Category Archives: Uncategorized

Gene drive:

In genetics, gene drive is the phenomenon in which the inheritance of a particular gene or set of genes is favorably biased. Gene drive can arise through a variety of mechanisms and results in its prevalence increasing in a population. Engineered gene drives have been proposed to provide an effective means of genetically modifying populations or even whole species. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “Gene drives can beat pests, but we can’t afford any mistakes,” Michael Le Page, NewScientist (25 November 2017, paywall):

NEW ZEALAND is considering using genetic “extinction” drives to tackle invaders such as rats, possums and stoats. These gene drives are essentially genetic parasites that can spread and wipe out populations.

But leading gene drive researchers are calling for caution. They argue that no country should tackle invasive species in this way unless these can be certain the drives won’t spread beyond that country’s borders (PLOS Biology, doi.org/cgcb).

Possums, for instance, are protected species in neighbouring Australia, so it would be a disaster if a possum-killing gene drive was deliberately or accidentally introduced there. Instead, conservationists should release only smart gene drives that cannot spread in other countries.

I heard a year or two ago that vinyl is coming back, record factories re-opened, and record players are hot once again. Damn that ex-brother-in-law for borrowing my record player and never returning it.

Anyways.

Now the next step is being taken, as Paul Marks reports in NewScientist (25 November 2017, paywall):

Yet some feel there is magic left in the cassette. And so, like vinyl, they are hoping to fuel a revival.

Behind this is what’s billed as the world’s last cassette maker, National Audio Company of Springfield, Missouri. With stock dwindling, and its South Korean supplier no longer making raw tape, it had to act, not only to fuel bands like Metallica that still use cassette, but also a growing number of indie bands who want to do likewise. So it bought machines once used to make magnetic strips for credit cards to repurpose for making tape. …

Music on tape has a unique, vital sound and record labels are picking up on that. Encoding audio as varying magnetic fields, as tape does, is bound to give a different quality to other methods.

For the record (hah!), I do still have a Denon tape player. Hidden in my attic.

AI-powered scarecrows work as well, NewScientist (25 November 2017) reports:

It can detect and identify pests, before responding intelligently with the right combination of sound or light. Each of these “sentinels” has a library of startling and scary noises: predator sounds, animal alarm calls, irritating tones and self-generated noises. Teams of the devices can protect large areas.

In tests earlier this year in Gabon, the scarecrow worked. “Elephants usually turn and escape as quickly as possible back the way they entered,” says Ashley Tews of Australia’s national research organisation CSIRO, which developed the system.

Which is actually fairly important, as elephants that invade human precincts are often killed because of the danger they pose, and their persistence.

After writing last night’s post concerning the recognition of Jerusalem as a possibly shrewd move by Trump, along comes WaPo and makes it clear that he’s just trying to beat his predecessors – again. And without understanding what might happen:

Several advisers said [Trump] did not seem to have a full understanding of the issue and instead appeared to be focused on “seeming pro-Israel,” in the words of one, and “making a deal,” in the words of another.

Once Trump indicated 10 days ago that he would not sign a second waiver, national security adviser H.R. McMaster began putting together options that officials assessed would result in the least damage.

The debate came to a head at a White House meeting Nov. 27 to hash out the waiver issue. According to people briefed on the meeting, Trump repeated his earlier assertions that he had to follow through on his campaign pledge, seemingly irritated by objections over security and the break with previous policy.

“The decision wasn’t driven by the peace process,” one senior official said. “The decision was driven by his campaign promise.”

Chief regional allies including Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt — where senior government officials have said they still have little sense of the parameters of the broader peace plan being fashioned by the Kushner-led team — were not told definitively that the decision had been made until late last week. All have described the Jerusalem decision as a step backward in the peace process.

When Trump made contact with Arab allies ahead of his announcement, it was to notify them, not to discuss the matter.

According to Nabil Shaath, an adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Trump “just went on saying he had to do it,” despite the Palestinian leader’s fervent objections.

Ah, well. Sometimes, trying to see what others don’t results in exactly that.

The stamp of corruption.

Midway through RoboCop (1987) I finally came to understand why I was enjoying what really seems like a slight action movie: it’s addressing one of the premier issues in today’s society, the problem of confusing the responsibilities and processes of one sector with another.

OCP is a company with its fingers in many fields, and it’s just signed an agreement with Detroit to provide law enforcement services, in return for the right for total renovation rights over portions of Detroit. Their newest offering is an automated robot, fully armed. One small problem: on its debut, it shoots and kills an OCP employee. That project is suspended, allowing another project involving a man/robot hybrid to proceed. And the man?

A dead cop.

They call it RoboCop.

He’s quite the success until he discovers that one of the senior managers of OCP is responsible for the death of another manager – and upon trying to arrest the guilty party, he finds his programming has a hidden constraint – senior managers of OCP may never be arrested by their own products.

Some might call this corruption, but to my mind it’s really just a corporate safeguard. After all, the corporation cannot afford to be disrupted by its own forces over what is really an internal mattter … right?

This makes RoboCop a graphic illustration of the problems that can occur when permitting a private company to intrude into governmental responsibilities. The clashing codes of conduct, morality if you’re daring, dangerously degrades the efficiency and trustworthiness of the service, and we can see why, if we have the wit.

There’s also a lovely scene following his discovery of the constraint. He escapes the rival robot that was set on him by the rogue senior manager, but on exiting the stairwell, he finds the OCP police force waiting for him, and as they shoot at him, the impacts force him into a dance of bruised innocence that seems to convey a sense of betrayal. As RoboCop, he is above corruption, and for having such a morality, he is subjected to the forces of death by those who would benefit from manipulating the system. In some odd way, it’s a tragic scene, from which he escapes only because of those cops who still cling to the precepts of law enforcement honor.

Eventually, RoboCop avenges himself on the gang that killed him, and the senior manager gets his comeuppance. While the story is straightforward and fairly predictable, it has enough humor to make it worth watching to the end. So if you find yourself at loose ends, want to watch something straightforward, and have never seen RoboCop, it might be worth your time.

