Category Archives: Uncategorized

Like the hard rock streets and cliffs on which the members of this company die, The Secret Invasion (1964) uses its motivations like chunks of granite – big, hard, unchanging, but unwieldy. This is a World War II movie using the same theme as The Dirty Dozen (1967), in which a team of criminals are assembled for a special mission. Led by Major Mace, their mission is to free a certain famous Italian general from the Nazis in Greece, on the assumption that he will then lead the Italian armies against their uneasy allies, the Germans. As this will happen during the Invasion of Italy, this will split the German defenses.

Why is the Major leading this insane mission? When he was a Colonel, he sent his own brother on a mission into the same citadel as the one the general is now held in. He failed to extricate the younger Mace in time, and the brother died. The Major was demoted. Now he’s hot for revenge.

And what of the men he leads? While they’ve been promised freedom, or at least life, each has their reasons, mostly selfish, although the explosives expert is an Irish Republican Army member who might be able to see more than his own self-centered needs. But the glamour boy? He’s also an impersonator who can’t resist a good role. Rocca, the planner? It’s a fascinating challenge. Durrell, the mystery man to be executed for murdering his own mistress? Well, that’s a harder guess.

And the guy who’s an expert forger? Well, he doesn’t want to be here, and his quick attempt to escape nearly leads to the instant failure of the mission – and the movie. From here on out, we should see these criminals working together and transforming from selfish individuals into a working team, and this transformation is unconvincing – or left on the cutting room floor. For example, the cold-blooded killer falls for a local young widow, still nursing a child. Why? We’re not sure. The attraction, which may be mutual, is obscure. When he accidentally kills the infant by smothering it while Germans are close by, he’s broken by it – and she forgives him. There may indeed be a bond there, but it’s a dark one indeed, and not particularly convincing.

The mission itself is at least worthy of those sent on it – so ridiculous and brazen as to gain the attention of over-confident individuals. Fortunately, the story is clever enough to not let the plan work. Instead, the group, captive and under harsh questioning, hangs together, improvises a new plan, and make do in an inspiring vision of never giving up.

Once out of the prison with their target, members starting falling in self-sacrificing ways which may have been necessary to the plot, but never feel quite right given their natures, but eventually Rocca and Durrell make it out with the General and take him to his men, located in one of those Balkan towns made of granite and hard men.

And, in a lovely twist, it turns out the “General” is a double for the real General; they speculate the General is dead and this substitute was used to control his men. He is informed that he will now order “his” men to turn on the Germans, but when he’s brought out to exhort his troops, he smiles broadly and says he will not; if they kill him, they, known as partisans, will be blamed and the troops will stick with the Germans.

But wait! There’s one more chunk of granite flying through the air.

During the breakout, several of the group had donned German uniforms, including Durrell, one of the two survivors; he has a Gestapo uniform. Stripping off the monk’s habit he was wearing as camouflage, he leaps onto the parapet, sneers at the faux-General, and shoots him in the head. He then executes a few Sieg Heils!, just to drive home the point, before the assembled and outraged Italians shoot him down, and then go on to fight the now-enemy Germans.

This is not a movie that lingers,  you need to pay attention, but the failure to illustrate the hows and whys of the transformations of the former prisoners makes what could have been an exciting movie a bit of an enigma.

Too bad I only had a kid’s toy. During my trip to visit my Arts Editor in Traverse City, where I was sick as a dog, one night she came clattering down the basement steps saying there was a great sunset going on.

That wasn’t the half of it. It was marvelous. Reddish-oranges illuminating dark gray clouds in a very clear sky. My sister-in-law said she’d never seen a sunset that good. Nor had I.

And me with a smartphone for a camera. Here’s how they came out. I believe the first bunch were shot without using the zoom function.

And these were shot with zoom.

Long time readers may recall my occasional references to bell curves for measuring desirability of behaviors. The extremes of any given curve indicate undesirability, while the middle of the curve is the desirable, as in having positive consequences, portion. I’ve talked about this directly as well as in terms of extremism vs. moderation, or taking things to the n^th degree – and how that leads to undesirable consequences.

So while I was recently watching The Karate Kid (1984), it struck me that this is primarily a comparison / contrast of moderation vs. extremism – or where you’re located on this bell curve. This leisurely-paced and conventional movie follows the travails of 16 year old Daniel, whose mother has moved him and herself from Newark, NJ, across the country to a suburb of Los Angeles, CA. He swiftly becomes the target of a gang of teenagers at his high school, and as they are karate students, Daniel has trouble effectively defending himself.

When he looks into the local karate dojo, he discovers his tormentors train there, and that the teacher has no concept of the utility of mercy – opponents are to be rent and destroyed. Daniel is destitute of hope.

