Category Archives: Uncategorized

Vladimir Putin, rule of Russia, believes that sanctions would be worthless for correcting North Korea’s behavior, according to CNN:

But Putin, speaking in China on Tuesday, cautioned against “military hysteria” and said that the only way to resolve the crisis was through diplomacy.

He warned that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has calculated that the survival of his regime depends on its development of nuclear weapons. Kim had seen how western intervention in Iraq had ended in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein after which the country was ravaged by war, Putin warned, and Kim was determined not to suffer the same fate.

“Saddam Hussein rejected the production of weapons of mass destruction, but even under that pretense, he was destroyed and members of his family were killed,” Putin said.

“The country was demolished and Saddam Hussein was hanged. Everyone knows that and everyone in North Korea knows that.” …

But speaking at the closure of the BRICs summit in Beijing — which hosted the leaders of Brazil, India, China and South Africa — Putin said that while Russia condemned North Korea’s latest actions, imposing any kind of sanctions would be “useless and ineffective.” Kim would rather starve his people than see his regime overthrown, he said.

Yes, it’s Putin, but the last bit rings true, especially concerning Hussein. Thus, while Joseph DeThomas’ post on 38 North is much more respectable, he seems to have forgotten that one aspect. He recommends a combination of stronger enforcement of sanctions as well as a stronger game of diplomacy, and after some specific recommendations he writes:

Orchestrating this diplomacy will be one of the most complex challenges of the past 50 years. It is unclear whether the US State Department—suffering from several levels of missing leadership, low morale and persistent and unhelpful interference from the White House—is up to the task. But a way will have to be found to perform it if there is to be success on this issue.

Probably nicknamed Bush & Cheney.

Joseph doesn’t really go far enough in recognizing the utter inadequacy of the Trump Administration, because, in retrospect, the problems didn’t start there. They started with the Bush II Administration’s decision to trump up (forgive me) a reason to destroy Saddam Hussein, who at this point had been reduced to a two-bit blowhard who had given up his weapons of mass destruction in exchange for guarantees of survival.

But those guarantees were backed by the US government, and were abrogated, to use John Bolton’s term, through lies and deceit.

And – no doubt I repeat myself – the birds of mendacity have come home to roost. Kim Jong-un understands that the US government is not trustworthy, and that, in his mind, it’s prudent to be a porcupine that can inflict a lot of damage on a predator. Promises aren’t enough, but a long, pointy spear may be.

There’s a real moral lesson in all this, but no doubt a historian will do a better – or more objective – job figuring it out than I will. To me, though, this smacks of provincialism, religious egocentrism, and the delusion that God favors you, and thus you can do no wrong.

No. We’re getting an object lesson in how badly these attitudes can go wrong, and the sad thing is that those who voted for Bush probably don’t realize just how much this is their philosophy’s fault. Some of it is the difficulty of drawing lessons from international incidents, since they can be hard to comprehend if you’re not in the Foreign Service. It’s even harder when you practice the hubris of being the center of the Universe. And it’s bloody well impossible when you are not made to see honest analysis, but instead pandering by the right wing media pursuing power and wealth with little regard to the national interest.

And here’s a relevant link. Don’t depend on your Federal government to remind you – they want to bust the ACA. If you’re wondering why, try firing off a letter to your favorite GOP CongressCritter.

My mother-in-law will be in town for the next few days, and so the blogging will be curtailed, although I’ll be trying to catch the news.

With a hurricane like Harvey, it’s not just humans that need help – but some of the wildlife as well. Melissa Breyer of Treehugger.com reports why helping bats is helping the human inhabitants of Houston:

So why the sudden focus on bats? Sure, there are bat lovers for whom this might be of particular interest – compassion is compassion. But there are people and pets in dire need of attention. Yet here’s the thing: The Waugh Bridge colony eats around two and a half tons of insects every night. Without them, Houston’s mosquito population would look very different. Popular Science writes, “A dead bat is a bat that can no longer consume huge meals made of Houston’s mosquitoes – mosquitoes that may lead to a proliferation of diseases after the flood.”

Petrologist:

Petrology (from the Greek πέτρος, pétros, “rock” and λόγος, lógos, “subject matter”, see -logy) is the branch of geology that studies rocks and the conditions under which they form. Petrology has three subdivisions, igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary petrology. Igneous and metamorphic petrology are commonly taught together because they both contain heavy use of chemistry, chemical methods, and phase diagrams. Sedimentary petrology is, on the other hand, commonly taught together with stratigraphy because it deals with the processes that form sedimentary rock. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “Why Thousands of Volcanologists are Meeting in Portland,” Erik Klemetti, Rocky Planet:

So, this whole week I’ll be taking part in the IAVCEI meeting in Portland, Oregon. Of course, most people have never heard of IAVCEI, which is an abbreviation of the International Association of Volcanology and the Chemistry of the Earth’s Interior (now you can see why we use the abbreviation.) This meeting is bringing together over 1,200 volcanologists and petrologists (who study magma, not petroleum) from all over world to talk about volcanoes.

