Category Archives: Uncategorized

comproportionation:

A reaction in which an element in a higher oxidation state reacts with the same element in a lower oxidation state to give the element in an intermediate oxidation state. For example Ag²⁺(aq)+Ag(s) → 2Ag⁺(aq) It is the reverse of disproportionation.

Ag²⁺(aq)+Ag(s) → 2Ag⁺(aq)
[Oxford Reference]

Noted in “Why the hunt for alien life is under way far beneath Earth’s surface,” Donna Lu, NewScientist (16 November 2019, paywall):

Just as photosynthesis in effect reverses the chemistry of aerobic respiration, does anything make a living by turning hydrogen sulphide and sulphate back into pure sulphur? No such organisms, known as sulphur comproportionators, have ever been found. But in theory, at least, the answer is yes. “It’s likely that in 3 billion plus years of evolution and the right pressures, some species have developed the ability to do this,” says [Pennsylvania State University astrobiologist Jennifer] Macalady.

I’ve been listening, off and on, to the Judiciary Committee testimony today. It features four professors, three brought in by the Democrats and one by the Republicans, George Washington University professor Jonathan Turley. Skipping the whining from the Republicans, I couldn’t help but notice that Professor Turley raised two objections to the impeachment process so far, neither of which I found credible.

First, he says this is the fastest impeachment process on record. Unfortunately for him, some processes move slowly and some move quickly, like most such things, and one has to be the fastest. Without a credible reason for not moving quickly, the movement should be at the discretion of those who believe impeachment is appropriate. That it be quick is preferable because, if you believe impeachment is called for, in most cases, and certainly in this case, you also believe the President is doing continual and lasting damage to the country. I have no insight into the Professor’s mind, but it sounds like he sees this as a standard criminal proceeding in which the alleged criminal is now in custody and no longer engaged in the alleged criminal activity. That is not true in this case.

Second, he spent some time elaborating on the dangers of removing a President who is seen as incompetent only by one Party, which is my phraseology, not his; I suspect he’d prefer “narrow partisan basis“. He felt that if this was a go-forward basis for impeachment, then we’re headed for chaos when the President is a Democrat, as the Republicans will raise impeachment charges when they can. But this suffers from a fatal flaw: the voters hold the final power. If they perceive the impeachment was nothing more than a political lynching, then those who are not Party cultists will dump the party who perpetrated such an action on their heads.

The Republicans have been an extremist organization for more than the last three years, yet did they impeach and convict President Obama? They didn’t even try. Why? Because the independent voter who holds the balance of power in their collective hands would have seen it as nothing more than dirty politics, found those involved to be unworthy of their seats, and voted en masse against them. No doubt the Republicans realized that.

So I’m not taking Professor Turley too seriously. His objections and complaints are too easy to rebut in my mind.

Back in August, I suggested in a footnote in a post that something called Precision Messaging, involving the tailoring of political messages to recipients, should be outlawed:

Keeping up with Republican Representatives of dubious ethics, Duncan Hunter (R-CA) has changed his plea from not guilty to guilty in the matter of misuse of campaign funds, joining former Representative Chris Collins (R-NY) in the club of admitted felons. The San Diego Union-Tribune has the story:

After years of denials and claims he was the target of a political witch hunt, Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine, is scheduled to appear in federal court Tuesday morning to plead guilty in a sweeping campaign finance investigation.

The announcement was posted on the U.S. District Court docket Monday morning, then KUSI aired an interview with Hunter in which he said he will plead guilty to one of the 60 criminal charges against him. He suggested that he is likely to spend time in custody.

“The plea I accepted is misuse of my own campaign funds, of which I pled guilty to only one count,” Hunter told the station. “I think it’s important that people know that I did make mistakes. I did not properly monitor or account for my campaign money. I justify my plea with the understanding that I am responsible for my own campaign and my own campaign money.”

