Category Archives: Uncategorized

Remember Rep. Franks, he who thinks the crime of breaking into a campaign’s computers isn’t all that important? CNN reports his backstep over the weekend:

But in an interview with CNN’s Jim Sciutto on “Wolf,” Franks argued that he has been a harsh critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime and that his comment was misinterpreted.

“Those comments were completely misconstrued,” Franks told Sciutto, adding that “nobody has been harder on Russian than me.”

Franks did not elaborate further on how his comment had been misunderstood.

Which doesn’t satisfy Steve Benen, who thinks he has some uncomfortable questions for the Rep:

I’d still love to hear answers to the questions I asked last week:

1. If Mexico had broken into RNC computers and Paul Manafort’s email to steal materials, embarrass Republicans, and help put Hillary Clinton in the White House, would Trent Franks have a cavalier attitude about international espionage?

2. If Franks’ own system were targeted in a cyber-attack during his re-election campaign, and his foes published genuine materials stolen from his computer to help elect his opponent, would he be equally quick to declare that the “bottom line” is that the hackers gave voters “information that was accurate”?

But I really think, in view of this WaPo editorial that Steve cites in another post, that Steve’s missed a big, juicy bet. How about this?

If a news organization actively broke into Trump’s personal papers and the IRS computers and found incriminating evidence that Russian governmental forces subverted the elections in a way that clearly favored Trump (and Franks), with Trumps’ knowledge, would Franks still advance these arguments?

Or are they really just self-serving?

Maybe a news organization should try just to find out how honest Rep. Franks is on the subject.

At least if you’re not an American. Look at this Gallup poll:

(The Clinton column refers to Bill, not Hillary.) It’s not completely unexpected, of course, for a President who lost the popular vote by nearly 3%, to inspire a lack of confidence. But I think of particular interest is the question concerning working with Congress. Does this extraordinarily low expectation for a GOP President working with a GOP Congress reflect the average American’s recognition that Trump is hard to predict? Does it indicate that voters expect Trump to defend Medicare and possibly even the ACA against a determined assault by Speaker of the House Ryan and Senate Majority Leader McConnell?

Collectively, these numbers amount to a measure of buyer’s remorse. If they go up, then there’s very little; if they go down, then even those who voted for Trump are regretting it. While it’s not clear if Trump is cannily playing his cards close to his vest, or if he’s dropped them on the floor and is too embarrassed to admit it, this is the sort of comparative poll results which should be a caution to Trump supporters: he may have been convincing to you, but to most Americans he’s not. And unlike most elections, where Americans evaluated positions and strategies advanced by the candidates, the latest was about a whole lot of voters buying into promises. No strategies, no positions, just promises. That’s a sea-change in how we elect Presidents. I don’t expect it to turn out well, but we shall see.

“Hey, there’s a copper. Ah, I’m not even illegal.”

“OK, so do some erratic weaving.”

“‘Sorry, officer, I was trying for a raven but it turned out to be a beaver.'”

>embarrassed silence<

Returning to this thread, MinnPost published an article by Ibrahim Hirsi on robotics in Minnesota in November of 2016. Amongst the observations was this:

[University of Minnesota robotics and AI professor Maria] Gini says that robots are mostly filling specific occupations that don’t require skills or are too dangerous for humans — positions that employers have long struggled to fill. In the car industry, for instance, robots have taken over most of the soldering and painting jobs. “These were well-paying jobs, but not really nice jobs for people,” Gini added. “But painting cars is dangerous; you’re living on fumes. So robots are replacing those kind of jobs.”

[Todd Bauernfeind, president of Summit Machine] added that companies mostly don’t bring in automation to get rid of people. Instead, they repurpose them to do other tasks. “I’m seeing it saving their jobs because the end product has become more competitive in the marketplace,” he said. “And if they didn’t do that, they risk losing the whole factory.”

Not everybody has such a rosy view of automation, of course. Matt Ehling, a Minnesota-based media producer who has written on the subject, said that many of the manufacturing jobs that have been lost in recent years have been lost to automation. “With the advent of more capable automation such as artificial intelligence software that can be trained to perform multiple, complex cognitive tasks, intellectual labor is now at risk of being automated,” Ehling said.

I find striking the contrast of the viewpoint of Ehling vs those of Gini and Bauernfeind. Ehling’s is a static view of the workplace, where jobs are replaced with little concept as to where the workers go, while the other viewpoint takes more of a resource viewpoint – the robots take over the repetitive & dangerous jobs, and the people who were filling those jobs can now move to other jobs at the same employer where they can use both their creativity and their domain knowledge to improve the company. And there’s room for both viewpoints because employers who are moving to automation will land all over the spectrum, as their wisdom and needs vary.

