Category Archives: Uncategorized

Many years ago, in my first year of fencing, my coach told me that learning fencing would take time, to which I retorted, “I’m part of the instant gratification generation!”

He thought that was funny.

Evidently, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy thinks the entire country embodies the Instant Gratification Generation central tenet:

“Look, we will never give up our oversight role, but this country is too great for a small vision of just investigations,” McCarthy said at a press conference. “There are challenges out there that we have to get done. And to be fair, we have been investigating for the last two years.

“I think it should come to a close. I think the country wants to be able to solve the problems going forward,” McCarthy said. “They want to see the challenges that we have, but actually rise to the occasion of — that the generations of Americans have done before us.” [The Hill]

Of course, this comes from a leader of the party which still wants to investigate former Secretary of State Clinton over the Benghazi matter – never mind that the first seven investigations found nothing. Can anyone say hypocrisy?

So this leads to the question of the century – how do we encourage our elected representatives to stop putting Party over Country? This is what McCarthy is doing, and I think about half our country is tired of it.

I’d like to suggest that we turn it into a quasi-ritual, and that ritual is this: when someone achieves electoral victory to some seat, they should discard their ties of loyalty to their party. This, of course, is beyond government to enforce, so it must be enforced by the voters. I think the best way is to simply ask them during the campaign: Will you disregard your ties to your party when it comes to matters of your country?

I’m sure there will be a lot of sputtering, but given how frantic the Republicans have been to safeguard President Trump from investigation, from Nunes to McCarthy to, well, there’s been a whole bunch of Republicans who think their personal loyalty to Trump is what makes them statesmen, ANYWAYS this does not seem like an outrageous question to ask a candidate. If the answer is not an outright Yes, then tell them they’ll not be getting your vote. And if they don’t act in conformance with their answer during their term in office, that becomes a point to be brought up during the next campaign. It’ll point up the hypocrisy that many members – and, throughout history, I’m sure of all parties – have been practicing of late.

Devin Nunes’ second career as famous toady Grima Wormtongue.

Think of it as a graduation ceremony: moving from one phase of being a citizen to another requires many changes – that’s the point of the ceremony and rituals. In this case, we’re talking about the transferal of matters of allegiance from the Party to the country. It’ll bring home the importance of being a mature member of Congress – and not a Presidential toady.

Just saw last night’s Late Night With Stephen Colbert, which included a visit from Steve Buscemi, which leads to two questions:

Now that Buscemi is playing God, does this place him above Charlton Heston in the Hollywood pantheon?

And how often is an actor of Buscemi’s stature upstaged by a piece of toast?

This is a dude who likes his tools. Hell, his coffin is spring-loaded with an ejector seat!
Or maybe it’s an ejector seat to hell?

Premature Burial (1962) is typical of the 1960s horror pieces, full of period dress, manners, and dry horror around every corner, although perhaps not that envisioned by the storytellers. Guy Carrell lives in a big, big house with his sister, Kate, his butler, and his fears. His means of support? Unclear. What does he do? He paints, and he sweats over his belief that, like his forefathers, he’s doomed to catalepsy: a disease in which doctors cannot differentiate death from paralysis.

Doomed to being buried alive.

So what attracts the beautiful Emily Gault, owner of a thousand bizarre hair styles, to Guy? He may be tall and courtly, but he’s a real maintenance-gig as well. Guy holds her at arm’s length for a while, but who can resist the multitudinous hair-buns and big, big dresses? So soon they’re married, with a whirlwind trip to Venice planned – but they never go.

Because Guy is suffering from delusions. His friend Dr. Judson cannot help, which is a shame since he’s so earnest and sure of himself. But Guy is not a complete victim. He exerts himself to build his own mausoleum, complete with various escape mechanisms, not to mention a bit of music & wine for a moment of lounging following one’s faux-burial.

Following a nightmare that he has been buried alive and the mausoleum stripped of his escape mechanisms, Judson and Emily combine forces to assure Guy that this is another symptom of his illness, and soon enough the mausoleum is used for dynamite practice, which Guy had obtained for the rather impractical purpose of blowing a hole in the side of the wee building. Another delusion, involving a whistling gravedigger, motivates Guy to prove to his family and friends that his father was really buried alive, and the resultant shock kills him.

Or does it?

Nope, and off to the burial ground we go. Too bad for Guy.

But he’s not entirely luckless, as Dr. Gault, Emily’s Dad, happens to enjoy performing autopsies, so he sends his minions to retrieve his late son-in-law’s body for a bout of midnight madness, but Guy has recovered from his seizure, destroys the gravediggers, and has a lovely bit of vengeance on the doctor. The rampage continues, and in the final act we discover this has been a contrivance of Emily’s.

It’s a mildly creepy story, but the plot holes vitiate it. For example, we never know Emily’s motivation. She’s just a wide-eyed innocent lass who has no apparent grudge against Guy, nor an appetite for ill-got gains. That’s a head scratcher. And Kate, Guy’s sister, claimed to have known all along what was going on, but “I couldn’t tell Guy, he’d never believe me,” she weeps at the murder scene, after shooting him herself. All very wishy-washy. If she knew, why didn’t she plan to foil Emily – or just blow her up with one of those sticks of dynamite?

And Guy just isn’t that sympathetic a character, nor repellent. He needed more depth so we could feel a tug of horror when he’s buried – or when we witness what he, in the end, becomes.

It’s sort of fun, sort of not. If you’re a Ray Milland completist, yada yada yada. Or does “yada yada yada” qualify as an anachronism when reviewing a play set in the 1800s? That’s a head-scratcher, too.

While I fear this proposal from Senators Schumer (D-NY) and Sanders (D-VT), published in The New York Times, concerning stock buyback and dividend behavior by public corporations, will not pass muster with the Republican Party nor SCOTUS, it has a lot of interesting elements which bear discussion:

From the mid-20th century until the 1970s, American corporations shared a belief that they had a duty not only to their shareholders but to their workers, their communities and the country that created the economic conditions and legal protections for them to thrive. It created an extremely prosperous America for working people and the broad middle of the country.

But over the past several decades, corporate boardrooms have become obsessed with maximizing only shareholder earnings to the detriment of workers and the long-term strength of their companies, helping to create the worst level of income inequality in decades.

