Monthly Archives: October 2018

Noted just outside our window at work.

In Bloomberg, Stephen Carter puts forth a simple proposal to reduce the cultural wars over open seats on SCOTUS:

Suddenly everybody wants to explore term limits for Supreme Court justices. Welcome aboard. I’ve been on that train for almost a quarter of a century. The current argument is that life tenure is a leading cause of the increasing viciousness of our confirmation battles. But whether term limits would fix the process depends on whether we’re right about what’s wrong.

Term limits are popular. Some 61 percent of Americans support them. Whether categorized by party, income, race, gender or religion, in no demographic group does a majority oppose them. 1  Over the last decade or so, many legal scholars have embraced the idea of discarding life tenure in favor of either a mandatory retirement age or, more often, a specified number of years on the high bench – usually 18 or 15.

But the biggest problem with life tenure, especially in our polarized age, is that it makes a seat on the bench far too valuable. Political parties, whether in or out of power, invest considerable capital in securing seats for their own side, or denying them to the other, because the seats themselves are so scarce a resource.

What drives all this is that vacancies occur so rarely. Their scarcity drives up the political price each side is willing to pay in order to get one. We can’t reduce the demand, but we can increase the supply. If vacancies were more common, the value of the seats would fall, and there would be less incentive to contest each one so vehemently. 

Carter may have been talking this up for a quarter century, but this article is shockingly deficient in that it doesn’t talk about how it could preserve that which we must value the most about the judiciary: independence and integrity. As long time readers know, I worry enough about the bending of justice to the winds of public whim and human self-interest that I reject the entire notion of judicial elections. The summary is that judges who must depend on the whim of the electorate for election may be strongly tempted to change their legal interpretations to suit those whims, and this may lead to unjustified ruptures in the law.

That leads to the most important question: how would term limits affect judicial independence and integrity. I think this is a bit of a tangled question. My first inclination was that this might be a good idea if term limits are strong term limits, which is to say, once a term limit is reached, there is no possibility of being appointed to a second term. One and you’re done, so to speak.

But then I thought about it some more. In my discussion of how the Kavanaugh confirmation may redound onto the Republicans’ neck, I noted that this lifetime appointment means that Kavanaugh is now off the Republican leash. That is, licit Republican influence on Kavanaugh is now nothing more than persuasion. They cannot promise him further positions, or deprivation from same. The best they can hope for is to discreetly promise or threaten family and friends, but that is a somewhat more dubious business, and can be subject to FBI inquiries.

Image source: NGV

He has, in essence, the Golden Fleece.

The term limit requirement, however, would invalidate that assumption to some extent. We do have to keep in mind that there’s little enough to keep a Justice from helping move to the court to a position desired by some party, and then resigning from the Court and reaping whatever reward has been promised them; a term limit, however, will force all Justices from their positions, and thus perhaps multiply opportunities for corruption. But, in all honesty, a corrupt justice will find a way to benefit from their position, and while this may not obviate objections to term limits, it does blunt the objections. Let’s note this argument may merit more discussion at some other time and move on.

Carter notes his proposal would address a number of issues, such as the effect of aging on the intellect, “strategic retirement” (think Anthony Kennedy’s retirement), and that sort of thing, but I’ll confine myself to consideration of his primary point: that term limits will calm the political wars over seats on SCOTUS. I think there’s a number of problems with this position. First, I will repeat his contention and his summary reasoning:

What drives all this is that vacancies occur so rarely. Their scarcity drives up the political price each side is willing to pay in order to get one. We can’t reduce the demand, but we can increase the supply. If vacancies were more common, the value of the seats would fall, and there would be less incentive to contest each one so vehemently.

I am most bothered by the application of reasoning derived from economics, because it makes the intellectual error of borrowing analysis of causal activity from one domain for application in another without at least attempting to ensure the rules concerning isomorphisms are followed; if you think about how analogies can fail, you’ll understand my concern about isomorphisms. Granted, Carter’s is a pop article and not a deep analysis, but I am distinctly uncomfortable trying to accept his suggestion that SCOTUS seats are simply just another commodity that are for sale, and that by making more available, the price will drop, for it seems both intellectually lazy and, on the face of it, wrong.

First of all, commodity sales are most often independent events from most perspectives, with the exception that they do all occur. This is not true of SCOTUS  seats. The value of any given SCOTUS seat, if we wish to use the perspective of partisan politics rather than that of judges deciding points of law with respect to the activities of jurisdictional entities (this would be my Second point, BTW, which needs little more elaboration – I hope!), will be an equation heavily dependent on the current composition of the Court, and, to a lesser degree, on the pattern of predicted retirements from the Court, forced and unforced, and how they interact with the currently perceived ideological leanings of those seated Justices.

Third, equating a commodity consumer with the partisans who brought about the recent battle over Kennedy’s former seat seems naive. The Court has been successfully politicized, it appears to me, and while we can argue over which Party is responsible^[1], it’s a fact that happens to be at odds with the ideal American governmental system. Each successive war for a SCOTUS seat will inflame partisans, the tribal members whose first and final priority, with little thought for anything else, is the victory of their little tribe. By increasing the frequency of open seats, we may cause the heat of our infection of partisanship to simply grow higher and higher.

This may lead to an unintended positive consequence, and that lies with younger, as yet uninvolved generations of Americans. Substantial portions of them are watching these conflicts, and with some fair dismay, if the occasional demographic survey of political opinion is anything to trust. We may find that both parties continue to shrink in size as they display their worst aspects to prospective members during these more frequent fights over SCOTUS seats.

So, cutting this off here, I think to suggest that a greater supply will ensure less partisanship seems unlikely. I think it’ll increase it. I haven’t addressed questions about losing cumulative experience and that sort of thing, as I’m not sure how much importance there is for experience among Justices, and how much they can refer to former Justices when it comes to that.

But I think a question of term limits for Justices needs a lot more exploration in the context of current political realities.

¹ My familiarity with the history of SCOTUS appointments doesn’t go back much further than the rejected nomination of Judge Bork. My understanding is that he was rejected for his radical view of the judicial system, but I do have to wonder if there was an undercurrent of unease because Bork had been Nixon’s hatchet-man for the Saturday Night Massacre. The short recap is that President Nixon, then under special prosecutor investigation by Archibald Cox for conspiracy in connection with the Watergate incident, decided he wanted Cox out, and so ordered the Attorney General to do so. AG Richardson refused and resigned, and then so did Deputy AG Ruckelshaus. However, Solicitor General Robert Bork complied and fired Cox, which suggests to me a lack of honor on his part.

But not the consequences which you might expect.

Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.), the second ranking Republican, attributed the divisions in Washington to wounds inflicted by Trump’s election in 2016, which he said “half the population can’t seem to get over.” [WaPo]

Yes, Senator. More than half of those voting voted for the President’s opponent, and thus feel cheated. Their new President is an utterly inveterate liar and cheat, a stealer of glory and unjustified boaster, and so they feel the reputation of their country and themselves is besmirched by not only their President, but by everyone who supported him and continues to support him. They can’t get over it? Are you kidding? You’re being told that you and your Party are incompetent failures, and you think you can’t get over it?

Senator, elections have consequences, but it’s not going to be just the theft of a SCOTUS seat or two, and the ravaging of the environment and possible demise of this country. We’re already seeing States modifying their Presidential selection criteria to properly reflect the popular vote. We’re seeing the Republican brand damaged by the extremists who’ve taken over the party, the incompetent governing, beginning with Trump and extending right down through the ridiculous antics of McConnell and Ryan, down to the candidates for the current mid-terms who think that being a good little Trump-lover is the essence of being a member of the national legislature, and they need to be nothing more.

And all of us who are not encased in the pathological Republican bubble are not getting over it. We may express it through anger, but the truth is often this:

We mourn your loss to us.

We mourn that your Party has decided to cling to power through mendacity, to ideas outmoded by reality, to deny realities which threaten our very survival when their existence erodes the dominance of your ideals, to illicitly tarnishing the reputations of your political opponents, to debasing our treasured political discourse, to the treatment of political elections as all-out warfare where gerrymandering, suppressing the votes of minority groups, and other such tactics are considered fair and proper.

Your behavior is diminishing for you, for us, and for the system of government to which we’ve sworn allegiance. We already know that China is taking advantage of your behavior to advance their propaganda that their system of government is better. Is this really what you want, Senator?

Think about that statement you made, Senator. You may wish to retract it.

An Angry Citizen

If your village is made of good, strong materials with lots of character, maybe you rent it out. That is happening to Corippo, Switzerland via a foundation:

The architectural pearl of the Verzasca Valley, Corippo retains its harsh and primitive charm. It fits into a scenario of rare beauty in symbiosis with the dominant nature. In 1975, the European year of architectural heritage, the village was designated by the Confederation and the Canton as a historic settlement worthy of being valued. The Corippo Foundation was established in 1975. An ambitious project is therefore born: the conservative restructuring of the dwellings to create a model of welcoming diffused with a tourist vocation. [translated from Italian]

In other words, a hotel for tourists that retains all the historic charm. I’m not sure this would work in the United States, but some dying communities might want to consider it, especially if there are attractions nearby.

When travel was more difficult, autocrats didn’t have so many problems facing them – such as so many of the best leaving as quickly as possible.  Kadri Gursel reports for AL Monitor on the escape of the brightest Turks from Turkey:

Speaking at an Istanbul fair Sept. 13, Turkish Industry and Technology Minister Mustafa Varank — a long-time chief adviser to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan before joining the Cabinet after the June elections — lamented that the country was “unfortunately losing its qualified human resources through brain drain.” It was a rather remarkable statement, for such admissions are rare in Turkish government quarters.

Varank’s statement is backed by newly released official statistics that speak of an accelerating, dramatic brain drain that is stripping Turkey of its well-educated youth — the sole strategic asset the country has for any quest of global competitiveness and prosperity. According to migration data released Sept. 6 by the Turkish Statistical Institute, the number of Turks emigrating due to “economic, political, social and cultural” reasons increased 42.5% to reach 253,640 in 2017. More than 42% of those emigrants were aged 25-34, and 57% were from big cities such as Istanbul, Ankara, Antalya, Bursa and Izmir. In other words, roughly half of the those leaving Turkey are young urban people.

The staggering 42.5% increase in emigration last year stems from the political watersheds in 2016 and 2017.

And those were the failed coup in Turkey, followed by the referendum which, barely, gave President Erdogan much greater executive powers. Gursel talks to one of those emigres. Gezi is a reference to the anti-government protests of 2013 that took place in and near Gezi Park in Istanbul:

Sercan Celebi, a leading founder of Vote and Beyond — a Gezi-inspired civic initiative dedicated to election integrity — described a sense of despair among the Gezi generation. “Those who took to the streets with various motivations during the Gezi protests are now leaving the country because they are left with no other democratic channel to display their indignation. Since the street is no longer an alternative, abroad has become ‘the street,’” Celebi told Al-Monitor.

He added, “This is a productive generation that has truly equipped itself with science and technology and is capable of preparing the country for a new future and providing added value. They have lost hope in both the government and the opposition. Their dreams hardly mesh with the dream the [current] decision-makers have for the country, which is a totalitarian and isolationist dream that says ‘I want everything for myself, even if I settle for less.’”

For those Trump supporters who believe our future lies with alliances with “strong leader” countries such as Turkey and The Philippines, it’s worth noting that the flip side of emigre is immigrant. People leave home for a variety of reasons, not just war or famine, but key to the immigration issue is a happy home country – it resolves a host of reasons. Thus, my upset with Colbert a few weeks ago.

And for those “strong leaders,” they may be backed by large numbers of their citizens- but it’s a rare educated person who’s going to stick around waiting for the noose that may come for them. Autocrats have a finely tuned sense for those who internally threaten them, and move quickly to neutralize them – regardless of their status. Wise people leave before the blade falls – or strike first.

Finally, it’s hard to look at the American millenials and not see the same disappointment as the Gezi generation appears to be experiencing – the disappointment at the power struggles, the disillusionment. In both cases, the element of religion and its separation (I shan’t say divorce, as that has the wrong implications) may be one of the hidden keys to the disappointment. Here is a time series from Gallup on the American view of the centrality of religion in their lives. It covers about half a generation, I suppose.

Unfortunately, Gallup neglected to offer the entire graph, despite having the data – see the link, it’s about a 1/3rd of the way down the page. In 1993, Fairly Important was 29%, and Not Very Important was 12%; the respective values in 2017 are 23% and 25%. I think this is a significant movement, even accounting for those folks who think of themselves as ‘spiritual.’^[1]

But is the future of this graph to show an upswing in religious sentiment, or will the current downswing continue? Gallup offers no demographic breakdown, so, at least from this data source, there’s no answer. However, the Pew Research Center has some useful graphs from … it doesn’t say.

Clearly, the younger you are, the less certain you are that someone’s looking out for you – but odds are still over 50%.

And it’s importance becomes lesser as you are younger. It’d be interesting to see data on these questions for Turkey as well. I don’t personally see religion holding answers for a world that is becoming pathologically overcrowded; my experience with American Christianity ranges from a cautious semi-realism to complete denial. Given that the entire range’s foundation is a mythology grounded in a completely different context, it’s difficult to have confidence even in the semi-realists.

