Last night my Arts Editor and I were watching the WCCO news, one of the local news stations, on their nightly broadcast, and one of the two co-anchors, Frank Vascellaro, covered yesterday’s little controversy with Trump’s advisor Conway concerning alternative facts. (Here’s CNN’s coverage – I haven’t found a clip of Frank.)

Frankie V – my hero!

And then, as they went to the next story, Frank started coughing. First into the live mic, and then, when they turned that one off, I could hear it echoing throughout the studio. His co-anchor covered for him for about 3 minutes, and when he did return, he looked a little glassy-eyed.

Seems to me the media is really finding it hard to swallow the Trump Administration so far.

I hope Frank continues to gag. An honest reaction to extremism is an important part of the news casting process.

In The Cheaters (1945) is a weird collage of a movie, with characters ranging from interesting to repulsive. A family thought to be well-off is in trouble, but only the arrogant father knows about it; his wife is an insipid refugee from The Wizard of Oz (think of the munchkins), one daughter a narcissistic brat, the other desperate to impress the well-off family of her fiancee’, who in turn never has to comb his hair as the cardboard he’s constructed of has a permanent part; the son is a young predatory shark; and the ridiculously large staff marches about with the traditional clothespin on their collective noses.

Why? Oh, not just the usual. This is a family of appearances, and so even as the financial tide threatens to drag them out to sea, daughter #2 (the one with a fiancee’ to impress) decides they should take in a “charity case” for Christmas, calling it a tradition of the family. Who it might be is unimportant, only that he be listed in the paper and appear under the random finger of the daughter, and thus “Mr. M”, aka Mr. Marchand, a crippled former actor who must meet his fortunes with an upper lip stiffened with spirits, is taken, temporarily, into the family.

But the riptide is coming. A lifeline appears – Uncle Henry has died, and with $5 million to will to them – if his lawyer cannot find Florence Watson, a child actor whom old Uncle Henry admired and, briefly, corresponded with. A quick call from the arrogant father, an unscrupulous but wary barrister, and perhaps their future is secured – if Miss Watson does not appear to claim her fortune within a week, it’s all to the family’s account. But, like money-grubbers, they worry, and scheme….

And find Miss Watson. Through the charm of Mr. Marchand, who offers minor diversions, observations, and a mystery or two of his own, Miss Watson becomes a cousin of the family, welcomed for the Christmas season.

And it goes on, keeping news of her imminent good fortune from her. Mr. Marchand’s spirit hobby grows, the family finds dueling with Miss Watson to be a chore, and suddenly –

They’re in the country! The Ghost of Marley stalks the hills and valleys of the snowy, bucolic country side, and now we can all see where this is going. Not that it’s not admirable, but it feels a bit forced, if you know what I mean. Mr. Marchand continues his stint as the most interesting of the characters, and if his burden is nothing more than the rejection of directors, producers, and audiences, perhaps this is understandable.

In all, a movie that suffers from a cast mostly too large and too undefined, it has a certain charm, but is best watched when one can barely bestir oneself from the chair to fetch the eggnog. True, there’s a lesson here, and perhaps it benefits from a retelling, a reminder to those who chase material wealth with an avidity repulsive to more spiritual people (whatever that phrase may mean), but the journey is long and hard, the attention may waver, and if you have mail to sort through – do it while watching this.

A reader expresses doubt about a future impeachment:

The GOP probably thinks Don is their patsy, and their gateway to passing all the radical and crazy laws they want.

I don’t think so, his expressed views on some subjects have been at variance with their own – and his behaviors must make them as uncomfortable as Hastert’s and Gingrich’s.

Pence is respectable, predictable, and quite possibly radical. Businessmen like predictability. This mob may prefer Pence over Trump.

The hypotheses concerning Tabby’s Star, aka KIC 8462852, continue to accumulate. This one, reported by NewScientist (14 January 2017), sounds plausible:

If Tabby’s star devoured a planet in the past, the planet’s energy would have made the star temporarily brighten, then gradually dim to its original state. Depending on the size of the planet, this event could have happened anywhere between 200 and 10,000 years ago.

