Yearly Archives: 2018

And  now they’re fucking with psychological research. Chris Stokel-Walker reports for NewScientist (18 August 2018, paywall):

AN ARMY of bots has infiltrated crowdsourcing.

Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is a crowdworking platform that pays people small sums to take part in menial tasks, such as tagging photos or filling out forms. Essentially it is a way to get humans to perform robotic jobs that machines can’t yet manage. But now bots are starting to take on the tasks themselves.

That is a problem, because the platform is widely used by scientists as a cheap way to carry out research. Hui Bai, a social psychologist at the University of Minnesota, was using it to collect data on the perception of far-right movements when he noticed a massive spike in support for groups including the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazi party.

Digging deeper into the data, he discovered a number of responses to open-ended questions within his survey didn’t have any connection to the question. Instead, they simply said “Very good” or “Very nice”. Bai also found that around half of his sample of 578 responders had the same GPS location as someone else. Around 50 were supposedly logging on from a statue in Buffalo, New York. A handful of others appeared to have taken the survey in the middle of a lake in Kansas.

And so much for using the Mechanical Turk for psychological research. It’s a little like a lake that’s been invaded by a red algae bloom. It’s unusable until it’s cleaned up.

However, Mechanical Turk was not created to facilitate psychological research, it was merely happy coincidence. It’s too bad if psychological researchers let themselves get dependent on it as a source of data, and in fact that might have been a mistake. As an element of the cyber-world, letting Mechanical Turk continue to evolve is an interesting experiment in the quasi-evolutionary world of digital entities, and I’d rather see how the interaction between bots and the rest of the digital world continues in the Mechanical Turk realm.

A reader responds to India’s gender imbalance problem:

Yet another example of the hubris of humanity. “We’ll prefer males because <whatever>, and ignore the potential unexpected side effects because we can’t imagine them so therefore they must not exist.” Sort of like legislatures big and small passing sweeping laws. Or technologists ignoring the societal, philosophical and moral consequences of their inventions. Or political parties (GOP) willingly burning every ethical bridge to maintain power. Etc. Etc.

It’s just a failure to value the potential contributions of everyone. This has been going on for centuries, of course, but in the modern era it should be possible to connect the social practice to the social catastrophe, publicize it, and have a proper public discussion about it? Or is it so traditional and/or a tenet of Hinduism that it cannot be properly expunged?

I have no idea, but if it is then I fear the result will be a cycle of tragedies.

Jennifer Rubin is enraged that the Republicans are resisting the idea of renaming the Russell Senate Building to honor the late Senator McCain:

If you want to understand just how morally bankrupt and reactionary is the Republican Party these days, look no further than Senate Republicans’ opposition to replacing the name of the late Democratic senator from Georgia and notorious segregationist Richard Russell on a Senate building with that of their recently deceased colleague, John McCain. The Hill reports:

“Senator Russell was a well respected man from the South and up here too,” said Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), adding that he was “a man of his time.”

“He was a well-respected senator,” Shelby said. …

“If you want to get into that you have to get into George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and all of our — most of our Founding Fathers, maybe with the exception of Hamilton,” he said. “It’s easy to prejudge what they should have done.”

Better to name a ship after him, which happened in a hackhanded sort of way. But that’s not really my point. My suggestion is that if the Republicans are reluctant to honor one of their most pugnacious and principled members, let the Democrats do it.

That’s right.

When the Democrats take control of government, be it in a few months or a couple of years, they should take the lead on the issue, and they should not permit any namby-pamby Republican who refused to act right now to sign on later as a co-sponsor or whatever.

That’ll send a message that Democrats want to lead everyone, while Republicans only care about … themselves.

This guy has his in performance chicken.

I hope the sound works for you. It didn’t for me.

The winner of the Republican nomination for the governorship of Florida, the Trump-clutcher and heretofore obscure Ron DeSantis, isn’t very good at subtle dog whistling:

“The last thing we need to do is to monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda with huge tax increases and bankrupting the state,” DeSantis said. “That is not going to work. That’s not going to be good for Florida.”