Please, sleep with my daughter who can read your filthy test pilot mind!

Beyond the Time Barrier (1960) is an example of the horror-SF genre, but unfortunately a fairly aimless example. Major Bill Allison, USAF, is a test pilot, using a rocket-equipped jet fighter to attempt to make it into orbit. On his last mission, he loses contact with his control team, and when he lands back at base, he finds it abandoned, dilapidated, and weedy. He explores and soon leaves the airbase, looking for anyone, when he loses consciousness.

On coming to, he finds himself a captive. The head of his captors, an elderly man called the Supreme, is wary, while his middle-aged Captain is aggressive and accuses Allison of being a spy. After some verbal fencing, Allison is taken away to a cage where other prisoners are kept – all bald and crawling on the ground. He fights with and questions one, and then is taken out of the cage and returned to the Supreme. He’s questioned some more and accused of being a ‘Scape’. The Supreme’s deaf and mute daughter, who has some telepathic capbility, is proctoring the conversation, and continually indicates Allison is telling the truth.

Eventually, we learn it is 60 years in the future, and now there are only Mutants, who have been damaged by a plague caused by A-Bomb testing, Scapes, who are so named for having escaped the plague, and everyone else, who is considered normal – but, with the exceptions of the Supreme, the Captain, and the Supreme’s daughter, Trirene, they are all sterile as well as mute and deaf^[1].

This, presumably, so the actors could be paid less for no speaking lines, my Arts Editor pointed out.

The Scapes, three in number, consisting of two scientists and a female Russian military officer^[1], have all arrived at this place in much the same way as did Allison, but their craft were destroyed, while Allison’s is intact, so they hatch a plan for Allison to return to his native time to try to stop the plague; meantime, he’s also informed that the daughter has picked him for her mate, since everyone else is sterile. Allison resolves to take her with him, since his plane is a two seater, although he flew alone.

Eventually, the time comes to break out of captivity and make a run for the plane, but the Russian military officer frees the captive Mutants, and in the resultant chaos tries to force Allison to take her instead of Trirene back in time. However, she’s killed by one of the two captive scientists, who has his own designs on the plane, but he, in turn, loses the turf battle to the other scientist, and in the final fight, Allison kills the last scientist, who accidentally shoots Trirene to death during the struggle. Ooops.

Allison then returns and is placed in the hospital, having magically become an elderly man, and is debriefed.

It’s all rather silly. Is there any sort of real theme here? Not that I can discern. And good horror movies do have some sort of interesting theme. Alien (1979), one of the greatest of the genre, gradually reveals that the machinations of a giant corporation in search of profit has infinitely worsened the predicament in which the crew of the Nostromo finds itself, and because this constitutes a betrayal of the crew, it greatly strengthens a horror element in that the iron-clad law that we all stick together in the face of unknown dangers has been broken in the simple search for profit. The horror element embodied in the act of rendering aid resulting in skin-crawling disaster for the rescuers is multiplied.

But there doesn’t seem to be anything like that here. A very straightforward action story, I suppose, but it seems, of all things, timid. The writers didn’t want to pursue hard choices, just tell the story in an expeditious manner.

And it was really boring.

¹I voted that the normals should have a name, too, but my Arts Editor discarded my vote.

²They indulge in some extremely bad and painfully told science to explain Allison’s predicament.

Nothing more than that.. took this pic a while back.

This one, too. Not sure how I forgot to post it, since it’s a bit of a dazzler.

Almost two weeks ago another missive in the ongoing saga of the Motley Fool came across my desk, and I was so appalled at what I read I put it away. Another look didn’t make it any better, though. Purporting to be from co-founder Tom Gardner, it says, among other things, this:

For the past six months, I have been working on a special research project with an ambitious goal:

Isolate the single investing factor that was found in nearly every one of The Motley Fool’s most successful stock recommendations…

As I began to analyze all the recommendations The Motley Fool has ever made, I quickly noticed a clear pattern emerging:

THE SMALLER OUR RECOMMENDATIONS, THE MORE MONEY INVESTORS HAVE MADE.

In other words, the smaller the total capitalization (“cap”) of a company they had recommended, the bigger the profit.

Tom, given how you stated it, the first criticism is that this is just standard math. Forget all the crap about share price, number of shares, etc – when you buy a piece of a company, the percentage at which the company’s total capitalization appreciates over the period that you hold that share of stock is also the percentage at which your holding also appreciates^[1]. Let’s make up a totally artificial example. Suppose someone has guaranteed you that in five years time four companies will each have a $10 billion cap. Suppose further that right at this moment the four companies have caps of $5 billion, $1 billion, $500 million, and $100 million.

Which company should you buy? Ignoring all other variables, and that’s one helluva big “ignore”, you buy the one worth $100 million because the appreciation percentage is the greatest^[2].

