Yearly Archives: 2018

Yet more pics of a frosty Sunday morning.

From Science Direct, which is channeling the Journal of Theoretical Biology, comes some work on theropods of the Mesozoic – or, more precisely, on their feet:

You get a purple cat.

Artist Alexander Reben fed the contents of a few thousand fortune cookies into an artificial intelligence learning algorithm, and then told it to print out philosophical statements. Here’s one of my early favorites.

More here.

Some more from Sunday morning.

Remember Representative Duncan Hunter (R-CA), recently indicted on theft of campaign funds? Well, it turns out that he’s really more or less an unprincipled bastard, at least from this corner of the United States. Via NPR:

A Republican congressman who should have waltzed to re-election is now in the fight of his career. Duncan Hunter, who has represented an inland Southern California district for a decade, was indicted in August on charges of using a quarter of a million dollars in campaign funds for personal expenses.

As the race grows tighter, Hunter is attacking his Democratic challenger for his Palestinian heritage. A controversial television ad accuses Ammar Campa-Najjar of trying to “infiltrate” Congress. It says that Campa-Najjar changed his name to hide his family’s connection to terrorism. It points out that his grandfather was part of the deadly attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Campa-Najjar never knew his grandfather, who was killed by Israeli agents 16 years before the candidate was born. This is just one of the commercial’s questionable associations. The Washington Post’s Fact Checker gave the ad its worst rating: 4 Pinocchios, which it defines as “a whopper.” …

“He changed his name from Ammar Yasser Najjar to Ammar Campa-Najjar,” said Hunter, “so he sounds Hispanic. … That is how hard, by the way, that the radical Muslims are trying to infiltrate the U.S. government.”

Actually, Ammar Campa-Najjar is Christian. And Campa is his Hispanic mother’s family name.

Here’s a commercial giving many of the same claims. Notice the music, which should engender a rapid pulse and System 1 thinking.

Sad times for a Republican Party that wants to believe it holds the moral high ground.

The latest eddy in the cultural wars has been caused by Senator Warren (D-MA). She has claimed there are stories in her family of an American Indian, which led to President Trump nicknaming her Pocahontas, and offering to pay $1 million to a charity of her choice if she took a DNA test and it showed her having an Indian in her heritage.

So she did, and the test came back positive for an Indian heritage. Will President Trump be paying off on his impromptu bet?

[tweet https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1052168909665824769]

Of course not. This is causing a bit of an uproar, but I’ll shun the usual psychological bullshit explanations for his failure to honor his promise, and suggest just one thing:

Mr. Businessman doesn’t have the cash.

Most of Magellan (2017) concentrates on the personality of astronaut Roger Nelson. When the radio telescope at Arecibo detects not one, nor two, but three radio transmissions locations of extra-terrestrial origin on the moons Titan (of Saturn) and Triton (of Neptune), along with the small planet Eris (very roughly out around the same orbit as Pluto), NASA selects Roger Nelson as the best fit as the human component of a probe to investigate these phenomena (sadly, they don’t go into deep detail as to why he’s the best, which would have been interesting for the science geeks out there).

This movie isn’t interested in easy answers. Using stasis to keep Nelson from going stale over the few years it’ll take to make it to the three targets, Nelson must struggle with his ship, the possibly-compromised Artificial Intelligence (AI) who runs the mission while he sleeps, the perky AI pilot of the lander, and, most sadly, his wife, who, despite her own scientific training and participation in Mission Control, has a very hard time losing her husband for a decade.

Nelson is successful in retrieving the artifacts, but, in perhaps the most realistic part of the story, the answers they provide lead to far larger and more important questions, not only of scientific and exo-political nature, but of a personal nature as well. When a fourth radio source comes online, possibly in response to Nelson’s examination of the first three alien transmitters, that source is out in the Oort cloud, the “cloud” of comets which circle the Sun nearly a light-year out. There is no magically quick way for Nelson to reach this target: it’s a 38 year trip with his technology, and Earth has no new technologies to help him.

Nor does the story let him summon that source to him. That leaves him with the simple, disturbing question – will he abandon his wife to pursue one of the most important discoveries ever made, or will he return to Earth?

We just stumbled into this movie and found it quite gripping. Not that there aren’t areas that couldn’t have used more work, but, for a movie which concentrates on just the single character, it’s rather well done. In the same class as The Martian (2015), Magellan may have not been quite so tense, but it asks deeper questions than did The Martian.

