Yearly Archives: 2019

Locum:

The definition of locum tenens, roughly translated from Latin, means “to hold a place.” Locum tenens physicians fill in for other physicians on a temporary basis for a range of a few days to up to six months or more. When a healthcare employer faces temporary staffing shortages due to vacancies, illness, or other causes, they hire locum tenens physicians and other part-time clinicians to fill those vacancies. [Staff Care]

Noted in “Conservative Party leader contenders: Ex-health minister Jeremy Hunt,” Clare Wilson, NewScientist:

After three short strikes in which junior doctors withheld all services bar emergency care for up to two days at a time, they took the extreme option of pulling emergency care too for two days. However, not all junior doctors went on strike, and senior hospital doctors and locums tried to fill gaps in cover.

Yes, this dates from May 2019 – Hunt is no longer in the hunt, as they say, for the premiership. But locum is entirely new to me.

Part of an occasional series examining President Trump’s progress against Candidate Trump’s promises.

The promise: Candidate Trump will release his tax returns:

“We’re working on that now. I have big returns, as you know, and I have everything all approved and very beautiful and we’ll be working that over in the next period of time,” the billionaire real estate developer and entertainer said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” [Politico, 1/24/2016]

However, he claimed he was under audit and therefore could not release them.

Results So Far: No recent tax returns have been released, although a decade of tax returns from the 1980s and 1990s were obtained by – not released to – The New York Times. As a voter, I consider this to be little more than an historical curiosity, and not a fulfillment of the obligation he assumed through his promise.

With regards to Candidate Trump’s claim that being under audit prohibits their release, the IRS Commissioner has since corrected Trump’s understanding of the matter:

… the president’s IRS commissioner, Charles Rettig, told lawmakers there are no rules prohibiting taxpayers under audit from releasing their tax information. [ABC News, April 10th, 2019]

And, in an apparent reversal of position, or, for those of us who regard this particular promise to be sacred, the breaking of a sacred vow, Trump advisor Kellyanne Conaway stated there would be no release of tax returns, as noted in this partial transcript of an interview:

After repeatedly promising to release his tax returns, Donald Trump has definitively reneged on that commitment. “He’s not going to release his tax returns,” presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway said in an interview on ABC’s This Week yesterday. “We litigated this all through the election. People didn’t care. They voted for him.”

A clamor for those tax returns, in the form of legal actions, have been raised by opponents of the Trump Administration. Steve Benen of Maddowblog provides a recent list of these actions here. For our purposes, we can take this list and break them into three categories.

The first are actions of Congress. Representative Nadler (D-NY), as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has asserted that he has the right to request the Trump tax returns as part of an investigation into violations of the Emoluments Clause. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin declined to honor the request, and the issue is now in court.

The second are new State requirements for Presidential candidates filing to be on the ballot. California has led the way in this category, but, as of this writing, a judge has blocked enforcement of the requirement.

The first two categories are arguably political in nature, meaning partisans will take their positions on the issue according to their predilections, but the third category can not be so easily dismissed. In connection with the alleged payment of hush money to silence certain women for having sex with President Trump, a grand jury has agreed to a request for the Trump tax returns by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. This is a serious matter, as Matt Stieb points out:

Unlike previous subpoenas, this one is in the context of a criminal investigation with a sitting grand jury, making it more difficult for the president’s lawyers to dodge this filing with a lawsuit.

And making it non-political.

The Bigger Picture: Voters will have various reactions to the status of the candidates’ tax returns. In most election years, nearly all of the voters won’t have an interest; most rely on non-partisan third parties to interpret the tax returns, as most of us are not facile with the complex tax code.

But it’s important to note how candidate Trump differed from all of the other viable candidates in the 2016 race. His rivals from both parties were, with a couple of exceptions such as Fiorina, politicians, campaigning on their political accomplishments, imagined or otherwise, their promises, and the connections they managed to create with voters. Candidate Trump also campaigned on promises and his connections with voters, but when it came to accomplishments, he denigrated his rivals’ political accomplishments, which often seem to be less accomplishment and more half-assed failures, thus leaving them with little to offer the voter, at least the voter who cannot accept that sometimes the best accomplishment is the compromise.

As he had no political accomplishment to offer, Trump substituted his business acumen as the accomplishments for voters to evaluate. I do not accept such a substitution for reasons I’ve delved into at length, but for those voters who have, there is a critical question: how much of his claims are true? Voters who’ve kept up with media reports are well aware that many questions have been raised concerning his success as a business leader.

