Author Archives: Hue White

After Atlanta we flew into Traverse City (TVC) and rested at my Arts Editor’s mother’s home. Her home is out in the hinterlands, so we took some pictures. Today is about grass.

Perhaps a repetitive subject.

Treehugger.com’s Melissa Breyer reports on the latest real-world problem caused by climate change – anthrax:

The latest horror-story-plotline come to life? “Anthrax spewing zombie deer,” as Bloomberg News describes them, have emerged from thawing permafrost in northern Siberia, sparking an outbreak of the rare and deadly bacterial disease.

The outbreak has occurred on the Yamal Peninsula in northern Siberia, a region that hasn’t seen anthrax since 1941. The Arctic Siberian district has faced temperatures ranging from 77F to 95F for a month or so; officials believe that the heat melted permafrost and exposed an infected reindeer carcass. Although many of us may be more familiar with anthrax as an agent used in warfare, it is a natural disease caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis and can survive in the environment for a century or more by forming spores. In the Sakha Republic, just east of the region where the outbreak occurred, there are some 200 burial grounds of animals that died from anthrax in the past.

Having surveyed the BBC, Bloomberg News, and Siberian Times reports, it’s not clear how they may have ruled out deliberate release of spores, much like the United States suffered in 2001. The locals are understandably nervous as they appear to have an active venison industry, with exports to Germany, Sweden, Finland and the UK, according to the Siberian Times. All the sources view this as a predictable outcome of climate change.

From around town. First, a monster assimilating a building.

Next, a monster on a wall.

I’m sure there’s a monster lurking in this MARTA station.

A lovely landscape. There used to be a monster here.

Another.

Certified monster-free.

One more. You pick.

Which, on a more serious note, symbolizes Atlanta, at least from the MARTA – rough patches interspersed with well-off patches. A little depressing, I think.

Downright Fiery.

Courtesy Climate Reanalyzer.

Today we noticed our front yard coleus is doing particularly well.

Lovely, unexpected colors, and a not a hint of decomposition.

Ingersoll & Jacoby (the biographer) on separation of Church & State¹:

Ingersoll decried the public religiosity required of politicians in a statement that is just as applicable today as it was then.

At present, the successful office-seeker is a good deal like the centre of the earth; he weighs nothing himself , but draws everything else to him. There are so many societies, so many churches, so many isms, that it is almost impossible for an independent man to succeed in a political career. Candidates are forced to pretend that they are Catholics with Protestant proclivities, or Christians with liberal tendencies, or temperance men who now and then take a glass of wine, or, that although not members of any church their wives are, and that they subscribe liberally to all. The result of all this is that we reward hypocrisy and elect men entirely destitute of real principle; and this will never change until the people become grand enough to do their own thinking.

A candidate’s religious outlook, in Ingersoll’s opinion, should be an entirely private matter. “If we were in a storm at sea,” he said, “with deck wave-washed and masts strained and bent with storm, and it was necessary to reef the top sail, we certainly would not ask the brave sailor who volunteered to go aloft, what his opinion was on the five points of Calvinism.” Ingersoll felt that the churches of his day were becoming politicized and correctly predicted that it would not be long until religious institutions would “divide as  sharply upon political, as upon theological questions.”

To expand on Ingersoll’s first point, we see this even today as the most publicly devout politicians find themselves caught up in scandals of one sort or another. In truth, those who chase power may assume any shape that advantages them in the great race for political power; and those who are consumed with power have no requirement of great morality, merely the appearance of same². By informally requiring some sort of religiosity, our subjects are permitted to don a cloak that obscures their true nature. Not that in the absence of this religious requirement that they won’t find another cloak, yet this one, I fear, is more potent than most as most devout people are, by the nature of this requirement, ill-suited for detecting the devout-seeming devil in their midst.