As WaPo once again issues a correction of President Trump, this time having to do with DoD budgets, it occurs to me that the fact-checking organizations should be more aggressive in checking Trump, as well as all major candidates during Presidential campaigns. Each time a candidate or the President is scheduled to speak, they should set up desks outside the venue, connect to their fact checking back ends, and then check each and every assertion the candidate makes during the speech. Through the use of high speed printers, by the time the attendees are exiting the venue, the fact-checkers should be able to create paper packets which correct those assertions which are fallacious.

Remember Trump’s assertion we were experiencing historically high rates of crime? Imagine handing out a packet with a big old graph showing the lie, with FBI Crime Statistics stamped all over it, to the excited attendees, and watching them deflate. And then get angry. And then probably throw it in the garbage.

The more advanced organization would also pull out statistics for the town where the event occurred, just for comparison. Maybe this little burg IS having a crime problem. This would illustrate that the crime problem is local, not national, and thus not to take Trump seriously.

Just an idle thought.

There’s been the expected uproar over President Trump’s announcement that his Administration will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel – the first nation to do so, as I understand it. I found Akiva Eldar’s analysis in AL Monitor an interesting take on it. Even the article title intrigues – Netanyahu left without any cards to play.

Every rookie cadet in the foreign service knows that in diplomacy, as in business, there are no free lunches. When a seasoned businessman like President Donald Trump grants Israel the coveted US recognition of Jerusalem as its capital, he expects a quid pro quo. That is why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orderedmembers of his government to lie low and, to the extent possible, abstain from crowing over the expected news from the White House. As a former furniture salesman (Netanyahu once worked in marketing for an Israeli furniture firm), the prime minister knows that an overly enthusiastic buyer jacks up the price of the goods. Netanyahu can assume that Trump will not risk upsetting his Saudi clients over the sensitive issue of Jerusalem — holy to both Muslims and Jews — just to please his Jewish and evangelical supporters/constituents. No one gives away such a gift, and with a 50% discount, at that. The first recognition by a foreign nation of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state will come with a price tag, and it won’t be cheap.

Trump’s envoy Jared Kushner, speaking on Dec. 3 at the Saban Forum in Washington, indicated that his father-in-law’s administration was preparing another pricey gift for Israel. The president’s adviser told participants at the prestigious gathering that many countries in the region, traditional enemies of the Jewish state, now view Israel as a potential partner given their shared enemies: Iran and the Islamic State. He noted that the US Mideast peace team, which he leads, was focusing on efforts to implement what the countries in the region want — “economic progress, peace for their people.”

The price? Get the peace thing with the Palestinians figured out.

However, hatred of Iran, love of Israel and even covert intelligence support are not the only ingredients of regional peace. “If we’re going to try to create more stability in the region as a whole, you have to solve this issue,” Kushner said, referring to an Israeli-Palestinian agreement. The Saudis, Egyptians, Qataris, Jordanians, Emiratis, “everyone we’ve spoken with,” all view a solution to the Palestinian problem as important.

Indeed, with all due respect to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and despite the importance of efforts being invested by the president of the United States, two additional partners are needed to advance resolution of the Palestinian problem: Palestinians and Israelis.

As much as I view President Trump as a clumsy, uninterested amateur, even a delusional man who would be better spending his time in a private hospital, this time I have to wonder if he’s on to something. A big old carrot’s being dangled in front of Israel, but it’s still out of reach because Trump has also said he doesn’t know when the actual, physical movement of the embassy to Jerusalem will happen. This isn’t a private message, this is a big old public If you want the rest of this, you know what you have to do.

And also keep in mind that Netanyahu is in personal peril due to the corruption that has surrounded his administration. Handled skillfully, he may be able to use this opportunity to distract everyone, or at least dilute the findings of the police. And, of course, add to his legacy.

It’s not subtle, but then Trump has all the subtlety of a bull moose in rut. Along with the threats of Iran and the Islamic State in the region, which changes the calculus of diplomacy, it may be enough to tip that particular balance. Although I still have to wonder how a city considered holy by three different religions is going to be managed, both politically and practically. Hell, the different Christians sects sometimes have violent riots with each other over what seems to me to be trivia.

Gallup‘s latest Party Affiliation poll should be disheartening for the GOP … who have, of course, governing dominance at the moment.

So the question in my mind is what has more importance here? Is it just Democratic incompetence, culminating in an inability to get their voters to the polls? Or completely unable to persuade Independents to their cause?

Or is it gerrymandering showing a very ugly face? This won’t explain the Senatorial dominance of the GOP, slender as it is, but it might explain their current dominance in the House.

And this result probably explains the recent trend of Democrats winning Republican seats in state-level special elections, as last happened last night in Georgia:

It was already a foregone conclusion, but Democrat Jen Jordan has become the newest member of the Georgia State, ending a two-thirds supermajority previously enjoyed by Republicans.

Jordan, a lawyer, won the election over Howard, a pediatric dentist, with 10,681 votes (64 percent) against Howard’s 6,017 votes (36 percent).

Howard and Jordan entered the runoff after drawing the most votes in a crowded field during the initial election. The seat was previously held by Republican Hunter Hill, who resigned to run for Georgia Governor, so it was a big surprise that two Democrats garnered the most votes. [Cobb County Courier]

A “jungle primary” resulted in two Democrats facing off. The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee claims the Democrats have flipped 33 seats in 2017. I’m not sure how many Democratic seats have come under GOP control in the same time period, but it seems unlikely they have anywhere near as many.

It doesn’t take any insight that the Democrats have high hopes for the 2018 midterms; they feel they just need to beat the mighty GOP marketing machine, which is quite formidable.

But, for me, what will it take for the GOP to reconsider its suicidal – and country-damaging – ways? Or are they too addicted to the donor-supplied cash, who now seem to be directing the GOP, at least in part?

