Monthly Archives: January 2020

The latest in hairdressing tools.

Ten Little Indians (1959) is a TV movie made from the Agatha Christie play And Then There Were None (1943), and chronicles the arrival of guests and staff at Indian Island for a weekend of revelry in a classic old Victorian house, supported by the mysterious generosity of Mr and Mrs Owen.

Mr and Mrs U. N. Owen.

Soon enough, the classic nursery rhyme Ten Little Indians is found inscribed colorfully on a wall, beneath which are ten Indian statues. It’s quaintly amusing.

Ten little Indian boys went out to dine;
One choked his little self and then there were nine.

The tension ratchets up when the butler plays a record on instructions from the missing Owens, but it’s not music, it’s a dry accusation of everyone in the house being responsible for one or more murders. Even the kitchen staff is unexcused. The sensibility of an imminent social faux-pas is upon us.

And then a guest collapses and dies while sipping a drink. Dr. Armstrong diagnoses cyanide poisoning, based on the symptoms of foaming at the mouth and … choking.

The bodies begin hitting the floor in earnest shortly thereafter, each echoing its line in the rhyme and always followed by a broken Indian statue, until, as the thunder crashes and the lights go out, only two are left, torn apart by the knowledge that it has to be one of them committing these revenge murders.

Right?

The production values are, unfortunately, fairly inferior, even for 1959, and the pace is just a trifle hurried. We never do really get to know anyone well enough to mourn their demise, or even cheer on their increasingly desperate failures. This is unfortunate, as it reduces the tension we could have felt for all these doomed people.

Still, it’s a lovely – and fortunately short – bit of fun.

I see that, in the wake of the United States’ fatal attack on Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps‘ Qasem Soleimani, Iraq is taking action:

The Iraqi parliament has voted to obligate the Iraqi government “to work towards ending the presence of all foreign troops on Iraqi soil,” according to the media office of the Iraqi parliament. [CNN]

This may be an opportunity for my reader to evaluate their favorite “pundit” to see if they really are a pundit, or merely an ideological zealot, unworthy of your attention. Did your pundit attack President Obama for pulling most of the troops out of Iraq, using that to blame Obama for the development of ISIS? Even though Obama was legally obligated to do so?

Let’s see if your pundit begins screaming about Trump doing the same. If he does, then she’s a pundit – even-handedness is the definition, despite the fact that contravening Iraq’s parliamentary will is, in itself, problematic.

If, on the other hand, they remain amazingly silent on the topic, then you can guess they’re nothing more than an ideological water carrier for Trump, and really aren’t worthy of further attention.

My apologies to Kevin Drum, but I must point out a flaw in his history of the United States. During his analysis of the American killing of the leader of Iran’s Quds Force, Qassim Soleimani, deputy head of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and a number of others, including four generals in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Kevin suggests …

Escalation of hostilities almost never gets the other guy to back down. It doesn’t get us to back down, after all. Why should we think it will get Iran to back down?

Except it has. In 1983, the United States lost 241 military personnel, and the French lost 58, in an attack by Islamic Jihad. The goal of the attack?

A group called Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the bombings and said that the aim was to force the MNF [Multinational Force in Lebanon] out of Lebanon.^[10] [Wikipedia]

The result? It may be questionable to use Wikipedia to connect action to result, but here it is:

The attacks eventually led to the withdrawal of the international peacekeeping force from Lebanon, where they had been stationed following the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) withdrawal in the aftermath of Israel‘s 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

Credit: SSgt Randy Gaddo, USMC – DefenseLINK News, U.S. Department of Defense

And I recall observing at the time that President Reagan’s force had, indeed, been chased out of Lebanon.

My point is not that Drum forgot about this, really, but that, yes, sometimes the application of deadly force can cause another nation to back down – if it’s done properly. There is no generally applicable rule; it’s entirely dependent on the character of the attacked entity. As a colleague I met at the start of my career once noted, the Indians succeeded in chasing the Brits out of India using peaceful resistance because the Brits couldn’t stand the immorality of slaughtering the Indians en masse. There would have been no such moral compunction if the foreign invaders had been Nazis. The United States suffered mass casualties in the attack on the MNF, which was publicly unacceptable; another such incident would have damaged the GOP brand for a generation, because the casualties were a raw reminder of what happened in Vietnam.