The second point leaves me somewhat ambivalent. To my mind, arguing via analogy requires an effective analogy, and while governing may involve tremendous flashes of light and booming, terror-riding demons on occasion, in truth governing and saving a ship in a storm are hardly analogous situations. I think it’s entirely certain that many folks will want to know about a candidate’s religious views in the mistaken belief that a candidate’s views of the supernatural and the afterlife will somehow affect his views on truly issues pertinent to government. Just having to write that sentence compels me to giggle, so, despite the poor analogy, in end I must agree with Ingersoll: a candidate’s religious views should not be of importance to the mature citizen of the United States. Indeed, I vividly recall a television interviewer with a woman during, I think, the 2004 elections, in which she stated that she believed God had selected Bush to be President; in view of the catastrophes of the Bush Administration, both before and after, we can only conclude that God hated, and perhaps still hates, the social conservatives who voted for him and the others caught up in scandal. It’s the only logical conclusion. If the United States is to remain strong, cooler, secular heads must prevail over those who insist on using the prism of religiosity when viewing the policies of government; the aberrations introduced by this prism are, on the evidence, terrible.

¹The Great Agnostic, p 150-152. Misspellings and poor grammar are most likely my fault due to manual transcription.
²Consider Livingston, DeLay, Cunningham, Ney, Foley, Hastert (thanks to Steve Benen). Many more, too tiresome to list here, could be added.

The Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta, GA, is a large, old cemetery, full of CSA vets, mausoleums, and some pithy epitaphs. We took a few pictures….

Some beautiful carving. Not sure how old.

Makes me wonder how much was spent on this final structure …

Someone liked gargoyles.

The mate is a little forward.

Love the cactus. Cacti. Porcupine plants.

A series of “beds” on the right attracted my attention.

So I took two pictures.

Evidently I was fascinated.

And a Roman Via-like path beckoned us along as the heat chased us through the cemetery. After this we hurriedly left, walked to the nearby Daddy Dz’s and had some excellent BBQ. Both the cemetery and the BBQ joint are recommended.

Perhaps the most amazing part of our viewing of The Incredible Melting Man (1977) is that my Arts Editor and I actually managed to watch the whole wretched thing. Let’s make this simple: take all the facets of the movie and rate them on a scale of 0 through 9. Set them all to 0.

The audio is good, give it an 6.

Same for the cinematography, call it a 6 for adequate work.

We have to give the acting a 4, primarily because of the efforts of the antagonist’s actor, as well as an elderly couple who played an old woman and her lover, ridiculously in love with each other, who had an easy, kitchy chemistry. I found their arguments over whether or not they should steal oranges and lemons from an orchard to be charming. All the rest of the acting? 0! So the average is 4.

And makeup gets an 8. It was, for the era, really quite macabre, a creepy, gelatinous mess that was, if not convincing, enough to make your skin crawl – right before you, too, started melting.

Everything else was terrible.

Normally I do not read other reviews when writing my own, but this time I couldn’t help but wonder how this amateur effort possibly made it out of any self-respecting studio, and, according to Wikipedia, the producers messed with the show:

The screenplay was originally intended as a parody of horror films, but comedic scenes were edited out during production and new horror scenes added. [Director] Sachs claims that the producers decided during shooting that a straight horror film would be more financially successful, and that the film suffered as a result.

And yet …

The film was commercially successful …

A reader continues the thread:

I wonder if molybdenum is used to strengthen some metal parts — it’s commonly used for that in steel.

I noticed that, but why would a smartphone need reinforced steel?

Treehugger‘s Lloyd Alter reports that the first prototype of the Transit Elevated Bus has has been released on schedule:

Originally conceived by American architect Lester Walker 45 years ago, there is in fact some logic to it; the right-of-way already exists, and instead of having a bus stuck in traffic, the straddling bus can fly right over it. When we showed a model of it earlier this year, we noted that the designer promised a working one by August.

And here we are in August, and there they are, running a real full size straddle bus down a thousand foot test track. It is officially known as a Transit Elevated Bus (TEB), will consist of four cars each being about 22 meters [72′] long, 7.8 meters wide [25.6′] and 4.8 meters [15.74′] high, and can hold 1200 people.

