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Politesse:

1. formal politeness; courtesy. [Dictionary.com]

Noted in the Leader for NewScientist (23 December 2017) under “A world divided“:

Science and scientists need to get better at reminding the world that they are a force for good – including that all-important prosperity.

After the initial vigour of the March for Science last April, attempts to defend science have fizzled out or returned to angry tweeting or academic letter-writing. Such politesse is not enough in the face of determined and unscrupulous opposition.

Science has its weaknesses. Not everyone will be or should be a cheerleader for it. But as we go into the new year, we could all begin by emphasising what science has done and can do for us. If we forget, and allow it to seem irrelevant or threatening, the next half-century really may be no better than the last.

The irony of its usage, above, also reminds me of the straits of the common voter. The occupation of the electorate, by and large, is not politics. For scientists, it’s science. It’s what they do, what drags at their minds, it’s what they wake up thinking about and what they fall asleep thinking about. Politics takes away time away from their lifetime task.

Most of the electorate also does not want to be bothered with the details of politics; thus, we have default political parties that we often inherit from our parents. It occurs to me that our current contretemps may be an inevitably periodic result of how, at least in the United States, we’ve structured our society. The exceptional freedom that lets us succeed on a somewhat titanic scale also leaves us with a political class composed of mostly second- and third- raters, who sometimes hold extremist positions.

I can’t help but wonder about societies with, to be up front, less individual freedom, but more expectations: the expectation that, as you age, you will take up leadership positions within that society, you will be trained in them, and you will be responsible for the results. Would the loss of freedom cripple such a society? Would the failures form too much of an opposition? Would a harmful stasis result?

Hard to say.

Do you like my interior decorating, Mr. Scott?

Continuing an unfortunate recent trend in the Star Trek franchise, Star Trek Beyond (2016) is a movie full of vivid scenes and some mild intercharacter chemistry, but lacking in one of the most important characteristics of the original series: consideration of interesting moral questions. As the original USS Enterprise is destroyed by a mysterious enemy that seems to know more about Star Fleet than the average bear, the bad guy implies his attack will be for the best for the races that make up the Federation. This forms the basis of the closest the story comes to an interesting moral question: does peace and prosperity improve a species, or does pain and toil and struggle?

Unfortunately, this is not a question of prime importance for most audiences, although of course one can always find an individual who might disagree with the broad consensus that peace and prosperity leads to more improvement in sentient, civilized species. Generally, the horror of war tends to set back civilization in its quest for progress, for freedom from famine and epidemic, or so goes the popular opinion, and this movie does not present material that would seriously dispute this view.

The balance of the movie presents how the Enterprise crew reacts to the bad guy’s acquisition of the critical part of a superweapon from them. Regrettably, the bad guy’s motivation is, as noted, rather dubious, and the supporting material, at least as presented in the movie, either incoherent or worse. I mean, I was paying attention and I couldn’t make out if the bad guy was extraordinarily long-lived because of his association with the superweapon or, well, maybe he was related to Dr. Who.

But it’s a fun visual treat, and Mr. Scott’s new interest had some striking makeup. If you like Star Trek, or possibly if you like James Bond (as I found myself thinking some of the scenes in this one are reminiscent of some of the crazier, yet traditional, action scenes in the 007 series), you’ll probably like this, but wonder at what seems to be missing. I mean, besides the silliness of Mr. Spock romancing Lt. Uhura.

As a bookworm growing up, who honors his past more in the breach than the practice, I was delighted to run across this LinkedIn article by Glenn Leibowitz:

The folks in Iceland, by contrast, observe a very different gift-giving tradition. Rather than obsess over exchanging electronic gadgets, DNA testing kits, and Keurig Coffee Makers, they give each other more entertaining, and also more intellectually and emotionally enriching items: Books. …

Icelanders’ devotion to reading is most evident in a remarkable tradition they observe: Between September and November, publishers launch a book publishing tsunami known as the Jolabokaflod, which in English translates roughly into the “Christmas Book Flood.” The annual Flood kicks-off with the printing of the Bokatidindi, a catalog of new publications distributed free to every Icelandic home, courtesy of the Iceland Publishers Association (of course).

On Christmas eve, Icelanders exchange books as gifts and then spend the night reading them, often while drinking hot chocolate or alcohol-free Christmas ale called jólabland. “The culture of giving books as presents is very deeply rooted in how families perceive Christmas as a holiday,” Kristjan B. Jonasson, president of the Iceland Publishers Association, told NPR.

Totally lovely. A devotion to books, particularly a variety, is a devotion to knowledge, a sign of the importance of wondering, thinking, answering, and coming up with more questions – the marks of nations devoted to tolerance, peace, and wisdom.

I received a book on how to cook and a book on cities over the holidays, and I’m frantically trying to keep up with all my other reading as well. I hope you are doing as well – or better.

