Category Archives: Uncategorized

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.

Back in 2015 I responded to a post by David Chung advocating straight ticket voting, the backbone of power politics. The victory of Trump and many GOP Congressional members has been attributed to stray Republicans returning to the party ticket, and while it’s not the only factor in their recovery, it’s an important factor, and resulted in many upsets. It”s a little depressing to see my points from that prior post starting to be fulfilled, starting right at the top.

Competency: As we’re seeing in the various nominations so far, demonstrated competency is not a component of most of the Administration’s picks; rather, it’s demonstrated loyalty. This lack of interest in competency, in turn, reflects on the Administration itself, in particular its methods. But, as Seashsells on The Daily Kos points out, the incompetence may have already been demonstrated on a more concrete level: the damaging weather in Georgia:

THIS is what American Carnage means. Just as FEMA failed to get help to NOLA after Katrina, so Trump and his team have dropped the ball after tornado storms ripped through the SouthEast this past Saturday and Sunday. There are 20 people dead and communities devastated with some areas looking like what many call a war zone. Officials are begging Trump to send help TWO-THREE DAYS after the tornado storms. Make sure you spread this story. Trump supporters need to see what voting for incompetent, anti-government Republicans gets them.

Positions are prizes: Magnifying the Bush Administration, it seems like nearly all the nominees are being handed awards for their donations and/or work. DeVos, Tillerson, Price. Even Haley, although in this case it’s not a reward to Haley, who didn’t support Trump, but for her Lt. Governor, Henry McMaster, an early Trump supporter. But now they have their cracker jack prizes for the money they donated – but what do we get out of them?

Reduction in public debate: While the volume of public clamor has increased, it’s not at all clear to me that public, productive debates on national policy are taking place. Perhaps I’m missing them. Or perhaps, as word comes down the chain of command that Trump has decided thus and so, the ideological faithful leap into line – no matter what they privately think. And this lack of debate means that the voices of those afflicted by the decisions are not effectively heard by those on top – by those who demand and expect absolute loyalty. For example, at the bottom are Iowa farmers and the TPP, as reported by The Des Moines Register:

President Donald Trump’s decision to jettison the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal and renegotiate U.S. trade with Canada and Mexico could lead to a trade war that could put Iowa in the cross-hairs, worried state leaders told the Register on Monday.

Agriculture and manufacturing, two industries that help form the foundation of Iowa’s economy, would be among the first casualties because of Iowa’s heavy dependence on exports.

For the party faithful, here’s a chilling comment:

“I would hope that President Trump wouldn’t take action that could start a trade war, given that it would damage the very people who helped put him in office,” said Dermot Hayes, an Iowa State University agricultural economist. “But that’s just a hope.”

I worry that the failure to hold Trump to a high standard by Iowa farmers is going to substantially hurt not only our Iowa farmers, but everyone else.

Selecting Party planks: Given the amorphous cipher that is President Trump, his actual position on many issues remains quite questionable, rendering this assertion of mine a little dubious. You don’t think he’s a cipher? Consider this report on German Chancellor Angela Merkel, from TPM:

During a joint press conference on Friday at the White House, British Prime Minister Theresa May seemed to go out of her way to box in President Donald Trump on his backing for NATO, declaring that he had told her in their private meeting that he will support the decades-old alliance “100 percent.” …

May’s portrayal of Trump’s comments on NATO diverge from his public statements on the alliance.

The strength of a democracy can be perceived as a weakness – the failure to speak in a single voice. For those who are in economic distress, for those who don’t tolerate dissent and multiple opinions and think they need certainty, it can seem as if the nation is adrift in a fog of voices. But it’s that respectful clamor, the opinions of many people, which bring us the political and moral strength that has made us a world leader. As we learn to use this tool called the Web, learn to discern false news from true news, lie from fact, we should improve our utilization of those opinions. At one time, the gatekeepers of the broadcast networks helped keep debate quality high; today we’re learning how attain that quality, as we gradually marginalize dubious sources such as foreign teenagers and its American equivalent, Breitbart News.

