Category Archives: Uncategorized

Concerning lies on the Web, a reader writes:

When I cite Snopes.com as a reality check to some online they generally dismiss it as liberal lies. So…

Yes, I’ve noticed during the searches that some lead-ins suggest that Snopes is liberal and untrustworthy as well. I could dismiss this as the conservatives running around with cotton in their ears, screeching to avoid reality.

But that ignores the legitimate, and ancient, question: Who watches the watchers? Or, more to the point, who fact-checks the fact-checkers? How do we know Snopes is trustworthy? They have a long and respected history, but, like professional sports, what have you done for me lately? As questions about fact-checkers become more acute, we may see services which spot-check the various fact-checkers, perhaps randomly selecting entries. But then who checks … never mind.

But that lets me transition to the next question: for those who refuse to accept as true certain conclusions, no matter how well supported, what then do we do? While I think that, in the long run, such folks’ divergence from reality will gradually lead them to disappointing results, even to spectacularly tawdry endings (such as the fellow who invaded the pizzeria to start this thread), in the short run the cultural cognitive dissonance is certainly unsettling, much like the science denied by those Congresscritters who dislike having their favorite preconception destroyed, whether it be climate denial or various new-Age medical approaches.

But to my mind, there’s two things at work here. First, there are facts: whether or not there’s evidence of, say, a child-sex operation, or temperatures rising around the world. And then there’s the conclusions to be drawn – we didn’t investigate enough, or someone spread lies maliciously; the temperature rise is caused by human activity, or by solar activity. The fact-checkers do need to constrain their statements to the first group, since that’s how they describe themselves; the second group should be handled by advanced experts, although these days just about anyone with a keyboard will render an opinion, and often will be outraged when they’re told they don’t have the expertise to have an opinion.

Such is life today.

I haven’t paid a lot of attention to Tor, the anonymous communications tool, but this post by Nicholas Weaver on Lawfare remains interesting:

I have a strong civil liberties streak, but I cannot defend Tor hidden services.  The Tor project claims that hidden services, servers that only exist in the Tor network and act to hide the server’s IP, can protect activists and whistleblowers.  This is false.  Truly hidden Tor services (unlike Facebook which, although reachable as a “hidden service” does not actually attempt to hide the server’s IP address) are only useful for content that is unhostable anywhere on the general Internet.

If I want to host contact [content?] that annoys the Chinese I can use Amazon or even my home connection.  If I want to host content that annoys the United States I simply place my server in Russia.  It is only content which no country will tolerate and not even a “bulletproof” hosting provider like CyberBunker will host that benefits from hidden services.

Fortunately, I believe that there is a way around the problem of hidden services.  It is an open secret in the Tor community is that Tor is simply not designed to withstand global adversaries: someone who can see all the traffic as it enters and leaves the Tor network is assumed to be capable of deanonymizing the traffic.  This also implies that Tor is not capable of protecting against an adversary who generates the traffic which enters Tor and sees where the traffic leaves Tor.

He concludes:

Tor provides significant uses for those legitimately seeking anonymity or censorship resistance.  But hidden services represent a plague not only on the world at large but Tor itself.  “Tor is the tool of drug dealers and pedophiles” is powerful rhetoric that limits Tor’s more general appeal.

Powerful rhetoric indeed. It would make me pause thoughtfully before using Tor if I had such a need. Such services as Tor, if they’re to reach their potential, must be sensitive to the political winds. A whistleblower who feels the need for anonymity has to consider the possibility that they may yet end up publicly exposed, and if that happens they certainly don’t need false attributions that will cloud the issue they’re involved in.

So, if Nicholas is technically correct in his Tor assertions, it would probably serve Tor well to remove hidden services from their capabilities.

If they can. It’s possible that criminals have forced Tor developers to create hidden services.

Yesterday we took a little trip down to Owatonna, MN, to visit a Wells Fargo Bank branch.

Source: Public Domain, Link

Yeah, more than an hour’s drive.

The trick? The building it’s housed in is the first of the “jewel box” buildings built by the architect Louis Sullivan, originally constructed to house a branch of National Farmer’s Bank. To the right is the pic of the outside from Wikipedia. It’s certainly an unusual structure; decorated to convince its depositors that their treasure was safe inside this ornate chest.

A walk north up the street (a cold, windy walk) revealed a couple of other buildings with pretty awesome art deco detailing as well.  We saw the same art deco fruit and nut border motif on the Federated Insurance HQ building across the street from the bank, albeit the borders were not of the same quality as those they were imitating.