So we left, because the GOP was in charge.

Of course, the problem with the current incident is that Trump and his Administration has not displayed competency. That doesn’t mean this won’t stop the Iranians from meddling in their neighbors business, but it really lowers the odds that this has been thought completely through, particularly since we have this report:

When President Trump’s national security team came to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Monday, they weren’t expecting him to approve an operation to kill Gen. Qassem Suleimani.

Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had gone to Palm Beach to brief Trump on airstrikes the Pentagon had just carried out in Iraq and Syria against Iranian-sponsored Shiite militia groups.

One briefing slide shown to Trump listed several follow-up steps the U.S. could take, among them targeting Suleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force, according to a senior U.S. official familiar with the discussions who was not authorized to talk about the meeting on the record.

Unexpectedly, Trump chose that option, the official said, adding that the president’s decision was spurred on in part by Iran hawks among his advisors. [Los Angeles Times]

AL Monitor’s Ali Mamour has a different viewpoint:

The scene was indeed set perfectly. Washington could not have chosen a better time, as after a series of protests from Baghdad to Tehran and Beirut, Soleimani had lost some public support and was seen as part of Iran’s suppression system against people and their free wills. The attack on the US Embassy in Baghdad had also turned the majority of Iraqi political forces and the international community against Soleimani as the highest — albeit unofficial — leader of the PMU. The location turned out to be perfect as well. The strike took place in Iraqi territory, raising questions among the Iraqi public about the reason for an Iranian general being present in Iraq, especially after accusations facing Iran-backed forces of killing Iraqi protesters and abducting many of them. Selecting a quiet place in the airport also prevented the killing of any civilians that might allow Iran to victimize themselves and demonize the United States.

But, in the end, I’m just picking a very important nit; I more or less agree with Drum:

A Talleyrandesque sort of devious statesman might—might—be able to handle the aftermath of this in a way that makes relative peace more likely. Unfortunately, Trump is an idiot who is doing this because he’s obsessed with Benghazi and wants to show his predecessor that, by God, a red line is a red line. He has no idea what he’ll do next.

How I felt while watching this one.

The Fantasticks (1995) is the story of a tutelary deity of love taking the form of a carnival in order to press two young neighbors to honor their mutual vows of love. This is a light, fluffy American musical, and it got off to a fast start but then fell apart, and if I made up parts of this review, that’s just too damn bad.

Nepantla:

The term, Nepantla is a Nahuatl (Aztec language) term connoting in between or a reference to the space of the middle. A number of contemporary scholars, writers, poets and artists have elaborated upon this concept, enhancing and/or adding on to the Nahua concept. (See Gloria Anzaldua, Pat Mora, Yreina Cervantez, Miguel Leon Portilla).

Most often the term is referencing endangered peoples, cultures, and/or gender, who due to invasion/conquest/marginalization or forced acculturation, engage in resistance strategies of survival. In this sense, this larger, cultural space of Nepantla becomes a postmodern paradigm or consciousness rooted in the creation of a new middle. [ChicanoArt.org]

Found on the sidewalk today.

Desiccated beauty?

A conservative friend sent me a YouTube, purporting (and probably is) from Australia, commenting on the current dire fire situation. I thought it would just be an interesting documentary, but it turns out to be a potent cocktail of facts and highly suspect assertions, which you can read as conspiracy theories. The video runs for 31 minutes, so you can watch it, or you can skip it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxHcBDp4J84 [link is now broken]

For me, the red flags are raised by these observations, chronologically ordered:

1. Doppler radar is used to keep the storms away. This was pushed so quickly I almost missed it, but there it was beginning @ 5:36. Then there’s this radar image @ 5:55:
   Impressive, no? Ignoring the issue of simple fakery, the problem, of course, is that if there’s any evidence of Doppler radar affecting the weather – pushing the clouds away, as this chap would have us believe – I can’t find it. Wikipedia doesn’t know about it^[1]. I can’t even find skeptical commentary on the subject; you’d think Skeptical Inquirer would have checked into such a claim, and I’ve been a subscriber for decades. I’m no physicist, but it’s my suspicion that Doppler radar could have an effect on the weather if the amount of power pushing the signal out was so outrageous that it burned out the transmitting elements of the apparatus. And possibly the power plant backing it.
2. The end of Australia (@ 14:00) is nigh due to the politicians. Perhaps my weakest objection, this dude asserts that a series of decisions made by popularly elected politicians were all taken in order to destroy Australia as it’s currently known. My problem with this is two-fold: (1) Does anyone really think a vast collection^[2] of elected politicians can coordinate such a conspiracy over the number of necessary years, (2) just to destroy the very thing that benefits them? Really? I’d grant the suggestion that politicians will make foolish decisions, especially if, like the American President Trump, they smell short-term gain and are quite self-centered or delusional, but to expect the politicians to cold-bloodedly destroy that which gives them value is just silly.
3. Chemtrail conspiracy mongering (15:37). The dude doesn’t actually actually call it that, but he remarks that aluminium, barium, and strontium have been sprayed on the country. Upon looking up barium spraying, I discovered this article in The Guardian, entitled My month with chemtrails conspiracy theorists: … But to Tammi, a 54 year-old organic farmer, it’s a “chemtrail”: a toxic cocktail of aluminum, strontium and barium sprayed from planes in a plot to control the weather, the population and our food supply. Chemtrails have been researched and found to be jet exhaust and condensation. While I didn’t view this dude’s other videos that concentrate on that subject, I’m willing to guess he’s gulped down the chemtrail conspiracy pill – or is at least willing to use it to manipulate his more conspiracy minded audience members.
4. His careful stirring of passions over reason (@16:45). He admits he’s no experts on forest fires, and yet he can’t help but use the chaos and fury of a wildfire to suggest that the forests have been salted, as it were, for a tremendous fire. That stirs emotional fury, the thought of someone planning to destroy the life on the continent through carefully planned fires. Is this rational? No, and it’s planned as a way to ensure the audience doesn’t start thinking for itself. He’s evoking the flight or fight reflex, and this strategy is often used by these sorts, as explained in The Persuaders, a book I recommend for those who want to understand how marketeers and dudes like the guy in this video try to manipulate audiences. A little later, around 19:30, he uses the term genocide to describe what is going on in Australia, another stir of the emotions.Why not consult with experts? Well, they might come up with inconvenient facts which would not support the tale he’s telling.
5. Climate change denial (@20:54). In just a single comment, he shrugs it off. It doesn’t support his narrative, so he doesn’t consider it important; he’s focused on his conspiracy theory that Australians are under attack by their own politicians.

In general, this is a skillful mixture of facts and dubious assertion, and the stir-stick is a gentleman with a very fine voice and foreign manner – a problem Americans in general have is that a good accent can cover a host of sins. Brit Andrew Sullivan observed that he could push the most outrageous stuff in class at Harvard, and most of his fellow students would swallow it all because, he said, of his authoritative British accent.

The problem for an audience member who does a bit of research, though, is that the video completely loses its value because of his reliance on discredited and/or deeply implausible conspiracy theories. For example, he suggests the government isn’t nearly doing enough. Maybe, I don’t know. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has certainly not impressed me with his mental acuity. But this dude doesn’t have any credibility, so I don’t know.

Similarly, his overview of MPs not being required to disclose whether they own water rights might be a good point. Australia is an arid continent, perhaps this is happening and is a serious matter. Maybe they are corrupt. If only I could take this dude seriously.

He’s entirely ruined any valid points by his inclusion of these conspiracy theories and his method of arguing. Ironically, he warns that some web sites have fallacious information or pictures; I’m not sure if he’s defending his territory by a bit of sleight of hand, or if he’s in earnest in his warning.

So, for the viewer who’s impressed by this video, be warned: it’s included conspiracy theories and employed communication strategies that render it quite untrustable. I rather enjoyed his delivery and manner, and I have to wonder if it’s rehearsed or comes naturally. It reminds me of Rush Limbaugh, although Limbaugh’s voice is warmer and more friendly.