In order to understand the fallacy of team politics and its implementation, straight ticket voting, one must come to a certain realization: team politics is an instrumentality independent of the quality of the policies it enables and enforces. Once this concept of straight ticket voting gains acceptance and is used, it can be used for anything.

Repeat it with me, folks: Anything.

Such as a highly damaging trade war, because the leadership doesn’t understand the processes and limitations of international trade.

The concept of team politics, without context, is a profound abdication of responsibility. I shan’t deny limited applicability, such as against today’s GOP, which appears to be a highly competent marketing machine, and not much else. But once committed to voting for a straight ticket, there is no more judgment to make, and if one or more of the members of the ticket are bloody fools, or sociopaths – well, straight ticket voting is not a defense, not a rationale. You are still responsible if that ticket you voted for leads you into bedlam.

One final point. I worry that other parties will see what appears to be success for the GOP, and try to follow suit, holding out the siren song of straight ticket voting. As they do so, we should see the power mongers, the sociopaths, the leaders with no qualifications start to climb the ladder towards the top of the hierarchy. That’s a sign of pathology. Watch for it. Otherwise, we’ll have another generation of Hasterts, Livingstones, and Gingrichs, deLays and Lotts – and Trumps. People to whom the rules didn’t apply as they reached for power.

And got it.

The opposite of straight ticket voting is an embodiment of one of the most important, yet under discussed, American qualities: that of doubt. The realization that our answers to governance are contingent, tentative, and never definitive and final. We put forward solutions, but if they fail then we write them off and try again, much as FDR reportedly did – and Governor Brownback fails to do, fixed as he is on ideological purity and not effectuality.

Broken ticket voting recognizes that no one party has all the answers.

This version of War of the Worlds  (2005) is not the classic version, but the remake starring Tom Cruise. It is, in some ways, similar to the earlier version, but it also differs in a key way.

They are similar in the special effects department, in that both, for their era, is excellent. The solution to the problem of something destroying humanity is the same, the attack of our pathogens on hosts with no defenses, and thus they appear to share the same religious orientation, although this version’s touch of religion is far lighter, perhaps even superfluous.

But there’s a key difference. In the original, science is brought to bear upon the problem, and is one of the foci of that version; its bitter and complete failure, and the scientists’ desperation, vs the smallest of the small’s success in defending our planet becomes the epilogue of the movie.

In this new version, science never enters into it. This is a classic It Came, We Saw, We Ran Like Hell plot, and we follow the flying heels of Cruise’s character, a longshoreman with virtually no concept of science, as he gathers up his children and gets out of town with the monsters hot on his trail. Once in the countryside, he must play dodge-ems with the monster’s monstrous machines, all the while trying to ride herd on a daughter with a scream like a train whistle, and a son with a ridiculous urge to prove himself.

But while the science and military of the first version barely lay a finger on the monsters (they manage to chop up a mechanical eye, as I recall, and bring it back for study), when Cruise finally gets scooped up by one of the machines, he goes up with a grenade belt, and, through a brave ploy, he halts its macabre rampage.

1 for the regular guys, 0 for the experts. While the first version addressed the classic rivalry between religion and science, this new version addresses a less conventional rivalry – that between the experts and the guy who fixes his own cars. It’s not stressed – we never even see a scientist labor and fail – but the theme lingers in the background, encouraging the audience to believe it can do anything it wants, if it runs fast enough and happens to be clever.

In the end, the monsters meet their doom due to the aforementioned pathogens, so the theme of the superiority of the regular guys is diluted, even attenuated; and, in fact, that’s a general problem with this movie: it can’t really decide what it wants to say, beyond the classic Put a putz in a pressure situation and he may grow up. It attempts to follow the original’s lesson in faith, but does it poorly, since it adheres to the single viewpoint of the longshoreman, who shows no sense of religion from beginning to end.