¹ Which I’ve found is such a nebulous concept that, despite having it explained to me several times, I still find completely forgettable. I speculate that the concept already has another name for me, perhaps less creditable, which lets me sweep the entire affair under the rug.

Anne Applebaum of WaPo has more details on the Russian GRU hackers and their goal:

These have produced a trove of additional information. Among other things, the Dutch have proof that some of these men have been to Malaysia, where they were spying on the team investigating the crash of MH17 , the passenger plane brought down by a Russian missile in eastern Ukraine in July 2014. They have proof that these same men hacked a computer belonging to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the organization that revealed the drug use by Russian athletes. They found train tickets to Switzerland, where it seems the GRU team was planning to hack the laboratory tasked with identifying Novichok, the chemical nerve agent that their colleagues used to attack an ex-spy in England. They even found a taxi receipt from the cab the team took from GRU headquarters to the Moscow airport. …

[The Dutch and open source investigation by the folks at Bellingcat] also represented a new turning point in the West’s fight against the onslaught of Russian disinformation, for this particular GRU team was not engaged in a traditional form of spying. They were not looking for secret information; they were looking for dirt. They wanted embarrassing stories, catty emails or anything at all that would discredit organizations that seek to establish the truth about Russian crimes: OPCW, WADA, the MH17 investigation, the Swiss chemical lab. Had they found anything, they would not have analyzed it in secret, they would have leaked it.

This is a familiar pattern. A similar search for kompromat was one of the motivations for the GRU’s hack of the Democratic National Committee in 2016, as well as of Hillary Clinton’s election campaign. The GRU agents who ran that operation were also looking for material, however banal, that could be leaked and then spun into compromising, distracting stories that would dominate news cycles and discredit Clinton. In any institution, whether a laboratory or a campaign office, there are private conversations that differ, in language and tone, from announcements made in public. The GRU seeks to exploit this distinction in order to create distrust and suspicion. They can’t alter the verdict of the OPCW or the results of the MH17 investigation, but they can persuade people not to take them seriously.

Anne believes the Dutch did the right thing by advertising the attempted hack around the world, and I have no intention of disputing that suggestion. She also notes that Bellingcat blew another hole in the Russian intelligence operation – it’s an article worth reading in full.

But I still think the Dutch should have dumped their asses in jail. And then issued an arrest warrant for Putin.

Finally, it’s worth reconsidering skeptical opinions my readers may hold on many subjects. How many are the result of false or misleading information released by the Russians? It’s a question worth considering – by everyone.

Which is, at least in my mind, the old, old question of how to put a map of the Earth, an oblate sphere, onto a flat piece of paper and have it be useful. Bojan Šavrič, Tom Patterson, and Bernhard Jenny have worked out a new such projection, which they call the Equal Earth map projection, and describe it in the International Journal of Geographical Information Science, and go into detail at ResearchGate. While I, as well as my Arts Editor, enjoy maps, I’ve never looked into the technical details, so I thought this paper was interesting. They begin with their aesthetic sensibilities:

The first step in developing the Equal Earth projection for world maps was deciding on its basic characteristics. To create a world map with an appearance familiar to as many people as possible, it must have an equatorial aspect and north-up orientation. We rejected developing another equal-area cylindrical projection, such as the Gall-Peters. Transforming the spherical Earth to fit in a rectangle introduces excessive shape distortions. In the case of Gall-Peters, the continents in mid-latitude and tropical areas are highly elongated on the north–south axis. Conversely, the pole lines that stretch across the entire width of the map severely elongate polar regions in the east–west direction (Figure 1). We also rejected the concept of an equal-area projection that depicts the poles as points, such as the Mollweide and sinusoidal projections. On these projections, the meridians that steeply converge towards the poles present a practical problem for cartographers.

Etc. Then they move on to the technical details, including the equations to use to map to and from a projection. After that, they described their approach of combining two other approaches in order to find that pleased them.

They’re pleased with their continents in this projection, which begs the question: how about the voids, i.e., the oceans? Are they equally accurate?

Do they care?

Their motivation:

A wave of news stories that ran in late March 2017 motivated the creation of the Equal Earth map projection. Boston Public Schools announced the switch to the Gall-Peters projection for all classroom maps showing the entire world (Boston Public Schools 2017). The media reporting by major national and international news outlets, such as The Guardian (Walters 2017), The Huffington Post (Workneh 2017), National Public Radio (Dwyer 2017) or Newsweek (Williams 2017), largely focused on these all-too-familiar themes: the Mercator projection is bad for world maps because it grossly enlarges the high-latitude regions at the expense of the tropics (true); nowadays, the Mercator projection is still the standard for making world maps (false 1 ); and only maps using the equal-area Gall-Peters projection can right this wrong (false) (Sriskandarajah 2003, Vujakovic 2003, Monmonier 2004). The reaction among cartographers to this announcement, and to others like it in years past, was predictable: frustration (Vujakovic 2003, Monmonier 2004, Crowe 2017, Giaimo 2017, Mahnken 2017). It is noteworthy that most of the news stories did not publish comments from professional cartographers. Our message –that Gall-Peters is not the only equal-area projection – was not getting through.

A look into the world of cartography.

I’ve not shown a sample here because it is, after all, their professional product. Well, OK, here’s one:

Source: Shade Relief

Somatic:

1. Relating to the body, especially as distinct from the mind.
   ‘patients completed a questionnaire about their somatic and psychological symptoms’ [Oxford Dictionaries]
   

Noted in “A Fitbit fit over our measuring mania,” William J. Kilfoil, The Chronicle Herald:

Albert and I are both past our best-before dates, but Albert’s decline is strictly somatic — mentally, he’s as sharp as ever. I always look forward to hearing his unvarnished point of view on current events, so we agree to meet in the parking lot and drive together over to Tim’s for a bit of chewing the fat and coffee.

On the eve of the probable confirmation of Judge Kavanaugh to SCOTUS, the Republicans are likely embarking on a far riskier enterprise than most of them may realize. After all, these are people who were given a short-term goal, which was to confirm the President’s choice, Judge Kavanaugh, to the land’s highest court.

But, in tune with the much of the music the GOP has played since the election of 2016, from tax reform to healthcare reform, this has transformed from a drama of relative simplicity to, quite literally, a circus exhibiting the fundamental weakness of the Party that claims to represent America. To suggest the tune may be discordant would be far too generous: the musicians flail at their instruments with manic grins on their faces, blood on their fingertips, all while trying to dance to illicit calls of a square-dance master who puts his own dreams first.