As spectacular as the outside of the box is, it’s the inside of the building that really sparkles. The Wikipedia page is quite correct: Wells Fargo welcomes visitors who simply come to gawk.

If your visit happens to be during a quiet period, one of the employees will come and discuss the structure with you. In our case, I think it was the assistant manager, although I could never quite get a look at his name badge.  He seemed to know just about anything – but, he admitted, he’d never tracked down the cost, in 1908 dollars, of putting the structure up. (Our research indicates that Sullivan and his team of craftsmen built the National Farmers’ Bank of Owatonna building in 1908 for $125,000 — more than $3 million in today’s dollars.) Otherwise, our guide had dates, construction and material details, symbology, past and future restoration projects and plans, and an appreciation of this part of his job: he clearly enjoyed the interaction. Better yet, there’s a balcony, positioned directly over the tellers’ station, which provides an excellent view.

All of our pictures were taken of the inside of the bank, and, sadly, some didn’t come out well, so I post those that did only to give a reason for having taken them.  This first one shows the medallion over the entrance to the bank, and while the picture is of not good quality, it does indicate the decorations of the bank are on an intricate agricultural theme: nuts and berries figure prominently.

These next four photos document the lighting strategy of 1908: Electroliers.  Four massive, cast iron, all-electric chandeliers holding numerous lights are suspended from the ceiling, each fixture weighing over two tons.   The detail on these fixtures is amazing, and it continues the agricultural theme (even if I pattern-matched it to sea horses and dragons). The final pictures’ background also provides some feeling for the detail in the decoration of the bank. The borders on the curved arch surfaces are not just paint over plaster; they’re molded, colored terra cotta clay.

These pictures below concentrate on some better views of the accents:

These next photos hint at the two large murals which also decorate the room, which continue the agricultural theme. These are from the Wells Fargo web site.

I’ll leave off trying to elaborate on the content of these pictures, lacking the skill to do so. There’s also some beautiful bronze work at some of the tellers’ stations and on the face of the clock.

While it’s possible to get caught up in the overwhelming detail of the borders and friezes, not all of the inside is this intricate. A substantial portion is simple brick work, and this is important because it gives the eye a place to rest.

If you’re in the area, it’s worth dropping in to see this masterwork of one of America’s first modernist architects.

(A substantial portion of this post was added by my Arts Editor, Deb White.)

Sounds like it might be getting cold, according to FishOutOfWater @ The Daily Kos:

The brutal chill will spread all the way from Anchorage, Alaska to Jacksonville Florida by next Friday while the Pacific coast warm up. Extremely unseasonable warmth will continue in easternmost Siberia and the central  Arctic. This is an absolutely bizarre weather pattern, with the kind of exaggerated waviness that Dr. Jennifer Francis and other scientists have linked to Arctic sea ice loss. This is an extreme example of the warm Arctic / cold continents pattern that Dr. Francis has written about in peer reviewed reports. The weather I am writing about this week direct follows the story I wrote 10 days ago about how warm water in the Barents and Kara seas, where sea ice used to be found this time of year, has destabilized the atmospheric circulation.

Wheee!

For ABC News, George Stephanopoulos interviews Mike Pence about the incoming Administration’s business strategy concerning Carrier and another company moving jobs to Mexico, Rexnord:

STEPHANOPOULOS: So does he now pick up the phone and call the head of Rexnord?

Does he call all these other companies who are going to move overseas?

PENCE: Well, I think what you’re going to see — and the president-elect will make those decisions on — on a — on a day by day basis in the — in the course of the transition and in the course of the administration.

But what you’re seeing emerge here — and I think it’s so exciting for millions of Americans — you should have seen the emotion on people’s faces…

STEPHANOPOULOS: We saw it.

PENCE: — at the Carrier plant, George. I mean this was — and I mean I — it was one of the most emotional experiences that I’ve had in my public career, the way people reached out, grabbed our president-elect by the hand and just said thank you AMB. ), because they see in him someone who’s going to fight for American jobs.

He’s going to fight on the world stage in negotiating trade deals. And he’s going to come here to Washington, DC and he’s going to fight to raised taxes, roll back regulations, repeal and replace ObamaCare and make American manufacturing come back to life.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You say he’s going to make these decisions on a — on a day by day basis.

Isn’t that picking winners and losers?

I mean Sarah Palin calls it crony capitalism?

