Monthly Archives: September 2020

We have to get off this film, I tell you!

Sound Of Horror (1966) is the story of a team of European treasure hunters, in the mountains of Greece, who believe they’ve found the location of a buried treasure. And all that stands between them and it is a buried concrete barrier. A little dynamite will take care of that, right?

And a really irritable, screaming dinosaur. Which was apparently only able to shuffle about like it’s lame.

And just to compound the fun, not to mention keep the budget low, the dinosaur is … wait for it … invisible.

Don’t blink! It’s the producer!

Yeah, nothing can save this bad boy. Earnest acting, occasional glimpses of the monster, footprints, a little handwaving at character development, a plot that has characters doing dumb stuff, this is all going nowhere, and getting nowhere.

Yeow!

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

Need a new clock?

ANDREW LUDLOW’S is no ordinary ticker. An intricate tangle of tubes, cables and lasers occupying an entire room at his lab in Boulder, Colorado, it is one of the best timekeeping devices ever made. “It’s the Lamborghini of atomic clocks,” he says.

That isn’t to say it is fast. But Yb-2, as the clock is known, is precision engineered. In fact, it should measure out each passing second so precisely that it wouldn’t miss a beat for around 20 billion years – more than the age of the universe.

This is the stunning frontier of precision at which timekeeping now finds itself. Clocks such as Ludlow’s could spur on as yet unheard-of technological innovations. They could transform our understanding of the universe, revealing wrinkles in established laws of physics and variations in the fundamental constants of nature that would otherwise be impossible to detect. But for metrologists like Ludlow, they raise an even more fundamental question: is it time once again to redefine time? [“Inside the incredibly slow race to reinvent time“, Rachel Nuwer, NewScientist (22 August 2020)]

A little baffled by this fascination? Don’t be. If you use a GPS, it depends on proper measurement of time.

And, yet, time itself is quite the mystery. Good article. I don’t need that clock in my house, though.

I guess President Trump saw that poll in the Military Times concerning … his popularity:

Source: Military Times

The latest Military Times poll shows a continued decline in active-duty service members’ views of President Donald Trump and a slight but significant preference for former Vice President Joe Biden in the upcoming November election among troops surveyed.

The results, collected before the political conventions earlier this month, appear to undercut claims from the president that his support among military members is strong thanks to big defense budget increases in recent years and promised moves to draw down troops from overseas conflict zones.

But the Military Times Polls, surveying active-duty troops in partnership with the Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF) at Syracuse University, have seen a steady drop in troops’ opinion of the commander in chief since his election four years ago.

Why do I say that? Because President Trump is indulging in his favorite reaction when some group appears to denigrate him – he’s punching back. From USA Today:

In a heretofore unpublicized recent memo, the Pentagon delivered an order to shutter Stars and Stripes, a newspaper that has been a lifeline and a voice for American troops since the Civil War. The memo orders the publisher of the news organization (which now publishes online as well as in print) to present a plan that “dissolves the Stars and Stripes” by Sept. 15 including “specific timeline for vacating government owned/leased space worldwide.”

“The last newspaper publication (in all forms) will be September 30, 2020,” writes Col. Paul Haverstick Jr., the memo’s author.

It’s rather like watching a petulant three year old take a swat at a tower of blocks, only to have it all come raining down on him, doesn’t it? In all likelihood, this’ll simply engender more politically independent troops to become Biden voters; only hardened Trump supporters will be unaffected, politically.

Fortunately, this venerable institution can be easily restored once this President is replaced. I hope.

And that graph is especially telling, isn’t it? From a 9 point advantage to a 12 point disadvantage over twelve years, it’s gotta say something about how a body of people whose culture includes commitment to discipline views the deeply undisciplined actions of this Administration. While the military does have its problems, at its core it believes not only in what it does, but in how it does it – and, Trump’s claims of being the military’s best friend notwithstanding, they are coming more and more to the realization that Trump shares very little with them.

Large, distributed enterprises require the careful selection of appropriate incentives in order to entice the humans who happen to inhabit them to, well, not pee in the corners. Dr. Stuart Ritchie has been looking into the twin problems of sloppy experiments and reproducibility, and talks about it in this interview in NewScientist (22 August 2020) – but, first, this:

WHEN Stuart Ritchie was a graduate student in Edinburgh, UK, in 2011, he was involved in an incident that shook his faith in science. With two colleagues, he tried and failed to replicate a famous experiment on precognition, the ability to see the future. They sent their results to the journal that published the original research and received an immediate rejection on the grounds that the journal didn’t accept studies that repeated previous experiments.

Which leaves me wondering just what this nameless journal is doing if it won’t publish retrospective studies. Since we’re talking precognition, a noted delusion, we can be fairly sure the experiment should have found nothing; if it did find something, then there was something wrong about it, and a careful survey of the study could be informative.

