Monthly Archives: January 2018

Spaceweather.com continues its data collection concerning radiation levels at high altitudes. Check out how it varies, not with altitude, but with latitude:

Recently we encountered an interesting feature in data taken over the Pacific Ocean: a “radiation bowl.” On Nov. 30th, 2017, Hervey Allen, a computer scientist at the University of Oregon, carried our radiation sensors onboard a commercial flight from San Francisco, California, to Auckland, New Zealand: map. As his plane cruised at a nearly constant altitude (35,000 ft) across the equator, radiation levels gracefully dipped, then recovered, in a bowl-shaped pattern:

In one way, this beautiful curve is no surprise. We expect dose rates to reach a low point near the equator, because that is where Earth’s magnetic field provides the greatest shielding against cosmic rays. Interestingly, however, the low point is not directly above the equator. A parabolic curve fit to the data shows that the actual minimum occurred at 5.5 degrees N latitude.

Keep in mind that the magnetic north pole is not coincident with the north pole defined by the spin of the planet (nor that of the geomagnetic north pole, which is getting beyond my meager knowledge of physics). I wonder if there’s a correlation between this offset and the magnetic pole offset…

E. J. Dionne in WaPo quite properly bemoans the likely narrative the conservatives will draw from the recently resolved government shutdown:

Government shutdown follies feed an ideologically loaded narrative that government is hopelessly incompetent and can never be counted on to do much that is useful.

President Trump and Republicans should bear the burden for Washington’s disarray because it was Trump’s erratic and uninformed negotiating style (along with his repeated flip-flopping) that made a rational deal impossible.

But even if he and his party are held responsible, episodes of this sort have the long-run effect of bolstering the standard conservative view of government as a lumbering beast whose “meddling” only fouls things up. The private sector is cast as virtuously efficient and best left alone.

Dionne then goes on to cite the many successes of the government in dragging us back from the brink of catastrophe during the Great Recession. I think those are valid examples, but because they may somewhat controversial in the minds of folks who want strict capitalism – that is, no government bailouts – I’d like to cite different examples.

1. Have you recently had to deal with a Red Dawn scenario in your hometown? If not, thank the government-organized US military.
2. Have you lost half your relatives to salmonella poisoning from food you bought at the supermarket? If not, thank government food inspectors.
3. Did you lose two-thirds of your siblings to smallpox, tuberculosis, cholera? No? Thank the epidemiologists who spend their days tracking down public health menaces and mandating sanitary sewers.
4. Do you spend all your time on the highways dodging idiots going the wrong way and doing 120 MPH? No? Thank government, which mandates the rules of the road and enforces them, for our collective safety.

When I was reading libertarian rags, it was quite fashionable to try to make government appear as useless as possible, and this was done with virtually no balance, no acknowledgment of the importance of government. So it doesn’t hurt to do what Dionne did – remind folks that we don’t have the American government as a punishment for the sins of our ancestors, but because, when well-managed (and it sure isn’t right now), it makes us stronger.

Stronger.

So if you’re one of conservative readers, readying yourself to trumpet the failures of government, take a step back and think about all it does FOR you. Quietly, behind the scenes, hardly asking anything of you but some cooperation.

Fun with cameras: the grid of the screen changes these into pictures from long ago. Of today.

These are of our garden-covered backyard. My Arts Editor thinks the last one is the best. Opinions?

CNN ran a poll and found out that the lump of coal from yesteryear sure damn well looks good now:

George W. Bush has turned his unpopularity upside down.

Six in 10 Americans, 61%, say they now have a favorable view of the 43rd President of the United States in the latest CNN poll conducted by SSRS, nearly double the 33% who gave him a favorable mark when he left the White House in January 2009.

To be sure, comparing Bush to Trump will make Bush look good. While Trump has yet to preside over a recession – those typically take a couple of years to build up to – he’s had a number of scandals already, and worse yet, his general job performance can be easily labeled as completely incompetent.

But none of this excuses Bush’s performance in office, which included a failed war in Afghanistan that no one can salvage, an unnecessary war in Iraq initiated on faked evidence that, in fact, many people saw through, and a little dip into the torture pool which should never have happened.

And then there was the Great Recession, marked by the rescue effort of the banks which infuriated so many folks.

In a more sober nation, this result would never happen. Bush’s rating would remain deservedly and pointedly low. Anyone who’d care to look would see the disaster that was Bush, the rebuilding effort led by Barack “scandal-free” Obama, and then Trump’s purposeful dive into the toxic waste dump. They’d understand that the GOP has a real problem with wise governance.

But that won’t happen. Bush has put forth a few statements critical of Trump, he’s taken up painting, and he’s more or less stayed out of the daily fray. Add in the folks who weren’t old enough to pay attention 15 years ago, and, well, he almost looks reasonable. You have to actually, like, read a bit to realize the Bush Administration was really quite the disaster.

I chanced into the living room as my Arts Editor was watching some show, resting from her Influenza.

Says I, observing the positions of the two (fully-clothed) people on the screen: “Oh, it’s doggy-style now, eh?”

Says she, “And on top of the body of her dead mother, too!”

Oh my oh my.

In reaction to Democrats demands for immigration reform in the fight over the Continuing Resolution, a video was released by the Trump campaign (for 2020). NBC News describes it:

After the government shutdown went into full swing this weekend, Trump’s campaign operation released a brutal advertisement slamming Democrats as “complicit in every murder committed by illegal immigrants” if they stand in the way of the administration’s attempts at curbing illegal immigration. The president himself appears in the ad to approve its message.

This is the sort of political chat that’s really beyond the pale, and should be rejected by all politicos, left and right, who believe they have serious input for the national discussion. I realize that Trump-supporters may believe this is just the President “shaking things up,” but it really isn’t. It poisons the atmosphere for good governance and, really, betrays the amateur status of this President and his advisors.

