Monthly Archives: February 2018

Feckless:

1. ineffective; incompetent; futile:
   feckless attempts to repair the plumbing.
2. having no sense of responsibility; indifferent; lazy. [Dictionary.com]

Used by my Arts Editor as we discussed French Impressionists:

They were rather feckless.

Loving Vincent (2017) is a novelty movie concealing a rather darn good story. The story is about the events surrounding the death of Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh, the early Impressionist artist who, obscure during his lifetime, cut off one of his ears and eventually committed suicide. The motivation driving this movie isn’t the story, good as it is, but the desire to bring van Gogh’s artistic style into a movie. To that end, 100 and more artists hand-painted every single frame of the movie (minus the ending credits, I think).

The story is told from the viewpoint of the son of a French postmaster who had known Vincent, and has come into possession of a letter addressed to Vincent. Knowing Vincent had a brother, Theo, the postmaster gives his son, Armand, the task of delivering the letter to Theo. Armand grumpily agrees.

Upon arriving at Theo’s address, however, he finds the man died months ago, and the family has moved away. He has one clue: a Dr. Gachet, who was treating Vincent’s psychological condition, may know the address of the widow of Theo. Armand had met Vincent briefly, and thus takes it upon himself to visit the scene of Vincent’s death, visit Dr. Gachet, and investigate a little bit.

Characters are vividly drawn and the story is told through flashbacks, enacting key scenes in Vincent’s life, letting us see the man behind the artist. Contradiction is piled on confusion as characters bring their own needs and viewpoints into the mix. This isn’t a retelling so much as a mystery – was it murder, accident, or suicide?

But the real stars here are the endless paintings making up the movie, some so thick with paint as to distort the scenery, others, indicating flashbacks, nearly photo-realistic in their careful renderings. My Arts Editor had a single word for the effort: Gorgeous. (Me? I actually got a little queasy. But this should be put down to illness.)

Fascinating visual treatment and a darn good story to boot? How can I not?

Recommended.

As cryptocurrencies get a lot of attention, this report in NewScientist (27 January 2018) certainly does nothing to encourage me to buy any bitcoins:

Decentralisation is key to cryptocurrencies, because there is no Federal Reserve or European Central Bank to lend legitimacy to the cause. Instead, decentralised networks authenticate transactions so no individual user has the power to manipulate the process, but everyone has the power to check it.

Emin Gün Sirer at Cornell University in New York and his colleagues monitored the bitcoin and ethereum networks from 2015 to 2017 to see how decentralisation was faring. “There is a lot of noise made about decentralisation, and then when you look at it, it’s not all that decentralised,” Sirer says. On top of this, bitcoin has halved in value since last month, with other cryptocurrencies having similar declines.

With bitcoin, the top four miners control more than half of the computational power of the bitcoin network, called the “hash share”. With ethereum, a well-established cryptocurrency that uses smart online contracts, more than 60 per cent of the computational power is controlled by only three miners. These may be individual miners or groups of people who share their processing power.

This is dangerous, because any person or group with a hash share of 51 per cent or more could potentially game the system by either censoring other users’ bitcoin transactions – making sure that they can’t send or receive currency – or by double-spending their own coins, according to Garrick Hileman at the University of Cambridge.

Or, as they point out, welcome back to central banking – with none of the governmental oversight.

Is this suggestive that we cannot replace that function of government, tainted as it is with human corruption potential, with the clean objectivity of algorithms? Well, honestly, I have no idea – one data point doesn’t make for an argument.

Except there is a second data point. There have been observations that certain AI applications are exhibiting sexist or racist behaviors when it comes to situations where humans might be sexist or racist as well. This is put down to the data used to train the artificial intelligence.

As ever, our constructs are vulnerable to corruption, as they are our inventions – which means we need to monitor them, just as we monitor ourselves.

I can just see the “common-sense” man shaking his head at the report that scientists adorned praying mantis (surely one of the greatest pun-names every constructed) with glasses. What a waste of money, I can hear muttered.

Well, sorry. They discovered something. From The Verge, who can probably produce a better interpretation of the scholarly paper than I can:

Photo: Newcastle University, UK

Praying mantises willing to wear 3D glasses and sit through bizarre, abstract movies have revealed a new way of seeing the world in three dimensions. The findings could help improve machine vision for robots that need to judge distance, like drones. But most of all, thanks to this research, we now know what bug-eyed mantises look like in glasses: adorable.

These carnivorous — frequently, cannibalistic — insects are well known for their pious posture, and the female’s habit of devouring her mate after sex. Praying mantises also have an unusual perspective for a bug: they’re the only insect we know of that can see in 3D, like we can. But figuring out how their bug-brains judge distance has been a challenge, because you can’t exactly ask a mantis to describe what it’s seeing. So scientists developed what they call a “3D insect cinema” and the bug versions of 3D glasses to test mantis vision. They discovered that mantis brains tune out confusing background information to judge distance to a moving target, according to a paper published Thursday in the journal Current Biology.

That’s completely different from how our own brains sense depth. To create a 3D perception out of each eye’s slightly different 2D picture of the world, the human brain has to merge both images. By comparing where the images match and where they differ, the brain can calculate what’s nearby and what’s far away. But if the images differ too much — like if one eye is seeing a picture of a forest and another is looking at a car on a road — that merging process breaks down.

A discovering with immediate application, if we can only implement it.

The silliest studies can surprise you, can’t they? Worth keeping an open mind.

