Category Archives: Uncategorized

It’s just lovely.

Until you have to shovel it.

We just finished Season 4 of The Expanse, and we’ve been impressed with all facets of this show, from the writing to the dialog to the characters to the imagination required to bring a complete future universe into being. The only area skimped on is humor, and when it does appear, I inevitably point at the screen and scream, Hey, it’s humor!!!!! at my Arts Editor.

I think I’ve done that maybe four times now.

If you like science fiction, gritty drama, and a sense that there’s more going on than you can shake a stick at, take a peek at this one. And supposedly a Season 5 is coming.

A reader writes about student monitoring technology:

If I were a modern student, I’d try to refuse to install their damn app. And then I’d also turn off Bluetooth on my phone (actually, I already do that).

If I were young, I might go along with it; as an older student, I doubt I’d bother with their app.

I wonder about the specific objections to Bluetooth might be. On rare occasion, I use it at work to block out loud neighbors, in combination with my headphones.

In my quest to use independent experts to evaluate what I cannot, I turn to Lawfare’s Benjamin Wittes, even though he does not much care for President Trump, for an evaluation of the reactions to the DOJ’s Inspector General Horowitz’ report on his investigation into the FBI investigation into the Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election:

It is thus important to emphasize the degree to which the Horowitz report debunks the surrounding conspiracy theories. I don’t mean debunk in the way that the Mueller report is said to debunk the idea of “collusion” between the Trump campaign and the Russians. The Mueller report, after all, found copious evidence of contacts, interactions, and cooperation between Trump campaign officials and Russian cutouts and agents—just not enough evidence to prosecute anyone for coordinating with the Russian electoral interference efforts. No, the Horowitz report debunks the “Witch Hunt” conspiracy theories on a far different level—the level of finding that a whole bunch of things alleged to have been done corruptly were, in fact, done on the level, done in compliance with policy for perfectly good reasons, or not done at all. …

A few key additional points that bear emphasis:

• The investigation was properly predicated and began when the FBI said it began.

• The FBI did not improperly use confidential human sources.

• The FBI did not use confidential human sources to gather intelligence on the Trump campaign at all.

• There is no relationship between the conduct of the investigation and text exchanges between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.

On some of these issues, the inspector general raises legitimate policy concerns, which I will discuss in a later post. For present purposes, the relevant point is simply that the behavior that has occupied hundreds of presidential tweets and countless hours on Fox News—and dominated innumerable ranting speeches by Republican members of Congress—did not happen. Not that these things can’t be proved or, in Mueller-speak, that the evidence “does not establish” them. They are just not true.

I would not dwell on this point if those who advanced these theories showed any sign of backing off of them. But they don’t. The day the inspector general’s report was issued, President Trump cited it triumphantly for a proposition it decisively rejects: “This was an overthrow of government. This was an attempted overthrow, and a lot of people were in on it. And they got caught. They got caught red-handed,” he said.

And etc. The point is that all the conspiracy theories put forth by Trump and his Republican cohorts were effectively disproven by Horowitz.

I should like Mr. Horowitz to be called in front of a Congressional committee yet again, and in his opening statement simply say,

Every time an elected official of our government uses my report to claim a conspiracy has existed, or continues to exist, to bring down President Trump, he or she is a liar. End of discussion. There are no nuances, no gaps to skate in, no pillars to hide behind. If you cite this report as confirming a conspiracy, you should be removed from office in disgrace.

It’d certainly clarify his findings.

Following on the heels of a positive view of the future of shipping comes a negative view of the current state of shipping. From The Independent:

Global shipping companies have spent billions fitting vessels with “cheat devices” that will allow them to pollute water while still satisfying new emissions legislation, environmental groups have warned.

More than $12bn (£9.7bn) has been spent on the devices, known as open-loop scrubbers, which extract sulphur from the exhaust fumes of ships that run on heavy fuel oil.

This means the vessels meet standards demanded by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) that kick in on 1 January.

The sulphur emitted by the ships is processed by the scrubber, which in turn discharges as a liquid which contains pollutant properties which have been found to pose a risk to sea life. …

A total of 3,756 ships, both in operation and under order, have already had scrubbers installed according to DNV GL, the world’s largest ship classification company.

Only 65 of these vessels have had closed-loop scrubbers installed only, a version of the device that does not discharge into the sea and stores the extracted sulphur in tanks before discharging it at a safe disposal facility in a port.

Wärtsilä Open Loop Scrubber.

“Cheat devices” is a loaded phrase when it comes to contraptions which satisfy a quasi-legal requirement, isn’t it? So I’m irritated; the fault clearly lies with the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), the issuer of the standard. The standard rebuttal is that it’s the responsibility of the shippers to meet the standards, not to save the world; that’s the responsibility of the IMO, or even further up the chain, say, to the United Nations.

Wärtsilä Closed Loop Scrubber.

This tiresomely familiar argument ignores the simple fact that shippers, or their proxies, undoubtedly influenced the negotiations. As interested parties, or stakeholders in the current vernacular, they can legitimately argue – at least in most folks’ views – that they deserve a place at the table^[1].

