear what thematic questions were to be closed or raised. He fixes the world, saves the wife he doesn’t remember (nor does she remember him), and fixes the world.
See this for the excellent use of visuals, the atmosphere, and the good structure. I like the acting, too. Don’t look for the ending to be satisfying, though.
Due to both the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday and this head cold, I anticipate not blogging much. Of course, if I feel an opinion coming on, I’ll say something.
What? He said it was a popsicle!
In the “Tongues So Deeply In Their Cheeks They’re Poking Out The Other Side” genre is Men In Black (1997). This movie plays off many cheesy tropes of the last 40 years, including rumors about the men in black, American tabloid newspapers, and UFOs. But what really makes this tick is the use of contrast.
First, there’s dialog, which often leads in one, often predictable direction, before suddenly veering off in quite another direction which is not only disconcerting – easy enough to do – but does the harder thing of making that switch organic to the movie. Contrast often uses the mechanism of expectation, so when an alien possessing many strong and slithery tentacles gives birth on the freeway, the agent who catches the baby isn’t repulsed, as we might expect, but charmed – until the inevitable baby URP.
There’s even the contrast of the pacing, in which the younger agent is ready to run pell-mell after the bad guys, while the senior agent, aware of his primary duty to not upset the public at large, is far more sedate and patient.
But the real contrast is between the two leads, J and K. I don’t often talk about specific actors, but Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, as the enthusiastic new recruit into the organization and the crusty old senior agent, respectively, are the very picture of contrast – and of chemistry.
Along with this skillful use of contrast, the characters each have a believable motivation, from crusty old K’s reason to stay in MiB, despite having to sacrifice the love of his life, to the antagonist, who has the responsibility of feeding his family.
All 70 million of them.
Like the pathologist says in the movie, “Well, you boys certainly have an interesting job.” It may not be subtle & nuanced, but it’s fun. Recommended.
Is he casting a spell, or about to poke him in the eyes? Only the Invisible Man knows!
A painful example of the comedy-horror genre is Abbot & Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), although perhaps Dracula or The Wolfman would have been a better addition to the title than Frankenstein. In any case, this is an attempt to meld the hijinks of the legendary Abbot and Costello with the horrific miasma emitted by Dracula and Frankenstein. The boys play deliverymen for a shipping company, but unknown to them, a minion of Dracula has designs on Costello’s brain as a replacement for Frankenstein’s current brain, and so she’s romancing Costello, much to Abbot’s bewilderment. Then he collects another lady, a shipping insurance investigator posing as … I forget.
The Wolfman, on the other hand, earnestly keeps interfering in Dracula’s plans, but finds himself in difficulty as it happens to be the full moon, leaving him decidedly ambivalent about his role in life.
Eventually, we find the boys running throughout the castle with Frankenstein and Dracula on their tail. The minion gets tossed out a window, presumably to her doom, the other is charmed by an assistant professor, so much for Costello’s love life. But the boys do survive a close call.
It did occur to me to wonder if either A&C or Lugosi & Chaney & Strange (Frankenstein’s monster) ever wished to play the other side of the title in this movie. Bela Lugosi as a comedian? It’s an intriguing thought. Untrained in movie lore, I don’t know if he actually tried. Or if just making the movies for which they were famous was a laugh riot already.
Unless comedy-horror is your academic specialty or you’re an aficionado of either set of actors, I wouldn’t waste your time on this one. The horror and the comedy are not well-integrated, and it’s not played for laughs like Young Frankenstein (1974). The cinematography is nice, as are the special effects, but the only reason I watched was because a cat insisted.
Oh, and Vincent Price addicts might want to sit through this and try to spot Vinnie, although I think you’ll fail.
NewScientist (11 November 2017) reports on a problem with AI object recognition:
WHEN is a turtle not a turtle? This is a conundrum for an AI trained to identity objects. By subtly tweaking the pattern on the shell of a model turtle, Andrew Ilyas at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his colleagues tricked a neural network into misidentifying it as a rifle. The results raise concerns about the accuracy of face-recognition tech and the safety of driverless cars.
