Category Archives: Uncategorized

The recent release of Hellboy (2019, aka Hellboy: Call of Darkness) is what Hollywood likes to call rebooting the franchise, but, in this case, it’s more along the lines of sinking the franchise. This origin story is divergent from the original movie, and not to its benefit. The original utilized a legendary ambiguity from history, the Russian religious man Rasputin, who survives his own death through the instrumentality of the Ogdru Jahad, a race of monstrous entities in another dimension, who seek to invade our dimension for purposes of, well, that’s not really stated, but what the hell. The creature who becomes known as Hellboy is sent through a portal Rasputin opens for the Nazis with a mission: to open a permanent portal for use by the Ogdru Jahad to destroy and invade.

But, in the original, Hellboy is converted to our side, using his immense powers to battle various paranormal monsters, until Rasputin returns for another bite of the pie.

In this Hellboy, the eponymous hero comes through a portal, but there’s little hint of how or why, only the question of why his adoptive father didn’t kill him immediately. The final response, delivered from beyond the grave, is unsatisfying.

Both movies try to examine the reaction of a semi-monster to a society not quite ready to accept him, but, in this version, his occasional appearance in public doesn’t seem to cause much more than curiosity. Is this alienating? When he’s dispatched to help a, well, club of monster hunters, it’s a lot of fun watching him take down both monsters and betrayers, but it does get repetitive, and the innovative end of the fight is impaired by that repetition; the choreography needed to be better.

It doesn’t help that Hellboy comes off as whiny and needy, and thus unlikeable, and that he also appears to be cross-eyed, which isn’t a dig at a harmless physical abnormality so much as wondering how one wins fights with seriously impaired vision.

In the end, both versions present Hellboy with a reason to change sides to be with the bad guys, but while in the original Hellboy is broken by the death of his beloved, in the new version he’s to be lured by the legendary witch Nimue, a brutal would-be ruler, and it’s unsurprising that Hellboy chooses to stick with the good guys.

It was a disappointing viewing.

Entrepôt:

port where goods for import or export can be stored without paying import duties:

Hong Kong is the most important entrepot for the Chinese mainland.
[Cambridge English Dictionary]

Noted in War and Peace and War, Peter Turchin, Chapter 2:

The Ukrainians referred to Caffa as “the vampire that drinks the blood of Russia because both under the Genoesee and after its conquest by the Turks this port city was the main entrepôt for the slave trade on the Black Sea.

When it comes to fallacious academic papers, they don’t come much more notorious than the Wakefield paper which claimed to find a link between autism and the MMR vaccine. Consisting of twelve subjects, leading to inappropriate rejection of vaccines by members of a public which has, as a whole, accepted the importance of public health methodologies, it was damn near a crime that it was published at all, much less by a prestigious academic journal such as the Lancet.

It was retracted roughly 12 years later in 2010.

As it happens, one of the most important measures of the significance of academic papers is the number of citations it receives from other papers. Surely a paper that has been retracted on the grounds of fraud would not be considered significant, at least in the classic sense, no?

Sadly, no. Retraction Watch has published a short interview with a group of librarians that has studied those papers citing the Wakefield autism paper. Here’s a question and answer that I think illuminates how we humans tend to have poorly thought out plans for computers:

RW: What role do continued citations of this paper play in public perceptions of vaccine safety? Are they similar to the role that a 1980 paper in NEJM — and that earned an editor’s note decades later — that downplayed the risk of opioid addiction has played over the years?

[Corresponding author Elizabeth Suelzer]: My group read the letter by Leung et al with great interest, and we use it as an example when we teach evidence-based medicine. Our study was inspired by it.

We feel that the majority of researchers understand the importance of vaccines and can easily articulate why the Wakefield study was so flawed. But for those unfamiliar with the research such as students, those from other disciplines, and the public, the number of citations this retracted study receives can be misleading. There seems to be a disconnect between what occurs within the scientific community and how it is communicated and shared with the general public via social media. This is also evident in public perceptions of the threat of global warming and gun violence. Scientists and researchers need to do a better job of making their research findings easier to understand, emphasizing its relevance to the general public, and making it meme-worthy for social media.

