Monthly Archives: January 2020

A couple of weeks ago Andrew Sullivan mentioned a sociological observation that I’d never heard of before, found in the first part of his weekly tripartite diary:

But a recent psychological study suggests a simpler explanation. Its core idea is what you might call “oppression creep” or, more neutrally, “prevalence-induced concept change.” The more progress we observe, the greater the remaining injustices appear. We seem incapable of keeping a concept stable over time when the prevalence of that concept declines. In a fascinating experiment, participants were provided with a chart containing a thousand dots that ranged along a spectrum from very blue to very purple and were asked to go through and identify all the blue dots. The study group was then broken in two. One subgroup was shown a new chart with the same balance of purple and blue dots as the first one and asked to repeat the task. Not surprisingly, they generally found the same number of blue dots as they did on the first chart. A second subgroup was shown a new chart with fewer blue dots and more purple dots. In this group, participants started marking dots as blue that they had marked as purple on the first chart. “In other words, when the prevalence of blue dots decreased, participants’ concept of blue expanded to include dots that it had previously excluded.”

We see relatively, not absolutely. We change our standards all the time, depending on context. As part of the study, the psychologists ran another experiment showing participants a range of threatening and nonthreatening faces and asking them to identify which was which. Next, participants were split into two groups and asked to repeat the exercise. The first subgroup was shown the same ratio of threatening and nonthreatening faces as in the initial round; subgroup two was shown many fewer threatening faces. Sure enough, the second group adjusted by seeing faces they once thought of as nonthreatening as threatening.

If the rhetoric coming from your favorite group seems to be pathological, despite visible and substantial progress in tolerance, this may explain the attitude. From the study Sullivan is pulling this from:

Our studies suggest that even well-meaning agents may sometimes fail to recognize the success of their own efforts, simply because they view each new instance in the decreasingly problematic context that they themselves have brought about. Although modern societies have made extraordinary progress in solving a wide range of social problems, from poverty and illiteracy to violence and infant mortality, the majority of people believe that the world is getting worse. The fact that concepts grow larger when their instances grow smaller may be one source of that pessimism.

This may tie in with Dr. Steven Pinker’s book Enlightenment Now, which I have not read more than reviews, which suggests he delineates how various measures of violence and poverty indicate that progress is being made with many global problems. I do not know how he treats them, but it may be worth the time of someone who has the time to read the book as a way to discover if the reader is a victim of this syndrome.

And it’s always worth remembering that newspapers media sites gain audience through covering disasters, not so much successes.

For all that, without having read Sullivan’s current diary entry, just from its title, America Needs a Miracle, I have to wonder if he’s suffering from the same syndrome – or if his Ph.D. in Political Science gives him a pass. I hope so, for my own assessment of American politics, in combination with Professor Turchin’s examination of demographics, is certainly grim enough. Oh, I hope I’m wrong for humanity’s sake, but for my own self-assessment I cannot help but hope to be right.

Weir:

A structure, used to dam up a stream or river, over which the water flows, is called a weir. The conditions of flow, in the case of a weir, are practically the same as those of a rectangular notch. That is why, a notch is, sometimes, called as a weir and vice versa.

The only difference between a notch and a weir is that the notch of a small size and the weir is of a bigger one. Moreover, a notch is usually made in a plate, whereas a notch is made of masonry or concrete. [CodeCogs]

Remember Lev Parnas? He continues to be an interesting figure in the Trump orbit, even though much of what he’s said remains unverified, at least in my limited understanding of the situation.

And now his lawyer has contacted Senator McConnell, the guy who’s making decisions regarding the trial, via a letter that suggests Parnas has a lot to say concerning the President. Here’s a single paragraph of this three page letter:

Mr. Parnas would explain the conversation he overheard between Mr. Giuliani and then-Energy Department Secretary Rick Perry, who attended the inauguration in lieu of Vice President Pence, and the quid pro quo that Mr. Perry conveyed while there. Mr. Parnas would testify to the meeting he attended between Mr. Giuliani and the special envoy to Ukraine, Kurt Volker, at which Mr. Volker asked Mr. Giuliani  to help facilitate a call and a face-to-face meeting with Zelensky and Trump. Mr. Parnas would explain that Mr. Volker connected Mr. Giuliani with Ambassador Gordon Sondland and Ukrainian Official Andrey Yermak, to try to facilitate a call and face-to-face meeting between Trump and Zelensky. [Transcribed, any typos mine.]