But if he is the success he claims to be, his tax returns should reveal that his talk matches his walk. For the serious, sober voter who worries about the competence of our leaders, if one of them claims to be a great business leader, verification, as with any leader, is a necessity, and so the tax returns become an unexpected key to evaluation of candidate Trump.

Thus, Trump’s failure to fulfill this promise is a great disappointment. Indeed, the article quoting Conaway also provides a timeline of the various comments made by Trump and his representatives on the issue, and it’s hard not to see this as a matter of stringing the voters along until he had the base hooked, until they didn’t care.

But he still has more than a year to fulfill that promise, and if he has been the great business leader he claims, it’ll be a great rebuff to his opponents. But as each day passes, legitimate suspicions grow that his acumen is inferior.

I know I’ve answered this before:

President Trump filed a federal lawsuit against the Manhattan district attorney Thursday, his attorney said, seeking to stop him from subpoenaing Trump’s tax returns in a probe of hush-money payments during the 2016 election.

In the suit, Trump argues that District Attorney Cyrus Vance is conducting a criminal investigation of him, which he contends is not allowed under the Constitution.

That’s because the Constitution prohibits any prosecutor from investigating any sitting president for any criminal wrongdoing, he says.

If that were permitted, Trump says, it could give local authorities too much power to hamstring a president’s actions. “All you need is one prosecutor, one trial judge, the barest amount of probable cause, and a supportive local constituency, and you can shut down a presidency,” Trump’s complaint says, quoting law professor Jed Shugerman, according to a copy of the lawsuit posted online by CNN. [WaPo]

Frivolous lawsuits get thrown out, biased judges get fired, trivialities don’t need his personal attention.

And if there’s something substantive, that’s another reason to have a Vice-President, now isn’t it?

I don’t care if then-Judge Kavanaugh disagrees:

His suit also quoted an article by Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh — written in 2009, when Kavanaugh was an appeals court judge — saying that “a President who is concerned about an ongoing criminal investigation is almost inevitably going to do a worse job as President.”

Good God, man, the alternative, which supplies the foundation for a dictator, is far, far worse than some morally puny President distracted by the potential punishments for his misdeeds.

A few days ago, a mysterious and even momentous non-event occurred. Or event didn’t occur. To recap, Andrew McCabe is a former deputy director of the FBI, and was responsible for the investigation of the Clinton email server incident. Later, after Director Comey’s firing and Trump’s learning that McCabe’s wife was a Democrat who had run for office, and lost, McCabe was fired days before his retirement. Then federal prosecutors began to investigate him for releases of information concerning the Clinton Foundation, and for possibly lying to FBI investigators about the matter.

On September 12th, an indictment from a grand jury was expected. And … nothing happened. Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare speculate:

It is hard to express what an incredibly rare occurrence a grand jury refusal to return what is called a “true bill” would be, if that is indeed what took place. It may not be quite accurate that, as the saying goes, a prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, but the sentiment gets at something real. The Bureau of Justice Statistics indicates that between October 2013 and September 2014—the last year these data were publicly available—the department investigated almost 200,000 cases and declined to prosecute roughly 31,500. Of the latter category, just five of those cases were declined because a grand jury returned no true bill—a percentage so small that the Bureau of Justice Statistics declines to actually write it out. Between October 2010 and September 2011, and October 2011 and September 2012, the proportion of declined cases explained by grand juries returning no true bills is a momentous 0.1 percent. …

… that the grand jury actually declined to indict McCabe, instead returning no true bill.

This would be a very big deal—a huge rebuke to the Justice Department’s conduct of this case. Grand juries do not need to be unanimous. They need to have a quorum of their 23 members, and they require only a majority of at least 12—that is, a majority of the full grand jury, no matter how many grand jurors are present—to return an indictment. They also don’t proceed by proof beyond a reasonable doubt, the standard at trial. Instead, an indictment issues on the lower standard of probable cause. In other words, if this is really what happened, it would mean that the Justice Department couldn’t even persuade a majority of people who have heard from all of the witnesses that there is even probable cause to proceed against McCabe.

Given the vociferousness of McCabe in defense of his conduct and the apparent failure of the grand jury to deliver a true bill, I am beginning to suspect the investigation into McCabe’s conduct was biased, or the results were misinterpreted, deliberately or not, by either AG Barr or President Trump.

As Wittes and Jurecic point out, though, this is all speculative at this point.

Professor Erik Demaine of MIT at work on a piece.

