Monthly Archives: March 2019

You may remember the last, failed appeal by Dominique Ray to have a representative of his faith tradition (Muslim) be present at his execution, and that SCOTUS voted 5-4 along strict party lines in that decision. But now another such appeal has come along, this time involving a Buddhist – and SCOTUS voted 7-2 to uphold the appeal. So what the hell is going on? Ilya Somin of The Volokh Conspiracy explains the situation and has a guess as to the reason for the decision:

… the Supreme Court stayed an execution in a Texas case in which the defendant, a Buddhist, was denied the right to have a Buddhist priest join him in the execution chamber, even though Christian and Muslim prisoners were allowed the company of spiritual advisers of the same faith, in like circumstances. The facts of Murphy v. Collier are very similar to those of Dunn v. Ray, a recent ruling in which the Court allowed an Alabama execution to go forward, even though the prisoner, a Muslim, was not allowed to have a Muslim imam in the execution chamber with him, while Christian prisoners were allowed to have a Christian minister present. …

Why then, did Alito, Kavanaugh, and Roberts rule in favor of Murphy despite previously ruling against Ray? We cannot know for sure. But it is possible to make some educated guesses. …

A more likely reason, in my view, is that the justices saw the extremely negative reaction against their decision in Ray, and belatedly realized they had made a mistake; and not just any mistake, but one that inflicted real damage on their and the Court’s reputations. Presented with a chance to “correct” their error and signal that they will not tolerate religious discrimination in death penalty administration, they were willing to bend over backwards to seize the opportunity, and not let it slip away.

And, whatever can be said about the procedural question, it’s a good thing that the justices have taken a major step towards clearing up any confusion over their stance on the substantive one. Whether in death penalty cases or elsewhere, it is indeed impermissible for the government to discriminate on the basis of religion.

I’m a little conflicted. It’s dismaying to see the Court swayed by public opinion (or pundit prattle, if you prefer), since Courts are ideally in the business of interpreting the law & Constitution regardless of the whim of public opinion. They provide a stable pillar to how government works.

On the other hand, given the reaction from across the political spectrum to what appeared to be religious bigotry on the part of the conservative wing of the Court in Ray, it’s a little reassuring that at least Alito, Kavanaugh, and Roberts were willing to admit a prior mistake and have backfilled where they can, assuming that Somin is correct in his guess.

But then how do we evaluate the Gorsuch and Thomas votes? They may have reasoned that making this a 9-0 vote for the appellant in Murphy would have suggested they had made a mistake in Ray; or it might have suggested inconstancy in their judgments between the two cases. Neither looks good for their legacy. On the other hand, their vote in Ray is an equally outsized blemish on their legacies. It’d be interesting to know if any of these guesses truly are accurate, or if they’d put forth yet another reason for their stubborn position.

And for the long term? I’m not sure. That Chief Justice Roberts screwed up the Ray case is appalling and disappointing. Somin has already pointed out in text I did not quote that, if anything, the reasoning applied by the majority in Ray applied with even more impact in Murphy; yet three conservative justices did not accept that reasoning.

These two cases, although as I understand it not precedent-setting, may generate painful and logically twisted legal arguments for years to come.

For this dinosaur geek, this is actually a little sobering:

In a paper to be published April 1 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences an international team of authors, including University of Washington Provost Mark Richards, share the discovery of a site that tells another piece of the story from the day a meteor strike is thought to have led to the end of the dinosaurs.

“It’s like a museum of the end of the Cretaceous in a layer a meter and a half thick,” said Richards, who is also a professor in the UW Department of Earth & Space Sciences.

This unique fossilized graveyard – fish stacked one atop another mixed with burned tree trunks and conifer branches, dead mammals, a pterosaur egg, a mosasaur and insects, the carcass of a Triceratops and seaweed and marine snails called ammonites – was unearthed over the past six years in the Hell Creek Formation in North Dakota by lead author Robert DePalma.

“This is the first mass death assemblage of large organisms anyone has found associated with the KT boundary,” said DePalma, curator of paleontology at the Palm Beach Museum of Natural History in Florida and a doctoral student at the University of Kansas. “Nowhere else on Earth can you find such a collection consisting of a large number of species representing different ages of organisms and different stages of life, all of which died at the same time, on the same day.” [University of Washington News]

Associated with the Chicxulub meteor crater off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, the pictures that can be seen at the link above are a graphic illustration of the uncaring forces of Nature which could drop on our heads at any moment. These ancient creatures are not the unfortunate victims of predators, or predators who took a wrong step into a sinkhole and never made it out – they are the evidence of mass, instantaneous death.

A sobering thought.

A fully wooden car, the Toyota Setsuna, was displayed at the 2016 Milan Design Week.