But this leads to my second criticism, which are misstatements. There are misstatements in the mail and misstatements in what I just wrote, so I’ll go first – I implied that the risk of each investment is the same. They never are, and that’s the main challenge of any investor, understanding the risks of each investment.

But Tom just glosses over the same point. If Tom had said,

Despite the higher risks implicit in microcap stocks, The Motley Fool’s picks in this area of investing have far outperformed all of our picks outside of microcaps!

then I could have respected what he’d written. That would speak to both the novices and the experienced investors, as the novice may not realize how important risk evaluation is during the investment process, while the experienced investor would realize it was an honest statement that explicitly notes this area of investing is not for beginners.

And then we come to the “herding the buffalo off the cliff” phase of the promotion.

To make sure only committed, long-term investors have the chance to benefit from these recommendations…

Not only will we be accepting just 1,500 additional new members into The Rising Stars Portfolio, but the only way to officially receive YOUR invitation before we reveal the entire portfolio is by filling out our brief “New Member Application.”

With over 500,000 active investors in the Motley Fool community, you can see why we expect those 1,500 seats to sell out fast. Installing this “New Member Application ” ensures our interests align when it comes to investing alongside The Rising Stars Portfolio.

Ah, they’ll sell out fast. Quick action is required. Turn off the brain and get yourself positioned, eh? It’s not a really respectable way to run a sober investing service. Indeed, if you carefully examine the statements, you’ll realize that they really don’t relate to each other very well. Consider the first paragraph vs the second. Or what does it mean to “install” an application?

But I fear rationality is not part of this promotion, despite rationality and refusal to run with the herd being historical parts of the Motley Fool business.

Instead, reading this, the heart starts pounding and you hit that button that says you’re interested before everyone else does, and now they have a shot. It’s not a guarantee for them, of course. Some folks will realize microcaps represent far too much risk for them – Tom’s new service may even give them that warning. But I won’t know that, because I won’t push the button.

As I was thinking about this promotion, it occurred to me to wonder if Tom and David Gardner have actually sold the Motley Fool to some nameless conglomerate, and as part of the sales agreement they agreed that the personas of Tom and David may be used by the new owners to promote the company. The zombie Gardners, if you will.

Now I’m a little frightened of doing the actual research to falsify the hypothesis. What if I’m right?

¹Minus fees and taxes, of course, once you sell. Also, if the company sells new shares of stock in order to raise capital for various purposes, current shareholders are diluted and will then not profit as much. This is common with microcaps, which are usually still developing their initial product. Speak to a licensed financial professional for more detail – don’t depend on me!

²And if this is not immediately obvious, please find a remedial mathematics course which will help you develop your mathematical intuition.

Turns out Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare was once a journalist, skilled in reading between the lines when it comes to anonymous sources. He shares his rules for evaluating such reporting:

Rule No. 3: It Is Ethical and Legal for Defense Lawyers to Dish on Matters About Which Prosecutors Cannot Appropriately Talk

There is no point more important to understanding where any given story comes from than this basic legal fact: investigative secrecy rules bind prosecutors and law enforcement and court officials but generally not defense lawyers or witnesses. Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure bars prosecutors and grand jurors from disclosing matters taking place before a grand jury. Lots of other rules within investigative bodies generally make it improper for prosecutors and FBI officials to talk to the press about what they’ve learned. So when prosecutors and investigators leak, and it does happen, it’s often a serious impropriety—and sometimes a criminal act. (There are limited exceptions to this statement.)

The thing to keep in mind is that none of these rules covers the many defense lawyers who have subjects, targets or witnesses before those same investigators. In fact, defense lawyers are ethically bound to zealously represent their clients’ interests, and many lawyers see conditioning the public discussion of an investigation in a favorable direction for the client as part of their jobs. There are situations—court orders sealing material, confidentiality agreements and the like—where defense lawyers have ethical or legal constraints on their ability to speak as well. But the norm is that they have great freedom to discuss matters prosecutors cannot discuss; the main constraint on them is the duty to act in their clients’ interests.

Dirty little secret: It’s a common tactic for defense lawyers to put material out there in a fashion favorable to their clients and to make sure the sourcing is suggestive of an improper prosecutorial leak—and then complain publicly about prosecutorial leaks. This happens a lot.

My point is not that prosecutors and investigators never leak. They sometimes do. It is, rather, that when it’s lawful and ethical and appropriate for defense lawyers to disclose material and illegal and unethical and potentially actionable for prosecutors to do so, the default assumption should be that the material came from the defense bar when something is sourced in a fashion consistent with coming from either.

Benjamin goes on to analyze a couple of recent stories using his guidelines. Interesting stuff.

