Yearly Archives: 2018

Somatic:

1. Relating to the body, especially as distinct from the mind.
   ‘patients completed a questionnaire about their somatic and psychological symptoms’ [Oxford Dictionaries]
   

Noted in “A Fitbit fit over our measuring mania,” William J. Kilfoil, The Chronicle Herald:

Albert and I are both past our best-before dates, but Albert’s decline is strictly somatic — mentally, he’s as sharp as ever. I always look forward to hearing his unvarnished point of view on current events, so we agree to meet in the parking lot and drive together over to Tim’s for a bit of chewing the fat and coffee.

On the eve of the probable confirmation of Judge Kavanaugh to SCOTUS, the Republicans are likely embarking on a far riskier enterprise than most of them may realize. After all, these are people who were given a short-term goal, which was to confirm the President’s choice, Judge Kavanaugh, to the land’s highest court.

But, in tune with the much of the music the GOP has played since the election of 2016, from tax reform to healthcare reform, this has transformed from a drama of relative simplicity to, quite literally, a circus exhibiting the fundamental weakness of the Party that claims to represent America. To suggest the tune may be discordant would be far too generous: the musicians flail at their instruments with manic grins on their faces, blood on their fingertips, all while trying to dance to illicit calls of a square-dance master who puts his own dreams first.

Let’s assume the confirmation takes place, as planned, on the morrow. This will place the newly anointed Associate Justice beyond the practical reach of the GOP; oh, certainly a Justice could theoretically be clawed back by the Senate through the standard process of impeachment, but in our reality, this seems unlikely. When he’s seated, he’ll be there for at least two years, and probably far longer, as I doubt the Democrats will achieve the required super-majority in the Senate anytime soon.

And this means the reputation of the GOP, their very brand, will be subject to the legal opinions advocated by the new Associate Justice. He will engage in questioning those lawyers advocating for their clients, he will write opinions, he may be asked to deliver majority opinions, he may even declaim dissident opinions from the bench.

And that means that every case of a cultural nature, such as something to do with LGBTQ rights, or unions vs right to work, or other decisions of a non-technical nature, is an opportunity for him to tarnish that GOP reputation.

Let’s stop for a minute and consider Kavanaugh’s appearance at the end of this confirmation process. Here’s a useful description:

Ultimately, opposition to Kavanaugh’s confirmation comes down to Christine Blasey Ford’s entirely credible testimony, a blatantly slipshod investigation seemingly designed to allow him to hop over holes in his testimony, deep concern over the message that his elevation would send to victims of sex crimes (we won’t seriously investigate your claims; instead we’ll mock you), and the partisan cloud that will descend over the Supreme Court if Kavanaugh joins the bench. Collectively, these should keep him off the court, in our view. …

Kavanaugh is different from any other Supreme Court nominee in recent history. Judge Robert H. Bork was more extreme (or more honest) in his judicial philosophy, but no one accused him of giving less-than-forthright testimony; there was no hint of private impropriety. Harriet Miers was intellectually ill-prepared but was never accused of personal misconduct. No other nominee has accused one political party of conducting a campaign of vengeance against him or her.

Indeed, no judge has gotten to the highest court with the baggage that Kavanaugh totes. His shredded credibility and overt partisanship should have counseled for a substitute pick weeks ago; his unprecedented partisanship will surely sow disrespect for our judiciary for decades. No op-ed is going to clean up that mess.

This is useful not only because it’s accurate, so far as I can tell, but because it’s not from a Democratic or leftist or progressive or even centrist source. This is authored by Jennifer Rubin, conservative columnist and writer of WaPo’s Right Turn blog, one of the many former Republicans who’ve left or been run out of the party over the years, but who remembers when Republicans were respectable conservatives. I value her words far more than those of her more liberal colleagues, because her agenda is clear and her criticism far more likely to be honest.

But she really clarifies where I’m going with this contrast with the previous appointment, from the same piece:

Had Trump been able to clone Gorsuch and send him up to fill the seat of retired justice Anthony M. Kennedy, we’d be exactly where we were back then — united Republicans and a few red-state Democrats combining to confirm him (54 to 45). Gorsuch’s patience and self-control were evident during his confirmation hearing. No one feared that Gorsuch would bring disrepute to the court, nor that he would cast doubt on the legitimacy of 5-to-4 opinions. He has been more dismissive of precedent than one might have thought, but he’s a perfect example of the adage that elections have consequences.

Kavanaugh is not joining SCOTUS by walking on a red carpet long runner, scattered with flower petals and surrounded by clapping admirers, up the steps and in the golden door, as did Gorsuch. Even though I will always call Gorsuch the Illegitimate Justice, I do not denigrate him, at least not yet. But Kavanaugh?

He’s slinking in by the back door. Don’t knock over the garbage can on the way in, bud.

I say this with no malice, but simply to amplify for the reader the great risk the GOP appears to be taking on. Let me add to that a bit more, just to make those nerve endings tingle. Judge Kavanaugh, depending on how much you believe what you read from various analysts, may have lied to the Senate about a number of matters.

To me, this does not matter so much. After all, the GOP is willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, rather than hold him to a higher standard, even if I think SCOTUS merits that standard. Throw this claim in a GOP Senator’s face and he may rage that this is untrue, but, if you believe the analysis of even moderate Republicans, it’s a simple fact.

That’s not the damage the GOP need fear.

What should have them perspiring is the revelation that, having lied about these matters, Kavanaugh may have lied about other things. What might they be? Hard to say. He claims to be a mainstream conservative, and that settled law is settled law. Perhaps, however, once he’s seated he’ll argue that the Establishment Clause is really an illusion and the Presidency has a Christianist requirement on it.

Think about that. It’s not out of scope, is it? Hell, the Center For Inquiry, a great advocate for the Establishment Clause, sent me mail warning that Kavanaugh has a history of leaning too far towards religious groups in his rulings. And there’s a host of other unknown issues on which he might have deceived our Senators, Democratic and Republican.

If he is out of the mainstream and reveals it, then the Republicans stand tarred and feathered, because Kavanaugh is their inevitable standard-bearer, and yet he’s out of their control.

Man intent on jacking up his base.

All honest observers already know that Kavanaugh is a revealed partisan hack, shown in all his Republican red glory in his frantic accusations of liberal conspiracies just over a week ago. His attempt at an apology and retraction in the last couple of days, published in the Wall Street Journal (here, requires subscription), is obviated by the fact that the incriminating statement was a prepared script from which he read, not an angry outburst. Carefully planned, it actually coordinates with, of all things, his initial acceptance speech. Remember that ridiculous little toady speech, breathlessly thanking President Trump for his deeply researched choice of himself?

Yes, if you didn’t find that repulsively far too partisan for a true candidate for SCOTUS, you should see it again. It’s a wonder for the ages that Kavanaugh thinks he understands what judicial independence really means.

But this lets me transition to the real danger for the Republicans, because Kavanaugh manifests the ways of the crazed partisan, or even extremist-advocate of views putrid in the view of the American mainstream, then there will be a focus on the ways of the Republicans.

That is, how did President Trump, the man who would “get the best” for us, and has failed mightily, pick Kavanaugh? Did he task his best legal advisors to sift through the membership of the Federal judiciary and pick the best legal mind, regardless of political leaning, for the job? Did they sweat gallons of smelly liquid in their job?

No. By all accounts, Trump picked Kavanaugh’s name off a list of names prepared by The Federalist Society, a group based on a specific way of interpreting law and Constitution, after asking a couple of people what they thought of Kavanaugh.

