Category Archives: Uncategorized

Andrew Sullivan, an insomniac and asthmatic, is also a stoner (habitual user of marijuana), and after years of experience gives forth on its effect on him. Summing up:

My mind, moreover, shifted into a much more nonlinear and creative mood when I was high. I never write when stoned. But I do let my mind wander, revisit my writing in my head, see better its flaws, drill down past my defenses, and allow myself to explore alternative ideas. One more thing: My experience of music changed. For the first time, I was able to turn off the ordeal of consciousness and allow myself to listen properly. It hasn’t really enhanced my appreciation of food (eating still basically bores me) but it has sharpened and deepened my visual capacities. It can make Cape light even more transcendent and transforming.

But my memory? Much worse. My lungs? They’ve taken a hit, even if vaping has helped. Weed may shorten my life by hurting my lungs — but endless insomnia might have shortened it more. Could I go cold turkey? I have from time to time, but it’s not easy, largely because the insomnia always returns. In that sense, I’m busted. By some criteria, I am dependent. Others may find that dependence an impediment to their lives and work, and legalizers don’t need to deny that. We’re all different, and weed most definitely isn’t for everyone. But compared with all the other substances available, and most other avenues to chill and friendship, it remains, it seems to me, a no-brainer to legalize it, and for many sane adults, one of God’s great gifts to humankind.

Given weed’s effects, both negative and positive, on the human organism, it seems to me this should be one of those decisions left up to individuals rather than taken away by government. In a sense, government embodies the most overwhelming opinions of the day, tempered by certain timeless principles. Weed does not appear, to my eye, to fall into the category of overwhelming opinion, but rather the sort of thing that should be explored by individuals and evaluated as to its usefulness in their lives. Andrew, for example, is well aware of the tradeoffs and is willing to pay the costs for the benefits.

Me? I’m not interested in trying it. Maybe when I’m a bit older.

Zoë Quinn was a central figure in the Gamergate controversy, which has led to her co-founding the Crash Override Network, dedicated to helping those subject to online abuse. In this NewScientist (2 September 2017, paywall) interview she talks about what happened during that shitstorm:

“People don’t understand how this sort of thing can happen over less than nothing, so they think there must be some truth to it,” says Quinn. “The rumour persists because people don’t bother to look it up. Even if they do, there’s so much garbage on the internet, it’s hard to tell what’s true.”

Within weeks, the mob organised a crusade against what it framed as corruption in the games industry. Some websites cracked down on users who supported the harassment – and were in turn accused of censorship. Still, each credulous story from mainstream news sites gave the campaign validation. “The adults running these outlets should have damn well known better,” says Quinn. “Every scrap of legitimacy the abusers got was a new circle of hell for me. That’s the shocking part, and arguably the most upsetting.”

The news media is often running on the fringes of profitability, and sometimes the first to go will be those responsible for validating the facts in an article. This failure in their central-most responsibility – to get the facts right – have in her a poster-child for the results of their neglect of this responsibility.

Not that any of this is unique, except in scale. Computer are multipliers, and they are disinterested in truth or fallacy. They just multiply.

My reader notes how a potential signaling mechanism for NASA’s Venus automaton resembles another device from a previous era:

The Russians did something similar during the cold war. A mechanical bug (passive resonator) was placed in an artwork and used to eavesdrop on the US ambassador’s office. http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1274748

From the EE Times article:

While there are a great many myths about when and where the bug was most famously deployed, the NSA provides a definitive history. From the NSA web site:

“On August 4, 1945, Soviet school children gave a carving of the Great Seal of the United States to U.S. Ambassador Averell Harriman. It hung in the ambassador’s Moscow residential office until 1952 when the State Department discovered that it was ‘bugged.’

The microphone hidden inside was passive and only activated when the Soviets wanted it to be. They shot radio waves from a van parked outside into the ambassador’s office and could then detect the changes of the microphone’s diaphragm inside the resonant cavity. When Soviets turned off the radio waves it was virtually impossible to detect the hidden ‘bug.’ The Soviets were able to eavesdrop on the U.S. ambassador’s conversations for six years.”

The existence of the bug was accidentally discovered by a British Radio Operator when he heard conversations on an open radio channel.

I found particularly interesting the fact that the whole scheme was dreamed up by Leon Theremin, inventor of the theremin^[1] and prisoner in the “… prison camp/gold mine of Kolyma.” Because of the Stalinist purges depleted the technical ranks, Theremin was recruited out of the camp.

The value of a device undetectable when inactive is hard to over-estimate. I wonder how much valuable intelligence was gathered, and could have been gathered but for the BRO, through this fiendish device.

And if we have a way to detect the damn thing these days. Trick me once …

¹If you’re a Star Trek fan and think the lead-in music was done on a theremin, shame on you. The theremin-like sound was provided by Loulie Jean Norman.

Three couples, three problems, involving communication, assumptions, and being true to one’s principles. A Letter to Three Wives (1949) uses the plot contrivance of suggesting one of these couples is about to collapse, due to interference by an unseen old flame of each, as an excuse to explore these problems.

Brad and Deborah Bishop met in the service during the war. She’s from a poor family, he has money and friends that go with it, leading to insecurity on her part. Perhaps the least complex and satisfying of the stories, the question seems to be whether she can gather up the gumption to be herself, rather than what she thinks her husband’s friends want her to be.

George and Rita Phipps are a school teacher and radio mystery writer, respectively, and have possibly the most interesting story for today’s audience. Rita has changed from the woman George originally married – independent and principled – to a woman obsequious to her boss, who benefits from the commercials that play during the radio plays. Her husband is dismayed at her loss of faith in herself as well as her dedication to her craft. This leads to a relevant rant on his part concerning how school teachers (especially male school teachers) are disliked by society as well as underpaid. Why is he still in the profession? Because he can’t imagine not being a teacher, using literature to teach the children and young adults of the day. To a great extent, school teachers still suffer this problem, this lack of respect for the entire idea of education. His rant remains well worth a watch.

