Yearly Archives: 2018

I’ve been puzzling over how to write about Maria By Callas (2017), a quasi-documentary concerning legendary opera diva Maria Callas. It’s composed almost entirely of Callas source material: Callas interviews, home movies, and videos of her performances. At first, it’s charming, at least for myself, who knows virtually nothing about the opera. And, technically speaking, the presentation of the material is more than competent, deftly setting moods through its use of artifacts of the material upon which these memories are stored.

But I gradually became aware that the documentary is inevitably a one-sided view of the star. Was she just an ordinary woman gifted with an extraordinary voice? Was she really an innocent who longed for children and family, but was forced, by the magnitude of her gift and the material aspirations of her husband and lovers, to instead be an opera singer?

There’s little to put this all in frame for an ignoramus like myself, so if you’re looking for an introduction to this icon of the field, you might do better to look for more comprehensive material. But if you’re an opera fan, this may come close to nirvana, not only to get to know a bit about the woman, but a chance to hear pieces of some of her performances.

National Grid, Environmental Defense Fund Europe, Oxford/CSci, and the WWF have developed a forecast tool for the carbon intensity of the current usage of electricity in the various regions of Great Britain:

National Grid, in partnership with Environmental Defense Fund Europe, University of Oxford Department of Computer Science and WWF, have developed the world’s first Carbon Intensity forecast with a regional breakdown.

The Carbon Intensity API uses state-of-the-art Machine Learning and sophisticated power system modelling to forecast the carbon intensity and generation mix 96+ hours ahead for each region in Great Britain.

Our OpenAPI allows consumers and smart devices to schedule and minimise CO2 emissions at a local level.

More here. I’d like to see this tool make its way to the United States, if it hasn’t already.

Chief Justice Roberts has stepped out of the shadows, so to speak, and since I find him to be the most interesting cipher currently on SCOTUS, it’s worth mentioning it. From the AP:

In a highly unusual public statement, Chief Justice John Roberts rebutted President Donald Trump’s statement that a ruling against the administration was made by “an Obama judge.”

Asked Wednesday by the Associated Press about the president’s comment, Roberts responded, “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”

He added on the day before Thanksgiving that an “independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.”

Needless to say, Trump wouldn’t be reprimanded by such a lowly entity as Chief Justice Roberts:

[tweet https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1065346909362143232]

Thus speaketh President Irrelevancy.

It’ll be interesting to see how the conservatives and the GOP (essentially two completely different entities at this point) reacts to the Chief Justice’s remarks. I suspect the former will cheer, and the latter will revile him as an apostate and even a liberal. It’s not much of a prediction, really, but I don’t see anything up on National Review (pro-Trump), The Resurgent (never-Trump but otherwise far right wing), nor The American Conservative (dunno). However, Joseph diGenova of Fox News has already begun to cast stones:

The spectacle of the ostensibly nonpolitical chief justice engaged in a dispute with the president of the United States is insulting to the Supreme Court and to our system of justice.

Shame on the chief justice. What he did is unforgivable, especially after the corrosive Senate confirmation battle over now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was the subject of bitter and baseless partisan attacks and character assassination by Senate Democrats.

With everyone looking for ways to remove the high court from the political thicket, Roberts strode arrogantly right into it. Sad day.

He thinks Roberts caved to criticism from Democrats, which is a laughable claim. The balance of his column shows he’s either glossing over the travel ban history – or ignorant of it. More importantly, there’s an implicit contradiction in using the 5-4 SCOTUS decision permitting the travel ban to come into effect to condemn the 9th Circuit, and then turn around and claim Roberts, who voted to permit the travel ban and was, presumably, impervious to Democrat opinion, must have caved in other decisions, such as the ACA ruling, that didn’t go diGenova’s way. Perhaps diGenova should consider the possibility that the law and Constitution simply dictated Roberts’ decision. I know, that’s a bit radical of me.

Paul Mirengoff on Powerline thinks there are Obama and Bush judges:

The questions of whether it matters who appointed a federal judge and whether such judges view litigants, including President Trump, with equal regard in any meaningful sense are empirical ones. If one can predict with a high degree of accuracy how a judge will rule in a highly controversial case, or in a case challenging a Trump edict the left doesn’t like, just by knowing which president appointed that judge, then Roberts’ defense of the federal judiciary fails.

That’s a more interesting observation. However, and speaking as non-lawyer, laws are quite often loaded with ambiguous specifications, some of which can be interpreted as contradicting the Constitution, a document itself subject to divergent interpretations. Mirengoff may consider consistent readings as illicit when they’re simply a consistent manner of interpretation of ambiguities. It doesn’t make them liberal nor Democratic per se, but simply as a matter of interpretation. Think of it this way: in many sports, the interpretations of the rulebook are an integral part of the sport, and oft-times those rulebooks, even seemingly well-written rulebooks, are chockful of ambiguities. Let me take a semi-hypothetical case from fencing, which states that when a fencer retreats behind his own end line, the action will stop, his opponent is awarded a touch, and the fencers will return to their en garde lines, unless the opponent has reached the goal of the bout, in which case the bout ends in the opponent’s favor. Furthermore, retreating behind the end line occurs when both feet are behind it^[1]. Sounds rock-solid, doesn’t it? Well, suppose this: one fencer executes an attack, the other fencer leaps back, evades the attempted touch, scores a touch of her own on the attacker while still elevated, and then lands with both feet behind the end line. Whose touch is this? Depends on how you interpret the rule, doesn’t it? Is she off the end of the strip when she lands, or when both feet are beyond an invisible plane perpendicular to the strip, connecting to the end line? (Now imagine the fencers are tied and this touch decides the winner of the gold medal bout at the Olympics!)

