Monthly Archives: December 2021

Adventurism:

improvisation or experimentation (as in politics or military or foreign affairs) in the absence or in defiance of accepted plans or principles [Merriam-Webster]

I would add that these actions are taken in prioritization of personal advantage, whether it be power or wealth. Noted in the Wikipedia article on Trofim Lysenko, the former head of Soviet science, who has become symbolic of the folly of placing ideology ahead of science:

In 1964, physicist Andrei Sakharov spoke out against Lysenko in the General Assembly of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR:

He is responsible for the shameful backwardness of Soviet biology and of genetics in particular, for the dissemination of pseudo-scientific views, for adventurism, for the degradation of learning, and for the defamation, firing, arrest, even death, of many genuine scientists.^[30]

The Soviet press was soon filled with anti-Lysenkoite articles and appeals for the restoration of scientific methods to all fields of biology and agricultural science.

And what brings this up?

Doctors asking the Alaska State Medical Board to crack down on colleagues spreading COVID-19 misinformation say they’re receiving holiday packages, some at their homes, from a group pushing for alternative treatments like ivermectin.

The delivery of the packages from the Alaska Covid Alliance came off as threatening and invasive, several doctors said. Each package — at least some of which arrived in holiday-themed gift bags — included chocolates, a letter acknowledging the recipients’ signatures on a recent letter to the medical board and a 28-page pamphlet advocating for mostly unproven COVID-19 treatments.

The “gift drops” idea came about as the result of brainstorming by Alaska Covid Alliance members on “how can we get a dialogue started,” said David Boyle, a member of the group and former executive director of the Alaska Policy Forum, a conservative nonprofit that advocates for small government and less regulation. [Anchorage Daily News]

The members of this Alaska Covid Alliance strike me as adventurers, advocating for using therapies for which no positive evidence has emerged. They want the prestige of advocating for an “approved” medicine before it was approved, and the hell with the discovery that they are useless and even dangerous meds.

Their opportunity at gaining social position disappears if they acknowledge that, so let’s pretend that they don’t exist.

It’s really quite shameful.

This report in WaPo seems, in some ways, depressingly familiar and repetitive, at least in what it says about segments of the Democratic Party:

From the moment Sen. Joe Manchin III started raising concerns about President Biden’s social spending bill, the outrage hurled at him from some fellow Democrats was pointed and personal.

Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri said Manchin’s position was “anti-Black, anti-child, anti-woman and anti-immigrant.” Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota dismissed his reasoning as “bulls–t,” and Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York called Manchin “Exhibit A” of the Democratic Party’s “true problems.”

Manchin, for his part, has publicly questioned whether there is still room for his “fiscally responsible and socially compassionate” views in today’s Democratic Party, where the far-left Congressional Progressive Caucus has emerged as a dominant force in the House and the senator from West Virginia is often the party’s lone conservative voice on Capitol Hill.

The striking part is the Bush response accusing Manchin of, well, bigotry, while Omar and Bowman find ways to echo it from the posture of moral superiority.

The “you fuckin’ bigot” response continues to raise larger and larger red flags for me, if you’ll forgive my decades-old interest in semantic analysis of communications. We see it in response to any opposition to proposals from the Left, don’t we? Accept my position or you’re a racist and a bigot! But it’s interesting to delve into the intellectual & emotional mechanisms behind this approach to communications.

By using the words and phrases of bigotry, racists, etc, and then reinforcing these moral judgments through morally superior dismissals of objections, the Left is attempting to meld its proposals to a moral position which cannot be successfully disputed. We’ve seen this strategy before in the transgenderism issue, haven’t we? To recap and update the link, rather than subject the issue to debate, as was done with gay marriage, the advocates for transgenderism managed to get it into federal regulations, and then defended it afterwards not through some sort of belated debate, but by screaming BIGOT! at the top of their lungs at anyone who dared to question their position, even to the extent of offers of debate^[1].

This strategy of assuming moral superiority, and then proving it by using that assumption, is nothing more than the classic intellectual failure of circular reasoning. While much of the unease I feel when reading about these incidents no doubt relate to the raw emotions invoked by the use of racism, bigot, etc, especially when the people & positions to which they are applied seem unoffending, I think a substantial portion of that unease is also an semi-conscious awareness that there’s a disconnect: a lack of appropriate debate, which makes the grasping after moral superiority deeply questionable and even inappropriate.

Or, in other words, running around screaming bigot whenever someone asks a pointed question, legitimate or not, marks the screamer as the BIGOT, not the target, at least for me.

When it comes to Senator Manchin, I do understand some of the frustration. The deadly, toxic charms of team politics have destroyed the old Republican Party, transforming it into a group of leering fourth raters who live on single-issue voters, ignoramuses, and fringers, while desperately avoiding questions of competency, or even legitimacy, issuing lies and half-truths whenever that advantages them. Now this ghoulish Siren beckons to a Democratic Party frustrated that it cannot lure a single Republican Senator, not even Senator Murkowski (R-AK), into voting for most of its important bills; the House GOP members are similarly recalcitrant, outside of a couple of heroic members in the persons of Kinzinger of Illinois and Cheney of Wyoming. Manchin, by refusing to automatically cast his ballot for the Democratic version of reality, is ruining their swig of team politics, a topic on which I’ve written far too much over the years. This policy, originating with the sinister former Speaker of the House Gingrich (R-GA) and carried on by Senator and Minority Leader Mitch “Dr. No” McConnell has exacerbated the pain.

And Manchin and Senator Sinema’s (D-AZ) refusal to reform or abolish the filibuster, an artifact of another age, is infuriating to one and all.