One way in which this pervasive corporate ethos manifests itself is the explosion of stock buybacks.

So focused on shareholder value, companies, rather than investing in ways to make their businesses more resilient or their workers more productive, have been dedicating ever larger shares of their profits to dividends and corporate share repurchases. When a company purchases its own stock back, it reduces the number of publicly traded shares, boosting the value of the stock to the benefit of shareholders and corporate leadership.

I think one of the practical problems of the concentration on shareholder returns is that we’ll get, and are in fact getting, a society which is wildly out of balance with regard to wealth distribution. There are practical consequences to this.

For the people who are not invested in corporations, there’s the obvious: poverty.

For those who see themselves on the upside, the results will be a bit more in the future: an economy, based on consumption, in which the great mass of consumers are lacking the financial means to buy the goods with which the rich maintain their incomes. They may find their returns originally generous, but less so as the years pass.

This result can be blunted by the rich if they limit their astronomical consumption (such as owning your own supersonic jet) and live off their stored wealth with some decorum.

Most don’t, though. That requires the ability to ignore the competitive instinct that drove many of them to become the top 5% of society in the first place. So when their income falls, they may find themselves in danger of losing their lifestyles. Then they’ll demand lower taxes, express shock at higher taxes (such as a bunch of billionaires recently, including this guy, who are too young to remember a 90% marginal income tax), and continue to “amass wealth.”

This behavior will have the capacity to drive society into an oscillation which may prove disastrous.

I don’t know how Schumer and Sanders’ proposal to enforce societal stabilization (aka, ethical) strategies will play out, but it’s worth considering that our fascination with wealth, with money, rather than with a healthier society, is the unspoken core of this proposal. Think of it this way: our metric for measuring ourselves is flawed. If I had a billion dollars, made through lucky investments or starting up some retail Web shop, would that make me better than the social worker who barely pays the rent but is helping people directly?

Some would say yes.

I don’t think so.

And, yet, resources, or wealth, is required to help drive improvement, but we seem to have forgotten all the other parts.

As I was typing this up, it occurred to me that the Democrats, for all their raucousness and flaws, are the party of grown-ups. It’s too bad they haven’t found a way to make their better urges more coherent and communicable.

Later note: the Democratic debacle in Virginia sorta renders my comment irrelevant, doesn’t it?

Hustings:

A husting originally referred to a native Germanic governing assembly, the thing. By metonymy, the term may now refer to any event, such as debates or speeches, during an election campaign where one or more of the representative candidates are present. The term is used synonymously with stump in the United States. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “This is the best person to beat Trump. And the 14 next-best.” WaPo:

Few of the potential contenders have been tested on the hustings or a national debate stage; nor have they shown us their organizing or fundraising chops.

A bit repetitive.

I thought about live-blogging this, but based on what fragments I’ve seen, the speech was self-serving and worthless.

The unliving wind howls,
But the trees, so quietly alive,
Shriek but little at their dismemberment.

Poster throwback, I’d say.

Lifeforce (1985) is annoying unless you’re a horror connoisseur, because there are good parts, awful parts, and a painful lack of theme. ESA and NASA have combined to send a probe, the Churchill, to Halley’s Comet, for the usual friendly scientific visit. I’d say that, for purposes of poetic license, the size of Halley’s has been somewhat overblown, but unfortunately suggesting that there’s some poetry in this movie might strain credulity.

As they approach, they realize there’s a ship sheltering in the comet’s coma. A big ship. It’s monstrous, and a mess, so it’s time to go investigate. (Don’t these chaps ever watch science-fiction horror movies? Ever?) Inside, they find the survivors, dead or alive or caught up in suspended animation, who can tell? They’re human, consist of one woman and two men, and are, ah, naked. Of course, they’re conveyed back to the ship.

Next thing we know, Churchill is re-entering orbit around Earth, tumbling randomly. A rescue mission finds the grotesquely damaged bodies of the crew – and the three naked humanoids, who they must, of course, convey immediately down to Earth.

Once down, the rampage begins, as guards die in gruesome manners, only to return to life as zombies, then die yet again. Ugh. Colonel Carlsen of the Churchill appears, surviving in an escape pod, and tells of how their prizes had telepathically sucked the life out of the crew, and he had only barely escaped himself. He teams up with British Colonel Caine, who is in charge of clean up, at which he finds himself failing miserably – not that he’s incompetent, but overmatched. But Carlsen has a telepathic link to the leader of the humanoids, and he uses that to track her down.

As London burns and its inhabitants’ life force is sucked up by the giant vacuum cleaner from the stars, Carlsen and Caine fight to stop the zombies, the humanoids, and the imminent catastrophe. And then the ending drivels off into incomprehensibility. Or perhaps it’s realistic – should we even expect the motives of aliens to be comprehensible? Well, actually, yes, since they’ll be subject to the forces of evolution as well.

The special effects range from excellent, at least for the era, to downright silly. Don’t miss the burning of London and the space scenes with the ships. Ignore the comet, and try not to laugh too hard at the zombies.

The acting ranges from not awful, in the person of Patrick Stewart (yes, Shakespearean-trained Stewart – what the hell is he doing in this bit of tripe?), to, yes, awful. I know some people really liked this movie, but really really the acting was terrible.

When surgery goes oh so very wrong.

And the story is of little help. The characters are given little dimension or likability. Lacking any sort of theme beyond making the expansion to the stars more scary than it already will be (like my tense confusion much, grammar proctors?), it is often unrealistic concerning how procedures might have actually taken place in a real world scenario. This may not seem important, but as a story drifts away from realistic moorings while still attempting to seem realistic, we lose the impact that comes with believing our best efforts are but lace waved in the face of the oncoming Minotaur. Godzilla may eat nuclear weapon blasts for lunch, and that terrifies us even as we giggle, but when the best of our best can’t seem to mount a plausible watch on the captured aliens, well, we might as well hand them a pass to the nearest lunch buffet. “We taste like chicken.” It’s the shock of realizing that, despite our best effort, we’re still vulnerable to the monster in the bush that makes horror into horror.

Or maybe not. I’m not much of a horror fan.

