Remember the candidacy of convicted coal mining company CEO Don Blankenship for the Senate seat in West Virginia? He was convicted of neglecting required coal mine safety measures when CEO of Massey Energy, resulting in the deaths of 29 Massey employees. He’s in the GOP primary and doing well – too well, and this is disturbing what passes for the mainstream GOP, according to Politico:

The Republican establishment has launched an emergency intervention in the West Virginia Senate primary aimed at stopping recently imprisoned coal baron Don Blankenship from winning the party’s nomination.

Late last week, a newly formed super PAC generically dubbed the “Mountain Families PAC” began airing TV ads targeting Blankenship, who spent one year behind bars following a deadly 2010 explosion at his Upper Big Branch Mine. The national party isn’t promoting its role in the group, but its fingerprints are all over it.

The 30-second commercials, which the group is spending nearly $700,000 to air, accuse Blankenship’s company of contaminating drinking water by pumping “toxic coal slurry,” even as the multimillionaire installed a piping system that pumped clean water to his mansion.

The primary result will act as a measuring stick for how far the GOP base has slid to the right. Are they willing to embrace a former coal mining CEO who constantly fought safety regulations for the mines, neglected those measures and therefore lost lives? He claims it wasn’t his fault, but the government’s, and of course I’m not in any position to evaluate such claims – but it doesn’t really matter. The incident and Blankenship’s attitude will be ammunition for the Democratic incumbent, Joe Manchin. If the base rejects him, all well and good, at least in proportion to the severity of the rejection. But if he wins the nomination, then it’s an indication that the base is continuing to slide to the right.

Just as importantly, there’s some irony here in that the Republicans have long run on assertions that add up to Too Much Regulation and Corruption In Washington. Blankenship is using those themes in his run:

He has far outspent his primary opponents, Rep. Evan Jenkins and state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, whom he castigates as pawns of the GOP establishment.

The GOP has sowed the farmland with persistent messages about the corruption of Washington, and then elected a President who personifies corruption. The entire situation bears a striking resemblance to, oh, cannibalism.

And cannibals often suffer from highly destructive diseases like kuru. Sure, this stretches the analogy into flab, but I think there might be some weight to it, even so.

Reader reaction to 2018 GE3:

“2018 GE3 was found less than a day before before its closest approach.” Yikes.

Very. To say we have a NEO (Near Earth Orbit) detection system in place is not to say it detects everything. There are size limitations and directional limitations – which is to say, if an object is on an outbound leg, which is to say outbound from the direction of the Sun, then the Sun can make it more difficult to detect.

Another:

My father-in-law believed that NASA launches from Kennedy Space Center would ultimately affect Earth’s rotation and orbit. It was his play on Newton’s First – for every action there is an equal and opposite…..

I’m not sure about rotation, since launches are perpendicular to the rotational direction of the Earth, but I’d believe orbit. I recall reading somewhere about how “slingshot” maneuvers around other planets “stole momentum” from them – an immeasurably smal fraction, but physics is physics.

On Lawfare Alan Rozenshtein talks about the encryption debate and just who’s the target – not terrorists:

My experience—which accords with what I’ve heard from many seasoned prosecutors—illustrates the critical importance of default settings. It’s been widely known for decades that only a sliver of users ever change the settings on their devices, or even know that the settings are there for the changing. And if users can’t be bothered to change easily accessible settings, they certainly won’t go to the trouble of switching smartphones or messaging apps just to frustrate law enforcement. But when WhatsApp decides to make end-to-end encryption a default setting on its already immensely popular messaging program, the communications of a billion people are suddenly warrant proof. That’s the stuff of law-enforcement nightmares.

There’s no question that sophisticated bad actors—whether terrorists or spies—won’t just settle for the default setting. They’ll always find a way to encrypt their communications, whether by adopting products that don’t fall under national laws mandating third-party access or by taking technological countermeasures. (For instance, bad actors can sideload secure messaging apps that might otherwise be restricted from the Apple or Android app stores).

But end-to-end encryption won’t cripple counterterrorism investigations. (If this were a serious concern, one would expect a former NSA director to lead the charge against end-to-end encryption, not support its wide deployment.) There aren’t that many would-be terrorists, and the ones who exist get ample attention from the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies. At such a high ratio of good guys to bad guys, the government can generally get around encryption where it needs to, whether by paying millions of dollars for third-party hacking tools, exploiting software and hardware vulnerabilities to hack devices, or engaging in physical surveillance. (The same logic also applies to counterintelligence investigations.)