All that said, if you’re a visual person, this is a fun movie to watch. Director Spielberg springs a number of dramatic tableaus, from a hunt of Cruise’s family in an abandoned farm house, to a burning train, still flying along despite the monsters’ attack, to a car ferry attempting to save refugees, but instead becoming a death trap. These are carried off in grand style, but rather than being the cherries on the top of a great plot, they are the distractions from the rather muddled mess it becomes. The transition from the destruction of monster to the march on Boston is particularly problematic, because by now there’s no mechanized transport, except for the military – so how did they get to Boston so quick? And why murder that one guy, driven mad by the loss of his family? It seems … excessive.

All in all, it’s an OK movie, certainly if you have a head cold like I do, but it’s not going to stick to you. Better seen in the cinema than on the TV, it’ll be 20 years old in about 8 years – it may be worth waiting for it to show up as a “classic” at a local nostalgia cinema.

Since the Trump Administration is apparently deciding to abandon its moral commitment to public health by no longer reminding people midway through the ACA signup process to finish it (which apparently is crucial), I will link to Steve Benen’s report on it, and reiterate his advice:

Vox’s Sarah Kliff added, “For Obamacare to work, it needs a lot of young people to sign up. Young adults typically have lower health care costs, so they can help balance out the hefty medical bills of older enrollees…. With less outreach at the very end of the open enrollment period, former Obamacare officials expect they’ll have fewer sign-ups from young adults.”

For Trump World, this is, of course, the point. The White House doesn’t want the system to work, so the president’s team is taking deliberate steps to undermine the system – in order to then complain that it doesn’t work.

For the record, Americans can still sign up through Jan. 31. You might want to let people in your life know about the looming deadline – it’s a detail their Republican-run government is trying to keep under wraps.

Remind everyone you know. And don’t fall for this underhanded stratagem.

Later note: The GOP’s allies certainly hope to drown the ACA. Consider this report from Politico:

A House GOP-aligned outside group is rolling out a $2.6 million media blitz urging lawmakers to repeal and replace Obamacare — a move aimed at proving Republicans support as they craft a health care alternative.

American Action Network on Wednesday will unveil the new spending on TV, digital and print ads as well as mailers in 41 districts. That brings the group’s total Obamacare ad spending to just over $4 million in January alone, a huge investment they hope will preempt Democratic attacks for their efforts.

“The current healthcare system does not work and has hurt millions of Americans; it’s time for a healthcare system that works,” said Corry Bliss, AAN executive director, in a statement. “Americans should know that Congress has a plan for patient-centered health care and their member of Congress is a key voice in this fight.”

Sounds like a load of nonsense from here. They need to bring along some facts and figures.

Forbes.com has an interesting tidbit on the Senator Warren’s baby, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau:

Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote a decision last year declaring the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency unconstitutional because no one including the President had the power to fire its director (a structure CFPB supporters including Sen. Elizabeth Warren say protects it from political meddling).

“Because of their massive power and the absence of Presidential supervision and direction, independent agencies pose a significant threat to individual liberty and to the constitutional system of separation of powers and checks and balances,” wrote Kavanaugh, a George W. Bush appointee who also served as counsel in the Bush administration.

So do judges, oddly enough, but I suppose the difference is that the agency doesn’t function as a check on another governmental agency. In the referenced article, the actual modification:

In a decision reversing $109 million in fines the board ordered against mortgage lender PHH Corp., the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that CFPB Director Richard Cordray must be subject to firing by President Obama.

If the CFPB doesn’t appeal, or loses the appeal, then Trump can fire the director whenever a complainant gets Trump’s ear and whines a bit. I don’t expect much in the way of adult supervision.

This sounds like the beginning of a plot for a bad movie. From NewScientist (14 January 2017):

Source: wiseGEEK

Alysson Muotri at the University of California, San Diego, and his team created the mini-brains by exposing stem cells taken from the pulp of children’s milk teeth to cocktails of growth factors that help them mature.Eventually, they can develop as many as six layers of cerebral cortex – the outer surface of the brain. This region is much more sophisticated in humans than in other animals, and houses important circuitry governing our most complex thoughts and behaviours, including socialising with others.