But a local man, Mr. Miagi, rescues him from a beating after Daniel plays a trick on one of the gang members, and, upon discovering there is no reasoning with the karate teacher, agrees to teach Daniel the form of karate he knows; the agreement is that they will face the gang members at a local tournament.

Mr. Miagi is from Okinawa, near Japan, but when World War II rolled around, he had moved to the United States and married; leaving his pregnant wife at a relocation camp, he volunteered for the nisei battalion of Americans of Japanese descent who fought for the United States during the War. Daniel is gradually introduced to the art of karate, the importance of patience, and the importance of caring for others. Between an off-again, on-again girlfriend, and Mr. Miagi, it’s a period of rapid learning.

And Mr. Miagi is an important sub-theme in and of himself. He may be a karate master, but that does not mean he is flawless. He is a reminder that the highest have their flaws, even if they are not the fatal flaws of theatrical yore. He drinks to mourn his late wife, who died in childbirth, along with their child, while Mr. Miagi fought for his adopted country. He’ll go out on the town, or out fishing, leaving Daniel to do important training.

The pace accelerates when the tournament begins. I liked this sequence, for though I’ve never been to a karate tournament, it reminded me of fencing tournaments, volunteers and refs working hard, competitors and all threading their way between ongoing matches, looking for where they will be fighting. It’s well-filmed and, even on the small TV I viewed it on, both exciting and clear enough to see the action.

And we really begin to see the consequences of the gang members’ training, as they become the roughnecks of the tournament; a loss results in shunning, rather than proper team support. But when Daniel gets on a roll, the opposing karate teacher orders one of his students to deliberately break the rules and cripple Daniel – an important transitional moment when we see how extremism, the absolute desire to triumph regardless of the rules, leads to the moral ruin of those characters involved – we’re at one extreme of the bell curve. The blow is delivered, along with an almost desperate apology as the student realizes he’s gone beyond the pale, and this may cost him in the future.

But Daniel stubbornly refuses to withdraw and is now in the gold medal bout, facing the defending champion and arch-tormentor. It’s a rich and tense scene, full of narrow escapes, comebacks, moves that skirt the rules, and a final roll of the dice. The opposing karate teacher is destroyed by the loss and may rain disaster on his students.

And leaves the audience wondering if that’s really the way to build community, through fear and shame.

The Karate Kid may be a bit too leisurely paced for today’s audiences, but for those who are willing to wait and put up with some squirmy high school scenes, it has its rewards.

This one was having a good time and showing some nice detail, so I took a couple of pics, which my Arts Editor then enhanced a bit.

For decades I’ve felt that such organizations as Focus on the Family and Moral Majority were little more than vehicles for those who grasped for power. A recent piece by Michael Gerson in WaPo reminded me of this – and lets me add a bit more to my internal narrative:

On sexual harassment, our country is now in a much better ethical place. And how we got here is instructive. Conservatives have sometimes predicted that moral relativism would render Americans broadly incapable of moral judgment. But people, at some deep level, know that rules and norms are needed. They understand that character — rooted in empathy and respect for the rights and dignity of others — is essential in every realm of life, including the workplace.

And where did this urgent assertion of moral principle come from? Not from the advocates of “family values.” On the contrary, James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family (now under much better management), chose to side with GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama against his highly credible accusers. “I have been dismayed and troubled,” Dobson said, “about the way he and his wife Kayla have been personally attacked by the Washington establishment.”

It is as if Dobson set out to justify every feminist critique of the religious right. Instead of standing against injustice and exploitation — as the Christian gospel demands — Dobson sided with patriarchal oppression in the cause of political power. This is beyond hypocrisy. It is the solidarity of scary, judgmental old men. It is the ideology of white male dominance dressed up as religion.

Michael notes the divergence between the behaviors of Dobson and the stated principles of his creation, Focus on the Family. In fact, it occurs to me that this is inevitable and diagnostic of just such a situation – that is, the hidden motivations, usually quite base, are at odds with the stated principles and, when a situation becomes critical, those hidden motivations rise and overwhelm the principles.

In all honesty, Focus on the Family has a long history of tawdry behavior, drawing on my memory of various news stories over the decades; I’m not aware of Michael’s reference that it’s under better management now. Then again, I haven’t seen any troubling statements from FotF in a while.

But for those who live their principles, they have less to fear from their behaviors. Not nothing; sometimes principles, even those you generate and enunciate, are ill-understood by yourself; or their implementation is flawed; or they are wrong, in part or in whole. This is ideologically blind, which is to say both left & right have such groups. The question is whether they are capable of self-criticism and mutation; if not, then like any biological species, they risk dying as the environment becomes unsuited to their uncouth conclusions. An extreme and painful example is the Jim Jones cult.