Which raises two questions:

1. What does McConnell care about Parnas? He’s already ignored the 75% of Americans who want witnesses.
2. And how trustworthy is Parnas? Has any of his other information been independently confirmed or disputed?

This all feels like an orchestrated drama, but I cannot make out who is pulling on the strings. Could it be Trump? Putin? Some slightly insane insanely rich dude? A Ukrainian mafia?

Or is this guy on the level?

I was watching last night’s The Late Show as Colbert interviewed Michael Stipe, and I just started laughing when Stipe mentioned Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenaged environmental activist cum United Nations shamer, turning her autism into her superpower.

Not at Thunberg.

But what would be Donald J. Trump’s superpower?

Being a douchebag.

Just doesn’t have the same cachet, does it?

I see CNN is reporting that there will be no witnesses & evidence presented at the impeachment trial, and Trump’s acquittal – dubious, in my view – is inevitable.

One of the pivotal Senators of whom I was unaware is Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN). Steve Benen describes him as an institutionalist with a variety of posts under his belt, and is retiring at age 80 with little to fear from Trump, politically speaking. Still …

As Alexander sees it, Trump did what he’s accused of doing. Indeed, while the president continues to describe his antics as “perfect” and “beautiful,” the Tennessee Republican conceded that Trump’s actions were “inappropriate” and that the House impeachment managers successfully proved their case.

Alexander just doesn’t much care. He read the call summary, heard the arguments, weighed the evidence, and concluded that Trump is guilty – of an offensive that isn’t especially important. It’s why, in the senator’s mind, there’s no need for any kind of accountability. …

And his conscience led him to disregard the misdeeds of a president whose guilt he considers obvious. Alexander not only won’t vote to convict Trump and remove him from office, he believes the right course of action is to make this the first impeachment trial in American history in which the Senate doesn’t even hear from witnesses.

Thing is, Benen shouldn’t be surprised at Alexander’s poor judgment. After all, it was Senator Alexander, possibly exhibiting signs of dementia, who said

“Better to get your news directly from the president,” Smith said. “In fact, it might be the only way to get the unvarnished truth.” [Vox]

Which all leads me to formulate a reporter’s question:

Senator Alexander, in view of the indisputable fact that the Senate, and therefore Congress, has now ceded to the Executive yet another power assigned to it by the Constitution, is there any point in having a Congress? And how do you think this will look in your legacy?

That’s just off the cuff. I’m sure readers can come up with more insightful questions for the good Senator.

Pushing Congress towards the Museum Of Useless Relics.

And that’s not to say I have lost faith in Speaker Pelosi planning to use this outcome to win the Senate and the Presidency in November. But this is a precedent, and I can only hope the next President repudiates it.

Another bad hair day, Franky. How are you gonna pick up chicks looking like this?

Very briefly, because it hurts my brain, Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster (1965) spins the tale of a cyborg spaceship pilot named Frank, who is being used, under the cover of being human, as the pilot of an experimental spaceship. On his first flight, however, an alien spaceship destroys the ship, and Frank escapes by using a parachute. The aliens track him down and blast him, but not being biological, he’s only damaged, and, after killing a few locals, he finds a cave to hide in.

You see, your Highness, if we spring a leak, we’ll die and they’ll survive, thus depriving them of our demonic presence! Or is it “presences”? LINE, dammit!

Its scientist-creators and their general are looking for him, but the aliens, meantime, are engaged in the traditional alien invader past time of kidnapping Earth women for use as cattle in order to rejuvenate the alien race, which has basically blasted itself into near-extinction in an internecine nuclear war. As the harvest continues, various Earth men get in the way and are blasted into little pieces. They didn’t seem too bright, so I wasn’t all broken up over them or anything. Maybe I giggled a bit, I don’t remember. See? The drugs are working.