It’s cool stuff, really – who would have thought that the pulp of milk teeth could be used to create parts of a cerebral cortex? And why?

To understand how brain development affects sociability, the team used donated cells from children with autism and Rett syndrome, both of which are associated with impaired communication skills. They also used cells from children with Williams syndrome, a condition characterised by a hyper-sociable nature. People with Williams syndrome can be unable to restrain themselves from talking to complete strangers.

The team found that mini-brains grown using stem cells from children with autism form fewer neural connections, while those from Williams syndrome children have an abnormally high number. When cells from the teeth of children with none of these conditions were used, the resulting mini-brains were somewhere in between these two extremes.

Which leads to questions of whether or not therapies developed to correct the number of neural connections to an “ideal” number is an ethical treatment. After all, what would determine an ideal number? That leads to questions about neuro-typical vs neuro-atypical desirability.

It connects, in my mind, to the azi of C. J. Cherryh’s Cyteen series, who were basically bred slaves – who didn’t mind being slaves. I found them a bit chilling, but then that was one of the points of the series – heavy specialization may be necessary to survive in space.

On Lawfare Jack Goldsmith does not believe the military services nor the CIA will return to torture:

People forget that under the Bush administration, the DOD in 2003 successfully revolted against aggressive interrogation techniques that the DOJ has at the time ruled lawful, and that the CIA interrogation and black site program had basically ground to a halt after 2006 in light of the changes in the law forged by the Detainee Treatment Act and Hamdan.  They forget that the CIA refused, after the DTA but before Hamdan, to accept a DOJ interpretation of the DTA that would permit a return to waterboarding.  (See pages 119-120 of Power and Constraint.)  Hamdan made a return even more perilous.  Whatever ambiguity was left concerning the legality of waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques was eliminated by the McCain-Feinstein Amendment to the FY2016 National Defense Authorization Act, which, as Steve Vladeck notes, requires ICRC access to detainees and “limits the techniques that can be used against any detainee either in U.S. custody, under the effective control of the United States, or held in a facility owned, operated, or controlled by the United States, to those ‘authorized by and listed in the Army Field Manual 2–22.3.’”

These are some of the reasons why the Attorney General and Defense Secretary pledged not to return to waterboarding, and why the CIA Director did as well despite some weasel-words.

That was ten to fifteen years ago, so I might not be so sanguine. Still, it’s an interesting post for his emphasis on the nuances which I doubt Trump even knows exists. Here’s an example (which he takes from an earlier publication of his):

Presidential actions do not take place in a vacuum, but rather in a context where they are interpreted based on perceptions about the President’s intentions and trustworthiness.   The early Bush administration loudly and proudly proclaimed that it wanted to expand presidential power, and appeared to act on this proclamation in many legal opinions and contexts that scared all of the checking institutions above and led them to push back very hard against Bush in an unprecedented fashion.  … [Presidential actions] are not judged in a vacuum.  They are judged against a background of beliefs about (among other things) the president’s trustworthiness and commitment to the rule of law.  In its first term the Bush administration was (as I argued in The Terror Presidency) unprecedentedly indifferent to these factors, and the checking institutions bit back unprecedentedly hard.  Trump is already in a much worse position than was Bush on the trustworthiness score.

Trump’s pack of amateurs and second-raters may play well to his base – but for the professionals both inside and outside the national security apparatus it’s going to be something entirely different. If we start seeing wholesale firings, we’ll know the Trump Administration is unhappy with the responses they’re receiving. However, the judiciary is relatively immune to the Administration, so they may end up being a bulwark against the foolish activities.

Claire Brewster does interesting things to obsolete maps:

I’ll skip trying to connect material to subject matter. Here’s another.

More here.

Message From Space (1978) has enthusiasm, chutzpah-filled teenagers, deus ex machina, and galactic bad guys. It doesn’t have any real plot, logic, motivations, special effects, or any real reason to get excited.

Except for that spaceship that crashes right at the end.

