Category Archives: Uncategorized

Some social experiments are harmless, and some are not. Biting off some more of this fascinating interview with North Korean expert Mitsuhiro Mimura by Jeff Baron of 38 North, this caught my attention:

JB: What’s the trajectory you’ve seen in the North Korean economy since you started going there in 1996?

MM: The first years I was there, the mid-1990s, was a time of great hunger. The people who waited for the government to help them, as it had for the previous 40 years, suffered greatly—and many perished. Those who believed in the government but decided to act independently, to survive through their own efforts—they survived. And some of them are becoming rich now.

Sounds like classic evolution – the weak die off and the strong survive. It just depends on how you define strong and weak. The question in my mind is how this will affect the North Korean culture, all the way up to the leadership and its survival, in the future. And it sounds like the North Korean leadership may be aware of the situation – from another part of the interview:

But between 1980 and 2016, there wasn’t a single Workers’ Party Congress. That coincided with the breakup of the Soviet Union and the end of the East Bloc, the development of capitalism in China. And especially in the terrible food shortages in North Korea in the 1990s and early 2000s, as the people stopped looking to the State for what they needed to survive and instead relied on their own efforts, we saw some erosion of the formal institutions of control.

What we’ve seen from the Seventh Congress of the Korean Workers Party, held in May 2016, is a re-invigoration of the tools of control, to reinforce the importance of the group over the individual, to drill in what’s expected, demanded, of a North Korean citizen, through groups such as the Youth League and women’s groups.

Those groups are the means for the leadership to hammer home propaganda and the continuing education of youth and adults. The leadership wants citizens to identify as members of a group, ultimately, to form a national polity—and not as individuals.

So they’re trying to control or even snuff out the elements of independence that had to be developed in order to survive. While it’s disturbing that they have nuclear weapons through the incompetence of the Bush Administration, possibly the approach of strategic patience taken by Obama may not be a huge mistake. Perhaps North Korea’s leadership will eventually be overturned by the people, who’ve tasted a trifling bit of liberty and are seeing the saddle being cinched tight again.

But who replaces the leadership?

Encountered at the doctor’s office.

Quite lovely.

propinquity:

The law of propinquity states that the greater the physical (or psychological) proximity between people, the greater the chance that they will form friendships or romantic relationships.

The theory was first crafted by psychologists Leon Festinger, Stanley Schachter, and Kurt Back in what came to be called the Westgate studies conducted at MIT.

In the study, the strongest friendships developed between students who lived next to each other on the same floor, or between students who lived on different floors, if one of those students lived near the stairways.

In non-scientific terms, the Westgate Studies found that the frequency of contact between students was a strong indicator of future friendship formation. [copyblogger]

The word itself simply means close proximity.

Noted in this 9 Chickweed Lane comic.

The News & Observer (North Carolina) has an article with the particularly intriguing headling “Two NC Republicans say they accidentally asked the Supreme Court to end gerrymandering.” Accidentally? Are you kidding me? Well, it’s not April 1st, is it?

Two of the three North Carolina lawmakers who had joined with prominent national politicians to oppose gerrymandering have now backtracked, saying they didn’t mean to add their names on an anti-gerrymandering letter sent to the Supreme Court.

Rep. Mark Meadows and Rep. Walter Jones, both Republicans, signed on to the legal brief along with Democratic Rep. David Price.

Meadows blamed an “error” and Jones blamed “miscommunication” for their participation. Meadows also made a point to say he supports the N.C. General Assembly, which is in charge of drawing the state’s lines for its members of Congress.

Both of those guys should just resign right now. Either they’re incompetent fools who can’t manage their positions on one of the more issues of the era properly, or they’ve been told they broke party discipline and they’re scampering back into line, having been reminded that Party orders are more important than their own judgment on this issue. It’s lose-lose, boys, so you might as well just go hide in the underbrush.

It’s good to see this is not purely a Democratic effort.

Republican politicians including Arizona Sen. John McCain, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger have been among those leading the anti-gerrymandering push, along with Democrats such as former President Barack Obama and former Attorney General Eric Holder and government watchdog groups like Common Cause.