I was led to this by an article in NewScientist (16 March 2019, paywall) on the replacement of concrete and steel with processed wood:

… as cities grow, the potential of CLT [cross-laminated timber] does too. Around 65 per cent of the urban infrastructure that will be needed in 2030 has yet to be built. If it is constructed with concrete and steel, we have little chance of keeping temperatures down. CLT does not eliminate the old materials completely, but reduces them by up to 80 per cent. “We still use concrete for foundations,” say Shah. “But a wood building is about a third of the weight of a steel and concrete building. That means we require less deep foundations so it reduces the amount tremendously.” Wood also improves a building’s insulation, further cutting its carbon footprint.

In the not-too-distant future, wood could even be used in place of glass in windows. A few years ago, scientists at the Wallenberg Wood Science Center in Stockholm, Sweden, invented a way to extract the pigments from wood. The result was a transparent material that can be used like glass, but with better insulating properties – another small step toward a zero-carbon future.

They even go on to observe lasers have been built using deconstructed wood. Long time readers will recall I’ve talked about wooden buildings made from CLT, so this is all very interesting. Do we really have the wood-growing resources to switch to an economy in which CLT is the primary construction material world-wide? It’ll be interesting to see.

Bon Appetit!

Amateurish drek.

That’s the label I was going to apply to Planet of Dinosaurs (1977).

But, after a little wretched setup to explain why this group of people are running around a savage planet, came the dinosaurs. And I had to admit that, for the stop-action era of special effects, they were not at all bad.

So it’s just drek. But I have to admit I laughed when mama dinosaur registered a forceful protest about making her eggs into omelettes. If you’re a fan of movie stop-action dinosaurs, this piece of drek contains some of the best.

One of you was cheating at pinochle, but I’m not sure who!

If you’re going to watch Up In The Air (1940), you’d best be prepared for a little racism, as Mantan Moreland plays his usual role as the terrified menial help, and it doesn’t help that there’s a blackface scene – although it doesn’t end well for the guy doing the deed.

But other than that, Up In The Air is a pleasant little murder mystery. When the lights go out during rehearsal at the radio station, star singer Rita, who proved to be a real bitch in her few minutes in the story^[1], is shot dead. Who did it? The mysterious stranger who was quietly enjoying the show? One of the musicians? Hyper-kinetic page Frankie, eager to move up in the world?

The police eventually release everyone for want of evidence, and Frankie and his helper, Jeff, who together have been working on a comedy act, take it upon themselves to further the investigation. The mysterious stranger is the next to take it in the neck, just as the investigators discover he’s from Cheyenne and has a connection with a ‘Gladys Wharton,’ but who’s she? The dead singer? Her up and coming replacement, too-innocent Anne? Some floozy back in Cheyenne?

Things move along perhaps just a little too quickly, and the characterization was a little too scant so that when the murderer is finally fingered, I couldn’t remember who it was, so this is definitely a mediocre presentation.

But my Arts Editor said, considering the poor audio, the replacement singer Anne had a more than passable alto voice.

¹ Although, to be honest, her employers were no gems themselves. The word defenestration actually crossed my mind during the one scene with her and the radio management.

This is one of those fascinating physics tricks. NewScientist (16 March 2019, paywall) has the story on laser light and black holes:

A BLACK hole’s gravitational pull is so strong that it bends light around it like a strange cosmic mirror. Interstellar spacecraft could make use of this effect to steal energy from a black hole and get a speed boost without needing extra fuel.

We already use a version of this energy-stealing. Spacecraft heading from Earth to the outer solar system slingshot around Jupiter for a gravity assist, speeding up by ever so slightly slowing the planet in its orbit.

Spacecraft could theoretically perform the same trick with a black hole for an even greater boost in speed. It is a risky manoeuvre, however, as the craft risks falling in to the eternal clutches of the black hole.

Luckily, David Kipping at Columbia University has found that you don’t need to use the spaceship itself for the slingshot: you can use light as a sort of proxy.

If you fire a laser at just the right angle to travel around a black hole that is moving towards you, the light will return with more energy than it started with. Catch the beam as it hurtles back and this extra energy could be used to power your ship.

And don’t forget the initial boost you’d get just by shooting the laser. I wonder how many SF writers ran right to their tripewriters word processors and came up with a story incorporating that phenomenon when they read this?

And now I’m thinking that’s just what Larry Niven did in The Borderland of Sol. It won the Hugo Award for Novelette in ’76, so don’t sneer just yet.

Steve Benen tees off on President Trump’s nomination of Stephen Moore to the Fed Reserve Board:

But even putting that aside, Stephen Moore isn’t just another unfortunate selection for the amateur president. He is a uniquely ridiculous choice – quite possibly the least defensible of the Trump presidency to date.

To say it’s difficult to know where to start with Moore’s c.v. is to be quite literal. It matters, obviously, that he’s not an economist and knows very little about what the Federal Reserve does. But it also matters that Moore has been wrong about practically everything for many years. It matters that he appears to be a Trump sycophant. It matters that Moore has had a hand in some spectacular economic failures. It matters that Moore’s economic opinions tend to echo Republican talking pointswhile “flying in the face of economic theory.”