The next national level special election is for the former Senatorial seat of Jeff Sessions, where accused child molester and stalker Roy Moore of the GOP is up against Democrat and “pro-abortionist”, as the GOP‘s literature says, former Federal prosecutor Doug Jones. I suspect the GOP, which has recently turned against its stated principles (with the exception of a few Senators) to back Moore after all, will retain the seat – Alabama goes its own way, even at the expense of its moral standing (and soul, if you believe in such things), and right now they perceive “the establishment” as being against Moore. Polls are all over the place, so it’s not worth citing them.

But the Democrats are actually in a win-win situation, if they are smart enough to take advantage of it. Moore is reportedly clever – he knows how to talk to Alabamans – but not particularly bright. If he wins, he’ll function as a screaming red canker on the hide of the GOP, and by highlighting this fact, and the evident fact that the GOP will embrace anyone of dubious morals and intellect, the Democrats should be able to swing more Independents to their side.

And if they win, it’ll spotlight the GOP as a Party in terrifying moral – and demographic – decline.

We’ll see how this plays out.

Paul Waldman remarks in WaPo on the tax bill currently in conference committtee:

Those are value judgments, rooted in how Republicans tend to view the worth of different people. They operate on the presumption that the economic system is fair, and the results of that system provide a measure of different people’s virtue. If you’re rich — even if you got rich by choosing the right parents — they presume that you deserve to be taxed as lightly as possible, while if you’re in need of the kinds of help we offer low-income people, then it reflects a moral failing. If we give you any help at all, it should be as grudging as possible, accompanied by stern lectures and even rituals of humiliation such as drug tests.

Which inspires me to ask, How about if we require drug tests when you’re inheriting money, and if you fail the drug test, you don’t get the inheritance?

Seems fair to me. It even makes sense. Why should some crack-head son of a billionaire get all that money just because Daddy found a way to make it? What did you do, sonny, that earns you that amazing inheritance? (Hey, we could make it into a game show!)

America was built on the idea of it being a meritocracy, and this attempt to protect estates is distinctly un-American.

For readers who like national monuments, Trump’s desire to erase Obama’s legacy has resulted in a reduction of two of monuments from Obama’s era. From The Salt Lake Tribune:

To the cheers of Utah politicians and dismay of environmental and tribal groups, President Donald Trump swept into Utah on Monday and erased most of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National monuments — shaving 2 million acres from their boundaries and replacing them with five smaller monuments.

The historic move was swiftly met with a lawsuit filed by a coalition of conservation organizations and threats of another from American Indian groups, as opponents claimed the reductions are illegal and denounced them as potentially opening pristine lands to development. Protesters along Trump’s route and in downtown Salt Lake City shouted and waved signs opposing his changes, and for a time halted traffic.

But, as Steve Benen points out, Interior Secretary Zinke is playing the “say the opposite of reality” game:

Wait, what’s the hundredth prime number again?

If only the premise of Escape From New York (1981) were palatable. From my science fiction days, I remember “they” would say you got one unbelievable assumption in a story. But it just doesn’t work here. The sacrifice of Manhattan, with all its valuable buildings, to be a high-security prison for all the criminals of the United States simply rings completely false.

Add to that the lack of interesting thematic material, and Escape From New York becomes merely another mindless action flick, as Air Force One goes down in Manhattan, and the President must be found and extracted by one “Snake” Plisken, former Special Forces, later arrested and convicted on charges of attempting to rob the Federal Reserve.

What’s turned him from military to armed robber? For that matter, what’s caused the 400% increase in crime? We don’t know. Not a hint. It makes the movie much less interesting. It seems like everyone in Manhattan has heard of Snake. Some have even heard he’s dead. Where do those two bits of info lead?

Oh, nowhere.

If you want mindless action, this isn’t too awful. Good sequences. But it’s not gripping, it’s boring.

I’ve been laughing all day at this silly-ass assertion that the President cannot be obstructing justice:

John Dowd, President Trump’s outside lawyer, outlined to me [Mike Allen]] a new and highly controversial defense/theory in the Russia probe: A president cannot be guilty of obstruction of justice.

The “President cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under [the Constitution’s Article II] and has every right to express his view of any case,” Dowd claims. [Axios]

Dowd is suggesting the President has no standards to live up to as chief law enforcement officer.

BUT THIS IS THE OPPOSITE OF THE FACT OF THE MATTER.

Law enforcement is ideally always held to a higher standard than the general citizenry. Because they’ve been permitted special powers as law enforcement personnel, they are also expected to adhere to standards that the rest of us need not.

In essence, no, Dowd, the President is not permitted to attempt to influence possible future cases. Not of Hillary Clinton. Not of himself.

And he most certainly may not use those powers to stop investigations into this own behaviors. That is inherent in being a law enforcement officer.

And it’s all in your own words, Dowd. If only you had given this matter deeper thought.

Sort of like your client.

Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare is having some trouble digesting Alan Dershowitz’s arguments against Trump indulging in obstruction of justice. He has four questions for Dershowitz, the first being this:

James Comey has testified that the FBI first opened an investigation of Russian interference in our election in July of 2016. This was presumably a counterintelligence investigation, in the first instance. To comply with Justice Department guidelines, it could only have arisen because some information came in—probably as a result of ongoing monitoring of foreign intelligence targets—indicating a degree of interaction between the Russians and Trump campaign officials or figures. That is, the FBI would have had to make a judgment, at a minimum, that a counterintelligence investigation touching the Trump campaign or someone within it “may obtain foreign intelligence that is responsive to a foreign intelligence requirement.” If there was a criminal component to that investigation, it would also have had to have information suggesting that “An activity constituting a federal crime or a threat to the national security has or may have occurred, is or may be occurring, or will or may occur.”

So here’s my first question to Dershowitz: Assuming that the information that came to the FBI in July 2016 properly met the standards for predication of either a national security investigation or a criminal investigation, should the FBI have declined to investigate it? That is, should the FBI have shrugged at the possibility of Russian recruitment of Trump campaign officials because Dershowitz concludes without the benefit of that investigation that “Even if it were to turn out that the Trump campaign collaborated, colluded or cooperated with Russian agents, that alone would not be a crime”? Note that Trump was not president at the time and that, therefore, no question arises at this stage as to whether a president can obstruct justice by exercising his constitutional authority to supervise the executive branch.