While most of the references to the Wakefield article are negative, each new citation is noted in databases like Google Scholar, Web of Science and Scopus. As citation counts continue to play a role in determining the significance or importance of an article (for better or worse), even negative citations will ensure that an article gets a higher rank in databases when the results are sorted by citation count. We accept the irony of conducting a study on Wakefield’s paper and adding yet another count to its cited-by number.

The obvious next iteration in the evolution towards a proper design of the statistical analysis of citations would be to record the nature of the citation: negative, positive, or neutral. After that comes the question of citations from papers that are themselves retracted.

So if my reader ever runs across some individual who simply, and honestly, observes a high number of citations of some paper, and then claims that proves, well, something, it’s worth remembering that, at least currently, these tend to be dimensionless numbers that are, without further analysis, lacking in real meaning.

As the 2020 elections begin to grow larger on the horizon, it’ll be interesting to see how well the traditional Republican strategies are utilized. Recently, the Texas GOP accidentally sent a draft document on state-wide election strategies to its opponents, and they chose to share it with The Dallas Morning News. This particular bit shows something unshocking:

The plan also identifies the Republican-led elimination of straight ticket voting as “one of the biggest challenges ahead of the 2020 cycle.” To address that, the plan details an effort to convince Republican voters to vote for GOP candidates all the way down the ballot manually through a tagline. Some of the potential taglines include: “Vote Right All the Way Down!” “Vote Right To The Bottom!” and “Vote RIGHT Down the Ballot!”

The Texas GOP has a crucial problem – right at the top of the ticket is a candidate whose official behavior appears to be impeachable, whose personal behavior is reprehensible, and under his leadership our Executive has been so incompetent that what little legislation has come under his pen has been impotent enough that the country continues to coast under the admirable momentum imparted by the previous Administration – despite the general misgivings of a rural America increasingly battered by Big Ag on one hand, and the President’s tariff wars on the other.

And the voices of sanity within the conservatives are ringing louder and louder with uncomfortable facts, such as this guy, who expressly advocates that Republicans discard the team politics rule and let their minds and consciences dictate their vote.

While some voters, particularly Evangelicals, are indulging in magical thinking concerning President Trump and his achievements, those Republicans who are becoming more and more disenchanted with the President are seeing the lessons of team politics displayed in front of their noses.

And with the resurgence of the Texas Democrats, the Texas GOP has one big mountain to climb. It’s called Mount Trump, and it’s full of ice, crevasses, and hidden moral traps. They will be fortunate to surmount it. And with a number of Texas Congressional members calling it quits at the end of this session, their unnatural lack of incumbents makes their problem that much worse.

Mutatis mutandis:

1. : with the necessary changes having been made
2. : with the respective differences having been considered [Merriam-Webster]

Noted in “It’s a new ballgame, with Buttigieg right out front,” Hugh Hewitt on behalf of The Ranking Committee, WaPo:

Back when this thing started, I expected Sen. Kamala D. Harris to be rising like a rocket at this point in the cycle. But it’s my job to call things like I see them, so since Latin phrases are so in vogue these days, I declare mutatis mutandis after Wednesday night’s debate and push Mayor Pete Buttigieg to the top of my leaderboard.

Recall how beloved was the moniker “no drama Obama”? Well, make room for “perfectly poised Pete.” The mayor is unflappable. This was supposed to be the debate in which everyone gang-tackled the upstart Rhodes scholar and military veteran, but the affable Buttigieg slipped through the net, untouched and smiling. He’s the candidate of generational change and a testament to the idea that intelligence and poise have a charisma all their own.

Personally, I have to wonder if Buttigieg has peaked a trifle too early.

I plan to write a review of Peter Turchin’s War And Peace And War when I finally finish it — soon! — but these two paragraphs, almost certainly written prior to 2006, stood out for the applicability to today’s political polarization, and what may be truly driving same. Turchin’s example scenario dates from Britain and France from the time of Dumas, author of The Three Musketeers. All typos mine.

When one aristocratic faction won, it attempted to completely exclude its rivals. One of the notorious examples of this was the situation in England between 1617 and 1628, when the faction led by George Villiers, the duke of Buckingham, managed to monopolize the court’s patronage. In his novel, Dumas paints a fairly favorable portrait of Buckingham, but in real life this royal favorite was a pretty unsavory character who used his power to unscrupulously enrich himself and his cohorts. In the words of the historian David Loades, “The ascendancy of Buckingham transformed abuse into a scandal of systematic exploitation.”

