Monthly Archives: April 2022

Reaching for the Pepto-Abysmol, oh yeah!

The Curse Of The Demon (1957, aka The Night Of The Demon) is a snurty little story about an atheist scientist confronting a warlock/witch/wizard/whatever the bad guy might be, and finding out the supernatural does, indeed, exist.

Comeuppance, one might say.

Beautifully photographed and well-acted, with some goofy and almost believable special effects, it’s all effort wasted because someone didn’t like scientists. Don’t waste your time unless you think scientists are closed-minded twits.

And I don’t care what Martin Scorsese thinks about this movie.

How monarchies treat their subjects is the message here.

Battleship Potemkin (1925) is a classic silent movie from another era, in more ways than one, depicting not the Russian Revolution, but rather an important predecessor incident – the mutiny on the Russian warship Potemkin in 1905, twelve years prior to the Russian Revolution of 1917.

In treatment that seems emblematic of Russian leaders, whether monarchical or otherwise, the crew of the Potemkin discovers its rations are covered in maggots. The officers receive their complaint by sending the ship’s doctor to inspect the rations, and he declares, after cursory inspection, that the rations are safe. Sailor Vakulinchuk, who claims all of Russia is in revolt, encourages mutiny, but the crew must be pushed to the very edge by a Captain and officers who are casually cruel, and not above sudden executions, before the crew does actually mutiny. A protracted struggle occurs, and eventually the officers are chucked into the sea to their deaths, but Vakulinchuk himself is also killed.

Now in charge of Potemkin, the mutineers make port in Odessa, where Vakulinchuk’s body is displayed for the citizens of Odessa to mourn. Their fury at the injustice of the now-dead officers of the Potemkin, and thus the monarchy itself, must face the retaliation of the Tsar’s heavily armed military forces, though, and the Odessans are injured and killed in droves in a famous and effective scene, the Odessa Steps, the victims of the barbarous forces of the monarchy. In revenge, the crew of the Potemkin fire on the Odessa Opera House, where Tsarist generals are gathered, although to what effect is not clear.

The Potemkin puts to sea on reports of an incoming Russian fleet, and signals the fleet that a revolution is come and the sailors should join. Will the Potemkin have to do battle, or will the fleet’s common sailors throw off their bonds and join Vakulinchuk’s heirs?

Battleship Potemkin is a classic example of propaganda, but it’s important to remember that propaganda is not always false. Historically, the Russian monarchy was infamous for its barbarous behaviors, which it justified by its belief that the Divine had selected them to head Russia (a belief I read about in a display at The Museum of Russian Art a few years ago). Keeping this in mind, it’s not difficult to believe the situation on Potemkin did occur, nor the slaughter in Odessa – although the latter is somewhat more fictional than the former, according to Wikipedia.

I’m not entirely comfortable with the interpretation of this film as an embodiment of the Soviets’ emphasis on the people, plural, as the basis of power. First, there’s Vakulinchuk, whose role is to stir up trouble or awaken the sailors to their power, depending on your viewpoint. It’s hard to accept that he’s symbolic of the people, for he is definitely someone unique.

Then, the firepower of both the ship itself and the monarchy makes them a menace to the people that they cannot really counter. Finally, the importance of the Soviet leaders over the decades – Lenin, Stalin, Kruschev are all names that roll off the tongue – also makes it a little hard to accept some interpretations of the film.

But, in the end, the story is quite compelling, especially given its early position in  movie making history. If a historical sense of movies and stories is important to you, then Battleship Potemkin is Recommended.

If you worry about how your data may allow you to be tracked, despite encryption and its burial in a mass of data, you may be seeing the acronym FHE, fully homomorphic encryption, in the near future:

There is a completely different and more extreme solution, however, one with origins going back 40 years. What if you could encrypt and share data in such a way that others could analyse it and perform calculations on it, but never actually see it? It would be a bit like placing a precious gemstone in a glovebox, the chambers in labs used for handling hazardous material. You could invite people to put their arms into the gloves and handle the gem. But they wouldn’t have free access and could never steal anything.