Porter and Lora Mae Darnell are the epitome of the central problem of the boss marrying an assistant – is the assistant marrying for money or …? This, in turn, influences his responses to her until she, smart enough to have caught him, doesn’t feel like a woman so much as merchandise; he simply feels as if he’s a bank, not a husband. Neither wishes to budge from their assumed positions until their pride is ready to destroy the marriage.

While some will point to the interfering woman, Addie Ross, as the connector of the stories, to my mind it’s actually a housekeeper, Sadie, who works for two of the couples and is related to Lora Mae. Every scene she appears in is her scene, and she dares the other actors to take it away from her. She’s a blast.

And the entire movie is just darn good, which you might expect from an Academy Award winning movie (Directing, Screenplay). It’s not a high octane thriller like today’s offerings, but it has fine acting from everyone, a subtle screenplay, good touches of humor, and some memorable characters.

Recommended if you don’t mind leisurely pacing.

A friend sent me this e-mailing, which I think is quite interesting, even if I did fail to click on the link to see all of Coulter’s article. (I will admit that I translate “POWERFUL CONSERVATIVE VOICES” to “WE YELL LOUDER FRIGHT-STORIES THAN OTHER SNAKE-OIL SALESMEN”.) It’s an attack on the idea of restoring DACA legislatively.

But it’ll depend on how Trump ultimately ends up playing this. Last I heard, Trump was leaning towards an agreement with the Democrats which would seriously leave the GOP looking bad. If this happens, then it appears that Coulter’s is one of the lead blows in the savage criticism to descend upon Trump from the extremist right. For example, Jeremy Carl on National Review sees this happening:

The short-term politics of a DACA amnesty would likely be devastating for Trump — for his most committed voters and supporters, immigration was his key issue of differentiation. For these voters, DACA amnesty is a knife in the heart. It’s no coincidence that some of the president’s staunchest defenders (Sean Hannity, Breitbart, Ann Coulter) are attacking the possibility of a DACA amnesty, and at times even Trump himself, in an unprecedented fashion. Helping to pass a DACA amnesty would likely be a strategic blunder of historic proportions for the president and his team.

But there’s an implicit assumption in this assessment – that Trump voters are issue-motivated voters.

I wonder.

I think it’s quite possible that a substantial number of them – over 50%, maybe 75% – are voting for the man, not for his positions on the issues.

This is not actually an exotic position. After all, from an ideal point of view, we do not elect our leaders in order to implement our viewpoints on specific issues in most cases. We elect leaders to assess situations and choose the best alternative. That’s why we pay them. If Trump stands up and says that he’s assessed the situation and believes visiting injustice upon these children of illegal immigrants is unacceptable, it’s not only possible but even appropriate that his supporters will accept his judgment and remain in his corner.

And the right wing extremists who function more on ideology than the strength of character of their leaders (of which Trump has none, but never mind that) will be outraged and attack him – and possibly alienate the Trump supporters until they no longer wish to vote for GOP candidates in general, only those who are Trump adherents.

It’s sort of RINO in reverse. And it may be what frightens independents and liberals the most, paradoxically, because it renders nearly impossible the effort to strip supporters away from the incompetent and frighteningly dangerous President Trump. Until those voters learn that simply blindly following Trump is not good enough, that his actions must be judged, not on ideological grounds, but on competency grounds, they will cling to Trump because of a certain charisma that some think he has.

And that means more and more damage to the United States, within and without.

Matthew Continetti at National Review would have us believe that governmental programs are evaluated in a fair and objective manner in this piece on Senator Sanders’ (I-VT) recently proposed “Medicare For All” bill:

Recall what happened the last time Democrats tackled health care. The designers of the Affordable Care Act went out of their way to get buy-in from all the various players in the health-care system. They based their plan on Mitt Romney’s legacy in Massachusetts. Yet the controversy over Obamacare’s mandates, taxes, regulations, and panels cost the Democrats the House, and the negative reaction to the law’s implementation in 2013 and 2014 cost them the Senate. What would be the fallout if Democrats, reduced to their weakest position in years, took on not only the entirety of the health-care industry but also the status-quo bias of the American people?

This completely ignores the campaign of fright and doomsday run by the GOP and fringe-right organizations who could not permit the Democrats a victory in the healthcare debate, and even today would have us believe the ACA is on the brink of collapse, rather than the truth that, properly managed, most third party experts seem to believe that it’ll be both stable and effective.

This omission may be a convenient way to make his piece stronger, but failing to consider all the facts often has, let’s say, karmic consequences. Let’s suppose the impossible occurs and some version of Sanders’ bill becomes law, and a decade later it’s stable and popular. How does that accrue to Continetti’s reputation?

A mix of Dark Cabaret. Some of the lyrics can be amusing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUwE4wwes28

A reader is intrigued by the proposed automaton for Venus:

Venusian strandbeets! But how do you get data back home when you have a mechanical rover? Semaphore flags?

Something like. In the link I forgot to add (now fixed in the original post) it says:

Another problem will be communications. Without electronics, how would you transmit science data? Current plans are inspired by another age-old technology: Morse code.

An orbiting spacecraft could ping the rover using radar. The rover would have a radar target, which if shaped correctly, would act like “stealth technology in reverse,” Sauder said. Stealth planes have special shapes that disperse radar signals; Sauder is exploring how to shape these targets to brightly reflect signals instead. Adding a rotating shutter in front of the radar target would allow the rover to turn the bright, reflected spot on and off, communicating much like signal lamps on Navy ships.

Sounds a lot like semaphores to me. But the programming still eludes me. And then materials analysis will also be a bit odd, I’d think. So you can run a (weak) drill fairly easily – but how do you analyze the material you bring up? Reactive chemistry, but you STILL have to figure out the results and how to get your machinery to transmit that result, all without electronics.