My sneaking suspicion is that the journals inhabiting the junk science part of the landscape are run by biased people – those who are convinced they’re studying real phenomenon, and whose livelihoods depend on that assertion.

But back to Ritchie:

How did we let the rot set in?

It crept in due to a system of perverse incentives. There’s huge pressure to publish papers and huge pressure to bring in grants – which is an incentive to publish papers and apply for grants, but not an incentive to discover the truth. We focus far too much on rewarding people who have brought in big grants or published papers in prestigious journals, which isn’t necessarily getting us what we want.

But there are checks and balances, like peer review, where independent experts vet papers before they are published…

It works in some cases, but it’s nowhere near the filter it needs to be. Some of the worst papers ever went through the peer-review system of the world’s best journals.

For instance, the system isn’t set up in a way that peer reviewers can easily get raw data. It’s absurd. The people who are supposed to be checking whether the analysis is correct rarely see the data that the claims are based on.

And so a lot of our knowledge of reality is, well, even more contingent than it should be.

What’s to be done? Perhaps every relevant discipline could support an Institute of Reproducibility (IoR), and every fresh post-doc could be expected to put in a year or two at their IoR. Papers lacking a notation in their IoR’s public database are considered dubious.

But, in a way, this is a patch on a systemic problem. This is really a fault of the institutes of higher learning that mostly exist to support research and teaching, and excellence in the former is proven by publishing – not in excellent publishing, but just publishing. As Ritchie points out, publishing is considered a pure good, when it should be considered a contingent good. The problem in this competitive system – for that’s how science is performed these days, and has, to a greater or lesser extent, since the Renaissance, whether it be in terms of prestige, individual and national, or profit-driven concerns – is that, incredibly, little credence is given to the possibility that someone’s study is wrong – despite the fact that RetractionWatch is flooded with news related to study retractions.

Oh, sure, there are noted retractions, such as the disgraced Dr. Wakefield’s notorious study erroneously connecting autism with vaccines, published in the top-flight journal Nature – a disastrous move that has cost many people their lives, for it was taken seriously for far too long by credulous people^[1]. While many folks would hold up its eventual retraction as proof that the system works, I’ll suggest that it was nothing more than the spasmodic reaction of a dying animal that happened to kick the conquering predator in the teeth – a symbolic victory, at best.

We need a sea-change in all of the culture surrounding science, including both the scientific community, and the lay community which benefits from science, to understand that a single, unconfirmed study is the moral equivalent of probable bullshit. Reproduce a study’s results in two or three repetitions, and then we know we may have something. And maybe a collection of IoRs is part of that change.

But, first, we have to impregnate society with that proper skepticism, and I don’t know how to get there.

¹ Although it doesn’t qualify as the start of the anti-vaxxer movement. My understanding is that the anti-vaccine movement more or less began with the introduction of the first vaccine, at least in Western culture.

As the season approaches its end, a few more random pics.

Here’s a depiction of just how bad the drought is on the West Coast, via WaPo:

And temperatures:

I wonder what sort of damage is being done to American agriculture.

Reuters is reporting on a new Republican, or former Republican, group announcing its support for Democrat Joe Biden:

Nearly 100 Republican and independent leaders will endorse Democrat Joe Biden for president on Thursday, including one-time 2020 Republican presidential candidate Bill Weld and the former Republican governors of Michigan and New Jersey, people involved in the effort told Reuters.

The latest Republican-led effort to oppose the re-election of President Donald Trump also includes current and former Republicans in the key battleground state of Michigan that will help decide the outcome of the Nov. 3 election, the group’s members said.

Called ‘Republicans and Independents for Biden’, the group is headed by Christine Todd Whitman, a former Republican governor of New Jersey who has become one of Trump’s fiercest critics and who spoke at the recent Democratic National Convention in support of Biden.

Steve Benen provides a comprehensive summary of Republicans Endorsing Biden here.

Source: Uncertain. Sort of like its future.

Skipping any jokes about how enthusiasm for Biden exceeds enthusiasm for Trump on the right side of the political spectrum, we may be seeing the beginning of the formation of a new Republican Party. The old Republican Party, the GOP, will continue its skid to the right, losing members who are, ironically, less and less moderate – but no longer acceptable to the Trumpists.

And while, in the short-term, the cavalcade of the more moderate Republicans to Biden will help ensure votes for Biden from the undecided independents and moderate Republicans, in the long-term many of these people are contributors to the pathological specimen that is the Republican Party. If they believe Trump is an anomaly and all will snap back to normal after Trump is roundly defeated, then they mistake their erstwhile Party.