If you’re a Patrick Stewart completist, then you’ll need to see this. He’s not in the best scenes, but that just means more of the movie is at least a little palatable. But if you’re not in that category of audience member, you can probably give this one a skip.

While there’s a delicious schadenfreude in this post on The Plum Line by Gary Sargent:

Senate Republicans appear to be in a panic about President Trump’s threat to declare a national emergency to realize his unquenchable fantasy of a big, beautiful wall on the southern border. Republicans are reportedly worried that such a move could divide them, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has delivered that warning to Trump in private conversations.

Republicans have good reason to be deeply nervous. Here’s why: According to one of the country’s leading experts on national emergencies, it appears that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) can trigger a process that could require the GOP-controlled Senate to hold a vote on such a declaration by Trump — which would put Senate Republicans in a horrible political position.

Really, really, the entire legislation, called the National Emergencies Act, that might enable Trump to make funding decisions without the participation of Congress should be retracted by Congress. I don’t care who proposed it, who passed it, and who opposed it. It’s clearly a transgression against the original intent of the Constitution, and it should be obviated by Congress, or, perhaps as good, voided by SCOTUS.

Call me a stickler for good design if you want. The weakness exhibited by Congress in its determination to delegate responsibilities and powers while at least part of it is cravenly deferential to the Presidency is becoming a dreadful reminder of what happened to the Senators of Rome. They became weaker and weaker until they were little more than a mark of success – and then they became nothing at all.

And halfway makes me wish the USSR was still around, because it’d make us shape up and stop this stupid ideological feuding.

Now that the Russians have their propaganda machine comfortably esconced in the Internet and have no concerns about blowback from President Trump, they’re off and running. NBC News has the report on their first bit of mischief:

The Russian propaganda machine that tried to influence the 2016 U.S. election is now promoting the presidential aspirations of a controversial Hawaii Democrat who earlier this month declared her intention to run for president in 2020.

An NBC News analysis of the main English-language news sites employed by Russia in its 2016 election meddling shows Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who is set to make her formal announcement Saturday, has become a favorite of the sites Moscow used when it interfered in 2016.

Several experts who track websites and social media linked to the Kremlin have also seen what they believe may be the first stirrings of an upcoming Russian campaign of support for Gabbard.

Since Gabbard announced her intention to run on Jan. 11, there have been at least 20 Gabbard stories on three major Moscow-based English-language websites affiliated with or supportive of the Russian government: RT, the Russian-owned TV outlet; Sputnik News, a radio outlet; and Russia Insider, a blog that experts say closely follows the Kremlin line. The CIA has called RT and Sputnik part of “Russia’s state-run propaganda machine.”

So what should the responsible voter do? S/he could simply try to divine the true intentions of the Russians and vote against them. This could become quite difficult, though, as we get into the He knows that I know that he knows that I know loop.

So my suggestion is that a good list of Russian propaganda web-sites should be made available or otherwise obtained, and then just ignore those sites. Find some good sites, such as mainstream sites that have decades of experience as being solidly American, and use them to gather up information about candidates you may wish to vote for.

Divining the intentions of the Russians is too hard for the average citizen, so just discard tainted information and make your judgments from there.

Now that the Trump Administration is firmly into its third year of operation, the question of continued employment must be intruding on the consciousness of those members of his Cabinet who are not independently wealthy nor addicted to power, which probably excludes Secretaries Mnuchin and Ross. Why? Because a second term for President Trump, while not impossible, certainly seems unlikely given his current approval / disapproval ratings.

Currently on the hot seat appears to be Secretary of State Pompeo, formerly a Representative from Kansas. Let’s have WaPo summarize:

President Trump has dismissed the prospect of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo leaving his post to run for a Senate seat, even as Pompeo has signaled that he is open to the possibility.

In an interview with CBS’s “Face The Nation” slated to air Sunday ahead of the Super Bowl, Trump said Pompeo told him he was not leaving his current position and voiced confidence that he would not bolt to pursue a Senate seat in Kansas.

“I asked him the question the other day. He says he’s absolutely not leaving. I don’t think he’d do that. And he doesn’t want to be lame duck,” said Trump.

The Washington Post reported last month that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) personally courted Pompeo to consider running in a telephone call, according to two people familiar with the conversation. Pompeo later confirmed the discussion.

Why would McConnell and the Kansas GOP want Pompeo, a former Representative from Kansas, to run for the Senate? Because Kansas, once the GOP’s Midwest crown jewel, has suddenly become precarious. The Kansas executive office was lost to the Democrats in 2018, and although a 5 point victory may not seem like much of a gap, the previous GOP victory gap was more than 3 points, leading to the suggestion that 8% of the electorate switched from supporting the Republicans to the Democrats in 2018. Add in the fact that four GOP state legislators recently switched their allegiance to the Democratic Party, and that’s gotta add to the case of nerves that the party leadership should be feeling. And then there’s the minor matter of the rejection by the moderates in the Kansas GOP of some party orthodoxy.

That rejection of ideology, which is that lowering taxes will always lead to prosperity and was revoked by the GOP controlled Kansas legislature after Kansas began to wobble economically speaking, was a signal that the leadership of the GOP, embodied in then-governor and prime mover of the tax reduction Brownback, had become separated from the moderate wing to a degree larger than was tolerable. In other words, they were true believers, rather than hardened empiricists.

But this leads to another observation. The GOP nominee for the governorship was Kris Kobach, who managed to lose in a heavily conservative state. He is also known as an extremist anti-immigrant warrior and a power-monger, as was documented numerous times. An extremist rejected by the Kansas electorate.

And so who is Mike Pompeo? To the right is the estimation from OnTheIssues of his ideological position. This could be interpreted as another right-wing ideologist. That suggests that the Senate seat up for grabs, which is another state-wide seat, much like the governor’s seat, is not a safe seat for a GOP extremist. If Pompeo chooses to leave his Secretary of State post for a run at the Senate, he may find himself unemployed.