That, in a nutshell, embodies the Republican way. We have power, now we’ll putz about and pick someone who looks good on camera. To hell with experts, because they don’t tell us what we want to hear.

And it’s a mighty inferior way to run government. The Republicans had better hope Kavanaugh keeps his nose clean and his views mainstream, because if he doesn’t, that’ll be another highly effective weapon for the Democrats to use on a party already reeling from the incompetency of President Trump. And they cannot control Kavanaugh. By putting him in a lifetime appointment, there’s no more leash, no more stick & carrot to use.

And that should scare them shitless.

Have the liberals gone too far? It’s been a game of very dangerous chicken, and I think the doxxing incident might have crossed a line. But it was necessary, given the concerns arising about his suitability for SCOTUS, to investigate thoroughly, and when the GOP Senators in charge chose not to fulfill their responsibilities, the Democrats were drawn into looking more and more extreme.

Their task will be to communicate that they were fulfilling responsibilities, and the Republicans were not. That’s where they need to go with this.

But the Republicans? They’re nearly in a lose-lose situation. This is just the start of the Kavanaugh game, not the end. What if every single case that comes before the Court were to result in a recusal request to Kavanaugh? How long before we’d get another partisan howl?

More popcorn. More strategizing. Because that’s what happens when the GOP weaponizes SCOTUS.

Even when you’re reading, apparently. The folks at RMIT University have designed a typeface that is hard to read – on purpose:

Sans Forgetica is more difficult to read than most typefaces – and that’s by design. The ‘desirable difficulty’ you experience when reading information formatted in Sans Forgetica prompts your brain to engage in deeper processing.

Yeah, not a great deal in that video. Melissa Breyer of Treehugger thinks it’s the shit:

I love that this is so simple – and it is a great example of how design can improve things with minimal effort on the user’s part. But the reason I think this is suitable for TreeHugger – a site not generally concerned with things like typefaces – is because it bucks the culture of convenience that is eating away at both the environment and ourselves.

For the sake of convenience we can’t live without single-use plastic and driving a car half a mile to the market. And meanwhile, the conveniences afforded by technology are robbing us of all kinds of thinking skills that used to keep us sharp. We no longer need to remember phone numbers or add figures in our heads, we don’t have to know how to spell words correctly or figure out routes on a map. I worry that we are going to become a species reliant on external brains, while our own become flaccid with disuse!

At a time in our history when every thing is pathologically designed to make things easier – to make us work less, move less, think less – how refreshing it is to stumble upon something designed to make things more difficult! Even if in the end the goal is to make memorization easier, that we have to use our brain power and work a little harder to get there can only be a good thing. And if we can get a bit of a memory boost out of the deal, all the better.

Not to be a contrarian, but we do seem to come up with new tasks to replace those that go by the wayside, so I have to wonder if Melissa is truly accurate in her worries. Do we have piles and piles of flabby20 year olds, feebly kicking bodies with which we can find nothing to do? (Soylent green! Oh, sorry.) Perhaps there was similar muttering from hard-core car drivers when automatic transmissions came around.

Figuring out the appropriate measurement metric may be a wee bit of a challenge.

In light of a new DoJ indictment of Russian military intelligence members, Megan Reiss on Lawfare discusses the Russian tactics of disinformation dissemination in the age of cyberwarfare. I thought this was interesting:

Second, Russia is using highly effective methods to meet its objectives: cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns. As the indictment describes, the GRU utilized most of the cyber tools the organization has available to conduct a wide variety of attacks, from spear phishing to spoofing to distributed denial of service attacks. Some of their efforts appear sophisticated, such as masking identities, utilizing cryptocurrency and developing malware to steal information.

Yet the aspect of the indictment that should send shivers down the spines of Western officials is the revelation that Russian agents used Wi-Fi to conduct attacks. These were not merely hackers conducting operations from the comfort of their home country. When they couldn’t attack remotely, agents traveled to their victims and took advantage of the security risks of unencrypted networks, and using poorly secured hotel Wi-Fi to steal network information and hack into the targeted computers.

According to the indictment, hacked information was then released—sometimes after being altered—as part of a disinformation campaign by the “Fancy Bear Hack Team.” Fancy Bear targeted an estimated 116 reporters and tried to create a social-media campaign to distribute the message that Russia was unfairly targeted and that athletes from other states dope as well . As noted by FBI Cyber Division Deputy Assistant Director Eric Welling, this campaign targeted hundreds of clean athletes from almost 30 countries.

Everyone secured their WiFi systems?

But this reminds me of a report last night on NPR, of which this is probably the transcript, concerning an attempted infiltration of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Netherlands:

Dutch authorities escorted four Russian intelligence officers out of the country hours after the car they had rented was found parked near the OPCW’s building in The Hague, its trunk full of gear for hacking Wi-Fi networks. A large antenna was sitting on top of the equipment, which was on and running, using a battery that had been placed in the trunk.

The four officers had entered the Netherlands on diplomatic passports, according to the Dutch Defense Ministry, which said the British intelligence service had worked with it to disrupt the operation.

“This cyber operation against the OPCW is unacceptable,” said Dutch Defense Minister Ank Bijleveld. “By revealing this Russian action, we have sent a clear message: Russia must stop this.”

I do have to wonder or what? Shake their finger even more vigorously? Those Russian spies shouldn’t have been escorted out of the country, they should have been dumped in the local hoosgow and there they could cool their heels for fifteen years. They’d become an object lesson for other would-be spies about infiltration.

That result would get back to the Russian hackers who are employed doing this, and it might discourage a few of them. Perhaps the best ones. Leaving Russia with second-rate hackers.

Sure, Russia would apply various sorts of pressure on the Dutch, but if all you think about is the pressure and how terrible it is that your fossil fuels might be cut off, well, why are you playing in international politics anyways?

Perhaps this is another bug in our home computer. You know, the one that’s simulating our Universe. At least, this weirdness sounds like it. From NewScientist (22 September 2018, extended):

Chemists have a plan to make ghosts in the lab, by bonding an atom to a patch of empty space.

Normal chemical bonds anchor two atoms together, usually through sharing their electrons. Now, theorists have worked out how to trick a single hydrogen atom to form a bond with nothing, by luring the atom’s lone electron into the same position and state it would be in a real bond.

Matt Eiles of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana and his colleagues are building on work from two years ago that saw the creation of strange, super-sized bonds in other molecules, such as diatomic caesium.

A few months ago Climate Home News published a leaked draft of the summary report for the United Nations concerning the goal to limit temperature rise due to anthropomorphic climate change to 1.5 C. WaPo summarizes some recent meetings on finalizing the report and remarks on our possible future:

“It would be an enormous challenge to keep warming below a threshold” of 1.5 degrees Celsius, said Shindell, bluntly. “This would be a really enormous lift.”

So enormous, he said, that it would require a monumental shift toward decarbonization. By 2030 — barely a decade away — the world’s emissions would need to drop by about 40 percent. By the middle of the century, societies would need to have zero net emissions. What might that look like? In part, it would include things such as no more gas-powered vehicles, a phaseout of coal-fired power plants and airplanes running on biofuels, he said.

And if we don’t? We’ll get a lesson in how religious expectations do not conform to the actions of Nature. By this I mean that an awful lot of people think they’ve led a good life because they’ve conformed, more or less, to the expectations of their religion. But Nature doesn’t really care about that; it keeps doing what the rules of chemistry (or physics, if you prefer) dictate, and if our religious rules don’t happen to recognize those chemistry rules, well, it’s just too bad.