Let’s assume the confirmation takes place, as planned, on the morrow. This will place the newly anointed Associate Justice beyond the practical reach of the GOP; oh, certainly a Justice could theoretically be clawed back by the Senate through the standard process of impeachment, but in our reality, this seems unlikely. When he’s seated, he’ll be there for at least two years, and probably far longer, as I doubt the Democrats will achieve the required super-majority in the Senate anytime soon.

And this means the reputation of the GOP, their very brand, will be subject to the legal opinions advocated by the new Associate Justice. He will engage in questioning those lawyers advocating for their clients, he will write opinions, he may be asked to deliver majority opinions, he may even declaim dissident opinions from the bench.

And that means that every case of a cultural nature, such as something to do with LGBTQ rights, or unions vs right to work, or other decisions of a non-technical nature, is an opportunity for him to tarnish that GOP reputation.

Let’s stop for a minute and consider Kavanaugh’s appearance at the end of this confirmation process. Here’s a useful description:

Ultimately, opposition to Kavanaugh’s confirmation comes down to Christine Blasey Ford’s entirely credible testimony, a blatantly slipshod investigation seemingly designed to allow him to hop over holes in his testimony, deep concern over the message that his elevation would send to victims of sex crimes (we won’t seriously investigate your claims; instead we’ll mock you), and the partisan cloud that will descend over the Supreme Court if Kavanaugh joins the bench. Collectively, these should keep him off the court, in our view. …

Kavanaugh is different from any other Supreme Court nominee in recent history. Judge Robert H. Bork was more extreme (or more honest) in his judicial philosophy, but no one accused him of giving less-than-forthright testimony; there was no hint of private impropriety. Harriet Miers was intellectually ill-prepared but was never accused of personal misconduct. No other nominee has accused one political party of conducting a campaign of vengeance against him or her.

Indeed, no judge has gotten to the highest court with the baggage that Kavanaugh totes. His shredded credibility and overt partisanship should have counseled for a substitute pick weeks ago; his unprecedented partisanship will surely sow disrespect for our judiciary for decades. No op-ed is going to clean up that mess.

This is useful not only because it’s accurate, so far as I can tell, but because it’s not from a Democratic or leftist or progressive or even centrist source. This is authored by Jennifer Rubin, conservative columnist and writer of WaPo’s Right Turn blog, one of the many former Republicans who’ve left or been run out of the party over the years, but who remembers when Republicans were respectable conservatives. I value her words far more than those of her more liberal colleagues, because her agenda is clear and her criticism far more likely to be honest.

But she really clarifies where I’m going with this contrast with the previous appointment, from the same piece:

Had Trump been able to clone Gorsuch and send him up to fill the seat of retired justice Anthony M. Kennedy, we’d be exactly where we were back then — united Republicans and a few red-state Democrats combining to confirm him (54 to 45). Gorsuch’s patience and self-control were evident during his confirmation hearing. No one feared that Gorsuch would bring disrepute to the court, nor that he would cast doubt on the legitimacy of 5-to-4 opinions. He has been more dismissive of precedent than one might have thought, but he’s a perfect example of the adage that elections have consequences.

Kavanaugh is not joining SCOTUS by walking on a red carpet long runner, scattered with flower petals and surrounded by clapping admirers, up the steps and in the golden door, as did Gorsuch. Even though I will always call Gorsuch the Illegitimate Justice, I do not denigrate him, at least not yet. But Kavanaugh?

He’s slinking in by the back door. Don’t knock over the garbage can on the way in, bud.

I say this with no malice, but simply to amplify for the reader the great risk the GOP appears to be taking on. Let me add to that a bit more, just to make those nerve endings tingle. Judge Kavanaugh, depending on how much you believe what you read from various analysts, may have lied to the Senate about a number of matters.

To me, this does not matter so much. After all, the GOP is willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, rather than hold him to a higher standard, even if I think SCOTUS merits that standard. Throw this claim in a GOP Senator’s face and he may rage that this is untrue, but, if you believe the analysis of even moderate Republicans, it’s a simple fact.

That’s not the damage the GOP need fear.

What should have them perspiring is the revelation that, having lied about these matters, Kavanaugh may have lied about other things. What might they be? Hard to say. He claims to be a mainstream conservative, and that settled law is settled law. Perhaps, however, once he’s seated he’ll argue that the Establishment Clause is really an illusion and the Presidency has a Christianist requirement on it.

Think about that. It’s not out of scope, is it? Hell, the Center For Inquiry, a great advocate for the Establishment Clause, sent me mail warning that Kavanaugh has a history of leaning too far towards religious groups in his rulings. And there’s a host of other unknown issues on which he might have deceived our Senators, Democratic and Republican.

If he is out of the mainstream and reveals it, then the Republicans stand tarred and feathered, because Kavanaugh is their inevitable standard-bearer, and yet he’s out of their control.

Man intent on jacking up his base.

All honest observers already know that Kavanaugh is a revealed partisan hack, shown in all his Republican red glory in his frantic accusations of liberal conspiracies just over a week ago. His attempt at an apology and retraction in the last couple of days, published in the Wall Street Journal (here, requires subscription), is obviated by the fact that the incriminating statement was a prepared script from which he read, not an angry outburst. Carefully planned, it actually coordinates with, of all things, his initial acceptance speech. Remember that ridiculous little toady speech, breathlessly thanking President Trump for his deeply researched choice of himself?

Yes, if you didn’t find that repulsively far too partisan for a true candidate for SCOTUS, you should see it again. It’s a wonder for the ages that Kavanaugh thinks he understands what judicial independence really means.

But this lets me transition to the real danger for the Republicans, because Kavanaugh manifests the ways of the crazed partisan, or even extremist-advocate of views putrid in the view of the American mainstream, then there will be a focus on the ways of the Republicans.

That is, how did President Trump, the man who would “get the best” for us, and has failed mightily, pick Kavanaugh? Did he task his best legal advisors to sift through the membership of the Federal judiciary and pick the best legal mind, regardless of political leaning, for the job? Did they sweat gallons of smelly liquid in their job?

No. By all accounts, Trump picked Kavanaugh’s name off a list of names prepared by The Federalist Society, a group based on a specific way of interpreting law and Constitution, after asking a couple of people what they thought of Kavanaugh.

That, in a nutshell, embodies the Republican way. We have power, now we’ll putz about and pick someone who looks good on camera. To hell with experts, because they don’t tell us what we want to hear.

And it’s a mighty inferior way to run government. The Republicans had better hope Kavanaugh keeps his nose clean and his views mainstream, because if he doesn’t, that’ll be another highly effective weapon for the Democrats to use on a party already reeling from the incompetency of President Trump. And they cannot control Kavanaugh. By putting him in a lifetime appointment, there’s no more leash, no more stick & carrot to use.