And he suggests he’ll be resigning or not running for re-election. It’s important to note that the other 59 charges to which he didn’t plead guilty don’t become automatically moot, although he may have plea-bargained them away. The article goes on to chronicle his various alleged misdeeds, including extra-marital affairs funded with campaign funds.

It’d be interesting to see him run again, just to see if his constituents would continue to vote for him. He’s from a political family, so maybe they would. They have low standards, if true.

Wrapping up, the original three Representatives were the aforementioned Collins and Hunter, who ended up pleading guilty, and Rep Rod Blum (R-IA), who admitted to nothing but ignorance in a House Ethics investigation, and claimed he was the victim of a “crusade” by the left. Victimhood didn’t work for him as he lost his re-election bid in 2018, suggesting his constituents were fed up with him. He lost to Abby Finkenauer (D-IA) by 4 points; in his 2016 race he won by 8 points, suggesting a 12 point swing in support, fairly large for conservative Iowa.

So all three are, or will be soon, out of elective office.

The FBI is finally getting around to telling us:

Today: building a digital defense with your TV.

Yes, I said your TV. Specifically your smart TV…the one that is sitting in your living room right now. Or, the one that you plan to buy on super sale on Black Friday.

Smart TVs are called that because they connect to the Internet. They allow you to use popular streaming services and apps. Many also have microphones for those of us who are too lazy to actually to pick up the remote. Just shout at your set that you want to change the channel or turn up the volume and you are good to go.

A number of the newer TV’s also have built-in cameras. In some cases, the cameras are used for facial recognition so the TV knows who is watching and can suggest programming appropriately. There are also devices coming to market that allow you to video chat with grandma in 42” glory.

Beyond the risk that your TV manufacturer and app developers may be listening and watching you, that television can also be a gateway for hackers to come into your home. A bad cyber actor may not be able to access your locked-down computer directly, but it is possible that your unsecured TV can give him or her an easy way in the backdoor through your router.

Hackers can also take control of your unsecured TV. At the low end of the risk spectrum, they can change channels, play with the volume, and show your kids inappropriate videos. In a worst-case scenario, they can turn on your bedroom TV’s camera and microphone and silently cyberstalk you. [FBI/Portland]

We’ve been looking at getting an LG OLED television, but have been put off by the price, which we expect to come down, and the fact that it now has a microphone so that Alexa, the personal assistant from Amazon, can listen in on you.

And I’m feeling fairly sure that snipping the wires from the microphone to the main processor would be a messy, warranty-voiding task.

So, unless LG acknowledges that some folks just don’t want Alexa, an OLED TV from LG may not be in our future, despite its superior (last I checked) energy consumption and display characteristics. Trading our security for additional features which, frankly, we’re not interested in just isn’t a favorable trade.

In general, a microphone and speakers are a communications medium, not only for you to use, but sometimes even computers. Yep, I’ve read about it: Years ago, a computer that was completely off the Internet was nevertheless hacked by someone – and the owner of the computer believes it was via the microphone in the victim and the speakers of a computer in the same room that was connected to the Internet.

I never heard if he figured out the technical details or not. I mean, the one off the internet had to have a vulnerability already … yeah, easier not to have Alexa and her damn microphone.

Make that one of your rules of digital ruling: if there’s a microphone on some computing device, be suspicious that someone is monitoring you, even if it appears to be off. Even of your phone.

Bromide:

Bromide in literary usage means a phrase, cliché, or platitude that is trite or unoriginal. It can be intended to soothe or placate; it can suggest insincerity or a lack of originality in the speaker. When hypostatized and embodied, in which the concept becomes a person, bromide can mean a commonplace or tiresome person, a bore. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “Belligerents in the Persian Gulf are trying something new: diplomacy,” David Ignatius, WaPo:

It’s our best Kool-Aid substitute!

Incoherence, scenery chewing, wretched dialog, sketchy plot, crappy special effects. Only watch Invasion of the Blood Farmers (1972) if you have a monstrous headache, or if this is the night when you’re finally giving into your self-hatred and this is your punishment.