Gallimaufry:

A confused jumble or medley of things.
‘a glorious gallimaufry of childhood perceptions’ [Oxford English Dictionaries]

Noted in “Identity U.” Heather Mac Donald, City Journal:

As vice chancellor of student affairs and campus diversity at UC Davis, de la Torre presided over a division made up of a whopping 28 departments—not academic departments, but bureaucratic and identity-based ones, such as the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual Resource Center; the Center for African Diaspora Student Success; the Center for Chicanx and Latinx Student Success; the Native American Academic Student Success Center; the Middle Eastern/South Asian Student Affairs Office; the Women’s Resources and Research Center; the Undocumented Student Center; Retention Initiatives; the Office of Educational Opportunity and Enrichment Services; and the Center for First-Generation Student Scholars. This gallimaufry of identity-based fiefdoms illustrates the symbiosis between an artificially segmented, identity-obsessed student body and the campus bureaucracy: the more that students carve themselves into micro-groups claiming oppressed status, the more pretext there is for new cadres of administrators to shield them from oppression.

From WaPo:

In a call center, somewhere on Earth, a telephone rang. John picked up. On the other end of the line was a man who spoke in a preposterously fake Russian accent and introduced himself as “Vicktor Viktoor,” which was not his real name.

It’s very possible that John used a fake name, too, as the call center was in actuality an Internet scam headquarters — something “Vicktor” knew very well, though he had no intention of telling John right away.

Not for hours, if he could help it.

Yep, waste scammers’ time. I’ve been contemplating constructing an interview form for use with scammers. When a scammer calls about my computer, the idea is to override their desires and begin answering questions. Perhaps give them a ‘promise’ that once the interview is over, they may ask their questions, but in the meantime, Mr … Jones, for purely statistical purposes, I need to know your age? Income level? Educational level?

See how far I can drag it out.

I once asked a scammer if his mother was ashamed of what he was doing. He said he was very ashamed, but he was desperate for money. Persistent.

(It helps to think of The Muppets Show, at least for the rhythm.)

These are not attached to the roofline, but rather to the ivy branches encrusting my neighbors garage.

Not all that impressive, sure. But unusual.

In news that has been rattling around for a week, SCOTUS refused to hear a GOP appeal from Pennsylvania lawmakers regarding a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that Pennsylvania districts have been gerrymandered and must be redrawn immediately. Their response?

Talk about impeaching the judges. Paste Magazine reports:

Pennsylvania Senate President pro tempore and Republican Joseph Scarnati told the state supreme court on January 31 that he would openly defy the court’s recent ruling on gerrymandering.

A letter from Scarnati’s legal counsel states that Scarnati will not be complying with the court order. The statement reads, “Senator Scarnati will not be turning over any data identified in the Court’s Orders.” Scarnati’s previously said that his defiance was due to his belief that the court’s January 22 order “violates the U.S. Constitution’s Elections Clause.”

Yesterday, pollster Matt McDermott tweeted a screenshot of an email from Pennsylvania Republican Cris Dush that was sent to all Pennsylvania House members. In the email, Dush calls for the impeachment of the state supreme court members that found the state’s congressional map unconstitutional.

The email reads:

The five justices who signed this order that blatantly and clearly contradicts the plain language of the Pennsylvania Constitution, engaged in misbehavior in office. Wherefore, each is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting removal from office and disqualification to hold any office or trust or profit under this Commonwealth. I would ask you to please join me in co-sponsoring this legislation.

Does the legislature have the right of interpretation of the law? No, by design the judiciary has that right and responsibility. Impeachment is typically for bad behavior.

How this turns out for both the judges and, later, the GOP should be quite interesting.

But more interesting is that, according to Carolyn Fiddler on The Daily Kos,

Supreme Court elections in Pennsylvania are partisan … Subsequent elections for these justices will be “retention” (yes-no) elections, which incumbents very rarely lose, so open seats present the only real opportunity for either party to gain seats.

So rather than select hopefully non-partisan judges who take their responsibilities seriously and needn’t worry about their job security so long as they act like adults, we have judges who are keenly aware that an unpopular judgment could end their careers. I don’t say a bad judgment, but an unpopular judgment. Just let biased “media” who would prefer some other, more malleable creature in the seat, and a PA Supreme Court judge may find themselves the target of a hate campaign.

I’ve discussed the election of judges before, starting here, or just run a search on “Yulee” to find more discussion. I’ve come down on appointed for either lifetime or for an unmodifiable period of time; the practice of selecting judges through voting seems like madness in a system which requires some form of disinterested law interpretation.

Wait, you made me do what?

A large, darkened room, filled by an elegantly dressed audience of men and women, seated in rows. The huge screen, in front of them. The shadows it’s destined to host begin their flicker.

The first hiss of a shocked, in-drawn breath, the enlarged pupils of the eyes, the clutching at the arm of a neighbor.

“Oh, my God, I’m in this?”

The squirming starts, as every member of the audience begins to realize they’ve been part of a travesty. And then, heralded by the tittering that sweeps through the crowd, a transition comes. A hairy hand tries and fails to cover cackle. And then the horse-laugh.

And now, as unstoppable waves of hilarity sweep through the helpless audience, the director of the shadows on the screen begins to weep, his dream mocked. Soon, the big bully of a man leaves, his sight in the dark auditorium fractured by his tears.

And salvation comes in the form of his once-best and only friend, who trots out into the lobby to find the man who tried to ruin his life. In the face of the director’s incoherent lamentations concerning the treatment of his dream, this autobiographical film, he has a simple rejoinder.

“You hear that? D’you hear that? Do you think Hitchcock ever achieved that?”

As they return to the auditorium, the lights come up and the audience stands for an ovation, of their director and themselves, in a horrifyingly successful conclusion to a tremendously fore-doomed flop, for it’s the opening for the supposedly autobiographical cult classic The Room (2003), the first movie by Tommy Wiseau.