It’s not quite recommended, but it’s worth a watch if you’re a science fiction fan. But, if you are, you’ve probably already seen it.

A reader writes concerning the missing journalist Khashoggi:

Why is he a “Saudi journalist?” Do we call Trevor Noah a “South African entertainer” whenever we mention him? Yes, he was a Saudi citizen. But he worked for the WaPo and lived in Virginia, did he not?

I think it gives important context, given that the Saudis have been accused by the Turks of murdering Khashoggi. That he lived in Virginia, I cannot say, but WaPo has certainly claimed him as a columnist; that his fiancee was Turkish and he was in Istanbul adds to the information surrounding him.

And, yes, I’ve heard Noah referred to as a South African comic.

Anyway, I suspect Carrot-faced 45’s male younglings, both blood and non-blood, of giving Saudi Arabia the go ahead to do this.

Could be. Trump claims there’ll be very big trouble if the government of Saudi Arabia is found to be responsible, but who knows what that means? Or if Trump will ever admit that his close ally and now good customer are responsible, given the his endless denials of Russian involvement in our election, despite our intelligence agencies repeating in concert that Yes, they are.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia may possibly be thinking about coming clean, according to CNN:

The Saudis are preparing a report that will acknowledge that Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s death was the result of an interrogation that went wrong, one that was intended to lead to his abduction from Turkey, according to two sources.

One source says the report will likely conclude that the operation was carried out without clearance and transparency and that those involved will be held responsible.

One of the sources acknowledged that the report is still being prepared and cautioned that things could change.

And, if the Saudis come clean, this may give Trump the out he probably wants. By admitting fault and punishing the underlings who did this “without clearance,” everyone with skin in the game will be able to nod, say that justice was done, and move on with the important work of money flowing one way and arms flowing the other.

Of course, a real President would demand insight into the entire process, with no scapegoating to protect important personages who may actually be important, such as MBS. Admittedly, such access might be hard to arrange, especially in an authoritarian state such as Saudi Arabia, but it’s really the ideal for which we should strive.

Unfortunately, the siren song of greenbacks cries loudly in the ear of our President, so don’t expect much real punishment out of this. Color me red if MBS is actually extradited to a Turkish court.

However, I wouldn’t be surprised if the King discreetly dismisses him from his position as Crown Prince in the near future. The King is responsible for finding a good successor, and so far MBS is failing to impress with results. All he seems to have is boundless energy.

From a West Virginia Supreme Court decision (written by a temporary replacement) in which it invalidated the West Virginia Senate from impeaching the remaining members of the West Virginia Supreme Court for overspending:

Our forefathers in establishing this Country, as well as the leaders who established the framework for our State, had the forethought to put a procedure in place to address issues that could arise in the future; in the ensuing years that system has served us well. What our forefathers did not envision is the fact that subsequent leaders would not have the ability or willingness to read, understand, or to follow those guidelines. The problem we have today is that people do not bother to read the rules, or if they read them, they decide the rules do not apply to them.

That sounds familiar.

A reader writes concerning the voting situation in Georgia:

how bout that Georgia voter purging!

It appears to be just one small part of the current state of Republican politics, which is to find there’s virtually no floor to which they won’t stoop. If it were an isolated incident, then I’d shrug and hope it’d get straightened out, but within the context of the national political scene, it’s disappointing that alleged adults would stoop to shit like this. It’d be one thing if voter fraud had any sort of plausibility, but to the best of my knowledge, outside of the concerns of statistician Professor Clarkson, who has never gotten access to the records she wanted^[1], there’s so laughably little voter fraud that the alleged concerns of the Republicans are frivolous. I know the Democrats claim they are really voting suppression tactics by making demands on voters that minority voters are less likely to be able to meet, and so far these claims seem to have some merit – although I’m not sure that’s conclusively proven.

WaPo reports that the voter roll purge can be circumvented by determined voters:

[Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacy] Abrams added she is confident that the election will be fair because the 53,000 whose registration applications were flagged will still be able to vote — although they will be at the mercy of “subjective” verification by thousands of precinct poll workers across the state.

“We are creating another set of hurdles for people who simply want to exercise their right to vote,” Abrams told NBC News’s Chuck Todd. “But . . . we have national organizations that are also paying attention [to voter protections], and I think we can make this work.”

I suspect the lawyers are clearing their calendars for November 6 and the days following.