One of scientists gets caught in the roundup and actually has the temerity to fight back and not be totally compliant in every possible way, especially when the alien Princess demands to know just what the hell the device used for tracking Frank is for. For that rebellion, she’s imprisoned in a cage, just out of range of the long, pointy claws of the similarly imprisoned …

Space Monster!

Spock’s older brother, Big Hand. He never made it out of Vulcan kindergarten, sad to say, and his parents never spoke of him.

Doesn’t that fill you with feelings of wellness? Not to draw this out, word gets to the American military of the presence of a spaceship, they presume alien intentions are bad intentions and launch ineffective rockets at it, while Frank, led to the spaceship by the other scientist, is dragged in, breaks free, gets all the surviving prisoners out, and, as the spaceship is leaving, shoots the Princess and her evil minion, a guy made up to look like a young Uncle Fester from The Addams Family and who left his toothmarks all over the bloody scenery. And Frank has a wrestling match with the …

Space Monster!

Yeah. No. No. No. The cinematography was nice. The bikinis were skimpy. They did OK with the stock footage of actual rocket launches. The Space Monster was almost well-managed in my perennial ode to Burke’s idea of the sublime: we never see the Space Monster in its entirety, just semi-horrifying, semi-silly hints. But the Evil Minion was really creepy. And didn’t have Uncle Fester’s essential innocence. The rest of the acting was dull. The plot sucked rocks. Maybe they were trying to play it for laughs. After all, the evil minion / young Uncle Fester is named Dr. Nadir.

Give this one a skip.

As the uproar over Alan Dershowitz’s defense of the President’s behavior gets louder, I keep thinking we need to get back to basics. I mean, this commentary has one obvious flaw, but a hidden one as well:

“He argued that if the president shot someone in the public square but believed it was in the public interest, it wouldn’t be an impeachable offense,” said J.W. Verret, a law professor at George Mason University. “But dictators always believe that what they are doing is in the best interest of the public — that’s the essence of an autocracy.” [WaPo]

The obvious, if minor, flaw, is that not all dictators are motivated by love of country. Hell, I’d say most are not. There is certainly room to believe that there’s a non-zero subset who simply love power and what it can do for them. Verret’s implication that all politicians do what they do out of love of country is naive.

But by following Trump’s, and by implication Dershowitz’s, claim that he could get away with shooting someone in the public square and get away with it, Verret misses the truly key problem with the argument, an appeal to one of the most fundamental keystones of the Republic:

Everyone is equal before the law.

Trump takes an action which is forbidden. If it’s granted that he can do it, then so can everybody else, otherwise, our keystone is upset and the entire structure, already trembling in the face of the corruption of the Republicans, comes tumbling down, soon enough to our woe.

Sure, we give out special passes. We permit self-defense claims in court in the case of homicide, allowing the jury to decide if a killing is justified or not. But there is no special Fog of Immunity for the President, regardless of party, even delayed prosecution, because, to delay justice is to deny justice.

For those readers who agree with Justice Kavanaugh, who would have us believe that the President should be able to delay prosecutions of themselves because they’re too busy and important, let me remind those readers that this is one of the contingencies for which Vice-Presidents should be ready.

In the end, we need to get back to basics, not be distracted by the handwaving, and if Trump is to be excused because of good intentions, so should everyone else. Just tell us your killing of your neighbor was because it would be good for the nation.

Or just admit the Dershowitz argument is just a load of crap and move on. Unless, of course, this is a setup.

My Arts Editor points me at a poignant news item on CNN:

Newly installed panels from the US border wall fell over in high winds Wednesday, landing on trees on the Mexican side of the border.

The area is part of an ongoing construction project to improve existing sections of the wall.

Agent Carlos Pitones of the Customs and Border Protection sector in El Centro, California, told CNN that the sections that gave way had recently been set in a new concrete foundation in Calexico, California. The concrete had not yet cured, according to Pitones, and the wall panels were unable to withstand the windy conditions.