Previous studies have shown that changing just a few pixels in an image – alterations that are imperceptible to a human – can throw an AI off its game, making it identify a picture of a horse as a car, or a plane as a dog. The model turtle now shows that an AI can be made to misidentify an object even from multiple angles.
Source: Optical Illusion
By simply proving the AI can be misled through a very simple approach, we know there’s a problem.
But what’s the source of the problem? Neural networks are notorious for obscuring the actual decisions used to come to any particular conclusion. My suspicion is this could be an attempt to analyze every pixel of the picture, rather than aggregatizing and pattern matching.
And keep in mind that humanity isn’t perfect at this, either. Just one example is the optical illusion of the young woman or old hag (today I’m only seeing the young woman), indicating that visuals can be difficult even for members of species that have evolved for millions of years.
However, the simplicity of the trick on the AI indicates they have a way to go.
Louche:
If you describe a person or place as louche, you mean that they are unconventional and not respectable, but often in a way that people find rather attractive. [Collins Dictionary]
Noted in “Consciously quantum: How you make everything real,” Philip Ball, NewScientist (11 November 2017, paywall):
The idea that consciousness induces wave function collapse, the process by which myriad possible outcomes of a measurement become a single definite one, is not inherently absurd. And yet physicists have long regarded it as a rather louche suggestion, because it seems to substitute one mystery for another: we have no idea how to describe consciousness, so how can we expect to know how it causes collapse?
And what’s behind door #2?!
I think someone took an initial story idea and ran with it in Cowboys And Vampires (2010), and that’s too bad, because the elements surrounding the story, such as the acting, cinematography, even the cheapo special effects, are actually competently done. But the story? It needed a few more drafts.
It tells the story from the viewpoint of Johnny Dust, a fading B-Movie Western star, who, between movie gigs, works as an everyday performer at a movie studio’s tourist attraction, a Western shootout, in Tucson. The story is given an intriguing framework, or rather two of them. The first is an interview with Johnny after the incident, told in isolated shards which let’s Johnny do some of his best work. The other framework are flashes from some of his best movies where a side-kick character keeps encouraging him to do the right thing.
And then the studio lot is sold to a company that wishes to redevelop it for a theme-park experience, and with Halloween, we can fairly much guess where this is going, so we lose some tension there? But why? Why would the vampire owners of the company moving in want to setup for a massacre of Tucsonites? Think of the future – the Feds swoop in and soon the vampires are extinguished or on the run – and their secret might be revealed.
Parasites rarely want to signal their existence.
And then there’s the time Johnny is bitten by one of the vampires. Does he change and begin sucking blood? Well, not really. They trowel on the makeup a little more deeply, but was I really supposed to believe this womanizer’s faith is going to save him when the faith of everyone else does not?
On Opening Night, the fun begins, and after a while we’re down in a mine, where the screaming and the running starts. And lasts way, way too long. You might have to admire the bravery of killing a young child by slapping him against a rock, but that strikes me as a taboo too far.
And all along the tension doesn’t really mount. Perhaps it’s because we don’t have a deep reason to connect with these characters, or maybe it’s because the title is a dead giveaway. In the end, I found myself just shaking my head in disappointment. I said there were enjoyable, competent elements to the movie, but its heart and soul, the story, just stank.
Halcyon:
adjective
An example of something you would describe as halcyon is the long, lazy and peaceful days of summer vacation.
noun
A halcyon is a kingfisher from Southern Asia and Australia.
Heard on Colbert last night.
A reader remarks on libertarian gun control:
Yep, that libertarian — or whatever — argument about arming the populace will make us polite is complete nonsense. It’s illogical when examined in the slightest, because it is moronically simplistic thinking being applied to one of the most complex systems* in existence, human society.
* (To quote Nassim Taleb: “The main idea behind complex systems is that the ensemble behaves in way not predicted by the components. The interactions matter more than the nature of the units. Studying individual ants will never (one can safely say never for most such situations), never give us an idea on how the ant colony operates. For that, one needs to understand an ant colony as an ant colony, no less, no more, not a collection of ants. This is called an “emergent” property of the whole, by which parts and whole differ because what matters is the interactions between such parts.”)
