Monthly Archives: March 2019

One must love luscious scientific mysteries, and it appears Ultima Thule is dishing them up:

The larger bulbous end of the rock, called Ultima, is not spherical as we had thought, but flat, like a cookie. The smaller bulb, called Thule, is also somewhat squashed, like a walnut.

“The new images are creating scientific puzzles about how such an object could even be formed,” mission scientist Alan Stern said in a statement. “We’ve never seen something like this orbiting the sun.” [NewScientist]

NASA/Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/National Optical Astronomy Observatory

Honestly, the graphic just looks like some supernova debris that hooked up.

Cairene:

1. Of or pertaining to Cairo, the capital of Egypt.

   The shop, in typical Cairene fashion, was small. [Wiktionary]

Noted in “Egypt’s Eternal City,” Andrew Curry, Archaeology (March/April 2019):

That’s not to say that the team is ignoring the spectacular statuary left behind by generations of pharaohs. When Cairenes looted [Heliopolis] for building materials in the Middle Ages, they took the limestone but left the remains of toppled sculptures of red granite, quartzite, and basalt in place. Among these are intact reliefs 15 feet square and granite falcons that once graced a temple gate dedicated to the pharaoh Nectanebo I (r. 380–362 B.C.). Other finds point to even more impressive monuments—a recently uncovered foot-and-a-half-long stone claw suggests the existence of a sphinx statue 50 feet long. “Whatever sculpture we get is extremely high quality,” Raue says. “Heliopolis was such an important site that we just get the best.”

Provided for decorative purposes only.

Up here in Minnesota we’re enduring an unusual stretch of intense cold, interrupted by near normal temperatures, accompanied by lots of snow, starting in early or mid January, with maybe an end in sight. Or maybe not. All the houses appear to have horrendous ice dams, which is certainly new in my experience (50 odd years up here). I may spend part of the day trying to remove ice from my gutters, although if it remains as cold as it is right now (@ 9AM, it was -9°F, -23°C, but @ 11AM we’re up to -3°F) it would be a fruitless endeavour. Not to mention my gloves would freeze to the ladder. Meteorologists explain this as a result of a breakdown in the polar vortex. Such are the consequences of our climate change conspiracy, eh?

But this isn’t awful. Awful is the trend in North Carolina, especially Oregon Inlet, NC. It starts with this report from NOAA:

The relative sea level trend is 4.69 millimeters/year with a 95% confidence
interval of +/- 1.16 mm/yr based on monthly mean sea level data from
1977 to 2018 which is equivalent to a change of 1.54 feet in 100 years.

But it’s not the water creeping up over the land just yet, because it’s not doing that. The problems? Storm surges and salt percolating up from below. Here’s WaPo’s Sarah Kaplan:

Of climate change’s many plagues — drought, insects, fires, floods — saltwater intrusion in particular sounds almost like a biblical curse. Rising seas, sinking earth and extreme weather are conspiring to cause salt from the ocean to contaminate aquifers and turn formerly fertile fields barren. A 2016 study in the journal Science predicted that 9 percent of the U.S. coastline is vulnerable to saltwater intrusion — a percentage likely to grow as the world continues to warm. Scientists are just beginning to assess the potential effect on agriculture, [East Carolina University hydrologist Alex Manda] said, and it’s not yet clear how much can be mitigated.

“We spend a lot of time and money to try to prevent salt,” [local farmer Dawson] Pugh says. “I worry what the future is. If it keeps getting worse, will it be worth farming?”

If farmers in coastal areas have any hope of protecting their land — and their livelihoods — the first step is to disentangle the complex web of causes that can send ocean water seeping into the ground beneath their feet.

A truly discouraging development for coastal farmers world-wide, as local scientists seem a little surprised by it. Speaking of a rising sea level sparked by rising temperatures, how’s that CO₂ measurement out at Mauna Loa?

Just the same, really. Up and up and up. Hope my readers like the heat more than the wildlife does.

He’s too boring to satire satirize.

Not much really goes right for Cast a Deadly Spell (1991), a private eye cum comedy cum supernatural cum … ummmmm I’m not sure what else to add into it. Hard-bitten private eye H. Philip Lovecraft, former cop, is hired to find a stolen book of the Necronomicon by a wealthy sorceror in late 1940s Los Angeles. That rare man who has not made a deal – literally – with the forces of supernatural evil, in his quest for the book he’s assailed by gargoyles, zombies, a minor hoodlum or two, even a unicorn hunter – and his ex. In the end, the bad guys are dead in suitably horrific ways, as are a few good guys.