On the one hand, it’ll be an awful demonstration of how religious belief can easily deviate from reality, but on the other, I doubt we’ll learn from it.

Later: My link on Facebook for this post amuses me so much that I have to copy it here. I make no apologies.

Meanwhile, the elephant tried to sit on one of your chairs, crushed it, fell through the floor, smashed the furnace, which caught explosively on fire, leaving your house flat and a flaming catapulted elephant which landed on the neighbor’s house, set it on fire, had enormous flatulence which ALSO caught fire, and now all the neighbors have flaming houses and harbor a grudge against you.

In case you were wondering, yes, that’s the climate change future WRT the United States in a nutshell.

And it goes both ways. WaPo reports that a former Democratic aide has been arrested for doxing some GOP Senators:

U.S. Capitol Police announced late Wednesday that a former junior Senate Democratic staffer has been arrested for allegedly posting private information about Republican senators on the Wikipedia Internet website.

Jackson A. Cosko, 27, of the District, faces five federal counts including making public restricted personal information, making threats in interstate communications, identity theft, witness tampering and unauthorized access of a government computer, police said. …

A brief police statement did not give details, but a U.S. official said the arrest was tied to the investigation into the posting of personal information about Republican senators on the Wikipedia site as they held a hearing Sept. 27 on sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh.

At the time, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) rejected accusations that a member of her staff was responsible, calling them “lies, lies, and more despicable lies.”

The information posted purportedly included phone numbers and home addresses for three Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the hearing: Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), Sen. Mike Lee (Utah) and Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (Utah).

I suppose Rep. Waters is technically correct – Cosko was no longer in her employ – but it’s still a bit of a stain on her.

More abstractly, this incident functions as a measure of the heat of the culture clash between the liberals and the extremists controlling the Republicans, an infection if you will. If more such incidents accumulate on the Democratic side, it may indicate a left-wing swing into obduracy as well. The right-wing is already there, although I wonder if they’re really blameless and operating in an honorable matter, or if – privately – they cop to their hypocrisy and either don’t think it’s important, or are so addicted to power that nothing else matters.

The right to privacy is another way of speaking of the importance of civil society, the agreement that, whatever our disagreements may be, we’re not going to resort to violence. Doxxing is, not to be blunt or anything, a virtual assassination, a message to the victims that they can be hunted down.

It’s really unacceptable, if you think about it. If Mr. Cosko is responsible, an arrest and jail time is appropriate. Those who were doxxed, whatever their failings as human beings, are justified in their outrage.

But back to the analogy, the question becomes whether or not this is an infection which will be burned out by the host, or if it’s going to kill the host. As I noted here, I think it’s just a matter of time before the more virulent members of both sides are either dead, or removed from power by the oncoming generations. Those generations will hopefully take a look at the problems of today and discard those assumptions which hold no water and lead to, well, various misbehaviors.

And we’ll keep on muddling on.

Remember the drone attack on Venezuelan President Maduro? On Lawfare, Nicholas Weaver discusses the legal vs practical implications for the United States. This bit sparked a couple of thoughts:

The effort was unsuccessful. One drone crashed into a building while the other appeared to explode in mid air; Maduro was unharmed. But amazingly, should someone try a similar attack in the United States, federal officers do not have sufficient legal authority to stop the drone in progress. The current version of the bill to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) contains language that would enable federal authorities to directly counter these threats.

The threat is significant. The drones used in the Venezuelan attack, for example, are available commercially for $5,000 each. They weigh less than 25 pounds and can be controlled from five kilometers away over a short-range radio link, essentially the computer equivalent of an old-fashioned walkie-talkie. These are standard drones used for professional aerial photography or similar activities, but modern racing drones are even scarier. One particular $300 drone has a flying weight of less than a pound, can travel at over 100 miles per hour, carry a 200 gram payload—the mass of a 40 millimeter grenade—and yet is agile enough that a skilled pilot can fly it under trees.

It is incredibly hard to intercept and disable small drones like these, even in a military environment and with a military budget—so hard that DARPA is still trying to solve this problem. Disabling drones like these is even harder in a civilian environment, with added budgetary constraints and concerns over collateral damage.

The threat from these drones has been obvious since well before the Maduro assassination attempt. The Islamic State has already shown an ability to weaponize commercial drones; a gang reportedly used swarming drones to disrupt an FBI operation; and at least one Mexican drug cartel has developed bomb drones. Yet under current law, it is illegal for law enforcement to counter such drones: To do so would be interference with an “aircraft,” as the FAA defines even a lightweight toy drone.

Inevitably, weaponizing a drone will result in calls for making such drones illegal. Will we see interference from adversaries such as Russia, attempting to sway public opinion concerning whether weaponized drones should be generally available? How can the NRA become even more shrill than it is these days?

Technically, to my mind there are two sorts of drones, remotely controlled and autonomous, and they may require separate approaches. Neither would be easy to hit with a kinetic weapon. Concussion weapons may cause too much collateral damage. Electromagnetic weapons of a primitive sort will work against remotely controlled drones, but taking out autonomous drones with an electromagnetic weapon such as an EMP may, again, result in too much collateral damage unless an EMP could be tuned to only destroy devices operating on a particular part of the spectrum. But what if the weapons are using commercial parts, thus causing collateral damage again?

This could be morbidly interesting.

My Arts Editor snapped this nifty little pic of the mums after some rain today.

System 1 thinking is useful when the ladder you’re on is falling over, or the lion bursts through the gate you thought closed.

Otherwise, though, not so much. System 2 thinking is the rational system, System 1 is the speedy fight-or-flight system, often not suited to many of today’s situations. But marketeers know  you can be tricked into making bad decisions by engaging that System 1 thinking system, and The Motley Fool’s latest come-on e-mail is an example of this:

I just released a brand-new investor presentation that gives the full story on why NOW is the time to get invested in the cannabis industry.

This presentation is called “Cannabis Countdown: How to Invest in the Coming Marijuana Boom.”

When you click the button below, I’ll share my complete investment blueprint designed to help you navigate the rapidly growing marijuana space, including the name and ticker of one cannabis stock I’m actively watching…

And reveal how you can position your portfolio to benefit from a trend that has already handed some investors gains of 177%, 417%, and 635% in 2018 alone!

This presentation is absolutely free, but the industry is moving so fast, we’re only comfortable keeping it available until midnight tonight!

So, don’t delay! Click the button below to go straight to this exclusive presentation.

I’ve omitted the button in case my reader is the impulsive sort. As we can see here, the idea is to appeal to the acquisitive nature of human beings (look at our winners!), and then scaring them by suggesting this opportunity is going away in less than an hour.

The seasoned investor will shrug and mutter, Yeah, right.. And then walk away.

Just like I am. If maryjane’s going to be a big industry – and, at the moment, the feds still see it as an illegal Schedule 1 drug – it’ll be around for a while and there’ll be plenty of opportunities to make and lose money. Why let yourself be hurried?

And a somewhat more subtle part of this appeal is that the one night only part tends to make the unwary person feel as if they’re part of an exclusive group – and that’s the beginnings of a subtle tribalism. Once you’re part of the group, then you can be milked. Incidentally, this is true of brands in general, such as the Apple brand, but in this case is being part of the group really worth the eventual cost? That’s the part that never comes up.

