Category Archives: Uncategorized

SCOTUS has refused to hear an appeal concerning the settlement of the concussion issue in the NFL, as reported by Reuters:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for the National Football League’s estimated $1 billion settlement of concussion-related lawsuits with thousands of retired players to take effect, rejecting a challenge brought by a small group of dissenters.

The eight justices refused to hear an appeal of a lower court ruling in April upholding the settlement, which resolved litigation brought by players who accused the NFL of covering up information that tied head trauma like that suffered playing football to permanent brain damage.

The settlement enables the NFL, the most popular U.S. sports league with billions of dollars in annual revenue, to avoid litigation that could have led to huge sums in damages and provided embarrassing details about how it has dealt with the dangers posed by head trauma in the violent sport.

Perhaps unfortunate for future NFLers, but maybe necessary for past NFLers who need help immediately. Although I would hope a beginning sum could have been negotiated while the issue received the airing-out it really requires.

If I had a child, I would not encourage them to play football.

Regarding a lawsuit based on the injustice of Winner Take All rules in most States for the Presidential election, a reader writes:

I’m thinking to make the argument, a couple things have to happen. (1) Stop the electors from meeting on Dec 19. That date is not mandated, it could be changed. It just has to happen before the inauguration. Get an injunction till the investigation(s) are complete. (2) The Jan 3 mad dash to get Garland seated. You’ve read that one, right? Jan 3 all the Senators who won election have to go get sworn in. At that moment, there would be 30 R and 34 D Senators, plus Biden. Biden calls the Senate back into session, the 34 Dems vote Yea on Garland, Biden puts it back in recess. That would take chutzpah and coordination (the Dems are not good at either). Plus the red state Dems (like my own Sen Tester) who are up for election in 2018 have to really do the right thing. So yeah. No chance.

Re (2), I mentioned it earlier on this thread here. I’m not quite sure what item #2 has to do with making the WTA argument, though. I suspect all SCOTUS has to do is declare WTA is not Constitutional and then the calculations have to be redone, on the basis of what’s considered to be the cutoff – if any. An addendum to Professor Lessig’s article points out that without a cutoff, the risk of throwing the election to the House of Representatives increases, at least in the current example, and that would be equivalent to depriving the citizenry of the right to select their President – a perhaps perilous assertion, since the voters had their chance:

It would seem that the most reasonable practical answer would be a proportional allocation of electors with a cutoff at a de minimis percentage of the total vote. The percentage should represent a reasonable balancing of the right of every voter to participate in the election in a meaningful way and the risk of taking the election entirely away from the voters by sending it to the House of Representatives. A reasonable cutoff would probably be in the range of 10 to 15 percent of the total vote; but any cutoff percentage should be based on a detailed probability analysis which, for obvious reasons, has yet to be conducted.

I had to look up de minimis:

… is a Latin expression meaning about minimal things, normally in the locutions de minimis non curat praetor (“The praetor does not concern himself with trifles”) or de minimis non curat lex (“The law does not concern itself with trifles”) a legal doctrine by which a court refuses to consider trifling matters.

In context? Maybe he wants to show he knows Latin. Since he then defines what the percentage should be, it’s hardly trifling. No doubt I am not subtle enough to understand. But it does seem to me that picking the proper percentage will become a political football, or perhaps gold mine, although I have to think most of Congress will not possess the sort of mind that could comprehend picking a proper number to advantage their side – but the GOP is good at following orders blindly, so just one smart person is enough.

toxodon:

Source: Wikimedia

Toxodon was a large herbivorous mammal that was similar in proportion to a rhinoceros,‭ ‬but also possessed other features that were similar to hippopotamuses and possibly even elephants.‭ ‬The post cranial skeleton has a very robust construction which suggests that in life Toxodon was a very heavy animal.‭ ‬The feet were plantigrade which means that Toxodon walked with the flat of its foot so that it could better support its body weight.‭ ‬The body was wide which suggests that Toxodon had an extensive digestive system for processing plant matter.‭ ‬The hind legs were much longer than the fore legs which meant that the main body sloped down towards the front.‭ ‬This also meant that the head was carried closer to the ground where Toxodon could feed upon low growing vegetation.‭ ‬The neural spines of the anterior dorsal vertebrae were enlarged,‭ ‬either providing anchor points for neck muscles that supported the heavy skull,‭ ‬or supported the formation of‭ ‬a‭ ‬fatty hump that served as storage for leaner times. [PrehistoricWildlife.com]

Mentioned in Archaeology Magazine:

ARGENTINA: Evidence continues to build that humans occupied the Americas well before the Clovis culture emerged around 13,000 years ago. At the site of Arroyo Seco 2, archaeologists have uncovered bits of stone tools and animal bones with telltale butchery marks dating to as long as 14,000 years ago. On the menu was a variety of extinct megafauna, including giant ground sloths, car-sized glyptodonts, and toxodons, rhino-like hooved animals with prominent incisors. —Samir S. Patel

Another last gasp approach to salvaging the election is proposed by Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig on Moyers & Company:

Most people, even Dems, can’t seem to allow themselves to even think about a constitutional challenge to the Electoral College — because they’re convinced our current Electoral College system is embedded in the Constitution. So when someone says, “What about one person, one vote?” they respond, “It’s the Constitution that creates this inequality — just as with the Senate — and the court is not going to overrule the Constitution.”