So, rather than 3rd party access to encrypted data, simply make sure the defaults are off and make the criminals figure it out. This will work for the petty, dumb criminals, as Alan points out, but organized crime may figure it out, and sophisticated terrorists will be on the spectrum from “may figure it out” to “will use immune solutions.”

Given Alan’s discussion, I’m having trouble figuring out if there’s any point to 3rd party access. The math & coding skills necessary for nearly impossible to break communication isn’t confined to the security or commercial worlds. Only if a quantum computing solution is found will the government have a one size fits all potential solution to the problem. So far, I have not seen any reports of an actually capable quantum computer.

Picture from National Review’s commentary on the controversy.

The third part of Andrew Sullivan’s weekly tripartite column covers a controversy I missed out on, which I regret since I would have laughed quite loudly if I had:

And then they came for Apu.

In battling against the relentless onslaught of “social justice,” you have to take solace in a few small acts of defiance. And last week, we had one, as the writers of The Simpsons stood their ground against the attempt to rid their show of funny stereotypes, in particular to reform and remake the character of Apu Nahasapeemapetilon. The usual arguments have been made: Apu foments racism because he was long the sole South Asian figure in mainstream television and does not represent many Indian-Americans, he is voiced by a white (i.e., Jewish) man in a parody of an Indian accent, he “hurts” people, he’s created by people with “privilege,” the oppression is intolerable, yada yada. We haven’t yet gotten to the point in the formula where Apu is actually responsible for the deaths of Indian-Americans, but I’m sure that’s coming.

As I recall, and as Andrew notes in passing, Apu happens to hold a doctorate in Computer Science. But how does he make his living in Springfield, ??, United States? He runs a convenience store. Now, Andrew focuses on Apu’s status as a small business owner (who happens to sell absolute crap to the gullible citizens of Springfield), but I think the contrast of having earned a doctorate, but ending up running a convenience store, is really a slap at the prejudices which infest the United States.

Now, in reality, a doctorate in Computer Science from India can get a job in the United States, as I know of at least one (there may be more, as I don’t pay a lot of attention to the academic attainments) in my building at work. But it’s a convenient trope to use in The Simpsons, as it fits right in with other stereotypes concerning India and who emigrates from there – and how much of a hurdle emigres often face from the somewhat xenophobic society they find here in North America.

So, in that respect, this is really the reverse of what the social justice mavens of Andrew’s acquaintance would claim – it’s an illumination of the problem and a cry for solution, not just the use of it for entertainment value.

Andrew goes on to defend the use of stereotypes in comedy, and I have no problem with that. I just want to say that Chief Wiggum is the most dedicated and loving father in all of TV that I’ve seen.

Which isn’t much.

Bloody April snowstorm. Well, actually, I liked the composition, but as my Arts Editor says, it’s a little grainy. So much for smartphone cameras.

It turns out a biggish asteroid came zooming near Earth, closer than the Moon is to us, just a few hours ago. Spaceweather has the update:

Based on the intensity of its reflected sunlight, 2018 GE3 must be 48 to 110 meters wide, according to NASA-JPL. This puts it into the same class as the 60-meterTunguska impactor that leveled a forest in Siberia in 1908. A more recent point of comparison is the Chelyabinsk meteor–a ~20-meter asteroid that exploded in the atmosphere over Russia on Feb. 15, 2013, shattering windows and toppling onlookers as a fireball brighter than the sun blossomed in the blue morning Ural sky. 2018 GE3 could be 5 to 6 times wider than that object.

If 2018 GE3 had hit Earth, it would have caused regional, not global, damage, and might have disintegrated in the atmosphere before reaching the ground. Nevertheless, it is a significant asteroid, illustrating how even large space rocks can still take us by surprise. 2018 GE3 was found less than a day before before its closest approach.

Watts Up With That has a lovely graphic illustrating the probable orbit of 2018 GE3:

I wonder if that close of an approach to Earth is enough to alter its orbit significantly.

From yesterday’s WaPo:

Just weeks until her wedding, Laurin Long sat down in front of the bathroom mirror, wrapped a blue-and-white striped towel around her shoulders and turned to her fiance.

“Go,” she said.

Michael Bank, 34, switched on the hair clipper and slowly started to shave her head.

“I woke up with bald spots this morning — so shaved head it is,” the 29-year-old then-soon-to-be bride told family and friends in February during a nine-minute Facebook Live video.

Laurin had battled breast cancer before and, in fact, had been bald when she met Michael three years ago.

The breast cancer had returned. This time it was Stage 4 and had metastasized to her bones, liver and lungs.