But the mendacity of the former can lead to difficulty in predicting their goals and behavior, beyond certain generalities. At least the latter can be trusted to cling to their principles; the difficulty is dissuading them from bad principles. You can apply this to your favorite group to distrust, whether they’re the too-shrill feminists, the antifa movement, or the anti-abortionists.

palynological:

Archaeologists working at the site of Forcello recently gained rare insight into ancient beekeeping when they uncovered the charred and melted remains of honey, honeycombs, and honeybees in a workshop that had burned down between 510 and 495 B.C. Researchers conducted chemical and palynological (pollen) analyses of the material to determine not only the composition of Etruscan honey, but also what types of plants bees were collecting pollen from two and half millennia ago. [“Itinerant Etruscan Beekeepers,” Jason Urbanus, Archaeology (Nov/Dec 2017)]

No, this is not a warning to liberal readers.

This is a warning to conservative readers who’ve bought into the entire “revoke Net Neutrality” argument.

Because Chris Reeves on The Daily Kos – yes, a progressive website – has a terrifying tableau just for you.

A taste:

Let’s say, in a large part of conservative America, Time Warner/Charter, AT&T, Verizon or some other entity decided boy, they sure don’t like the reporting of Fox News. Fox News has been kind of mean to them lately. The response? They slow Fox News website up. Maybe they don’t like Rush Limbaugh or they think Alex Jones online TV show is a bandwidth suck and they just don’t like him. Well, they can slow him up or prevent you from visiting the website altogether.

What choice do you have as a consumer if Net Neutrality is repealed: none.

In fact, we’ve already had cases where providers have done exactly that.

If you want to see more about how the end of Net Neutrality could emasculate conservative readers, click the link above and ignore some of the more ascerbic overtones.  Yeah, I know progressives are know-it-alls. Sometimes they’re right.

On WaPo, Professor John Bargh of Yale describes a recent experiment conducted online, and how invoking imaginary superpowers can modify political feelings:

But if they had instead just imagined being completely physically safe, the Republicans became significantly more liberal — their positions on social attitudes were much more like the Democratic respondents. And on the issue of social change in general, the Republicans’ attitudes were now indistinguishable from the Democrats. Imagining being completely safe from physical harm had done what no experiment had done before — it had turned conservatives into liberals.

In both instances, we had manipulated a deeper underlying reason for political attitudes, the strength of the basic motivation of safety and survival. The boiling water of our social and political attitudes, it seems, can be turned up or down by changing how physically safe we feel.

This is why it makes sense that liberal politicians intuitively portray danger as manageable — recall FDR’s famous Great Depression era reassurance of “nothing to fear but fear itself,” echoed decades later in Barack Obama’s final State of the Union address — and why President Trump and other Republican politicians are instead likely to emphasize the dangers of terrorism and immigration, relying on fear as a motivator to gain votes.

Although I’m always a suspicious of Internet-driven data collection, and humanities experiments are always worth replicating, I have to say this falls right into my thinking, both intuitive and from multiple sources, such as the still unfinished The Persuaders. His conclusion?

Our study findings may have a silver lining. Here’s how:

All of us believe that our social and political attitudes are based on good reasons and reflect our important values. But we also need to recognize how much they can be influenced subconsciously by our most basic, powerful motivations for safety and survival. Politicians on both sides of the aisle know this already and attempt to manipulate our votes and party allegiances by appealing to these potent feelings of fear and of safety.

Instead of allowing our strings to be pulled so easily by others, we can become more conscious of what drives us and work harder to base our opinions on factual knowledge about the issues, including information from outside our media echo chambers. Yes, our views can harden given the right environment, but our work shows that they are actually easier to change than we might think.

Yes, yes, yes! Stop and think and question and wonder about the language used by the communicator. But of course I love this conclusion … because I may have confirmation bias!

Sigh.

A number of news outlets have reported on the possibility that Thomas Brunell, a Texas professor of politics, will be hired by Trump for “ … the top operational job at the U.S. Census Bureau …” This is not a job that requires Senate confirmation – it’s just an up and down hiring. Why is the man controversial? Because of a book he published: Redistricting and Representation: Why Competitive Elections Are Bad for America.

It’s an alarming title. I’ve not read the book. I doubt I ever will. The title rather tells it all, although I might be willing to propose a name change: Picking Your Winners For You Ahead Of Time Because We All Know Who They Are. Which is a title that might outrage voters in the recent state-wide elections in Virginia. Or even those in Alabama who are planning to vote in the upcoming Senatorial special election. Or all those flipped state-level seats throughout the nation since the Presidential election and its horrid consequences.