I can’t imagine why my Arts Editor wanted to watch this one.

On WaPo Mitch Daniels goes over the particulars of Income Share Agreements:

In an ISA, a student borrows nothing but rather has his or her education supported by an investor, in return for a contract to pay a specified percentage of income for a fixed number of years after graduation. Rates and time vary with the discipline of the degree achieved and the amount of tuition assistance the student obtained.

An ISA is dramatically more student-friendly than a loan. All the risk shifts from the student to the investing entity; if a career starts slowly, or not at all, the student’s obligation drops or goes to zero. Think of an ISA as equity instead of debt, or as working one’s way through college — after college.

I could see this for a trade school or technical college, but for the general college student I have to wonder, because buried in this is the assumption that it’s all about the income the student will earn afterwards. Is this a good way to look at advancing one’s education?

It reminds me of an assertion I made a couple of years ago, which now I cannot find, justifying, on a libertarian basis, the liberal funding of public universities via taxation, the rationale being that those who benefit most should pay the most, and those who benefit the most from education aren’t the students, but society itself. It’s not an obvious conclusion, but it becomes more and more clear as we consider how important it is to have educated, knowledgeable citizens. Forcing a penniless student to pay for the privilege of becoming an important part of society, today and tomorrow, seems like madness, once the proper description of the critical role education, and educated people, fill in society is formulated.

An ISA, in this view, becomes simply a nail in the coffin of the responsible view enunciated above, doesn’t it? It sounds innovative to the person who has already bought into the notion that the student should pay for their education, underscoring the mistaken notion that education is simply another product. To me, questions concerning how investors evaluate students, how much an MD vs and English major is worth, potential litigation involving students who don’t use their degree (I know a few) and yet make a good living, insurance against your student dying, the entire thing sounds less like a business undertaking and more like a fiasco.

Sure, these are just surface thoughts, but I’m not feeling the love for a proposal which runs on false notions of the nature of education.

FishOutofWater on The Daily Kos reports and comments on a convenient bit of insanity:

An abortion ban bill introduced into the Ohio state legislature requires surgeons treating women for potentially fatal pregnancies located outside of the uterus to “reimplant” the pregnancy into the uterus or face “abortion murder” charges. However, there is no such thing as reimplanting an ectopic pregnancy. It is impossible because the fetal blood supply grows over time and grows into the tube or other site it is attached to. Moreover, a pregnancy will not attach to the uterus at this point in gestation because the uterus does not develop the vasculature to maintain a pregnancy when the egg implants ectopically. In fact, a growing tubal pregnancy will rupture the Fallopian tube if it is not treated medically or surgically. Tubal rupture is the leading cause of maternal mortality in the first trimester of pregnancy.

This proposed legislation would criminalize a medical procedure necessary to save a woman’s life under the pretense of saving a clump of cells that has zero chance of survival.

Practicing Obstetrician/Gynecologists (note my wife is an Ob hospitalist now) told Ohio legislators that “reimplanting” ectopic pregnancies is impossible the first time they introduced a similar bill. Again, Ob/Gyns are telling Ohio legislators that there is no such thing as reimplanting an ectopic.

I found the bill here, and the single mention of an ectopic pregnancy is in the context of abortion:

A physician who does all of the following is not subject to criminal prosecution, damages in any civil action, or professional disciplinary action, for a violation of this chapter:

(A) Using reasonable medical judgment, believes it is highly probable that the pregnant woman will die from a certain fatal condition before her unborn child is viable;

(B) Performs a surgery, before the unborn child is viable, for the sole purpose of treating the pregnant woman’s fatal condition;

(C) Takes all possible steps to preserve the life of the unborn child, while preserving the life of the woman. Such steps include, if applicable, attempting to reimplant an ectopic pregnancy into the woman’s uterus.