Whether or not it’s a rip off of Star Wars, don’t waste your time. Even as a head-cold movie it’s a horrid bit of trash.

By Steve Benen on MaddowBlog:

After Donald Trump condemned people who are registered to vote in two different states, multiple reports surfaced about the president’s chief strangest and his Treasury nominee being registered to vote in two different states.

Perhaps he is strange, but it’s no doubt strategist. Gotta like it.

Heterostructure:

A heterojunction is the interface that occurs between two layers or regions of dissimilar crystalline semiconductors. These semiconducting materials have unequal band gaps as opposed to a homojunction. It is often advantageous to engineer the electronic energy bands in many solid-state device applications, including semiconductor lasers, solar cells and transistors (“heterotransistors“) to name a few. The combination of multiple heterojunctions together in a device is called a heterostructure, although the two terms are commonly used interchangeably. [Wikipedia]

Encountered in”Dawn of the 3Suns: Green technology firm takes over former Deer Lake Elementary building,” Joe Bowen, The Bemidji Pioneer:

One project, Bahr said, would use a “quantum dot Peltier Effect semiconductor heterostructure” to passively convert heat energy that might otherwise be wasted into electric energy.

“Suppose you had a bathtub that was coated with a Peltier Effect quantum dot thin film. While you’re sitting in there, you’ve filled up that bathtub with 40,000 BTUs of heat that came from your water heater,” Bahr said. “You’re just going to let it go down the drain and warm up the sewer, right? Maybe not.”

A reader is angry at me concerning voter fraud investigations:

You Are White arent you? You very seriously have no clue how illegitimate are their methods and what is really at stake, do you? Have you ever felt challenged as to your rights in your life? Legitimately?

Its an attack on voter registries intended to disenfranchise the brown people.

I’m an American independent. I ask my reader: Did you read point #2? Did you digest it? Do you realize how powerful this approach is to making YOUR point if no fraud is found? If no fraud is found, it makes YOUR position invincible. Right now, the vast majority of American citizens Just Don’t Know. But imagine – then they get the news that a major investigation has been conducted, and nothing beyond the current sparse GOP fraud is found. Now they know the GOP is blowing smoke.

And if there is fraud? That needs to be fixed.

CNN reports that President Trump still believes there was massive fraud during the last election – and he wants it investigated:

President Donald Trump called on Wednesday for “a major investigation” into voter fraud, following through with baseless claims he has made since November’s election alleging millions of illegal votes during the general election without citing any evidence.

“I will be asking for a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal and … even, those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time). Depending on results, we will strengthen up voting procedures!” Trump wrote in two consecutive tweets.

[Bold mine.] Steve Benen and others are disbelieving:

It’s worth pausing to appreciate the fact that Trump can apparently be baited into doing almost anything. He’s pushed this ridiculous ideas about voter fraud for months and never even hinted about the need for an investigation. Yesterday, however, journalists effectively said, “If Trump were serious, he’d be demanding a probe,” leading the president to quickly start tweeting – complete with unnecessary capitalization and exclamation points – about his newfound interest in an investigation, an interest he apparently discovered after watching some TV news.

But here’s the thing – speaking as an independent, if the investigation is conducted properly, only good things can come out of it. Here are the scenarios:

1. Rampant fraud is found. Great! I don’t care which way it leans, let’s clean it up. This improves our democracy.
2. Fraud is not found. Great! Trump shuts up and the numerous attempts by the States to to impose tighter controls on voting, often found to be discriminatory by the courts, lose all basis for their continuance in legal fact. This improves our democracy.

The hard part is conducting the investigation properly. It will require an impartial authority – which, sadly, the FBI has lost – and a transparent process so that reasonable partisans (which excludes anyone who thinks Breitbart News has any consistent validity) may be satisfied that the investigation methods were appropriate to the problem. A suggestions box might even be provided in case the investigating authority misses a bet.

But if I were directing these sites that have a liberal lean, I’d tell them to just advocate for a thorough investigation and drop the denigrative adjectives. If the investigation finds nothing, then there’ll be a far stronger moral authority over Trump – and another argument to use against him if he is chooses to run for a second term.