So just in contemplating the title, I can see that this is an attempt by the extremist right, threatened by nation-wide demographics, to move the political fight from the popular vote arena to another arena, a state-level fight over the districts. Similarly, by putting this professor in a key position in the Census Burea, which provides the rendering of demographics into the political (and others) realm, could be an attempt to freeze the demographics, already beginning to slip away from the extremist right after the populace’s brief and dubious fling with right-wing extremism.

And what does that say about the GOP and its embrace with the right-wing extremists? Their ideas are neither popular nor particularly persuasive, I think. Their share of the population, according to Gallup, has fallen, while the Democrats may have bottomed out. Their response? Or, better yet, whoever is sitting at the apex and directing ideology? Freeze themselves into power.

So this appears to be another attempt to cement themselves into power. We can only hope it turns into another instance of trying to impose your will on Jell-O. It’ll all run away.

Remember the recent excitement in astronomy circles over an extra-solar system visitor? The Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii has a sort of introductory update:

“What we found was a rapidly rotating object, at least the size of a football field, that changed in brightness quite dramatically,” according to Meech. “This change in brightness hints that `Oumuamua could be more than 10 times longer than it is wide – something which has never been seen in our own Solar System,” according to Meech.

“An axis ratio like that is truly extraordinary – we have never seen anything in the solar system that is this elongated”, says Lance Benner, a specialist in radar imaging of near-Earth and main-belt asteroids at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

`Oumuamua does have some similarities to small objects in the outer Solar System, especially the distant worlds of the Kuiper Belt – a region of rocky, frigid worlds far beyond Neptune. “While study of `Oumuamua’s colors shows that this body shares characteristics with both Kuiper Belt objects and organic-rich comets and trojan asteroids,” said Meech, “its hyperbolic orbit says it comes from far beyond.”

“We are continuing to observe this unique object,” added Hainaut, “and we hope to more accurately pin down where it came from and where it is going next on its tour of the galaxy. And now that we have found the first interstellar rock, we are getting ready for the next ones!”

The report in Nature would be way beyond me, of course, and it costs money, but this is from the publicly available abstract:

Our observations reveal the object to be asteroidal, with no hint of cometary activity despite an approach within 0.25 au of the Sun. Spectroscopic measurements show that the object’s surface is consistent with comets or organic-rich asteroid surfaces found in our own Solar System. Light-curve observations indicate that the object has an extreme oblong shape, with a 10:1 axis ratio and a mean radius of 102±4 m, assuming an albedo of 0.04. Very few objects in our Solar System have such an extreme light curve. The presence of ‘Oumuamua suggests that previous estimates of the density of interstellar objects were pessimistically low. Imminent upgrades to contemporary asteroid survey instruments and improved data processing techniques are likely to produce more interstellar objects in the upcoming years.

I’m looking forward to the future reports! (Ah, I’m such a kid at heart.) From the Institute of Astronomy’s press release is this artist’s impression, which I have fallen in love with:

Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

Of course, a visible spectrum picture would have been even more entrancing, in sharp focus and high resolution. I’m so demanding.

Probably should be put in the retirement home.

Semiotics:

: a general philosophical theory of signs and symbols that deals especially with their function in both artificially constructed and natural languages and comprises syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics  [Merriam-Webster]

Referenced in the previous Word Of The Day.

From WaPo:

Seeking to prove that a conspiracy of astronauts fabricated the shape of the Earth, a California man intends to launch himself 1,800 feet high on Saturday in a rocket he built from scrap metal.

Assuming the 500-mph, mile-long flight through the Mojave Desert does not kill him, Mike Hughes told the Associated Press, his journey into the atmosflat will mark the first phase of his ambitious flat-Earth space program.

Hughes’s ultimate goal is a subsequent launch that puts him miles above the Earth, where the 61-year-old limousine driver hopes to photograph proof of the disc we all live on.

“It’ll shut the door on this ball earth,” Hughes said in a fundraising interview with a flat-Earth group for Saturday’s flight. Theories discussed during the interview included NASA being controlled by round-Earth Freemasons and Elon Musk making fake rockets from blimps.

Ya gotta admire a guy ready to put his life on the line for a long disproven theory. You could even say he’s just participating in scientific research, attempting to disprove a hypothesis first formulated by ancient Greeks.

Hope he doesn’t become an object lesson.

Ostension:

The word ‘ostention’ comes from the Latin ‘ostendere’, to show.

It was used by semiotician Umberto Eco to refer to moments in oral communication when, instead of using words, people substitute actions, such as putting a finger on your lips to indicate that someone should be quiet.

Folklorists Linda Dégh and Andrew Vázsonyi appropriated the term in their 1983 article “Does the word ‘dog’ bite? Ostensive Action as a Means of Legend-Telling” to refer to ways in which real-life actions are guided by legends.