I think it means there’s going to be significant unhappiness among firms, starting with these, but as the whim of the Administration impacts other industries over imagined or real injustices, it’ll spread to general industry. Can an Administration which targets individual companies, whether with tax incentives or with punishments, remain effective throughout its term? Or will it end up floundering about, looking foolish?

And will it matter to its supporters? I’m not sure Trump really needs the support of all of American and international business, just Wall Street and the health insurance industry may be enough to tide it over. But the business segment may look like someone took a thresher to it.

Before the recent victory for the protesters at Standing Rock, a friend sent me this opinion piece by Paul VanDevelder from High Country News, and it provides some interesting background. A tidbit, confirming what I thought all along:

David Archambault II, the tribal chairman of the Hunkpapa Sioux Nation, has as much legal standing at the United Nations and in international courts of law as any American president.

Legally, Indian tribes are powerful entities. In the matter of the Standing Rock Sioux vs. the Dakota Access Pipeline, I have little doubt that the tribe will prevail. The law of the land is on their side. Pipeline permits issued to oil companies by the Army Corps of Engineers do not trump the federal government’s fiduciary responsibility to the tribes. Claims to the contrary by politicians are so much nonsense. For far too long, this, our “nation of laws, not of men” (in the words of John Adams) has acted with lawlessness and reckless abandon with its solemn responsibilities to the Indian Nations.

usufructuary:

Tonight I heard on NPR that some group in Ghana put together a fake US Embassy, and ran it for – a decade.

Source: Feelgrafix

For about a decade, Turkish and Ghanaian organized crime rings operated a fake U.S. embassy in Ghana’s capital, where they issued fraudulently obtained legitimate and counterfeit visas and ID documents costing $6,000 to people from across West Africa.

That’s according to the U.S. State Department, which detailed how the operation worked.

“In Accra, Ghana, there was a building that flew an American flag every Monday, Tuesday and Friday, 7:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m. Inside hung a photo of President Barack Obama, and signs indicated that you were in the U.S. Embassy in Ghana,” reads an article from the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Bureau. “However, you were not. This embassy was a sham.”

The “embassy” was shut down by Ghanaian authorities this summer, in cooperation with the real U.S. Embassy, following a tip from an informant. Authorities have arrested “several suspects” and confiscated “150 passports from 10 countries,” according to the article. They also discovered a fake Dutch embassy and continue to pursue “several” other suspects.

What gall. I’m sure its purpose was entirely dishonorable, and possibly even people were hurt.

But I can’t help but admire the balls and ingenuity.

We found this out in the garden this morning, decorated in frost …

Ever thought about how to share knowledge about your profession to the general public? Show ‘n Tell just doesn’t rock your world?

How about using puppets to talk about the law? That’s how Rania Refaat talks about the law to the general public in Egypt, as reported by Youssra el-Sharkawy in AL Monitor:

Originally a lawyer, Refaat combines law with art to explain Egyptian law and raise awareness of various issues, including human rights and women’s rights. She uses marionettes as her tool by which she can express her own views.

“Every artist has his ideas, and he searches for the best tools by which he can deliver these ideas. I chose puppets as my tool because they are popular and many people — of different ages — like them,” Refaat told Al-Monitor.

The young artist said, “Young children love to watch the puppets and like the music in the play, while older people understand the deep meaning and receive the message I’m delivering.” …

In her recent show titled “Ana mosh Ayza Atgawez” (“I Don’t Want to Get Married”), which was performed in Cairo during the Children’s Day celebrations on Nov. 20, Refaat discussed child marriage, a major issue in Egypt.

The play is set in what seems to be a village. A teenage girl cries after her father insists that she marry a 60-year-old man with an illegal contract because the girl is underage.

“Egypt is an inspiring country for any artist, and there are many topics that I’d like to raise awareness about through my art, like violence against women, corruption, the relation between people and the government, relation between people and the environment and even the way people raise their children,” she said.

I’m not sure this would make sense for a software engineer to do in the United States, but it might be fun, regardless. But could I see any of the lawyers of my acquaintance doing this?

Not really. But I’d pay real money to see it.

I understand the following item is about “false news” or “fake news”, but I prefer my Arts Editors’ name for it: Lies. From CNN:

A suspect arrested Sunday with an assault rifle at a Washington, DC pizzeria admitted he had come to investigate an online conspiracy theory, Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department said Sunday evening in a statement.

Police have identified him as 28-year-old Edgar Maddison Welch of Salisbury, North Carolina.