As the planet fell into its star, it could have been ripped apart or had its moons stripped away, leaving debris orbiting the star in eccentric orbits. Every time the debris passes between us and the star, it would block some light, making it seem as if the star is blinking (arxiv.org/abs/1612.07332).

A good, physics-based explanation for the behavior is always preferable to alien intelligences, if not quite so much fun.

On the Dead Things blog at Discover Magazine, Gemma Tarlach talks about an interesting new finding in connection with fossilized dinosaur eggs (Protoceratops and Hypacrosaurus) that may indicate why most dinosaurs went extinct during the end-Cretaceous mass extinction:

Paleontologists have long thought that the incubation period for dinosaur eggs was similar to that of modern birds which are, after all, the only dinosaurs still around. Modern bird incubation periods range from a little more than a week to just under three months. Based on the von Ebner lines revealed in the new study, however, dinosaur eggs appear to have incubation periods of three to six months — a lot longer.

So what, you might be saying, because you’re a callous person who only reads dinosaur stories in hopes of hearing someone has managed to clone one (dream on, buddy!).

Well, the more time you’re sitting in an egg waiting to be born, and the more time one of your parents is sitting on you and your siblings keeping you warm, that’s time both adult and embyro [sic] are vulnerable to predation and nasty environmental surprises such as floods wiping out the nest. It’s also time lost for the parents that could have been spent rearing other young and/or prepping for the next batch o’ babies if you know what I mean.

I dunno. Without more discussion of the causation series, I don’t see how this would be a critical attribute of the extinct lines of dinosaurs; also, this is only two out of dozens and dozens of species. A great deal of speculation, so far as I can see. From the academic paper’s abstract, title of “Dinosaur incubation periods directly determined from growth-line counts in embryonic teeth show reptilian-grade development“:

Birds stand out from other egg-laying amniotes by producing relatively small numbers of large eggs with very short incubation periods (average 11–85 d). This aspect promotes high survivorship by limiting exposure to predation and environmental perturbation, allows for larger more fit young, and facilitates rapid attainment of adult size.

The vulnerability of elected judges has been demonstrated in Texas, where Supreme Court justices are elected to six year terms – and were faced with politically powerful men who wanted a do-over. From myStatesman:

In a rare reversal, the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court accepted a gay marriage case Friday after pressure from state GOP leaders and grass-roots activists.

The state’s highest civil court had rejected the case in September with only one of nine justices dissenting, prompting a backlash from opponents of gay marriage who saw an opportunity to strip away same-sex spousal benefits offered to employees of state and local governments.

Three leading Republicans — Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton — joined the effort, filing a brief that urged the high court to reconsider because the case offered an opportunity to limit the impact of the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down the state’s ban on gay marriage.

Especially telling:

Spurred by religious and social conservative leaders, opponents of same-sex marriage also barraged justices with emails making it clear that some GOP voters saw the case as a litmus test for party loyalty and Christian values.

“When I voted for you, I thought that you would uphold the Republican platform to protect the family unit for my children. Obviously, that was a correctable mistake on my part,” one email said.

(Because you’re so under threat right now how?) The point here is the folding of a critical pillar of society because it’s been permitted to be politically vulnerable – whether the issue is liberal or conservative.

And politics like this is not always about justice.

Seen on Quartz:

Six years ago, Domino’s admitted it made terrible pizza. Now its stock returns have outpaced Google’s

Just say it with me: so what? Stock performance has nothing to do with the value of the company, it only reflects how the investors view the potential of the company relative to its current position. The headline is awful. Or perhaps they were hoping it’d act as a hook, since it seems ridiculous. But only for the naive investor; the rest of the investing world would have just shrugged its shoulders and not bothered to read it.

At the end of the article they admit as much:

Some of [Charlie] Bilello’s [director of Research at Pension Partners] Twitter followers pointed out that the two companies have radically different market caps—Domino’s is $8 billion, and Google’s over $560 billion—which puts the finding in perspective.