It matters that Moore has a reputation for misstating basic factual details. It matters that his economic views tend to vary based on the party of the president at the time. It matters that the White House has made the finance industry nervous with this nomination. It matters that actual economists have been apoplectic about Trump’s selection of Moore, (One scholar argued, “This is truly an appalling appointment. An ideologue, charlatan, and hack. Frankly so bad the putatively serious economists in Trump administration should resign as matter of honor.”)

It matters that Moore has embarrassed himself on television over and over again. It matters that Moore, at the height of the Great Recession, turned to “Atlas Shrugged” as an economic guide. It matters that Moore’s own finances are a mess – why the White House refuses to vet its nominees in advance is a mystery – owing $75,000 in unpaid federal taxes, interest, and penalties.

Slate’s recent summary struck me as notable: “Stephen Moore is a living embodiment of the sucking intellectual void at the core of conservative economics, an inept pundit who has spent his career evangelizing the supply-side dogma that tax cuts pay for themselves while shilling for Republican officeholders, all from well-paid perches at think tanks and in the media.”

I think we may see Mr. Moore confirmed, despite his apparently glaring deficiencies, because he appears to be an acolyte to the Holy Economic Faith of the Republican Party: tax cuts, Laffer Curves, and trickle-down economics. This is important because such unreasoning beliefs are difficult to rebuff. Reason has little effect on them. They have theoretical underpinnings, much like theology, which gives them an air of respectability for all concerned, including the leaders. Witness the smoking disaster of Brownback’s Kansas. He should have known better.

No one’s really peeking behind their curtain.

So I fear we’re really going to have to go through another recession in order for the Republicans to even consider revising their faith, not belief, but faith in these Holy Economic Tenets.

And, in the meantime, I fear Mr. Moore will get his seat on the Fed Reserve Board. His lack of economics training may be the only thing that’ll hold him back, and I don’t know that’ll stick in the Republicans’ craw enough to stop his ride.

Lagerstätte:

A Lagerstätte (German: [ˈlaːɡɐˌʃtɛtə], from Lager ‘storage, lair’ Stätte ‘place’; plural Lagerstätten) is a sedimentary deposit that exhibits extraordinary fossils with exceptional preservation—sometimes including preserved soft tissues. These formations may have resulted from carcass burial in an anoxic environment with minimal bacteria, thus delaying decomposition. Lagerstättenspan geological time from the Neoproterozoic era to the present. Worldwide, some of the best examples of near-perfect fossilization are the Cambrian Maotianshan shales and Burgess Shale, the Devonian Hunsrück Slates and Gogo Formation, the Carboniferous Mazon Creek, the Jurassic Solnhofen limestone, the Cretaceous Santana and Yixian formations, and the Eocene Green River Formation. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “Daily Kos Science: A discovery in China could add extraordinary details to the history of life,” Mark Sumner, The Daily Kos:

Lagerstätte may not be a word that many people run into in their daily lives, but for geologists it’s an extremely exciting term. A lagerstätte is an area were rocks have preserved evidence of ancient life—with extraordinary fidelity and in great numbers. Unlike most fossils, which are generally only reflect bones and shells—the ‘hard parts’ of vanished organisms—the remains found at a lagerstätte may include the delicate sweep of a brush-stroke-thin antenna, dangling representations of a jellyfish’s tendrils, even the internal organs of tiny creatures.

I see there’s another uproar caused by religion leaking out of its home and intruding where it is explicitly unwelcome:

State Rep. Stephanie Borowicz was on the ninth “Jesus” of her opening prayer in the Pennsylvania statehouse when other lawmakers started to look uncomfortable.

Speaker Mike Turzai, a fellow Republican, glanced up — but Borowicz carried on, delivering a 100-second ceremonial invocation that some of her colleagues decried as an offensive, divisive and Islamophobic display shortly before the legislature swore in its first Muslim woman.

This is ridiculous, a clear abuse of a dubious privilege. If we’re going to have an Establishment Clause, we should simply eliminate opportunities to privilege religion in a governmental context, as this most certainly is.

But Borowicz has her defenders, including the prominent (but intellectually doubtful) Franklin Graham:

“She doesn’t need to apologize,” Graham wrote on Facebook. “We don’t change who we are or what we believe because someone who is present may believe differently than we believe. I know Stephanie Borowicz would appreciate your prayers and encouragement. I always appreciate anyone who has the guts to stand up for Jesus.”

So why didn’t she use her time to defend democracy? After all, the statehouse is not a church, it’s a place where governmental business in a democracy is conducted – and certainly over the last couple of years, it’s had its abusers. Where is her loyalty to the Constitution, Graham, if she has to use a government facility to promote her religious views?

And that last sentence is, of course, hysterical, the remark of a wannabe theocrat who has decided to don the hood of the victim in order to advance his cause. It’s quite shameful, backing someone illicitly using her governmental position to attack someone else’s religion. This is another reason not to accord Graham any respect.