And that explains why this opening salvo is free.

Yours in wariness.

I see The New York Times has a report on Trump the Failure, if my reader will permit me to extrapolate from what little I’ve read.

Significance?

Zero. I fear the Trump bubble is made of iron and it’s locked tight. The report has no tangible impact on the lives of the Trump Tribe, so they won’t pay attention. They care nothing about his personal character; in fact, if he’s been devious and unsavory, an alleged tax cheat and draft dodger, they cheer him on all the more. As this point, he’s not attracting new adherents from the groups to his left (which, don’t get me wrong, is really far right, so I’m talking moderate Republicans), only from the far-far-right; I do not include those who cynically use him to achieve their aims while holding their noses, a far more dangerous practice than they should be comfortable with.

My question is whether reports such as this CNN report will have any impact:

[Richard] Ojeda’s campaign has at times been a one-man mission to call attention to one of the most economically desolate regions of the country — a reality that explains some of his populist positions. Ojeda loves coal jobs but loathes energy industry executives. He favors marijuana legalization because, he says, it’s a way to combat “Big Pharma” and loosen opioid addiction’s grip on southwestern West Virginia. He likes the generals surrounding Trump, but sees wealthy appointees like education secretary Betsy DeVos as anathema to Trump’s campaign promises.

He rocketed to stardom in West Virginia by leading the teachers’ revolt over years of Republican budget austerity — a backlash that quickly spread to other states. Now, educators have turbocharged his campaign, giving Ojeda an issue that appeals to voters of all political stripes.

His campaign has emerged as an important test for Democrats, who have watched rural, white areas like West Virginia’s 3rd District vote overwhelmingly Republican, and feared that — even with the right candidate and the right message — those voters were lost to the party forever.

Polls in recent weeks have shown Ojeda in a single-digit race behind Republican Carol Miller. And national Democrats see Ojeda’s previous support for Trump — and the reasons he turned on the President — as part of what makes him an appealing candidate.

Yep, a former Trump supporter, out in the open and running. He’s a former paratrooper who plays the part. And he’s a Democrat:

“It’s pretty simple the role that he fills: He is the return of the Democratic Party to really being the champion of the people. Not Wall Street, not Silicon Valley, not any corporate interest — but really fighting for working people in every community,” said Krystal Ball, a Democratic strategist who has worked closely with Ojeda through her political action committee, The People’s House Project.

If he wins, Ball said, Ojeda would be an “instant national voice in the Democratic Party, just because the odds are so long for him to be able to win the district.”

If Ojeda cannot persuade Trump voters to start thinking and evaluating in a critical manner, for themselves, who can? I’ll be quite interested in the results, as he’s running in a district won by Trump by 49 points. If he’s already gotten it down to single digits, he’s done quite well at making up ground. Can he get the last few yards?

Although it’d be better if he won by > 10 points.

And I feel a bit trashy, because I have no idea if he’d be competent at this job. None whatsoever.

But part of me just wants to tell the civil libertarians that if they’re going to be paranoid – justified or not – then bloody well adjust how you live your life rather than expect the world to adjust to your personal desires. Here’s the trigger:

Travelers who refuse to surrender passwords, codes, encryption keys and other information enabling access to electronic devices could be fined up to $5,000 in New Zealand (about US$3,300), according to new customs rules that went into effect Monday.

Border agents were already able to seize digital equipment, but the Customs and Excise Act of 2018 newly specifies that access to personal technology must be handed over as well. The law provides, however, that officials need to have “reasonable cause to suspect wrongdoing” before conducting a digital search — cold comfort for civil liberties advocates, who have sounded an alarm about the measure. [WaPo]

It’s a personal choice on my part to avoid having too much data on my phone. Sure, I could figure out how to completely encrypt all access and all data so I could use my phone to do my personal banking, lending, mortgages, all my software development for my employer, run a small, indie bank on the side, build a complete photography portfolio, manage half a dozen mistresses, AND store all the nuclear secrets I may or may not have stolen over the years.

And then lose the damn thing in the river, so of course now it’s de rigeur to save it all in The Cloud, except The Cloud is nothing more than an old-fashioned time-share system from forty years ago, meaning someone else controls the computer you just put all your vital information on.

And no matter how much you encrypt that data, if those computers are told not to let you access it, there’s not much you can do unless you’re a world-class hacker. And, of course, an EMP or possibly a really big solar flare could turn your data into a big old bang of dinosaur flatulence.

That’s paranoia. Unless your backup system is punch-cards.

In fact, and perhaps it’s already well-known, but I suspect many of us are more prisoners of our phones than find them truly beneficial. But trying to find a metric for that suggestion will be a challenge.

Sort of like the challenge Satan had with Saddam Hussein. If you don’t understand that one, it doesn’t really matter.

In any case, I keep some pictures of cats on my phone. And of some totally awesome orange lilies that has completely charmed me. I can read my mail, if I really want to – hint: more than half my mail is political spam from BOTH SIDES. There, now no one will steal my phone.

The rest is either not computer-bound, or is on my computers. I tend to be conservative about this crap.

And maybe I’m just crabby.

Yeah, crabby. I’ll grant that the New Zealand move could be a step along a path to a world with no privacy, or of government officials surreptitiously collecting information on you for their personal gain.

On the other hand, the New Zealanders think they’re safer with this law in place.

Conservative pundit Hugh Hewitt’s piece in WaPo makes me think Hewitt believes he’s on to something – he wants to blame everything on “the left.” But it’s a careful selection of arguments missing their historical context. For example:

But some seem to welcome a slide in that direction. “Tell me again why we shouldn’t confront Republicans where they eat, where they sleep, and where they work until they stop being complicit in the destruction of our democracy,” tweeted Ian Millhiser, justice editor at ThinkProgress.

“Because it is both wrong & supremely dangerous,” replied Georgetown Law professor Randy Barnett. “When one side denies the legitimacy of good faith disagreement over policy — as well as over constitutional principle — the other side will eventually reciprocate. Neither a constitutional republic nor a democracy can survive that.”

And, yet, this was started by the GOP. Can we say Merrick Garland? Sure we can – and remember the Republican refusal to even consider his nomination – followed by Republican vows to keep the late Scalia’s seat open if Clinton had won the Presidency. And, yet, Hewitt would point at the left as starting the culture wars.

Six years of Republican attempts to sabotage President Obama should not be forgotten when the finger pointing begins.

But he has an even bigger whopper he’s trying to slide by the inattentive reader:

Its cause is the retirement of a Supreme Court justice who was appointed by a Republican president, and his imminent replacement by a Supreme Court justice nominated by a Republican president.

And we’ll just stop right there and contemplate the hidden assumption that SCOTUS seats are assigned to political parties. Great idea, eh? Let’s enshrine ideological majorities so they can be run by party donors, no doubt using the latest in judicial joysticks.

The right wing extremists in control of the Republican party wouldn’t countenance any such philosophy if it had been Justice Ginsburg’s, or any of the other left-wing Justices’, death precipitating Obama’s selection of Garland.  We’d have seen the exact same dishonorable, institution-destroying maneuvering by Senator McConnell, supported by the exact same lies and distortions about how seats on SCOTUS which open up during the last year of a President are reserved for the next President.

And Scalia died more than a year before the end of Obama’s term. Ahem. McConnell and his fellow extremists don’t know history, nor do they understand how the calendar works. Or … they’re lying.

And then Hewitt condemns himself:

Though Donald Trump is not anyone’s idea of a conventional president, Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh is not only extraordinarily qualified but also a deeply conventional choice.