But I fear the lack of tolerance appearing on the left in the form of pronouncements of an assumed, but undebated, moral superiority will drive away independent voters. There’s a streak of moral arrogance on the Left that’s being noted by independents like me, moderate conservatives like Andrew Sullivan, and flying nutcases like Erick Erickson. There is a danger when even the nutcases are getting a cultural issue such as the hubris of the Left correct for a change. It doesn’t make him right about anything else, but it attracts independent voters who see him getting that right, and wonder what else he may be getting right.

But the upshot? I’ve often wondered, and written once or twice, about the potential breakup of the Republican Party. I know party faithful would poo-poo the notion, without realizing that, in a sense, it’s already happened. Every former member who has left, or been driven out by some power-hungry new member wielding the RINO spear, contains the potential to start a new party, and the former members are beginning to form quite a group, full of Bush Administration members disenchanted Trump Administration members and perfectly conventional and acceptable Americans who want their voices heard – and find that impossible in the Party devoted to Trump.

Now I’m wondering if the Democrats are in somewhat similar straits, if officials such as Bush and Omar, rather than dragging the Party to the left, find themselves more and more alone as they take positions and postures unsupported by the traditions of liberal democracies – that is, they expect immediate shame and supplication by their opponents, rather than the healthy debate which improves the body politic. Could they find themselves expelled from the Party? Would the Democrats dare such a maneuver?

Or are they too committed to team politics?

I refuse to predict the results of the next election, 10 months and some weeks from now, though. Will the Left continue to screw up? (Yes.) Will the Republicans continue to act like fourth raters? (Yes.) Will the economy continue its unexpectedly strong recovery and will the Democrats figure out how to message properly about it? (Yes, No.) What about Covid?  (Shit, I don’t know.)

Yeah, too many questions.

Notable victims of this childish approach to the issue include famed author J. K. Rowling (of the Harry Potter fantasy series) and famed atheist icon Richard Dawkins, whose award from the American Humanist Association was retracted after he said something that, in my opinion, was the sort of honest question really smart people ask. That is, it referenced an apparent inconsistency in the transgenderism position, and asked for clarification in an intellectually rigorous manner. Other victims include Dave Chapelle, who is apparently no longer funny, and Andrew Sullivan, a leader of the debate on gay marriage, who has been critical of the entire transgender issue, but hasn’t managed to connect it strongly to violations of the liberal democracy model of government, which is a bit shocking as he holds a PhD in PoliSci.

When Superman met Tang Lun, Superman lost. Tang Lun declared him to be most tasty.

Beyond White Space (2018), for all of its apparent renewal of the Moby Dick theme, is really a story about betrayals – a confusing tale of both conscious and unconscious betrayal, of one’s friends and family.

And, ultimately, self.

The Essex is a fishing boat, a spacegoing vessel that hunts clickers, a form of outer space wildlife that is small, valuable, and dangerous. The Essex’s captain is one Richard Bentley, whose father was also a fishing boat captain who went after Tang Lun. Tang Lun is the largest of what appear to be space dragons, visually similar to Chinese dragons, but are considered space whales, rare, immensely valuable, difficult to catch and/or kill, and horrifically dangerous.

And that’s not all the dangers of space. There are space pirates, who track the fishing vessels and relieve them of their valuable cargoes. They are known as boomers, one of a small collection of jabs at current culture. Just as the boomer generation of today are often regarded with distaste by younger generations for their self-absorption, their pollution, and other dubious characteristics, so are these pirates distasteful – violent, grasping, and definitely takers, not makers.

The interactions of at least half the crew of the Essex are filled with deceit, even if mistaken, from the Chinese gang who, in the midst of a deal predicated upon the honor of the captain’s dead father, attempt to kill the captain when they detect a government agent nearby, to said government agent, whose very act of sending a message attracts pirates, from the engineer whose infection, much like toxoplasmosis, drives him to madness and murder in the midst of the whale hunt, to the crewman who seems to use betrayal as a way of life, whether it’s sleeping with other women or quietly planning to escape from the Essex with pregnant girlfriend and ship’s cook Batali as it plunges along in the wake of Tang Lun.

Even Captain Bentley’s guilty of betrayal – of his crew and of himself, in his reckless pursuit of Tang Lun in his little ship. This is brought into sharp relief when his brother Owen, a crew member who is the rare exception to the rule that everyone betrays someone, dies trying to accomplish the task of his brother.

The portrayal of this story is in the gritty-grimy tradition of science fiction, it’ll make you wish you could take a shower afterwards. This contributes to the realism of the tale, but there’s a fundamental problem that no amount of grime is going to fix, and that’s the overly complex nature of the story. At its climax, I count at least three different betrayals going on, along with a space whale taking the diminutive, and fast diminishing, Essex apart.

Despite the efforts of a talented cast and crew, it’s just too much.

The script needs to be redrafted with an eye towards theme clarification and either reduction of the number of moving parts, or a stronger thematic connection between those moving parts. The story of Moby Dick was strongly about vengeance on the white whale, and how that sank the putative venture of harvesting whales and wasted lives; vengeance on Tang Lun may be the motivating factor in this story, but why, for instance, the engineer goes mad from an infection is not in the least clear, and it appears to be little more than a random occurrence. Was it because he was pushed beyond endurance? Was the infection a result of the pursuit? Maybe I missed something?

And it’s too bad, as there are a lot of quality parts to this production. I liked the special effects, the acting, the characters, some of the theme, even the veiled shots at today’s culture. But the script, the element that ties together all of the parts, failed. It all became a nebulaic fog that the Essex sails into.

