Category Archives: Uncategorized

Steve Benen on MaddowBlog gets a trifle hysterical – or perhaps he’s a little lacking in the imagination department – with regard to the ongoing scandal of Russia interfering in the American election:

If we stopped here and went no further, we’d still have one of the most important campaign stories in American history. It’s an almost unimaginable crime: a foreign adversary provided clandestine assistance to a presidential candidate, creating a dynamic in which the next leader of the free world managed to reach the office thanks in part to foreign espionage.

Well, no. Nearly unimaginable would require something out of the pages of the National Enquirer involving space aliens. The discussion de jour? We’ve certainly interfered in our share of elections, both during and after, including Iran. Interference in an American election is not nearly unimaginable, except that we’ve never had it thrown in our faces before.

But all this is sort of behind the point. Here’s what Steve has not yet addressed: what do we do about it? The Constitution, so far as I recall, does not address the question. I am not a lawyer, so I don’t know if we’ve ever had reason to address it in the courts – so, assuming not, what’s the response?

Obama can not do anything. Any positive response on his part to the crisis that requires an extension of his term will result – quite correctly – in cries of illegitimacy and, on the fringes, of dictatorship. His role is to call out the problem to the citizenry, entreating a response.

Clinton? I think she should do little, otherwise she risks sullying her reputation with the epithet of “sore loser”, and while no doubt most conservatives still despise her, in the long term I suspect she’ll be exculpated of all charges and considered one of the finest candidates for President to not win the job. But she has little leverage at this time.

Trump? Honestly, beats me. This is without precedent. I doubt he can legitimately (but, of course, yes legally) step aside on this basis: this nation needs someone to run the Executive branch. But to do so wisely? I just don’t see him able to do so.

Perhaps he should be really wise and try to construct a national unity government, with Democrats and Republicans in the Cabinet, and the Senate Republicans doing their job, rather than the rubber stamp they tend to employ. McCain and Graham have shown some grit, perhaps they can lead the way.

Otherwise, it’s going to be a rough, divisive four years, which may result in the destruction of the Republican Party, and the loss of American prestige world-wide.

Years ago, I ran across The Chronicles of Riddick (2004) while on a trip, rooming with another fencer. We only saw part of it, but I found it riveting and soon tracked down a version on DVD. Since then, every couple of years I watch it again.

Why? Because it appeals to the primal urge that a single person, man or woman, can make a difference, even in the face of overwhelming odds. Granted, the characters in this movie are rarely basic humans, but in the end they are all people motivated by the same concerns, from the most basic to the spiritual.

While this is technically part of a series, through minimal flashbacks it stands on its own while justifying characters from earlier in the series. The plot? Riddick, a man who might be considered to exist without concern for right or wrong, is being hunted at the command of a couple of people trying to save a world, Helion Prime, from an invading force of death-worshipers – they believe he might be their saviour. But Riddick, once roused, believes in being proactive; he comes to the threatened planet to see who calls him. Eventually, after messing with the invading force, he ends up on a prison planet, where he battles his way out and returns to Helion Prime to rescue a friend, where he must face the invading force again, and then it’s either win or die.

Grandiose? Sure. And the meat of the story is rich, complex, even baroque, enough to support this story. The invaders display a well-considered strategy for both winning and then stripping the world of its most precious resource: People. The swirl of power politics is touched on enough to realize this really is another human enterprise. Meanwhile, Riddick is a cipher, decisive, possibly out for himself, until one realizes his motivations appear to have little to do with wealth or sex or power; one is left wondering precisely why he’s a criminal in this society – except, perhaps, for his direct approach to problems. The prison planet once again displays the foibles of humans – both of the inmates and the keepers – and is a fascinating little world of its own.

And the story contains quite suitable attributions of a greater world beyond this story, of civilizations watching this battle with trepidation, yet hope. It’s lessons? We see the karma of lust, of avarice, of power. And we see Riddick. Perhaps that’s enough.

Some may say it’s a boy movie. But I say – Recommended.

Or so analyzing PEOTUS Trump’s comments on North Korea seems to be. Still, Jeffrey Lewis gives it his best on 38 North, with an intermediate conclusion (it’s part of a series) of:

This all adds up to … nothing. Trump praised Dennis Rodman when it helped ratings of the Celebrity Apprentice, then trashed him when he didn’t. He called Kim Jong Un a maniac and suggested assassinating him, expressing only admiration for a 20-something stepping out of his father’s shadow. And when asked about the serious issues of international diplomacy, he pivoted to a long-rant about all the money wasted on state dinners.