The National Weather Service reports that winds in the area gusted as high as 37 mph Wednesday. Video from CNN affiliate KYMA shows the metal panels leaning against trees adjacent to a Mexicali, Mexico, street as the wind whips up dirt from the construction site on the other side of the border.

Trump’s wall fell over? Awwwwwww, and Mexico didn’t even pay for it! Or will Trump disown it because it’s not brand new?

The latest assertion from a Trump Administration official in defense of President Trump’s highly questionable behaviors is causing a well-deserved uproar:

Toward the end of the night, Democrats bridled over comments by [Deputy White House Counsel Patrick Philbin] responding to a question from Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) about Trump’s apparent public solicitation of Russia and China for compromising materials on his campaign rivals. Philbin argued that Trump’s remarks did not, in fact, represent a violation of campaign finance laws that make it illegal to accept or solicit a “thing of value” from foreign sources.

“Apparently it’s okay for the president to get information from foreign governments in an election — that’s news to me,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), a House manager, as fuming Democrats accused Philbin of engaging in a wholesale rewrite of federal law to cover for Trump. [WaPo]

Steve Benen:

Flatulogenic:

Adjective

flatulogenic (comparative more flatulogenic, superlative most flatulogenic)

1. Tending to produce flatulence. [Wiktionary]

Noted in “Anal gas evacuation and colonic microbiota in patients with flatulence: effect of diet,” Chaysavanh Manichanh, et al, BMJ:

Oh, dear lord, what did you do to your hair?!

When the old mother-in-law, stoned out of her gourd, collapses to the ground, shrieking you shouldn’t leave the path, the Swedish overlords in Draug (2018) would do well to take her counsel, no matter how much they’re spitting, seriously.

Too bad they don’t.

But when you’re searching for a missing missionary, deep in the forest, and the locals are terminally resentful of your superior societal position, well, one way or another you’re going to end up off the path. And off the path, there be monsters.

So, sure, we fight our way through the monsters, find the missionary, and we’re all set to head for home, except for that one wee question about the adoptee that one of the searchers brought with him: where’s she from, again? Why is she having visions?

And why don’t the monsters eat her? That’s the big question, and it would seem there’s one more monster out there, one that no one expected:

The one that started it all.

The captioning is a little annoying, and the humor a little rude (I cannot repeat the nickname for the mother-in-law on this blog), but the plot managed to stumble two steps further than I expected: but I’m still not sure why the survivor survived. Hint: it’s not who you’ll expect.

But the real question is whether the movie appeals enough for you to find out who wins out to the end.

Way back when World Press Review was still a print magazine to which I subscribed, I recall reading that a large number of China’s cities were experiencing water shortages and contamination. Since then, the Yangtze River has been successfully dammed by the Three Gorges Dam, and the Chinese continue to demonstrate their seriousness about the water situation and pollution, although their efforts are more notable for attempts at reduction of air pollution in the big cities, as well as reductions in the use of coal – if one believes their statistics.

Source: Wikipedia

But another river originating in their territory is being dammed, the Mekong River. This longish article in WaPo explores the impact of the dams in the process of erection, and reminds me that overpopulation will result in strategic moves with regard to acquisition and control of water resources by many national entities.

Will the American government realize this and come up with effective strategies? We already have epic squabbles over water resources right here on the American mainland, in both the Southeast and the Southwest, so I’m not sure exactly how we’d approach it. After all, there’s always the chance that efficient desalination might still be invented and commercialized, or some other solution to these problems, such as effective-at-scale decontamination technologies for those cities whose water supplies are poisoned by pollution or natural toxins, such as arsenic.

But if a technological solution isn’t invented and commercialized, and population continues to grow, what then? I’ll freely admit I’m not up on the latest technologies, but it’s worth noting that Lawfare maintains the topic Water Wars, with most of the posts concerning China, its neighbors, and the United States.

Minnesota is fortunate to usually have a surplus of clean water, letting us take long showers. Contrast that to a friend of mine who grew up in Rajasthan, a northern state of India, as I recall, who once contrasted how many buckets of water it took him to wash sufficiently in Pune, vs his home city, which might have been Jaipur.