(If my reader is wondering why I don’t address the putative issue, I refer you to this Vox article indicating first generation immigrant crime rates are lower than Nth generation immigrant crime rates.)

But I think it also is an indicator of the desperation in the White House in the face of the continuing failures of Trump, from his Cabinet failures to his legislative failures to the failures of Republican candidates in special elections, from the Alabama Senate seat that should have been a walk in the park and became a failure, to the numerous special elections the Democrats have won by flipping previously Republican-held seats. They can only claim success in the judicial appointment arena, and despite the joyfulness of some conservative pundits, those are tainted, from Gorsuch’s illicit acquisition of a seat to the incompetence that is so frequently appearing in candidates to the federal judiciary that even the GOP has begun rejecting them.

What to do when you’re a President that’s failing? Well, you could try to improve, but that would mean admitting incompetence in the first place. The alternative is to fight back! And so we’ll be seeing more of these wild swings, most of them involving immigration, as that is the key issue for the Trump base.

But how long will they continue chowing on their own meat? For, after all, most of us are immigrants or the children of immigrants – it’s a self-condemning attack, and I have to wonder if it’ll result in the mad-cow disease which is the logical end of this metaphor. If, indeed, Trump voters start looking at their immigrant colleagues and friends and asking “What criminals?“, what will Trump do then?

What, will he punch himself?

Demimonde:

1. (especially during the last half of the 19th century) a class of women who have lost their standing in respectable society because of indiscreet behavior or sexual promiscuity.
2. a demimondaine.
3. prostitutes or courtesans in general.
4. a group whose activities are ethically or legally questionable:
   a demimonde of investigative journalists writing for the sensationalist tabloids.
5. a group characterized by lack of success or status:
   the literary demimonde.

Noted in “To the People Who Want to Spend 36 Hours in Washington,” Kriston Capps, CityLab:

Maybe you read in The New York Times that Showtime is the best bar in Washington, D.C., for “nightcapping with the demimonde.” Sorry. That is not something we do here. That is not something anyone has done anywhere since the Civil War. Piqued and stimulated Times readers should try a different bar—I hear they have loads of demimondes in Brooklyn. For anyone else confused about when D.C. shed its longtime status as a “white male fiefdom,” or when we opened our first non–steak house restaurant, or when we started to matter as a place, consider our recent reporting.

I found this NewScientist (13 January 2018) article fascinating, both for the specifics and how it implies living creatures occupy many spots on the spectrum of intelligence:

Some birds of prey have learned to control fire, a skill previously thought to be unique to humans. The birds appear to deliberately spread wildfires in order to flush out prey. The finding suggests that birds may have beaten us to the use of fire.

There are many anecdotes about Australian birds of prey using fire, according to ornithologist Bob Gosford at the Central Land Council in Alice Springs, Northern Territory. Most come from Aboriginal rangers who manage natural fires in the north Australian tropical savannah, which straddles Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia. The three species mentioned are black kites (Milvus migrans), whistling kites (Haliastur sphenurus) and brown falcons (Falco berigora).

The claim is that the birds pick up burning twigs from existing fires and drop them elsewhere to start new blazes. This would flush out prey hidden in the brush. In effect, the birds are using the burning twigs as tools. At least, that’s the idea.

It’s a bit jaw-dropping.

The most dramatic evidence comes from Dick Eussen, a photojournalist and former firefighter who is a co-author on the paper. He recounts fighting and controlling a blaze at the Ranger Uranium Mine near Kakadu, Northern Territory [Australia], in the 1980s, only to discover a new one on the other side of the road. As he tried to extinguish that fire, he noticed a whistling kite 20 metres away. The bird was carrying a smoking stick, which it dropped, creating another spot conflagration. In all, Eussen extinguished seven new blazes started by the kites.

What we find catastrophic is just another tool for a different species. Much like tool-using crows, these kites are manipulating the world around them in order to get what they need.

Just like we do.

In one of the more puzzling developments for the mid-terms, Red Maryland reports that Chelsea Manning, who as Bradley Manning leaked national defense secrets via Wikileaks, has taken a legal step in the process of entering the Democratic primary for the Maryland Senate seat currently held by Ben Cardin. There are more to complete. Red Maryland just shrugged her off as a convicted traitor, which I suppose is accurate enough for some folks. It’s worth noting, however, that he was found not guilty of the charge of “Aiding the enemy,” and I suppose an argument could be made that she leaked these documents as evidence of bad behavior by the US Army.

Greg Fallis is disturbed, but not at her history, but …:

… I have to say, Manning’s campaign announcement video makes me wonder what the hell her ideas are. Here, watch:

It’s not just that the video is awkward (though it is), or that her voice-over is wooden (and lawdy, it is). The thing about the video is that with a different candidate and a different voice-over, this could easily be a right-wing nutcase propaganda piece. This is what she actually says:

We live in trying times. Time of fear, of suppression, hate. We don’t need more…or better…leaders; we need someone willing to fight. We need to stop asking them to give us our rights. They won’t support, they won’t compromise. We need to stop expecting that our systems will somehow fix themselves. We need to actually take the reins of power from them. We need to challenge them at every level. We need to fix this. We don’t need them anymore. We can do better. You’re damned right we got this.

Substitute a short-haired Aryan face for the image of a trans woman, exchange the footage of the Nazi rally with a BLM rally, and replace the voice-over with a deeper, more menacing voice and that video would be appropriate a pro-Trump candidate. …

But that video? It’s grounded in fear, not in change. It’s not about politics, even; it’s about Chelsea Manning. It suggests that the world is in turmoil and in order to fix it we need a trans woman. And hey, that may be true. But being a trans woman isn’t, in itself, enough. Be a trans woman with ideas and tell us what those ideas are.

If you want to take the reins of power, first tell me what you want to do with them.