That was delightfully indulgent for me. To return to my point, anyone involved in heavily refereed sports will tell you that consistency of interpretation is almost as important as the interpretation being consistent with the rulebook’s text. When judges present consistent interpretations, and even consistent interpretative styles, this should not be immediately considered a symptom of a core intellectual deficiency in the judge’s understanding of the law, but rather a positive attribute of the judge, in and of itself, because I suspect lawyers faced with a judge who is erratic in his rulings will tell you this is a far worse thing than a conservative or liberal judge – and a trial lawyer is already faced with the inherently unpredictable factor of the jury. The last thing they need is a judge who varies interpretation from moment to moment.

In fact, absent evidence that a judge or even a category of judges are actually issuing judgments inconsistent with the law, my opinion of the whole Obama / Bush / Trump judge thing is that it’s the first step down the pathological path of condemning an entire class of judges, fracturing the judiciary, and then politicizing the same. This would be a step that any national-level adversary, such as Russia, China, or ISIS, would embrace with hisses of delight.

The fact of the matter is that if a given Federal judge is consistently issuing judgments at variance with the Constitution & the law, we have a mechanism available to be rid of him or her: impeachment. Mirengoff’s opinion, I think, mistakes disagreement for pathology, and results in a political course detrimental to health of the polity.

So will there be a tangible change in the Chief Justice’s rulings? Hard to say. He surely must realize his Party of old has been overcome by the corruption at its core, but he may continue on with his own ideological roots, as they color his rulings.

But it definitely means that decisions with a strong political factor may be less certain in their final disposition. For instance, the very recent Federal ruling invalidating the abortion law in Mississippi is certainly headed for SCOTUS – but it may not be heard, if the Chief Justice decides Roe v Wade really is settled law, no matter what the other four conservative Justices think. Or it may be heard – and he’ll choose to side with the liberal wing.

In the end, the Chief Justice had no choice but to issue a defense of the Judiciary, because it is one of the pillars of American society. A strong, high-morale judiciary is an important & critical part of American society. Persistent, decades-long mutterings against it on the conservative side of the spectrum has served to fracture it to some extent, which is unfortunate as no major political party’s interests are truly served by a chaotic, ineffective judiciary. Its chronic understaffing, also the responsibility of a recalcitrant GOP determined to politicize a judiciary that has acted as a restraint on its pathological ideology, is another problem, and while it’d be good to see it properly staffed with a qualified collection of judges of either brand, the collective quality of judicial nominees presented by President Trump has been far below the required standard, or at least so qualified observers have noted (I must go with expert opinion, although some nominees have obviously been so unqualified that even the GOP Senators rejected them); that is, the judiciary staffing approved by Senators Grassley and McConnell will be seen, in the light of the disinterested historian, as another black mark against them.

Will there be continued verbal joust? I doubt it. Roberts has made his point, and his defenders should now rush to the redoubts. They should be both liberals and conservatives, because this was an attack on an essential of American society, just as much as the free press is an essential. Without a high quality judiciary which makes consistent interpretations of law and Constitution, we’ll descend into chaos. We’ll be lorded over by amateurs and second-raters. We’ll just be another banana republic, ruled by self-righteous incompetents who think their ideology or religious faith or immaculate intellects justify any action they take, regardless of the law.

But one prediction I will make: At some point, President Trump will attempt to remove a judge he particularly despises through Executive Order, i.e., autocratic fiat. If & when that happens, there’ll be a lawsuit, and when it makes it to SCOTUS, it is imperative that they rule swiftly (i.e., within an hour) after arguments, the decision should be 9-0, and the text of the ruling should be “No, <relevant constitutional section cited>, piss on you, President Trump. Speaker of the House, begin immediate impeachment proceedings. Senator McConnell, we’ll see you in SCOTUS chambers immediately.”

OK, won’t happen. That last part is a bit too imperious. But it’s what should happen. McConnell has been far too busy destroying the United States while in pursuit of his personal goals – or those of his backers.

¹ I say this is a semi-hypothetical example because I haven’t read the USFA rulebook in at least a decade and probably more, so perhaps I’m out of date. Having attended a fencing referee’s seminar and a sabre referee’s short & informal seminar, I know that much of the seminars were devoted to interpretation, so I remain certain the spirit of this example is true.

Plenary:

1. : complete in every respect : ABSOLUTE, UNQUALIFIED
   plenary power
2. : fully attended or constituted by all entitled to be present
   a plenary session [Merriam-Webster]

Noted in “Another judge just blocked Trump. His ruling contains a warning.” Greg Sargent, WaPo:

But for our purposes here, there’s something remarkable buried deep in the decision: The judge warns that Trump’s proclamation and the interim rule that went with it actually claim for Trump the authority to shut down the southern border to any and all asylum-seeking.

“The rule itself actually gives the President the ability to issue even more restrictive proclamations” later, the judge’s decision says. “The rule gives the President plenary authority to halt asylum claims entirely along the southern border.”

