Monthly Archives: March 2018

While Great Briain’s Prime Minister Theresa May’s government isn’t getting the best of reviews, at least they seem to be willing to call a bear a bear, according to the BBC:

Former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned by a military-grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia, Theresa May has told MPs.

The PM said it was “highly likely” Russia was responsible for the Salisbury attack.

The Foreign Office summoned Russia’s ambassador to provide an explanation.

Mrs May said if there is no “credible response” by the end of Tuesday, the UK would conclude there has been an “unlawful use of force” by Moscow. …

Mrs May said: “Either this was a direct action by the Russian state against our country, or the Russian government lost control of its potentially catastrophically damaging nerve agent and allowed it to get into the hands of others.”

Meanwhile, President Trump can only express admiration for Putin and other autocrats such as the newly-minted Chinese President-for-life Xi Jinping and Philippine President Rodrigo Roa Duterte.

This weakness in our President will have consequences for decades to come, and it lands squarely on the backs of Congress, specifically Speaker Ryan and the Executive oversight committees, to identify such grave failures and do something about them. To their mild credit, they did pass a sanctions bill to punish Russia, which Trump promptly ignored.

But make no mistake, the consquences are also immediate – for our ally. In normal times, Britain would have had a conference and then the full backing of the United States on this important matter. Today? They can have no confidence in us, because our leadership appears to be compromised.

For Trump, the Russian moves are nothing more than the arabesques of a ballerina. For our erstwhile ally, they are far more sinister.

(h/t Syd Sweitzer)

Bob Bauer’s explication on Lawfare of President Trump’s use of the government lawyers really reinforced, through example, my thoughts concerning the various sectors of society and why processes, as well as leaders, are not interchangeable:

But the crux of the problem seems to be the president’s failure to accept that it is the counsel’s responsibility to advise him of limits—legal constraints—on what he wants. Lawyers are his “staff,” like any other: He wants their personal loyalty, which, as he understands it, can mean that they must ignore or work around legal and ethical limits on the pursuit of his personal and political wishes. A leading example is the president’s refusal to accept that his attorney general was required to follow Justice Department regulations in recusing himself from oversight of the Russia investigation.

In this single paragraph is illustrated the expectations of a businessman vs the realities of a government. President Trump expects the government lawyers will serve his whim and fancy, but they do not – they give legal advice, but they have responsibilities which are dictated by the government, not by Trump, and he cannot order them about as he might wish. This is an exemplification of different expectations of optimizations, the clashing of purposes – but it’s not a beautiful cymbal, but more a thud followed by the scream of the workman who just got his caught between the hammer and the nail.

Bauer then gives some insight into the ways of government lawyers:

Executive branch lawyers can do their work only if certain bedrock conditions are met. One is adherence to dependable process of some sort for building legal advice into the decision-making process. The other is an understanding of the lawyers’ role. Trump has little feel or use for process, a limitation that has become apparent, from the development of the first travel ban, through the tweeted announcement of his intention to bar transgender Americans from military service, to his appearance in the press room on Friday to tout—without preparation or any briefing of relevant foreign policy and national security staff—the invitation to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The president has exhibited a lack of understanding of the lawyers’ role and sees them as serving an enabling function—just making it possible for him to do what he wants. And often when they don’t do as he desires on the issues he most cares about, Trump instinctively resorts to threat and bullying, as he has publicly done in the case of Jeff Sessions.

Government is not a bigger business. It’s an entity with responsibilities far different from that of business – and because President Trump refuses to recognize this basic (but obscured by American anti-intellectualism) fact, our government will continue to fail to meet its basic responsibilities in all executive areas.

The government is 200+ years old, and did not pop into existence fully-formed. These processes were put in place for reasons, usually having to do with the needs of the Executive. Trump’s attempts to twist the government to protect himself will, inevitably, damage the government and our security.

Anything to whip up the voters, it seems. WaPo reports on President Trump’s visit to Moon Township, PA, in support of Rick Saccone’s (R) special election run for the House of Representatives:

Trump said that allowing prosecutors to seek the death penalty for drug dealers — an idea he said he got from Chinese President Xi Jinping — is “a discussion we have to start thinking about. I don’t know if this country’s ready for it.”

“Do you think the drug dealers who kill thousands of people during their lifetime, do you think they care who’s on a blue-ribbon committee?” Trump asked. “The only way to solve the drug problem is through toughness. When you catch a drug dealer, you’ve got to put him away for a long time.”

It was not the first time Trump had suggested executing drug dealers. Earlier this month, he described it as a way to fight the opioid epidemic. And on Friday, The Washington Post reported that the Trump administration was considering policy changes to allow prosecutors to seek the death penalty.

But on Saturday his call for executing drug dealers got some of the most enthusiastic cheers of the night. As Trump spoke about policies on the issue in China and Singapore, dozens of people nodded their heads in agreement. “We love Trump,” one man yelled. A woman shouted: “Pass it!”