I’ve watched it, too, and it’s a puzzling video, evidently motivated by frustration and even fear of the right wing extremists. Without much in the way of specifics, at least that which I can recognize as democratic specifics, it’s hard to really evaluate a potential candidacy.

But if she were to claim that what she said constitutes specifics, then I’d reject her. Those were words, I think, of power, and while she may think that’s what necessary, to my mind we need to use the traditional weapons of a democracy – reason and truth. Those who mislead will simply lead the nation down paths to dry rivers and disaster, and that message must be conveyed to the citizenry – persuasion, not force unless force is deployed against those who speak the truth. Coercion is a tool without moral force, which means it can used for evil and well as good, and by the same person at different times.

Today your submissive is Loki, God of Mischief!

Thor: Ragnarok (2017) has glitz, explosions, colorful vistas, some clever dialog, enormous comedic sympathy for the travails of Gods, and … not much else. And, yet, there is one nice little bit of thematic material, for while Thor must find a way to defeat his elder sister, Hela, the Goddess of Death, lurking in the background is the threatened fulfillment of the dread prophecy that Ragnarök, the destruction of Asgard, home of the Gods, has begun.

It’s really a useful approach to think about using one evil to cancel another out. Sort of like math with units, ya know?

But other than that, it felt a bit limp. My Arts Editor pointed out that most or even all of the strong female characters have disappeared, and the addition of a Valkyrie doesn’t really work – they were, after all, cannon fodder in Norse mythology. Even one as snappy as this one. More importantly, no one really seems to grow and change, although I suppose that the Gods are supposed to be eternally unchanging, no?

And resorting to claims concerning the undermining of the divinity, as with Ghostbusters (1984), would be false, for while there are non-divine characters present, this is really about a war between the creatures of mythology. The cheating of a divine prophecy may be uplifting, a paean to the old chestnut about never giving up, but it doesn’t satisfy the concept of the upending of the reign of Gods.

But, perhaps worst of all, according to our Arts Editor, the role of Death in the times when such mythologies held sway was as a time of transition. Death has a role in life, providing sustenance in one phase, and providing release from the fading of one’s body in another.

It was not considered necessarily an evil.

But destruction and evil is the essence of Hela. Shut away for undisclosed reasons, perhaps the isolation did in her mind; more likely, it injured pride, and now free but finding her father, Odin, out of reach, she reaches out for that which she perceives as most valuable, with plans to conquer everything in sight.

I mean, if it wiggles, she’s coming at it with everything she has.

And just why? There’s no depth to Hela, she’s all hurt pride and domination of Thor. What could we have learned if the personification of Death could have been more interesting? But, as part of the Avengers series, this movie had to deliver eyes-bugging-out fights, and that’s what it did.

Much to its detriment.

Have you heard there’s another confidential memo from Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) on possible indiscretions by intelligence agencies? Quinta Jurecic of Lawfare is thoroughly tired of the circus:

It’s impossible to comment definitively on the memo while it remains classified. At the moment, following a party-line vote by the House intelligence committee, the classified document is available to all members of Congress—though lawmakers reportedly must sign a non-disclosure agreement in order to view it. But as Trump supporters and Trump-aligned House Republicans beat the #ReleasetheMemo drumbeat, here is a modest prediction: if and when the memo is ever made public, it is likely to be just one more string of spaghetti tossed onto the wall by the now-familiar alliance of Trump-supporting congressional Republicans and sympathetic conservative media desperate to discredit and distract from the investigations into Russian election interference. …

At this point, any work product from Devin Nunes concerning matters related to the Russia investigation should be taken with a healthy helping of salt. Although Nunes still chairs the House intelligence committee, he was forced to remove himself from its Russia probe after a bewildering March press conference in which he announced concern over possible incidental collection of Trump transition-team information. (Reports later showed that the White House had leaked Nunes the allegedly alarming material on “unmasking.”) After months, Bloomberg’s Eli Lake—originally sympathetic to Nunes’s concerns—reported that National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster had found no evidence to support Nunes’s allegations of wrongdoing.

And as far as Quinta is concerned, it’s just another cycle of deceit:

At this point, the feedback loop of disinformation between Trump-friendly congressional Republicans, the White House and pro-Trump media has become familiar. The cycle runs like this: Congressional Republicans voice concerns about an alleged abuse of government authority under President Obama or an instance of anti-Trump bias; one of a small group of relatively marginal media outlets writes about their theories and investigations, drawing yawns from more traditional reporters; then Fox News—usually including Sean Hannity—devotes breathless attention to the story; President Trump tweets about it; Fox and Congress respond to the president’s tweets; and around and around we go.

For those readers late to the game, Rep. Nunes is widely considered Russia’s strongest ally in Congress.

Here’s a thought: why do these entities continue to be treated as reliable sources of information? Fox News, Breitbart, all of those that are hyping this dubious memo, why do readers keep reading them? Do readers ever scratch their heads and wonder if they ever will get significant, accurate news from them? Or is it only the experts with skin in the game that realize that some news sources are significantly flawed and untrustworthy?

And in this age of anti-expertism, it doesn’t really help when an expert marks a source as contaminated, as driven by an inferior agenda.

Andrew Sullivan relates his concerns about how the current concerns about sexual aggression by those in power is being misinterpreted by leftist-feminists:

I mention this because in our increasingly heated debate about gender relations and the #MeToo movement, this natural reality — reflected in chromosomes and hormones no scientist disputes — is rarely discussed. It’s almost become taboo. You can spend a lifetime in gender studies and the subject will never come up. All differences between the sexes, we are now informed, are a function of the age-old oppression of women by men, of the “patriarchy” that enforces this subjugation, and of the power structures that mandate misogyny. All differences between the genders, we are told, are a function not of nature but of sexism. In fact, we are now informed by the latest generation of feminists, following the theories of Michel Foucault, that nature itself is a “social construction” designed by men to oppress women. It doesn’t actually exist. It’s merely another tool of male power and must be resisted.