Progressive David Nir is upset with Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA):

This is very interesting indeed. Longtime Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein is an institution in California, but she’s often made liberals’ teeth ache. The most recent trip to the dentist became necessary just the other day, when Feinstein rather startlingly declared she believes Trump “can be a good president,” something it’s hard to believe any mainstream Democratic politician would ever think, let alone say aloud. Feinstein’s full remarks were even worse:

“I think we have to have some patience. I do. It’s eight months into the tenure of the presidency … We’ll have to see if he can forget himself and his feeling about himself enough to be able to really have the kind of empathy and the kind of direction that this country needs. The question is whether he can learn and change. If so, I believe he can be a good president.”

Feinstein thinks it’s possible Trump can learn and change? Forget himself? Show empathy? Seriously? Which Donald Trump has Feinstein been watching these last few terrifying years? Any hypothesis that involves Trump doing something you’d want him to do is automatically null and void. These are not open questions, because we already have the answers.

But I read the Senator’s remarks as a direct insult to Trump. After all, in Trump’s mind Trump is a great guy – why should he have to change? To change is to acknowledge the first eight months of his Administration have been abject failure.

I wonder if the progressives are a little trigger-happy.

Michael Elleman on 38 North reports on the latest North Korean stride forward in missile technology, from the launch of August 28:

She has him in a headlock! Oh, but those eyes!

It’s all about … ummm … apparently, inter-species sex in the fairly incoherent Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II (1993). An egg and the remains of another are discovered on an island used as a nuclear waste dumping ground, and as the research team is examining them, Rodan (but pronounced “Radon“, as in the radioactive gas common in many basements, and a known health hazard, which may be some sort of subtle pun) appears and messes with them; then Godzilla appears, and in the tussle that follows, the team escapes in their helicopter, lugging along the intact egg.

Meantime, a team is working on Mechagodzilla, assembled from various bits of other monsters, along with a generous helping of technology, oh, goodness, this is really dreary to write about.. Deep breath.. is being perfected. Aaaaaaaand … over at the lab, a cohort of telepathic girls begin singing to the egg, and it hatches into a vegetarian baby Godzilla.

Yep. Vegetarian. Although those ain’t molars. But the eyes, so cute.

In any case, Godzilla appears nearby and Mechagodzilla sallies forth to do battle. After bouncing around for a while, Mechagodzilla burns out and Godzilla, neglecting to stomp his opponent summarily into the ground, wanders off while Baby Godzilla’s eyes glow red.

Baby Godzilla is then packaged up and used as bait for Godzilla, luring him to some uninhabited islands for a finishing fight with Mechagodzilla, but Rodan appears, torches the helicopter, and snatches the Baby Godzilla. Mechagodzilla intercepts and messes up Rodan but good, just as Godzilla approaches. A battle royale ends in Godzilla being left a quadriplegic, and thus he’s given ten minutes to recover per the rules of … what, this isn’t a sanctioned bout?

OK, so the Japanese (one named Johnson, just for laughs) are getting all set to turn Godzilla into a million cheeseburgers, when Rodan rises from the dead, flings itself (I hesitate to even guess gender) on top of Godzilla, turns bright red and blends with Godzilla, healing his second brain (sure, I didn’t mention it, you know all dinosaurs had second brains, right?), and Godzilla bounces to his feet for a knockout swing at Mechagodzilla. Victory achieved, he and Baby Godzilla wade off into the ocean while the General in charge tells us that Baby Godzilla is the offspring of Godzilla and Rodan.

The visuals of that mating leave me dazed and confused.

Much like this awful movie.

If you have to see this, I hope you’re a Godzilla completist, because there’s no other reason to subject yourself to this rot. Unless you like making jokes about monsters named ‘Radon’.

Distaff:

the female branch or side of a family [Merriam-Webster]

Heard from my Arts Editor recently, realized I didn’t know the meaning at all.

This is a harvest year for apples, but it’s become apparent that between an anemic year for tomatoes and a buggy year for apples, we’re not getting much to put by.

She starts baking.

Even the smartphone camera got a little freaked out about it.

Is this my voodoo doll? Wrong genre this time, kids!

Vincent Price may not burn the castle down in this one, but chances are you won’t care at the end of Tower Of London (1962), an imaginative take on the accession of Richard III to the throne of England in 1483. Compressing the events, both real and fictional, from 2+ years to perhaps a month or so, Price, in the lead role, introduces the audience to Richard’s raging ambition. His brother, King Edward, lies in his death bed, and commands the youngest of the three brothers, the Duke of Clarence, to be Protector of Edward’s sons, the elder the heir. Thus, Richard’s first hurdle is created, and he leaps it with flair, and soon the bodies are piling up as the matter of a kingship is a costly undertaking.

But Richard’s mind, already twisted like his crooked back through resentment of those he thinks laughs at him, now suffers a touch of Macbeth’s disease – the affliction of guilt, of shame for what he’s done and will do. But this does not stop him, and when the unstoppable force of guilt meets the immovable object that is Richard’s ambition, the result is a man whose descent into madness goes deeper and deeper as he ascends to the throne, trampling upon the bodies of those in his way, both determined and innocent. His delusions lead him into further murder, danger, and misjudgment, and soon he takes on the mantle of invincibility; the audience may suspect that, to him, it’s not whether he has been touched by God, but whether he has touched God.