Yet that response misses a critical point.

Yes, the Constitution creates an inequality because of the way it allocates Electoral College votes. A state like Wyoming, for example, gets three electoral votes with a population of less than 600,000, while California gets 55 electoral votes with a population of more than 37 million. Thus, while California has a population that is 66 times Wyoming, but only gets 18 times the electoral college votes.

But the real inequality of the Electoral College is created by the “winner-take-all” (WTA) rule for allocating electoral votes. WTA says that the person who wins the popular votes gets all the Electoral College votes for that state. Every state (except Maine and Nebraska) allocates its electors based on WTA. But that system for allocating electoral votes is not mandated by the Constitution. It is created by the states. And so that raises what should be an obvious and much more fiercely contested question: Why isn’t WTA being challenged by the Democrats in this election?

Professor Lessig proceeds to assemble a legal argument from various sources and people. I learned a lot: the Constitution’s Articles themselves are not absolute, for example, if one would violate another through an absolute interpretation. It’s an interesting approach, much less like the butchery proposed in earlier posts on this thread; it makes a strong argument that leans heavily on the concept of justice, rather than using technical timing issues. It certainly has an attractive quality.

But in order to be heard someone’s going to have to file for it. I have no idea if Roberts would be sympathetic, or Kennedy for that matter; I figure Thomas and Alito are probably a lost cause when it comes to something like this.

But it’s worth spreading the word. Here’s that link again.

(h/t Sydney Sweitzer)

Oh, what fun! Mary Anne Case (a clear example of nominative determinism, I’m sure) posts a paper to SSRN stuffing the rhetorical methodology of the late Justice Scalia into the myths of Procrustes and Cassandra. Here’s the summarizing paragraph:

The essay will go on to use another Greek myth, that of Procrustes, to shed light on a tendency in Scalia’s majority opinions. Just as Procrustes forced his guests to fit snugly into an iron bed, stretching out their bodies or chopping off their limbs as necessary, so Scalia frequently forced all prior doctrine in a given area of law into the shape he needed for the new rule he announces in a majority opinion. As with Procrustes’s unfortunate guests, so with Scalia’s procrustean majority opinions, the result, I shall argue, is often that the operation is a success, but the patient dies: subsequent decisions, whether by courts or legislatures, tend to back away from the implications of the categorical rule Scalia had gone through such pains to fashion. The paradoxical result is that Scalia as Cassandra dissenting has sometimes been more effective in illuminating the path to results he deplores than Scalia as Procrustes has been in bringing about results he favors. This is so notwithstanding that Scalia in procrustean mode does his rhetorical best to minimize the innovative or controversial character of his holding for the majority, whereas Scalia in dissent seeks rhetorically to maximize the unprecedented and revolutionary character of the majority position to which he objects.

Sadly, SSRN won’t give me access to the rest of the paper – claims I’m unusual. Maybe so. But it’s an interesting assertion on Ms Case’s part, suggesting that either Justice Scalia permitted his biases to run away with him, or the source of law – the legislatures – is basically irrational. I’d go with the latter, myself, as it’s an obviously true conclusion.

A reader expresses skepticism towards the GOP ever checking out a Trump scandal:

The GOP is not going to do a single thing to get in Trump’s way. Ever. Only a massive public outcry, with massed demonstrations in the streets, etc. like those over the Viet Nam war (but larger) are going to change anything.

It looks like the Russian interference may awaken the GOP from its sloth. Consider this CNN report, headlined “McConnell, senators unite behind investigation into Russian hacking“:

An educator in North Carolina writes in response to ITT Tech going away, concerning their duties:

We are being encouraged to consider our ‘customer service.’ A lot of this seems to apply to higher education, but who knows what the next four years will bring.

Yes, the subservient position vis a vis the “customer” is hardly a good educational pose, and given that educators are usually also “inferior” to the school’s administration (soon to be called the business leaders, if all goes ill). Not that students shouldn’t have rights, such as a right not to be abused – but an educational position bears little resemblance to a “customer representative”, and attempting to make educators into such will simply degrade the educational experience – and the Republic.

It must be a high point in Greg Hayes’ career. Who’s Greg Hayes? He’s the CEO of United Technologies, who owns Carrier, the HVAC company that was going to move all those jobs to Mexico, until President-elect Trump swooped in to persuade them to keep those jobs in the United States. But did he really succeed? Margaret Hartmann of New York Magazine has some news on that:

In exchange for $7 million in tax breaks from the state of Indiana over the next decade, Carrier agreed to invest $16 million in its in-state facilities. (Carrier is still moving 600 jobs from the Indianapolis plant — and all 700 jobs from its Huntington, Indiana, facility — to Mexico.)

United Technologies CEO Greg Hayes admitted in an interview with CNBC earlier this week that the money will mostly go toward automation, telling Jim Cramer:

We’re going to make a $16 million investment in that factory in Indianapolis to automate to drive the cost down so that we can continue to be competitive. Now is it as cheap as moving to Mexico with lower cost of labor? No. But we will make that plant competitive just because we’ll make the capital investments there. But what that ultimately means is there will be fewer jobs.