And that should scare them shitless.

Have the liberals gone too far? It’s been a game of very dangerous chicken, and I think the doxxing incident might have crossed a line. But it was necessary, given the concerns arising about his suitability for SCOTUS, to investigate thoroughly, and when the GOP Senators in charge chose not to fulfill their responsibilities, the Democrats were drawn into looking more and more extreme.

Their task will be to communicate that they were fulfilling responsibilities, and the Republicans were not. That’s where they need to go with this.

But the Republicans? They’re nearly in a lose-lose situation. This is just the start of the Kavanaugh game, not the end. What if every single case that comes before the Court were to result in a recusal request to Kavanaugh? How long before we’d get another partisan howl?

More popcorn. More strategizing. Because that’s what happens when the GOP weaponizes SCOTUS.

Even when you’re reading, apparently. The folks at RMIT University have designed a typeface that is hard to read – on purpose:

Sans Forgetica is more difficult to read than most typefaces – and that’s by design. The ‘desirable difficulty’ you experience when reading information formatted in Sans Forgetica prompts your brain to engage in deeper processing.

Yeah, not a great deal in that video. Melissa Breyer of Treehugger thinks it’s the shit:

I love that this is so simple – and it is a great example of how design can improve things with minimal effort on the user’s part. But the reason I think this is suitable for TreeHugger – a site not generally concerned with things like typefaces – is because it bucks the culture of convenience that is eating away at both the environment and ourselves.

For the sake of convenience we can’t live without single-use plastic and driving a car half a mile to the market. And meanwhile, the conveniences afforded by technology are robbing us of all kinds of thinking skills that used to keep us sharp. We no longer need to remember phone numbers or add figures in our heads, we don’t have to know how to spell words correctly or figure out routes on a map. I worry that we are going to become a species reliant on external brains, while our own become flaccid with disuse!

At a time in our history when every thing is pathologically designed to make things easier – to make us work less, move less, think less – how refreshing it is to stumble upon something designed to make things more difficult! Even if in the end the goal is to make memorization easier, that we have to use our brain power and work a little harder to get there can only be a good thing. And if we can get a bit of a memory boost out of the deal, all the better.

Not to be a contrarian, but we do seem to come up with new tasks to replace those that go by the wayside, so I have to wonder if Melissa is truly accurate in her worries. Do we have piles and piles of flabby20 year olds, feebly kicking bodies with which we can find nothing to do? (Soylent green! Oh, sorry.) Perhaps there was similar muttering from hard-core car drivers when automatic transmissions came around.

Figuring out the appropriate measurement metric may be a wee bit of a challenge.

In light of a new DoJ indictment of Russian military intelligence members, Megan Reiss on Lawfare discusses the Russian tactics of disinformation dissemination in the age of cyberwarfare. I thought this was interesting:

Second, Russia is using highly effective methods to meet its objectives: cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns. As the indictment describes, the GRU utilized most of the cyber tools the organization has available to conduct a wide variety of attacks, from spear phishing to spoofing to distributed denial of service attacks. Some of their efforts appear sophisticated, such as masking identities, utilizing cryptocurrency and developing malware to steal information.

Yet the aspect of the indictment that should send shivers down the spines of Western officials is the revelation that Russian agents used Wi-Fi to conduct attacks. These were not merely hackers conducting operations from the comfort of their home country. When they couldn’t attack remotely, agents traveled to their victims and took advantage of the security risks of unencrypted networks, and using poorly secured hotel Wi-Fi to steal network information and hack into the targeted computers.

According to the indictment, hacked information was then released—sometimes after being altered—as part of a disinformation campaign by the “Fancy Bear Hack Team.” Fancy Bear targeted an estimated 116 reporters and tried to create a social-media campaign to distribute the message that Russia was unfairly targeted and that athletes from other states dope as well . As noted by FBI Cyber Division Deputy Assistant Director Eric Welling, this campaign targeted hundreds of clean athletes from almost 30 countries.

Everyone secured their WiFi systems?

But this reminds me of a report last night on NPR, of which this is probably the transcript, concerning an attempted infiltration of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Netherlands:

Dutch authorities escorted four Russian intelligence officers out of the country hours after the car they had rented was found parked near the OPCW’s building in The Hague, its trunk full of gear for hacking Wi-Fi networks. A large antenna was sitting on top of the equipment, which was on and running, using a battery that had been placed in the trunk.

The four officers had entered the Netherlands on diplomatic passports, according to the Dutch Defense Ministry, which said the British intelligence service had worked with it to disrupt the operation.

“This cyber operation against the OPCW is unacceptable,” said Dutch Defense Minister Ank Bijleveld. “By revealing this Russian action, we have sent a clear message: Russia must stop this.”

I do have to wonder or what? Shake their finger even more vigorously? Those Russian spies shouldn’t have been escorted out of the country, they should have been dumped in the local hoosgow and there they could cool their heels for fifteen years. They’d become an object lesson for other would-be spies about infiltration.

That result would get back to the Russian hackers who are employed doing this, and it might discourage a few of them. Perhaps the best ones. Leaving Russia with second-rate hackers.

Sure, Russia would apply various sorts of pressure on the Dutch, but if all you think about is the pressure and how terrible it is that your fossil fuels might be cut off, well, why are you playing in international politics anyways?

Perhaps this is another bug in our home computer. You know, the one that’s simulating our Universe. At least, this weirdness sounds like it. From NewScientist (22 September 2018, extended):

Chemists have a plan to make ghosts in the lab, by bonding an atom to a patch of empty space.

Normal chemical bonds anchor two atoms together, usually through sharing their electrons. Now, theorists have worked out how to trick a single hydrogen atom to form a bond with nothing, by luring the atom’s lone electron into the same position and state it would be in a real bond.

Matt Eiles of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana and his colleagues are building on work from two years ago that saw the creation of strange, super-sized bonds in other molecules, such as diatomic caesium.

A few months ago Climate Home News published a leaked draft of the summary report for the United Nations concerning the goal to limit temperature rise due to anthropomorphic climate change to 1.5 C. WaPo summarizes some recent meetings on finalizing the report and remarks on our possible future:

“It would be an enormous challenge to keep warming below a threshold” of 1.5 degrees Celsius, said Shindell, bluntly. “This would be a really enormous lift.”

So enormous, he said, that it would require a monumental shift toward decarbonization. By 2030 — barely a decade away — the world’s emissions would need to drop by about 40 percent. By the middle of the century, societies would need to have zero net emissions. What might that look like? In part, it would include things such as no more gas-powered vehicles, a phaseout of coal-fired power plants and airplanes running on biofuels, he said.