And if you’re still laughing from the Republican blunders, you can have a giggle over the statement proudly issued by the third member of the Congressional delegation to sign on to the anti-gerrymandering cause, Democratic Rep. David Price:

In a press release, Price was also quoted as saying “It is time we put an end to a system where politicians have the ability to cherry pick their voters. My home state of North Carolina has been ground-zero for hyper-partisan gerrymandering, and I am proud to add my voice to this effort.”

Despite that first sentence, that second sentence leaves me wondering if he really is in favor of hyper-partisan gerrymandering. Maybe he’ll split the difference somehow.

As I always hope, politics is entertainment.

Sami Grover on Treehugger.com notes the forces of the socially conscious market may force the socially greedy on to the right path – or at least using the right engine to get on the path:

Uber’s brand has taken a bashing lately, but there’s no doubt that it is a huge influencer in terms of new car sales. So news from the UK that all UberX rides in London will be electric or hybrid by 2020 is a big deal. By 2025, the company wants London rides to be 100% electric or plug-in hybrid. …
Coming alongside news that every major fuel retailer will be required to offer charging, that London’s black cabs are going plug-in, and that a growing number of companies are building big electric fleets, I’m beginning to think that the UK government’s stated goal of no new gas or diesel cars by 2040 is a decidedly conservative target.

That said, rumor has it that China is eyeing a ban on diesel and gas cars too. At what point do oil investors really start jumping ship?

Indeed. Oil has too many uses to go completely out of style, but as demand drops it’ll become less profitable. We’ve discussed selling our oil investments, which are relatively small.

This New York Times article on Scott Pruitt’s response to to Hurricane Harvey’s damage to Texas and Hurricane Irma’s anticipated damage to Florida and the connection to climate change does not dwell on how Pruitt’s babbling incoherency makes Trump look awful:

Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, says it is insensitive to discuss climate change in the midst of deadly storms. …

“To have any kind of focus on the cause and effect of the storm versus helping people, or actually facing the effect of the storm, is misplaced,” Mr. Pruitt said to CNN in an interview ahead of Hurricane Irma, echoing similar sentiments he made when Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas two weeks earlier. “To use time and effort to address it at this point is very, very insensitive to this people in Florida,” he added.

The Times takes the very respectful position of collecting considered opinions from scientists and other politicians who soberly disagree.

I say, just laugh at him for desperately avoiding an issue that is squarely in his bailiwick. If he looks like a fool, or a tool of industry, then bloody well call him that and let the fallout hit Trump. The man is laughable for making such a foolish statement, and it invalidates any credentials he may bring to the job. He just wants to avoid the issue because he doesn’t have any sort of valid rejoinder.

And he makes Trump look bad. Really bad.

There are too many assumptions in this scene.

Nothing But the Night (1973) considers the problem of apparent murders which are not really murders, and apparent survivors who are really dead. Sort of. And the vulnerability of children in a classy orphanage.

Nothing But the Night, besides the nonsensical title, suffers from some choppy editing and unsympathetic characters, but has a story which keeps signaling it’s about to go off the rails and into the swamp, and then swerves right back onto the road at the last moment. Saving its one exempted moment of unbelievability until the very end, the tension builds as the audience wonders at each new challenge the storytellers have given themselves, until we are forced to a conclusion unpalatable and unbelievable. We are relieved of this tragedy by a yet greater unbelievability, though, and we collapse in horror and pity when a gaggle of orphaned children throw themselves off a cliff rather than face the horror of their future.

An emotionally graphic lesson in the Western aversion to death, the movie would have benefited from a deeper exploration of its central motivation, although by doing so it might have relieved some of the building tension, thereby losing momentum. That, and better editing, more imaginative dialog, and some other improvements and this could have been a memorable movie. Instead, it merely merits “Good Try.”