The video is fun to watch and spawns some thoughts, such as what happens when an unaware motorist is overtaken by the elevated bus and panics? OK, no big surprise: he crashes and possibly damages a vehicle containing up to 1200 people. Then there’s the tracks themselves, which may be optional, which will need installation and will result in death and dismemberment if someone gets in the way – which is also true of trains.

Straddling bus is completely powered by municipal electricity and solar energy system. In terms of electricity, the setting is called relay direct current electrification. The bus itself is electrical conductor, two rails built on top to allow the charging post to run along with the bus, the next charging post will be on the rails before the earlier one leaves, that is why we call it relay charging. It is new invention, not available yet in other places.

The last of the ABG pictures, with no particular theme. First, if you’ve never seen okra out in the field, here it is:

A random stone path.

A lovely atmospheric from the tropics:

These are fun!

And we come to an end of our walking tour of ABG, having swilled an elegant lunch at the on-site Linton’s, walked until we could walk no more, and endured sad self-doubt about the Atlanta bus system.

As we remain stubbornly nation-oriented (yeah, the blue helmets aren’t invading anytime soon), the Internet brings tough questions about crimes in which the Internet may contain important evidence. The Obama Administration recently brought forth suggested legislation, and Jennifer Daskal and Andrew K. Woods of Just Security (via Lawfare) cover it:

Enter the draft legislation.  The legislation would permit the President to enter into agreements with foreign countries whereby US firms would no longer be prohibited, as a matter of US law, from responding to local law enforcement demands for emails and other communications in the investigation of serious crime.  Importantly, the legislation sets numerous human rights and privacy-protective restrictions on what these agreements would look like.   These agreements would only be permitted with foreign governments that afford “robust substantive and procedural protections for privacy and civil liberties” —a determination that takes into account, among other things, compliance with human rights obligations and respect for the principle of non-discrimination.

Moreover, the orders issued pursuant to the agreement must meet numerous requirements—including that the requests be tailored to a specific account, person, or device, of limited duration, and based on articulable and credible suspicion.  The requests must be overseen by a judge or other independent authority, may not be used to infringe freedom of speech, and are subject to a strict prohibition on the dissemination of non-relevant information unless necessary to protect against the threat of death or serious bodily harm.  These requirements apply at the request level—that is, each request by the foreign country must meet these standards.

Later:

This is, in sum, a remarkable effort by the administration to lay out, in great detail, a set of baseline privacy protections that apply to law enforcement access to data. Imagine, for a moment, that countries around the world implemented these requirements. We would see a significant enhancement of privacy protections globally.

The whole article is worth a quick read. Judging from the summary presented, this seems like a careful, workmanlike approach to the problem. In their judgment, it’s not perfect – but that’s for legislators to fix.

I can’t help but wonder if Trump and Clinton have – or will – endorse what appears to be thoughtful, careful legislative initiative.

A reader has a question about their smartphone:

So what parts are in my smartphone?

If your phone uses Lithium-ion batteries, the lithium will be the same as astronomers search for in the spectrum of stars, in particular TZO stars.

Molybdenum, another such target for astronomers, is also used in your phone, and may be in short supply, as noted by TechTimes last year. Unfortunately, the article doesn’t state how it’s used. Other articles tend to indicate it’s used in manufacturing circuit boards, but in the end I’m not sure I can make the case for molybdenum being actually in your phone.

I do not see any application for the third metal used, rubidium. However, I’m fairly sure more than just these three are produced by TZO-specific nuclear reactions, and the production of the higher members of the periodic table (above iron, IIRC) have always required exotic conditions, such as supernovas and the like.