This ugly bit of right wing rhetoric is an example of following the logic of ill-founded assumptions to its bloody end, isn’t it? Imputing personhood to a fertilized egg on theological grounds is the bad assumption; it leads to all sorts of odd-ball assumptions which roil society in the service of some religious leader’s dubious agenda. I suppose the author would argue that the language merely readies the law for the day that the medical procedure becomes available, but it’s still ridiculous.

But let’s keep filling in the logic, shall we? We’ve already seen miscarriages being used to bring manslaugter charges against mothers who lose their fetus, another bit of madness which essentially condemns the founding assumption^[0]. We can say that any miscarriage is thus manslaughter, and the entity responsible should be held liable. I’ve seen estimates of the percentage of pregnancies ending in miscarriage ranging from a quarter to a half of all pregnancies, so we’re not talking small potatoes here.

Since we’re currently in the domain of someone who believes their theology should be law, that lets us place God at the scene of the crime.

Yep, that’s right. If you have God, then God must have planned the whole thing, right? So the old saying goes, at least: God has a plan for everything. God Is Responsible, since miscarriages are, by definition, not induced by humans.

I’m a reasonable person, or at least that’s part of my personal set of delusions, and so I realize that imprisoning a divine, all-powerful being could only occur if he, A) permits it, and B) can be found.

Neither condition seems likely to be fulfilled.

Similar arguments apply to the imposition of fines on the divine being.

Therefore, in order to discourage God from committing crimes in the State of Ohio, I recommend finding his or her or its ordained representatives and imposing appropriate penalties on them. Now, I recognize that, because there are multiple sects involved in the worship of said creature, it’s actually difficult to ascertain which one, if any, is the duly authorized and recognized (by it) representative, in the body of the leader of the sect, and which are merely well-meaning but deluded, psychopaths with agendas, or indolent parasites, nor is it the role of a secular state to make that determination.

But I will not throw my hands up in the air at this conundrum! Instead, let me supply a convenient answer which side-steps the intellectually obstinate theological questions^[1] raised above, and that is this:

Let the author of this delusionary segment of the bill be identified; from there, their sect & church may be further identified; and let the fines for the involuntary miscarriages be levied against that sect and its adherents, no matter how large or how small. Let’s be generous to God and impose no more nor less than $5000 per miscarriage. Furthermore, if that sect should disband for any reason, then the section on ectopic pregnancy shall be null and void.

Does this sound like madness? I am a practicing software engineer, logic is my everyday business. I’m simply practicing a bit of logic here. So, if this sounds like madness, perhaps we should go back to the assumption that a fertilized egg is somehow a person, and re-think what I consider to be a specious, and even malignant, assumption.

⁰ I bring up miscarriage as an ectopic pregnancy is little different from a miscarriage: something has gone wrong with the pregnancy and it must be terminated. In ectopic pregnancy, we must perform the abortion or the expectant woman is at substantial risk of death. The fetus is doomed in either case, for reasons out of our control.

¹ While intellectually difficult, or even impossible, to answer, history supplies sufficient and even overwhelming evidence that these questions concerning the propriety of various faiths are easily validated through the use of physical violence. Let not mere questions of actual existence stop us from assaulting our fellow man, eh?

While on our recent vacation trip to Traverse City, Michigan, we stopped in at Lobdell’s: A Teaching Restaurant, which is, in turn, attached to Northern Michigan College’s Great Lakes Maritime Academy, and I took a moment to snap some picturesque shots. Nothing earth-shattering, but I like them.

Seeing that it was Thanksgiving week, the Academy was empty of all but the people at the desk, who quite nicely let us in when we tired of dockside and knocked at locked back doors. Speaking of the restaurant, here’s a couple of outside views, which were surprisingly compelling.

Fun, and the food was good, too.

Bloomberg reports on the latest proposal from Senator Warren (D-MA):

Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday unveiled details of a tax on lobbying that would cost some of the biggest U.S. corporations hundreds of millions of dollars.