We’re unlikely to be pushed around, as the Mississippi Rover originates here, and major dams don’t make a lot of sense. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the American Indian reservations have been deprived of water supplies, and certainly pipelines such as the Keystone are seen by many as constant dangers to rivers and lakes near to which they exist.

When it comes to political machinations, the latest Senate GOP desperation talking point in defense of President Trump is, well, instructive …

“Let’s say it’s true, okay? [Harvard Law professor Alan] Dershowitz last night explained that if you’re looking at it from a constitutional point of view, that that is not something that is impeachable,” Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) told reporters Tuesday morning.

“Alan Dershowitz said it was not” impeachable, said Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), a top ally of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “And I don’t disagree with that.”  [WaPo]

For the GOP, now it’s not so much that Trump is innocent, but that he’s not guilty enough – if you believe Dershowitz. For the record, legal academics disagree with the Harvard Law professor:

Lawyers and academics strongly disagreed with Dershowitz. Frank O. Bowman, a University of Missouri law professor and author of the book “High Crimes and Misdemeanors,” said Dershowitz’s view is out of step with mainstream constitutional scholars and historians.

“In making this argument, Alan is essentially alone, and I mean alone,” Bowman said Tuesday, accusing Republicans of seizing on Dershowitz’s argument because it gives them cover not to convict a president in their own party. “What Dershowitz did yesterday was stand up and be a guy with Harvard attached to his name and spout complete nonsense that’s totally unsupported by any scholarship, anywhere.” [WaPo]

Steve Benen is appalled over the latest Republican defense strategy in the impeachment trial:

The party’s indifference seemed liberating. If Trump’s culpability is no longer relevant to his GOP acolytes, then the answer to every question could be effectively the same: “It doesn’t matter.”

Even if every allegation is true, even if the president did exactly what he’s accused of doing, even if he abused the powers of his office in the precise way Democrats claim, much of the Republican Party has convinced itself, quite suddenly, that the presidential misdeeds simply don’t meet the arbitrary threshold for importance.

And if the allegations are no longer relevant, then the trial is no longer relevant, and the need for witness testimony is no longer relevant. Dershowitz effectively handed the GOP a key to get his client out of this mess, and several Senate Republicans rushed to use it.

As a substantive matter, the party’s new posture is indefensible. Trump’s abuse of power was staggering on a historic scale and, according to Congress’ independent watchdog, blatantly illegal. For lawmakers to say it’s perfectly permissible for a president to ignore the law, withhold congressionally approved aid to a vulnerable ally, as part of an extortion scheme the president hoped to use to cheat in an election, is madness.

I think, for my part, this is going to fall right into the Pelosi strategy for the November elections. It’s important to remember that not all battles need to be won in order to win the war; indeed, impeachment may have been  planned as a feint to lure the Republicans into self-destructive statements.

One must always keep in mind – neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have enough voters enrolled on their membership lists to win outright. Independents embody the balance of power. This disregard for corruption by the Republican Party may be acceptable to much of the Republican base, but the independents, if it’s pitched properly to them by the Democrats, may be a fertile field for the harvesting of votes against Trump and all of his supporters.

The November elections are looking to be more and more interesting for Republicans who thought they sat in safe seats. While McConnell himself is probably safe, despite his horrendously low approval ratings, Senators such as Loeffler (newly appointed in Florida) and Graham may find, if they let their mouths fly too freely in praise of the above position, that the independents will have had enough of naked power-mongering, of putting Party over country, and dump them on their asses.

And, if I may put on my cynic’s hat for a moment, I must wonder just who the hell Alan Dershowitz is playing for fools. Given the strong negative reaction to his posturing concerning what he said above, I have to wonder:

Is he purposefully setting up the Republicans?

Dershowitz followed up with this one:

Alan Dershowitz, a member of President Donald Trump’s legal team, argued on Wednesday that a quid pro quo that benefits the president politically is fine because all politicians believe their elections are in the public’s interest.

He explained that if Trump did withhold nearly $400 million in aid to pressure Ukraine into announcing investigations of Democrats to help his campaign, it’s not an impeachable offense because Trump thinks his election is to the country’s benefit. Therefore, he has no corrupt motive.