The latter viewpoint is what a libertarian would expect to hear, and would rejoice in, and I do find it interesting. As a knowledge worker, it doesn’t sound that bad, either – but I have to keep in mind the general anti-intellectualism gripping the United States these days. In this atmosphere, too often we hear this disdain for experts, for education, for learning in general. People get out of high school or get their college degree, and once they’re working, they don’t want to have to learn entire new subjects. Too often it’s unaffordable. (And then horror stories like these come tripping along.)

And if they’re working 40+ hour works (more likely 50+), it’s hard not to sympathize. Given the staggering amounts of entertainment available, coming home exhausted and plopping down in front of the computer or TV and enjoying some common cultural activity – being part of society, no matter how passive – is tempting for anyone who’s not on the autism spectrum.

In a previous post I mentioned the Bears Ears proposal to create a new national monument, and now Meteor Blades on The Daily Kos reports that President Obama has declared Bears Ears to be a new national monument. The proclamation is here, with this taste of it:

Source: Native News Online

Rising from the center of the southeastern Utah landscape and visible from every direction are twin buttes so distinctive that in each of the native languages of the region their name is the same: Hoon’Naqvut, Shash Jáa, Kwiyagatu Nukavachi, Ansh An Lashokdiwe, or “Bears Ears.” For hundreds of generations, native peoples lived in the surrounding deep sandstone canyons, desert mesas, and meadow mountaintops, which constitute one of the densest and most significant cultural landscapes in the United States. Abundant rock art, ancient cliff dwellings, ceremonial sites, and countless other artifacts provide an extraordinary archaeological and cultural record that is important to us all, but most notably the land is profoundly sacred to many Native American tribes, including the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Navajo Nation, Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah Ouray, Hopi Nation, and Zuni Tribe.

The area’s human history is as vibrant and diverse as the ruggedly beautiful landscape. From the earliest occupation, native peoples left traces of their presence. Clovis people hunted among the cliffs and canyons of Cedar Mesa as early as 13,000 years ago, leaving behind tools and projectile points in places like the Lime Ridge Clovis Site, one of the oldest known archaeological sites in Utah. Archaeologists believe that these early people hunted mammoths, ground sloths, and other now-extinct megafauna, a narrative echoed by native creation stories. Hunters and gatherers continued to live in this region in the Archaic Period, with sites dating as far back as 8,500 years ago.

The proclamation goes on for quite a while, describing the resources being brought under protection, and is the first such proclamation I’ve read – although I admit to not having a great deal of patience for it.

Meteor Blades is worried:

However, some foes of the designations hope to reverse them when the Trump regime takes office in January. They argue that Obama has abused the executive authority granted by the act. What they mean is they don’t like the law because it limits where and how private parties can make big bucks off public land.

No president ever has retracted a monument designated by a predecessor, and the courts have several times backed up executive authority in the matter, beginning with the case of Cameron vs. United States in 1920. But given the kind of renegade reinterpretation a Trumpian judiciary could take, there’s no certainty that stare decisis will keep an existing presidentially declared monument from being unproclaimed. …

Environmentalists—like the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) that has for decades been seeking protection for Bears Ears—and the five tribal governments of the Inter-Tribal Coalition are elated by the Bears Ears decision. But there is no joy in the all-Republican Utah congressional delegation or the governor’s mansion. That’s so even though the president reduced the monument from the 1.9 million acres backers had sought. Indeed, there are Republican plans—which were in the works well before the president’s announcement—to overturn monument status for the site once Obama leaves office.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens if Trump tries to withdraw the proclamation. Meanwhile, I missed this article from Utah Public Radio on dissenting Navajo chapters back in May 2016:

With help from the organization Sutherland Institute, members of two chapters of the Navajo Nation have released a video in opposition to a plan that asks President Obama to use the U.S. Antiquities Act to declare 1.9 million acres of tribal area lands as a national monument.

In a YouTube video, members of the Aneth and the Olijato chapter of the Navajo Nation said turning Bears Ears into a national monument could keep them from accessing roads and resources important to their traditions.

The report also comes with recorded interviews with native people against the then-proposed national monument. For context, Wikipedia tells me the Sutherland Institute is a conservative think tank opposed to bigger government.