We have already seen how declining economic fortunes of aristocrats create the climate conducive to interpersonal and interfactional conflict. It is important to stress that the purely materialistic calculation — “I lack sufficient funds to support the life style to which I am entitled by birth, and I will obtain this money by fore if necessary” — is just one possible motive driving violence, and not necessarily the most powerful. … [War and Peace and War, Ch. 10: “The Matthew Principle”, Peter Turchin (p. 277)]

I cannot help but note how Trump and so many that have come to cluster around him – Pompeo, Ross, Pruitt, and Bannon are just a bare few of the names that come to mind – are frantically attempting to build fortunes, both monetary and in terms of prestige, in this time of Trump. They seem to be, in Turchin’s terms, to be of a class desperate to become aristocrats – or, worse, striving to remain the same. I suspect that’s Trump’s driving force, and, given that class membership is often based on perception, it may lend an additional reason to his frantic determination to not have his tax returns see the light of day. If he’s seen as broke, then he’s not an aristocrats, or what we call “upper-crust” these days. Indeed, given the head-start he was handed by his father, if he’s underwater, then for all of his big talk, he’s nothing but a loser.

That would explain a lot.

But the future, if historical events are rhymed^[1], is quite alarming. Turchin observes internecine combat in the form of duels, assassinations, murders, and wars, happening to the Romans, the French, the English, and the Russians, as overpopulation puts pressure at all levels of the citizenry.

The future may turn out to be only morbidly interesting. Let’s hope someone figures out a way to reach other worlds in a way that is not ruinously expensive.

¹ “History never repeats itself, but it rhymes.” Author uncertain.

David Brody notes one of those useless religious proclamations, this time from former South Carolina governor and UN Ambassador for the current Administration, Nikki Haley:

JUST RELEASED: @NikkiHaley on whether God put @realDonaldTrump in place as president for such a time as this? She Says, "everything happens for a reason… I think God sometimes places people for lessons and sometimes places people for change." Her @700club story Tuesday! @POTUS pic.twitter.com/8woXuAfAh1

— David Brody (@DavidBrodyCBN) November 25, 2019

Ambassador Haley should perhaps think before she speaks – because all I can think is that, if this is true, some people just aren’t learning from the object lessons being displayed to them in that debacle in the White House. She, an experienced politician, should know better.

Meanwhile, former Press Secretary S H Sanders also sticks her foot in it^[1]:

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told a Christian television station Wednesday that God “wanted Donald Trump to become president” so he could support “a lot of the things that people of faith really care about.”

The early, abbreviated transcript provided by the conservative evangelical station CBN, the Christian Broadcasting Network, didn’t include specifics from Sanders. However, many in a devoted segment of Trump’s base have said they consider any drawbacks of his presidency worth it because the president regularly speaks about their priorities and picked two Supreme Court justices believed to oppose abortion. On Monday, Trump lauded proposed state-level legislation meant to bring more teaching of the Bible in public schools. [WaPo]

And so, tell me again, why do these issues, so supposedly of deep interest to God, require such a stunningly defective and ineffective man for delivery? Have you ever noticed that Sanders, her dad Mike Huckabee, Jerry Falwell, Jr. of Liberty University, etc, refuse to address such a question? Y’see, they’ve edged their way to the cliff’s edge in acknowledging that Trump is nothing more than a childish bully whose conception of ‘play fair’ consists of Donny Boy Gets Everything. He’s an incompetent and incurious man, incapable of effectively operating outside of his original domain of real estate – and even there he’s a dubious character.

But he’s given them what they think they want – favor for their religion and its proscriptions. That’s the important thing to them. In its way, it’s so very, very Boomerish.

But it’s also a sign for those who can read: that the ideology, or theology if that makes more sense, of Haley, Sanders, and their fellow travelers is so flawed, unappealing, irrational, and out ‘n out dangerous, that they must ride the gangrenous monster that is Trump in order to eke out their little gains.

