Category Archives: Uncategorized

The problem of ineffective antibiotics won’t go away, as NewScientist (21 January 2017) sadly notes:

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported that a woman who died in Nevada last August was infected with Klebsiella bacteria that were resistant to 26 antibiotics – everything her hospital could throw at it. …

 

Her infection might have been cured by one drug that is licensed for uses like this in Europe, but not in the US. Fosfomycin is an old drug that was replaced in the 1980s by more modern cephalosporin antibiotics. Researchers are now trying to resurrect and relicense such drugs for use in the increasing number of cases where newer ones fail.

Concerning Fosfomycin, Wikipedia notes:

The drug is well tolerated and has a low incidence of harmful side-effects.^[5] However, development of bacterial resistance under therapy is a frequent occurrence and makes fosfomycin unsuitable for sustained therapy of severe infections. It is not recommended for children and those over 75 years old.^[8]

Additional uses have been proposed.^[9] The global problem of advancing antimicrobial resistance has led to a renewed interest in its use more recently.

Gotta wonder how long Fosfomycin will remain useful.

Alakazam the Great (1960), listed as Japanese anime (our version was dubbed by such names as Jonathan Winters) of a Chinese story, is quite candid about its message: punishment and redemption. Alakazam is the king of the monkeys, having obtained his throne through great, if reluctant bravery – and then going on to obtain great conceit and pride. (Side lesson: bravery does not make for leadership or management skills. These tests should be connected to the eventual skills needed, eh?) He compels a wizard to teach him magic, which he begins to use to his advantage. The king of Majutsu Land, aka Heaven, takes note of his pride and resolves to teach him humility, sending his human son, the Prince, down from heaven and requiring Alakazam to escort him through the desert and over the mountains.

Hey, lady, does that flower ever come off?

During the trip they encounter various obstacles, including a criminal pig and a human cannibal, both of whom the Prince and Alakazam convince to join them in their quest, thus giving up their former ways and playing into the theme of redemption. In their toils and troubles, yeah, let me save my fingers. We know how this ends, no?

Aaaand all this while ignoring the entreaties of a beautiful lady monkey.

This is mostly a pell mell movie, leaping from scene to scene with scarcely a segue to be found. Not that the pace is uniform, as we do drowse for a bit in a prison, and plod, if ever so briefly, through a desert; but it’s never leisurely, and quite often frantic – do not attempt to knit a shawl during this movie. And there is no lack of characterization of Alakazam, as we both acquired a great distaste for this impulsive, domineering monkey; many other supporting characters are also flamboyantly driven, including the wife of the primary antagonist, who was an ambiguous fascinating character.

So for all that it’s an obvious movie, we watched the whole of it. We were never quite sure where it would turn next, partially because we didn’t have time to think about it; the action was forced upon us so quickly that we spent more time deconstructing the art (which was surprisingly interesting) than thinking about the story.

Oddly enough, the style of animation also reminded me of a Russian version of The Nutcracker we saw at The Museum of Russian Art over Christmas, although much shorter in length, which can also be found here. I’m not entirely sure why; the points of similarity are the somewhat slap dash animation styles, the use of animals in key roles, a studied ignorance of physics, and a certain dispatch to the storytelling, although not with the same frantic nature of Alakazam the Great.

Today, this movie may be an orphan in terms of audience appeal. Certainly, the historical anime gourmand will take notice of it, but that is a small audience. Children will expect a more polished product and perhaps be bored with it, while adults will find this basically a bit too juvenile, although fun if you’re in the mood for it.

It’s hard to stamp Recommended on it, especially as we nearly gave up on it early on, but there is a certain charm to it. If you happen to run across it on TV, as we did, give it a whirl. Maybe it’ll tickle your penny.

Kate Bannen on FP reports on the National Security Council’s transformation:

Even before he was given a formal seat on the National Security Council’s “principals committee” this weekend by President Donald Trump, Bannon was calling the shots and doing so with little to no input from the National Security Council staff, according to an intelligence official who asked not to be named out of fear of retribution.

“He is running a cabal, almost like a shadow NSC,” the official said. He described a work environment where there is little appetite for dissenting opinions, shockingly no paper trail of what’s being discussed and agreed upon at meetings, and no guidance or encouragement so far from above about how the National Security Council staff should be organized. …

The lack of a paper trail documenting the decision-making process is also troubling, the intelligence official said. For example, under previous administrations, after a principals or deputies meeting of the National Security Council, the discussion, the final agreement, and the recommendations would be written up in what’s called a “summary of conclusions” — or SOC in government-speak.