Native News Online does not mention any native peoples opposition in their report:

There have been over 80 years of various efforts to protect the Bears Ears region, beginning with former Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes in 1936 and by Members of Congress, state, local and tribal leaders, and conservation groups in recent decades. Most recently the Hopi Nation, Navajo Nation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah Ouray, and Zuni Tribe developed a proposal to protect the area, and U.S. Representatives Rob Bishop and Jason Chaffetz introduced the Public Lands Initiative, legislation that included a similar protection proposal for the Bears Ears landscape. Today’s action responds to both of these recent proposals, recognizing the areas where there is broad agreement about the need for protections, tribal engagement, and allowances for historical uses such as grazing. Today’s action also establishes a process for developing a management plan that will ensure robust opportunities for all interested stakeholders to provide input about how the monument should be managed.

Indeed, this rather bland report makes it seem as if Chaffetz’ proposal is much like the final national monument designation. I wonder how he’d feel about that. I know even less about Native News Online than I do about the Sutherland Institute.

quiff:

The quiff is a hairstyle that combines the 1950s pompadour hairstyle, the 1950s flattop, and sometimes a mohawk. The hairstyle was a staple in the British ‘Teddy Boy‘ movement, but became popular again in Europe in the early 1980s and faced a resurgence in popularity during the ’90s. [Wikipedia]

Seen on The Crux during a discussion of the use of lasers for investigation of fossilized soft tissue remains:

Psittacosaurus in all its strange glory. (Credit: Vinther et al., 3D Camouflage in an Ornithischian Dinosaur, Current Biology (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ j.cub.2016.06.065)
Via The Crux.

We now know about the colors of fossil feathers because they contain melanin—the same pigment that colors our eyes, skin and hair. But some dinosaurs preserve the fossilized remains of skin, and an exceptional species is Psittacosaurus, a small and early ancestor of Triceratops. One specimen, housed at the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt, Germany, not only preserves a weird bristly tail quiff, but also the remains of its flesh.

The Crux of Discover Magazine publishes Jon Tennant’s report of the use of lasers on fossils, and how they can reveal the soft tissue chemistry of the original creature – and when a fossil has actually been assembled from several creatures:

When the team fired its laser at a Microraptor specimen, from the fossil graveyards of Liaoning, China, it lit up like a galaxy. What to the human eye appears as a rather mashed-up bird on a boring slab of rock, LSF transforms into a psychedelic horror show. Intriguingly, the skull of this particular specimen fluoresces in a way that suggests it could be a composite, with part of the skull added from another specimen.

A skull composite? The Microraptor skull under white light, top, shows subtle color differences. Under laser-light stimulation, the bone fluoresces from differences in fossil mineralogy. (Credit: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0125923.g013)
(Verbatim from The Crux)

“Tom [Kaye] and I have laser-imaged thousands of dinosaur fossils and, aside from revealing soft tissue and bone details that were previously ‘invisible’ or unclear, it has helped us to identify potential composite specimens,” says [Mike] Pittman. “In these specimens, we see specific bones or slabs that have fluorescence colors that are amiss from the rest of the specimen. We can then explore further using other instruments (e.g. CT scanning) to confirm if it has been compiled from the parts of several specimens.”

In all fairness, I have used fraud in a slightly unfair manner. Not all fossils are embedded in rock, and even those that are quite often come from disarticulated skeletons; assemblage must be a bit of a guessing game if they come from a bone bed (i.e., area where more than one carcass was located). On the other hand, there have been documented cases of fraud, often by locals who find the fossils and assemble them in such a way as to intrigue fossil hunters – and induce them to pay more.

And it’s a great picture.

Going to the original article at PLOS ONE, I found this interesting discussion of one specimen:

Figure 6 from the article. “Unidentified Liaoning fossil specimen.
An unidentifiable specimen from a Liaoning rock slab containing a Microraptor specimen (LVH 0026). No diagnostic bones are visible on the specimen surface, but laser penetration into the matrix induced fluorescence in multiple teeth and scales, making the identification of a fish possible. Scale bar 1 cm. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0125923.g006″

A very small specimen (Fig 6) was discovered on the same slab as a Microraptor specimen (Theropoda: Dromaeosauridae [20]) discovered in Liaoning province, China (LVH 0026). The visible bones were not sufficient to identify the specimen, so it was submitted for laser analysis as a last resort. Laser fluorescence identified the specimen as a fish within minutes. In this case the hydroxyapatite in the bones and teeth fluoresced at a higher intensity than the surrounding matrix. The higher intensity fluorescent reaction of the specimen, in comparison to the matrix, revealed teeth below the surface and transparent scales on the surface that were virtually invisible in reflected light (Fig 7). Note that the bone fragment on the right in Fig 7 actually lies under the scale. Laser fluorescence of the formerly translucent scale shows enough detail to count the scale’s growth rings.

