Yearly Archives: 2018

There’s one hundred weasels waiting to attack you, you say? What were you doing in the forest, my friend?

Cyrano de Bergerac (1950) is a story about truth and falsity, ranging from fidelity to the needs of a story, to the needs of the heart and how ill-served it is by Cyrano’s insincerity. Cyrano, the bearer of the largest and ugliest nose in France, is a Guardsman in the 17th century, the leading member of his military unit, and the finest swordsman in the country. But his opinions are at least as pointed and aggressive as his sword; it is his supreme skills with the sword that keeps him alive – and esteemed by his comrades.

As the story opens, he appears shouting critiques of a play at a tavern, accusing the lead actor of playing poorly, of his failure to be true to the story he is to tell. He is pre-emptory, dominating, ecstatic, and when it is required, he donates all his available funds to refund the tickets to the patrons gathered: a considerable sum. This does not settle one patron, though, a member of the upper classes disposed against a man for interrupting a play – and possessing such a nose.

Cyrano owns up to the nose in memorable fashion, embracing its existence and how it might serve as a pivot for the agile wordsmith; during the following duel, he embraces his three most important attributes, of wit, nose, and swordsmanship, composing a ballad and reciting it during the fight, capping it all off by critically injuring his opponent.

But when his love, Roxanne, appears, he is uncertain, hesitant, his stomach in his mouth, as it were. She wishes to arrange a meeting, and his heart soars; when a friend and amateur poet appears, fearful for his life due to maladroit wordplay, Cyrano is delighted to fight the hostile band off, and even expresses disappointment at their small numbers.

The meeting with Roxanne, it turns out, is a dart in his chest: she loves a new Guardsman by the name of Christian, despite never having spoken with hi, and begs Cyrano to take care of him. Wracked with disappointment, he returns to his comrades, and pressed to recount his night’s battle, begins to do so – only to be interrupted by a stranger who makes wordplay of Cyrano’s deeds – and famous appendage. Cyrano demands this puppy’s name – Christian! His comrades, expecting the quick end of the newest Guardsman, are astounded at Cyrano’s restraint, and soon Cyrano chases all but Christian out.

Soon enough, Christian admits to admiring Roxanne, and Cyrano, betraying his allegiance to truth, has agreed to supply the words Christian lacks the wit to use. Let the wooing commence! It’s a rough road, but soon enough tongue meets tongue, much to their mutual delight. Roxanne is not above a little deceit, for when a message arrives instructing her to marry a military commander not to her liking, she reads it to all present as instructions to marry Christian, and Cyrano is assigned to delay the commander until the ceremony is complete.

But the commander has one more set of orders to his name, and that’s to wheel out and engage in war with the Spanish, and to leave immediately: there will be no wedding bed for Christian, no rest for Cyrano.

At the front of the war, Cyrano seals his fate with the letters he writes Roxanne under Christian’s name, for when Christian dies in her arms, it proves impossible for Cyrano to hope to court her, even as he proves his courage against the Spanish.

Years later, he is now a somewhat faded version of the man he once was, writing condemnatory opinions of how France is run for the local broadsides. No man willingly will face his sword, but assassination need not be accomplished via that avenue. Mortally injured, he finds himself making one last pilgrimage to the still-bereft Roxanne, where his lies are finally laid bare for Roxanne to mourn, and he faces death, sword in hand: and if he’s delusional, it is the sort he’d like, facing opponents and dealing them their blows, but he’s lost his way through his ill-considered lies, not only his life wasted, but Roxanne’s as well. A man cannot be two men and hope to have either end well, it seems.

This film has its problems, primarily with the visuals – they are blurry and, perhaps, this was not the best copy of the film available (Amazon Prime). On the other hand, the lead, José Ferrer, has a wonderful voice and plays the part just about perfectly. If you can put up with the visuals – or find a better copy of this film – then you should have a very good time.

Recommended.

Checking the partisan mail files, this came in from the Democrats:

Not long ago, the GOP leader in the Iowa Senate resigned in the aftermath of a sexual harassment scandal that cost taxpayers nearly $2 million.

Now Republicans are scheming to prevent his seat from flipping blue, and we only have a few days to stop them.

In the wake of the resignation, Republicans called a snap special election for April 10thto fill the vacant seat – that’s one week from tomorrow.

With little time for Democrats to recruit volunteers and a severely limited early voting period, Republicans think they can run out the clock on us before local Democrats can get their campaign off the ground.

The GOP is so sneaky? Well, no,  not really. According to The Courier, this date was announced March 17:

How vacancies are filled in Iowa

See also: How vacancies are filled in state legislatures

If there is a vacancy in the Iowa General Assembly, the vacant seat must be filled by a special election. The governor of Iowa is required within five days of a vacancy in the General Assembly to call for a special election. If the vacancy happens in session, the governor must call for an election as soon as possible with a minimum 18-day notice. All other special elections require a 45-day notice as long the election does not happen on the same day of a school election.

In accordance with the law, unlike Governor Walker of Wisconsin, who didn’t want to call one at all. So we have a little fear-mongering coming in from the left. Something to remember.