Now that Stacey Abrams (D) has conceded the governorship of Georgia to (very, very recently) former Georgia Secretary of State, aka Counter Of Votes, Brian Kemp (R), the Kemp Campaign to get His Ass Re-elected as Governor has already kicked off, courtesy President Trump. CNN has made available notable parts of a transcript of Fox News‘ Chris Wallace’s interview with the President, and this tidbit comes to the fore, as a number of pundits have noticed:

“And it was all stacked against Brian, and I was the one that went for Brian and Brian won.”

Anyone paying attention knows that Georgia’s a deep-red state in which Kemp should have had an easy win. Furthermore, Kemp, in his role as Secretary of State, pushed for modifications to voter rules, purged voter roles, and in general pursued a number of changes to electoral procedures that were designed to suppress the vote, while looking like reforms. I shredded the “exact match” law into tatters and then danced on them in this post.

But I don’t read the above just as part of the usual Trump self-important fallacious braggadocio. I don’t doubt Trump needs to rain praise on himself as part of his mental disability, but I also think this is the kick-off for Kemp’s re-election campaign. The best campaigns, regardless of the Party or the quality of the candidate, tell solid stories concerning the candidate. Maybe the story is how they were a combat pilot in Iraq, and now they’re up against the terrible odds of battling the bloviating incumbent who’s held the seat for the last 30 years. There’s a good story beginning in this hypothetical case. Or the former Trump voter who was running for Congress and telling it how he saw it – that Trump was not what he claimed, but the candidate was so pissed off that, well, I think his hair caught fire. This one is more or less true. Another good story. (I forget the guy’s name and don’t know if he won or not. It was a House race in West Virginia.)

In Kemp’s case, it’s how he battled against impossible odds in order to pull off the impossible dream – a Republican winning the governor’s seat in Georgia.

Yeah, if you put it that way, and you’re a politically conscious citizen of Georgia, or someone who pays attention to politics in America, it’s a joke. That Abrams came as close as she did to beating Kemp has to leave the GOP completely shattered and, if it was rational, desperately conducting a post-mortem. They may conduct that post-mortem, but I seriously doubt much will come of it. In these situations, certain interests are typically too entrenched to easily ouster, and instead they’ll depend on their deteriorating marketing machine to pull them through 2020 and 2022.

But back on point, notice that Trump didn’t mention Georgia, didn’t mention anything that’ll work against the story he’s crafting. He’s focused on Kemp, on the alleged (and false) odds that he faced, and, boy, with just a smidgen of help from his buddy Trump, Kemp won.

In fact, I’m missing something here. It’s never Kemp. It’s Brian. It’s that friendly touch, using the given name rather than the colder surname. Surnames are impersonal, unless they’ve been mutilated, such as Brownie for Brown. That practice, however, may not be used for a generation because it’ll remind voters of the mismanagement of the response to Hurricane Katrina, the responsibility, deserved or not, of FEMA Director Michael “Brownie” Brown, who worked for President Bush (R), whose name shall only be spoken through gritted teeth by the GOP Faithful.

This is all part of an ongoing effort to shape the narrative of the Georgia electoral battle. The GOP is well aware that it has done its best to shape how the electorate votes, from gerrymandering (not applicable here) to purging voter roles and the whole “exact match” imminent disaster, without regard to “fairness” or even legality. They want to make the next go around into personal battles against the “cheating” of the Democrats, a word that has already been deployed a number of times on the GOP side, in order to distract attention from their own peccadilloes.

It’s easy to write off Trump’s utterances as utterly self-serving and the sign of a deteriorating mind, even the mark of dementia. And they may be. But they are also the opening salvos in the next 4 years of campaigning.

And keeping that campaigning honest will take the strongest efforts of our free press.

One of the fears of epidemiologists has been that cheap air travel will result in the unstoppable propagation of novel, deadly viruses, which will one day result in far too many of us dropping in our tracks. It hasn’t happened yet, and the reason may not be what you’re expecting, as NewScientist (10 November 2018, paywall) reports:

But new diseases don’t spring from nowhere – they evolve from related strains of viruses or bacteria, says Robin Thompson at the University of Oxford. The new microbe may differ from the old by only a few genetic mutations.

That often means people exposed to the first strain may have some degree of immune resistance to the new, deadlier one. This makes them less likely to catch it or, if they do, to die from it. And, thanks to air travel, that is likely to be the case around the globe. “It’s like a natural vaccination,” says Thompson.

In other words, the continual spreading of microbes around the world through air travel makes it harder for one to evolve in isolation long enough that when it finally breaks out, it kills large numbers in populations with no immunity at all. “We may have been thinking about air travel all wrong,” says Thompson.

To test the idea, he and his colleagues mathematically modelled the factors that affect the spread of a theoretical new and highly virulent microbe in a world with mega-cities and mass air travel.

They found that a crucial variable is the degree of immunity to this strain that has been gained by exposure to similar, less harmful viruses or bacteria (BioRxiv, doi.org/cwm2).

The analogy may not be strong, although recall that the early, pioneering vaccinations for smallpox (variola major and minor) were derived from the closely related, but not nearly as dangerous, disease cowpox.

But while it lowers the odds of a massively deadly outbreak, it doesn’t zero them out. The Spanish Influenza of 1918 would seem to be proof of that. All it requires is an incubation period of a few days combined with a terminal outcome in a high percentage of patients, and the influenza provides the latter.