“Automation means less people,” [United Steelworkers Local 1999 president Chuck] Jones underscored Thursday on CNN. “I think we’ll have a reduction of workforce at some point in time once they get all the automation in and up and running.”

So the subsidies promised to Carrier will be used to … automate those jobs away anyways. Sweet deal for Hayes. Trump looks like an idiot. The Art of the Deal, indeed.

But what will the union do? At one time, the IWW (the “Wobblies”, one of the better nicknames of all time) was the best hope to raise labor compensation throughout the world, but they seem to have fallen on hard times. This results in an imbalance in pay across nations, and thus the migration of jobs from well-paying nations to the more needy nations (parsimonious is not the proper term here). The immediate goal is to stop the movement of jobs, first to other nations, and then into the domain of machines. The former is often handled through treaties, but while automation is hardly new, the pace of automation seems to be accelerating as the computers controlling the machines become smarter. When does a machine become taxable?

Will it ever make sense for Congress to attempt to place a special tax on automation? We already tax, as a general concept, the income from jobs (lots of exceptions, but not important here). If a company buys a machine that automates the creation of something, it may pay a tax on the acquisition, but after that the only taxes may come from maintenance; this revenue stream almost certainly doesn’t match that of the worker(s) replaced by the machine. So the government faces a shortfall in estimated revenue for each job lost to automation.

Imagine a manufacturing company which is controlled by a few managers, has maybe a human sales & marketing manager, and everything else is produced by automation. They pay taxes on their profits; the taxes “paid” by employees will, by and large, disappear.

Now, the libertarian response is that the former employees will find new jobs, even creating entire new industries which will produce taxes, and it’s a lovely thought – freeing up human creativity from the drudgery of the factory line. But such creation takes capital, time, intelligence – and its rare for all three to come together for someone fresh off the assembly line.

How this all plays out in general should be fascinating.

(h/t Georgia Logothetis @ The Daily Kos)


Katherine Martinko on Treehugger.com spreads the word about textile recycling:

Look at any article on smart, sustainable shopping habits and you are guaranteed to see “recycle your old clothes” written somewhere. Ignore it. That’s a load of hogwash. The idea that most old textiles get recycled when you stuff them into a special clothing recycling bin is ridiculous. It just doesn’t happen because the technology does not exist— at least, not for mainstream, large-scale use.

And yet, many clothing companies (H&M, are you listening?) love to make it sound as if it’s common industry practice, despite the fact that they continue to churn out disgusting amounts of cheap clothes made almost exclusively from virgin materials. Of course, the fast fashion giants want you to feel good about recycling because then you’ll feel less guilty about buying more of their new (crappy) clothes.

Turns out most “recycled” clothes are shipped out of the country, as there doesn’t appear to be an actual recycling methodology that works.

With the advent of the snow season, the backyard changes its oeuvre. Here’s a couple of examples, starting with our Dusty Miller from above:

Hellboy (2004) is a movie about, as it explicitly states, choices, but it never really explores this premise, and thus never quite achieves greatness – but, like many movies (The Thin Man (1934) comes to mind), it achieves a certain smiling good cheer through a self-awareness of certain ridiculous aspects of its scenario.

And that would be? Late in World War II, the Nazis are trying to reverse their situation by opening a portal to the ancient Gods of Chaos, an attempt foiled by a group of American soldiers, but before the portal is closed, something comes through. It’s a baby demon, young and untrained – and they coax it with candy bars and name it Hellboy.

Most of the cast.

Sixty years later, he’s a leading member of the team that, when something goes bump in the dark, they bump back, a paranormal squad out to extinguish evil in the world. But Hellboy, who now only looks maybe 30, is even less mature, hardly out of his teens emotionally speaking, and the team has problems resulting from his impulsive nature – and when a 6′ 5″ demon with special powers is impulsive, this can cause problems.

Eventually, the team must travel to Russia and confront the legendary Rasputin, and discover what he represents – and present Hellboy with the choice of fulfilling his destiny, or not.

If this was really a movie about choices, then it might have been effectively structured like Lord of the Rings (the books, not the movies!), a very long novel which, at its core, was about temptation¹, exploring all the possible responses to the temptation of using ultimate power, code for ignoring the rules, to do good – and what happens when you break the rules by accepting the temptation, and compares those results to refusing the temptation, even in the face of disaster. Virtually every character faces this decision, and the results of the decision are spelled out in detail. And while Hellboy’s plot could be viewed through this lens, it’s more of a maturation story, as one of Hellboy’s impulsive decisions ends in disaster for his colleagues, and from there he begins to grow up. As such, there’s nothing new at its core. There are a couple of swipes at the choices theme, but they are not setup properly; especially jarring is the sudden appearance, in the climax of the movie, of a Christian symbol that reminds Hellboy that he does have a choice, when the antagonists try to force him to unlock the door to the Gods of Chaos. Until then, only the viewer who noticed he carried prayer beads might have deduced that he was a Christian, and probably a Catholic, as we know that to be true of his adoptive father. The choices theme would have gained legitimacy had the religious facet been emphasized earlier.