Incidentally, in that same report is a note on Senator Perdue (R-GA), in Atlanta to campaign for the star of this little drama, Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp, and how he reacted when he ran into someone willing to ask uncomfortable questions on the campus of Georgia Tech:

An attempted conversation between a Georgia Tech student and Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) ended abruptly with the lawmaker snatching the student’s cellphone away while he was being asked about possible voter suppression in the state. The senator’s office has said the exchange, part of which was captured on video, was a misunderstanding.

On Saturday, a student member of the Young Democratic Socialists of America at Georgia Tech approached Perdue, who was visiting the Atlanta campus to campaign for Brian Kemp. …

That was as far into the question as the student got. Before he could continue, Perdue snatched the phone out of the student’s hands, as evidence shows in a video [omitted].

“No, I’m not doing that. I’m not doing that,” the senator can be heard saying in the cellphone recording.

“You stole my property,” the student tells Perdue. “You stole my property.”

“All right, you wanted a picture?” the senator replies.

“Give me my phone back, Senator,” the student repeats.

That, apparently, is how you cover up the attempted theft of someone’s not-inexpensive smartphone. On role reversal, the student would be sitting in a jail cell, but Perdue just walks away free.

But I highlight this to suggest that Senator Perdue may be fully aware of the strategy of Kemp. I’m hoping that if he continues to campaign in Georgia for Kemp, citizen after citizen will continue to raise this question with him.

¹ As I recall, the unsettling patterns were actually in primary data from Republican contests, suggesting certain candidates were being aced out for nominations to statewide offices by their own Party. Not particularly shocking, but of course entirely unethical.

It’s a pity that Kevin Williamson’s piece in National Review wasn’t entitled I’m Fat, Dumb, and Happy, because he seems quite content to ignore any bumps in the road that might upset his thesis that politics and politicians don’t matter. This bit raised red flags:

Things look pretty good at home, too. There are things I would prefer to see done differently, and some important problems that are not being treated as seriously as I would prefer. But the nation is at peace, and it is prospering. (For the most part.) Americans have developed a weird, cultish, caesaropapist attitude toward the presidency, without ever stopping to consider that the nation has thrived under the administration of a succession of very different men with very different political agendas: Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and, now, Donald Trump: The fact that America just keeps on trucking irrespective of the qualities or character of the man in the Oval Office ought to make us think rather less of the presidency and rather more of ourselves — and think better of our neighbors, our businesses, our public institutions, our civil society, and much else — including the citizens who do not share our political views.

Thrived under all those Presidents? Has Kevin forgotten the Great Recession incident? The amassing of a huge debt during the Bush and Trump Administrations? The travails of the economy during the early part of the Bush Administration? The anger of the middle class at the bailouts handed to the large banks?

I was there. I watched us limp our way out, making decisions which, in retrospect, may have been questionable even if necessary.

But to argue these inexcusably smoothed over abysses in grand detail is not my purpose, because I want to point out how these deliberate omissions work against Williamson – by damaging his credibility. If he can’t acknowledge the bumps and twists and mistakes and that they affected the nation, then why should the reader really trust anything he says? Indeed, if he’s going to present an analysis, rather than a pleasantly rose-colored glasses view of the past, he cannot start with flawed facts.

And it’s a pity, as I thought this insight – true or not – concerning partisans was interesting:

At that level, this is about something other than politics per se. I have spent about 30 years covering political protests of various kinds, and, of course, people rarely show up at a protest because they are happy about something. But many of the people one encounters at such events (from Occupy Wall Street to the tea-party rallies) are categorically unhappy, bereft and adrift in a way that is only tangentially related to politics. They turn to politics to provide a sense of meaning that might once have been provided by family or religion, two anchors from which many of us enlightened moderns have cut ourselves away. But politics provides a sense of meaning only when we convince ourselves that there is a great deal at stake. I do not know how many planning-and-zoning meetings I have been to, how many suburban school-board meetings and small-town municipal board meetings. Rarely does one get the sense that there is much that is urgent going on. They are boring, and, generally, free of drama. (Not always. A visit with the San Bernardino, Calif., city leadership will cause one to despair for democracy.) That isn’t very much compared to communing with God or being a father. The people who fall into politics as a source of personal meaning must believe that what’s at stake is . . . everything . . . or at least something meaningful, otherwise — well, that’s obvious enough. Political fanaticism is not rooted in ideology. It is the hollow clanging sound that social life makes when banging up against an empty soul.