If it were only that easy.

But, disregarding questions of whether a Christian would endorse this proposal and whether it would pass Constitutional muster, there are two problems with it.

First, treating drug dealers as deliberate murderers ignores the fact that, like President Trump, drug dealers are businessmen. And the first thing a businessman doesn’t want to do is kill off the customers. Thousands? Only by their own hands, in most cases.

Second, it trashes the traditional role of redemption in American society. While there are certain crimes, such as serial killing, which will draw death penalties or life in prison, generally Americans have always believed in punishment followed by a chance for redemption. This proposal trashes this tradition embraced by conservatives and liberals alike.

Third, unlike murder, which is a deliberate act inflicted on an innocent person, and sometimes even planned, drug dealing involves two willing parties (disregarding the addiction the buyer may suffer from). Kill a drug dealer and someone will take his or her place. You want to stop the overdoses? Stop the demand – or satisfy it legitimately.

Executing drug dealers will be ineffectual for the real problem – it’ll only be effective for satisfying the emotional desires of people frustrated with reality.

The blue guy had too much beer.

Watchmen (2009) is a fusion of the superhero and film noir genres, an exploration of the limits of good and evil, how the actions of costumed vigilantes, who see themselves as judge, jury, and executioner, differ so little from those they pursue – whether it be merely the gang member in front of them, or the two greatest countries in the world in a tireless rivalry which, in their stubborn perversity, may explode into Armageddon at any moment.

There’s a big cast of characters here, ranging from President Nixon (in his third term? fifth term?), through the superheros who make up the vigilantes, onwards to the enigmatic Dr. Manhattan, a physicist killed and recreated as a near-god in a physics accident, but my attention was drawn to two of the vigilantes.

Rorschach, whose mask flashes through the cards of the same name, is a cipher and the personification of vigilantism, tracking down criminals and executing them. His allegiance to all that is good may be uncompromising, to use his word, but his methods are evidence of an underlying psychoticism exacerbated by the ceaseless cries of civil rights by those very criminals who have violated the rights of their victims. His thirst to cleanse the world of all that is evil makes him, paradoxically, an ambiguous character, but whose unceasing pursuit of evil – at least as he sees it – drives the story.

So when Rorschach discovers that another superhero, The Comedian, has been killed, he follows up on it. The Comedian is the other character who fascinated me. A vigilante who glories in the violence, he is less a man interested in justice than in satiating his primitive desires, and in that satiation he glimpses the fragile underpinnings of the artificial systems of justice we inevitably live in. Such a glance at the insanity of losing these systems would cause many to lose their minds, but for The Comedian, it makes him laugh, even if his laughter is maniacal and his mood black as tar. For all that the movie begins with his murder, he casts a long shadow over the entire enterprise, because, for all his chaotic and unrestrained desires, he emits some light as well. He is the hidden father of one of the new generation of vigilantes. His sigil will acquire planet-wide significance. And he is the one who discovers the fantastic scheme to force peace on this world, which in turn forces him to realize he has no friends as he turns 60 years old, no one to share this adventure with, an adventure which ends all too soon.

But this scheme, much like the vicious methods use to attain justice in individual encounters, requires equally vicious methods, but scaled up to the deaths of millions, sacrificed on the altar of peace and survival. Will it happen? Rorschach may violently disapprove of the scheme – but its originator believe it’s the only way to save human civilization. And what of Dr. Manhattan’s observation that the Universe is like a giant clock, predictable and relentless – do we have free will or no? Does it mean there is justice – or just someone’s clock?

This is a long and almost luxuriant movie, with characters mostly drawn out with delicacy, but it’s also gratuitously violent, and, at least in the director’s cut that I saw, has a cartoon interspersed throughout, a morbid tale of a man, concerned about the fate of his family after his ship is ravaged by The Black Freighter, attempting to return to his home port, and what occurs when he finally arrives. It appears to be connected to Rorschach, but I’m entirely unsure as to its purpose in the movie.

This movie is magnificently parsimonious in its information, and it asks a lot of implicit questions.

Recommended.

It begs bad jokes, but his purpose is worthy. More information from Melissa Breyer on Treehugger.

Opprobrium:

1. the disgrace or the reproach incurred by conduct considered outrageously shameful; infamy.
2. a cause or object of such disgrace or reproach. [Dictionary.com]

Noted in H. Sidky’s “The War on Science, etc,” Skeptical Inquirer (March / April 2018, print only):

Ironically, given that this enterprise was about epistemological egalitarianism and human dignity, those who did not accept postmodern premises were labeled racists, sexists, right-wing oppressors, colonialists, and the instruments of a defunct materialist worldview (the terms of opprobrium were endless).