However, this stakeholder argument ignores a simple fact about the shipping industry. In order to abstract this to more situations, let’s define concerned commercial entities (CCEs) as organizations whose primary purpose is to provide some product or service to a market in hopes of gaining a monetary profit. By both default and by societal design, they do not generally concern themselves with the impact, societal or environmental, of their service or product, although of course there may be exceptions. Such concerns usually run counter to their goals and methods, and thus get short shrift in the world of human desires.

When a CCE either overtly or covertly attempts to influence the formation of legislation meant to regulate them and improve the world^[2], it therefore does not share the goal of the legislation, and I have to wonder if the stakeholder argument really holds water. Unfortunately for me (but perhaps fortunately for a young political science or sociology researcher), that’d be the subject of a research paper, and I’m not in a position to be aware of any such research.

Another point illustrating the short-sighted nature of CCEs is this:

The ICCT [International Council on Clean Transportation] has estimated that cruise ships with scrubbers will consume around 4 million tons of heavy fuel oil in 2020 and will discharge 180 million tons of contaminated scrubber washwater overboard.

“About half of the world’s roughly 500 cruise ships have or will soon have scrubbers installed,” said Mr Comer. “Cruise ships operate in some of the most beautiful and pristine areas on the planet, making this all the more concerning.”

Assuming the article refers to the polluting open-loop scrubbers, I have to wonder at the quality of the cruise liners’ owners’ thought processes. They’re basically pissing in their very own product. Who wants to go on cruises in disasterized waters^[3]? Yet, here they are installing devices which will ultimately destroy one of the things they’re selling.

Perhaps they all worried that, if they installed the closed-loop scrubbers, they’d be disadvantaged by the cost. Perhaps they should have banded together and agreed that all would install them, and thus save the commons which they exploit. I wish I knew if that idea ever came up, and what really shot it down.

¹ In the general case, there are cases of covert proxy organizations being created by industries purely to influence legislation to the advantage of industry, without regard to the greater goals which the legislation was originated to accomplish. They often masquerade as “citizen organizations” representing popular opinion, when they are, in fact, no such thing. This is a tactic borrowed from politics; no particular brand of politics is implied, as tactics are rarely, if ever, restricted to any particular political stripe.

² Pomposity at its worst, yet I could not find a better descriptor.

³ Yes, yes, I know there is such a thing as Disaster Tourists. Work with me here, people!

Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) follows a donkey named Balthazar as he moves from owner to owner, sometimes bought, sometimes stolen, sometimes discarded. Those in command of his life do various things to him, love some of the people in their lives, hate others, all with carefully expressionless faces. Eventually, the donkey is shot and dies, and the movie comes to an end.

The cinematography was excellent.

Now I’ve reviewed some other views of the film, and I see someone writing for Wikipedia states,

The story was inspired by Fyodor Dostoyevsky‘s The Idiot^[3] and each episode in Balthazar’s life represents one of the seven deadly sins. Bresson later stated that the film was “made up of many lines that intersect one another” and that Balthazar was meant to be a symbol of Christian faith.

Oddly enough, I’ve been reading The Idiot for about a year, now.

As I’m not Christian and certainly have not drunk deeply of that mythology, I may not be well suited to be an audience for it. Nevertheless, I must continue to insist I detested the illogical actions of the characters, and their expressionless faces continue to bug me. Perhaps it really is a fabulous movie, but it doesn’t get my vote for Best of All Time. J. Hoberman, quoted in the Chicago Reader, criticizes people like me:

“To not get Bresson is to not get the idea of motion pictures—it’s to have missed that train the Lumiére brothers filmed arriving at Lyon station 110 years ago.”

The article’s author, Drew Hunt, is a bit nicer:

Such a statement is funny and ultimately true, but it also places an unnecessary burden on watching a Bresson film. Ultimately, they’re really not that difficult to parse. There’s a reason adjectives like “spiritual” and “humanist” and “transcendent” are used so often when talking about his work: it isn’t as important to “get” a Bresson film—or any film, for that matter—as it is to simply experience one.

But then Hunt insists that Au Hasard Balthazar is the best Bresson has produced:

Bresson’s richest and most profound film, a parable of sin and suffering that considers the human cost of spiritualism with Dostoevskian complexity. Plenty of hyperbole has been lobbed its way—Jean-Luc Godard said “Everyone who sees it will be absolutely astonished, because this film is really the world in an hour and a half,” and Andrew Sarris paradoxically claimed “It stands by itself as one of the loftiest pinnacles of artistically realized emotional experience”—but none of it feels unearned. This is one of a kind.

I just feel sorry for the donkey. If he’s the stand-in for Christianity, then it’s not that he’s annoyed by humanity – he’s bloody well dead. I suppose that he dies in the commission of a smuggling crime might be meaningful, but by the end of the movie I’m too tired to make fun of it.

From CNN:

It’s so cold in Minnesota, school buses are sliding down icy streets

Totally misleading, folks. Here I am in St. Paul, MN, looking at the thermometer and it shows 33.4°F, with an error range of ±1°F if I remember the packaging properly. That measurement reflects the day’s temperature range, really – I woke up to see it at 33.4° as well.