Jennifer Rubin, Right Turn, WaPo:

Contrary to the positive spin that Trump is now getting the Cabinet he wants (was he not president before this?), he’s in fact getting the dregs, the cranks, the Fox News personalities and the even more unqualified hangers-on to backfill posts.

That’s just so reassuring, JR.

My Arts Editor, due to return Saturday from Traverse City, Michigan, reports the weather forecast for tomorrow is calling for 1-2 feet of snow. Nothing like having a big lake next door to multiply winter weather.

Echoing other strikes, WaPo is reporting that Oklahoma teachers are walking out. Why?

The 30 or so teachers joined thousands more at the state Capitol, part of a statewide walkout that has shuttered schools across the state. Teachers in Muskogee, where the gym roof is so leaky that volleyball games get “rained out,” arrived to urge lawmakers to restore education funding. Many of them came bearing a threat: Increase education funding, or teachers will not return to work.

“I’m fed up,” said Rusty Bradley, a high school technology teacher whose classroom computers are more than a decade old, as the bus rumbled toward the state Capitol. After nearly 28 years on the job, he has seen state lawmakers repeatedly pledge to give teachers raises and restore education funding, only to be disappointed. “I want them to get off their butts and do something.” …

They were joined by students who also feel the impact of dwindling financial support for education. Many schools do not have enough textbooks for students. The tomes are often outdated, tattered and missing pages.

Raylynn Thompson, 16, a top student at Muskogee High, said her history textbook is at least 10 years old — stopping at the 2009 inauguration of President Barack Obama. Wearing red sneakers, she wrapped herself in a blanket on the back of the bus, saying she made the journey because she hopes the next generation of students does not have to suffer through leaky classrooms with shared textbooks.

“For me, school is a big thing in my life, and it’s one of the only things that matters,” the aspiring doctor said. The chronic textbook shortages and deteriorating classrooms make it hard to concentrate, she said. “It’s just making it really hard for me to go school.”

It’s not so much teachers’ pay, but the entire educational establishment is underfunded. Steve Benen presents a rather dire history of GOP governance:

Under former Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), Louisiana Republicans took control, cut taxes, and slashed spending. The result was a fiscal crisis and weakened public services. Under former Gov. Sam Brownback (R), Kansas Republicans took control, cut taxes, and slashed spending. The result was a fiscal crisis and weakened public services.

And under [Oklahoma] Gov. Mary Fallin (R), the same experiment has unfolded the same way.

Here’s what concerns me – this could become a self-reinforcing vortex if the Republicans get stubborn about their taxes. There is a certain value to having well-educated workers to fulfill business needs. I don’t even mean college graduates, but folks with high school degrees which actually mean something. If business doesn’t find what it needs, it has two choices.

First, It can pick up and leave. That would be very bad for Oklahoma. While small, locally run businesses are certain critical to any State, large, national businesses are at least as important, if not more so. Their tax revenue would dry up even more, which would no doubt be compensated for by sucking it out of the education budget – if the educational establishment doesn’t protest it. Soon, education would consist of unpowered schools run by folks who don’t even have a high school degree themselves. How does this lead to prosperity?

Second, business can try to remedy the problem. I’m not talking about for-profit schools, which are an entirely different kettle of fish, and have done poorly, as I’ve discussed elsewhere on this blog. I mean business simply does the educating it needs to do to get workers with the proper skills. Vocational schools, if you will, but this is not a good situation, either, because those skills may be very narrowly defined, such that they don’t transfer to any other employer. Now the workers are really tied to the apron strings of a company that may not be sentimental about you – or may go under abruptly itself.

Furthermore, businesses don’t know much about doing a full education. It’s not their job. Properly, it’s the job of the local government to provide high quality schooling, and that requirement should be a priority. Why? Because study after study show that better educated people are more productive and, generally, happier.

Oklahoma has pursued the illusion that dropping tax rates will cause prosperity, and it hasn’t worked out. Kansas Republicans had the balls to reject that approach, finally. Will the Oklahomans? For a bunch of Sooners, they’re way behind the curve.

On this thread, it’s a little after midday, and the markets are decidedly unhappy. All three primary indices are down in excess of 3%, although they still have time to recover. I think this time around, everyone’s going to agree that this all about the politics. CNN certainly thinks so, blaming China’s reaction to our tariffs with a fine selection of their own, as well as noting Trump’s tweets attacking Amazon, owned by Jeff Bezos, and who also owns WaPo, which is generally features critical coverage of President Trump. They must have singed his tailfeathers recently.

I don’t put a lot of faith into the Amazon tweets being a source of the stock sell-off. We own some Amazon stock, but we’re a bit split on actually using them. I order virtually nothing from them in terms of generally available commodities, as things tend to arrive broken and I prefer to see a broad variety of suppliers competing, so I direct my dollars to other retailers when I can. Meanwhile, my Arts Editor uses them quite a bit more.

But the China tariffs have to have the Iowa farmers in a real quandary. Iowa went for Trump in the last Presidential campaign, and, in fact, I happened to drive through the western corner of Iowa just prior to the election and was appalled at the nearly uniform blanket of Trump  / Pence signs, as if they had completely lost their self-respect. CNN is reporting the tariffs will include products such as pork & meat – and if that doesn’t affect the farmers directly, it may do so indirectly (animals gotta Eat!), and also indicate the future may hold more tariffs that could more directly impact those farmers.

