Yearly Archives: 2018

The Incredibles (2004) gets just about all the big things right. Empathetic, well thought-out characters, some charmingly eccentric, a plot which fleshes out their world while advancing briskly, and injections of the less heroic elements into the story which leavens it with some much needed humor. It’s in some of the small details that it annoyingly falls apart, and the details do matter.

It opens with a world which, much like The Watchmen (2009), has banned the activities usually associated with superheroes. Mr. Incredible has married Elastigirl, and they have three kids, infant Jack, speedy Dash, and Violet, who can generate force fields. But Mr. Incredible, in his civilian identity, is slowly dying of boredom and frustration at his job at a somewhat shady insurance company, and his occasional forays into anonymous heroics isn’t really enough. When he’s fired for abusing his boss, mysterious Mirage contacts him about a “job”.

Mr. Incredible clashes with his wife over his yearnings to be a superhero again, so he doesn’t mention his change in vocation. He simply leaves to take care of a rogue robot, and then returns with a big paycheck. Realizing he may be hired again, his job is now to work out and shape up, his former muscles having gone somewhat to pot. But when he asks his former clothing designer, Edna, to repair his hero suit, she responds with an entire new ensemble for him and his family – and the repair to his old suit, which is a clue.

While Mr. Incredible is on his second mission using his new suit, Elastigirl sees the repair to his old suit and knows something is up. She contacts Edna, is introduced to the clothes for the entire family, who then suggests Elastigirl may be ignorant of her husband’s doings. Upon trying to track him down on his “business trip,” she discovers his employment termination at the insurance company, and Edna points out that, as part of the ensemble, the location of any member can be easily discovered at the press of a button.

And what of Mr. Incredible? A new rogue robot, faster and tougher, has him at the end of his rope, when the robot is restrained and his adversary appears – a fanboy he had frustrated years earlier, who has gone sour and invented such weapons that he’s now a “super” himself. He goes by the handle Syndrome. The “rogue robot” is actually a super killer, invented by Syndrome and improved each time it loses. As the supers have little contact with each other, there was little clue that they were being offed, one by one, by this man with no ethics. Mr. Incredible breaks free and manages to trick Syndrome into thinking he’s successfully killed Mr. Incredible, and so Mr. Incredible breaks into the island fortress and accesses Syndrome’s plans.

As he’s about to leave with the information, Elastigirl presses the button and Mr. Incredible’s suit signals its location – which is detected by Syndrome. Captured and restrained, Mr. Incredible listens as Syndrome’s defenses destroy the jet on which Elastigirl, Dash, and Violet are inbound to the island (damn fast jet).

But they’re supers, and the destruction of their jet is merely an inconvenience. On the island undetected, Elastigirl goes in search of her husband, and finds him – but too late to foil Syndrome’s plot at the island. Fighting their way off the island, they confront and defeat the rogue robot, which Syndrome had planned to defeat himself through his secret control of it, but failed. In the climax, Syndrome tries to kidnap their infant Jack, only to discover there’s more to kidnapping the son of supers than one might think.

I didn’t mention the humor, the delightful eccentricity and dialog of Edna, the back and forth of the plot, but it’s all there. Someone definitely put a lot of thought into this movie, and yet … let me give a couple of examples that I find jarring.

Mirage works for Syndrome. She knows what’s going on, she knows supers are being killed – so why is she upset when it comes out that children were on the jet that was destroyed? She’s already a killer by conspiracy, and of her own kind, no less. She’s charming – but she’s not believable in her responses.

And that’s the problem in the larger world – in a world full of supers, why are there still criminals? Indeed, this is alluded to in the first scene, an interview with Mr. Incredible prior to his marriage. Even suppressed, they should still be doing their good works. It also just rings a little bit false.

Add in some sloppy editing in the second half of the movie, and it’s an effort that I almost rate a failure despite all of the fine elements that are brought together. But I still enjoy watching it for most of the fine details and the excellent plot. I can’t quite recommend it – but I do plan to see the announced sequel.

I’ve continued to follow the Stormy Daniels payoff with some bemusement. Today, WaPo reports on more news and suggests that it’s almost certain that election law has been violated.

To which I say, So what?

The election won’t be invalidated. Trump’s campaign might be convicted of failing to report an in-kind contribution, they pay a fine, and move on. Maybe Daniels stirs a bit of uproar over sleeping with Trump.

But the evangelical Trump backers have, by and large, lost their moral compasses. They won’t stop backing him. Nor will anyone else except the Mormons – and I don’t think they really care for him anyways.

So why is the media following this so closely? Anyone care to educate me?

Long time readers know that I occasionally rip emails from the conservative data stream into little pieces for entertainment purposes. This time it’s a little bit different (although I will point out one outright lie) – I’ll just riposte. Here’s the email (in all its glorious lack of useful formatting):

Billy Graham’s daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her “How could God let something like this happen?” (regarding the attacks on Sept, 11, hurricanes and earth quakes. Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said “I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we’ve been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?” In light of recent events…terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O’Hare (she was murdered, her body found recently) complained she didn’t want prayer in our schools, and we said OK. Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school …. the Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK. Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn’t spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock’s son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he’s talking about. And we said OK. Now we’re asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don’t know right from wrong, and why it doesn’t bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves. Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with “WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.” Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world’s going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says. Funny how you can send ‘jokes’ through e-mail and they spread like wildfire but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing. Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace. Are you laughing? Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you’re not sure what they believe, or what they WILL think, of you for sending it. Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us. Pass it on if you think it has merit. If not then just discard it… no one will know you did. But, if you discard this thought process, don’t sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in.