Ever wonder if megafauna benefits or destroys the environment?

Ever wonder how to even measure such a thing?

NewScientist (2 September 2017) has a short report on the subject of megafauna:

Sometimes those benefits are intended. For instance, giant tortoises from Aldabra in the Seychelles have been installed on Mauritius to replace their extinct counterparts and spread the seeds of native trees.

At other times, it has just happened. In his Master’s thesis, [Erick Lundgren of Arizona State University] describes the behaviour of wild donkeys or “burros” in the Sonoran desert, US. They dig down to uncover underground water that can then be drunk by dozens of native bird and mammal species. When native megafauna disappeared, nothing remained in the area with the ability to do that.

I suppose the measurement stick might be the sheer bulk of life enabled by any particular species. It seems a bit crude. It’s hard to understand how the lack of access to water would be of “benefit” to the ecology of the area, though.

I ran across Theo Jansen’s work years ago, but had forgotten about it until today – the previous post on a proposal to use an automaton as a probe on Venus reminded me of Jansen. His work makes me wonder if he’s modeling, purposely or inadvertently, a part of biological evolution that could be studied fruitfully.

Maybe it is.

Anyways, here’s a taste.

Becalm:

1. to deprive (a sailing vessel) of the wind necessary to move it; subject to a calm :The schooner was becalmed in the horse latitudes for two weeks.
2. Archaic. to calm; pacify. [Dictionary.com]

Noted in my previous post about being becalmed on Venus. The juxtaposition amuses me.

Remember the proposed Venus probe which would not have electronics? NASA/JPL recently released an announcement concerning project progress, which is known as the Automaton Rover for Extreme Environments (AREE):

Mechanical computers have been used throughout history, most often as mathematical tools like adding machines. The most famous might be Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine, a 19th century invention for calculating algebraic equations. The oldest known is the Antikythera mechanism, a device used by ancient Greeks to predict astronomical phenomena like eclipses.

Mechanical computers were also developed as works of art. For hundreds of years, clockwork mechanisms were used to create automatons for wealthy patrons. In the 1770s, a Swiss watchmaker named Pierre Jaquet-Droz created “The Writer,” an automaton that could be programmed to write any combination of letters.

Sauder said these analog technologies could help where electronics typically fail. In extreme environments like the surface of Venus, most electronics will melt in high temperatures or be corroded by sulfuric acid in the atmosphere.

“Venus is too inhospitable for kind of complex control systems you have on a Mars rover,” Sauder said. “But with a fully mechanical rover, you might be able to survive as long as a year.”

Wind turbines in the center of the rover would power these computers, allowing it to flip upside down and keep running. But the planet’s environment would offer plenty of challenges.

From a little earlier this year is the NASA page on AREE:

Two enabling technologies, RTG powered cooling systems and high temperature electronics, have been proposed to enable long duration in-situ Venus operations. The former is highly complex and requires billions in R&D to cool a small chamber of electronics, while the latter is not close to the integration level required for a rover. We propose a third approach, the Automaton Rover for Extreme Environments (AREE), an exciting concept which enables long duration in-situ mobility on the surface of Venus through robust mechanisms. An automaton is a mechanical device capable of performing a series of complex actions to achieve a specific result.

They have long been explored as art forms but remain unexplored for space applications. The automaton rover is designed to reduce requirements on electronics while requiring minimal human interaction and based on the subsumption architecture from robotics, where simple reactions of the rover lead to complex behavior. AREE combines steampunk with space exploration to enable science measurements unachievable with today’s space technology.

They also have a short video illustrating a possible implementation:

Which leads one to dread being becalmed. And I have to wonder about remote reprogramming – how would this be possible? It’s questions like these that make places like JPL fascinating.

[EDIT: Added forgotten link to the announcement.]

Every time Kim Jong Un of North Korea fires off a missile, the test data his people are collecting is actually secondary in purpose; because each launch gets so much attention, it’s obvious he’s trying to achieve something more than just perfect the technology. So listening to the report on the radio this morning of a launch that sent a missile over Japan caught my attention. Specifically, this from NPR:

North Korea’s most recent missile launch — on Aug. 29 — was the first to fly over Japan in several years. That one, like this one, triggered the J-Alert Japanese civil defense system to break into television and radio broadcasts and send messages across mobile phones in northern Japanese prefectures saying, “Missile alert, missile alert … please take shelter underground or in a sturdy building.”

This sort of thing will alarm the citizens – the citizens who vote and therefore sway their governments. These are not messages solely for the governments of Japan, South Korea, and the United States, but also messages to their citizens. If nothing else, Kim may believe that he’s destabilizing those governments, threatening them with at least temporary dissolution because the citizens, naturally, do not wish to have their lives threatened, however emptily, by Kim’s missile and all he would like us to portend. There’s nothing like a good riot to change the focus of the leadership of, say, Japan, from North Korea to its own citizens.

Kim is no poltroon. He knows one dumb nuclear mistake and his Empire of North Korea will disappear into a pit of steaming lava, and even if he personally survives, his prestige will be shot – and that’s a big deal for him. But he also knows that stirring up his adversaries’ citizens  may make them hesitant when decisions need to be made. Decisions such as assassination teams, dealing with North Korean non-nuclear aggression – and distract us from seeing anything else he may have up his sleeve.

I hope to have this much fun at my funeral.

Death At A Funeral (2007) is an odd mixture of dry British humor and broad farce. A man has died, and his sons and wife are running the funeral. Expenses are piling up, hormones are running high in some of the guests, and there’s a vial of pills blazing a trail of evil through the guests.

Meantime, the man’s lover has shown up to claim a share of the estate. His short share, actually. Too bad he hit his head on the corner of the table.