But despite the cancer and chemotherapy, despite doctors’ concerns about her deteriorating health, and despite their recommendations that she move up the March 24 wedding date, the couple pressed on.

It’s a lovely little story.

It looks like President Erdogan of Turkey, who has arranged for his position to accumulate more and more power, is indulging in the old game of propping up the economy in order to avoid the angry mob incident. Mustafa Sonmez reports in AL Monitor:

On March 29, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK) announced that the country’s gross domestic product grew 7.4% in 2017, the highest rate in the past four years. The 7.4% rate made Turkey the second fastest-growing economy in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development after Ireland with 7.8% and ahead of Slovenia with 5%. The GDP, however, shrank in terms of dollars to $851 billion from $863 billion in 2016, reflecting the dramatic depreciation of the Turkish lira. Accordingly, GDP per capita went down to $10,597 from $10,883 in 2016.

There is another side of the coin, which shows that Turkey’s spectacular growth came thanks to government propping that is hard to sustain and at the expense of excessive borrowing and increasing fragilities. The social leg of growth is also troubling, as low-income Turks appear to have benefited little in terms of job opportunities and income increase.

As Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek conceded, government guarantees encouraging loan expansion were the main booster of growth, coupled with tax cuts and incentives. The economy’s growth was driven largely by domestic consumption, which brought about double-digit inflation — 12% in consumer prices at the end of 2017.

I wonder how long it’ll take for the edifice to come toppling down – and the disillusionment in the strongman to grow strong enough to chase him out.

Or force violent confrontations.

We’re supposed to be oohing and aahing over the tulips!

Not dealing with this!

Sigh!

Feeling virtuous when you’re deveining that hapless shrimp? Discard that feeling, reports NewScientist (7 April 2018):

There’s an ironic twist to this picture. Let me know if you figure it out.
Credit: Organic Facts

Globally, [Robert Parker at the University of British Columbia and his colleagues] found that carbon emissions from fisheries rose by 28 per cent between 1991 and 2011, even though total catch has barely changed (Nature Climate Change, DOI: 10.1038/s41558-018-0117-x). That contrasts with other foods, where improved efficiency has led to lower emissions per kilogram of product.

One reason is that we are eating more shrimp and lobster. Compared with beef, these have higher emissions per kilogram, partly because they are hard to catch. Most other fish are good choices for a climate-friendly diet. “The typical fish product is going to have a similar footprint to chicken, which is the most efficient land-based animal source,” says Parker. Some small fish, such as anchovies, do even better. The team is now developing a website that will let people look up the greenhouse gas footprints of different seafood.

The best way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from seafood is to manage fisheries well. This will allow fish populations to rebuild to higher levels. “The more abundant your fish are, the easier it is to catch them,” says Ray Hilborn at the University of Washington in Seattle.

In other words, don’t eat so much fish. And don’t fish so inefficiently, which I would measure as non-target fish that are caught up in the nets and die as a result.

Or you can be like these fish biologists and simply cease eating fish.

The Libby Scooter surprise pardon, coming on a late Friday afternoon where unwholesome news is often dumped by political administrations of all types and stripes, is generating some commentary. Former White House Counsel Bob Bauer on Lawfare:

It is not clear how a Libby pardon advances the president’s cause directly. But Trump has never showed much interest in Libby’s conviction—until now. Perhaps the subject arose during discussions about Rosenstein and Mueller. Trump may have been moved to act, as he often does, on impulse, experiencing newfound sympathy for Libby’s plight that he imagines to be so much like his own. He may be especially focused on the obstruction report that, according to news accounts,  Mueller is preparing for Rosenstein, who then has a complex decision to make about his authority to provide that report to the Congress or the public.

Then again, this action could also reflect a strategic move in the president’s legal defense. Trump’s lawyers may have thought that the president could improve on his expressions of personal pique by building his constitutional case against Mueller by taking this action now in the Libby case—by demonstrating that Trump will do what it takes, including using pardons, to bring special or independent counsels (or special prosecutors) under control and to remedy what Trump believes to be their abuses.

So Libby’s prospective pardon is not as much of an abrupt change of subject as it might appear. By this action in a totally unrelated matter, Trump may be looking to cloak in principle at some future time his exercise of the power of his office to protect himself.

From a criminal trial, yes. If it comes to impeachment, it only depends on whether or not the GOP can muster up the gumption to vote for conviction. Bauer also notes this:

The move resonates in other ways with the situation now facing the president. His preoccupation at the moment seems to be Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Following the raid on the offices of Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen, the president’s objections to Rosenstein’s role have intensified. Apart from his natural anxiety about what befell his lawyer and what it means for him personally, Trump is intensely focused on what he perceives to be Rosenstein’s inadequate supervision of the special counsel. He has recently heard Alan Dershowitz’s judgment in public comments, and maybe in private conversations as well, that Rosenstein—presumably a witness in the obstruction investigation—should be subject to a recusal motion and removed from the supervision of the Russia matter.