God bless you as you share it with friends. No Nation or people can ever survive or succeed without Jesus Christ.

Let’s get the lie (or simple mistake) out of the way first – Dr. Spock’s children are still alive. However, a grandson did commit suicide. He suffered from schizophrenia. I do not know if that statement was part of the original interview (which did actually happen, according to Snopes).

But the important part is to address the real point of this interview with Anne Graham Lotz, which is to suggest that by the banishment of God from public life, we’re not suffering disasters.

First of all, Lotz is depending on (or perhaps mislead herself) by the chronological distance from her Golden Age. The fact of the matter is that nations which have God, whichever one they may favor, have been rife with public disasters, whether they be natural or manmade. I’ve written about this before here, wherein the public embrace of Christianity by English monarchs (and one Lord Protector) have been intimately accompanied by various crimes against humanity.

Let’s face it – religion may call us to the highest forms of behavior, but it often serves as a self-centered excuse for the lowest forms of behavior.

And if my reader wishes to reject these incidents because they take place in a monarchy, let me point out that, prior to the move towards a more secular society in the United States, the Bath School massacre of 1927 resulted in the murders of 38 children and 6 adults. Earthquakes, serial killers, horrible fires, hurricanes – all of these happen regardless of God.

Now let’s address matters of scale. The further you go back in history, the fewer people there are co-existing. That is, the population of the Earth drops. We know this intellectually, but it’s hard to absorb into your bones.. But once you do, it should become apparent that, coupled with the exponential jumps in our news reporting systems (we no longer have to send clipper ships around the southern tip of South America to gets from New York to San Francisco, just as an example), now it seems like there are more terrorist incidents and more murders and, oh, earthquakes and any other tragic event you care to name.

Well, those that are manmade, sure. There’s more people.

And there’s more crowding. Overpopulate a niche with rats and they start eating each other, which is illustrative of how the battle for living space can transform peaceful folks into genocides. Just think of how much the Serbs and Croats had a go at each other when Yugoslavia fell apart.

All that said, if Christianity were structured such that it could ensure a lack of violence, then it might be worth it to enmesh ourselves in a myth. But it isn’t. It’s infinitely malleable. It’s been used to justify wars of aggression, slavery, murder, as well as donating money and food for the poverty-stricken.

The United States is a secular nation for very good reasons. It’s one of the reasons we’re as prosperous as we are. Why should we emphasize a force that divides us in the public sphere?

In the end, Lotz’ call for religion is a call to huddle under the cloak of a mythical creator.

A secular society, on the other hand, is a call to be adults.

Which should we be?

Febrile:

: marked or caused by fever : feverish • a febrile reaction caused by an allergy [Merriam-Webster]

Noted in “Work the crowd: How ordinary people can predict the future,” Arran Frood, NewScientist (24 February 2018, paywall):

That’s not too shabby a record, although beating a poll might not seem that impressive in today’s febrile political climate. And the prediction markets have a downside: they can be rigged. Rajiv Sethi, an economist at Columbia University in New York, showed that in one prediction market for the 2012 US presidential election, a single trader accounted for a third of all bets on Mitt Romney. They may well have been trying to manipulate public confidence in him winning.

I went to Raccoon City and all I got was this lousy mutation!

Having recently seen Resident Evil (2002), I had both cautious hope and reasonable concerns about the close sequel, Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004), and I think they were justified. The story follows the lead character from Resident Evil, Alice, as she emerges from evil corporation Umbrella’s research facility after having broken loose from the lab. She discovers a city in chaos as the citizens fall victim to the virus that renders them zombies. Of those in the control of the city, one of them has a daughter who has disappeared during the evacuation of VIPs, and so she soon has a clandestine mission to make her way to the school containing the child and bring her to City Hall.

Joining forces with a news reporter, the remains of a special forces group, and a small-time hood, they shoot their way to the school, losing group members here and there, and always in the background is a monstrous figure, built like a human tank but without the charisma of The Hulk. At the school, they find the survivors of a police group, also there to rescue the girl.

And now comes the big reveal – Alice, the little girl, and the last surviving cop are infected. However, in Alice’s case, it’s not killing her – the virus has integrated into her genome, making her stronger and faster. And the little girl is in the same boat, except the increase in strength means she doesn’t need to use crutches.

In fact, her father invented the virus for her, and the corporation stole it.

The rush to City Hall to meet the helicopter turns into a trap, as the leader of the experiment shows up to test Alice against the monstrous figure – who it turns out is a dead-end mutation of the virus, and a friend of hers, and through that knowledge they engage and defeat the guards, escaping in the helicopter just as Umbrella, Inc nukes the city. The lead experimenter is left to the tender mercies of the zombies.