And never sails out of.

A reader writes concerning Professor Richardson’s observations of elite internecine warfare now that the Soviet Union is gone:

Yes, exactly. And also, you may have noted a rather large degree of coziness between those young-punk Republicans and Russia (as well as the old corrupt Republicans) — something that’d be unheard of 50 years ago. Those old Republicans invented McCarthyism after all. Today they kiss up to the reds, the communist Russians.

And in response to a query:

Any Republican politician under the age of say 35 who has said anything positive about Russian policies or oligarchs will fill the bill, in my book. For example, Ashley-Madison Cawthorn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asJTYp-rgao

I do have a vague memory of Representative Cawthorn (R-NC) having some Russian connection, and here’s a recent story by Susie Madrak on Crooks and Liars about the matter:

Madison Cawthorn recently announced his divorce from Cristina Bayardelle, an Instagram fitness instructor.

But now he’s sharing the strange story of how they met — set up with a fake story by an American stranger he just happened to meet in Russia! I suspect there will be much, much more about this story, because this sounds like a national security problem:

Grant Stern on Twitter said, “Madison Cawthorn’s divorce just went from boring information to national security concern in about 77 seconds of interview time with the Daily Caller.

“This does not sound a normal meet-cute story whatsoever. Very few of these stories involving Russia are.”

“All I got from this video is that Madison Cawthorn married a honeypot,” tweeted Angry Staffer, a former White House staffer.

Make of it what you will. Sourcing someone calling themselves Angry Staffer is a bit of a red flag for me, I must admit.

But this also reminds me of a tempest in a teapot from a few years ago, when Senator Cruz (R-TX) endorsed the idea of McCarthyism. McCarthyism was putatively about stamping out Communism in the United States in the 1950s, a position from which being anti-Russian is a very small stretch. Those who study the era will know that McCarthyism was really about Senator Joe McCarthy’s (R-WI) frantic clutching after power & influence; once a few politicians stood up to him and he was revealed for what he was, his influence waned and he eventually died, in office, an alcoholic.

The tempest was a brief return – maybe a week long – to endorsement of the tenets of McCarthyism. How that is incompatible with the concept of Young Republicans becoming intertwined with the successors of the Soviets is the motivation for me to laugh. The intellectual incoherence of the Republicans is certainly a topic worthy of pursuit.

Another reader remarks:

“Great Power” by Molly McCew on Substack has a lot of this information.

https://www.chathamhouse.org/…/02-supply-and-demand…

Thank you.

Hypothetical, of course – I do not have access to Senator and Senate Minority Leader McConnell’s (R-KY) social calendar. But in view of this announcement from the former President, I can’t imagine McConnell’s not reaching out to Senator Murkowski (R-AK) in view of this:

Endorsement of Mike Dunleavy

Mike Dunleavy has been a strong and consistent Conservative since his time in the Alaska State Senate. I was proud to endorse his first run for Governor, and I am proud to support his reelection, too. From his handling of the virus, support of the Constitution—including the Second and Tenth Amendments—taking advantage of all the opportunities Alaska has to offer, and his strong pushback against the Liberal Biden Administration’s attempt to hurt our great Country. Alaska needs Mike Dunleavy as Governor now more than ever. He has my Complete and Total Endorsement but, this endorsement is subject to his non-endorsement of Senator Lisa Murkowski who has been very bad for Alaska, including losing ANWAR, perhaps the most important drilling site in the world, and much else. In other words, if Mike endorses her, which is his prerogative, my endorsement of him is null and void, and of no further force or effect!

This is a double-shot from the former President against two Senators who he feels have not been totally and slavishly devoted to him. That is the preferred environment of the former President – adored, constantly told that he’s right and he’s amazing, responsible for all the good things that happen, and never incurring blame for those things that go poorly.

If that sounds like a pathological condition to you, join the club.

While I think Senator Murkowski will simply stick with the Republican Party and run roughshod over all comers up in Alaska during the election season in 2022, there is a distinct possibility, in view of certain remarks she’s made in recent years, of her moving to the (I) column in the Senate, and caucusing with the Democrats.

This would worsen Senator McConnell’s position in the Senate, as his caucus shrinks and his prestige is damaged. Worse, the damage would be inflicted by a former President infamous for his incompetence in many sectors, from politics to business. I might argue that his only real success has been as a B-list actor in The Apprentice.

Quite the embarrassment for a Minority Leader whose own set of accomplishments is sharply limited to confirming judicial picks and frustrating Democrats. The Democrats, incidentally, are happy to assist him in that respect.

Are the Alaskan Republicans going to re-elect a Senator who has respect in the Senate from both sides of the aisle? Or are they so glued to Trump’s knees that Murkowski is out? Time will tell.

And will Murkowski take McConnell’s meeting request?

The most important status page on the Web is that for the James Webb Space Telescope, launched four days ago and on its way to its station at Earth’s L2 position, a place relative to the Earth where the gravitational pull of Earth (Earth/Moon?) is balanced by the pull of the Sun. There’s a lot of money=effort invested, and it has a lot of milestones to pass before it’s commissioned as the successor to Hubble.

Go JWST!

In case you thought North Korea had disappeared, no, it has not. Here’s a video they released of an SRBM (short-range ballistic missile) test launch back in September.