And if we don’t? We’ll get a lesson in how religious expectations do not conform to the actions of Nature. By this I mean that an awful lot of people think they’ve led a good life because they’ve conformed, more or less, to the expectations of their religion. But Nature doesn’t really care about that; it keeps doing what the rules of chemistry (or physics, if you prefer) dictate, and if our religious rules don’t happen to recognize those chemistry rules, well, it’s just too bad.

On the one hand, it’ll be an awful demonstration of how religious belief can easily deviate from reality, but on the other, I doubt we’ll learn from it.

Later: My link on Facebook for this post amuses me so much that I have to copy it here. I make no apologies.

Meanwhile, the elephant tried to sit on one of your chairs, crushed it, fell through the floor, smashed the furnace, which caught explosively on fire, leaving your house flat and a flaming catapulted elephant which landed on the neighbor’s house, set it on fire, had enormous flatulence which ALSO caught fire, and now all the neighbors have flaming houses and harbor a grudge against you.

In case you were wondering, yes, that’s the climate change future WRT the United States in a nutshell.

And it goes both ways. WaPo reports that a former Democratic aide has been arrested for doxing some GOP Senators:

U.S. Capitol Police announced late Wednesday that a former junior Senate Democratic staffer has been arrested for allegedly posting private information about Republican senators on the Wikipedia Internet website.

Jackson A. Cosko, 27, of the District, faces five federal counts including making public restricted personal information, making threats in interstate communications, identity theft, witness tampering and unauthorized access of a government computer, police said. …

A brief police statement did not give details, but a U.S. official said the arrest was tied to the investigation into the posting of personal information about Republican senators on the Wikipedia site as they held a hearing Sept. 27 on sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh.

At the time, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) rejected accusations that a member of her staff was responsible, calling them “lies, lies, and more despicable lies.”

The information posted purportedly included phone numbers and home addresses for three Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the hearing: Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), Sen. Mike Lee (Utah) and Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (Utah).

I suppose Rep. Waters is technically correct – Cosko was no longer in her employ – but it’s still a bit of a stain on her.

More abstractly, this incident functions as a measure of the heat of the culture clash between the liberals and the extremists controlling the Republicans, an infection if you will. If more such incidents accumulate on the Democratic side, it may indicate a left-wing swing into obduracy as well. The right-wing is already there, although I wonder if they’re really blameless and operating in an honorable matter, or if – privately – they cop to their hypocrisy and either don’t think it’s important, or are so addicted to power that nothing else matters.

The right to privacy is another way of speaking of the importance of civil society, the agreement that, whatever our disagreements may be, we’re not going to resort to violence. Doxxing is, not to be blunt or anything, a virtual assassination, a message to the victims that they can be hunted down.

It’s really unacceptable, if you think about it. If Mr. Cosko is responsible, an arrest and jail time is appropriate. Those who were doxxed, whatever their failings as human beings, are justified in their outrage.

But back to the analogy, the question becomes whether or not this is an infection which will be burned out by the host, or if it’s going to kill the host. As I noted here, I think it’s just a matter of time before the more virulent members of both sides are either dead, or removed from power by the oncoming generations. Those generations will hopefully take a look at the problems of today and discard those assumptions which hold no water and lead to, well, various misbehaviors.

And we’ll keep on muddling on.

Remember the drone attack on Venezuelan President Maduro? On Lawfare, Nicholas Weaver discusses the legal vs practical implications for the United States. This bit sparked a couple of thoughts:

The effort was unsuccessful. One drone crashed into a building while the other appeared to explode in mid air; Maduro was unharmed. But amazingly, should someone try a similar attack in the United States, federal officers do not have sufficient legal authority to stop the drone in progress. The current version of the bill to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) contains language that would enable federal authorities to directly counter these threats.

The threat is significant. The drones used in the Venezuelan attack, for example, are available commercially for $5,000 each. They weigh less than 25 pounds and can be controlled from five kilometers away over a short-range radio link, essentially the computer equivalent of an old-fashioned walkie-talkie. These are standard drones used for professional aerial photography or similar activities, but modern racing drones are even scarier. One particular $300 drone has a flying weight of less than a pound, can travel at over 100 miles per hour, carry a 200 gram payload—the mass of a 40 millimeter grenade—and yet is agile enough that a skilled pilot can fly it under trees.

It is incredibly hard to intercept and disable small drones like these, even in a military environment and with a military budget—so hard that DARPA is still trying to solve this problem. Disabling drones like these is even harder in a civilian environment, with added budgetary constraints and concerns over collateral damage.

The threat from these drones has been obvious since well before the Maduro assassination attempt. The Islamic State has already shown an ability to weaponize commercial drones; a gang reportedly used swarming drones to disrupt an FBI operation; and at least one Mexican drug cartel has developed bomb drones. Yet under current law, it is illegal for law enforcement to counter such drones: To do so would be interference with an “aircraft,” as the FAA defines even a lightweight toy drone.

Inevitably, weaponizing a drone will result in calls for making such drones illegal. Will we see interference from adversaries such as Russia, attempting to sway public opinion concerning whether weaponized drones should be generally available? How can the NRA become even more shrill than it is these days?

Technically, to my mind there are two sorts of drones, remotely controlled and autonomous, and they may require separate approaches. Neither would be easy to hit with a kinetic weapon. Concussion weapons may cause too much collateral damage. Electromagnetic weapons of a primitive sort will work against remotely controlled drones, but taking out autonomous drones with an electromagnetic weapon such as an EMP may, again, result in too much collateral damage unless an EMP could be tuned to only destroy devices operating on a particular part of the spectrum. But what if the weapons are using commercial parts, thus causing collateral damage again?

This could be morbidly interesting.

My Arts Editor snapped this nifty little pic of the mums after some rain today.

System 1 thinking is useful when the ladder you’re on is falling over, or the lion bursts through the gate you thought closed.

Otherwise, though, not so much. System 2 thinking is the rational system, System 1 is the speedy fight-or-flight system, often not suited to many of today’s situations. But marketeers know  you can be tricked into making bad decisions by engaging that System 1 thinking system, and The Motley Fool’s latest come-on e-mail is an example of this:

I just released a brand-new investor presentation that gives the full story on why NOW is the time to get invested in the cannabis industry.

This presentation is called “Cannabis Countdown: How to Invest in the Coming Marijuana Boom.”

When you click the button below, I’ll share my complete investment blueprint designed to help you navigate the rapidly growing marijuana space, including the name and ticker of one cannabis stock I’m actively watching…

And reveal how you can position your portfolio to benefit from a trend that has already handed some investors gains of 177%, 417%, and 635% in 2018 alone!