This was the thought that occurred to Ronald Rivest, Len Adleman and Michael Dertouzos at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1978. They devised a theoretical way of making the equivalent of a secure glovebox to protect data. It rested on a mathematical idea called a homomorphism, which refers to the ability to map data from one form to another without changing its underlying structure. Much of this hinges on using algebra to represent the same numbers in different ways. [“An extreme form of encryption could solve big data’s privacy problem,” Edd Gent, NewScientist (9 April 2022, paywall)]

Because the data structure is retained, analysis of the encrypted data set should be possible – and, according to the article, the results will be encrypted, too. I’m looking forward to hearing how this works out, as it’s out beyond my solution intuition.

Nothing like realizing you’re not going home:

But the Martian helicopter Ingenuity doesn’t have enough AI to care, I suspect. This is the parachute and backshell of the its delivery vehicle, photographed by Ingenuity from the air.

My Arts Editor observed we litter everywhere we go, which is true.

There have been suspicious fires in Russia recently, and some are out of range of Ukrainian weapons systems. So what’s going on?

Oleksiy Arestovych, a military adviser to [Ukrainian President] Zelensky, said he doubted Ukraine was involved in the fires at the defense-related facilities and suggested that Russian officials are setting fires to cover up evidence of corruption.

“I think you need to look for reasons inside Russia — for example, hiding the means by which money has been stolen from the Russian defense ministry,” he said. [WaPo]

Sure, it’s a convenient excuse in case these are examples of Ukrainian sabotage, but it’s also quite plausible. The problem of corruption isn’t some offense against an arbitrary morality, but rather a set of rules which, when broken for selfish reasons, result not only in benefit, fleeting as it may be, for the criminal, but quite serious damage for the offendee.

That’s why corruption should never be tolerated, on the right or the left.

The Register reports on the Crypto Bug of the Year:

Java versions 15 to 18 contain a flaw in its [Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm] signature validation that makes it trivial for miscreants to digitally sign files and other data as if they were legit organizations.

Cyber-criminals could therefore pass off cryptographically signed malicious downloads and bogus information as if it were real, and affected Java applications and services won’t know the difference.

The scope of the damage that could be done is wide: encrypted communications, authentication tokens, code updates, and more, built on Oracle’s flawed code could be subverted, and as far as vulnerable Java-written programs are concerned, the data looks legitimate and trustworthy.

Ah! For the days of CP/M and 58K TPA (Transient Program Area). Yeah, that’s right – ‘K’ – meaning 1000. When programming wasn’t for the sloppy.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was once a far-right member of the GOP. Now? He may be on the way out:

As recently as Sunday, Rep. Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Fox News, “I think Kevin is in very good shape…. I can tell you, the support in the conference is very strong for him, and this is a little Beltway bubble blip, if you will. I don’t think it’s going to have any long-term consequences.”

But in the days that followed, the party has seen and heard more of what McCarthy had to say early last year, and while practically zero GOP lawmakers criticized the minority leader on the record last week, that’s starting to change.

Republican Rep. Andy Biggs, for example, told a conservative media outlet yesterday that McCarthy is facing “a huge trust issue“ in the wake of the latest revelations. The Arizonan, who led the far-right House Freedom Caucus, added that the GOP leader has “undermined the conference.”

Last night, Gaetz issued a written statement deriding McCarthy and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise as having engaged in “the behavior of weak men, not leaders.” Around the same time, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, a prominent voice in Republican politics, told his viewers that if McCarthy becomes House Speaker next year, “we would have a Republican Congress led by a puppet of the Democratic Party.” [Steve Benen, Maddowblog]

Next will come the accusations of McCarthy being a RINO, and out he’ll go. He might even be primaried this fall, as they say.

