Author Archives: Hue White

CNN headline: Daryl Hall files restraining order against John Oates.

Restraining order?

Yeah. It’s sad when the idols of your youth fall to fighting among themselves.

They were our idols?

Yeah. We called them Eric. Remember?

In a WaPo article concerning a proposed coal power plant replacement with an experimental nuclear unit in Kemmerer, Wyoming, I was struck by this political observation:

Nicole Anderson, 30, was motivated to open her own accounting firm downtown. She said most reservations about [Microsoft found Bill] Gates — long the subject of right-wing conspiracy theories stemming from his support of vaccines — are overshadowed by hope.

“I think people still think of him as a figment of your imagination,” Anderson said. But he’s put Kemmerer “on the map, which none of us ever saw happening.”

Of course, being a science groupie, I was tiredly outraged by the remark concerning vaccines. You look at the change in death antecedents following the introduction of a vaccine, and the case is generally closed. The most likely conclusion is that vaccines simply do work, and most are “safe” in the statistical sense, which is to say that, yes, I do actually know someone who suffered an attack of myocarditis following a Covid shot, so he’s probably one of the < .001% who suffered a negative, dangerous reaction to the vaccine.

That does not make the vaccine generally dangerous. The statistical definition of generally dangerous may be up for discussion, but < .001% is not generally dangerous. The vaccine in question is safe within the general definition.

But, to return to the point, every political movement is speckled with fallacies, misconceptions, and other detestable aspects that accompany being human. Politics is about acquisition of power in order to implement political philosophies; political philosophy, on the other hand, is an accretional theory about how humans, and human societies, both do work and should work.

Because political philosophies are mixtures of earnest theories of human behaviors and self-interested “theories” designed to carry their progenitors to power, evaluation of political philosophies must carefully differentiate between the two, marking as negative the latter while critically evaluating the former.

Because the former can easily be as wrong as the latter.

What am I saying? Every political philosophical aggregate will inevitably have ingredients, forcibly introduced by those of a ruthlessly ambitious nature, that are simply wrong. Keeping in mind the scientifically accepted findings of researchers of vaccines, those “suspicious” of vaccines are echoing the sentiments of those who are desperate to accrete power to their own ends, who talk through their hats in order to unite those inclined, through ignorance and suspicion, to disdain vaccines.

Meanwhile, transgender advocates, eager to be civil rights champions, bypass standard democratic values and procedures, quite potentially leading non-transgender down the irreversible path of surgery and, almost certainly, depression, in their hurried quest for, yes, say it, fame.

Rinse. Lather. Repeat.

That teaches me that, yes, the conservatives are fools for disdaining vaccines, but the Left have their revered feet of clay, too, and us Independents have our treasured ignorance of governing. None of us are anywhere near perfect, but for those who know they are ignorant.

The company responsible for ChatGPT, OpenAI, fired its CEO, Sam Altman, over the weekend, reportedly over his desire to aggressively push AI in the marketplace, while the board of directors wished to move more cautiously. This morning, Microsoft is reported to have hired Altman to run their AI effort; Microsoft is reported to be OpenAI’s biggest backer.

I suspect we’re not seeing some inevitable historical current, but rather just another serpentine sign of greed.

ANYWAYS … the only real reason I’m posting this is that CNN added a picture of Altman, which struck me as being so ridiculously manipulative that it set my teeth on edge.

Ah, the picture of a man selflessly gazing towards a bright future of inanity for humanity for which he’ll sacrifice himself, now isn’t it? No doubt I sound bitter, but that would require the erasure of my dreams by his actions, and that has not happened; in fact, I’m simply waiting to be amazed by a humanity that has proven to be credulous about, well, what this morning I shall call a party trick, if I’m to believe the popular summaries of the technology involved.

That is certainly unfair to the AI researchers involved, and I duly apologize, but the only magic going on here is the immense amount of computer power being made available to the project. And, certainly, many will fairly proclaim it a boon to mankind as a sort of pre-digestive of whatever its data source has been fed to it. For many scientific and academic disciplines, the sheer amount of research published on a monthly basis really requires a mechanical and cheap way to organize new material for perusal by the humans involved.