Which is all sort of funny since apparently Trump boasted just last week that we’ve never seen such a fine economy as the one he’s running. Of course, Presidents don’t typically “run” the economy, as that’s more a Federal Reserve responsibility, although policy choices such as the upcoming tariff war will have its effect.

And stock markets are also poor proxies for evaluating the economy. Unemployment and GDP are far more typically used.

But the markets can function as a prognostication mechanism, and right now money is saying that the President’s behavior is not conducive to prosperity. That’s something to keep in mind going forward – a whole lot of fairly smart people just said No!

Looks like we have a trend this week.

Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) is evidently one of the attack dogs selected for the damaging the Veteran’s Administration. Here he is on Meet The Press:

… yeah, it’s, it’s a reflection of the fact that the VA healthcare system is a government-run, single-payer, bureaucratic healthcare system. And it doesn’t work. You know, Senator Coburn, one of his last reports talked about how the VA system, in– on average, doctors have about 1,200 cases. In the private sector, it’s about 2,300. You know, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve spent so much money on the VA. And we’ve increased funding, overall, about 2.3 times in the last ten years, on healthcare spending, 1.5. And it’s still a mess.

Hey, buddy, let’s add in some relevant facts. Remember the Iraq War? The Afghanistan War? I know you didn’t vote for them, but still – you do understand they generated casualties, which now require treatment?

In fact, because emergency medical care has improved drastically over the years, a higher percentage of casualties survive their wounds long enough to make it back to the States than was true during other conflicts, which means these wounds – which are often far more expensive to treat – end up on the V.A.’s gurneys, operating rooms, and rehabilitation rounds.

And just one more thing, Senator. Demographics. The Vietnam vets are entering late middle age, even senior citizen status. Those old wounds still require treatment as those old bodies start coming apart. And that’s expensive. From old shrapnel to chemical wounds to psychological wounds, those all cost money.

You gave them lots of money? Good. You did the right thing. Stop being a putz about it. Steve Benen points at this article in the Washington Monthly which refutes Johnson’s claims – and asserts this is a manufactured scandal:

This, combined with the increasing volume of vets returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, contributed to an increasingly large backlog of unprocessed eligibility claims. For those who managed to get into the VA, the quality of care continued generally to be demonstrably better than that found out outside the system. A systematic review of thirty-six studies comparing the quality of VA and non-VA care found that as of 2009, “almost all demonstrated that the VA performed better than non-VA comparison groups.” But during the Bush years, access was becoming an increasing problem, causing many vets to become embittered, though often without understanding what the root cause of the problem was. As frustrations with red tape mounted among vets and the press focused on breakdowns in claims processing, the conditions were set for new attempts by conservative ideologues and corporate health care providers to privatize the VA.

That’s just a taste. Under Obama’s pick of General Shinseki to lead the V.A., performance was even better. It’s a big article, and worth reading.

It’s a socialized medical system, and that’s why it has to go – because it works. And that’s why the GOP is upset. It has shortcomings, but no one should be surprised – an institution that large will always have shortcomings. We just have to be engineers, calmly and soberly addressing those issues.

Not running around trying to destroy an institution supporting vets better than the general health system might. That’s just outright betrayal.

Over the weekend, Veterans Administration Secretary David Shulkin was fired. No, wait, he resigned. What happened?

CHUCK TODD:

Let me start with just a simple question. Were you fired or resigned? Because the White House now claims you resigned.

DAVID SHULKIN:

Well, you know, I came to the V.A. because our men and women in the country fight for us and don’t give up. And I came to fight for our veterans. And I had no intention of giving up. There would be no reason for me to resign. I made a commitment. I took an oath. And I was here to fight for our veterans. [Meet The Press]

So why is this more than a tempest in a teapot? Steve Benen explains:

As it happens, we know the answer. Politico  reported over the weekend that the fired-vs-resigned distinction “could have far-reaching implications that could throw the Department of Veterans Affairs, the second-largest federal agency, into further disarray.”

In announcing the removal of Shulkin as VA secretary, Trump tapped Defense Department official Robert Wilkie as the acting leader of the department, bypassing Shulkin’s deputy, who was next in line to succeed him. That decision has reignited a debate among legal experts about the president’s ability to hand-pick replacements for ousted Cabinet secretaries.

The debate centers on vague language in the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998, which gives the president broad authority to temporarily fill a vacancy at a federal agency with an acting official if the current office holder “dies, resigns, or is otherwise unable to perform the functions and duties of the office.”

In other words, if Shulkin didn’t resign, the president’s personnel authority is far more limited. What’s more, if Shulkin was fired – and literally every piece of evidence makes clear that he was – then he should be replaced by Deputy Secretary Thomas Bowman until the Senate confirms a permanent successor.

But the White House doesn’t like Bowman, an opponent of the far-right privatization push.

If you’re a vet, and you think the V.A. is going roughly in the right direction (based on how my Dad, a medically retired Air Force officer, was treated over the years, I think it is), even with its known flaws and scandals, you should be alarmed. Private sector medicine, despite the efforts of the individual medical personnel employed by them, is by and large dedicated to making money, and in some institutions that goal mutilates the medical goal.