For instance, legends of contaminated Halloween candy predated the finding of actual contaminants in treats by at least ten years (Dégh and Vázsonyi, 1983). Individuals who placed needles, razor blades and other dangerous objects in treats as pranks engaged in a form of ostension. The theory of ostension explains how easily certain elements can pass from legend to ritualised action. [ostension.org]

Noted in “Pizzagate and Beyond: Using Social Research to Understand Conspiracy Legends,” Jeffrey S. Debies-Carl, Skeptical Inquirer (November / December 2017, print only):

In doing so, participants enter into the legend itself, acting out a part of it as one of its characters, and thereby “telling” its narrative through the process of ostension – through their behaviors rather than through words.

Movant:

One who makes a motion before a court. The applicant for a judicial rule or order.

Generally, it is the job of the movant to convince a judge to rule, or grant an order, in favor of the motion. Rules and legal precedent within particular jurisdictions, as well as the type of motion sought, dictate the burdens of proof and persuasion each party must meet when a court considers a motion. [TheFreeDictionary.com]

Noted in “Burlington lawyer joins U.S. Supreme Court Bar,” Isaac Groves, The Times-News of Burlington, North Carolina:

Campbell actually recruited Berry and a few other graduates to apply to the bar. She was one of the dozen or so who made the cut. It was not a difficult process to apply, Berry said. She had to contact the N.C. Supreme Court and get her standing in this jurisdiction to show she had no disciplinary actions or grievances against her professionally.

The induction was done at the Supreme Court itself earlier this month before the nine justices, with all the legal pomp the high court is known for, where a current member of the bar — a movant — requested Berry be admitted.

“Your movant introduces you to the Supreme Court by name,” Berry said, “and then you stand and you look down at all nine justices, or rather you look up at all nine justices, and they look down at you, and the chief justice says, ‘You are so affirmed.’”

Palimpsest:

1. :writing material (such as a parchment or tablet) used one or more times after earlier writing has been erased
2. :something having usually diverse layers or aspects apparent beneath the surface
   Canada … is a palimpsest, an overlay of classes and generations. —Margaret Atwood
   too short a time to get to know the palimpsest of Genevan societies, let alone those of Switzerland —George Steiner

[Merriam-Webster]

Noted in “Editing the Human Germline: Groundbreaking Science and Mind-Numbing Sentiment,” Kenneth W. Krause, quoting Jennifer Doudna, CRISPR gene-editing pioneer, Skeptical Inquirer (November / December 2017, not apparently online yet):

Humans had never before had a tool like CRISPR, and it had the potential to turn not only living people’s genomes but also all future genomes into a collective palimpsest upon which any bit of genetic code could be erased and overwritten depending on the whims of the generation doing the writing …

[Typos mine]

Opening the old email bag with shaking hands (nyah, just sick) revealed this bit of trash:

72 years later!

THE 5 STATEMENTS AT THE END SAY IT ALL!
—————————— ————–

What happened to the radiation that’s
supposed to lasts thousands of years?

This isn’t really relevant, but HuffPo treated this question here.

HIROSHIMA (1945)

We all know that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed
in August 1945 after the explosion of atomic bombs.

However, we know very little about the progress made
by the people of that land during the past 72 years.

HIROSHIMA – 72 YEARS LATER

DETROIT – 72 YEARS AFTER HIROSHIMA

What has caused more long term destruction –
The A-bomb,

Or

Government welfare programs created to buy the
votes of those who want someone to take care of them?

Japan does not have a welfare system.
( READ THIS SENTENCE AGAIN AND ASK, ‘WHY NOT?’ )

Work for it or do without.

These are possibly the 5 best statements you’ll ever read and
all applicable to this social experiment:

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.

Can you think of a reason for not sharing this?
Neither could I . .

I’ll just stipulate the pictures because I’m sick and tired and not very good at tracking down picture provenances. And they are not the issue here, of course. The author of this bit of trash is frantic to push out a bit of conservative kant (it has a small helping of libertarianism in it as well), but he’s really on slippery ground right the get-go. The situation in Japan, which was the recipient of massive American aid in response to the start of the Cold War for both tactical and strategic reasons, as well as having an extremely cohesive population. This is far different from Detroit, which has had poor leadership over the decades, a leadership that often depended on the new big plant by one of the automakers to advance its fortunes. When they decided to move away, the lack of alternative commerce was a real problem.

And then, of course, came the Great Recession.

But here’s the kicker, the thing I look for in these emails that swim the conservative bloodstream:

The outright lie.

So what’s the lie du jour?

Japan does not have a welfare system.