The problem is that none of the facets are well done. Lovecraft, a Philip Marlowe analog, isn’t nearly as tough or world-weary to really be the anchor this story needs. The humor is far too understated, being mostly references to famous names from the various genres, and compared to the standard upon which such satires are judged, The Cheap Detective (1978), well, it hardly garners a grin. The supernatural’s rules are unstated, meaning they don’t exist and therefore any opportunity to display cleverness by playing off those rules is lost.

Not all is rotten in this state of Denmark. The visuals are mostly good, even cartoonish in a good sort of way. But the special effects ranged from, well, mundane to really fairly awful. The plot is mostly predictable, limp, and beset by weakly motivated actions. Characters come and go with only a little hand wave at using them to develop any themes beyond satirizing the originals – and then it’s not done all that well.

This is mostly a waste of an hour and a half, unless you’re a Julianne Moore completist, and she’s not really given enough material to be effective. So find something else to watch.

Gotta love this story:

Without notifying his followers or even his inner circle, the longtime president of a legacy neo-Nazi group has signed over its control to a black civil rights activist from California.

James Hart Stern, a 54-year-old with a history of infiltrating white supremacist groups, is the new leader of the National Socialist Movement. And his first move as president was to address a pending lawsuit against the neo-Nazi group by asking a Virginia judge to find it guilty of conspiring to commit violence at the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017.

Next, he plans to transform the hate group’s website into a space for Holocaust history lessons.

“I did the hard and dangerous part,” Stern told The Washington Post in his first interview since taking over the National Socialist Movement. “As a black man, I took over a neo-Nazi group and outsmarted them.” [WaPo]

Glorious. I just love it.

I read this description of the Taiwanese health system with interest.

Kevin Bozeat, a 25-year-old student, wrote about coming down with severe gastrointestinal symptoms while studying in Taiwan: stomach cramps, bouts of vomiting that would not abate and, perhaps worst of all, the inability to keep any fluids down.

Around 3 a.m., he decided it was time to go to the hospital for treatment, not knowing what to expect having never been to a hospital in Taiwan — a country that has a national health-care system, or as Bozeat wrote, “socialized medicine.”

He was checked in and given IV fluids within 20 minutes of his arrival. Phlebotomists drew blood and the lab ran tests on it. Hospital techs performed an ultrasound to make sure he didn’t have gallstones or appendicitis. And eventually they diagnosed stomach flu, gave him two prescriptions and discharged him.

“Each day since I’ve gotten progressively better and am now pretty much back to normal,” Bozeat wrote. “The bill for the ER visit? . . . US $80.00.” [WaPo]

Sounds lovely. His conclusion?

“Taiwan is less wealthy than the US, yet it spends less and gets more out of its healthcare system. We see the same story repeat itself,” he wrote. “This debate is all so tiresome, because there is no debate. Universal healthcare works, it can be done here, it can be done in any country with sufficient resources. All we need is political will and an implementation plan.”

And this is where I can’t help but get a little bothered, because he’s missing one detail: who’s developing the therapies the Taiwanese are using? That’s where there may be a fly in the ointment. Long time readers are well aware that I’m not necessarily in favor of the private sector controlling the medical sector as it currently does, but one must consider all the factors in a world in which medical systems are not isolated from each other. The information and drugs that are the lifeblood of health systems flow from health system to health system, but it costs money to develop them. A lot of it.

So, when Bozeat think all it takes is political will, he’s neglecting to ask how much of Taiwan’s admirable efficiency is enabled by the basic and commercial R&D performed by other health systems. Do the Taiwanese develop their own therapies, or do they use therapies from other systems? And then ask the same question about the United States health system.

I’m not arguing for or against any particular system; I’m criticizing the analysis presented as being too simplistic. What happens if we shift to single payer and suddenly things get no better and we didn’t foresee that? To charge confidently ahead as he appears to be recommending seems a bit foolhardy to me. There are certainly efficiencies that can be attained, but what will be the drawbacks?

A friend pointed out this article in The Idaho Statesman, entitled “This bill would have ended child marriage for those under age in Idaho. The House voted it down“. I’m finding the objections, listed here, to be ill-thought out at best, and perhaps disingenuous, and because the whole subject is making me slightly ill, I think I’ll have to disassemble them:

Several lawmakers who spoke against the bill cited government overreach.

