Regarding the bald flowers, a reader remarks:
If the baldies match the plant in the lower left, it’s monarda (bee balm). I suspect all the lovely blooms in my yard will be turning bald in the near future.
A veritable harvest of baldness, an exercise in hirsute futility.
Me at my Annual Performance Evaluation.
It’s one of the supreme classics[1], so what can I say? The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), starring Lon Chaney, fights through its technical shortcomings, such as people moving too fast and a very scratched up film[2] (ours came from a DVD compilation of horror films) to deliver a tight, twisted plot and a fascinating performance by Mr. Chaney in this early, early example of film noir.
The year is 1482, in Paris. Briefly, Quasimodo (Chaney) is the deformed & isolated monstrous minion to Jehan, who both live, at the dispensation of Jehan’s brother the Arch-Deacon, in the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Jehan is a man of lusts and jealousies – carnal, wealth, and prestige. He has none of them, and so is consumed with jealousy for the standing of the Captain of the Guard, Phoebus, for the affections of the street dancer Esmeralda, and, just to round out the sentence, of the mostly unseen presence of the instrumentality of Godly vengeance, King Louis XI. Esmeralda, the pivot for much of the plot, is a Gypsy, dancing for a living, and also the object of fatherly affection of the King of the Beggars, Clopin, who adopted her after she was stolen from her crib.
Jehan resolves to reduce one of his jealousies by kidnapping and ravishing Esmeralda, and to that end he and his minion, Quasimodo, operating in the dead of night, track her down and attack her. But Phoebus, soon to be promoted, happens on the scene with his men and rescues Esmeralda, capturing Quasimodo in the process. Jehan slips away in the confusion, leaving Quasimodo, pleading silently for help, to his fate.
Please pick the lice from my pelt.
Phoebus falls in lust with Esmeralda, but restrains his carnal instincts upon encountering her innnocence, and invites her to the ball celebrating his appointment to the Captaincy. Meanwhile, Quasimodo is given a quick trial and sentenced to be lashed for his attempted kidnapping and assorted alleged bestial urges. It being a public, lesson-to-be-learned punishment, Esmeralda stumbles upon the scene at the end of the performance, brings Quasimodo water, and helps release him from his chains, thus winning the monster’s gratitude.
Onwards to the ball (surely one of the greatest gatherings of wimples in their natural habitat presented on film), step-father Clopin leads a mob that breaks in and accosts Phoebus in mid-woo, causing Esmeralda to proclaim herself unsuited to the aristocracy, and leaves with her step-father. She arranges for a note to be sent to the heart-broken Phoebus, begging him to meet her in a secluded garden for a farewell before she takes up the veil. Unknown to her, Jehan has continued to lust after her, and, trailing her, leaps upon Phoebus while he necks with Esmeralda, stabbing him in the back.
Esmeralda is arrested for the crime, and, under the King-endorsed wickedly augmented interrogation procedures, confesses. For this, there is no redemption: she is to be hung. Phoebus, who has survived the attack, is utterly sick with worry, but as Esmeralda is conveyed to the gallows, past the Cathedral, Quasimodo clambers down the front of Notre Dame, knocks over the guards like bowling pins, and carries Esmeralda into the sanctuary of Mother Church.
My punishment is not that I must wear a wimple, but that I think I look good wearing it.
But Mother Church is infested with a tick, a tick by the name of Jehan, who tells Esmeralda that Phoebus has died and instructed Jehan to take care of Esmeralda. Meanwhile, step-father Clopin reconstitutes his mob to rescue Esmeralda from Notre Dame. Puzzlingly, Notre Dame has boiling lead ready for itinerant mobs, and Quasimodo, in his isolated and damaged condition, does not recognize the mob as rescuers, but as attackers. He pours the boiling lead on their heads as they batter at the doors; Esmeralda is distraught at the deaths of her friends, far below, and in a moment of inattention, Jehan attacks her, meaning to take her by force. Quasimodo, remembering Jehan’s abandonment at his moment of need, throws Jehan from the battlements of Notre Dame into the crowd, far, far below, now a battleground as Phoebus and his men counter-attack the mob. But Quasimodo is not unscathed, as Jehan’s parting gift is several knife thrusts into the hunchback’s body. Quasimodo, mortally injured, manages to return to his one true love, the ringing of the bells of Notre Dame, for one more tug on their cords, and the cords of your heartstrings.
