Monthly Archives: June 2019

… and that’s where it’ll stay since I lack the chops to do anything about it. The subject? Let’s start with last night’s Trump campaign rally, as reported by Steve Benen:

At his re-election campaign kickoff event this week, Donald Trump made a curious boast to supporters about his record as president: “We stared down the unholy alliance of lobbyists and donors and special interests, who made a living bleeding our country dry. That’s what we’ve done.”

We need a song that lists each corporate lobbyist who’s joined the Trump Administration and sought to gut his or her agency. We could start with Scott Pruitt, but there are so many potential honorees that I suspect this song could go on for a long time.

My Arts Editor suggests the tune should be I Am The Very Model Of A Modern Major General from The Pirates of Penzance. Maybe we could call it It’s Such A Clean And Modern Swamp Now.

It does beg the question of how many corporate lobbyists were in the Obama Administration, doesn’t it?

I’ve mentioned Art Laffer a number of times over the years. He’s the namesake, if not the inventor, of the Laffer Curve, which illustrates the theory that if a state lowers taxes, economic prosperity will follow and government revenues will rise enough that there won’t be a shortfall in the state budget.

This has been tried several times and failed, most recently in Kansas. The economic phenomenon described by the Laffer Curve may occur, but only in highly confined circumstances.

But does this stop the GOP from paying obeisance at his altar? Ho-dowdy, no it doesn’t:

Ronald Reagan’s former budget director, David Stockman, calls Art Laffer “the greatest Fake Economist to ever come down the pike.”

Laffer helped popularize the notion that tax cuts pay for themselves through faster economic growth.

It almost never works out in practice. But Laffer and his namesake curve remain darlings of Republican politicians.

On Wednesday, Laffer will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the nation’s highest civilian honor — from President Trump. [NPR]

It appears the Republicans remain impervious to the thought that they might be wrong, doesn’t it? They’ve taken a failed economist and a resentment of paying taxes to Big Government and turned it into an award that – unless he’s done something marvelous which has escaped my attention – has been manifestly unearned.

Rather, Laffer provided intellectual cover for a policy which satisfied the emotional predilections of the members of the GOP. Mix in the religious fervor which has taken over the party, the refusal to admit error, the certainty that the liberals and leftists are inherently evil, and this action should be unsurprising. By attempting to cement the reputation of their favorite economist into a position in the heavens, they also hope to legitimate their economic theories and thus leverage themselves into an extension of power.

Will it work? Depends on the audience. I don’t happen to know any economists, but it’s my guess that most are interested in what works, not in the dictates of ideology.

But the general citizenry? It might. Surveys of what citizens think happened during the Obama years vs what really happened can make for dismaying reading. People see what they want to see; it’s so hard to see beyond the end of one’s nose, your’s truly included.

Rather than rewarding someone for years of success, this is all about rewarding the Republican Party for keeping power for themselves. Laffer just gets something to chuckle over.

Axios is reporting on the guest list for the imminent Israeli-Palestinian peace plan to be presented by Presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner:

The White House has decided not to invite the Israeli Minister of Finance Moshe Kahlon or other Israeli government officials to the Bahrain conference in Manama on June 25, where it plans to launch the economic part of the Trump administration’s Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, U.S. officials told me.

The big picture: The decision follows a Palestinian boycott of the conference, which has put pressure on other Arab and Muslim nations not to attend. A senior U.S. official told me: “The goal of the workshop in Bahrain is to present our economic vision for the Palestinian people. As such we want to focus on the economic aspects and not the political ones.” The Bahrain conference will now take place without Israeli or Palestinian officials.

It feels like colonialism, doesn’t it? The parties concerned aren’t there, just a proposal. And for economics, too. Now, I won’t argue that economics is a strong influence on most everyone, but the formal problem here has to do with a political fight over ownership of the land. That’s economic at its roots, but political and religious in its presentation – and I fear that without some sort of political and religious settlement, an economic plan is little more than dry oatmeal.

I’m not expecting much out of this. I expect Trump isn’t, either, but he’ll try to push it as a big accomplishment, because he’s desperate to pump up a re-election campaign which seems to be lifeless.

Hey! Let me out of this taxi before I die of starvation!

The Phantom of 42nd Street (1945) is a pleasant, empty-minded whodunit which has the charming differentiator of a chief crime solver being a drama critic for the newspaper, and the victims are all connected to the theater. His name is Tony Woolrich, and it all is centering on the family named Moore, near-royalty of the theater of New York City. When the business minded elder brother dies, he’s found hung with a witty quote from a play on him. The younger brother, elderly and on his last legs, is thought to be the next target, but a night watchman dies next, killed by someone in a pirate costume, again leaving a witty note.