Video of North Korea's TLBM (train-launched ballistic misisle) pic.twitter.com/tbcjBgJFco

— Colin Zwirko (@ColinZwirko) September 16, 2021

More from 38 North:

The unveiling of a rail-mobile SRBM is surprising, given that North Korea has deployed all of its SRBMs on road-mobile launchers since their advent in the mid-1980s, and all of its new SRBMs (including the KN-23 and the “new type” variant) have been displayed on such launchers. Road-mobile deployment of such small missiles is straightforward and well-understood by Pyongyang.

The September 16 statement suggests that going rail-mobile was intended to diversify and add to the mobility and flexibility of the missile force and its ability to “deal a heavy blow at the threatening forces multiconcurrently [sic] with dispersive firing across the country.”[5] Pyongyang may also have seen propaganda value in revealing a hitherto unknown basing mode, and one cannot rule out the possibility of a new pet project of the reputedly train-loving Kim Jong Un.

It’s not the SRBMs that’s an issue so much as their work on ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles), which has been reported before, as Vann H. Van Diepen concludes:

The significance of the September 15 SRBM tests is not the missiles, which are along the lines of existing types, but the use of a rail-mobile launcher, which has little added value for the North’s already road-mobile SRBM force but important implications for its ICBMs. ICBMs, which are harder to make road-mobile than smaller missiles, would benefit from rail mobility much more than smaller systems. While rail-mobility is inferior to road-mobility in terms of promoting survivability, rail-mobile systems are significantly more survivable than fixed-base ones.

Gruit:

The long history of flavouring beer with hops is just froth compared with how long we have been brewing: evidence of alcoholic drinks made from fermented grains dates back some 13,000 years. The first documentation of hop cultivation, by contrast, is from just AD 736 in what is now Germany. Before that, to give their drinks flavour, ale brewers used gruit, a mix of bitter herbs, flowers or roots, including dandelion, burdock, sweet gale, mugwort, ground ivy, yarrow, horehound and sage. [“How climate change is shaking up the hops that give beer its flavour,” sidebar: “Rooted in History,” Chris Simms, NewScientist (18 December 2021, paywall)]

I hope everyone wore their name badges for this investigation. No exchanges! I mean it!

Topper Returns (1941) is a whimsical take on the murder mystery that is meant to charm the viewer, and partially gets there. Cosmo Topper, a shy and retiring banker who has the ability to speak to ghosts, is tapped by the ghost of a murdered young woman, Gail Richards, who was visiting a neighboring palatial estate, to find her murderer and bring them to justice. Forced to visit the site of the murder in the middle of the night – that would be her second story bedroom at said palatial estate – we’re quickly introduced to a complex setup of father in failing health, a just-arrived heiress-in-waiting who is days off from inheriting a fortune, the doctor in charge of the father, and various staff members.

Adding to this is Topper with ghost and the unfortunate character Rochester in tow, and then soon followed by Topper’s spacey, jealous wife with personal attendant, and then the cops show up, which are sadly represented by the usual, for the era, farcical detective.

Oh, and here’s the taxi driver, looking to get his fare paid after someone shot out the tire of his taxi while driving the young ladies to the estate. Oh, apparently he’s cute.

And then comes the stealing of the corpse for purposes unknown! And don’t forget the abusive seal!

The mechanism of a reluctant detective speaking to the ghost of the murdered has its merits, especially that of novelty, but Topper’s desire not to get involved seems a trifle shameless in view of the youth of the hapless victim; less sympathetic to the cause of plausibility is the revelation that ghosts can drink and metabolize alcohol.

Yeah, she’s drunk off her ass at one point. What?

Then we get hidden passageways and a spring-loaded chair, just to round out our collection of murder mystery icons, all before the murderer is finally revealed to all, the heiress disturbingly fails to be upset over the murder of her friend, Topper’s wife is in upper-class hysterics, and the seal tries to drown Rochester.

It’s all very silly, and some of it is disturbing or, if you’re so inclined, offensive. But if you’re not offended and you’re looking for that light-hearted murder mystery to get you through the insomnia, this may be the pick for you.

And here it is:

I’ve mentioned Professor Turchin, and his use of the Arabic term asabiya, a number of times over the year. Asabiya refers to

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

Turchin noted that a key factor in the dissipation of asabiya, and in turn the dissolution of multi-state empires, is the defeat of an existential enemy, such as the final defeat of the Gauls leading to the drifting apart of the Roman Empire.

So I wonder if Professor Richardson has read Turchin:

In some ways, the collapse of the USSR thirty years ago helped to undermine the Cold War democracy that opposed it. In the past thirty years, we have torn ourselves apart as politicians adhering to an extreme ideology demonized their opponents. That demonization is escalating now as Republican radicals who were born after the collapse of the USSR and who therefore see their primary enemies as Democrats, are moving the Republican Party even further to the right. North Carolina representative Madison Cawthorn, for example, was born in 1995. [Letters from an American]

This description of internecine warfare by the elite sounds frighteningly like Turchin’s descriptions of agrarian societies tearing themselves into pieces.

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) is entering the sweepstakes:

How to steal an election: “Seeding an area heavy with potential Democratic votes with as many absentee ballots as possible, targeting and convincing potential voters to complete them in a legally valid way, and then harvesting and counting the results.”

The quote is from an article in The American Conservative on the Democratic win in the Presidential Election in Wisconsin. The significance of the statement is that Paul, despite the fact that, to the critical reader, this is basically a “so what” statement, there’s nothing skanky here unless the responsible officials then refused to send absentee ballots to Republican areas, which I suspect would be illegal and would get them sued, has issued it. What does that say about his opinion of his audience, his base?