The documentary Between The Folds (2008) is less about the mechanics of origami, the art of folding and warping paper, and more about the philosophy and frontiers of origami. It narrates the history of both the vocation and its leading practicioners of the time (2008), exploring the emotional interstices between audience, artist, and process in one sequence, the aesthetic questions of technique vs art in another, and the potential practical applications of origami in fields as diverse as safety engineering and mathematical research, or, as one mathematician remarked, how a single piece of paper encompasses all of mathematics, from geometry to number theory.

Too damn cute. By Bernard Peyton.

This is a simply presented subject, letting it speak for itself, and this transformational art certainly has a lot to say. From time to time my Arts Editor gasped in wonder as an artist found something new to add, such as color, and how the folds transformed the crude color application into a startling and beautiful contrast; or how the mottled skin of a representational figure left us bemused.

It’s something to say that, afterward, we held a short discussion on the application of origami into research on prime numbers. I doubt we’ll ever get to it, but simply thinking about the topic, the application of living geometry to one of the most mysterious aspects of mathematical systems, is fascinating.

It’s not hard to recommend this documentary, not just for the student origamist, but for the cross-disciplinarian who is looking to expand their mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE4lqYzS2m0

In a sign that I have fallen behind on my reading, I have yet another NewScientist (31 August 2019) reference:

A Chinese government policy allowing all couples to have two children led to an additional 5.4 million births in the first 18 months after it took effect.

China’s universal two-child policy, announced in October 2015, was designed to boost the country’s stagnating population growth. …

Birth rates declined to a low of 1.49 births per woman in 1999. Driven by concerns about an ageing population and shrinking workforce, from November 2013, a selective two-child policy was introduced: couples were allowed to have a second child if either parent was an only child.

Putting more pressure on the environment, the cities, and, in general, human civilization. This strikes me as the malevolent spreading of a morality appropriate to small groups to the biggest group around, and watching it eat everything in sight.

This sounds cool, doesn’t it?

Image source: YouTube

A smartphone app can detect signs of norovirus, the most common cause of gastroenteritis.

Jeong-Yeol Yoon and his colleagues at the University of Arizona in the US built the system using a microscope attachment for a smartphone and a separate light source. Combined they can detect low levels of norovirus in water.

The technique is sensitive enough to detect as little as 10 attograms (10⁻¹⁸ grams) of norovirus per millilitre, which is six orders of magnitude better than other portable detectors, says Yoon. As few as tens of norovirus particles are enough to make people sick, he says. [NewScientist, 31 August 2019]

A mysophobe’s dream, no? But my Arts Editor suggests this might be a nightmare for them, especially if it detects levels so low as to be harmless – or a false reading.

There can be too much information.

There’s been trumpeting of Trump Administration incompetence vis a vis Iran using the Aramco drone strike as evidence, as Business Insider reveals:

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday acknowledged that the current crisis with Iran was a “direct result” of actions taken by President Donald Trump.

Since Trump withdrew the US from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, his administration has engaged in a “maximum-pressure” campaign against Tehran, Iran’s capital, in an effort to cripple the Iranian economy with harsh sanctions. The end goal of this is to squeeze Iran into coming back to the negotiation table to agree to a more stringent version of the nuclear deal that prevents Iran from building nuclear weapons. …

The secretary of state was addressing the recent attack on two major Saudi oil facilities and facing questions on how the attack was possible despite Saudi investments in US defense technology, as well as how such incidents could be deterred moving forward.

But I wonder if Trump’s opponents are misunderstanding Trump and the conservative’s objections.

First, from the BI report:

If Iran is indeed responsible for the Saudi oil field attacks, experts and former US officials say Trump’s decision to withdraw from the JCPOA opened the door for the attack, as well as the broader tensions surrounding it.

Barbara Slavin, the director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council, said in an op-ed on Wednesday, “This is what happens when you unilaterally pull out of a nuclear deal and then try to smother another country.”

There’s an implicit selection of metric of success, and it’s the level of tension, and its child, the incidence of violence, in the Mideast.

But what if this liberal approach to Iran is not the conservative approach? What if their metric is quite different?

In other words, and as my second point, what if their goals are different?

My perception is that the liberal approach to the problem of Iran, culminating in the JCPOA, was to reduce the tension and violence incited by Iran in the region. The people of Iran would be left with the problem of governance, and if that involved violence to remove the theocratic elements, so be it.

But the conservatives, offended by a regime that had nationalized Western economic assets during the Iranian Revolution, exiled a friend of the United States in the last Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, and, for many elements of the American conservative movement, is Muslim rather than Christian, this not good enough.

They want regime change.