And the average high for December? 27°F. We’re not all that cold.

The real problem is a mix of rain and sleet, which it’s been doing, on and off, all day. If we have buses going sideways down the road, it’s no surprise. The rain hits the asphalt that’s colder than 32°, freezes, repeat and rinse.

Yeah, I haven’t ventured outside today. A little scary out there.

WaPo provides a useful chart in response to President Trump’s tweets proclaiming himself to be leading the greatest economy ever seen:

For me this raises a small horde of questions:

1. What’s the connection between stock market performance and the economy? The one is not a perfect proxy for the other.
2. As the WaPo article notes, shouldn’t the Fed get more credit? And what are the dangers of the actions it took to stimulate the economy? Why do we have to drop our prime lending rate to nearly 0% in order to stimulate the borrowing necessary to invest in the economy? Doesn’t this signal a profound structural problem?
3. How does the market represent the costs accompanying deregulation, which is one of the few levers the President has to hand? These costs are such things as added pollution, damage to wildlife, and other difficult-to-measure damage which isn’t going to show up on any company’s balance sheet, and thus not in market numbers. Shouldn’t we be adding these considerations to an evaluation of the Executive’s performance?
4. Each of these Presidents begin with a market that is somewhere on a spectrum of bearish to bullish, and it’s never the same, but the measurement is from that point – which makes this an apples and oranges comparison. For example, President Obama inherited a tottering economy, and as it recovered it was very easy to gain 53%. Trump, on the other hand, inherited an economy that had been stabilized and a market that reflected the same, and it’s continued to chug along despite a tax cut designed to benefit the elite 1%, various tariff wars, and a rapidly expanding national debt. I’m not even sure if Trump should be credited for his 44.6% “performance,” criticized for not doing better, or simply written off as not having that much influence.

But, most of all, I want to know why WaPo has permitted President Trump to define the parameters of the game by which he pursues his reelection campaign. Frankly, the performance of the economy is a poor and misleading metric. The President is the Executive Branch, and because he is responsible for executing the law, he himself should be held to the highest standards of the law. That should be the primary metric by which he is judged. His impeachment has been the subject of accusations of partisanship by Congressional Republicans, but the evidence, and its interpretation to Trump’s disadvantage even by Republicans such as Schoenfeld, Amash, Rubin, Boot, and Coleman, suggests Trump’s guilt in the matter of the Ukraine affair is solid and worthy of conviction.

President Trump has spent a lot of time squawking about his inherited economy, but this is little more than a sleight-of-hand trick, appealing to people’s economic interest and suggesting a good economy voids any responsibility on his part to follow the law. And it’s working, I’m sure – much to the dejection of those who believe in the value of rule of law and civil rights. Those who’ve permitted themselves to be sucked in by this mere economic argument, mendacious and illusionary as it may be, may live to regret it.

A couple of months ago I was a little puzzled at a report that the major investment firms were reducing their trading commissions to zero, but, at the time, the report was a little short on the whys, just noting that Schwab was leading the way. But a couple of weeks ago my wonder was cleared up by this report in CNN/Business:

Robinhood’s free-trading ethos turned the online brokerage industry on its head.

Established players were forced to rewrite their business models by abolishing commissions. The extreme disruption even prompted the blockbuster merger of industry leaders Charles Schwab (SCHW) and TD Ameritrade (AMTD).

Robinhood, the zero-commission online broker that recently surpassed 10 million users, is celebrating the rapid change it helped usher in.

“Robinhood pioneered commission-free investing in stocks,” Vlad Tenev, Robinhood’s co-CEO, told CNN Business. “We can be really proud of not just creating a world where our own customers don’t pay commissions, but customers of other brokerages have benefited as well.”

When it comes to investing, it’s important to understand how money is made and lost, and I didn’t understand how Robinhood – and all these other firms – were managing to stay afloat if they were offering one of their services for free. A little digging brought this Money article to light, and it contains that answer.

One way Robinhood can provide commission-free trades is by making money on the interest from the assets it holds within accounts, a practice that’s not unusual for brokerages.

Ah! But there’s more.

The other way it makes money, though, is through a subscription to gain access to margin (or borrowing money to invest more than you can afford with your own money).

For these subscriptions, you’re essentially paying a monthly fee to borrow money to trade stocks. And if those trades go sour, you could lose your money very quickly.

It’s worth expanding that cautionary paragraph into noting that Robinhood, by lending you that money, is assuming risk as well in that if your margin investment fails, they could lose their money as well if you go bankrupt; the subscription fee ameliorates, if not eliminates, that risk.

If you’re considering using Robinhood, or already an active member, the Money article is worth a read, although like any article on investing and investments it should be taken with a carefully considered grain of salt. Money is definitely an old-line publication (more than 45 years of existence), and in this area it should be considered to be weighted towards the conservative end of the opinion spectrum, or protective of old-line institutions, so when it cautions against using Robinhood, keep that in mind. But it’s arguments are worth the evaluation if you’re an investor, particularly if you’re a younger investor who grew up with a smartphone in your hands.