It’s an insult: it’s written on the assumption that they aren’t critical readers. They’ll take this exercise in victimology, incorporate it into their psyche, and continue to be resentful. He’s basically adding a bit more cement to the concrete that is his base, and he doesn’t care if he is insulted over it, or not, just so long as his base swallows it.

And why is this important? 2022 is an election year for his Senate seat.

Paul doesn’t mind looking stupid to the rest of the world, not when he’s solidifying his chances for re-election.

Myrmecologist:

Myrmecology (/mɜːrmɪˈkɒlədʒi/; from Greek: μύρμηξ, myrmex, “ant” and λόγος, logos, “study”) is a branch of entomology focusing on the scientific study of ants. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “Edward O. Wilson, Harvard naturalist often cited as heir to Darwin, dies at 92,” Patricia Sullivan, WaPo:

In high school, with the encouragement of a myrmecologist from the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, [Edward Wilson] set about realizing the goal of surveying all the ant species in Alabama. When the time came for college, his father was unemployed, so the young Wilson struck upon the idea of enlisting in the Army and using the GI Bill for his education. But his damaged eye caused him to fail his Army physical. Finally, he discovered that the University of Alabama admitted all White graduates of its high schools, and he raced through college in three years.

Worst. Toupee. Ever.

Who killed Roslyn? That’s the initial question in The Unsuspected (1947), a story that explores how the lust for prestige, wealth, and power drives people to commit crimes to slake those lusts.

Victor Grandison is a man of high taste, wealth, and prestige, an exemplar of everyone’s goal, at least in high society. A middle-aged lifelong bachelor, he’s surrounded by young, beautiful women, and the source of his wealth is as a radio-based storyteller, telling tales of murder to his huge audience, to which his advertisers gladly pay richly for access.

And then he comes home one night to discover his secretary, Roslyn, swinging from the chandelier.

And, as shocking as this is, this is the second death to afflict this household recently: his ward, Matilda, a young niece, is reported dead in the sinking of a ship en route to Portugal. In order to expunge the gloom certain to infect the house, Althea, Victor’s niece, throws a party, and it includes many of the top tier of society, including Police Detective Richard Donovan, who is also in charge of the investigation into the suicide.

And then who shows up at the party? Why, it’s Steve Howard, Matilda’s (the one who went down with the ship – the characters do get confusing) fiancee, an event to which everyone in the household responds, WHO?

Yeah, no one’s heard of him. Over the next day or so, the inevitable cries of gold-digger! are turned aside by Donovan’s report that Howard is, indeed, as rich as he claims, perhaps even as rich as the late heiress Matilda herself.

Aaaaaaand then … Matilda shows up.

And doesn’t remember Howard.

And now the fun really begins, as Donovan’s investigation reveals the suicide was really a murder. The masks are coming off, the plans are unraveling, and the bodies begin piling up, which, by default, eliminates each victim from the list of suspects.

A hard way to prove one’s innocence.

Will Howard and Matilda make it to the end of the story? How about the oh so wealthy Victor? Who hired the muscle? While some mysteries are cleared up early, others persist to the end – in a most enjoyable dénouement.

There are irritating elements to this story. Matilda is far too much of a wimp, barely able to stand on her own at one point – although, granted, she was poisoned at the time. But for a woman who survives a ship sinking, we expected more gumption from her. This deficiency is enhanced by the several other strong female characters: Snarky Althea, smoothly efficient radio producer Jane, even the constrained role of victim Roslyn portrayed her as vivacious in her few moments of life. My Arts Editor was quite unhappy with Matilda.

But this is a story that drew us in, and while it may not draw a recommended rating, it is certainly an underestimated gem of a murder mystery. If you’re a connoisseur of the genre, or a fan of Claude Rains, you will not regret seeing this.

Long time readers are well aware of my attitude of doubt towards cryptocurrencies. Not that I shan’t change my attitude should cryptocurrencies’ flaws and limitations be corrected, and an advantage to them emerges that justifies shifting to them from governmental currencies happens.

But the following is not encouraging. While I’ve verified WorldCoin exists, I am surprisingly uncomfortable at even visiting their website. I can be creeped out quite effectively at a remove or two from the primary source, thankyouverymuch:

Take Worldcoin, which at first glance seems like a serious company. It is the brainchild of Sam Altman, an influential Silicon Valley investor, who raised more than $25 million for the firm’s launch in October. The company admits that only 3 per cent of the world’s population currently uses a cryptocurrency, but aims to change that. How? Well, this is where it gets odd. Worldcoin will give “as many people as possible a share of a new currency”. Anyone who wants a Worldcoin can have one – as long as they are willing to look into “the Orb”.

That’s right, Worldcoin’s big technical advance is that it has created a shiny, silver ball about the size of a grapefruit called an Orb. You gaze into it, a camera inside takes a picture of your eyes and – poof! – now you have a Worldcoin in your app. Of course, the company also has a picture of your irises.

Like your fingerprint, each of your irises is a unique biometric attribute that can be used to identify you any time you look into a camera. On its website, Worldcoin has strange pictures of “Orb operators” asking people to gaze into shiny balls on a farm in Indonesia and on the streets of unnamed cities in Sudan and Kenya. The vibe is reminiscent of those edge-of-the seat moments in a horror film when something horrible is about to happen to the protagonist. You want to scream: “Don’t look into the Orb!” [“2021 was the year cryptocurrencies went completely off the rails,” Annalee Newitz, NewScientist (18 December 2021, paywall)]

Yes, that would be me, clutching at my eyes, running in circles with the hair afire. Not exactly the picture of sober assessment, is it?