“During a post arrest interview this evening, the suspect revealed that he came to the establishment to self-investigate ‘Pizza Gate’ (a fictitious online conspiracy theory),” the police department said in a statement.

“Pizza Gate” is a name given to the online false news stories begun last month that charged the Comet Ping Pong restaurant and its owner were involved in a child sex operation. The owner has vehemently denied the charges, but they continued to proliferate online. The owner and employees said they were repeatedly threatened on social media.

Fake news has always been with us, but computers and the internet are great multipliers, as I’ve said before. Now, CNN has published an allied article on how to be a responsible news reader and sharer here. But is that really the route to go, to make everyone responsible for vetting their news sources? The use of these sites to persecute individuals for political or commercial reasons may eventually lead to the abandonment of those sites, if enough shame is flung at those who make the mistake – honest or not – of believing and propagating the news found on those sites. If they become ineffectual, then they’ll go away.

And that’s why fact-checking sites such as Snopes keeps lists of untrustworthy sites. But will that be good enough? I have to wonder if we’re going to see a slow, but real migration from the great mish-mash of news sites we see today to a core of sites that are consistently trustworthy, until it just about looks like the 1960s – just a few organizations with good reputations and large news staffs, perhaps charging for access, in place of the advertising model. After all, if there are consequences for propagating false news lies,then folks will seek out real news.

The late SF author Jack Vance enjoyed employing the footnote, the aside, and the citation to fill in the background of his many books; but the fact that he (and others, such as Frederik Pohl, who has also used the device) is a fiction author doesn’t suggest any old filler would do. Consider this, the lead-in of Chapter 3 of The Book of Dreams:

From Life, Volume I, by Unspiek, Baron Bodissey:

… I often reflect upon the word “morality,” the most troublesome and confusing word of all.

There is no single or supreme morality; there are many, each defining the mode by which a system of entities optimally interacts.

The eminent entomologist Fabre, observing a mantis in the act of devouring its mate, exclaimed: “What an abominable custom!”

The ordinary man, during a day’s time, may be obliged to act by the terms of a half-dozen different moralities. Some of these acts, appropriate at one moment, may the next moment be considered obscene or opprobrious in terms of another morality.

The person who, let us say, expects generosity from a bank, efficient flexibility from a government agency, open-mindedness from a religious institutions will be disappointed. In each purview the notions represent immorality. The poor fool might as quickly discover love among the mantises.

This ties right in with the behavior of our President-elect, a man who doesn’t seem to understand that different standards of behavior apply when operating in a different sector of society. Why is this a problem? Because each sector has different goals, such as making things (or, for the less subtle of thought, profit), justice, feeding the unfortunate, and each sector’s goal necessitates different behavior patterns in order to optimize our path to the goal.

Unfortunately, these simple observations and conclusions are no longer widely understood. The decades-long push to minimize government had, as its side effect, the minimization of the importance of expertise when running government, to the point where many people believe expertise in some other sector will transfer right over into government.

Thus, Trump.

Given the private prisons debacle, and the recent push (and collapse, sometimes literally) of schools for profit, we need to begin to re-examine the importance of sector expertise in society, and why it actually matters that you understand why we’re not going to give nuclear technology to South Korea, or Japan, or how to run a government bureaucracy, where the rules matter, vs a business bureaucracy, where the rules are quite different – and the goals are different.

In the meantime, hopefully the world will realize that we have a functionally impaired leader and will compensate for it. Which, in a way, I kind of regret since we’re less likely to learn from this mistake – but the alternative is probably too messy to really contemplate.

In some good news (at least for those who cheer for the underdog), the protesters at Standing Rock appear to have won a victory. From CNN:

Plangent:

1: having a loud reverberating sound <a plangent roar>
2: having an expressive and especially plaintive quality <plangent lyrics>

[Merriam-Webster]

Encountered in Jack Vance’s The Book of Dreams.

The debate over saturated fats continues as BMJ issues a press release in relation to the article they previously published, “The scientific report guiding the US dietary guidelines: is it scientific?”, by Nina Teicholz:

Independent experts find no grounds for retraction of The BMJ article on dietary guidelines

•  Formal reviews reject calls for retraction led by Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI)
•  Reviewers say criticisms of methods used by the guidelines committee “are within the realm of scientific debate,” and merit “further investigation of the composition of the committee”
•  The BMJ is publishing a notice of correction and clarification
•  Journal stands by the article and will continue to provide a forum for debate on the science and politics of nutrition

Two independent experts who conducted formal post-publication reviews of an article in The BMJ questioning the science behind US dietary guidelines have found no grounds for retraction. The BMJ is, however, publishing a notice of correction and clarification to the article on the basis of the reviews and internal assessment of the issues raised.