Anthropologist H. Sidky, writing in the pages of Skeptical Inquirer (March / April 2018, print only) in “The War on Science, Anti-intellectualism, and ‘Alternative Ways of Knowing’ in 21st-Century America,” points the finger of responsibility for those collectively best thought of as reality-deniers at …                     :

… postmodernists were able to launch an all-encompassing disinformation campaign to delegitimize science and rationality. The distressing effects of this campaign were painfully brought to light for many after the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The assault on science centered on the idea of epistemological relativism. This entails the premise that conditions of knowledge are such that the truth and falsity of assertions are context-dependent, situated, and always relative to cultural and social backgrounds, political position, class, gender, ethnicity, race, and religion. Thus, the idea that scientific knowledge depends upon objective empirical evidence is false. Excluding the empirical dimension of the scientific enterprise, these writers misrepresented science as merely a “story” or narrative like any other that relies on rhetorical ornamentation and languages games to persuade people of its legitimacy and authority. Epistemological relativism dictates that no representations of reality or story can be privileged because there are multiple and equally valid realities and truths. Moreover, because all truths are relative, postmodernists asserted, who truth prevails is a coefficient of power and coercion [c.o.^[1]]. The West is dominant and hegemonic, and hence its “truths” (i.e., science) are privileged. [Any typos mine – haw]

Which, suitably translated into everyday English, does sound an awful lot like we see a lot of these days, I’ll grant. However, Sidky attributes much of this to philosophers such as Kuhn, Feyerabend, and Foucalt, among others – and I have to admit that, not having read them myself, why should I think that the chief climate-deniers have read them, either? They’re high-falutin’ stuff, ya know?

Sidky continues,

To expose the exact nature of power relations, post-modern thinkers believed, one had to look at the linguistic context of truth claims because nothing exists apart from the discourse that constitutes them. In other words, apprehension of a reality outside the linguistic webs that entangle us is not possible, which is an assertion that goes against anthropological evidence, science, common sense, and everyday epistemology.

To my mind, it also present a chicken and egg problem. But to continue on to the definitive fingerpoint:

For forty years, the postmodern savants in universities across the country indoctrinated students with their antiscience message [c.o.]. The substitute they offered was epistemological relativism as the avenue to establish a genuinely just and tolerant society open to diverse viewpoints. …

Many of those indoctrinated in postmodern anti-science went on to become conservative political and religious leaders, policymakers, journalists, journal editors, judges, lawyers, and members of city councils and school boards. Sadly, they forgot the lofty ideals of their teachers, except that science is bogus [c.o.]. Thus, vast cadres of people with little interest in the message of multiculturalism and epistemological egalitarianism coopted the central lesson of postmodernism that truth is what one wants it to be to assert the legitimacy of their authoritarian dogma, irrationalism, and bunkum.

Given some of the madness that has come popping out, this makes some startling sense, although I wouldn’t expect the “conservative” right wingers to actually taken Kuhn, Focault, et al, seriously. What little I’ve read of them certainly had me shaking my head in disbelief.

And I’m not really sure how this all helps, either.

¹c.o. – citation omitted. See the original article or email me for the citation, as I have no plans to reproduce Sidky’s citation list here.

From the kudos or recommendations testimonials page (I cannot remember the word I really want to use) for Skeptical Inquirer:

“I know of no greater antidote to pseudoscience than the contents of Skeptical Inquirer magazine. I wait with high anticipation for the arrival of every next issue. And when it arrives, I read every word. And when I am done, my fuel tanks are once again topped off for my next round of encounters with all those who have yet learned how to think.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysicist and Director Hayden Planetarium, NYC

Dude, I think you meant “… who have not yet learned how to think.”

If you love – I mean really love – your car, then you won’t like this piece by Lloyd Alter on Treehugger:

It seems that most transit decisions in North America are made with the goal of making life easier for people in cars.

In North America, transit planning is a mess. Decisions like building a hyperloop from Cleveland to Chicago or a one-stop subway extension in Toronto in the face of sound transit planning by experts that say these decisions are ridiculous. In New York City, they arrest people for fare-jumping but let them park cars for free for months; in Toronto again (my home is in the news a lot these days) they beat up kids over a two buck ticket.

In Munich, you see what happens with sound planning and good transit. I am staying in the suburbs near a massive new residential and commercial development, with a lovely streetcar right outside the door of my hotel. It stops about six times on the way to the other end of the line at a subway stop.

I have been on this streetcar a number of times, looking out the window at the stores and buildings on either side. You can do that on a streetcar; you are on the surface, a step from grade, so if you want to get off and buy something you can. There are housing, offices and retail on either side; unlike subways with stations far apart, the development isn’t just at nodes but along the entire route.

That’s how you keep the car makers, some of our biggest employers, and alive and kicking, I suppose.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To which I say, So what?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which should we be?

Febrile:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dulcet:

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

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

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

Her reply?

Traps have been set for the unwary.

Oh dear..

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jonathan Chait of New York thinks the GOP are slackers:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gyre:

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

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

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

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

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

It looks a little out of focus to me.

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

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

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

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

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