“Under [President George W. Bush], the National Security Council was quite strict about recording SOCs,” said Matthew Waxman, a law professor at Columbia University who served on Bush’s National Security Council. “There was often a high level of generality, and there may have been some exceptions, but they were carefully crafted.”

These summaries also provided a record to refer back to, especially important if a debate over an issue came up again, including among agencies that needed to implement the conclusions reached.

Certainly the ascent of extremist Islamophobe Steve Bannon to a permanent seat on the NSC is a matter of concern – President Bush forbade the presence of political strategist Karl Rove at NSC meetings, and while Obama permitted his political strategists to accept invites, they didn’t have permanent seats – according to this article’s author, Kate Bannen. National security should not be warped by political considerations.

This lack of paper trail, though, is something of a sign of a modern Keystone Cops, the comedy troupe that lampooned the real cops back in the 1910s. Why? Because it’s a truism of modern management that in order to evaluate your methods, you have to know what was decided and why, develop baselines, and evaluate your results. These things must be recorded, or they don’t exist.

Avoiding writing things down and evaluating decisions? This is the mark of an amateur, someone who’s too tied up in his self-importance to realize that governance is a team game. Hey, he’ll remember this decision – after all, it had been made before the meeting started. He’s Just Too Good To Be Wrong. Everyone else should Just Remember It. Another sign of amateur hour? Kate notes that her source says, “There is zero room for dissenting opinion.” Think about it. No reasoned debate, enlivened with facts and interpretations. Either you’re singing in the choir or your job, your entire career is teetering on the edge.

This is, as anyone’s worked on hard problems knows, a recipe for disaster.

So what’s my point? He can certainly cause chaos and uncertainty – indeed, as a critical part of our defense infrastructure, the failure to come into governance with a plan for the NSC, as Bannen also reports, is an echo of just how much of a disaster the Trump Administration has been so far. Bannon is a critical part of this failure. His perception of Islam being a fatal enemy may cloud the fact that the Russians, as an homogenuous ethnic group and equipped with heavy weapons, are far more capable of causing us upset than a relatively lightly armed religious group riven with both theological and ethnic divisions. Obama’s strategy, no doubt built during meetings fraught with dissenting opinions, of picking off leaders and letting the groups run around more or less headless, keeps us out of painful wars that could prove disastrous. ISIS is being driven out of the cities is had conquered, out of territory it claimed. Does Bannon have a clue as to how this is working? Has he bothered to read the reports? Or does he regard himself as the expert? He’s dangerous – but he’s acting like an unconscious buffoon.

Honestly, if Trump was a smart guy (and he keeps telling us he is – makes you wonder how often Einstein reassured us he was smart), he’d thank Bannon for his help during the campaign – and show him the door. He’d get a troublemaking amateur out of the gears of government while giving more than half the populace some assurance that he’s taking the job seriously.

But Trump thinks he’s smart, so it won’t happen. Better to impeach Trump sooner rather than later, then see if Pence is smart enough to eject him – or if we’re going to have to up the count of Presidents yet again.

Politico asks 13 legal scholars to evaluate SCOTUS nominee Gorsuch, and, after agreeing that he’s top notch and a great writer, the usual cacophony of opinions are produced. I found Professor Farber to be a little naive:

Still, he’s a Trump nominee, and he’s nominated for a seat that should properly belong to Garland. So why not filibuster and try to block the nomination? One reason is that the Republicans were wrong in what they did to Garland, and the Democrats were right that this kind of behavior is damaging to the Supreme Court as an institution. But there are two other reasons. First, blocking a nominee for a year when you have a majority of the Senate is one thing; blocking any appointment for four years when you’re in the minority is much less feasible (and more damaging to the court).

Second, the key thing about Gorsuch from my point of view is that he’s principled—and he seems to have enough backbone to stand up to Trump. We could use that on the court. The fact that Gorsuch has spoken against judicial deference to the executive branch in matters of statutory interpretation makes it more likely that he won’t rubberstamp Trump’s actions.

The problem is that faced by all parents at one time or another: the little boy or girl who demands something that isn’t their’s and screams bloody murder if they don’t get it. Does the wise parent reward them by giving them the lollipop?

No. Proper punishment is administered, instead.

The Senate GOP, McConnell in particular, has behaved like petulant children, and they should be punished for it. I suppose, as many commentators have noted, that the GOP will change the rules to eliminate the filibuster, and thus the Democrats won’t be able to enforce a punishment – and that will be sad, because their should be consequences for the GOP abandonment of the rules of the United States in pursuit of raw political power. The sad thing is that the traditional punishment switch, the ballot box, will not reach to Gorsuch (and, yes, I remain in the corner of making judge immune to ballot boxes), and given the GOP’s gerrymandering ways, they have insulated themselves from the ways of adults in a number of States, such as North Carolina.