Continuing the theme, if you’re in or considering the Robinhood camp, it’s worth playing devil’s advocate with yourself. While I’m a slug and not likely to use Robinhood rather than my current adviser, I’ve been intermittently playing the role for the last couple of weeks. Here’s what has caught my attention:

• Investment services often come bundled with adviser services, and Robinhood marks a potentially large disruption of this tradition. Traditions often exist for a reason, and this is worth carefully considering. On the pro side of investment advice is that markets are complex feedback animals that can fool even the pros; unless you’re a pro, why do you think you should be using Robinhood to avoid fees? On the other hand, the ethics of some advisers have been sadly lacking, and the industry, as a whole, often resists pressure for licensed professionals to pledge to put their clients first. Of course, the best do for the best of reasons (it’s both honorable and profitable to do so), but others cannot see beyond the tip of their nose and lead their clients down the path to financial hell – there’s not much repeat business down in that hole. And once you make the mistake of investing on a high note and selling on a low note, it’s rare that you’ll get your money back. Robinhood certainly won’t cover your losses. Oddly enough, your only chance of recovering a loss is if you got caught in an investment scam, such as the one put forth by ProNetLink (PNLK) back during the dot com bubble. I put in about $20,000, thought I’d lost it all, and then SEC enforcement actions, IIRC, managed to recover nearly all of that money back. But – ironically – if it’s not a scam, if you just screwed up through inexperience, wave goodbye to your money. You won’t get it back. Period.
• Robinhood doesn’t offer free investment advice. Think of this as unbundling. Traditionally, you’d pay your adviser for the advice and for the actual access to the market; they’d also make money off your uninvested assets, as does Robinhood. The problem called churn can then appear, as a dishonorable adviser recommends numerous buys and sells, saddling you with commissions and short-term gain taxes. Robinhood may reduce or eliminate this problem, as the adviser loses the general motivation to recommend numerous buys and sells; however, it’s not impossible for an adviser to have covert relations with companies they are recommending, and which benefit in some way from having their stock moving in the markets. When officers of the company own large amounts of the stock, they wait for the price to rise to an unwarranted peak, and then sell. This is often called pumping and dumping, and a dishonest investment adviser can easily participate in these schemes. Unbundling is not a panacea.So is this unbundling a good or bad thing? As an investment adviser becomes less dependent on commissions, they also lose that income they were presumably making through investment of your uninvested assets. Therefore, I would expect advice to cost more. Is that bad? Is cheap advice of the same quality as expensive advice? Examples can go both ways, so I just suggest you approach the question carefully. An up-and-comer may have cheap, quality advice as a way to establish a position; if you find such a source, be aware the price will go up once the advisor becomes established. And, while numerical analysis of the results of the advice is a worthy pursuit, that’s not the singular method of evaluation. It’s worth considering the adviser themselves: do they come off as fast talkers, or charismatic? Do some research on their reputations and backgrounds, if they’re independents or working for a bigger organization. This advice worked just as well 50 years ago as now; I reiterate it because the pervasive Silicon Valley belief that computers solve everything just ain’t so.
• In the CNN/Business article, Robinhood co-CEO Vlad Tenev is quoted as saying:
  

  “It just didn’t make sense,” Tenev said of the trading commissions charged to buy and sell stocks. “These were purely electronic transactions.”

  Either Tenev is deceitful or not thinking very well. There’s a tremendous amount of infrastructure and intellectual effort that went into putting together an Internet and the ability to run stock markets in an electronic format, rather than the old-style traders shouting out bids on a stock market floor. I’m a cautious fan of the consumer paying directly for what they are consuming, and, while I understand that makes me a bit of an oddball in this age of commercials paying for everything, starting way back in the Age of Radio^[1], I really do wonder how that secondary approach to paying for that access  – because the elevated prices of products paying for those commercials means you pay, nonetheless, for that access – tends to mutate the transaction in insalubrious ways. That said, I don’t know how this plays out – pro-rating all these buys against the fixed costs will reduce the cost per action to pennies. This doesn’t seem to be a Tragedy of the Commons situation, since the resource will be practically inexhaustible; however, as Money points out, psychologically this is a situation in which the inexperienced trader will be encouraged to indulge in a lot of activity, and that, in investment terms, tends to lead to disaster. Keeping a brake on activity in the form of fees seems like a good idea, no matter how insulted the investor might be at the idea that they should be reined in.

• Fractional shares:
  

  … Robinhood announced a series of new features on Thursday, including the launch of fractional share trading. That feature will allow investors to invest in stocks and ETFs with as little as $1 — regardless of the price tag.

  Some young investors may balk at cost of even buying a single share of Amazon (AMZN), Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA) and Google owner Alphabet (GOOGL) — each of which are priced at north of $1,000. Even Apple (AAPL) stock is priced at nearly $300.

  I note that CNN/Business glosses an important point – the benefits of ownership. This is not merely the right to share in dividends and capital gains when you sell, but to also vote at annual meetings. A share represents some fraction of ownership. For some investors, this is the most important aspect of owning a public company. Here’s what Robinhood states when it comes to fractional shares and ownership:

  We will aggregate and report votes on fractional shares.