BUT the movie does bring a certain sense of self-deprecating humor to the entire story, and that, while perhaps not entirely new, is refreshing and, even as we titter at a baleful monster confused by rush hour traffic, leads us to think about how the ancient Gods that haunt our history may not actually compare with our own powers – and mistakes.

The characters are well-drawn, and the major characters do seem to have lives of their own, gifted with a self-awareness of the oddity of their situation; their asides and frustrations are both well-timed. Better yet, the dialog is delivered at a pace really appropriate to the movie, rather than spat our rapid fire, as so often happens.

Cinematography is more than adequate, as is the audio. The special effects, however, range from excellent to squirm-worthy. The job of special effects is to make the spectacular look quite natural, and there’s two or three effects where they fail that test.

But, if I may engage in an outré observation, the character Hellboy may be easily interpreted as an intelligent tool. As the antagonist tells it, Hellboy is the key to a door, a key created to that purpose – and, as it turns out, a tool that rebels against its proper destiny. And I cannot help but notice a certain correspondence from this concept, and how certain of the services of the Internet seem to have the same result. Not that they’re exactly intelligent, but in that such things as e-mail and web services may be subverted to ends other than that of their creators. Could this be taken as an implicit warning to those who develop Artificial Intelligence? There is no shortage of movies meditating on the creations of Man gone awry, I suppose, but this one is a little out of the ordinary in that the subversion results in the salvation of Mankind – not its destruction.

And the significance of that? Beats me. If you have an idea, let me know.

While Hellboy is not for everyone – some may find it irritatingly juvenile – I’ll admit I’ve watched it a number of times over the years, and actually own a copy of it. If nothing else, it makes me laugh.

¹A former boss of mine insisted that Lord of the Rings was just about nine guys getting together and killing everything in their path.

Chris Meserole discusses the prongs of counter-terrorism on Lawfare, and why he’s worried that the incoming Trump Administration may snap one off:

The counterterrorism approach has met with many successes. The original leadership of al-Qaeda is now almost entirely dismantled, and Osama bin Laden himself enjoys no more than the small solace of thalassic repose. But in the past few years, the limitations of counterterrorism have come into plain view. In focusing on the tactical level alone, counterterrorism assumes that to defeat Salafi-jihadism overall we need only destroy each and every extant Salafi-jihadist organization. The emergence of successor groups like Boko Haram and the Islamic State put the lie to that assumption. If we are to rely on counterterrorism alone, we are destined to play an endless game of global whack-a-mole.

In a bid to avoid that fate, policy analysts and practitioners have recently shifted their focus to “countering violent extremism,” or CVE. The goal is not so much to supplant counterterrorism as to supplement it. Whereas the counterterrorism frames the policy response to Salafi-jihadist violence in terms of tactics, CVE does so in terms of ideology and grievance. We cannot hope to defeat Salafi-jihadism, the thinking goes, unless and until we discredit the ideas and concerns that lend it animus. For instance, consider the Aarhus program in Denmark, or the Center for the Prevention of Radicalization Leading to Violence in Montreal, Canada. The former seeks to de-radicalize and re-integrate violent extremists; the latter intervenes with at-risk individuals before extremism fully takes root. Or consider USAID’s project to bolster community resilience in places like Niger and Somalia. These programs share an effort to engage Salafi-jihadism through ideas and civic engagement rather than through force alone.

And the signals from the incoming Trump Administration?

As a candidate, Trump espoused famously few policies, but one of them was his now notorious “Muslim ban,” which has since, allegedly, morphed into a “Muslim registry.” The precise contours of that policy remain unclear; they may be dropped altogether. But in one sense the details don’t matter nearly as much as the rhetoric, and in that Trump has been crystal clear: he aims to speak openly and forcefully of “radical Islam” — and to take little care, as he utters that turgid phrase, to distinguish qualifier from subject. In that regard, a well-known tweet from Trump’s former campaign adviser, Lt. Gen. (ret.) Michael Flynn, could not have been more in keeping with Trump’s main foreign policy message: “fear of Muslims is RATIONAL.” Couched in that tweet isn’t just the assumption that all Muslims are the same; it’s that because all Muslims are the same, we must engage them through the security lens of fear, rather than the more diplomatic lens of ideology. If all Muslims are the same, then they must be identified, banned, and fought. What good is a war of ideas if ideas cannot change?

And so, with Flynn now tapped to be National Security Advisor — and with Mike Pompeo, who by all accounts holds quite similar views, set to be ensconced at Langely — the only war left is a war of might.

Having a bigot as an advisor is a mistake, because the implied mistaken view of reality means decisions made regarding that reality are doomed to be flawed. Trump should be getting the best people, not those who say what he wants to hear – or those who supported him best during the campaign. It would be interesting to know how he selected his advisors back when he was this “successful” businessman.

For the conservative reader, I might point out that the CVE approach is classic Cold War tactics in which we took the very ideas on which Communism was built upon and analyzed them, revealing their hidden flaws and biases, followed with publication of these results, along with a modicum of propaganda, much as did the Soviets. A rejection of these tactics, as may or may not occur under Trump, would be a rejection of the very tactics we used fifty years ago against the Soviets.