More and more, we see the lies, self-delusions, bad behaviors, and terrible actors that surround and are drawn to Trump. These will cling not only to Trump, but to those who claimed to benefit from his presence in the Oval Office, even when they knew he was a desperately and deeply flawed character who has been doing substantial damage to the United States.

And their much bally-hooed gains during the Trump Administration may turn out to be little more than calorific sweets: doing nothing but satisfying that urge to win in the short run, while damaging their “brands,” that horrific term imported from the private sector as a cover for “reputation,” in the long term.

The Millenials are watching and learning about you, Haley and Sanders. Washing your feet in sad irrationality – of several kinds – will bring nothing but woe to your envisioned successors.

Later: I see Energy Secretary Rick Perry has expressed similarly idiotic sentiments. I do hope he can blame it on his meds, like he did last time.

¹ While “it” is usually understood to mean something along the lines dog poo, in this instance I suggest that the equivalent would be an entire lake of Cthulhu’s excrement. And, I lament, I’m not even hyperbolizing.

About a quarter of the way through Terror Beneath The Sea (1966), my Arts Editor declared, “It doesn’t suck as much as it could have.”

Sadly, that didn’t hold true. Shipshod plot, crappy monster costumes, ridiculous special effects, a bad guy with an evil laugh, good guys who can’t figure out how to act, gibberish orders on the submarine, it’s all there to laugh at.

If you insist on watching this one, make sure you drink heavily first.

I haven’t pursued overviews of the various Democratic candidates unless something interesting comes up because most of them just aren’t going to get very far. But Molly Roberts in WaPo brought up some interesting notes concerning candidate and the former Mayor of South Bend, Pete Buttigieg, so I thought I’d look at them in the context of Buttigieg being on top of the polls in Iowa these days.

A couple of years ago and more I spent some time dissecting the idea that absolute loyalty to Party, i.e., the concept of team politics, is actually one of the worst rules a party can have – at least for the nation in which it operates^[1]. This guy, Beau, understands this fundamental error in team politics, as he blames the Republican failure in Louisiana on what he calls loyal Republicans who still have morals:

Now, it’s true that Beau ignores factors such as Edwards being a very conservative Democrat, and that the Louisiana black community turnout has traditionally been heavier in runoffs than in the jungle primary.

But Beau is, in my opinion, incontrovertibly right in his analysis of how Trump affects, and should affect, “loyal Republicans.” If you haven’t clicked on that YouTube above – especially if you consider yourself a loyal Republicans – do yourself a favor and do so. It’s just shy of five minutes long, but Beau is well-spoken and speaks from the heart. Which is far more than Trump has done, ever.

Go, Beau!

¹ The first such post is here.

Presidential Candidate Amy Klobuchar (D-MN).
Source: Wikipedia

I happened across a friend’s thread on the various Democratic candidates for President, including a test you can take to see which one is most congruent with your policy views. This got me to thinking: how much importance should be credited to that congruence?

I try to keep in mind that the President doesn’t make laws, the Legislature does. Sure, the President has influence and veto power over the lawmaking process – sometimes I wonder if veto power was a wise choice by the Founders – but in the end it’s about the 538 folks in Congress. And the President does make certain appointments of importance, such as those to the Fed.

So when evaluating the candidates for Executive, I tend to think about experience and apparent (alleged?) competency as a governmental executive (no, not corporate executive – different animal, wrong number of paws) in addition to policies – and discount by some percentage those Presidential candidates’ policies which requires a supportive Congress to enact. For example, paging through the web site of Senator Warren (D-MA), it appears from a partial accounting of her plans, roughly 50%^[1] will require legislative support. But how does one discount this? The veto power does give a certain potency to those plans; the Congressional ability to override the veto, on the other hand, limits the plans’ potency in a hostile legislative environment. Clearly, those plans which can be accomplished by the Executive should carry more weight with the electorate than those that require a cooperative legislature.

Representative Betsy McCollum (D-MN), lawmaker.
Source: Wikipedia

And, by the same coin, if a candidate’s plans are near and dear to their heart, but require legislative support, does it make sense that they run for the Presidency? Or should be seek or retain their legislative seat? Warren has already shown her abilities in Congress by getting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau through the legislative process. Do we want that experience and drive to be lost by her moving to the Executive Branch?