Obviously, there’s a lot going on here: social commentary, moral teachings, and a lot of cleverness I chose not to report. But perhaps the most interesting part is how simply it’s presented. It’s not a labored, tedious movie about the inequalities of France in the late 1400s, but a movie about a man afflicted by both God and Man, and how the thick currents of societal ignorance, sauced by class resentment, lead to general and unjust disaster, as the self-interested decisions of far too many lead to a black ending for those who merely struggle to survive.
This movie is often classified as horror, but I see it as the classic film noir, as the decisions of men & women, inevitable yet defective, lead down the path to black endings, tragically instructive.
Put up with the scratches, the unnatural speed, the captions. Pay attention. Strongly Recommended.
1Which didn’t keep me from making fun of it, but only with the greatest of affection.
2Do film buffs consider this patina or rust?
Concerning misleading hospitals, a reader writes:
It’s a very real thing, as I think I’ve written to you earlier, having experienced it personally at Fairview Southdale [here in the Twin Cities]. Predatory hospitals are practically criminal. Yet another reason for single payer health insurance.
I wonder if there are any sites out in Web-land which list – and shame – those hospitals using 3rd party, out of network, doctors & agencies to staff their emergency rooms.
Completely unprompted, my Arts Editor composed the following while at dinner yesterday.
While save her from his selfless wisdom has a certain charm, I was immediately drawn to the last one, and became aware of the land of Were-Cows.
Moo-hahahaha….
Noctilucent clouds:
NLCs [Noctilucent clouds] are, essentially, clouds of frosted meteor smoke. They form when wisps of summertime water vapor rise toward the top of Earth’s atmosphere. Water molecules stick to the microscopic debris of disintegrated meteoroids, assembling themselves into tiny crystals of ice that glow beautifully in sunlight at the edge of space. [Spaceweather.com]
And here’s a perfectly lovely picture from a satellite. I tried to find the original on the AIM site, but that site really needs to be reorganized; this is shamelessly stolen from Spaceweather.com, which claims it found it on AIM.
Credit: NASA/HU/VT/CU LASP
Not all things Earthly look Earthly.
My Arts Editor favorites from our stroll around Lake Como a couple of days ago. I really have no idea what they might be.
I jumped all over Senator McCain a couple of days ago when he reprimanded the Senate for hyper-partisanship over the healthcare “reform” matter, and then failed to take the proper action by assenting to a procedural “begin the debate” move. By all reports, the current GOP healthcare push in the Senate was terminated by his Nay vote, as reported by NBC News:
Senate Republicans failed to pass a pared-down Obamacare repeal bill early Friday on a vote of 49-51 that saw three of their own dramatically break ranks.
Three Republican senators — John McCain, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski — and all Democrats voted against the bill, dealing a stinging defeat to Republicans and President Donald Trump who made repeal of Obamacare a cornerstone their campaigns.
I don’t know what sort of tightrope Senator McCain is walking, or thinks he’s walking, but it was good of him to recognize the basic unacceptability of everything about the bill he rejected – the process by which it was written, its crudeness, and its reported cruelty to those least able to defend themselves. (In this I depend on the analysis of many others, as I don’t have the time or the expertise for it.)
I’m relieved he, as well as Senators Collins and Murkowski, finally stopped the farce. My heart-felt thanks, both for my own nerves as well as some relatives who depend on the ACA and would be forced to return to uninsured status without it. Has anyone thought of inviting the honored Senators to switch parties?
THAT said, I am fairly much appalled that all of the rebuffs of the various healthcare proposals which occurred in the last couple of days were so bloody close. What is wrong with a party that would cause it to deny a benefit to so many citizens who are otherwise unable to afford it, who benefit from it individually, and, just as importantly, benefits the Nation as a whole? Do they not realize that a Nation of healthy people is a productive, happy Nation? This is not a matter of, Well, I’d rather not be healthy this year, there won’t be any long term consequences.
No, this is a matter of the random blows of Nature laying us low, temporarily or permanently, through little fault of our own. The point of society is mutual support, and healthcare, unlike consumer goods, is all about support so that we can productive in our chosen arenas. Sometimes fantastically so.
But rare is the person who can make a living out of being ill. Maybe Evel Knievel did.