“If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment,” he said during the first day of the question-and-answer period of the Senate impeachment trial. [NBC News]

Utterly screwy, isn’t it? It’s not in the least difficult to falsify, even to ridicule, Dershowitz’s assumption that the President cannot have purposes other than the best interests of the Republic at heart and to hand – suppose, for instance, the President is being blackmailed.

But Dershowitz has shoveled this utter drek into the waiting mouths of the Republican Senators regardless, and some seem to be contentedly chewing on it.

I think Pelosi must be awfully pleased. All this and a valid trial, to boot. She’s one smooth operator.

Former FBI lawyer Lisa Strzok has been taking some abuse on Twitter, which was analyzed by Christopher Bouzy of Bot Sentinel, with results published on Lawfare:

As time passes, the number of victims of the Wuhan virus are mounting, with the latest count at 131 dead. In this entry of the thread, I reacted to James Griffiths’ early evaluation of the Chinese response to the virus’ outbreak. Another view is put forth by Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, as noted in WaPo:

Despite concerns over the efficacy and ethics of a travel ban, Huang said that if China does ultimately control the virus, some officials there may actually see the outbreak as “an opportunity to beef up their legitimacy when they portray themselves as being decisive and as being wise.”

A reader comments on the Virginia gun rights Instagram account:

Exactly. Also, the bad guys are often experienced at being vicious, so don’t suffer from the fight/flight reactions the good guys will, putting the good at an even bigger disadvantage and possibly becoming a danger to others themselves.

Fortunately, bad guys got poor kindergarten grades when it came to playing with others, so they rarely cooperate when they grow up and use their toys in anti-social ways. It’s the good guys ability to cooperate and even self-sacrifice which wins the day for the good guys.

It’s that time of the good guys goading each other to be good guys is where the lives are lost.

Regarding the unknown picture of a fish in the TMORA exhibit, a reader has an identification:

The “top creature” is a pike (Esox lucius) by the way. They are native to North America as well as Northern Europe and Russia.

Cool. Thank you. A fish often mentioned in Minnesota.

Which reminds me of a story involving either a pike or a northern I heard many years ago. The teller of the story was canoeing on a Minnesota lake one day …

… when I saw a squirrel looking at an acorn, sitting out on a tree limb above a little bay. Finally, the squirrel went scampering out onto the branch, eager for his prize, and >SPLASH!< a pike leaped from the water, clamped the rascal in its jaws, and took the squirrel away to a watery fate.

My goodness! exclaimed the audience.

No, that’s not the amazing part, said the storyteller.

Really?

The storyteller nodded. Yep. Not five minutes later, I saw that pike again. He was balancing an acorn on his nose …

I can’t help myself:

Ken Starr, a member of Trump’s legal team who served as the independent counsel investigating former President Bill Clinton, lamented that the U.S. is now in the “age of impeachment.”

“In this particular juncture in America’s history, the Senate is being called to sit as the high court of impeachment all too frequently,” Starr said. “Indeed, we are living in what I think can aptly be described as the ‘age of impeachment.'”

“How did we get here, with presidential impeachment invoked frequently in its inherently destabilizing as well as acrimonious way?” he asked.

Starr said that “like war, impeachment is hell, or at least presidential impeachment is hell.” [NBC News]

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha …

There, I feel much better. What are we seeing here? The GOP is a party that’s frantically attempting to preserve its claim on plausibility. The Democratic Party, in the person of President Obama, represents the rung for which the GOP is desperately stretching; Starr, by lamenting how impeachment has become an everyday occurrence, seeks to deflect attention from the behaviors of President Trump, and by implication the large and enthusiastically loyal base which supports him, and to the fact that now we’re impeaching Presidents every 20 years, give or take.

As if it’s nothing more than a political stunt.

Sadly for Mr. Starr’s intellectual reputation, this doesn’t work. Nixon lost nearly all of his backing once the tapes came out and his activities were well known. Clinton never did lose his backing, because Starr turned up a fib about … a blowjob. Neither the fib nor the blowjob should have happened, but they also didn’t impress the public as a high crime.