This is, however, untrue. Even the newest generation of feminists concede this on the quiet. Although they will organize to shut down an entire magazine to prevent an airing of an alternative view of gender, they are not currently campaigning to shut down the Planet Earth series because it reveals that in almost every species, males and females behave differently — very differently — and there appears to be no “patriarchy” in place to bring this about at all. They know enough not to push their argument into places where it will seem to be, quite obviously, ridiculous. But it is strikingly obvious that for today’s progressives, humans are the sole species on this planet where gender differentiation has no clear basis in nature, science, evolution, or biology. This is where they are as hostile to Darwin as any creationist.

And what of it?

I know this must be a pain in the neck for most women. But it’s who we are. It’s a blessing and a curse. It’s called being male, this strange creature, covered in hair, pinioned between morality and hormones, governed by two brains, one above and one below. We can and should be restrained, tamed, kept under control. But nature will not be eradicated. And when left-feminism denies nature’s power, ignores testosterone, and sees all this behavior as a function entirely of structural patriarchal oppression, it is going to overreach. It is going to misunderstand. And it is going to alienate a lot of people. If most men are told that what they are deep down is, in fact, “problematic” if not “toxic,” they are going to get defensive, and with good reason. And they are going to react. So, by the way, are the countless women who do not see this kind of masculinity as toxic, who want men to be different, who are, in fact, deeply attracted to the core aggression of the human male, and contemptuous of the latest orthodoxy from Brooklyn.

And men, especially young men in this environment, will begin to ask questions about why they are now routinely seen as a “problem,” and why their sex lives are now fair game for any journalist. And because our dialogue is now so constrained, and the fact of natural sexual differences so actively suppressed by the academy and the mainstream media, they will find the truths about nature in other contexts. They will stumble across alt-right websites that deploy these truths to foment an equal and opposite form of ideology, soaked in actual misogyny, and become convinced that every sexual interaction is a zero-sum battlefield. They will see this as a war between the genders, not as a way to advance the freedom of both. They will fight back, and in this tribalized culture, the conflict will intensify. Suppress debate, ban ideas from civil conversation, and you won’t abolish these ideas. You will hand them to the worst bigots and give them credibility.

It’s an interesting column, full of food for thought. For me, there’s a couple of things here.

First, a concept I’ve mused on for a while, that of the basic reality of having evolved as an animal in which the two genders fulfill different roles, as basic as the sperm-carrier and the baby-bearer, into which the wildcard of self-aware intelligence has been inserted, an intelligence fully capable of upending traditional roles, trying new approaches to the hard problem of lots of people living together, all constrained by the continuing pressures of evolution. The intelligence has allowed us to explore the concept of justice, of a justice shorn of any link to our animal physiology, and how to apply such.

And to evaluate the results. Evaluation can be formal – or informal. From Andrew:

This week, in the New York Times, Tom Edsall bravely exposed the politics of this. He looked at the data and found, believe it or not, that gender-studies feminism is not shared by all women by any means, and is increasingly loathed by men — and not just older men. “2016 saw the greatest number of votes cast by young white men in the past 12 years — markedly higher than their female counterparts,” says Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, a psychologist at Tufts. Their support for the Democratic nominee dropped by 15 points from 2008 to 2016. Edsall reports that “a Cato 2017 Free Speech and Tolerance Survey found that a bare majority (51 percent) of Democrats believes that calling out sexism is typically justified and not designed to shut off discussion. In sharp contrast, Ekins wrote, about three-fourths (76 percent) of Republicans and two-thirds (65 percent) of independents believe it’s primarily used as a tool to stifle debate.” Two-thirds of Independents now suspect the sincerity of most claims of sexism.

The other thing for me is, knowing Andrew is Catholic, I have to wonder how this all plays out for him, theologically speaking. “Made in the image of God,” no? This all makes God look fairly bad, even if you allow for some flim-flam about Satan spoiling the whole lot of us apples. It seems to me that the more we hew to reality and walk away from insupportable superstitions, the more likely we’ll be to find workable solutions to the problem of having animal bodies and persistent notions of justice and fair play.

Ukase:

A ukase, or ukaz (/juːˈkeɪs/;^[1] Russian: указ [ʊˈkas], formally “imposition”), in Imperial Russia, was a proclamation of the tsar, government, or a religious leader (patriarch) that had the force of law. “Edict” and “decree” are adequate translations using the terminology and concepts of Roman law.

From the Russian term, the word ukase has entered the English language with the meaning of “any proclamation or decree; an order or regulation of a final or arbitrary nature”. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “Trump’s first year: A damage assessment,” Tom Nichols, WaPo:

[Trump] is everything, in fact, except our chief magistrate and the head of the executive branch of our government. Rather than feeling bound by the Constitution “to take care that the laws are faithfully executed,” Trump sits atop a structure of laws and norms he attacks daily. Courts? How dare they impede his executive ukazes. The Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA? Disasters. All part of the “deep state.” And the First Amendment? An annoyance that needs to be cleared up by rewriting libel laws to protect those in power from a free press.

A clever little usage, no?

Professor Tom Nichols of the Naval War College is disturbed, as am I, that the GOP is fast losing its ability to function as a governing party in counterbalance to the Democrats – and then points out something I missed. From WaPo:

Democrats should not celebrate these trends: If the GOP ceases to be a sensible opposition party, if it can no longer provide the constraining influence of a governing alternative, the Democratic Party will be overtaken by extremists as well. And if both parties become captured by their fringes, America will hurl itself between far right and far left, like a dysfunctional parliament instead of a system of divided powers that has been a model of stability for nearly 2 1 / 2 centuries. A boat can be tossed from side to side only so many times before it is swamped.