So, what is it? Purely rhetorical, I know; I’ve speculated before that this is simply a party purple with envy. But I felt the urge to vent. Sorry about that.
Noted in an investment report:
Brendan Mathews owns shares of Markel. Karl Thiel owns shares of Markel. Steve Symington owns shares of Markel. Tom Gardner owns shares of Markel and Markel. The Motley Fool owns shares of Markel.
Tom’s evidently excitable.
No doubt computer generated. Still amuses me.
I was fascinated by this CNN article on former megachurch pastor Rob Bell, who was ousted for expressing doubt about the existence of Hell. CNN’s John Blake attended his presentation in Atlanta, the heart of the Bible Belt, where street preachers were threatening attendees standing in line with a visit to, well, Hell if they persisted. I wonder how many were discouraged and left. This particularly caught my attention:
He told the audience he doesn’t like those YouTube videos where Christians “destroy” atheists in debates. Respect people’s doubts, he said. You can’t lead them to where they don’t want to go. Doubt is part of the biblical narrative, he said, quoting Jesus’ cry on the cross: “My God, My God, why has thou forsaken me?”
“The Bible is as much about the absence of God than the presence of God,” he said.
That element of doubt is a necessary element of faith, as I noted in this missive. The lack of same that I find in so many fundamentalists really marks them as folks who have shut up their minds, who have made ruts higher than even those a late-middle-aged man walks in. It may function as a quick-read recognition marker for like minded people, but the many requirements of the intellectual landscape that results makes them peculiarly vulnerable to manipulation, to the con-man.
Like the one in the White House.
So seeing a formerly influential man attended with great interest in the Bible Belt makes me wonder if we’re seeing the first signs of a retreat from the ramparts of desperate fundamentalism. I should think those ramparts won’t collapse anytime soon, but, then again, no doubt most observers were saying the same thing about the Berlin Wall on the evening of 8 November 1989. So, speaking as an agnostic, anything which opens the minds of my religious co-citizens to more flexible attitudes, less attached to dogma which hurts more than it helps, is a good thing.
And evidence that Bell is moving that way is implicit in this:
Do you belong to a church that says women cannot be priests or pastors?
Bad move, Bell said.
Any church that does so betrays the example of Jesus, who treated women as equals. Women in Jesus’ times couldn’t even testify as witnesses in court.
“Yet all the gospels have women as the first witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection,” he said.
Any group which rejects the genius of half its members is a group paralyzed by the fight for power – and a group crippled by its failure to utilize the most important resource available.
NewScientist (15 July 2017, paywall) has a fascinating interview with Françoise Sironi, a psychologist with a specialization that puts her in a field with few peers – assessment of those accused of war crimes and genocide. This may seem prosaic:
What kind of person becomes a perpetrator?
Many have grown up in a violent family, or experienced humiliation early in life. Then when they are recruited, their identity is often broken down in some way. This might involve a traumatic initiation process: children who are forced to become soldiers may be required to kill members of their family, for example. They can no longer return to their families or villages and they become dependent on the new group – their fellow child killers – and in particular, on the commander of that group.
This may help to explain one of the most troubling scenarios, which is medics who facilitate torture – advising interrogators when to turn the electricity off, for example, so that the victim’s heart doesn’t give out too soon. They no longer belong to a group whose identity is defined by doing no harm.
But this is a bit of a gut wrencher:
In 2008, you assessed Duch, the Khmer Rouge leader who tortured and killed thousands at the notorious S-21 prison. What did you conclude?
Duch is an example of what I call a man-system – someone who has relinquished their own identity and adopted that of the ideological system they grew up in. The same is true of Pascal Simbikangwa, who I also assessed and who is in prison for his role in the Rwandan genocide. They don’t fit any known psychiatric category. Their behaviour can only be understood in the geopolitical or historical context in which it arose.
What are the main characteristics of such individuals?
A strong sense of group belonging and duty, and an ability to compartmentalise. Duch was capable of talking normally about his family one minute and discussing his “work” at S-21 the next. It wasn’t easy for him to torture, he told us, yet he trained youngsters to do it. When he expressed regret, it was on behalf of the Khmer Rouge, not himself. At one point I asked, “What happened to your conscience?” He replied he didn’t understand the question.
That last statement’s implications set me back on my heels. Taken in isolation, without acknowledging his work, this devotion to group may be taken to be a high moral attainment.