I think the reason the question of Presidential policies has become so much more pointed than it was prior to, say, President Lincoln, is that, first, the world has become more complicated and dangerous, and, second, Congress has, infamously, ceded its powers to the Executive. There’s little to do about the former except find ways to wisely manage those problems, and elect wise people to the legislature, rather than the pack of second- and third-raters making up the GOP’s side of the legislature these days; not to suggest the Democrats are entirely top-line personnel, but the Republicans stand out like a supernova in the night sky for the basic intellectual and moral failings these days.

And as far as the latter goes, those cessions of Congressional purview should be retracted. Kill the National Emergency law that President Trump has dictatorially tried to use to fund a southern wall. Ask if we really need such a law. Examine the law books for other such examples.

By doing so, the diffusion of power back to the 538 members will make abuses a little less likely, albeit the determined abuser, such as Senator McCarthy (R-WI), can still cause trouble.

But through such retractions, the position of President will become less of a divisive, hot potato issue.

Getting back to my thoughts, it’s not necessarily the candidate who best agrees with you, but the one most likely to win independent support when faced with a national disaster such as Trump as an opponent.

¹ Working from plan titles, and keeping in mind I’m a software engineer, not a political science whiz, I see Senator Warren’s plans falling into these categories:

Requiring legislative support:
Clean Energy for 100% achievement
Farm Economy
Affordable Higher Education For All
Justice Reform
Debt Relief for Puerto Rico
Defend/Create American Jobs
Raising Wages
End Private Prisons (yay)
Ending the Opioid Crisis
Health Care Costs

More or less within the Executive’s domain or in the leadership domain:
Trade
Immigration
Public Schooling
Working Agenda for Black America
Maternal Mortality
Lobbying (?)
Accountable Capitalism

Beats me:

End Wall Street’s Stranglehold on Our Economy
End Washington Corruption

Aaaaaaand … I’ve run out of patience for this task. There’s just too many plans to evaluate in my limited time.

Over the American Thanksgiving holiday we’ll be busy with family stuff. Blogging may or may not be curtailed.

Yesterday evening my Arts Editor and I attended Theater In The Round’s production of a recently re-discovered play by Agatha Christie, Towards Zero. Per usual, this is a murder mystery involving British gentry, involving those with too much money, those with barely enough, and a few staring into the blackness of insanity. It was a little slow in the first half, as the conventions of 80 years ago are not those of today, but in the second half the pace of events picks up, the body is found, and we get a peek into the diseased intellect of a killer who thought themselves too cool to be caught. And as two lovers sail off to South America, it seems to be a commentary by Christie, or whoever is responsible for the leavetaking, on the subtle illnesses of English society.

Nicely produced in the circular space of TitR, we had a fun little evening, and if it wasn’t all that profound, that’s OK. Sometimes a bit of fluff is just what the doctor ordered.

From a New York Times story on the recent release of Donald Trump, Jr’s^[1] book Triggered, and its quick ascent to the top of the New York Times Bestseller List:

But a financial disclosure form filed to the Federal Election Commission showed that the R.N.C. paid $94,800 to the bookseller chain Books-A-Million on Oct. 29, a week before the book went on sale. Disclosures filed by the R.N.C. indicate that the payment was for “donor mementos.”

When asked about the disclosure on Thursday, [R.N.C. spokesman Mike Reed] confirmed that the money went toward “Triggered” orders, and added that the party committee made additional purchases in November. “The book has been hugely popular,” he said.

OK, Boomer.

¹ I wait with morbid fascination the gossip which will inevitably erupt from Donny, Jr.’s ghostwriter. And I can’t help but wonder what the median age of the lover of Triggered will be. 45? 55? 65? 75?

I’m going with 65, quite honestly. The middle of the boomer demographic and most solidly locked into a culture war without regard for the future of the United States – or humanity.

I wonder how much it would take to buy the top position of the Bestseller List for Secular Cycles. It has more relevance to the current political situation than anything else I can think of.

"Consumptuary," I said,
   Deliciously rolling the words
About My Mouth.

"Ossuary," came the reply,
   Each and every femur 
Bumping the metaphorical
   lid of the psyche.