Tony is catching flack, first from his editor, who chews him out for not getting the story on the first murder, and then by the police for meddling, and then by his taxi driver – he leads a life of criticism. Hey! But soon he gets into the swing of things, finding this whole crime solving gig to be amenable to his thought processes.

But this story is about thrills, not deduction. The audience never really has a chance to solve the murders for themselves as too much information is withheld. But the acting is good and even fun in places, so if you can find a good print of this flick and an hour of down-time, it may be worth your time.

I found this guy charming. He and his chums were hiding in the ornamental grass.

Yep, she’s trying to fall out of her dress, and he’s busy smoking a pipe he doesn’t know how to use.

Woman In The Shadows (1934; aka Woman In The Dark) is a pleasant and engaging what-the-hell story which never quite lives up to its promise. Former inmate John Bradley, imprisoned for manslaughter for killing a man in a brawl, moves to a family lake cabin in order to avoid trouble and how to learn to smoke a pipe, a futile endeavour on his part. Trouble finds him, though, first in the person of the sheriff’s daughter, Nell, who thinks she loves him, and then a singer named Louise who stumbles through his front door one night. In hot pursuit are a couple of ne’er-do-wells, Tony & Kraus, who say they want to take her back to her home she shares with Tony.

She’s having none of it, but Tony knows the sheriff hates John, so he clues the sheriff in that his daughter is visiting John on the sly. Soon enough we have multiple escapes, and Kraus is down with a dent in his skull courtesy John, although he leaves John’s place under his own power.

John and Louise make it to the big city, but the cops are looking for him and he’s soon hosting a cop’s bullet in his shoulder and has to visit a doctor, who gives the game away. Meanwhile, Louise is shipped back to Tony, where it turns out Kraus is knocking at death’s door – and if he makes that transition, John will be sent up the river for a long time. All this time, John’s antics with his pipe, such as putting the lit instrument in his pocket, serve to keep the audience amused.

Unfortunately, with the exception of the final plot twist, the audience probably knows a little bit too much to be surprised by most of the story. Of course, this can be made into a game, guessing what comes next. But it also tends to feel a little contrived, and despite some good acting, the ending is a little hollow.

Still, if you have a little downtime and want a short taste of a Dashiell Hammett-inspired story, this might be a way to satisfy the curiosity.

In terms of career choices, I found this bit by Shivendra Singh Dungarpur fascinating and almost singular:

A few years ago, I had gone to a slum, Pathanwadi, in the suburbs of Mumbai — accompanied by my guide, Bipin ‘Silver’ — the place where films go to die. Bipin Silver has earned his name from his choice of livelihood: extracting silver from black-and-white films. In a darkened room piled high with 16 mm and 35 mm film cans, I watched a thin old man systematically strip these films bare of silver, leaving ghostly, translucent white strips of nothing scattered on the floor. Bipin says he strips 1,000 kgs of film in one go; he has been doing this for the last 40 years. [The Telegraph of India]

The rape of India’s cultural heritage? Or merely a recovery operation of a precious metal? Assuming the films were acquired legally by Bipin, it’s a mixture of both, honestly speaking. Much like the thousands and thousands of oil lamps residing in archaeological collections, I fear there’s a little bit of over-reverence for the past, an inevitable and to-be-desired quality for those who delve into cultural history. Not that these concerns aren’t important:

In 2014, I received a phone call from Gulzarsaheb. He had been awarded the Dadasaheb Phalke award and the government wanted to screen a retrospective of his films at the International Film Festival of India in Goa. But it couldn’t find a print of his acclaimed film, Maachis. This was a film less than 20 years old; yet it seemed to have vanished. This is just the tip of the iceberg in the tragic story of the colossal loss of India’s film heritage. [The Telegraph]

Certainly, the loss of professional films that win awards is startling and to be avoided. But thousands of home movies? I still puzzle over all the pictures my parents took and left behind when they passed away. Perhaps this is just a reflection of the consumer culture in which they were embedded, I think.

Conurbation:

a city area containing a large number of people, formed by various towns growing and joining together:
the conurbations of Tokyo and Osaka
[Cambridge Dictionary]

Noted in the NewScientist Feedback column (1 June 2019):

Cases of measles continue to soar in the US, following a record dip in the number of vaccinated children that has left millions unprotected against the potentially deadly disease. If Stickland’s opinions are at all representative of his constituents, subscribers to the post-Enlightenment order may wish to steer clear of this part of the Dallas-Fort Worth conurbation. Ignorant paranoia looks to be contagious, and as the Houston Chronicle put it in a recent cartoon, there’s no vaccine for that.