And what was its use? Horrific torture.
It’s hard not to draw parallels between Duch and the Grand Inquisitor, Torquemada, as they inflicted agony & death on victims who did not conform to some group requirement. I suppose to an anthropologist, trained to abstractly examine human culture, this is no surprise, but for me it’s a startling descent into the amoral enterprise of group competition, where failure often means extinguishment.
And yet, the existence of such torture, and the inevitable public knowledge of same, must inevitably tear upon the nerves of the public. Because of the perception – false that it may be – of the high efficacy of torture, the knowledge that it may be turned on members of the group, rather than outsiders and apostates, its use is inevitable in intra-group situations. And why? While someone like Duch may have managed to submerge self & ego to the greater entity of the group, most others do not. Human ambition will exist, and the stronger it may be, the more likely it will use those tools that come to hand to achieve a superior position.
Thus, the group’s tool may rip that group apart.
Still, I find Duch’s statement unsettling.
Our current highest profile circus in Washington involves Anthony Scaramucci as Trump’s communications director, who is busy threatening to fire everyone AND stab them “in the front” if they dare to leak information to the press. From The New York Times:
The clash between Mr. Scaramucci and Mr. Priebus offers a case study in how the Trump White House operates, a conflict divorced from facts, untethered from the basics of how government works, enabled by the lack of any organizational structure and driven by ambition, fear, animosity and envy.
My Arts Editor shares my feelings on this specific circus:
I wonder what they’re trying to distract us from now.
Tim Tiana Lowe on National Review has similar, if unconscious, sentiments:
If you think that Trump will be incensed by these distractions, then you clearly haven’t been keeping up with the Trumpians. This is a man whose idea of intimacy is Marla Maples boasting on the cover of the New York Post about his sexual prowess, and whose idea of leadership is a public execution (see: Lewandowski, Corey; the entire cast of the Apprentice). Trump grew weary of Sean Spicer’s attempt to stammer appropriate niceties to the Fake News MSM. Why please people when you can entertain them?
Much like his namesake, the scaramouch, the Mooch masquerades as a useful idiot and a sly schemer, performing both roles while never forgetting to enthrall the audience and, most important, the boss. Today, the spotlight is off the dumpster fire that is the Senate’s health-care negotiations, and instead the Beltway class is fanning itself over the impropriety of Scaramucci’s lewd humor and “front-stabbing.” And so, however this turns out, the Mooch wins. He has entertained, shamed his foe, and impressed the boss — just as Trump’s favorites did on The Apprentice. McKay Coppins at The Atlantic notes today that Trump favors surrounding himself with “mini-mes — hard-charging, bellicose big talkers who idolize their boss and labor to perfect their imitations of him.” One could take the point one step further. While Trump takes his steaks well-done with ketchup when not eating Big Macs and Filet-O-Fish, Scaramucci frequents Hunt & Fish Club for veal parmigiana, decked out in Loro Piana suits. In truth, he’s not really Trump in miniature. He’s a genuinely self-made Trump — a Freudian projection of the president’s deepest dreams.
And Steve Benen on Maddowblog comes to the obvious conclusion:
The spectacle of feuds is obviously interesting, but it’s not what’s important. Rather, what matters is the unsettling realization that the White House is being run by clownish amateurs who don’t seem to realize they’re in over their heads, led by an incompetent president who’s a bit too comfortable in the noxious culture he’s created.
It is not a recipe for governing success.
Sure. But let’s ask a simple question: does President Trump’s base realize this?
Think about it. That base has spent an enormous amount of time listening to Rush Limbaugh & other incendiary hosts who had little reason to portray Obama’s Washington in an honest manner. For them, it was disaster, scandal, and bullying 24 hours a day – never mind that the actual scandal count was on the closer order of zero, the bullying consisted of polite suggestions, and the disasters, compared to GOP President Bush, were non-existent[1].
So to them, if they are watching their President closely, this may not seem all that unusual. Without the proper history, perhaps what they see seems like what they’d expect from a President Trump – a lot of drama and temper tantrums, and meanwhile things are getting done.
Of course, there’s a big difference between the small business world – or The Apprentice – and a government with nuclear weapons and multitudinous international responsibilities. But is this clear to his base?
Do they actually realize how unusual and dangerous Trump’s actions will be?