This presentation is absolutely free, but the industry is moving so fast, we’re only comfortable keeping it available until midnight tonight!

So, don’t delay! Click the button below to go straight to this exclusive presentation.

I’ve omitted the button in case my reader is the impulsive sort. As we can see here, the idea is to appeal to the acquisitive nature of human beings (look at our winners!), and then scaring them by suggesting this opportunity is going away in less than an hour.

The seasoned investor will shrug and mutter, Yeah, right.. And then walk away.

Just like I am. If maryjane’s going to be a big industry – and, at the moment, the feds still see it as an illegal Schedule 1 drug – it’ll be around for a while and there’ll be plenty of opportunities to make and lose money. Why let yourself be hurried?

And a somewhat more subtle part of this appeal is that the one night only part tends to make the unwary person feel as if they’re part of an exclusive group – and that’s the beginnings of a subtle tribalism. Once you’re part of the group, then you can be milked. Incidentally, this is true of brands in general, such as the Apple brand, but in this case is being part of the group really worth the eventual cost? That’s the part that never comes up.

And that explains why this opening salvo is free.

Yours in wariness.

I see The New York Times has a report on Trump the Failure, if my reader will permit me to extrapolate from what little I’ve read.

Significance?

Zero. I fear the Trump bubble is made of iron and it’s locked tight. The report has no tangible impact on the lives of the Trump Tribe, so they won’t pay attention. They care nothing about his personal character; in fact, if he’s been devious and unsavory, an alleged tax cheat and draft dodger, they cheer him on all the more. As this point, he’s not attracting new adherents from the groups to his left (which, don’t get me wrong, is really far right, so I’m talking moderate Republicans), only from the far-far-right; I do not include those who cynically use him to achieve their aims while holding their noses, a far more dangerous practice than they should be comfortable with.

My question is whether reports such as this CNN report will have any impact:

[Richard] Ojeda’s campaign has at times been a one-man mission to call attention to one of the most economically desolate regions of the country — a reality that explains some of his populist positions. Ojeda loves coal jobs but loathes energy industry executives. He favors marijuana legalization because, he says, it’s a way to combat “Big Pharma” and loosen opioid addiction’s grip on southwestern West Virginia. He likes the generals surrounding Trump, but sees wealthy appointees like education secretary Betsy DeVos as anathema to Trump’s campaign promises.

He rocketed to stardom in West Virginia by leading the teachers’ revolt over years of Republican budget austerity — a backlash that quickly spread to other states. Now, educators have turbocharged his campaign, giving Ojeda an issue that appeals to voters of all political stripes.

His campaign has emerged as an important test for Democrats, who have watched rural, white areas like West Virginia’s 3rd District vote overwhelmingly Republican, and feared that — even with the right candidate and the right message — those voters were lost to the party forever.

Polls in recent weeks have shown Ojeda in a single-digit race behind Republican Carol Miller. And national Democrats see Ojeda’s previous support for Trump — and the reasons he turned on the President — as part of what makes him an appealing candidate.

Yep, a former Trump supporter, out in the open and running. He’s a former paratrooper who plays the part. And he’s a Democrat:

“It’s pretty simple the role that he fills: He is the return of the Democratic Party to really being the champion of the people. Not Wall Street, not Silicon Valley, not any corporate interest — but really fighting for working people in every community,” said Krystal Ball, a Democratic strategist who has worked closely with Ojeda through her political action committee, The People’s House Project.

If he wins, Ball said, Ojeda would be an “instant national voice in the Democratic Party, just because the odds are so long for him to be able to win the district.”

If Ojeda cannot persuade Trump voters to start thinking and evaluating in a critical manner, for themselves, who can? I’ll be quite interested in the results, as he’s running in a district won by Trump by 49 points. If he’s already gotten it down to single digits, he’s done quite well at making up ground. Can he get the last few yards?

Although it’d be better if he won by > 10 points.

And I feel a bit trashy, because I have no idea if he’d be competent at this job. None whatsoever.

But part of me just wants to tell the civil libertarians that if they’re going to be paranoid – justified or not – then bloody well adjust how you live your life rather than expect the world to adjust to your personal desires. Here’s the trigger:

Travelers who refuse to surrender passwords, codes, encryption keys and other information enabling access to electronic devices could be fined up to $5,000 in New Zealand (about US$3,300), according to new customs rules that went into effect Monday.

Border agents were already able to seize digital equipment, but the Customs and Excise Act of 2018 newly specifies that access to personal technology must be handed over as well. The law provides, however, that officials need to have “reasonable cause to suspect wrongdoing” before conducting a digital search — cold comfort for civil liberties advocates, who have sounded an alarm about the measure. [WaPo]

It’s a personal choice on my part to avoid having too much data on my phone. Sure, I could figure out how to completely encrypt all access and all data so I could use my phone to do my personal banking, lending, mortgages, all my software development for my employer, run a small, indie bank on the side, build a complete photography portfolio, manage half a dozen mistresses, AND store all the nuclear secrets I may or may not have stolen over the years.

And then lose the damn thing in the river, so of course now it’s de rigeur to save it all in The Cloud, except The Cloud is nothing more than an old-fashioned time-share system from forty years ago, meaning someone else controls the computer you just put all your vital information on.

And no matter how much you encrypt that data, if those computers are told not to let you access it, there’s not much you can do unless you’re a world-class hacker. And, of course, an EMP or possibly a really big solar flare could turn your data into a big old bang of dinosaur flatulence.

That’s paranoia. Unless your backup system is punch-cards.

In fact, and perhaps it’s already well-known, but I suspect many of us are more prisoners of our phones than find them truly beneficial. But trying to find a metric for that suggestion will be a challenge.

Sort of like the challenge Satan had with Saddam Hussein. If you don’t understand that one, it doesn’t really matter.

In any case, I keep some pictures of cats on my phone. And of some totally awesome orange lilies that has completely charmed me. I can read my mail, if I really want to – hint: more than half my mail is political spam from BOTH SIDES. There, now no one will steal my phone.

The rest is either not computer-bound, or is on my computers. I tend to be conservative about this crap.

And maybe I’m just crabby.

Yeah, crabby. I’ll grant that the New Zealand move could be a step along a path to a world with no privacy, or of government officials surreptitiously collecting information on you for their personal gain.

On the other hand, the New Zealanders think they’re safer with this law in place.