That’s not implicit in the JCPOA. It might occur, but the conservatives want to see it happen soon, so they can take credit for it happening. That’s why Administration officials appear to be impervious to the facts on the ground, this may be why Secretary of State Pompeo could be entirely truthful when he says:

…”There is this theme that some suggest that the president’s strategy that we allowed isn’t working. I would argue just the converse of that. I would argue that what you are seeing here is a direct result of us reversing the enormous failure of the JCPOA.”

Of course, if he is being truthful, then he misapprehends the purpose of the JCPOA. But, being the amateur that he is, he doesn’t comprehend that fact, and so to him, saying the JCPOA is a failure seems like truth-telling. But, given that regime change is their goal, the incidence of tension and violence in the Mideast isn’t a sign of failure, but a sign to them that Iran is striking out due to increasing pressures at home. They may even believe that regime change is an incipient event.

All that said, I’d like to turn to the theme of paranoia, at least on my part. Who was responsible for the Aramco attacks? I’ve mentioned Iran, Yemen, Israel, and unnamed terrorist organizations. But there is one more, barely plausible, entity in play.

And that is the United States.

I don’t speak from evidence, but only from motivations. An attack pinned, however fallaciously, on the Iranians would help the current Administration achieve a current goal, which my reader can of course guess. An excuse to attack Iran it may not be, but it certainly impacts the reputation of Iran internally and internationally. Achievement of regime change would certainly perk up both the Trump base and those segments of the conservative movement that have their doubts about Trump’s re-election efforts.

And I am certain that President Trump would have no moral qualms about trying to frame Iran. The political leadership of the victim, Saudi Arabia, may have even assented.

But this is all evidence-less speculation. If I had to order my suspects from most to least likely, it’d be unofficial Iranian elements, official Iranian elements, Israel, Yemen, and the United States as least likely.

But perhaps that’s just own moral system at work. I’d rather believe that American operational elements would have screamed rather than hit an ally’s oil facilities.

It strikes me as being akin to the fabled ice dagger, but NewScientist (31 August 2019) doesn’t go there:

Spies and soldiers might soon be able to go behind enemy lines using a parachute or glider made from a polymer that vanishes on exposure to sunlight. …

[Paul Kohl of the Georgia Institute of Technology and his team] began with polymers that have a low ceiling temperature, which is the point at which the key bonds holding the substance together begin to break.

Lots of polymers break down slowly when they reach this temperature because many bonds have to be broken. But Kohl designed his material so that as soon as one bond breaks the whole thing rapidly unzips. …

Sunlight or artificial light can trigger the material to go poof. Or, in true spy style, a small light emitting diode can be placed inside a device to trigger the self-destruct process on demand. All that’s left behind is a residue and a faint smell, which Kohl says are from the additives that control the rigidity of the material.

While this particular material may prove inapplicable in a murder, cousins of it might be stiff enough to function as a knife, and perhaps it’d dissolve in the presence of blood. This team appears to be funded by the military, and so the fixation on battlefield applications. But how about a mystery assassination of an adversary leader?

Or even someone of your own country you don’t like?

The lions are adorable!

Mortal Engines (2017) took a fascinating concept and made it … mundane. In this post-apocalyptic world, mobile cities prey on each other, rolling along on their monstrous treads, looking for anything to feed their mysterious and never explained power source at their hearts. Smaller cities, burgs, and towns are meat and potatoes to the big ones, and London, having crossed the dried up channel after cleaning out England, is now on the prowl, under the guidance of the Lord Mayor and his deputy, Thaddeus Valentine.

While prey are mostly sought for incineration into energy, old tech they may carry is also of interest. We’re on the downside of the technology mountain now, and some of those old-time gizmos can be salvaged and made useful by the inhabitants of these parasitical cities.

Even into useful, but forbidden, quantum energy weapons.

Valentine collects old tech in secret hope of building a weapon that’ll make London the master of the world, but his insatiable lust leads to an assassination attempt by the citizen of a recently ingested town, a knife attack that -ahem- barely phases him. In the subsequent chase, Tom Natsworthy, a young tech salvage worker, nearly catches the assassin, but on the edge of a city precipice, the assassin says something to him, which he mindlessly repeats to Valentine –

And over he goes, out of London and into the outlands, at the hand of Valentine. He awakes to find himself being scavenged by none other than the assassin.

Between Tom’s need to get back to London, and discovering the assassin’s motivations, we’re exposed to the brutal depths to which mankind has sunk. It turns out Municipal Darwinism^[1] doesn’t have a long-term future, as the prey reproduce, if at all, abnormally slowly, and the appetites of the bigger cities are voracious. It would seem these mobile cities are doomed.