The use of language seen as containing coded racism prompted an extraordinary rebuke from the network. [WaPo]

Clumsy, embarrassing, and indicative of someone who probably can’t find his ass using both hands. I don’t know his opponent, progressive Democrat Andrew Gillum, but I suspect his surprise victory has given him enough momentum to worry a guy who can’t speak a whole sentence without mentioning Trump. In case you missed it the first time, here’s one of his nomination videos.

If this is the competency level of Republican nominees, and they win in November, then there’s going to be an awful lot of hurting going on in the near future.

It occurs to me that some readers may not understand. “Monkey” has been used as a derogatory reference for African Americans, and in this context is the only meaning that makes any sense.

From Roll Call, Senator Graham (R-SC) puts his foot in it:

“I’ve told the president the same thing I’m going to tell you. I’ve been looking at this for two years. I find zero evidence of you colluding with the Russians. Trump beat Hillary Clinton, not the Russians,” said Graham. “I don’t think he colluded with the Russians ‘cause I don’t think he colludes with his own government, so why do we think he would’ve colluded with the Russians?”

Breaking this down, we have to assume Graham is going one of two ways on this:

Either Trump is a loose cannon, the proverbial bull in the shop of nuclear weapon buttons, and he really should be restrained and removed from his dangerous position.

Or Senator Graham really can’t think straight because someone indulging in treason rarely colludes with more than one government. In fact, the fact that President Trump rarely coordinates his own government in an effective manner suggests he’s just the thumb puppet of another country that finds the United States to be a dangerous and obstreperous force.

Incidentally, Senator Graham is evidently considering thrusting his head into the Clinton thresher machine:

“I want to win in November. If we stop the Mueller probe tomorrow, you wouldn’t be able to talk about anything else,” Graham said. “I told the president this: I promise you, you’ll be treated fairly. I promise you that the people who put the Clinton investigation in the tank, they’re going to have their day too.”

“So, I’m going to let Mueller do his job and we’ll see what he finds, but Mueller’s not in charge of looking at the FISA warrant application, he’s not in charge of overseeing the FBI. What they did during the 2016 election on behalf of Clinton appalls me.”

I don’t think Graham has paid sufficient attention to the repeated failures of the House Republicans to find anything to pin on Secretary Clinton. If he does achieve the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee, as may occur if the GOP retains control of the Senate, and calls Clinton in for a hearing, at her age she may have to use a walker, but she’ll still beat the living shit out of Graham.

Metaphorically speaking, of course. But, just in case, he should wear a diaper to that hearing.

So alike you can’t tell them apart.

Code 46 (2003) is an odd science fiction film concerning a future in which one must be ‘covered,’ to have ‘papeles’. What is covered? It’s not entirely clear from the movie, although it appeared to have something to do with health coverage, and a little online research confirms what we were able to pick up from the movie.

Naturally, there are haves and have-nots, and there is the illicit traffic one might expect in such documents between the two groups. William is an inspector, whose main gift is the ability to read minds, if only partially, because of an ’empathy virus.’ Sent to Shanghai to investigate possible fraudulent activity, he finds the runner of the papeles, a woman by the name of Maria, and impulsively declares her as not involved. They end up getting to know each other, and then sleep together. Upon his return home to his family, his boss calls up and says he must return to Shanghai, because there’s been a death in Delhi, and his papeles originated in Shanghai, leaving the company responsible because the papeles itself is not fraudulent, only the fact that the man had papeles is wrong.

Upon his return, Maria is gone from her apartment. He tracks her down, mystified, at a clinic, and she doesn’t remember him. Using his position as an inspector to get information, he discovers that she has had an abortion and her memory of him has been removed. Why? Because their sexual contact violated Code 46.

Code 46 basically forbids incest.

Soon enough, William comes to understand that their mother was one or two of a set of ten clones, and that their love is forbidden. Now in a dusty little city on the island of Jebel Ali, they once again make love, and then William calls the authorities and confesses to the crime. Pursued and caught, his memory of Maria, the love of his life, is wiped and he is judged to have been unduly influenced by the empathy virus – and therefore it is not a criminal act.

An exploration of how future technologies may interact with the taboos of today, it was just a little too incomprehensible to be compelling. Love stories often are, as the chief component, love, is not a rational element. This means it can be conjured out of the air by the storytellers as an arbitrary, inarguable element, and that can be a curve ball for an audience trying to make sense out of a future containing elements they’ve never thought about.