If so, why not approve Garland, instead? Recommended by Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), he was, by all expert accounts, intellectually impeccable and ideologically middle of the road. If Kavanaugh really is conventional, then let’s put Garland in the seat, instead. Why object, Hewitt?

Unless Kavanaugh’s not all that conventional? Certainly, his ridiculous position on Executive immunity is both unconventional and intellectually flawed. I mean, I’m not even a lawyer and I picked the summary I read of it to little pieces and laughed at it. Rumor has it that he’d like to overturn Roe, another unconventional position – but also unconfirmed.

I also got a charge out of this:

… and the volcano erupts because Kavanaugh — a thoroughly decent man, an obviously good man — was slimed.

It’s not a stretch to suggest we replace Kavanaugh with former Speaker Dennis Hastert and realize the sentence is just as believable, just as plausible.

And then we remember Inmate Dennis Hastert, admitted child sex abuser (convicted on tax fraud, however). We may trust people based on impressions, even long-term associations, but when it comes to a seat on SCOTUS, we fucking verify, as Ronald Reagan said (perhaps I paraphrase a trifle).

And it’s all a pity, because there’s one point Hewitt makes which will require we wait until the mid-terms are concluded, and it’s worth considering:

A vast swath of the public has concluded that the Democrats sat on an explosive charge until the last minute, and they imagine themselves being ambushed that way at work. They don’t want their daughters and sons to live in a society where allegation is conviction.

It’s a good point, primarily because he added daughters to that paragraph – if he’d left it at sons, I’d be laughing at it as well – just like those whimpering idiots who whine about White rights. But, as one of my readers noted, Ford contacted the Administration as soon as she heard about Kavanaugh  being on the list.

But that’s not his point, his point is perception, and that means the Democrats need to justify how this process went, and implore the voters to think about the needs of the nation, not the wants of a party which has gone rapidly right over the last two decades.

A reader writes concerning Three Identical Strangers:

I thought it was very good. As you wrote, the first third was the feel-good part, and then it got dark. The interesting thing was as they were interviewing the triplets in the now, it never dawned on me that the 3rd one was missing. Even when they interviewed his wife and she was speaking in the past tense. I guess it didn’t seem that weird to my brain because they were talking about events of the past.

I was pretty horrified that this could happen, considering they said the agency specialized in adopting Jewish kids to Jewish families. This study started in the mid 60s, 20 years after WWII. Do they have no cultural memory? The Nazis used to experiment on twins.

I have to wonder if there was some cultural things going on, because, if memory serves, the psychologist came from Austria, which certainly had some ties to the Nazis and the general culture at the time. However, I know little enough about cultural morals to guess whether the psychologist’s moral system, derived from the early 20th century in Europe, would have clashed with the moral system of the United States in the mid-to-late 20th century.

Clearly, Aunt Hedy (I hope I have her name correct) was appalled, but I don’t recall if she was American or European. The RA was clearly European and defended the psychologist’s research. I do think that the moral systems of scientists and the general citizen can differ in a systemic way (and feel free to mutter “duh” at this point), and that may be what we’re seeing here.

I also wonder what would have happened if when the kid went to college, the person who walked into his dorm room actually never walked in. That guy happened to know the brother’s DOB and his current phone number. I wonder if the other people recognizing him would have been enough to make him seek the other guy out? Life is weird.

I think so. People get curious about such things.

Although I don’t know that I’d chase down my doppelganger.

Up here in Minnesota we like to think our mosquitoes are awful – or would be, if we didn’t aggressively fight them every spring. But in the face of this report on Treehugger from Melissa Breyer, I’m sort of leaning towards handing the title of fucking huge mosquitoes to North Carolina:

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That mosquitoes may revel in flood-ravaged areas doesn’t come as much of a surprise, but the size and numbers currently seen in North Carolina are striking. This batch of biters is called Psorophora ciliata, or “gallinippers,” or even better yet, “shaggy-legged gallinippers” – a wonderfully Dr Seuss-y name surely at odds with the actual experience of being swarmed by a blizzard of them.

Various news reports have them at anywhere from three to twenty times larger than regular mosquitoes – and Newsweekputs the number at “billions.”

One resident said “It was like a flurry – like it was snowing mosquitos,” another said it was like “a bad science fiction movie.”

Yeow!

If you can sit through Rebirth Of Mothra (1996), you deserve a beer. Yep, go get one. Then we’ll toast how creaky this bad boy is.

A lot.

We saw the picnic operetta at this park, and while I failed to get a picture of the actual operetta, I did manage to take a picture of a … smokestack.

Yes, please, hold the applause. Don’t disturb the singers.

While it’s an important contention as Kavanaugh’s nomination goes into extra innings, Jennifer Rubin’s column today in WaPo made me laugh.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but should not Kavanaugh recuse himself from every case involving a left-leaning group that is part of the conspiracy he decried?

As he yelled at Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, it was not hard to imagine that he would be less than evenhanded if they were a party in litigation. “With his unprecedented attacks on Democrats and liberals, Kavanaugh must now likely broadly recuse himself from matters including those groups,” says ethics guru Norman Eisen. “It may wipe out a substantial portion of his docket should he be confirmed. We have a rule of thumb in government ethics: When recusals are so broad that the nominee can’t do his job, then maybe he shouldn’t be confirmed to the position. It is time to consider that question here.”

Partisans are rarely, if ever, capable of empathy with anyone outside of their own little tribe, it’s practically definitional. So it’s not surprising that Kavanaugh may have given his little emotional outburst with hardly any thought as to how it would sit with those who might come before him, not only if he makes it to SCOTUS, but even if he must return to his current seat on the D.C. Court of Appeals.

He’ll probably set a record for the most recusal requests from attorneys, given his naked display of anti-liberal bias.

Not that most cases have clear conservative vs liberal parties, but there are always a few, and it may become a strategy for Supreme Court attorneys to try to decide if Kavanaugh might, a priori, render his decision against them, and, if so, first ask him to recuse himself.

It’ll become a matter of some humor among attorneys, I’d imagine. And an Associate Justice of SCOTUS should hardly want to be the laughingstock of his colleagues.

Yep, makes me laugh. Just like the President to whom he practically, and quite unethically, swore allegiance is also a laughingstock.

There’s a joke buried in there somewhere.

Today I emailed my Senators and Representative concerning Puerto Rico and statehood, suggesting the latter should be applied to the former.

It’ll be interesting to see how soon each replies to this issue of less than compelling importance during the current national shitstorm.

Found on the porch 9/30. Transcribed below.

Chronicle Ephemeris

June 3, 1982^[1] – I make these notes as my memory is shattered or non-existent. My earliest memories are echoes of glorious times, my storerooms filled with treasured objects of glittering significance, my cupboards of the skulls of the mdemifiji^[2]. Perhaps they bore those treasures to me.

And then memories grow faint and scanty. Something went amiss, and I faded. I leave this barren cave tomorrow, summoned as I am. The hollow I laboriously scratched out is too small now. Tonight I refuse to contemplate other troublesome aspects, for I tire.

June 4 – To the North it is, then. I flew high, flinging my wings into their task, feeling the cool dampness of occultation battling the heat of the everlasting sun on my alien hide, and, aware of both my pride and current weakness, subtly avoided the sky-riding metal monsters of the interlopers.