Although even that doesn’t really do the situation justice. Six years ago, Domino’s was well known to be substandard, and then they improved. Google lead the industry then, and still does. It’s harder for them to improve their stock situation, although certainly possible.

NewScientist (14 January 2017) reports on the use of RNA interference to control pests, improve yields, even change the colors of your favorite rose. But how is the RNA delivered to the pests and plants?

Not actually produced by this process.
Source: Wikipedia

In experiments with tobacco plants, [University of Queensland team member Neena Mitter’s] group has shown that its spray’s protective effect can last at least 20 days. This was achieved by combining the RNA with clay nanoparticles developed by Mitter’s colleague Gordon Xu.

The positively charged clay nanoparticles, made of stacked sheets of common minerals such as magnesium chloride, bind to the negatively charged RNA. Over time, the clay particles react with carbon dioxide and break down, slowly releasing the RNA (Nature Plants, doi.org/bwxq).

Plant viruses are a huge problem for farmers around the world and no existing treatments target them directly. Farmers must either grow resistant crop varieties, if they exist, or try to kill the organisms that spread plant viruses, such as aphids. So if the antiviral spray works well in field tests on crops there could be huge demand. “We do believe it will be commercially viable,” Mitter says.

An interesting development. As it’s RNA, there should be zero worry about horizontal DNA transfer; the clay particles should be mostly harmless, although I wonder how many applications are possible before the buildup of clay in the soil leads to significant degradation of the soil – or if it just washes away.

Egypt’s iconic historical relic is the pyramid, but there’s much more, such as mosques – but bits and pieces are disappearing, as Khalid Hassan reports for AL Monitor:

In a bid to preserve old mosques and protect them from being looted, the Standing Committee of Islamic and Coptic Monuments, affiliated with the Egyptian Ministry of State for Antiquities, decided Jan. 4 to move old mosque artifacts to the ministry’s warehouses. Smaller items, such as niches, carpets and chairs, are taking priority as they are easier to steal.

The decision comes after six niches were stolen recently from Al-Rifai Mosque in Cairo’s Citadel Square. On Jan. 1, the Ministry of Antiquities announced the disappearance of six out of 15 niches from the burial chamber of King Fuad I and Princess Ferial, the descendants of the Muhammad Ali dynasty. The niches, which date back to 1911, are made of sanded glass emblazoned with the seal of Khedive Abbas Hilmi II. They also bear a Quranic verse in Mamluk characters.

Even more interesting, beyond the reported drugging of guards?

On Jan. 2, Minister of Antiquities Khaled al-Anani decided to form a commission to inventory the content of Al-Rifai Mosque and compare the findings with the ministry’s records to check whether any original artifacts have been replaced by fake pieces.

Not an overwhelming problem in the United States. I wonder how it affects society, knowing there are millennia of history to protect, meanwhile we’re facing power and water shortages, not to mention a sometimes restive population.

Some pictures of missing glass from King Fuad I are here. I wondered about a referenced Ministry of Endowments, which, on further research, appears to regulate institutions such as hospitals and other such that aid the community. In Wikipedia it’s called Ministry of Awqaf.

On Lawfare Daniel Byman examines the coming challenges for the foreign policy community, but I found his preamble quite interesting for what it said about President Obama – and the implications for the foreign policy community:

A new day, a new president, a new set of challenges for the foreign policy establishment.

It’s hard to be a member of the foreign policy establishment. President George W. Bush challenged many of the establishment’s basic premises with his emphasis on preemption and Texas-tough rhetoric. Many of us breathed a sigh of relief when Obama came in. Surely the cerebral University of Chicago law professor, with his conciliatory rhetoric and embrace of alliances, would realize our worth. Yet he too quickly tired of us, his team derisively referring to think tanks and policy intellectuals as “the blob.”