This is what happens when the metric for your position in the Party is extremism. McCarthy, a few years back, stripped then Rep Steve King (R-IA) of his committee assignments for remarks which appeared to be racist, and King was bounced in the following primary.

But when Reps Gaetz, Biggs, Gosar, Gohmert, Greene, and others have engaged in remarks of extremist nature more recently, McCarthy has done nothing. The monster, emboldened, is now looking to nip its trophy, and right in the nuts.

I’m not sure McCarthy will be the Speaker of the House, if the Democrats are so foolish as to allow the party of insurrection beat them. He may not even BE in Congress. And wouldn’t that be a shock?

No principles, no position – eventually.

Reading Erick Erickson’s public post today was kind of funny, but not in a good way:

The precipitating event for Musk buying Twitter was Twitter suspending the Babylon Bee’s very popular account because the Babylon Bee gave Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary Rachel Levine its “Man of the Year” award. Musk is a free speech absolutist. He had been on a podcast with the Babylon Bee guys. It was absurd to shut them down. That allegedly got the wheels turning.

Progressives have thoroughly embraced the mythology of transgenderism and the only way for them to win their argument is to censor and silence anyone who disagrees with them. Because the government cannot censor free speech, the left has turned to companies like Twitter to shut people up because the first amendment does not apply to them. …

Regardless of how you feel about transgenderism – I remain convinced that the entire matter was profoundly botched by the Democrats, and I say that without rendering an opinion on transgenderism itself – I think it’s not beyond the realm of reasonableness to label the more vociferous advocates for the transgender wannabe autocrats. They may not realize it, but their bullying tactics force the conclusion. Erickson’s observations regarding the behavior of the advocates, if accurate, simply reinforce the point, while permitting Erickson to slip in his beloved word, mythology, which he later also applies to climate change (I didn’t quote that part). Words matter, and his binding the bad behavior of transgender autocrats with the issue of transgenderism itself is a nasty little sleight of hand.

Erickson continues:

Residents are furious about crime. Did you know that police murders have jumped 59%? After a year of angry and overheated rhetoric about police from the left, nuts are murdering police officers.

When anyone on the right says anything at all, the left accuses them of inciting violence. The left’s rhetoric against police is very clearly inciting nuts to murder cops. And no one on the left is speaking out about it.

Notice Erickson’s failure to ask whether these murders – I haven’t verified the numbers myself, being a working dude – are actual, or just someone’s wet dream, and if they were committed by left-wing nuts or right-wing nuts. Or just criminals hoping to take advantage of a crime wave that is straining law enforcement resources.

And, even more importantly, Erickson is disregarding the critical question of who made it legal to own guns with virtually no constraint or even training requirement. Yes, Erickson would really prefer you not think about that – or how many of those officers would be alive if criminals had far more difficulty obtaining firearms, whether manufactured by the usual companies, or ‘ghost firearms,’ which lack identifying numbers.

Yes, it’s funny reading Erickson’s post, but not in a good way.

And that means both parties are letting the country down.

The harmonious pics of dinner:

A meal with an aesthetic sense.

Rep MT Greene (R-GA) testifying at a hearing concerning whether or not she advocated the overthrow of the Republic, which, if true, would technically render her, by Constitutional Amendment, unqualified for her position:

Greene on Friday:

Question: Did you advocate to President Trump to impose martial law as a way to remain in power?
Greene: I do not recall
Question: So you’re not denying you did it?
Greene: I don’t rememberpic.twitter.com/bXC5c9Su2M via @Acyn https://t.co/kghbFS8hdN

— andrew kaczynski (@KFILE) April 25, 2022

In other words, she can’t remember a damn thing. To which I can only ask, If you can’t remember anything, doesn’t this render you intellectually damaged and thus unqualified for your position?

Just another reason to dislike her. I still like her Jewish Space Lasers conspiracy theory, on the other hand.