The story does not end there. Because when the FBI began investigating this matter, evidence arose of potential crimes among senior members of the Trump campaign. For example, in the course of investigating L’Affaire Russe, the FBI—and later the special counsel’s investigation—developed information suggesting that Paul Manafort and Rick Gates had engaged in a giant money-laundering scheme. Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s appointment letter for Mueller specifically gave him jurisdiction over “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.”

The rest are interesting questions, as I think Benjamin more or less ridicules Dershowitzs’s arguments.

Andrew Sullivan on President Trump:

In his speech last Wednesday night in Missouri, for example, he claimed that his tax proposal was the biggest tax cut in history (not even close); that it was “going to cost me a fortune, this thing, believe me … I have some very wealthy friends. Not so happy with me, but that’s okay” (an absolute inversion of reality); and that the stock market had been flat before his presidency (the Dow was at 7,000 when Obama came to office and 20,000 when he left).

Or cast your eyes back a few days and consider his condemnation of various sexual abusers and harassers (such as Al Franken and Matt Lauer). Why on earth would someone who has been personally accused by a dozen women of sexual assault get on his high horse with respect to others? Because in his own mind, he never committed assault. Every single woman who accused him really is a liar and the tape that recorded his bragging of assault was in fact as faked as Obama’s birth certificate. And this is not the only indelible delusion we discover he still clings to. He believes — alone among the leaders of every single other country — that climate change is a Chinese hoax, even as the Chinese, for some unfathomable reason, invest heavily in renewable energy; he is adamant that Russia did not meddle in the U.S. elections last year and that the U.S. intelligence community is lying about it or full of “hacks.” He believes that every poll that shows him as unpopular is fake; and that virtually everything the mainstream media reports about his administration is fabricated.

And this is the result of building your entire identity on your success, to the n^th degree. For Trump, reality is a tertiary concern, to be repressed when it interferes with his perception of success.

To me, one’s first allegiance should be to reality, the truth. Which is why I find myself so much alienated from the GOP than the Democrats these days.

The Magnificent Seven (1960) is not your average Western film. The story of seven gunslingers hired to guard a Mexican village against a group of bandits, it pulls back the romantic reputation of the gunslinger to reveal its hollow, desolate core. Each of the Seven has a story to tell, from the young wannabe, searching for a reputation and the prestige to go with it in order to rise out of his humble beginnings, to the has-been, tormented by nightmares of not being good enough, to the leader and his number 2, both sadly aware that no place has a hold on them, no woman waits for them, there are no children to care for.

It’s this awareness of a hollow at core of their existence, perhaps, that permits this movie to open with a funeral scene – or, more properly, the trip to the burial site. A man has died of a heart attack, his funeral expenses have been kindly paid for by a stranger, and the undertaker reports all is ready on Boot Hill.

Except for the small group of men who object to an Indian being buried on Boot Hill.

Chris and Vin volunteer to take the body in, showing off their pinpoint shooting skills by shooting one man’s gun out of his hand, and another in the arm, and successfully taking the body to his final resting place. But why? Why not, perhaps? Or perhaps they’ve discarded that prejudice that so many early settlers had against the Indian, discarded it because of their own bleak future.

So when three villagers show up, looking for help against the 40 or so bandits who demand tribute from their village, Chris takes on the job, recruiting Vin and the others, each coming for their own reason, from the wannabe to the man still looking for the big score, which he’s convinced is somewhere in the mountains of the village, to the has-been, a quiet cipher who may be looking for redemption – or the final way out.

Once at the village, they direct the villagers in building defenses. Each step is careful to show the inner lives of the men, such as when they realize the villagers are giving them the best food and subsisting on a few beans a day – the Seven then turn around and host a feast using the food, making sure everyone is well-fed, if only for that night.

When the bandits show up, all hell breaks loose – but now we’re invested in these Seven, along with the villagers. They win the first battle, but when the second ends in their disadvantage, some would say they were lucky to walk away with their lives. Why do they return to the third and final battle? To rescue the villagers? To salve their wounded pride?

To do right? To fill, for a moment, that hollow core?

Strongly Recommended.

Andrew Sullivan celebrates the British royals’ influence on society:

One note in favor of the monarchy. I’m an unabashedly Tory royalist. This is not because I have anti-democratic impulses (if I’d stayed in Britain and at some point been offered some kind of aristocratic title, like many of my friends in the elite, I would refuse it on principle). And it’s not even because I love royal news and gossip. It bores me to tears. It’s because I see the enormous value, especially in these tribal times, of institutions that can unite people with each other and with the past. The British monarchy brilliantly performs both functions. The country is currently bent on an act of economic suicide in its pathetic attempt to leave the E.U.; it is riven by the same tribal divides as America; it has an identity crisis around race, religion, and even the boundaries of its own territory. But everyone loves the Queen. When she dies, the nation will fall silent. She is the living embodiment of that Burkean idea of a national compact between the generations, past, present and future. She gives an apolitical meaning to being British. I remember vividly watching Netflix’s The Crown in the wake of Trump’s victory. Queen Elizabeth II represented the polar opposite of President-elect Trump. Utterly self-effacing for decades, stable, rational, devoted to protocol, insistent on political neutrality, devoting her entire life to constant service, she is, in some ways, a living rebuke to the polarizing, showboating American presidency we now have to endure.

The contrast of Queen Elizabeth II and President Trump neglects one important challenge: when the Queen dies, how do you know her replacement, whether it’s son or grandson, will have her virtues? History is full of monstrous Kings and Queens, and in fact that’s some of the motivation for the American form of government.

I want to say the antidote is composite institutions, such as Congress, but recent experience has cast doubt on that assertion. Perhaps the most that you can say is that even if a majority of the institution has been perverted, they do remain individuals capable of random, even honorable acts. As each has individual ambition, they may occasionally neglect their sad, un-American allegiance to Party and whoever controls that Party.