This isn’t a coherent North Korea policy, it’s the ramblings of a reality television show with unresolved Daddy issues and a love of fast food. To find our first hints of how Trump might approach North Korea, we need to look elsewhere. Trump is more likely to think that the way to solve the North Korea problem serving Xi Jinping a cheeseburger, not Kim Jong Un. But that is installment three of this series.

At least one gets the impression that Jeffrey’s quite realistic about the situation.

Dilip Saraf suggests us the old folk shouldn’t panic at the layoff notice:

What drives this mindset [of being unemployable when laid off after age 50] is some myth around job losses that occurred during the past several decades, mostly from the manufacturing sector. Conventional wisdom holds that the new economy is an inhospitable place for workers in their 50s or 60s, with full or part-time gigs flipping burgers or as Wal-Mart greeters or worse, are the only avenues available to them. In a recent Wall-Street Journal article Ann Tergesen reports it’s never been better to be an older worker looking for a job. Why? The numbers show that the nightmare scenario simply isn’t true. The 55-and-older demographic is actually the only age group with a rising labor-force participation rate, Ann reports. Not only that, but more than 60 percent of workers age 65 or older have full-time positions, up from 44 percent in 1995. These older workers are increasingly working in well-paid, highly skilled jobs in the professional services industry. They are helped by the overall shift from a manufacturing to a service economy, which has created more jobs in which cognitive skills matter more than physical ability.

Suggesting that the wisdom of the ages has some value after all? While keeping in mind Heinlein’s dictum that age is only guaranteed to bring wrinkles, it’s a nice thought. But in professions which rapidly transform, mental fatigue can set in, resulting in the youth being favored in job interviews.

Gonopodium:

Mating between mosquito fish – a relative of the guppy – is far from romantic. The male makes no effort to court partners. Instead, he sneaks up and attempts to copulate by force up to 1000 times a day – and females try to avoid the harassment. Males use a modified anal fin, the gonopodium, to deliver sperm into the female.

Séverine Buechel at Stockholm University in Sweden and colleagues bred males to have longer gonopodia, and found that this led to bigger-brained females (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, doi.org/bvmv).

From “Longer ‘penis’ drives evolution of bigger brains in female fish,” NewScientist (17 December 2016).

Jack Goldsmith discusses on Lawfare the problems of cyber warfare and the three options the United States can pursue: better defense, better offense, or make a deal. He points out that amidst the outrage (mostly, from my own observations, from liberals) over the Russian manipulation of the recent election, the United States is not exactly an innocent:

But perhaps nothing is as threatening as the pledges and activities associated with the U.S. “Internet Freedom” initiative, which (among other things) involves funding and technical support to empower citizens in authoritarian states to circumvent censorship and promote speech there.   Russia views this initiative as “a U.S. strategy to intervene in [its] domestic politics through cyber means,” as David Fidler notes. …

In short, China and Russia, among our most potent adversaries, see efforts to weaken their control over their networks as a direct threat to their core sovereign interests.  They view it in the same way that we view the intervention in our election.

This latter point is surprising to many.  A casual consumer of the news in the United States would think that the United States is the main victim in the confrontations going on in the cyber realm.  It is indeed a victim.  But the United States is also widely perceived around the world as the greatest threat in the cyber realm.  It has, as President Obama bragged last Fall, greater offensive cyber capabilities than any other nation.  And it is perceived abroad to use these capacities aggressively.  Stuxnet, now widely attributed to the United States, is one example.  The Snowden revelations were an even bigger deal.  They provided clear, extensive, concrete evidence about the numerous impressive (and, to many, shocking) ways that the United States penetrates and collects information in foreign networks.  And of course the United States isn’t taking all of the information stolen from foreign networks and putting it in a box.  It uses the fruits of its espionage and theft to bolster every element of its foreign and defense policy, and its national and economic security.