Technically, it’s a well done and well acted movie, but I was subconsciously confused that in this future, of which there are many hints that population has grown ever higher, it seems like William is often alone, whether he’s traveling or working or looking for Maria. Wouldn’t it be a bit more jostly?

But if you’re in the mood for a bit of stream of consciousness, a bit of future (which may be unnervingly closer than we’d like), and a bit of lust and love, this might be for you.

CNN/Politics reports the depths to which President Trump is slipping:

President Donald Trump, facing scrutiny for hush money payments to a porn star and a former Playboy model, pleaded with evangelical leaders for political help during closed-door remarks on Monday, warning of dire consequences to their congregations should Republicans lose in November’s midterm elections.

“This November 6 election is very much a referendum on not only me, it’s a referendum on your religion, it’s a referendum on free speech and the First Amendment. It’s a referendum on so much,” Trump told the assemblage of pastors and other Christian leaders gathered in the State Dining Room, according to a recording from people in the room.

“It’s not a question of like or dislike, it’s a question that they will overturn everything that we’ve done and they will do it quickly and violently. And violently. There is violence,” Trump said, describing what would happen should his voters fail to cast ballots. “The level of hatred, the level of anger is very unbelievable.”

Violence would be un-American and unbelievable – but Trump thinks his evangelical supporters, who have already compromised their morality through their continual support of Trump, are so credulous that they’ll eat that right up and run to the polls.

But how will news of rank lies like this affect independents? Not that there’s a lot of them likely to support Trump in the wake of his relative failures, boastfulness, and possible legal infringements, but this may put those who lean away from Democrats into at least not voting.

But it is a measure of just how deeply President Trump is about the upcoming mid-terms. Now comes the question: how addicted are the evangelicals and, more importantly, their leaders to their taste of influence and even power? Will they continue to ‘bed with the devil,’ as it were, in order to suck down the liquor of power?

I have very little musical experience, but my cousin Scott Chamberlain sings choir with the Minnesota Chorale and the Minnesota Orchestra. They recently traveled to South Africa, but during prep Scott was working with a visiting South African musician and had a chance to witness …. this:

I kept on eye on my guy, trying to discretely provide key bits of information—we in the Chorale have done this work dozens of times and it’s in our blood, but I can only imagine how bizarre the whole thing must seem to someone who is coming to it for the first time.

And it was at the very end, after the final chord finally stopped reverberating from the walls that that great Moment finally came.

I turned to my neighbor, and saw his face.

It was a look you only get from performing Beethoven’s Ninth for the first time.

It was look that was one part goofy delirium, one part radiant joy, one part Divine Inspiration, and one part… Holy —-, did we just —ing seriously do that??!!?!

I laughed, and laughed hard.  “So, what did you think of–“

He hugged me. And then with a smile wider than the 35W construction zone, he gave hug-handshakes to everyone around us.

And then he just sat down, laughed, and spoke in unfinished sentences.

“That was. They were so. Just a rehearsal? I can’t even.”  And he rounded it off by kissing his fingertips and blowing a kiss to the orchestra.

It’s a good post and Scott contributes to MinnPost, so we know he’s a good writer. It’s worth reading his stuff, particularly if you’re a musician who like orchestral work.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) is a movie about encouraging those around you to do better. This atypical story involves the aftermath of a rape and grisly murder of the daughter of Mildred Hayes, a somewhat embittered divorcee who, as she is driving home one day, realizes there are three billboards near the murder scene that are unused. She rents them on a monthly basis and posts a message across them asking the local sheriff why no progress has been made in the last seven months on her daughter’s murder.

As it happens, the sheriff is busy dying of cancer, a fact he thought was private but is, in fact, known to the citizens of Ebbing. This may not bother Mildred, but it bothers her fellow citizens that she would harass the sheriff, and this permits Mildred to explain, in vivid detail, why his condition is irrelevant to his duties, to her friends, enemies, abusive ex-husband, and a priest to whom she makes quite clear has no moral standing if he’s unwilling to root out the abusers in his own colleagues.