And, yet, any reasonable reading of the Presidential tea-leaves of 2020, as premature as it is, suggests President Trump is on a fast track to losing. No matter how much he fulfills his promises to his base, no matter how much he boasts about how well the economy is doing, it’s clear that a majority of the American citizenry disapproves of him and the job he’s doing. Furthermore, it’s difficult to see any upcoming events which would push his negative numbers upside down, while, based on his past performance, it’s quite likely that there’ll be more putrid scandals for him to try cover up and distract from.

And there’s the Special Counsel’s investigation waiting in the background as well. So far, nothing good – for Trump – has come of that.

So Pompeo may be in a bit of a bind as he looks to his future. Of course, he may see nothing but sunlight, either based on non-public information, or the confidence that ideologists often exude because they believe they’re in possession of the truth.

But the Secretary of State may not make it much longer as an official, elected or otherwise.

At least for those who do mind a fall.

The Man Who Lost His Head (2007) is a fairly painless telling of the story of how a village of Maori, who find a carving of the head of a lost leader that is still integral to their lives is now being kept in a British museum, fight to have it repatriated to them. We find the usual themes of enlightenment, romance, and that sort of thing.

But it is a useful, valuable story in that it raises important questions concerning the practices of the great museums of the world, and the objects that they hold in them. For example, on last year’s trip to Chicago’s Field Museum, we ran across a room dedicated to artifacts taken from South Pacific islands where the inhabitants are head hunters. I wonder if those villages still exist, and if these artifacts, now lost to them, are still important to their villages. This is a parallel to the Maori story of this movie, as that carving not only symbolizes that long-gone leader, but actually embodies him. His loss was a tremendous loss to the community, echoing down through the generations.

This comes down to the very different views that different societies can potentially take of their pasts and future and of the very nature of life itself. Westerners struggle between the call of ancient sects from the Judeo-Christian family, and the more objective approaches of science and even agnosticism/atheism. Some ancient artifacts are still forbidden, but others may be freely shown by museums, especially those from alien cultures.

And those alien cultures, such as the Maori, are often not finished with them. Skipping over the varied roles such artifacts, possibly imbued with some sort of agency, may play in culture, we come to a bit of cultural pollution. Much like the Elgin Marbles of Greece, taken from their origins when Greece was vulnerable, these artifacts have, in a moment of emotion I cannot even name, joined the cultural consciousness of the cultures into which they’ve been forcibly imported. Those Elgin Marbles are the iconic example of this fusion, as the British Museum continues to resist repatriation attempts, and while I’m sure their are many excuses, I suspect at the heart will be the question of what will be a British Museum minus this grand example of Greek architectural statuary?

I’ve never liked zoos. The animals, even if they have longer lifetimes than in the wild, are inmates, at best clowns to entertain the humans. I’ve always like museums, as their exhibits are almost always dead or never living, at least by Western civilization standards. But a movie like this makes me wonder if some parts of their collections may still be considered objects with agency by their home cultures, held against their will by the museums.

It makes for an odd world to think that way.

It finally occurred to me to take some pictures of the winter wonderland, as the sidewalks had a delicate layer of frost.

The risers beset with frost.

It didn’t last all that long.

Here’s a puzzle for my frazzled mind:

This summer, the Georgetown Center for the Constitution will again offer its week-long “boot camp” on originalism in theory and practice, open to students from all law schools, as well as to recent law school graduates. The 2019 Summer Seminar will run from May 20-24. It features an all star roster of professors and jurists decribing the cutting edge of originalism theory, as well as how best to utilize it in practice. It includes adherents of different variations of originalism, as well as a critic of originalism. As in past years, we will visit the Supreme Court of the United States.

Students attending the Originalism Summer Seminar will receive a $2,000 award for their participation. The five-day course runs from Sunday evening, May 20 to Friday evening, May 24, 2019. Morning sessions beginning at 8:00 a.m. followed with a daily luncheon and afternoon meetings each day. A reception and dinner will be held on on May 22 and the week concludes with a farewell reception on May 24. The application season closes February 15, 2019.

Students will receive an award for participation? What, these students have to be bribed to hear the presentations? Generally, this runs the other way – you pay for your boot camp, whether it’s academic, avocational, or sports, not get paid. Makes me wonder. I hope those students can bring the proper skepticism to what appears to be a controversial theory & practice.

The smart ones will refuse the payment.

Politico reports that Sarah Huckabee Sanders thinks President Trump was God’s choice:

“I think God calls all of us to fill different roles at different times, and I think that he wanted Donald Trump to become president,” Sanders said during an interview with Christian Broadcast Network News. “And that’s why he’s there, and I think he has done a tremendous job in supporting a lot of the things that people of faith really care about.”

Which reminds me of some words of support President Bush (43, not 41) received that I happened to see on TV back during his campaign – some voter said she thought that God had picked Bush to be President.

That was well before the wars and economic disaster of the Bush Administration befell us, which I suppose humiliated said voter. Or maybe not, they seem fairly immune to self-abnegation. I later opined that if God had picked Bush, he must surely hate America. And, fact is, most Republicans don’t care to mention President Bush in political conversation. Maybe they did finally pick up on the enormity of their position.

Dana Milbank is on the right track:

This makes sense, because Trump has of late been acting as if he draws his authority from the divine right of kings. He’s asserting his absolute power to act without — and often in contravention of — the Democratic House, the Republican Senate, his own intelligence agencies, law enforcement authorities and diplomats, and the will of the American public.

Presidential defenders say the Sanders claim is simply a repetition of the biblical admonition that all temporal leaders are established by God. And conservative evangelicals have reason to be pleased with Trump’s judicial picks and other policies.

Right up until those judges indulge in incompetence or corruption and are ousted, or, worse, actually turn out to be good judges (such as this one) and rule against the corporatists’ and would-be theocrats’ pet positions. Then they’ll proclaim him to have fallen under the influence of Satan. Poor chap.

But I must say, as an agnostic, Sanders’ remark, her belief that she’s reading the mind of the Divine, or at least interpreting it from the “will” of the voters, is illustrative why such people should simply be laughed out of public discourse. Let me illustrate by building on Sanders’ delusion.

I believe that, given the danger our President has put his own nation in through his actions and inactions with regard to national security, environment, and political corruption, God has decided Americans must learn to appropriate judge their own government, and replace it if need be. Therefore, he willed Trump to be President against the popular vote, and is now waiting for all faithful Americans to surge forth and remove him.