Its culmination, as hilarious as I found it, also includes an opportunity for many to mature a bit, and that adds a lovely counterpoint to what could have been simple humor. It serves to deepen the movie a nice bit.

This is an old favorite of mine, and after a long day at work, it was great to sit down and watch, even if it was the TV version, and occasionally the dialog disappears completely under the Puritan’s censorious gaze. If you have the patience for the certain slow pace of a funeral gone awry, then I think this is Recommended, or at least not far short of it.

This has been remade in a 2010 version, which I have not seen.

Kevin Drum remarks that it’s not entirely the insurers’ fault in the medical explosion of costs:

Source: Saint Peters Blog

There are two takeaways here. First, these hospitals charge private insurers a lot more than Medicare. The average for outpatient care was 258 percent more. For inpatient care it was 117 percent more.

Second, there’s stunning variation in prices. This is an old story, but it’s an old story that never gets old. The least expensive hospital charged private insurers 71 percent more than Medicare for outpatient services. The most expensive charged 396 percent more than Medicare for the same basket of services.

What accounts for the difference? Did big hospitals with economies of scale, lots of competition, and tight relationships with physicians charge less? In a word, no. In two words, hell no:

At the bottom of the price distribution are the independent CAHs [critical access hospitals, which are all small and rural] and three small systems….Although CAHs are, by definition, geographically isolated and have no nearby competitors, that lack of competition does not correspond to higher negotiated prices. The upper end of the price distribution is dominated by five large hospital systems, with Parkview Health standing out for having exceptionally high prices. Hospital systems and consolidation among hospitals have been cited as drivers of high and increasing prices, and these findings are consistent with that argument.

This is the not-so-hidden story of exploding medical costs. We’ve become so accustomed to hating on insurers that we hardly notice that hospital consolidation is a much bigger villain. When a big insurer has a local monopoly, it can usually negotiate lower prices from hospitals because the hospitals have nowhere else to go. But when there are lots of insurers and only one or two local hospitals, it’s the hospitals that have the upper hand. They can charge high prices because the insurers have no choice except to do business with them. As hospital systems get steadily larger and rope in more and more physicians, their effective competition decreases and they have the ability to demand ever higher prices.

Where hospital consolidation is the equivalent of local monopolies. Perhaps, if we’re going to stick with this idea of free enterprise and the health system being compatible, we should also inject the old idea that government must exercise its oversight responsibilities and break up monopolies which are regressive to price competition.

Which all sounds a little silly when it comes to your health and life, but there it is. In for a penny, in for a pound.

mattyciii on Natural Cyclection comes up with an idea concerning unlicensed drivers – make the cars unusable:

In the corporate world it’s increasingly common for people to log onto their computer by placing a smart-chip equipped ID into a card reader and typing in a personal identification number (PIN). This is similar to the way people use an ATM.  This “two-factor identification” provides strong authentication; it’s far more difficult to “crack” than a password, and it’s much harder for a user to share their logon credentials with another person (since two people cannot be using the ID at the same time).

In a society that requires “smart licenses”, starting a car would require these three steps: car keys would be required just like we do today, plus the driver would place their smart-chip license into a card reader and enter their PIN through a keypad or touch screen.  The use and function of car keys would be the same as they are today – they would still represent permission from the owner to use the car.  The other two steps confirm the driver has the government’s permission (i.e., a valid driver’s license) to use public roads.

I’ve been trying to come up with objections to this approach, but beyond obvious, mundane remarks about the development of black markets for circumventing the technology, I can’t really see any downsides.

But I think this may be pessimistic:

Like most every other safety system mandate – seat belts, air bags, tire pressure monitoring – smart card licenses and enforcement would phase in over time.  The average age of cars on American roads is just over 11 years, so even if we implemented smart licenses today it would take a long time before the majority of cars were card-reader equipped.

Given the growing consciousness about pollution, as well as the growing popularity of electric cars, IF the car manufacturers implemented this on their electric cars quickly, we might see the infiltration of this technology into the market somewhat faster than marty anticipates.

I think Steve Benen is being too kind to the GOP:

If given a choice between protections for Dreamers or an opportunity to use Dreamers’ plight for political gain, Democratic leaders en masse prefer the former to the latter. This might give Trump a “win” – if the deal comes to fruition, he’ll take credit for doing something popular and bipartisan – but most Dems don’t care, so long as the young immigrants get the protections they need and deserve.

For Republicans, this dynamic is flipped. The party’s policy goals have largely been replaced with slogans and soundbites, and few in the party care about working on substantive outcomes. For much of today’s GOP, an ideological crusade and a constant search electoral advantage is the driving motivation behind every decision.

Given a choice between working with Dems to achieve a goal and blaming Dems for standing in the way of the goal, most Republican leaders choose the latter, not the former.

It’s the difference between a governing party and a post-policy party. The more Donald Trump is willing to make concessions, the more Pelosi and Schumer will work to advance their agenda.

“Post-policy”? No. We don’t need a new name for an old game. This is what you get when you have a bunch of power-hungry politicians people who care for nothing but power. The Democrats are driving for solutions, in contrast.

Weirdly enough, this reminds of the Lehman Brothers example I ran across a few years ago. The example goes that just days before they collapsed during the Great Recession, the CEO was giving a presentation where it was all about maximizing return on investment – for the shareholders.

Not for the clients.

They put their customers second and concentrated on making money, taking on larger and larger risks while ignoring the global environment, and when it all went to pot, they were the ones who burned up. Now they only exist because unwinding them is exceedingly complicated.

Similarly, all the GOP politicians seem to know is the drive for power and the implementation of some ideological goals not shared by the general public – even their own public. There’s no concept of solving problems and actual governing – and they’ve admitted as much.