Scientists are investigating whether an interesting effect in mice is also present in humans, and represents an interesting survival optimization. NewScientist (16 December 2017) has the report:

Mark Mattson of the National Institute on Aging in Maryland and his team looked at 40 mice that consumed the same total calories, but either ate normally every day or ate nothing every other day.

The team found that fasting caused a 50 per cent increase in a brain chemical called BDNF. Previous studies have shown that such a rise is likely to boost the number of mitochondria, which provide a cell’s energy, inside neurons by 20 per cent.

BDNF also promotes the growth of new connections – or synapses – between brain cells, which helps in learning and memory, says Mattson.

The finding makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, as animals that are hungry would benefit from more intellectual resources to find food, he says. “If human ancestors hadn’t been able to find food, they had better be able to function at a high level to chase down some prey.”

If you feel like you’re slowing down mentally, try some fasting. Interesting thought. A related study might be to survey scientists to see how many are overweight. I don’t personally know enough scientists to make for a good survey – but the three that I can think of offhand are all slender.

I haven’t paid much attention to Marc Thiessen over the years, and had only heard he was a doctrinaire extremist-conservative. He’s a columnist for WaPo, and when I saw he had a list of the top 10 best things Trump’s done, I couldn’t resist a list.

Sadly, it’s not a good list when I can only agree on one thing. But let’s go through them one by one, as it’s illustrative of the far-right mindset.

1. He, not Hillary Clinton, was inaugurated as president. And the beat goes on in running against Hillary, who appears to be guilty of … well, it’s hard to say, beyond being Clinton. Every time I see some mud flung at her, it doesn’t stick. But the important point here is that Thiessen is participating in the Clinton/Satan meme. Evidently coming up with more than 10 was a problem?
2. He is installing conservative judges who will preside for decades. And, as we’ve discussed, many nominees are so incompetent for the jobs that even his own Party’s hack has started rejecting them. This is a good thing?
3. He enacted historic tax and regulatory reform that has unleashed economic growth. No, we were doing just fine without them, by objective measurements of the nation as a whole. Thiessen is reaffirming his allegiance to the “taxes taxes taxes oh so high and horrible we’re all suffering” ideology of the GOP, rather than fulfilling his duty of sober analysis. And his assertion that economic growth has been unleashed is just that – we continue to toddle along just as we did with Obama.
4. He admitted he was wrong on Afghanistan and reversed Obama’s disastrous withdrawal. I’ll just abstain on this one, because Afghanistan appears to specialize in gobbling up invading forces such as the Soviets and now ours. On the other hand, portions of the populace do reach out for help. It’s a bit of a heart-breaker, but in the end we’re trying to build a democracy, and that just doesn’t seem to work very often.
5. He has virtually eliminated the Islamic State’s physical caliphate. Just following in Obama’s footsteps, as I understand it. I suppose you can at least give him credit for letting the military do its job – just as Obama did.
6. He got NATO allies to kick in $12 billion more toward our collective security. If so, I think that’s good. But, I don’t really know how he did it. By suggesting we’d walk away? His link only verifies the jump, not the reason. If he put NATO at risk just to save a bit of money, then I’d have to consider retracting my agreement.
7. He withdrew from the Paris climate agreement. Freaking potential disaster. You need leadership on these sorts of things in order to communicate the seriousness of the problem to those in a position to do something about it and help direct resources. It’s been great that various cities and even States have stepped up to counteract Trump’s failure of nerve, but let’s not sugarcoat it as Thiessen does, where he says, “After George W. Bush pulled out of the disastrous Kyoto treaty, U.S. emissions went down faster than much of Europe. The same will be true for Trump’s departure from the Paris accord. Combined with his approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, and opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to exploration, Trump is helping usher in a new age of American energy development.” No, he puts the country at risk. Present and future tense. And he gave credibility to the anti-science movement, which is also a high-risk thing to do.
8. He recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. And every independent analysis of this move has condemned it. Need more be said? Oh, let’s add – we’ve capitulated on our leadership position in a very difficult situation.
9. He has taken a surprisingly tough line with Russia. In what sense? That he signed the sanctions legislation that he criticized vociferously, and signed only when it became clear his veto would be overridden? Come on, Thiessen, that’s a joke.
10. He enforced President Barack Obama’s red line against Syria’s use of chemical weapons. Which consisted of a single attack on a Syrian airfield for which the field had been given warning and was swiftly rebuilt. I thought it was worthless.

Doctrinaire to a fault, I’d say. It echoes Trump’s urge to take credit for the work of others, it projects success in the future and then assumes it and takes credit for it when that success is considered doubtful, and generally ignores the promotion of trends which lead us astray when he should be providing strong leadership.

I see little reason to be reading Thiessen.