As a practicing software engineer, I work on using the fruits of research labs, albeit sometimes it’s a long stretch from that lab to me, chronologically speaking. But because I don’t actually work in a research lab, I find descriptions of how things go in those labs & institutions to be interesting – even fascinating. Consider this description, originating from Duke University, in the facet of professional ethics of researchers:

Significant discussion focused on system-level factors such as faculty tenure and promotion criteria, the pressure to obtain grants and publish, and the climate of hyper competition in academic research, which participants cited as potential contributing factors for DRPs [detrimental research practices] and misconduct. Participants also expressed frustration at the unrealistic expectation that researchers can maintain an unwavering commitment to ethical coda when the pressures of academic research and job retention may demand moral compromises. For example, one research staff member commented in the context of a discussion on the ethics of research, “Integrity is good and fine, but it doesn’t pay the bills.”

I hope that was sarcasm, but they don’t denote it as such. Integrity and ethics should not be considered hindrances to accomplishing goals, but rather aids in accomplishing those goals with superior confidence in their validity. The researcher’s remark, taken as a serious remark, suggests that the ideal goal of research is being tainted by the pressure to publish.

Naturally, administrators feel a pinch as well: they need a way to measure the performance of the researchers / professors they manage, to the extent that management isn’t a laughing matter; that is what they are trying to avoid.

It seems to me that just counting publications isn’t enough; the quality of such pieces, as measured by significance as judged by the field, as well as negatively by corrections and retractions, must also take place. I wonder if a formalized process embodying those principles is already a major part of most research centres. This Duke University report suggests they’re working towards it but may not be there yet.

They look very proper.

Due to illness, posting on this blog may be curtailed.

Cryptobenthic:

1. Of fish: both benthic (living on or near the seafloor) and cryptic (hiding in crevices, or camouflaged). [Wiktionary]

Noted in “The tiniest fish are the most important for healthy coral reefs,” Michael Le Page, NewScientist (1 June 2019):

… Simon Brandl has been studying “cryptobenthic” reef fish that are less than 50 millimetres long as adults – basically, the ones you don’t see when snorkelling or diving on a reef. When he looked at surveys of plankton near reefs around the world, he was surprised to discover that 70 per cent of the fish larvae were of these cryptobenthic species.

Related to the Lyme Disease thread, and tempting me to entitle this post My Deadly Disease Has A Tail-Wagging Proxy, I ran across a recent study comparing incidence of the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi, one of the sources of Lyme Disease, as found in dogs against actual reports of Lyme Disease in the United States. Here’s the two maps, respectively, taken from “Quantifying the relationship between human Lyme disease and Borreliaburgdorferiexposure in domestic dogs,” Yan Lui, Geospatial Health 2019:

Given that dogs but not humans are screened for Lyme Disease on a yearly basis, this is an interesting way of determining when Lyme Disease, or the ticks that carry it, are moving into a new area. And, if you’re a little nervous about needles, get yourself a dog and make monthly visits to the vet with your walking pin cushion.

There’s been predictable and justified outrage over President Trump’s remarks concerning foreign interference in American elections, which were:

The president told Stephanopoulos that “life doesn’t work that way” when asked why his son didn’t go to the FBI. Trump also said he would want to hear if another country had information on another candidate and called it “oppo research.”

“It’s not an interference, they have information,” Trump said. “I think I’d take it. If I thought there was something wrong, I’d go maybe to the FBI.”

Stephanopoulos then pointed out that FBI Director Christopher Wray said his agency should know about contacts from foreign governments.

“The FBI director is wrong,” Trump said. [NBC News]

There’s been references to previous attempts at interference as a critique of Trump’s stance, but that’s not an explicit critique of the issue, so let’s be clear. The use of foreign-supplied information leaves those candidates who accept it vulnerable to later exploitation by the suppliers. Why? Because it’s generally considered poor form to allow such interference in our elections. When a candidate accepts it, the foreign entity can later reveal the candidate’s acceptance, which becomes a lever on the candidate’s behavior – especially if the candidate is wins the election.

But why is it wrong? Let’s not explore the myriad reasons why foreign interference in our elections could be deleterious to our nation’s (and citizenry’s) future, because it’s not relevant to my argument. No, let’s go with the reason being that the American citizenry thinks it’s wrong.

With that in mind, Trump’s pronouncements, which could be interpreted as simply him showing his toughness to his base, assume the quality of an admission of guilt, and an attempt to normalize the behavior, thus getting him off the hook. This is how it’s always done, how it works, diverting the attention of those paying attention from the critical question of Should this be permitted to Oh, well, if it’s always …

Keep this in mind. He’s trying to walk a tightrope, and a push at a critical moment might reveal information about the last campaign which will indicate that he’s utterly mendacious.