But London must go on, and Valentine’s weapon from the old, genocidal times is the one thing that can let London find new hunting grounds, because the wall shielding the land of Shan Gou has been impenetrable for centuries. Indeed, the wreckage of failed assaults by other cities is a theme of the era. But the riches of Shan Gou are legendary, and London is so, so hungry…

And so, as Tom and the assassin scramble to survive the slavers, Shan Gou agents, and the assassin’s murderous stepfather, London closes in on Shan Gou and municipal anarchy.

Even this light plot overview sounds exciting, and yet, it’s not. The problem lies in the characters, none of which are particularly well-developed or even particularly logical. Valentine may be power-hungry, or a super-patriot, or simply insane, but we can’t tell, and he’s a little dull. Another problem is a reliance on national stereotypes. Tom, for example, is almost iconic in his British blundering, while the primary Shan Gou agent, Anna Fang, of Asian heritage, has admirable fighting skills reminiscent of certain Chinese fighting styles. And then there was this Brit slaving crew who just had to have their tea…

A big, gauche monster of a flying city, awaiting its butterfly.

But balancing these negatives are the visual effects. This is classic steampunk, through and through. A mobile city may sound and look like madness, but off it roars, full of grime, people, treads, and spikes used to capture the prey. Then there’s the city in the sky, Airhaven, deliciously beautiful and ugly at the same time, impractical, a doomed flower of the air. The airplanes docked at it, too, creaking, groaning, it’s almost impossible that they can fly, but who cares? They’re gorgeously imaginative, dirty, groaning in their clashes with reality.

But speaking of, what are we to make of this stepfather of the assassin? Those glowing green eyes and creepy need for affection may have a certain ambiance, but in the end he feels like a barnacle stuck on this creaking hulk of a plot. In fact, far too much of this plot’s elements are more like barnacles snatched off the shelf, rather than organic elements that hold hidden meanings.

In the end, perhaps the biggest problem in this movie is the allocation of resources by the producers. The graphics people must have received the gargantuan portion of the funds, while the writers were the mice looking for crumbs in the pantry.

It’s too bad. It could have been so much better.

¹ Municipal Darwinism is a lovely phrase, but I fear it lacks a future, too.

Kevin Drum ruminates on this chart of the rate of abortions:

Drum doesn’t much care for either of the major competing explanations:

The usual answer [for the declining use of abortion] among liberals is that it’s due to better awareness of contraceptive choices. The usual answer among conservatives is that it’s due to restrictive new abortion laws. For various reasons I’m skeptical of both answers, but I don’t have a better one of my own.

Drum’s quite right to doubt both explanations, as do I, although my doubt isn’t based so much on detailed knowledge as it is on the fact that the two assertions are by interested, ideological parties. As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to notice that individuals keep on asserting their positions, regardless of the facts on the ground, the longer they’ve been part of the ideological movement. I see it as investment bias, the emotional feeling that if they admit failure and fallacy, they lose prestige and position. Which is true. But leads to disregarding facts in favor of useless political wars.

So let me throw out some other factors. First, we’re (to beat my own drum) overpopulated, and our personal resources are becoming scarcer and scarcer. Having a child may mean choosing to not have something else. You may wonder why that didn’t apply hundreds of years ago, but back then, one, there wasn’t that much stuff to acquire, and, two, children were an asset, not a burden. At a young age, they could be workers on the farm, diggers of coal, and laborers in many other professions.

Now, you’d think that this should push abortion rates up, but not so fast. Scarcity of personal resources can render young males less attractive, and for ladies looking for a mate, that can be a deal-killer. Indeed, looking at US Census Bureau data, in 2018 the median age for marriage for men was just short of 30 years, and for women just show of 28. 1890? 26.1 and 22. And, to illustrate my point, 1947, after an existential war that cost a lot of lives, thus lessening overpopulation and resource usage, 23.7 and 20.4. Keep in mind a woman looking to have children has to be aware that abortion is a medical procedure, and that always carries risk. Add in contraceptives, and we have some bit of an explanation.

And then there’s also the mysterious – at least to me – fertility problem plaguing contemporary male humanity in the developed world. Lowering the odds of a fertilized ovum, lower the abortion rate.

Not all factors controlling our sexual behavior are overt and consciously considered. Simply the idea that a child could put you in poverty can make both sides of the equation decline to meet in the middle.

