Yearly Archives: 2018

I’m somewhat dismayed, if unsurprised, at this report by Bruce Reidel in AL Monitor on the military spending habits of Saudi Arabia, particularly this bit concerning the current Administration’s reaction to the spending choices of the Saudis:

Saudi Arabia has the third-largest defense budget in the world; Saudi military spending last year was almost $70 billion — only the United States and China spent more. However, the level of spending is unsustainable and inconsistent with the kingdom’s stated intent to retool the economy. And the Saudis are not buying what the White House is selling. …

Much to the annoyance of President Donald Trump, the Saudis have not been buying big new weapons from the United States. Trump visited Riyadh a year ago and said the Saudis had agreed to a $110 billion arms package. None of it was actually finalized. The president upbraided Saudi Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman on television this year when he was in the Oval Office for only spending “peanuts” on American weapons. A resupply of munitions and spare parts does continue due to the Yemeni war, but big new platform sales are on hold. They will be controversial on Capitol Hill.

Implied in that paragraph is the idea that we should be selling, and thereby profiting, to the Saudis – or to anyone purely on a profit basis.

I am, probably to an excessive extent, a realist concerning international politics. Some countries irrationally hate us, some rationally hate us, some simply have ambitions of various sorts that are incompatible with our ambitions, and yet others are nominal allies. We have to deal with these realities on the ground in various ways, and some of them include arming other countries. It’s a dangerous game wherein people get killed, but I fear the alternatives may be worse.

But we cannot and should not select our customers based on their ability to pay, and that’s precisely the implication of that second paragraph up there. The Saudis are flush with cash and looking to upgrade their military technology – and Trump sees green and a sorely needed boost for his prestige and is put out when it doesn’t happen.

Is this a wise way to evaluate the situation? We didn’t get the sale and thus we’ve failed?

The government is not a big profit-making corporation, and the longer we pretend it is, the more precarious our international situation will become, because rather than focusing on whatever is important, whether it be peacefully persuading countries to convert to democracy or mediating conflicts, we’ll be focused on financial profit. That gets us so little, because – in extreme cases – we may end up arming our enemies, if not directly then indirectly through arms transfers.

These sales must be evaluated through the lenses of national security and international diplomacy. Traditionally, they have been. I fear, though, with the State Department in disarray and a profit-addled President in power, we may make critical errors which will cost us dearly in the future.

In the third part of his weekly tri-partite diary, Andrew Sullivan discusses the subject of the Evangelical movement’s relationship with Donald Trump in the context of Trump possibly paying one of his paramours to have an abortion:

But what intrigues me is whether this would actually be enough to get the religious right to abandon their cult-leader. The pro-Trump evangelicals have already staked out a position: Nothing in Trump’s personal character or history matters compared with his advancement more generally of a Christianist agenda in the federal government and especially the judiciary. And if that’s truly the standard, if evangelical Christians have absolutely no interest in the fact that Trump is a serial liar, adulterer, and philanderer, then surely an abortion in his wake wouldn’t matter either.

I think of it as a litmus test for their tribalism. Some small part of me would love to believe that this indeed would be a deal-breaker, that even though Trump has boasted he could shoot someone dead on Fifth Avenue and face no political repercussions from his base, maybe the killing of an unborn child could shake what’s left of American evangelicalism out of its trance.

And then I snap out of it. They’d weigh one abortion against the millions of others sustained by the Roe regime, and give Trump yet another Mulligan. Once you’ve turned Christianity into a mere instrument for wielding political power over others, the logic becomes entirely utilitarian. There is, in many ways, no going back now. It is simply a matter of how great the moral cost of the entire, grisly transaction will be.

Which leads to the question, what will be sufficient to make an Evangelical group, convinced that it’s a victim of America, finally give up on their hold on power? Will it take an outrage of momentous quality?

Or a leader who’ll talk some sense into them?

Or is it all too much to hope for, and we’ll just have to wait for inevitable demographics to extinguish the current corrupt crop of them? I say corrupt because that’s the horse they’re riding here, both metaphorically, as Trump is not only not an Evangelical, but almost violently not, and literally, as Trump and his Administration appears, simply based on the behavior of many in his Cabinet and himself, to be literally corrupt.

If their horse is this corrupt, it’s a monstrous blot on their belief system, as well as on their souls, if such exist.