Ms Teicholz comments on the retraction here. There’s a lot, but here’s the part that caught my eye:

A fundamental question is why 170+ researchers (including all the 2015 DGA committee members, or “DGAC”), organized by the advocacy group, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), would sign a letter asking for retraction. After all, in the weeks following publication, any person had the opportunity to submit a “Rapid Response” to the article, and both CSPI and the DGAC did so, alleging many errors. I responded to them all in my Rapid Response. This is the normal post-publication process.

Yet after all this, CSPI returned for a second round of criticisms, recycling two of the issues (CSPI points #3 and #10) that I had already addressed in my Rapid Response (and which had required no correction), adding another 9 (one of which, #4, contained no challenge of fact), and demanding that based on these alleged errors, the article be retracted. CSPI then circulated this letter widely to colleagues and asked them to sign on.

Last spring, a journalist for The Guardian, Ian Leslie, was able to quickly unmask the nature of CSPI’s campaign. Leslie interviewed many of the researchers who had signed CSPI’s petition:

“They were happy to condemn the article in general terms, but when I asked them to name just one of the supposed errors in it, not one of them was able to. One admitted he had not read it. Another told me she had signed the letter because the BMJ should not have published an article that was not peer reviewed (it was peer reviewed). Meir Stampfer, a Harvard epidemiologist, asserted that Teicholz’s work is ‘riddled with errors,’ while declining to discuss them with me.”

Indeed, quite a few sets of emails obtained by a blogger including those by Harvard professor Frank Hu, all obtained via public records requests, reveal researchers passing along the retraction request as if it were a chain letter, agreeing to sign on without asking a single question about the substance of the alleged errors.

Big Sugar conspiracy? Seems unlikely to me. More likely, researchers protecting their turf without being willing to question the very foundations of their field – always a hard thing to do, particularly if they are not truly independent of their funding. But I don’t know, I’m not an expert in the field. BMJ’s decision not to retract after a proper, independent review does suggest there’s something going on, though.

And I know I put on weight when I indulge in carbs, but not when I eat steak. And my last two heart scans actually show my heart is  improving, from a “2” to a “1” – my GP started tearing at his hair when he saw that. “It’s not supposed to get better!” he lamented. I kid you not. I’ve been trying to move away from carbs and sugars over the years, but I do give some credit to the dark chocolate I regularly consume.

Yeah, yeah, just anecdotal. Unless it applies to me.

For those not familiar with Hooked, in 2015 TechCrunch presented a summary:

So with Hooked, [founders Parag Chordia and Prerna Gupta are] commissioning short stories that take the form of text message conversations. Instead of turning pages, you tap the screen to bring on the next message. The app offers a limited number of free stories but charges a subscription fee (starting at $2.99 per week) for unlimited access.

Chordia suggested that this presents a couple of advantages over a standard book or e-book. For one thing, readers aren’t faced with “this block of text that just doesn’t have that natural feel on your phone that a casual game does.” It could also make it easier for readers to consume the story in small bites, say when they’re waiting in line or riding the subway.

At the same time, the stories are supposed to keep you, well, hooked. I read one of them, “Unknown,” and while I don’t think it was a great piece of literature, I have to admit that the mystery grabbed me — I kept hitting the “Next” button until I reached the end.

“Every line has to either advance the story or advance the relationships,” Chordia said. “Every message is a cliffhanger.”

Katherine Martinko wonders about Hooked:

For anyone accustomed to reading full-length books and not communicating constantly over text message, the format can seem very strange indeed. The plot development is limited to exchanges going back and forth between characters, sort of like a play, except the characters can never be in same place, otherwise they wouldn’t be texting. It does not allow for character development, complex imagery, or descriptive language. …

While I think it’s important to get teens interested in reading, I worry that spoon-feeding them over-simplified, thrilling fiction is not a good long-term solution to the problem. Books are a bit like food; it’s entirely possible to overindulge in ‘junk’ literature that immediately gratifies, but has little lasting value — whether it’s a complex story to mull over afterwards or important emotional lessons to take away from it. After all, much of fiction’s worth lies in character development and the empathetic bond created with readers over the course of a novel. To take that out of the equation entirely seems tragic.