This is The Disaster Artist (2017), which is all about how mystery man Tommy Wiseau made his first movie, from his recognition that you have to be the best you can be, to the agonizing realization that his best, as an actor, would not be enough to get him in the door of any studio to make a movie, and then back up the rollercoaster again as he determines to make a movie himself. Drawing on mysterious resources and a bottomless pit of self-confidence and arrogance, that movie gets written and made, destroying relationships and many other unnameable things in the process – and, soon enough, perhaps Tommy himself.

This is the sort of movie, if you choose to go, that may chase you from the theater, as both my Arts Editor and myself agreed afterwards. There are parts that are predictably painful. But persevere.

Because it gets worse. Several times it gets worse. You’ll wonder if that was a prosthetic or a paper bag. And then it gets worse. And the predictability disappears. And all along, the WTF factor keeps going up. Because why the hell is Seth Rogen and James Franco in this movie? Why is J. J. Abrams IN this movie. I mean, What The Fuck?

In the end, this is an enormously painful, probably honest, and yet affectionate gesture from Hollywood to one of their own, for pursuing and achieving his artistic dream – and then transforming it into something else.

It’s not quite Recommended, but if you’ve seen The Room or are interested in the artistic process, or just want to see artistic madness before the warts are shaved off, this is quite the example.

Meta-punning:

Literally, a pun about a pun, meta-punning occurs when a pun is attempted, but the purveyor of the pun realizes the pun stretches the boundaries of the material of the pun beyond its capacity to absorb, and so the purveyor then attempts to absolve themselves of the pun’s failure by making a pun about the failure, or more precisely about why the material “stretched out of shape” by the pun could not properly contain the pun’s structure. [Hue’s Defiant Imagination]

Sadly, I have forgotten the example my Arts Editor and I made up.

One of my more conservative friends who received my post concerning the closed conservative mind replied nearly immediately; I apologize for not publishing and responding as quickly, and plead illness as my excuse.

I’d like to say beforehand that his definition of tribalism and mine are not congruent. I pointed this out and offered to await a revision of his response in light of my definition, but he declined and agreed his initial response could be published.

You may not be looking for a lengthy response, but I disagree with so much of what you say.

First, tribalism is not wrong. It is inevitable. It is even good. We all have some idea of who is “us” and who is “them”. These “tribes” overlap and come in many forms – engineers, Americans, tall people, men, christians, corvair lovers. Most tribes are trivial, some vital. One form of tribe is “family”. I don’t think that you can make a case that treating family better/differently than “outsiders” is “wrong”. Duty and responsibility to family holds society together. That tribalism gives us small groups that take care of each other, and provide a measure of discipline more than any government can do.

As mentioned, our definitions of tribalism are different. This I have no disagreement with, provided that leaders do not replace the functions of truth and honor. That is, they should be expected to measure up to the highest standards of truth and honor, not define the meanings of those words. This might be the central lesson of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

The idea that the media is about “truth” is ridiculous. It has never been, and never will be. Throughout history there are numerous stories that have been pushed by “media” that were self serving, malevolent, or pure propaganda. Media in this country exists to make money. This is true even of “public” media, because they serve their donors, and their donors have opinions. It is the job of the citizen to sift through the chaff to get to the wheat. It has always been so, and will always be so.

If the media as truth seekers is silly, then why have a free press at all? Is it all so ridiculous to seek a media which transmits the full facts of a situation, and purveys clearly labeled editorial content as well? That stories are told is both undeniable and highly desirable, given how most human minds function, but the best are fully informed by all the facts, and if they suggest a certain point of view over another, they should do so in a manner testable by the common audience.

The identification of certain past stories as defective and even malevolent, whether they’re from the Fox News of today or by the yellow journalists of WR Hearst encouraging the Spanish-American War does nothing to evaluate the contention under examination; indeed, given human inclination towards errors in their endeavours, it can be seen as a sign that, per normal, we may fall short, but we should continue to strive for that perfection we so happily envision.

However, it’s critical to differentiate between defective and malevolent. The former, so long as it’s recognized as a problem and processes are developed to remediate and remove defective stories, are of limited concern – and if those responses are not undertaken, I should hope the publication is deserted by its readers and soon shutters its doors.

But I worry about the deliberately malevolent stories, as we often see them today. The specialized technician, by which I mean journalist, has the tools to recognize such stories for what they are. Organizations such as Media Matters are in fact specializing such work (although it’s a poor example, as they apparently only watch conservative media, rather than all media, which I would prefer).

But the general audience? I honestly belief that the average audience member does not have the capacity to search out and absorb the information necessary to form judgments about media stories. We are not rational creatures, after all, merely creatures capable of rationality; many of us are controlled by our emotions, which can be deliciously played on by stories in the media written by actors who want specific reactions. That these actors are not acting as ethical journalists is not and should not be expected by members of the free press.

The idea that the Russians did something bad and “interfered” in our election is just silly. Nations try to do “marketing” all the time. They always have, and always will. They often want to push an ideology, like the US did with Radio Free Europe and VOA. Are you going to tell me that VOA was improperly “meddling” in other nations? I thought we – as a nation – (tribe?) believed in free expression and free press. Are American’s prohibited from trying to influence people beyond our borders? Are foreigners prohibited from influencing us? It is illegal for Russian Jews to lobby for help to emigrate from the Soviet Union. Really?

Indeed. In the competition between nations / government systems, one must ask if the same ethical system applies as within each country. Perhaps the ethical system of the Soviet Union should have applied, rather than the United States? I do not see how to properly select one over the other; the fact of the matter is that there is often an existential war, declared or not, progressing between borders, and applying our intra-country ethical system to it seems like a fool’s task. We (for the most part) believe that our system is best, and so we broadcast it, clearly labeled, and we believe there’s is antithetical to ours. Since then we’ve seen the Soviet Union collapse, but now Russia attempts to meddle in our system without attribution.