The July/August 2016 issue of Discover Magazine has an apparently paper-only issue on astromical Thorne–Żytkow objects (TZOs), of which I’d never heard. From Wikipedia:

A Thorne–Żytkow object is formed when a neutron star collides with a star, typically a red giant or supergiant. The colliding objects can simply be wandering stars. This is only likely to occur in extremely crowded globular clusters. Alternatively, the neutron star could form in abinary system after one of the two stars went supernova. Because no supernova is perfectly symmetric, and because the binding energy of the binary changes with the mass lost in the supernova, the neutron star will be left with some velocity relative to its original orbit. This kick may cause its new orbit to intersect with its companion, or, if its companion is a main-sequence star, it may be engulfed when its companion evolves into a red giant.

I boggle at the thought. And now some in the astronomy community believe the star known as HV 2112 may be the first known example of these objects. SciNews covered the initial announcement more than two years ago here.

When they took a close look at the subtle lines in the spectrum of HV 2112, they found that it contained excess rubidium, lithium and molybdenum.

Past research has shown that normal stellar processes can create each of these elements. But high abundances of all three of these at the temperatures typical of red supergiants is a unique signature of TZOs.

“I am extremely happy that observational confirmation of our theoretical prediction has started to emerge,” said Dr Zytkow from the University of Cambridge, who is a co-author of the paper accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters (arXiv.org version).

Look at your smartphone. Odds are that some of its components were first created within a TZO.

Is it a world-wide movement towards autocratic rule? Here in the United States we’ve seen the candidacy of Donald Trump supported (currently) by an impressive (or frightening), as documented by a CNN Poll as being 42% (+/- 3.5%). Vladimir Putin continues has dominated a nominally democratic Russia for nearly 20 years. In Turkey, President Erdogan is cracking down on dissidents after an attempted military coup, although some question whether Erdogan is strengthening or weakening his position.

And in Israel, a historically strong democracy, question marks are starting to pop up regarding the behavior of Prime Minister Netanyahu. Ben Caspit reports for AL Monitor:

In the last seven years, Netanyahu has inched closer to autocratic rule than any other Israeli leader. He fortified his rulership and has consolidated several key government ministries under his wing. In addition to the premiership, Netanyahu also serves as foreign minister, communications minister, economy minister and regional development minister, in addition to other functions. Though the Communications Ministry is seen as an underfunded and small ministry, Netanyahu has no intentions of ever relinquishing it. …

Culture Minister Miri Regev did not hide the Likud’s aspiration to control the corporation. “It’s inconceivable that we’ll establish a corporation that we won’t control. What’s the point?” she asked. “We put down the money and theybroadcast whatever they want?” Minister of Internal Security Gilad Erdan, who initiated the establishment of the corporation about two years ago, tried to give Regev a lesson in democracy. But he seemed to be talking to a wall. Additional ministers attacked the establishment of the corporation and argued that there were not enough Likud supporters among the journalists in the corporation’s ranks. Others claimed that Naftali Bennett, the head of Orthodox Zionist HaBayit HaYehudi, has control over some of the journalists since they are “skullcap wearers” (Orthodox Jews). At this stage, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, a member of Bennett’s party, lost her cool. She banged on the table and blasted the Likud ministers, saying, “Stop it already with your lies! Learn to control [yourselves] and stop complaining. … You have your own newspaper, what are you whining about?”

The weakening of the free, neutral, independent press is worrisome; the reported behavior of the Likud ministers is horrifying. But it’s also edifying in that it recalls that one of the tools in discovering the activities of the forces of, well, let’s say the power-mad, those who adhere to rigid, tangible orthodoxies rather than the processes of democracy, have become aware that the light shined upon their activities by a free press are a discouragement to their activities and objectives. Their attacks on the free press are a signal event in the degradation of the body politic, and should be viewed with concern, and responded to forcefully, by those who believe that it’s better to have a democracy than a power-made dictator, no matter how scary the rest of the world appears.

After all, we didn’t need Donald Trump to defeat the Nazis; we were just fine with FDR and the Congress, Churchill and Parliament, and all the rest of our allies. Yes, the USSR was run by Stalin – but, alone, they would have failed.

ABG: Permanent sculptures. First, this adorable puppy.