Working in the sheriff’s office is a young, directionless man, Dixon, who has absorbed, without noticing, all the hatred around him. He’s not so much bigoted towards minorities as he’s bigoted against anyone who makes his life uncomfortable, not even excepting his mother, with whom he still lives. His lone idol may be the sheriff, so when the sheriff commits suicide, he takes his anger out, not on Mildred, but on the local representative of the company who rented Mildred the billboards, Red Welby. This unfortunate young man is launched from a second floor window to the pavement below, and ends up in the hospital.

Unfortunately for Dixon, the sheriff’s replacement has already arrived and witnessed the incident, and Dixon is immediately fired. He returns home, emotionally lost and out of control. A lifeline appears – a goodbye letter from the sheriff, which he can pick up after the police station closes (he still has a key). The contents of the letter: the sheriff’s belief that Dixon is a good man and has the makings to be a good detective, a sentiment hard for the audience to square.

But while he’s reading the letter, Mildred firebombs the station house, and Dixon escapes the conflagration with burns and Mildred’s daughter’s case file. In the hospital, who’s his roommate?

Oh, you guessed it: Red Welby, the man he tossed out the window. In a touching scene, Welby forgives Dixon.

Dixon is now deeply confused, but, out of the hospital, by chance he happens to overhear a man bragging about a crime that seems to be the same as that which befell Mildred’s daughter. He follows up on it, collecting important information and giving it to the police, but they report the man was out of the country at the time of the crime. Mildred and Dixon, deeply disappointed, decide that justice still needs to be dispensed for this man’s nameless victim, even if they must do so personally.

Or should they? This is where the movie leaves off, with our two main characters questioning if they should take the low road or the high road, and while we cannot be sure, it seems likely that, after the first flush of rage, they will look to the high road, for that’s what both of these people have slowly learned.

To be better.

Full of open-ends, flawed people, and strong performances, this movie deserves every award it won.

Strongly recommended.

From WaPo:

India has more than 600 million people under 25, and they have greater access to technology and education than ever before. Yet millions have little hope of finding decent jobs, and a “bachelor bomb” of more than 37 million surplus men — a legacy of generations of a preference for sons and aborting female fetuses — threatens social stability for decades. …

Without solid prospects, many young men are gravitating to India’s growing right-wing nationalist organizations, where they find a sense of purpose.

Over time, a stereotype of a right-wing troll has emerged — keyboard jockeys with too much time on their hands, sitting in their childhood bedrooms furiously tweeting about every perceived slight to Hinduism and [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi.

I’ve visited India four times since 2000, but I won’t claim any special knowledge from those visits. It has 3 times the population of the United States, which would make it ridiculous to claim I know a damn thing. While it’s popularly seen to be a peaceful country, the reality is that since 1947 it’s fought four wars with its neighbor, Pakistan. I suspect that this surplus of young, troublemaking men will become fodder for another war with its neighbor, conveniently killing off the surplus males, but risking a nuclear exchange, as both countries are armed with nuclear weapons. Ordinarily, the United States would lead efforts to calm the waters before a nuclear exchange could take place, but Trump is so completely lost that I would have no hopes that he’d even understand that something evil is about to happen, nor do I have much hope for any of his aides or Cabinet members.

And have the Indians been reforming their culture to place more value on females? Nothing in the article suggests as much. A war would be a temporary pressure relief on a situation that is basically pathological.

The passing of Senator McCain over the weekend got me to thinking about why we publicly mourn certain members of our society on their deaths. To my mind, we as a society are more successful when we recognize those individuals who have put the good of society over our more personal personal or partisan interests. This behavior, as personified by Washington and many other Founding Fathers, not only brought our society into existence, but guided that society into stability and provided the structure to continue stability, even into a Civil War provoked by the endless selfishness of near-half the country. That’s why the deaths of McCain, his friend Senator Ted Kennedy, various Presidents to greater or lesser degrees, and many military personnel gain some form of immortality for their memories, while the deaths of mere millionaires, who by definition did not put society ahead of their own interests, or, at best, personally benefited from their efforts to improve society. Even such larger than life personalities as Gates, Buffet, or Musk, despite their reputations, have still operated to their own profit – it’s what made them prominent, after all – and not necessarily to benefit society, despite the promises of the free enterprise system. On their passing there will be a nod to how they transformed private enterprise, but there won’t be the mourning we see for the personality who sacrificed much for the nation.