Our notions of free press originated in a nation into which foreign information penetrated only after traveling an ocean in a dubious sailing ship; perhaps free press needs some change, although I’d indulge in such an exercise only after the consumption of alcohol :). I believe it was developed as a way to strengthen our nation and assumed the agencies would be American; nowadays, they are often international corporations, and sometimes I do actually wonder if that was a wise thing to do, although generally I dismiss those notions using arguments concerning the grave importance of having multiple sources of foreign information – for the same reason we have multiple press organizations.

And, yes, many nations prohibit private American citizens and public American servants from meddling in their politics, as I suspect do we. Whether it’s right or wrong is another question.

The goals of Russia and the United States are not congruent, they are in conflict, at least in my amateur’s view of the situation – which accords with many experts as well. Convincing enough Americans to vote against the hard-ass Clinton vs a Trump who appears to be quite concerned about keeping the Russians happy through subversive means is not a use of the free press (which will ideally try to deliver stories with correct and full facts), because these stories will generate certain emotions in the vulnerable reader while using false facts (a phrase I’ve always found uncomfortable) and omitting true facts, all in the search for turning a voter against the undesired candidate. The fact that the voter lacks the resources to check the facts of all stories makes them vulnerable. See below, also.

I think not. It is the duty of the citizen to sift through the propaganda and find the truth. I believe in the free marketplace of ideas, and trying to stop ideas and information from crossing national borders is a fool’s errand. I go farther and suggest that information from “foreign sources” is necessary and valuable. For instance, Al Jazeera should have a place on cable, if it wants. How else do we get a window on the arab media?

But the reference to al-Jazeera is a red herring, is it not? In the ‘market’ of the free press, there is an assumption that each organization has a relatively limited funding source which will run dry, or be withheld, if they fail to attract an audience, and that the audience will demand high quality journalism. My understanding is that al-Jazeera is exactly that. But Russian meddling had no motivation for quality, because quality would ill-serve their goals; the audience merely had to be convinced that the “news” is true when it’s not. A malevolent agency backed by government funding is on a different playing field.

I covered the loss of Al-Jazeera America here. When I want news these days from the Middle East, long time readers know I go to AL Monitor. Back before the Internet, I read World Press Review avidly, but its website is not as interesting as the magazine, sad to say.

Byt the same token the Meuller “investigation” is misguided. Even if it were found that Trump had weekly meetings with Putin and talked over the Russian’s Facebook ads, I don’t think law enforcement should be involved. Next election, I would have some hard questions to ask the candidates, but it is not a legal issue. In this country we have freedom of expression, and the voters decide.  That implies that we trust the electorate. That implies that the electorate carries a major burden – to be wise, and diligent. If wisdom and diligence fail, we are in a world of hurt.

Two points.

1. The Mueller investigation should be digging for facts, the bedrock by which this all operates. These are facts that may not be available to even the most diligent news agency, because to acquire those facts requires legal capabilities reserved for Special Counsels. The free press becomes involved when those facts (or, perhaps, legal assertions) are made publicly available, for confirmation (if possible) and analysis (factual) and analysis (editorial). So, in fact the Mueller investigation serves the public and free press interests.
2. As part of educating the voters and enhancing their diligence, the Mueller investigation is not mis-guided – it’s critical.

I do not believe that application of force, either via prosecutors, FBI agents, new laws, etc, will make up for a failure of the electorate. If we, as a nation (tribe?) fail to carry our burdens, and follow fashion and passion rather than wisdom and truth, it is the electorate that has failed. If the electorate rules, then we’re in trouble.

But the FBI and other law enforcement agencies are not foreign entities – they are tools of the American government and public for discerning what is happening. If law-breaking occurs, they must properly make the proper arrests and bring the proper information to the judiciary for final disposition. As cadres of specialized investigators, what is wrong with using them to check on the behavior of our proposed and current leaders? In fact, the suggestion that we not use the FBI leaves me a little chilled, as it suggests (although I doubt my reader meant to) that the President should not be constrained by the laws which constrain the rest of us.

I believe as Winston Churchill did. He once said (paraphrased) : America will always do the Right Thing, once they have tried everything else.

I’d love to join the reader in that belief, but old WC also responsible for the Gallipoli Campaign during World War I, an awful disaster for the Allies, so I try not to mistake WC for being particularly wise – just very quotable.

That said, the close reporting on the President, the investigations, the recognition of the closure of the conservative mind and its manipulation by malevolent actors and the attempts to break those closures, this is all part of the Americans trying to do the Right Thing. It’s what I worry about and gnaw on and worry the rest of us might also be attracted to such closed ways of thinking – in a world moving so fast that sometimes a single unfortunate error has no potential for recovery from.

And so I hope what I am doing helps us all do the Right Thing. By waking up minds to bad thinking, be they on the right or the left.

In a separate mail, the same reader sends:

Speaking of tribes….

https://www.city-journal.org/html/identity-u-15701.html

I’ve glanced at the first couple of paragraphs, but haven’t time to read it now. It looks like another out-of-control college, maybe.

Courtesy Gloria Copeland:

An evangelical minister who advised President Donald Trump’s campaign sparked an uproar Tuesday by suggesting that Christian faith makes people immune from the flu.

Texas minister Gloria Copeland, who sat on the Trump campaign’s evangelical executive advisory board, denied the country is in the midst of a severe flu outbreak in a Facebook video that went viral because, “Jesus himself is our flu shot. He redeemed us from the curse of the flu.”