As I suspected, President Trump’s Approval / Disapproval ratings – at least according to Gallup – have immediately recovered.

I have no real explanation as to why the country seems to recognize the utter incompetence of our President one week and then goes back to sleep the next. Perhaps it’s a reaction to how his opponents are reacting to that incompetence. Perhaps this Internet thing on which you’re reading this has made attention and meditation so fleeting that no one really evaluates anything anymore.

Oh, and tribalism. If you’re in the tribe, the leader can do nothing wrong. (Shame on tribalists. Absolute shame.)

This reader’s observation concerning the Khashoggi murder is cogent:

I suspect this will be old news, in the US at least, by the time we finish the thanksgiving leftovers. We have short memories from, and in, a news cycle that seeks fresh shock and awe headlines daily. “Oh yeah, Khashoggi? Didn’t somebody go to jail for that?”

Just for my own morbid amusement, consider these facts:

• The “caravan” from the South, the one for which we deployed the Army? Remember Trump’s claims that it was full of malevolent characters, bent on our destruction? Well, the Army is withdrawing, most of the immigrants are still marching (a dubious term for these unfortunate people), and nothing like some horrid invasion is occurring. Hope you weren’t frightened, because if you were, you were a sucker.
• Mass shootings continue to occur, despite Trump’s (and the NRA’s) assertion) that everyone carrying guns would obviate the need for gun control. I used to believe that, back, oh, 30 years ago. It’s become blindingly clear that this is bullshit. It’s built on the premise that everyone is rational. As scientists & people with bad neighbors know, rationality is not a core part of many human beings‘ core.
• Trump’s refusal to accept the CIA’s appraisal of the Khashoggi murder as being on Crown Prince Salman’s (MBS) head, and the revelation that Trump has financial interests in Saudi Arabia, not to mention those of personal pride (think his Middle East diplomacy effort through his son-in-law, Kushner), leaves one with the inevitable conclusion that money matters more than lives to this President – and, for a self-proclaimed billionaire, it just makes the immorality of it all that much more pathetic.
• Remember that big ol’ tax cut for the middle class of which Trump announced just before the mid-terms? That’s completely disappeared. Never mind that it would have added to a suddenly ballooning debt, a helium balloon formed under the GOP’s leadership. As one conservative writer (Max Boot, I believe) recently noted, if you consider yourself a financial conservative, you’d better be a Democrat, because financial responsibility is no longer part of the GOP brand. I’d add, the acquisition of power & money is the soul of the GOP brand, and the abortion issue, along with tribalism, is the shears with which they harvest the money and votes of their tribe. (Quick, someone get me a cartoonist!)

Which all leads to the question, how much longer will the religious right continue to ignore the sober teachings of earlier generations, those that forbid the adoration of money, abjure the liar, to stay to their self-proclaimed religious path? Sure, as I’ve said before, redemption is a big part of the American Way, but at some point you do need to move towards it, it’s not thrust upon you. You must admit to error and seek forgiveness.

Otherwise, all anyone can say is that the religious right, the evangelicals, is nothing more than a bunch of money worshipping, liar-loving hypocrites.

And I don’t want to think that a large proportion of my fellow-Americans are in that leaky dinghy.

Arabesque:

1. Fine Arts . a sinuous, spiraling, undulating, or serpentine line or linear motif.
2. a pose in ballet in which the dancer stands on one leg with one arm extended in front and the other leg and arm extended behind.
3. a short, fanciful musical piece, typically for piano. [Dictionary.com]

Noted in “Whitaker is Unfit to be Attorney General, Acting or Otherwise,” Bruce Fein, The American Conservative:

Mr. Whitaker decries Marbury as one of the Court’s many “bad rulings.” At the same time, the Acting Attorney General berates the Court for neglecting to employ its power of judicial review (which he believes it should not enjoy) to nullify New Deal legislation expanding the power of the federal government, including Obamacare. His intellectual arabesque recalls F. Scott Fitzgerald’s memorable quote from The Crack-Up: “The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

Perhaps Mr. Fein is a trifle fanciful in his metaphors.

With regards to the Khashoggi tragedy, between an undoubtedly intransigent MBS (the Crown Prince) and the eternal amateur President Trump, I would not in the least be surprised if this scandal was still dragging on in two years, despite the outrage of the Turks and the best efforts of Secretary of State Pompeo, who, by many reports, is better than former Secretary Tillerson.

And how would that play into the 2020 elections?

If you heard something about a blogger trashing 29 year old Representative-elect Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) for her clothing, Greg Fallis has an explanation for you:

Remember, ‘it’ is the misleading bullshit conservatives throw in front of us to distract us. It’s NOT about her clothes. When we respond to bullshit by discussing the clothing options of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, we are falling for the misleading bullshit. It’s sabotage. It’s creating a narrative designed to undermine Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It’s suggesting she is a fraud, that she’s not who she says she is, that she doesn’t belong in a position of power, that she can’t be trusted. That she’s phony. I’m going to say it again; it’s NOT about her clothes. We do her a disservice when we let folks like Eddie Scarry distract us by talking about her clothes.

Repeat his attack — and similar attacks — for a decade and some of that narrative will infiltrate the public consciousness. After a few years, people will begin to distrust AOC without quite knowing why; they’ll begin to dislike her without knowing quite why. This is exactly what conservatives did to Hillary Clinton. It’s what they’ve done to Nancy Pelosi. It’s what they’ve consistently done to all effective Democratic women leaders.