But, in the end, that’s fluff: when you’re pushing sordid lies, your voice’s warm and friendly qualities are don’t matter. Anything this guy says has to be taken with a very large grain of salt.

¹ Which is not to suggest Wikipedia is the end-all, but it’s certainly a good place to start.

² A rabble, if you will, but a very dignified rabble.

As I noted in my very short review of Turchin’s War and Peace and War, asabiya is

… a critical concept and term from Ibn Khaldun, meaning the “capacity of a social group for concerted collective action.”

When a society – or empire, since that was Turchin’s focus – is in decline, its asabiya is running low. For those of us who like economy of expression, asabiya and societal health is correlated. And in a society in which the asabiya is running low and overpopulation is present, Turchin observes internecine war begins to break out in the upper levels of society which are involved in governance as they battle to stay in the elite, or even to become a dominant faction.

While Turchin suggests this is because of a burgeoning scarcity of resources, basically the commoners who do the work, he also notes that it can be caused by the cessation of an existential threat. We’ve seen the latter in the failure of the Soviet Union. China may be just as dangerous as the Soviet Union, but, unlike the Soviet Union in its hey-day, it doesn’t try to frighten the United States into submission; the leadership of the China, whether due to internal issues or due to craft, is very subtle in its adversarial relationship with the United States.

What brings this up? This AP report concerning the attacks of Trump’s allies on Democratic Presidential nominee-wannabe Joe Biden:

A video of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden that was selectively edited to falsely suggest he made racist remarks during a recent speech made the rounds Thursday on social media, raking in more than a million views on one tweet alone.

Experts have been warning about the dangers of selectively edited videos being used as a misinformation tactic ahead of the 2020 presidential election. They are easier to make and do not require the sophisticated technology needed to produce deepfake videos, which are fabricated to look realistic.

In the edited clip, which was less than 20 seconds long, Biden says, “Our culture is not imported from some African nation or some Asian nation.” Social media users paired the video with comments like “It’s almost like Joe Biden is a Racist.” Posts with the video surfaced across social media platforms on Wednesday.

For those of us who believe in the value of facts, truth, and fair play over the ethic (!) of victory at all costs, this is disheartening, especially when Steve Benen predicts this is only the beginning.

So let’s talk about the implications of high asabiya. Often acquired in the face of continual and severe threat, it is a recognition that, as a whole, we are greater than our aggregate worth as individuals. This is essence of teamwork, and so much more. But the binding has to go both ways, the potential members of the society to be bound together by asabiya must have motivations to join that society that are greater than the motivations to remain apart.

Those latter motivations, of suspicion and distrust, are often traceable to differences in color, religion, perceived value systems, politics, etc – and more subtle factors, such as affinity for dogmatism, or certainty that you are always right. These factors are more or less unconscious; one sees conscious, manipulative actions for socio-political reasons, which most often have to do with jealousy of position, as leaders who do not wish to become small frogs in big ponds exert themselves to keep their followers separate – keep the pond smaller so they seem bigger and more dominant. The latter can be, but are not necessarily, pathological; it certainly lessens asabiya.

Contrariwise, implicit in the increase of asabiya is the commitment to treat others in the bound community fairly, in all venues, from sharing food to competing for political position. Treating other members unfairly is the utter equivalent to dumping arsenic in the community water supplies in order to be rid of some hated personality, it’s really simple as that. There may be some short-term benefit, but in the long term, no matter how much the miscreant wishes to believe otherwise, it’s a loser for everyone.

That’s what I see happening here. Someone – I don’t know who, but probably plural – who is no longer worried about outside threats has decided that it’s time to tear the United States apart in their pursuit of wealth, power, and prestige. Nevermind that there are strong external threats, and Trump’s strikes against Iran-aligned Iraqi militias has made those threats stronger.

But what really bothers me is the fact that this is just another step on the path trod by the Roman emperors and Senate, the French nobility, the English nobility, and many others as population pushed up pressure on resources, foes were vanquished, the elite feared losing their status, and the personal pride and religious vanities of some all conspired to destroy the social cohesion which had brought them their eminence in the world. Not that eminence, in and of itself, is desirable, but the positive things that can be done with eminence, such as alleviating illness and suffering, suffocating the warlike instincts of others, and all that sort of thing, are lost when that eminence is lost.