Only because I mentioned Notre Dame’s reaction to changes to the ACA before do I bring this to your attention:

Notre Dame has decided to ban “abortion-inducing drugs” from third-party-provided insurance plans. It will also begin providing coverage for “simple contraceptives” in the university plan.* The move was announced in a letter from its president, Father John Jenkins, to the university community on Wednesday. …

Many students and faculty were angry when Notre Dame indicated it would end coverage for birth control, arguing that it would create an enormous financial burden for them. Likewise, many conservative Catholic alumni and community members were outraged when the school agreed to continue coverage, pointing out that the use of birth control is against Church teachings; one advocacy group called it “a dark time for Notre Dame.” The latest decision likely won’t leave critics on either side happy, since it limits access to certain drugs but reaffirms the decision to allow coverage of birth control—and moves coverage under the authority of the university, rather a third party.

Notre Dame sees this latest move as a compromise. It will discontinue the government provision of drugs through a third-party administrator, and it will also provide funding for natural-planning options. While ending access to all contraception “would allow the university to be free of involvement with drugs that are morally objectionable in Catholic teaching,” Jenkins wrote in his letter, it would place a burden on many people who rely on the school for health-care benefits. [The Atlantic]

They say that a good compromise leaves no one happy, and that’s a good thing. It occurs to me there’s another positive to compromises that leave everyone unhappy – it gives everyone a chance to evaluate whether those portions of their policy preferences that are implemented actually lead to positive results, and, analogously, if the opposition’s implemented portion lead to negative results.

In other words, it’s a very crude laboratory experiment.

But there is a constraint: this only works in situations where people connect their policies with projected tangible results. Notre Dame is connected with the Catholic Church, a religious institution, and it’s never been entirely clear to me if the ban on abortion, which apparently is not mentioned in the Bible (according to this HuffPost article), is called for as a propitiation of Jehovah, the Christian God, or as some sort of positive result in American life. The latter would be testable; the former, from my point of view, just gobbledygook.

It also requires honest search for truth, rather than blind adherence to rules, and perhaps an interesting argument over whether some particular change in society is good, bad, or just random.

In any case, I really only meant to mention that the University of Notre Dame continues to do the dance of compromise in connection with the ACA.

Readers continue to react to stock market gyrations:

I watched Mad Money with Jim Kramer last night. He blamed the blowup on VIX (volatility index funds). Sounded to me like total vapor ware. They make money not by buying real stocks, but by buying VIX ETFs. Basically betting on volatility of stock trading.

Maybe it’s like popcorn volatility. The stock market crashes so I have popcorn more often (emotional eating) and I figure many other people do the same thing. This creates a greater demand for popcorn. So I should buy popcorn stock.

https://www.marketwatch.com/…/jim-cramer-blames-a-group…

Makes sense. I’ll mention that to my financial advisor. There are days when I wonder if the stock market is ever used for its original purpose. Another:

Wild stock market drops don’t just hurt the big money wall street types (when they even do that, since many are hedged or short, etc.). A lot of small people have savings, retirements, etc. in the market, including me.

Roughly 50% of Americans are thought to have money in the stock market, and so we’re all riding the waves. Thing is, since the Great Recession we hadn’t seen a correction, so those investors who started since then haven’t had the visceral reaction of watching 10% – or more – of their investment funds disappear. The first time that happens can be quite disturbing, especially if you (generically speaking) didn’t follow the general rule of investing only money that you won’t need in 5 years.

Yesterday? The Dow was all over the place, but closed up 1.38% for the day.

You may have heard of the Rob Porter scandal, the guy who apparently abused his two wives big-time, and then was hired by the Trump Administration and, despite their knowledge of the accusations and divorces and myriad evidence to back the allegations, marked him for promotion, a fair haired boy.

You may not have yet heard this:

Rachel L. Brand, the No. 3 official at the Justice Department, plans to step down after nine months on the job as the country’s top law enforcement agency has been under attack by President Trump, according to two people briefed on her decision.

Ms. Brand’s profile had risen in part because she is next in the line of succession behind the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, who is overseeing the special counsel’s inquiry into Russian influence in the 2016 election. Mr. Trump, who has called the investigation a witch hunt, has considered firing Mr. Rosenstein. [The New York Times]

Both of these are significant. Ms. Brand, as she’s been appointed by both Democratic and Republican Administrations, may be considered one of those people we really need in government, ideologically-neutral in her job and understanding the importance of being so, along with being a highly competent lawyer, etc etc. Her loss is a signal of the deterioration of the Trump Administration.

But there may be something more to the Porter scandal than we’ll ever know, if you’ll permit me to transition into paranoia mode. Here’s the central question puzzling everyone: Stipulating his ex-wives contentions and that key players in the Administration, possibly but not necessarily including the President, knew of the accusations, then the central question is Why was he selected for such an important position (staff secretary handles darn near everything and acts as a gatekeeper to the President)?

Let’s take a hint from the troubles the Administration was having obtaining a security clearance for him. What was the problem? His wives were telling the FBI that he was violent enough that the very violence he had inflicted on them could be used as blackmail in order to control him.

Roll those words around in your mouth and feel them: control him. Blackmail.

I could very easily see those currently in control of the GOP seeing Porter not as a liability, but as a very useful tool: young, smart, proper training and credentials, ambitious, perhaps charismatic – and a real character flaw that could be used to control him.

What a catch. (What dicks!)

Fortunately, this all came public and his public career is probably – almost certainly – finished. Unless some damn fool Congress lets Trump rewrite the libel laws.

Does this all sound far-fetched to you? It’s not as far-fetched as a failed real estate developer and successful reality-show host becoming President by subverting the most overtly moral group of Americans despite infidelities, lies, and none-too-humble boasting.

OK, you make up a story to answer that central question.

There’s two things I like about Greg Fallis’ latest composition. First, his use of semi-stochastic (sorry, real scientists) unplanned composition:

I walk a lot. Most days, I try to take a lazy two or three mile walk. During that walk I’ll occasionally shoot a photo or two with my phone. I usually delete them. Last week, as I was deleting photos, I noticed I’d taken two shots with similar framing–looking straight down at stuff near my feet.