No offense to Judge Gorsuch. I’m sure he’s a very nice man, and legal opinion suggests he has the respect of many judges and Supreme Court justices. He’s just the guy caught in the whirlwind.

Perhaps he and Judge Garland should form a club.

Retraction Watch publishes an interview with Raphael Didham, editor of Insect Conservation and Diversity, on the problems of recruiting peer reviewers. This is particularly interesting – and amusing:

Retraction Watch: You talk about the current problem of “zero-sum” reviewing. Could you define that in the context of the scientific peer review system?

Raphael Didham: … Many scientists are inherently ‘analytical’ people, and naturally gravitate towards accountable metrics of performance. In a zero-sum game, researchers could quantify the minimum effort required to resolve the ‘reviewer debt’ owed when they publish one of their own papers, simply by calculating the number of reviews received per paper (k) divided by the number of coauthors per paper (n). This simple formula, Sk/n, seems disarmingly ‘objective’ and superficially ‘fair’ in apportioning obligation – but actually holds a number of inherent biases that are having an unduly negative effect on reviewer willingness to review.

RW: Why is “zero-sum” reviewing such a problem in science publishing today?

RD: We believe that a growing philosophy of ‘zero-sum’ reviewing is one of the factors contributing to the increasing difficulty in finding willing reviewers these days. What this does is create a bottleneck in manuscript processing, and growing delays in the publication of new research.

For scientists who are accustomed to subtlety, such a gross approach and lack of forethought is slightly shocking. As Raphael points out, there’s a lot more on the positive end of the scale than just … numbers. The problem may lie in the current general Western Civ attitudes towards anything – or, as I once retorted to my fencing coach, I’m part of the Instant Gratification Generation! But here’s Raphael’s far more measured response:

Readers should reflect on the reasons why they are doing science in the first place, and take a moment to consider the genuine competitive advantage they can gain in their career from receiving an advance preview of new developments in the field before they are even published. Peer review provides a low-cost synthesis of how up to date you yourself are with current literature, a benchmark of comparative performance with other researchers in the field, and the opportunity to shape the conceptual and technical direction of your field through critical feedback.

Michael Price on Lawfare discusses a specific problem the Muslim ban will encounter in the courts, at least so long as Trump tries to use § 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA):

And in 1987, Congress responded by passing the “Moynihan-Frank Amendment,” explicitly prohibiting the President from excluding foreigners based on their beliefs. The provision became permanent with the enactment of the Immigration Act of 1990, as codified in § 212(a)(3)(C)(iii). The statute made clear Congress’s intent to end the practice of ideological exclusion. As the Senate Foreign Relations Committee put it:

For many years, the United States has embarrassed itself by excluding prominent foreigners from visiting the United States solely because of their political beliefs. Among those excluded, or harrassed [sic], in recent years have been Nobel Laureates Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Pablo Neruda, and authors Graham Greene, Doris Lessing, and Carlos Fuentes. In these cases and others, the excluded individuals had done no more than exercise rights to freedom of expression and association enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – rights promoted in congressionally-initiated human rights legislation and constitutionally protected for all U.S. citizens.

S. Rep. No. 100-75 at 11, 100th Cong., 1st Sess. (1987). The House similarly decried the Executive’s use of immigration law to deny American citizens “the opportunity to have access to the full spectrum of international opinion,” stating that “the reputation of the United States as an open society, tolerant of divergent ideas, has suffered.” H.R. Conf. Rep. No. 100-475 at 162-63, 100th Cong., 1st Sess. (1987). Indeed, according to the legislative history, the whole point was “to take away the executive branch’s authority to deny visas to foreigners solely because of the foreigner’s political beliefs or because of his anticipated speech in the United States”—in what the Senate Report deemed an “affirmation of the principles of the First Amendment.” S. Rep. No. 100-75 at 11.

Lloyd Alter on Treehugger.com reports on the delivery of a battery farm designed to handle peak power requirements currently managed using natural gas peaker plants. The source? Tesla:

One of those alternatives that people dreamed about just a few years ago was giant batteries, and Elon Musk promised that he would make them in his new Nevada factory. What is really astonishing is that in just three months, Tesla has delivered a giant battery farm with 396 stacks of batteries that can provide enough electricity to power 15,000 houses for four hours,…

Natural gas peaker plants are expensive and controversial; you want them near the user, but the NIMBYs come out in force. Battery packs are much simpler, they are modular and they are scalable.