On Lawfare, Stephen Rickard and Elisa Massimino, in reaction to Benjamin Wittes’ support of Gina Haspel’s nomination to the position of CIA Director, have a telling remark:

For this reason, Haspel’s involvement with the RDI program calls into question her ability not only to stand up to the president but to be an effective leader within the agency. She was promoted to the Deputy Director of the CIA, but, as Sen. Dianne Feinstein has said, “the top position is another matter entirely.” The Senate is evaluating her ability to make sound moral, ethical, and strategic judgments under intense pressure. How, for instance, can Haspel be expected to foster a culture at the CIA where officers are encouraged to resist political pressures or orders to engage in legally and morally dubious conduct if one of her major arguments against her critics is that she was “just following orders” when she helped destroy evidence and facilitated torture?

Haspel is reportedly hard-working, dedicated and effective. But she applied those talents over several years to support and assist Jose Rodriguez, and by all accounts there was never a more gung-ho advocate of brutal interrogations in the agency.  She was, as Rodriguez puts it in his memoir, his “right arm.”

Bold mine. That’s an excellent discussion of the problem Haspel would face in a less partisan Senate. Of course, the problem of discerning legal vs illegal orders can be a difficult issue, and this issue came with an added thumb on the scales, a legal opinion that the interrogation methods to be used were legal.

But this doesn’t free Haspel from criticism, but makes it even more significant. The post-Bush Administration world has concluded that those methods were, in fact, torture. Haspel’s failure to discern this fact in a situation in which she was intimately involved can only leave one to wonder how much she was motivated by professionalism, and how much by the vengeance mindset of the Bush Administration, a mindset ultimately damaging to the position of the United States in terms of prestige and influence.

I’ll be very uncomfortable with Haspel in this position.

A reader comments on the Ohio redistricting amendment:

I’m still of the mind that districts should be drawn by computer, and that no political factor should be included in the software. It should be all be simple demographics and geographic similarities/impediments.

I’m still at a loss as to how this would work. In a highly partisan polity, a representational democracy really isn’t – those who don’t approve of the victors in an election also find their viewpoints unrepresented.

In at least some European countries, my understanding is that the result of a vote is used to allocate how many representatives a given party will have. This, however, leads to team politics, which long-time readers know has a host of problems leading to second- and third-raters in the national representative bodies.

Governance is a tough business.

Jessica Hamzelou notes in NewScientist (5 May 2018) that some bacteria are now munching on penicillin:

Gautam Dantas at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, and his colleagues discovered [the consumption of penicillin by bacteria] by accident 10 years ago. They were growing soil bacteria in the presence of penicillin, expecting that it would stop them from growing.

“But we saw exceptional growth on antibiotics,” says Dantas. His team found that some strains were around 50 times above the threshold at which bacteria are normally classed as antibiotic-resistant, and that they were feeding on the penicillin.

Now, Dantas and his colleagues have figured out how these bacteria do it, by focusing on the genes that became active in four strains. Deleting these genes and observing the effects revealed that the bacteria are able to thrive on penicillin using a cocktail of enzymes: proteins that catalyse chemical reactions.

And they know how. It seems Nature is just one big toolbox, at least for bacteria, what with the swapping of genes (“horizontal gene transfer”). Jessica notes that the researchers are having some thoughts towards using this discovery for removing waste antibiotics from our water supply.

I wonder what unintended consequence that might have.

Way back on this thread, I suggested that Obama waged an undeclared war on Russia, following their forcible annexation of the Crimea, by forcing down the price of oil through various means. Mark Sumner on The Daily Kos now suggests that Trump’s bizarre rejection of the Iran nuclear deal may, in fact, be linked to Russia’s financial problems resulting from Obama’s move against Putin:

A report on Russian state media shows that Donald Trump has already delivered not just a gift to Vladimir Putin, but possibly the gift that Putin has wanted all along. In a conversation on RT, the two hosts note that to implement all the domestic programs Putin has promised for Russia, the cost will be 8 trillion rubles ($127 billion). But, where, the host questions, is Russia to get such a huge amount when the government has long been strapped for cash?

Female host says: “Looks like we found it. Trump is withdrawing US from the Iran nuclear deal. Oil prices should go up, which is good for us.”

Crude oil futures have leapt from $26 at the time of Trump’s election to $77 today. Back in January, Trump actually certified that Iran was in compliance with the nuclear agreement. However, Trump threatened to end the agreement if it wasn’t expanded to include items unrelated to Iran’s nuclear program and “strengthened” in unspecified ways.

Trump increased his warnings that he would end the deal in February, and by Marchwas engaged in talks with European allies—talks at which allies consistently urged Trump to remain in the deal and Trump consistently announced his intention to walk away. As the talks wore on, and Trump’s intransigence became clear, fears of a destabilized Middle East began to shore up oil prices.