But those efforts already existed prior to ChatGPT. I find it hard to get excited by the descriptions of ChatGPT. (I was rebuffed the first day it was available, and never returned to it. Not being an AI researcher myself, I do not feel abusive.)

Miraculin:

Miraculin is a basic glycoprotein that was extracted from the miracle fruit plant, a shrub that is native to West Africa (Synsepalum dulcificum or Richadella dulcifica). Miraculin itself is not sweet, but the human tongue, once exposed to miraculin, perceives ordinarily sour foods, such as citrus, as sweet for up to 2 h afterward. This small red berry has been used in West Africa to improve the taste of acidic foods. Since the miracle fruit itself has no distinct taste, this taste-modifying function of the fruit had been regarded as a miracle. The active substance, isolated by Kurihara, was named miraculin after the miracle fruit. [ScienceDirect compilation]

Noted in “Sweeteners: The bitter truth about low-calorie sugar substitutes,” David Cox, NewScientist (11 November 2023, paywall):

But perhaps we could one day get rid of sugar and its low-calorie mimics altogether, and still get a sweet hit. That is the promise of a range of sweet proteins found in the berries of various West African shrubs. These include brazzein, monellin and, the best known, miraculin, which comes from the [miracle] berry that made my lemon sweet.

Silly names, all of ’em.

A great lady has died.

I’ve long read references to the Mayan ball game, in which the ball can only contact the hips. Here, the BBC has a short clip covering a Mayan group that has recreated the game of their ancestors. Quite fun!

And I liked the body art as well.

In other news, for the last three weeks I’ve been dealing with an infection which appears to be defeated now. I hope to return to regular, though not prolific, posting.

He said he was going to show you his etchings, didn’t he? So who makes etchings of animal entrails?

Beetlejuice (1988) is a lovely, amusing, middle of the road movie concerning a young, newly married couple whose car goes off a bridge into the creek below. Their following travails function to illuminate themes having to with poseurs vs authenticism, the limits of asking for assistance, and snakes.

Big, colorful snakes. And how even the dead can die.

I was a bit fascinated with the interpretation by Jennifer Rubin of WaPo of recent poll results contrasts with that of Erick Erickson, far right pundit. First, Rubin:

Ohio GOP legislators’ reaction to the passing of Issue 1, an amendment to the Ohio State Constitution safeguarding abortion rights, as noted by Ja’han Jones of MSNBC:

After Ohioans voted Tuesday to enshrine access to abortion care in their state constitution, more than a third of the Republican caucus in Ohio’s House of Representatives issued a joint statement essentially vowing to keep up their fight to restrict abortion.

The statement says:

Unlike the language of this proposal, we want to be very clear. The vague, intentionally deceptive language of Issue 1 does not clarify the issues of life, parental consent, informed consent, or viability including Partial Birth Abortion, but rather introduces more confusion. This initiative failed to mention a single, specific law. We will do everything in our power to prevent our laws from being removed based upon perception of intent. We were elected to protect the most vulnerable in our state, and we will continue that work.

To my eyes, it appears Ohio conservatives don’t know how to read a room. And I suspect Ohio seats held by the GOP, both at the local and federal levels, are going to be rated as More likely to flip at the next election. There was a number of ploys of dubious morality employed prior to the vote by various conservative organizations attacking the Amendment. Assiduous reporting on those and what may be in the offing may become a hand grenade in the face of this bunch of arrogant, posturing fools.

The Horsehead Nebula as imaged by new space telescope Euclid.

More information from the ESA here.

Noah Smith has identified a need that’ll make the hair of libertarians to stand on end:

I believe that the U.S. suffers from a distinct lack of state capacity. We’ve outsourced many of our core government functions to nonprofits and consultants, resulting in cost bloat and the waste of taxpayer money. We’ve farmed out environmental regulation to the courts and to private citizens, resulting in paralysis for industry and infrastructure alike. And we’ve left ourselves critically vulnerable to threats like pandemics and — most importantly — war.