This is nothing new for long-time readers. My themes on this matter are toxic team politics, religion and politics mixing and the consequent disdain for science, and, in common with the Democratic far-left, a palpable loathing for those fellow Americans who don’t fall into line with them, a belief that abortion should somehow be a crime, or, as I call it, the great crowbar of American politics, and those who disagree are intolerable monsters – rather than just folks with a differing opinion on a subject that some find difficult.

Without repairing these faults – a word that seems entirely inadequate to the situation – I fear a new Republican Party will suffer the same fate as it appears will befall the current GOP – taken over by any power-hungry and/or God-driven righteous person who can shout RINO! loudly enough.

Senator Barry Goldwater, right-wing fringer that he was, sure sounded the right alarm on this group.

Proper technique for sneezing is to turn your head and sneeze into your neighbor’s sleeve.

The Woman Eater (1958) is a story about a Dr Moran, whose unfettered ego soars far above his accomplishments, and it’s made him bitter. Having traveled to the Amazon and obtained a sample of a plant that exudes a sap that makes mankind immortal, now he seeks to refine it in the English countryside – by feeding the plant random women, who go to their fate inexplicably all wearing the same one-strap dress after being subjected to a drum-beat song from an Amazonian ex-pat.

Into this mess stumbles Dr Moran’s car mechanic, and the woman the mechanic rescues from an abusive circus situation, whose name might be Susan. He’s a bit of a lump, and her hula dancing fails to counter the depradations of the plant, but the local gendarmerie have been poking around, looking for missing women.

Well, Susan gets a job as a maid, inadvertently pushes out the housekeeper, and things go terribly wrong from there. The plant becomes underfed, and, well, it all comes to a flaming climax.

It’s a bit limp and dated, even if the monstrous plant is cool in that B-list movie monster way that evokes affection more than horror, but it remains a B-list movie. Maybe, after a couple of beers, you’ll enjoy this.

Then again, maybe not.

The Lincoln Project should write a thank-you note for Trump providing his own rope. If you haven’t heard about the “people in the dark shadows”, here it is:

He is crazy. He is unraveling.

Wake up. pic.twitter.com/YkhIl4FkUZ

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) September 2, 2020

The interviewer is Fox News host Laura Ingraham and Trump fan, and even she seems disbelieving of what she’s hearing.

Gnomon:

A gnomon (/ˈnoʊmɒn,ˈnoʊmən/, from Greek γνώμων, gnōmōn, literally: “one that knows or examines”) is the part of a sundial that casts a shadow. The term is used for a variety of purposes in mathematics and other fields. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “Everything you wanted to know about Joe Biden’s shadow people but were afraid to ask,” Alexandra Petri, WaPo:

I’m glad you asked. The Shadow People have been present ever since someone glancing at the Washington Monument realized that it was the gnomon of an ominous sundial and stood in its shadow as the sun set; within that shadow were bits of deeper shadow. That man was Henry Clay; it was because the Thing from the Shadow followed him patiently out of it that the presidency always eluded him. It was long thought that the Shadow People could not cross the Mississippi River but that turned out to be what they wanted us to believe. And if you stare into the Masonic eye on the dollar too long, something small and gray will flit out of it into your eye and, from that moment onward, you will not know rest.

Great rant!

Graham Lawton reports in NewScientist (22 August 2020) on the newest environmentalist goal:

Jackson’s theme was restoring the atmosphere, by which he means returning it to its pre-industrial state. Jackson said he was no longer satisfied with goals to keep warming to 1.5°C or some other arbitrary value, but longed to return the atmosphere to how it was before we started dumping carbon dioxide, methane and other pollutants into it.

Taking inspiration from the growing field of ecological restoration – intervening to help degraded ecosystems recover – he argued that we should treat the atmosphere as we do wetlands, forests or endangered species. We don’t merely aim to halt their destruction, but to nurse them back to full, pristine health. The atmosphere deserves no less. Think of it as rewilding the sky.

Yes, he admitted, it seems a “preposterous idea”. We can’t even stabilise levels of greenhouse gases, let alone reverse them. But, he said, with so much bad news we need a new narrative of hope. Temperature thresholds are abstract; normal people don’t relate to them. “They don’t provide a narrative that has, or will, lead to action.”

There is a certain importance in having impossible goals, because sometimes they’re not impossible.

But I’m wondering about the definition in this case. It might be great to have the atmosphere returned to some pristine state – even defining such a state strikes me as being problematic, unless you have large error bars. Really big ones, maybe. I mean, pristine can mean an atmosphere nearly empty of O₂, if you push back the time of your definition far enough.

But how about connecting the state of the atmosphere to the state of the environment? An endless chase after some indefinable pristinity may lose adherents, but chasing after removal of contaminants inimical to life is far more measurable – and good for both wildlife and humanity.