This long dormant thread shows some life as a WaPo article suggests that former President Obama’s subtle strategy in response to the annexation of the Crimea from Ukraine may be bearing fruit:

VLADIMIR PUTIN boasts of popularity ratings that Western leaders, Donald Trump included, can only dream of — 85 percent and above since Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014. Yet Mr. Putin remains unwilling to test those numbers against real competition. On Monday, the state election commission banned his most popular opponent, Alexei Navalny, from running in the presidential election scheduled for March 18 — meaning that Mr. Putin will face no serious opposition to obtaining another six-year term.

So?

He nevertheless prefers to stage a Potemkin vote in which his only challengers will be two perennial candidates, one Communist and one ultra-nationalist, and Ksenia Sobchak, a 36-year-old celebrity who has called the election “a high-budget show.” Mr. Navalny has now called for a boycott, which means that the Kremlin’s reported goal of a 70 percent turnout may be impossible to reach, barring fraud. In one recent poll, only 58 percent said they would vote.

What could explain Mr. Putin’s seemingly self-defeating tactics? Some analysts argue that the authoritarian regime he has constructed requires not a credible democratic victory but a crushing show of strength. The message must be that there is no alternative. That is particularly true at a time when the regime is failing to deliver the rising living standards it once offered Russians in exchange for their passivity. After two years of recession brought on by falling oil prices and Western sanctions, the economy will grow this year by less than 2 percent.

A stagnant country with a high unemployment could be a kettle ready to explode – and through manipulation of the price of oil by oversupplies by Saudi Arabia and the United States under President Obama, the price of oil has been low relative to its usual prices for several years now.

So Putin is forced to invalidate a dangerous electoral opponent. How important is this in Russia? Beats me – but it’ll surely contribute to the doubts of those Russians who are on the fence.

The path of losing Senatorial candidate Roy Moore could go on for months at this rate, and it may be a laugh riot. Alabama is reported to be planning to certify Doug Jones victory today, and Roy Moore is filing suit to stop it, according to CNN. Here’s a good part:

In its last-minute court battle to stop state officials from certifying Jones as the winner, the Moore campaign said certification should be delayed until a “thorough investigation of potential election fraud,” according to a press release.

Without some sort of solid evidence, I don’t see how the judge could take this seriously. Potential election fraud? At this juncture, it either is or it ain’t. But then we transition into, well, the laughable.

In his election complaint, Moore stated that he took a polygraph test over the sexual misconduct allegations made against him by Leigh Corfman, Beverly Nelson and Tina Johnson. Moore says that he took the polygraph test after the December 12 election, according to his affidavit, included in the complaint.

In the affidavit Moore states, “the results of the examination reflected that I did not know, nor had I ever had any sexual contact with any of these individuals.”

A polygraph? One of the great science superstitions of the modern age. The folks at Skeptical Inquirer never tire of pointing out that all gold-standard tests of polygraphs have shown it performs worse than flipping a coin. Moore’s citation of the polygraph is an irrelevancy. Jones campaign should point this out and just ignore the fact that Moore admits to  having taken the polygraph after the election.

Ask if Moore believes in superstitions. Let him flounder around a bit.

While Jones will soon be a sitting Senator, and may think it above his dignity, I’d say that ridiculing Moore and all he stands for is a public service.

Back to disappointment, I fear, in the integrity of The Motley Fool. In a new email received sometime in the last 24 hours, they’re promoting their 2018 Investor Summit. Here’s the section that bothers me, right at the start, in fact:

With just a few days left in 2017, I’m writing you with some exciting news…

While this past year has been one of the most profitable investing years in The Motley Fool’s history, I believe — with the right strategy — 2018 could be even bigger.

I realize that’s a bold statement, but the numbers don’t lie…

I’m sure you’re quite familiar with some of the gains we’ve seen in Stock Advisor through stocks like NVIDIA (up 85% YTD) and PayPal (up 88% YTD).

IPG Phontonics (up 116% YTD)

Take-Two Interactive (up 123% YTD)

Align Technology (up 145% YTD)

Universal Display (up 214% YTD)

And the list goes on…

Note the reference to their Stock Advisor service.

We, my wife and I, happen to own some of that last stock mentioned, Universal Display. And you know what?

TMF‘s Stock Advisor service does NOT recommend it. Never has, if their online records are accurate. In fact, if I ask for a quote, it tells me that none of the services to which I have access on TMF recommends that stock.

I consider this quite misleading, as they’re taking credit where none is due. Could it be an honest error? I suppose so. I’ve made odder honest errors – although I don’t think I’ve distributed them so widely.

But it’s disappointing. Do I have to proctor every mail I receive for their truthfulness? Nyah. I can just delete them without reading.

I’ll see if there’s some way to request a retraction.

The Guardian reports on the recently passed tax change law:

Along with Trump himself, Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary; Linda McMahon, administrator of the Small Business Administration; Betsy DeVos, the education secretary; Steven Mnuchin, the treasury secretary; and Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state, will benefit to the tune of $4.5m from changes to the estate tax, according to the CAP.