Russian oil production hovers around 10 million barrels a day. That means the increase that has already happened in oil prices is providing Putin with an extra $520 million a day. If the prices were to continue at the level generated by Trump’s actions for a year, Putin could meet all his promises to Russia—and have $60 billion to spare—just out of the net increase.

Of course, Putin will have expenses, but he’ll still be left with a pretty penny at the end of the day, if all this is true. And I have the appalling feeling that it is true. Sumner also reiterates a point I made quite a while ago:

Breaking the agreement didn’t really cost Trump much. Just the faith of every other nation on the planet, who now see that the US is willing to violate a treaty over the objections of allies and the evidence that the other party is living up to the deal. In other words, nothing that will concern his supporters.

An aggressive adversary is reinvigorated, our reputation is damaged, and the validity of democracy as a functioning governmental system is thrown into doubt. Not bad for a little bit of manipulation.

Oleaginous:

1. having the nature or qualities of oil.
2. containing oil.
3. producing oil.
4. unctuous; fawning; smarmy. [Dictionary.com]

Noted in “Trump is no longer the worst person in government,” George F. Will, WaPo:

Donald Trump, with his feral cunning, knew. The oleaginous Mike Pence, with his talent for toadyism and appetite for obsequiousness, could, Trump knew, become America’s most repulsive public figure. And Pence, who has reached this pinnacle by dethroning his benefactor, is augmenting the public stock of useful knowledge. Because his is the authentic voice of today’s lickspittle Republican Party, he clarifies this year’s elections: Vote Republican to ratify groveling as governing.

I wonder if such big and unusual words are truly effective rhetoric, or mere posturing by the author.

And we’re back from a short vacation trip to Chicago, a whirlwind tour of two museums, one madman’s hidey-hole, Geno’s East, and the Broadway production of Hamilton: An American Musical at the CIBC Theatre in eastern Chicago. That last item is the subject of this post.

I’m going to keep this short, partly because I couldn’t appreciate all the nuances of this lovely production. This was due to my own failing: I do not pick up on accents or extremely rapid patter very well, especially when there is musical accompaniment, and that is the essence of this play: a biography of the American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, warts and all, told mostly through the musical form rap. The use of this musical form in this play is important in that it connects a profoundly American musical form (though built on preceding imported forms), still relatively recently developed, to the beginnings of the American experiment in government, in perhaps the most important possible way – each began in the depths of alienation and struggle. Rap started as a street music developed by a black community struggling with centuries of American racism, and all it that has implied for members of a black community who have the spirit of the poet moving through them, the desire to chronicle their stories and how injustice impacts them.

The Founding Fathers were reacting to the sometimes arbitrary rule and taxation of a sovereign far, far away, who knew little of their situation and cared less, a monarchy the history of which contained acts of extreme barbarity inflicted not only on enemies, but on citizens of the British Empire as well, often justified through appeals to religious orthodoxies not applicable or accepted by the colonists of America. Thus, the alienation felt by the colonists who were of various religious sects, were belabored by the monarch’s representatives, and often felt like afterthoughts who were managed not for their prosperity, but for what they could produce for the faraway homeland. In this alienation, there is a connection, and that connection is important to making the play significant for American audiences familiar with the history and themes of both.

But the play is also interesting in that it recognizes there’s more than one story here, and that this is an inevitability. We learn the story of Alexander Hamilton (and how many Americans know the story of Alexander Hamilton – I certainly didn’t, and in fact as the play progressed towards the infamously tragic duel, I realized that I knew of the duel, but not the why), but the playwright also deliberately introduces the story of Hamilton’s eventual antagonist, Aaron Burr, another orphan and his friend and rival, and how their differences made Hamilton both better and worse. We also catch parts of the story of Hamilton’s mentor, George Washington, and of Hamilton’s wife, Eliza, who brings us to the real end of the story as we discover she is responsible for founding the first private orphanage after his death in the duel.

Orphaned, ambitious, amatory, brilliant, and infuriating – it’s a fascinating story, and well told if you can hear it. We loved the story, presentation and the music, except when we couldn’t quite hear the words, as well as the costumes. If you have a chance, please go see Hamilton, and see that American politics has always had an element of the dirty about it.

Recommended.