And after the subsequent helicopter crash, Alice ends up in the clutches of Umbrella, Inc.

This doesn’t quite have the pounding pace of its predecessor, and the characters, as a whole, are less cohesive. In particular, the small-time hood seems to just wander about with little to do but look pretty. Nor is there much connection to the characters – the empathy we need to develop to really care for them is fragmentary at best, and often non-existent.

But it doesn’t feel like a video game, although maybe that’s my unfamiliarity with Resident Evil showing. Although to some extent it’s a matter of shooting as many zombies as possible, there is plot development, twists and turns, and an unexpected finale that left me speculating about the next movie in the series.

But will that be an even worse entry in the series? That’s what worries me.

In Saudi Arabia, human resources turnover in recent years has ranged from the King himself, through the Crown Prince, and now includes the military top echelons. Bruce Riedel has the story for Brooking‘s Order From Chaos:

Saudi Crown Prince and Defense Minister Muhammad bin Salman (known as MBS) fired the joint chiefs of staff of the Saudi military this week. The chairman of the joint chiefs, the army commander, air defense chief, and Royal Saudi Air Force boss were replaced with no explanation. MBS said he wanted “believers” in the top military jobs in his ministry, apparently meaning believers in MBS.

The shake-up follows the ouster of the minister for the Saudi national guard last November, so the entire military leadership of the Kingdom has turned over in a few months. It’s a shattering indictment of the Saudi military high command and the conduct of the war in Yemen. Instead of the “Decisive Storm” that MBS promised in March 2015, the war is a stalemate and a quagmire.

It also probably suggests that the crown prince is ready to up the ante and try again for a military victory in the war with the Zaydi Shiite Houthis and their Iranian backers. This is MBS’s war and his signature policy initiative. Failure in Yemen is a fundamental black mark on his credibility. So it appears he is determined to double down on the blockade, the air bombardment, and trying to rally the Houthis’ enemies against them.

It appears MBS is not a subtle man. He’s plunging into what seems to me to be a morass, rather than attempting a more nuanced approach of, say, removing resources needed by his adversaries. It’ll be interesting to see if he remains the Crown Prince or if King Salman decides to replace him. I suspect it’ll depend on his success in this war.

Steve Benen discusses the President’s exceedingly loose grip on facts, the GOP‘s unhinged belief that the other side is as bad they are themselves, and the possibility there will be more Special Counsels:

As for the road ahead, the Washington Post  reported in December, “Attorney General Jeff Sessions is entertaining the idea of appointing a second special counsel to investigate a host of Republican concerns — including alleged wrongdoing by the Clinton Foundation and the controversial sale of a uranium company to Russia — and has directed senior federal prosecutors to explore at least some of the matters and report back to him and his top deputy.”

Will the attorney general be able to resist the pressure and acknowledge reality now that the GOP’s story has collapsed?

Speaking as an independent, I say bring on those investigations. Let’s see, once and for all, if any of the GOP‘s concerns have any substance.

And if I were a Democrat, I’d be celebrating the chance of a special investigation, and crying it out to the stars. Why? First, as a Democrat, and given the lack of real evidence so far seen for the supposed scandals, I’d have to believe that there’s nothing there. Second, because of that, the chance to remove any taint of scandal on the Democrats greatly increases – and, with that, the greater the contrast with a scandal-bound Trump Administration, the various GOP legislators who’ve resigned, and a relatively clean Democratic Party.

After all, has not Secretary Clinton been investigated a half dozen times or more regarding the Benghazi tragedy, and found completely clean of any wrong-doing? That would suggest the GOP may be looking for dirt where there isn’t any – and that would reflect well on the Democrats.

This morning’s headlines are reporting that President Trump has agreed to meet with North Korea’s despot, Kim Jong-un. A couple of days ago Ruediger Frank on 38 North discussed the beginning of Cold War 2.0:

The whole idea of a dead end situation depends on the assumption that consent and cooperation by Washington is an essential part of everybody’s calculations. So far, this is certainly true, but the world is turning. China has been rising for many years now. As result of its massive gains in economic, military and political power, Beijing is becoming more assertive in international politics. The South China Sea conflict, the Belt and Road Initiative, and even the recent constitutional change to extend the rule of Xi Jinping are indicators of that. I have for a long time expected a situation when the Chinese are ready for an open challenge to the supremacy of the United States, thus ending the phase of a unipolar world order that started with the demise of the Soviet Union around 1990. I call it the Cold War 2.0, and it will certainly start in China’s own backyard: East Asia. I thought such a development would take at least ten more years to materialize, however. Is this what we are witnessing now, thanks in part to Donald Trump who is acting as a catalyst of such a process by pulling the plug on TPP, expanding THAAD, demanding higher payment for US military presence, and offending his allies with the threat of punitive trade measures? We should keep our eyes open for signs from Beijing.