This, in essence, is an attempt to do an end-around the rules, just for the right to temporarily appoint the proper ideological agent to the post. Perhaps the Administration believes that having the guy in the post, with a bit of a record, will be enough to sway a Senate that may otherwise be disinclined to privatize the V.A. As I understand it, most vets rather strongly believe it should not be, so this would go against the will of a lot of voters, although not all of them are Republicans. The Senate may be viewed by the White House as somewhat fragile on the topic, faced with a GOP base that nearly always backs the President, and the vets, who mostly prefer the V.A. as it’s currently formulated.

If you’re a vet, get the word out. I’m sure the big vet organizations already have, but it’s worth reiterating.

… between MFG and CSR.

Malacology:

1. the science dealing with the study of mollusks. [Dictionary.com]

Noted in “Mussel pain: The crisis engulfing our freshwater molluscs,” Jason Bittel, NewScientist (10 March 2018, paywall):

When the Wilson dam was built on the Tennessee river in Florence, Alabama, for example, it put the most diverse mussel bed on the planet under vast amounts of standing water, says Paul Johnson, a malacologist, or mollusc specialist, at the Alabama Aquatic Biodiversity Center. Some of the 75 or so species in this area adapted and got on with their lives but more than half disappeared. And that is just one spot. There are similar stories all over the place, leading the US Geological Survey to declare freshwater mussels the most endangered group in the country.

CNN is speculating on the possible retirement of Justice Kennedy, and in the process they reference a January article by Ed Whelan for National Review, in which he states:

1. Will a Supreme Court vacancy arise?

Your guess is as good as mine. If the rumors are true that Justice Kennedy has been looking to retire, then it seems a reasonable bet that he would do so this spring. Indeed, the very real prospect that Democrats will win control of the Senate in the November 2018 elections might clinch his decision to do so. If he waits until next year, and if Democrats take control of the Senate, his seat would probably remain empty until 2021. That’s probably not a scenario that Kennedy would welcome.

I very much doubt that any other justice is considering stepping down. But, as Justice Scalia’s death reminds us, vacancies can arise when you’re not expecting them.

If a vacancy does arise this year, the White House ought to be able to obtain Senate confirmation of an outstanding candidate. Thanks to the Senate Democrats’ foolish obstruction of the Gorsuch nomination, Senate Republicans abolished the filibuster (the 60-vote threshold for cloture) for Supreme Court nominations. So the White House will know from the outset that the next nominee will need the support of only 50 senators, plus the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Pence, for confirmation.

Yet, that suggests Kennedy would prefer a strongly conservative court, and, quite frankly, that would not be congruent with his voting behaviors, where he swings back and forth over the liberal / conservative line.

My suspicion? He may choose to not retire until the mid-terms are completed and the new Congress is sworn in. The Republicans, although often into team-voting, may find themselves at the barest of majorities in which every single Republican could withhold their vote for a Trump-nominated new Associate Justice, demanding approval of pet projects in exchange for their vote. If the House GOP has suffered catastrophic losses, as may happen, a Republican Senator may project that the Republican base is no longer the potent force that they apparently currently fear, and be willing to pursue their own priorities by such means.

If these Republican Senators are excessively principled, they might even reject the nomination outright, assuming the nominee is either unqualified, or is too extreme for the Republican’s taste – both of which are richly possible from this White House. In this case, Trump may be forced to nominate a more reasonable candidate, one which the Democrats might even be able to endorse – which is not necessarily a negative issue for their electoral chances. After all, governance competency is emerging as an issue in the uproar over GOP incompetency during the current Congressional term.

And if the Democrats control the Senate at that time? They expressed their loathing for Senator McConnell’s corrupt behavior by rejecting Gorsuch, a much hyped candidate who has yet to demonstrate excellence, unless you’re a conservative – not the best test around. Whelan may think it foolish that the Democrats refused to endorse Gorsuch and thus engendered the abolition of the filibuster, but Senator McConnell’s decision to abolish the filibuster of cloture can take place at any time. It was necessary to underscore McConnell’s failure in the conservative realm, to highlight how he would break the rules and abandon traditions that had been set in place for good reason in order to stack SCOTUS with an ideological Justice. Whelan focuses too much on the conflict within the Senate, and not on the ammunition the Democrats were stockpiling for upcoming elections – if they’re wise enough to use it.

But they need not continue to reject the President’s choices automatically. If the Democrats want to build their Party’s reputation as the best qualified on governance issues, then they need to demonstrate their willingness to separate the nominee from the nominator. This means careful evaluation of the nominee on her merits, not on the merits of the incompetent Trump. Indeed, if they wish to establish themselves as a Party that embodies wise conservative principles, they could even bring back the cloture requirement Whelan referenced. Such a move, if handled and advertised properly, would enhance the Party’s reputation for fair and just dealing, and could easily be contrasted with the Republicans to create a Republican reputation for greediness and abusive power politics that is employed for the gain of the Party, to the detriment of the country.