Conservative pundit Hugh Hewitt’s piece in WaPo makes me think Hewitt believes he’s on to something – he wants to blame everything on “the left.” But it’s a careful selection of arguments missing their historical context. For example:

But some seem to welcome a slide in that direction. “Tell me again why we shouldn’t confront Republicans where they eat, where they sleep, and where they work until they stop being complicit in the destruction of our democracy,” tweeted Ian Millhiser, justice editor at ThinkProgress.

“Because it is both wrong & supremely dangerous,” replied Georgetown Law professor Randy Barnett. “When one side denies the legitimacy of good faith disagreement over policy — as well as over constitutional principle — the other side will eventually reciprocate. Neither a constitutional republic nor a democracy can survive that.”

And, yet, this was started by the GOP. Can we say Merrick Garland? Sure we can – and remember the Republican refusal to even consider his nomination – followed by Republican vows to keep the late Scalia’s seat open if Clinton had won the Presidency. And, yet, Hewitt would point at the left as starting the culture wars.

Six years of Republican attempts to sabotage President Obama should not be forgotten when the finger pointing begins.

But he has an even bigger whopper he’s trying to slide by the inattentive reader:

Its cause is the retirement of a Supreme Court justice who was appointed by a Republican president, and his imminent replacement by a Supreme Court justice nominated by a Republican president.

And we’ll just stop right there and contemplate the hidden assumption that SCOTUS seats are assigned to political parties. Great idea, eh? Let’s enshrine ideological majorities so they can be run by party donors, no doubt using the latest in judicial joysticks.

The right wing extremists in control of the Republican party wouldn’t countenance any such philosophy if it had been Justice Ginsburg’s, or any of the other left-wing Justices’, death precipitating Obama’s selection of Garland.  We’d have seen the exact same dishonorable, institution-destroying maneuvering by Senator McConnell, supported by the exact same lies and distortions about how seats on SCOTUS which open up during the last year of a President are reserved for the next President.

And Scalia died more than a year before the end of Obama’s term. Ahem. McConnell and his fellow extremists don’t know history, nor do they understand how the calendar works. Or … they’re lying.

And then Hewitt condemns himself:

Though Donald Trump is not anyone’s idea of a conventional president, Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh is not only extraordinarily qualified but also a deeply conventional choice.

If so, why not approve Garland, instead? Recommended by Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), he was, by all expert accounts, intellectually impeccable and ideologically middle of the road. If Kavanaugh really is conventional, then let’s put Garland in the seat, instead. Why object, Hewitt?

Unless Kavanaugh’s not all that conventional? Certainly, his ridiculous position on Executive immunity is both unconventional and intellectually flawed. I mean, I’m not even a lawyer and I picked the summary I read of it to little pieces and laughed at it. Rumor has it that he’d like to overturn Roe, another unconventional position – but also unconfirmed.

I also got a charge out of this:

… and the volcano erupts because Kavanaugh — a thoroughly decent man, an obviously good man — was slimed.

It’s not a stretch to suggest we replace Kavanaugh with former Speaker Dennis Hastert and realize the sentence is just as believable, just as plausible.

And then we remember Inmate Dennis Hastert, admitted child sex abuser (convicted on tax fraud, however). We may trust people based on impressions, even long-term associations, but when it comes to a seat on SCOTUS, we fucking verify, as Ronald Reagan said (perhaps I paraphrase a trifle).

And it’s all a pity, because there’s one point Hewitt makes which will require we wait until the mid-terms are concluded, and it’s worth considering:

A vast swath of the public has concluded that the Democrats sat on an explosive charge until the last minute, and they imagine themselves being ambushed that way at work. They don’t want their daughters and sons to live in a society where allegation is conviction.

It’s a good point, primarily because he added daughters to that paragraph – if he’d left it at sons, I’d be laughing at it as well – just like those whimpering idiots who whine about White rights. But, as one of my readers noted, Ford contacted the Administration as soon as she heard about Kavanaugh  being on the list.

But that’s not his point, his point is perception, and that means the Democrats need to justify how this process went, and implore the voters to think about the needs of the nation, not the wants of a party which has gone rapidly right over the last two decades.

A reader writes concerning Three Identical Strangers:

I thought it was very good. As you wrote, the first third was the feel-good part, and then it got dark. The interesting thing was as they were interviewing the triplets in the now, it never dawned on me that the 3rd one was missing. Even when they interviewed his wife and she was speaking in the past tense. I guess it didn’t seem that weird to my brain because they were talking about events of the past.

I was pretty horrified that this could happen, considering they said the agency specialized in adopting Jewish kids to Jewish families. This study started in the mid 60s, 20 years after WWII. Do they have no cultural memory? The Nazis used to experiment on twins.

I have to wonder if there was some cultural things going on, because, if memory serves, the psychologist came from Austria, which certainly had some ties to the Nazis and the general culture at the time. However, I know little enough about cultural morals to guess whether the psychologist’s moral system, derived from the early 20th century in Europe, would have clashed with the moral system of the United States in the mid-to-late 20th century.

Clearly, Aunt Hedy (I hope I have her name correct) was appalled, but I don’t recall if she was American or European. The RA was clearly European and defended the psychologist’s research. I do think that the moral systems of scientists and the general citizen can differ in a systemic way (and feel free to mutter “duh” at this point), and that may be what we’re seeing here.

I also wonder what would have happened if when the kid went to college, the person who walked into his dorm room actually never walked in. That guy happened to know the brother’s DOB and his current phone number. I wonder if the other people recognizing him would have been enough to make him seek the other guy out? Life is weird.

I think so. People get curious about such things.

Although I don’t know that I’d chase down my doppelganger.

Up here in Minnesota we like to think our mosquitoes are awful – or would be, if we didn’t aggressively fight them every spring. But in the face of this report on Treehugger from Melissa Breyer, I’m sort of leaning towards handing the title of fucking huge mosquitoes to North Carolina:

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That mosquitoes may revel in flood-ravaged areas doesn’t come as much of a surprise, but the size and numbers currently seen in North Carolina are striking. This batch of biters is called Psorophora ciliata, or “gallinippers,” or even better yet, “shaggy-legged gallinippers” – a wonderfully Dr Seuss-y name surely at odds with the actual experience of being swarmed by a blizzard of them.

Various news reports have them at anywhere from three to twenty times larger than regular mosquitoes – and Newsweekputs the number at “billions.”

One resident said “It was like a flurry – like it was snowing mosquitos,” another said it was like “a bad science fiction movie.”

Yeow!

If you can sit through Rebirth Of Mothra (1996), you deserve a beer. Yep, go get one. Then we’ll toast how creaky this bad boy is.

A lot.

We saw the picnic operetta at this park, and while I failed to get a picture of the actual operetta, I did manage to take a picture of a … smokestack.

Yes, please, hold the applause. Don’t disturb the singers.