Figure 7. From the article. ” Details enhanced with laser fluorescence.
A, White light photo. B, Fluoresced with a 457 nm blue laser. Fish scale on the surface is translucent and barely perceivable under white light. Growth rings on the scale are revealed under fluorescence and can be counted. Bone fragments are brought out in sharp detail. Arrows point to teeth in the matrix. Scale bar 0.5 mm. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0125923.g007″

The article notes that the laser can penetrate slightly into the matrix, revealing buried fossils and fossil fragments. Fascinating!

The thought of repealing the ACA has excited readers:

So that’s a problem — even people who benefit from the ACA don’t know what’s in it. All doctors and hospitals are mad about the shrinking Medicare/Medicaid reimbursements, but those are really important price controls for ALL of us. Yes, those controls were built into the ACA legislation, but it’s only for Medicare/Medicaid, it’s not like private insurance is using those rates. Yet.

IMO the problem is that the medical industry (doctors and hospitals) wants to deal exclusively with the wealthy and healthy, or the government funded, and maximize their per patient dollar intake. The insurance industry wants maximum rates and minimum expenditure (thus your high deductible plan, for which you pay several hundred dollars a month and have such a high deductible that you won’t go to the dr unless you think you are actually dying). We should not be surprised by this. it is exactly how a for profit system should work.

But somewhere in there we’ve lost the idea of public health, and the patient’s well being….

Right. We pay on a procedure basis, not on an outcome basis. We have lemon laws for cars, and general guarantees that merchandise does what’s advertised and doesn’t endanger the consumer’s health – why not the same for medicine? Answer: Medicine is harder. Still, we need to find ways to encourage medical activity that benefits the patient without regard to how it benefits the provider, because in a for-profit environment the two are, in the natural state, at cross-purposes. Another:

All that and more[]. I’d like to think there are a lot of doctors and nurses who actually do care about their patients and want to do good. But most of them work for for-profit businesses, clinics and hospitals, and those business folks drive the policies and bottom line.

Meanwhile, the insurance industry tries to squeeze as much money as possible out of both the patient and the doctor. Most docs have network agreements with insurers, who then provide financial incentives which are based on minimized the per-member per-month cost to the insurer. That is, the doctors get paid more when they see more patients for the same fixed costs. You can imagine where that leads.

Which sounds an awful lot like using private sector methods in another sector – with what is becoming an increasingly predictable bad outcome.

Today I chose to read, for the first time, the farewell speech of President Eisenhower. For younger readers, General Eisenhower was Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe during World War II, and receives a lot of credit for the victory over the Nazis. Later, he served as President from ’53 to ’61, personally seeing to the end of the Korean conflict at the beginning of his first term, while articulating the domino theory of Communistic encroachment near the end of his second term, as Vietnam came to the forefront. While the Cold War intensified during his terms, it did not erupt into a hot war, and he made several gestures of peace.

There’s a reason the current GOP does not reference him as a former Republican President, and this is because his intra-party foes would appear to have won the Party. From Wikipedia:

As the 1954 congressional elections approached, and it became evident that the Republicans were in danger of losing their thin majority in both houses, Eisenhower was among those blaming the Old Guard for the losses, and took up the charge to stop suspected efforts by the right wing to take control of the GOP. Eisenhower then articulated his position as a moderate, progressive Republican: “I have just one purpose … and that is to build up a strong progressive Republican Party in this country. If the right wing wants a fight, they are going to get it … before I end up, either this Republican Party will reflect progressivism or I won’t be with them anymore.”

He would share little with the current GOP leaders. I suspect it would be fair to say that today’s GOP is nothing like the party of Eisenhower’s day.

Given his record of military and political service, it’s fit to see him as a man with a great deal of experience who applied it successfully, and thus his famous farewell speech is worth a review. He addresses issues important not only to his day, but to the future of the country; and he does so with brevity. For this post, as I’ve already referenced the current GOP, I’ll quote a relevant part of his speech.