Under her proposal, companies that spend between $500,000 and $1 million a year on lobbying would pay a 35% tax on their expenditures. The rate would increase to 60% for spending of more than $1 million, and to 75% above $5 million. …

“My new lobbying tax will make hiring armies of lobbyists significantly more expensive for the largest corporate influencers like Blue Cross Blue Shield, Boeing, and Comcast,” Warren wrote. “Sure, this may mean that some corporations and industry groups will choose to reduce their lobbying expenditures, raising less tax revenue down the road – but in that case, all the better.”

Her campaign said that if her tax had been in effect over the last 10 years, more than 1,600 corporations and lobbying groups would have had to pay about $10 billion in taxes.

It would certainly make “capturing” the agency regulating you a bit more expensive; however, your customers may end up paying for it, so I have to wonder if this proposal would be all that efficacious. And, one must wonder, would the corporations, by paying the tax, feel that they should gain something, since they’ve already “paid for it”?

However, for the Senator, and I do emphasize her position, if she does not win the Presidency in the next election, she retains her Senate seat and therefore could propose this tax, probably in concert with a Representative (since taxes must be initiated in the House, as I recall – although I’m having trouble verifying that).

And I have a morbid curiosity about how the companies would get around it.

[This post accidentally was made into a menu page a while back, and I just noticed now. -Hue]

I suppose the presenter is the big clue.

Somehow I missed this lovely hoax; my source, a comment on The Daily Kos, suggests it dates from 2008.

As an example of the confusion over society sector morality, we have this particular defense of a Michigan law concerning the leftover money, if any, after a tax foreclosure sale to pay back taxes. Crain’s Detroit Business sets out the case:

• In tax foreclosure sales, state law allows governments to keep money left over after overdue property taxes are paid
• Issue is whether it’s illegal under takings clause in U.S., state constitutions
• Attorney for former Oakland County property owners calls it “stealing”

A lawyer on Thursday warned the Michigan Supreme Court that local governments could face a financial calamity if forced to repay surplus cash from the sale of tax-foreclosed properties.

There is no dispute that state law allows county treasurers to keep money left over after overdue property taxes finally are paid from a sale. The issue for the court is whether the practice is illegal under the takings clause in the U.S. and Michigan constitutions.

“This is unjust and it is unconstitutional. … The government can take the property and sell it, but it can only keep what it’s rightfully entitled to,” said Christina Martin, an attorney for former property owners in Oakland County.

She called it “stealing.” …

John Bursch, arguing on behalf of Oakland County, told the Supreme Court that property owners have more than two years to avoid foreclosure because of unpaid taxes. But after foreclosure, he added, property rights are extinguished along with any other claims.

“This is not unjust enrichment” by local governments, Bursch said. “When you’re on notice and you fail to do something, you lose your rights.”

He urged the justices to rely on the Legislature to change the law if the public thinks it’s unfair. Bursch said more than $2 billion is at stake if the court declares the law unconstitutional.

“A ruling for the plaintiffs will ruin local governments,” Bursch said. “There are currently class actions pending in all 83 county circuit courts and in our federal courts. … That will come right out of schools, roads police, firefighters and other basic services.”

It’s Mr. Bursch’s final argument which bothers me. It’s basically a distraction for the justices to consider the alleged hypothetical financial plight of the local governments over the settled financial plight of the citizens who feel they’ve been victimized by this law.

Is it the business of local government to turn a profit? No.

Is it the business of local government to manage the affairs of the citizens in a wise and just manner? Yes.

Government entities have several options for raising required funds, primarily taxes. I know there’s been a decades-long push on to lower taxes as if they’re the devil’s plaything, but in this case we’re seeing the unfortunate results of pushing that understandable goal too far: injustice visited upon those least capable of bearing it. The devil is not in the chasing of lowering taxes, but in forcing the funding of government services through alternative means: keeping foreclosure profits as if a government entity has somehow earned them, the insanity of funding law enforcement via civil asset forfeiture, and the moral bankruptcy of private prisons. Each seeks to use means which are not congruent with the goals of government, as they are borrowed from other sectors of society or even simply perversions of the usual methods of government. While they may appear to be an efficient means to those goals, they are also rife with opportunities for corruption. Is this better than taxation, where the numbers are available for all to see and evaluate, and the revenue is predictable, while these other means are neither public, reviewable, nor predictable?