In my view, the more we embrace irrational religious systems on a literal basis – rather than taking the general good they convey – the less society should be entrusted with guns. The libertarian response is grounded on the assumption of rationality, but we need to remember that humanity is capable of rationality, but is not rational in and of itself. It’s easy to see some obscure passage in a divine text that someone interprets as an order to massacre someone else – say, the Cathars.
Depression is not generally a rational response to reality, yet depression is a rampant mental illness. We need to learn from that simple lesson.
In a by-conversation, our reader continues to comment on markets:
Supply does not create demand. Demand creates supply. This is basic high school level economics. Applies to every business ….. except Apple.
I’d argue that the Republican ideology context is different from the Apple context. In the former, they see the lifting of taxes as more fuel for building factories, etc, as if those taxes are holding back that investment. This ignores two problems, if you’ll permit the digression (this is me on a head cold):
This, it seems to me, is just a way to give more money to the people who don’t need any more.
Now, Apple wasn’t supplying an already open market. They opened a new market, created (or discovered – I’m not sure English actually has a precise word for the phenomenon) the demand by dangling spanglies in front of everyone, and then gilded the lily with an integrated “app” offering (probably the very word “app” was part of the siren song), the famous ecology. I think this is a bit different from trying to create demand by increasing supply …. although just typing it makes it sound similar.
Another reader remarks in the context of the first reader:
That’s a very good point. Supply-side trickle down has been tried and extolled over and over, and it has never once delivered. This may well be the primary reason. A company can’t sell more product X if there aren’t buyers for it. The eventual buyer for all products is the consumer, and consumers are majority lower and middle class. (This ignores those companies who sell exclusively to the government, which in turn pays them with money forcibly extracted from the populace — which sounds rather feudal in this context. But even then, the populace is still majority lower and middle class.) More money in all the average person’s pockets means more commerce, and more business. More money in the pocket of the 1% means a slow death spiral into collapsed economies.
And I see I repeated this reader’s argument above, except he was more direct. I wonder if we’re going to be experiencing the Trump Recession as part of the insanity by half our electorate.
But it’s a true thing that taxes, in the libertarian and GOP worlds, are considered, at the very best, a necessary evil. In my evolving view, there’s certainly room for abuse in taxation, but this is how we fund those services which are ill-provided by the private sector. To suggest that taxes hold back economic expansion (itself a concept that bears reconsideration as a desirable goal) is an ideological assertion which is meaningless without context – but that’s how it’s given.
Where’s the silver lining? If the tax “reform” is passed as formulated and we do experience the Trump Recession my reader predicts, that particular religious precept ideological assertion can be given the lie.
I’ve talked from time to time about gerrymandering, most recently here. So, as I blear my way through this head cold, I was interested to see mention of a new approach to building a legislative map. From the Abstract of the academic paper:
We design and analyze a protocol for dividing a state into districts, where parties take turns proposing a division, and freezing a district from the other party’s proposed division. We show that our protocol has predictable and provable guarantees for both the number of districts in which each party has a majority of supporters, and the extent to which either party has the power to pack a specific population into a single district.
NewScientist (11 November 2017) amplifies:
With the approach, one political party draws an electoral map that divides the state into the agreed number of districts. The second party then chooses one district to freeze so that no more changes can be made to it by either side. It then redraws the rest of the map. Once the new map is complete, the first political party freezes one of the new districts, and redraws the rest of the map again. This continues until every district in the state is frozen.
I’m too sick – and no doubt inexperienced – to analyze this approach. But it does remind me of times past in which scientists were fooled – or fooled themselves – when analyzing psychic phenomenon. It didn’t take long for the skeptics’ movement to come up with the best way to analyze such phenomenon:
Send in a magician.
Scientists are not practiced in the art of fooling, so it becomes a game for the psychic shyster to fool the scientists, and they succeed. But a magician is basically the same as a psychic shyster, except they cheerfully shrug and admit that it’s all just trickery – just like the psychics. And that makes them optimal for revealing the tricks of the psychics.
Now, it’s a stretch – and maybe the authors of this paper did it, I haven’t taken the time to read it – but it’s my hope that they tossed this plan into the laps of a bunch of politicians, just to see if politicians react as they predict.
Or if they find loopholes in this scheme.
Ambit:
The ambit of something is its range or extent.