It’s also worth noting, in this context, the many episodes in which the United States has intervened in foreign elections.  I summarized some of the evidence in posts last summer.  A study by Dov Levin found that during the Cold War, the United States intervened to influence foreign elections over twice as often (69% to 31%) as the Soviet Union.  In many of these cases the United States “weaponized information” to sway the election.  U.S. electoral intervention continued after the Cold War.  A prominent example is its support of the populist Boris Yeltsin in the 1996 Russian presidential election.

Which may or may not affect Trump, who I find quite hard to predict. Goldsmith recommends option #3, entering into a non-aggression pact with those countries we perceive as messing with us:

Selecting A & B sometimes results in C.

One response to [#3] that I hear in conversation is some version of: “The United States should be able to have its cake and eat it too.”  On this view, the United States is the strongest nation in the world militarily and economically, and should not have to give up any of its cyber and related capabilities in exchange for relief from adversary cyber and related actions.  We have to get tougher, act more aggressively, and the like.  I am surprised by this reaction because in other contexts—most notably, nuclear weapons—the United States perceived a clear advantage from giving up offensive capabilities in exchange for the threat reduction of reciprocal concessions.  But in any event, the “tough guy” line of thinking is belied by events of the last five years or so, which has made clear that problems of attribution, escalation, and digital vulnerability mean that no matter how powerful we are at the moment, we cannot in fact have our cake and eat it too in this context.

Oddly enough, in this instance I am somewhat happier that Trump is the President, rather than his VP, Pence. (On the Kelvin scale I’m still very unhappy.) Why? I perceive Pence, for all his smooth-talking ways, to be one who has let his religious impulses run rampant. When one is certain that God is on your side, you don’t compromise, you don’t negotiate – you try to put the hammer down. You burn your opponents at the stake, if I may be so rash as to take note of history. Anything less and you’re not doing the Will of God. A sure recipe for rampaging through the china shop, breaking everything you desire, all the time gasping that this is the right way, God’s will, all that irresponsible crap.

On the other hand, note carefully one of Jack’s historical notes – the United States perceived a clear advantage from giving up offensive capabilities in exchange for the threat reduction of reciprocal concessions. And then recall Trump has promised to “rebuild” our nuclear weapon stockpile. It puts a damper on my trivial bit of optimism above, doesn’t it?

Danila Tkachenko is a photographer located in Russia. From his “Restricted Areas” series:

The caption is Test bench for missiles. Kazakhstan, Kyzylorda Region, 2015. More may be found here.

Veronique Greenwood reports  in NewScientist (17 December 2016, paywall) how typing completion may affect our self-expression:

Presented with pre-digested options, will we grow less creative? “The danger of getting very formulaic in how people express themselves is a real one,” says Kushler.

Evan Selinger, a professor of philosophy at Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, who writes about the effects of predictive text, notes that both Apple’s QuickType and Google’s Allo messaging service offer pre-packaged responses. Presented with a photo of a friend skydiving, Allo might offer you the choice of the following replies:

“How exciting!”

“So brave!”

“How fun!”

Although this software can study your habits, letting the program choose a comment that sounds like you, it’s still you at your most generic. And while generic might appease the immediate needs of friendship, it’s not particularly satisfying. Studies on outsourcing suggest that putting less effort into a behaviour makes you feel less responsible for its effects, both good and bad. This kind of communication actually creates distance. And Selinger points out that prediction eliminates the possibility for whimsy that often makes human interaction rewarding: it mistakes the predictable for the inevitable.

Letting us pretend at communication and friendship, just as games let us pretend at shooting each other. But let’s be honest: some of us need hints like these in order to fit into society – the neuro-atypical, for example. Some would even argue that blogs (today) or BBSes (2-3 decades ago) were warping how to interact with our fellow man. Being one of those who finds it easier to write than to talk to someone, I just have to say – we’re not all the same. Some of us function wonderfully in close contact – and some of us need the space to think before opening our mouths. Perhaps confirming this point, Veronique concludes:

But in English, the first 10 Google search results for “predictive text”, as it happens, contain instructions for turning it off.

In view of this Steve Benen piece on how Trump plans to distance himself from his business empire:

Postscript: In the final moments of the press conference, Trump said his sons will run his business operation, “I hope at the end of eight years, I’ll come back and say, oh, you did a good job. Otherwise, if they do a bad job, I’ll say, ‘You’re fired.’”

I’d like to propose that all reporters covering a Trump press conference be issued a kazoo. It is to be used anytime Trump says something ridiculous.