And then, the lizard herd:

Which, for reasons that escape me (oh, I’m tired, the visuals are odd, oh so odd), reminds me of a very charming T-Rex built of scrap metal in Faith, SD. RoadSide America provides a bit of information and this lovely picture:

The artist is John Lopez, who I linked to yesterday.

A sort of ultimate found object sculptor, John Lopez has done some interesting work with scrap metal when not doing his day job – which is …

For the past ten years, John has been working on The City of Presidents project in Rapid City, SD. John Adams, John F. Kennedy and John, Jr., Calvin Coolidge, Teddy Roosevelt and Ulysses S. Grant are a few of the presidents John has placed on the street corners so far.

And here’s a sample of his off-hours work.

More here.

The ABG water garden in close up.

And as a hidden bonus, the coolest cactus I’ve ever seen:

Amazing stuff, dragging a wreck off the seabed.

And for all that I know it’s impractical, and even a negative in many cases, I’d still like to see humanity clean up its messes just like this: pick the whole thing up, salvage what can be salvaged, and make the sea clean again. There’s a few ships, such as World War II oilers and munition ships, that really need to be neutralized and removed.

Who would think that drilling a few holes could stop an earthquake? Kate Ravilious writes about the ambitions of physicist Sébastien Guenneau in NewScientist (23 July 2016, paywall):

But in 2001, French seismologist Philippe Guéguen realised that getting buildings to sway could have unexpected benefits. He was studying the effect on Mexico City of a magnitude 7.4 quake that hit it in September 1995. While various parts of the city should have responded in the same way, some neighbourhoods shook for nearly twice as long as others. Softer sediments wobble more than solid rock, but underlying geology wasn’t enough to account for the discrepancy. Instead, it turned out that tall buildings were creating secondary waves in the ground around them, prolonging the shaking but muting the original surface waves. This suggested that the swaying high-rise towers were redistributing the earthquake energy, and providing some protection.

The idea that the waves themselves could be modified, rather than simply withstood, turned earthquake engineering on its head, says Guéguen, who is based at the Institute of Earth Sciences in Grenoble. The key is controlling the way in which the ground responds to incoming waves.

Guenneau had a surprising idea for how this could be achieved. While simply drilling holes in the soil may not seem like it would have much of an impact, he knew that the principle on which it was based had already achieved the impossible.

A small-scale test nearly worked to perfection, with only the small problem that rather redirecting the energy in another direction, or harmlessly dissipating it, the energy was reflected. They are now working on an improvement.

I have a couple of thoughts.

1. Rather than redirect or dissipate, how about capturing that energy?
2. On a deeper level, how does this disturb the overall system? Is it predictable, or are we setting ourselves up for something bigger? I can’t imagine what, but I do worry about ad hoc fixes that result in bigger problems down the road. Chalk that up to a few disasters of my own in which a fix for one problem lead to larger, unexpected problems somewhere else. I’m not saying a computer program is the same as a natural system … just something to think about.

In a sidebar, another scientist is investigating a similar system for mitigating tsunamis, inspired by the 2004 disaster.

… interrupting our regularly scheduled vacation pics are some of the phlox:

An anomalous phlox, the only one of this color:

A cluster of cleome, perhaps in a gossip section.

And, finally, a random cloud.

Spaceweather.com reports on the misnamed proton arcs:

Aurora photographers see these structures from time to time–tight ribbons of light, sometimes red, sometimes green, writhing across the night sky.  They are commonly called “proton arcs.”

Yet aurora scientists say they probably have nothing to do with protons.

“My opinion, and I believe the consensus of most aurora scientists, is that these arcs are not proton related, ” says Jason Ahrns, a researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, “but I don’t know what does cause them.”

From Spaceweather.com’s gallery:

Taken by Sherri Grant on August 17, 2015 @ Just north east of Val Marie, Saskatchewan, Canada


Having just finished viewing The Day Mars Invaded Earth (1963, aka Spaceraid 63), it’s difficult to find much to praise in connection with this movie, beyond the clear cinematography and excellent audio. A movie about a NASA scientist in charge of the Mars probe, he returns home to his angry wife and their children, only to find various members starting to become terrorized by what it appears to be other members of the family.