(American)
- a circuit or circumference
- the limits or scope; bounds [Collins Dictionary]
Noted in “May the government restrict political T-shirts and pins inside polling places?” Eugene Volokh, The Volokh Conspiracy:
Another question is whether the policy, though facially viewpoint-neutral, will be so vague that it is likely to be implemented in discriminatory ways. As the challengers’ petition argued, the law “often requires election officials to rely on their own subjective judgments about whether certain apparel falls within the ambit of the law’s ban on ‘political’ speech.”
Incidentally, this is an appeal of a Minnesota case.
It isn’t just Russia and the United States. In fact, anyone with a fair bit of mathematical ability and some moxie can play in the game of cyberwarfare – and that easily includes North Korea. Adam Meyers on 38 North has the summary:
Finally, the maturity of North Korean offensive cyber operations has been demonstrated through the integration of destructive attacks by cyber units during military exercises executed in the midst of escalating tension with South Korea. For instance, following the December 2012 launch of the Kwangmyongsong-3 satellite via the Unha-3 satellite launch vehicle, tensions on the Korean peninsula were high. That March, following the passing of UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR 2087) and B-52 strategic bomber overflights in South Korea, North Korea responded with a particularly aggressive disruptive attack against South Korea. This massive wiper attack targeted South Korea’s financial and media sectors and coincided with provocations by North Korean military and escalating political rhetoric. This pairing allowed for maximum psychological impact, while demonstrating North Korea’s ability to integrate offensive cyber activities into well-developed military doctrine. During these attacks, the Korea Broadcasting System (KBS), Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC), Yonhap Television News (YTN) and several Korean financial institutions reported disruptions. With the threat of military escalation on the table, many in South Korea would have depended on the media outlets for breaking news. Disruption of ATM networks and financial institutions would further add to the chaos as word of media disruptions began to spread.
As tensions are once again escalating between North Korea and the international community, more attacks perpetrated by DPRK cyber actors are likely. The recent increase in financial sector targeting associated with these actors may illustrate the potential for disruptive attacks to demonstrate both the capability of the North Korean actors, as well to achieve objectives in line with their broader military doctrine. While North Korea’s isolation may be detrimental to its economy and international relations, it is an effective shield from which to launch offensive cyber operations against a connected and delicate global system.
Of course, they must have a connection to that global system. I wonder if it’s vulnerable to Western manipulation as well.
Miguel de la Torre has no more patience for the Evangelical movement, as noted in Baptist News Global:
Evangelicalism has ceased to be a faith perspective rooted on Jesus the Christ and has become a political movement whose beliefs repudiate all Jesus advocated. A message of hate permeates their pronouncements, evident in sulphurous proclamations like the Nashville Statement, which elevates centuries of sexual dysfunctionalities since the days of Augustine by imposing them upon Holy Writ. They condemn as sin those who express love outside the evangelical anti-body straight jacket.
Evangelicalism’s unholy marriage to the Prosperity Gospel justifies multi-millionaire bilkers wearing holy vestments made of sheep’s clothing who discovered being profiteers rather than prophets delivers an earthly security never promised by the One in whose name they slaughter those who are hungry, thirsty and naked, and the alien among them. Christianity at a profit is an abomination before all that is Holy. From their gilded pedestals erected in white centers of wealth and power, they gaslight all to believe they are the ones being persecuted because of their faith.
Evangelicalism’s embrace of a new age of ignorance, blames homosexuality for Harvey’s rage rather than considering the scientific consequences climate change has on the number of increasing storms of greater and greater ferocity. To ignore the damage caused to God’s creation so the few can profit in raping Mother Earth causes celebrations in the fiery pits of Gehenna.
Miguel says it far better than I possibly could, being an agnostic (and fairly clumsy with words). But I wish Miguel had taken the next step and begun to analyze what makes the Evangelical movement so vulnerable to con-men. Or is all mankind vulnerable to these sorts of things?
I tend to think the culture of religion automatically makes the religious more vulnerable. They’ve already learned to believe there’s a God, despite a lack of evidence; the natural sense of suspicion and common-sense is thus blunted.
But I’m sure Miguel could be more exact, if only he would.