It’s very true. The folks who joined the Republican Party and then proceeded to RINO out all the moderate members, as I’ve discussed numerous times, have done a severe disservice to the country. This country doesn’t benefit from zealous ideologues in either party, but from adults who are aware of the awesome responsibility which they have won, their own fallibility, and the importance of being able to compromise, and even learn from, the “other side.”

Because we’re all Americans here.

For those readers who loved the idea of lightsails from science fiction, or had heard The Planetary Society was working on one, the Society has a YouTube of the planned launch of a lightsail prototype on an upcoming SpaceX Falcon Heavy Rocket.

And, if this missive happened into your mail slot, did you buy the message and come to a slow boil, just as the author wants?

Clint Eastwood’s new movie, “The 15:17 to Paris,” is based on true events, where three American heroes stopped a terrorist on a Paris train in 2015, and it is causing the Hollywood crowd to go nuts. They just tried to put the kibosh on certain scenes that didn’t fit their liberal agenda, and boy, that made Eastwood mad. So, the famous actor and director who voted for President Donald Trump just slapped the leftists hard with a brutal surprise. You’re going to love it.

Yep, they hate him. They keep giving him Academy Award nominations, they hate him so much. For example,

… [Eastwood directed but did not act in] the mystery drama Mystic River (2003) and the war film Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), for which he received Academy Award nominations … [Wikipedia]

No black list for Clint, they hate him too much for that.

Clint Eastwood is an American icon and is probably the most famous conservative actor and director in Hollywood. Eastwood’s legendary work affords him the ability to pick and chose what type of movies he’ll make, and he loves making patriotic American movies.

His current film, “The 15:17 to Paris,” is in the final edits, but the Hollywood crowd hates it, and they tried to stop certain people from seeing it. The reason is the pro-American message it sends, described in this synopsis on Google: “In the early evening of August 21, 2015, the world watched in stunned silence as the media reported a thwarted terrorist attack on Thalys train #9364 bound for Paris—an attempt prevented by three courageous young Americans traveling through Europe.”
The summary adds, “Throughout the harrowing ordeal, their friendship never wavers, making it their greatest weapon and allowing them to save the lives of the more than 500 passengers on board. The heroic trio is comprised of Anthony Sadler, Oregon National Guardsman Alek Skarlatos, and U.S. Air Force Airman First Class Spencer Stone, who play themselves in the film.”

The movie stirs real patriotic emotion and honors the three American heroes who have military backgrounds. It shows an Islamic terrorist, who gains entry into France as a migrant, attempting to slaughter 500 people, with three Americans stopping him. This just isn’t the type of movie the Hollywood crowd makes, and they tried to screw Eastwood by giving it an “R” rating.

And how would this boob know? It’s not been released yet. But it’s important to the hate story this guy is trying to perpetuate (or perpetrate, if you like) to setup the tone of the movie before he throws strawmen into the candle flame, so of course the movie – which he hasn’t seen – stirs up patriotic emotion.

The reason they gave for the “R” rating was it showed “violence,” and this pissed off Clint Eastwood, who is making this film so teens could also see a movie with real American values. It was a cheap shot by the liberal Hollywood idiots, and Eastwood decided that wasn’t going to happen. The legendary star shocked the Hollywood crowd by taking on the rating board himself, something that never happens. And, not only did he take them on, he blew them away.

Which is all rather funny, because the Film board is NOT a liberal institution! It was, in fact, imposed on the film industry by conservatives who were terrified – perhaps deservedly so – over what might appear on a screen without an adult to intervene and screen a child’s viewing. So this

“Clint Eastwood has won an appeal to overturn the R rating originally assigned to his upcoming film, The 15:17 to Paris. Instead, it will be rated PG-13. According to a source, the R rating was given for the train attack scene at the center of the film, which the Classification and Rating Administration described as ‘a sequence of violence and bloody images,’” reported Hollywood Reporter.

They added, “The Classification and Rating Appeals Board says it reviews 800 to 900 films each year, with fewer than 12 ratings a year appealed. Eastwood represented his own film on behalf of Warner Bros., which opens the film in theaters on Feb. 9.”

can, along with being a contradiction of what this boob said before (“something that never happens”), be seen as a legacy of the conservative movement. It’s quite possible that concerns about violence are a historical liberal contribution to the Ratings board, but the fact remains: Ratings are a conservative institution, not a liberal institution.

And all this then is a lurid fantasy from our anonymous author, rightly disregarded by those who are willing to think about it:

Clint doesn’t just play a “tough guy” in his movies, he showed those Hollywood snakes that he really is a tough guy who won’t be pushed around. He’ll make any darn movie he wants to make, and they won’t stop him from making sure as many Americans as possible can see it.

In case you’re wondering how much the Hollywood crowd detests this movie for its pro-American military theme along with its anti-Islam, anti-migrant message, here’s how one Hollywood critic describes it: “But in the hands of someone like Eastwood, this [movie] reads like a recruitment ad for the military. Nothing diminishes the heroism of these three men, but in Eastwood’s hands, it looks like he’s coasting on their achievements to tell a story that will make some people think that they too can be heroes if they just head down to their local recruitment office.” [Source: Collider]

Because, as we all know, one critic is representative of an entire industry. Of snakes. Right? If you’re nodding, you have a problem.

In reality, it’s just someone critiquing a movie. I do that all the time. Some I trash, some I love. Heck, let’s turn this around: Director Clint is a conservative. Therefore, all Hollywood directors are conservatives, too. Right?

Well, we know better, so when we get to the next paragraph of this divisive little bit of trash, we know we’re getting the real message of this missive:

Well, let the haters hate. They loathe patriotism and they despise middle-class working Americans who love this country. They can’t stand Clint Eastwood who said that former President Barack Obama is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”

Perhaps. They keep nominating him for Academy Awards, too. Cognitive dissonance? While I’m tempted to say, Yes, on the part of the author, I don’t really think he’s mentally ill. I just think there’s hatred of America going on – and he’s the one perpetrating it via this email. How did Benjamin Franklin put it?