Ohio is another state which has been gerrymandered by the GOP, who have retained a vast majority in the legislature ever since. However, they’ve apparently been watching what’s been happening to other states such as Pennsylvania (GOP gerrymander) and Maryland (Democratic gerrymander) and decided to be proactive on the matter. They offered an Amendment to the Ohio Constitution on the matter, known as Issue 1, to change the process from a simple majority vote + signature of the governor to a more complext process, as described in Vox by Andrew Prokop:

1. To start off, the Ohio legislature would be tasked with drawing a new map. But they could no longer pass it with a simple majority vote. They’d need three-fifths support and the support of at least half the members of both major parties, in each chamber, as well as the governor’s signature.
2. If there’s no deal, the congressional map-drawing would be punted over to the seven-member Ohio commission that exists to handle the state legislature’s redistricting. Here, again, bipartisanship would be necessary — at least two minority-party members would have to agree to approve a new map.
3. If the commission fails, the job would be tossed back to the Ohio legislature. In that case, the threshold for success would fall, but bipartisanship would still be necessary to pass a map — at least one-third of each party’s members would have to vote for it, to pass it and send it for the governor’s signature.
4. Finally, if all these efforts fail, the legislature would be permitted to pass a map with simple majority support. But the catch is that this new map would only last four years, rather than the usual 10. And again, the governor’s signature would be required.

From the same article:

“I think it largely enshrines the process that we have,” says Republican state Sen. Matt Huffman. “It still leaves it in the hands of the majority party in the legislature, because people elected the majority party to make these decisions. But it also enshrines the concept of minority rights.”

Not really. This will be an opportunity for corruption in three ways, all related to the commission in #2. First, there’s old-fashioned bribery, whether it’s cash or special consideration for the minority party members of the commission. Second, what’s to keep a member of the commission from switching parties? And, related to number two, the third would be a ‘mole’ in the other party, although that’s admittedly a little far-fetched.

And since step 4 exists, the status quo is maintained in the event of failure. Big win for the Republicans. In fact, step 4 is the hammer of the process – Either agree to our marginally better map or you’re stuck with the Big Bad One for another four years! It’s all about the power politics, folks.

The best way to do these things is to have an objective, non-political mechanism. So far, I haven’t seen one for the American system, but that doesn’t mean one cannot be devised. Perhaps having the judiciary devise a redistricting map as constrained by the efficiency gap would work. I haven’t given it a lot of thought.

This thread concerns the candidacy of CEO Don Blankenship for the GOP nomination of Senator from West Virginia, who was convicted of a misdemeanor in connection with a coal mine disaster which killed 20+ miners, and I am glad I can bring it to a positive conclusion. Via Reuters:

[West Virginia] State Attorney General Patrick Morrisey won the Republican U.S. Senate nomination in West Virginia on Tuesday, beating former coal executive Don Blankenship and calming the fears of party leaders who thought the brash ex-convict would spoil their chance to pick up a Senate seat. …

Blankenship had panicked Republican leaders by showing signs of a late surge, but he faded to a third-place finish behind Morrisey and U.S. Representative Evan Jenkins after President Donald Trump intervened to urge voters to reject him. …

Blankenship told supporters in Charleston, West Virginia, that he had no regrets about his campaign and blamed the “establishment” for the loss.

“I think if there was any single factor … it was President Trump’s lack of endorsement,” he said.

Is he saying that Trump is now the establishment? The swamp, so to speak? Forgive my snark!

More seriously, his comment does bring up the question of whether the GOP primary voters had the good sense to reject a former CEO who ignored safety regulations in favor of profits, or if the voters just fell into line at Trump’s command. I have no idea which is a more accurate description of reality.

And will Blankenship’s comments discourage his supporters from coming to the polls this November? Current holder of the seat Senator Manchin (D) is considered to be one of the more vulnerable Democrats, but also one of the more conservative Democrats. Right now, in my mind this is a toss up until we start seeing polls indicating how the West Virginians views the two.

The data smuggler also liked to do community theater on the side, as he felt he could become an actor. Sadly, he was wrong.

Johnny Mnemonic (1995) has some interesting elements to it, but it ultimately fails because there’s no real hook from which the audience might learn^[1]. Consider the categories of characters with which we’re presented: a data smuggler who uses a brain implant, which has displaced his childhood memories, in order to make room for the huge data downloads with which he’s entrusted; the Yakuza, a collection of Japanese-based international organized crime syndicates (these are reality-based); a senior executive of PharmaKom, a pharmaceutical company whose data is being stolen, who has personally been devastated by the death of his only child by the disease his company may have found a cure for; the mainframe-based ghost of the founder of PharmaKom; the Lo-Teks, an outlaw group bound together by the belief that this world’s intensive information society is damaging its members; a man turning himself into a cyborg who raises the funds by hiring himself out for assassinations, which he performs as a Christian-based ritual death; a bodyguard who maintains her edge through the use of debilitating drugs while fighting off a terminal disease; and a dolphin.