And without that realization that it’s about the problem solving and the governing, they’re just left with the marketing and the one innovation, the one really new thing that’s driven them to this: the “Persuaders” approach to campaigning. And it’s turned out to be awful as it lets the incompetent to hide their failures in a cloak of darkness and win elections.

Post-policy FAH! It’s all about incompetency.

Leucism:

Leucism (/ˈljuːkɪzəm/;^[1] or /ˈluːsɪzəm/^[2][3]) is a condition in which there is partial loss of pigmentation in an animal resulting in white, pale, or patchy coloration of the skin, hair, feathers, scales or cuticle, but not the eyes.^[1] Unlike albinism, it is caused by a reduction in multiple types of pigment, not just melanin. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “Elusive snowy white giraffes filmed in Kenya,” Melissa Breyer, Treehugger.com:

Different subspecies of giraffes have different patterns. For example, Masai giraffes have spots that look like oak leaves while Rothschild’s giraffes boast large, brown splotches outlined by thick, pale lines. Kenya’s own reticulated giraffe, has a dark coat with very graphic shapes and well-defined narrow lines. Unless, of course, that reticulated giraffe happens to be white as a ghost.

Incredibly rare with what appears to be only a handful sightings in the wild captured on film, white reticulated giraffes are pale in color thanks to a genetic condition called leucism. Unlike albinism, in leucism skin cells don’t produce pigmentation, but soft tissues, like dark eyes, do.

And a video!

For an example of how not to argue a point, I turn to Mark Anderson on The Daily Kos, who is a union supporter and a little upset:

Over the last couple weeks I have written about unions. While the majority of comments are supportive, there has been a trend of folks using Republican talking points about unions. You know the arguments: they are corrupt, they are not needed, they have idiotic rules, and members of public employee unions get paid too much.

You can always find those exact same comments in every single post about organized labor. So let’s talk about corruption, idiotic rules, and unionized public employees.

And then … he doesn’t. Instead, he highlights bad rules and illegal activities undertaken by businesses. And then, as if this makes any sense, he finishes up with this:

Unions are a human endeavor. As with all things human, they are imperfect. They will make mistakes, have stupid rules, and fall victim to corruption—just as any business will. When you complain about issues with unions, you are not complaining about things that are unique to unions.

Which begs, with hands and knees and chin on the ground, what to do about these problems in unions!

Look, unions and businesses are not institutions that fall into the same general category, they really aren’t. Mark’s implicit argument tact is that if we can find a way to fix them in a business, then the unions can be fixed in the same way.

But we’re not talking about the same structures! Businesses are typically hierarchical boss-employee situations in which employees have little to no say about who will boss them around.

Unions, however, are ideally democratically run institutions in which the leadership of the union, whether it be a single person or a board of some sort, must win a vote of the membership on a periodic basis.

The problems may be the same, but the solutions will be different because the power structures are different. This is the problem of the partisans who cannot bring themselves to suggest solutions to problems on their own side because they’re too busy hating on the “other side.” In Mark’s case, he could have presented possible solutions to these known problems with unions and really presented a winning post.

Instead, he’s just throwing a tantrum.

If you’re wondering about the special elections for state-level positions, such as state Representatives, Senators, Assemblycritters (there are many names), that are going on all the time as people resign or die, and how they’re turning out in the greater context of the Trump Administration, The Daily Kos has some organized record-keeping at this link. For example, they’re reporting that two days ago two Republican seats were flipped into the Democratic column, one each in New Hampshire and Oklahoma, by final voting margins of 11% and 21% points, respectively; in the 2016 Presidential Election, Trump won these districts by margins of 28% and 31% points.

As you might guess, margins like this in Republican districts are exciting The Daily Kos denizens. It makes me wonder, though, if the Republicans are fielding weak candidates, or if they’re fielding strong candidates and the voting Independents aren’t buying, or if the Democratic candidates are just so strong that they’re overwhelming the Republican candidates.

In nominally Republican districts.

It’s like watching blood pressure going up. It means something, and probably something bad, but exactly what remains a puzzle.

Steve Benen, in discussing the DACA (Dreamers’ protection) polka Trump’s engaged in with the Democrats over the last 24 hours, as a side note suggests:

The only certainty here is that Trump seems lost without a map.

I think this is a bit misleading. Most professional politicians have a map, and they’d be lost without it, because the “map” is a plan of action, carefully worked out with specific goals, etc. So it’s not really surprising that Trump is lost without a map. The surprise is that he could prepare these maps and follow them and achieve his goals, reprehensible (or even incomprehensible) as they might be.

It’s his resistance to using maps that is confounding. Maybe he really believes his own rhetoric that he’s smart and doesn’t need them. But the evidence so far is he needs maps so badly they should be tattooed on the inside of his eyelids.

I present a fictional live-blog of Terrordactyl (2016), wherein I record my stream of consciousness – or what should have constituted same – while watching Terrordactyl.

Remember those news reports of the duck keeping up with the boat because it imprinted on the boat owner?
This doesn’t end as well.

OK, it’s dark and it’s a rig pulling into a rest stop – the only flat face in this lot of snouty rigs. Guy stumbles out, Arts Editor calls him a Neanderthal. Seems unfair.  What?  Is he just finishing off that bottle of whiskey? Oh, he just threw it >crash!< and opened a new one, how can he possibly have been driv –

Wow! Something just hit his rig and shattered it. Shitty special effect, though. Ooops, that’s one long snout poking out of the flames. Fire doesn’t seem to bother whatever it is.

It flies!

Mr. Whiskey’s spotted it and sort of running around at random. Hey, dummy, hide under someone else’s truck! You look like a mouse in a maze –

Oooops, and off he goes in the clutches of … yes, I can make it out. It’s clearly that plastic model of a Pteranadon I built from a kit 45 years ago! And it has a G. I. Joe doll in its clutches!  Too bad, Mr. Whiskey.