And, as often happens to the hubristic, he meets an ignominious doom suitable for the foolish at Bosworth.

Price displays a wider range than is usual for him, dragging his way from courtly manners to outright murder to gibbering terror, and he pulls all off with equal competency, treading a fine line between convincing performance and chewing the scenery. His supporting cast, too, is at least equal to their tasks; his minion, Ratcliffe (Michael Pate), brings a delicious little extra to his role. The cinematography is excellent, as is the audio, and the special effects generally did not repel me for want of competency. The sets were adequate to the needs of the story.

And the story, constrained as it has to be by the historical events, is not bad. The madness of ambition is well conveyed, and if its fidelity to real events is somewhat low, what of it? This is a story that teaches a lesson concerning over-reaching and the dangers that accompany it; these purposes benefit from the modifications to the base reality. And if Richard is not met with effective opposition at his forcible and traitorous usurpation of the throne, the opposition he does meet is that within himself. His betrayal of his own family results, in the end, in his own betrayal.

Roger Corman was the director, a famed (or infamous) B-film director. We’ve seen a number of his efforts, and this may be his best so far.

For all the positives, I won’t quite recommend it. The pacing needed some work, I think, and some of the actual murders could have been clarified to emphasize the real horror generated by Richard’s ambition. For example, the horror associated with the murders is heightened as it violates some special norms, so we’re expected to recoil at the idea of murdering one’s brother; if there had been stronger apparent affection between Richard and Clarence, we might have been more horrified.

Perhaps more importantly, one of the most important facets of this sort of story is the generation of pity for the man who commits these crimes, and it was difficult to feel real pity for the wreck of a man who would be King, in the end. Achieving such a quality would have elevated his movie up the ladder of accomplishment.

But if you do get the opportunity, you may find this entertaining on a lazy afternoon.

And if you prefer your entertainment to be purely escapist, you should probably stop reading at this juncture.

Midway through I began to see some parallels with the Trump Administration. The denial of facts, the desperate ambition, turning to dubious means as well as dubious actors (not in the theatrical sense), all are shared between Price’s Richard III and various members of the Administration – not just its head. A general dissatisfaction with reality, the delusions of grandeur, and how it leads to a disaster for both the Crown and the People were unexpected reminders of the current sad drama unfolding in our nation’s capitol. One suspects, however, that there is little guilt, little introspection, little self-awareness in this Administration, simply greedy grasping and knee-jerk fear in equal measures.

Earlier this week Benjamin Wittes and Jane Chong  of Lawfare called for the beginning of impeachment proceedings. Jane now continues with a look at her list of the top four impeachment myths. I found the last, concerning the Emoluments Clause, the hardest to comprehend, and perhaps the most disturbing:

Equilux:

An equinox is the moment in which the plane of Earth‘s equator passes through the center of the Sun‘s disk,^[2] which occurs twice each year, around 20 March and 23 September.

On an equinox, day and night are of approximately equal duration all over the planet. They are not exactly equal, however, due to the angular size of the sun and atmospheric refraction. To avoid this ambiguity, the word equilux is sometimes (but rarely) used to mean a day in which the durations of light and darkness are equal. [Wikipedia]

Just happened to stumble across it.

You can’t really draw any analogies to water dripping in this case, because the chart from Gallup as of today betrays neither stalagmites nor stalactites:

The two relevant numbers are, for approval of Trump as President, 34%, and disapproval, 61%. As you can see, they continue to diverge, indicating the President’s support is decaying. When the numbers manage to reach a 2-to-1 ratio, what will happen? It’s not totally unprecedented, as President Nixon’s numbers were worse at the time of his resignation – below 30% approval.

Will Trump leave office of his own accord, his ego having taken enough of a beating? Or will he wish to press on, to prove himself right? I’m betting the latter, being such an egotist, so the numbers must be analyzed for what they indicate about his support, not his future actions. The divergence suggests one of two things – and they are not mutually exclusive.

This is what I’d like to be at some Trumpist meetings where they discuss his accomplishments.

First, the Trumpist hard core is gradually losing its sheath of GOP members who voted Trump and approved of him for a while on a partisan basis, but are gradually discovering that his many extremist views and incompetent approach to the Presidency is really too much to stomach. As part of such a movement, I can postulate that at least some will begin considering competency as more important than in the past, moving ideological purity down the priority list and, for the truly suspicious ones, discounting the manipulations of the right wing media circus. They might even discard the entire ‘team politics’ approach, which has hamstrung the moderates to the point where they can only leave the party to protest those who’ve clambered to the top of the pile of candidates in search of power. And this may begin to move the GOP back to the left, which will appall those who have benefited from the right wing gallop in which the party has engaged for the last 25, if not 40, years, and now think they can fling the weakest of rhetoric into the wind in order to profit (see this post from earlier today for the level to which arguments from the right have sunk). This movement can only be a good thing for the Party as a whole, as well as the country.