And now we have Trump, who has indulged in so many transgressions against both tradition and law that it’s hard to know where to begin. From obstruction of Mueller’s investigations to criminally sloppy management of classified information to emoluments to the shockingly immoral debacle on the southern border right to today’s Ukraine scandal, President Trump has been an embarrassment to the United States in the eyes of anyone paying attention, inside or out. Starr won’t have an eye blackened – his entire reputation will be burned to a crisp.

That said, will Starr’s desperate diversion work? I suspect so, unless explicitly countered by the Democrats – and even then, the Fox News audience will never see the counter, the debate, and Starr’s embarrassment. Fox News will never show it.

So this is just another bit of meat, fed to the base, in hopes that it’ll keep them fired up and not thinking, and perhaps ensnare an independent or two, because most of them are not political and not paying attention. Starr should be ashamed.

This impeachment is happening for a legitimate reason, not because of some political vendetta. I will now look pointedly at Mr. Starr.

Idempotent:

[REST API Tutorial]

Sorry about the verbiage about their APIs, that’s a bit extraneous.

In some ways, it sounds like the formal definition of a function in mathematics: given the same inputs, the same output should always occur. For you software types, there’s no such thing as a global variable in formal mathematics.

In any case, this word was noted in “(A few) Ops Lessons We All Learn The Hard Way,” Signs of Triviality:

16. Very few operations are truly idempotent.

A site for what are called the Ops people in the software industry: the professionals who keep everything humming along. I love those people.

Regarding the unique physiology of the hagfish, a reader writes:

Four hearts sounds better than one. If the one you have fails, you’re dead, unlike say if one kidney, or one lung or one eyeball fails. Redundancy is good. There’s clearly no intelligent design when one discovers what a pile of kludges the human body is.

I’m not sure I agree that four hearts are going to be better than one – there will certainly be a resource cost, as well as possible problems with vascular coordination. I assume they have four hearts due to their environment (what else?!), which is 250m.

We made it over to The Museum of Russian Art (TMORA) over the weekend, and found that they’d taken their permanent Soviet oil paintings exhibition down, making the entire museum new for us, along with all the temporary exhibits, or, as a friend who visited when that happened, “they gutted it!”

In place of the old permanent collection is now a collection of etchings, serigraphs, and lithographs by three artists who are not Russian themselves, but associated through their country of origin, which were members of the Soviet Union.

First, and the best known of the three, were works by Marc Chagall. This set of works revolved around Biblical subjects and themes, such as this one to the right (I apologize for my inability to take a straight picture). I understand this specimen is unusual in that Chagall actually depicts Jehovah.

The second of the trio is Ben-Zion, a mostly self-taught artist who “adored” the prophets of the Torah. Typical of his work are figures with overly large feet and hands, as can be seen on the right. This picture is not of a prophet, however, but from Ben-Zion’s portfolio The 36 Unknown, and, yes, the other 35 were present as well. This particular picture is entitled The Petitioner, and I thought it somewhat more charming than other members of his portfolio.

The third of the artists is Ben Shahn, who was entranced by the shapes of letters, particularly those of the Torah. According to the information available, he believed, or at least suspected, that the very shape of each letter had a certain mystical power. While I failed to find his work striking, and therefore took no pictures, I will present this one from the TMORA website.

On the main floor of TMORA were two more exhibitions. The first was a large collection of Soviet Union propaganda posters, both contemporary and reproductions. These were highly graphic, accompanied by full translations to English. Below is a somewhat atypical example lamenting the environmental damage brought on by the capitalist system, as I recall.

Here are the three segments in greater detail:

I forget the top creature, but those following are a swan and a crayfish, a bit the worse for wear.

This exhibition also featured a movie made 11 years after the Revolution, which would place it roughly in 1928. We found this to be quite the puzzle, as there was no sound and the images were sometimes obtuse. A kind lady sat down with us to discuss the farm which appeared, which was very kind of her. While she clarified matters slightly, I fear the propaganda thrust of the film bypassed us.