Philosophizing about the social effects of such an app, however, does not change the data, which is every app developer’s primary focus. Gupta, clearly, is on to something pretty spectacular, when you consider that Hooked has recently become the top grossing book app for iOS in the United States and is now competing with Amazon’s Kindle and Audible apps to be the number one free book app in the U.S. Apple store, too. It’s impressive.

I think that context matters, and here the context of an SMS conversation provides information to the reader that may never actually need to be described: each character has a device capable of SMS, they are probably in a certain age range, certain things will never be known for certain – but inferred with a certain probability. I’m sure there’s more down this vein.

But another important aspect is that endemic to, in my view, all story-telling – it’s a teaching tool. Not in the overt sense, mind you, but in the very act of SMS, by learning the by-ways of an important communications tool of today. How can SMS be used to fool you? When someone uses this sentence structure, and later that happens, maybe this is something that can deployed in real life.

Just as in novels.

I haven’t seen Hooked in action, but it sounds interesting – and, for an author, like an intellectual challenge. Apparently, much like traditional publishing, there are gatekeepers – it doesn’t appear to be a free-for-all, and let the readers sort it all out. From Katherine:

There is a staff of 200 writers constantly pitching and creating content for Hooked. Stories are written in four or five segments, each about 1,000 words conveyed through texts. From Quartz:

“The kids can be absolutely brutal,” says Sean Dunne, one of about 200 writers who’s written for Hooked since it launched. His stories include “The Watcher,” whose first episode came out in early October and has 872,000 reads alone at time of writing. “For every story I publish there were 10 ideas shot down, that didn’t get approval.”

Today we were delighted and perplexed by Tampopo (1985), a Japanese movie playing in Minneapolis’ Lagoon Cinema. This is a movie about food, featuring a main storyline, detailing a widow who is failing as a ramen cook, and the men who come together to help her master the art of ramen service, from cooking to presentation to preparing her hole-in-the-wall eatery to host her guests. Interspersed is a far more whimsical story about a fellow who appears to be a gangster with a food fetish, and his main squeeze.

The main story is well done. The characters are well thought out, and, as an audience, we get the feeling that, outside the movie frame, they don’t sit around smoking cigs until they are called upon to appear again, but have lives they are also living, from the divorced trucker who used to box, to the ramen sensei on loan from a band of hobos-cum-gourmets. Coming together, their interaction initiate the audience into delight as the movie leisurely explores metaphorical blind alleys, such as the second scene, in which a trucker is reading a book on ramen appreciation; it’s brought to life for us, provoking laughter, then thoughtfulness.

Source: Flixist

In this ocean of the main plot are islands of perplexity. Perhaps inserted to highlight a point, although I often didn’t really see it, they primarily involve the gangster, his girl, and their use of food during sex, which was quite surprising, and a little alarming. But they are not the only sources of perplexity, as we also see a woman on her deathbed, her desperate husband begging her to live on, until he loses his temper and demands that she cook dinner for the family.

It may not be a lively kitchen workout, but she gets the job done before meeting her end.

The movie bounces from main story to side story to dead-end, back to the main story, never hurried, but with enough impulse and unexpected >FIST FIGHT!< turns to keep you guessing. And, in the end, a death scene was one of the most thematically loyal, obscure, and interesting I’ve ever seen at the cinema. I’ll never look at yam jammed intestines in quite the same way again.

Recommended, if you like offbeat movies.

Last night, while conversing with my Arts Editor, I used the word “excruciant” (don’t ask how, fortunately I’ve already forgotten). Of course, I thought I had made up a new word.

Sadly, no. At least the Romans had already thought of it, as this is Latin.

Verb

excruciant

1. third-person plural present active indicative of excruciō

[Wiktionary]

Not sure I like being associated with that particular brand of Roman.

Prosopagnosia:

Prosopagnosia /ˌprɑːsəpæɡˈnoʊʒə/^[1] (Greek: “prosopon” = “face”, “agnosia” = “not knowing”), also called face blindness,^[2] is a cognitive disorder of face perception where the ability to recognize familiar faces, including one’s own face (self-recognition), is impaired, while other aspects of visual processing (e.g., object discrimination) and intellectual functioning (e.g., decision making) remain intact. The term originally referred to a condition following acute brain damage (acquired prosopagnosia), but a congenital or developmental form of the disorder also exists, which may affect up to 2.5% of the population. [Wikipedia]

Encountered in the Letters column of NewScientist.