This is set in the future, a future where that new, terminal illness has emerged, called Nerve Attenuation Syndrome (NAS), a disease characterized by the “black shakes”. The plot is that a group of Lo-Teks has stolen unknown data from PharmaKom, and hired the data smuggler to move it securely from their location to the headquarters of the Lo-Teks. The data smuggler’s implant doesn’t actually have enough capacity for the download, and the extra is stored in his brain, thus endangering his sanity and life. He’s motivated to take the job because he wants his childhood memories back; he currently feels isolated from the world. This job will provide the funds to remove the implant.

The Yakuza show up just as the download finishes, massacring the scientists but missing out on the data smuggler. In the fray, the encryption key, consisting of three images, is torn in half and the smuggler emerges with only one of the images. While it seems the Yakuza were hired by the PharmaKom executive, they may later decide to take the data for themselves, but it’s not really clear. In any case, he hires the aspiring cyborg to finish the job, which is to acquire the data smuggler’s head. The implant is not enough, you see, because the data overflowed; the entire head is necessary.

And the smuggler is having none of that. He’s struggling to find a way to download and decrypt the data, and eventually he shows up at Lo-Tek headquarters, who appear to be little more than a streetgang that happens to hold a wrecked bridge in New Jersey. Along the way he acquires the services of the bodyguard, who rescues him from a group trying to take his head. The Lo-Teks have the services of a code-breaking US Navy dolphin, because that’s useful to have at this point in the plot, never mind how silly it may be, and in the midst of the mutual massacres of the Yakuza, the Lo-Teks, and the PharmaKom dudes, the data is decrypted and spread through public channels for all to see.

And what is the data? A how-to for curing NAS.

Oh, and that ghost has been torturing the PharmaKom exec with assertions that PharmaKom used his own child for testing the cure.

So, how about us little guys, the common citizen? Are there any in this story? In short, no. Most of these folks are so far beyond your typical audience’s experience that an instant connection is not possible. Nor does the movie, at least the one cut for the TV, provide much of a hook to any of these characters. That exec who lost his child to experimentation? We saw nothing, we’re just told that’s what happened. The data smuggler’s lost childhood, is it really that awful for him? We can’t tell. Maybe his parents beat him everyday, for all we know.

And NAS is supposedly widespread and kills most of the victims – so are there riots in the streets? Have the citizens all given up on whatever activity is causing the disease? Well, hell, we don’t know – and if some version of the movie does tell us, that’ll be the problem – they tell us.

Stories are about showing. How about an old-fashioned riot in the streets with some characters with which we can identify?

The special effects are a little goofy, the acting is OK, but the story feels like a first draft, and could have used two or three more, not to mention a few brainstorming sessions. In the end, the characters aren’t much more than dull cardboard cutouts. The ideas are OK, especially that of NAS, but the suggestion that PharmaKom sacrificed little kids, especially the exec’s own child, to find a cure for the disease seems both stale and, in its particulars, a bit unbelievable. A man building himself into a cyborg doesn’t seem unrealistic, given today’s body modification fetishists, but it just seems out of place in this story.

And a dolphin? Really? Why?

¹Keeping in mind I’m analyzing in the context of the theory that stories provide keys to survival to the audiences, and the better they do so, the better a story they will be considered.

Maquette:

A maquette (French word for scale model, sometimes referred to by the Italian names plastico or modello) is a small scale model or rough draft of an unfinished sculpture. An equivalent term is bozzetto, from the Italian word that means “sketch”. [Wikipedia]

Noted at the Chicago Institute of Art.

If you’re unreligious, like myself, and haven’t quite figured out how to live in a nation in which so many expect you to be religious, buck up! The House Of Representatives has a caucus for Representatives just like you, as Vox reports:

A new religious group in the US House of Representatives is advocating for more representation and influence. Those members? The nonreligious.

This week, Democratic Reps. Jared Huffman (CA), Jamie Raskin (MD), Jerry McNerney (CA), and Dan Kildee (MI) announced the formation of a new caucus, known as the Congressional Freethought Caucus, to safeguard the interests of nontheists in government, and to promote policies based, in their view, on reason and science.

A press statement emailed to journalists said, “The mission of the caucus is to promote public policy based on reason and science, to protect the secular character of our government, and to champion the value of freedom of thought worldwide.”

According to the statement, the caucus will actively work to “protect the secular character of our government”; promote science-bred public policy; counter discrimination against atheists, agnostics, and humanists; and provide a “forum for Members of Congress to discuss their moral frameworks, ethical values, and personal religious journeys.”