"Not -"
   Appalled
Repelled
   At language's
Failure.

"No," with her smile,
   And a laugh,
And a pirouette,
   "Not at all,
But bones in a box."
   And with that, a precise little cough.

And now, in labor,
   Creating a box,
A cute little box,
   Lined in finest marble,
Long enough for tibias,
   And, with the finest of chisels,
"XDR" in the corner.

Let the archaeologists wonder.
   Perhaps they'll cough, too,
And have use of the box.

I see CNN is reporting that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has finally been charged with various crimes:

Charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust have been unveiled against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in three separate corruption cases, the Attorney General announced on Thursday evening, marking the first time in Israel’s history that a sitting PM faces indictment in criminal investigations.

During a final pre-indictment hearing last month, Netanyahu’s high-powered legal team tried to convince prosecutors to close the cases, including the most serious charge of bribery. But Avichai Mandelblit, a Netanyahu appointee who once served as his cabinet secretary, is moving forward.

Israel’s deadlocked parliament means that a formal indictment may still be months away. Nevertheless, the charges are a significant blow to Israel’s longest-serving Prime Minister, who has held office for a total of more than 13 years. He has proclaimed his innocence ever since the criminal investigations became public nearly three years ago.

AL Monitor’s Danny Zaken gives a succinct summation of the situation:

Why it matters:  Netanyahu’s investigations have trailed him throughout the 2019 electoral season and have dominated this year’s elections. His rivals blame him for holding his Likud Party — and the whole country — hostage to his criminal cases and preventing the formation of a unity government that could end Israel’s political paralysis.

Netanyahu has led the country for more than 10 years and his upcoming legal fight against the charges is expected to be deeply intertwined with Israeli politics. The impact on national security is also not to be discounted as Israel steps up its attacks against Gaza and Iranian targets in Syria.

This is an interesting parallel to the American situation: a populist politician who has used fear to manipulate and draw voters to him, who has displayed unlimited ambition and a certain arrogance which seems to attract a certain class of voter, whose actions in pursuit of power can be easily seen as dangerous to the very country which he purports to lead, and who now appears to have been caught indulging in crass actions which are designed to use the powers of the office to personally and illegally benefit himself.

Of course, when we’re talking about grasping, self-interested individuals – and entities – there are certain differences in behaviors from more admirable entities. Trump has proven to be less than a constant ally of Israel, a matter which has given the right-wing Israelis fits, and should give Trump’s religious allies some heartburn.

But I think – I hope – we’re seeing the mechanisms installed by the designers of these governments to guard against untrustworthy politicians and foolish electorates springing into action. The importance of independent agencies, a professional bureaucracy with strong whistleblower protections, co-equal and independent branches of government with oversight power – all of these and more stand as safeguards against the inevitable winds of corruption which will dog humanity for as long as it’s around.

Now it’s up to those taken in by Trump and like-minded would-be politicians to learn from their errors and select better leaders, despite the blandishments of these power-hungry men.

And will the Trump-admiring Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison end up in the metaphorical cell next to their’s? I have a morbid fascination on the matter. And what of the Poles, and the Hungarians? Are their institutions strong enough?

In case you’ve been listening to the right wing propaganda machine, here’s political Professor Keith Whittington to set you straight:

It’s not what you think.

When a bit of insanity has another bit of insanity added to it, sometimes the mix comes out quite odd. Blood and Donuts (1995) is the story of the awakening of Boya, a vampire dating back to the 1800s, and the reason he hides away periodically from the world:

He’s clinically depressed.

His friends grow old and die off, when he’s stressed he can turn into a monster, and while he’s as immune as any mythological vampire to the general weaponry of the age, he’s also just as vulnerable to the Sun. And he misses the old fireball in the sky.

Between the depression and the knowledge that his immense powers have made him not-human, an outsider looking into a condition that he loves but can only temporarily return to – I mean, damn, he keeps scrapbooks! – his future, so apparently bright to others, is deepest black to him.

Trying to staple a body to the hood of the car a la Mad Max.
We need bigger staples, he said.
She said, Shut up and drive!