We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.

And that remains true. There’s hatred going on here – but I think our Founding Father had a more clear vision of it than does this anonymous author.

Now, just for the sake of being a completist, let’s finish reading the letter:

Lastly, what in the hell is wrong with sending the message to teens that they too can be heroes? What is wrong with giving some kids the idea that joining the military is a heroic thing to do? This is exactly the kind of movie our young people need to see in today’s world that is filled with idiot celebrities pushing anti-American messages. If this movie inspires just one young American to join the military and make their life worthwhile, then Clint Eastwood’s film will be a resounding success.

At best, this should be addressed to the movie critic, and, at least to my eye, he was bringing an adult’s eye to the message of the movie. Still, it is foolish on my part to evaluate a critic’s review when I haven’t seen the movie, so at best, since no one reading this before Feb 9, 2018 will have seen it, it’s best to simply ignore it as tripe.

Just like the rest of this email.

When you’re outclassed, all you can do is sit down and take notes. And maybe get new equipment.

There’s more dancing than meets the eye in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994). It’s the story of two drag queens and a transsexual, traveling from Sydney to Alice Springs, Australia, in order to take a gig doing what they do best – lip-syncing and dancing to disco hits for audiences. They have a bus, which they name Priscilla, and it serves as transport, stage, and setting for their trip and their lives.

But the real dance here is their desperate tap to maintain their identities and sanity on the edge of a society that they need to survive, but has, at best, mixed feelings about them. Each has a story to tell.

Transsexual Bernadette’s search for a place and a husband (she begins the movie mourning her young husband’s death) takes her into a step mother role for the two drag queens, counseling, sometimes against her better judgment, them on the tricks of survival, both physical and emotional. She once had a long career as a ‘lay girl,’ and this is the resumption of this older woman’s career – and perhaps a return to her glory years.

Tick is called to Alice Springs on an ulterior motive, which he fears to reveal because it will lay bare a sordid past – at least in this company. A wife and child speak to the influence of traditional society, even on those despised by it, and a call for help and promise of a gig motivates him to leave home – and the support of the local community of what has come to be known as the LGBTQ – in order to pay fealty to that influence, even if unappreciated by most of society.

Adam is the young firebrand, embittered by society’s rejection and consequently embracing his lifestyle full on. One moment kicking society in the shins, the next retreating into the age-old tradition of alcohol and drugs to survive another night, Adam’s rejection by society is mirrored in his own rejection, spotty as it may be, of even his own companions. This is a drag queen with testosterone, and all the confusion that plagues young males of almost any species.

The trip isn’t just about covering geography, although that’s an important part of a trip across rugged, dangerous Australia. This trip is more about traveling the spectrum of society’s response to them as they are and wish to be – and how that threatens society. On one end of the dial, they experience a brutal rejection in a town where they invade – and win over – a local bar, only to find Priscilla terribly defaced with hate-filled words in the morning.

But, stranded by an engine failure in the midst of the Australian desert, they find the other end of the dial as they experience the simple acceptance of a local Aboriginal band who are throwing a party under the stars. This is an interesting scene, as the Aborigines are portrayed with eyes that are steady, accepting, and, in some nameless way, wise, while Adam, Tick, and Bernadette have eyes that are restless and, well, modern, darting about in ways signaling their concern about this society. But they volunteer to take part in the party by performing, and soon the disco beat of “I Will Survive” is echoing throughout the ancient hills as they gyrate in costumes to rival the Milky Way above, much to the amusement of the Aborigines.

And then the story-tellers add in a magical element: an Australian didgeridoo blends with the disco beat and Aboriginal chant to bring into the fold, into at least this society, our heroes and their way of life. The ancient, in the form of the Aborigines, has always had a whiff of ancient wisdom for Western ears, for good and bad, and the simplicity and deep bass pitch of the didgeridoo reinforces that impression, even if the actual tradition isn’t the ancient Western world. The blending of one of the newest of musical art forms with one of the oldest and, one would think, most incompatible of instruments, brings a lift to our protagonists, as they face the next day of an immobile bus. The scene is below, although extracted as it is from the full movie, the effect is diminished.

The Aborigines are not the only folks accepting of their lifestyle and choices, though, and Bob, the mechanic they find in a small town and who nursemaids their bus, symbolizes those parts of modern Western society who are transitioning from easy hatred to justifiable acceptance and, perhaps, understanding. Bob’s wife, though, indicates that there are still potholes on the way – and quite potent for our performers, who find that Bob’s wife’s performance is more popular than all three of them put together.

Eventually, they reach Alice Springs, do the gig, take care of the kid (a minor miracle in himself), and Bernadette decides a new challenge is in order for herself.

It’s an off-beat movie. There are no individual antagonists, only the resistance brought on by bigotry and xenophobia, and how it messes with the lives of the protagonists – and how they mess with it right back. In the process, we see how persistence, spirit, and creativity are the yeast in our lives – and how not all things come out as expected. And, fortunately, it also has fine technical aspects, and the acting is strong across the board.

Strongly Recommended. Even if you don’t like disco.

But North Korea? Yep, it’s available. From 38 North:

In late December, Will Scott, an American computer scientist who once taught at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), launched an ambitious effort to create an open library of North Korean software.

The site is called the “Korea Computer Center,” somewhat cheekily borrowing the name of Pyongyang’s main computer programming center. It features items from Scott’s collection of North Korean software, providing a rare opportunity for users to examine it first hand and learn more about the country’s IT infrastructure. It will also act as a depository for other users who might have North Korean software and devices to share information and deepen the open source understanding of the hardware and software ecosystem inside the country. …

However, much can be learned about North Korea’s domestic IT landscape from further examination of its software. For instance, the way that devices have been programmed to access the national intranet can tell us something about its structure and the security settings will provide detail on how much network-level surveillance takes place. For organizations interested in infiltrating North Korea with information, such data can be very valuable.