Oh, and fix your damn electoral system while you’re at it. For our God believes in Democracy, and that ain’t Democracy you’re doing.

See? It’s easy. When you’re reading the mind of something that has written so many contradictory and obscure things, and he/she/it is not around to correct you, you can make up any old shit and it sounds good.

And then the zealots come popping out, and before we know it there’s a few dozen people burned at the stake and the lawn is a mess. Do you think I’m joking? Go read some English history. Some representative examples, from which the American Founding Fathers no doubt learned, are embedded in this link.

The point is that Sanders is proceeding down a path bereft of rationality. She has some facts, yeah: President Trump, “conservative judges,” policies she likes. But those don’t add up to a hill of beans until she inserts the approval of a Divine creature for which there is no known objective proof. This is doubly a problem because the human species does not share minds nor consciousness, meaning all we can do is imperfectly communicate. What does that mean?

Sanders may be lying. Or perhaps she’s had a brain malfunction and really thinks she’s talking to God. Or maybe it’s all just deduction on her part. No one can be rationally sure, except perhaps a neurologist with a blood test in hand. But while those first two points are obvious and don’t need discussion, that last one needs a bit of buffing and polishing because Sanders’ idea of the divine is necessarily dissimilar from damn near everyone else’s, and that means her deductions, which necessarily come from her assumptions about God’s mind, may not match my readers’, or her confidants, or her political opponents, or herself a week earlier.

Or mine. She sees the Divine picking Trump as the guy who makes the evangelicals happy by doing their will, regardless of how much he lies, cheats, bellows, boasts, mismanages, and misleads.

And I see Trump as the cautionary lesson, the encouragement to pay more attention to governance and less to, well, pick your favorite time-wasting hobby. Like, say, celebrity adoration. Reality TV shows. Or studying the Bible. God wants us to perform better, not have more judges of a particular bent. That’s my opinion, based on a close study of all the objective information about the Divine. (In case my reader is in doubt, that would be a grand total of none.)

And who’s right? This is the nub, so pay attention. Neither one of us is provably right, yet there are people who don’t deal well with such uncertainty, who’d love to fight the good fight without knowing just which side is the good side.

The Founding Fathers had recent instructive examples in the history of religious folks, and that’s why we’re a secular nation. That’s why the Johnson Amendment exists. I don’t care how much it galls any of the religious folk, Christian, Hindi, or what have you, the history of theocracies is poor and getting worse, and that’s because rationality is not part of the discourse.

And, yes, I’m pissed off that Sanders would display her poor judgment and ridiculous deductions in her role as a government spokesman. It’s an embarrassment. This country excels when it’s rational, and falls apart when it’s in the throes of religious sensibility.

Was that a thank you or a curse?

The Ash Lad: In the Hall of the Mountain King (2017; in Norwegian, Askeladden – I Dovregubbens hall) retells a Norwegian fable with a knowing wink and nod. Myth decrees that if ever the Princess of the kingdom reaches her 18th birthday without wedding a suitor, the Troll King under the mountain will awaken and make her his bride, enslaving her and no doubt subjecting her to a variety of undescribed atrocities.

In what becomes a theme for the movie, Princess Kristin, who incidentally and rather purposely has mad knife-throwing skills, also has thoroughly modern sensibilities, not only in not taking the myth seriously, but in also refusing to wed the rather cocky Prince who presents himself as ready to take on the responsibilities of the Kingdom. Exactly why he’s a prince and wasn’t drowned somewhere along the way is not clarified.

In order to escape a potential forced wedding, or any other wedding for that matter, the Princess escapes into the night, and when the King is so informed, he announces that he who returns with the Princess can have her in marriage, along with half the kingdom.

Princess Kristin has some problems controlling her horse during her escape, resulting in the young man destined to be known as the Ash Lad, Espen, being knocked off a bridge and into the river. She ends up wet behind the ears as well, and so they spend the evening drying off before a fire – before an unseen force knocks them apart.

Espen returns home to his two brothers and father, bereft of food, and they go off hunting while he is told off to watch the fire at home, and, before we know it, the house is afire, resulting in the Ash Lad appellation. Their loss of home being the end of the line, they hear from the searching Prince that the discovery of the Princess might save them, and so off go the brothers to find her.

Between forest nymphs and old witch, pond sharks and an exceedingly bad tempered troll king, the brothers find the Princess and return her for the reward they want: home & respect.

The theme of modern sensibilities intruding shows up in the treatment by the characters of the world around them. For example, the evil Prince observes that “… there are many accidents during the Royal hunt,” suggesting the Princess can be killed easily enough if she interferes with the Prince’s reign.

But hero Espen, a young man who is brave enough, but loses focus and wanders off too easily, is, well, it’s surprising he made it to adulthood. His brothers, competent at accomplishing tasks, are impatient with his behaviors, and it’s a strangely modern sensibility in a story concerning the ravages that occur when myths are defied.

And that’s one pissed-off troll king. A small mountain with a prodigious nose, trees growing out of him, and a temper to dismay even the great & heroic Prince, the troll is the shadow around the corner, the vengeance upon those whose reach exceeds their grasp, a temper to dismay even the evil Prince and his minions, the creature in violation of all norms of behavior and even of existence; that sunlight destroys him speaks to an allegory concerning how shining a light on boastfulness and arrogance will bring evil fates down upon those holding such attitudes.

In a word, he’s cool. I wish he’d had some dialog.

The dubbing I thought was excellent, although my Arts Editor disagrees, and the movie never drags. The theme that differences are not necessarily bad is at war with older themes concerning the importance of orthodoxy, and perhaps those latter lose in this movie. But it’s a fun movie, if you’re in the mood for it, so give it a go if you like fairy tales from other countries.

What say you and I dump this case and go get married, instead?

The Kennel Murder Case (1933) is a formulaic whodunit in which the dogs play only a nominal part, apportioned between the categories of romance, a quick-witted free-lance detective, slow-witted cops, and humor. Unfortunately, little time is given to actually get to know the characters, with the exception of the victim, who, it turns out, is thoroughly unlikable, leading to a veritable cavalcade of suspects parading throughout his residence. This made it hard to keep track of all the suspects, even though they had nicely thought out motives. We really didn’t care that much about them, I fear.