  I don’t even know what this means! My most charitable reading of this is that it means a fractional share owner can vote their fraction, which will then be aggregated with all other fractional share owners held beneficially by Robinhood. So, I hope, the impact of your ownership is not negated by owning a minor piece of a share. CNN/Business‘ loss of focus on the truly important is troubling.

• On the same topic, though, is circumvention. Step back and review the ultimate goal of an investment evaluation of a company^[3]: in relation to its future prospects, is its market capitalization overvalued, equable, or undervalued? Remember, share price does not embody company value, but rather it’s merely the result of the equation
  

  Share price = Market cap / Share count

  A company can modify its share price simply through the use of a share split, which reduces the price of a stock share while increasing the number of shares held by all shareholders, thus not materially impacting shareholders, or, more rarely, through a reverse split, which reduces the number of shares held by each shareholder and increases the price per share. In neither case is the market cap modified.

  My point? Because companies can utilize these actions to control the ultimate price per share using an action generally both legal and ethical^[2], then it’s worth asking why they do or don’t. In the case of the relatively rare reverse split, it’s because certain markets do not like to carry what are called penny stocks; they require a share of stock to have a price greater than some arbitrary value, such as $1.50. A company desires to stay listed for two reasons: because it lends credibility to it in the eyes of its customers, and because, if they have a treasury of their own shares, it stabilizes the value of that treasury, which might otherwise become quite volatile in penny stock land. So companies that are struggling will use a reverse split to pump up the price per share, even though it has no direct impact on their vital market cap number – although, indirectly, if they are delisted from a market, their market cap could plunge.

  But why not lower a high price per share? Not only does a high price per share discourage small investors, it also discourages those who use call and put options as part of their investment strategy, as these contracts operate in terms of 100 shares, which makes the requirements of a stock with a high price per share out of the reach of all but the very well off investor. Selling a put on Berkshire Hathaway’s BRK-A stock, currently priced at nearly $338920/share, would put me on the hook for roughly $33,800,000, depending on the strike price, if the put were executed.

  Warren Buffet, CEO and Chairman of the aforementioned Berkshire Hathaway, does have a statement on the matter:

  “I don’t want anybody buying Berkshire thinking that they can make a lot of money fast. They’re not going to do it, in the first place. And some of them will blame themselves, and some of them will blame me. They’ll all be disappointed. I don’t want disappointed people.

  The idea of giving people crazy expectations has terrified me from the moment I first started selling stocks.”

  In other words, the reasons for keeping a price per share high may be varied and even personal.

  Which brings me back to circumvention. Robinhood may be laying bare the mechanisms for circumvention of corporate intentions, and I don’t know if this comes out of the wash as a bright white or a big blot on your shirt. I suppose it’ll depend on your view of corporations: are they all evil with malicious intentions, or can they have ethical intentions which actually work to the advantage of investors, even when those investors therefore cannot invest in the company? Your call.

• Finally, Robinhood’s stated ideals of making investing more available reminds me of some observations made just prior the Great Depression (the one back in the 1930s; the Great Recession of 2008-2009 is a different and not as enormous dip in the world economy), and that was that a number of investors had made (and, for some, subsequently lost) fortunes in the market, and now every taxi driver and janitor was investing in hopes of making it big, just like these new millionaires (back then, that term really meant something). You can bet that when the Great Depression hit, all of those little investors lost it all and ended up in the soup lines. Now we see Robinhood, perhaps with the best of intentions, attempting to engender the same toxic enthusiasm for investing.Sure, it’s merely a similarity I’m noting. Could be nothing more. But it’s worth investigating this further if you think Robinhood is great stuff, and to think about the consequences for you if the market folds like an origami unicorn under a boot heel.

So there you are, some thoughts on Robinhood. I’ll tell you what, I’m just glad to get them out of my head.

¹ Note that I write from an American context; my understanding is that in other countries, you often had to buy a license to use your TV to access broadcasts. I have no personal experience with this model, and whether it meant there were no commercials, how much cheating occurred, etc. In yesterday’s Age of Cable, you paid for that access AND you still had commercials. I’m old enough to remember the first cable companies advertising that buying cable meant No More Commercials! So much for that corporate promise.

² If you came to a stop at the word ethical and snarled, you need to go back and review your knowledge of how share prices relate to market capitalization, and what this all means. Regrettably, many people don’t stray out of the realm of share prices, which is a hobble on achieving their investment goals.

³ Most investors invest to make money, but some people use the public markets for influencing companies, so my statement isn’t entirely accurate.

For me, it’s quite one thing when one side of an argument, whether it be polite or or political, critiques another, and quite another when a side critiques itself – especially when the critique is more or less a final condemnation. While the former can have a certain informational and analytical value, the latter, benefiting from insider access and knowledge of how the alleged ethical system is being violated through the actions of that side, can deliver revelatory broadsides which the constituents should find troubling.

Gabriel Schoenfeld, an adviser to Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, delivers a middlin’ editorial in USA Today on just such a theme:

Republicans in Congress are avidly denying the obvious truths about President Donald Trump’s serial criminality. Though they lack the votes to stop impeachment in the House of Representatives, they are poised to acquit Trump in the Senate, where they easily can block the necessary supermajority of 67 votes required to evict a president from the White House.