For the adventurous. If I was twenty years younger I’d probably delve…

When a partisan is hired as a journalist, it can upset an organization. Or so says Eric Wemple of the eponoymous blog on WaPo, as he discusses the performance of John Solomon, a recent hire at The Hill:

Solomon is among the best-traveled journalists around the Beltway. He has worked at the Associated Press, The Washington Post, the Washington Times, the Center for Public Integrity, Newsweek/The Daily Beast, the Washington Guardian, Circa and The Hill. As he moves around, he leaves an interesting trail for media reporters to follow. Last summer, for instance, Solomon announced that he was jumping from Circa, a general news site owned by the conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group, to The Hill. “The Hill’s spectacular rise as the leading outlet for political news coverage speaks to a far-reaching vision for digitally-powered growth,” Solomon said in a statement. “Joining The Hill team at this time, when the outlet is seeing just the first fruits of that vision, is an incredibly exciting opportunity. I’m looking forward to working with some of today’s most talented journalists to create a new political genre for the mobile generation, providing unmatched, non-partisan political news and bipartisan shows in the digital formats they love.”

Employees at The Hill would take issue with the “non-partisan” promise. According to sources consulted by this blog, there’s frustration that Solomon appears so tight with Hannity, the prime-time Trump apologist who has admitted straight-up that he’s no journalist. Over the past three months, Solomon has turned in a dozen or so appearances on “Hannity.” The TV hits may be good for traffic at TheHill.com, though the implications for up-and-coming journalists at the publication are less salutary: Their employer comes off as a propaganda mill.

I’m not sure what to make of it – but, according to Eric, some of Solomon’s worst stories have electrified the conservative media world to no good effect. I’ll be interested in hearing how this all comes out in the wash – if it ever comes out at all.

Are you wondering why North Korea has suddenly warmed up diplomatic ties with South Korea? Stephen Blank of 38 North has an answer for you:

Trump administration officials insist that the “military option” is needed to make North Korea abandon its nuclear weapons because, according to National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, it is unacceptable for North Korea to possess a single nuclear weapon that could strike the United States. Under these circumstances, and since the DPRK’s government has never been suicidal, it should have been predictable that once the regime proclaimed itself satisfied with its nuclear deterrent that it would seek outside political opportunities to defuse the tension. This is exactly what occurred when Kim Jong Un, in his 2018 New Year’s speech, launched a diplomatic initiative towards South Korea. Equally unsurprisingly, the two sides after only one day of negotiations agreed for North Korea to participate in the Olympics, reinstated the hotline at the 38^th parallel, and agreed to further military-to-military talks.

This is the North Koreans cooling off a situation in which they’ve taken advantage of an inexperienced American leadership, obtained their goal, and are now in the end game. Stephen goes further:

… we are repeatedly told that North Korea and its leader cannot be deterred, that the regime will collapse if pushed hard enough, and that Kim Jong Un is crazy and irrational. Yet there is no evidence for any of these arguments—or at least none that has been offered to Congress or the public. On the contrary, claiming that deterrence won’t work is belied by 65 years of prudential North Korean statecraft that demonstrates the regime’s understandings of the limits it cannot cross. And despite the perfervid moralism of those who still believe that we can simply crush evil in the world by dint of our superior virtue (another argument used in favor of invading Iraq), preventive war against North Korea lacks both strategic and moral justification given the number of ROK, US, North Korean, and possibly Japanese casualties likely to occur during an armed conflict and probable Chinese intervention. Moreover, the signs that we are about to launch a preventive war would be so numerous, visible, and time consuming that they would forfeit surprise and could provoke Pyongyang to attack first.

Right. This is the conservative strategy of frightening the base. The GOP thinks it still has military cred, and perhaps the conservative base still believes it – despite the blunders of the Bush Administration in Iraq, where they never should have gone, and Afghanistan, where it’s increasingly clear that we probably should have left as soon as possible, evacuating any Afghanis who wished to leave with us.

But this also caught my attention:

Finally, we have for too long chased the illusion that we could induce Russia or China to pull our chestnuts out of the fire when over a decade of their policies shows that they blame Washington more than Pyongyang for this crisis and regard North Korea as an asset to their policy of reducing US power and presence in Asia. They may oppose a North Korea’s nuclear program because it allows Pyongyang to escape their control and conduct an independent policy that could trigger a war. But they have covertly and sometimes overtly abetted its proliferation for years and continue doing so even while supporting sanctions to curb North Korea’s independence.

Stephen then explores fairly conventional explanations for Chinese behavior. I’d like to move a little bit outside of those conventions, informed by recent Chinese ambitions in artificial intelligence and other areas, as well as the historical context of China.

We may not generally recognize it, but we remain in a contest of governmental systems. The collapse of the Soviet Union, widely heralded as total victory for the West, more or less ignored the sleeping monster that was Communist China. Well, the monster is awakening – they have a bustling consumer sector, their rural poor are moving into the cities where they can be better utilized by the government, and basically the war is on.

A cardinal tenet of Western thought on Communism is that it cannot provide for its citizens – thus the empty shelves which became emblematic of the Soviet regime. Yet, in China, that’s increasingly a false observation. But China doesn’t want to fight an actual war with the United States, it just wants to move it out of the way as it snaps up its traditional objects of desire, such as islands in the South China Sea. How to do it?

Harass the United States through client states, especially in this period of critically inferior American leadership. There should not be one iota of doubt that Trump and his team simply do not have what it takes to run an effective foreign policy that can block China and Russia. It doesn’t matter whether the President is an amateur or if he’s actually been compromised by the Russians – he’s just not got what it takes.