On Take Care Richard Primus addresses the possibility of an early American Presidential election:

The stability of many of our constitutional expectations is a key element in keeping the constitutional system workable.  But it’s also true, and important to remember, that constitutional expectations sometimes change over time.  In the first years of the Republic, before Americans had grown accustomed to a pattern of elections every four years and never more frequently, the idea that presidential elections could occur only in every fourth year wasn’t yet a dominant view.  On the contrary, Congress in 1792 enacted a law providing for early elections in the event that the Presidency and Vice-Presidency became simultaneously vacant.  What’s more, the new President chosen at the early election would serve a full four-year term, rather than simply filling out the remainder of the last President’s term.  So in the contemplation of this early Congress, if a President and Vice-President elected in the year 1800 were killed or removed in 1803, a special election could be held in 1803, and the next regularly scheduled election would be in 1807.

The fact that Congress in 1792 deemed early elections appropriate doesn’t prove that such elections are constitutional.  Maybe Congress passed an unconstitutional law.  (James Madison, then serving in the House, seems to have thought the law was unconstitutional.  Then again, Madison argued that lots of laws Congress passed over his objection in the 1790s were unconstitutional.^[4])  Maybe—not for sure, but maybe—there are good structural arguments against early elections.

But it’s also plausible that Congress in 1792 made a constitutionally valid choice.  As a matter of structure and of democratic theory, it’s not crazy to think that the best way to identify a President is to elect one.  And nothing in the constitutional text clearly precludes, or even cuts heavily against, holding an early election.  As noted before, Article II says that an Acting President serves “until…a President shall be elected,” not “until a president is elected at the next regularly scheduled election.”  And to deepen a point made earlier, no constitutional text prevents a presidential election from being held less than four years after the previous one.

But he warns against such a move as it can lead to unfortunate gamesmanship in a hyper-partisan political environment.

I’d prefer to watch the GOP implode, kick out the extremists, and get back to the restrained compettion wherein we close ranks when an outside threat asserts itself – rather than writing extremely unfortunate letters and whining when the other side does something successful.

Tare:

The tare of a container is its weight when it’s empty, which is important to know when you can’t weigh something without putting it into something else. [Vocabulary.com]

Noted on a recently received arborist bill. I’d never seen such a word before. My Arts Editor says she sees it everywhere. Frankly, its usage didn’t make much sense to me. It was used in a column header:

Rate of Dilution Mixing Tare

I call it the Foxglove!

In a fascinating, short interview with North Korean expert Mitsuhiro Mimura, 38 North‘s Jeff Baron covers territory that sparked a lot of thoughts. In this segment, I couldn’t help but reflect on how this explanation of a change in farming behavior would resonate with a libertarian:

JB: So you’re saying the North Koreans are giving individual workers and farmers incentives to produce more, and that that’s a new thing. How does that work in practice? Is there really any noticeable impact, changes in the way the workers do their work?

MM: Absolutely. Let’s go back to the collective farm, which is now letting workers keep what they grow beyond their quota. Now, there’s no change in the fact that the State owns the rice paddy land, not the farmer. But now, the collective gives a particular paddy to a particular farmer, not just to work for this year, but year after year. In effect, as long as the farmer is managing the land well, he or she can count on getting the same land to work for the next production year too.

And yes, you can see the impact of that.

Traditionally—and traditional farm methods are still used in North Korea, because of the shortages of agricultural chemicals and machinery—farmers in Japan and Korea went to the mountains after harvest to bring back leaves, to spread on the fields as fertilizer.

But that’s a lot of work. And up until a few years ago I never saw farmers on collectives in the North make that effort. They might or might not be working the same land the next year. And they didn’t get any benefit from extra production from the collective.

Now, they know they’ll be working the same land. And that they’ll benefit from the extra production.

In the last few years, when I’m in North Korea after harvest time, it’s common to see those collective farmers going off to the mountains to bring back leaves for their fields.

For a libertarian, giving ownership to the farmer induces the farmer to use sustainable practices out of common sense – in theory. In practice, we may instead see slash & burn techniques, mostly because the libertarian makes false assumptions about the inclination of the farmer to follow legal restrictions, such as invading tropical forest which may yield quick profits, rather than working soil that requires more patience.