Hemiplegic:

Pertaining to hemiplegia (paralysis of one side of the body.) [MedicineNet]

Heard used by a friend a couple of days ago.

This speech by Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) has the political world abuzz:

If you don’t want to sit through it, there’s also a transcript. On an aesthetic level, I suppose the Senator did an OK job, although that’s not really his area of expertise. I’m sure his staff enjoyed this assignment. I was vaguely amused. I also saw mention of this on Colbert last night, and, on review, I think Colbert was a somewhat unfair to the Senator.

However, and I believe the Senator is no longer being satirical at this juncture, I was horrified at his conclusion. I suppose I shouldn’t be – his training is in law, neither climate science nor demographic analysis nor ecology nor, since he mentions he believes this is an engineering problem, an engineer. When he calls for, in very libertarian language, more people:

And problems of human imagination are not solved by more laws, but by more humans!

More people mean bigger markets for innovation.

More babies mean more forward-looking adults – the sort we need to tackle long-term, large scale problems.

American babies, in particular, are likely going to be wealthier, better educated, and more conservation-minded than children raised in still-industrializing regions.

As economist Tyler Cowen recently wrote on this very point, “by having more children, you are making your nation more populous – thus boosting its capacity to solve [climate change].”

he’s calling not for a solution, but for an exacerbation of the problem. At it’s root, climate change is not about burning fossil fuels or even mass consumption – tragically, it’s about too many people. If we had only a third, or even half the population we actually have, and they were steady state, and our technology more or less the same, would we be facing a climate change problem? Almost certainly not. In fact, the Spring 2019 issue of American Archaeology, not yet online, has an article which inadvertently makes my point for me. I plan to publish a post using material from that article when AA’s publisher, the Archaeological Conservancy, gets their act together and puts it online (if they do – some articles don’t make it online). It has to do with the severe reduction in North American population when the diseases of Europe were let loose among the Indians, and how that affected the climate.

But back to the point, his call for more people and a magical creation of a solution is rather like, after jumping out of an airplane sans parachute, calling for everyone else to jump out as well and we’ll develop a solution before we hit.

She keeps showing up at the most unexpected functions.

Roger Corman is a B-Movie legend as a director & producer – but what’s interesting is who’s worked for him. A short while ago I reviewed Galaxy of Terror (1981), and didn’t mention that the now-legendary James Cameron worked as Production Designer, and was responsible for many cheap, yet effective, special effects.

Here’s another one: Corman served as producer for Dementia 13 (1963), but who was the director? Now-legendary director Francis Ford Coppola. In this early Coppola-written psychodrama, an Irish family living in a castle is being slowly sucked into the black hole that is the young daughter’s death by accidental drowning. Why is her mother still so distraught? Who’s the chap with the axe who’s taken a dislike to the family? What of her three brothers, and their two spouses? Bodies start to pile up, but so do the psychotic attributes of these people, as the family fortune comes into play, as does the devilishly handsome doctor who’s paying almost unseemly amounts of attention to the mother.

And if the interesting effort isn’t enough, our Arts Editor vouched for the quality of the sculpture.

It’s an erratic but interesting effort. There are some plot holes here for sure, but when the little girl’s toys starting floating up from the back yard pond, well, that was a little creepy. Sure, the seams of the plot show here and there – character narrative is always a red flag – but there’s also well-done bits that keep the interest flowing.

Not that I recommend it, but it’s not beyond the pale to say that the devoted Coppola fan wouldn’t enjoy this early production of his.

Since the release of A.G. Barr’s summary of the Mueller Report, there’s been a concerted effort to run the Democrat in charge of the House Intel committee, Adam Schiff (D-CA), out of town:

The House Intelligence Committee was a center of partisan fighting over Trump’s alleged Russia ties even before Mueller began his investigation, developing a reputation for discord and sniping during the GOP-led Russia probe that determined there was no evidence Trump colluded with Russia.

Republicans see Schiff’s recalibration as proof he was wrong to challenge Trump.

“He essentially spent 22 months lying to the country,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), one of Trump’s most vocal supporters in Congress.

Gaetz said that in seeking Schiff’s ouster as committee chair, Republicans were following the example set by Democrats, who in 2017 sought to remove Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) when he chaired the committee. [WaPo]

The idea is that Barr’s Summary has been mistakenly interpreted to “exonerate” President Trump of obstruction of justice charges, when it explicitly does not do so, and not finding enough evidence of collusion to prosecute, especially since the DoJ frowns on prosecuting sitting Presidents. The misrepresentations of the content of the Barr Summary have been discouraging to see in my fellow Americans.

But what’s caught my eye, the dishonest error being committed by Republicans who are frantic to be seen as being on the same moral plane as the Democrats^[1], is this: the House investigation and the Mueller investigation are independent of each other. As we all know, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Let’s suppose Mueller found not a spec of evidence of collusion by then-candidate Trump. Does this prove that Trump is innocent of the charge? Does it prove Schiff’s investigators will find nothing because there’s nothing to find?