Although, on a second reading, the ending reads as more patronizing than anything. There’s a point to be made that most of us think we’re the center of the Universe, or that our concerns are vital to the greater community, and often that’s just not so. But this is more of an effort, I think, to discredit partisans in hopes of discouraging the newcomers, who, according to polls, are generally more Democratic than Republican. Portray those who concern themselves with the parties as being an “empty soul,” and maybe some of those darn new Democrats will be intimidated into leaving.

Some more pics.

At least the snow wasn’t up over our shoe tops.

I think the short dude has my favorite new super-power.

A good story asks a good question, even if the question isn’t directly applicable to the audience, and in the case of The Incredibles 2 (2018), the question is whether or not, beyond their immediate impact as a crime-fighting force, the superhero community, of which the Incredibles, aka the Parrs, are a part of, are having a good influence or bad influence on humanity at large.

It’s a good question because it forces the viewer to think beyond the moment, to speculate if, every time we’re faced with disaster, someone with superpowers will come and save the day, then how will we mature and fulfill our potential? In fact, why should we bother?

The hidden application of this question to our future involves a subject not unknown to this blog, namely that of the impact of an automated labor workforce and AI (artificial intelligence) entities. While automation has generally been employed in repetitive tasks which were the low-hanging fruit of the field, freeing humans to work on tasks of a more creative and rewarding nature, the question continues to cause anxiety because it’s always difficult to conceptualize new jobs until the new world we continually create requires them. The AIs can be seen in the role of super heroes, performing humanity’s tasks better than human can.

Unfortunately, this movie doesn’t really try to answer the question. It’s answers to good questions, especially unexpected or innovative answers, that can transform a good movie into a great movie, and that transformation isn’t here. Not that this is a bad movie, far from it. Too many sequels are drek, money-harvesting machines that lack the fuel, the story, to actually do well enough to make their creation matter. The Incredibles 2, along with its technical competence and sense of humor, at least dared to ask an interesting question.

Perhaps we’ll get an answer in The Incredibles 3 (20?).

Lloyd Alter of Treehugger has his list of things we should be doing in order to keep anthropomorphic climate change down to a manageable roar:

Radical Decarbonization – Electrify everything

We have to cut back on our use of fossil fuels to the point that the oil and gas companies are forced to leave it in the ground because there is so little demand. That means getting our homes off gas, switching to induction ranges for cooking, mini heat pumps for heating and cooling. Switch to walking, bikes, e-bikes, scooters, and transit, and then electric cars.

In our buildings, we have to use less concrete and more wood. We have to fix and renovate instead of building new. We have to stop using foamed plastic insulations and get rid of PVC.

And many others. But just issuing lists is only one strategy. Another is societal nudging. The libertarians would categorize it as using the free market to solve a problem, although I’m not sure I’d agree.

An example: Today, when I was at my favorite movie theatre, the Riverview of Minneapolis, I asked when they would be switching to paper straws. The poor kid I asked said he’d just started this job and didn’t know anything, so I smiled and told him to just pass it on to management.

Twisting arms may be dramatic, but sometimes honey gets you more than vinegar.

Some pictures of our Sunday morning here in Minnesota.

Another summer come and gone.

On Lawfare, Jessica Marsden explains the significance of a recent ruling by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia regarding voting machines:

Last month, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia recognized that the risk of election hacking is of constitutional significance—and that courts can do something about it. In Curling v. Kemp, two groups of Georgia voters contend that Georgia’s old paperless voting machines are so unreliable that they compromise the plaintiffs’ constitutional right to vote. In ruling on the voters’ motion for preliminary injunction, Judge Amy Totenberg held that the plaintiffs had demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits—in other words, Georgia’s insecure voting system likely violated their constitutional rights. While the court declined to order relief in time for the 2018 elections, the ruling suggests that Georgia may eventually be ordered to move to a more secure voting system.  …

Until now, courts have had few opportunities to consider the constitutional dimensions of vote-counting procedures. Voting rights litigation has centered on voter-registration rules, access to the polls, and access to the ballot, rather than the mechanics of counting votes. But with a new focus on election hacking, courts are being invited to scrutinize the sufficiency of different states’ voting systems and their security from intruders. Totenberg’s ruling shows that courts are fully capable of evaluating the risks of different voting technologies—and ordering remedies when they are needed.