They’ve started on AOC even before she’s been sworn in. Why? Because she scares the absolute shit out of them. She’s young. She’s young AND she’s conventionally attractive. She’s a young, attractive woman AND she’s of Puerto Rican descent. She’s a young, attractive, working class Latinx AND with less than US$200,000 in campaign funds, she won a primary against a long-term Democrat with campaign funds of nearly $3.5 million and who was the Chair of the Democratic Caucus of the House of Representatives. She did it through hard work combined with intelligence and passion. And that scares them.

Right now, we can think of Ocasio-Cortez as a faux-pinpoint of light. Faux, because we really know little about her, but because she’s a fresh face that has had little time to indulge in subterfuge, we think we have some understanding of her.

We don’t. But this is not a condemnation, nor even a warning. This observation applies to most novice legislators.

The goal, if we take Fallis seriously, is to smear that pinpoint so that it’s seems harder and harder to get a read on Ocasio-Cortez. She may be full of ideas and ideals and energy, but, hey, her dress, and ya know she is just a girl.

This is the time, if a citizen hasn’t already done so, to formulate standards on which to judge legislators. Too often – which I can say because I often belong in this group – we simply vaguely watch and, at some point, our gut comes back with an answer, with little regard as to the integrity of the inputs, as to whether or not we like someone.

I think it’d be wise to come up with important categories, ranging from ideology to leadership qualities to ethics, and then be ready to pursue measurements for each category and each legislator we’re interested in. If, in the end, your gut doesn’t agree with your brain, then it’s time to sit down and figure out what you’ve missed in your rational approach, or which news source is feeding you bad information for your gut to process.

For those of us in a less than welcoming mood, this news from NewScientist (3 November 2018, paywall) has to be a trifle disturbing:

What’s in your suitcase? If you open the suitcase and show me what is inside, will it confirm that your answers were true?

These are just two of the questions that an automated lie-detection system will ask travellers during a six-month pilot starting this month at four border crossing points in Hungary, Latvia and Greece with countries outside the European Union. It will be coordinated by the Hungarian National Police.

The lie detector uses artificial intelligence and is part of a new tool called iBorderCtrl, developed by a Europe-wide consortium.

The pilot will involve actual travellers, who will be invited to use the system after they have passed through border control. It won’t affect their ability to travel. But the plan is that the system will eventually be able to grant people permission to cross a border by automatically assessing a range of information, including official documents, biometric data and social media activity – as well as the truthfulness of responses to security questions.

The cutesy name is just a false attempt to obscure the fact that a key part of theory of mind is under development in this project, and theory of mind is one of the key parts of being human (although it’s not unique to humans, and I have my doubts as to whether there’s any biological feature of humanity that can be considered unique, beyond the definitional genomic configuration).

This is, of course, a very small part of it, the recognition of tangible signs of deceit, and has a long ways to go. But it does trouble me. First, I’m not sure I want government authorities using a machine to guess whether or not I’m lying.

And if the machine achieves true sentience, it’ll certainly know that deceit is part of existence.

Paul Rosenzweig on Lawfare is in agony over the breakage of integrity in the national security apparatus:

And it really, really is a problem that they have succeeded. In normal times—by which I mean the entire course of the American Republic, and certainly the time from 1945 until just a couple of years ago—the CIA’s conclusions about bin Salman would have been some of the most highly classified secrets within the American government, subject to dissemenation to a small, select group of individuals. The reasons for this secrecy are, classically, two-fold: First, disclosure of what we know deprives the country’s leaders of freedom of action, to act with knowledge that U.S. adversaries don’t know we have and to select courses of action that maximize America’s benefit. Second, disclosure of what the government knows will often “burn” sources and methods so that the inquiry is of the “one and done” variety. When U.S. opponents know what America knows, they often learn how America knows it—and change their behavior accordingly.

And so it is beyond belief that some in the CIA (or elsewhere in the classified community) feel the necessity to disclose this Top Secret information publicly through the Post. I understand their motivation—the aberrance of Donald Trump is so great that they have no faith in his ability or willingness to process intelligence analysis faithfully. I share their concern—in spades.  But violating norms of behavior and the criminal law is not the way to ameliorate the problem.

One must wonder, though, if the leakers assessed the damage potential of making such a release and came to the conclusion that the Saudis would truly learn little, if anything, from it. Security professionals are not idiots, and are often intensely patriotic, outside of a few well-known exceptions. That patriotism may be the driving force in these leaks, once the incompetence and venality of Trump had become apparent.

But it’s a minefield in which they’re dancing, there’s no doubt about that.

Praxis:

1. practice, as distinguished from theory, of an art, science, etc.
2. established practice; custom
3. Rare
   a set of examples or exercises, as in grammar [Collins Dictionary]

Noted in “Games researcher retracts one paper, corrects three others, for plagiarism,” Retraction Watch:

A researcher, formerly of Bath Spa University in the UK, who studies how computer games are designed, has retracted a paper and corrected three others after she said she became aware that they all contained plagiarism.

The common author of the four papers, Dana Ruggiero,

focuses on praxis in design for persuasive technology, multimedia installations, and affective knowledge, including the application of games for social issues such as higher education, homelessness, juvenile offenders, children in care, and healthcare.