It’s time for us to bring back the bureaucrats.

The aim of government is, or should be, to be in service to citizens and provide for the common sense. Corporations and non-profits? Generally, to make money, whether it be to pay investors or pay salaries. This difference in goals will, in many and even most cases, lead to undesired results and side effects.

Best to bring such expertise, as Smith notes, back in-house.

For years I’ve been suggesting the Republican Party was at risk of tearing itself to pieces as various factions, allergic to compromise, become more and more inclined towards orthodoxies peculiar to themselves, and of more and more absolute formulations.

Now I see far-right pundit Erick Erickson has come to the same conclusion. From Wednesday:

The reality is that the GOP as a national party is dead. It is now a conglomeration of several regional parties. In parts of the country, Republicans must run wrapped in the MAGA label as Donald Trump candidates. In other parts of the country, they must run as far from Trump as possible. That renders the GOP a regional party of divergent views that must then assemble a coalition of disparate and often incompatible values.

At some point there may be a great rip as the MAGAs go one way, the evangelicals go another, etc, or, if the moderates have enough leverage, a great expelling of the extremists. Given the toxic culture of the GOP that advantages the extremists, the latter seems unlikely, but not impossible. Enough failures, blunders, tugs of war, and Pyrrhic victories like Dobbs, and disillusioned conservatives will gulp down their misery and not vote, or find conservative Democrats who are acceptable.

We may even see conservative Democrats break away to join with moderate Republicans and form a new party.

And the Grand Old Party will slowly fade away, as relying on ideological adherence, to the disdain of experience, competency, and the ability to compromise, leads inevitably to arrogant personalities such as Greene, Gaetz, and Johnson being in charge, who can do performative morality in front of the cameras, but are vastly incompetent at real governance.

Everyone hold their breath. Or is that plural?

We recently took the time to watch Deadloch, a series of episodes, or a very long movie, featuring an amazing average of at least two profanities per sentence, a collection of dead bodies sure to inspire jealousy in serial killers everywhere, and a theme or two driven home with a ballpeen hammer soaked in blood.

If you like crime dramas and kicking sand in the eyes of the patriarchy, and are not likely to faint at the least hint of an Aussie giving vent to their frustrations, this might be right up your alley.

So the numbers are in for the 2023 election, and let the goat entrail pulling begin.

• Tate Reeves (R-MS) retains his place in the governor’s mansion of Mississippi, and by about the same margin as in 2019, so it wasn’t too much of a struggle. Even so, Erick Erickson remarked “In Mississippi, Tate Reeves just isn’t that popular and ran a bad campaign. His embrace of the MAGA label probably drove turn out for him more than it alienated people.” A hate-race, apparently: Who did Mississippi voters hate more, the Democrats or Tate Reeves? Or at least distrust.
• In Kentucky, Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) retained his seat with a five point margin, which is far larger than his initial victory in 2019. Steve Benen asserts “But Beshear prevailed anyway, in part thanks to steady and effective leadership over four years, and in part by running on abortion rights.” If true, it must be a galling remark in a state where the GOP has tried to make opposition to abortion rights a rallying cry.
• In Virginia, all the legislative seats were up for grabs, and now Governor Glenn Youngkin (R-VA), noised about as a potential late entrant to the GOP Presidential nominating contest, is facing a Virginia House and Senate controlled by the Democrats, a shocking result that suggests his influence is weak. One of the main themes for both parties was proper management of abortion rights, with Youngkin and the Republicans proposing an abortion ban that started at 15 weeks and calling it reasonable. Apparently, voters didn’t quite buy it.
• And in Ohio, the State Constitutional Amendment #1 protecting abortion rights not only passed, but passed with ease, by 13 points, a staggering failure for the Republicans.

The results from Mississippi are disappointing, but not surprising, for Democrats. But the big lesson to be derived from the other positions and issue is that so long as the GOP clings to its anti-abortion position, its chances of winning swing districts is imperiled. Given that anti-abortion is a dearly held position of many in the Republican Party, it’s unlikely to change.