Um, no. Sorry, maybe you can play again when you’ve learned the difference between a truth and a lie. From the The Japan Times:

Welfare system not faring well

BY PHILIP BRASOR
SEP 25, 2011

Ten years ago, in her book “Nickel and Dimed,” Barbara Ehrenreich chronicled her own experience as a subsistence-level American wage-earner during a period of relative economic vigor. She found a whole class of workers who lived — and would always live — from paycheck to paycheck. In the afterword to the recently published tenth-anniversary edition of the book, Ehrenreich says that in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown, these people now have to compete for minimum-wage jobs. Ever since President Bill Clinton overhauled the welfare system, many poor Americans no longer qualify for assistance, which means they have nothing to fall back on. The “safety net” has turned into a “dragnet,” since, in line with the contraction of welfare eligibility, many state and municipal governments have effectively “criminalized homelessness.”

In spirit, Japan’s public welfare system is closer to America’s than it is to Europe’s. Citizens do not have a right to be supported by the government. Some claim they do and as proof point to Article 25 of the Constitution, which states that all people have the right to “maintain the minimum standards of wholesome and cultured living.” But Article 27 states that people have the right “and the obligation” to work. What this means in practice is that a person who applies for welfare must pass a rigorous screening process that can include personal disclosures, such as whether or not the applicant has access to support from a relative or even a lover. The applicant has to conform to certain notions of impoverishment. I’ve heard that in the 1960s and 70s, potential welfare recipients would hide “inessential” possessions like color TVs when a case worker visited.

Differences, obviously, inevitably. But welfare.

And this isn’t some minor mistake, which I would forgive. This is the pivot on which this ghoul of a writer would invoke the demons of Hell on the souls of those poor folk who grew up poor, who were provided bad schools, ran into rampant racism, and vigilantism (fortunately, while not gone it has decreased greatly in virulence, but when you grow up with it, the intensity of today is less relevant than you might first assume – think PTSD, not to mention the economic damage already suffered).

In essence, this is bigotry, employed by someone who appears to really prefer to worship at the altar of his money rather than a more forgiving master who preaches brotherhood. This is a guy who doesn’t have the common good at heart. If he did, he’d be advocating for better schools.

But this is what the conservatives are being fed: thin ideological broth, thickened with lies.

I haven’t known much what to say about the news that Senator Al Franken (MN-D) has been credibly accused of sexual harassment on two occasions. After all, it hurts to hear someone that you consider to be a good guy. But it’s important to understand how these accusations play out in the greater context of the United States.

That context, for those not paying attention, includes the accusations of harassment and rape against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, and his subsequent removal from the board of directors of his own company; accusations of sexual harassment by President Trump, as well as his own taped admission that he had engaged in same (which he characterized as “locker-room” talk, much to the amazement of locker-room denizens); the accusations of sexually inappropriate behavior by Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, such as exposing himself to a 14 year old, and dating or attempting to date teen age girls when he was in his thirties; and accusations against lesser political lights.

The reactions have been diverse. Both Democrats and Republicans have denied charges, at least here and here in Minnesota, while Weinstein was leveraged out of his company, but Franken did not deny the accusations and issued an immediate apology and called for an investigation of himself. Even more interesting? How those who control the fates of these men have also reacted.

We have one: Trump is President.

The other accusations are too new to gather definitive results, but there are smoke signals on the horizon. In regards to candidate Moore, we’ve seen some Republicans throw up their hands and form the Republicans for Doug Jones group (Jones is the Democratic opponent in the special election for the Alabama Senatorial seat, and the group has a cool pic) to Republicans stating they will vote for Moore – despite believing the accusations against him. Franken, on the other hand, has drawn mixed fire, from those calling for his resignation from within the Democrats, to others for whom he has been an honorable warrior in the political warrior and should be excused.

These reactions are important for what they say about the state of politics in America today. Why? For most Americans, denial of position, and its concomitant power and prestige, is a punishment for misbehavior. But there’s two unsung notes to this song, and it’s this: with this punishment there’s also the signal that inappropriate behavior (and that’s an inadequate phrase, but I’m too sick to come with something better) is not tolerated and those indulging in it should never be elected. Even more importantly, by signaling that the defective, the criminals if you will, will not be permitted to climb the ladder, you’ve also signaled that this Party is open to improvement.

The obverse side of the coin? That any “perv” (as Alabama governor Kay Ivey memorably put it in the above link concerning Moore), any rapist, any murderer, demagogue, traitor, or pederast can rise through the ranks of the Party, and if they can repeat the Party-sanctioned arguments, if they can pay the right bribes or have the right charisma, they can be your “leader.” Perhaps the next tax proposed by a GOP governor will be that you bring in your teenage daughters one night a year for an overnight inspection by that governor. Purely for ideological purity reasons, boys, and leave them by door, won’t you? Because this sort of Big Green Light will result in a rush of the power-hungry to the GOP (as if that hasn’t already happened).

We may be seeing the GOP starting to shiver into pieces, although I’m not certain. Remember Governor Ivey? Here’s her statement on candidate Moore:

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey says she is still going to vote for embattled GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore, even though she thinks he’s a perv.