The spirit of Robert Ingersoll lives on. As Vox notes, those who are not part of any particular religious tradition are growing, although formal atheists only make up 7% of the population in a 2017 poll. The slowly receding influence of the old institutions, whether they be Catholic, Protestant, or Judaism, will certainly lead to new developments in many sectors of human society, from government to the private sector; the only major exception might be science, as religion doesn’t play a big part in its continued development, although it does impact funding and acceptance – perhaps I misspeak slightly.

The youth of today should keep an antenna tuned to that question if they don’t want to be caught unawares. Depending on the denomination, some of those sects may not accept their new limitations with grace.

Puss In Boots (2011) is a classic tale concerning the tension between the importance of community life and the self-centered actions of those who envision their happiness in the accumulation of wealth and the exultation of vengeance. All of this is clothed in the modern conception of an origin story, and, more importantly, the recent incorporation of non-human creatures into the community of sentient creatures.

Puss is an orphan kitten who was raised by a kindly foster mother, but his fellow orphan, Humpty Dumpty the Egg, has scant respect for the law. As they grow older, Humpty develops a taste for gold, and eventually tricks Puss into helping him rob the bank of their little village – and thus the villagers who’ve used it. Pursued by the local militia, Humpty loses his footing and is taken by the militia even as he begs for help from the angry Puss, who leaps from the bridge into the chasm to escape.

A few years later, Humpty reappears in the company of Kitty Softpaws. Humpty vows to restore the gold to the bank and begs Puss for help, who reluctantly allows his attraction to Softpaws to persuade him to assist in restoring the gold.

The source? There are magic beans involved.

Once the source of gold is secured, though, Puss discovers he is ensnared in a scheme of vengeance, a group effort including not only Humpy and Softpaws, but even Jack and Jill and some villagers. Turned over to the military, he’s imprisoned.

Momentarily. Shamed, but made aware of an imminent disaster, Puss employs his charms to escape and make the situation right, with panache, but for one unfortunate loss.

This is the sort of story that illustrates the sad, lonely ending for those who fail to cultivate societal ties in favor of satisfying the base desires of greed and failure to consider the welfare of others. It’s a basic teaching story, which includes the unusual element of other creatures than humans being full-fledged members of society.

Also of interest are the arsenal of skills in Puss’ possession, while Humpty, for all his intense desire for wealth and vengeance, can only be credited with cleverness – little else. He fumbles from one situation to another, and in this there must be a parable about thinking that one’s desires will fulfill one’s life, whereas it’s more in what one can learn to do.

This is a fun animated movie with panache and some mildly wicked laughs. It’s a good way to spend a snowy evening after shoveling another annoying load of snow. If you have kid, recommended.

Ed Rogers in WaPo’s Post-Partisan blog indulges in some quaint intellectual dishonesty concerning history:

Rather than there be a wholesale capitulation to the shallow-minded embrace of socialism, I hope at least a few Democrats will have the courage to teach millennials and others the history of socialism’s debilitating, murderous past and the historic human advancement that has been produced by a free market. Remember, socialism is just a kinder, gentler version of communism. Democrats should think twice before they abandon capitalism.

Capitalism is rife with equivalent examples of man abusing man – and that’s the key. The economic system isn’t all that relevant to the question of how those in charge of the economy, or means of production (to use the old Marxian phrase), are indulging that control, but rather it’s much more direct – that is, do they see them as their fellow man, or as objects that will lead to their own greater wealth?

Communism essentially melds the political system to the economic system. Socialism, so far as I can tell, tries to do so but to a lesser extent, trying to be more intelligent about it – think of the Scandinavian countries, which seem to be full of Scandinavians fairly happy with how those things work out. The gulf between the economic and political systems in those countries is larger than in Communist countries.

In capitalist countries, the gulf is larger yet – but not unbridgeable, nor should it be. The political system’s responsibility in this case is to safeguard the citizens, who constitute the essence of the political system, from the more predatory aspects of an economic system not particularly well-designed to regard workers as PEOPLE, rather than OBJECTS.

Capitalism has the capacity to be just as barbaric as does communism – and that suggests it’s not a problem with either system so much as a deeper problem, which will, if ever properly studied and understood, turn out to be something to do with xenophobia (most communist victims tended to be outside of the ethnic or national group of those in power) in sync with sociopathic personalities with an urge to power.

Right now we’re in a vast social experiment to see if the American political system can withstand just such a personality successfully.