But all this depends on Justice Kennedy’s choice. I’m just guessing, really, upon when he’ll retire. But the Democrats do need to be prepared, strategy in mind, for each of the situations.

Andrew Sullivan has been involved (first part of his usual tripartite column) in the genetics of intelligence debate for along time – by his word, since Murray’s controversial The Bell Curve was published. The current state of the debate, according to Andrew, is that the left rejects any suggestion that intelligence, or for that matter much of any attribute of a human, vary based on genetics and racial grouping:

For many on the academic and journalistic left, genetics are deemed largely irrelevant when it comes to humans. Our large brains and the societies we have constructed with them, many argue, swamp almost all genetic influences.

Which is understandable, as suggesting otherwise might lead to idiotic race-based supremacy claims. I say idiotic because it would indicate basic ignorance: statistics do not apply to individuals. (Also, statistics are descriptive, not prescriptive.) But what if science, the study of reality, says different? Andrew references an editorial from a geneticist at Harvard, David Reich:

… who carefully advanced the case that there are genetic variations between subpopulations of humans, that these are caused, as in every other species, by natural selection, and that some of these variations are not entirely superficial and do indeed overlap with our idea of race.

I have no opinion – I’ve not read The Bell Curve, and while Andrew used to reference the debate on his now-dormant blog The Dish, he didn’t go into it in much detail. But let’s stipulate Professor Reich’s conclusion, which seems reasonable, while assuming the political left continues its unbending ways. What will happen?

Reich simply points out that this utopian fiction is in danger of collapse because it is not true and because genetic research is increasingly proving it untrue. On the male-female divide, for example, Reich cites profound differences, “reflecting more than 100 million years of evolution and adaptation.” On race, he is both agnostic about what we will eventually find out with respect to the scale of genetic differences, and also insistent that genetic differences do exist: “You will sometimes hear that any biological differences among populations are likely to be small, because humans have diverged too recently from common ancestors for substantial differences to have arisen under the pressure of natural selection. This is not true. The ancestors of East Asians, Europeans, West Africans and Australians were, until recently, almost completely isolated from one another for 40,000 years or longer, which is more than sufficient time for the forces of evolution to work.” Which means to say that the differences could be (and actually are) substantial.

This will lead to subtle variations in human brains, and thereby differences in intelligence tests, which will affect social and economic outcomes in the aggregate in a multiracial, capitalist, post-industrial society. The danger in actively suppressing and stigmatizing this inconvenient truth, he maintains, is that a responsible treatment of these genetic influences will be siloed in the academic field of genetics, will be rendered too toxic for public debate, and will thereby only leak out to people in the outside world via the worst kind of racists and bigots who will distort these truths to their own ends. If you don’t establish a reasonable forum for debate on this, Reich argues, if you don’t establish the principle is that we do not have to be afraid of any of this, it will be monopolized by truly unreasonable and indeed dangerous racists. And those racists will have the added prestige for their followers of revealing forbidden knowledge. And so there are two arguments against the suppression of this truth and the stigmatization of its defenders: that it’s intellectually dishonest and politically counterproductive.

Which is to say, adhering to the politically comforting may lead to untenable positions in the future – even disaster.

It was an interesting essay on the state of intelligence, and there’s a lot more to it. Perhaps we should simply dispense with the practice of measuring IQ, as it doesn’t seem to necessarily correlate with success in life, only with whether or not you can join the Mensa club.

Kevin Drum has a question:

Here’s the latest [tweet] from the head of the Republican Party:

Democrats hate our President more than they love our country.

Why is this kind of routine smear acceptable? It’s revolting—or should be, anyway—but nobody even notices or bothers to complain anymore. We accept that top-ranking Republican Party officials are allowed to casually malign the patriotism of half the country with no more than a shrug. There wasn’t even a reason for this tweet. It was just something to pass the time.

Oh, sure there’s a reason, Kevin. It’s to tell the Republican base that they’re so much better than any Democrat. This is actually an important message which must be reiterated over and over, like any message which is both vague and untrue. This tells the Republicans they are the select, the smarter ones.

And that’s an important message around Easter.

Next door to the movie set was a rock ‘n roll concert, and this guy strayed from yonder to hither.

The first five minutes of Solarbabies (1986) sets up an intriguing future in which water has become scarce, and society shattered, via a well done narrative sequence.

After that, it’s about how cool it is to travel on roller-skates in the desert and encounter an unexplained alien being, shaped like a crystal ball, which becomes the friend of all the good guys.

The actors give it the old college try, but this story is nowhere near college level. Avoid! Avoid!

Abstruse:

Difficult to understand; obscure.
‘an abstruse philosophical inquiry’ [Oxford English Dictionaries]

Noted in “A cracking idea: The radical way to open up frozen seas,” David Hambling, NewScientist (10 March 2018, paywall):

It was an abstruse effect that went largely unnoticed until 1974, when the Canadian Coast Guard accidentally discovered what could follow. A team was testing whether an experimental hovercraft could break ice using the downwards pressure jets it uses to get around. But when the vehicle accelerated to just over 20 kilometres an hour as it travelled across the ice to a test site, the crew saw a wave form behind. The wave rose and rose – until the ice started breaking at its crest.