Of course not.

Mueller’s investigators may have been incompetent, hamstrung by regulations, unable to access proper sources of information, or even just unlucky. After all, there is much circumstantial evidence of said collusion, including Trump begging the Russians, live on TV, to help him, if they could, with stolen Clinton email. Quite properly, that’s collusion right there, the kind of evidence that no one in their right mind can ever deny.

My point is that the Republican assault on Rep Schiff is unreasonable, dishonest, and a betrayal of their oaths to the Constitution. If Schiff says he’s seen evidence, uncovered by House investigators, of collusion, then that should be treated with sober concern by all members of Congress, because that’s an attack on our core institutions.

Yeah, those institutions that got all these Trump-defenders their jobs.

They should think about that, if they can’t raise themselves to the moral level of worrying about their country.

¹ And with a dead immoral weight like Trump swinging from their necks, they aren’t likely to achieve that height of rectitude any time soon.

They were so bad, he just up and had a heart attack.

Murder with Pictures (1936) suffers from a lack of attention to detail. This is a murder mystery in which the defense lawyer of a gangster dies of a gunshot wound during a photo shoot after the gangster has been cleared of a recent murder. There’s a selection of possible murderers, most of them news photographers, along with a mystery woman. The lead is a young, poverty-stricken newsman looking for his big story, but having to wade through quite the shit storm, from veiled threats from the gangster to a woman who claims he signed a contract to marry her or pay her $5,000 – in 1936 dollars, it’s quite a headwind.

And it all feels a little artificial.

Throw into the blend the fact that the mystery woman is apparently shot in the back, yet can bound up out of bed and drive around in cars with notoriously stiff suspensions, who also takes a shot to the jaw, and is yet not kidnapped while she lays unconscious, a killer who appears out of nowhere, and a really flawed soundtrack (at least on Amazon Prime, where the captions were also at least 30 seconds behind the dialogue), and it was a difficult story to enjoy, despite the cleverness of the crime.

In the end, I think the unbelievable character responses damaged the show. But I still like the title.

The snapback of the Republicans in the wake of the supposed “exoneration” of their cult leader, President Trump, has been something fierce – and quite possibly an overreach, if the Democrats are willing to take advantage of it. I have in mind the statements of Kellyanne Conway:

Kellyanne Conway calls for new investigations of the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton.

"'Why are still talking about Hillary Clinton?' Because folks, you wouldn't let the 2016 election go… There should be a reckoning, because our democracy bears nothing less." pic.twitter.com/pUbdjEqah0

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 25, 2019

And then there’s Senator Graham (R-SC), who has his plans for retribution:

“When it comes to the FISA warrant, the Clinton campaign, the counterintelligence investigation, it’s pretty much been swept under the rug,” Graham said. “Those days are over.”

But this is all fairly laughable; in fact, it’s marketing material, not serious governance. Each of these were investigated by the Republicans themselves in the previous Congress – and while they sometimes made shrill cries of victory, they all proved to be rotten at their core. For those paying attention to these matters, Graham is a laughingstock. A laughingstock who is, however, assuring his own re-election, by satisfying his own base.

But he won’t have much of a legacy. I don’t envy him his retirement years, when the realization of the character his allies is forced upon him.

But I must say, there are days I’d love to be the interlocutor of these clowns. Let’s take Kellyanne for an example, as I make up a scurrilious conversation:

INTERLOCUTOR: Kellyanne, you said, “There should be a reckoning, because our democracy bears nothing less,” and I completely agree. As I’m sure you would agree that each side should be equally well-examined, let’s begin with Clinton. In the last decade or more, she’s been thoroughly examined by Congressional committees, most of which have been run by vengeful Republicans -”

KC: That’s not true, young man –

I: I refer, of course, to Rep Kevin McCarthy’s open admission to same, Kellyanne, so please desist from spreading further lies.

KC: <sputter>

I: … but to continue, Clinton has been investigated half a dozen times and more, often led by seasoned former U. S. Attorneys, such as former Rep Trey Gowdy (R-SC). She been raked down one side, up the other. She’s been given a virtual full gynecological examination, a look right up the ol’ vagina by Republican-backed investigators, not only into her finances, and the Clinton Foundation finances, but all her activities as Secretary of State and as candidate Clinton.

KC: Where there’s smoke –

I: There’s fire, yes, yes. And even – arson. But I stand quite in gratitude to Republicans for proving, well beyond any reasonable doubt, that Hillary Clinton stands guilty of nothing worse than mismanaging an email server.

KC: But –

I: Now, Kellyanne, it’s necessary that President Trump be equally forthcoming. Before you try to sell some line of tripe that he has already done so, has he released his tax returns for the last ten years? Has he released the contents of his conferences with President Putin of Russia, which he has so unwisely held back from his intelligence leaders? We’re not asking for the results of his proctology examine, nothing nearly as invasive and unfair as has happened to Clinton, but just simple, old-fashioned American honesty and fair-dealing. Is that too much to ask of an American President? We haven’t seen that as of yet, now have we?