Trump may not be aware of this problem in a direct way, but indirectly, through world-wide polls of confidence in American leadership and its importance to the American citizenry, he has some awareness. We know this because he lies about it. He says world confidence in America has soared since he took office. Wrong.

But, in the meantime, we keep walking this bloody, weary path of history, ripping ourselves apart, rather than operating as a team to face the immense challenges of today. Those who have become fixated on wealth, power, and prestige keep denying reality and use the political weapons of total destruction in their strategies to hold on and gain more of those things, no matter what the cost might be for the future.

It sounds depressingly like Turchin. The path leads down into darkness and disaster.

Tensions abound in Pamela (2020), which we caught on Amazon Prime but is listed in IMDb as a February 2020 release. This is a tight family-tensions thriller, set over a single dinner. As mother Pamela, daughter Vanessa, and son Matt order and ignore dinner and down far too many cocktails, the latter two reveal they know there’s a big, nasty family secret involving their late father and themselves. As they seek answers, each prods the other, but Pamela is the chief target of their thrusts, their hunger for answers to the questions brought up by their shared childhoods. Who is their father, after all, and why did he do as he did? And why is she defending him?

As we learn that no one’s perfect, we also discover how those imperfections interact with each other, and how that affects the characters, even those that aren’t there to defend themselves – and why deep, dark secrets can sometimes be problems with no good answers.

There’s no question this is well-acted, but the script might have benefited from another draft, especially as some pointed barbs might have brought out a bit more tension, a few more questions to chase around on the table with one’s fork. And I’m curious as to whether they tried to film this without that unnamed furry animal clinging to Matt’s face, and finally decided he looked better with it than without it. It was … distracting.

But this kept the attention of my Arts Editor and myself, and not out of morbid curiosity. Each actor knows what they’re trying to accomplish, and they do it well. As I recall, the movie poster was decorated with various film festival awards, and it earned them.

You won’t laugh much, but you’ll be drawn in.

Jason Campbell captures a prime specimen off of Fox News:

Trump campaign Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany: "In 2016, President Trump was the foregone nominee from the beginning. Never did anyone go up against President Trump. We loved our nominee." pic.twitter.com/9Q4aXLV0Lu

— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) December 29, 2019

This is so Soviet it makes me mildly ill. Much like the Soviets airbrushed figures of disgraced high Soviet officials out of photographs in an effort to reshape history to their advantage, this McEnany character is trying to turn Trump into the eternal and obvious savior of the Republicans – in the face of one of the largest Republican fields ever back in 2016. In the face of a field which fought tooth and claw to beat Trump. It’s worth noting in the face of this blatantly false propaganda that Trump didn’t win all of the Republican primaries (in Minnesota he came in a paltry 3rd, behind Rubio and Cruz); in fact, he only began to poll more than 50% after the race came down to him, Cruz, and Kasich.

It helps to remember that McEnany is all of 31 years old. She has no experience with seeing this sort of damnable propaganda for what it is; she’d need to be 60+ years old. But her disregard of the facts remains inexcusable. An honorable campaign would fire her immediately and apologize; Trump’s campaign will give her a raise and the Medal of Freedom, because that’s how they operate.

But Fox News viewers do have memories. Will they disregard them in this casting of Trump as their last, great, eternal hope? Or will they growl a bit and take her with a grain of salt?

Hard to say.

Noted on Facebook:

Manhunt underway for couple stabbed in Riverwest

First stabbed, now you get hunted down. Tough life. Or the particular might even ask if the couple had body organs named Riverwest. The actual headline?

Manhunt underway for suspect who slashed Riverwest couple

Not quite so harsh on the victims of the stabbing. Makes you wonder if the translation from headline to FB news summary is created by the content provider or created by FB, or more likely an automated FB process (we shan’t make the mistake of calling it an AI).

And are these prayers for Mr. Bigfoot?

Fishing Naked (2015) is an oddball mixture of juvenile humor and self-aware screwing with audience expectations, the sort of movie that makes you wish it was better, but also worry that making it better would make it worse.