Occasionally.

So long as we have institutions of power, we may suffer through periods like this.

Perfervid:

adjective
extremely fervid; ardent [Collins English Dictionary]

Noted in “America Is Trapped in Trump’s Delusional World,” Andrew Sullivan, New York:

At its center is mental illness. It radiates out of the center like a toxin in the blood. And this, again, is nothing new. On Trump’s first day in office, with respect to the size of his inauguration crowd, he insisted that what was demonstrably, visibly, incontrovertibly false was actually true. At that moment, we learned that all the lies and exaggerations and provocations of the previous year were not just campaign tools, designed to con and distract, but actually constitutive of his core mental health. He was not lying, as lying is usually understood. He was expressing what he believed to be true, because his ego demanded it be true. And for Trump, as we now know, there is no reality outside his own perfervidly narcissistic consciousness.

A lovely word. The context of the United States electing this chump, however, makes me ill at my heart.

They say I look good as a porcupine.

The best way to describe the genre of Kung Fu Hustle (2004) is as a cartoon come to life. For the movie’s director, Stephen Chow, the laws of physics are mere play things for characters whose actions and natures are amplified by Chow’s special effects team, frequently using ideas borrowed from cartoons. Running involves the classic spinning legs of the Coyote from the Roadrunner cartoons; fights can move at ludicrous speeds; and when the fat lady sings, look out.

But these are not merely affectations to mark the movie as novel, but also serve to notify the audience of the moral dimensions of this movie, because this is a movie that disputes the notion that there is little connection between the behaviors, or morals, of a person, and his capabilities as a fighter. For example, every time the hero of the story attempts an evil act, he fails spectacularly. No, catastrophically. His own weapons wound him, he is detected and pursued, escaping only through happy happenstance. He’s never committed arson, murder, rape, or anything else – despite a stated intent to do so. Rebuffed at every turn, his most evil attainment may be his pick-lock skills, which save his and his partner’s life when he’s about to be executed by the very gang in which he covets membership.

These tricks highlight a plot of some intricacy and anticipation that has playful references to other movies, some of which I’m sure I missed. But the running theme is how there is always a sufficiently skilled fighter for good to defeat the almost magical powers of the kung fu master for evil. And if some magical Chinese thinking is necessary to bring forth the final fighter for good, so be it, for he’s been with us all along, and simply needed to be released from the chrysalis that had constrained him.

My Arts Editor may not care for this movie, but if you don’t mind some bright whimsy – no, a lot of whimsy – and a hidden smile behind almost every scene, then this movie is Recommended.

It appears that anytime the ‘I’ word comes out, the American public perks up, shakes its head sadly, and discounts the Trump Administration, as we can see in the Gallup Presidential Approval poll. With a 33% approval rating, President Trump has achieved a new low, while the 62% disapproval rating ties a high.

If we just look at these numbers, it appears Trump is in trouble – but how long will these numbers persist or even worsen? The Manafort indictment resulted in a similar reaction, only to recover shortly thereafter.

So I’m hesitant to actually read much into these numbers. Now, if Trump’s approval rating were to reach 30%, then I’d grant a permanent effect, but at the moment, it’s more like a shock to the system, causing one’s hair to stand on end before the cardiac arrest returns.

And in the end, how much does this affect Speaker Ryan? In his hands are the ability to start the impeachment process, and so far he hasn’t shown any willingness to use it. Honestly, it’s hard to say if his loyalty to the Party leader is greater than his loyalty to the country, or if in his opinion there’s not enough evidence to justify impeachment – despite Trump’s increasingly dangerous and incomprehensible ways.

Stay tuned, I’ll be interested in tomorrow’s numbers – although I expect a recovery for President Trump.

Benjamin Wittes and a small team of his colleagues present a first cut at interpreting the implications of the Flynn indictment on Lawfare. Among the many takeaways:

The most important revelation here is that contrary to [Trump’s attorny, Ty] Cobb’s statement Friday morning, Flynn is saying clearly that he was not a rogue actor but was operating at the behest of the presidential transition team. He states that a “very senior member of the Presidential Transition Team,” a “senior official of the Presidential Transition Team” and “senior members of the Presidential Transition Team” were involved in directing his actions. The stipulated facts also make clear that Flynn reported back to the transition on his conversations with Kislyak.

Second, take a moment to remember the context in which Flynn’s underlying conduct took place: He and apparently the Trump transition team were working to undermine U.S. foreign policy goals endorsed by both parties. In December 2016, President Obama authorized sanctions against Russia in response to cyber-enabled election interference. He did so with broad bipartisan support to deter such activity in the future against the U.S. and its allies. The shared bipartisan—even nonpartisan—goal was to protect foundational elements of democracy and legitimacy. To the extent that there was mainstream criticism of the action, it was for being too weak, not for being too aggressive with respect to Russia.

And so Flynn is just part of the team, which means there will be more indictments. Will this Greek tragedy come to an end, or is Trump going to try to ride this right into the side of a mountain? I’m guessing his ego won’t let him resign and let the nation get on to the task of healing – we’ll have to endure some sort of impeachment, even possibly a criminal trial.

It’s an interesting article, seeing how experienced lawyers interpret a plea agreement in one of the most unusual contexts in American history – the investigation of a Presidential campaign and even Administration.

Andrew McCarthy on National Review prefers to see corruption in the Obama Administration:

Obviously, it was wrong of Flynn to give the FBI false information; he could, after all, have simply refused to speak with the agents in the first place. That said, as I argued early this year, it remains unclear why the Obama Justice Department chose to investigate Flynn. There was nothing wrong with the incoming national-security adviser’s having meetings with foreign counterparts or discussing such matters as the sanctions in those meetings. Plus, if the FBI had FISA recordings of Flynn’s conversations with Kislyak, there was no need to ask Flynn what the conversations entailed.