In the North Korean setting, ironically, the generally iron hand of the government results in better behavior by the farmer. He (or her) may not own the land, but knowing it’s effectively his apparently leads to a better behavior. But will happen if the government then arbitrarily takes it away?

Andray Abrahamian writes on 38 North about North Korean long term goals and how the Trump Administration appears to be playing into their hands:

Three generations of North Korea’s Kim family have dreamed of getting the United States off the Korean peninsula. Now, the Trump administration appears to be doing everything it can to undermine the US-South Korean alliance that has vexed Pyongyang since the armistice that ceased the Korean War was signed 64 years ago. …

In the past month, Trump has made statements on two fronts that continue to profoundly undermine the US-ROK [South Korea] alliance. The first was his August 8 off-the-cuff “fire and fury” remarks. The second was his more deliberate disdain for the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA) that has been in effect for five years. Negotiations began during the Bush administration and the FTA was signed in 2012 during President Obama’s first term. Trump is now threatening to unilaterally pull out of the deal, and soon.

In the meantime, Kim Jong Un is marching along at his own pace in his quest for a credible nuclear deterrent against the United States, as last week’s missile and nuclear tests reemphasize. Pyongyang chooses more or less provocative ways of testing its nukes and missiles, but it has an end game and several overlapping goals in mind. That end game isn’t nuclear war, which would lead to the destruction of North Korea and the end of the Kim dynasty. But driving a wedge between the United States and its allies, especially South Korea, is among the likely aims (or at least hopes). For that to work, however, it would depend on some “cooperation” from politicians in Seoul or Washington.

But now the South Koreans have real doubts about the dependability of the United States. Is Trump’s mercuriality and general immaturity going to break a decades-long alliance and possibly expose South Korea to an existential danger? Keep in mind that South Korea isn’t some small, virtually invisible country who we won’t miss if they disappear into the sea. South Korea is home to Samsung, Hyundai, POSCO, and LG, integral components of the global economy.

But more generally, the inability of two of the great democracies of the world, bridging the East-West gap, to cooperate in mutual defense, would be a propaganda victory of immense proportions for President Kim Jong Un of North Korea. In a world where the various forms of government are in continual competition and the choice of form of government – a problematic yet accurate turn of phrase – is certainly an open question in many countries, it’s very discouraging and even dangerous to give Kim a step up in such a situation, no matter how barbaric we consider his country.

And don’t think that this is only a problem related to Trump. It’d be very easy for Kim to simply point at Trump and say,

Hey, this guy’s totally inappropriate to lead the United States, and yet there he is in the American Presidency. This is the result of democracy.

Now look at me. Under my leadership my tiny little country [25 million, or less than one tenth of the United States] has developed nuclear weapons, our own Internet, and a rockin’ economy.

Making the case for Kim’s little monarchical approach to ruling is easier than you might think. People look for success first, not great sounding principles, especially when they’re in chronic distress.

The Arpaio pardon continues to stir the dust. Professor Joshua Geltzer offers the following summation on Lawfare:

Critical to the work of an amicus here would be exploring the Court’s precedent specifically on the pardon power. The leading case remains 1925’s Ex parte Grossman. That case established that a president can pardon a conviction for criminal contempt, just as Trump did for Arpaio. But it’s the underlying violation, not the contempt order sitting on top, that distinguishes Grossman from Trump’s putative pardon of Arpaio. A federal court had deemed Grossman to be running a speakeasy contrary to the law at the time and barred him from doing so. Another court found he’d continued to do so and therefore held him in contempt. President Coolidge pardoned Grossman to reduce his punishment to a fine because the President viewed imprisonment as too harsh a sentence for operating a speakeasy. That fits one traditional pardon paradigm: The President steps in to show leniency based on the particular facts of a case.