Or has the right-wing echo chamber so cut them off from reality that they think this is all normal?
1In a note far too depressing to explore deeply, I must ask, Does conservatism now simply consist of dishonest messaging? Is that the full content of American conservatism?
Como LakeLake Como, Ramsey County, Minnesota, July 26, 2017.
Intromittent organ:
An intromittent organ is a general term for an external organ of a male organism that is specialized to deliver sperm during copulation. Intromittent organs are found most often in terrestrial species, as most aquatic species fertilize their eggs externally, although there are exceptions. For many species in the animal kingdom, characteristic of internal fertilization. [Wikipedia]
There might be a word missing there, although I’m not sure what it might be. I ran across this word/phrase on Greg Fallis’ blog:
To some Doctor Who fans, however, there is one immutable characteristic of the Doctor. One physical facet of the Doctor’s being than is indispensable, regardless of the regeneration process. One supreme, conclusive physical attribute that defines the Doctor. An extendable intromittent organ that acts as a sperm delivery system. To these fans, the Doctor’s physical body is apparently nothing more than an extension of the Doctor’s dick. Absent that organ, the Doctor is a sham.
In other words — no dick, no Doctor.
In Washingtonian Elaina Plott covers the post-political career of former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R), who was unexpectedly beaten by a primary challenger who alleged that Cantor was soft on the ACA – typical RINO-speak. How has Cantor, now in the private sector, changed since then?
It’s far easier to cop to political gamesmanship when out of office. But Cantor says if he could do it over again, he wouldn’t have bought into this “expectation . . . that says if it’s not everything, then it can’t be conservative.” He pauses. “That’s a perspective I’ve gained.”
***
Yet here’s the other shocker: despite all that, Cantor’s read of how party leadership is navigating the current landscape is nothing short of sanguine.
While he won’t go so far as to say Trump’s presidency has been a “disaster,” as Boehner recently put it, Cantor admits he’s less than charmed by the state of the West Wing: “The lack of humility right now in the system is striking to me. I’m worried about Trump’s rhetoric. . . . If things keep going like they are now without any real progress, it’s a problem for electoral victories for our party.”
But strikingly, he won’t criticize House speaker Paul Ryan or others for not demanding a new course. Cantor does say that, were he speaker, he would “answer the questions I’m asked,” a subtle dig at Ryan’s penchant for evading Trump-related questions from the podium. But that’s as pointed as he’ll get.
Why not demand more from leadership? For one thing, Cantor is convinced that the party’s current state—the fury roiling the base and the White House alike—is an aberration. He calls the moment an “anger detour,” which sounds less like a label for a larger GOP identity crisis and more like an inconvenient square in Candy Land.
His position, however, reflects that of many in the establishment—that a pro-immigration, pro-market strain of conservatism, the one Cantor championed at the end of his tenure, is still the future of the party. It’s why he helped raise funds for Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign even after his own primary defeat was seen by many to be the first sign of a populist wave to come. It’s why Cantor continues to believe that President Trump, his policies, and the discontent that wrought them are mere hiccups and that at some point they’ll all cycle out.
“It’s very captivating to a lot of people right now because of the extremes of the language, of the Twitter, of the activity, and it’s just . . . it’s really a lot about showmanship,” he says. “It could end up to all be a lot of steam that, in the end, the implementation will be a lot more consistent with what I think the party’s about.”
I find it striking that his primary worry is not about where his party is going, demographically and philosophically, but about electoral victories, and, implicitly, that’s how to measure the success of your party. I would call that the necessary but not sufficient part of the political equation – are you winning, AND …. where it’s a big AND.
On the other side of that AND is the more important part of the equation, in my opinion – are your goals for which you strive for victory good or bad for the country. Properly aligned, the party and the country should prosper together.
And, honestly, every time the GOP has been in control, we’ve seen economic disaster. I’m simply hoping that the incompetency at the top, and the basic stasis in Congress, will result in only minimal damage. Unfortunately, the judiciary may be burdened with incompetent ideologues for decades to come.
This is the price we pay for “change in Washington.”
Look deep into my eyes!
The title may be a mystery, but the movie’s goals aren’t. In Boston Blackie And The Law (1946), the goals are the good-natured ribbing of the boys in blue, keeping the police at bay long enough to remove the cloud of suspicion that has inevitably formed over the heads of Blackie and his trusty sidekick, The Runt, and to solve the sordid murder which happens midway through the story.