Flynn, an early backer of Donald Trump and a fierce critic of Obama’s national-security policies, was generally despised by Obama administration officials. Hence, there has always been cynical suspicion that the decision to interview him was driven by the expectation that he would provide the FBI with an account inconsistent with the recorded conversation — i.e., that Flynn was being set up for prosecution on a process crime.

While initial reporting is portraying Flynn’s guilty plea as a major breakthrough in Mueller’s investigation of potential Trump-campaign collusion with the Russian regime, I suspect the opposite is true.

Speculation that Flynn is now cooperating in Mueller’s investigation stirred in recent days due to reports that Flynn had pulled out of a joint defense agreement (or “common interest” arrangement) to share information with other subjects of the investigation. As an ethical matter, it is inappropriate for an attorney whose client is cooperating with the government (or having negotiations toward that end) to continue strategizing with, and having quasi-privileged communications with, other subjects of the investigation and their counsel.

Nevertheless, as I explained in connection with George Papadopoulos (who also pled guilty in Mueller’s investigation for lying to the FBI), when a prosecutor has a cooperator who was an accomplice in a major criminal scheme, the cooperator is made to plead guilty to the scheme. This is critical because it proves the existence of the scheme. In his guilty-plea allocution (the part of a plea proceeding in which the defendant admits what he did that makes him guilty), the accomplice explains the scheme and the actions taken by himself and his co-conspirators to carry it out. This goes a long way toward proving the case against all of the subjects of the investigation.

McCarthy seems to ignore the possibility that Mueller may select a different strategy than McCarthy sees and interprets. He also forgets that Flynn may be protecting his own son, Mike, Jr., who is thought to also have been a part of this scandal – although he’s not charged. He may function as extra leverage for Mueller.

Here’s the choices given to the survivors of the spaceship Shenandoah, located on the Saturnian moon Titan:

1. Try to salvage stuff from some unnamed alien ship, which just happens to be a charnel ship.
2. Try to fix the Shenandoah, which is unfixable, and is about to become a charnel ship.
3. Try to take an unnamed German ship off the surface and return home. BTW, this is a charnel ship.

And they thought it was part of a butterfly collection!

An unhappy choice for the survivors, a shrinking number, in the movie Creature (1985). The remains of a ship – I think – are found on Titan by the crew of a ship owned by the corporation NTI, and as the researchers / archaeologists / crew (again not sure) are in the midst of trying to document it, something comes popping out of one of the containers they’re puzzling over.

A few hours / days / months later, an unknown ship apparently piloted by one of the crew crashes into a manned satellite in orbit around Earth. Why? Uh, I’m not sure.

So now, of course, another ship, the Shenandoah, is sent by NTI to see what might be there. On getting there, they find a ship owned by their chief competitors, Richter Dynamics, or RD for short, is there. The commander of the mission, a corporate flack, orders an immediate landing over the objections of the Captain, with no research as to the best place to land, and moments after landing, Shenandoah bursts through the crust and the ship is effectively disabled.

Well, after this it gets messy, what with bodies hidden in cupboards (the monster is apparently related to squirrels), dead bodies springing to life, a German survivor who has a thing for the tall, silent security officer who hasn’t an effective weapon, and, well, a lot of screaming.

It was fairly awful.

If it sounds a little like the classic Alien (1979), I assure you this felt like a thin ripoff, from the plot to the persistent fog on the surface of the moon, even the landing reminded me of the Nostromo landing sequence.

But not nearly as good. Just like the rest of this movie. Don’t waste your time.

When they build them (or specify them, since private industry builds them), NASA builds them to last:

This artist’s concept shows NASA’s Voyager spacecraft against a backdrop of stars.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA scientists needed to reorient the 40-year-old Voyager 1 — the space agency’s farthest spacecraft — so its antenna would point toward Earth, 13 billion miles away. But the “attitude control thrusters,” the first option to make the spacecraft turn in space, have been wearing out.

So NASA searched for a Plan B, eventually deciding to try using four “trajectory correction maneuver” (TCM) thrusters, located on the back side of Voyager 1. But those thrusters had not been used in 37 years. NASA wasn’t sure they’d work.

Tuesday, engineers fired up the thrusters and waited eagerly to find out whether the plan was successful. They got their answer 19 hours and 35 minutes later, the time it took for the results to reach Earth: The set of four thrusters worked perfectly. The spacecraft turned and the mood at NASA shifted to jubilation.

“The Voyager team got more excited each time with each milestone in the thruster test. The mood was one of relief, joy and incredulity after witnessing these well-rested thrusters pick up the baton as if no time had passed at all,” said Todd Barber, a propulsion engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. [CNN]

Wow!

An old friend has sent me an article by Brent Bozell concerning the sexual harassment problems at the long-time American institutions NPR and PBS:

The swift revolution against sexual harassment is ending the careers of a series of media “icons,” left and right. But perhaps nowhere is this hypocrisy more notable (and deeper) than at PBS and NPR. These were the entities that made sexual harassment the boiling feminist issue when Anita Hill testified during Clarence Thomas’ confirmation hearing in 1991.

Here’s an easy question: Why didn’t this sudden spirit of self-discovery and investigation happen back then? Or in any year since? It could have happened when then-President Bill Clinton settled with Paula Jones in 1998, or even last year as these networks enjoyed reporting on sexual harassment scandals inside Fox News. All along the way, it appears that very same sexual harassment was alive at both PBS and NPR.

I’ll just interrupt the tirade to note that this is a very typical rant. PBS and NPR have been long time targets of the right-wing due to both content and the fact that they’re funded through taxes, one of the evils of government. More importantly, though, is that leadoff statement:  “These were the entities that made sexual harassment the boiling feminist issue when Anita Hill testified during Clarence Thomas’ confirmation hearing in 1991.” This assertion is provided without proof, and, in actual fact, this would be exceptionally difficult to prove or disprove. Brent slips it in as a way to ratchet up the emotional content of the article, and he wants that for a very specific reason.