The newer generation of peonies has disdained its support system:

Perhaps in the future it’ll be a little more temperate.

If you’re a fan of a quick, tightly knit plot involving secret agents, you may want to look up an old series that has favorably impressed us called Danger Man (aka Secret Agent). Made starting in 1960, each episode (at least in the first season) is a half hour long, B&W, and follows the adventures of John Drake, American secret agent, as he foils plots against the Western world.

This is not a pain-free series. Drake loses friends to temptation and to death, he has to make hard choices, and explores some of the backwaters of morality, all in half hour chunks. Episodes are not connected, so it’s easy to watch them at convenience.

On this cold & dreary day, have some more purple irises to raise your spirits.

Source: Gallup

A reader remarks on Speaker Pelosi’s apparent preference to jail President Trump:

I think she’s just trying to defuse the push for impeachment. Which makes her an impediment. She ought to get out of the way, or be forced out.

I think this is a dicey question. We have a bunch of variables, some of which we think we know how they’ll work, and some we have only a little historical precedent, of a long time ago, to work with.

1. GOP Senators. While there’s a constant grumble of discontent with certain parts of the Trump Administration, they generally do not buck President Trump, although I’ll grant there has been a few exceptions, the most noteworthy being the vote to deny funding for the Saudis with regard to their war in Yemen. But, as the link I provided reports, they were not sufficiently together on the subject to override the Presidential veto. It’s quite likely that they will never vote for conviction on impeachment charges, if only because most of them agree with South Carolina Senator Graham’s sentiment that their primary motivation in occupying their seats is to … get re-elected. Sadly, no one has put themselves forward in the mold of Senator Howard Baker (R-TN), who had the courage to ask publicly of his own Republican President, “What did the President know and when did he know it?”
2. American public. It’s been speculated that Pelosi wants more public support before initiating impeachment proceedings, but it’s a tricky thing, isn’t it? Former Democratic Rep Steve Israel of New York notes in The Atlantic, “… Even Republicans recall how the failed impeachment of President Bill Clinton backfired: In 1998, Democrats gained seats in Congress, a rare occurrence for a president’s party in a midterm election.” Contrariwise, in the comparable case, the Nixon impeachment, the impeachment and trial never actually occurred, as Nixon resigned before he could be impeached. But the investigations had begun and, as the chart at the top of this post indicates, as details of Nixon’s actions came to light, his approval ratings began dropping, ending in the low 20s.
   But today’s American public is not that of the Nixon years, when virtually everyone voted for Nixon in the face of voting for him or the radical McGovern; the public, once it had its face rubbed in the evidence, was far more fluid, ready to change its mind when the evidence was presented for public viewing. Today, amidst the thousands of “news” sources, people tend to find the ones that make them happy, rather than those that make them uncomfortable, and if they’re inclined to Trump, then the evidence of his alleged misdeeds may never reach them.

Given Rep Israel’s observations concerning the backlash that hit the Republicans in the election following the failed Clinton impeachment, Speaker Pelosi’s refusal to begin impeachment proceedings without strong evidence derived from current investigations, and a groundswell of support from the general American public may be the wiser course of action – even if it may seem a trifle craven in the face of the evidence so far gathered, but not yet widely dispersed to the public.

… lupines! Just .. not purple.

An angel and a fallen angel?

The Hippopotamus (2017) is one of those cranky examples of British humor that can often leave an audience wondering if there’s a point to the hijinks. Ted Wallace is a poet, a poet with a big name, a string of failed marriages, destroyed friendships, a taste for alcohol arguably stronger than his taste for breathing, a job as a theatre reviewer of definite opinion, and a case of writer’s block so powerful he hasn’t published anything in a decade. He’s a cranky old shit.

His job evaporates, and as he celebrates, his goddaughter shows up. She has been diagnosed with leukemia, but claims she’s been miraculously cured – and she hires her godfather to find out how. Is her family home the base for creating miracles?

There’s history here, and not so good of history, but Ted has a positive connection with his godson, David, and he leans on that to cadge a visit. David is a trifle, well, odd. He spends evenings outside, he often disappears, and his family has witnessed him saving people and animals that are near death. Add to that a preoccupation with poetry, but poetry Ted disapproves of, and he’s a bit of a package that you’re not certain you’d sign for.

Ted continues to investigate, digging beneath the surface of a pond opaque to casual investigation. Between old, detested acquaintances, desperate for a miracle, and family members who hesitate to throw either water or oil on the fire, the truth is occulted, but Ted has found a purpose, a drive that drags him, kicking and screaming, out of his private pond of whiskey, and on a quest for truth.