Which leaves me with this piquant question: is there anyone competent to the position of supervising Mueller in the White House who isn’t a witness?

Steve Benen:

So why would Trump pardon him a decade later? Perhaps because this White House is determined to advance another petty political point.

Kellyanne Conway told reporters this morning, for example, that Scooter Libby may have been “the victim of a special counsel gone amok.”

Left unsaid was the obvious point that Trump World sees itself as a victim of a special counsel gone amok, offering us another example of this president using his pardon authority as an instrument of political messaging.

Nicole Wallace (on The Rachel Maddow Show) of MSNBC is paraphrased:

Trump conditioning public with pardon of Scooter Libby

Activities which will condition thoughtful independents to be inclined against Trump, but would please his base inordinately, appealing to their sentiment of being under attack by the forces of evil. Don’t underestimate this urge, as it’s an emotional underpinning to the entire Trump movement, and it takes an effort to break free of it, evaluate Trump objectively, and leave the movement that has become your emotional home.

Valerie Plame, who was the agent outed by those leaks for which Libby was convicted in court, as reported by Politico:

Plame, appearing on MSNBC on Friday, suggested that Trump is telegraphing a message to Manafort and other aides, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn and son-in-law Jared Kushner, who are also key figures in the Russia investigation.

There’s a moral dimension to the Mueller investigation, which I believe Trump and his supporters are attempting to obscure – much to their discredit. Mueller isn’t investigating insipid technicalities, he’s been asked to investigate whether the activities of Trump during the Presidential campaign have left the Republic endangered.

This message needs to be conveyed to Manafort, Flynn, and the rest – a reminder that whatever they may believe, their first duty is to honestly come forth with answers to Mueller’s questions. Failing this relatively low hurdle, at this governmental level they become traitors to the United States. A pardon may be a hollow comfort for them.

CNN’s Chris Cillizza has 5 possible reasons Trump pardoned Scooter. I like #1:

1. He wants to send a message about out-of-control special prosecutors

Libby was charged and convicted as the result of a probe by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. Libby allies argued that Fitzgerald was far too aggressive and ventured too far afield in his pursuit of Libby.

A special counsel who is overstepping? Sound familiar?

Just in case you missed the message, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway is here to help. “Many people think that Scooter Libby was a victim of a special counsel gone amok,” said Conway in a Friday interview with Fox News.

In pardoning Libby, Trump can send a very clear message about how he feels about special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. (As if anyone living on planet Earth hadn’t received that message before.) He can also send a more subtle message about his willingness to step into the breach for those who he believes have been unfairly persecuted by a special prosecutor.

Which leads me to the inevitable question: should a special prosecutor ever not be out of control of his nominal superiors when the prosecutor is investigating them?

But there is definitely a theme here.

Kevin Drum:

I suppose all of Mueller’s victims deserve pardons too, don’t they? Of course they do.

On the subject of Libby, however, I’ll offer up this hot take: he was basically just a spear carrier for his boss, Vice President Dick Cheney. As long as Cheney is walking around free, I don’t really have a big problem with pardoning the fall guy.

Good point. Cheney, and for that matter his family, remain convinced of the necessity of torturing human beings and thus violating the international laws of warfare, which in my mind apply regardless of whether your opponents are also bound by them. Psychologically, of course, they have very little choice; it would take an extraordinary human being to deny the will and choices of their patriarch in matters of this great of importance, especially given the monumental consequences of such a denial, if not to his person, then at least to his honor – and for those around him.

I haven’t run across much of anything from the conservative side of the spectrum, which is not unexpected given the timing of the pardon, the strike on Syria, and the fact we’re barely 24 hours since the announcement. If I see anything of interest, I’ll relay it along. I expect it’ll be Happy Days for them, but we shall see if any of them can rise above party or movement loyalty.

Oh, and myself? I remember little of the matter except he was convicted in open court. The outing of a spy is an extremely serious matter, and since Trump admitted he’s not familiar with the matter himself, I think this is another blot of dishonor on his legacy.

Gov. Bevin of Kentucky must be really peeved at the teachers who walked out on Friday to protest various vetoes by Gov. Bevin of various budget and revenue bills, as WDRB.com reports:

“I guarantee you somewhere in Kentucky today a child was sexually assaulted that was left at home because there was nobody there to watch them,” the governor told a group of reporters outside the Capitol. “I guarantee you somewhere today a child was physically harmed or ingested poison because they were home alone because a single parent didn’t have any money to take care of them. I’m offended by the idea that people so cavalierly and so flippantly disregarded what’s truly best for children.”