“I’m going to cast my ballot on December the 12th, and I do believe the nominee of the party is the one I’ll vote for,” Ivey said Friday while speaking to reporters at the state’s Thanksgiving turkey pardon event.

“I believe in the Republican Party, what we stand for, and most important, we need to have a Republican in the United States Senate to vote on things like the Supreme Court justices, other appointments the Senate has to confirm and make major decisions,” she explained. “So that’s what I plan to do, vote for Republican nominee Roy Moore.”

Ivey claimed that while she does believe the sexual assault and harassment allegations being hurled at the 70-year-old, she feels she must stay loyal to her party.

“I certainly have no reason to disbelieve any of them,” Ivey said of Moore’s accusers. “But at the same time, the United States Senate needs to have in my opinion, a majority of Republican votes to carry the day and when they have to consider other major decisions. So that’s a factor, as well.”

Buried in that statement is the crux of the matter: Party over Country. She’d rather see Moore, a man she believes to be a malignant sexual abuser, who’s been boosted out of judicial office twice for blatant anti-Constitutional actions, whose obvious lust for power should be disturbing to everyone, than Jones, who happens to be a former Federal prosecutor who doesn’t appear to have a hint of scandal on the horizon, or not so that I’ve noticed.

What does that say about her love for her country? Oh, it’s the BGL, now isn’t it? A Big Green Light to every charismatic bum and rapist who can get himself high enough in the polls. Of course, as governor she should be a leader in the state and in the Alabama GOP. She should be leading efforts to discharge the dishonorable from the Party, and, since the Party picked Moore in the primary over Strange (who, admittedly, had his own smell of potential corruption hanging over him), it’s her duty to find a polite but effective way to say What the fuck are you folks doing?

And she’s failing.

But what’s causing the shivering? The many sitting GOP Senators who’ve withdrawn support and called on Moore to step aside.

But back to Senator Franken. It saddens me to say that, as a Senator who has exhibited a lot of leadership for good from his constrained position in a GOP-dominated Senate, I think he should resign. I think what I’ve said so far should make it plain, but I’ll explain anyways. If the Democrats are to exhibit a moral character of any sort – and that’s extremely important to have in the leadership of our nation – then those who’ve transgressed must be stripped of their position and prestige. As a signal that the Party wants to improve.

Now, I’m no legal expert on Minnesota law, but I believe a new Senator would then be appointed by current Governor Dayton. And who should he pick? I’ll spare you the anticipation.

Presenting … Senator Franni Bryson, the wife of the former Senator Franken.

She’ll get excellent advice, she has a great local reputation, and if she’s not quite up to speed to start, no doubt she knows a lot already from her husband.

Don’t pull his finger.

Dark City (1998) is a puzzling movie. Structurally, it’s quite compelling, withholding vital information from the audience, letting them try to work out what’s going on as the protagonist’s world of 1950s America starts out mystifyingly, as he finds himself sitting in a bathtub in a scuzzy hotel room, with no name and nearly no memories, and a dead woman in the corner. The phone rings, he’s warned strangers are coming and he must not be caught, and so he’s off and running.

And then the story starts twisting out of control. Literally. He lucks into learning his wallet is at the automat, and so he learns his name, John Murdock, but little else. And then, while inspecting a billboard that reminds him of something, he runs into three “strangers”, who ask him to sleep and then pull knives. John escapes, but exhibits an interesting power of his own.

In the meantime, the world and its people are changing around him as the Strangers continue their enigmatic experiment on the humans. Each person he runs into adds a bit more to the puzzle, but may also knock a piece loose. The building of the mystery is well done, and despite the fact I’ve seen Dark City a number of times, I find it compelling.

Which makes the fact that the ending is less than compelling an intrigue in itself. I think the problem lies in the setup, because the Strangers, and eventually John himself, end up possessing immense powers with which they do battle. But if the Strangers have these immense powers, why are they having trouble resolving the problem motivating their research? And in the end, after John triumphs, it’s not at all clear what thematic questions were to be closed or raised. He fixes the world, saves the wife he doesn’t remember (nor does she remember him), and fixes the world.

See this for the excellent use of visuals, the atmosphere, and the good structure. I like the acting, too. Don’t look for the ending to be satisfying, though.

Due to both the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday and this head cold, I anticipate not blogging much. Of course, if I feel an opinion coming on, I’ll say something.

What? He said it was a popsicle!

In the “Tongues So Deeply In Their Cheeks They’re Poking Out The Other Side” genre is Men In Black (1997). This movie plays off many cheesy tropes of the last 40 years, including rumors about the men in black, American tabloid newspapers, and UFOs. But what really makes this tick is the use of contrast.