The second possibility is that the Trumpist core of support itself is beginning to crack. There have been reports of late that Trump’s “ego-rallies,” as a friend calls them, have been less well attended than President Trump might like. If this is true – and I don’t know that this has been verified – it doesn’t mean that those who are disaffected will begin to judge future candidates using better criteria, because it’s quite possible that Trump’s failure to deliver on various promises has merely disappointed them without educating them. A sad possibility, but some citizens will only use that criteria for their judgment of candidates. I vividly recall Trump being the hands-down winner at making ridiculous promises and predictions during the campaign, especially the primaries, leaving his GOP rivals red-faced and in the dust as even they couldn’t really force themselves to promise 10% economic growth. If the Trumpists tied their support to his promises, many of them impossible and most outlandish, then we may see Trump sunk by his own rhetoric. You can start your own private company and remain king of the castle for so long as you can keep the creditors at bay; the political game is far, far different, and Trump doesn’t really seem to appreciate that. There are several factors – be appealing to the independents, keeping your supporters happy, while remaining within the bounds of the law and understanding the purpose of the various conventions which we follow – up until now. In the area of supporters, if you choose to keep them happy through concrete promises, such as increasing the military budget by $500 billion, then you have a problem when you fail miserably. Principles and policies are better promises than simply saying you’ll spend $X more on the military, outlaw abortion, or put guns in the hands of the mentally ill..

Will his numbers continue its divergence? I am aware that most folks don’t pay a lot of attention to the issues I’ve started thinking about since I started blogging; I’ve long said that political groupies think the world should revolve around politics, and bewail the simple fact that it doesn’t. I don’t, generally, as it’s an ugly business, but these days it’s more important than it used to be to pay attention the political world around us. So I’m often disappointed in how slowly Trump’s support has eroded, even if it’s been at historically low levels. I viscerally loathe his mendacious lies, I find his incompetency wretched, and his fascination with fringe-right web sites appalling.

But I hope there’ll be a silver lining left behind when his cloud sinks into the sea – that of more political involvement from solid citizens, those who had ignored the political world and have found that, for all that politics can be a sausage making business, at least it got things done – until the GOP of 2000 and then 2016 took over and have demonstrated their awful incompetency. Perhaps the participation of citizens who have one hand covering their nose as they push the levers of power will bring sanity back to our political world, in terms of compromise and decisions made with less regard to political issues and more to national issues of justice, prosperity, and security.

LinkedIn has a short article on vacations, which I’ll quote in full:

Unlimited vacation? We could be wrong

More companies including Netflix and Twitter have started offering unlimited vacation — but is it a good thing? To employers, the policy minimizes burnout while potentially allowing them to save on costs by avoiding unused vacation payouts. For employees, however, unlimited vacation can cause even more stress. They may feel guilty taking off too much time — and when they do finally take the plunge, they may feel anxiety over the work they’re missing. Last year, the average American used 16.8 days of vacation — even though they earned 22.6 days, according to a 2017 survey by US Travel Association’s Project: Time Off. • How do you manage your vacations? Join the conversation

Perhaps rather than assuming the companies are in the wrong, we should consider whether this is a maturity test for the employees. Those who have come to an understanding that either they take care of themselves or they fail both themselves and their employers may be considered mature; those who sweat their vacations because they’re not working, well, they need to reconsider how they’re living their lives.

Or is that on the judgmental side?

Too bad. It strikes me as daft that one of the richest countries in the world can be just full of folks who are neurotic about actually taking care of themselves. If the system doesn’t take care of you, why should you be part of the system? But the system offers a chance to take care of yourself, and now you can’t?

/faceslap

Spaceweather.com reports on sprites – an upper atmosphere lightning phenomenon – and what may be a new variant.

A NEW KIND OF SPRITE? Barely 30 years ago, many researchers did not believe that upper atmospheric lightning existed—until 1989 when researchers from the University of Minnesota captured them on video tape. Now there is a menagerie of accepted forms: sprites, elves, gigantic jets, gnomes. These “transient luminous events” (TLEs) appear above thunderclouds, reaching toward space rather than lancing down to the ground like regular lightning.

On Aug.14th, Thomas Ashcraft may have spotted a new kind of sprite. “I was photographing a cluster of sprites over a thunderstorm in western Oklahoma when something curved snaked up behind the main cluster.”

Here’s the video.

Courtesy Greg Fallis:

Got distracted by this:

READ THIS FIRST: Feathers and the Law.

Feathers and the Law — four words I’d never expect to see together. Totally clicked on the link, which opens a window with a few other links and begins with this alarming warning.

Feathers are beautiful and remarkable objects.  If you find feathers in nature, appreciate, study, and photograph them, but leave them where you found them.  It is illegal to take them home.