Yes, I remember them now, if dimly. As I slept one season away, half a millenia ago, bathing in the glow of adoration, they came across the deep blue sea, their hands out, their gifts of weapons. They, too, were mdemifiji, but of another, and mine melted away, and so did I.

But at midday, as I glided, I felt it, the hot rush of my bravery, that giddy rush of mdemifiji’s red essential fluids, fountaining high as some mdemifiji summons me, his knife doing its sacred work again. I land, and I am larger and harder to conceal than before, but even this land, teeming with ignorant interlopers who are like lice on some casual running bite, has its areas free of their presence, and there I can hide.

And muse on my malformations.

June 5 – The land flowed below me today as hot liquid rock overtook the lush lands of my youth, consuming all before it, its essential greenness, of which I’m so perpetually enthralled, tainted, and pocked with the pride of the interlopers, and their constructions afflict my sense of propriety as if their pride were claws, piercing my eyes and forcing me to stare in horror.

Can I stare in horror? I shouldn’t think so, yet I am afflicted with it even as I present this. Why do I, of all the divine, possess claws? Are these not ludicrous, the very denial of my identity?

I am Quetzalcoatl^[3]! My beautiful form is marred by these appendages. Why am I deprived of my essentials and ornaments and slashing fangs? I sicken at the thought of some mdemifiji glimpsing my dingy gray hide, so alien to my sense, bereft of the jewel-like multi-hued feathers I deem essential to my very being.

Or are my mdemifiji so degraded they know not what they summon? Am I not divine? Yet, this, this form forced upon me, I cannot change it! Am I not divine? Am I not divine?

Am I not a god?

June 6 – This call upon me, now I dread and hate. The mdemifiji continues his sacred work with his hungry knife, and naught may I do but continue. I rest now within sight of a great pile of interloper constructions, thrusting their pride into the air like some monstrous expression of reproductive lust, overburdening their world with their numbers in limitless pride. Such are they.

And I wonder, now. My mdemifiji of old knew slaves, bent under tasks for which their owners cared not. For what does this mdemifiji call me? If it is because I am, and must be again, then all is well and pride is unscathed. But if the mdemifiji wants some act, then am I still a god? A slave?

An enslaved god? Is this a concept even to be considered? I cannot understand it.

As I wait for the sun to escape from my grim mood, I contemplate the assemblage of glowing constructions on the horizon from my hiding spot. Hiding spot grinds on my nerves as I write it. City, the teeming lice call it. That’s easier to write.

Writing. It’s for the weak and vituperative. My other thoughts are nuncupatory, unsavory and unworthy of any but mdemifiji. I hate them.

June 7 – Tempestuous. I am worn out. I am woven into this hiding spot (some cruel part of me whispers lair), but I scratch this out as a reminder of indignities.

Night, in the times of glory, unjustly concealed my beauty and that of my sacred squash and corn from the eyes of those who did adore, but I am no longer such a creature, and so I welcome its embrace as I submit – submit – to the call of the hungry knife and its wielder, cursed mdemifiji, slashing his willing offerings into fountains of chains to compel and hold me.

From high above this city, in this alien, filthy glow obscuring the unconscious beauty of the stars even I cannot reach, I sought an eyrie, for I tire of the caves and suspect those of the city will be damp and inhospitably dominated by loathesome carrion eaters. I knew an eyrie millenia ago, and soon found a suitability in a high, older building in which the top levels had been abandoned – or perhaps never were meant for use. Battering my way in, I confirmed its rough adequateness and prepared a simple nest for my contemplative ease.

And then an indignity heretofore unknown was thrust upon me, unimaginable and infuriating. With no control, I found myself desperately distending my hips and veritably rendering my sacred viscera for all to see, and to my shock – I nearly choke writing that phrase even now – I birth an egg.

An egg.

I, who have never dallied, never deigned to engage in this act, have had it thrust upon me. Is this sacred, profane, a crime? A baffled, violated divinity? The concept is absurd, and yet it weighs heavy on me. Now, I rest, the egg taking pride of place in my nest. I feel nothing for it.

June 8 – The profane act of the night burdened me such that even the mdemifiji could not enliven me, and so I thought to hunt. This was simple, as the interlopers, the inhabitants of this hellhole, display themselves openly in their worship of the sun. As an amusement, I plucked a head from one clinging to the side of one of their structures, evidently harassing the occupant, and found the contents flatulent. Next, a swoop, some screaming from my hapless prey, a happy balm to my being, but a traditional, if quick, dispatch through the eye socket, and I soon dined in my new home.

Once finished, I found myself belabored by postprandial morbid thoughts, and took again to wing, this time to observe these horrid creatures at their trivial lives. Acts of consumption like mine, reproduction, even primitive entertainment flitted through my perceptions as I glided high above. A collective act of aggression raises psemiffi^[4] in me; not that this was unknown in my mdemifiji, but was a reminder of this primal facet of all existence.

June 9 – Another morsel, this time, for my amusement, taken from a company of them. Their horror was delectable, a fine accompaniment as I crushed the creature’s rib cage and rained gore upon those below. Let them clean it, such is the task I assign them.

Then the mdemifiji’s knife drinks again, and even as I vitalize, I inwardly cower. What will this creature desire? How shall I fulfill the implicit promise of the mdemifiji’s actions? The chains of his desires tighten around me.

June 10 – How can a god be surprised? Yet, here I am, having dined in usual fashion upon two victims, but not having hunted them down. They were lured here by one of those aggressors of which I spoke earlier. Some inferior drama occurred, and the most inferior’s survival depended upon my snapping jaws, as if I were little more than an animal. Insulting, yet filling.

I think they call it room service. How droll.

But I meditate upon this connection, and wonder about the psemiffi involved.

June 11 – It happened. Again. I do not understand it. I shall not speak of it, nor think of it.

But I wonder at something. These creatures and their mechanisms. I ignore them, they are not adulatory of me, but I wonder a little at their function. After I left that other place, they came with those machines and pointed them at my issue. How did they know? Why do they do that?

June 12 – I am more and more aware of these creatures’ mysterious motives. They hold these mechanisms and seemingly point them everywhere. I am now aware that even my first morsel taken in this city was witnessed, despite my fast strike, by such a mechanism. Other forays may also have been captured.

The mdemifiji continues his bloody ways, yet makes no demand upon me. Is resurrection enough for him? Today’s meal appears to have outraged the inhabitants, for they ignored my divine status and stung me with pellets like a swarm of bees, but it was for naught, as I still lunched easily.

June 13 – I barely scratch this out. I am shattered. Why remember it? I am driven. If you are divine, you will  understand.

An empty hunt, but the pleasure of the wind in my wings, came to a fateful end as I found these creatures, these loathesome termites, had invaded my nest. I swept by the tall building on wing and glimpsed through the openings I had made, the shattered fragments of egg and the dead bodies of my offspring, destroyed by these northern barbarians. My anger betrayed me, for though I took sacred vengeance upon several of these worthless creatures with skillful attacks, again they sent the bees to bloody me, likely flung by the invaders of my nest. They clung and dug deeply, and, enervated, I crashed to the ground.

Even as I did so, though, I glimpsed a ghost, a veritable flying mechanism of mechanical wings, and from it hung more of the creatures, silently pointing those other mysterious mechanisms at me. They are beyond me.