The print itself, viewed through Amazon Prime, was damaged and/or the film was overexposed from the get-go, and the audio was a trifle messed up as well. The romance was more or less a zero (“Really? Him??”), but the comedy left me with some gentle laughs.

But, in the end, this was something of a disappointment, just suitable for viewing while keeping my sickly Arts Editor company.

Back in 2016 I criticized Obama and the Democrats over their use of the term common sense. For me, anytime a politician advertises their solution to some problem as being common-sense, red flags are raised and that politician’s assertions should be examined with vigor and enthusiasm.

Today, newly elected Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) used that term so many times in a WaPo op-ed piece that I think my blood pressure went up ten points. It’s not that I’m against compromise, but that he misrepresents positions consistently, and hides behind common sense as if it’s an invincible barrier. In fact, it reminds me of some of the emails I’ve dissected on the blog that come from the conservative email lifeblood – they may seem reasonable, but once you start thinking for yourself, you realize this is just sophisticated bullshit. Shall we take a look? All the bolding in the quotes are my additions to remind you that Senator Scott is attempting to hide public nakedness by hiding behind the bush of common sense.

One year ago, I called on Congress to make a simple deal on immigration requiring both Republicans and Democrats to do two things — compromise and respect the wishes of the American people. This deal is so logical and so easy, even politicians in Washington should be able to grasp it. But, as the events of the past few weeks have shown, they cannot.

Democrats would have to agree with the American people that our border needs to be secure, and that we need some kind of physical barriers to secure it. It’s not complicated; it’s common sense.

Or … it’s a lie. From a recent WaPo/ABC News poll:

For every goal imputed to the wall, researchers have shown it would have little to no effect. The public doesn’t agree with Senator Scott, they agree that a wall is a waste of money. Back to the good Senator:

Republicans would have to agree with the American people that “dreamers,” kids who grew up here after being brought to the United States by their parents, must be welcomed into our society. Again, it’s common sense.

In the biz, this is known as a softball, because it’s easy to hit while not revealing anything about the folks in question. Of course, Dreamers shouldn’t be deported, because that would be cruel. Nearly no one disputes that. But the Republicans have a legitimate concern when it comes to Dreamers: if you legitimize this generation of Dreamers, what’s to keep more illegal immigrants from arriving with babes in arms and continue the drama onwards? It’s a serious question that requires far more debate than it’s received. I like the idea of figuring out what’s gone wrong in those nations from which immigrants are coming and trying to fix it, even if it means curtailing our exports to those countries. I’ve yet to see another one, and this one has the added positive that President Trump himself came up with it, as he noted in a speech to the United Nations. But does Senator Scott mention that?

Senator Scott is now trying to take advantage of that bush he’s hiding behind:

Hate is bad that way; it clouds your judgment. As former senator Alan Simpson said at the funeral for former president George H.W. Bush, “Hatred corrodes the container it’s carried in.” That’s the predicament that Democratic leaders find themselves in now. They hate President Trump so much that they cannot behave in a rational manner.

Of course, Senator Scott has no time for trying to understand the motivations of the Democrats. He’s trying to weave a story of how the Democrats are haters, and will behave irrationally because of that hatred. In fact, this article is not a missive concerning border security, that is merely a grandma’s cape he’s draped over it. This is actually the next blow in the 2020 election, wherein the Republicans will be attempting to paint the Democrats as irrational and untrustworthy.

As long time readers of this blog know, whenever the extremist/Trumpist wing of the Republicans attacks the Democrats, it’s always worth asking if the Republicans are simply projecting, attempting to divert attention from the exact same characteristic in the Republican extremists’ ranks.

In this case, the reigning example of political irrationality would be, you guessed it, President Trump.

But let’s continue mining this artful little article. Senator Scott would like to have us believe the Hispanics are in favor of the wall:

Florida is home to nearly 21 million people, more than 4 million of whom are Hispanic. They want fairness for these dreamers. But guess what else they want: a secure border. That’s right, and it’s not something you hear on the news, but it is true: Hispanics want border security.

In a post-election survey of 1,014 Hispanic voters in Florida, my campaign asked this question: Thinking about our nation’s immigration laws, do you think we need stricter or looser enforcement of these laws?

Sixty-nine percent of the respondents said we need stricter enforcement of our immigration laws, while only 29 percent preferred looser enforcement. Hispanic Americans want our borders secured.

Securing our borders with a physical barrier is not a partisan issue, it’s a common-sense issue.

And, having committed some more gross intellectual errors, Scott is hiding behind the bush again. But, at this point in the article, we’ve learned to read carefully and not skim. (You’re not skimming this blog post, are you?) Here’s what I see as errors.

First, he’s conflating a goal with a process. Stricter enforcement? Fair enough, that’s a reasonable goal. This does not imply a wall. We’ve already seen multiple researchers find that a wall would be a waste of money. Why, then, would this Hispanic population want a wall, if it’s not going to work? The poll Scott’s carefully quoting isn’t, from his own words, asking about a wall, but about stricter enforcement.

Second, he’s conflating border security with immigration laws. By most accounts, illegal immigrants arrive at ports of entry with tourist visas, and simply don’t leave when those visas expire. The wall is going to help how with this or with immigration laws in general? Let’s be clear: If there’s any effect at all, it’ll be minimal and certainly not worth either the $5.7 billion Trump wants to start the wall, nor the $25 billion he estimated to finish it, nor the $50 billion that experts say it would cost to construct the proposed wall. And then there’s the environmental issues, maintenance issues, and etc. etc.