[EDIT added forgotten link to Baptist News Global 11/17/2017]
A reader writes concerning CEO behavior:
The supply-side Repubs get it wrong at every opportunity. No rational CEO will build new plants or hire employees unless and until there is a demand for what they will produce. Do they really think, for example, that 3M will increase Post It Notes production simply because they may now have (after tax reform) the financial ability to do so?
Right. They’re assuming flexible demand when, in fact, there may not be any demand. In fact, the reader’s comment highlights the importance of helping the lower and middle classes, either through redistribution or better education / training.
I think right now any tax cuts will be funneled to the owners of the companies, the investors, in the form of dividends and share buybacks.
Vespertine:
adjective
- of, relating to, or occurring in the evening:vespertine stillness.
- Botany. opening or expanding in the evening, as certain flowers.
- Zoology. appearing or flying in the early evening; crepuscular. [Dictionary.com]
Encountered during a meeting with my boss on Wednesday.
Fun fact: the entire movie will be shot in this pool!
Dammit, I don’t know how to swim!
I’ve seen Constantine (2005) a number of times over the years, and I think it’s one of those under-appreciated movies you hear about, although I understand that someone’s under-appreciated movie may just be drek to me, and vice versa. I like Constantine, first and foremost, for the tight plot, which features John Constantine, a cynical, bitter defender of mankind, doomed to Hell, and his encounter with a police detective whose twin sister has just committed suicide.
Except she doesn’t think so.
In a world where the “half-breeds” can whisper in the ears of the vulnerable, manipulating them towards various ends, John functions as a policeman upholding a misty, gloomy treaty between God and Satan, judging when the agents of one or the other have stepped over the ill-defined lines drawn up in that agreement, and removing them – violently.
But the suicide begins a chain of events in which John’s friends, who are not as sympathetic as they might have been, are beginning to die and odd, impossible things are starting to happen. Satan’s son, Mammon, lusts for control of the world, and he’s found a way to do it.
And when push comes to shove, and even God’s agents have betrayed him, John just has to bust the move you wouldn’t expect the hell-bound to do – he commits suicide.
Once you accept the supernatural, the plot seems organic and logical, although I’ll leave fine theological points to the Catholics. I find it easy to believe in Constantine’s actions, as well as those of the detective; the motivations of Constantine’s friends, unfortunately, are less clear, and if they’re interesting, they’re too obscure to actually contribute what they might have to the plot.
The special effects are, for the most part, well done. Hell itself is suitably horrifying, but its references to modern life, principally in the form of the modern city, ruined in hellfire, really makes the point. And I appreciate how the tile floor wrinkles as a body being dragged down to Hell acquires more and more weight – it’s a special effect with a specific, appreciated message.
I will object, however, to a scene in which someone is about to be stabbed when time stops, and … I just don’t think it’s well done. And our glimpse of Heaven, well, what are you going to do with the indescribable? Make it look like a couple of buildings wrapped in golden fog? Granted, it’s a tough one to do, but this felt limp.
I enjoyed the juxtaposition of the ancient evils from Hell against certain modern sensibilities, in particular the egotism mankind’s defenders has, and the calm use of golden, sanctified bullets on the invading force.
And the portrayal of Satan is something I keep coming back to – he’s not overawing or regal, he’s banal and probably enjoys roasting ants under a magnifying glass, and has amazing powers that it’s difficult to understand his goal in using them – except to satisfy childish impulses. It’s a lovely portrayal of evil, if Satan is evil.
I don’t want to forget to mention the very dry sense of humor that occasionally shows up. Just what is this chemistry between John and the police detective? I’m not even sure they know. But it kept me amused.
It’s by no means a perfect movie. I suspect another rewrite of the script might have given us more insight into hell-bound John’s state of mind as he fights for mankind, tormented by the knowledge that he has lung cancer, and that would have increased the impact of the movie. And while I did say the plot was tight, during this viewing I kept a weather-eye out and picked up on a couple of plot holes. For example, the last confrontation with Midnight – what convinces him to help John? That’s not in the least clear.
But it is still a tight ship that celebrates the never-say-die attitude, and that sometimes even Satan can be fooled – and sometime he’ll fool you right back.