Wireless headphones may also be necessary. The headphones would convey the content of the press conference, but preserve the reporters’ ears from damage caused by the incessant kazooing.

The special elections for North Carolina discussed here are now on hold after SCOTUS issued a hold on the issue, as reported by WRAL.com:

The U.S. Supreme Court has put new General Assemyed a lower court demand that lawmakers redraw many of their districts and hold new elections in 2017. Normally, new legislative elections would have to wait until 2018.

WRAL further notes:

However, many of the issues at play in this state gerrymandering case are similar to a case involving congressional districts that went before the court in December. The Supreme Court has not issued a ruling in that case yet.

The cited case appears to have to do with how Congressional districts were drawn in North Carolina, so it makes some sense.

Nystagmus:

… uncontrolled eye movement …

Observed in a sidebar titled, “47 ways not to love your liver“, NewScientist (17 December 2016, paywall).

Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare covers the latest meeting of the Senate Armed Services Committee, looking for evidence of support for Trump’s position on Russia – and not finding it:

But this strikes me as a political fight he is unlikely to win.

The evidence of this reality in yesterday’s hearing had a few distinct elements. First off was the particularly warm body language between committee members, the leaders in particular, and Clapper. While John McCain, the committee chairman, was unspairing [sic]in his criticism of the Obama administration for not developing a cyber deterrence strategy, his demeanor towards the DNI was one of profound respect and cordiality. Others too made a point of thanking Clapper for his long service in various intelligence capacities and across administrations. …

Indeed, the whole hearing had an unusually bipartisan tone given the generally polarized political atmosphere of this particular moment. Democrats went out of their way to praise Sen. McCain. And there was, for the most part, relatively little difference between the tone of Republican and Democratic questions.

I think this all augurs quite badly for Trump if he is really hell-bent on a major confrontation with the intelligence community over its Russia conclusions. The New York Times reports today that Trump has described the hacking focus as “a political witch hunt.” The merits of that ridiculous claim aside, if it is a witch hunt, it’s one to which some Republicans and all seemingly all Democrats on this committee are fiercely committed and against which no Republicans appear eager to defend the president-elect’s position. That means that a presidential war against the intelligence community on behalf of the innocent virtue of Vladimir Putin will likely also mean a battle with Congress.

While the Presidency certainly has levers of power it can wield, a fight with an obdurate Senate Armed Services Committee could have horrific consequences for Trump. I suspect it would all depend on which side could rally public support – the Trump lovers, or the Russia-worriers, so to speak. While Trump can only claim to have information that he only knows about, making the Committee to be a bunch of worry-warts, they can call down accusations ranging from amateurism all the way to selling-out and even betrayal.

But will Trump and his advisors, who are mostly zealots rather than experienced hands, understand this?

Might be time to invest in popcorn stocks.

Another step towards a whole lot of really small Bolos is announced by the DoD:

In one of the most significant tests of autonomous systems under development by the Department of Defense, the Strategic Capabilities Office, partnering with Naval Air Systems Command, successfully demonstrated one of the world’s largest micro-drone swarms at China Lake, California. The test, conducted in October 2016 and documented on Sunday’s CBS News program “60 Minutes”, consisted of 103 Perdix drones launched from three F/A-18 Super Hornets. The micro-drones demonstrated advanced swarm behaviors such as collective decision-making, adaptive formation flying, and self-healing. …

“Due to the complex nature of combat, Perdix are not pre-programmed synchronized individuals, they are a collective organism, sharing one distributed brain for decision-making and adapting to each other like swarms in nature,” said SCO Director William Roper. “Because every Perdix communicates and collaborates with every other Perdix, the swarm has no leader and can gracefully adapt to drones entering or exiting the team.”

The demonstration is one of the first examples of the Pentagon using teams of small, inexpensive, autonomous systems to perform missions once achieved only by large, expensive ones. Roper stressed the department’s conception of the future battle network is one where humans will always be in the loop. Machines and the autonomous systems being developed by the DoD, such as the micro-drones, will empower humans to make better decisions faster.

Technically, I wonder if they attempt to have a composite brain, as implied, or if each individual simply follows a set of simple rules, as has been used in other such projects. A potential problem with the latter approach is that why the simple set of rules works in Nature with a flock of birds, I cannot think of an analogous situation for a combat situation. The approach might be a dead-end, or a subservient part of the greater solution.