Gov. Bevin is deeply unwise to use an argument which can easily be turned around and used on himself. I’ll just note in passing that he’s an exemplar of the third-raters who have ridden the first rate GOP marketing machine to positions of influence.

But, of course, it’s Gov. Bevin’s vetoes which have brought the teachers out to help ensure the public good, and encourage the KY Legislature to override his actions.

Bevin’s comments came after thousands of teachers swarmed the Capitol, most of them hoping lawmakers would override his vetoes on budget and revenue bills. The House and Senate ultimately overturned those decisions, but Bevin said children across the state suffered after several school districts closed either to allow teachers to attend Friday’s events or because enough teachers absences triggered closures.

The suggestion that the teachers should curtail the civil rights they were using in opposition to his actions, whether those actions were correct or not, is not only inappropriate, but unethical and against the spirit of the United States. Fortunately, such arguments as his are specious and sensationalistic, and should alienate the independents who hold the pivot of power. If children are at such risk, then we should ask why he’s running a State that does not provide safer environments to all children. Teachers, after all, are not baby-sitters. They are teachers, who are inculcating knowledge; the safety of the classroom, which I say fairly sardonically at this juncture in American history, is strictly a requirement for teaching.

Shame on you, Gov. Bevin.

And not an Oxford comma, either, but simple old-fashioned comma, without which we’re faced with a bloody plague!

The above is so much worse than this other plague, also brought on by foolish impulsiveness when it comes to commas. We can corral these with a few Roombas, though.

I hope they haven’t gone out of business.

A post title which would also apply to quantum mechanics, but not in this case. Instead, it’s about a nearly 300 page book dedicated to a single cartoon strip. I haven’t actually read it (my unread stack is too high already), so let’s go to Pat Padua’s review in Spectrum Culture back in October ’17:

You’re heard of the 33 1/3rd series of small books written about a single beloved album? Cartoonists Mark Newgarden and Paul Karasik take the deep reading approach even further with a 276-page book about a three-panel comic strip—a single, three-panel Nancy strip published on August 8, 1959. How to Read Nancy is a nearly 300-page expansion of an article that the authors wrote in 1988 for the collection, The Best of Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy that seemed to be the definitive analysis of an often-dismissed art form. It turns out that article was just the beginning.

Coming under microscopic analysis is a strip that depicts a variation on the old “hose gag.” Nancy, whose face we never see in this particular strip, watches from a distance as Sluggo, armed with a water pistol, confronts neighborhood kids with the Western cliché, “Draw, you varmint!” (Crucially, as the authors note, punctuation is merely implied.) In the final panel, Sluggo approaches his goil with the same warning; but unbeknownst to the would-be gunslinger, Nancy’s holster sheaths the end of a long garden hose ready to burst his bubble.

It seems simple enough, but those three panels, with their sharply-defined lines, selective blacks and significant negative space, hold a world of context and myriad decisions that make it work so efficiently.

The ability to isolate the aesthetic elements of a particular art form from a single specimen can often help clarify the process to a successful rendition of other members of that art form. They can also speak to those elements which derive from the evolutionary drives to which we’re all subject in this cultural context. While that may seems a sterile enough sentiment, there’s something satisfying in understanding why a particular art work really works – or if it’s admirers are really just poseurs.

And, really, I wasn’t aware that Nancy had such a large following.

On WaPo’s The Plum Line Gary Sargent believes he sees the public repudiating Trump for his belittling of certain governmental institutions in a recent poll:

It’s tempting to see this polling as little more than a reflection of Trump’s deep unpopularity. But numbers this stark suggest something else may be going on: that the depth of Trump’s contempt for our institutions and the rule of law is becoming clear to the public, and Americans are recoiling at it.

This contempt is everywhere. You see it in Trump’s double standard toward due process, documented by Adam Serwer, in which he rages at the raiding of his lawyer’s office while cheering on law enforcement abuses directed at Muslims, immigrants and African Americans. You see it in his instinct toward firing Rosenstein for the express reason that he is conducting himself by the book, rather than politicizing law enforcement to Trump’s benefit. Trump views law enforcement as primarily an instrument for carrying out his political will. He has told us this in his own words again and again and again.