If the Democrats recognize that Conway and Graham have made rhetorical errors, then they should retort and publicize those retorts. Clinton has been their favored target, even if Clinton keeps slapping them silly during hearings, so use that treatment of her against the Republicans. If the Republicans are competent investigators, then declare that the Republicans have proven she’s clean, and that now it’s time for Trump to come absolutely clean – and, if he declines, politely inquire as to why he can’t be bothered to measure up to the Clinton standard.

Prick him with the thought that Clinton is much better than she has. Make it clear he’s not making it over the bar, yet.

Trump’s wasn’t even exonerated by Mueller. You can’t let him and his party get away with taking control of the agenda. This is when it’s necessary to use their own efforts against them.

On-set nickname: Miss Grumpycakes.

Earth is a danger to all of the Universe, so some Federation of civilizations sends a glowing, radioactive woman to, well, interfere with a kidnapping. She touches the bad guys and they fall down dead from radiation poisoning.

The title of this whopper is so much better than the actual story: The Astounding She-Monster (1958).

Oh, and we get to the end of the movie, and the message left by the alien is … “Come join our Federation.” Wait, what? Continuity!

Oh, this was dreadful. Please do not waste your life on this one.

Lawfare’s Benjamin Wittes, etc, evaluate Attorney General Barr’s letter concerning Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign:

The brief letter sent by Attorney General William Barr to congressional leaders on Sunday afternoon summarizing Mueller’s findings is a complicated document. In key respects, it contains very good news for President Trump about a scandal that has dogged his presidency since before he even took office. The determination of just how good the news is—whether it amounts to the exoneration Trump claims on these points or whether we’re dealing with conduct just shy of prosecutable—will have to await the text of Mueller’s report itself. But for those who quite reasonably demanded a serious investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and of cooperation and coordination with it on the part of the Trump campaign, it has to be significant that Mueller, after the better part of two years of investigating, has not found that anyone associated with the Trump campaign knowingly conspired with Russia’s efforts.

In other respects, however, Barr’s summary of Mueller’s report is ominous for the president. While Mueller did not find that Trump obstructed his investigation, he also made a point of not reaching the opposite conclusion: that Trump didn’t obstruct the investigation. Indeed, he appears to have created a substantial record of the president’s troubling interactions with law enforcement for adjudication in noncriminal proceedings—which is to say in congressional hearings that are surely the next step.

Which is to say, the President may have committed criminal acts when it comes to obstruction of justice, but Mueller did not feel he had the freedom to prosecute those in view of DoJ policies. He leaves that to  Congress to consider.

If you’re depressed Trump wasn’t marched away in handcuffs, it’s worth recalling that we have, on record, an amazing collection of falsehoods and braggodocio which should eliminate him from consideration for a second term – even if his base continues its insane love affair with him. We have indications of character defects, crimes committed prior to his election to the Presidency, and many other defects.

But, perhaps most importantly for the health of the Republic, is the Lawfare conclusion:

Whether this proves the beginning of the end of L’Affaire Russe or the prelude to a series of additional disclosures about activity on the part of the Trump campaign and the president himself that are disturbing but happen to fall just short of criminal activity, it is important not to lose sight of the significance of the investigation having been completed. That Mueller was able to complete his probe into a sitting president without having his investigation blocked—despite ongoing presidential braying against the probe and menacing of the Justice Department’s leadership—is no small thing.

That Mueller was able to write his report, to document his findings in a fashion that can allow for transparency and, if necessary, accountability, is of immense value. The question of what to do with the record Mueller has compiled will ultimately fall to Congress.

It’s not an impregnable Presidency. Names such as Manafort & Gates will ring forth as emblematic of a sick, corrupt campaign that has led to one of the most corrupt and swamp-driven Administrations in a very long time.

I also liked Wittes’ approach in another post:

The end of a criminal investigation is thus a funny moment. While the subject will generally claim vindication, it actually does not mean that you cannot judge her conduct morally. It does not mean that she cannot be held accountable in myriad non-criminal fashions. She can be ridiculed. You can campaign against her on the basis of the unindicted conduct. You can write histories of the scandal that denounce her behavior. You might even be able to sue her successfully. The end of the investigation only means that the state will not punish her using the specific instrumentality of the criminal law. It means only that the we won’t “lock her up.”

This is another post well worth reading.

Democratic candidates for President have been noising about the idea of increasing the number of Supreme Court Justices, along with possible changes to how appointments are made, all in the hopes of reforming the Supreme Court. Candidates O’Rourke, Buttigieg, Harris, Gillibrand, and Warren have all mentioned it as a possibility.

I think this is a mistake.