More than 90% of businesses in the US are “pass-through businesses”, meaning their income passes through to the owners’ individual tax returns, where it is taxed at ordinary income tax rates, instead of being filed on a separate business return like a corporation. The sweeping tax bill cuts the top rate on “qualified” pass-through business income from 39.6% under current law to 29.6%.

The Salt Lake Tribune has named Senator Hatch (R-UT) the Utahn Of The Year. Why?

It has everything to do with recognizing:

• Hatch’s part in the dramatic dismantling of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments.
• His role as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee in passing a major overhaul of the nation’s tax code.
• His utter lack of integrity that rises from his unquenchable thirst for power.

Each of these actions stands to impact the lives of every Utahn, now and for years to come. Whether those Utahns approve or disapprove of those actions has little consequence in this specific recognition. Only the breadth and depth of their significance matters.

Uh oh, that doesn’t sound good. So what’s the paper’s final stance?

Common is the repetition of the catchphrase that Hatch successfully used to push aside three-term Sen. Frank Moss in this first election in, egad, 1976.

Not that I would expect the Democrats to have much of a chance in Utah. But Hatch, with a current Trump Score of 96.4%, is clearly part of the problem and is not a moderating influence on the Hill. Replacing him with a moderate Republican, of which I suspect there may be a few in hard-headed Utah, might be a good enough solution.

Source: Wikipedia

Peccaries are pig-like animals of a smaller size. NewScientist (16 December 2017) reports on the pioneering work of a young scientist:

In January, 8-year-old Dante de Kort was watching a herd of five collared peccaries (Pecari tajacu) behind his house in Arizona. One of them seemed to be ill. The next day, he found a dead adult female and the rest of the herd nearby.

MSNBC has an interview with Rep. Francis Rooney (R-Fla.), who calls for purging of the FBI and other agencies, presumably those that are investigating President Trump, of malcontents and other undesirables. Putting aside my foreign association of the word purge^[1], I found this to be a clumsy, but possibly effective, use of the techniques described in The Persuaders. That is to say, he manages to also mention former President Obama, former Secretary of State Clinton, something about $82 million and the Clinton Foundation – which didn’t make sense to me – and something about ends and means, which I suspect was something about the old aphorism, which I personally hold dear, about the ends never justifying the means. He appeared to be trying to intimate that Obama, Clinton, and Special Counsel Mueller are all guilty of indulging in putting the ends before the means, to use what appears to be his phraseology.

Since this is precisely the subject of Mueller’s investigation of the Trump campaign, it’s quite the ironic little interview. He started out OK, but quickly became flustered. But for those who’ve been sucking down the Fox News propaganda or Trump’s Twitter feed, no doubt the dopamine flooded their brains and they believed every last drop.

But I think we should start a little list. Each time a Republican begins bleating about how the FBI needs to be purged or changed, or any other legal agency which may be investigating the Trump campaign, and how unfair it is, and, oh my, well, let’s stick him in the list called The 3^rd-Raters Club, and we’ll know they’re the ones sweating that they may lose their sinecures^[2] if Trump continues to go down in flames as his poll numbers indicate. Right now they’re hoping the fired up base of Trump will also vote for them, and if he’s gone or sorely wounded, they’re more likely to be swept out to sea, or at least a step closer to finding an honest job to support themselves.

Because right now they’re aiding and abetting a con-man.

¹With Soviet/Russian activities which occurred during the Cold War, along with certain American activities rejected by the American public.

²Because they certainly don’t seem to be doing honest government work in this Congress.

Squirm.

It’s what you’ll do if you watch Squirm (1976). It has bad American deep South accents, a stereotypical broken Southern small town, stereotypical useless Sheriff, and – in the category of ridiculous – screaming worms.

Plot? Why, yes, there is a plot, something about a southern lass asking a damn yankee to come visit her in her little town. The night before his arrival, a terrible, even demonic, storm hits the town and a power line tower falls over, inundating the ground – and the worms – with electricity. The worms multiply, grow fangs, and proceed to start lunching on the proprietor of the local worm farm, then moving on to other delectable specimens of humanity. The sheriff, for example, is caught by the worms having sex with his girlfriend in a prison cell. Isn’t that fun?

Now, judging from what I’m seeing in my search for pictures, our TV version chopped out almost all the sex scenes and, perhaps, some continuity. Still, it’s clear this is a stinker, what with tubs full of rubber worms, bad acting, and some OK makeup. Gotta like this guy:

Those worms are on their way in, not out.

But whether you like him or not, Squirm really isn’t worth your time.

Inimitable:

impossible to copy because of being of very high quality or a particular style:
Louis Armstrong’s inimitable gravelly voice [Cambridge Dictionary]

I realized last night that I had little concept of this word, despite having heard it all my life.

When I started this blog I did not anticipate it turning its focus on the political world to the extent that it has, but then I did not anticipate a Trump Presidency, and all the dangers that brings to our liberal democracy. I do tire of it.