The facts of the case are damning. Not only is Trump on record, in a document released by the White House itself, of engaging in extortion and bribery, but his conversation with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky was the culmination of a plot months in the making. Yet no matter the facts of the imbroglio, the Republican legislators either baldly deny them or interpret them in phantasmagorical ways. …

Acquittal in the Senate, when it comes, will be an example not of democratic deliberation, of the careful sifting and weighing of facts to arrive at some approximation of truth, but the exercise of raw political power. …

This exercise of political power in raw fashion could prove to have profound consequences for the future of human freedom. As the possibility of reason and compromise are destroyed, a venerable constitutional democracy, once the beacon of hope around the world, is coming undone.

Another problem, of course, is that many folks don’t pay attention to the national political news, being far too busy keeping body & soul together, and those that do inevitably see it through the prism of whichever news purveyor they happen to favor, whether it be a traditional network broadcaster such as CBS, a cable site such as the enormously popular yet deceitful Fox News, or an out and out silly website such as the discredited InfoWars, Breitbart, etc.

That’s what makes Schoenfeld more interesting. A Republican adviser who’s not just attacking some rival Republican, but condemning nearly an entire party for forgetting its way. Like I said, if Schoenfeld was a Democrat, it’d be easy to ignore him; as a Republican (perhaps former, I cannot tell), his words are infinitely more important, and as they echo those of many other Republicans, current and former, it should be a message to the Republican base: Something’s gone seriously wrong with the President and his bodyguard of Senators. Your parents and grandparents would never have put up with this dishonorable behavior. Why are you?

The Aeronauts (2019), “inspired by true events,” is the story of how the first meteorologist, astronomer James Glaisher, managed to study “the air”, and his first ascent by balloon. His pilot? The fictional widow Amelia Wren, trained by her late husband, Pierre. Since funding is scarce, she’s the one with all the glitz, while Glaisher is all business, bringing all of his science gear in preference to his oilskins, not willing to give up an iota of data just because his fingers might become a trifle cold. A high point comes when she tosses her dog from the ascending balloon.

Quite the guy.

Flashbacks interspersing the main story tell us Glaisher’s and Wren’s backstories, Glaisher in the traditional role of a man with huge plans which get the horse’s laugh from his colleagues at the Royal Academy, while Wren must wrestle with the social restraints put on women during the Victorian period of the 1860s, especially those who’ve been widowed. The movie wisely withholds the reason Wren is reluctant to pilot Glaisher’s balloon, but we do eventually learn that her husband sacrificed himself to save her in a balloon accident.

But the primary story is their ascent. Very little was known of the atmosphere at the time, so we see them learn of the various layers and how they vary in terms of temperature and movement; they survive the theatrical violence of a lightning storm; and then wrestle with the far more deceitful opponents of freezing temperatures and hypoxia. All the while, Glaisher works with his instruments and his freezing hands, as well as his sense of inferiority brought on by his humble upbringing.

Wren is in a worse place, between memories of her late husband and a stubbornly obstreperous passenger who didn’t bring his heavy weather gear. When hypoxia comes into play, and she finds the balloon’s vent is frozen shut, it’s up to her to find her way to the top of the balloon and undo the damage. This is quite gripping.

On the way precipitously down, though, it’s Glaisher’s turn to recognize that the heaviest item on the balloon is the basket itself, and he’s the one who keeps Wren from sacrificing herself, cuts the basket free, and the converts the balloon into … well, that would be telling. But it warmed my heart to see such cleverness.

And, truth be told, my heart needed a bit of warming at that point. For all that the story is well-written and well-told, the acting mostly excellent (actually, Redmayne reminded me of other movies I’ve seen him in, and not in a good way), and that special effects were spot-on, I was left feeling that the story seemed a trifle warmed-over. While it’s not wrong to use elements over and over again, something unique must come out of it, and that part wasn’t at all clear. I’m not quite sure what that might have been better in this instance, but in some ways this felt just a bit like yesterday’s spaghetti leftovers. Not bad today, but not as good as yesterday.

Therianthropy:

Therianthropy is the mythological ability of human beings to metamorphose into other animals by means of shapeshifting. It is possible that cave drawings found at Les Trois Frères, in France, depict ancient beliefs in the concept. The most well known form of therianthropy is found in stories concerning werewolves. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “44,000-year-old hunting scene is earliest painted ‘story’ ever found,” Alison George, NewScientist (14 December 2019):

The human-like figures appear to have animal characteristics, as seen in the detail pictured above. “They are half human, half animal. If you look closely, one has a tail and another seems to have a bird head,” says Aubert.

Such depictions are known as therianthropes. The oldest previously known example was the Lion Man statue found in Germany’s Hohlenstein-Stadel cave. Carved around 40,000 years ago, it combines a lion’s head and human body. Until now, it was the earliest evidence of the ability of humans to conceive of things that don’t exist in nature – a capacity linked to imagination and spirituality. “Now it seems the same thing was happening in South-East Asia, but even earlier,” says Aubert.

Not quite congruent, are they?