Go ahead. Everyone go stare into their favorite silvery orb. And then think of ol’ Zuck, sucking your thoughts out for use in the Metaverse.

Wheee.

In news that doesn’t seem to make it onto the main stage at this theater, it’s weapons galore and how to dispose of them:

U.S. Navy ships this week seized approximately 1,400 AK-47 assault rifles and 226,600 rounds of ammunition from a stateless fishing vessel during a flag verification boarding in the North Arabian Sea on December 20, the Navy’s 5th Fleet said in a statement.

The U.S. Navy patrol coastal ships, USS Tempest (PC 2) and USS Typhoon (PC 5), found the weapons during a search conducted by embarked U.S. Coast Guard personnel in accordance with customary international law. The illicit weapons and ammunition were later transported to guided-missile destroyer USS O’Kane (DDG 77) where they await final disposition.

The stateless vessel was assessed to have originated in Iran and transited international waters along a route historically used to traffic weapons unlawfully to the Houthis in Yemen. The direct or indirect supply, sale or transfer of weapons to the Houthis violates U.N. Security Council Resolutions and U.S. sanctions. [gCaptain]

For those weapons with an identifiable maker, I vote they be returned to that point of origin. Preferably, dropped from 50,000 ft.

As has been predicted by several commentators, it’s clear, in this secretly taken photograph, that the Jumanji franchise is actually owned by Santa Claus. Rumor has it that profits from the franchise saved Santa Claus Enterprises following the costs of legal troubles encountered when the Martians broke free of Santa Claus’ dominance and wreaked havoc on Easter Island. The role of the Holy Bunny in this incident remains obscure to this day. If you have more information, please don’t tell me, I prefer the mystery.

The jungle drums are beating in Jumanji (1995), summoning the insanely curious to a reckoning, a reckoning that will stretch out for years. Young boy Alan, son of a shoe factory owner, finds the game box labeled Jumanji buried in a forgotten graveyard. He takes it home, with scarce a thought for the crime of robbing the dead. There, with his friend, Sarah, they open the box to find a game board, complete with playing pieces, instructions, die, and a message window.

Within their first couple of turns, Alan has been sucked into the game board itself, while a hysterical Sarah is chased from the grand house by a collection of bats. We go on to learn that Alan isn’t heard from again, much to the sorrow of his parents. And Sarah?

Now it’s twenty six years later, and orphans Judy and Peter have moved in to the grand house, under the guidance of their Aunt Nora. Their parents recently died, and, in some shock from the event, they each exhibit some pathologies, even as Nora makes plans to open a B&B. Don’t trust Judy!

But the drums are banging again, and in rhythms I found quite pleasing. Soon, Judy and Peter find the source of the calling rhythms, and discover what was inevitable: a game of Jumanji, in progress, and they’re implicitly invited to be part of it. Curious or clumsy, soon the bones are rollin’, and the adventures are jumping. Encounters with monkeys and a lion are bad enough, but when a man, clad in skins and leaves as only a man of the jungle must be, emerges from nowhere, it’s all a bit much for the kids.

Meanwhile, the various creatures are not only crippling Aunt Nora’s efforts to rehabilitate the old lady, but are spreading chaos in the neighboring, dying New England town.

And … it’s Sarah’s turn. Where is Sarah? And who is this dude the elephant gun? Can I have one?

A story of rescue after rescue, physical, intellectual, and emotional, it’s all about the courage to stand up and do what’s right.

Even when you’ve won.

This is a lot of fun, and if you don’t love the rhino, you have no heart. I won’t recommend it, as it’s not quite aged as well as I’d hoped, but it’s still got that inspirational quality that made it so popular on initial release.

While nuclear power doesn’t scare the crap out of me, the fact that it’s not a renewable source of energy does concern me.

Or did.

A new material inspired by the fractal-like nature of blood vessels can absorb 20 times more uranium from seawater than previous approaches. The team behind the approach believes it could provide a reliable energy source that could last thousands of years at current rates of consumption.

Uranium is the most common fuel for nuclear power stations but it is a finite resource. Earth’s seas are estimated to contain some 4.5 billion tonnes of uranium, 500 times as much as is held in its land mass, but extracting it from water is more expensive than mining it from rock. …

Linsen Yang at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and his colleagues created a polymer membrane riddled with small channels that branch into even smaller tunnels just 300 to 500 nanometres across, mimicking the way that blood vessels bifurcate into ever-smaller passages within mammalian organs and limbs. The material was impregnated with a compound called amidoxime, which binds to uranium ions. [NewScientist (4 December 2021]

Obviously, a few small scale experiments aren’t going to prove that the lack of renewability isn’t important. But it’s a step along the path.

… and the Spirit of Christmas Present prepared to thrust old Scrooge into the brothel!

Scrooge (1935) is a rendition of the standard Dickens’ tale of the fun-hating misanthropist Ebenezer Scrooge, and his lesson, delivered from on-high, concerning the love for his fellow humans that he should bear, and how its absence has cost him, to his sorrow.

In terms of story, Scrooge shows a sad paucity of backbone, even more than is normal for this story, which has often been adapted for the movie screen. His late partner, Marley, speaks to him from the spirit world of his travails, and he’s immediately metaphorically face-down on the floor, shaking with obedience to every command.

Perhaps this is sensible for a man of the era, the 1840s, but I like my characters to have a bit of gumption, even in the face of supernatural power. Scrooge is the bully who tries to disappear when faced with the bigger bully. It’s dull and disappointing. It’s the character who clings bitterly to their conceits and preconceptions who teach us, ultimately, of how these are sins and not virtues.