Even suggesting that taxes might have to rise would be inappropriate. Justice isn’t about profits, in this case it’s about who rightfully owns what. Building government services on the backs of those who have trouble paying taxes, or, as the article makes clear, are the victims of clerical errors, is simple madness.

That’s enough venting for the morning.

Polynya:

A gigantic hole in Antarctica’s sea ice has perplexed scientists for decades.

Now, with the help of robots, satellites, and seals with sensors strapped to their heads, a team of researchers has discovered that climate, salt levels, and an underwater mountain all contribute to the weird recurring phenomenon, according to a study published Monday in Nature.

The massive “polynya,” which is the term for an area of open water surrounded by sea ice, occasionally appears in the Weddell Sea in the Antarctic northwest, seemingly at random. The size and frequency of the offshore polynya are not closely correlated with temperatures, suggesting a more complex mechanism drives its formation process. [“Mysterious Hole in Antarctic Sea Ice Explained by Robots and Seals,” Becky Ferreira, Vice]

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that I thought the recent The Simpsons‘ episode Thanksgiving of Horror, a collection of three mildly ridiculous stories about Thanksgiving horror, to be noteworthy for the middle story, The Fourth Thursday After Tomorrow. Marge’s intellect is replicated by Homer and placed in a computer, from which she becomes the slave of Homer and Marge for the upcoming Thanksgiving dinner.

I’ve mentioned the use of a true AI may be functioning as a substitute for human slavery, and this episode serves to illuminate this in a very special way by cloning Marge, rather than spawning some fully artificial personality. By thinking about a personality of now some thirty years of age, no matter how artificial in one special way, it may serve to give pause to the idea of creating fully intelligent artificial entities without the option of the sort of limited self-agency to which we, which is to say Western Civ, often appeal.

The empathy for the Marge imprisoned in a computer, as it were, is certainly a plausible result, and if we can already have empathy for current computer entities which exhibit faux-behaviors reminiscent of intelligent creatures, perhaps we can still have hope of not mass-producing true slaves someday.

I’m a little behind on my science reading, so my apologies if you’ve seen this video of ants rescuing their nestmates from spiderwebs:

The video could have been more inspiring, but still cool behavior if you ask me, but assuming this is a single queen colony species, it’s not hard envisioning this mutation spreading rapidly through a species, or even causing speciation.

This is the second book by Peter Turchin to enter my experience, although it precedes the other, Secular Cycles^[1] in publishing chronology. Judging from a note near the end, it’s meant to be a popularization of two earlier works, one of which is the aforementioned Secular Cycles.

The goal of this book is to give the reader a sense of how history is primarily affected by population, by the cycles of asabiya, and, perhaps inadvertently, how the twin motivations of justice and vengeance are submerged by exhaustion. This sense is conveyed through the use of anecdotes, followed by generalizations of those anecdotes, often accompanied by references to similar incidents in other cultural contexts.

The Introduction sets the problem of adequately and precisely describing how empires form, rule, and crumble, using as a reference the classic science fiction series Foundation by Asimov. In the series, these questions are precisely described by mathematics, and while Turchin doesn’t pretend to the precision suggested in the fictional series, he does wish to take the next step along that path.

Empire is defined as a “large, multiethnic territorial state with a complex power structure.” This does not preclude monarchies nor democracies, suggesting a wide applicability. Questions of how such entities, given traditional hostilities between human groups, bind together are brought up.

A fast overview of the proposed theoretical framework is given; how it is predicated on differentiated groups, rather than individuals; how groups are defined in terms of internal cooperation, rather than competition, which leads to asabiya, a critical concept and term from Ibn Khaldun, meaning the “capacity of a social group for concerted collective action.” Such questions as measurement, origin (external threats), and attenuation are noted, if not immediately answered. He declines to agree with dominant theories in social and biological sciences, as they are not congruent with this theory.