“I do not think courts should be involved in marriage at all,” said Bryan Zollinger, R-Idaho Falls. “I don’t believe there should be a license required to get married. I think two willing people should be able to go and get married.”

Given the inequalities possible between the parties, especially how an older party can manipulate a younger party, and the immaturity implicitly involved, this appeal seems ignorant and ideological, at best. Worse yet, though, is the hidden contradiction. The statement is all about freedom, from government oversight in this case. Yet, this very advocacy will result in marriages in which one of the spouses is trapped, even forced into the marriage. In the name of freedom, freedom will be erased.

Rep. Julianne Young, R-Blackfoot, said: “This is a decision I think should belong with families. I believe parental consent, which is what is in the law right now, should be sufficient.

Parental consent is, too often, code for arranged marriages. The use of children as a way to enrich family fortunes, whether it be material or societal, teaches those children that human beings are merely objects to be moved around at will. This is not healthy.

Rep. Christy Zito, R-Hammett, complained that the bill would make it illegal for a 15-year-old girl to get married but not to get an abortion.

In Idaho, a girl younger than 18 can get an abortion with permission of one parent or a judge.

“If we pass this legislation, it will then become easier in the state of Idaho to obtain an abortion at 15 years old than it will to decide to form a family and create a family for a child that has been conceived,” Zito said.

So? This is one of those shiny thing arguments, to my mind. You cite an irrelevant, yet emotionally inflammatory argument, and soon the air is fouled with the smoke of battle, and nothing gets done. It’s much like the drinking age battle, wherein a teenager can join the Army, potentially end up killing other people, yet they can’t drink themselves under the table in order to forget about it.

After a couple of months of chasing the rhetorical tail in circles, you realize the connections between the arguments are tenuous and unhelpful. But the battle is lost to the forces of chaos.

Look: Marriage is an institution which should be entered into by two^[1] consenting adults. Those last two words are loaded with meaning and implication, and to write them off with empty ideological trigger words is gobsmackingly wrong. Considerations of maturity, power relations, and other topics must come into consideration, and in this context a few simple governmental rules helps iron out a host of problems introduced by the entire concept of marriage before you’re ready for it.

¹ My apologies to fans of more outré forms of marriage, such as polyandry and others, but in this context those would be another shiny thing.

I’ve been reluctantly thinking about the 2020 Presidential Campaign, so I suppose I’ll kick off the fun with a look at Senator Warren (D-MA) and her latest campaign ploy. I had recently mentioned that she’d made the mistake of venturing in President Trump’s territory, but her new tactic seems to be an attempt to dictate where a future battle will be fought, as found on her blog:

So let me be perfectly clear, in the way that everyone who might be President next should be: If I’m elected President of the United States, there will be no pardons for anyone implicated in these investigations.

Everyone who might succeed Donald Trump as president should adopt the same policy. Starting with Vice President Mike Pence.

This means no pardons or commutations for anyone who is prosecuted and sentenced as part of the Mueller investigation.

In order to move away from Trump’s use of the pardon, and thus away from his field of battle, she defines its use:

The pardon and clemency powers are supposed to be about granting mercy to the powerless — not immunity for the powerful.

A populist phrase that might catch some attention in Trump’s populist base. On the other hand, it’s also a veiled threat to the current Republican leadership, as toothless as it might be. She’s saying she’s expecting more guilty pleas and convictions.

It’ll be interesting to see how the Republicans react. Dispassionately analyzed, it’s a bit hollow, isn’t it? But for those who may have pursued their ambitions without inhibitions, it must seem menacing.

In the end, though, I would have been more impressed if she’d made a slightly different promise: to not pardon Democratic office-holders for crimes while in office. And then to express the belief that there won’t be any cases to consider.

Precept:

noun

1. a commandment or direction given as a rule of action or conduct.
2. an injunction as to moral conduct; maxim.
3. a procedural directive or rule, as for the performance of some technical operation.
4. Law .
   a writ or warrant.
   a written order issued pursuant to law, as a sheriff’s order for an election. [Dictionary.com]

I used it in this recent post. An hour or two later, I ran across the related preceptor in story The Dragon Masters, by Jack Vance, from which I shall forgo quoting.