Lenticular:

1. : having the shape of a double-convex lens
2. : of or relating to a lens
3. : provided with or utilizing lenticules
   a lenticular screen [Merriam-Webster]

Noted at The Chicago Art Institute.

Returning to this thread, another bit of bad news has come across the gunwale from Michael Le Page on NewScientist (28 April 2018, paywall):

NO ONE expected this. In the longest-running experiment of its kind, plants that were supposed to thrive in higher carbon dioxide levels have instead done less well.

The finding suggests plants won’t take up as much CO₂ in the future as climate models assume – potentially leading to greater warming in the long term.

“To get this result is startling,” says Peter Reich at the University of Minnesota in St Paul, whose team ran a 20-year study of how high CO2 levels affect grasslands. This study shows we must be cautious when predicting how complex systems behave, he says. “There could be surprises.”

So much for those who think CO₂ levels will be good for vegetation on their own. While more land may become available for certain vegetation, sometimes at the expense of others, if the plants themselves have poor uptake then that vague theory just isn’t going to work out, is it?

It’s worth noting that this is a single study’s results, and the study ran for more than a decade. It could be an outlier – but to count on that is foolishness in the face of all the other scientific evidence concerning climate change.

And speaking of CO₂ levels, how’s the Mauna Loa NOAA measurement station doing these days?

Much the same – trending upwards.

I’ve been on vacation and not paying attention to the outside world, but when I ran across WaPo’s commentary on the GOP reaction to the sudden resignation of the New York Attorney General, I was a little puzzled.

It took three hours for New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to step down Monday night after he was accused by four women of physical abuse in a New Yorker article.

Equally swift was the response from allies of President Trump, a longtime nemesis of the attorney general. While the president himself had not weighed in on the news as of early Tuesday morning, numerous Trump supporters from within and outside the White House reveled in Schneiderman’s resignation. The attorney general became the latest powerful figure to fall from grace amid the #MeToo movement, and among the most high profile of Trump’s political enemies to be accused of misconduct.

Do these jubilant faux-conservatives not understand how bad this makes the President look? He, after all, has been accused by far more than four women of various forms of improper sexual advances. Schneiderman has denied the allegations, but he has also resigned.

Can the President match him in at least that one honorable decision?

No. Instead, he stands forth as a brilliantly lit example of one of the many demons that have not just plagued the GOP, but actually transformed it from a responsible governing party to a vehicle for the spectacular hypocrites of the conservative religious movements that supported him, as well as the various extremists who hunger for power. He’s admitted, on tape, to behaviors that may be worthy of jail time. There is little doubt in the minds of those paying attention that a philanderer of his stature has committed these misdeeds.

So when our pack of faux-conservatives celebrate the downfall of a Trump opponent, temporary or permanent, under the same accusations that have been lodged against the President, they only serve to focus that beam of morality upon their own leader.

And, once again, raise questions not only about the suitability of their man to be President, but about all these faux-conservatives themselves, and their continual poor judgment they continue to display when it comes to the well-being of the United States.

Lloyd Alter  on Treehugger is upset at a winner of this year’s Committee on the Environment (COTE) award:

© Gabe Border / Olson Kundig

There is no question that Olson Kundig has designed a beautiful house, and written a brilliant award submission. But is it really setting the standard in sustainability? I don’t think so.

Thousands of people have been living off-grid in the desert for decades, usually sucking propane for heating and power. Modern technologies like efficient solar panels, big battery packs, LED lighting and heat pumps have made it possible to live better electrically off-grid with zero carbon, but it is not with zero impact. That is a lot of hardware, needed to power a lot of house. If this is, as COTE suggests, “a new model for the sustainable single-family home” then we are in a lot of trouble.

Perhaps the Committee lacks expertise?

When it comes to killer robots, researchers are up in arms – sorry about that. Jeremy Hsu reports in Discover’s Lovesick Cyborg that researchers have forced an institution to clarify the purpose of a research project:

It all began in late February when a Korea Times article reported on a leading South Korean defense company teaming up with a public research university to develop military AI weapons capable of operating without human supervision. By March, a group of more than 50 AI researchers from 30 countries had signed an open letter addressed to KAIST, the South Korean university involved in the AI weapons project, that declared the signatories would boycott any research collaborations with the university. …

KAIST quickly responded to the open letter  from the international research community. By early April, KAIST President Sung-chul Shin had put out a statement to allay researchers’ concerns: “KAIST does not have any intention to engage in the development of lethal autonomous weapons system and killer robots.” In acknowledgement, the researchers called off the proposed boycott.