Once imperiogenesis is overviewed, it’s the turn of the destruction of empires: imperiopathosis. As external threats decline, how is asabiya, and thus internal peace and stability, affected? How does the rise in population first benefit, then damage, all classes of society, all handled under the rubric of The Matthew Principle; and how the behavior of the occupants of an empire seems, in my view, to emulate that of the terminally drunk man who eventually stumbles disastrously into the nearby river.

Chapter 1 gives us the example of a 1581 Cossack raid through the Urals, where a small band of men won against immense odds due, in part, to their superior sense of asabiya. The Cossacks were multiethnic, and had suffered from the raids of the Tatars for many years. This provided the forge on which a shared group identity was formed; the Tatars did not have that shared allegiance, and when faced with the Cossack resurgence, fell apart and were conquered.

A further example is the success of the Tatar’s ancestors, the Mongol Horde’s invasion of Russia. The transition from success to failure by the Tatars is contrasted with the transition from the failure of the Russians to the success of the Cossacks, and the ebb and flow of social cohesion suggested as the primary reason for these successes and failures.

Chapter 2 covers the Russian Empire up to the mid-1600s in greater detail, illuminating its early failures, the progression of its asabiya, and its later successes. Then it transitions to the United States, noting how the ferocity of the war between Europeans and Indians increased the asabiya between Europeans, regardless of national origin.

Chapter 3 is devoted to chronicling Rome during its secular cycles (see Secular Cycles for more on the terminology), and how its asabiya enabled it to defeat its various enemies, most importantly the Gauls, and how the Gauls strengthened the Romans’ asabiya.

Chapter 4 focuses on the contributions of Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), an early Tunisian historiographer and demographer, whose concept of asabiya is central to Turchin’s work. From there it moves on to the rise of Islam and the part asabiya played in that rise, as did umma, the closely knit Islamic community. By definition, no one could be excluded from the umma due to origin or social status, and that contributed greatly to asabiya.

Chapter 5, “The Myth of Self-Interest, And The Science of Cooperation,” examines those subjects in the context of World War I, Machiavelli, etc, and critiques rational choice theory as it relates to cooperation, and it covers evolutionary biology aspects of cooperation. Based on studies, he divides people into knaves (aka rational theory agents), who I might characterize as parasites; the opposite of the knaves, the saints, who give to the community regardless of the actions of others; and the moralists, who’d like to be saints, but are so disgusted with the knaves that they withdraw cooperation; etc. This chapter, although abstract, is possibly the most interesting of all from a theoretical standpoint, and leaves me wondering how rational could have been part of the name of rational choice theory, when it should have been short-sighted choice theory, or worse. I am not particularly familiar with rational choice theory, but it appears to be little more than satisfying immediate desires in your choices, rather than considering how a different choice might contribute to the strength of a community which supports the chooser.

Chapter 6 returns for a closer look at Rome, the archetypal empire of the West, using stories to draw out general principles concerning the essence of Roman cooperation, or asabiya, and how it enabled empire.

Chapter 7 gives a light overview of Europe in the last 1500 years, beginning with an invasion of Berbers and Arabs in 711, Charlemagne, Iberia and the Castilians, the Franks (even further back than 711), Germany, etc. The themes should be familiar by now.

Chapter 8 begins the exploration of imperiopathosis, or the collapse of empires, a set of chapters which may make observant American readers uncomfortable. It explores the collapse of the French empire and, just as importantly, the behaviors of both upper and lower classes, which are morbidly fascinating as well as illuminating as to how individual behaviors come together to destroy social structures. Physical structures such as churches, lodges, clubs, and other such buildings will only exist and be symbolic of their creator organizations so long as the spirit of empire-wide cooperation exists; once that disappears due to divergent ideologies, the adoration of old grudges, or simple pursuit of self-importance, the buildings are only symbolic of a lost time. Similarly, the great empire becomes only a dusty name when the citizens pull themselves apart, whether losing their asabiya or due to an overpopulation that strains the resources people need to stay relatively equal – or even simply survive.