So when I finally opened the most recent issue of Skeptical Inquirer and found an interesting survey, I decided to talk about it a bit: the results of the Chapman University survey of America concerning the American citizens’ beliefs in the paranormal. I really like their snazzy chart:

In fact, I’m so taken by the chart that I haven’t read the blog post it’s embedded in. I think I’ll freehand this and then read their blog post.

Belief in Bigfoot or Yeti, at 16%, is one that has never bothered me; indeed, the acceptance that there are biological creatures which we have not yet found, categorized, and characterized is a good one for any society which needs to progress in the future in order to survive. A society which believes it knows everything it needs to know is doomed – at least in that form. It might even go extinct. That all evidence of Bigfoot has been discredited is probably a fact not known to the public that chooses to believe in the big guy.

Fortune tellers & psychics, on the other hand, are well-known dangers to the naive person. Why? Because their advice may divert the trusting from a proper course of action, such as accepting a conventional course of treatment for an illness, for some course of treatment of no value – but perhaps benefiting the fortune teller. It appears some 19% of the American population remains credulous.

At 25%, telekinesis is of limited danger. I can dream up some scenarios where someone might get hurt, but to tell the truth, I probably won’t value their contributions to society anyways, if they’re adults.

The idea that aliens have visited Earth recently is, for me, at an unexpectedly low value of 25%. A physicist will give several reasons why it’s nearly impossible that it has happened, but I think hope springs eternal. The higher value for a visit in ancient times (35%) actually makes sense, given the unexpected achievements of Egypt and the various South American empires, not to mention the different span in time between ‘ancient’ and ‘recent’ – whatever that might be.

However, the places haunted by spirits at 52% is discouraging, given that no one has ever captured any evidence of a spirit. Usually they are shown to be hoaxes or natural phenomena – yet we continue to give such stories credence.

And at 55% is the contention that ancient ‘advanced’ civilizations once existed. I wonder about the reasoning behind this – that is, how many of those who assented to this question are simply trying to be open-minded? How many ran across such contentions in reading sensationalistic publications such as National Enquirer? And how many, disconcerted by the variety of human experience, would prefer to see current society as doomed to return to a simpler time, and in this question they see a way to confirm that such will happen.

Perhaps I’m just a little cynical today.

Finally, the survey notes that 25.3% have “no paranormal beliefs,” which I believe is a misstatement – properly, given the context of the table, those folks just don’t have any of the listed beliefs. I am uncertain as to whether I should be reassured or aghast.

Regarding Trump’s aborted desire to talk about his accomplishments, a reader reacts:

Trump is telling it like he see’s it, not what people necessarily want to hear. And then there is Hillary, nobody with a brain would believe her. Trump lets you decide what to believe, Hillary assumes you are going to believe her so will tell you anything..

How do we know that, though? Trump continually issues statements at variance with reality. In fact, I think the reader is precisely wrong – Trump says what his base wants to hear. All part of being in a winning club. The rest of us?

But what I find more interesting is the reference to Mrs. Clinton. Why? Has she said anything of interest recently? Or is the reader influenced by the frantic need of the GOP to run against someone who will almost certainly never run again? I suspect they’ve invested so much capital is demonizing Mrs. Clinton that they need to pull her into the national spotlight again just to get a little more return on investment, which is all very silly.

I would also very much like to point out that Mrs. Clinton was investigated a large number of times, 8 that I know of, mostly by hostile, Republican-controlled committees, and they never found anything. This suggests that Mrs. Clinton, as horrible a political strategist and tactician as she may be (she should have stomped both Obama and Trump), is either far, far brighter than your typical GOP Congresscritter …

… or there was nothing to find …

… or both.

Your pick.

Steve Benen is puzzled over the behavior of Trump towards the various 2017 special elections:

Over the holiday weekend, the president did it again.

“Remember, the Republicans are 5-0 in Congressional races this year. In Senate, I said Roy M would lose in Alabama and supported Big Luther Strange – and Roy lost. Virginia candidate was not a ‘Trumper,’ and he lost. Good Republican candidates will win BIG!”

To paraphrase Luke Skywalker, every assertion in that tweet was wrong. For example, Trump never predicted Moore’s defeat, at least not publicly. Virginia’s Ed Gillespie, who wasn’t a congressional candidate this year, went out of his way to run a Trump-style, anti-immigration campaign, which played a big role in his nine-point defeat. …

For those eager to argue that a 5-2 record in congressional special election is pretty good, that’s fine. Barack Obama’s Democratic Party actually went 5-0 in the first year of his presidency, the year before a Republican wave ended the Dems’ House majority, but GOP partisans looking for good news can find some if they look hard enough. (They should probably ignore how surprisingly competitive the Democratic candidates were in this year’s Republican victories.)

What they shouldn’t do, however, is put Democratic victories in some kind of blind spot. Responsible parties examine defeats and try to learn from them; they don’t pretend the losses never occurred.