I applaud the recognition of the Court of the importance of voting procedures which exhibit a high degree of integrity. That is an important part of the foundation of our democracy. And that the Court recognizes that in advance of the mid-terms, even if, for practical reasons, a remedy cannot be readied in time:

Importantly, the court found that voters have standing to challenge voting procedures even before an election hacking attack occurs. Generally, standing requires a plaintiff to show (1) an injury in fact that was (2) caused by the defendant’s conduct and (3) that is redressable by the court. Here, the Court found that Georgia plaintiffs satisfied the injury-in-fact requirement in two ways. First, the voting system actually has been hacked—by cybersecurity experts who reported the system’s vulnerabilities to election officials. The plaintiffs’ right to vote was burdened by a voting system that failed to “accurately and reliably record[] their votes and protect[] the privacy of their votes and personal information.”

But I am utterly appalled and infuriated that the State of Georgia felt it necessary to litigate the matter. Their first priority should be to have a voting system in place that has a more than reasonable chance of reflecting the will of the people. If no computer system can be found that satisfies the security requirements established by the experts, then bloody well setup a manual system.

They should be working to establish a system of which they can be proud, not a system which can be manipulated by foreign adversaries – or corrupt officials.

Shooting moles suggests a dull life, no?

Crooked House (2017), a BBC production of an Agatha Christie novel of the same name, is an exploration of how the combination of extraordinary wealth and a domineering personality, the latter from someone we see only in brief flashbacks, can combine to overwhelm standard morality and produce offspring who view morality as a barrier to their acquisition of anything they want. It is, in fact, a condemnation of the old maxim The end justifies the means.

Murder is the mechanism through which we’re introduced to these offspring. Aristides Leonides may have been a midget, or so we infer from the remarks, but coming to England virtually penniless didn’t stop him from becoming one of the moneyed elite and marrying a beautiful woman. He had children with her, then she passed away, and, now elderly, he remarries, leading to children and grandchildren living in the same magnificent estate; even his first wife’s sister lives there.

But now he’s dead, his insulin replaced by his glaucoma medicine, resulting in it being injected, possibly accidentally, into him by his young wife. His youngest daughter has brought in the son of a Scotland Yard legend that she met in Cairo to help find the murderer, and soon everyone but the family dogs are suspects.

But the murder is almost incidental, because the real horrific aspect are the behaviors of everyone in the house. The nanny and the tutor may be the most normal, one indulging a memorable taste for hot chocolate, while the other cavorts with the old man’s wife – with, it’s rumored, his approval. But the eldest son, quite embittered at his father and, by extension, himself, and his wife indulge in, well, indulgent art and gambling, while the second son runs one of the family businesses – into the ground. His wife works on levering him out of the family, and by that measure may be the most normal of all.

And the grandchildren are the most alien. While their parents long for normalcy, forever denied them by their father, they embrace their strangely non-empathic lives, engaged in discovering what they want, and then pursuing it with little regard for decency. Only their youth and hormones are preventing their morphing into monsters.

Into this strides our detective, the aforementioned son of the Scotland Yard legend, and he’s got a good bit of lust going for his employer, the youngest daughter of the murdered man. Her demons are a little more elusive than her brothers’: a detachment from the emotions of the day, a willingness to play with the men in her life with no inclination to fully commit, leaving broken hulks in her wake. For the young private investigator, she’s both a distraction and a suspect.

But when an unexpected Last Will and Testament appears, granting the same daughter the bulk of his estate, the story accelerates out of control. She reveals she was being trained by her father to take over the family fortune, and that some of that training is the use of ruthlessness. But, for all that, when someone’s confession – or exultation – of murder appears, she is still stricken in grief as two members of the family find their doom.

One to protect the family by killing the other.

This story has plenty of twists and turns, although sometimes I felt I needed a scorecard to keep track of it all. But it was fun. And I watched it late enough at night that I had some associated nightmares.

Which says something, I suppose.