If this is where the game is headed, Chinese influence could play a critical role in changing the outcome of inter-Korean dialogue. For instance, imagine a scenario where Beijing is trying to capitalize on the current momentum and is ready to stand up to the United States, rather than continuing cooperation in a maximum pressure approach. In that case, it could declare after the upcoming April summit that the current inter-Korean dialogue has created important results, and that these show the international sanctions, at least those to which China has agreed, have fulfilled their task and have now become unnecessary. North Korea would be displayed by the Chinese as a country that is still problematic, but one that has shown willingness to cooperate and thus needs to be rewarded for such positive behavior in the name of peace and prosperity. Beijing could, for instance, submit a resolution to the UN Security Council to lift some of the sanctions, especially those targeting commercial sectors. Such a step would be vetoed by the US and most likely also by the UK and France. China may then declare that it no longer feels bound by previous resolutions and would unilaterally open its markets again for North Korean goods and services, and host those who want to engage in trade and financial transactions with that country. Russia would likely follow suit.

Under such circumstances, South Korea would then have a choice: It could side with the United States and the UNSC, and refrain from re-opening the Kaesong Industrial Zone, resuming trade and other forms of economic exchange. Alternatively, however, Seoul could share Beijing’s position and feel free to do whatever they see is in the national interest of Korea.

In this era of weakening alliances, I could easily see Trump’s alienation of the South Koreans last year, in tandem with the North Korean offer to discuss the future with South Korea, resulting in a realignment. Frank may disagree:

Or this might just be the beginning of the end of the post-1990 world order. If true, this would require a complete rethinking of what we regarded as certainties, including such big issues as the US presence on the Korean peninsula, the status of Taiwan, and in a more distant future, the possible prospect of a Korean unification with Chinese backing. What the US does next will have long-term implications for the role it will play in Asia’s future. To maintain influence, the US should be smart, capture the current process and take a more active stake in dialogue with North Korea, rather than being the only party to remain seated ostentatiously while everybody else is cheering the joint North-South team.

Whatever else you may think of Kim, think of this: he’s been trained for his role as government leader. So far he and his family has displayed long-term thinking skills, where long-term means, at least, decades. So have the Chinese. President Trump? I doubt more than a year – and then it’s all business, with no thoughts to the international political aspects. He has neither the training, family tradition, or intellectual curiosity to be up to speed when it comes to planning for the future of this country in the international arena.

So when Trump meets with Kim, what are the dangers? That the United States gets taken for a ride. Kim will have focused on Trump as his primary antagonist, the man he must best in diplomatic maneuvering. Claiming nuclear weapons, he now will appear to be dealing from a position of strength. It may even appear that he’s summoned the American president to the meeting.

The hardest part will be discerning how we’ve been taken. If Kim is good, he’ll make it appear that some sort of equitable deal has been struck that enshrines his family as the leaders of North Korea, but there’ll be more to it that President Trump will not understand.

And the most dangerous part will be the claims by the incompetent President of political salvation. Remember, he’s focused on biggest and best. He wants to eclipse his predecessors, most notably Obama, in his accomplishments, and spends inordinate amounts of time claiming that he’s done so – all bombast, exaggerations, and outright lies. But this will something of substance, now won’t it? Especially after last year’s verbal fireworks, it’ll look like Trump has actually accomplished something worthwhile.

And sticking us with Trump for the balance of his term – and possibly even the next – would be a masterstroke by Kim. Crippled by trade wars, losing influence so fast you can see the needle dropping, this is Kim’s dream scenario.

Dulcet:

1. Sweet, especially when describing voice or tones; melodious.
2. Generally pleasing; agreeable.
3. (archaic) Sweet to the taste. [Wiktionary]

I’ve used it many times over the years without knowing its precise meaning. For example, this morning I texted my Arts Editor:

Thrice the dulcet tones of cat barfing were heard last night, but only one has been found.

Her reply?

Traps have been set for the unwary.

Oh dear..

NewScientist (24 February 2018) reports on a new strain of avian flu:

A NEW strain of avian flu has infected people for the first time. So far, the virus doesn’t seem to be especially threatening, but its jump from chickens to humans was unexpected: the World Health Organization says no similar strains have ever crossed to people before.

Last week, the Hong Kong government announced that a 68-year-old woman in Jiangsu province in eastern China was hospitalised in January with severe respiratory symptoms. This turned out to be the first recorded case of an H7N4 flu virus infecting humans.

The woman recovered after a month in hospital. She had handled live poultry before falling ill, so probably caught the virus from the birds or the market she bought them in. No one around her developed any symptoms.

 The case highlights the huge amount of unpredictable viral evolution taking place in livestock farming. “This reminds us that virus activity in animal reservoirs is very dynamic, and we should not just focus on one subtype,” says Wenqing Zhang of the World Health Organization.

One such subtype – H7N9 – has infected more than 1500 people in China since it first emerged in the country in 2013. More than half of these cases occurred last winter and spring alone, and 40 per cent were fatal.

I – along with every virologist in the world – fear that one of these high fatality rate flus is going to get the genes that makes it highly contagious for humans. And how much effort is being put into better vaccines or TamiFlu II?