From The Guardian comes a nice little energy scheme involving physics:

Britain’s cheapest “virtual battery” could be created by hoisting and dropping 12,000-tonne weights – half the weight of the Statue of Liberty – down disused mine shafts, according to Imperial College London.

The surprising new source of “gravity energy” is being developed by Gravitricity, an Edinburgh-based startup, which hopes to use Britain’s old mines to make better use of clean electricity at half the cost of lithium-ion batteries.

Gravitricity said its system effectively stores energy by using electric winches to hoist the weights to the top of the shaft when there is plenty of renewable energy available, then dropping the weights hundreds of metres down vertical shafts to generate electricity when needed. …

Charlie Blair, Gravitricity’s managing director, said: “The beauty of this is that this can be done multiple times a day for many years, without any loss of performance. This makes it very competitive against other forms of energy storage – including lithium-ion batteries.”

This one looks good.

I like it. Efficient, presumably quiet, utilizing otherwise wasted locations, not likely to billow clouds of pollution and climate change gases. Yeah!

This came to my Arts Editor today:

If this were official, why mail it to Direct Mail Processing, LLC? Yeah, it’s a scam. Here’s more info. We’re just irritated by it, but this scam must work if some people fall for it.

This is Humphrey Bogart losing money.

I finished Beat The Devil (1953) last night.

It took me two years, I think.

It has Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, and some other stars. They’re all playing swindlers and ne’er-do-wells.

I hated it.

Having reviewed the Wikipedia entry, I don’t recall a voiceover, so I may have seen a 4K restoration of the original, rather than the voiceover version. Or not. I think my brain is trying to salvage the brain cells I used on it.

Know the guy who does the Chipotle wall hangings? No? He does other stuff. I like this:

There’s an awful lot of those huddled figures, though. My Arts Editor likes this:

More here.

Readers comment on the Boeing Board of Directors handling of the dismissal of the CEO:

Hear, hear Hue! Boeing lost their way. It seems to be a larger management issue or the loss of their primary goal. Safety first. Instead they build a new plane that pilots don’t know how to handle. All they’ve done since the MAX crashes is treat it like a PR problem. I know Boeing employees that are very angry. I hope they find their way.

Indeed. It is disappointing, though, to see that Muilenburg holds a Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering; this cannot be blamed on an MBA concentrating on profit.

Another:

I suspect the board itself highly profited off the same attention to profit at all costs priorities of the CEO, so in more than one way, they are complicit and simply paying off one of their own. There was a long chain of decisions that lead to this fiasco, not just one.

Possibly. On the other hand, the Wikipedia page on Muilenburg includes this action by the board:

On October 11, 2019, Boeing announced that the board had voted to separate the roles of chairman and chief executive officer, both of which were held by Muilenburg.

Generally, I don’t like to see the CEO holding a board position as well, since that makes the CEO his or her own boss, so at least the Boeing board is making motions of responsibility. Whether they’re honest or not will need to be evaluated in the future.

Right here in Minnesota we’re having a Presidential Primary in March of next year, and the Republican ballot has been restricted to a single name. Jim Martin is unhappy:

[The Republican central committee] interpreted the new [Minnesota] law to mean that it has the power to choose which name will be printed on its political party’s ballot, and (more importantly) whose will not^[3] despite the desire of other candidates to politically associate with its related political party^[4]. For the first time since we obtained statehood in 1858, we Minnesotans are unable to politically associate with the candidates who are seeking our support. In other words, you and I must first obtain the express permission of the central committees in order to advance the nomination of a candidate seeking to be elected!

But, it gets worse. As an absentee voter, I will receive and turn in my ballot early. As the candidate I desire to advance might not be printed on the primary ballot I receive, I will have to write-in that candidate’s name. However, the central committee is not required to inform anyone what names will be canvassed until about a month after I submit my ballot. In other words, I don’t have any way of knowing if my vote will be counted at the time I cast it!

Our longstanding history of a healthy and honest republic is damaged; our democracy is breaking down; the walkway has been paved for an egregious Soviet-style election process; and, as I demonstrated earlier^[5], the corrupt election practices allowed by this law is openly taking place.

And he’s filed a lawsuit with the Minnesota Supreme Court. When I first discussed it, I skipped over this quote from Minnesota Republican chairwoman Jennifer Carnahan:

“My job as Chairwoman is to make sure we deliver our 10 electoral votes to the President.”

It’s really indicative of the second-raters who now run the machinery of the Republicans that they believe their job is to support President Trump in his reelection campaign, rather than give the Republican Party’s base the opportunity to select the best candidate available, whether his or her name is Trump, Walsh, Sanford, or Weld. Right now the Republican upper echelons appear to be a bunch of terrified mice, ready to do anything their master directs, rather than actually think about what’s best for country and party.

What does Carnahan fear? That Trump isn’t the big winner in Minnesota that he should be, if we’re to believe the polls? Or that if other, serious candidates appear, the base might look at them and decide they’re tired of the rampant incompetency and corruption of Trump and pick someone else?

Or even just make him look bad by winning more than 10%?

Carnahan looks like a fool. She really should retract her statement and her position. Put the other names on the ballot! Go Martin!