The apparent success of the proposed boycott could inspire future campaigns to follow in its footsteps. But many universities would likely think twice about pursuing similar research projects that could lead to lethal autonomous weapons. Russell noted that the AI research community would have to remain watchful.

Unfortunately, questions concerning the inherent instability of a system in which the weapons to be developed are not easily detectable and require little more than computer science research and some minor weaponry development are not addressed. This is in contrast to nuclear weaponry, which is detectable at a distance and requires a certain amount of natural resources. Because of these differences, I hesitate to draw analogies with our more or less successful management of nuclear weapons.

pen register:

UPDATE: It was a pen register, not a wiretap. In other words, just a record of incoming and outgoing calls, not recordings of conversations. [“Too Many Lies to Keep Track Of,” Kevin Drum]

Greg Fallis has a lovely rant about rules in fictional universes, which he calls cosmological events:

I mention this because I had a parting of the ways with a writer who has written a very good story. Her characters (both living and not-living) are interesting and well-defined, her dialog is bright and witty, the story is structured in a logical and supportive way, her writing is accessible without being pedestrian, and while her plot isn’t entirely original it has to be admitted that very few plots are. I won’t go into detail about the story itself but I can say this: it revolves around a murder victim whose ghost/spirit is trying to help the detective who is assigned to investigate her murder. As I said, it’s not an original idea, but it’s very well written and told in a charming narrative voice. It could be a very marketable manuscript.

So why have we parted ways? Because we fundamentally disagree on one thing: rules for ghosts. I say she needs a coherent and internally consistent set of rules for ghost behavior. What are the limits of what a ghost can do? She says rules and limits would stifle her creativity. I say rules and limits will actually force her to be more creative. …

But as a manuscript doctor, the thing that makes these stories interesting is also the thing that makes a lot of writers stumble: magic (or magick — and yes, for folks who work in this genre, there’s a difference; magic is grounded in illusion, magick is based on the physical manifestation of the supernatural or the occult). The most common problem I see in these stories is that the magick is used as a lazy way to solve problems in plot and character instead of as an existing supernatural system.

I would take this a step further and note that rules, well-thought out and rigorously followed, will keep the writer from those embarrassing plot holes which waste the writer’s valuable time and, if they escape into the outside world, lead to humiliating questions and might become a burden on their career.

The fact that the writer is whining about rules suppressing creativity tells me that he or she hasn’t yet given much thought to the theory behind good fiction writing. They no doubt work very hard at the craft, working out the dialogue and plots, but they haven’t completely considered the abstract why’s of the entire activity.

And I enjoyed Greg’s rant, except for his long list of questions he had for the writer. Then again, I’m not much into ghost stories. As Greg notes, they tend to be a little too …. magickal.

Kevin Drum looks behind the curtain when it comes to the unemployment rate:

The number of unemployed is indeed down by 239,000, but where did they go? Not to the ranks of the employed, which rose by only 3,000. It turns out they left the labor force entirely, which is why the civilian labor force fell by 236,000 even though the total population grew.

So, sure, the unemployment rate is down, but it’s because 236,000 people gave up and quit looking for work—which means they no longer get counted as unemployed. This is bad news, not good.

Retirement would also be congruent with those numbers, but I don’t know that they break that segment out. And why would so many folks retire en masse, anyways?

Regarding James Comey’s book, a reader writes:

I’m amazed you acquired a copy and read it so swiftly after its release. I read something which said, and I agree, that Comey’s biggest error was in how he handled the Clinton email thing. His motivations there were colored by consciously or not wanting to preserve his job. He believed there would be dirt found on Clinton (there wasn’t) and that if he did not announce the investigation (which he shouldn’t have done and wouldn’t have done under any other circumstances) and that suspected dirt came out later (which he thought it would), he’d be hung for letting her get elected.

Like I said, it was an easy read.

With regard to the email investigation, Comey states he knew he, or more properly the FBI, was in big trouble the moment that investigation began. He presents it as an attempt to deal with it in the best way he possibly could. Did he make mistakes? Maybe. Was he unconsciously influenced by a desire to keep his job? He states he expected Clinton to win, so it’s a little difficult to accept that he brought the investigation public in an attempt to keep his job.

So the readers have two choices. Accept him at his word that he was simply attempting to preserve the reputation of the FBI from charges of favoritism, or he’s lying through his teeth. That’s a judgment all of us have to make for ourselves.

For my part, I prefer, lacking evidence to the contrary, to believe him. It’s an approach I generally take with people, modified by observations of body language, general history, and that sort of thing. Trump has been caught in so many lies, boasts, and other character defects that I figure he should be doubted on every thing he says.