Jonathan Chait of New York thinks the GOP are slackers:

What makes Conaway’s lack of familiarity with the name “George Nader” especially troublesome is that Conaway is the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee and putatively running the lower chamber’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

If you’re getting the idea that maybe Conaway and his party aren’t utterly determined to uncover foul play between Moscow and Trump Tower, your suspicions are warranted. Conaway recently declared the investigation to be nearing its completion. “All investigations have a natural conclusion,” he explained. “As soon as we have everybody interviewed, we’ll start working on the report, we’ll get the report finalized, and we’ll move forward. Every investigation ought to have a conclusion, including this one. So we’re coming towards the end of it.”

Investigations, you see, have a “natural” conclusion. It is out of his hands. And so while Conaway’s committee has not forced the witnesses to answer questions Democrats believe they should answer, or even learned the names of major figures in the underlying investigation, there’s no arguing with nature. Anyway, it’s not like they’re investigating something like Benghazi, which took place in 2012 and was still being investigated four years later in a fruitless attempt to establish that the Obama administration deliberately lied.

Mr. Nader is the witness du jour for the Mueller team, according to reports. If Chait is right – and he has a good reputation – then the GOP is basically abdicating one of its most important responsibilities. This shouldn’t be a surprise, given what we’ve seen over the last year. But I just have to ask – what happens if the Democrats take the House after the mid-terms? Do they re-open the investigation and show how to do a proper investigation?

If so, the behavior of Chairman Nunes, Representative Conaway, and the rest of the GOP members of the House Intel Committee will become prime fodder for the 2020 elections, then, and might result in the burial of the GOP as a political party.

We’re seeing another reason to loathe and reject team politics – it’s turning out to be destructive to the Republican Party. That loyalty makes it impossible to do their job like adults. Let’s hope all the other political parties in America never go down that road.

Then some folks make a sacrifice. From the Tampa Bay Times (or WaPo):

In a move that can only be described as utterly Canadian, hundreds of doctors in Quebec are protesting their pay raises, saying they already make too much money.

As of Wednesday afternoon, more than 700 physicians, residents and medical students from the Canadian province had signed an online petition asking for their pay raises to be canceled. A group named Médecins Québécois Pour le Régime (MQRP), which represents Quebec doctors and advocates for public health, started the petition Feb. 25.

“We, Quebec doctors who believe in a strong public system, oppose the recent salary increases negotiated by our medical federations,” the petition reads in French.

The physicians group said it could not in good conscience accept pay raises when working conditions remained difficult for others in their profession — including nurses and clerks — and while patients “live with the lack of access to required services because of drastic cuts in recent years.”

But I wouldn’t call it “utterly Canadian.” Clearly, the system is in trouble. I think this indicates the doctors, etc, have recognized that they’re engaged in an enterprise that is currently struggling because certain, important members of the team are not being treated properly – which results in a failure to recruit new members to replace those who leave the profession.

You have to wonder if American doctors would do something similar, and, actually, I think many would.

Gyre:

1. a ring or circle.
2. a circular course or motion.
3. Oceanography. a ringlike system of ocean currents rotating clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. [Dictionary.com]

Noted in “The world’s oldest message in a bottle survived 132 years. Now it’s been found.” Theresa Vargas, WaPo:

The museum’s report lauds the discovery’s scientific significance.

“Ocean current and drift patterns are still not completely understood, and modern scientific work continues to investigate ocean currents, gyres, and drift patterns using drifters with GPS beacons and other drift targets,” the report reads. “The need to understand long-term climate change patterns has also seen historic data, such as that recorded in Paula’s meteorological journal and other 19th century ships’ logbooks, added as datasets into global climate models.”

My Arts Editor said she likes the composition of this walk by photo, so enjoy!

It looks a little out of focus to me.

Remember the lawsuit from 2016 in which a group of teenagers sued to stop climate change, alleging that governmental actions had encouraged the use of fossil fuels and this was endangering their rights under the Constitution? It’s still rolling onwards:

The U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled Wednesday that a novel and sweeping case, which the Obama administration first tried to extinguish in 2016, can proceed toward a trial. Trump’s Justice Department is expected to ask the Supreme Court to shut it down.

The group of mostly teenagers in Oregon alleged in a 2015 complaint that government policies have exacerbated global warming in violation of their rights — and those of future generations — under the U.S. Constitution.

They claim that for more than 50 years, the office of the president and eight federal agencies promoted regulations to support the U.S. energy industry’s proliferation of fossil fuels, accounting for a quarter of the world’s carbon emissions. They asked the court to force the government to formulate a formal plan to change course.

I’m not sure what tangible procedures they hope to establish, or if they’d be of much help against climate change, but as a symbolic action, it could be quite powerful.

Jason Bailey on ArtNome discusses the use of blockchains by digital artists:

There are at least four major areas where blockchain will disrupt the art market:

1. Driving digital art sales through digital scarcity
2. Democratizing fine art investment
3. Improving provenance and reducing art forgery
4. Creating a more ethical way of paying artists

…

A big problem with producing and selling digital art is how easily it can be duplicated and pirated. Once something is copied and replicated for free, the value drops and the prospect of a market disappears. For things to be of value they need to have scarcity. Blockchain helps solve this for digital artists by introducing the idea of “digital scarcity”: issuing a limited number of copies and tying them back to unique blocks proving ownership.