After a series of shots at the current shooting gallery members, Brent finishes:

In what way, then, is “public” broadcasting morally superior to corporate broadcasting? And how deep is the hypocrisy on the left considering it waited decades to hold sexual harassers in its own taxpayer-funded ideological sandboxes accountable? They don’t deserve one more red cent from taxpaying Americans.

And did you catch the sleight of hand? He’s tried to suggest that public funding is all about paying the salaries of sexual harassers.

Well, no. We all know that’s false, we just need to be reminded that PBS and NPR missions have nothing to do with hypocrisy, they have to do with public service. The fact that powerful men and women^[1] may use their positions for morally dubious purposes is not confined to any one ideology, although some do not condemn it or may even celebrate it (not common in the American milieu, though). We see it at Fox News, NBC, and it seems positively rife in religious settings – although I’m sure an intellectually honest measurement would show it to be sparse.

But the proper response is to correct the situation, not to indulge in an impulsive termination of the entire enterprise, and that’s what we’re seeing – powerful people being fired. The enterprise should be judged on how well it fulfills its mission, and how important that mission is to the nation. Note that the question of sexual harassment does have an impact on the performance of the mission, because sexual harassment has a negative impact on the productivity of those who are victimized. An organization demoralized by a boss whose proclivities are not properly restrained will not be a successful organization.

Also, note Brent’s intellectual dishonesty of implying “the left” even knew about these offenders in their midst. It would be equally dishonest for me to suggest that the fans (or former fans) of Bill O’Reilly, ex-employee of Fox News and host of their “O’Reilly Factor,” the most popular cable show for 16 years, were aware that he was a serial sexual harasser, and Fox News had actually made substantial payoffs to settle lawsuits resulting from his behavior, and they continued to watch regardless because they all approved. No, of course they didn’t know, because the entire sexual harassment phenomenon embarrasses the victims, and then if they do lodge complaints, they’re going up against people in powerful positions who can make their lives quite difficult. By the same token, “the left” has no general knowledge that some leader X is actually a sexual harasser.

Bozell should be ashamed that he wrote that sentence.

I’ll also note in passing his mistaken conflation of “the left” with PBS and NPR. The fact of the matter is that all of us pay, or have paid, taxes, and that gives all of us a stake in these enterprises. If they appear “liberal” to viewers of a conservative bent, this may be more indicative of the state of the world than the ideological mindset within these institutions.

Up to here, this is just a simple close reading of Bozell’s prose and being sensitive to the use of emotional currents to cover up intellectual weakness. But now I want to address one more point, using one of my hobby horses that’s been out to pasture for a while. Long time readers are aware of my analysis of the sectors of society, which boils down to realizing that categorizing our various sectors also reveals their differing goals, and how those goals necessarily affect the selection and optimization of processes for achieving those goals – and explains why attempting to import one sector’s processes into another sector is an intellectually suspect project, also known as “elected business leader Y because he has leadership experience.” And then he flops (with some exceptions). Interested readers should click here.

Brent asks,

In what way, then, is “public” broadcasting morally superior to corporate broadcasting?

Of course, firmly fixed in the pliant reader’s mind is the entire sexual harassment episodes, linked to hypocrisy, and how surely this compromises the entire “left” – a position I think is quite weak. But implied in that is a right-wing frustration that the private-sector model of news reporting is always considered a little suspect when compared with public broadcasting.

First, we need to understand the importance of accurate news and information dissemination in our society. We function and do well on good information; we misfire, we make poor decisions, we elect bad leaders, when we have poor quality information.

The processes and goals of our news sector should be bringing the best quality news and information to its viewers, uncontaminated by political and commercial concerns. That is the ideal. The roles of competition, innovation, delivery modes, gathering modes are interesting but irrelevant here. A key problem is that the viewing audience should reward those who do this task best, but that requires rationality from a species that is only capable of rationality, but is not rational itself.

So? Corporations have financial, political and commercial interests that can, and sometimes do, contaminate the information that reaches the audience. I’ve commented before on the ongoing disaster which is Fox News, and Bruce Bartlett’s analysis of same. Another example, which may become worse if the government neglects its role in preventing and dismantling monopolies, is the Sinclair Broadcast Group, which is trying to buy Tribune Media and thereby gain a dominant position in the market – and stifle competition. How are they contaminating information? From The New York Times (which might be considered a competitor, but has a long and honorable history in the news sector):

They are called “must-runs,” and they arrive every day at television stations owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group — short video segments that are centrally produced by the company. Station managers around the country are directed to work them into the broadcast over a period of 24 or 48 hours.

Since November 2015, Sinclair has ordered its stations to run a daily segment from a “Terrorism Alert Desk” with updates on terrorism-related news around the world. During the election campaign last year, it sent out a package that suggested in part that voters should not support Hillary Clinton because the Democratic Party was historically pro-slavery. More recently, Sinclair asked stations to run a short segment in which Scott Livingston, the company’s vice president for news, accused the national news media of publishing “fake news stories.”

Yes, because a news company is qualified to issue “terror alerts”. Nothing like amplifying the bad news and minimizing the good news in order to keep your audience cowed and compliant, eh? Compliant for what? Voting the way SBG wants.

So how does this connect to Brent’s plaint? Funding sources. Corporate broadcasting is necessarily tied to a company, which, to reiterate, will have commercial, financial, political, even religious desires – because corporations are motivated to deliver good news, but to make money, whether it be directly, or by manipulating the audience into doing what’s desired.

But public broadcasting? Readers who believe the funding is direct might complain that it, too, is susceptible to political influence – which is why the funding goes through a separate entity, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, thus insulating them from the strong political taint that might otherwise apply. Not that this will stop the determined leader at NPR or PBS from possibly tainting their productions – but that is not the mission, and employees will let that be known, as they appear to be a dedicated bunch.

And corporate broadcasters know the importance of appearing to be bringing you the best news. Consider Fox News‘ recently retired “Fair and Balanced” motto – anything but, but bought into by an audience eager to hear what it desired to hear, rather than what might be true but unpleasant. NBC, ABC, and CBS all have put together strong news rooms throughout the years, and exhibit journalism prizes and awards with pride and joy, for both journalistic and corporate reasons. A corporation is not staffed only with corporatists, but by specialists such as journalists.