As an addendum from my own point of view, there is a key difference between the Cold War and the current war with the terrorists. The former was a clash of economic models, which may be thought of as a clash of interpretations of how the human mind works, at its most basic, and then building up to how to properly manage the business of a country. In contrast, this latest conflict concerns theology. I am well aware that most folks the world over think of theology as something concrete, the teachings of one or more Gods, but to me it’s simply the various imaginations of (mostly) men throughout the ages, guessing at what some unknowable supernatural creature might think concerning how we should behave.

It’s too much to attempt to discuss the socio-evolutionary forces that have shaped the major religions in a blog post, and in any case such a post would only be informed by my casual observations, not by a trained mind. It’s safe to say that religions that do not contribute to the survival potential of a group will either be discarded or transformed until they will contribute. How that can be used, however, as a lever on those who are attracted to violent groups is not at all clear. Economics at least searches for a rational basis; theology may have pretensions, but at its base it’s just imagination, perhaps cobbled together with an interior consistency, but the connection to reality probably lies only in the previously alluded to socio-evolutionary forces. Allegiance to any theology will mostly be based on upbringing, a recursive process; a few individuals may decide to change theological allegiances, but they are rare examples.

I suspect an effective CVE will need to provide attention to both the economic and social justice vectors for all individuals concerned. A way forward, and the apprehension that one lives in a just society, are likely two of the tools necessary to persuade individuals that shooting down a Blackhawk merely pisses off the Americans.

The previous owners of this domicile planted some glorious ornamental grass. Here’s a pic of it from last summer:

And here’s a couple of pics of it today.

Not looking so chipper, eh wot?

Ever wonder how the solar system got its start? (I’m getting some odd visceral reactions as I look out at some snow coming down; it just doesn’t seem real to be thinking about the beginning of the solar system while snow is making our freeways slippery.) University of Minnesota researcher Yong-Zhong Qian has been doing some work on the subject, as reported by the College of Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota:

About 4.6 billion years ago, a cloud of gas and dust that eventually formed our solar system was disturbed. The ensuing gravitational collapse formed the proto-Sun with a surrounding disc where the planets were born. A supernova—a star exploding at the end of its life-cycle—would have enough energy to compress such a gas cloud. Yet there was no conclusive evidence to support this theory. In addition, the nature of the triggering supernova remained elusive.

Qian and his collaborators decided to focus on short-lived nuclei present in the early solar system. Due to their short lifetimes, these nuclei could only have come from the triggering supernova. Their abundances in the early solar system have been inferred from their decay products in meteorites. As the debris from the formation of the solar system, meteorites are comparable to the leftover bricks and mortar in a construction site. They tell us what the solar system is made of and in particular, what short-lived nuclei the triggering supernova provided.

“This is the forensic evidence we need to help us explain how the solar system was formed,” Qian said. “It points to a low-mass supernova as the trigger.”

Qian is an expert on the formation of nuclei in supernovae. His previous research has focused on the various mechanisms by which this occurs in supernovae of different masses. His team includes the lead author of the paper, Projjwal Banerjee, who is a former Ph.D. student and postdoctoral research associate, and longtime collaborators Alexander Heger of Monash University, Australia, and Wick Haxton of the University of California, Berkeley. Qian and Banerjee realized that previous efforts in studying the formation of the solar system were focused on a high-mass supernova trigger, which would have left behind a set of nuclear fingerprints that are not present in the meteoric record.

excipient:

Drug companies add substances, called excipients, to help medicines dissolve in the stomach and intestinal fluid, but there have been few improvements in recent years to this decades-old technology. The process outlined in the study is a major breakthrough that revolutionizes the process of making drug structures more soluble in the body so that they are better absorbed. [“University partnership with Dow results in major discovery to improve oral medications“, College of Science & Engineering, University of Minnesota]

… can be something mere mortals bounce off of. Shlomi Eldar reports in AL Monitor on the reaction of the ultra-Orthodox of Israel when their own choose to enlist in the Israeli Army:

“Ronnie” started officers training in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Dec. 4. If he makes it through the rigorous course, in four months he will be commissioned as an officer. For him, it will be a victory over the ultra-Orthodox community that ostracized him and the family that threw him out of his home.

The young man, who asked that Al-Monitor not divulge his real name, is an ultra-Orthodox soldier. He is coping with a society that objects to military conscription and encourages its members to study the Torah and remain within the boundaries of the community. I called him late in the evening after his first day of training. “Yes,” he answered in a somewhat bashful tone, “I am the ultra-Orthodox yeshiva student who led to the establishment of the nonprofit organization helping soldiers like me who were thrown out of their homes for wanting to serve in the military.”

Ronnie told Al-Monitor, “Six weeks before my draft date, my mother informed me that if I do indeed go into the army, I would have to leave the house. When she understood that I was determined, she said, ‘Take your things and don’t ever come back.’ That’s what I did. I left with nothing and not knowing where I was going.”