Even as a poet might see it.

But there’s a price to be paid for truth, and it’s enforced through a ruthless Nature – at least in the eyes of his ex-wife. If only he’d kept his mouth shut, she seems to be saying, everything would have been fine. Maybe it was just as well they divorced.

The characters are well drawn, and it’s all a trifle sly and fun. Still, the title is a bit of a puzzle, and without having read the novel, I can only guess that a hippopotamus goes where it will, with little consideration for manners, and that’s Ted in a single line. But is there a theme that draws this all together.

Truth to be told …

This is highly dismaying, if unsurprising:

White House officials barred a State Department intelligence agency from submitting written testimony this week to the House Intelligence Committee warning that human-caused climate change is “possibly catastrophic.” The move came after State officials refused to excise the document’s references to federal scientific findings on climate change.

The effort to edit, and ultimately suppress, the prepared testimony by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research comes as the Trump administration is debating how best to challenge the fact that burning fossil fuels is warming the planet and could pose serious risks unless the world makes deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade. Senior military and intelligence officials have continued to warn climate change could undermine America’s national security — a position President Trump rejects.

Officials from the White House’s Office of Legislative Affairs, Office of Management and Budget, and National Security Council all raised objections to parts of the testimony that Rod Schoonover, who works in the Office of the Geographer and Global Issues, prepared to present on the bureau’s behalf for a hearing Wednesday. [WaPo]

On the existence of climate change, we’ve seen this Administration deny it, call it a hoax, refuse to acknowledge our responsibility for our share of it, and try to suggest it’ll be a net positive.

Anything to avoid taking leadership on the issue.

This is nothing new to folks who’ve kept track of what may be the most important issue of our time and how various GOP-controlled parts of our government have reacted. But for those who’ve become newly aware of it, it’s important to understand who has failed in their responsibilities because, so long as we have a country that is dependent on the votes of its citizens to select its readers, it’s important to understand the shirkers have been the GOP, and the Democrats have, at least, tried.

Analyses of the motivations of the GOP I’ve performed before, but today I’ll just leave it here. This Administration never really had the nerve for this sort of challenge, and the promotion of an amateur to the position of President will haunt this nation for a long time to come.

Lupines! (Is that proper plural?)

Here’s our normal batch of purplish lupine.

Tomorrow a new variety.

More of those gold & maroon irises bloomed recently.

Too many lights!

Faced with the epic that is Interstellar (2014), there’s a certain inclination to punt because this is a big story that seems to embody a single theme, if it can only be dug out of the floorboards of the storytellers’ minds. This is also a story that plays its cards close to its vest. The only foreshadowing is so heavily disguised that it’s merely one of many mysteries, rather than a vital, if unintelligible, clue concerning the future. Even the dystopia into which we step is only vaguely hinted at, with remarks about agricultural pests which can no longer be kept at bay, and hints that a war was fought in which certain combatants chose not to use the biggest weapons at their disposal, despite the demands of the leaders.

That dystopia is the main driver of this story, a story which starts on a farm full of quiet desperation and leads to the mysterious phenomenon in orbit around Saturn, and from there to somewhere else. But this isn’t all about physical bravery, but mental as well, as the mathematics of survival – the equations which must be solved in order to lift mankind off of Earth – prove to be a critical and lifelong focus for several characters. Follow that with survival-oriented betrayal, and then another one, and then a reversal, an almost ridiculous survival stunt, and at least one mountain sized chicken & egg plot hole (which the story very wisely never tries to explore), and after a while the mind starts to boggle at trying to understand all of the currents and undercurrents going on in this story.

The theme may simply be Never quit. The elaborations are, however, sophisticated and intellectually informed. For example, the fact that time slows in gravity fields is a fact that is used to good advantage, even if it seemed to be exaggerated and perhaps leads to a bit of a scientific blunder by the storytellers. That leads on to questions concerning how social beings would cope with large chronological discrepancies – and not through a bit of magic to make it all go away. Imagine watching your child die, except your child is now 60 or more years older than you. The tragedy is no longer the oncoming death, but the fact that you missed out on their life.

Not every element was explored. For example, there’s some  fascinatingly intelligent robots, but we don’t really get to explore whether those things they’re asked to do have any ethical facets or not – you just jump into a black hole if asked.

Add in some lovely CGI, and for the science fiction fan this is probably a gem. As a former reader, I can say it was good to see the female characters coming to the fore. How this plays with the general audience is a little harder to say, but I say the hell with that question.

Recommended.