But, in compensation, the visuals of this Scrooge are unexpectedly evocative, sometimes even stunning, despite the primitive technical capabilities available during the creation of this film. In particular, the scene in which his scavenged household goods are presented for valuation by a reseller by those who dared to appropriate them from the very room of Scrooge’s passing, the faces of these scavengers are presented to best advantage to show their indifference for the dead old Scrooge, and the poor way in which he died: friendless.

At an hour in length, this story almost hurries along, and yet it covers, effectively, the important points: the love Bob Cratchit for his son, Tiny Tim; the effect of Tim’s loss on Cratchit and his family; the affection, unforced, Scrooge’s nephew Fred has for his uncle, drawn in just a few strokes; and Scrooge’s past mistakes and where they may lead.

It’s not overwhelming, but it is cleverly done, and certainly family-suitable.

Fun with steam:

Selvage:

1. the edge of woven fabric finished so as to prevent raveling, often in a narrow tape effect, different from the body of the fabric.
2. any similar strip or part of surplus material, as at the side of wallpaper.
3. Also called margin. Philately. the surplus paper or margin around a sheet of stamps:
   The number of the plate block appears in the selvage.
4. a plate or surface through which a bolt of a lock passes. [Dictionary.com]

Noted in this video from Baumgartner Restoration, last year’s holiday season video, which also showcases a quite dry sense of humor:

The actual word selvage appears around the 50-55 second mark. BONUS: This year’s holiday season video!

Remember the tale of Taylor Energy, the owner of some Gulf of Mexico oil platforms that were destroyed by Hurricane Ivan and spewed an immense disaster, before being capped by li’l old Couvillion Group? Well, gCaptain notes that Taylor Energy is going under:

Louisiana oil and gas company Taylor Energy will be liquidated and required to turn over all its remaining assets to the United States to resolve its liability for an oil spill at its former Gulf of Mexico offshore oil production facility — the source of the longest-running oil spill in U.S. history which has been ongoing since 2004.

Under a proposed consent decree announced Wednesday by the U.S. Justice Department, Taylor Energy will transfer to the Department of the Interior (DOI) a $432 million trust fund dedicated to plugging the subsea oil wells, permanently decommissioning the facility, and remediating contaminated soil. The consent decree further requires Taylor Energy to pay over $43 million for civil penalties, removal costs and natural resource damages.

The settlement comes after the U.S. filed a civil complaint against Taylor Energy in District Court in New Orleans in October 2020 seeking removal costs, civil penalties and natural resource damages under the Oil Pollution and Clean Water Acts arising from the discharge of oil from facility.

Not that Taylor Energy didn’t try, according to earlier reports, but they were inadequate to the task. Closure.

Erick Erickson is affecting^[1] rage at left-wing arrogance:

The prevailing thought on the right is that pandemic controls are about progressives wanting to control us. I think people who think this are wrong.

It was never about control. It was and remains about arrogance.

It was arrogant to think a virus, once released into the wild, could be controlled.

It was arrogance to think unelected bureaucrats and elected politicians could contain Americans in their houses in perpetuity.

Science, vaccines, bureaucracy all come in for his faux-spanking. Even stuff he’s making up:

Our leaders and public health officials promised us COVID Zero. They promised us a way out of the viral path. They could not deliver. They lack the humility to admit they were wrong.

The dangerous binary of the religious mind. Science investigating a new phenomenon promises nothing but to try; it discusses potentialities, hypothetical scenarios, techniques. Guarantees? Only to try.

And so I encounter this conclusion, the peak of societal irresponsibility:

The path forward is for Dr. Fauci, the President, and others, to admit we will never get to COVID Zero and must return to normal, each of us using our own risk assessments to move forward.

In short, the sooner the elite acknowledge they cannot control us to conform in a way to eradicate the virus, the sooner we can control the virus. Their control of us has never been about a desire to control us, but a desire to cover up their lack of control of a microbe. Science is their god and their god has failed them.

Shall we consider what would happen if we followed his advice?

IN CURRENT CIRCUMSTANCES, meaning a substantial portion of the citizenry refusing to be vaccinated, or boostered, but instead demanding the use of ineffective medications or the intervention of deities, who appear uninterested in helping, along with the evolution of Covid-19 into variants, the medical profession would suffer an unprecedented exodus of personnel: doctors, nurses, and associated professionals involved in emergency and infectious diseases. This, in fact, appears to be underway already, as Ed Yong notes.

Some health-care workers have lost their jobs during the pandemic, while others have been forced to leave because they’ve contracted long COVID and can no longer work. But many choose to leave, including “people whom I thought would nurse patients until the day they died,” Amanda Bettencourt, the president-elect of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses, told me. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the health-care sector has lost nearly half a million workers since February 2020. Morning Consult, a survey research company, says that 18 percent of health-care workers have quit since the pandemic began, while 12 percent have been laid off. [The Atlantic]

Overloaded by patients lead on to think they are experts in pandemics, or, worse, infected by the same against their will, these medical professionals would leave a sacred vocation that is already little more than skin deep on the body of the country, and substantially dependent on immigrants. Would the behavior of the irresponsible patients, already denying other sufferers medical treatment, discourage those critical immigrants from coming to America, knowing that a substantial portion of the populace is behaving in an effectively irresponsible manner?