Socially? No reactions at the anti-killer robot sites, but no doubt it’ll come. Lawfare notes the news release and that it’s going to be an important development.

Shrift can mean confession or absolution, the latter of which I select:

Absolution is a traditional theological term for the forgiveness experienced in the Sacrament of Penance. This concept is found in the Roman Catholic Church, as well as the Eastern Orthodox churches, the Anglican churches, Lutheran churches and Methodist churches. [Wikipedia]

As in short shrift. Heard on Jeopardy.

It’s not heartburn, Spence.

The Devil at 4 O’Clock (1961) is a movie about redemption: of sick children, of felons, of priests.

Of civilizations.

The volcano on the island of Talua in the south Pacific is having indigestion once again, and the islanders, both native and European, already upset by a hospital for children with leprosy, are nervous. Into this flies a collection of criminals transferring to Tahiti, as well as a new Catholic priest to replace the old, sour priest. The latter is a bad old apple, even smelling of it – an alcoholic.

And then the volcano launches into a rant against humanity, and the islanders begin to evacuate, with the exception of the hospital, which was established at some remove from the islanders as they, in their ignorance and selfishness, feared the leprosy carried by the children.

With the hospital cut off by landslides, the old priest must make last ditch efforts to reach it, the hospital he literally built with his own hands, the staff he recruited himself, and the children, who he brought to the church when the islanders turned their faces from them. The felons, handed the opportunity to help out in exchange for a good word at sentencing, volunteer and soon the priest and his helpers find themselves flying into the mouth of hell.

The hospital is evacuated and now the race is on against the Nature-imposed deadline of the outgoing tide. But this is no easy slide down a hill, because between a fast pace and pursuing lava, casualties are inevitable and we suffer with those who lose companions, for the characters are sympathetic and believable.

In the end, though, the interpersonal relationships are not always completely believable. Convict Harry (Frank Sinatra) supposedly falls in love with a blind girl and marries her, yet I didn’t find it believable – there was a vague echo of the necessary change, the movement towards regret and redemption, but it didn’t come through strongly. As this was part of his redemption, it weakens the primary theme. I put the blame for this on Sinatra, as it seemed the story line was there to support it, but he didn’t quite have the chops to pull it off.

Similarly, the theme of redemption is not fully and believably explored. Not that I’m knocking the movie; I enjoyed it on several levels. The acting is generally fine, including Spencer Tracy as the sour, old, desperate priest; filmed in Hawaii, it looked and felt very authentic.

The special effects were more than adequate, between numerous quake scenes which were clearly more than a nervous camera operator, and a fully believable volcano – if I’d been there, I’d be nervous. Dialog, visuals, audio, story – all are good enough.

The movie climaxes and ends in a quite shocking manner, both visually and with regards to the story, and so while part of me mourns the unexpectedly lost characters, part of me celebrates the choice of the story-tellers. Perhaps the latter was inevitable, as a symbolic judgment upon the islanders who thrust the sick children away, even with such a curable disease.

It’s a good movie, but not a great movie. I can think of worse ways to while away a lazy afternoon.

Quinta Jurecic on Lawfare discusses at length the behavior of PEOTUS Trump’s Twitter followers and the basic intellectual dishonesty practiced by Trump and his allies, and it’s well worth the read. One of her more frightening thoughts:

Even if the needle doesn’t move, the mere prospect of a President using Twitter to tacitly encourage attacks on private citizens and lawmakers who oppose him is unpleasant enough, recalling a kind of mob rule demagoguery.

In the case of private citizens, it could lead to a chilling effect in the public square of the internet, with commenters hesitating to criticize Trump for fear of harassment. In the case of Republican legislators, it is also a novel, and particularly nasty, form of political engagement. The online culture of harassment harnessed by Trump has lowered the bar to political involvement and made the possibilities for that involvement uglier, promoting a form of trolling as political participation. But it’s a strange kind of political involvement. Trolling, after all, requires very little effort and allows for the semi-ironic detachment so beloved of certain corners of the internet. There’s no longer any need to drive miles to an hours-long Tea Party meeting, or even to reveal one’s name to put pressure on an elected official who is straying from the leader’s course.