Murmuration:

For real:

A Billionaire Dinosaur Forced Me Gay

Too bad the summary is a trifle meh:

The year is 2014 and dinosaurs have gained control of the world economy due to exceptionally accurate stock predictions. After graduating from NYU with a business degree, John is hired to be the assistant for one of the largest trading firms on Wall Street. His boss, the CEO of the company is highly regarded as the best businessman of the century. Only difference is that he is a dinosaur!

Crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside?

Yep, that’s a spider with a fly carcass.

From CNN:

An explosion has caused a fire at a Russian biological research facility that’s one of only two centers in the world known for housing samples of the smallpox virus.

The blast occurred Monday during repair work of a sanitary inspection room at the Russian State Centre for Research on Virology and Biotechnology, known as Vector, near the Russian city of Novosibirsk in Siberia, the center said in a statement.

One worker was injured in the incident and is being treated in intensive care for burns, Russia’s TASS news agency reported.

In its statement, Vector said that no biohazard material was being stored in the room where the explosion took place. The city’s mayor also insisted that the incident does not pose any biological or any other threat to the local population, according to TASS.

The fire broke out when a gas cylinder exploded on the fifth floor of the six-story laboratory building in the city of Koltsovo. The blast caused windows to smash but there was no structural damage to the building, TASS reported.

And why should I trust the Russian government’s assurances?

Image source: Wikipedia

Anagenesis:

Most anthropologists agree that A. anamensis is the ancestor of the later species A. afarensis. It is both slightly older and slightly more ape-like.

However, Melillo and her colleagues are now questioning the standard story for how A. anamensis gave rise to A. afarensis, which is widely thought to have been our ancestor.

Many believe this happened by anagenesis. “That’s when one species is evolving and gradually wholesale turns into another species,” says Melillo. “You just see some trends in time, and all of a sudden there’s no more of the ancestral species and we only find the descendant species.” The transition from A. anamensis to A. afarensis has been “one of the strongest cases for anagenesis in the fossil record”, she says. [“We’ve finally found a skull from one of our most important ancestors,” Michael Marshall, NewScientist (7 September 2019)]

I wonder how many species which leave appreciable clues in the fossil records are not geographically dispersed, or, is there a strong link between geographical dispersion and a presence in the fossil record, or is it just the luck of the draw?

I’m thinking it depends on the ecological needs of the species. If the needs are not of an environment which results in a high percentage of fossilization, then your species may not ever be found and studied.

Take that as you may.

I hope he has the old magic. From The Far Side official website:

A new online era of The Far Side is coming!

Still by Gary Larson, or does he have a creative team helping?

Larson was one of the guys who made the unthinkable thinkable, who explored human dilemmas by having them happen to ducks, dogs, and cows. Does he still have it in him?

Can’t wait to find out!

The rush to blame Iran for the drone strike on Saudi Arabia’s Aramco oil processing plants seems to be accelerating. However, in the latest WaPo article on the incident, I couldn’t help but notice this paragraph:

A U.S. assessment found that 15 structures at Abqaiq were damaged on the west-northwest-facing sides — not the southern facades, as would be expected if the attack had come from Yemen.

Not being up on the political geography of the Middle East, I pulled up a map of the area from worldatlas:

West-northwest of Saudi Arabia includes a lot of countries, most of which would either strain to launch an attack of this sort, or would prefer not to get involved.

But then there’s technologically advanced Israel. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s political future is hanging in the balance, as Mazal Mualem notes in AL Monitor:

Some media outlets described the clash that erupted in the Knesset Sept. 11 between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Arab Joint List Chairman Ayman Odeh as “unusual.” Apparently, what made it so “unusual” was the idea that Odeh could walk right up to the prime minister while clutching his cellphone and start filming him up close in the most annoying manner. It may have lasted all of a few seconds, but it seemed a lot longer.

This heated encounter took place just as Netanyahu stepped down from the podium after delivering his “camera speech.” It was a sophisticated campaign speech, promoting the Camera Bill (for placing cameras in polling stations). A speech that summoned all the demons on the right by playing on their attitudes toward Israel’s Arab population. It also succeeded in painting Yisrael Beitenu Chairman Avigdor Liberman as collaborating with them. Netanyahu went a step too far, even by his own standards, by inciting against an entire sector of the population, but the political crisis he is facing is real, at least as far as he is concerned. What this means for him is that as of now, nothing is out of bounds.