Trump’s pardon of Arpaio may be distinguishable from that. By his own account, Trump thinks Arpaio simply did nothing wrong. In this instance, the argument would go, that’s not Trump’s prerogative to determine, once the federal judiciary has found precisely the opposite by speaking to what the Constitution means in this context. Grossman itself explains that “[e]xecutive clemency exists to afford relief from undue harshness or evident mistake in the operation of enforcement of the criminal law” (emphasis added). And that’s just what Coolidge offered Grossman – some relief from enforcement of the criminal law. Trump, however, has attempted to overrule the federal judiciary’s very interpretation of the Constitution. And that, an amicus might argue, would run headlong into the separation of powers our country rightly holds so dear.

My bold. Not being a lawyer, I can only say this seems like a very fine hair to split. But it’s still a point, as Trump has strayed into the land that is supposedly the Judiciary’s private reserve – the interpretation of the law. It does seem to me that the Executive gets to interpret the law as well, but the Executive doesn’t get the last word.

Reading Steve Benen on Maddowblog this morning sparked a repeated thought in my head. First, the passage:

The Washington Post‘s Jennifer Rubin had an item yesterday, which didn’t directly reference the president’s comments, in which she noted, “You almost get the idea that the entire GOP economic philosophy is dependent on a never-ending stream of tax cuts for the rich.”

The thought was NOT that I should subscribe to WaPo in order to read the material first hand, although I probably should. The thought was related to one of my repeating themes on this blog: the problem of sector methods crossing into, and unexpectedly hindering the accomplishment of the goals of other sectors.

But this is not quite the same. For whatever reason, Jennifer’s remark focused my mind on goals rather than methods, and it suddenly occurred to me that Trump, and probably most of the GOP, has confused the goals of government with the goals of the private sector. Tax cut, tax cut, tax cut – given the current fascination with the accumulation of wealth, of which President Trump is an exemplar, taxes are viewed with loathing by the GOP. No big insight there. But if we then stipulate that the accumulation of wealth is such an important goal for members of the GOP, it doesn’t take much to suggest all they see is that when it comes to government – how it hinders their accumulation of wealth.

Now I’m back to that old tension between amateur rulers and professional rulers. I’m quite certain that Trump, nor most of politicians of either stripe, have engaged in a formal study of the purposes and methods of government. Of course, they may point proudly at informal study, but there’s be an almost inevitable slant to such studies, as they are not guided by experienced, disinterested experts. This leads to rule by amateurs who have clashing understandings of the important points of government – and may even engage in corrupt practices without realizing it. This would certainly explain Donald Trump, Jr.’s many blunders over the recent months.

The other side of the coin are professional rulers, which not only clash with American traditions of governance, but are only a short step from their own form of permanent corruption. It’s a conundrum.

Standfirst:

 (journalism) an introductory paragraph in an article, printed in larger or bolder type or in capitals, which summarizes the article [Dictionary.com]

Noted in a correction to a Nature editorial:

Editor’s note: The original version of this article was offensive and poorly worded. It did not accurately convey our intended message and it suggested that Nature is defending statues of scientists who have done grave injustice to minorities and other people. We have corrected the headline, standfirst and a line in the text to make clear we do not support keeping those memorials; our position is that any such memorials that are allowed to stand should be accompanied by context that makes the injustice clear and acknowledges the victims.

In case you thought scientists move in lockstep, Smithsonian.com delivers up a report on scientific vandals:

If you’re a scientist who wants to name a newly discovered form of life, your first step is to gather two to three lines of evidence—from DNA and morphology, for example—that prove that you’re dealing with something new to science. Then you have to obtain a holotype, or an individual of the species that will serve as an identifier for future researchers. Next you’ll write up your paper, in which you describe your discovery and name it according to taxonomic naming conventions.

Finally, you send your paper off to a scientific journal for publication. If you are the first to publish, the name you’ve chosen is cemented into the taxonomic record. But that last step—publication—isn’t easy. Or at least, it isn’t supposed to be. In theory, the evidence you present must adhere to the high scientific and ethical benchmark of peer-review. Publication can take months, or even years.