A conservative friend and I recently had an exchange which I think I’ll post, with his permission, concerning the current various political leaderships, and the proper way to integrate divinity into the question of governance. We pick up on this in the middle of our correspondence:

[My friend] I’d worry more about the idiots on the other [Democratic] side of the isle.

[Hue] I have to say I adore your typo!

They seem to not be in step with the common sense folks.

Problem is they’re not employed to ‘be in step’ with us. That’s how we ended up with gross incompetents like Speaker Ryan, Gohmert, not to mention corrupt folks like Pruitt, Price, Zinke, Ross, Hunter, Collins, etc etc etc. They’re employed to take care of us – safeguard the nation, and regulate it so low-life scum don’t take too much advantage of us.

Wasn’t it well known conservative and writer Robert Heinlein who said something like ‘common sense is neither’? Well, he was technically trained and thought analytically (and he was a former Navy officer, forced out by TB). Point is, common sense, at best, applies only to your area of expertise. ‘Common sense folks’ have no experience with politics, government, and international politics, and their diagnoses and plans often reflect their ignorance. The only fountain of wisdom is the knowledge that you’re ignorant, and that applies to farmers just as much as it applies to M.D.s or physics PhDs – two groups famous for their hubris.

To me they seem to be in the game for power, glory, and money.  The heck with the common folk.

Both sides are attracted to the power & glory, and Trump appears to get off on all three. If you wonder about money, search on the new FBI HQ building and how he’s interfering to keep it right near one of his own hotels.

But since you bring up common sense folks again, I gotta ask why. The way I was brought up, common sense meant you didn’t trust liars, and Trump is the undisputed King and Master of the Liars of Politics. Maybe Nixon was in the same ballpark, but even he was only at 1st base when Trump rounds 3rd and chugs for home. (Brief pause to consider the visual.) There may be a couple of other Republicans who think they are as absolutely unprincipled as Trump, such as Pruitt and this new boy, Whittaker, but they’re no where near them.

No doubt the Democrats do a little lying, but to tell the truth, as an independent, the Republicans appear to be equal parts liars and incompetents. Their campaigns seem to subsists on lies and voter suppression/gerrymandering. How is this something the ‘common folks’ with ‘common sense’ can possibly approve of? Maybe it’s just that I’ve started paying attention to politics, but it seems painfully obvious that Trump has snookered almost half the nation.

Trump has plenty of folks around to help keep him on the straight and narrow—that is if you have faith in your politicians and that’s a se7rious problem,

Trump appears to be attracted to people just like himself, and generals. Defense Secretary and former General Mattis seems like he’s both competent and honorable, although how can I be certain from this distance? The rest? Either hamstrung with ridiculous ideologies or so freakin’ avaricious they belong in cartoons. And as the expert Washington watchers have noted, he’s not nominating competent people who just [have] views that differ from liberals – he’s nominating folks with no relevant experience, often people who just happen to show up on Fox News (such as that Florida candidate for Governor, DeSantis, who was considered a long shot when he entered the race, but arranged to appear on Fox every chance he could until Trump endorsed him). That Acting Attorney General has managed to put himself in the running as Biggest Clown in the Trump Cabinet, and given names like Price, Zinke, and Pruitt, that is saying one helluva lot.

but God put these people in position,  but I have to say I don’t really agree with His choices, but He’s running the show—like it or not.  I have to keep reminding me of that too.

I cannot agree. The last time people said that, the Bush Debacle occurred. If it’s really God in charge, he fucking well hates us.

But the truth of the matter is that we’re self-governing, we’re no longer under the rule of a God-picked sovereign, eh? It’s no Queen Lizzie for us, and we’ve told ‘God’ to keep his nose out of our affairs. I know that ticks a lot of folks off, but given how poorly theocracies work out I thinkt the Founding Fathers agreed for good reason to keep him/it/her at arms length and take responsibility for our own future.

And a second point – putting this all on God, some sort of mysterious plan, let’s call it what it really is:

Abdication of Responsibility.

How much sense does it make to say that God wants Trump to sit in an Oval Office, give up national security secrets, damage the economy through the tariff wars, lie like it’s an Olympic Sport, and SIT ON OUR ASSES DOING NOTHING BUT VOTING FOR THOSE WHO SUPPORT HIM?

Doesn’t it make more sense to admit he’s an error and work to fix it?

It’s so much easier to blame it on a God with a mysterious plan than take up arms against a thousand foes, isnt it? Yet, I contend, the latter course is far more honorable than navel-gazing about the intentions of some divine creature for which there’s no evidence of even existing?

The Founding Fathers struck out on their own because the navel-gazing of King Henry was going nowhere good. Why deviate from their course?

Make of it what you will.

While reading Paul Waldman’s missive concerning President Trump’s doom – in his opinion – I began to wonder if President Trump will go on a foreign trip and simply never come back, thus evading the forces of justice. It’d certainly appeal to his sense of drama.

But I think his nebulous grasp on reality makes it impossible for him to understand just how deep this tarpit trap has become. I think he’ll stick it out until he finds himself in handcuffs, if that is how this all ends.

But it makes for some interesting possible fictional stories, doesn’t it?

Yes, it’s the Evil Texaco symbol!