Faith over family. I suppose we see this in the United States, but I have not on a personal level. One more paragraph:

“It’s an incredible story,” the founder of the organization told Al-Monitor, asking to be identified as “A.” About a year ago, he said, he came across a poster (a means of expression common in ultra-Orthodox communities) that had been making the rounds in the ultra-Orthodox community, condemning Ronnie. A., a religious man himself, asked around and found out that Ronnie was a young student at a yeshiva of the Lithuanian faction of ultra-Orthodox Jews that is the most extreme in its rejection of compulsory service in the IDF. “I found out that during his basic training in the Givati Brigade, the guy studied Gemara [a part of the Talmud] and had finished an entire treatise by the time he was inducted into the IDF,” A. recalled. “I thought this was a fellow who should be saluted, not ostracized.” The fact that Ronnie studied Gemara in the army made his community even angrier, A. said.

In another AL Monitor article, Mordechai Goldman, himself ultra-Orthodox, discusses their attitude toward the Israel Defense Forces (IDF):

… the attitude of the ultra-Orthodox sector toward the military is fascinating and contradictory. But before we approach this subject, it is important to distinguish between the various sectors within the ultra-Orthodox world with regard to the IDF. On one side are the factions associated with the anti-Zionist Neturei Karta court and Eidah Hareidis (an inner fringe group within the ultra-Orthodox sector). These groups strongly oppose IDF recruitment under any condition. On the other side are the Chabad Chassidic group and Shas circles, who have a more liberal, forgiving view of those who choose to serve in the army.

Between these two sides reside the majority of ultra-Orthodox Jews, who do not oppose the IDF for anti-Zionist motives. Instead, they do not enlist because they hold that while enlistment is very important, Torah study is even more so. Many ultra-Orthodox leaders argue that the yeshiva world is, in effect, a spiritual-religious front that is no less important than the military front. Thus, while there is ultra-Orthodox opposition to IDF conscription at any age, the greatest opposition is reserved for the recruiting of yeshiva students, generally aged 18-22. The ultra-Orthodox leadership operates under the axiom that the ultra-Orthodox public would cease to exist if not for the continued existence of the yeshiva world.

“But this argument is not the reason that the ultra-Orthodox sector as a whole does not enlist in the IDF,” ultra-Orthodox activist and attorney Rabbi Dov Halbertal tells Al-Monitor. “The real reason is the fear of the army’s secular influences on ultra-Orthodox youth. The army is a place that endangers the ultra-Orthodox way of life, and that is the reason that ultra-Orthodox Jews do not enlist.”

According to Halbertal, “The army is a social melting pot. An ultra-Orthodox Jew who enters the army will not remain the same person when he leaves. He will be more Israeli and less ultra-Orthodox. The ultra-Orthodox public guards its ethnicity and its identity. All ethnic groups would act this way in the face of such an existential threat.”

And thus they believe they have a reason to avoid required military service – because it would destroy their community. I could see that as a possible, if illiberal excuse, for simple preservation of the community, but I suspect that, much like the Amish, they think God has ordained their society as the most preferred, and at that point my sense of humor just leaves me.

Whether this attitude damages them politically is beyond me; nor do I know if they even care. Such communities tend to be insular and static, and while others are willing to protect them, they’ll survive – but if their protection goes away, what then?

Turkey, already a secular democracy in danger under the thumb of President Erdoğan, is now reported to have suffered terror attacks. From CNN:

Ever hear an oud? Here’s master Rahim Al-Haj making a recording for the Smithsonian:

Yeah, don’t ask.
Source: Hubbs Movie Reviews

1962’s Jack The Giant Killer has good sets, mediocre special effects, and a bad story. This is a story from medieval England, as a sorceror attempts to steal away the Princess from the King of Cornwall. His giant gains the princess, but falls to a lowly farmer; knighted, he now must pursue the again-abducted princess, this time over the seas. His first ship stripped from him, he falls in with a lone Viking on his boat, who gives him an imp, imprisoned for, ummm, I forget how many years, who matches magic with the sorceror. The good guys are good guys, the bad guys are, for no ready reason, really really bad, and the hurdle this movie attempts to bound over the is that low one labeled “Light Entertainment,” for there is nothing really to contemplate and think about it, no moral questions, no ambiguous characters, nothing really; Jack gets the girl in the end.

A witch, a witch!

Monsters abound, in classic stop-action style, and also in the traditional mode, they appear to be lackwitted, even if one of the giants has two heads – for no discernible reasons. I did think the witches were inventively done, however.

The editing and special effects was mostly average for the era, but in one combat scene the fighting was just wrong – one moment the good guy has a whip, next he has a sword, and, maybe as one might expect from a farmer, he’s just awful with his weapon.

The acting was OK. The actor playing the sorceror reveled in his role; the other actors are adequate, but clearly everyone’s there to collect a paycheck; this isn’t Art by any stretch of the imagination.