No fucking way is that illegal. Is it? Yes, it is. Sorta kinda. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 makes it illegal to hunt, take, capture, kill, or sell migratory birds or any part of a bird, including feathers, eggs, and nests. Of the 900+ bird species in North America, more than 800 are considered migratory. We’re talking birds like crows and mourning doves and chickadees — and it’s actually illegal to take their feathers.

Hope my Arts Editor is reading this.

WCWatch on The Daily Kos relays a recording of climate change denier Mark Levin’s idea of an argument against climate change:

On his August 30th broadcast, first he gravely listed scientists from history: “Aristotle, Archimedes, Galileo, Tesla, Faraday, Newton, Pasteur, Einstein and Edison,” while managing to mispronounce “Archimedes” as if his first name were “Archie,” which is pretty funny in itself.

Then Levin popped his serious question: “What do they all have in common?”

If that sounds more like the wind up to a joke (nine scientists walk into a bar, and the bartender says…), well, yeah. Because here’s Levin’s actual answer:

“Not a single one of them ever wrote about man-made climate change.” Levin repeats this several times, as if he’s fathoming a major revelation.

Here’s the recording:

It’s like the most wretched elaborate joke ever. A demonstration of how not to assemble an argument. It’s the worst appeal to authority I think I’ve ever heard.

And yet, it could be extremely useful. Here’s my idea. Someone should hire Gallup to do a survey in which this recording is played for each person polled, and then they’re asked to rate how effective of a counter-argument this is, without considering their own views on the matter.

The higher the rating, the more this country needs to work on teaching thinking skills.

I’ve run across a couple of pieces written from within the antifa movement, roughly speaking. First, Kyle Chapman’s experience in Berkley, California, via Medium:

A friend of mine is constantly reminding me that 2017, rather than being a relief from horror-saturated 2016, has spiraled down some rabbit hole of political absurdity and surrealism. My mother, a long-naturalized immigrant from Zimbabwe, responded to the election of Donald Trump with a panic and fear that I had never seen from her before. She was born in Zimbabwe while it was still under colonial administration: growing up in Rhodesia meant subjugation by white settlers, fear and humiliation as second class non-white people (even as native people), suppressive violence by the state. Trump reminded her of Ian Smith, she confessed to me, the Rhodesian prime minister and terroristic white nationalist (a redundancy) of her formative years. Her fear should have been a foreshadowing of the absurdities that would follow, but while I comforted her, I still dismissed her. Nine months later, I am on the street protesting against neo-Nazis.

After some description of the event, Kyle continues:

Media commentary has forced me to understand our collective [mis]definition of violence as we constantly grapple with “well-reasoned” responses to far-right politics and urgently reinscribe the state’s monopoly on legitimate forms of force to undermine the legitimacy of self-defense. Community members were implored to stay away from the spaces where fascistic forces assemble, while the media actively normalizes their politics by positioning functionally genocidal politics as “controversial” albeit legitimate opinions within a robust marketplace of ideas. Violence is the state’s white supremacist militarization, like Urban Shield, in the name of “community safety”; it is my constant articulation that, as a black anarchist and member of the left more broadly, my defense of self and community (and other communities) in the face of existential threats, is not “violence.” Antifa (anti-fascism), a coalescence of left politics in resistance to fascist creepings, is not violence because this kind of community self-defense cannot be violent.

For a community that has striven and suffered for two centuries in the American nation, these are richly understandable and reasonable attitudes. But that last phrase caught my eye – good writing so often contains apparent contradictions which lead to better understanding – so I followed the link to an article on Truthout, by William C. Anderson, where I ran across some factual inaccuracies which troubled me, although I’m not sure they really affect Anderson’s final conclusion. Here’s the first three paragraphs:

“Of the many inhuman outrages of this present year, the only case where the proposed lynching did not occur, was where the men armed themselves in Jacksonville, Fla., and Paducah, Ky., and prevented it. The only times an Afro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun and used it in self-defense.” — Ida B. Wells

“The stranglehold of oppression cannot be loosened by a plea to the oppressor’s conscience.” — Robert F. Williams

In order to self-defend, groups targeted for violence by white supremacists have to first acknowledge in ourselves that we are worthy of defending. Those of us who experience the daily damages of white supremacy and desire its end deserve a world without it.

In response to the Williams quote, I believe we should have an interview with Mr. Gandhi, who led a non-violent war against the colonialist England, and won by using the English conscience against the English – or so I understand. But, as a colleague from 35 years ago once asked, What if, instead of the British, Gandhi had gone up against the Nazis? He wouldn’t have succeeded, now would he? Thus, my own niggling concern about Mr. Williams’ ignorance (or deliberate omission), is, perhaps, not of great concern. After all, what of the conscience of today’s right-wing fringe? Do the white supremacists have consciences? Well, probably – but sharply demarcated in racial terms. Thus, the damage, and the loss of instruction through the omission of the Indian example, are compartmentalized.