Ditto the newspapers to varying degrees.

In a perfect world, the news sector would not have to intermingle with the private sector, and would produce news and information without contamination from those corporate interests, but that’s not the world we live in. The public funding of NPR and PBS is an attempt to inject some independence into a sector otherwise flooded with corporate intrusions and potential contaminations. By their very existence they are a reproach to the corporate broadcasters and publications who have failed the test of the ideal news sector, sometimes purposely. And, thus, the right’s anger – the reproach stings when one believes the private sector can do no wrong.

But the private sector is not the cure for all ills.

[h/t Greg Edmonds]

¹While no women have yet been caught up in this nation-wide scandal, Disclosure (1994) is a graphic reminder that women may abuse their positions, too.

Back in the old days, when “personal computers” were just starting to come out, the epithet hackers had positive connotations, and I suppose I was one of them, although I never sought the label, or much of any label. Since then it evolved to more negative connotations, although those who think of themselves as hackers will often disagree.

But now it may be returning to its roots in the guise of bio-hacking, where the skilled try to modify genomes for their individual purposes. It started out with the genomes of simple creatures, but with the development and availability of CRISPR technology, which permits editing genomes with few errors and fairly cheaply, bigger game can be tackled with confidence.

Such as ourselves.

NewScientist (18 November 2017, paywall) notes the growing controversy over the ethics of, well, self-editing a genome – that is, modifying your own gene-set. It’s unsettling a lot of people:

These biohackers believe it is a basic human right to access and edit one’s own genome. “I am of the opinion that your genome is your own,” says [bio-hacker David] Ishee. “I think that it is important that people have the ability to choose what kind of gene expression they want for themselves.”

This ethos of “my body, my choice” is used to underpin arguments for health, reproductive and disability rights, but should it extend to the right to edit our own genes? What about the potential unintended effects of using untested technology? And will allowing broad access to CRISPR risk creating a group of “superhumans” with enhanced senses and abilities? …

These are some of the many issues that have plagued scientists and ethicists for years. Recent papers from the US National Academies and the Nuffield Council on Bioethics in the UK have attempted to grapple with these questions, including whether there is a moral difference between gene editing for medical therapy versus enhancing ordinary abilities.

John Harris, a bioethicist at the University of Manchester, UK, who has written about human enhancement since the 1980s, does not believe there is a significant difference. He thinks the biohackers could help move the arguments along and hasten the safe use of CRISPR in humans.

“There is a long and noble history of both doctors and scientists experimenting on themselves,” says Harris. “It has proven tremendously valuable in the public interest.” …

And what if “the next guy” is a future Olympic medallist? The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) announced last month that it would ban all forms of gene therapy or gene doping from international competitive sports from 2018. However, it’s unlikely that international testers will be able to detect most forms of gene editing, and with all the free-flowing information about various experimental enhancements, it seems even less likely that WADA will be able to enforce this ban. “WADA is a joke,” says Ishee.

Günes Taylor, who also works with CRISPR at the Francis Crick Institute in London, says she is conflicted by these home-brew experiments.

“Part of me is, like, ‘that is so awesome’… but it won’t work,” she says, insisting it will be more difficult than the biohackers think. “CRISPR has been sold as a cure-all… but actually getting it to do the thing that you want it to do successfully is more complicated.”

The article is somewhat more muddled than need be, dancing around the ethics controversy without ever getting a good balance of dueling views. Still, the muddling itself suggests that the ideology of individual autonomy – for which I have a lot of sympathy – is the rock over which a lot of folks are stumbling.

I don’t have an answer, since I’m not a specialist in this technology, but I think a re-think of ethics might be helpful, along with some questions that might illuminate the way.

So, not one to let my lack of training stand in the way of opening my mouth, ethics. Ethics discusses, at its core, how people ought to conduct themselves, which can be mostly seen as how we interface with each other – honestly, dishonestly, with flowers or with knives in our hands. There is, implicitly, a goal of having a peaceful society.

But why a peaceful society? Briefly, it’s about survival. Think of society as an engine; a society with ethics that lead to harmonious relations between its members can be thought of as a well-oiled machine quietly humming along; a society in which relations are acrimonious is the machine which is starved of oil and off-balance. In the latter case, as time passes the machine’s performance degrades, until pieces are flying through the air and its hostile neighbors dismember it.

So when we’re talking about individual conduct that does not directly interface with other individuals – which is a good representation of this situation – it becomes valid to ask whether the behavior of the bio-hackers might harm society as a whole. Here are some questions which might guide the answers.

1. Is it possible for a bio-hacker to change oneself, without regard to intent, such that one is an implicit, physical danger to others? Not being a biologist, I can only wonder, as a single example, as to whether the virus DNA found in the human genome could be accidentally set to, say, manufacturing some deadly illness that can be easily spread. Sound dumb? Sure. But reassure me. I’m just a dumb hacker.
2. I can easily accept bio-hacking when attempting to repair a deficiency in oneself, by which I mean some capability of survival value which most members of the species has. Here is one example. But what is the likelihood that substantive improvements can be attained beyond the above-average member of human society? Can we really expect to double the strength of our strongest current members without substantial damage to other physical faculties? Improve our IQs beyond 300, if that even means anything? If vast improvements seem unlikely, then perhaps the question is moot, and autonomy may be left undisturbed.
3. But if the answer to (2) is yes, then we must ask, can society survive with the capabilities of certain of its members so far beyond the capabilities of others that it might as well be two different species? Or will that rip the society apart into hostile constituents? While the bio-hacker may argue that individual autonomy trumps such concerns as the latter seem trivial, I’d suggest that our profound interdependence, which we so often ignore, puts everyone at great risk if society starts ripping itself apart – a torn, broken society will soon drown in its own wastes, if it doesn’t die of starvation itself.
4. All that said, what if some competing society – say, Russia – made bio-hacking the national past time? What sort of risks do we then face?

Got others? Let me know.