She’s a scene-stealer, Sheriff – quick, put her in cuffs!

Sharing a theme with The Magnificent Seven (1960), The Gunfighter (1950) is a sober exploration of the dingy reality behind the glamour of being a famous person, and, as such, it’s a Western film noir. Jimmy Ringo is reputed to kill men far and wide, so when he trots into Cayenne, he causes an uproar. The fame is a little overwhelming, as he’s really visiting Cayenne to see his estranged wife and son, but he finds one of his former partners is now the sheriff, while another partner and gunslinger who had retired was murdered one night, shot in the back of the head. Then there’s the bartender who knew him back in the day and practically idolizes him now, and when word hits the street that Ringo is in town, the school empties of its rambunctious scholars, eager to see a gunfight and someone die. Even the local group of upright ladies, eager to see him out of town, make an appearance to make their bold observations – fifty murdered men, why he should be hung! – known to the sheriff and, inadvertently, to Ringo, who protests that the number is scarcely more than fifteen.

But Jimmy is fading, no longer the cocky young man eager for a reputation, but now in his thirties and reflecting on the lives he’s been forced to take, and how that has affected his life. What he doesn’t know is that he’s surrounded by the forces he himself has caused to come into being. In front of him is a younger version of himself, gunning for him just for the reputation of having killed Jimmy Ringo. Behind him are the three brothers of the man he last had to kill, all in the name of reputation. Off to the side is a grieving father, angry over the loss of his son, reputedly by the hand of Ringo. And filling in the gaps are the townspeople, eager for blood in their morally upright way, eager to see the Wages of Evil served on the evil-doer, or they’re just eager if they’re the children.

Through the storm beckons his one hope: his estranged wife, who could not stand his wild ways years before, but now he hopes for another chance, because he’s changed and wants to settle down, far, far away. But the forces of evil are too strong, and when she gives him a period of a year to prove that he’s changed, they don’t realize he won’t even see the next sunset.

You see, Reputation wins out.

But Jimmy and the sheriff know the terrible reality behind the dangerously easy grasp for quick fame, and as Jimmy slips from this world to the next, he and the sheriff, in unforgiving vengeance, shift the curse which has afflicted Jimmy onto his killer. No, he won’t die for the murder of Jimmy Ringo, that would be too easy. With his dying breath, Jimmy declares to the sheriff that he drew first but the kid got him. And now the kid, even as the sheriff boots him out of the town, is the next to realize his life is little more than glitter and the next gunslinger; between bouts with death, his life will be as desolate and bleak as a desert.

A quick and easy fame benefits no one.

This is not a major masterpiece, as the lead looks more like a Hollywood 25 year old than a Western 35 year old, but it’s otherwise well done, with a particularly interesting plot. I think this is a minor classic, well worth a look if it pops up as available. I know I enjoyed it quite a lot, not for the action, but for the rich moments in between gun shots.

Recommended.

Amish-inabe:

Collaboration [archaeology] can even bring separate groups together, [Sonya Atalay of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst] added. During her work at an Anishimaabe rock art site in Michigan, she watched as the Native Americans got to know the local Amish community, which provided stones for a sweat lodge ceremony and looked after the site. The evolving partnership inspired a Native artist to coin the term “Amish-inabe.” [“A Case for Collaboration,” Julian Smith, American Archaeology (spring • 2018, print only)]

Professor Randall Eliason of George Washington University Law School discusses an angle on the whole Presidential pardon idea that hadn’t occurred to me – if dangled in front of someone as a possibility, it might actually be a bribe. Eliason explains in WaPo:

Federal bribery requires that a public official agree to receive and accept something of value in exchange for being influenced in the performance of an official act. In this scenario, the official act would be granting a pardon. While the Supreme Court’s 2016 decision in the case of former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell dramatically narrowed the definition of “official act,” there’s no question that a president granting a pardon would be an exercise of government power under the McDonnell v. United States standard.

“Thing of value” is also fairly easily met: It would be the agreement not to cooperate against the president. The thing of value in bribery law is not limited to envelopes stuffed with cash. It can include anything of subjective value to the public official, whether tangible or intangible. Such intangibles as offers of future employment and personal companionship have been found to be things of value for purposes of bribery. A promise not to cooperate in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe could readily serve as the quid in this quid pro quo.

The public official, of course, is the president. Dowd is not a public official and cannot be bribed himself, but he could conspire with a public official to arrange bribes on the official’s behalf. The theory would be that Dowd and the president engaged in a conspiracy to accept bribes by agreeing that Dowd would make the offer. This, of course, would require proof that Dowd was acting with the president’s approval and not merely freelancing.

My oh my, the footing is getting slippery for the President, isn’t it? I think the informal English rendering would be If you refuse to cooperate with the law and are therefore convicted and jailed, I will pardon you, and my public pronouncements are my signal to you of this deal.

I wonder if Fox News has considered reading Eliason’s article on the air when they know the President is watching, just so he’s informed about how that could end badly for him. Not sure what I’m talking about? Here’s Steve Benen to explain:

It’s an amazing dynamic without precedent. When White House officials wanted Trump to understand his own agenda, they’d brief television pundits in the hopes that they’d convey the lessons to the president through his preferred medium.