Hey, it’s light out and there’s a guy doing yard work. Name is Lars. Pro equipment. And another guy with a, ah, shovel with an umbrella taped to it. And he’s sleeping on the job, and the other guy is giving him serious shit. And the bikini lady poolside is teasing both of them. Looks like California. This is a bit painful, not clever, stereotypical. Except for the shovel.

Now a jump to a bar, the yard work boys are tossing them back but Mr. Shovel clearly has problems talking to the ladies, with a badly done stutter just to prove it. That’s a bad special effect, too. That lady bartender falls into the ‘cute’ category. There’s this barfly, he’s a yapper, well, the women in your bed are all in your mind, friend – and why do you look like a cross between Jesse Ventura and Robert deNiro? Sampson, heh. I’ll bet you die early.

But the TV is reporting astronomers are excited by a ‘surprise’ meteor shower, oh, and she (the bartender) knows about meteors – ok, now she’s a bit sexy. Claims they’re worth money, and now Mr. Shovel’s paying attention as he gets his change, grabs his buddy Lars and they scurry out to Lars’ truck to do some meteor hunting. Downed power tower? No problem, we’ll just step carefully over the live high-tension wires!! – these actors should do a PSA after that crap. Well, Lars isn’t so happy, he just wants to sleep and do hard honest work, and up and out in the hinterlands he walks off in a huff and >thud!< lands in a crater. Meteor!

Heading back, meteor in the back, Lars asleep, Mr. Shovel discovers the bartender gave him her ph#, so he calls her up.  Ooops, it’s 7:30 AM, she’s had 4 hours sleep, but she gives him an opening to ask her out. “Can I show you my space rock!?” he shouts. Well, it’s better than etchings, I suppose, but she’s still put out. Gives her address.

And on the way over something buzzes them, then lands on the truck. It’s big, bigger than me. Wings, snout, well, he’s back, apparently. Wants another G. I. Joe? Oh, my, Lars  has a lot of profanity, but nothing particularly shocking. But it does have that Gen-X’ self-absorption thing going on. Which is just a myth. Heck, why does the TV channel even trouble to blank the profanity out? Is this PuritanTV? And why is Lars SO attached to his truck? OK, so your windshield is shattered, but Mr. Shovel finally figured out – gad, he’s slow – to drive like a madman, stomp on the brakes, and then hit the damn thing while it’s down. Think of 9 foot long roadkill, and they aren’t stopping to collect a sample.

Aaaaat Aaaaand they’re at the girl’s apartment now.  Turns out Mr. Shovel is a “wuss” about elevators, so they’re hoofing up ten floors, Mr. Shovel shaking, meteor in hand. Bartender Candice (had to look it up) lets them in, looks at the spacerock, turns out she does a bit of geology too, woo hoo! A couple of good lines, too. But what’s that outside –

Hundreds of flying Snouties? Well, this special effect isn’t quite so bad.

Maybe it’s an attempted blessing.

Oh, and they’re looking in the windows! Definitely that uncomfortable feeling when you catch a stranger staring at you at the mall, so close the shades and… that shadow suggests this is a pushy stranger, perched on the balcony. With wings. And a snout. And a surprise roommate pops out and screams and the window shatters (her scream or his snout?) and in it comes! Oh the roommate is so dead, just so – wait, what’s Mr. Shovel doing with that rubbing alcohol bottle? Really? Lighting it up and tossing it – hold it, that other Mr. Snouty didn’t care about fire, why is this one writhing and saying bad things in a loud voice? And building management’s not going to be happy about this!

Hey, the roommate’s not dead!

And on their way to the elevator there’s the aforementioned management, giving them a bad time.  Enter Mr. Snouty – oh, ouch, that’s gotta sting. Down the elevator they go, out the door, just in time to see poor Lars’ truck get crushed. He’s having a conniption over his truck, while the critters are tearing the city apart – away go people in the clutches of more Mr. Snouties! OK, let’s run over to Candice’s car – we need to head for a good bomb shelter. Flying down the road, good lines for the boys and Candice, roommate’s just a wallflower, while they dodge Snouties and other cars and once a burning jet liner memorably flashes through the pic – nice touch.

This reminds me of spring break in Ft. Lauderdale.

Where are we going? Hey, remember Sampson the bar fly? Bang Bang Bang! Oh, you finally came to share my bed! Wait, a threesome – oh, the yard boys – well, he’s open minded. What do you mean what’s going on? OK, now he’s seen and knows, it’s time for a drink, a check-in with his Marine buddies (they seem to be in the midst of dying bloodily), and now let’s open the Armory. Armory? Oh, yeah, Candice knows how to shoot. She just gets better and better. The other three? Lars isn’t too bad. Mr. Shovel has to have his hand held in this EXCRUCIATING SCENE … it’s like passing an anvil. Crash! Hey, that was an awful segue, did they chop that up for TV? Anyways, there’s a Snouty in the bunker and NOW the roommate’s bought it. There’s a principle here: if you don’t get good lines, you die early. Sampson’s gone, no doubt to be dinner. So much for my principle, he had some weirdly good lines. And he left toothmarks on the scenery.

More Snouties, a firefight, one gets locked in the Armory where it triggers the timer on the bomb. “A parting gift from an old boyfriend” – Sampson. Yeah, I’ll bet she tried to ram it up your ass. Uh oh, everyone out, just in time! Oh, well, what to do ne- ooops, there’s goes Lars, still carrying the meteor (these guys are so into having things), snatched by a Snouty. So much for- wait, why are you running AFTER him? You can’t keep up with these Snouties, they’re FLYING – oh, I see, we need to hear Lars shouting PROFANITIES. That’s important, gotta stay in character, right? Profanities and insistent defiance. Izzat Gen-X like?