Right. For those of us concerned with reality and truth, this doesn’t make sense. But that’s not Trump nor the GOP – although since this is a Trump Tweet, that’s who we should focus on.  It’s been said many times Trump is a branding guy, and this is a branding effort.

A brand is a club, basically – and who wants to belong to a losing club? This is how you attract people to a brand, by being a winning club – or, in Trump’s world, making it seem like a winning club. This is what he does, he spreads a patina of success over everything he does, with no regard to its relationship to reality. He’s the worst caricature of the conscience-less marketeer, the patent-medicine huckster, the homeopathic vendor, who doesn’t care if you die of your mistaken allegiance – for him, it’s all about him and his success.

So he proclaims his brand is 5-0 in special elections. No surprise. Sounds better than 5-2. And for those voters who suckle at his Twitter nozzle, gulping down the President’s verified fake news with little regard to reality, this is what gets their dopamine levels up in their brains, the idea that their brand is WINNING!

But if you’re a Trump voter and want to know the truth, here it is:

1. In the most conservative state in the union, Trump lost. He lost backing a candidate who is arguably even more Trumpian than Trump.
2. The Democrats won a seat they already held, easily.
3. And in this link Steve covers 4 of the 5 wins for the Republicans. The summary? Each victory was far closer than the previous election for each seat, even though each was considered a “safe” Republican seat. I expect at least three of the five to flip in the midterm elections.

If my reader is Trumpian, you may think the numbers are favorable, even if Trump is misstating the fact of the matter, but I think a peek behind the curtain shows another Trump club going up in flames, much like his Trump University. If being part of clubs is your thing, is this a good club to join?

The back side of the snow-dumpers, December 24.

It was heavy snow one moment, blue skies the next.

Your ambulance is suffering a minor malfunction. Would you care for another?

When a space-going EMT vessel receives a message from a notorious personality on an unapproved communications link, calling for help, the crew of Nightingale 229 must decide whether to respond or not to a possibly dubious communication, and, true to their calling, they do respond. Unfortunately, the interdimensional jump kills the ship’s Captain, and they emerge in the midst of a damaging meteor-filled region, with a high-gravity blue giant star just nearby.

Thus starts Supernova (2000).

The surviving crew is led by the second pilot, a hardened veteran, who manages to keep the ship mostly intact, with the exception of maneuvering fuel lost to the meteor field. But far more dangerous is the blue giant, which is dragging them in to a fiery doom, and in order to survive they need to wait for the dimensional drive to recharge, which it turns out will be just a moment shorter than when the blue giant will incinerate them.

And then an escape pod, or something small, arrives with the author of the distress signal, who claims to be the son of the man whose name was on the message. Self-confident, he is a man left behind by an informal team of salvagers, he claims, but when his small ship is investigated thoroughly, an alien artifact is found.

And eventually the survivor is revealed to be something akin to a God. A God who intends to take the artifact to Earth – and detonate it.

So the science is somewhat spotty, the plot has some holes in it (an example being that the crew believes the Captain deliberately used a defective jump pod for the rescue trip, but never explain why he did so), and defeating a God in one-on-one battles is always a chancy business.

But this is a movie relentless in its pacing. Even the slower parts are full of tension and puzzlement: why is the rescued man so sure of himself? What draws the med-tech so consistently to the alien artifact? And why is that other med-tech making such poor choices? Is it the rescued man’s powers? Or is she just an idiot? And why why why, oh rescued guy? But such is the pacing, the obstacles dodged or overcome, that the questions may come later, after the movie has finished and you’ve come down from the little adrenaline high you’ve been riding.

If you buy into it in the first place. And that could be dicey. This is not a hidden gem, and most reviewers appear to hate it. But if you’re looking for a late night adrenaline run and are not feeling too critical, this might be the right one for you.

Refugia:

As [Professor John] O’Shea looked at the map and envisioned what this ridge might have looked like in the past, he realized that around the end of the last Ice Age, some 9,900 years ago, it would not have been submerged. Rather, it would have been a land bridge, with icy lakes on either side and the receding glacial ice sheet just a few hundred miles to the north. The ridge would probably have remained much colder than the mainland, offering a refuge in a slowly warming world for animals and vegetation adapted to very cold environments. Such isolated pockets of archaic ecosystems that endure after broad continent-wide climate shifts are known as refugia. [“Where the Ice Age Caribou Ranged,” Jason Daley, Archaeology (Jan/Feb 2018)]

CNN/Media has an implicit question that’s easy to answer:

President Trump’s year of flouting presidential traditions and trashing the media isn’t quite over yet.

Trump left the White House on Friday without holding an end-of-the-year press conference.

While it’s by no means a requirement to do so, most presidents in modern times have chosen to hold a formal news conference in December to tout accomplishments and share seasons greetings before Christmas.

This is the first time in 15 years that a president has opted not to.

CNN’s Jeff Zeleny reported that Trump “wanted to hold a news conference, but aides prevailed on him not to.”