Nothing out of the ordinary there; I’d guess almost everybody who’s ever held a camera has taken that same basic photo. On a whim, instead of deleting the photos, I used a simple app to lay one image over the other–a sort of faux double exposure. And I liked the result.

Second? Knuckles Dobrovic.

Gimme da backstory!

In NewScientist (27 January 2018, paywal) comes a report on an AI that has managed to crack a couple of ciphers with just about as much information as a human gets:

Without any prior knowledge, an artificial intelligence algorithm has cracked two classic forms of encryption: the Caesar cipher and Vigenère cipher. As translating languages is similar to decoding a cipher, the approach may improve translation software.

To break the ciphers, Aidan Gomez and colleagues at the University of Toronto and Google used a type of algorithm called a generative adversarial network. The GAN started with no knowledge of ciphers or language, but by analysing thousands of English sentences and lines of coded text, it was able to start switching between the two. The texts were in no way related. For instance, the GAN could have started with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in English and To Kill a Mockingbird in cipher text.

After analysing the texts, one part of the algorithm makes guesses about the cipher and another part determines whether the result makes sense based on what it has learned about English. If it doesn’t, the algorithm updates its next guesses accordingly. This process was then repeated thousands of times, until the GAN reached near perfect accuracy on coded text generated by the Caesar cipher, named after Julius Caesar, who used it, and the Vigenère cipher, invented in the 16th century (arxiv.org/abs/1801.04883).

The Caesar cipher you may have learned as a kid, as it’s the classic and trivial static change to each letter of the same offset. An example is A=C, B=D, C=E, implying an offset of 2. The Vigenère cipher is an enhanced version:

The Vigenère cipher (French pronunciation: ​[viʒnɛːʁ]) is a method of encrypting alphabetic text by using a series of interwoven Caesar ciphers based on the letters of a keyword. It is a form of polyalphabetic substitution. [Wikipedia]

I don’t know anything about advanced encryption, but I think this is a cool approach – building a model of the source language and applying the discovered heuristics to crack the admittedly simple codes.

But now there’s talk about using this for translation services:

When learning to translate, it is usually easy to get plenty of examples of the two languages: just raid a library or scrape text off the internet. The tricky bit is working out how to switch between the two.

The best current translation software learns from pairs of translated sentences. For example, Google Translate originally learned to translate between French and English by analysing thousands of professionally translated documents from the United Nations and European Parliament.

But such accurate translations don’t exist for many language pairings. So translation engines normally use English as a stepping stone, first translating to English and then to the actual target language.

As the new approach doesn’t require paired sentences, the stepping stone could be ditched. This process, called unsupervised translation, is something that Facebook and Google are also exploring. “Unsupervised translation is super-hot right now,” says Gomez. “It’s not just an interesting idea, it’s getting really impressive results.”

Hmmmmmmmmm!

A. Barton Hinkle of the Richmond Times-Dispatch has no problem noting how extremists will do anything to pardon extremism – even becoming like their own hated enemies:

But the real metamorphosis has occurred on the right.

It is no new insight to note the extent to which Republicans, who once were horrified by Bill Clinton’s sexual improprieties, now dismiss or even defend Donald Trump’s. A few days ago, after news of Trump’s dalliance with a porn star broke, the Rev. Franklin Graham argued that while Trump is not “President Perfect,” he “does have concern for Christian values.” High praise indeed.

Regarding the market, a reader remarks:

When one tunes in CNBC on a day like today one hears experts of all strips scream “Buy, buy, buy!” Don’t panic! All the other experts are wrong. Listen to me!

I say buy popcorn!

Sit back with lightly salted, buttery popcorn. Hard to go wrong, I suspect. If you have cash, keep an eye on your favorite company’s stock, and if seems abnormally low, buy it.

Hard advice to follow, isn’t it? Where is the bottom of this correction, anyways?

My understanding is that we’ve entered 10% decline territory, also known as a ‘correction,’ which the experts say is well overdue. Could be right. But my thought is this: the history of the market does not include the full effect of high-frequency trader (HFT) algorithms. Of many different sorts. In the last few years, the media has documented some abnormal stock movements thought to be due to various HFTs interacting in various ways. Now, an HFT is an algorithm which necessarily imperfectly implements a human’s desires about the market, where a desire is some well-defined (or not) tactic for accumulating money – buy and hold (rare for HFTs, by their nature), buy and sell within moments, go short, others more arcane.

But these are trees. Let’s talk about the forest.

The forest is an artificial soup of an ecology, populated with non-self-aware (I hope!) algorithms (I so want to write ‘life-form’) which perform, and then on a periodic basis are evaluated, and then retired, allowed to continue, or modified and reintroduced. The goal of all is profit. It’s not unlike a real ecology with evolution, although some elements are missing. But my point is that it’s a young soup. The creatures are imperfect, sometimes irrational.

And that takes me back to my starting point. 10% territory? But just how much further down will we go? I think it’s a little harder to predict than our experts think – or at least will let on. Suppose a poorly made algorithm which happens to control a substantial portion of some large company’s stock starts selling it in response to some indicator which was poorly chosen. Other HFTs will respond by buying, but this is a signal, which means other HFTs will analyze the signal, its presence and magnitude and direction.

And do … what? If it’s a bad signal, do HFTs evaluate for ‘bad signal’? I don’t work in that area, so I don’t know. It’s all quite secretive. Some do, I’m sure, and some don’t.

And that may cause chaos for a while.

About the only advice I’d care to give is don’t leverage and don’t step out at the bottom.

This chart from WaPo is sardonically disturbing:

Only three quarters of voters understand the Democrats are to the left of the Republicans on just about every issue? That leaves me a little stunned. Is it really a participatory democracy?