One of the superior thrills for the movie viewer is going into a movie cold and discovering they’ve been transfixed for an hour without realizing it. I had that pleasure when I walked into a theater and watched the now-legendary The Usual Suspects (1995) without a clue as to what was happening. More recently, my Arts Editor and I had the same reaction to Magellan (2017), and even if I am not convinced it’ll ever be legendary, we enjoyed it and found it thought-provoking.

Into that same category falls Armstrong (2017), an action movie that has, as its primary theme, a meditation on the contrast between certainty and uncertainty. Rookie EMT Lauren, an ex-junkie, is deeply uncertain of herself and her future as she climbs into Ambulance 32 to ride the midnight streets of Los Angeles with Eddie. Before long, a huge explosion rends the quiet and, on dispatch to the scene, they literally run into a man who leaves one big dent in their ambulance’s hood. As they tend to him, his gibberish confuses them – and then they become even more confused when they find one arm is encased in a previously unknown prosthetic.

On the edge of shoving their patient, Armstrong, out the door, the two EMTs encounter a man in futuristic military costume, evidently searching for their patient, and mouthing apocalyptic Aztec religious references to the Fifth Sun. In the midst of the religious rhetoric, their patient surprises this attacker and kills him with a shocking blast of power.

Soon, we are told – with good reason to wonder – that a Doomsday Cult is at work, the sort that thinks Doomsday must be actively brought about, rather than passively awaited, and their patient is a dissident from the movement, burdened with his own ghosts from his military past.

Throughout the movie, Lauren’s personal uncertainty, the choice before her of working for good, or blotting everything out of her consciousness, is contrasted to those who are certain – principally, the representatives of the Cult, who are certain with the obduracy of granite that they are those who are Chosen to survive, and thus they have the right to escort everyone else to the Gates of Hell, if I may wax faux-eloquently. For Lauren, this means she must repeatedly ask herself what is right and what is wrong, while for those who are in the cult, the question has been answered so with such finality that the very concept of reopening the question, to look too closely into the depths of irrationality, is beyond conception. To die with the words of murderous orthodoxy on one’s lips is to have abandoned entirely the question of good and evil.

It’s a well done movie, but it’s not perfect. Some of the special effects are suggestive of a low-budget effort, but if it is low-budget, the moviemakers were smart enough to put their principal investment into the story and actors. I found myself more than willing to use my imagination to fill in the missing elements of the visuals in order to get on with the story.

And, without revealing its content, I would have not included the final scene. Lauren has been faced with a question, but this movie needn’t provide an answer. It’s enough for every viewer to put him or herself in Lauren’s place and meditate on how they might answer the question put to her. Her answer is both unnecessary and trite.

I won’t quite recommend it, but I can say we were pleasantly surprised. The violence isn’t too graphic, information is strategically withheld, and the questions asked are good questions. Dig it up one night if you’re in the mood for a highly focused thriller.

Thrill-seekers? It’s like watching a 2 year old fall down the stairs.

Or like the kitten we had back when I was a teenager who was so determined to get into the forbidden basement that he launched himself full tilt through the door the moment it opened, cart-wheeled down the stairs, shook himself at the bottom, and trotted off to explore.

I think Kevin Drum has stumbled across the latest concerted meme and Republican behavior, discovered as Representative Mimi Walters (CA-R) finally loses her re-election bid to Democrat Katie Porter:

The sad part of this is that a couple of days ago, as it became clear which way the wind was blowing, Mimi Walters pulled a Trump and started claiming that the vote count was corrupt. “I’m currently up by 1 point, but the Democrats are already preparing for a recount to try and steal this Republican seat after the fact,” she wrote in a fundraising email. This is a shameless and reprehensible thing to say. She knows perfectly well that Neal Kelley is a very well regarded Registrar of Voters and that there’s no evidence at all of even the slightest fraud or incompetence in his office.

But I guess that’s how things go in the GOP of the Trump era. If you lose, you lash out. Yesterday I said I had nothing special against Walters other than the usual disagreement of a liberal toward a conservative. Now I do. What a terrible way to go out.

In the Trump Republican Party, you have to go down kicking, screaming, and pointing at imaginary foulness from the Democrats in order to retain the respect of the Leader, otherwise your political career is finished.

Or at least that’s the perception among the losers. The culture is such that there’s no such thing as a graceful loser, at least if it’s close.

But I suppose that’s how you safeguard the royal jewels Holy Tenets of the party from disgrace. It’s not that the voters have rejected faux tax reform, the deadly threat of invaders from the South, and the grace of Trump, it’s cheating by the Democrats.

That’s one way to soothe one’s ruffled feelings.

2020 should be interesting if the Republicans suffer more losses. Every public claim – and this one was in a letter to donors, so it’s private – should be met with polite requests for evidence from the reporters, and, if none is provided, keep noting (as CNN now does) that none was provided and the claim is probably false.

There was a time that Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) commanded a certain amount of respect in the Senate, but I think that’s coming to an end. It’s not just the political threats he’s making against those who appear ready to apply proper oversight over the President, but the logic that he’s applying in the process. Someone has nicely supplied a Tweet summarizing an interview Graham had with Sean Hannity of Fox Propaganda News:

Here’s Lindsay Graham on Sean Hannity last night, threatening House Democrats that if he’s in charge of Senate Judiciary and they investigate Trump-Russia, he’ll investigate whether “political bias” in FBI Hillary Clinton email server and Trump-Russia probes. pic.twitter.com/SSjTVFDGoD

— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) November 15, 2018

So what’s the problem here?