Not everyone is sure this will work out. Lloyd references skeptic Jamie Condliffe of MIT Technology Review, who opines:

But there are some problems. First, lithium batteries remain expensive. It’s not clear how much this installation cost, but Bloomberg last year noted that Tesla will sell anyone a system a tenth the size of California’s for $2.9 million. Still, as electric cars hit the mainstream, large lithium batteries are expected to fall dramatically in price.

A bigger concern is with the hardware itself. Tesla doesn’t say how many cycles that the batteries in its Powerpack systems, which make up the installation, can tolerate before they degrade and reach the end of their useful life. But like other lithium-ion batteries, it’s likely in the thousands—probably around 5,000, the same as its Powerwall units. That’s not bad in a domestic setting, but could be quickly devoured in a grid setting.

Problem is, we’re not overrun with alternatives. The quest to build a great grid battery doesn’t sound too tough: it simply has to be cheap, made using common materials, and resilient to repeated charge-discharge cycles. The batteries don’t have to be portable, so factors such as size and weight aren’t a design constraint.

Given recent incidents of little smartphone batteries blowing up, I wonder how Tesla has safeguarded this “battery farm”. Space separation? Physical barriers? It’d be terrible if a single defective battery destroyed the rest of the farm long before they physically just wore out. And do they have a plan for recycling once they’re worn out?

“It’s the American tradition that, when a SCOTUS appointment falls to a one-term President, the pick is delayed until the next two term President.”

– future Pelosi and Schumer

Kevin Drum is worried about the insurance companies and why they aren’t lobbying harder for retention of healthy contributors to the pools, aka the “mandate”, which Trump apparently wishes to do away with:

Julian Pecquet on AL Monitor reports the echoes of the objections from the US Foreign Service to the travel ban:

“As a result of this ban, many of those fleeing war and persecution have been adversely and unjustly affected,” the Mecca-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation said in a statement Jan. 30. “Such selective and discriminatory acts will only serve to embolden the radical narratives of extremists and will provide further fuel to the advocates of violence and terrorism.”

And the Saudi-backed government in Yemen, which is battling Houthi rebels and welcomes Trump’s stance against the Houthis’ Iranian patron, also denounced what they call Trump’s “ban.”

“We resent the US ban,” the Yemeni Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “Such decisions support the stance of extremists and sow divisions.”

Even the Iraqi Kurds, many of whom trust Trump to be more supportive than former President Obama of their dreams of independence, are keeping a nervous eye on the developments of the past few days. Like other Iraqis, they are covered by new regulations denying them entry into the United States for 90 days.

Populist stands, popular as they may be, are naturally developed by those who have little experience in the relevant domains. As the amateurs muck about, the innocent victims cry out, but those responsible will never apologize and only relent with the greatest reluctance, for they will hide behind the bush of conveying the desires of the people, the deliverer of wishes; but such is not the role of our representatives in government, but to instead find and implement effectual policies; and, much like Trump’s self-proclaimed military wit, discard the merely popular; for the popular is the dreams of the inexperienced, unnuanced, unsubtle.

And the world is a very subtle, non-linear place.

The Independent has an article illustrating the dangers of reaching for goals out of legend – for scientists. They were in search of metallic hydrogen:

To do the research, the scientists crushed tiny bits of hydrogen beneath diamond anvils, exerting more pressure on it than is found at the centre of the Earth. Small steps forward have been made through the work, but no researchers have yet been able to show off the shiny metal that would be expected to be seen.

That is what the two Harvard scientists claimed to have done. But they cannot yet show off the piece of metal because it is still stuck between the jaws of the anvil – and they say that removing it might cause it to disappear entirely.

The researchers believe however that the reflective and shiny material they can see crushed in the anvil is metallic hydrogen. One of the scientists, Isaac Silvera, said that when looking through a microscope at the sample it looked to be shiny and so “you can only believe [it] is a metal”.

But …

The Harvard researchers first posted their work to arXiv, a website that collects scientific studies before they are published through peer-reviewed journals, in October. At that point it attracted huge amounts of criticism from other scientists who argued that it was based on a mistake.

But the paper was published this week in the journal Science all the same, heralding a succession of headlines that claimed that humanity had made a huge breakthrough that could shed light on some of the central questions of the universe.

The pressure to publish on research professors – especially those at high end institutes such as these two at Harvard – may have caused them to not be complete in their work. After all, the phenomenon of duplicate discoveries is fairly well known, and even if they didn’t know of any competing teams, that doesn’t mean they aren’t out there.

The two wanted to “… publicise their “breakthrough event”, and that further experiments would shed more light.” It’s not a gamble to not check your results thoroughly, it’s really just bad science. I can understand them wanting to get the stick in the ground, marking the territory as their’s – but I fear they may end up on the Retraction Watch web site.