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society’s future, we — you and I, and our government — must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

This cautionary passage reflects the awareness that our avarice, enhanced by the dominance of a free enterprise private sector, and lack of awareness of tomorrow in those who are immature, can lead to disaster when our resources are mismanaged in pursuit of instant profit. Today we see this in the clamor of the quarterly report within the private sector, as CEOs of public companies, in pursuit of their own aggrandizement, manipulate customers and markets in order to satisfy investors, who otherwise will flee at the least sign of disappointment. The stampede at a report of being 1% below the predictions of the self-appointed market watchers can be deafening, and in fact such institutions as The Motley Fool make a living advising investors to take advantage of the foolish herd.

But, and more importantly, is a literal reading of the passage and its application to today. The struggle over the importance of nature vs commercial concerns can be seen in locations as diverse as coal country, where mountains are literally beheaded in search of the poisonous stuff, to the frigid reaches of Alaska, to North Dakota, where the local American Indians are menaced in the banal name of money, to the frigid reaches of Alaska, where the right to drill for oil is tussled over, and the cries of the free market advocates ring woodenly in the ears of those who will need to clean up after them, should they win through to victory.

And then, of course, we’re lead to ask the question: would President Eisenhower have accepted the climate change hypothesis?

Eisenhower was well aware of the value of expertise. Indeed, his Cabinet selection process reflects this:

After selecting his budget director, Joseph M. Dodge, Eisenhower asked Herbert Brownell and Lucius Clay to make recommendations for his cabinet appointments. He accepted their recommendations without exception; they included John Foster Dulles and George M. Humphrey with whom he developed his closest relationships, and one woman, Oveta Culp Hobby.

In short, Eisenhower picked those who had the expertise which he didn’t have, and let them run with it. Scientists are definitionally experts in their fields, and better yet, within the domain of science, which encourages debate while pursuing the recognition of the truths of reality; Eisenhower would have accepted their judgments and begun the strategic planning necessary to bring the nation safely through this crisis.

Senator Inhofe (R-OK) disproves global climate change using his credentials as a life insurance executive.

And he wouldn’t have had the time, or any respect for, those willing to place personal avarice or ideology over the educated, experienced opinion of the experts. A man of immense experience in service, and having been born in 1890, very experienced in the immense volatility of markets, free or not, he would be well aware that the “perfection” of the free market to solve all matters is a self-serving myth, and that government, as in war, has a leading part to play in resolving a crisis. That, in fact, one of its designated roles, to foresee, forestall, and manage crises.

Not to deny them.

It all must mean something! Maybe if I break this dog open!

Dr. Phibes Rises Again! (1972) is primarily about Dr. Phibes, antagonist of the previous The Abominable Dr. Phibes, inventing new ways to eliminate his foes as he searches for the fabled river of life in Egypt, dragging his dead wife and mysterious assistant Vulvania with him. Yet, for all the piled bodies, he continues to miss an important mark, his competitor in the search, Biederbeck, a man who’s already lived for centuries, but has run out the string and is in search of more … string.

As such, the rest of the movie receives a rather short shift. Editing is excessively choppy, the dialog is merely adequate, while Vincent himself looks quite ill and continues to resort to the tube in his neck for his monologues.

If murder in exotic form excites your interest, then by all means indulge in this odd little film, but there’s not a lot more to it than a mediocre Vincent and bodies strewn about the landscape in fairly inventive ploys. No one excites sympathy, so the passing of so many characters must be appreciated for its inventiveness, not for the sad tragedies.

mortsafe:

Mortsafes were contraptions designed to protect graves from disturbance. Resurrectionists had supplied the schools of anatomy in Scotland since the early 18th century. This was due to the necessity for medical students to learn anatomy by attending dissections of human subjects, which was frustrated by the very limited allowance of dead bodies – for example the corpses of executed criminals – granted by the government, which controlled the supply. …

The mortsafe was invented in about 1816. These were iron or iron-and-stone devices of great weight, in many different designs. Often they were complex heavy iron contraptions of rods and plates, padlocked together – examples have been found close to all Scottish medical schools. A plate was placed over the coffin and rods with heads were pushed through holes in it. These rods were kept in place by locking a second plate over the first to form extremely heavy protection. It would be removed by two people with keys. They were placed over the coffins for about six weeks, then removed for further use when the body inside was sufficiently decayed. [Wikipedia]

Heard on last night’s Bones episode.

Source: Atlas Obscura

The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory. Now shutdown, it was used to detect neutrinos, using heavy water with which the higher energy neutrinos might occasionally collide and cause a flash.