Also on the main floor was a small but moving exhibition of the Chernobyl disaster. These are pictures of the damage done to the reactor that exploded during routine testing, the protective gear worn by those who conducted cleanup, and the memorials to those who died in the incident.

Finally, the basement contained an exhibition of Christmas decorations, covering both the Imperial and Soviet eras, although the latter only briefly.

The Imperial era featured ornaments from both peasants and the Imperial family, as well as the gifts given by the members of the monarchy and their hangers-on.  Peasants rarely, if ever, gave gifts, instead dedicating their time to communal celebrations.

Needless to say, as the Imperial family had access to the finest artists of Russia, their gifts are exquisite. This Russian Double Eagle box on the left is a cigarette box, as I recall, and I found it to be exquisite without being overly busy.

But, even as I admired my favorite piece, this jewelry box dominated by a dachshund with attitude, a feeling of gloom came over me. This is no surprise; after all, the Imperial family and nearly all of their supporting establishment was becoming increasingly entangled in exercises of pomp, futility, incompetence and superstition.  Eventually, this was to end in a sad meeting with destiny in the Ural Mountains.

There’s something to be said for an exhibition which says little to nothing about the imminent doom of the humans associated with the objects, and yet leaves one enveloped in that sadness for this fragment of lost humanity. Their beautiful, bright trinkets, charming and impressive in their sophistication, did nothing to help them when the hammer finally struck the anvil. The short movie, playing against the back wall, came through as a collection of ghosts of another time, people who didn’t understand how to lead a nation into the future, and paid for it.

All in all, a good way to spend an afternoon!

It appears Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) has lapsed into senescence and Arkansas voters will be needing to replace him at the next opportunity, based on this Talking Points Memo report:

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) dismissed the criticism President Trump’s lawyers received for floating Ukraine conspiracy theories during the Senate impeachment trial as a “Democratic talking point” in an interview on CBS Sunday morning.

When asked by CBS’ Margaret Brennan on whether he thinks it was a “misstep” for Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow to float the conspiracy theory that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election on the Senate floor, Cotton replied “that’s not a conspiracy theory.’

Brennan then pointed out that Sen. John Thune (R-ND) — one of Cotton’s Republican colleagues — said that he’d prefer for Trump’s lawyers to not spread Ukraine conspiracy theories during the trial, which Cotton dismissed as “a Democratic talking point.”

After Brennan pointed out to Cotton again that Thune is a Republican leader who takes issue with Ukraine conspiracy theories being mentioned on the Senate floor, Cotton doubled down that the criticism is a “Democratic talking point.”

Maybe Senator Thune decided to become a Democrat?

And, yet, it was the President’s lawyers who brought it up, too.

Time to retire, Senator.

Not to be too bold or anything, but Bolton riding in on a white charger at the last moment is turning this impeachment trial into a melodrama.

A managed melodrama.

Just sayin’, this all stinks to high heaven of manipulation and careful timing by someone, left or right, domestic or foreign. Keep a weather eye out.

A piece I forgot to publish from a week ago …

Jennifer Rubin is right on the mark when it comes to the true purpose of the trial of President Trump:

Schiff and his fellow impeachment managers understand that Trump has been impeached, that a majority of the public believes he obstructed Congress and abused his power and that a really big majority want a real trial. They know Republicans are going to vote to acquit, so the purpose is not a favorable verdict. Rather, it is to hammer home to every persuadable voter that Trump violated his oath and engaged in a coverup, which Senate Republicans are enabling.

The jury is not really the Senate; it’s the public. The defendant is not really Trump; it’s the Republican senators. Understanding this, Schiff got off to a strong start. [WaPo]

The GOP and Trump have relentlessly ridden the horse that says this is all politics, but it’s not.

This is about governance: is it good and proper, or is it corrupt and bad? As Rubin points out, this isn’t just Trump on the stand, but the entire Republican Party. Do they even understand that? Or will they simply vote en masse, beholden as many are to Trump, and more caught in the toxic hold of team politics, to acquit, and thus seal their moral – if not political – fate?

That’s really what this is all about.