In the end, it’s hard to see this happening unless the size of humanity is shrunk, and in a peaceful manner, too. But I do look forward to seeing if this nascent movement thrives or deteriorates. I’ve been so wrong on my predictions on these sorts of things that I expect this one’ll take off.

Even if it’s fairly horrifying, it’s unsurprising:

As Iowa’s positive coronavirus cases climbed this week to their highest level yet, local elected officials in several of the state’s most populated counties said they are increasingly relying on data sources other than the state health department to make decisions about protecting residents in their communities.

In places such as Polk, Story, Johnson and Linn counties, several officials complained they no longer trust state data or metrics because case numbers have been consistently under-reported and contain inaccuracies — and that Gov. Kim Reynolds’ guidance thus far has failed to quell the coronavirus’ spread.

“Iowa has become an island to ourselves,” said Linn County supervisors Chairman Ben Rogers, a four-term elected official from the northeast side of Cedar Rapids. “We find ourselves at the top of all the bad lists. … It’s not slowing down.” [Des Moines Register]

The Democrats could screw this up, too, it’s true, but when a party has come to believe that nothing but collecting loot and plaudits follows a political victory, as has the GOP, and when its expertise and experience is disdained in favor of political loyalties and the soothing of tender, needy egos, it’s not hard to guess that the entire exercise at the State level is being mishandled.

Or even deliberately.

It’s beyond question that the county-level officials lack the resources to manage these sorts of things on their own; this is one reason a state, or a national government, exists. But it appears these folks will have to get creative in the face of incompetence – or malevolence.

Senegal may be hosting a city of the future – Akon City, propelled by Senegal performer Akon. The architecture is interesting, but not clearly functional:

Here’s a single building:

More here. WaPo discusses some of its challenges here.

Gonna dance ’til I can’t dance no more! Clack them bones!

Sinbad: The Fifth Voyage (2014) is a rather limp addition to the long and sometimes gamy Sinbad collection of tales. Let me see if I can remember this properly:

Sinbad and crew – a small crew compared to some of his tales – are sailing into his home port of Baghdad, laden with jewels & plunder, but something’s not right. Ships are not moving about, the lights are not right this evening. He rushes to the palace, where he finds the guards, and, indeed, everyone is frozen. In fact, it’s quite the chilly reception.

But the court magician – or witch – is still mobile, and now that Sinbad is back, she uses one of his collection of talismans to unfreeze everyone. Everyone, that is, except for Sinbad’s love, the Princess. In flashback, we learn she was abducted by a visiting wizard, or Deev, and taken back to his island for a ceremonial decanting of her soul, the better to consume it for his own fell purposes.

At this point, I was sort of hoping Sinbad would cough delicately and say, What island did you say? Didn’t we just invade and sack that one on the way home, crew? He’s going to be one mad wizard.

Sadly, nothing so clever comes out of Sinbad’s mouth. Indeed, I don’t believe Sinbad ever says or does anything clever, which is a pity because that’s part of the charm of Sinbad, along with being a lady’s man and a slight rapaciousness – it’s his core. Now, I must admit, he is clever, just once, but it’s not spectacular, and I shan’t recite it.

Anyways, Sinbad & crew make their way to the island, trek through it, the crew gets mangled, the Princess rescued, the secret of Sinbad and the Princess is revealed, and the Deev is sorely disappointed, after chewing the landscape thoroughly.

There’s little reason to see this movie, unless you’re a Ray Harryhausen fan. Harryhausen, a pioneer in stop-action special-effects, is more or less honored in this 2014 movie by having all the monsters presented in the same style as Harryhausen’s – choppy stop-action. But while it was leading edge in Harryhausen’s day, now it’s better done by the gang who did Chicken Run (2000), and more distracting than anything else.

Add in some indifferent acting and a script that needed three more rewrites, and this, despite some lovely cinematography, was a definite disappointment.

NSFW:

The latest rumor to roil the political waters is that the President has been experiencing mini-strokes, and that is why he visited Walter Reed Hospital last November.

It’s just a rumor, not substantiated news, boosted by Trump himself.

But the statement by his physician was less than reassuring:

“I can confirm that President Trump has not experienced nor been evaluated for a cerebrovascular accident (stroke), transient ischemic attack (mini stroke), or any acute cardiovascular emergencies, as have been incorrectly reported in the media,” Dr. Sean Conley said in a statement. [Yahoo News]

Dude. If you haven’t evaluated someone for a stroke, logically you cannot say the patient hasn’t experienced one.

You cannot. You dispute that, you get to surrender your degrees in medicine and logic.

Is this a carefully worded denial, or a carelessly worded denial? Beats me. I suspect it’s just carelessness, the kind that characterizes an Administration of third-raters.

But keep it in the back of your mind.

Here’s some reminders of warmth.