In a mini review of Jeremy Rifkin’s The Zero Marginal Cost Society in NewScientist (19 November 2016, paywall), Sally Adee summarizes Rifkin’s vision of the future:

Within 60 years, capitalism might have left the building completely. In its place will be a society in which all our basic needs are met. Rifkin calls his new economic vision “the commons”, but it goes beyond the economy – it will be the new “water” we swim in.

You will have a job, but it won’t be for money. The company you work for will be a non-profit. Your “wealth” will be measured in social capital: your reputation as a cooperative member of the species. So when you contribute to open-source code that makes a better widget, you’ll enjoy a “payment” in the form of an improved reputation. Apps that track your contribution to the commons – whether by your input at work, your frugal use of energy, or other measures of reputation – will let you cash in your karma points for luxuries, say, an antique chair that was conspicuously not built by a fabricator. Even in the commons, we’ll still be human.

Karma points, eh? And how will this differ from money? It doesn’t. Just another measurement of what I’ll call social contribution – so don’t get sidetracked by the terminology. The key is the nature of social contribution and what is valued. In the past it was contributing to the building of things, whether you’re laying the pavement of a bridge – or building the software that enabled the proper design of the bridge – or created the mathematics that enabled the proper design. In other words, working with reality, even at some remove, in order to further our survival.

From this limited mini review, it appears Rifkin wants to more directly control the definition of social contribution, transforming from the relatively unregulated riff on satisfying the wants and needs of society, individual and whole, to a more idealistic – or at least more manipulable – definition of good vs bad wants and needs. I suspect this’ll definitely be a more political definition of how to run society, as it’ll be disconnected from base reality (in other parts of the review, citations of automation and next generation 3D printers are used to suggest the cost of creating such things used for survival will become negligible), possibly resulting in potent arguments over who has contributed and who has not.

Could even lead to small wars. Especially with those 3D printers functioning as your weapons factories. Now I’m tempted to buy the book just to see if it’s as nihilistic as this little tidbit suggests it should be.

Concerning Cuba’s healthcare approach, a reader writes:

Efficiency is rarely a desirable goal in and of itself, especially in government or societal affairs. I would argue that Cuba is not “efficient” per se, but “effective”. They have continuity of care, which is well-known in the medical field as important. There’s a lot more that could be happening in Cuba with the neighborhood approach that could be teased out with more research, and thus made into concrete benefits. Imagine how healthy Cuba might be if they could increase their health care spending from 10% of ours to 15% of ours.

Meanwhile, I’m fearful I’m going to be priced out of the market before I manage to make eligibility for Medicare and/or that Medicare will cease to be as affordable and effective as it is today by that point, thanks to the new Congress and Administration we’ll be getting.

America doesn’t have the best health care in the world; we have perhaps the worst among OECD nations. (I think that’s the right acronym and group I want.)

I agree, efficiency is more of a bugaboo of minds entranced by monetary concerns, but an irritant to those of us seeking social harmony.

But, for reasons obscure, the reader’s phrasing triggers in my mind (no doubt everyone else is far ahead of me, but I mostly write this blog so I can hear myself think) the observation that humanity evolved in relatively small groups in which the contributions of everyone was valued; it’s programmed into us to contribute, and to expect our contributions to be valued.

We did not evolve in a large state (country) environment. The larger a state grows, the less we are likely to be recognized for simple contributions on a nation-wide scale. In this view, cities and other political sub-units of countries become important in that they permit the individual to contribute and be recognized for those contributions on that local level; to participate in governance; and other functions that would be, without those political units’ presence, fading away.

It’s not an important point, but I think it gives a little insight into an alternative importance to current social and physical structures; given the drive of many people to be dominant in their little puddle, as it were, this is one way to reduce the pressure on those individuals. Not that this always works – we all know bitter old men who try to dominate their neighborhood; when I moved into my current residence, one of my neighbors fit that definition to a ‘T’. I suspect many white supremacists fit the same definition – bitter and frustrated that they and their brand, with which they so closely identify, are not the dominant figure of the nation.

Another reader writes:

Russia underwrote much of Cuba’s medical efforts.

I’m not clear as to whether this refers to the Soviet Union’s well known links to Cuba, or if Russia continues to support Cuba’s medical efforts even today. I know quite a few economic links were severed when the Soviet Union collapsed, and Cuba lost a number of subsidies in the process. I’m not sure how that affected their medical field, though. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, or 25 years ago.

I was hasty in my last post. Lawfare’s Chris Mirasola has provided a crisp history of the uncomfortable China/Taiwan/American relationship, and then a quick analysis:

The President-elect’s personal financial interests further muddies the situation. According to the Shanghaiist, the Trump Organization was considering a deal to build luxury hotels in Taiwan as recently as this past September. It is unclear how far this deal has progressed, though a local mayor has said that the project is still speculative.