As a justification for just posting a cool picture, I reference my college Astronomy professor, who used the last day of class to simply show his favorite astronomical pictures. As I recall, he was an expert on Jupiter.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016) is a movie with most of the elements of an excellent film, but fails to mix them properly in the test tube. Intriguing characters, excellent visuals, a plot that doesn’t give away the game in the first ten minutes, dialog appropriate to the characters (although sometimes I failed to follow the accent of the main character), magical creatures exhibiting traits both appropriate and comedic, they’re all there.

What’s missing is a sense of the daring. The sense of exploring an intriguing theme. The idea that one should walk out of the theater chewing on the ideas behind the film.

Those are not in this film. There is plenty of something akin to deux ex machina, a sure sign of a failing story, and a main danger of stories involving magic, where the problems may be wished away – especially in a universe where the use of magic doesn’t even seem to require much in the way of resources.

But don’t let this scare you from this movie. There’s a lot of deliberate comedic elements, some excellent dramatic elements, and the visuals & special effects appear flawless. (Although I will complain that some intercharacter chemistry simply did not work for me.)

But you won’t be thinking about this movie an hour later. It’s like a luscious meringue, airy and sweet, but no nutrition.

And I should take them to task for that completely conventional ending. They could have done so much more with it.

ectogenesis:

Ectogenesis (from the Greek ecto, “outer,” and genesis) is the growth of an organism in an artificial environment^[1] outside the body in which it would normally be found, such as the growth of an embryo or fetus outside the mother’s body, or the growth of bacteria outside the body of a host.^[2] The term was coined by British scientist J.B.S. Haldane in 1924. [Wikipedia]

Encountered on The Crux by David Warmflash:

In 1924, British physiologist and geneticist John Burdon Sanderson Haldane coined the term ectogenesis. Haldane was thinking of an artificial process in which development, from fertilization to birth, could occur outside of a woman’s body.

He described ectogenesis in a work called Daedalus, where he predicted that about 70 percent of human babies would be born this way by the year 2074. Today, 92 years after Daedalus, judging by the pace of neonatology, genetics and other areas of biomedicine, it appears that we’re on track to have an artificial uterus-placenta of some kind within Haldane’s predicted timeframe.

In Fools’ Parade (1971) the Biblical admonition that we’re all sinners is elaborated upon. Three sinners are released from prison during the Depression, and because one of them has a just claim on a lot of money, some leading citizens of Glory, West Virginia decide the ex-cons should be deprived of that money, and similarly their lives.

Yep, those are the latest fashion from Pawtucket.
Source: Rotten Tomatoes

It’s a memorable meditation on how the lust for wealth and the unworthiness of the Other will excuse and distort the behaviors of those subject to it. As our nominal sinners complete their service to society, the hyenas of that same society, in the forms of a banker and a Sunday School teacher, begin to circle their prey. The dogs are loosed! (Actually, a bloodhound has a prime role in the movie, first tracking the ex-cons, but later coming to live with them, perhaps symbolizing the basic amorality of tools, or, in other words, morality is defined by intent and knowledge.)

One, the main gunner, must be reassured that the prey are “atheists”, and then his enthusiasm for the hunt knows no bounds, and he fairly drools when he encounters the unhappy men. But, unhappy they may be, they are not without wiles, and the hunter’s very source of morality is turned against him as an escape is made.

But make no mistake, the leaders of this betrayal of the morality they claim to uphold know what they are doing, even if they mutter about protecting the town in these tryin’ times. The wealth attracts them like flies to a dead horse, and unlike the flies, there’s some tearing at each other over the stench of the wealth.

But it’s interesting that the most despicable are the leading lights of Glory. It reminds me of an article from Skeptical Inquirer discussing those who disbelieve the evolution the strongest – it’s the best educated, not the worst. Here we see those who should know best, who should be most moral, who are most willing to capsize the ship of society in pursuit of their own bedizenment. This might escape the general attention, except that the storytellers make sure we end the movie with a mob scene in which it turns out the mob is not there to persecute the innocent ex-cons – but one of the instigators of foul corruption.

This movie greatly benefits from the skills of Jimmy Stewart, George Kennedy, Kurt Russell, Strother Martin, and Anne Baxter, who know how to bring a movie to life through the stuttering of men under the pressures of alcoholism, avarice, and many other such motivations.

This is not Lord of the Rings, or Pacific Rim.

No, it’s Fools’ Parade, and it has its own gentle lessons to teach, all the while entertaining you. Recommended.