And, in a way, that’s too bad. I cannot help but wonder if Democrats are asking themselves why independents tend to be repulsed by them, or if they just shrug them off as bigots or ignorant or what have you, with no thought as to how it might be Democrats’ fault. If the Republicans were respectable, they could deliver a blow to the Democrats that would force them to self-evaluate and, hopefully, improve.

But the Republicans, with a few exceptions, are little more than performative puppets that suck the air out of the room.

I expect abortion rights to be the lead issue in 2024, followed by ranked choice voting in select locations, and possibly climate change in third. Trump and his allies have problems with all of these issues.

I expect abortion rights to have some staying power, too, since they involve the lives of expectant mothers.

The latest hit autobiography!

The Importance of Being Burnished: The story of the Tin Man.

The Christie original, which I’ve not read.
From https://www.raptisrarebooks.com/product/halloween-party-remove-term-agatha-christie-first-edition-agatha-christie-first-edition/, Fair use, Link

Kenneth Branagh’s version of Hercule Poirot in A Haunting in Venice (2023) is a merely adequate introduction to the post-World War II Poirot, an elderly and dogged believer in the power of rationality in the face of machinations that appear to be supernatural in origin, with a sad undertone for all those that he’s known and lost. It casts a long and strong shadow over a character best known for a droll sense of humor and a charm most disarming.

This is reinforced by an odd comparison of Poirot to one of the suspects in this story, a shell-shocked doctor who is accused of bringing death and disaster wherever he goes, but this is one of the cracks in a story that might have been better rendered. After all, once one reaches a certain age, friends and family do tend to start leaving, whether from accident or illness, and it will add up. Why try to throw such a wet blanket over a detective who brings light, not dark, to the scenes of often terrible crimes?

And Poirot, an icon of rationality, would realize this fact and at least mitigate any depression he might be feeling. But it is difficult to deny that, having reached advanced age with no family and few friends, any such person may feel discouragement, particular if the mental faculties seem to be failing.

As my Arts Editor points out, we have nary a reference to the little gray cells of which Poirot is so fond of mentioning in most stories, but instead an audio occasionally just muddy enough to render his accent difficult to understand at times; I detest having to struggle to understand what a character might be expressing at key moments, when other portrayals of a character have been clear in their expressions.

Insofar as the plot goes, it could have been better. One plot machination is used to explain far too much of the occurrences we witness, for example. On the other hand, a twist near the end was surprising and satisfying, so not all was a loss. Still, the internal meditations on advancing age are a logical, yet unwelcome, distraction from what Poirot usually does best.

And that’s not solve mysteries, but reveal the nuances of the human condition.

Phantom time:

The phantom time conspiracy theory is a pseudohistorical conspiracy theory first asserted by Heribert Illig in 1991. It hypothesises a conspiracy by the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III, Pope Sylvester II, and possibly the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII, to fabricate the Anno Domini dating system retroactively, in order to place them at the special year of AD 1000, and to rewrite history to legitimize Otto’s claim to the Holy Roman Empire. Illig believed that this was achieved through the alteration, misrepresentation and forgery of documentary and physical evidence.^[2] According to this scenario, the entire Carolingian period, including the figure of Charlemagne, is a fabrication, with a “phantom time” of 297 years (AD 614–911) added to the Early Middle Ages. [Wikipedia]

That’s an odd one. Noted in “What Is the Truth Behind the Controversial Phantom Time Hypothesis?” Benjamin Plackett, Discover:

Contrary to what you might believe, you aren’t actually living in the 21st Century. Instead, you’re in the 1700s, and the reason that most of you don’t recognize this fact is that the elites of the early medieval period worked hard to deceive you. At least, that’s what German historian Herbert Illig puts forward in his phantom time hypothesis. “There’s this outrageous claim that all historians have made a mistake and that we’ve all had the wool pulled over our eyes and that the chronology we all follow today is wrong,” explains David Hamon, an independent researcher who has studied alternative histories.

As ever, we want to know the future, in this case the results of the 2024 election a year from now. In addition to the goat method of divination, which is messy and offends some people, there is analysis of lead-up elections, both special and scheduled, leading up to the elections in question. So what do we have and how do they look?