Their victory rid them not of their terror, and before they could come to visit upon me horrid vengeance, I crawled into their sewers. From there, I felt the desperation of that depraved mdemifiji, bane of my divinity, ready once more to wield that sacredly wicked knife, but upon whom? In grim humor, I laughed, as he found the creature who had led my attackers to my nest, but that had no interest in being a mdemifiji, and so the sacrifice would be for naught. During remonstrances, another surprised and killed the mdemifiji, condemning me to extinguishment. In that moment of malicious humor, I honored the promise of the mdemifiji’s knife and returned the mdemifiji to life, momentary life once again ended by the vengeful.

His momentary dismay was sweet. I laughed. I expire. Once again.

Received while contemplating Q (1982, aka The Winged Serpent and Q – The Winged Serpent). A wretched little monster movie, suggesting that the gods of the vanquished are violent and inferior to those of the vanquishers, a quetzalcoatl is summoned to New York, where it makes snacks out of the locals.

The connection between Q and this transcript is fleeting and imaginary.

¹ The translator’s (or perhaps translators’, as the identity of translator is not revealed) commentary, hurriedly scrawled, indicates the dates are somewhat problematic, but thought to be close to accurate.

² The translator’s commentary indicates mdemifiji is a concept which begins with our notion of worshiper, but extends it to suggest that a mdemifiji also contributes to the creation of that worshiped. To my knowledge, English has no single word for such a concept, but the concept itself is not unknown; for a fanciful treatment, see Strange Evil, Gaskell, J.

³ Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent god of the Maya and allied Central and South American empires. Incidentally, we used a plush quetzalcoatl on a string to finally charm an inherited cat to join our family, years ago. She has since passed on, and the plush quetzalcoatl has been returned to storage. Now I wonder.

⁴ Psemiffi, the commentary suggests this is a wholly untranslatable concept. Make of it what you will.

In case you were wondering if the purpose of corporations is constrained to making as much money as fast as possible, economics professor Steven Pearlstein is here to set you right.

MYTH NO. 2

Corporations must be run to maximize value for shareholders.

This is an almost universal belief among corporate executives and directors — that it is their principal mission and legal obligation to deliver the highest possible return to their shareholders. The economist Milton Friedman first declared in the 1970s that the “one social responsibility of business [is] . . . to increase its profits,” but the corporate raiders of the 1980s were the ones who forced that view on executives and directors, threatening to take their companies or fire them if they didn’t go along. Since then, “maximizing shareholder value” has been routinely used to justify layoffs and plant closings, rationalize an orgy of stock buybacks, and defend elaborate corporate schemes to avoid paying taxes. It is now widely taught by business schools, ruthlessly demanded by Wall Street’s analysts and “activist” investors, and lavishly reinforced by executive pay packages tied to profits and share prices.

In fact, corporations are free to balance the interests of shareholders with those of customers, workers or the public, as they did routinely before the 1980s, when companies were loath to boost profits if it meant laying off workers or cutting their benefits. Legally, corporations can be formed for any purpose. Executives and directors owe their fiduciary duty to the corporation, which is not owned by shareholders, as widely believed, but owns itself (in the same way that nobody “owns” you or me). The only time a corporation is obligated to maximize its share price is when it puts itself up for sale. [WaPo]

It’s a mostly reassuring view, except for the part where he states that “Executives and directors owe their fiduciary duty to the corporation, which is not owned by shareholders, as widely believed, but owns itself …“, a view which is certainly not taught to shareholders, at least by The Motley Fool, who does teach investors to consider their stock holdings to a share in ownership of the corporation, and to evaluate their potential investments accordingly (also known as fundamental investing, vs technical investing, which looks for patterns in investor behaviors as found in pricing charts, and results in rapid-fire buying and selling).

But, more importantly, that last view reminds me of the dubious view that corporations are people. I acknowledge this is a difficult subject, and I’ll desist from further commentary.

Instead, I’ll just note that, as an Econ professor, Pearlstein carries a certain amount of authority when he notes that corporations are under no obligation to maximize their profits, and that organizations can have many goals. It makes for an effective rejoinder to those who’d stamp their feet and demand more, more, more!

Despite the cool Minnesota fall weather, we were able to attend our yearly appointment to see the latest offering of Mixed Precipitation, the local operetta company, and, in Dr. Falstaff and the Working Wives of Lake County, came away with the up close & personal story of the Environmental Protection Agency’s successful suit to close up the Minnesota Iron Range taconite mines due to the pollution. Sung to the tunes of Bruce Springsteen, Nicolai Otto, and a few pop-music groups, we have here an introduction to the travails which descend upon the taconite miners as their only large industry is forced to close up shop, while brightening the lives of the local fishermen who’ve seen their industry fade under the unceasing pollution of the mining industry.

Meanwhile, a certain Dr. Falstaff has appeared and is chasing the local women about in an uncommonly lecherous manner, no doubt the contribution of Nicolai Otto. While perhaps the discerning critic would ask how these two threads complement each other, it was more than enough for us to see the heinous Falstaff forced to wear moose antlers made of hockey sticks while being serenaded in German by outraged wives of distressed, unemployed men.

Go, have fun, the food was extra good this time (oh, yes, this is a picnic after all), and make some artists happy.

SPOILER ALERT: This review discusses the details of a movie currently still in theaters, and that discussion may significantly alter your perception of that movie. If you don’t like that, then simply know that Three Identical Strangers is Recommended.

The construction of Three Identical Strangers (2018) is the key to the success of this documentary. Much like the depth and currents behind the events that shaped these three boys’ lives that began prior to their birth, the documentary opens with the happy-happy joy-joy event of identical triplets, separated at birth, accidentally meeting each other as they near their twentieth year. This momentous occurrence is, of course, celebrated by the mass media of the day, who are charmed by the three undeniably charismatic boys, young men that are so alike despite being raised by disparate families. They are on the edge of manhood and possess that glow that comes from the mad coursing of hormones through their veins. Through first person interviews with these men, more than thirty years later, we share in their joy of discovering each other, chasing women and booze, and opening their own business. Incidentally, there is some culture shock in the interviews, as after those 30+ years, the triplets have changed significantly as they gain the insignia of old age.

These initial, surface events are well-told, as they’re narrated by themselves, their friends, and their adoptive families, but after 15 minutes my hair began to itch. It was hard to fathom how to keep up the interest of viewers if the balance of the movie was as light & fluffy as these first few minutes.

And then the movie shifts down a gear to dig into the slope before it. We come to learn that the boys are alike not only in various likes and dislikes, but also that they suffered from mental illness; two of them had spent short periods in the hospital for mental health reasons. They search for and find their biological mother, and, contrary to the fairy-tale mood of the story, they admit she was a bit of a disappointment, and surprised them by downing her booze as fast as they could.

And then the documentary shifts down into yet a lower gear, as the surviving boys, now in their late 50s, recount the suicide of the most charming of the three in his youth. The sense of foreboding is well-developed, so his death is not a complete shock. It comes after one of the other boys, now a young man, has left their jointly owned restaurant (Triplets, of course) and moved away, ostensibly due to disagreements in running the business. Even now, years later, the men are clearly deeply troubled at their brother’s death.

For all that this would seem to be the nadir of the emotional content of the documentary, it then uses this important aspect of their story to transition to the origins of their adoption, and this functions as a shift into yet a lower gear, as if that were possible.

As an investigative journalist who really broke this facet of the story tells us, this was not an ordinary adoption of triplets to separate families. We see as the story unfolds that these triplets, and various other infant multiples put up for adoption through the same adoption agency, are actually part of a study by a psychologist concerning the famous nature / nurture question; how much our genes and our environment contribute to a person’s personality, intelligence, their entire gestalt, if you will. The study subjects are periodically measured and tested using a subterfuge, so the families are not aware that their children are even multiples, much less part of a study. When this fact is discovered, the adoptive parents converge on the adoption agency, but leave in anger as they’re successfully stonewalled.