Similarly, some might categorize my second objection in much the same way. Anderson writes “… Those of us who experience the daily damages of white supremacy and desire its end deserve a world without it.” I’ve developed a strong mistrust of the word deserve and its insistent use in an individualistic context wherein the Universe, it seems, owes a debt of gratitude and concern to the inhabitants of this small world we call Earth, merely because we exist. Sadly, such claims on the Universe are generally rejected in a violent manner, and while some will claim this is merely a rhetorical device, I will soundly disagree, for the spirit of entitlement often continues in the same vein throughout such pieces of communication without regard to the effects on the greater societal context – as I’ve noted before.

Not that I think this is a reason to condemn this piece, but I should like to see a better line of reasoning than merely assuming that some group, because of abuse, has some claim on societal assistance. Through careful use of detail, I could make the noxious, yet plausible, case that white nationalist groups also have some claim simply because they’ve been forced to the edges of society. It’s a ridiculous claim which makes me ill, but given the rhetorical setting of Anderson’s writing, it’s certainly a possibility.

And then this:

Our beings and our bodies are not empty things intended to labor in service to a nation that refuses to protect us. A rejection of liberal mythology — the untruth that those who have fallen victim to the atrocities of this nation’s past and present were simply necessary fodder — is an act of preservation and protection for anyone who chooses to strive for liberation. It’s an act that has been increasingly necessary for some time in an increasingly hostile United States. Our future depends on our understanding of self-defense and how it’s applied to the constant crises unfolding around us.

Wait, excuse me for a moment. As a white male of liberal leanings, I can’t say I’ve ever run across this necessary fodder thing. Am I isolated enough – which I wouldn’t doubt – that I’ve missed out on this meme? If true, it’s certainly execrable – but if I haven’t heard of it, I have to wonder if this is something Mr. Anderson invented.

On the other hand, it’s simple to agree with this:

Those who oppose white supremacy and the violences it distributes out in the world should begin arming themselves if they are not already. Kind words, liberal idealism and the state are not guaranteed to protect you. In an escalating bigoted environment where the president refuses to denounce white supremacists, because he is one of them and encourages their violence, many of us are prepared to protect our lives with the same weapons that aggressors would use to attack us. Those who seek to do us harm (regularly including the police) will do so whether we’re unarmed or armed, even with gun permits.

And I do. If our society is going to encourage gun ownership for the citizenry, then that ought to apply to everyone. And then we have to be willing to pay the inevitable price in gun accidents, domestic violence increase, and a decrease in rational discourse. It’s a fine line to balance on, but a later, compelling quote provides a good rationalization:

Ida B. Wells once wrote:

A Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give. When the white man who is always the aggressor knows he runs as great a risk of biting the dust every time his Afro-American victim does, he will have greater respect for Afro-American life. The more the Afro-American yields and cringes and begs, the more he has to do so, the more he is insulted, outraged and lynched.

I am not familiar with Ms Wells, but I’ve known enough bullies and bigots to understand her line of reasoning.

While I’d like to end this post on a positive note, I cannot, as Anderson appears to disapprove of one of the most valuable long-term tools of civilization – rational discourse.

Many liberal nonprofits, academic institutions and politicians tell us to engage in civil debate with extremists who want us dead. But for a process like this to work, our opponents would have to see us as humans worth debating in the first place, which they do not. Therefore, pleas for us to depend on the courts and the logics of white society, like prisons, police and prosecutors — institutions that oppress us — means more dying. Yet again, we’re supposed to continue being human sacrifices for the sake of “progress.” However, many of us know that we are more than readymade martyrs who should be willingly brutalized and murdered so that, in the future, self-satisfied people in power can look back and feel all right about taking their time to possibly implement change. We are not logs to be thrown on the fire whenever the US needs to soul search.

No idea may rest of its laurels; our intellectual foundations should always be questioned, just as Newton and, later, Einstein’s ideas in science were and are subjected to constant questioning and testing; eventually, some of Newton’s seminal contributions were overturned in favor of Einstein’s explanations, and now Einstein’s ideas are tested and verified over and over and over, looking for a chink here or there in order to explain one of the great ongoing mysteries of physics, such as the connection between gravity and quantum physics.

Similarly, civil debate over all of our ideas of what makes for a just, prosperous, and civil society is a necessity. This practice serves a number of purposes.

1. It inculcates those ideas in the participants. You can’t defend or attack an idea without really knowing it.
2. The energy of the presenters will impress the less accomplished members of society.
3. We may find flaws or ways to improve these ideas.
4. The extremists have friends and family who will see these debates – and be persuaded.
5. Sometimes even extremists change their spots, oddly enough.

Without civil debate, you can be armed and then be part of a partitioned, armed society, constantly on the edge of civil war. Without those civil exchanges in which superior ideas are advanced and the inferior ideas of the right-wing extremists are shown to be nothing more than the belchings of the inferior power-hungry narcissists, our society will become far more unstable.

But self-defense as this pus-filled wound on our hide is lanced and cleaned out is a sensible idea.