Some of what drives Jason’s enthusiasm are the reduction or elimination of transaction friction – i.e., fees paid to middlemen. But later in another post, he talks about the blockchain and how art native to it occurs:

CryptoArt are rare digital artworks, sometimes described as digital trading cards or “rares”, associated with unique and provably rare tokens that exist on the blockchain. The concept is based on the idea of digital scarcity, which allows you to buy, sell, and trade digital goods as if they were physical goods. This system works due to the fact that, like Bitcoins and other cryptocurrency, CryptoArt exist in limited quantity. Popular early examples include CryptoKitties, CryptoPunks, Rare Pepe, CurioCards, and Dada.nyc.

While no single CryptoArtist or CryptoArtwork adheres to a single definition, I believe it is helpful to look at a series of common factors that have shaped the aesthetic and community thus far.

1.Digitally Native: For the first time, artwork can be created, editioned, bought, and sold digitally.
2.Geographically Agnostic: Empowered by the internet, artists participate from all over the world. CryptoArt is the first truly global art movement.
…
4. Pro-Artist: Blockchain platforms often take little to no commission from artists. Artists are often remunerated for every future sale of a single work.
5. Dankness: Because CryptoArt is open to everyone, judging it by traditional artistic standards kills what is great about it. Instead, it is best to judge CryptoArt by “dankness” or potency of expression and creativity.

“Art” is one of my weakest areas of understanding in contemporary society, from individual motivations to create it, onwards to the motivations of collectors, to the role it plays in society – I do understand that historically it often played roles roughly equivalent to propaganda in some part, but whether it does now I’m not so certain. In my (fragmentary) reading so far, it appears that these artists come from technical or financial backgrounds, and I wonder if that colors how they see the future of CryptoArt. On FiveThirtyEight, Oliver Roeder has coverage of CryptoArt, ending with this somewhat cryptic conclusion:

A new order is emerging in the art world. But will it be any different than the old one? People like [John] Zettler make me think not. He and Rare Art Labs may be handling a new type of art, but what they’re doing with it is nothing new; in fact, it’s exactly what the critic Hughes warned us against: the fetishization of art’s prices and the emptying of its higher virtues. As a result, the relationship between art and the blockchain, which seems symbiotic for the moment, could soon become parasitic. Artists can only avoid the art establishment’s capitalistic maw for so long.

I can understand concern about losing the essence of art, and I also am well aware that motivations will wildly vary from individual to individual – did van Gogh hope to become rich on his art? How about Heinlein’s remark that If you ask a writer why he writes and he doesn’t say For money, he’s lying?

But artists do have to eat, too.

Here’s a view across the front yards of the neighbors.

The piles just get deeper and deeper.

Apotheosis:

• The highest point in the development of something; a culmination or climax.
  ‘his appearance as Hamlet was the apotheosis of his career’
• The elevation of someone to divine status.
  ‘death spared Pompey the task of having to account for the apotheosis of Caesar’
  [Oxford English Dictionaries]

Found in this title: “The Troubling Apotheosis of the Notorious RBG,” John O. McGinnis, Law and Liberty. I’m not sure I would have used the same word myself.

I have an interest in those odd little cases which plumb the corners of systems, so even though I’m not a lawyer or Constitutional scholar, I found this article by Michael C. Dorf on Justia Verdict to be interesting:

Last week’s ruling [Patchak v. Zinke] arose out of a dispute over a parcel of land in Michigan known as the Bradley Property, which the federal government obtained in trust for the creation of a casino to be operated by a Native tribe. The owner of a neighboring property sued the government, arguing that the acquisition was illegal. The government defended by, among other things, invoking its sovereign immunity against private lawsuits, and that issue made its way to the Supreme Court. In a 2012 case, the Court ruled that Congress had waived its sovereign immunity and that therefore the litigation could proceed.

But before plaintiff David Patchak could obtain a judgment against the government, Congress stepped in. It passed the Gun Lake Act, which states that any litigation “relating to” the Bradley Property “shall not be filed or maintained in a Federal court and shall be promptly dismissed.” Last week’s case concerned the constitutionality of that enactment.

Patchak argued that the contested provision was a thinly disguised effort by Congress to dictate the result of a pending case and thus a violation of the basic constitutional principle of separation of powers. As anyone who has seen Schoolhouse Rock knows, each branch of government serves a distinctive function. Justice Thomas quoted Chief Justice John Marshall’s 1825 statement that “the legislature makes, the executive executes, and the judiciary construes the law.” Patchak argued that while the Gun Lake Act had the form of legislation, in substance it was an effort to resolve a concrete case—namely his.

Dorf is exceedingly polite, but, reading between the lines, it sounds like SCOTUS may have had a collective mental breakdown. Justices Thomas, Alito, Breyer, and Kagan took one side, while Roberts, Kennedy, and Gorsuch took another, and Ginsburg and Sotomayor “… tried to duck the question that divided their colleagues.” Just the lack of ideological alignment is enough to cross my eyes.