It’s necessary to remember that a sizable number of Americans do not pay attention to the minutiae of government. For those of us who watch politics, the denial of a confirmation hearing to Judge Garland was a sickening symptom of the rot at the core of the current conservative movement. The subsequent awarding of the open seat to Neal Gorsuch, followed by Kennedy’s retirement and then Kavanaugh’s nomination, subsequently confirmed, was the height of dishonor for Senator McConnell, who orchestrated the tactics to retain the seat in contravention of all law and tradition, even as he and his compatriots lied about it.

But most Americans have already forgotten about these events, or, at best, they have to be reminded about them. And then they’ll just shrug about them.

So when Democratic candidates talk about changing the Supreme Court around, it’s not perceived as a matter of correcting a structural problem, but as pure & bitter politics. SCOTUS is not perceived as broken by most of America, and in politics, perception is all. This seems to be more of a matter of playing to a Democratic base that is rightfully outraged at McConnell’s dismal tactics of total war against his fellow Americans, but it’s necessary for the Democrats to remember that they have to play to the independent and moderate Republican voters, or they will continue to lose elections.

There are plenty of issues which need attention, from climate change to trade to immigration, and they need to bring innovative approaches to those problems to the voters. There’s no reason to risk alienating voters by bringing up a change to an institution which has not yet pervaded the public consciousness as needing reform – and may never do so.

Who’s cardboard and who’s real? $xx if you can guess!

There’s a sociological puzzle to Phantom of Chinatown (1940) for which I have no solution. This murder mystery revolves around the death of expedition leader Dr. Benton. He’s returned from leading an archaeological expedition into the Mongolian desert, where he retrieves a scroll that might give the location of “eternal fire.” He dies during a presentation on the subject back home in San Francisco.

Into the mix are then thrust the San Francisco PD, Win Lee from China, and James Lee Wong, a Chinese-American. Wong is a friend of Benton’s, and so takes on a private investigation of his death, a subject of some resentment by the SFPD representatives. His investigation of expedition members, as well as Win Lee, eventually leads to the setting of a trap, revealing that a supposedly lost member of the expedition is still alive, and directing the plot to steal the scroll.

The real mystery here, though, is the presentation of the various characters. As my Arts Editor remarked, it’s a casually racist movie in the attitudes of the Western European-derived Americans towards the Chinese. Yet which characters are the best drawn?

Win Lee and, by far, James Wong. They feel like real people, thoughtful and with lives beyond this story. Everyone else? Pulled out of the locker in the movie studio’s backlot, to be returned upon completion of the movie.

This story is no great shakes, but if you’re looking for a way to pass an hour or so, it might amuse you.

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

Sometimes you need a picture of something extraordinary to remind yourself of other things.

Today’s picture of the Sun, from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.

There’s nothing like the craven submission to another’s will to curry favor:

[The ranking Republican on the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio)] said he was all “for erring on the side of transparency.” But asked whether he would urge Trump to release the full [Special Counsel Mueller] report, he replied, “That’s the president’s call.” [WaPo]

Uh, no, it’s not the President’s call, you bloody idiot. The President does not get to decide how much of the report should be released, that’s up to the Attorney General. The President should have no influence on the matter.

But it is your responsibility to deliver an independent opinion which best benefits the Republic. No, I didn’t say the Republican Party, I said the Republic. And if you think burying a report which condemns the President is the best for the Republic, then it’s time for the voters of Ohio to replace you.

Somebody’s not going to make it to the end of this story. Who forgot to pay off the author?

For a 1950s-60s B-class sci-fi movie, I have to say The Day of the Triffids (1962) is one of the better examples of the genre: its characters feel like they have, or had, lives of their own beyond the movie, they move in believable story arcs, there’s a real sense of apprehension, and even if you find the triffids ludicrous, they are ludicrous in a way that is unsettling, as if they are life, but not as we know it, to quote an old chestnut.

For one long night, the Earth is bombarded with an immense meteorite storm. They burn up in the atmosphere spectacularly, which lures the entire population out for a “Once in a lifetime show”. However, for one security guard at a London arboretum, the show will be coming to an early, bloody end … The next day, all of humanity (but why not the pets, and the wildlife?) is going blind.

But there are exceptions. Bill Masen, a merchant mariner, was in hospital for eye surgery, and was thus protected by his bandages. When he wakes up the morning following the light show, anticipating the removal of said bandages, no one answers his calls, and he ends up taking them off himself. Thus, we experience with him the wreck of the hospital, his encounter with his now-blind doctor and how, after an examination, the doctor commits suicide.

Bill decides to travel to his ship, which gives us a taste of the piercing tragedy of a world gone blind – not in piles of bodies, but the personal tragedies of those, blind themselves, desperate to reach and help their own loved ones, all while a burgeoning population of triffids are supping on their ready-made prey. Bill’s inability to help brings the tragedy home, and it’s a relief when he discovers a young runaway orphan, Susan, who spent the night hiding in the baggage car of a train, and was thus spared this universal malady. Together, they find his ship, abandoned, and listen on the radio as an airliner, calling for help, crashes.

“Why do you keep your secret lover out on the ledge, my dear?”