This is an above average example of this 14 movie series. If there are any troubling plot holes, they escaped my attention, and Blackie impersonating a magician makes for some unusual scenes. Not that this is a sparkling movie, of course. The pacing could have been peppier, the dialog is mostly highly mundane, with few if any lines that raise the eyebrows, and the cops as latter-day Keystone Kops are a trifle tiresome. How either of the lead cops don’t end up in the welfare office is an eternal mystery.
But the guns roar, the bodies fall, the clever ploy wins the day, and in the end we’re exposed to the great lesson of America, honored almost entirely in the breach, that the lust for money will lead to a bad end.
On Lawfare Nicholas Weaver discusses the recent closure of the currency exchange site BTC-e, its effect on the ransomware market, and how the technology of Bitcoin may be a bit tricky for criminals to handle. The US prosecution requires that criminal activity took place on US territory, and Tradehill, which was used by the owner of BTC-e for alleged money-laundering, is in California:
Since Tradehill was located in California, this gives a strong California nexus for all these charges, which is very important. BTC-e may be a global criminal enterprise, but the U.S. Attorney has to prove that each crime has a tie to the district where the prosecution takes place. With MtGox located in Japan and BTC-e in Eastern Europe, only Tradehill’s involvement gives the United States jurisdiction to prosecute for the theft [from MtGox].
It also is remarkably easy to prove. The “Blockchain is forever,” as the saying goes—which makes a criminal’s Bitcoin mistakes forever as well. Since it is now straightforward to identify the chain of custody as Bitcoin transfers were stolen from stolen from MtGox, then moved to a wallet belonging to Vinnik on TradeHill, these charges will be much easier to prove and won’t require decoding a maze of shell companies and Eastern European financial transactions.
And, in the age of computers, such tracing may be the matter of seconds, rather than the laborious checking of paper files from yester-era. Something to consider, young criminals.
At the White House Press Briefing of July 24th, wherein the ban on transgender Americans serving in the military was allegedly explained, this was pointed out (I don’t typically read these things myself) by Steve Bannon:
Q But do you say to the transgender community that he is still committed to fight for them? And how is this not not fighting for them?
MS. SANDERS: I think the President has made very clear he’s committed to fighting for all Americans.
One of the most effective corrective actions in our arsenal of non-violent weapons – particularly among ourselves – is laughter. Ridicule.
And this would have been the moment where the entire press corp could have simply burst out in a chorus of laughter. Maybe a bit of pointing at the press secretary. But make it clear that they recognize White House absurdities, and will write about them as absurdities
And let that go out on the airwaves.
Cameras become cheaper and we record the happenings on Earth in more and more detail. This has been happening for years, of course, and has revealed that there can be a distinct lack of eyes to actually evaluate all that video – for example, England has been recording certain cities in great deal as a crime detection & prevention measure and then discovered they didn’t have the personnel to watch all the movies.
But that’s all mundane. We also have the starry eyed crazies who watch the skies, both in person and – lucky us – on video. Spaceweather.com references the Gemini Observatory and its Cloud Camera All Night Video, which keeps an eye on the weather near Mauna Kea and its complement of expensive observatories. And what did they see?
On July 24, a rare lightning phenomenon called a Gigantic Jet. The general collection of movies is provided at the link, above, but the movie containing the specific link is here:
I managed to catch the lightning at the 5 second mark, scraped the screen, and present my lazy, unprocessed effort below. Here’s Spaceweather.com on the phenomenon:
Sometimes called “space lightning,” Gigantic Jets and their cousins the sprites are true space weather phenomena. They inhabit the upper atmosphere alongside auroras, meteors and noctilucent clouds. Some researchers believe they are linked to cosmic rays: subatomic particles from deep space striking the top of Earth’s atmosphere produce secondary electrons that could, in turn, provide the spark for these upward bolts.
The link to cosmic rays is particularly interesting at this time. For the past two years, space weather balloons have observed a steady increase in deep space radiation penetrating our atmosphere. This increase is largely due to the decline in the solar cycle. Flagging solar wind pressure and weakening sunspot magnetic fields allow more cosmic rays into the inner solar system–a trend which is expected to continue for for years to come. These changes could add up to more Gigantic Jets in the future. Stay tuned!