Readers find the Aetna report nauseating. One replies to my question about perjury:

I’m not sure that perjury charges would be effective. For better effect, I’d try for an anti-trust suit.

Perhaps a class action suit would make more sense. The rejection of their attempted merger with Humana might put a damper on an anti-trust suit. Another:

“The company [Aetna] said its overall profit leapt 38% in the final quarter of the year, as a key measure of spending on medical costs fell. The strong quarterly results were fueled largely by its government business, which includes Medicare and Medicaid.” http://www.wsj.com/articles/aetna-profit-rises-38-1454326988

In other words, they’re a bunch of greedy, whining bastards.

But from their viewpoint they’re just trying to maximize profit. That’s what they’re taught to do.

I wonder if this is what happens when the idol of free enterprise seeps out of the private sector into everything else.

The Lancet has published research on a correlation between dementia and living near major roads. It’s an article only available to subscribers in full, but this is from the Findings section:

Between 2001, and 2012, we identified 243 611 incident cases of dementia, 31 577 cases of Parkinson’s disease, and 9247 cases of multiple sclerosis. The adjusted hazard ratio (HR) of incident dementia was 1·07 for people living less than 50 m from a major traffic road (95% CI 1·06–1·08), 1·04 (1·02–1·05) for 50–100 m, 1·02 (1·01–1·03) for 101–200 m, and 1·00 (0·99–1·01) for 201–300 m versus further than 300 m (p for trend=0·0349). The associations were robust to sensitivity analyses and seemed stronger among urban residents, especially those who lived in major cities (HR 1·12, 95% CI 1·10–1·14 for people living <50 m from a major traffic road), and who never moved (1·12, 1·10–1·14 for people living <50 m from a major traffic road). No association was found with Parkinson’s disease or multiple sclerosis.

Public Health Ontario gives the non-technical overview:

Led by PHO and ICES scientists, the study found that people who lived within 50 metres of high-traffic roads (like Ontario’s Hwy. 401) had a seven per cent higher likelihood of developing dementia compared to those who lived more than 300 metres away from busy roads. …

“Our study is the first in Canada to suggest that pollutants from heavy, day-to-day traffic are linked to dementia. We know from previous research that air pollutants can get into the blood stream and lead to inflammation, which is linked with cardiovascular disease and possibly other conditions such as diabetes. This study suggests air pollutants that can get into the brain via the blood stream can lead to neurological problems,” says Dr. Ray Copes, chief of environmental and occupational health at PHO and an author on the paper. …

The increase in the risk of developing dementia went down to four per cent if people lived 50-100 metres from major traffic, and to two per cent if they lived within 101-200 metres. At over 200 metres, there was no elevated risk of dementia.

And Lloyd Alter on Treehugger.com gets the Sardonic Humor of the Week award:

It’s amusing that this study comes from the Province of Ontario, where they spend billions widening highways into cities, where light rail proposals are fought tooth and nail because they will block lanes that could carry cars, where the Mayor of Toronto is spending a billion bucks to fix up a highway that saves a few thousand people a few minutes a day, and then everybody wonders why the costs of health care are getting so high.

Spaceweather.com reports on a recent solar event:

Source: NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory

SOLAR PROMINENCE: A giant cloud of plasma is dancing over the sun’s western limb today. Shown here in a snapshot from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, the structure is more than 80,000 km tall and could swallow our planet more than 50 times with room to spare.

I really like that picture. It reminds me that all of our contretemps on this puny globe could be erased by the solar hiccup of a trivial little star on the edge of a mediocre galaxy.

Barycenter:

The barycenter (or barycentre; from the Ancient Greek βαρύς heavy + κέντρον centre^[1]) is the center of mass of two or more bodies that are orbiting each other, or the point around which they both orbit. It is an important concept in fields such as astronomy and astrophysics. The distance from a body’s center of mass to the barycenter can be calculated as a simple two-body problem. [Wikipedia]

Barycenter came up during a work lunchtime conversation concerning high blood pressure. Yeah, the participant had the grace to look embarrassed as he “crossed my medical neurons with my astrophysics neurons.”