First, there’s dialog, which often leads in one, often predictable direction, before suddenly veering off in quite another direction which is not only disconcerting – easy enough to do – but does the harder thing of making that switch organic to the movie. Contrast often uses the mechanism of expectation, so when an alien possessing many strong and slithery tentacles gives birth on the freeway, the agent who catches the baby isn’t repulsed, as we might expect, but charmed – until the inevitable baby URP.

There’s even the contrast of the pacing, in which the younger agent is ready to run pell-mell after the bad guys, while the senior agent, aware of his primary duty to not upset the public at large, is far more sedate and patient.

But the real contrast is between the two leads, J and K. I don’t often talk about specific actors, but Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, as the enthusiastic new recruit into the organization and the crusty old senior agent, respectively, are the very picture of contrast – and of chemistry.

Along with this skillful use of contrast, the characters each have a believable motivation, from crusty old K’s reason to stay in MiB, despite having to sacrifice the love of his life, to the antagonist, who has the responsibility of feeding his family.

All 70 million of them.

Like the pathologist says in the movie, “Well, you boys certainly have an interesting job.” It may not be subtle & nuanced, but it’s fun. Recommended.

Is he casting a spell, or about to poke him in the eyes? Only the Invisible Man knows!

A painful example of the comedy-horror genre is Abbot & Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), although perhaps Dracula or The Wolfman would have been a better addition to the title than Frankenstein. In any case, this is an attempt to meld the hijinks of the legendary Abbot and Costello with the horrific miasma emitted by Dracula and Frankenstein. The boys play deliverymen for a shipping company, but unknown to them, a minion of Dracula has designs on Costello’s brain as a replacement for Frankenstein’s current brain, and so she’s romancing Costello, much to Abbot’s bewilderment. Then he collects another lady, a shipping insurance investigator posing as … I forget.

The Wolfman, on the other hand, earnestly keeps interfering in Dracula’s plans, but finds himself in difficulty as it happens to be the full moon, leaving him decidedly ambivalent about his role in life.

Eventually, we find the boys running throughout the castle with Frankenstein and Dracula on their tail. The minion gets tossed out a window, presumably to her doom, the other is charmed by an assistant professor, so much for Costello’s love life. But the boys do survive a close call.

It did occur to me to wonder if either A&C or Lugosi & Chaney & Strange (Frankenstein’s monster) ever wished to play the other side of the title in this movie. Bela Lugosi as a comedian? It’s an intriguing thought. Untrained in movie lore, I don’t know if he actually tried. Or if just making the movies for which they were famous was a laugh riot already.

Unless comedy-horror is your academic specialty or you’re an aficionado of either set of actors, I wouldn’t waste your time on this one. The horror and the comedy are not well-integrated, and it’s not played for laughs like Young Frankenstein (1974). The cinematography is nice, as are the special effects, but the only reason I watched was because a cat insisted.

Oh, and Vincent Price addicts might want to sit through this and try to spot Vinnie, although I think you’ll fail.

NewScientist (11 November 2017) reports on a problem with AI object recognition:

WHEN is a turtle not a turtle? This is a conundrum for an AI trained to identity objects. By subtly tweaking the pattern on the shell of a model turtle, Andrew Ilyas at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his colleagues tricked a neural network into misidentifying it as a rifle. The results raise concerns about the accuracy of face-recognition tech and the safety of driverless cars.

Previous studies have shown that changing just a few pixels in an image – alterations that are imperceptible to a human – can throw an AI off its game, making it identify a picture of a horse as a car, or a plane as a dog. The model turtle now shows that an AI can be made to misidentify an object even from multiple angles.

Source: Optical Illusion

By simply proving the AI can be misled through a very simple approach, we know there’s a problem.

But what’s the source of the problem? Neural networks are notorious for obscuring the actual decisions used to come to any particular conclusion. My suspicion is this could be an attempt to analyze every pixel of the picture, rather than aggregatizing and pattern matching.

And keep in mind that humanity isn’t perfect at this, either. Just one example is the optical illusion of the young woman or old hag (today I’m only seeing the young woman), indicating that visuals can be difficult even for members of species that have evolved for millions of years.

However, the simplicity of the trick on the AI indicates they have a way to go.

Louche:

If you describe a person or place as louche, you mean that they are unconventional and not respectable, but often in a way that people find rather attractive. [Collins Dictionary]

Noted in “Consciously quantum: How you make everything real,” Philip Ball, NewScientist (11 November 2017, paywall):

The idea that consciousness induces wave function collapse, the process by which myriad possible outcomes of a measurement become a single definite one, is not inherently absurd. And yet physicists have long regarded it as a rather louche suggestion, because it seems to substitute one mystery for another: we have no idea how to describe consciousness, so how can we expect to know how it causes collapse?