Jeff Greenfield remarks on Politico concerning the prophetic powers of … George Orwell:

In the most provocative segment of [The Road to Wigan Pier], Orwell also cites “the horrible, the really disquieting prevalence of cranks wherever Socialists are gathered together. One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw toward them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.” And he notes the prospectus for a summer Socialist school in which attendees are asked if they prefer a vegetarian diet.

That does make me laugh. I’ve never read The Road to Wigan Pier, so perhaps Orwell later identifies the reason the Left attracts the ‘cranks,’ but for me it’s due to the facts that the Left is almost always devoted to toppling the de facto power and compelling its own vision of the future on the populace.

And so, too, is the crank: vegetarians, quacks, even pacifists all have their militant members who passionately believe the world would be greatly improved if only their philosophy, their dogma is widely adopted.

Combine that with the Left’s commitment to upset the old Order, and the cranks will gather like maggots to a body, hoping to inflict their vision of the future upon the world.

This would seem less likely to happen with conservatives, but then I look at some of the flakes frantically running for elective office, and I have to wonder.

And so we see the value of gatekeepers.

This makes me laugh:

Initial brain scanning studies used too few human subjects to ensure that real patterns in the data stood out from the noise. Matters came to a head in 2009 with a study apparently showing that pictures of humans in emotional situations could trigger neural activity in a dead Atlantic salmon. The researchers had used the fish to test that their scanner worked, but then wrote up the faux “study” to show how easy it is to get false results. “That was an important message,” says Gould van Praag.  [“The replication crisis has spread through science – can it be fixed?” Claire Wilson, NewScientist (9 April 2022, paywall)]

dead Atlantic salmon, indeed. I wonder if it had a fashion sense as well.

A drop hitting a surface:

More here.

Modern travel these days is cutthroat.

Train to Busan (2016) is a high quality zombie movie that uses its premise to illuminate, I suspect, some shortcomings of South Korean society. Seok-woo, father to Su-an, estranged husband, financier in South Korean society, and a man strongly in the grip of the importance of being successful, has been badgered into delivering his daughter to her mother for her birthday, a task requiring a train trip to Busan and back, a trip that takes him away from his precious offices, subordinates, and … successes. Those successes that, despite their ease, have failed to make him a great husband or even a legendary father. And, yet, who can abandon them?

So, against his better judgment, they hop on the express to Busan, and behind them Seoul bursts into a bloody shambles. Seok-woo, though, is not worried until his mother calls, and then it dawns on him, in the final gurgle of her voice, that perhaps those reports of rioting are of importance.

These are not your father’s shambling zombies, either. These are those new-fangled sprinting kind, the sort who redouble their pace when needed, who fight harder if need be, and … you get the point.

Getting from one end of a rolling train to the other is a problem when these zombies are aboard.

But don’t count the uninfected out. Seok-woo, along with a few others, are bright, motivated survivors, who notice today’s monsters are a little blind in the dark. Their maneuvers, in the brightest of days, are little short of inspired. It’s as if they’re hitting home runs.

But corporate villainy lurks in the empty eyes of the zombies, doesn’t it? Seok-woo isn’t the only wannabe corporate magnate. And what awaits them in nearly fabled Busan, not to mention those intervening towns? Is Su-an’s mother ready and waiting? And how do I mean that, anyways?

Train to Busan is a thoroughly modern retelling of the unsettling zombie story, rejiggered to be the tool of the South Korean social critic. The heads-in-buckets maneuver of some zombie movies is not present, for which I give heartfelt thanks, but the utter ferocity of this version is heartbreaking in its own special way.

I won’t give a general recommendation to see this, but if you’re a fan of the zombie, this should be front and center on your bucket list. You won’t be disappointeded.

In the digital realm of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), commonly used to make digital Art ownable, there’s some cheeky Ukrainians messing with Russian minds:

My Arts Editor was fascinated with this Jack White performance on Colbert.

I believe the adjective was consummate. I enjoyed it, as well, particularly the percussion.

Although she did say the guy with the ukelele was a little puzzling.