Hormesis:

Hormesis is a term used by toxicologists to refer to a biphasic dose-response to an environmental agent characterized by a low dose stimulation or beneficial effect and a high dose inhibitory or toxic effect. In the fields of biology and medicine hormesis is defined as an adaptive response of cells and organisms to a moderate (usually intermittent) stress. Examples include ischemic preconditioning, exercise, dietary energy restriction and exposures to low doses of certain phytochemicals. Recent findings have elucidated the cellular signaling pathways and molecular mechanisms that mediate hormetic responses which typically involve enzymes such as kinases and deacetylases, and transcription factors such as Nrf-2 and NF-kappaB. As a result, cells increase their production of cytoprotective and restorative proteins including growth factors, phase 2 and antioxidant enzymes, and protein chaperones. A better understanding of hormesis mechanisms at the cellular and molecular levels is leading to and to novel approaches for the prevention and treatment of many different diseases. [PubMed.gov]

Noted in “Is a Little Radiation Good For You? Trump Admin Steps Into Shaky Science,” Nathaniel Scharping, The Crux:

This week, the Associated Press reported that the Trump administration may be reconsidering that. The Environmental Protection Agency seemed to be looking at raising the levels of radiation considered dangerous to humans based on a controversial theory rejected by mainstream scientists. The theory suggests that a little radiation might actually be good for our bodies. In April, an EPA press release announced the proposal and included supporting comments from a vocal proponent of the hypothesis, known as hormesis. It prompted critical opinion pieces and sparked worry among radiation safety advocates.

I love stories that concern Nature’s infrastructure. Yes, yes, imputing human engineering and motives to a life form fairly alien to us is an intellectual error, but there it is: not a dying salmon, flopping around on a cold Alaskan beach, but one of those silly koi, wandering about its tank, serene or bored – I can’t tell.

Anyways, Katherine Martinko of Treehugger has gathered up just such a story:

These busy filter-feeders clean the water, attract biodiversity, and offer protection from storms.

When English explorer Henry Hudson sailed into New York City harbor in 1609, there were oysters everywhere. Accounts say he had to navigate carefully to avoid running into some 220,000 acres of oyster reefs. Fast forward 400 years and most of these oysters are gone, their population decimated by polluted water.

One group of citizens, however, is on a mission to restore the harbor’s oysters to at least a shade of their former glory. The Billion Oyster Project grows baby oysters and replants them on the bottom of the Hudson River in order to kickstart a rejuvenation of the ecosystem. So far the group has planted 28 million pounds of oysters across nine reefs and the water quality is measurably improved.

It’s the fascination with evolution that it generates, not a system on a knife-edge, but one that has built-in correction mechanisms. The idea that we recognize this mechanism and can use it to clean a polluted area, with very little damage, if any, to other areas, delights my sense of how to solve problems.

I remember having the same sense of wonder and delight when I heard of mycoremediation, the use of mushrooms to remove poisons from the soil. A well designed program which can be enhanced with ease can induce something like the same feeling, but Nature is better at it.

Most readers may not be aware of it, but Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, the supposed billionaire Cabinet member who may have lied through his teeth about his personal wealth^[1], has been ordered to testify concerning the addition of citizenship question to the next Census form. This question has been controversial because it’s thought this will frighten many immigrants, legal or not, into not answering the call of the Census, thus lowering resident counts and reducing how many Representatives are allocated to areas that traditionally vote Democratic. The order comes because it’s thought, by some, that Ross may have previously lied to Congress.

The Administration has been fighting this order, and now Steve Benen reports that soon SCOTUS will be taking up the issue.

Yeah, that SCOTUS. The one with the newly confirmed Justice Kavanaugh.

I think this should be an early indicator of Kavanaugh’s attitude towards the Executive Branch. If he votes that Ross is under no obligation to testify, it’ll indicate that he’s quite supine towards his President. (Yep, I used that phraseology entirely on purpose.)

His problem may be his fellow conservatives. I don’t know much about how ideology will play into this decision, so – and maybe I’m the only one ignorant enough to be so – I’m on pins and needles. If it goes 8-1 against him, he’ll just look worse.

But my wild-eyed guess is that it’ll be a 5-4 decision, with Chief Justice Roberts, ever mindful of the legitimacy of the Court, as well as his own legacy, siding with the liberal wing of the Court, requiring Ross to testify.

¹ An issue that has never had much importance for me, and, as I age, becomes even less and less important. The multitudinous ways to accumulate wealth, many dishonorable or, at best, technically permitted by an ill-designed economic system, make wealth an exceptionally poor proxy for the measure of a person.

A coal chute, we think, at a semi-estate sale in Minneapolis last week:

They came out better than I expected.