And, third, there’s the simple intellectual dishonesty behind those couple of paragraphs. The wall, border security, and immigration law and enforcement are separate topics; indeed, they’re not even in the same category. A wall is part of border security, which in turn is a small part of immigration law and enforcement of same. Walls are simple and easy to understand, yes? But …

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.  –H. L. Mencken

In fact, I should thank Senator Scott for this article, because, as a political independent, for me it’s really crystalized the Wall as an icon for duplicity, irrationality, dishonesty, and confusion on the part of President Trump and the Republicans. Every time I see or hear anything about the wall, there’s at least one thing from those four categories present: the American populace wants it (the majority do not), it’s already being built (neither the GOP-controlled 115th Congress nor the 116 Congress, not GOP-controlled, have designated any dollars for a new wall), it’ll keep out illegal drugs (no), it’ll keep out illegal immigrants (no, and in fact the lessening of that flow of illegal immigrants may be having a negative impact on our economy), most of them are rapists (crime rates are thought to be lower than for native born Americans), they’re mostly gang members (no), the caravans would be stopped by the wall (the caravans go to the ports of entry and apply for asylum, for the most part), and add your favorite lie here. If it goes up, it may be the most shameful monument to President Trump ever built.

And now we return to Senator Scott’s op-ed, already in progress, to see the real point of his writing:

There is only one thing standing in the way of this common-sense solution for America: irrational and clouded thinking motivated by hate from Democratic leaders in Washington.

Dishonest? Sure. Senator Scott fails to represent the true reasons the Democrats, and most Americans, are against the wall. If he were interested in a good solution, he’d understand their reasoning as well as his own, represent it fairly, and then rebut it or find a good compromise position. Instead, he wants to spread the myth that the Democrats are irrational. To say that his compromise is common-sense is a failure of the intellect, and condemns his as shallow, short-sighted, and politically motivated.

Bu it doesn’t matter which party is involved, when someone starts throwing around the phrase common sense when it comes to political matters, it’s a fair bet that they’re either vastly inexperienced or entirely duplicitous. I leave it to my reader to decide which category into which Senator Scott belongs. But remember it for the future, and apply it liberally, especially when dealing with someone from your own side. Honestly telling them they’re full of crap will improve the party, not ruin it, no matter what the adherents spout to the contrary.

Oracle recently won a Federal court ruling concerning Java APIs in litigation with Google, and Ars Technica reports that Google is taking this right to SCOTUS. Why?

An application programming interface is the glue that holds complex software systems together. Until 2014, it was widely assumed that no one could use copyright law to restrict APIs’ use—a view that promoted software interoperability.

Then, in 2014, a court known as the Federal Circuit Appeals Court issued a bombshell ruling taking the opposite view. Oracle had sued Google, arguing that Google had violated Oracle’s copyright by re-implementing APIs from the Java programming language. The case has been working its way through the courts ever since, with the Federal Circuit issuing a second controversial ruling in 2018. On Thursday, Google asked the Supreme Court to overturn the Federal Circuit’s controversial ruling.

I had to dig around in this article and the previous one, to be sure of what’s going on here, but that second paragraph above is accurate, even if other parts of the articles obscured the issue: Oracle is suing Google for replacing Java “libraries” with their own versions, alleging that the signatures are copyrighted and may not be used in this way without Oracle’s permission. In most programming languages of any sophistication, code is chopped into pieces for easy reuse, such as “get the current time” or “calculate the tangent of x.”. As an analogy, think of meringue, which can be made in several forms, and is used in innumerable recipes. It is, in and of itself, a piece of no particular use (OK, some would disagree, but you’re just sick, sick, sick!), but in combination with other pieces, enables a delicious dessert^[1].

These “pieces” of code have what is called a “signature,” implicit or explicit, associated with them, and that signature defines how to use, call, or invoke (all meaning the same) that code. For some programmers, an “API” is both the signature and the code that implements that calculation of a tangent. (Our analogy to recipes breaks down at that point, so don’t go looking for help there.)

For other programmers, though, that signature is separate from the implementing code. You find this in languages that believe in “type checking,” which, in this regard, means double-checking that the invocation of the piece of code is correct. It’s also important in languages supporting polymorphism, which means (among other things) various pieces of code with the same name, as the decision concerning which one to invoke during execution of the code is dependent on some other factor; the signature enables the proper invocation of whichever piece of code is chosen. So it is in Java.

Now, these pieces of code are usually collected into libraries of one sort or another, and some of these libraries are dynamically linked to the programs using them – which, in English, means the library is not physically bundled with the program, but instead exists as a separate file. And here’s where Oracle is screaming bloody murder – Google has apparently been replacing Oracle (formerly Sun Microsystems, the developer of Java, until they were bought by Oracle) supplied Java libraries with Google-written libraries.

So, if Oracle ultimately prevails, what does it mean?

“The Federal Circuit’s approach will upend the longstanding expectation of software developers that they are free to use existing software interfaces to build new computer programs,” Google wrote in its Thursday petition to the Supreme Court.

James Grimmelmann, a copyright scholar at Cornell University and former software developer, agrees with that. “The Federal Circuit’s decision threatens the continued vitality of software innovation,” he told Ars.

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.

It’s rather fascinating. I’ve been off working in a company-proprietary language for the last twenty years, which means I’ve not been exposed to certain industry-practices for quite a while, and thus I have little feel for how often these Java, and other language, libraries are being replaced by other suppliers^[2].

Let’s assume it’s a lot. And that Oracle wins. What’s next? Does Oracle sue the pants off everyone, not just Google? Do other library suppliers also sue?

Is it litigation central?

Well, it’s a corporate knock-down drag-out, so I suppose it’s going to depend on who has the best lobbyists in the House of Representatives, and who has bought the most Republican Senators in the Senate, because if the software industry comes to a grinding halt, some will start screaming for legal relief, and we’ll have the fun of watching a pack of lawyers-turned-legislators trying to understand the difference between a signature and the code described by that signature, and how the latter should be copyrighted, but not the signature.

Because I can’t see the shebang being excluded from the copyright laws. That’s not fair to the corporations who’ve paid for a lot of this code to be written.

Perhaps Oracle wins – and everyone walks as far away as possible from Oracle. There is definitely an inter-corporate social culture out there, and it’s possible that Oracle might find itself socially excluded, as it were. However, given that they supply the most successful database program ever as well as Java, one of the most successful languages around, it seems unlikely.

Maybe Oracle licenses companies to supply replacement libraries? Perhaps you have to exhibit a certain amount of technical competence in order to win that license? Could be a net gain for the industry?

Personally, having seen, second-hand, the Court furrow its collective brow over the measurement of gerrymandering, sorting out signatures vs code should be quite the circus for them. Google may not be looking forward to this appeal, as it may not work out for them.