Because that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? We, by which I mean most of us, are deeply selfish creatures who sometimes can’t even think generously about our own families. When an individual stands forth and recognizes the reasons for how the government is structured as it is, how we are all feeble creatures who have no credible claims on any sort of truth, which is the insistent basis of compromise, that our human enterprises are inevitably full of flaws, some of them terrible, requiring constant adjustment and repair, and when that personality puts forth the vociferous arguments in defense of that institution, even to their personal degradation and ruin, then we have someone worthy of mourning on their passing, celebrating their walking illustration of that which founded the Nation.

It is dismaying to see Senator Collins (R-Maine) say this:

“The lions are gone,” Ms. Collins said. “The lions of the Senate are gone. It is very sad.”  [The New York Times]

As if they were an exhausted natural resource? Senator Colllins, you could be a lion. Stop being a sheep. Defend the Senate against the incompetent ways of McConnell. What do you do when presented with incompetent judicial candidates, for instance?

Election to national office is not a passport to immortality. Names such as Ryan, McConnell, Nunes, Chaffetz had their opportunities, but instead clutched the party to their breasts and swore allegiance to it, without murmur as to its mistakes; their party shaped them, rather than they at least trying to shape their party; they have lost their opportunity to be mourned by more than their small coteries, if that, who benefited from their actions.

Will new Democratic lions, beyond Obama, stand forth? We’ll have to see.

American public mourning is a celebration of the values of the best of us. The private sector, important as it is, has nothing special to it in that it’s a center for the pursuit of selfishness, and that is exceedingly common among us; that some of us do it better than others is nothing to particularly celebrate when the achiever passes. One might muse on the concept that private enterprise doesn’t enable democracy, but instead it’s the other way around, and thus those that engage and excel in honest execution of that greater endeavour deserve the praise we shower upon them when they can no longer hear it.

And we should meditate on that.

When you’re investigating a cat’s disappearance, you’ll need all the help you can get.

My Arts Editor and I recently finished watching the BBC Cymru Wales TV series Dirk Gently (of 2010, not the later series), based on the character and books of the same character by Douglas Adams. Ending after four episodes, we enjoyed the series not only for its quirky characters and humor, but also because the characters did appear to be changing and maturing, so we were a little put out to discover only four episodes were made and there’s no chance of continuance. While these four constitute no great feats of drama or comedy in and of themselves, they did seem to be building a foundation from which greater leaps of fiction might be achieved.

So, too bad, BBC. It could have become something quite interesting.

The super-hero genre of story-telling is often used to explore viewpoints that are otherwise difficult to establish in a plausible manner, such as the consequences of having an all-powerful dude in charge of the defense of your planet, but, while issues of aging are often explored in more mainstream genres, the same issue is hardly ever explored in the super-hero genre. After all, it’s easy enough to explore without the super-hero duds and powers, right? I am not a super-hero aficionado, so I am no doubt deficient in the list department, but the only aging super-heroes who weren’t treated superfluously which I recall were The Comedian and The Owl (the first one) in The Watchmen movie (I have not read the graphic novels).

She should use those on her school art project.

I can now add to that list two from another series, the X-Men, from the movie Logan (2017). Logan was Wolverine’s given name, dating back to his birth in the mid-19th century. This explores the end-game of Wolverine’s life, his assumed burden of caring for Dr. Charles Xavier, who I thought had died in an earlier installment, but here is an aging man, afflicted by a dementia which manifests not only as delusions, but as a psychically broadcast delirium which shakes the people around him.  Worse yet, he has a terrible tragedy in his past with which he cannot cope.

Into their orbit, near the Mexican border, comes a young girl, Laura, maybe ten years old, who has few morals or even social manners, but lots of claws, reminiscent of Wolverine’s own, and, as he often did, a group of dedicated hunters looking for her. As Charles directs, Wolverine takes her and Charles north towards Canada, hoping for sanctuary. When the hunters close in on them, both Charles and Wolverine demonstrate their powers, if degraded, still function, but when Charles is taken unaware, we lose him to the death that he sorely wanted.