However, one her more interesting observations:

All this poses a particularly odd set of legal problems when Donald Trump takes office on January 20th, taking possession not only of the nuclear football but also of the @POTUS Twitter account. Perhaps the two Twitter handles @POTUS and @RealDonaldTrump will, in the spirit of our baffling zeitgeist, become the king’s two bodies—the institution of the presidency and the person who happens to fill it.

In that case, how do we take a threatening tweet posted by @POTUS as opposed to one posted by @RealDonaldTrump? What happens, legally, if someone suffers damages, or is seriously hurt, as a result of the loosing of a mob by either account? Usually in such a situation, we would look to First Amendment doctrine regarding incitement. But coming either from the President or from the institution of the presidency, such a tweet would probably represent state action and therefore be outside the scope of the First Amendment entirely. Could a party injured, or merely harassed, as a result of one of Trump’s tweets bring a suit against the government? And if so, for what? Is the President, in whom all executive power is vested, allowed to tweet insults at individual people knowing that the result will be to “unleash my beautiful Twitter account on you”? This is uncharted territory.

So if someone is injured because of a POTUS-inspired insult, that might mean Trump is liable, no matter how much he screams about free speech.

But suppose he isn’t held legally responsible. Then what? I propose that WaPo or some other large, national publication begin a column called Trump’s Twitter Victims. Each time someone identified as a Trump opponent is hurt or, tragically, killed, he or she would be listed in the column, along with a biography and the evidence connecting Trump to the incident. Soon it would be syndicated.

And each column could plaintively end with

Why Hasn’t Trump Been Impeached Yet?

Because this behavior is utterly intolerable in the American Republic.

A friend mentions an article published in the Columbia Journalism Review of interest to bloggers. A blogger is in civil court in South Carolina, sued for defamation because he published reports that a (now former) state lawmaker was under investigation for ethics violations and would be indicted.

The lawmaker denied the investigation, and was never indicted. Now he wants damages and sources, which the blogger, Will Folks, refuses to give up. He may end up in jail on contempt charges, but his attorney has asked for an opinion from the SC Supreme Court. Journalists are unhappy, as he’s not a favorite of their’s. Local journalism professor Doug Fisher:

Indeed, the blogger’s use of unnamed sources is now at the heart of this current legal battle. How it shakes out is of concern for Doug Fisher, who teaches journalism at the University of South Carolina and was news editor in the state for the AP from 1992 to 2001. He worries about a potentially bad precedent that could have a long-term adverse affect for journalists.

“The case scares me,” he told me in a phone interview Wednesday as he gamed out the potential outcomes. One is that the Supreme Court declines to hear the case. Another is that the court hears it and rules in the blogger’s favor. Or the court hears it and rules against him. “That makes it one in three that you get a ruling that’s in your favor. I don’t like those odds.”

Which is also bad stats, unless you think the Supreme Court is just rolling dice.

On the bigger picture, this is a tricky situation. As a blogger who doesn’t try to make money off this hobby, I’m not at risk because I make no effort to publish original news, simply opinions concerning the news and the opinions of others (just think of me as a parasite on a parasite on …); nor will I pick sides. To me, the issues are tightly balanced, between the right to publish legitimate news vs the right not to be slandered by a malicious individual. How to prove it any particular case? That’s the fun part.

But – one could argue that the news is illicit as the proceedings are, I think, expected to be private; the leak of such news is probably against the rules, if not the law. But, of course, if it’s really serious, it should be reported in order to safeguard against corruption. Laws & traditions are not created with the expectation that everyone “plays fair”, otherwise there would be no point to having them in the first place. A law safeguarding privacy is equally a law covering for corruption.

I wonder if it’s an appropriate legal strategy to ask if the lawmaker really was under investigation. If not, then the contempt of court is applied; if so, then dismiss the case.

I’m not a lawyer, so I really have no idea. It just seems … logical.

Noah Feldman writes in Bloomberg/Politics about a recent Indian Supreme Court decision regarding what speech by candidates for office may contain:

The decision by the seven-member panel of the court was an interpretation of India’s Corrupt Practices and Electoral Offenses law, first enacted in 1951 and amended subsequently. Section 123(3) of the law makes it a corrupt practice for a candidate to make an appeal “to vote or refrain from voting for any person on the ground of his religion, race, caste, community or language.”