¹ At this juncture, my Arts Editor is in the midst of a gagging fit. She hates meringue. That’s probably the reason I haven’t made a good lemon meringue pie in years.

² I tried Java out for two weeks when it came out. I went in excited, I came out appalled. It was just C++ in a pretty dress, and C++ was a mess. I suppose I belong in the same club as the guy who proclaimed “X Windows sucks and will be gone in two years.” (X Windows is the equivalent of the visual interface most of my readers use everyday when running Windows). Well, he was half-right – X Windows continues to trundle along, but, having programmed in it, it sucked at the time. I felt the same about Java and C++.

Actually seen in California, via WaPo:

Drakes Beach and its access road from Sir Francis Drake Boulevard are temporarily closed to all vehicle, foot and bicycle traffic due to elephant seal activity in the area.

Apparently chasing them off is a problem, as they’ve entrenched during the shutdown. But …

Source: Wikipedia

For the humans of Drakes Beach, it might not be a total surrender. Dell’Osso said staff members are exploring the possibility of offering guided tours of the Drakes Beach elephant seal colony. A similar program happens at Año Nuevo State Park. Visitors who want to see the seals at that park are encouraged to bring a warm jacket, water and sturdy walking shoes.

Perhaps this is part of the Nature push-back. Human evicted from this beach, come help us occupy it now…. Next up: Manhattan Island!

Remember my concerns over American abrogation of the JCPOA (Iran nuclear deal) and how it might affect international relations (link here, mitigation here)? This is all based on the premise that international relations do not happen in a vacuum, the opposite of which, on the face of it, is risible. But the recent meltdown of Venezuela under the watch of President Maduro, his continuance in office, and the recent decision by the Trump Administration to support Juan Guaido, President of the National Assembly, as the President of Venezuela without recourse to Venezuelan legalities, has suspicious leaders wondering if they’ll be next on the chopping block. Semih Idiz in AL Monitor reports on one of them, erstwhile Trump-buddy Turkish President Erdogan:

Developments in Venezuela are reverberating in Turkey, especially after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threw his weight behind the country’s embattled President Nicolas Maduro.

Erdogan feels honor bound to do so, of course. Maduro was among the first international leaders to contact him even though the two hadn’t met before and offer support against the failed coup attempt in Turkey in July 2016. …

The fear in government circles and among the religious and nationalist supporters of Erdogan is clearly that Washington — with support from other Western democracies — could do to Turkey in the future what they are trying to do to Venezuela today.

Those who believe this are also angry with Turkish commentators who stress the mistake of standing up for Maduro and his authoritarian regime.

They are particularly furious with those who stress that the international opposition to Maduro comes mostly from the democratic world, while authoritarian countries like Russia and China are the only ones joining Turkey in supporting him.

And there’s lots more of an interesting nature at the link, but this is illustrative of how the world watches the United States, and everyone else with enough heft to interfere in other nations’ domestic affairs. I know little about the Venezuelan leader Maduro, and only a bit more about a situation in which an oil-rich country appears to have mismanaged itself into a real corner.

Erdogan I’ve watched a bit more. He appears to be attempting to transform Turkey from a secular country into an official Muslim country as a way to shore up his power base and accumulate more power personally, which according to reports is starting to corrupt the Muslims, even as they reach out for that power. I’d not weep if he were to be swept from power legally.

And I emphasize legally. Respect for the law, even in the face of suspected illegalities by authorities in the law enforcement hierarchy is important because otherwise we have the gored ox phenomenon: it may have been your opponent’s ox who was gored in today’s rioting, but next year it might be your’s.

But the moral of this particular post is that the world is watching America’s every international move in order to divine what it may do tomorrow, and our fidelity to international legal norms – or lack thereof – will have an impact on our international relations with countries which are not directly involved in those actions.

Meretricious:

1. Apparently attractive but having no real value.
   ‘meretricious souvenirs for the tourist trade’
2. archaic Relating to or characteristic of a prostitute. [Oxford Dictionaries]

Popped into my head as cool-sounding but of unknown definition, although just by sound it seems denigrative.

Conservative pundit George Will in WaPo:

When Democrats are done flirting with such insipidity [aka Beto O’Rourke], their wandering attentions can flit to a contrastingly serious candidacy, coming soon from Minnesota. The Land of 10,000 Lakes and four unsuccessful presidential candidates (Harold Stassen, Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, Walter Mondale) now has someone who could break the state’s losing streak. Sen. Amy Klobuchar is the person perhaps best equipped to send the current president packing.

Really? Hey, I love Amy as our Senator, but there are some Minnesota-specific reasons she blew out her opponent in her re-election last year, and it all starts with her public appearance. She is absolutely reflective of Minnesota introspective/passive-aggressiveness. Hell, we’re the home to a passel of generations of Finnish immigrants, who’s favorite joke is …

How do you know a Finn likes you? He’s staring at your shoes, not his own.

She’s not a polished speaker, much like our termed-out Governor (and former Senator) Dayton, neither of whom could inspire a pack of squirrels to squabble over a bunch of rotten apples, and because of that she connects with most of us Minnesotans at a subconscious level. For us, she’s the one sacrificing herself so the rest of us don’t have to. She appears to acquit herself well, hasn’t stepped in any horseshit, offended any minorities, and appears to be well on her way to a respectable, but not standout, career in the Senate, and that’s no mean thing.

But that doesn’t mean she’s Presidential timber. How is she going to connect with New Yorkers who expect and respect constant aggressiveness? With rural voters who are suspicious of the Congressional crowd because they don’t speak their language? She hasn’t yet presented that campaign-organizing Presidential goal, such as what eventually became the ACA for Obama, or the Wall for Trump, or finishing the Cold War for Reagan. While not necessary, it’s an immense help to a campaign to have that campaign point to discuss, to enlighten supporters and inflame critics.

I’d be happy to be proven wrong. But I don’t think her communications skills are up to the job, at least from what I’ve seen. Maybe she has hidden reserves. Maybe she’s been sand-bagging us all, and soon we’ll learn to fear the might of President Amy.

Nyah. She’s too mild-tempered for that.