FORTUNATELY, CIRCUMSTANCES CHANGE. The emergency approval of Paxlovid, the Pfizer-created treatment for Covid-19, based on reported test results of

Pfizer’s pill was 89% effective in preventing hospitalization, according to final clinical trial data submitted by the company to the FDA earlier this month. [CNBC]

has the potential to return the United States to normal operating behavior, with the singular exception that exhibition of symptoms characteristic of Covid-19 should result in immediate visits to the doctor and, if warranted, consumption of this medicine. This, of course, applies to the great bulk of the population; there would, of course, be exceptions, but this is the normal course of our medical knowledge.

And, if & when this happens, I will look for Erickson to proclaim victory for his point of view, when in reality it loses. Science developed the medicines using science-based principles, and until it managed to do so, we took the recommended precautions, or we didn’t and sickened horribly, overloaded hospital facilities, and even died. We collectively rode the wave from ignorance to knowledge, skillfully or less so, and now Paxlovid will hopefully let us transition out of this altered way of living.

But, if it doesn’t, we can use our new skills to continue to survive, while science continues to work the problem. Erickson does not want science to win, because it’s a hole in the side of his own view of reality.

And it really is a pity. There is an element of arrogance to the left. If he connected the lack of public debate on the issue of transgenderism to how that deliberate lack violates the implicit mutual promises of the very core of our nation, its liberal democracy nature, as I do here, he could make some real progress in uncovering the flaws brought on by the arrogance of the know-it-alls in the progressive side of the spectrum.

He might even find a way to equate that to the failures of his comrades, who organized and lead the assault on the Capitol of January 6th, a day of treason. That I would be interested in reading. The betrayal, inadvertent as it may be, by both sides of the political spectrum has been disheartening and, really, discrediting of certain elements of both sides.

Perhaps, some day, he’ll do that.

¹ Meaning play-acting.

Damn, they never dust those secret passages!

The Canterville Ghost (1996) features a clash between the essence of Shakespeare, embodied in the ghost of Sir Simon de Canterville, who met Shakespeare back in the day and has studied the man’s works ever since, and the essence of science, the arrogant physicist Harry Otis in command.

Between them is Otis’ daughter, Ginny, wife, Lucille, and the two sons, troublemakers. And don’t forget Mr. and Mrs. Umney, who, ummmm, run the English castle in which the Otises, Americans, will reside while the physicist, mysterious, is doing his research, unspecified. I mean, is this a sinecure or what?

The arrival of the Otises kicks off the fun, as the townspeople lay quiet bets as to whether the Otises will make it through the first night, or if it’ll be exit, stage left, between the moaning and squeaking and howling. They do make it through, but that means Ginny now has time to be bored, a boredom alleviated only when a handsome, teenaged duke, perhaps he’s just heir apparent, makes an appearance (love the car!). Captivated by Ginny, he knows and tolerates the ghost, which is more than can be said for dear old rationalist Dad, or Dr. Otis if you prefer, who believes that every squeak and squawk can be explained.

Which isn’t going to help him when Sir Simon makes his appearance. In fact, it’s so unhelpful that the Doctor and Lucille literally can’t see him. Which raises all sorts of questions concerning existence, or lack thereof, which the story promptly ignores.

Eventually, the tawdry and tragic story of Sir Simon comes out, with a bit of help from Shakespeare, and Ginny finds that she’s the key to Sir Simon’s rest – a bit of forgiveness and some advocacy to the latest revision of Charon, purely off-stage, and Sir Simon is released.

The strength of this movie lies not in the story, which, although it has some fun little quirks, such as a ghost that can itself be frightened, is basically rather weak-kneed in its obeisance to its tired supernatural and mythical tropes. The strength here lies in the performance of Patrick Stewart, in the role of Sir Simon, who brings his Shakespearean training and voice to bear on this tragic, mad ghost, who has not slept since his death at the hands of his in-laws. (Note to self: do not drive wife insane.) His commitment to a role that could have been painful makes the movie tolerable, especially as none of the other actors are execrable, although the role of Harry is, I fear, irredeemable; not the fault of the actor, Edward Wiley.

While skating near the side of the ice rink and almost into the frozen mud that lies waiting for the unwary, it never quite falls on its face, mostly because of the efforts of Stewart. It’s not a life changer, as the plot is too silly, but it can be a pleasant way to spend an hour or two.

Big Carnivore vs Three Stick Figures. Greeeeeat.

Early during the viewing of Jurassic Galaxy (2018) I had determined that the review would exclusively consist of

Dinosaurs! Yeah!

because Spaceship crashes on planet, Survivors of crew recover from the impact to discover themselves face to face with alien dinosaurs, followed by Frenzied munching of amateur actors by alien dinosaurs. I mean, even the title qualifies as wretched. It’s only one planet, for Big Carnivore’s sake!

And then the surviving Security guy, Marston, played by Eric Paul Erickson, came popping out, and, surprisingly – shockingly – he has what we like to call acting chops. And I’m not referring to his musculature, either. He knows how to act.

And then there’s this “lifer,” Flynn, played by Jonathan Nation, who has an unsettling resemblance to Mark Hamill. He’s clearly committed to his role, which is eventually blood sacrifice to the angry dinosaurs. I liked him. And then out came the fetchingly named Retch (Frankie Ray). We settled in to watch.

The special effects range from Wow, that’s beautiful to I think the dinosaurs must have invisible hoverboards, and the balance of the acting is OK to so-so. The science just sucks. And while the story could have used two or three more drafts, I have to admire its honesty. When a lot of storytellers would have made the effort to Save the leads, these storytellers didn’t.

The leads go down fighting to save the baby.

Look, parts of this are awful. Like, where are the herbivores? my Arts Editor asked. But I had to admire other parts of it, such as the sincere and even effective acting efforts.

They don’t save the story.

But they’re within viewing distance.