So let’s tout up his accomplishments:

1. Nomination and confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to SCOTUS. Note that Gorsuch qualifies for the denominative “IJ,” or Illegitimate Justice, but this is Trump’s fault only in part, as while it is true he publicly encouraged Senator McConnell’s dishonorable actions in regard to Obama’s nominee, Judge Garland, but many others of the Republican party also participated in this action that brought heaps of dishonor upon themselves and their Party.
2. Nomination and, in most cases, confirmation of numerous highly conservative Party members for the federal judiciary. This would be a true accomplishment if they were qualified, but most apparently have not been, which can found not only in the proceedings comments from Republicans, who expressed their dismay at certain nominees but then went on, to their discredit, to vote for confirmation anyways, but also in the fact that two were outright rejected in the last couple of weeks by Senator Grassley, Judiciary Committee Chairman, and another, after being humiliated by a Republican who questioned him, withdrew.
3. Recent passage of a tax change bill (I cannot consider it a reform). However, as he contributed virtually nothing but his signature to it, this is a little difficult to credit. Still, in the spirit of Christmas generosity, we’ll give him some credit for a bill that was written in great haste, has low regard in popular opinion, and appears to have ignored all non-partisan evaluations in preference to the expert (or lack thereof) opinion of the politicos who have the most to gain from it. And if my reader is puzzled at my assertion that this is of low popularity, keep reading.
4. The Executive Order that immigrants from certain nations be banned from entry to the United States. He certainly managed to issue that order. Then it ended up in the courts where it lost and lost before finally winning some sort of wan victory at the Supreme Court. Given the lack of terror attacks from immigrants in the United States since, oh, say Obama took over, it’s hard to define a useful measuring stick as to the efficacy of this Executive Order. Oh, but he got it out.
5. Highest churn rate in White House staff, etc, in quite a while. From The New Yorker, we learn
   

   This degree of churn is “off the charts,” according to Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who has spent years tracking White House turnover rates. Next month, Tenpas will release her findings about Trump’s first year in office. The data—some of which she shared with me this week—is striking: even if every one of Trump’s senior aides stays put until January 20th, the anniversary of his Inauguration, his first-year turnover rate among senior staff—some sixty positions in total—will reach or exceed thirty-three per cent. Turnover, as Tenpas defines it, includes resignations, firings, and shifts of position within the White House. Trump’s first-year turnover rate will be three times higher than both Barack Obama’s (nine per cent) and Bill Clinton’s (eleven per cent) and double Ronald Reagan’s (seventeen per cent), which is as far back as Tenpas’s analysis goes. And this, almost certainly, is just the beginning.

Yeah, not much, so perhaps his aides had a solid reason to dissuade him from leaping to the dais. But I suspect this piece from Steve Benen may be even more instrumental in explaining their fears. And I do encourage the conservative reader to consider this piece carefully, as it fits in with all we know of Trump from public records and his recent behavior.

Donald Trump boasted two weeks ago that that the more Americans learn about the Republican tax plan, “the more popular it becomes.” Even at the time, that was wrong to the point of delusion.

And yet, there was the president this morning, describing the regressive GOP package as “very popular.” …

Does the president believe the nonsense or is he trying to deceive the public? Billy Bush, to whom Trump bragged about sexual assault during the infamous “Access Hollywood” recording, recently wrote a piece for the New York Times, which included an interesting anecdote.

In the days, weeks and months to follow, I was highly critical of the idea of a Trump presidency. The man who once told me – ironically, in another off-camera conversation – after I called him out for inflating his ratings: “People will just believe you. You just tell them and they believe you,” was, I thought, not a good choice to lead our country.

“People will just believe you. You just tell them and they believe you.”

For the reader who thought the tax bill is popular needs to seriously reconsider their sources of news. This should be a red flag that your approach to news gathering is defective. First rule of thumb – disregard everything the President says. Find independent news and facts – Fox News does not qualify – to verify or refute something that worries you OR pleases you.

And I think this is why the aides really discouraged him from a press conference. I think every time he opens his mouth, another 1000 independent voters go negative because they’re willing to look at what he says and realize that it doesn’t correlated with reality, while when he keeps his yap shut, he gains, to a very small degree, some credibility. Heck, he’s been relatively quiet recently and his Gallup Approval rating is almost 40%. That’s after approaching 30% every time another indictment of one of his former aides/campaign managers/friends, who he now reportedly never heard of, is handed down.

So it seems to me that keeping Trump quiet may be the long-term key to success. However you define success in this case.

From WaPo’s Answer Sheet:

In 2013, Google decided to test its hiring hypothesis [of hiring only technologists] by crunching every bit and byte of hiring, firing, and promotion data accumulated since the company’s incorporation in 1998. Project Oxygen shocked everyone by concluding that, among the eight most important qualities of Google’s top employees, STEM expertise comes in dead last. The seven top characteristics of success at Google are all soft skills: being a good coach; communicating and listening well; possessing insights into others (including others different values and points of view); having empathy toward and being supportive of one’s colleagues; being a good critical thinker and problem solver; and being able to make connections across complex ideas.