Graham is arguably committing a crime if he doesn’t investigate the Democrats!

Look, if he suspects one or more crimes have been committed, and he doesn’t either investigate himself, or present his credible evidence to the FBI, then he is effectively a co-conspirator, and thus equally guilty as the Democrats of any crime they may have committed.

All of which makes me think this is empty-headed bluster by a guy who’s been given his orders by Party Leader Trump, and he’s busy trying to carry them out. Right now, he’s offered a bribe to the Democrats – you don’t investigate us, we won’t investigate you. That just might be an illegal offer worthy of scrutiny by the FBI, and even if it isn’t, it looks like an exceedingly bad offer for a sitting Senator to make.

But the Democrats won’t care, I suspect. Clinton may still be a force in the Party, but honestly Democrats have seen her lose twice now in Presidential bids, and understand her limits (along with her age). More entertainingly, they are undoubtedly willing to let her have another go with a Congressional investigatory committee – after all, it’s another chance for her take a bite out of the ass of a bunch of incompetent Republicans who are chasing a Sasquatch across the landscape. Hell, Clinton herself may relish a chance to bounce Graham up and down a few more times.

And the Democrats should be willing to let all of Graham’s threats be promulgated, because it’s their professional duty to implement this oversight and investigation. Graham should know all about this, he’s an adult.

Which all makes me wonder if it’s Senator Graham or Thumb-Puppet Graham. It’s just so stupid. Unless Graham has decided that in order to keep the respect of Trump, he has to “hit back twice as hard.” But does it really makes sense to desire the respect of a liar? Hell, what does that even mean?

And, yes, Senator Grassley has given up his chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee, clearing the way for Graham to be appointed to the post.

Bezoar:

A bezoar is a mass found trapped in the gastrointestinal system, though it can occur in other locations. A pseudobezoar is an indigestible object introduced intentionally into the digestive system.

There are several varieties of bezoar, some of which have inorganic constituents and others organic. The term has both a modern (medical, scientific) and a traditional usage. [Wikipedia]

Noted at the new Bell Museum yesterday. They just described it as a cow hairball.

In this dormant thread I mentioned that Trump-clone Chris McDaniels was threatening to run in the primary against up for re-election Senator Wicker (R-MI). However, the other Senator from Mississippi, Senator Cochrane, retired for health reasons, and a special election of the ‘jungle’ type took place. Chris McDaniel decided to join the fun. Here’s the results:

It was good to see the Trump clone rejected, and while I think I’d prefer former Ag Secretary Espy over Hyde-Smith, she did manage to beat McDaniel comfortably, so what the hell, right?

Wrong.

A video of Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., who faces a runoff this month against an African-American Democrat, joking about attending “a public hanging” went viral Sunday as she insisted there was nothing negative about her remark.

“If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row,” Hyde-Smith said during a campaign stop in Tupelo, Mississippi. The man she was referring to was identified as a local rancher. [NBC News]

When backlash hit, she took the “what are you talking about?” route out of the controversy:

It’s ok to still have a sense of humor in America isn’t it? These students enjoyed a laugh with Cindy despite out of state social media posts trying to mislead Mississippians. @espyforsenatehttps://t.co/dcObRfHpMi pic.twitter.com/nfOi3ifekq

— Cindy Hyde-Smith (@cindyhydesmith) November 16, 2018

Symptomatic of another sycophantic power-seeker.

Which all makes me think we may have an election on our hands here, rather than the usual Republicans win in Mississippi, now over to the news from the local bar. While Nelson may eventually lose to Republican Rick Scott in Florida, there may be a surprise pickup in Mississippi for the Democrats. I suppose it depends on how many people are outraged at what Hyde-Smith thinks is funny.

Especially if President Trump goes and campaigns for Hyde-Smith, as he’s rumored to readying to do so. He’s so awful at it….

Blighty:

1. An informal term for Britain or England, used by soldiers of the First and Second World Wars.
   1. military slang A wound suffered by a soldier in the First World War which was sufficiently serious to merit being shipped home to Britain.
      ‘he had copped a Blighty and was on his way home’ [Oxford English Dictionaries]

Just popped into my head this morning.

“It’s like Country & Western as done by the Muppets!”

– My Arts Editor, commenting on an act which will remain nameless.

A friend and reader sends an article on just how deep the Sun can reach into the Earth and we hardly even notice, courtesy Scientific American:

“Between 2 and 4 August 1972 [a sunspot] produced a series of brilliant flares, energetic particle enhancements and Earth-directed ejecta,” [researchers] wrote. …

And somehow, amid all that drama, space weather researchers had largely ignored another consequence of the storm: “the sudden detonation of a ‘large number’ of US Navy… sea mines [that had been] dropped into the coastal waters of North Vietnam only three months earlier.”

We all know the telegraph stories from the 1859, where unpowered telegraphs suddenly sprang into activity, powered by an immense solar flare that hasn’t been matched since. But sometimes these flares can do odd, odd things to unstable mechanisms, of which I would classify sea mines.

I wonder if other munitions, such as those on wrecks, might also be vulnerable? There are a few wrecks that are under surveillance because of the dangers they pose if their cargoes were to detonate. Could the metallic hulls somehow destabilize these precarious munitions?