It’s true, the 30 seconds of the Mars-roving robot is  inutterably adorable, and the daughter has a certain charming freshness about her. But I could not help but wonder if under the wife’s ornate hair style there might lurk a motorcycle helmet; the little boy could have been used to greater affect; and despite the use of a noir ending, the entire plot sadly crosses the line from tantalizing to insipid. I’m not sure why: we are not overly informed as to what’s happening, the special effects are adequate. It may be the characters, who do not exceed the limitations we automatically place on them. The wife is angry, then terrified, with no particular innovation in her responses; the husband understands her anger, is preoccupied with his data, but has heroically chosen to work on his marriage rather than the data; the daughter is dutiful with both parents and with her boyfriend (lucky guy), who in turn gets so little camera-time that when he is offed, we feel nothing. Even the assistant scientist, despite the devotion of a freakish pair of glasses, has little impact in his bizarre ending.

Perhaps the problem lies in its theme: I couldn’t identify one, really. Don’t explore? Don’t send cute probes? Nothing really stands out. The morality of the theme Don’t go to Mars! has little impact or relevance on the typical movie-goer.

Don’t bother with this one.

Oh, yeah, the family estate is immense. Makes you wonder if it was actually one of the homes of William Randolph Hearst.

Dipping into the old fishin’ stream, I hooked a bit of mail that, in part, starts out thisaways:

Charles Krauthammer is a brilliant man. Really. A man of character who lives life in a wheelchair. Among his other careers, he is a doctor of psychiatry. He was a devoted Democratic activist and presidential advisor. An independent thinker who won the Pulitzer Prize. He has both liberal and conservative stances and writes a weekly column in the National Review which is syndicated to 400 newspapers. He has been a regular panelist on a variety of programs, including Fox News. Mr Krauthammer is an independent thinker and has become a neoconservative. Why am I telling you this?, Because a brilliant man of character as he is can clearly see much that we do not.

Please read this article.

Recently, Charles Krauthammer alluded that he had no doubt some of the 30k emails Hillary deleted from her private e-mail server very likely had references to the Clinton Foundation, which would be illegal and a conflict of interest.

The first fatal weakness shows up here – “… he had no doubt …“. Why? Well, the article doesn’t say. Apparently he’s got the ol’ second sight.

The second weakness is that the introduction of this brilliant man is in itself a fallacy, the appeal to authority that has been discredited by skeptics. It’s going through your mind, right? A doctor of psychiatry and so many other careers, despite his physical disability, he must be so strong; he holds positions on both ends of the political spectrum, why, he must be fair-minded. Sorry, none of this makes any real sense, once you start thinking about it.

Finally, the factual parts are no doubt correct, and in fact I’ve heard Mr. Krauthammer described as a neoconservative many times. The writer depends on the ignorance of the reader to skip that little bit – but if you’ve been paying attention, it’s the neoconservatives who cried out for the war in Afghanistan, and then for the invasion of Iraq – indeed, it is their signature pair of achievements. But a large percentage of Americans do not approve of these wars, in retrospect.

Afghanistan, as ever, has proven to be a hellhole, while Iraq’s war was founded on fraudulent assertions. Both have resulted in immense civilians casualties, and to proclaim they have achieved their objectives is specious in the face of the number of casualties, disruptions, and unintended consequences (Islamic State, etc) that were a direct result of them.

I’ve never heard of a neocon admitting the error. Indeed, many of them call for bombing Iran, resulting, without a doubt, in many more thousands of innocent deaths, not to mention the comparatively fewer American deaths.

So I just threw this fish back into the flood, as it appeared to be black and moldy, snarling with the sharpest of teeth, just like a lamprey.

(Sea lamprey mouth (Photo: T. Lawrence, GLFC))

The sea-going neocon lamprey.