Meanwhile, a couple living in an isolated lighthouse cum laboratory have also been spared blindness, probably because Tom was blind drunk during the night. His emotional depression meets its match in the frantic need to discover how to survive and destroy the triffids, and we follow their methodical, frustrating approach to the problem, all while holding off the triffidian invasion of their lighthouse.

Back to Bill and Susan, they discover a sanctuary in France, run by several sighted French, for the blind. But the triffids are on their way and preparations are made to evacuate. But, believably, a troop of French prisoners invade and destroy the sanctuary, and then all die under assault of the triffids, with only Bill, Susan, and french lass Christine getting out. They’ve heard the radio announcements of evacuation by submarine from Spain, and that becomes their goal. Will they get there?

Back at the lighthouse, Tom and Karen are becoming frantic as each chemical assault on their sample of triffidian cells is a failure. When the triffids resort to battering their way in, they make their despairing way up the stairs, and, in the end … discover the answer.

And it’s a classic movie poster, too. No one gets snatched up in her nighty.

It’s a hoary old aphorism of science fiction authors that your audience will always permit 1 to 1.5 incredible things in a story. The Day Of The Triffids is, really, an outstanding example of how to best utilize this truism: the triffids may be ridiculous out of context, but the context built by the believable actions and reactions of the characters we follow, and the reports they and we hear, transform them from fun little special-effects efforts into monsters which become the center of gravity of this story. Through them, the characters are permitted to embody the theme of Never give up, fight to the last breath – because sometimes only in that last breath do we discover the solution for which we’ve been searching.

The film quality itself is so-so, given its age, but I have to say that I rather enjoyed this old flick. If you haven’t seen it before but enjoy science fiction, or film history, give this one a whirl.

As a computer scientist (a guy who writes programs, really), I have very little use for probability & statistics in my line of work, which is to say that I’m not what they call a natural scientist, a scientist who studies the natural world. My use of probability is more or less nil, and statistics & instrumentation only comes into play when I’m working on performance and scalability problems – and then it’s nothing more than rudimentary use of the services of that field. I know the term p-hacking has come to the forefront in science, a term indicating scientists are manipulating the data they collected in order to find something significant to say about their latest study, but it and its relationship to statistical significance are not explicit parts of my life.

So I’m fascinated and bemused to see this interview Retraction Watch published with Professor Nicole Lazar (principally; Ron Wasserstein and Allen Schirm contributed to the answers, as co-editors of a publication on the subject) of the University of Georgia on the obsolescence of the phrase statistical significance:

So the [American Statistical Association] wants to say goodbye to “statistically significant.” Why, and why now?

In the past few years there has been a growing recognition in the scientific and statistical communities that the standard ways of performing inference are not serving us well.  This manifests itself in, for instance, the perceived crisis in science (of reproducibility, of credibility); increased publicity surrounding bad practices such as p-hacking (manipulating the data until statistical significance can be achieved); and perverse incentives especially in the academy that encourage “sexy” headline-grabbing results that may not have much substance in the long run.  None of this is necessarily new, and indeed there are conversations in the statistics (and other) literature going back decades calling to abandon the  language of statistical significance.  The tone now is different, perhaps because of the more pervasive sense that what we’ve always done isn’t working, and so the time seemed opportune to renew the call.

Dr. Lazar helped edit and publish an issue of The American Statistician devoted to this subject, but, sad to say, I shan’t try to read it because of my abysmal ignorance of the subject. I’ll be fascinated to observe, however, if this recommendation takes hold in the world of science, and how it’ll change how we do science.

My correspondent responds to my last remark concerning attempts to transfer nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia:

I’m surprised I didn’t mention this earlier: Saudi Arabia seems intent upon having their cake and eating it too at the expense of the rest of the world. They’ll sell their oil to gain riches, but will power their nation with nuclear and renewables, and make themselves a nuclear power. Of course, by the end of the century, it may well be too hot for humans to even live in Saudi Arabia at all.

I’m visualizing the world’s largest geodesic domes encompassing their cities.

While the attempts to transfer the makings for nuclear weapons by American business & military men is naturally quite worrying, since it appears to be completely commerce-related, the performance of Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (MBS) has been dismal. If he continues to fail to reach the standard required of a Saudi royal, there’s a few possible things that might happen:

1. He’ll be replaced. But is King Salman, reportedly ailing, really up for replacing his favorite son?
2. He’ll continue blundering on, alienating family and Saudi business people, and possibly get himself knocked off.
3. He’ll assume he can continue the authoritarian act outside of his country and get his hand burned.
4. He’ll ascend to the throne at the passing of King Salman, doesn’t improve his judgment, and Saudi Arabia continues to blunder along.
5. The royals are overthrown by dissatisfied subjects.
6. He improves his judgment and takes command of a nuclear project.

Which will happen? Which is even best? Hopefully, we can keep #6 out of the mix through the efforts of the FBI and other agencies tasked with keeping nuclear technology out of unauthorized hands.