From JAAD Case Reports:

The above-referenced article has been voluntarily retracted by the authors who subsequent to publication learned that the patient was taking the medication Ustekinumab at the time of the eruption and not Secukinumab.

Ummm, volcanic? I don’t think I’ll be taking Ustekinumab.

Jamal Kashoggi

Beyond the sad tragedy of the disappearance and probable murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Turkey lies a maze of international responses which should reflect our Western moral system, but more probably will reflect our energy interests in the big, oil-fueled theocracy of the Middle East. The general picture at the moment has Khashoggi entering the consulate in order to get pick up a piece of paper which would enable him to marry his fiancee, a Turkish woman, where he was set upon and killed by a team of Saudis. Some speculation has it that it was to be punishment for his criticisms of the relatively young Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (usually known as MBS).

I’ve remarked on MBS before, in connection with his increasing control of the kingdom, and his responsibility for the Saudis’ problems in Yemen. He appears to be foolishly ambitious, at least from half a world away. It’s easy to see a rising panic on his part, as his clampdown on leading businessmen and members of his own extended family generates unexpected backlash, the Yemeni war grinds on endlessly, absorbing precious resources, and the King is known to be afflicted with dementia of some sort. MBS may see the criticisms of a journalist as threatening to an overblown ego, or even part of an existential threat. And keep in mind that Saudi Crown Princes can be changed at the whim of the King. MBS himself displaced a former Crown Prince.

My point up to now is that it’s entirely credible that MBS is ultimately responsible for whatever happened to Khashoggi. So what is to be done, and by whom?

The Turks are not happy, but they’re in a bit of a bind, seeing as their own military was depleted by the putsch following the failed military coup of a few years ago, and the economy’s not doing particularly well. Nor is Turkey an economic powerhouse that can punish the Saudis with much hope of a positive result.

But they may have hopes for the United States, and I noticed that CNN is reporting that an American pastor who’d been held on charges of complicity in that failed coup. Given that Turkey had been intransigent on this issue, it’s interesting that suddenly the pastor has been released. Could the Turks be looking to link their capitulation on this issue with American backing on the Kashoggi murder?

President Trump has reportedly not been responding quickly to Kashoggi’s disappearance, but he’s at least addressed it, with an expected slant to it here:

Q You mean sanctions in that case? You oppose sanctions against Saudi Arabia?

THE PRESIDENT: I oppose — I would not be in favor of stopping a country from spending $110 billion — which is an all-time record — and letting Russia have that money and letting China have that money. Because all they’re going to do is say, “That’s okay. We don’t have to buy it from Boeing. We don’t have to buy it from Lockheed. We don’t have to buy it from Raytheon and all these great companies. We’ll buy it from Russia. We’ll but it from China.”

Money, money, money. That, I think, encapsulates his typically short-sighted approach to foreign relations – let the money flow and don’t worry about what MBS might do, thus encouraged, in the future. And that’s the sticking point, isn’t it? If MBS isn’t punished for this transgression, who might be the next annoying person to be killed as if it were a normal part of doing business?

That sounds like the Soviets, doesn’t it?

And it’s not just MBS, either. Any thin-skinned strongman, or a would-be strongman in a precarious position, will see MBS getting away with murder and figure he can indulge in it for political reasons as well.

Trump observed that Kashoggi, while U.S. based, isn’t an American citizen, and I suspect he’s using that as an excuse. That’s likely to lead to bad consequences.

For my part, I’d prefer a cleaner response, one modeled on the Western response to the Lockerbie bombing. That is, if it is determined the Saudis are almost certainly responsible, demand the Saudis hand over those responsible, and specify that all conspirators be included.

And if that includes MBS, so be it. Let King Salman decide if he’s more interested in keeping his allegedly murderous Crown Prince around, or keeping good relations with the United States. Even if he decides to not deliver MBS, MBS may be removed from the Crown Prince position for incompetence.

And make it clear that if King Salman declines, then we’ll decline implementing any further arms shipments to him, and we’ll begin investigating how to stop all oil shipments from Saudi Arabia.

We really should not reward murderous autocrats, which appears to be a tool MBS wants to use to further his ambitions. It would be much the same as cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face: blood everywhere, people repulsed and pitying, and all that money would have to be shoved up the nasal passageway to stop the bleeding.

Someone should inform Trump that standing firm on moral grounds has more potential for profit than just running frantically after money. After all, turning the world into a shooting gallery may be profitable for the shooters, but not so good for the targets.