Academy Award winning Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) stars Gregory Peck confronting anti-Semitism in its American form – the nearly invisible miasma of a people who might have formally accepted the American stricture that religion should not matter in one’s social and business dealings, but haven’t actually invested in it. A writer with an assignment, he begins telling all manner of people that he’s Jewish, and observes their reactions – until his own young son is subjected to the more honest anti-Semitism of small children, and while he was morally outraged at what he had encountered from both Christian and Jew alike, this emotional pain is the real lesson he needs to help him write his story.

As one would expect from an award winner, there are many superb aspects to this movie, from the the excellent illustrations of the moral arc of the movie, to the acting and photography (we saw it on TV in the original B&W). Peck is his usual sympathetic, complex self, showing a professional skill at squirming uncomfortably in social situations; the blanket covering hypocrisy is always a little rumpled. Within the greater arc of American history, this is some of the most subtle bigotry, unlike the more raw versions practiced on the Africans, Irish, Germans, Chinese, and no doubt others.

All this aside, while the story is fairly timeless, this telling is inevitably tied to the artifacts of the era, which is just after World War II. It could have hurt, but such things as the man who functions as the directory of a building has an organic, authentic feeling to it, which makes the movie interesting from the academic viewpoint of collecting archaic customs of the time.

While this movie is unhurried, it doesn’t drag through unnecessary scenes; each is important and will tell you something, although occasionally it’s nothing more than Love is a Blindfold. Indeed, beyond the title (I can’t think of a good replacement, but this title is awful), and the ending (I think he got the wrong girl in the end, but then the other one reminds me of my Arts Editor), it’s hard to find much to complain about. This is a long movie and you will find this movie is, as my Arts Editor says, good for you. If you don’t mind such movies, then it’s Highly Recommended.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. From Roger Pielke, Jr.’s 2010 book The Climate Fix, Chapter 7 (Disasters, Death, and Destruction), p 174:

Consider that presidents declare 50 percent more flood disasters in years in which they are running for reelection than in other years. There is obviously a signal there. It’s just not a climate signal.

Indicative of the difficulties in analyzing proxies of climate data – sometimes politics intrudes. I wonder if Obama did the same thing…

Avuncular:

suggestive of an uncle especially in kindliness or geniality <avuncular indulgence> [Merriam-Webster]

Encountered in “Inside the Trial of Dylann Roof,” Jelani Cobb, The New Yorker:

Judge Richard Gergel was presiding. He is an avuncular silver-haired man with a reputation for efficiency and a liberal bent; in 2014, he issued a ruling that same-sex couples have the right to marry in South Carolina, and he was responsible for installing a portrait of Jonathan Jasper Wright, the state’s first black Supreme Court justice, in the Court building.

Paul Rosenzweig on Lawfare discusses the abrupt arrest of a manager at Kaspersky Labs, and his own discretion when it comes to security software. Did you know KL was located in Russia?

The news today is shocking.  Russian authorities have arrested a top Kaspersky cybersecurity manager for espionage.  Kaspersky is a Russian-based cybersecurity company, widely regarded as having close ties to the Russian government.  Kaspersky himself has close connections to the KGB [as an aside, that is one reason why I personally do not use Kaspersky’s products.]  According to English language reports: “Kaspersky Lab on Wednesday confirmed reports in Russia’s respected Kommersant newspaper that Ruslan Stoyanov, head of its computer incidents investigations unit, was arrested in December. Kommersant said that Stoyanov was arrested along with a senior Russian FSB intelligence officer and that they both face charges of treason.”  That’s two people who, no doubt, will soon be convicted and, one suspects, thereafter executed.

As I understand Paul, he thinks American activity in connection with the recent election may have provided enough of a signal to Russian intelligence to pinpoint an American mole in KL. Paul thinks we might have done better:

Today we see the costs of the public discussion of intelligence.  I admit to speculating here (though with good reason, I think) but two of our sources (including one in Kaspersky) are now blown and the reason may well be that we felt the need to publicly disclose the information we gleaned from their efforts in order to publicly defend the IC against President Trump’s unjustified and unjustifiable attacks.  To be fair, part of the reason for the need for the publication was also the Obama administration’s remarkable reluctance to act earlier this year and the relatively laughable nature of the sanctions we imposed.  They had the tools but failed to use them.  And as a result, two men will, I think …. die.

Some more blood sacrificed to American politics? There have been several incidents of wars being extended for election reasons, which seems despicable. I don’t know if we’ll ever find out what happened here.

Lawfare is reporting that American civilians are not alone in their astonishment at the Muslim travel ban – Foreign Service personnel are also protesting using an official communications channel:

Numerous Foreign Service officers and other diplomats have drafted a dissent memo expressing opposition to President Donald Trump’s executive order banning refugees and immigrants from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from entering the United States. ABC reported this morning on the draft, which is likely to be submitted today.