Mualem makes the additional point concerning Netanyahu’s methods: “… that summoned all the demons on the right by playing on their attitudes …” In other words, the Prime Minister is a fear-monger who will stop at nothing to keep his position, even if that means endangering innocents and the world economy. By increasing tensions in the region, he reminds Israelis who has kept them relatively safe over the last decade, and who can continue to do so, and then he watches the votes roll in for him and his allies.

As an election ploy, it’s a bit extreme, but worse has been done in the past. And I have no evidence, I merely note how this is convenient for Prime Minister Netanyahu, and, as a close ally of the United States, he’s unlikely to suffer even a reprimand from the Americans for this activity. All he needs to worry about is the Saudi Arabians retaliating, and given their alliance with the United States, it’s doubtful that it would be military. However, it might still occur, simply through other means – but Netanyahu may think he can counter that. Or be out of office by then.

And it’s worth remembering the Iranians seem to be more plausible culprits. Seem to be. On The Resurgent, David Thornton makes another good plea to consider Iran as guilty:

President Trump does not want war with Iran. The president is essentially an isolationist who wants to bring American soldiers home rather than dispatching them to a new front. War with Iran, if it did not reach a rapid and successful conclusion, would also complicate President Trump’s reelection campaign. The problem for Trump is that the Iranians sense that he does not want war and realize that this gives them an opportunity to run amok.

If credible evidence surfaces of Iran’s complicity, then this makes a great deal of sense – and challenges Trump. But that evidence has not yet been presented.

Our lone Hibiscus gave us another flower the other day.

And then the next day….

So short.

The problem with Veronica Mars (2014) is in the title. No, it’s not the wrong title, but the right title, because this movie is all about Mars, her troubled ties to her old high school in Neptune, California, and not really anything else. And that’s fairly dull.

Mars’ one time friend and classmate Logan Echolls finds himself suspected of murder by the lazy, corrupt cops of Neptune when he is found next to the electrocuted body of a woman with whom he was associated, another high school classmate of his and Mars’, now known as Ruby Jetson. Ruby was a well-known singer and celebrity, so this is a high profile murder case.

At his request, Mars, who has graduated from law school and is looking for a high-powered job to cover the costs, flies home to help investigate it. She had assisted her father for years as a private eye, and so she brings a certain level of expertise to his case. She checks out Logan and begins her investigation, runs into problems, expresses her continued hostility towards old classmates, and notes how just about no one in her class has really grown up. Eventually, it comes out that, sometime after graduation, a group of her classmates, including Ruby, had a party on a boat during which one of them died. In order to avoid the questions and shadow that such an incident were to cause, they dumped the body into the ocean.

And now someone is blackmailing them.

Well, someone else is killed, another seriously injured and then framed for attempted murder, and her own father is seriously hurt – but we never learn who’s responsible for that particular incident, and in fact that’s more or less dropped like a hot potato.

The problem? There’s little to learn from the murders. It’s all about Mars and her relationship with her sordid little town, and how she can’t help but return there. Sure, it’s not unusual to focus on the good guys in dramas like this, but the best focus on the bad guys and how they hold some attraction for the good guys. It becomes a moral struggle.

Mars’ struggle? Whether she’ll take that high-powered job at a big time law firm, or if she’ll stay in Neptune and split the private eye business with her Dad.

And that’s dull. There’s no denying this is well acted, and there are some sharp, fun exchanges, but there was little chance to predict who dunnit, as the perpetrator appears conveniently out of nowhere. Again, it’s all about Mars.

So, too bad. Meh.

Conflagration has long been a noun applied to the Middle East, a nexus of vast oil supplies, national rivalries, and clashing religious ideologies. Such bloody incidents as the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait (1990) certainly contributed to the reputation of instability the region has earned. But this weekend’s attack on the Saudi Arabian oil processing facilities in Abqaiq and Khurais, besides its literal correspondence with conflagration, also contributes in the metaphorical sense of the word.

Once again we see competing claims, and, at least for myself, the mendacity the Trump Administration has displayed since before Trump became President makes it very difficult to understand the true nature of the attack, and that uncertainty leads to a more generally elevated concern over what might happen next.

Here’s a CNN-provided summary of some of the competing claims:

A Yemen armed forces spokesman was quoted by the agency as saying the Houthis successfully carried out a “large-scale” operation with 10 drones targeting Saudi Aramco oil facilities in Abqaiq and Khurais.

But preliminary indications are that the attacks Saturday that disrupted about half of the kingdom’s oil capacity did not originate from Yemen and likely originated from Iraq, according to a source with knowledge of the incident. The same official said the damage was caused by an armed drone attack.