Chapter 9 continues the exploration of the dissolution of the French empire, and indulges in some comparisons with the English empire.

Chapter 10 switches gears to the abstract and mathematical, describing a simple model Turchin designed and implemented to explore how individual decisions, as well as events outside of anyone’s control, such as fertility or disease, can lead to the destruction or advancement of a single family line. He compares it to historical records for validation. He uses the model for Dumas’ character d’Artagnan to trace the doings of various elite families in England, and how their short-sighted, self-serving actions served to lead all England astray, and how the wiser members of the royalty dealt with those elite families which had the potential to become threats to the royals, whether through straight-forward murder, or the more charming approach of Queen Elizabeth I, who would simply move her entire court to the castle of a rival she deemed dangerous, and after a few weeks or months, the man would be financially ruined by this “opportunity”, unable to engage in rebellion.

Chapter 11 explores the long dissolution of the Roman Empire, arguably signaled by their own final defeat of the Gauls. Their ancient enemy finally ended, their asabiya slowly dissolved, as can be seen by the focus swinging from the health of the state to the overflowing coffers of its upper classes, while the lower classes became poorer and poorer. This is followed all the way to modern day Italy, in which the differences between the prosperous northern part is contrasted with the poverty-stricken southern part, and explained as a lack of social cohesion.

Chapter 12 signals the end of examples, and begins the exploration of cliodynamics, a view of history through the lens of mathematics, including asabiya. He turns to a colleague’s use of mathematics to quantify the efficacy of various military units during World War II.

Chapter 13 extends Chapter 12 out of the realm of military cliodynamics, and he returns to Italy and its history as a natural laboratory.

And Chapter 14 looks to the future, predicting which powers are ambitious to be empires, and pointing at Russia’s Chechen population as a signal to watch. Keep in mind this was almost certainly written pre-2006.

In general, this is an educational and, in parts, entertaining book concerning how human behaviors dictate demographics as we see throughout history. It disputes the previous theory of the Great Man defining history, and instead points to how the clashes at metaethnic frontiers can, over time, generate the social cohesion across ethnic groups necessary to build empires, and, conversely, when the enemy is vanquished, that cohesion can disappear. Interested younger readers, unfamiliar with the tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States may wish to review that history; application of Turchin’s theory to the history of the United States since 1991 may find it enlightening. Also keep in mind that a theory is only valuable in that it generates predictions which can be checked, and if those predictions turn out to be true.

If you want to have a different view on history, its past, present, and future, this book may be for you. It lacks the charts and graphs which made Secular Cycles more enlightening, but has a few more stories and is built on the basis provided by Secular Cycles. Have at it!

¹ Secular is used by Turchin and his co-author Nefedov in the secondary sense of “greater than 100 years.”

Dyspeptic:

The definition of dyspeptic is a person with poor digestion, something that relates to poor digestion or a depressed person.

1. An example of dyspeptic is a person who doesn’t digest dairy well.
2. An example of dyspeptic is someone who’s sad all the time.
   [Your Dictionary]

Noted in “There’s at least one Republican who’s not afraid to stand up to Trump,” Max Boot, WaPo:

It is too bad that Weld is not getting more traction, because I am convinced he would be a better president not only than Trump (a very low standard) but also than any of the Democratic front-runners. A quintessential moderate — a fiscal conservative and social liberal — Weld is also, as he told me, “a proven reacher-across-the-aisle. . . . The atmosphere in Washington would change radically on Day One if I were to replace Mr. Trump.” He has the right temperament for the office: “I’ve always been very comfortable in my own skin, and I’m a calm and relaxed person.” The contrast with the dyspeptic incumbent is so obvious that he doesn’t even have to draw it.

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.