Here’s a copy of the actual draft. We are hearing that literally hundreds of foreign service officers are planning to be party to the dissent memo; it’s still unclear exactly how many. We have redacted all names and personally identifiable information from this document.

The State Department’s Dissent Channel is a mechanism for employees to confidentially express policy disagreement, created in 1971 as a response to concerns within the Department over the government’s handling of the Vietnam War. Authors of a memo submitted through the Channel, which is open to all regular employees of the State Department and USAID, may not be subject to any penalty or disciplinary action in response. Once a memo is submitted, the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff must acknowledge its receipt within two working days and will usually distribute it to the Secretary of State, the Deputy Secretary of State, the Under Secretary for Political Affairs, the Chairperson of the Open Forum, and, if the memo’s author is employed by USAID, by the head of that agency as well. Taking into account the wishes of the author, the memo may also be distributed more broadly within the State Department and may be done so anonymously.

A response is irrelevant; that such a memo exists at all, and is attracting many signatures from Foreign Service professionals, indicates just how poorly the Trump Administration is performing.

I’m still digesting the actual memo, available at the provided link on Lawfare.

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) comes out of the noir genre. A girl, Martha, trying to run away with a boy from the other side of the tracks, accidentally kills her domineering aunt in front of her tutor’s son, and then lies. 17 years later, the boy returns with a checkered past, and the girl now runs the aunt’s business empire – and the tutor’s son is married to her and is the District Attorney. Assuming he’s back to indulge in some blackmail, the married couple makes the boy’s life tough, not only physically, but emotionally.

Much like The Grapes of Wrath (1940), this is a movie about circumstance, choices, and how they affect the balance of a lifetime. But in this case, some might argue that Martha had little choice; her aunt was stern and strict, and may have had delusions of grandeur, as she reiterates her intention to make her orphaned niece into an “Ivers”. It’s a question mark, though, for all that the aunt’s portrayal appears to be evil, and is shown beating a kitten to death, it’s still arguable: perhaps the proper upbringing was all she had on her mind. Some people do fear, and sometimes hate, cats.

But the aunt dies, and now the decision of telling the truth or lying comes to the fore. But she’s a child, and she makes the child’s choice: lie.

But, as we learn, that one decision queers her life’s arc enormously: her marriage is a sham, her husband, for all of his apparent success, is a drunk, she fears her life is the prison she lied to avoid, and when the boy who was going to help her escape returns, she quietly snaps. We don’t even hear it, yet it resounds throughout the movie.

None of the characters are saints. The boy who returned? A gambler who slips trouble like a dancer. His mysterious girl? Another victim of a dysfunctional family, with a police record. Perhaps he’s with her out of pity, or out of his own desperation – he doesn’t know himself. But when illicit financial opportunity is dangled in front of him, he’s willing to grasp it – even if a nettle comes with it.

But what a nettle.

If not languid, this is certainly a leisurely tale, letting you soak in the glow of the stars, and some excellent cinematography. The twists and turns of the story kept us on our toes (good thing my head cold is finally fading), and the acting was quite good. If you enjoy noir, this is certainly not to be missed.

Underfunded pension funds? Must be Chicago, right?

Nope, it’s Iran. Navid Kalhor reports in AL Monitor:

The most important issues are the imposition of financial obligations by consecutive administrations over the past four decades as well as the approval of populist legislation by various parliaments, and particularly under the previous conservative government. Combined with the pension funds’ own financial problems, the situation is truly dire.

By politically influencing the pension reserves, consecutive governments have mismanaged the assets owned by these funds. At present, most of them are accumulating large, unsustainable and unfunded pension liabilities. In this vein, problems concerning equity, efficiency and management are pervasive. In an interview with business weekly Tejarat-e-Farda on Oct. 8, 2016, Mohsen Riazi, the deputy of the social and economic planning office at the Social Security Organization (SSO), said, ”Policies such as early retirement in difficult and hazardous occupations and renovation of industries that have played a great role in the financial misbalance of the largest pension fund in the country [belonging to the SSO] date back to the Reformist government [1997-2005].”

Growing old has its risks no matter where you live.

Sure, it’s The Onion. Doesn’t mean it’s not right.

Putting the nation on alert against what it has described as a “highly credible terrorist threat,” the FBI announced today that it has uncovered a plot by members of al-Qaeda to sit back and enjoy themselves while the United States collapses of its own accord.