The exact nature of the research is never revealed, for, in fact, the study was never published, and no results were given to anyone that can be found.  The data is hidden away in a vault under a 100-year legal seal controlled by a secretive council, the lead psychologist has died, and those assistants that can be found claim to know little about the overall study.

But this doesn’t hinder the documentary from asking the questions that are the hardest ones to answer. Consider the question of the ethics of manipulating the multiples into being introduced into separate families. The surviving triplets, as well as other multiples who were also unknowing subjects, are absolutely livid at their treatment. I think their unspoken contention is that they felt they were three parts of an single composite organism, and their separation has proven their undoing; they mourn what might have been, if only they had been raised together.

But there are other viewpoints on that question. The psychologist in charge, who is defended by one of his surviving assistants, may have argued that an assertion that separation was damaging was unscientific as it had never been studied, and the multiples were simply multiple human beings who happened to share identical genetics at the start of their lives. They thus presented an excellent opportunity for exploring the nature / nurture question, and there is no ethical boundary violated just by separating them. If, in fact, the study at least hinted that they were damaged by the separation, then one could suggest that another such study would be unethical, but this study was not, as an ethical breach requires the knowing damage to the health of one or more individuals.

On the other hand, one of the adoptive family members, a Holocaust survivor, points out that when people play with the lives of other people, it seems like disaster always ensues. She has quite a presence in the movie, and it’s a viewpoint worth thinking about.

It’s definitely an emotional point that can bring on a lot of discussion. One of the few mistakes of the documentarians was to permit the statement that many of these multiples suffered from mental health issues, and that more than the single suicide occurred. This may have been intended to suggest that an ethical breach really did occur, but to my mind, the statement is without context. How many study subjects were there, and what was the rate of suicide? Are there too few subjects to make the rate worthy of comparison to the general population suicide rate? And, as my Arts Editor pointed out, if the biological mothers of these multiples chose to give up these children, this can often be indicative of mental illness, given the strength of normal (or at least supposedly normal) maternal instinct, and since some mental illness is heritable, this may contaminate the conclusions of the study.

This all made for quite the discussion after the showing. All together, this is a well made movie about a provocative topic which will stretch most folks’ minds.

Recommended.

A reader remarks on some information concerning Professor Ford’s actions in the Kavanaugh nomination fiasco:

Except it wasn’t last minute. I heard Ford testify that she called the WH when she heard Kavanaugh was even on the list of candidates. They ignored her. She called again after his nomination. They tried to suppress it. Then she went public. Conspiracy? Guess we’re just paranoid. Or. Women don’t matter to Republicans? Surely no evidence of that…

I remember running across this yesterday, although I misrember where. Still being a working dude and not having a natural appetite for politics nor meetings, I’ve only seen scattered bits of the testimony; my Arts Editor has seen far more than I. Perhaps she’ll comment.

This testimony does increase Ford’s credibility, although, donning my conservative conspiracy theorist hat, it could have all been planned as a way to discredit Kavanaugh the moment his name appeared on the list of Federalist Society sponsored possibilities. I’m not a conservative conspiracy theorist, however, so I’ll just go with increasing the credibility of an academic, who, trained^[1] in the intricacies of psychology, can give credible explanations for the impacts of the incident on her memory and behaviors.

Back to the original topic, I’m still fatigued, and now that the final vote has been delayed for a week while the FBI conducts an investigation^[2], I suppose my fatigue will increase. But I can’t help but notice how the Republicans’ nuts are caught in a walnut cracker^[3], and, worse, it’s of their own making.

By refusing to demand the White House release all material relevant to the nomination, hiding behind the rubric of Executive Privilege, the GOP members of the Judiciary Committee have politicized the nomination process. Some may proclaim that these nominations are always political fights, but, ideally, the legislative branch is a co-equal and independent branch of American government, and thus should have a neutral beginning position to the question of whether a nominee to SCOTUS is qualified or not. Making such an evaluation should require the acquisition and evaluation of all relevant materials. By not demanding that material, these Republicans have marked themselves as partisans, putting party over country. Incidentally, this is a view that an apparently large number of Americans already have of the GOP, and they might do well not to reinforce such a perception of base dishonor.

They, as most of us know, also initially rejected the Democrat’s request of an FBI investigation into the matter of Ford’s allegations, another mark of partisanship. Their dislike of putting Kavanaugh completely on the stage, rather than to just have his head and one hand projecting from stage left, is disappointing and suspicious.

Furthermore, Kavanaugh himself has politicized the process, as sane conservative voices have emphasized, by sitting down with the least fair and balanced major news network, Fox News, for a rebuttal interview, and then indulging in a outburst in yesterday’s committee interview that can be best considered to be the output of a partisan hack (see the same link).

In the end, the GOP’s desperate need to seat Kavanaugh, to not see President Trump defeated, forced them to accept a new FBI investigation as the price of Senator Flake’s vote, and, worse, endure an entire week of their brand being further damaged. Their flip-flop looks bad to base, independents, and liberals alike.

I have to wonder how they’ll respond during this week. I noted they’ve already emphasized the supposed limits on the investigation. If the FBI comes back with substantive positive results, they may try to suggest the FBI exceeded those limits, combine that with their sustained attacks on their former favorite institution over the last year, and use that to invalidate the very results they’ve purportedly solicited. But would they then ram his nomination over the finish line? The mid-terms, which may result in a change of who leads the Senate, looms like a smoking volcano over a village of alarmed people. And even if the more extremist members of the GOP succeeds in smearing the FBI investigation, that doesn’t guarantee their more moderate members will play along. Senators Collins, Murkowski, Flake, and perhaps even Corker may choose to accept a substantive report at face value and vote against Kavanaugh. I am not aware of any reports of defection among the Democratic Senators, so if two of these Senators voted against, the issue would be dead. Indeed, if those two told their colleagues of their final determination, we might see a number of Republican Senators suddenly throw Kavanaugh under the bus. But this is all speculative; I don’t expect the FBI to come up with any substantive findings, and they are restricted to Professor Ford’s allegations; my understanding is that investigation of allegations from other accusers are off-limits.

Long time readers will know that I prefer to add the acronym IJ to references to Associate Justice Gorsuch, as in Justice Gorsuch, IJ, which stands for Illegitimate Justice, and I think that Judge Kavanaugh may acquire the same permanent caveat if his backers achieve victory. My suspicion is, in the event of his ascension to Associate Justice Kavanaugh, the old and venerable word Pyrrhic may re-enter the American conversation.

¹ I feel a little odd saying trained in the intricacies of psychology, as it’s really apparent that we’re barely started on understanding one of the most difficult of topics. Remember the astronomer’s remark that the intricacies of the physical processes of a star are as nothing to the biological processes of a frog? Well, the intricacies of the human brain, intellect, emotions, and kaboodle are the next step on that progression.

² But our President has assured us that the Federal Bureau of Investigation doesn’t, you know, conduct investigations. So what’s up with this?

³ Perhaps this is unnecessarily graphic. I tried to find a pic to accompany note #1, above, and discovered “star frog” returns descriptions of a wrestling move called the Five Star Frog Splash. Be glad I didn’t go looking for a pic to accompany this note.