Which official? Is s/he trustworthy? Was it Mike Pompeo?

We call on all nations to publicly and unequivocally condemn Iran’s attacks. The United States will work with our partners and allies to ensure that energy markets remain well supplied and Iran is held accountable for its aggression

— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) September 14, 2019

Source: Wikipedia

There’s no shortage of players motivated to cut the Saudis off at the knees. The Yemen Houthis are in an active war with the Saudis, which makes the Aramco oil processing plants legitimate targets, and so if the Houthis are, in fact, responsible, then this is simply another tactic designed to drive the Saudis out of the war. Given that the Saudis, under the leadership of Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (MBS), plunged into this war (or “intervention”), began this particular incident in March 2015 under the premise that it would quickly resolve in their favor, it would be clear that the Houthis, using cheap technology and innovative tactics, are practicing asymmetrical warfare to great effect.

If the Houthis did, in fact, effect this attack.

Despite Secretary Pompeo being a member in good standing of the untrustworthy Trump Administration, his assertion that Iran is responsible is not unbelievable. Iran, after all, is laboring under American sanctions designed to bring the Iranians to their knees, renounce all nuclear arms and energy, and, in a probably unstated aim, cause regime-change in Tehran. Oil is Iran’s primary export, and the American’s primary target for sanctions. Reducing the world oil supply would certainly return the pressure on the Americans to ease up on those sanctions.

It’s worth noting that this may be an unofficial Iranian act. Iranian politics are polarized in a way that would be familiar to Americans; while both the Reformists and the hard-line Conservatives are deeply religious, the former believe that talks with the West, and in particular the United States, are necessary, while the latter believe defiance, particularly through meddling in Mideast politics, is a necessity. The two sides spend a lot of time bemoaning the moral degeneracy of the opposition. I could easily see a Conservative entity, either private or the Revolutionary Guard or allied agency, supplying the weaponry and expertise required for the attack, as a gambit to pressure and discredit the current Reformist government.

And that leads to thoughts about entirely private, pan-national terrorist organizations. Guns help level the playing field between large and small groups; drones are another element that can level the playing field, amplifying the importance of military intelligence and technological skills to damage and destroy targets with little risk to those employing them. These successful attacks on the Saudi oil processing facilities may be the work of a terrorist organization, either directly or by supplying the Houthis, stirring up mischief in hopes of taking advantage of the chaos to accomplish their private ends. Without more information, though, speculation on this possibility is pointless.

Finally, while some might proclaim this to be the proof that drones can be used by the oppressed to rise up against their oppressors, drones are, like most weapons, agnostic tools. That is to say, their efficacy is not dictated by the ideology of their users, but the situation in the field, and the skills of their operators. And the latter may shrink if they are equipped with strong artificial intelligence, a possibility that does not fill me with feelings of wellness, as I’ve mentioned before numerous times on this thread.

Better than just about anything else. Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/CjY0mm-xiLY

Update: I wish I had been one of the runners.

With regard to the controversy concerning the National Weather Service (NWS) being ordered to lie to back up the President, I see in yesterday’s WaPo that Neil Jacobs did in fact protest the order to inform the NWS to back up the President’s tweet and not contradict him in the future, and that now he’s trying to repair the damage:

Neil Jacobs, the acting head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, sent an all-staff email Friday afternoon in an apparent effort to repair damage from an unusual Sept. 6 statement that sided with President Trump rather than agency weather forecasters. …

The Washington Post learned Jacobs and NOAA chief of staff Julie Kay Roberts were involved in crafting the statement, which admonished the Weather Service’s Birmingham office for speaking “in absolute terms.” However, Jacobs fought issuing such a statement and also tried to block the paragraph that called out the Birmingham Weather Service office but lost both those arguments, according to two people who spoke to The Post.

I’m not inclined to apologize for my suggestion that Jacobs resign in disgrace. Jacobs should have resigned in a public display of defiance, protecting the critical importance of the independence of NOAA and its devotion to integrity, and not the emotional and political fragilities of the President. He also may have laid the blame for that mistaken order at the feet of whoever gave it, reportedly Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.

That said, I can and do acknowledge that he may see himself as a moral bulwark against the President’s unethical desires, and serves the Nation better quietly working to preserve the independence of those agencies in his purview, rather than making a splashy flame out in the atmosphere.

In the closing line of his email, Jacobs touched on that very topic: “Our team is committed to upholding scientific integrity.”

I disagree with that judgment, but I can see it.

This is the time of the year when our cleome shines. Cleome is an annual that sometimes will reseed, and these are the result.