Young adults David and Rodney live at the intersection of American and Indian life in backwoods Oregon, raising some mild hell while fly fishing and messing with tourists using their Bigfoot suit. When two young women, Sarah and Amy, wander in, getting away from the big city after finishing school, they’re more than ready to jump when the ladies say hop – and Bigfoot gets a workout. The fun & games begin.

Meanwhile, David’s grandma happens to be pleasantly enthralled by the floating orbs she seems to be the only one seeing. But when a tourist manages to photograph something, blurry as it may be, that doesn’t belong, the juvenilia turns into the interesting. Grandma knows something they don’t, and when it comes time to do something about it – is it time to panic, or help out?

Sure, it’s silly and hormone-ridden, but just when it become painfully predictable, it isn’t, and that’s where the real fun lies. Sure, it could have been better in parts – but would that have detracted from the parts that turned out to be good? An indie apparently made on a minuscule budget, this survives on the enthusiasm of its acting and the mild cleverness of its script.

Ever wonder what lives at various depths of the ocean? Try neal.fun. I had no idea polar bears could be found, living one hopes, at 25 meters, or about 75 feet. I do see a claim that the bird name the Thick-Billed Murre can be found at 211m, while Wikipedia will only admit to 150m, so I’m uncertain as to its accuracy.

This did spark in me a question as to analogous situations, in the sense that, at least in me, the idea of going down deep into the ocean in a mere scuba suit leaves me with a sense of apprehension, even if the problems of pressure and nitrogen narcosis were solved – I dislike the thought of some hungry predator taking a chunk out of me. But any similar situations?

Caving, perhaps, although caves are not known for their predators.

But how about a hypothetical species based outside of an atmosphere? It is not unreasonable to suggest such a creature might have eyes sensitive to the electromagnetic spectrum that is filtered out by our upper atmosphere. Might they look at a planet like Earth as a dark and foreboding hole in space, possibly populated by similarly predatory creatures that create unease in me?

Following up on the use of Mechanical Turk in research, it turns out there’s more flaws to this approach than just bot-induced corruption, as NewScientist notes:

People seem to be answering research survey questions randomly on Amazon’s crowdsourcing website. The findings could mean that many academic studies are wrong.

Michael Chmielewski at Southern Methodist University in Texas and Sarah Kucker at Oklahoma State University recently revisited data they had collected on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) platform, a virtual labour marketplace where people are paid to perform short tasks. MTurk is often used to gather survey responses for social science research.

Since 2015, Chmielewski and Kucker had used MTurk to collect data on how a child’s language skills developed depending on their parents’ personalities. When New Scientist published an article in 2018 claiming automated bots were targeting the site and ruining academic studies, the pair revisited their data and found inconsistencies. But rather than bots ruining their data, it seems humans racing through possible survey answers and not reading the questions were causing the problems.

By performing a statistical analysis on their results, the team found that the responses just weren’t right. “The conclusions were just massively wrong,” says Chmielewski. “Well-established links between neuroticism and depression weren’t there. We were seeing links in the wrong directions. Things that should have been negatively related were now positively related.”

One of the most difficult elements of science is collection of data, and it appears Mechanical Turk was merely an illusion of a source of data. A worker elaborates:

Kristy Milland who does work offered on MTurk wasn’t surprised by the results. “MTurk is a labour platform, not a participant pool,” she says. “We signed up to make money, not to help science.”

Self-reporting and other sources that might be classified as secondary must always be treated with skepticism by researchers, even when that is the only available data. As Chmielewski & Kucker demonstrate, it’s possible, in many cases, to examine the data for consistency and plausibility, even though that might seem to be placing an otherwise unwarranted expectation on the data. In the future, more researchers should do the same.

Someone around here has to be guilty!

Shadows On The Stairs (1941) is a light and floofy story within a story, as a writer pursuing a woman to be his wife is prodded into writing a murder mystery, and soon a boarding house of victims and potential murderers are running around in hapless circles. While the actors make a go of it, the story is unconvincing and joyless. Especially the matriarch of the boarding house.

Or maybe I’m just a crab.