After all, Trump is more likely to buy into an idea if he sees it repeated by pundits he likes on television. The alternative, I suppose, would be presidential aides handing Trump a “document,” but everyone involved seems to understand that doesn’t work. …

In case you think the severe winter storms in the Northeast militate against a warming globe, think again. D-brief’s Eric Betz reports on the latest research:

In late February, an invasion of warm, southern air sent temperatures surging above freezing across the Arctic and toward the North Pole. In the two weeks since then, three nor’easters have smacked New England and the surrounding areas.

As the Arctic warms, this trend has become common in recent winters, and it’s drawn new attention to links between the polar vortex — a constant mass of cold, dense air rotating over the north pole — and weather patterns farther south.

When the polar vortex weakens like it has several times this winter, it can cause the jet stream to buckle and smash cold Arctic air into warm and wet air to the south. The result: severe winter storms.

“This year is a great example — a textbook case,” says Judah Cohen, a climatologist with the private prediction center called Atmospheric and Environmental Research. He says that Arctic heat “set up this parade of nor’easters the past two weeks.”

Weather is a non-linear system, so as we add (or more precisely retain) more heat to the system, strange things will happen. In this case, the winds forming a wall around the North Pole breakdown and the cold mass descends south.

For the unofficial record, Minnesota had a more traditional winter season than we have had over the last decade or so. Or so was my impression when I wasn’t huddled in a sickly pile of pajamas.

Conservative Max Boot has a complaint about the U.S. military under Secretary Mattis:

After the Vietnam War, the U.S. military deliberately set out to forget everything it had learned about the brutal and unpleasant business of fighting guerrillas. The generals were operating under the assumption that if they didn’t prepare for that kind of war, they wouldn’t be asked to fight it. The emphasis in the 1980s and 1990s, even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, was on fighting conventional, uniformed adversaries. That worked out well in the 1991 Gulf War but left the U.S. armed forces tragically ill prepared for the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I thought the military did reasonably well in the initial attacks on the two countries, but were asked to then rebuild nations, not something the military should be doing. But anyways, the following interested me more:

Countries such as Sweden and Italy are working to combat Russian election interference by educating citizens about “fake news” and closing loopholes that hackers can exploit. (Even so, pro-Russian populists won the recent Italian election.) But Adm. Michael S. Rogers, outgoing head of U.S. Cyber Command, told Congress that he hasn’t been granted enough authorities to fight back against the Kremlin’s meddling and that the Russians “haven’t paid a price . . . that’s sufficient to get them to change their behavior.”

Generals are often accused of fighting the last war. Actually, they are more likely to prepare for a future war that never arrives while neglecting a current conflict. The Pentagon will be repeating that mistake if it focuses its energy on conventional wars rather than the hybrid threat. In fairness, that’s not all Mattis’s fault. Combating hybrid warfare requires extensive civilian-military cooperation. But it’s hard to fight a war when the foremost beneficiary of the enemy’s attack is the commander in chief.

I wonder if Max has considered the possibility that, by preparing for the war that never arrived, the US Military was actually successful. I’ve mentioned the fleet in being concept before, so I’ll just quote myself:

… where the very existence of a force, even if not deployed, modifies the behavior of the adversary.

Adversaries thinking to engage in conflict with us come to the realization that the United States is prepared for conflict in one mode, and therefore, and quite logically, abandon that mode themselves, seeing as we can generally out-resource just about anyone not named China. I’m no United States defense expert, so I can only guess that Mattis felt that we’d been neglecting our conventional capabilities and didn’t want to tempt someone into taking a shot at us, so he at least says that aspect of defense needs beefing up. It’s a signal: Don’t fuck with us, our conventional forces will be ready.

The question then becomes whether or not Max’s hybrid war preparations are being abandoned, or simply advanced without fanfare.

In a WaPo article on the labor tensions around the company that makes Peeps, they mention pensions:

The pension, which is administered by a group of labor officials and corporate executives from the 200 participating companies, has sued the company, alleging it improperly tried to stop enrolling new employees in the pension without paying the withdrawal fee. The company has sued the union, demanding “monetary damages” and alleging the strike was illegal.

Companies, labor leaders and retirees are watching closely, because the multi-employer pension that Peeps workers depend on is one of close to 1,300 around the country.

In total, 10 million current and retired workers participate in multi-employer pensions, according to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. These pensions allow employees to move from one job to another within the same pension and carry their retirement benefits with them.

Many of these multi-employer pensions are on track to run out of money. If the pension runs out of money, retired workers might only get a small percent of the money they thought they had earned through decades of work.

I know that pensions are one of the pet projects of unions and the left, one of those things you automatically get behind if you’re on the political left. Corporate America doesn’t like them, on the other hand, and has been getting rid of them as they can.

In my mind, I wonder about the stability and advisability of a financial institution where the income is known and limited, while the outgo is effectively neither. In the middle is, of course, the investments the pension fund can make – but investments can go belly up, too, so depending on them to make up the difference seems a mugs’ game.

And I wonder if UBI (Unconditional Basic Income) would ease the pressure on pension funds – or if the possible increase in taxes to pay a meaningful UBI would increase the pressure. Not an economist, am I.