Multiple intelligence agencies confirmed that the militant Islamist organization and its numerous affiliates intend to carry out a massive, coordinated plan to stand aside and watch America’s increasingly rapid decline, with terrorist operatives across the globe reportedly mobilizing to take it easy, relax, and savor the spectacle as it unfolds.

“We have intercepted electronic communication indicating that al-Qaeda members are actively plotting to stay out of the way while America as we know it gradually crumbles under the weight of its own self-inflicted debt and disrepair,” FBI Deputy Director Mark F. Giuliano told the assembled press corps. “If this plan succeeds, it will leave behind a nation with a completely dysfunctional economy, collapsing infrastructure, and a catastrophic health crisis afflicting millions across the nation. We want to emphasize that this danger is very real.”

More precisely, the 9/11 attacks were never about tangibly defeating us as we were. They were about changing us. That is, the United States as it was could not be defeated by a bunch of terrorists – or even if the Middle East nations all banded together and took a shot.

But, for those who hated us, there was a realization that the ideals we represented were very attractive to large segments of their population, large enough that the factions the haters represented would never be able to take power if nothing changed.

And thus, the attacks. As enormously frightening as they were, they inflicted only a small amount of damage; worse yet, for the terrorists, they exposed a hole in our systems which had to be repaired.

And was repaired.

But. But but but. It also changed us. A highly conservative administration (and somewhere around here is a posting on an academic study of the conservative mind, but I can’t find it at the moment), conservatives who claimed to be so much better than their political opponents at defending America, were embarrassed and shown to be, in the eyes of many, making hollow claims and promises. This enraged them.

Thus came the Afghan invasion, the Iraq invasion, the opening of Gitmo, and the various torture scandals which have since left a horrid blot on the honor and reputation of the United States. The Bush / Cheney Administration served the needs of the terrorists perhaps better than they ever expected.

In Obama they had a more canny enemy Commander-In-Chief, one who thought and analyzed and saw the big picture. I suspect there was celebration in the terrorist holes when Trump came to power. Because now we’re seeing shallow-minded “travel bans” which is triggering protests and discord in the United States. It’s on display for everyone overseas to see: the United States, which likes to make itself a beacon of hope, is becoming less attractive to those in desperate straits. (And if you, dear reader, just shrug, then I shall remind you that Albert Einstein was another refugee in desperate straits, as were many others who made great contributions to the States over the centuries.)

Make no mistake.

There’s a difference between a respectful clamor of differing opinions, and outright discord and protests. This is not a bunch of leftists or rabble rousers reacting to a conservative President. These are common citizens who understand the United States stands for liberty and accepting refugees, and not ripping families apart just to satisfy the xenophobia of a few fringers. Once again, it’s amateur hour at the White House.

And a satirical web site may have failed in its mission: it may have gotten the news spot-on.

The Planetary Society’s Report has reminded me that there’s more going on than politics – there’s the greater Universe. I’ll be scattering some cool pictures from 2016 about, just to keep up my feeling of awe. First up is from NASA/JPL/University of Arizona and the MRO HiRISE project, looking at the Martian south polar region:

Source: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

The white portions of this observation are part of that residual [South Polar] ice cap, and the sunlight is coming from roughly the bottom of this non-map projected image. It is made of solid, frozen carbon dioxide and is very bright relative to the background. This is despite the background terrain having a very high water-ice content, which is darkened by very fine rocky particles, or dust.

Very interesting and picturesque in this scene are the different scales of polygons present in each terrain. The relatively medium-toned lines in the dark terrain divide it into polygons that are up to approximately 10 to 15 meters (30 to 45 feet) wide. Typically, temperature changes of the ground over the seasons cause it to expand and contract, forming cracks and troughs between sections of ground that may partially fill with frost, forming the polygonal pattern viewed from above.

The polygons in the bright carbon dioxide terrain are different. First, they are much larger, up to 20 to 40 meters (60 to125 feet) wide.

Very unexpected.

California is enjoying a respite from the recent drought – as KQED reports, quite a respite:

Virtually all of California is enjoying its wettest winter in five years. In fact, current statistical reports on rainfall and the water content of the Sierra Nevada snowpack show that so far, we’re in the midst of one of the wettest California rainy seasons on record.

All the precipitation has transformed a state that suffered through five years of severe drought. One of the most visible effects: high levels of the state’s major reservoirs.

And a nifty before & after pic. From the American River & Hydrologic Observatory we can get their real-time charting service:

Hopefully this will provide some relief. I hope this doesn’t slow down conservation and management efforts mentioned in earlier posts.