Trump’s rage-tweets about Comey confirm all of this. And the public repudiation of Trump comes after he and his allies have waged an extraordinary public campaign in the right-wing media and in Congress, both of which have been weaponized to create a fictional narrative designed to shield Trump from accountability, by casting the Russia investigation and the institutional processes undergirding it as hopelessly corrupted to their core. Yet the public is siding with the rule of law and our institutions, and against Trump. As the Trump-Comey feud comes to the fore, this is the larger narrative unfolding in the background.

Personally, I’m not all that impressed with a mere 65% of the surveyed agreeing with the investigation, but it’s better than it might be. I’m also not sure I see how Gary connects that poll, which is mainly concerned with Mueller’s investigation, with the greater question of the public’s general understanding of the importance of these institutions, and how we structure government at the highest levels.

In The New York Times, Paul Krugman excoriates not only Paul Ryan and the barbarian hordes (my loose interpretation of Krugman, anyways) who boost him, but also the journalists who made him look good:

The answer, all too often, has involved what we might call motivated gullibility. Centrists who couldn’t find real examples of serious, honest conservatives lavished praise on politicians who played that role on TV. Paul Ryan wasn’t actually very good at faking it; true fiscal experts ridiculed his “mystery meat” budgets. But never mind: The narrative required that the character Ryan played exist, so everyone pretended that he was the genuine article.

And let me say that the same bothsidesism that turned Ryan into a fiscal hero played a crucial role in the election of Donald Trump. How did the most corrupt presidential candidate in American history eke out an Electoral College victory? There were many factors, any one of which could have turned the tide in a close election. But it wouldn’t have been close if much of the news media hadn’t engaged in an orgy of false equivalence.

I have not studied Speaker Ryan closely, so I can’t speak comprehensively. The few times I’ve paid attention to him, he’s struck me as a buffoon – long-time readers may realize that. Between his mismanagement of the major bills in the current Congress, his incompetent grasp on the basic principles of insurance, and his adoration of Ayn Rand, it’s fairly clear that Ryan, who’s been a member of Congress since age 28, hasn’t had a lot of engagement with the realities of life.

But the facet of Krugman’s column that really caught my attention actually had nothing to do with politics, and everything to do with the journalist’s behavior. Why? Because it’s a familiar plaint in another context, namely that of the skeptical community. Very often, the leading skeptics complain that a journalist’s analysis is, well, too balanced, although I suspect the word they’d use in a undiplomatic moment would be credulous.

Just for a taste, consider serious articles that might compare evidence-based medicine therapy for some medical condition to that recommended by apitherapy enthusiasts. Consider a comparison of evolutionary biology to the latest attempts by creationists to explain dinosaurs, such as hypergolic dinosaurs co-existing with humans. Or an article on the last electromagnetic gizmo for detecting ghosts vs the electrical engineer explaining what they’re really detecting.

Articles like these have been and continue to be published, much to the chagrin of the skeptics.

Look, like everyone else, skeptics have a particular world view, and often have little patience for those folks whose view that clash with it. For them, taking subjects as varied as Uri Geller’s spoon-bending, ghosts, bleeding statues, chiropractic, homeopathy, creationism, and dozens of others are a waste of time, and, worse, will legitimize them in the eyes of their readers. But they do have a bigger point than most in their favor: they have evidence and science on their side.

When they talk about journalistic shortcomings, they admit that it’s a rare journalist at your local newspaper who happens to have a science degree on the side. Such folks exist, but they tend to write for science magazines for the common citizen, publications that very rarely take ludicrous views seriously. Your general journalist rarely has applicable expertise when it comes to appraising mumbo-jumbo dressed up in science’s stolen clothes, or in the priestly robes of religion. And there doesn’t yet seem to be a set of rules available to journalists for making such determinations. After all, they do have to consider the source of those rules, don’t they?

The same problem applies to politics. Long time readers will know that I agree with Krugman’s sentiments in that NYT article: the GOP leadership (by which I mostly mean their elected members of legislatures at the state and federal levels) consists of second- and third-raters, the power-hungry and the power-mongers, the ideologues who find it easier to shout out their ideologies than to consider how reality really doesn’t support what they want. It’s not as if the Democrats are angels: every political party of any weight inevitably attracts cockroaches, and we get to see them every year when they suddenly resign from their positions over sexual or financial “improprieties,” which is a very clean word for what are generally rather dirty and shameful acts.

But, speaking as an independent, by and large the Democrats currently seem to bring a better class of person to the table, smart people with ideals and looking forward to the future, rather than ideologies and a yearning for a past that never was. Paul Ryan, for example, advocates amateurism, a doomed philosophy in a world where specialization yields better results – as does high level forms of crowd-sourcing. This is not uncommon among a GOP which denies realities that clash with its ideologies.