And now there is Trump. More than any candidate in my memory, he has challenged basic foreign policy assumptions and dismissed the value of traditional expertise. Some of his Cabinet picks bring considerable experience to the job, but many are relative newcomers with little track record as policymakers.

It’s hard to be part of a scorned community, yes. While I wouldn’t get too het up about disdain from Bush or Trump, the fact that Obama walked away suggests a problem – either in conclusions or in communications. He doesn’t address the topic further, sadly, as Trump is his focus.

Source: The Telegraph

If you think you’re a whodunit fan, then you’ve seen Murder by Death (1976), the classic parody starring a host of stars, and if you haven’t seen it but think you’re a fan, then go see it. It plays with everything, from plot to dialogue to the very idea of consistency. Clues are outrageous and solutions fanciful.

Although at 40 years old, all the stars are dead and it’s lost some little bit of impact. Still, it’s a lot of fun.

Sylvatic:

Sylvatic is a scientific term referring to diseases or pathogens affecting only wild (sylvan means forest-dwelling) animals. [Wikipedia]

Seen on Discover’s Body Horrors blog:

Pigs, rats, and dogs are the beasts most commonly implicated as hosts in the domestic sphere, but more exotic animals such as wild boar, walrus, and polar bear may also serve in the sylvatic or wild animal cycle of Trichinella.

Thinking about investing, but not the sort to jump in on your own? Be careful about your financial advisor. From a Motley Fool newsletter:

There are lots of people out there trying to sell annuities, and some of them engage in misconduct. A recent study examined the records of more than a million financial advisors and former financial advisors between 2005 and 2015 and found that 7% of them (that’s about 87,000 people!) had been disciplined for misconduct or fraud. The top complaints were unsuitable advice (21.3%), misrepresentation (17.7%), unauthorized activity (15.1%), omission of key facts (11.6%), fees/commissions (8.7%), and fraud (7.9%), and the specific products involved in the most misconduct were insurance (13.8%), annuities (8.6%), stocks (6%), and mutual funds (4.6%). You’re not likely to experience trouble, but it’s good to be careful.

Do a little research.

In the case of the recent commutation of Chelsea Manning’s sentence for releasing secret material to WikiLeaks, Lawfare presents both sides of the controversy, on the one side their own Benjamin Wittes and Susan Hennessey, on the other Cully Stimson at The Daily Signal. First up will be Cully:

To some, Manning was a whistleblower who deserved a pardon, or at least a sentence commutation. Indeed, one of the videos Manning gave to WikiLeaks showed U.S. military personnel in Iraq engaged in a deeply troubling, if not illegal, shooting incident.

But there was so much more to Manning’s crimes than exposing that killing.

By downloading hundreds of thousands of secret documents about some of the most sensitive information related to the war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan, by disgorging highly sensitive diplomatic emails for the world to see, and recklessly exposing top secret files of terrorist detainees we held at Guantanamo, Manning betrayed the oath to our country, armed our enemies with information that they could only dream about acquiring, and forced our government to expend untold hours and money to minimize the damage inflicted by this criminal conduct.

Benjamin and Susan’s position, which they originally wrote about last year:

There were members of the national security community who viewed our position as somehow disconsonant with our broader tendency to support more, rather than less, robust security policies and laws. A different part of the ideological spectrum criticized us for arguing for Manning’s clemency in the context of arguing against a pardon for Edward Snowden.

We think both of those lines of criticism miss a few important distinctions, the most central of which is that national security is about real security, not simply vengeance. Moreover, Manning’s case is not like Snowden’s. And critically, Manning did not get a pardon. The distinction between a pardon (which voids the underlying conviction) and a commutation (which merely lessens the punishment) is important here. As we argued then:

If there is a case in which to exercise executive prerogative to heal a rift regarding the treatment of self-proclaimed whistleblowers, Manning’s is infinitely more deserving than Snowden. We do not argue that Obama should consider a pardon: Manning committed serious and consequential crimes and was properly convicted. But the President should consider commuting the sentence either to time served or to some reasonable period of additional years. Manning has been imprisoned for more than six years; she could be eligible for parole in the next several years with good behavior. She clearly presents no ongoing security risk and it’s hard to imagine how her circumstances would inspire others in the military to believe they can disclose classified information without consequence.