Thrown back into life by a golf ball, life happens to him: a taxi driver and a donut shop clerk come to know him, and as they try to save each other from impetuous mobsters, each time Boya must make a move, things die. He hardly dares move for fear that he may kill those that he loves.

Humanity.

It helps that the supporting characters have their own lives they’re living, their own burdens to share, but this is about Boya and his life existence, and the importance of shared struggle in making life worth living.

It makes for a disquieting story with abrupt changes in rhythm, and Hollywood would never want to own up to this (no fears for Hollywood’s virtue, this is Canadian), but it feels organic, if not necessarily much fun.

SCOTUS has stepped up and accepted the Google appeal of Oracle’s victory in Federal Circuit Appeals Court concerning whether computer language API signatures are subject to copyrights, as Ars Technica reported a few days ago:

The Supreme Court has agreed to review one of the decade’s most significant software copyright decisions: last year’s ruling by an appeals court that Google infringed Oracle’s copyrights when Google created an independent implementation of the Java programming language.

I wonder if the industry has thought about readying itself for a rebuff from SCOTUS, leaving companies as possibly legally vulnerable. From the previous Ars Technica report on this subject:

If APIs can be restricted by copyright, then every significant computer program could have legal landmines lurking inside of it. Grimmelmann warns that API copyrights could easily give rise to API trolls: companies that acquire the copyright to old software, then sue companies that built their software using what they assumed were open standards. API copyrights could also hamper interoperability between software platforms, as companies are forced to build their software using deliberately incompatible standards to avoid legal headaches.

While I think it’s a misstatement to suggest that every significant computer program might be at risk, because they don’t usually indulge in this practice, those firms who are providing software libraries which replace others will be at risk.

What can be done? Sequestering the copyright interests in entities which refuse to pursue copyright infringement suits might be a first step. Industry giants who feel they are at risk might contribute to these entities, and acquisition of APIs which they may have innocent violated should zero out those risks.

Similarly, acquisition of those entities owning those rights would also safeguard those manufacturers. Those firms which have gone out of business would also confound the persistent copyright troll.

Another approach would be to lobby Congress into passing laws which either obviate the judiciary’s decisions, or limits the damage for those firms which trespassed before they knew the law was against them.

The industry had best get on the ball on this problem, because if they don’t, the damage won’t be limited to Court awards, but also the vitality this part of the industry contributes to the entire software project, warts and all.

The unyielding malice of people sometimes just leave me tired and defeated.

Attackers could reveal most of the genetic information for millions of people whose DNA is held on genetic genealogy databases by exploiting how the websites work. …

One attack involved uploading many real genetic data sets and monitoring for partial matches with short stretches of people’s genomes in the database.

A twist on that approach was uploading genetic data that is largely fake, apart from a genuine segment targeting a match for specific genetic variants linked to greater risk of certain conditions, such as Alzheimer’s.

A third way involved trying to trick algorithms by using completely faked data designed to match most people in the databases.

Tests returned more genetic data as the minimum matching segment length reduced. Using the first technique with the shortest segment length returned significant genetic data: about 60 per cent of an average person’s total alleles – their variants of a gene – could be recovered. “So we are in fact talking about most of the genetic information of most of the people in our database,” says Edge. [NewScientist, 2 November 2019]

It may just have been a result of how the article was written, or maybe I’m in a chronic bad mood, but that people will use sophisticated attack techniques simply to discover your genetic encoding just, augh. I hates it, I do, I hates it a lot, how about you?

Sorry.

Anyone got cheery thoughts?

Sometimes billionaires do good, as much as that may sicken lefty ideologists. CNN is reporting on the Bill Gates-backed company Heliogen and its recent achievement:

Heliogen, a clean energy company that emerged from stealth mode on Tuesday, said it has discovered a way to use artificial intelligence and a field of mirrors to reflect so much sunlight that it generates extreme heat above 1,000 degrees Celsius.

Essentially, Heliogen created a solar oven — one capable of reaching temperatures that are roughly a quarter of what you’d find on the surface of the sun.

The breakthrough means that, for the first time, concentrated solar energy can be used to create the extreme heat required to make cement, steel, glass and other industrial processes. In other words, carbon-free sunlight can replace fossil fuels in a heavy carbon-emitting corner of the economy that has been untouched by the clean energy revolution.