Well, I’m sure that tower with all the Snouties flying around it is famous, but I dunno what it is. And, hey, is that – is that where Lars is still screaming profanities? Doesn’t he ever get tired of mouthing off? Oh, here comes the meal, looks like a formal affair with ten or fifteen guests as Lars gets slung INTO the tower through a big gouge in the side. One of them gets into a stare down with Lars, and Lars calls him Barbecue. What? Oh, is that the one Mr. Shovel lit up with the alcohol? Looks like some mild peeling. When’s the munching start?

Meanwhile, the iconic meteor gets added to a pile of them. Baubles of the Snouties, maybe they wear them on their heads after some drinking. Watch out, another guy gets tossed in! His suit’s a mess, call Men’s Wearhouse! Although the big Z wouldn’t sell to this guy, given how he cares for his suit. And hysteria!

Oh, and look at that. The meteor is an egg, and oh the miniature Snouty is so damn cute you just want to hug it. However, our new guest star in the bad suit doesn’t last long as he is fed to the new kid. Lars doesn’t understand the social etiquette of the moment and buries his head in embarrassment.

Meanwhile, Candice and Mr. Shovel are working on a plan to save Lars, which is a bit sentimental of them. Seems to involve a gun, a leaf blower, and some tough talk. But first they have to deal with the ground floor guard detail, who fly about a bit while dying, and the last one is offed most unpleasantly by putting a flagpole through him. Ouch. Oh, and the American flag then unfurled. Would a super-pat cheer, sneer, or pass out from ‘roid-rage? Up the elevator and into the formal dining area, where Lars is menaced by something no larger than his head. Well, OK, and Barbecue. The shooting starts, we have a home made flamethrower (think leaf blower) and the dinner party is chased away, with the last one, probably Barbecue … well, remember Mr. Shovel? This involves an umbrella and, I think, a shovel. My Arts Editor shakes her head in deprecation. It’s the wrong shade of blue.

In no doubt a tasteful display of trophies, we see a number of human heads, including, for the love of something large and scaly, our bar fly Sampson. Remember him? Drunk, tasteless, Ventura-like? Tsk tsk- AUGH, it moved and smiled! He’s alive, but not like in Aliens (thank goodness). How about the rest? Never find out. And what’s that whooshing noise?

Sheeeeeit. That’s one big motherfucking Snouty. I mean, my Arts Editor and I shout simultaneously, It’s a dragon! Turns out, the Snouties are like bees or ants.  It’s the queen, apparently, because it’s come to protect the eggs. Now, let me ask: which one of these little Snouties is going to have the balls – so to speak – to actually have intercourse with this monster?

Maybe it’s like Praying Mantises. One sex experience is all you’re good for.

Anyways. Mr. Shovel, ever inventive (remember that, Candice, since now you’re kissing him), comes up with a bomb made of various vintages of whiskey, bourbon, etc etc. Arts Editor shakes her head and mutters, but on they soldier, eventually luring big old Snouty into sticking her head into the gouge, at which point Sampson rolls the bomb into its mouth, going along for the ride (a little like Hellboy in his fight with one of the Ogdru Jahad – gulp gulp gulp BAM!). No more dragon head, thud goes the body.

And, like a bad ex-spouse, Sampson climbs out of the wreckage and rushes off to do interviews as an expert. Expert something.

Wait, is that another meteor storm?

I wanted to hate it, to loathe it, to refuse to believe such a piece of trash could be released. But I actually thought it was fairly funny, in that way movies that blur genre tropes can be funny. I probably wouldn’t watch it again. But it reminded me of Shaun of the Dead. Which we hated. But we liked this.

Go figure.

The pressure to scrap the JCPOA (aka Iran nuclear deal), legally or not, continues in an Ambassador Haley speech at the United Nations, as noted by J. Dana Stuster on Lawfare. This caught my eye:

The JCPOA was an international agreement only made possible by the participation of a coalition that included Russia and China; that Washington, Moscow, and Beijing could all agree to the terms is still an incredible diplomatic achievement by itself. But those international partners to the agreement got short shrift in Haley’s speech, only coming up in the question and answer portion. “This is about U.S. national security. This is not about European security. This is not about anyone else,” she said, which the New York Times reports left “several European diplomats in the audience fuming.” Haley claimed that the U.S. role is to ask tough questions of its partners. “No one [in Europe] wants to get out of the deal out of holding out hope that the Iranians will do the right thing,” she said. “I think we have to be honest enough to say, ‘But what if they’re not? What if they’re not doing the right thing?’” Haley then suggested that Iran would have a nuclear weapon and start a war as soon as the JCPOA’s limitations begin to expire. “What if we just gave them 10 years and all the money they wanted to do whatever they want to prepare for when that tenth year hits and they start nuclear war?” she asked.

That’s a bit of a breath-taker, isn’t it? Despite being part of a multi-party deal in which there are security guarantees and benefits for all parties, all Ambassador Haley will admit to seeing is the American national security interest – and then without even elucidating it.

And does the Trump Administration really think it has an end-game available if the JCPOA is scrapped without good reason? The United States has treated various allies, such as South Korea, like so much crap. Even if they could persuade Iran to return to the bargaining table, why should Iran or any of the other parties to the agreement think that the United States would stick to a future agreement? The behavior of the Trump Administration has bounced between vacillating and reprehensible; there is very little motivation to believe anything Trump says or or does is worthy of trust.

Some people call it karma. I just say what goes around comes around. They’d better hope that Iran is caught with its hand in the cookie jar with no hope of it being a setup. Hell, we’d all better hope that, given the Trump drive to scrap the JCPOA. Why?

Because without that excuse, we’ll be in a worse place than we were before. No agreement, so Iran can return to enriching plutonium with which to experiment with in pursuit of a bomb. We’ll call for sanctions and we’ll be ignored. Iran will thumb its nose at us.