So how can China take advantage of it? By letting North Korea run wild, basically. North Korean defiance in combination with the doomsday jargon of the Trump Administration leaves the liberal democracy of the United States looking less than dewy-fresh, and other countries will take notice. The Philippines has already elected an autocrat who openly boasts of his crimes. How much more will the world tilt against the liberal democracy approach in favor of autocratic regimes such as those in Russia and, yes, China, just because we elected an inferior President?

We’ll have to wait to find out.

A reader remarks on the character of Senator Flake and his cohort:

The problem might be many or most members of the body he was addressing (including himself?) might not really give a damn about democracy, as long as they “have theirs.” When you’re wealthy and powerful, who needs democracy?

I suppose it’s possible, but, if so, we’re probably doomed. Nor have I seen any formal moves to extinguish democracy, only the gutter full of informal moves to suppress those who might vote “the wrong way”.

I suspect it has more to do with funding, oddly enough. While many members are wealthy, the requirements of a successful run for Senate are overwhelming for a relatively small millionaire^[1]. But the Mercers and the Kochs have enough billions to finance these second-raters several times over – and so they dance to their tune. Add in those conservatives horrified at the advances of the past years – I suspect Flake falls into that category – and we see the result today. The donors set a deadline for ACA replacement and changes to the tax structure, and off the bunnies went, eager to satisfy their masters.

I wonder how they feel about public financing of elections. Leave the donors out in the cold. I suppose SCOTUS would frown on it, though.

¹The days of Senator Proxmire (D-WI), who served 1957 to 1989, and his fabled $250 budget for re-election are long gone. Hmmmm, don’t see a reference for that anywhere. I remember reading about it during his career.

Katherine Martinko on Treehugger.com reports on a new retail model for clothing:

The fast fashion industry is notoriously bad for the environment. It is a top consumer of resources and energy, and a main source of landfill waste. Many eco-minded shoppers have sworn off fast fashion because they do not feel comfortable supporting an industry that treats clothing as disposable.

For the shoppers who make this decision, the only real alternatives are thrift stores and independent, eco-friendly labels, both of which are great, but have some downsides — namely, the limited selection at thrift stores and the high price tags on sustainable brands.

Now, however, some innovative entrepreneurs have come up with alternative ways to support the fashion industry. The following three companies specialize in sharing and borrowing high-quality fashion items through subscription services, which is exactly what the recent report on fashion by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation said needs to happen. Learn how they do it.

As the population swells and those who are on top continue to swill down the most in resources, those of us who are not must find ways to cope – and this seems to be one of them. Rental clothing reduces the number of clothes society must produce to clothe us while increasing our closet space.

And then they make it feel cool, as they must. And should.

Steve Benen chronicles the history of threats of government shutdown due to funding, as we’re facing today. I was unaware that it was that extensive. WaPo has a comment from the governing party:

“We have one real responsibility here, and that’s to keep the government funded,” said Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), a member of the House Appropriations Committee. “There’s a lot of stuff we want to do or we’d like to do, but there’s one thing we must do and that’s to pass a budget and keep the government funded. And it is very frustrating that simple, basic task has become such a herculean effort.”

There’s a clue in Representative Dent’s lament. Then, from the opposition:

Added Sen. Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.): “I think it makes us all look terrible and it calls into question whether a democratic republic like the one we live in can actually govern itself in a predictable way.”

As a software engineer, sometimes it really pays to go back to basics when working on a problem, and I think perhaps it’s worth doing this hear. Keep in mind that a significant problem in the House has been the intransigence of the Freedom Caucus, a band of Tea Party right-wing extremists who were instrumental in the oustering of Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) from his post as Speaker, which led to the resignation of his seat. There general philosophy is to cut government spending.

Senator Bennet’s woes concern the lack of predictability of Congress. Predictability relates to the inputs to some process and how the process produces the outputs. What are the inputs on Capitol Hill? Well, for Bennet, it’s Democrats and Republicans and their respective agendas.

But I don’t think so.

For me, it’s implicit in the previous paragraphs, and close observers of Congress should be aware of this. It’s Democrats, Republicans, and the Tea Party. They may be cruising under the flag of the Republicans, but their agenda, particularly financial, is at divergence with the GOP. They are the fiercely extremist-conservative. Like any group of people, they do share certain views with the Republicans. No doubt they share views with the Democrats.

But in the end, if you want to be able to predict the results of Congress, you need to understand that the reality is that we’re currently in a three-party system, and the minority Tea Party holds a lot of power. This is not only because the Republicans and Democrats are far apart in their set of goals, leaving the Tea Party with leverage when the Republicans are a little short, but also because the Tea Party is currently under false colors. People don’t understand that the Tea Party is arguably its own Party and not just a faction of the GOP. Currently they have the resources of the GOP at their disposal, if only they can get their candidates on the ballot under the flag of the GOP – and, so far, they have been very good at that. They’ve toppled Boehner, Representative Eric Cantor (R-VA), who was House Majority Leader when he was ousted in a primary by Tea Party member Dave Brat, and many others.

It would probably be a lot healthier for everyone – but the Tea Party – if the GOP just kicked them out and made them run under their own name.

And their own results.

A reader is discouraged at the blame game in Washington in connection with the possible government shutdown:

The GOP got its message out first and more loudly, and its adherents are more likely to believe that message. So it doesn’t matter that the truth is the GOP is screwing the children worse than the Democrats; the GOP has again won the propaganda war in the minds of the largely illiterate populace of this country.

Later:

Yup, and MPR reported this morning that if the government shuts down, it will be the minority Dems who caused it. With friends like that, who needs enemies?

So the reader appears, inadvertently, to be in the same camp as MPR.

What’s to be done? Direct outcry, I think. Has the reader called up MPR and complained vociferously? Perhaps made it onto one of the several talk-shows to strongly suggest that the MPR reporters should get both sides of the story? Share posts such as mine on Facebook?

Sometimes the truth must be shouted from the rooftops.