It appears the story concerning former Governor Matt Bevin’s (R-KY) use of the pardon power to free a large number of criminals isn’t about to peter out after all.

The FBI is asking questions about the pardons Matt Bevin issued during his last weeks as Kentucky governor, The Courier Journal has learned.

State Rep. Chris Harris, D-Forest Hills, told reporters that a criminal investigator contacted him last week and asked what he knew about Bevin’s pardons.

Harris did not elaborate on what questions were asked, and he declined to say which law enforcement agency contacted him.

“I can confirm that I have been contacted by someone looking into the pardons that were issued by Gov. Bevin on his way out the door,” he said. “The impression I got is that there was an investigation ramping up.”

Two sources with knowledge of the inquiry told The Courier Journal on Monday that an FBI agent had spoken with Harris. An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment, saying the agency could “neither confirm nor deny the existence of said investigation” when reached late Monday night.

State prosecutors and leaders such as U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have condemned several of Bevin’s decisions, particularly his pardon of Patrick Baker, who had served two years of a 19-year sentence for reckless homicide and robbery in the slaying of a Knox County man in front of his family.

The Courier Journal reported on Dec. 11 that Baker’s brother held a campaign fundraiser at his home for Bevin in July 2018 that raised $21,500. The former governor also received a letter from business executive Terry Forcht, one of the state’s Republican mega-donors, urging Bevin to pardon Baker. [The Courier Journal]

While it might be premature to leap to the conclusion that Bevin was bribed with a mere $21,000 campaign contribution, the involvement of Terry Forcht, Chairman & CEO of the Forcht Group, a banking group, is a little puzzling. I hope the FBI will be investigating the motivations for that letter as well.

While we wait for the investigations to come to fruition, I wonder just how quickly our Teflon President will deny any sort of relationship with the former Governor. Remember how his former 2016 campaign manager, Paul Manafort, abruptly became nothing more than a short-term staffer?

The Trump campaign claimed Trump’s campaign rally on the eve of the recent election had dragged Bevin across the finish line ahead of the eventual victor, Democrat Andy Beshear. Will they deny that Trump even showed up at the rally? That Trump has never met Bevin? That Bevin doesn’t exist?

Inquiring minds wait in trembling eagerness!

Damn, I wish I had some sort of drawing ability. This just cries out for a cartoon.

These are food items #3 and 4. Enjoy, sir!

The next in our Christmas movie marathon is Poseidon Rex (2013). Treasure hunters poking around off the coast of Belize provoke some ancient horror, and soon it’s off at a gallop, gulping down little tidbits from the buffet, while the humans do the running and screaming thing. Throw in the local Mob and some execrable special effects, and it’s a right royal forgettable mess.

About the only points I’ll score in their favor is the lady marine biologist and the fact that not all the good guys survive to the end. Make it into a betting pool and have more fun!

WaPo has a fascinating article on technology intersecting with college campus life:

Foreshortening. Nyah, that candy cane isn’t nearly that big.
It’s bigger -!

Kicking off the Christmas movie marathon (isn’t that everyone’s task for today) is Anna and the Apocalypse (2018), which we fully expected we wouldn’t finish.

We were wrong. In fact, we watched all the way through the credits, hoping for an Easter egg – no spoiler alert, you’ll have to watch for yourselves.

Part way through, my Arts Editor turned to me and said, I’m surprised. This doesn’t suck. It gets off to a slow start, feeling like a teenage angst movie, with rebellion against parents and all that sort of thing. But then it goes after the Glee^[1] vibe, intertwining juvenile lyrics with well-composed and performed music; my Arts Editor is a particular fan of the rap song.

As the story progresses, though, the students find that reality is destroying the semi-fantasy that is high school. Children are disappointments to their parents; parents are disappointments to their children. Boy toys disappoint the ladies, and the guys keep hoping to be noticed. How to progress beyond it is a puzzle that everyone must solve for themselves.

Music is its own little world.

And then things go boom, and it’s a race for their lives, watching friends & family die as the world crumbles around them, even as the songs continue to pop out, but ever more darker, and when the survivors win through, it’s not a Hollywood ending.

At least we can be thankful that the zombies never sang.

Well acted, well sung, with an enticing hint of madness in the air as our shared view of what is breaks up, revealing the chaotic swirl in which we may really live, we were very surprised at the quality of both the story and the production. Some of my enchantment is a reaction to how superior the movie was to expectation, so I won’t place it in the Recommended category, but if you do run across this, or are in the mood for a cross-genre story which felt quite organic, you only need to endure ten or so minutes of the opening before events take an interesting turn. Be warned, though, there is a touch of violence.

Merry Christmas!

¹ A successful TV show concerning a high school glee club, featuring a lot of singing, sort of a musical about growing up in television format, now terminated.

Rafter:

Say again?

Lashley points to two pieces of historic legislation that established the framework for turkey population rebound: The Lacey Act of 1900 that banned trafficking in illegal wildlife … [WaPo]

Excuse me, but what the hell is illegal wildlife? Is this wildlife required to have a license in order to exist? I’m seeing a pride of lions, each with their license hanging around their neck from a chain, tastefully framed and licked clean of their victim’s viscera, as they gallumph across the savanna.