 I’ll admit that I haven’t paid much attention to this case, whch appears to involve the release of thousands of pages of information, including at least one incident of a war-crime. And if you stopped reading right now, I wouldn’t blame you, as I don’t know much.

So I’ll make this march. On the one hand, we have potential and real damage to the national security apparatus, while on the other we have what appears to be at least one war crime, possibly being covered up. Cully makes this point:

Under the law, military trial judges are required to take into account all aggravating and mitigating evidence before sentencing the accused.

And while Cully makes this remark in the context of the gender identify disorder from which Manning suffered at the time of the crime, I am going to switch the context to the mitigating circumstance of the revelation of at least one concealed crime, as Cully admits. But I think there’s a wrinkle here: the sentencing is at a fixed point in time. But as time passes, circumstance changes. Perhaps the former President (as it’s now afternoon on Inauguration Day, so now we have a President Trump to endure) judged that the crime revealed was far more severe than originally thought; perhaps other important data came to light. The point is, if the evaluation of the importance of the data changed, then the judgment of the trial judge may become obsolete and require modification.

A second wrinkle, independent of the changing context, is this: the judge is a military judge, and is thus constrained to view the incident through military eyes, and apply military sector standards to the incident. However, the military is subordinate to the government, because the government is charged with the overall welfare of the country – not the military. The reason we have a President, as constrained as he (or she) is by Constitutional checks and balances, is to make evaluations for the good of the entire country. If the evaluation comes out that Manning did some good for society, balanced against the damage also done, well then perhaps commutation is the proper action to take. She was sentenced to 35 years, but Cully claims she would have been eligible for parole in the next few years. She still bears the stigma and dishonor of a 35 year sentence.

I also have to take issue with this statement:

By commuting Manning’s richly deserved sentence, Obama is sending a horrible message to dedicated U.S. public servants, in and out of uniform, that honoring their responsibility to keep national security secrets from the public eye isn’t all that important.

This is a slap in their face.

There’s certainly a message here. It’s that awareness of a possible war crime requires action. Perhaps Manning overdid it with the amount of data released – I won’t try to judge. But as Cully notes, a 35 year sentence is more symbolic than real, since parole was anticipated to begin soon. If so, then isn’t that a slap in the face?

Finally – and I hope this is merely an unpleasant and fallacious paranoia – perhaps Obama was concerned about the incoming Administration victimizing Manning. After all, among the more fringe right elements of Trump’s supporters, gender change and release of secret documents are not going to engender any positive feelings – and I’ve noted a certain lack of balanced judgment on their part; they prefer the mob with flaming torches approach. This may be Obama’s attempt to put Manning beyond the legal reach of the fringe-right.

In light of the widely reported request by the Trump Administration for certain Obama Administration officials to stay on, perhaps a trifle of schadenfreude is in order. Let’s have Steve Benen set it up:

What’s more, let’s also not forget that some of the people Team Trump have asked to stick around for a while have reportedly said no, which means those offices will be literally empty at 12:01 p.m. (ET) this today.

Christopher Lu, the Deputy Secretary of Labor and the former executive director of the Obama-Biden transition, talked to Rachel about this on the show last night, and he noted how unusual it is for an incoming administration, 24 hours before the inauguration, to reach out to current officials, pleading with them to stay. It’s evidence of a team that’s woefully unprepared.

Asked if he’s worried about the Trump administration’s preparedness, Lu said, “Of course.”

I can appreciate why this seems crazy, but the fact remains that Donald Trump and his aides knew they had a responsibility to find qualified, competent staff to run key agencies of the world’s dominant superpower, but they just didn’t try very hard to complete this task.

Giving her a title might be problematic, but you know her love of country would force her to serve.

Which just leaves me wondering: has Trump considered contacting Hillary Clinton for a little help? After all, she expected to win, and, more importantly, she not only took the job seriously, but she has experience in the field.