In the end, the weird mix of right-wingers and moderate liberals won the day with a plurality opinion, but the fact that it’s not split sharply or unanimous (or close to it) suggests to me that this is an issue which has not been fully thought out by anyone.

In the end, Dorf says the court may have been hung up on the question of how to measure the generality of a law, as I remember that Bills of Attainder are specifically forbidden in the Constitution:

These practical concerns may ultimately explain why the plurality was unwilling to treat the Gun Lake Act as the functional equivalent of a law that said “Patchak loses.” But if practical administrability was the real reason for the decision, the plurality ought to have said so. By instead paying lip service to the proposition that Congress may not enact a law directing the outcome of a particular case, while in practice allowing Congress to circumvent that principle with some minimally astute drafting, Justice Thomas endorsed an empty formalism.

Sounds exciting! And not just because of my odd taste for odd corner cases, but because sometimes odd corner cases with undesirable outcomes may signal that a detail somewhere … is wrong.

On Dorf On Law, Neil Buchanan has posted an article, “When Shouid Liberals Try to Remove Judges From the Bench?” which didn’t interest me as much as the more general question, When should judges be removed?

Obviously, initiating impeachment out of ideological pique is a non-starter. Just as judges should be beyond political ideology once they take their seats, the safety of their seats should not depend on the ideology of those who can, in certain circumstances, terminate their tenure in those seats.

It seems to me that the sober legislator has at least two recognizable concerns about any particular judge:

Are they competent to the job?

Are their mental faculties up to the job?

These two questions appear to be the same, but are not. The first questions whether they have the skills, temperament, and ability to drop the ideology and simply interpret the law once they are in the seat. The second asks whether the judge is facing a decline in faculties, whether from natural causes or damage to the brain.

The second question might be answerable through medical and psychological tests, although I can see feisty judges dodging the issue.

But what of the first? I think the chief measure of a judge who is simply incompetent is the testimony of attorneys as to his inability to manage the mechanics of the job.

And what of ideology? Simply this: if his decisions continuously are overturned by superior court judges, never to be returned to his favor, it may signal someone seriously out of step with the general judiciary. Certainly, this may signal that all of the superior judges are compromised, but the odds are against it.

The success of the strike in West Virginia may be emboldening teachers in other states, BloombergPolitics reports:

The fury among low-paid teachers that triggered a wildcat teachers’ strike in West Virginia—the longest in its history—may be spreading.

Teachers across the country may soon build on the state’s example. The Oklahoma teachers’ union said it will shut down schools within months if its demands aren’t met, and some teachers said they may strike even if a deal is reached.

“The end goal is funding for public education and our core services, and if it takes us closing down schools to do that, then we are prepared and willing to do so,” said Alicia Priest, president of the Oklahoma Education Association. On Thursday, the OEA will announce a timetable that could culminate in a school shutdown if lawmakers don’t pass teacher raises, something the legislature hasn’t done in a decade. While some teachers may have been on the fence, said Priest, the two-week West Virginia strike “has given them an emboldened sense of purpose and a sense of power.”

That may not be enough for the rank and file. Some Oklahoma teachers are planning a wildcat strike of their own. Leaders from a dozen schools met last week to discuss such an unsanctioned walkout, and they plan to reconvene Wednesday to vote on a strike date. If the union’s plans aren’t to their liking, they may walk out, said Larry Cagle, who teaches advanced placement courses and is one of the organizers behind the independent effort. “We’re going to force this on the union and on the superintendent,”  he said. “Teachers are ready—they are chomping at the bit.”

If there’s anyone that loves education, it’s teachers. While the conservative states may fight to keep their taxes low on the backs of teachers – it’s long been an article of faith among the libertarian wing that teachers unions are evil incarnate – in the long run states with well-educated citizens are usually more prosperous, regardless of taxes.

This is the problem with trying to apply family budget principles to the budget of a state – the priorities differ to the point where parsimony in the wrong quarter can have serious, yet hard-to-trace, long-term consequences.

If you’ve been hearing rumors that Special Counsel Mueller’s legal theory is novel, let Emma Kohse and Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare straighten you out:

The legal theory used by Special Counsel Robert Mueller turns out to be worth pondering in some detail, as it offers considerable insight into where he may be headed next. When news of the indictment broke, a number of commentators—including one of us—suggested that the legal theory was novel. On closer inspection, however, it doesn’t seem new. Still, the indictment is rather clever, drawing on a venerable and well-trodden theory of criminal liability in a fashion that Mueller may be able to leverage into a powerful instrument with respect to both foreign and domestic actors.

 Let’s unpack it.The indictment works like this: It is a crime to conspire to “obstruct the lawful functions of the United States government through fraud and deceit.”

Etc in some detail. Their conclusion?

Which brings us to people on this side of the Atlantic—say, people who knowingly facilitated or participated in the distribution of emails through this mechanism or people who knowingly helped guide the activities of Internet Research Agency trolls. Such people might be inside or outside of the Trump campaign or organization. Their specific activities could all be, in and of themselves, perfectly legal. It’s an interesting question whether they would even need to know their interlocutors were Russian, much less acting at the behest of a foreign intelligence actor. As we read Mueller’s theory under §371, as long as they acted knowingly to join a scheme to deceive the U.S. government to frustrate its enforcement authority and took some action in pursuit of that scheme, they too would be guilty.