A big shout out to Rep Tom Emmer (R-MN) for at least initially pushing to do the right thing, according to journalists Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin:

McCarthy’s reaction was similar. Burns and Martin wrote that in a phone call on January 10, McCarthy said he planned to call Trump and recommend that he resign. “What he did is unacceptable. Nobody can defend that and nobody should defend it,” he told a conference call of the Republican leadership. He also said he wished that social media companies would ban certain Republican lawmakers because they were stoking paranoia about the 2020 election. Other leaders, including Representative Steve Scalise (R-LA) and Representative Tom Emmer (R-MN), talked of moving Trump out of the party. [Heather Cox Richardson, Letters From An American]

Rep Tom Emmer (R-MN)

The problem with the toxic team politics of the Republican Party is that running around and going it on your own appears to be only viable for the far-far-right extremists who are waiting for the Party to continue its mad skid to the right, and not for the folks like Emmer, who, while obviously an extremists to us Minnesotans – who can forget his gubernatorial run of 2010, in which he seemed to think waiters made far too much money – might now be classified as a middle of the roader in today’s MNGOP.

And tomorrow, as too moderate. (I have a friend who was ejected from the MNGOP for being “too moderate” back in the day. These days that friend is a lefty.) The ties that bind in the Republican Party suppress free thought and public debate, and that is much to the detriment of the Party and Country, something Party leaders must take to heart.

So congrats to Rep Emmer for at least making a little bit of noise about doing the right thing.

When an eclipse occurs, everyone stops and stairs – even the robots.

Jonathan Rauch surprised me by not jumping up and down, hob-nailed boot clad, on this set of statements he quotes on American Purpose:

As Helen Joyce argues in her book Trans (2021), radical gender ideology (or gender identity ideology, as it’s also called) is a horse of a different color. It is not at all the same as trans rights. Nor is it any one thing: It’s a conceptual mess, propounding some ideas that make sense (gender is socially conditioned) but also wild claims, such as that (as Joyce writes) “depending on its owner’s identity, a penis may be a female sex organ.” I take its central claims to include these:

·      Trans women are women and trans men are men, no difference, full stop;

·      Human gender and sex are social constructions and are not a binary but on a continuum, so concepts like “male” and “female” are relative and subjective;

·      Gender and sex are chosen identities, and an individual’s declared choice can never be doubted or challenged;

·      Denying or disputing any of the above is violence.

Any useful hypothesis, as any well-trained scientist, i.e., familiar with philosopher Karl Popper’s work on the nature of hypotheses, should jump up and down upon encountering these statements, particularly the last. Popper’s work and arguments are that a hypothesis that cannot be considered scientific and useful if it cannot be falsified, which is to say proven false. For example, the hypothesis that a divine being, all-powerful, created the Universe would be unfalsifiable, at least on its face.

Rauch?

Even if you don’t agree me that the first three propositions are false and the fourth is intolerant, you might concur that they are not the only or best way to think about transgender civil rights. Rather, they are extrinsic notions that escaped from academia and attached themselves, limpet-like, in the same way that left-wing politics parasitized gay rights a generation ago.

It’s also possible to ask why such a proposition is presented in a society in a liberal democracy, as the tenets of liberal democracies include the ability to debate any political proposition. Clearly, Joyce, the author, feels so uncertain concerning her assertions that she cannot tolerate the least little critique, much less the sometimes raucous debates that lead to improvement and justice.

I’m left wondering why, in fact, they published this book at all. Books usually inspire conversation, but this one will inspire terror, in those afraid of hollow accusations, and disgust in those who value honest debate.

But this has been worth reading if only for the remark about leftist politics “parasitizing” gay rights. I’ve run across this before, just recently, including the observation that there is a considerable proportion of the gay community that votes conservative, even in the face of homophobia. It’s a vital reminder to the Democrats that conflating sexual orientation with political ideology is a minor unforced error, and the recent promotion of racial groups as being solid political ideological groups will turn out to be a major unforced error – in my view. So long as the far-right can continue the masquerade of being reasonable, Hispanics, Asians, and Blacks will consider voting conservative, especially if the more hateful and mistaken ideologies of the left come forward.