When it comes to special elections, so far the Democrats are looking good. Daniel Donner of Daily Kos Elections gives a summary:

In fact, there have been 27 typical special elections pitting a Democrat against a Republican in the 2023-24 election cycle so far, and Democrats have overperformed Biden in 20 and Clinton in 23. When numbers like that start to pile up, it’s time to sit up and take notice.

And what we notice is this: It’s beginning to look a lot like 2018 around here. That’s very good news. …

So far this year, Democrats in special elections have been doing an average of 7.6 points better than Biden’s margin in 2020 in the same districts and 12.0 points better than Clinton’s margin in 2016. Since Biden won the national popular vote by 4.5 points, and Clinton won it by 1.8 points, that translates to a political environment with Democrats running 12.1 points ahead based on comparisons to Biden and 13.7 points ahead based on comparisons to Clinton. Averaging the two values gives us a figure of D+12.9.

So how about scheduled elections? We’ve seen the 2021 elections in a few states, most surprisingly in Virginia where business exec Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) defeated former governor Terry McAuliffe (D-VA), and, say what you will about the latter’s popularity, it remains undeniable that the Democrats lost an eminently winnable State. Have the Democrats figured out what went wrong? At the time, I noted at least one post-poll interview indicating the problem was their management of the trans issue, and I haven’t really seen much evidence of their recognition of this mistake.

But the Republicans remain the owners of the abortion issue, along with a gerrymandering issue that makes a lot of voters, even conservatives, uncomfortable, no matter how zealous the officials might, and that can be mighty zealous as the State of Alabama tried to ignore a SCOTUS ruling on the issue. (They were promptly bopped on the nose and told they were a bad, bad dog. It was not an inaccurate statement.) For conservative readers hopping from one foot to another in an urgent need to say Democrats gerrymander, too, it’s true: Maryland is heavily gerrymandered. Maryland, Wisconsin, Alabama, and other states require adjustment.

But that’s the far past (2021, that is) and the far future. What about now?

The 2023 elections are next week, and on the list is the Mississippi governor’s race, with incumbent Tate Reeves (R-MS) facing challenger Brandon Presley (D-MS). Reeves has been in the midst of the Brett Favre scandal involving the spending of Federal dollars on University of Mississippi projects for which they were not authorized, Reeves tends to try to apply inappropriate religious solutions to problems he’s supposed to be solving with the help of the Legislature, and he’s simply not really a strong governor.

Reeves won in 2019 by 5 points. Can he do better this time? Or is it possible that he’ll lose? The vote totals will give a hint on how the 2024 elections may go. If Reeves, in a quintessential Republican state, underperforms, then we may be seeing a potential for a Democratic wave in 2024, with Democrats retaking the House, possibly by a large gap as swing districts fall to the Democrats, and retaining the Presidency and the Senate. While professional pundits keep claiming Biden looks weak, and polls don’t look so great for the current President, the former President continues to look weak himself, not to mention some observers claiming he’s showing signs of dementia.

So keep an eye on Mississippi, as well as Kentucky, where Democrat Andy Beshear is the incumbent governor running for re-election. His results will be relevant as well. The latest poll I saw gave Beshear a large lead, but with a large portion of the electorate undecided, but that was a few weeks ago. Will Beshear ride the family rep and the abortion issue to victory?

The goat entrails may depend on the governors’ races.

This is MSR B1509-58, a pulsar, and its nebula (the purple “hand”), MSH 15-52.

More information here.

Senator and former football Coach Tommy Tuberville (R-AL … or is it Florida? Where do you live, sir?) must surely know that winning football involves, in large part, proper preparation. Even I know that, and I don’t even play a pro football coach on TV.

So what’s this all about?

Tuberville on the suggestion he take his beef with the Pentagon to the courts:

“I’m a football coach. I’m not a lawyer.”

— Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) November 2, 2023

“I’m a football coach. I’m not a lawyer.”