Those traits sound more like what one gains as an English or theater major than as a programmer. Could it be that top Google employees were succeeding despitetheir technical training, not because of it?  After bringing in anthropologists and ethnographers to dive even deeper into the data, the company enlarged its previous hiring practices to include humanities majors, artists, and even the MBAs that, initially, [Google founders] Brin and Page viewed with disdain.

Emphasis mine. I suppose as a software engineer I should be horrified. But I don’t know that I was ever a technologist, whatever that might be. Coming out of high school, I thought I wanted to be a novelist someday, but I knew I wasn’t ready for that and didn’t really believe you could train to be one, so I found a forward looking career and took a shot at it. Fortunately, writing code tends to agree with my temperament – and it let me be lazy as well.

I wonder how much influence this study will have on industry and education. For years the soft sciences having been getting short schrift from everyone, from technology students to the educational institutions themselves. Perhaps this will mark the end of a pendulum swing and now it’ll start to swing back to accepting there’s value in those hills as well, as they’ve constantly argued themselves (talking hills? Must be Christmas morning around here). And, in turn, this will make the those educational institutions stronger, rather than turning them into simply a skills-development academy.

I wonder if the University of North Carolina is listening.

Depletion gilding:

All the [golden] objects were initially subjected to “depletion gilding,” in which copper is removed from the surface through hammering, annealing, or both, producing a golden surface that belies the metal’s true contents. This gilding was later deliberately removed, bringing out the copper’s pinkish tones. “We suggest that at a particular moment, it was desirable for an object to be golden, and at a later point, it was desirable to have the gilding removed,” says Martinón-Torres. He adds that red has been associated with the feminine in the region, so objects may have been turned pink when a woman took ownership of them or when a female owner entered puberty. [“The Pink Standard,” Daniel Weiss, Archaeology (Jan/Feb 2018)]

Bonus word!

Annealing:

Annealing, in metallurgy and materials science, is a heat treatment that alters the physical and sometimes chemical properties of a material to increase its ductility and reduce its hardness, making it more workable. It involves heating a material above its recrystallization temperature, maintaining a suitable temperature, and then cooling. [Wikipedia]

Dickens and his guidance counselors.

Whether fictionalized or not, The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017) gives its audience a peek into the chaos that may have been Charles Dickens, and in particular the act of creation which brought his classic Christmas story into being.

Our story begins with the sources of tension in Dickens’ life: two failures after the phenomenal success of Oliver Twist, a fifth child on the way, a new house, expensive tastes, financial strains, and finally a father whose limitations distress Dickens. And no book incipient, a key problem when his publishers insist on the repayment of a loan necessitated by the failures of his last two books.

But when those publishers apply their business acumen to his spur of the moment book proposal and spurn it, he impulsively decides to publish the book on his own dime, complete with illustrations – and only six weeks left to complete the non-existent manuscript, get the illustrations and all to the independent publisher, and onward to the shops. Thus would seem to be the tale to be told.

But it’s not, really. The story is not the race from nothing to something, but concerns his own form of authorial semi-insanity which comes from vivid characters beginning to populate his mind, characters who talk to him when he’s stuck, feed him his story – and then refuse his demands when the story he wishes to impose on them doesn’t meet with their approval.

When your fictional characters fight back, you have an insurrection on your hands.

And Charles doesn’t handle it all that well, subjecting himself, his friends, and family to mercurial moods which may alienate those who love him best. Some parts of constructing a new story are fairly mundane, although I do not mean mechanical or easy: the gathering of names for characters, locations, and ideas. But the harder parts of great stories come from staring at the very pillars of society, strong or crumbling, obvious or hidden. Dickens may be wealthy, or keeps up a good front, but right in front of him are the dregs of society, the children living in abject poverty, abused by parents and others for ends which leave the children in miserable places. And the best stories come from the insights the author believes they see – such as the attention paid to wealth in Dickens’ London society, over that attention that should be paid to friendship and uplifting the poor of society.

And that’s what this movie works hard to lay bare, for Dickens is hardly without fault himself. He virtually despises his own well-meaning father, a man beset with his own demons and deficiencies. And while I empathize with the problems caused by interruptions of the creative process, firing a maid for the conveyance of a message is hardly the act of a just employer; his failure to manage his time is used to put a metaphorical arrow through the poor woman. So when Scrooge himself laughs at his own author and proclaims no one ever changes, it’s the challenge for Dickens, not only in his story upon which he’s laid so much hope, but for his own life.

As a meta-story it works fairly well. The acting is excellent, I enjoyed the cinematography and sets, and if it sometimes feels like Dickens dominates the movie, what did I expect? I’ll admit I have a poor ear for London accents, so I occasionally lost bits of dialog, but I and the audience clapped at the end. Go and have a good time.