Maybe when you have the season’s head cold and can’t stand to sleep any longer, this will serve the need of something to distract you from angry virus; otherwise, don’t waste your time unless you’re a devotee of the lead, Kerwin Mathews.

precuneus:

Location of Precuneus in red.
Source: Wikipedia

Further clues on how to tackle itch come from brain imaging studies. Many brain areas activated by pain are also active during itch, but one area that seems distinctively responsive to itch is the precuneus. This brain region is involved in visual processing and memory, says Gil Yosipovitch at the University of Miami, Florida. “We can’t pinpoint what the precuneus does in itch, but it’s uniquely activated with itch and not pain,” he says. [“Itch: When pain feels good“, Stephani Sutherland, NewScientist (26 November 2016, paywall)]

Regarding Minneapolis’ inquiry into changing their bank from Wells Fargo, a reader writes:

Good luck with that, I say. Wells Fargo will then turn around and move out of Minneapolis, where they’re a major tenant in a number of buildings.

Which is, in itself, an expensive proposition. I suspect moving is something they’d prefer not to do without good reason – especially if it involves more bad publicity, on top of their problem with sham accounts. And that’s not going well – The New York Times reports Wells Fargo is attempting to use arbitration rather than litigate a class action suit, much to the detriment of their customers:

In congressional hearing rooms and on national television, Wells Fargo has vowed to make things right for the thousands of customers who were given sham accounts.

The bank’s new chief executive, Timothy J. Sloan, in his first week on the job, said his “immediate and highest priority is to restore trust in Wells Fargo.”

But in federal and state courtrooms across the country, Wells Fargo is taking a different tack.

The bank has sought to kill lawsuits that its customers have filed over the creation of as many as two million sham accounts by moving the cases into private arbitration — a secretive legal process that often favors corporations.

Lawyers for the bank’s customers say the legal motions are an attempt to limit the bank’s accountability for the widespread fraud and deny its customers their day in open court.

Source: Scheldt.us

Perhaps Wells Fargo doesn’t consider the common citizen a worthy customer. It’s thoroughly possible they’d prefer to go the corporate customer route. But you’d think corporate customers would take a look at this rather bad behavior and maybe just take their business elsewhere.

Because, at the moment, it appears money is in charge at Wells Fargo, and this is a very bad thing for an entity dependent on good relations with the community. If I were a Wells Fargo customer … I wouldn’t be.

Returning to this dormant thread, I recently learned that three local for-profit educational institutions are in trouble. First up is ITT Tech, shutting down last September, according to NPR, because…

… ITT shut down all of its 137 locations. The federal government cut off student aid because the school’s accreditor found it had lied about its graduation and job-placement figures.

This leaves the students with debt and credits which may be worthless, the story says. MPR News more detail on recruiting tactics:

When he first moved to Miami, Waltter Teruel says, working as a recruiter for ITT Technical Institute was a welcome change from his life in New York where he had been selling antiques and life insurance.

As a recruiter, Teruel says, ITT Tech took care of the pitch to potential students for you. Recruiters used scripts set out in detailed PowerPoint presentations and got long lists of prospective students to call. But soon the welcome change faded. “Most of these students, they were looking for a job,” not more school, says Teruel.

When ITT Technical Institute closed, employees began to share tightly designed sales tools, like those PowerPoints, that offered a glimpse into the strategy that helped the company grow to more than 130 campuses across the country.

But those same tactics ultimately contributed to the company’s downfall, when the Department of Education ruled, in part because of its aggressive recruiting, ITT could no longer enroll new students using federal loans.

Those tactics?

[Tereul] says if you filled in your information, you’d get a call from one, or maybe 10, recruiters. The rule set out in the ITT training materials instructs recruiters to call “a minimum of three times a day for the first three days.” This was known as the 3×3 rule.

The goal was to reach people as soon as possible after a lead was generated, and then get them to come in for a meeting. Teruel says recruiters were supposed to frame the meeting in person as a “coming attraction” and avoid answering too many questions on the phone. “Maybe if you give them too much information, they won’t want to come in.”

He says recruiters would try to appear as if they were swamped with meetings, “How about today at 2 o’clock, or tomorrow at 11 o’clock in the morning?”

And it got personal. On-campus visits began with a questionnaire, the WITY, or “what’s important to you.” Teruel says that served as a backbone for the interview. If an applicant said “I’m tired of making minimum wage,” or “I want to better support my family,” recruiters would remind them what brought them there in the first place.

Next up, Globe University and the Minnesota School of Business, having common ownership, as noted in this press release by the US Department of Education:

The U.S. Department of Education announced today that participation in the federal student aid programs will end this month for Globe University (Globe) and Minnesota School of Business (MSB), two for-profit colleges under common ownership. This enforcement action is in keeping with the Department’s ongoing efforts to protect students, safeguard taxpayer dollars and increase accountability among postsecondary institutions.

The Program Compliance and Enforcement Units within Federal Student Aid determined that Globe and MSB are ineligible to participate in federal student aid programs because Globe and MSB have been judicially determined to have committed fraud involving Title IV program funds. Additionally, both institutions knowingly misrepresented the nature of their criminal justice programs and the transferability of credits earned to other institutions. These callous acts of misrepresentation left many students without the credentials necessary for their chosen careers and no options to continue their studies at other postsecondary institutions. Many graduates incurred thousands of dollars of debt but had limited options for successful job placement in their chosen fields.