Daniel Bob on 38 North rebuts a Charles Krauthammer suggestion that Japan and South Korea be permitted to develop nuclear arms as a way to pressure North Korea to terminate its nuclear arms program:

Japan’s public and its leaders understand that choosing to go nuclear would actually reduce the country’s security. It would undermine the country’s vital alliance with the United States and likely provoke South Korea, America’s other key alliance partner in East Asia (which has also rejected nuclear weapons despite having the technical capability), to follow suit. However, 59 percent of Koreans gave a positive answer when asked, “Should South Korea possess nuclear weapons?” according to the same Genron NPO survey cited above. Given their ongoing distrust of Japan, Koreans would almost certainly view their neighbor—if armed with nuclear weapons and unmoored from its alliance with Washington—as a threat, generating even more support for developing a nuclear arsenal. If Japan and South Korea joined the nuclear club, China could be expected to respond by increasing its own store of nuclear bombs, while other states in the region would feel less constrained by their NPT obligations.

The likely result would be the end of both the US-led alliance system in Asia, which has been so successful in advancing US and regional interests, and the NPT, which stands as the world’s most important and successful arms limitation treaty. Within East Asia, historical animosities still afflict Japan’s interactions with South Korea and China; territorial disputes undermine Japan’s relations with China, Korea and Russia as well as China’s relations with Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Vietnam; internal conflicts linger in Thailand, Myanmar, the Philippines and Indonesia; and a number of autocratic regimes and democracies alike face instability. The proliferation of nuclear weapons would not only increase the chance of catastrophic war in the context of regional tensions, but also of loose nukes falling into the wrong hands. …

I ask you to stop and think for a moment what it would mean to have nuclear weapons in so many hands, in the hands of countries large and small, stable and unstable, responsible and irresponsible, scattered throughout the world. There would be no rest for anyone then, no stability, no real security, and no chance of effective disarmament. There would only be the increased chance of accidental war, and an increased necessity for the great powers to involve themselves in what otherwise would be local conflicts.

Yeah, the idea seems nutty; in fact, it sounds like capitulation. We can’t solve the problem, let’s let their close neighbors solve it, instead. Daniel’s case seems sound.

Uri Savir in AL Monitor has an interesting report out of Israel on their plan for dealing with the Trump Administration:

According to a senior Ministry of Foreign Affairs official who is part of the policy team preparing Netanyahu’s visit, Israel is currently drafting a proposal for Trump and his team, pre-empting any future agreement with the Palestinians. The draft will propose that the new US administration recognize Israel’s future sovereignty in the settlement blocs without defining their scope. Israel also seeks US assurances that it will prevent any diplomatic move internationalizing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resolution, such as the continuation of the Jan. 15 Paris conferences or any other UN Security Council resolution stipulating the illegality of Israeli West Bank settlements. On the other hand, the relocation of the US Embassy to Jerusalem is not high on the Israeli agenda, out of concern for unrest in the West Bank. Such an agreement by the new administration will enable the Netanyahu government to freely continue its settlement expansion policies, especially within the settlement blocs and the Jerusalem area. Netanyahu will also ask for new sanctions on Iran.

Other countries are also covered. I can’t help but wonder, though, if Netanyahu has taken into account Trump’s predilection for TV, as noted by Steve Benen:

During the Republican presidential primaries, NBC News’ Chuck Todd asked Trump whom he turns to for guidance on matters of national security. “Well,” the Republican replied, “I watch the shows.”

By the fall, Kellyanne Conway said if she wanted to deliver a message to Trump, she wouldn’t just tell him what’s on her mind. “A way you can communicate with him is you go on TV to communicate,” she explained.

I foresee a new television series in the future, starring the Israeli Prime Minister.

Spraint:

Spraint is the dung of the otter.^[1]

Spraints are typically identified by smell and are known for their distinct aromas, the smell of which has been described as ranging from freshly mown hay to putrefied fish.^[2] The European otter‘s spraints are black and slimy, 3–10 cm (1–4 in) long and deposited in groups of up to four in prominent locations near water. They contain scales, shells and bones of water creatures.^[3] Because of the decline of otters in Britain, several surveys have been made to record the distribution of the animal, usually by recording the presence of spraint. ^[4] Further, there is some evidence that spraint density is correlated with otter density. [Wikipedia]

Noted in NewScientist’s Feedback column.

ON THE subject of spraint, our colleagues previously announced the news that dogs habitually orientate north-south when relieving themselves (17/24/31 December 2016, p 44). Steve Martin sees a useful application: “If you are exploring, take your dog with you and you will never get lost.” Just remember to give it a big feed first.

Vivien Harrison, meanwhile, cautions that the correct breed is necessary. “My brother informs me that his dog doesn’t orientate itself north-south when it defecates,” she says, “as it is not a shih tzu pointer.”

In proper Minnesota fashion, I now moan Uff-da.