She’s competent.

Which is more than most of the members of the Trump Administration appear to be in the government arena.

Maybe we can force some life into this one!

Theater of Blood (1973) possesses that odd quality that many British movies of the 60s and 70s are burdened with – a certain indefinable brittleness, which I find to be undiluted irritation. Much like Hitchcock’s similarly brittle Frenzy (1972), the characters show little growth, little nuance, but are defined by their grosser qualities; they do not exhibit any awareness of the dramatic tableaux, nor do they contain much beyond the lightest hint of positive character traits; they are self-absorbed, with the exception of the police, who appear to be overwhelmed chaps of dubious intelligence and insight.

The editing of the movies is erratic, spastic, even, amongst the vulnerable, given to inducing spasms of wild discomfort. Don’t get me wrong, a discomfortable movie that knows whyfore it evokes such a feeling may be of great value, but in combination of the self-absorbed, there is little to gain. The audio is erratic.

And so in Theatre of Blood, the central conceit, the murder of theater critics by a spurned leading man (Vincent Price) as guided by the occasional literary murder brought on by the dyspepsia of a certain Wm. Shakespeare, has its virtue let out much like the helium from a birthday balloon by the reckless child. For hours, he may have gamboled with this balloon, watching it hover at the ceiling, bounce obligingly at his least tug, before obsequiously finding its freedom, only to find the whine of a beebee, projected by the tyke’s gun, to be its final end; and so, this movie, too, might have presented us with hours of fun, both in the initial viewing, and then in the post-viewing meditation, as each turn of the plot was savored.

But no. (Yeah, this left me all cranky.) Even in the category of head cold movie, it is, with no possible defense, found wanting. Thrust this unwanted & unwatched back into the movie pantry, and select another.

Even if Vincent finds himself burning down a castle, yet again, at the end of the movie. The temerity is not earned.

John Edmark:

His website is here. And here is Blooms 2. Maybe think of it as animated math.

Channelopathy:

Several developmental diseases are caused by channelopathies, or malfunctions of our ion channels. They include Timothy syndrome and Andersen-Tawil syndrome, rare diseases that cause neurological, heart, and skull and facial defects. Even fetal alcohol syndrome, which can develop if a woman drinks during her pregnancy, can produce similar defects because alcohol blocks many of the same ion channels.

Noted in “Grow with the flow,” Jason Bittel, NewScientist (7 January 2017, paywall). An ion channel:

Ion channels are pore-forming membrane proteins whose functions include establishing a resting membrane potential, shaping action potentials and other electrical signals by gating the flow of ions across the cell membrane, controlling the flow of ions across secretory and epithelial cells, and regulating cell volume.

Zach Shaner of the Seattle Transit Blog notes the failure of Pronto, the Seattle bike sharing system, concluding:

So while there may be future chapters for bike share in Seattle, the Pronto saga will come to a close on March 31 with a series of unforced errors and unnecessary political pain. Severely undercapitalized, hobbled by helmets, and going against best practices for network design, Pronto was doomed to disappointment at least and failure at most. For those of us broadly supportive of public biking in Seattle, the slow-moving demise was sad to watch. For now, a second try will have to wait.

I don’t know what went wrong here, but it’s safe to say either it’s not bike friendly territory, the experts have a lot to learn – or experts were not in charge or not properly funded.

(h/t Lloyd Alter on Treehugger.com)

Julian Pecquet of AL Monitor thinks South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, nominee of U.N. Ambassador, is a shoe-in after her Congressional hazing:

Diplomatic novice Nikki Haley easily won over her Senate interrogators Jan. 18 by reassuring them that the incoming administration will at least have a steady hand guiding the US Mission to the United Nations.

On every issue from the Iran deal to Israeli-Palestinian peace to the global world order, the South Carolina governor offered a nuanced and measured counterpoint to President-elect Donald Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric. During 3½ hours before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Haley tactfully won over conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats with pointed answers to a wide variety of questions that repeatedly put her at odds with her future boss.