The market continued to be lumpy and dumpy today. James Dorn of the Cato Institute thinks he knows why, via CNN:

The long stock market rally since 2009 was fueled in large part by the Federal Reserve’s unconventional monetary policies. By promising to keep its policy rate (the federal funds rate) near zero “for a considerable period of time” and engaging in large-scale asset purchases, known as “quantitative easing,” the Fed hoped to boost asset prices and stimulate the economy.

A law of the market is that when interest rates fall, asset prices rise. As long as markets believe the Fed will support asset prices by keeping rates low, stocks will be the investment of choice, rather than conservative, low-yield saving accounts, money market funds, or highly-rated bonds.

Ah, laws of the market. I’ve seen those before. Quantitative Easing was supposed to result in runaway inflation because the government was basically printing money and injecting it into the economy by buying bank shares.

Ummm, no inflation. Sorry, please play again.

Now, I have no idea if Dorn was one of that bank of pundits, but then this really caught my eye:

The only sure path toward future prosperity is to let free markets determine interest rates and the allocation of credit. Private saving finances productive investment that increases future real income and consumption. That linkage is an iron law of economics.

Mr. Dorn must be a man of faith, because there’s an article of faith behind this statement – that a capitalistic economy has a stable rest state which can be achieved if, just if … name your economic blasphemy is corrected. The Cato Institute is listed as being libertarian, so this article of faith is unsurprising, as the libertarians spend a lot of time trying to prove it. When I gave up on REASON Magazine, their current lead on the subject was Veronique de Rugy, who frequently sped off into incoherency trying to prove her points. (She later showed up briefly on Andrew Sullivan’s The Dish, but my memory of her appearance was that it was quite brief – or she didn’t make much of an impression.)

To be honest, there are few iron laws of economics; it’s called the dismal science for good reason. In any transaction there are many motivations explicit and implicit, and if any of them are non-economic then the iron laws predicated on cost and value go by the ways. Even perceptions of trustworthiness can chew these iron laws into trinkets. I would argue “brand loyalty” makes them into chump change. I’m an LG guy myself.

Perhaps in a lab it’ll work. And in that lab there are no hostile countries ready to eat you up. That’s a problem because the concept of hostile countries isn’t going to appear in these “perfect economic models”.

So I wouldn’t pay much attention to Mr. Dorn. He doesn’t seem to know about the real world. Economic management isn’t evil, it’s merely necessary. The evil comes in the implementation, and that means the evil is optional.

And the Dow Jones Industrial Average? Down 4.15%. Probably has something to do with the new Fed Chairman. Trump’s pick, right?

I’ve puzzled over responses to President Trump’s desire for a military parade, but I’ve finally decided to ignore it, as Aaron Blake of WaPo seems to suggest:

It will be one massive troll, complete with tanks and flyovers and marching soldiers. And it will be thoroughly Trump.

Trump is a thoroughly unimaginative man, and as Aaron notes elsewhere, Trump’s motivation is to have a bigger one than France or North Korea. This the best Trump can come up with. We should impeach him for not reaching the proper intellectual levels, sigh.

I left out a piece of chocolate without eating it.

That’s a bad sign.

Stomach’s tender. Bladder infection? Pulled muscle? Trapped gas? Giant bacteria waiting to eat my arms.

Stay tuned. Been sick since Sunday.

But we know better, don’t we?

Another annoying clot of lies and misdirections, designed to bring anger to those who don’t know the facts, or don’t read carefully. Long time readers know what this is all about – I carefully take the mail apart so all my friends can have a good laugh at it.

This time around I’m actually having to take it apart and reassemble it, as it’s a bunch of pictures. For most, maybe even all of them, I’ll have a reaction. Maybe one will even be approving! Here we go:

Funny how he looks demonic when he says that. Heck, I don’t even actually know if he said that – whoever he is. But it’s actually the most interesting of the lot, because there’s a few bad assumptions. Let’s talk about them, and I will promise that none of the other entries will be as long as this – none of them are as interesting.

1. People are lazy and won’t work if they don’t have to. If we exclude retired types and infants from those to , how many reading this would raise their hands and agree that most wouldn’t work. Yeah, really think about that. Sit around and watch the telly (sorry, my Arts Editor has me watching Dr. Who and I can’t help myself) all day? You really think that? Yeah, there’s only a few hands up now, and those who are being stubborn need to read this post, which describes Universal Basic Income (everyone gets a guaranteed income in lieu of some getting welfare), and some minor applications of it – and how it enables people to work, only at what they wish to work at. Sounds like heaven to me (sorry, Dr. Who tends to be a bit hyperbolic in his passions. I’ll try to stop now). Shaking your head in disbelief? Go read that post.
2. Even more interesting is the idea that if we do nothing, nothing will happen. As if the social net of you knowing me knowing Mary knowing Glen knowing John doesn’t exist – and nor do the usual jealousies and envies of people who have too little  But they do. And, let’s be honest, most poor work two or even three jobs to stay above water; in my experience, it’s only the faux-entitled that get crabby about not being the regal rich. But those working those three jobs sure get crabby when they make no progress, when it turns into four jobs and a couple of kids and, hey, didja hear the CEO of Home Depot was just stepped down and got a $200 million pay package? Yep, that happened in 2009. Meanwhile, old Mabel’s interviewing at the gas station for the night shift, she says she doesn’t need to sleep no-how.See, these situations remind me of Russia, about the time the Romanovs abruptly went under. No food, no prospects, and suddenly riots break out. All that human potential because… well, they had problems with the crops and corruption. What’s our excuse? A little outrage because our Reps have determined we should be helping the poor and, honestly, the churches haven’t the reach or the information to do it properly?

The flag represents the idealization of your country. If the current government is going to shoot you right at the port you come in to, why would you want to go back? It’s easy to see loving your country but hating the government. The GOP did that every day for 8 years, no? Hell, that’s the position this sniveling manipulator of an author has taken, now hasn’t it? Either that, or he just plain hates America.