And, in the second sub-basement, why? Because the GOP cannot stand the idea that Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement was the neutering of Iran’s nuclear weapon ambitions. This pack of third-rater zealots would endanger the United States, in pursuit of repudiating an achievement that experts say is a good, safe, and effective agreement, as Stuster notes, because … why? Because a Democrat did it? Because Iran nationalized the oil industry way back when? Because some GOP idiot claims, for reasons unknown, that the agreement is actually dangerous despite the experts’ opinions, and all the rest of the GOP ambles along behind him without giving it any thought?

I honestly don’t know why the Trump Administration continues to neuter our own nation in the foreign relations area, but that really appears to be his goal.

Professor James Davis surveys the North Korean situation on Lawfare and has some thoughts on situation resolution:

One of the most robust findings in the field of behavioral economics is the difference between what people demand to sell something they already own and the price they would have been willing to pay for it. For example, my wine-loving investor friend might not be willing to bid more than $750 for a desirable bottle of Bordeaux, but when received as a gift wouldn’t sell the same bottle for less than $1000. Somehow the mere fact of owning something makes it seem more valuable. This “endowment effect” runs counter to classical understandings of utility and leads to the expectation that there will be fewer market transactions than standard economic theory predicts. Reinforcing other psychological processes, it contributes to a strong bias toward the maintenance of the status quo.

The bottle of wine is a metaphor for nuclear weapons. Lovely.

The endowment effect can help us understand the international impasse over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and suggests it will be even more difficult to reach an agreement to end Pyongyang’s nuclear program than is often assumed.

Many commentators point to the international agreement that closed off Iran’s route to developing nuclear weapons as a model for North Korea. In the dispute with Iran, the challenge was to put together a package of sanctions sufficient to convince Tehran to forgo acquiring a nuclear weapon. Initially comprising a ban on the supply of nuclear-related materials and technology, as well as the freezing of foreign assets of individuals and companies involved with Iran’s nuclear program, sanctions subsequently were extended to include a ban on arms sales, the servicing of Iranian ships and aircraft and the freezing of state assets. Taken together, U.N., E.U. and U.S. sanctions were the most severe ever imposed on a single country. Their cumulative effect wreaked havoc on Iran’s economy. And they worked. The price set by the international community for Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons was higher than Iran was willing to pay.

Drawing analogies is always a difficult business in International Relations. As I noted earlier, Kim is looking at the past to see the future, and sees the United States as having demonstrated duplicity and dishonesty in the cases of Iraq and Libya, which both aspired to nuclear weapons, then gave up their ambitions for promises – which were broken. He has a reasonable excuse to desire nuclear weapons, purely as a deterrent. Meanwhile, Iran is NOT a country run by a dictator/madman. Rather, it’s a limited (or damaged, if you like) democracy in which power does not reside exclusively with the Supreme Leader, but is distributed and somewhat reassignable, if only to those who are sufficiently Islamic. Their excuse for coveting nuclear weapons, while also including prestige, was to become predominant in their region, which includes nuclear powers Pakistan, Israel, and India – but they don’t need it for survival.

And note this, from the interview by Jeff Baron of Mitsuhiro Mimura on 38 North:

Dr. Mitsuhiro Mimura: North Korea is the poorest advanced economy in the world—but what’s important to understand is that, while it may be poor, it is still an advanced economy. In that respect alone it is unique in the world. And that is an important source for the pride the North Korean people take in what they see as their country’s achievements.

JB: The poorest advanced economy? Can you explain that a little?

MM: By standard economic measurements, given that the North continues to emerge from its past as a feudal society and then Japanese colonial rule between 1910 and 1945, North Korea is a developing economy.

That said, they have built a comprehensive production structure including both labor-intensive and capital-intensive industries. They are able not only to produce capital goods to run their society, like railroad locomotives and carriages, cargo vessels, turbines and generators for power plants, numerically controlled lathes, but they also make most of the things needed for military use, from small arms to ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons, trucks, jeeps, destroyers, and diesel engines.

In other words, they are somewhat self-sufficient. It’s true that their food situation is probably still problematic, but it seems to me that sanctions, no matter how much they hurt both in pragmatic terms as well as blows to the national prestige, will have limited impact on North Korea. Iran, on the other hand, was in serious trouble, as its population is considerably more educated, restive, and sensitive to issues of liberty in its many facets; North Korea has just a small bit of history in terms of independence, as noted earlier here.

Professor Davis suggests this is just an exercise in costs:

But if the question confronting the international community in the Iranian deal was determining the price at which Tehran was no longer willing to pay to acquire nuclear weapons, the problem in North Korea is establishing a price for which Pyongyang would be willing to relinquish an existing nuclear arsenal. And all other things being equal, the price demanded will be higher than North Korea would have accepted to forgo the program in the first place. Because of the endowment effect, North Korea values the weapons it now has more than it did the prospect of acquiring them.

Does this mean that there is no room for a deal? No. As long as the international community, and more particularly the United States, place a higher value on a nuclear free North Korea than Kim Jong Un demands as compensation for ceding his nuclear capabilities, agreement is possible. Given that American leaders view both the risks of a nuclear armed North Korea and the costs of launching a preventive strike against Pyongyang as unacceptably high, there should be a price at which both sides are willing to cut a deal.

But the conditions differ, which Professor Davis is trying to minimize. But I think there’s a big difference between nuclear weapons are key to my survival and nuclear weapons would be good for our national prestige. The latter, while important, is not strictly a necessity, and as Iran, more hooked into the global economy than North Korea, suffered, it could see that.

All of which makes the analogy less workable. As long as Kim sees nuclear weapons as the ultimate key to his regime’s survival, I think he’ll stick with them. Unless Trump’s commanders can come up with some sort of canny military solution that involves minimal casualties, I see this situation going on for a very long time, in the absence of some sort of advanced technology that can actually disable nuclear weapons from a distance.