The central legal issue was whether the law only bans the candidate from appealing to his own religion or community, or whether it extends to cover references to the voters’ identities, too. …

The court split 4-3, with the majority adopting the broader reading and the dissenters the narrower one. The leading opinion of the majority emphasized that India’s founders “intended a secular democratic republic where differences should not be permitted to be exploited.” Treating this as the law’s purpose, the majority rejected the narrow reading of the word “his” as referring to the candidate’s identity as inappropriately literal.

So what, you say – that sounds reasonable, no? Turns out context is everything:

On the surface, the decision looks like a close legal case with a defensible conclusion. But the reality is otherwise — for a concrete legal reason. In 1995, a three-judge panel of the court issued a famous judgment colloquially known as the Hindutva or Hinduism decision. In it, the court said that because Hinduism didn’t subscribe to a single dogma or worship a single God, it did not satisfy the traditional definition of religion. It was therefore “a way of life and nothing more.”

Thus, according the 1995 precedent, Hinduism isn’t a religion for purposes of the election law. The result is that the broad reading of the statute doesn’t equally disadvantage all appeals to religion – it disadvantages only minority religions. Thus Muslim candidates can’t invoke their creed to win votes, but Hindu candidates can.

Infamous might be a better word for it. But it’s interesting that in a country where the Hindus outnumber the Muslims 5-1, the majority just found another way to oppress the minority – even if it was by accident.

Which I’d never heard of. MIT’s Technology Review covers the latest accomplishment involving single pixel cameras:

In the last few years, single-pixel cameras have begun to revolutionize the field of imaging. These counterintuitive devices produce high-resolution images using a single pixel to detect light. They do not need lenses, the images of have none of the distortions that lenses produce, and the entire picture is always in focus. Physicists have used them to make movies and even to create 3-D images.

And that raises an interesting question: how much more can these devices do?

Today we get an answer of sorts thanks to the work of Bin Bai and co at Xi’an Jiaotong University in China, who have built a single pixel camera that can see around corners. Their new device can photograph objects even when they are not in direct view.

The technique is similar to that used with other single pixel cameras. The trick is to first randomize the light that the pixel detects, record the resulting light intensity, and then repeat this process thousands of times.

It’s easy to think that this randomization makes the task of creating an image even harder, but the reverse is true.

So the Chinese researchers are mining the reflections of a convenient wall to see around the corner. It doesn’t say how long it takes to acquire the 50,000 inputs used to compose the image.

There’s no doubt that AI, if achieved, will affect most aspects of society, including literature. But in the area of literary devices? Here’s my thinking. In NewScientist (17 December 2016, link temporarily unavailable), Leah Crane reports on the projected fate of the Cassini probe:

… the Cassini spacecraft will crash into Saturn, sacrificing itself for the sake of the ringed giant’s potentially habitable moons.

First, I thought this was horribly inaccurate. The flight controllers are the responsible parties. But, of course, this is a literary device, a little conceit, which led me to wonder if Leah is aware of it, or if it’s just an automatic expression, dispensed on command.

But then it occurred to me, if & when AI matures and becomes something like our equal, this expression will move from literary device to literally true. The machine could actually make the volitional decision to plunge to its non-existence in the clouds of Saturn.

(Telepresence for the AI comes to mind. Just for fun. Is it a literary device then?)

And that leaves this literary device an attenuated creature, some of its viscera dematerialized by the advance of technology.

With regard to President Eisenhower, here were two reasons I decided to read his farewell address. The first was simply that I never had done so, and it’s relatively famous. The second had to do with its most famous component, the military-industrial complex. It had begun striking a chord for me recently, and I wanted to know more. Here’s the complete relevant passage from the speech:

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military[-]industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific[-]technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system — ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

Perhaps Eisenhower further pursued this theme in other publications, but I will be bold and claim a certain consonance with some of my thoughts without further research (and if I earn the reputation of being lazy, it is not without warrant). Specifically, I believe his warning has to do with a consistent theme I find myself sounding on this blog: the problems incurred by importing the methods and processes of one societal sector into another. While I’ve gone on at great length here on the subject (for which I excuse by saying I was thinking out loud), I can summarize easily enough. Clearly, Eisenhower is warning that the military-industrial complex, or armaments corporations, may seek undue influence over the policy of the United States. Why? The first reason is no great secret: the prospect of profits in the offing.