More pictures, more discussion at the link above!
Jejune:
1 Naive, simplistic, and superficial.
‘their entirely predictable and usually jejune opinions’2 (of ideas or writings) dry and uninteresting. [Oxford Dictionaries]
I used it in this post.
Chaos Theory is my overblown reference to the idea that a small change in one part of a system can have unpredictably large effects in another. I had that reaction while reading Stuart Vyse’s article in Skeptical Inquirer on an academic analysis on one of the causes of the Great Recession of a few years back:
In the 1990s, personal bankruptcies were rising sharply, and the banking industry began a lobbying campaign to stiffen the bankruptcy requirements—a move that was expected to increase the profits of credit card companies. Attempts to pass a bill failed until President George W. Bush was reelected in 2004. Finally, after big banks spent $40 million in campaign contributions and millions more in lobbying efforts, the bill went into effect in late 2005 (Labaton 2005). It had a number of provisions, but most importantly it increased the up-front costs of filing for bankruptcy and made the process more onerous.
This is known as the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA). So what of it?
Sources: U.S. Courts and Mortgage Bankers Association. via Stuart Vyse
Although it took a few years to figure it out, several economic studies now conclude that the BAPCPA was a precipitating factor in the ensuing debacle of 2008 (Albanesi and Nosal 2016; Li et al. 2011; Morgan et al. 2012). According to these investigations, once the new bankruptcy requirements went into effect, many people who were struggling with debt found bankruptcy was no longer an option. Ironically, they could no longer afford to declare bankruptcy. But what remained an option was not paying the bills, and beginning in 2007, a little over a year after BAPCPA went into effect, an increasing number of homeowners chose to stop paying the biggest bill of all—the mortgage. The switch from bankruptcies to foreclosures can be seen in Figure 1.
The rest is history. Many of those mortgages had been bundled together and sold to investors, and when the value of those mortgage-backed securities started to tank, so did the stock market, the employment rate, and the economy in general. Obviously there are many other factors that went into the Great Recession. BAPCPA was not the only cause. But the crash of 2008 started when the real estate bubble finally burst in 2007, and the bursting of the bubble gained steam when thousands of homeowners stopped paying their mortgages. Had bankruptcy still been an option, some of those people might have been in a position to keep paying the mortgage.
The beauty of bankruptcy as a form of financial failure is that most of the effects are restricted to the individual filers and the banks. Foreclosure is a different matter entirely. When your neighbor forecloses, your house loses value, and the real estate market and the economy in general are affected.
It’s a lovely causal link chain. And the illustration of how a relatively minor change to the bankruptcy code causes the jello to squeeze out of the mold in an unexpected area is a reminder of the lessons of chaos theory.
But – skipping the debate about bank greed and how that leads to corruption[1] – I’d like to return to my hobby horse[2] by observing closely the responsibilities we can expect the various entities to assume. The bankers who pushed for BAPCPA feel they have a responsibility to increase their profits, and in this depraved age of chasing the dollar, rather than caring for the community which ultimately generates those profits for you in the first place, they do not have the expertise to make judgments concerning the rules which govern them. Indeed, in this extremely complex world of international banking, it may be asking too much of a company, complex in its own right, with rivals which conceal their own internal states, to make exceedingly wise rules concerning their own conduct; and given the rules of engagement for the private sector, leaving a chink in the armor merely invites competitors to take advantage.
Which leads to the responsibilities of government, primarily that of regulation. In this age of Trumpian-anti-regulation, it may seem jejune or even retro, but the propaganda of the right needs to be beaten back before we risk another Great Recession, because proper regulation enhances business. For the doubter, merely consider, following the repudiation of Glass-Steagall, the final fates of Lehman Brothers, Wachovia, or Merrill Lynch. In this instance, the government failed, under the guidance of the party of business, to properly decide not to pass this bill, and the subsequent fallout was quite damaging to both Main Street and Wall Street.
Government not only has this responsibility as part of our cultural remit, but because it’s the natural assignment – government should not be prone to the same pressures as that of business, it has the resources to take the long view, to conduct the deep research needed to make these decisions properly. To keep society safe.