But the problem for the journalist is this: the GOP remains one of the top two political parties in a country whose elective system downplays the #3 party. When faced with a candidate from the GOP who appears to be a third-rater, such as Saccone in PA-18, what is our journalist to do? Tell them to take a leap because they’re inferior?

That’d be media bias.

Fact-checking is one approach, I’m sure. Perhaps demanding coherency might be another. We have occasionally seen candidates getting coverage despite doing nothing more than repeating talking points designed to stimulate the conservative viewer’s fight or flight reaction. Telling them that it’s either full sentences addressing the subject at hand, or the only coverage they’ll receive on this occasion is an announcement that the candidate, or elected official, was incapable of coherent speech or thought.

But I’d love to hear how a real journalist thinks the media should cover these third-raters in order to avoid reasonable media bias charges.

Remember this place from last year? An unwanted office space in Arden Hills, MN, is pushed over for some whippersnapper of a replacement, no doubt. Recently we happened to drive by, and took some pictures of that replacement:

Senior condominiums, partway done!

Source: Military & Aerospace

I noticed on the broadcast national news tonight that we, the United States, are supposedly prepping to strike Syria in retaliation for, allegedly, performing a chemical attack on its own citizens in Douma.

My first reaction was to wonder about the reactions of leaders around the world. It’s certainly true that American political leaders have a long history of using military strikes and related activities to distract attention from unsavory political incidents, as was once noted on Lawfare (I blogged about it but am not going to bother to dig it out) in a statistical study.

But the level of cynicism attending such incidents are inversely proportional to the general level of respect for the President in office at the time. For instance, when President Obama struck at Libya, his world-wide prestige was fairly high, and I believe that, to the extent that it applies and matters, he received a fair hearing in the various world capitals, and it accrued to the United States’ advantage.

President Trump, despite any of his Twitter-bound assertions to the contrary, has garnered very little respect world-wide. Unless the United States releases the evidence that shows the Syrian government is responsible for the attack, which seems unlikely as it might reveal top-secret data sources, my belief is that most world leaders will view this military strike, if in fact it takes place, with the greatest skepticism and cynicism.

This doesn’t just debit President Trump’s prestige and influence, but everyone in the United States, because our system selected Trump to be President. It suggests that our system is vulnerable to electing people who are deceitful, untruthful, and motivated by base urges unworthy of being part of the leadership of the last remaining superpower.

That leaves us diminished, our influence no longer evaluated for its moral dimension, but only for its military and commercial facets. Thus have the Evangelicals cursed the United States.

It doesn’t help that we don’t seem to be remorseful for this mistake. The Gallup Presidential Approval poll shows Trump with 41% approval, which is ridiculously low, yet is actually a rise from earlier catastrophic depths.

So if & when those strikes occur, not only will American prestige risk sinking even further, that drop may be permanent. I’m at a loss as to how successors to Trump can hope to recover the lost prestige and influence we can have on a world that often needs moral leadership.

Has Trump condemned this world to a final era of rancorous international relations, unrelieved by American resources and leadership that we formerly have provided? Thinking back, we have made many mistakes in the last 70 years: Vietnam, Richard Nixon, Bush II, the Iraq War, climate change denial, evolutionary theory denial … the beat goes on. Balancing those are the positives, such as scientific progress, exemplars of political fairness from time to time, and the great resources we can provide when disaster strikes.

But I fear the world may stop looking to the United States for political leadership.

In a post on the sudden pardon of Scooter Libby, Steve Benen remarks:

Postscript: Trump lashed out at former FBI Director James Comey this morning as a “proven leaker and liar.” In reality, Scooter Libby actually is a convicted leaker and liar – who’s apparently poised to receive a pardon from Trump.

I so hope a reporter asks Press Secretary Sanders, or even President Trump, that If former FBI Directory James Comey is a proven leaker and liar, then will he also be issued a proactive pardon, much like proven leaker and liar Scooter Libby?

Pellucid:

1. allowing the maximum passage of light, as glass; translucent.
2. clear or limpid:
   pellucid waters.
3. clear in meaning, expression, or style:
   a pellucid way of writing.

[Dictionary.com]

Noted in “What on earth is Trump saying?” Max Boot, WaPo:

Trump’s ramblings about Vladi­mir Putin were positively pellucid in their clarity compared with his March 29 comments on the U.S.-South Korea trade deal: “So we’ve redone it, and that’s going to level the playing field on steel and cars and trucks coming into this country. And I may hold it up till after a deal is made with North Korea. Does everybody understand that? You know why, right? You know why? Because it’s a very strong card.”