Wolverine and Laura continue north, but Wolverine’s body, sorely abused for more than a century, is failing him, and they do not quite achieve the border – but they stumble on a nest of surviving mutants. With the hunters hot on their trail, they make a break for Canada, and Wolverine proves he has one last killing rage in him even as the wretched ghosts of his past, brought to life by the faceless corporation who hunts him, prove that the soulless killing machine is indeed a wretched creature, a lost and destructive creature with no concept of mercy.

This is an ultra-violent movie, perhaps too much so, even if fans demand it. It suggests that extraordinary powers come with extraordinary responsibilities, and this is something Logan cannot avoid, no matter how much it endangers those around him, because technology is bringing those same extraordinary powers to people hardly equipped to properly manage them, and even stripped of the most vestigial moral capabilities. In the end, the sacrifice of the individual for the next generation, an ageless tenet of Western Civ, rings true even for those who are arguably not human.

A technically competent, well-acted movie, the violence may be a turn-off for the sensitive. Moreover, seeing it out of sequence may lessen its emotional impact, as it depends on the contrast of earlier depictions of Wolverine’s ability to recover from otherwise fatal wounds to accomplish his moral requirements, grumpy as he may be about them, in order to magnify the importance of his sacrifice.

It’s a good, if not great, movie.

The passing of the Senator McCain yesterday is a punctuation mark on a number of national events, from the Vietnam War to the moderate Republicans holding out against the extremists flooding the party, from those who would blame him for anything from causing a disaster on USS Forrestal to being captured during the Vietnam War, to his work as an elected representative. In a sense, he was the mythical Everyman, the warrior, father, and participant in the public conversation concerning the management of the Republic.

In his latter years, his reputation as a maverick was, I felt, inconsistently fulfilled, as elements of the right-wing agenda were achieved without public protest from him. But his protests against the mismanagement of the Senatorial processes were a badge of honor for him, for they rose about partisanship and addressed issues that are important for the proper functioning of the Senate in the greater scheme of the country, and did so without regard to his own positions on those agenda items that might benefit from mismanagement, if only in the short-term.

His death is a loss to the country, immense as it is inevitable, but I think the conservatives will feel it more, because they’ve lost someone who could properly invoke a moral position to which most Americans would respond, unlike most members of today’s conservative movement. No one’s motives are unmixed, to my mind, but McCain’s motives to become an elected representative appeared to be more worthy than most.

RIP, sir. I hope your successors are worthy of you.

Megan McArdle follows the consequences of not sending everyone to college in the pages of WaPo:

The increasing interlinkage of partisan leanings and cultural identity has allowed both sides of the political spectrum to consolidate control over key cultural institutions, which they can leverage to foment policy change. But it’s also concentrated partisan power within those nodes, leaving both sides dependent on them — and vulnerable to their decline.

And while tearing down the other side’s redoubts may seem like a win for your own, recent experience should give everyone pause. As Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, a columnist at the Week, pointed out last year, liberals who thought they hated the Christian right were shocked to find that they disliked the post-Christian right even more. And in the twilight of the universities, conservatives might equally well find themselves trembling before an opposition that is no longer sheltered in institutions, nor constrained by institutional norms.

Perhaps the educated hater is more restrained, less savage than the unreasoning hater? The conservatives may see the university as a center of power for the left, but the university is also a primary conservator of secular moral values, and those values, which are the result of careful reasoning about the world and humanity, act as constraints on those who have learned to respect them.

Not incidentally, the rise of the ‘antifa’ movement on campus, and its employment of violence, both physical and mental, is troubling for the more traditional university graduate or student, as we’re taught that violence often begets violence, and violence is not conducive to a productive and happy society. I haven’t run across an investigation of the ‘antifa’ as to its origins, which could be authentic or manipulative, but I doubt are legal in the sense that they descend from valild university values.

Half the poultry barn was devoted to bunnies, the other half – to poultry.

Humble. Mr. Humble.

He doesn’t have a lot of patience with fooling around.

Dr. Seuss birds, of course. He always wins a ribbon at this show. Some say he’s bribed the judges.