But, not so clearly, but implicit, is the confusion of the methods and processes of the armaments corporations with governmental processes. “We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes,” Eisenhower says, and it’s clear that a democratic process is his main concern. Shall corporate profits take precedence over democratic processes? Shall the corporation take over a duty of government, bringing its self-interest into play in a function which demands disinterest?

Eisenhower is calling for keeping the rifts between the sectors as clean and well-defined as possible, because he recognizes the incompatibility between corporate and governmental priorities. And that, in general, has been my assertion and my reason for caution amidst all the calls for privatizing this and privatizing that: the methods and processes optimized for one sector, so successfully, may be catastrophic for another.

And, clearly, President Eisenhower understood this and warned us.

And, just as clearly, the lesson is not so well understood.

Peculation, aka embezzlement:

Embezzlement is the act of withholding assets for the purpose of conversion (theft) of such assets, by one or more persons to whom the assets were entrusted, either to be held or to be used for specific purposes. Embezzlement is a type of financial fraud, e.g. a lawyer might embezzle funds from the trust accounts of his or her clients; a financial advisor might embezzle the funds of investors; and a husband or a wife might embezzle funds from a bank account jointly held with the spouse. [Wikipedia]

Encountered in The Reverse of the Medal, by Patrick O’Brian.

Suspected peculation, absence without leave or fancied disrespect would rouse her to a volume of sound that seemed to  mark the utmost limits of the female voice; but this was an illusion, for once unchastity in man or woman came to her attention these bound were left far, far behind, the remote babbling of some distant brook.

Fun!

On Lawfare Quinta Jurecic introduces Trump’s pick for Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats:

While on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Coats signed on with the minority in the committee’s report on interrogation, along with Senators Richard Burr, James Risch, Marco Rubio, and Tom Coburn. He was one of only three members of the committee to vote against declassifying the report in 2014. Coats opposed the USA Freedom Act and voted against it, writing that the legislation significantly weakened U.S. intelligence capabilities.

Notably, Coats is banned from entering Russia—along with a number of other Senators and government officials—due to his support for sanctions against Russia in response to the annexation of Crimea in 2014. At the time, Coats stated that he found Russia’s behavior “unacceptable” and declared his intention to “lead efforts on Capitol Hill to bring Putin to his senses.” During his most recent term in the Senate, he was known as a Russia hawk who routinely pushed for a hard line against Russian adventurism in Ukraine. His position on Russia may cause friction with other members of the Trump team and will likely raise questions during his confirmation hearing given the President-elect’s coziness with the Kremlin. Coats’s previous hedging when asked if he would feel more comfortable with Trump controlling nuclear weapons than Obama may not help his case.

Coats’s connections to the intelligence community and reputation as a more traditional establishment Republican rather than a partisan bomb-thrower have been welcomed by some intelligence officials, who hope that Coats will be able to bridge the gap between the intelligence community and the President-elect.

And an easy confirmation, overall. This may be reassuring to those on the fence about dumping Trump in a hurry. But if Trump later disses Coats then we may see fireworks.

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was an astrophysicist who calculated the maximum size of a white dwarf, which is known as the Chandrasekhar Limit. On his initial presentation of the theory to his mentor, Sir Arthur Eddington, a man already famed in astrophysics, he was rejected, and in fact Eddington never did accept the proof. Gino Segrè quotes Chandrasekhar in A Matter of Degrees, p. 268 (typos mine) on the incident:

“The moral is that a certain modesty toward science always pays in the end.  These people (Eddington …) terribly clever, of great intellectual ability, terribly perceptive in many ways, lost out because they did not have the modesty to say ‘I am going to learn what physics teaches me.’ They wanted to dictate how physics should be.“

I can’t help but note that this is, incidentally, a blistering indictment of the current GOP. Not only in climate change, but in economics as well, as demonstrated in the Kansas debacle, wherein Kansas, after applying the GOP’s model of how the economy works, has suffered an economic decline not in keeping with its neighbors. The man responsible, Governor Brownback, wants to apply his model to the entire nation.

All I can think is that Brownback would bring the nation down in order to improve Kansas’ performance, relatively speaking.

Anyways, seeing politics even in Chandrasekhar’s observation of scientists’ intellectual errors makes me wonder if I’m taking the political world far too seriously.