But I get to learn a new word, so all is well.

We now have more news on the Aetna withdrawal from the ACA, as a federal judge has made a ruling. BuzzFeed has the report:

America’s second-largest health insurance company stopped offering coverage to hundreds of thousands of people as part of a legal strategy to avoid government scrutiny of a planned merger, a federal judge said in a ruling today.

Aetna withdrew from health insurance exchanges in 17 counties in Florida, Georgia, and Missouri after the Department of Justice said competition in those markets would be harmed by the company’s $37 billion planned merger with rival Humana. The withdrawal was part of a wider move that saw Aetna pull coverage from almost 550 counties in 11 states.

The health insurance giant said it exited the exchanges purely for business reasons, having lost a total of $420 million due to plans sold through the marketplaces. But in a ruling blocking its merger with Humana today, DC District Court judge John Bates said it was also done as a legal maneuver. …

“Aetna was willing to offer to expand its participation in the exchanges if DOJ did not block the merger, or conversely, was willing to threaten to limit its participation in the exchanges if DOJ did,” Judge Bates said Monday.

I suppose the execs just think they’re playing hardball, but I wonder if perjury charges could appear. It’s almost as if the execs are just daring the justice system to discover the truth, with no penalties to them either way.

I was originally going to post this to this thread, concerning the massing of the herd of RINOs, but thinking about, it A Big Game of Chicken just seems better. WaPo reports on the hiring of Julia Hahn, a Breitbart writer, by the Trump Administration. Why is this interesting?

When House Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s redbrick Georgian revival house in Janesville, Wis., was surrounded last July by women whose children were murdered by undocumented immigrants, conservative writer Julia Hahn published a scathing report and a blurry snapshot of Ryan’s departing SUV.

The headline: “Paul Ryan flees grieving moms trying to show him photos of their children killed by his open borders agenda.”

Three months later, Hahn wrote a 2,800-word story alleging that Ryan (R-Wis.) was the ringmaster for a “months-long campaign to elect Hillary Clinton.” It was just one of a torrent of posts over the past year that cast Ryan as a “globalist” who is cozy with corporations and an enemy of Donald Trump-style populism.

As noted in the previously mentioned link, Speaker Ryan is easily one of the most conservative members of the House, and certainly the most conservative Speaker in its history, so trying to RINO-ize him out of power is a little ludicrous. Yet, a leader in that RINO effort is now in the Trump Administration.

Privately, a number of House Republicans told The Washington Post that Hahn’s involvement signaled Bannon’s plans to possibly put her to use against them, writing searing commentaries about elected Republican leaders to ram through Trump’s legislative priorities and agitate the party’s base if necessary.

In other words, this is a bullying move, and so long as the GOP base believes in Trump, she may be a big club to use on GOPers reluctant to follow Trump’s lead.

Image: Foreign Policy Association

But Ryan may carry the doomsday weapon in this battle – he can begin the impeachment process, which would tar Trump with dishonor and even possibly boost him out, in favor of the more savory (to Ryan) Pence. We already have a report of Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a professor of Constitutional law, readying articles of impeachment, with the cause being the conflicts of interest caused by failure to divest from Trump’s business interests – but Raskin may be wise to wait a bit until the House leadership is fully unhappy with Trump.

Of course, while the House initiates the process, it’s the Senate that makes the final decision, and they are, in general, not so quick to come to judgment, as seen in the Clinton impeachment debacle. However, if there are more Russian revelations, they may not be so hesitant.

So this may just be an old-fashioned game of chicken. Will Ryan meekly follow Trump’s lead? Will Trump rein in his foaming at the mouth hired gun?

Or will we be treated to the popcorn event of an impeachment?

In any event, I think we’re continuing to see the disintegration of the GOP as the purists and power-mongers swarm. It’s just like a train wreck.

I’d like to know the nature of the evolutionary tradeoff, if known.