Egyptian Faience:

Egyptian faience is a sintered–quartz ceramic displaying surface vitrification which creates a bright lustre of various colours, with blue-green being the most common. Defined as a “material made from powdered quartz covered with a true vitreous coating, usually in a transparent blue or green isotropic glass,” faience is distinct from the crystalline compound Egyptian blue.^[1] Notably, faience is considerably more porous than glass proper and can be cast in molds to create vessels or objects.^[2]Although it contains the major constituents of glass (silica, lime) and no clay until late periods, faience is frequently discussed in surveys of ancient pottery, as in stylistic and art-historical terms objects made of it are closer to pottery styles than ancient Egyptian glass. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “World Roundup,” Archaeology (September/October 2018):

ISRAEL: A small faience head from Abel Beth Maacah in northern Israel may represent a king who lived during the 9th century B.C. The sculpture, which sports a manicured beard, wavy tresses, and a painted black and yellow headband, was likely part of a figurine that would have stood about 8 to 10 inches tall. Its high degree of artistry is leading experts to believe it may depict King Ahab of Israel, King Hazael of Aram- Damascus, or King Ethbaal of Tyre, three rulers known from the Bible.

Follow the link to see the picture.

I use ‘movie’ in a loose sense, the idea of a story, told in a theatrical format, committed to film or other medium which permits extensive editing. The filming of a play might not qualify; a TV mini-series, on the other hand, appears to fit the definition.

This particular mini-series was broadcast initially last April, but in Britain. I’ll call it ‘Belated’ because that’s how it feels.

Being part of this family is just fuckin’ exhausting isn’t it, sisters? Sisters? Oh, crap. This’ll make for an awkward dinner conversation.

There are two lessons to take from Ordeal by Innocence (2018), a BBC mini-series based on the Agatha Christie novel of the same name.

First, this may be the most insanely dysfunctional family I’ve ever seen.

Second, if you’re looking for revenge, don’t monologue^[1] about it. In this story about a dead step-son who is the sardonic witness to the family’s dysfunction, it’s his inclination to spew his plans for revenge which results in his untimely demise.

I shan’t get too much further into this movie, because my Arts Editor and I both found it difficult to connect names to faces and, sometimes, motivations to characters. Suffice it to say that the first victim in this three-victim story seems to have managed to inspire every character, with perhaps the exception of the maid, with a reason to commit mayhem upon her person; the second, our monologuer, might or might not be the fall guy, and the third also let his bitterness get the better of him. Or perhaps the story-tellers just tired of him. Where there’s a conscienceless murderer handy, there’s a way, as the old saying goes.

I thought this movie came close to being top-flight. There was the building suspense, the disbelief at each revelation of a new facet of dysfunction, the suggestion that the surrounding culture is also at fault, it was all fairly interesting. But I didn’t quite get there. Perhaps it was the subject matter, which is certainly not inspirational; nor was it easy to draw lessons from it, other than Don’t be English.

But maybe this was a cautionary tale about studying competing theological systems.

In the end, it’s about a collection of foster children trying to survive a family embedded in a society of hypocritical taboos and social expectations, and how their reaction to it can be equally horrible.

Don’t skip the ending. As if you could.

¹I ran across the term monologuing in The Incredibles (2004), where it is used to describe a villain who stops in the middle of the action to describe his evil plans to the hero, who, at the time, happens to be in a tight spot. I transfer the term loosely here, but the spirit is the same: announcing plans to the presumably helpless, who turn out to still be potent.

It’s been a while since I expressed disappointment at Australian Prime Minister Turnbull’s endorsement to build the world’s largest coal mine in Australia. Well, now Turnbull has been evicted from the Prime Minister’s residence (which he never physically occupied) because he was too ambitious on the issue of CO₂ emissions for his Liberal Party to stomach, and he’s being replaced with social conservative and, until now, Treasury Minister Scott Morrison. His position on anthropomorphic climate change?

In a country where the debate over climate change and clean energy has brought down several political leaders — including Turnbull — Morrison has been unequivocal in his support of Australia’s traditional power source.

He famously brought a lump of coal into parliament in February 2017. “This is coal,” Morrison shouted across the chamber. “Don’t be afraid. Don’t be scared. It won’t hurt you. Those opposite have an ideological, pathological fear of coal.” [WaPo]

I suppose he denies that burning the stuff releases releases mercury, along with all the climate change gasses. The former Prime Minister’s description of his opponents certainly has a ring of familiarity for me:

Friday’s vote was the second one on Turnbull’s leadership in three days and the culmination of years of what Turnbull asserted was an “insurgency” by opponents aided by right-wing commentators and media outlets, including Sky News, the Australian equivalent of Fox News.