However, there’s a loophole. The rules for naming a new animal taxon are governed by the ICZN, while the International Association for Plant Taxonomy (IAPT) governs plants. And while the ICZN requires that names be published, as defined by the commission’s official Code, “publishing” doesn’t actually require peer-review.

I’m a little amazed at the omission of peer-review. It’s also a surprising that it’s a race to the publishing house, rather than a well-documented process that shows which scientist found the critter first.

Here’s one glory-hound scientist sounding a bit grumpy about the rest of the field:

Vandals have zeroed in on the self-publishing loophole with great success. [Doug Yanega, a Commissioner at the International Commission of Zoological Nomenclature] pointed to Trevor Hawkeswood, an Australia-based entomologist accused by some taxonomists of churning out species names that lack scientific merit.  Hawkeswood publishes work in his own journal, Calodema, which he started in 2006 as editor and main contributor.

“He has his own journal with himself as the editor, publisher, and chief author,” Yanega says. “This is supposed to be science, but it’s a pile of publications that have no scientific merit.” (In response to questions about the legitimacy of his journal, Hawkeswood delivered a string of expletives directed towards his critics, and contended that Calodema has “heaps of merit.”)

It’s a little like buying your victories at, well, any sport. The uninitiated may be impressed, but the folks in the field will well-understand how little these scientists are really contributing to the field. No true legacy for them, I’d say – and, in fact, due to the conflicting nomenclature problem, as Smithsonian.com details, it raises the spectre of the use of the wrong meds in emergency situations. See the article for more information.

And I suppose predatory journals could also be part of this problem.

He’s swinging for a homerun, but doesn’t even get a single.

The makers of Terror Birds (2016) clearly don’t know the tropes of the terror genre. The vapid blonde would-be Valley Girl should have been eternally annoying until she becomes the first victim of the birds. Instead, amidst the annoyance, she knees a horny guy in the balls really good (we cheered), gets off a few snappy lines, is mildly clever once, survives way too long, and then doesn’t even fall prey to the birds. Instead, she is presumably snapped up by the alligator/crocodile that we see taking a run at her – right after she says, “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding!”

Or the lass with the best lines in the movie, who should have made it nearly to the end, but instead is the second victim of the final group of six contestants in this run-and-hide-and-run-a-thon. She shows a fine pace, even if she doesn’t quite have the speed of a 15 ft tall flightless bad-tempered bird, but somehow the damn thing sneaks up on her while she’s cleaning her glasses and, well, have you seen … ah, just look to the right.

Of course, terror requires a sense of injustice. Remember the guy who took it in the family jewels? He ends up, involuntarily, as one of our six contestants. Given his poor behavior with the blonde, he would have perfectly fit the bill of injustice by surviving nearly until the end. Indeed, he could have exhibited a behavior indicating he was maturing out of his “I’m all horny” phase, and then be disposed of.

Instead, he’s victim #1, handily and quickly beheaded. His terror point total must have been fairly low.

In case you’re worried, though, there is an amoral millionaire and some sufficiently repulsive minions (poor puppies!), and the most pathetic of our contestants do win out in the end. They’re even slightly clever doing it.

But if you’re going to mess with the tropes, do it well. Remember Mr. Hornypants and the blonde? I think those two should have been the surprise winners. She could have taught him a thing or two about being a gentleman – or at least breaking into cars – and who knows what she could have learned from him.

Ah, well. Hey, I learned a new word – slutosaurus.

And in case it hasn’t become obvious just yet, don’t bother with this stinker. OK, the acting is mostly adequate. But even the special effects sucked.

While visiting an estate sale yesterday, we ran across this little malformation:

None of the other trees on the property exhibited this growth pattern, so we’re a little puzzled.

I’ve seen doomsayers come and go, and it appears the latest is a certain David Meade, who has received far more coverage than he deserves from the media – as usual. His claim? The recent eclipse presages the end of the world, in which the hidden planet will finally bang into our planet. And then the Tribulations start. From the introduction on his web site:

When the birth of Jupiter from Virgo occurs, we also see the fulfillment of Genesis 3:15 and Revelation 12:4 when great and fearful signs in the heavens are given. This birthing occurs according to the latest astronomical data available on October 15, 2017. This is when the King Planet – Jupiter, crosses the womb region of Virgo.