I’m somewhat intrigued in that they’re claiming they had to use artificial intelligence to make their scheme fly. Their web site doesn’t really discuss it:

The breakthrough in Heliogen’s technology starts with our patented closed-loop control system that makes our field of mirrors act as a multi-acre magnifying glass to concentrate sunlight. The HelioMax system is an industry first and a critical step in harnessing the power of the sun. Our ability to concentrate and capture sunlight allows us to create carbon-free, ultra-high temperature heat (HelioHeat) commercially for the first time.

Their note about it being patented also piqued my interest. How does patents play into an artificial intelligence system? Think of pharmaceutical patents, where the owners will muck about a bit with drug formulas and patent the new ones as a way to extend their ownership of a drug. Can a patent be taken out on the information that necessarily lies at the heart of the artificial system, the machine intuition which I discussed a few days ago? Or do they extract a static version of that information and patent that?

This is hardly a panacea, either. There’s been a lot of strain on the raw materials for cement and concrete, so perfecting a non-carbon heat source for cement doesn’t relieve all of the problems associated with those materials. Treehugger hasn’t covered the Heliogen story yet, but Lloyd Alter has a connected piece of interest:

This is the fantasy of green hydrogen and carbon-free steel; yes, it can work, but we don’t have time. We would need to transform the entire industry, and produce billions and billions of tons of hydrogen, and build all the infrastructure to make it.

It’s why I always return to the same place. We have to substitute materials that we grow instead of those we dig out of the ground. We have to use less steel, half of which is going into construction and 16 percent of which is going into cars, which are 70 percent steel by weight. So build our buildings out of wood instead of steel; make cars smaller and lighter and get a bike.

Written before Heliogen went public with its claims. Will Heliogen be able to get around these problems? They claim they create hydrogen:

Heliogen said it is generating so much heat that its technology could eventually be used to create clean hydrogen at scale. That carbon-free hydrogen could then be turned into a fuel for trucks and airplanes.

“If you can make hydrogen that’s green, that’s a gamechanger,” said Gross. “Long term, we want to be the green hydrogen company.”

But enough to matter?

Finally, it looks like they plan to commercialize it and run it like any other business. I wonder if they ever considered giving it away. Otherwise, it may be difficult to get those companies involved in the carbon-releasing technology to switch over.

These two li’l trucks for sale are a couple miles from our place.

They have a very humble sense of class.

And this could be unsettling, depending on where you live. From NewScientist (2 November 2019, paywall):

Global warming could contribute to the failure of one in four steel bridges in the US over the next two decades. …

Hussam Mahmoud at Colorado State University and his colleague decided to model the effects of increasing temperatures on steel bridges around the US.

In particular, they focused on what would happen when joints that are clogged with dirt and debris are exposed to the higher temperatures expected in the years ahead as the climate warms. Clogging is a common problem, especially in deteriorating bridges, but it is costly to address. …

They found that current temperatures aren’t extreme enough to cause a problem, but one in four bridges are at risk of a section failing in the next 21 years, rising to 28 per cent by 2060 and 49 per cent by 2080. Almost all are set to fail by 2100.

Lots of risk, but a lot of business for bridge building companies, I sadly suppose.

Manichean:

Manichaeism taught an elaborate dualistic cosmology describing the struggle between a good, spiritual world of light, and an evil, material world of darkness. Through an ongoing process that takes place in human history, light is gradually removed from the world of matter and returned to the world of light, whence it came. Its beliefs were based on local Mesopotamian religious movements and Gnosticism. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “A Glimpse at the Intersectional Left’s Political Endgame,” Andrew Sullivan, New York Intelligencer:

[Ibram X. Kendi’s] capable of conveying the complicated dynamics of that violent mugging on a bus, but somehow insists that the only real violence is the structural “violence” of racist power. After a while, you realize that this worldview cannot be contradicted or informed by any discipline outside itself — sociology, biology, psychology, history. Unlike any standard theory in the social sciences, Kendi’s argument — one that is heavily rooted in critical theory — about a Manichean divide between racist and anti-racist forces cannot be tested or falsified. Because there is no empirical reality outside the “power structures” it posits.