What will this all mean for Sino-American relations? As Bolton recognized, “Beijing’s leaders would be appalled by this approach.” He is likely correct. Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Geng Shuang, speaking before the phone conversation, condemnedproposed US-Taiwan military exchanges and “urge[d] the US to abide by the one China policy” and “avoid backsliding and damaging the larger interests of China-US relations.” President Xi Jinping has been particularly direct about Taiwan’s political status. After Tsai Ying-wen’s election President Xi reiterated Beijing’s strong opposition to Taiwan separatism, asserting that, “the more than 1.3 billion Chinese people and the whole country will not tolerate secessionist activities by any person, at any time and in any form.” Xi has also signaled that he may be more aggressive than past administrations in bringing Taiwan under Beijing’s control. He told former Taiwanese Vice President Vincent Siew, for example, that, “political disagreements that exist between the two sides must reach a final resolution . . . and these issues cannot be passed on from generation to generation.”

If this phone call is indeed a first step in a plan to bolster Taiwanese sovereignty, the President-elect may find himself confronting a particularly vociferous, and increasingly powerful, opponent in President Xi Jinping.

I fear the business world has not prepared Mr. Trump for his new position. Perhaps the neocons will cheer on direct action such as this (although it appears Bolton is taken aback), but the risks are comparable to a bull in a … sorry.

Still, such an analysis as my off-the-cuff makes variables into constants, always an intellectual error. In this case, the variable taken to be a constant is the Chinese leadership and their response profile. They are now faced with a baffling situation, an American President who may not even realize the affront he is giving. Given our military capabilities, do they respond with strength, or with subtlety? We would assume a Cold War with another President, but such a War would damage all parties, and the Chinese leader’s are fools if they think their position is assured. The Chinese are starting to taste a bit of sufficiency, even affluence – if that’s taken away by a world-wide recession in which the Chinese leadership is seen to have a role, revolt might be in the cards.

The Chinese, upon examination of the situation, may consider simply protesting his behavior as a matter of saving face, while privately agreeing to suck it up for four years, hoping more reasonable actors may take over the American government. This is how they may be a variable.

This all makes me wonder if the next Presidential election will be an international cyber struggle in which the Russians and the Chinese vie for control of the American voter. At the moment, it would appear the Chinese might prefer an experienced American politician of Clinton’s caliber, while the Russians prefer the chaos and incompetence of Trump.

Updating the President-elect’s scandal list, we have a couple more.

Reuters is reporting Trump has invited imminent dictator Duterte of the Philippines to visit:

Trump’s brief chat with the firebrand Philippine president follows a period of uncertainty about one of Washington’s most important Asian alliances, stoked by Duterte’s hostility toward President Barack Obama and repeated threats to sever decades-old defense ties.

The call lasted just over seven minutes, Duterte’s special adviser, Christopher Go, said in a text message to media, which gave few details.

Duterte congratulated the U.S. president-elect, the Trump team’s statement said, and the two men “noted the long history of friendship and cooperation between the two nations, and agreed that the two governments would continue to work together closely on matters of shared interest and concern.”

In five months in office, Duterte has upended Philippine foreign policy by berating the United States, making overtures toward historic rival China and pursuing a new alliance with Russia.

His diplomacy has created jitters among Asian countries wary about Beijing’s rising influence and Washington’s staying power as a regional counterbalance.

Perhaps “diplomacy” is a euphemism.

Second on the list is Trump’s direct contact with Taiwan, as reported by the New Civil Rights Movement:

Source: Washington Monthly

The U.S. Government severed official diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 1979, and technically no president, or president-elect, has spoken with their president since.

Why?

China.

Taiwan is considered by China to be a part of China, and China considers communication with the head of state of Taiwan to be a “highly provocative” act against the Chinese government, as one expert notes.

The Financial Times’ Demetri Sevastopulo and Geoff Dyer broke the news, reporting that Trump’s phone call “on Friday with Tsai Ying-wen, the president of Taiwan … risks opening up a major diplomatic dispute with China before he has even been inaugurated.”

The reporters note that “the call is likely to infuriate Beijing which regards the island as a renegade province.”

It’s often said the Chinese see symbolism everywhere. Let’s hope in Trump they see a drunken elephant, to be approached with caution and a tranquilizer gun. And absolutely no temper.