The originalism vs living document argument amongst the judicial set is a very long running argument, with many facets I don’t understand. But this summation from retiring Florida Supreme Court Justice James E.C. Perry in the Miami Herald seems succinct in his rejection of the originalist position:

Flaws of ‘originalist’ doctrine

Racist thinking has also penetrated some judicial thought, namely the “originalist” judicial philosophy of many conservatives, embraced by the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Perry said. That doctrine adheres to the notion that interpretation of law should be based on the original meaning of the text of the statute or the Constitution at the time it was enacted.

The doctrine was promoted by conservatives as a de facto litmus test for Gov. Rick Scott’s replacement for Perry on the court. Scott’s selection, C. Alan Lawson, described his approach as “very originalist.”

But to Perry, a descendant of slaves, the notion that jurists should interpret the Constitution through the lens of the original intent of the founding document is incongruous.

“They say that the Constitution is stagnant and I don’t think it is. I think it is living — like the Bible is living,” he said. “Should I want to be an originalist and go back to the original thinking of the Founders? No. Never. I’m not enamored by places called plantations. That doesn’t give me warm and fuzzies.”

Perry considers the Founders “flawed people” who were wise but not omniscient.

“They were slave owners,” he said. “These people didn’t have divine intervention. They had some great ideals, but it didn’t include poor whites. It didn’t include women. We weren’t even human beings, we were chattel. It didn’t include the Native Americans, and it didn’t include merchants. It included land owners, or planters, they called them.”

He noted that slaves were not allowed to marry, and black men had to submit to their owners at all costs: “They’d come in and want to have favors with your wife — whatever you call her — you would have to stand outside the door. Think about it, just in terms of human sense. How debilitating, how dehumanizing can you get?”

I wonder how he feels about stare decisis. While I appreciate that today bears little resemblance to 1776, I think what drives originalists a little nuts is that there’s no structure to constrain the power of judges.

Back in mid-December, Bruce Reidel assessed the Middle East from the viewpoint of the Saudis and Jordanians and doesn’t like the idea of moving the US Embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and writes in AL Monitor:

The [Saudi] kingdom has a full plate. Low oil prices have hurt the economy and raised unemployment. The king’s war in Yemen is an expensive quagmire, just like Nasser’s. Iran is today’s existential threat, and its proxies are on the march in Syria and Iraq. Tehran will hail an American shift in Jerusalem as validation of its decades of labeling Washington Israel’s protector. If [King] Salman is soft on Jerusalem, the Iranians will have a field day denouncing the king as a puppet of Zionism.

Jordan’s King Abdullah will be in an even hotter seat than Salman. He has his own claim to Jerusalem and a majority Palestinian population. Just a few days ago, the Jordanian monarch presided over a formal reinterment of the remains of Jordanian soldiers killed defending Jerusalem in 1967 in a martyr’s memorial in Amman. The king badly needs American help to cope with the Syrian crisis, but he can’t ignore what happens to Jerusalem.

The Arab world is in the midst of an unprecedented tsunami of chaos, terrorism, sectarian violence and civil war. Al-Qaedism is rampant even if the Islamic State is contracting. All the causes of the Arab Spring are still unaddressed. It is not the time to pour oil on the fire.

I suspect when the shouting’s over, the American symbol won’t be Uncle Sam, but a bull liberally adorned in china fragments.

With regards to one of the greater extremophiles, HuffPo reports the board he serves on wants to have nothing to do with him:

Paladino was Donald Trump’s New York campaign co-chair and currently sits on the nine-member Buffalo school board. In recent days, he’s faced intense criticism for his answers to a local newspaper’s questionnaire about what he would like to see happen in 2017. Paladino said he’d like President Barack Obama to die from mad cow disease and called first lady Michelle Obama a man who should go live with gorillas.

psychrophile:

Psychrophiles or cryophiles (adj. cryophilic) are extremophilic organisms that are capable of growth and reproduction in cold temperatures, ranging from −20 °C to +10 °C. Temperatures as low as −15 °C are found in pockets of very salty water (brine) surrounded by sea ice. Psychrophiles are true extremophiles because they adapt not only to low temperatures but often also to further environmental constraints. [Wikipedia]

Even folks not on the ACA can get hurt if the ACA is out and out repealed, as Joan McCarter on The Daily Kos notes:

[The ban on insurance caps is] probably gone with Obamacare repeal. Along with children up to age 26 being on their parents’ plans, employers with more than 50 workers having to provide insurance, free preventive care, affordable coverage regardless of whether you have a pre-existing condition, and seniors saving billions on prescription drugs. All in jeopardy now. “We view everything as being threatened right now,” said Kathy Waligora, director of the health reform initiative of EverThrive Illinois. That’s for the 156 million Americans who have employer coverage as of last year.