If I may extend this, business cannot make these decisions because they cannot reliably think beyond their own individual boundaries. A single business conducting its business in an unethical manner may cause little systemic damage, but when all the businesses in a niche – such as banking – are conducting business in the same destructive manner, we begin to see damage at our very foundations. This multi-fold effect, invisible to business, must be visible to some regulatory entity, or the so-called free enterprise system is a failure. Fortunately, it is visible, if with some difficulty, so we are left with only the requirement to have the bravery to pursue the proper regulation.
And not fall victim to the amateur’s claim of the evil of regulation.
1It’s a worthy debate, but without proper framing & understanding it just collapses into insults.
2You’d think it would be dead by now, wouldn’t you?
Steve Benen on Maddowblog notes President Trump continues to negatively tweet about Attorney General Sessions:
But in the larger context, the president whining about the acting FBI director isn’t about McCabe; it’s about Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whom Trump apparently believes he can force out of office through rude tweets. Indeed, this morning’s missives were ostensibly about McCabe – a popular target in conservative media of late – but not that the president started by asking rhetorically why Sessions didn’t replace McCabe.
I assume tweets like these will continue indefinitely until Sessions quits?
Yes. If Trump fires Sessions, then it’s an admission that he made a mistake. The Presidential Ego cannot tolerate the idea that he may make major errors.
It’s also an admission that someone who looks the part can’t play the part, which is apparently important to Trump.
Finally, it’s an admission that someone of an ideology compatible with Trump is an incompetent, and while that’s hardly damning of an entire movement – incompetents abound regardless of ideology, something which ideologues and voters should remember regardless of position – it’s still a problem when Trump thinks he’s picked the best and Sessions turns out to be useless to Trump’s needs. And may end up being one of the least distinguished AG’s in American history.
Gotta wonder what Trump’s like on the golf course. Probably blames his clubs for everything.
Not of use anymore? Just lay there on your face.
Near Traverse City, Michigan.
Ineluctable:
not to be avoided, changed, or resisted : inevitable : an ineluctable fate [Merriam-Webster]
Noted in an interview in NewScientist (15 July 2017, paywall) with Françoise Sironi:
Helping both torturers and their victims didn’t strike you as incompatible?
Not at all. By then I had realised that to understand one, you have to understand the other. For example, a torturer inflicting sexual abuse might say, “You’ll never be a man again.” To treat the person those words were directed at, you need an insight into the torturer’s intentions. But often the victim is too ashamed to repeat this. I was ineluctably drawn to become interested in torturers.
I will have a bit more on this interview later.
Kevin Drum read Elisabeth Rosenthal’s An American Sickness and has this summary. EmCare is a company that will run your Emergency Room for you – and isn’t in-network with anyone’s insurance plan, apparently. Over to you, Kevin:
Hospitals know perfectly well that patients expect doctors at in-network hospitals to also be in-network. That’s why hospitals negotiate with insurers in the first place: to get a place in the insurer’s network so they can attract the insurer’s customers.
Likewise, if they contract with a third-party firm to run a part of their hospital, they know perfectly well what will happen if the third-party hasn’t negotiated with the same set of insurers: their patients will get outrageous out-of-network bills.
Unlike patients, hospitals are sophisticated actors. They know enough to ask whether or not EmCare’s doctors belong to their networks. Obviously they did ask, and just as obviously the answer was no. But they signed up with EmCare anyway.
But when you need an ER, do you have the time & inclination to check whether the local ER is in-network? Are you smart enough to ask that specific question?
I know I’m not.
Here’s the thing – I doubt whoever is running EmCare will consider themselves immoral or unethical. To them, this is simply finding a lovely loophole through which to make money, and since they’re businessmen, they’re completely moral. Much like the for-profit prison companies who lobby for longer prison sentences in order to fill their prisons, it’s not the role of companies to look to the greater good. They provide services and make a profit – and if that profit can be increased, their morality is improved just as much.
Now, I’m not yammering for government to step in just yet. It’s not yet clear to me that the interests & skills of government would be appropriate to this situation – especially the Federal Government just at the moment. I might be more interested in a Board of Medical Business Ethics that has a realistic view of the situation and makes rules based on a just understanding. That’s just a rough idea, though, and might not work.
But my point is that the intrusion of private sector sensibilities into the health sector has led to what sounds like a really awful situation. Just called me Broken Record Hue.
And all this based on my reading of a review of a book. I suppose I should read it.