To be clear, without knowing details of the conduct of any specific individual, it would be irresponsible to speculate as to how a reasonable prosecutor would evaluate that person’s conduct with respect to this particular alleged conspiracy. For present purposes, our point is twofold: Mueller’s theory involves a well-established legal doctrine that has been deployed in roughly analogous situations, and it is potentially extremely powerful.

To be clear, Emma and Benjamin have no doubt that it is a crime to frustrate the organs of government from pursuing their statutorily defined goals, and anyone knowingly doing so will be guilty and dumped in the pokey.

Including, I suspect, the President.

When you have that hankering for beef!

Some genre fusions are a little more successful than others, but The Beast Of Hollow Mountain (1956) is a shade indifferent to the entire debate. A Mexican village plays hosts to a powerful Don and his son, Enrique, the latter soon to marry the beautiful Sarita. But an Americanos, Jimmy, and his partner, Felipe, who together own a herd of cattle, also live here, and when Sarita engages in some innocent conversation with the Americanos, Enrique is enraged. Fisticuffs are not enough, and soon there are plans afoot to stampede the herd into the hills.

Meanwhile, the herd is also suffering attrition, and Jimmy and Felipe, along with their last workers, Pancho and his little boy Panchito, track down the carcasses – or, more precisely, the disarticulated heads – in the swamp that borders on Hollow Mountain. The blame falls on Enrique. Eventually, Pancho, the town drunkard, ventures into the swamp for fairly unsatisfying reasons of his own, and becomes a breakfast nugget for the … well, the storytellers were wise enough to have Pancho shoot wildly (and quite amateurishly) while screaming as a shadow pans over him. Nicely done.

But soon enough Pancho’s son bullheadedly runs away, in fact on the day of Sarita and Enrique’s marriage, and Sarita, not quite yet clasped to Enrique’s bosom (there’s a bad visual), rides in pursuit. Naturally, they soon encounter the Beast, a clay stop-motion T-Rex with a really really long tongue. After a lot of pointing and laughing and falling down and being afflicted with hiccups

Ahem. Sorry about that. Anyways, Jimmy shows up after Sarita and Panchito take refuge in an abandoned house, and the Beast demonstrates its skills in disassembling stone and wood structures. Does Mr. T-Rex win an award? Noooo! Distracted by Jimmy, who nicks his snout (it’s good to see a dinosaur who’s not completely proof against six-shooters), Sarita and the kid make a break for the horses (which at this point should have been crossing the Canadian border, if they had any sense) and go for help, while Jimmy plays a little hide and seek with a dinosaur which is really awfully damn fast on his feet.

The funny things you find in a Cracker-Jack tree!

Enrique shows up, ready to pick off Jimmy, but has an unpleasant encounter with our dino. But once again, no awards for the dinosaur as Jimmy helps Enrique slip through the dinosaur’s claws. A dash to an empty tree and, for a brief moment, the dinosaur has a bit of success, with Enrique dangling in his clutches, but, damn, he must have ADD or something, because the rescuers have arrived and are busy trying to puncture that hide of his. Tossing lunch aside, he chases the rescuers, but to no effect.

Finally, Jimmy tires of the fun and lures the dino into the swamp, where it takes a bad step, forgets its swimming lessons, and drowns. The actress playing Sarita, ever the professional, hides her head in Jimmy’s bosom so the laughter doesn’t ruin the scene.

I cannot say that this cross between a romantic Western and a monster-horror story really did anything for me. The problem lies in the failure to expose some moral question for a good examination, as the best Westerns (think The Good, The Bad And The Ugly) do so well. Add in the amateuristic dinosaur and predictable and bland village conflict, and it’s a bit of a yawner until the climactic scene. The movie makers made some good decisions, such as not showing the beast until near the end, but the title gives the game away, and leaves us with nothing more than distasteful treacle.

It occurs to me that we in the uproar over President Trump’s business holdings and the Foreign Emoluments clause of the Constitution, the reverse problem has been under-emphasized. And this is the perfect time to consider it. Not sure what I mean?

Suppose President Trump really goes through with the tariffs. Things are going swimmingly, President Trump thinks, why all those arrogant foreigners are so pissed off I must have done something right!

And then comes the news … Jared Kushner comes rushing into the Oval Office with the report … that wonderful Trump Tower you built overseas, so much money invested, so wonderful, biggest in the world, going to make you so much money, Papa? Why, those damn foreigners just nationalized it!

And then the tariffs go away a day later.

See, it’s not just corruption to accept foreign emoluments. It’s also vulnerability, the possibility that a foreign power will threaten a business interest and thus modify the President’s thinking because now he’s personally threatened. This is another reason the guy in the Oval Office must shed those things that make him vulnerable.

And this should be talked about more. It’s too late for Trump, but for the future we should be clear on the stupidity of Trump for not shedding his business ties.