Yep, this falls into the Lookie what we accomplished! category, followed by the slap upside the head. Fred Pearce of NewScientist (31 March 2018, paywall) has a review of how corporations are trying to take advantage of green-washing, the movement to make what they do sustainable and socially positive. I loved this observation:

Pepsi proudly outlined how 27 per cent of its turnover is now in “nutritious” food and beverages that are helping meet the SDGs [Sustainable Development Goals]. “In sub-Saharan Africa, we provide nutritious food to undernourished people,” said a spokesperson. That left the rather uncomfortable impression that 73 per cent of its products, sold in Africa and elsewhere, are not nutritious.

I’m sure Pepsi can argue that far more than 27% of their output is nutritious, but given that this is Pepsi, it has that piquant flavor of someone falling face first into the pig-sty in their Sunday best.

The Guardian notes that our effluvia is choking our support systems:

River systems around the world are coursing with over-the-counter and prescription drugs waste which harms the environment, researchers have found.

If trends persist, the amount of pharmaceutical effluence leaching into waterways could increase by two-thirds before 2050, scientists told the European Geosciences Union conference in Vienna on Tuesday.

“A large part of the freshwater ecosystems is potentially endangered by the high concentration of pharmaceuticals,” said Francesco Bregoli, a researcher at the IHE Delft Institute for Water Education in the Netherlands, and leader of an international team that developed a method for tracking drug pollution “hotspots”.

For an engineer, this sounded interesting.

Bregoli and his team developed a computer model to predict current and future pharma pollution based on criteria such as population densities, sewage systems and drugs sales.

They compared the results to data gathered from 1,400 spot measurements of diclofenac toxicity taken from around the world. Most of the data points were in Europe and North America.

Pollution levels are likely to be substantially higher in much of Latin America, Africa and Asia where less than a quarter of waste water is treated, and with technology unable to filter out most pharmaceuticals.

Technology alone cannot solve the problem, said Bregoli.

“We need a substantial reduction in consumption,” he said.

Lots of options for reducing consumption, but none are all that attractive.

1. Clean the water.
2. Take fewer drugs.
3. Stop issuing drugs.
4. Reduce the population which may take drugs.
5. Reduce the population.
6. Find ways to better regulate dosages so that less excess – much less excess – is shed by the patients.

Neither do they seem all that likely to occur in the short-term, except, sadly, #5.

On 38 North, Jongsoo Lee wonders if North Korea is trading in its old leadership for a newer version:

The recent developments since Kim Jong Un’s New Year’s speech raise the possibility of a generational shift in the leadership and political culture of North Korea at the highest level. Combined with a recent significant increase in the role for market forces in the North Korean economy, this generational change may present an opportunity for the global community to spur North Korea on a more peaceful and prosperous path, especially if Kim emerges as a North Korean Deng Xiaoping or even Mikhail Gorbachev.

The most visible manifestation of this generational shift was Kim’s decision to dispatch his younger sister Kim Yo Jong to meet with South Korean President Moon Jae-in during the recent Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. That Kim entrusted a relatively inexperienced young woman, barely 30 years old, with this critically important mission came as a surprise because it was largely unprecedented in North Korean history. There have been a few prominent women in the top North Korean leadership—Kim Kyong Hui, Kim Jong Un’s aunt, being the most recent example. However, Kim Yo Jong is the first woman to not only play such a high-profile public role, but also to do so at such a young age in such a strict patriarchal culture. Kim Yo Jong, who was educated along with Kim Jong Un in Switzerland and is likely her brother’s most trusted political confidant, is now among the most powerful figures in North Korea after Kim himself and possibly his young wife, Ri Sol Ju. It is reported that Kim Yo Jong has been the choreographer of the Kim regime’s public image. It was apparently Kim Yo Jong who encouraged her brother to cultivate a friendship with Dennis Rodman in an effort to “humanize” his image. On her visit to South Korea, she captured the world’s attention and won the hearts of many South Koreans with her winning smiles, youthful charm and western-style dress.

Sounds like there’s a firm  hand on the wheel in North Korea, so President Trump is unlikely to overawe or manipulate Kim. If Jongsoo is right, then what does this portend for the future of North Korea? A bloody-minded culture, as indicated by the assassination of Jong-Un’s half brother a couple of years ago, mixed with a confident leadership and an economy moving towards a market approach could be a pathological business. Just think of the Mob taking care of rivals.

Or at least I hope it is. From the CNN front page:

GOP wages bipartisan attack on James Comey

What, the GOP is bifurcating itself?