Several web sites I surveyed indicate ol’ TJ said nothing of the kind. Some even said, No, TJ never said that. I think I’ll classify that as a lie until someone can show me different. That’s the big out and out lie of the mail, expended on TJ – a sentiment he’d be unlikely to express. He’d be far more wary of monarchies and, perhaps, radical Revolutionaries (think France at this time period).

Favorite habits of the GOP, and if you think that’s flippant, go examine the fiscal behavior of the GOP dominated Congress during the Bush years – or the recently passed tax change bill, or even this agreement to avert the imminent government shutdown. Then there’s the endless GOP-initiated wars, money-till-busting military budget, Senator Tom Price (he who seems to have manipulated pharmaceutical companies to his benefit) … Still, the anti-government flavor of this quote is disturbing in itself, because, unlike Rome, the American government is OUR government. You don’t want to see endless wars, etc? Don’t elect the GOP, and proctor the Democrats. It’s our government, not some monarchy, so we need to examine our candidates, only vote for those who are acceptable (voting the Party ticket, whether it’s the oliphants or the asses is how we got into this mess), and be willing to honestly proctor the winners. Given the record of the two parties since 2000 (I’ll go back to 1990, even, although it doesn’t mean much, given the passage of years), I think the Democrats have earned the right to foul things up.

The mistake of stripping context. Several other weather events, such as steadily warming temperatures, other hurricanes, higher CO₂ concentrations, etc, add the necessary context to look at that last hurricane and state that while it may have come regardless of CC, CC made it worse.

Call it a false call to common sense.

Hillary kicked butt in the Benghazi hearings. Who can’t remember a damn thing?

Jeff Sessions. You should see the hearing he’s had regarding the Russia investigation. You think if they’d shown him his wife, he’d say he couldn’t recall who she was. Seriously.

But I do find it interesting how the Republicans are still desperate to run against… Hillary Clinton. The next Presidential campaign should be very interesting as the GOP candidates desperately try to run against…. Hillary Clinton. I wonder, once she passes away, if they’ll try to resurrect her into… zombie Hillary Clinton.

But I know my reader didn’t twitch when he saw some half-wit’s words in Kermit’s mouth. Right? Too smart.

Well, look at that – it’s true, Billy-boy did say that. So what? Is Buckley God or something? He wouldn’t even be considered a Republican in today’s environment – they’d run him out for being too liberal. You don’t think so? They ran Senator Richard Lugar out of office, one of the brightest and most respected Senators of the 20th century, because he was no longer conservative enough. Bill would be a proud independent these days.

Goodness, the things you learn doing research – Buckley endorsed a legal ban on tobacco. Wow.

You WANT to see her rapping her husband’s knuckles and telling him what to cook for dinner? But, seriously, why the love for your vanquished foe? Is it too hard to spatter mud over someone new?

The definition of DREAMER is someone brought into America illegally at a very young age and now grown up. Kick them out of the United States now, and they’d have nowhere to go, no familiarity with anywhere – but here. Mental disorder? Please. It’s compassion. You know, the stuff they’re supposed to teach at church?

Here’s some classic misdirection – it’s not the liberals or Democrats or progressives clamoring to rewrite the Constitution.

It’s the conservatives. Shaking your head? Here’s just one story among many on the subject. It’s not even possibly fake news, because you can go look it all up. It’s all of legal record.

And the propaganda there is a lovely sentence, isn’t it? Gets the reader stirred up, as the Constitution is about as sacred as it gets, outside of a religion.

Except a few conservatives hate it. I can guess why, but I’m tired of writing. So, sure, get stirred up – and then consider who really wants to take away your Constitution, your Bill of Rights, and all those other things that have made this country one of the finest the world has ever seen.

And, if you’re a GOP voter, or even a member – just how far right has GOP gone to even consider such an option? To throw away a system of proven worth, for private, selfish reasons. What have you to lose if the Constitution is slipped into a back-alley garbage can – and the amazing GOP marketing machine rumbles into life to tell you that life with the Constitution was a horrid nightmare of skittering monsters, of immigrants slitting everyone’s throat, and that the authors of that Constitution were really all pedophiles.

You don’t think that won’t happen? I hope you’re right. But I’ll be betting against you on that one. If they can call one of their own an ISIS supporter, they could easily call Ben Franklin a pedophile.

And when, pray tell, were guns made into people? That’s what this goof wants you to miss.

If you like it to be a bit more tangible, a gun sitting around unused isn’t worth much. An immigrant, however, is working his ass off, picking fruit, hauling garbage – a number of jobs that Americans won’t take are filled by immigrants. Be glad of it, else your supermarket’s produce section might be a lot smaller. Or more expensive.

Ah, another false analogy, energetically beaten to a pulp. Brings life to the world!

Criticism is how institutions are improved. Or do you think happy faces are the only way we know things are good?

Easy. The poorly educated are less productive. Society derives far more benefits from investing in them. Indeed, it raises the question of why tuition rates keep going up. Why should society get the free ride of all the benefits that college graduates bring them? And, I assure you, it’s quite a lot. Conversely, what do we lose when someone looks at tuition, shakes their head, and heads off to clerk at the convenience store?

I’ve written on this subject before. The misdirection lies in believing only the potential student will benefit from college education. Society? Never comes up. Oh, it’s brought up, but it gets ignored.

Someone should do a study, but then everyone who hoards their cash against the day they die would scream that it’s All. Fake. News. Because that lets them not help further society. It’s hard to touch and feel, but in reality, college grads help society.

Well, another round of kicking a poisonous snake in the mouth is over with, and I hope you played along with me. This email was meant to roil you up, but I hope your roiling has been directed at the truly deserving target.

The author of it.