“Globe and MSB preyed upon potential public servants – targeting those with a sincere desire to help their communities.” said U.S. Under Secretary of Education Ted Mitchell. “These institutions misrepresented their programs, potentially misleading students, and abused taxpayer funds, and so violated federal law, which is why we removed them from the federal student aid program. This is a sober reminder that not all institutions deliver on their advertised promises.”

Local NBC affiliate KARE11 notes Globe’s reaction:

We continue to fight hard for and alongside our nursing students, and those in every other program who are working so diligently to earn a degree to better their lives and the lives of their families. We believe the Office of Higher Education’s Order reaches far beyond what was necessary, penalizing students in every program for findings related to a single program that is no longer offered. Our nursing students routinely have a high first-time pass rate on the NCLEX, are successful in their careers, are passionate about their profession and are in great demand in their industry. It is imperative they be allowed to complete their program. Not allowing those students to complete not only has a devastating impact on them, it threatens the quality of health care for all Minnesotans. We appreciate how strongly and passionately many of our students have advocated for our Schools and we will continue to do the same for them.

Source: Piero Amadeo Infante

Notice how Globe University has become critical for the very survival of the healthcare industry of Minnesota – at least in their minds. To the mature citizen, it’s a mindset that says, We can say anything we want because honesty is not our paramount value. I wouldn’t trust that company with taking care of a cinder block, much less my education.

STUDENT, student, customer. This is true for traditional schools as well – I recall an interesting story out of Iowa some 35 – 40 years ago, where private Drake University was facing falling enrollment. They had been reducing tuition, to no avail. A new president came in and boosted tuition – and enrollment began growing. It appears students were using tuition as a proxy for education quality. [I have no idea if that story is online anywhere.]

So it’s not only a for-profit problem, but the real problem is that a private-sector originated school will, in all probability, bring private-sector methods to bear on the problem – and education is a fundamentally different sector, so the methodology can be glaringly wrong, not only resulting in the failure of the venture, but in people getting hurt as well.

Which is just as true within authentic private-sector transactions.

But the takeaway is to realize that the age-old educational institutions have developed appropriate methodologies for student recruitment, not to mention the rest of the student life cycle, from housing to the actual incidence of education. The message that education must change, must be replaced by private entities, is becoming an increasingly dubious message as we see these crash and burn amidst charges of fraud. Perhaps this is a case where the societal knowledge of previous generations is superior to today’s assertions – the realization that different sectors of society have different methods for good reason.

For all the complaints concerning the Iran nuclear deal, the whining of the Iranian hardliners is far more telling about the deal – they hate that they danced with the Great Satan, and looks like they lost. So now they’re looking to take out their frustrations on the Iranian Finance Minister, according to Changiz Varzi in AL Monitor in an article tellingly entitled “Iranian hard-liner alleges FM Zarif is American spy“:

On Dec. 3, Hossein Allahkaram, the head of the coordination council of Ansar-e Hezbollah, a semi-official paramilitary organization, alluded to Iran’s foreign minister being a US spy. On his official Instagram page, Allahkaram wrote, “Some believe that [Zarif’s] exceptional ties with American intelligence entities are undeniable. … Reuters had reported that the phone numbers of American politicians and intelligence officials, such as [Vice President] Joe Biden and [former Secretary of Defense] Chuck Hagel, are saved in Zarif’s cellphone, which [Zarif] hurriedly denied.” Allahkaram’s post continued, “Interestingly, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, in a secret meeting with a high-ranking [Iranian] official, said that ‘according to our information, Zarif is an American agent.’”

Though the reasons for what happened next remain unclear — with some speculating that the Office of the Supreme Leader directly chastised Allahkaram — he subsequently did a U-turn and edited the Instagram post to remove the espionage allegation against Zarif and apologized for “any misunderstanding [he] might have caused.” Yet a screenshot of his original post was widely shared by Iranian social media users, especially on Twitter. One user tweeted, “Is it not a crime to [falsely] accuse [the] FM? Mr. Prosecutor, you have again showed favoritism.” …

A well recognized problem with public companies is their distraction with the short-term at the expense of the long-term. The clamor of shareholders, and even executive staff who have “aligned their interests with shareholders”, to meet quarterly goals can leave companies sensitive to such criticisms vulnerable to problems which may require long-term, resource-heavy solutions. This can range from products becoming obsolete to global environmental problems.

Recognizing this, several companies have come together to create FCLT Global:

FCLT Global is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to developing practical tools and approaches that encourage long-term behaviors in business and investment decision-making.

We take an active and practical approach to achieving our goals by conducting research, convening business leaders, developing educational resources and actionable recommendations, and generating broad awareness of ways in which a longer-term focus can increase innovation, economic growth and future savings.

FCLT began in 2013 as an initiative of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and McKinsey & Company, which, together with BlackRock, The Dow Chemical Company and Tata Sons, founded FCLT Global in July 2016. In addition to our Founding Members, we involve other Member organizations from across the investment value chain, including asset owners, asset managers and corporations, that are committed to achieving long-term tangible actions that benefit businesses, markets and society more broadly.

Will they get traction? Their introductory presentation lays out the problem… but doesn’t seem to have solutions in mind.