So? Proper preparation includes getting legal advice from qualified professionals. It’s just like working out in the gym for the players, except the lawyers generally don’t come so large.

His remark isn’t a defense, it’s an admission of ill-preparation, of incompetency.

How much longer are the citizens of Alabama going to saddle the United States with such an incompetent?

The latest on the Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) saga, former CEO of bankrupt FTX, which is in the criminal trial phase, has come to pass:

A jury on Thursday convicted FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering, the culmination of a month-long trial that saw the former crypto mogul take the stand in his own defense after his inner circle of friends-turned-deputies provided damning testimony against him.

The decision was reached after less than five hours of deliberation by a jury of nine women and three men, who found Bankman-Fried guilty of two counts of wire fraud, four counts of conspiracy to commit fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. He could be sentenced to decades in prison. [WaPo]

Is it any surprise? Not really. I expect we’ll be seeing more convictions as people who thought they are clever find out they are not.

CNN has an article on something I’ve not heard of: White hydrogen:

A couple of hundred meters down, the probe found low concentrations of hydrogen. “This was not a real surprise for us,” Pironon told CNN; it’s common to find small amounts near the surface of a borehole. But as the probe went deeper, the concentration ticked up. At 1,100 meters down it was 14%, at 1,250 meters it was 20%.

This was surprising, Pironon said. It indicated the presence of a large reservoir of hydrogen beneath. They ran calculations and estimated the deposit could contain between 6 million and 250 million metric tons of hydrogen.

That could make it one of the largest deposits of “white hydrogen” ever discovered, Pironon said. The find has helped fuel an already feverish interest in the gas.

White hydrogen – also referred to as “natural,” “gold” or “geologic” hydrogen – is naturally produced or present in the Earth’s crust and has become something of a climate holy grail.

Sure, sounds nice, since it produce H₂O when ‘burnt’.

But I can’t help but notice that, once again, we’re looking at using a resource that doesn’t renew quickly. Contrast that with solar power, which comes from a source that will, in all probability, outlast us.

Which is better to be dependent on, all other factors being equal.

And it’s true, it is silly to think the other factors are equal. Energy density, transportability, pollution, all these other factors complicate assessments.

But I can’t help but notice that burning white hydrogen will eventually exhaust it, and, odds are, faster than we think. So being feverish about it is a bit premature.

I’ve been speculating that AI (artificial intelligence, but don’t mistake it for self-agency) would suck down enough power to make them too pricey to use for piddling tasks, but now comes this, from NewScientist (21 October 2023, short version, paywall):

A reconfigurable transistor can run AI processes using 100 times less electricity than the standard transistors found in silicon-based chips. It could help spur development of a new generation of smartwatches or other wearable devices capable of using powerful AI technology – something that is impractical today because many AI algorithms would rapidly drain the batteries of wearables built with ordinary transistors.

The new transistors are made of molybdenum disulphide and carbon nanotubes. They can be continuously reconfigured by electric fields to almost instantaneously handle multiple steps in AI-driven processes. In contrast, silicon-based transistors – which act as tiny on-or-off electronic switches – can only perform one step at a time. This means an AI task that might otherwise require 100 silicon-based transistors could instead use just one reconfigurable transistor, thereby reducing energy consumption.

Performance is not mentioned, unfortunately, and I’m not quite sure what it means for something to be continuously reconfigured – the frustrations of being obsolete, eh?

But it remains fascinating.

Insufflation:

1. The action of breathing or blowing into or on.
2. The result of breathing or blowing into or on.
3. The ritual breathing onto the water used for baptism [Wiktionary]

Noted in “Before Modern CPR, There Were Tobacco-Smoke Enemas,” Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza, Discover:

Various devices were used to administer the enema: a regular tobacco pipe, tubes of different kinds with metal nozzles on each end, and, eventually, a bellows. As far back as the 15th century, physicians believed rectal insufflation had reanimating powers. Instructions from the physician Paulus Bagellardus to midwives in 1472 recommended a similar therapy for stillborn babies: “If she find [the newborn] warm, not black, she should blow into its mouth, if it has no respiration … or into the anus.”