Rather than rip up the nuclear deal with Iran, “I think what would be more beneficial at this point is that we look at all the details,” she said. “And if it is not being followed, and if we do find violations, then I think we should act and I think that we should act strongly.”

A savvy politician, I’d say. She separates herself from Trump, even if she’s working for him. And she still appeals to the base by opposing a strategic move by Obama:

“What I think happened with [Resolution] 2334 was a kick in the gut to everyone,” Haley said. “We can think what we want to think on settlements, but you have to go back to the fact that the US abstention … was wrong. And I think the fact that we have not allowed the Palestinian Authority and Israel to resolve this themselves, and I think for the UN to have inserted themselves into that, I believe is wrong.”

I have to wonder how much contact she’s had with Netanyahu. I also wonder how far she’ll go – and what her ultimate ambition amounts to. First Indian-American-female President?

Cynosure:

And the brilliant star, the one that appears to be the center about which all others rotate, they also called Cynosura, from which we get our figurative sense of cynosure, something which is the center of attention.

Seen in Thereby Hangs a Tale, by Charles Earle Funk.

NewScientist (7 January 2017) reports on the activities our core of iron is engaged in:

DEEP below our planet’s surface, a molten jet of iron, nearly as hot as the surface of the sun, is picking up speed.

This stream of liquid some 420 kilometres wide has been discovered by telltale magnetic field readings 3000 kilometres below North America and Russia. It has trebled in speed since 2000, and is now circulating westwards at between 40 and 45 kilometres per year, heading from deep under Siberia towards the underside of Europe (see diagram). That is three times as fast as the typical speeds of liquid in the outer core.

No one knows yet why the jet has got faster, but the team that made the discovery thinks it is a natural phenomenon, and can help us understand the formation of Earth’s magnetic fields, which keep us safe from solar winds. “It’s a remarkable discovery,” says Phil Livermore at the University of Leeds, UK, who led the team. “We’ve known that the liquid core is moving around, but our observations haven’t been sufficient until now to see this jet.”

There’s a lot of mystery and speculation here, but this bit is natural:

Earth’s magnetic field seems to have been weakening, especially since around 1840, at about 5 per cent per century. The molten iron stream should help us predict if and when the magnetic field of the planet’s core will flip. And thanks to the satellite monitoring system, says [Xiaodong Song at the University of Illinois in Champaign], we have opened a new window to view in real time the activity of molten iron deep in Earth’s core.

We may think we have a dynamic, vibrant world – but we don’t know the half of it. If we could see electromagnetic fields without using lots of iron bits, what would we see? How does this change things?

The North Carolina legislature, bereft of control of the governorship, continues to muddle onwards. WAVY.com reports on their sudden attempts to shut down a clean energy installation because they think it might interfere with a nearby Navy radar installation:

North Carolina legislators want the incoming Trump administration to shut down a nearly complete, $400 million wind farm they believe poses a national security threat because it’s too close to a long-distance surveillance radar installation. …

A 2014 agreement between [wind farm operator] Avangrid and the Navy said that although there is potential for conflict between the wind farm and the radar array, the Pentagon also sought to enhance the country’s renewable energy resources. The agreement specified placement of the project’s wind turbines and an understanding that the company would curtail operations “for a national security or defense purpose.”

Perhaps the legislature’s corporate masters are using them to fight the competition? Perhaps they have overblown opinions of their own technical knowledge? One Senator doesn’t watch the farm dismantled, just changes to the agreement. Maybe they’re in earnest. Still, this is a Navy matter, not a state matter, so you have to regard their activities – in light of their bizarre behavior in relation to the powers of the governorship – with more than the usual concern for hidden agendas.

In the category of bad literary form we have Ed Yong, publishing this awful kickoff to an article in The Atlantic:

In Norse mythology, humans and our world were created by a pantheon of gods who lived in the realm of Asgard. As it turns out, these stories have a grain of truth to them.