This is the day of the onset of the 7-Year Day of the Lord, or Tribulation. If we use astronomical calculations and the Book of Revelation only, and no extra-Biblical source such as visions, this takes us to the most important date of this century or millennium – October 15 this year of 2017. The American Eclipse of August 21, 2017 is the TIME MARKER – a 40 day countdown – the Sign of Jonah, to the beginning of the month of October. October is the month to watch!

The major signs that converge on September 23 are indeed amazing, but those are celestial events. They are time markers. The mainstream media states that something visible will occur on these dates. I don’t believe that. The actual event of the beginning of the Tribulation occurs on October 15. That’s when the action starts. Hold on and watch – wait until the middle of October and I don’t believe you’ll be disappointed.

Revelation is progressive. My book Planet X – The 2017 Arrival has the detail. You don’t have long to read it.

Or, he doesn’t have long to make his money, so quick buy his book!

I’m not going to burden you with the usual sober analysis or clever mockery. No, I went to his website hoping to find a Donate button, because a thought came to me. I thought, how about this? I offer David a $100 in exchange for a post-dated check for, say, a $1000. Or maybe $1 million. He can post-date it to a year from now.

Shouldn’t matter, right? At best we’ll be fighting our way through the Tribulations, and I’ll be eating my words. And if that mysterious planet has hit the Earth, I can fairly much guarantee I won’t be around to cash the check.

But, sadly, no Donate button.

NewScientist (26 August 2017) notes that researchers have observed a strong correlation between images of familiar and unfamiliar objects and activity in the perirhinal cortex of monkeys. I thought this was interesting:

[Yasushi Miyashita at the University of Tokyo] says perirhinal neurons help convert the perception of an object – what it is – into its meaning.

A better understanding of this conversion process could help improve machine learning, says David Sheinberg at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. “Any realistic robot would not only need to know what it’s looking at, but also need to know if it’s seen that thing before,” he says. “The computer vision world is still stuck looking at that first part.”

A step towards self-awareness? How do we know that we know something about an object? This has both practical and philosophical facets.

We look in a mirror, and we see something which we recognize as ourselves. How do we attach meaning to that image when it’s about ourselves? Is this a deeply metaphysical question, or just a matter of storing information? I think it’s the former because of the profound, yet paradoxically practical questions it raises about that image: can we trust it, since it’s a secondary information source, what does this mean in comparison to other members of the tribe, etc.

And a key difference between us and the artificial intelligences about which we so freely speculate is that we are, quite naturally, encased in these physical entities, one to a customer. They are mobile and distinguishable. This is not necessarily true for artificial intelligences, which could be distributed to numerous processing units that are geographically distributed; the machines that might function as a body are certain to be manufactured once the problems are shaken out; etc. Will this modify the reactions of an artificial intelligence in a such a way as to differentiate its reactions to stimuli compared to humans?

You betcha.

Nous:

\ˈnau̇s\ chiefly British :  common sense, alertness [Merriam-Webster]

Noted in “Losing the plot,” Colin Barras, NewScientist (26 August 2017, paywall):

Our species, Homo sapiens, is special. We have achieved things beyond the capacities of all others in our family tree. Even with their wanderlust, the ancient humans that came before us probably never made it to the Americas, let alone reaching for the moon, of course. Ancient human species never learned to write, or compose symphonies, nor did they develop the scientific nous to explore their own evolutionary roots.

We ran across this by the side of the road, and since we were stopping anyways, I took a few snaps.

Smartphone cameras don’t focus so well.

Following up on this thread, Lyme disease is notoriously hard to detect, so this report in NewScientist (26 August 2017) is welcome news:

John Belisle at Colorado State University and his colleagues wondered whether [Lyme disease and southern tick-associated rash illness (STARI)] could be distinguished by measuring the changes each causes to the abundance of specific metabolites in the blood.