When the media speaks of decoding genomes, I think there’s an assumption that the decoding is perfect. I know I did. Turns out that this is wrong, and that the mistakes and missed DNA is remarkably consistent – and has been dubbed Dark DNA. Biologist Adam Hargreaves describes the realization and subsequent hunt for the missing matter in NewScientist (10 March 2018, paywall):

[From the sidebar] These days, sequencing is largely automated, so the process is much faster. Multiple copies of a DNA strand are first chopped up at random into small fragments – usually between 100 and 150 bases long – which are then sequenced individually before being pieced back together by computer programs that match overlapping sections. But there’s a problem. This “next-generation” sequencing is not very good at deciphering stretches of DNA dominated by just two bases, such as G and C, because this makes it hard to reassemble overlapping fragments. As a result, we may have overlooked substantial chunks of DNA in the genomes sequenced to date. My colleagues and I have dubbed this “dark DNA”.

And so?

[From the main story] But we realised it might explain why the corresponding DNA appeared to be missing – standard sequencing technology is not very good at picking up sections of DNA with high levels of G and C. So we set out to reveal the elusive DNA in a different way: using caesium chloride ultracentrifugation. This involves spinning chopped-up DNA in a highly concentrated salt solution very fast – at least 40,000 revolutions per minute – for three days so that denser fragments, like those rich in GC bases, sink to the bottom. Having separated this out, we attempted to sequence it alone.

It worked. What we found was a mutation hotspot – a region of DNA with an extraordinarily large number of mutations, many of them changes from A or T to G or C bases. Sand rat Pdx1, for example, contains more mutations than any other version of the gene we know of in the animal kingdom – resulting in a Pdx1 protein that, in just one key region that binds to DNA, has at least 15 amino acids differing from the normal version.

Ah! Not only are the “missing” DNA not easily detected by traditional methods, but they’re undergoing very fast mutations! A major piece of evolution occurring, and we couldn’t see it.

A great bit of detective work, if it holds up.

Continuing the proactive thoughts on deep fakes that are coming our way, Jesse Lempel publishes a post on Lawfare concerning a possible approach using current law on how to attack those who would generate deep fakes, at least domestically:

But there’s another form of intellectual property that doesn’t turn on ownership of a particular image or work: the “right of publicity,” which, as one court explained, “is an intellectual property right of recent origin which has been defined as the inherent right of every human being to control the commercial use of his or her identity.” The right of publicity is a state law claim recognized in most states, whether by statute or common law (with slight variation among states), and is frequently invoked by celebrities seeking to prevent a business from unauthorized use of their images or identity in an advertisement. (For greater detail, see Jennifer Rothman’s Roadmap to the Right of Publicity.)

Could a victim of a deep fake posted on Facebook or Twitter bring a successful right-of-publicity claim against the platform for misappropriating “the commercial use of his or her identity”? This is a tough question that has not yet been tested in the courts. Such a claim would need to get over three basic hurdles: (1) fitting the right of publicity into the Section 230 intellectual property exception; (2) counting deep fakes as “commercial use” of identity for right-of-publicity claims; and (3) First Amendment protections on free speech.

I’d  never heard of the Right of Publicity before. Jesse goes on to analyze this approach, pointing out possible pitfalls and adverse previous rulings. It’s an interesting position to take on what is, quite frankly, a frightening future development for those who value a stable society.

Courtesy Steve Benen, today’s scandal is EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s living arrangements in Washington, as explained by Bloomberg Politics:

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt’s lease at a Washington apartment owned by a lobbyist friend allowed him to pay $50 a night for a single bedroom — but only on the nights when he actually slept there.

Not so bad?

The owner is a health care lobbyist, Vicki Hart. Her husband J. Steven Hart, is also a lobbyist and his firm represents clients in industries regulated by the EPA.

Ooops. But there’s more, as Steve helpfully notes:

ABC News reported yesterday on a first-class trip Pruitt took to Morocco late last year – it cost $40,000 and you paid for it – in order to have the EPA chief pitch “the potential benefit of liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports on Morocco’s economy.”  …

But what makes this story so much worse is the second half of the controversy. As ABC News added, “Cheniere Energy Inc. owned the only active Liquid Natural Gas export plant in the United States at the time.”

Why is that important? Because for much of 2017, Pruitt “occupied prime real estate in a townhouse near the U.S. Capitol that is co-owned by the wife of a top energy lobbyist, property records from 2017 show.”

The lobbyist’s firm specifically lobbies on liquid natural gas exports.

Pruitt’s a real Swamp Monster, apparently. But it was Steve’s last comment that caught my attention:

Postscript: Twelve years ago, with Republicans controlling the White House, the Senate, and the House, Democrats had a fair amount of success running against the GOP’s “culture of corruption.”

The party may want to consider dusting off that playbook.

I actually have to kinda wonder about that. After all, when it’ll actually take three or four minutes just to list all the scandals in the White House as well as Congress, before getting to the full scale ineptitude and rank incompetence, well, no one will sit still for a political ad of that magnitude.

But it’s like Fogo de Chão for wolves and lions.