“There was a determined insurgency by a number of people, both in the party room and backed by powerful voices in the media . . . to bring down my prime ministership,” he told reporters.

I’m not sure how American right-wing and Australian right-wing commentators line up, but it’s probably not too far off. That Mr. Morrison is also an Evangelical Christian is also not surprising, as an existential crisis brought on by our own activities, supposedly blessed by the Divinity, seems a paradox.

Looks to be another step backwards. Fortunately, Morrison’s Liberal Party holds a razor thin majority in coalition with the National Party, so Labour may be able to take control soon. I’m not sure if they’re any better, though.

We attended the Minnesota State Fair on its first day – yesterday. Here’s a few pictures from the poultry barn of the non-poultry – the bunnies.

Coloration and buddyship.

Nice markings, reminds us of Smudge, a late kitty we had the privilege of hosting.

Cute!

I’m a sucker for gray cats. And gray bunnies are dignified, too.

I liked the size contrast.

Good markings! Too bad the pic is out of focus.

The pure black reminds me of our late cat Mischief.

You just want to grab those ear, don’t you?

Yoda.

A small cow.

Mr. Plush doesn’t care about you.

Two more minutes and I’ll have escaped. In six pieces, yes, but my sister is a tailor!

My ears disapprove of you. You may leave now.

Unfortunately, yelling at Mother Nature is neither effective nor satisfying.

That was from light winds and heavy rain. Since this is during the Minnesota State Fair, our street is lined with the vehicles of attendees, and I can only say I hope they feel lucky that those branches didn’t land on their expensive SUVs.

One of the unusual problems faced by prosecutors in the various investigations involving President Trump’s associates is his pardon power. If one of his associates are willing to take the hit of being found guilty of various crimes, they can hope that he’ll pardon them for their incidentally illegal services, and they can rise from the dead to serve him again.

At least, that’s true of federal prosecutions, but not true of state prosecutions, but most of these are federal prosecutions.

But as I was reading about Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, it struck me that the Feds have their own big cannon in this war – the use of immunity. This has been granted to Weisselberg. By promising a witness that he or she shan’t be visiting a prison for their misdeeds, they’ve basically rendered the Trump cannon impotent.

It must be a fascinating exercise in deciding when to use this weapon. After all, you are immunizing a probable criminal from the usual consequences of his or her illegal activities, and that has to hurt. But the key here is that the most senior person responsible for the illegal activities is the big target – not just for the sake of the pride of the prosecutors, but for the very practical reason that, if they are not caught and punished, they’ll just do it again. It’s part of their temperament, after all, because If they didn’t get caught last time, why should they this time? So let’s go off and reoffend again, collect the goods, and, well, hurt society again.

Usually immunity is used just to tempt a confession and more information out of someone already hip deep in the muck, but not so often used to immunize them from a Presidential pardon. Normally, potential criminals are more likely to have a turncoat assassinated; to have a crime pardoned is substantially different.

Maybe in the great scheme of things doesn’t mean much, but I find it interesting and anticipate it may influence the course of future events in ways not analogous to a big Mob investigation and eventual trial.

But, then again, aren’t we all, outside of a few gang members and extremists?

Anyways, if you were a family values voter, how would Representative Hunter’s response to being charged with treating his campaign funds as personal funds strike you? From CNN/Politics:

Rep. Duncan D. Hunter seemed to shift any blame onto his wife, Margaret, on Thursday for alleged campaign fund abuses, saying she was the one handling his finances.

“She was also the campaign manager, so whatever she did that’ll be looked at too, I’m sure,” the California Republican said on Fox News.

“But I didn’t do it,” Hunter said. “I didn’t spend any money illegally.”

>crunch<         >crunch<

Nothing quite like throwing your spouse under the bus, I suspect. But how will the typical family values voter respond to this defense? Sure glad I don’t have to pick between him and the ancient evil of Cthulhu, it’d be a hard choice.