I was chatting with a Mayo Clinic programmer yesterday and he said Mayo’s executive team is not happy with the ACA, primarily because of Medicare reimbursements shrinking. I don’t know if that’s an official position or just scuttlebutt.

Steve Benen comments on right fringe House member Trent Franks’ (R-AZ) opinion that the theft of DNC materials by the Russians are less important than their release:

… a far-right Donald Trump ally for most of 2016, appeared on MSNBC earlier today and echoed Putin’s talking point:

“I’m all for doing what’s necessary to protect the election here, but there’s no suggestion that Russia hacked into our voting systems or anything like that. If anything, whatever they may have done, was to try to use information in a way that may have affected something that they believe was in their best interest.

“But the bottom line, if they succeeded – if Russia succeeded – in giving the American people information that was accurate, then they merely did what the media should have done.”

I get the feeling Trent Franks hasn’t thought this one through.

Maybe the congressman is confused about the basic details of the controversy. Someone – Russian agents, according to U.S. intelligence agencies – stole Democratic materials by way of a cyber-attack and released those materials in order to subvert the American political system.

There’s two problems with Steve’s remarks.

First, he’s letting Franks set the assumption that the leaked material was actually accurate. We don’t know that. All we know is Wikileaks released something. Frankly, we need a national conversation regarding the trustworthiness of such leaked material, since, by its nature, it cannot be verified. Honestly, we don’t know if the Russians just made shit up. In general, the same applies. Is Wikileaks actually one of the greatest con games ever concocted?

Second, the leaks really aren’t the problem. The real problem was the concerted Russian effort to subvert our news culture with its own versions of the news, tuned to discredit Russia’s greatest foes and support Russia’s allies in American culture. This has been documented and strikes me as far worse than the ethical confusion, real as it is, of Rep. Franks.

This all leads to the collapsing morals of the Fox News conservatives. Voting for a man whose lies per day during the campaign overwhelmed fact checkers, leading to Trump trying to ignore the Russia controversy, as noted by CNN:

Here are the foil lamé decorations, front and back.

This one’s currently still in use.

Jeff de Boer engages in, uh, well there doesn’t seem to be a word beyond Art.

Source: BoredPanda

That’s for a cat, and it’s cat sized. Here’s another:

Source: JeffDeBoer.com

More fascinating work here. Look in Galleries.

Politicians of all stripes are always claiming success, because admitted failures are rarely re-elected, and (just in case you haven’t stumbled across on your own) Trump appears to be striving for an Olympic medal in this event1, taking credit for a number of job creations and movements with little excuse, as Kevin Drum (among many others) [insert your adjective here, such as gleefully or in horror] notes:

The skepticism in these headlines turns out to be warranted. Trump did indeed desperately try to take credit for this, and you will be unsurprised to learn that he was lying. First of all, Sprint announced these jobs back in April. Here’s the Kansas City Star: “Sprint Corp. is launching a nationwide service to hand-deliver new phones to customers in their homes. The Direct 2 You service, which first rolled out in a Kansas City pilot, will lead to the hiring of about 5,000 mostly full-time employees as it spreads nationwide.”

Second, the Japanese owner of Sprint, Softbank, announced in October that it was creating a huge tech investment fund.

Third, in December, Softbank’s CEO announced the fund again after a meeting with Trump, and said that one part of the whole package was the creation of 50,000 new jobs. Today, Sprint reluctantly conceded that its 5,000 jobs were part of the previously announced 50,000 jobs.

And finally, these jobs were announced yet again today.

That makes four times these jobs have been announced. Donald Trump was responsible for none of them.

Let me move off on a more general tangent, though. It’s inevitable, even good, to fail. It indicates you’re working on a hard problem. Programmers fail all the time. So do artists. Other professions may fail less often (which reminds me of a horrid anecdote from many years ago, as I heard a software guy from India moan that he should have gone into civil engineering, as buildings were always falling down in India and no one was ever punished for it).

And governing is no different. Sometimes you try something hard and it fails. But a politician may not get re-elected if some project she or he champions fails. So then they go off and bury it.

It’s a conundrum. Almost makes term limits sensible.