From the Bangor Daily News:

The International Cryptozoology Museum just opened its new Bangor outpost on Hammond Street this week, after first announcing the bookstore and gift shop last fall, and Bigfoot hunters, paranormal enthusiasts and the merely curious have already stopped by to visit.

Oh, that’s nice. Good luck storming the –

Some of the more eye-popping things on display at the shop include Frosty, a huge sculpture of a Yeti head that’s mounted on the wall, and a replica of the Minnesota Iceman — a six-foot, hairy hominid originally believed to have been found in Vietnam — whose supposedly frozen body was displayed around the country throughout the 1960s.

The Minnesota WHAT???

Oh, slow down, my slammin’ heart. That hoax Viking carving out in Kensington, MN, is enough for us. That and those skeeters that carry away small –

WAIT WAIT – I’m a big human! PUT ME DOWN-

Palaeo-poetry:

[Professor Matthew Bennett of Bournemouth University] stresses there is always a risk of pushing [fossil] footprint analysis too far in pursuit of a captivating story – what he calls “palaeo-poetry”. It is tempting to argue that the woman hurried because she was wary of roaming sabre-toothed cats, but we will never know for sure. Still, footprints do pitch us closer than ever to the emotions of ancient people. [“How fossil footprints are revealing the joy and fear of Stone Age life,” Colin Barras, NewScientist (9 April 2022, paywall)]

Hey, who could resist such a great word?

After reports that a large number of Ukrainian civilians have been killed and/or deported by Russian occupiers, which is a classic ‘depopulation’ move for when the time comes to discuss who the current population wants as their overlords or government, and while Russia is reeling from the loss of its Black Sea fleet flagship Moskva, and reports that the United States is considering labeling Russia a sponsor of international terrorism – a label of some practical consequence, it turns out – I think it’s time, even past time, that an encouragement to stop hostilities and right, to the extent that Russia might do so, the barbarities it has visited upon the civilians of Ukraine.

By putting punishment prices, payable by Russia, on those civilians.

So – just spitballing here – we could say concerning the status of a civilian:

• Displaced – $500,000
• Besieged – $750,000
• Missing – $10,000,000
• Dead – $5,000,000
• Deported – $20,000,000, but with a return discount of, say, 50%

The point is that a tactic known to be often used by Russia is punished, and that punishment is directly tied to its usage.

I suggest that this list be announced, with suitable values, to be applied when Russia exits Ukraine, all of Ukraine, by the end of May. If they do not leave by then, the punishment rates go up.

Yes, there’s a risk in this sort of tactic. But Russia believes that depopulation of Ukraine is a winning tactic in the long run, a tactic that’s worth a heavy price. It’s necessary to make that price as heavy as possible – and tie that price directly to the implementation of the tactic.

And then broadcast it to the Russian populace.

This sort of language – from a supposed political scientist, no less – has to make every serious agnostic and atheist squirm:

Deputy of the State Duma Vyacheslav Nikonov (a grandson of Vyacheslav Molotov) claimed: “In the modern world, we are the embodiment of the forces of good. This is a metaphysical clash between the forces of good and evil… This is truly a holy war we're waging and we must win.” pic.twitter.com/B8C7ILH1O8

— Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) April 17, 2022

Marrying this massively unjust war with the language of holy wars, well, it certainly pulls into focus a horrendous and tragic depopulation event.

And after that? A population that is convinced it should have won, a capering cleric, such as the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, or evangelical Paula White who’ll find a way to explain their terrible loss in terms that doesn’t involve a wretched self-examination of the terrors of living under the metaphorical, if not actual, theocratic regime.

If you’re unaware of Strandbeests, do yourself a favor: