Category Archives: Uncategorized

As hot house gases concentrations continue to rise, the UK takes a positive step forward, according to the guardian:

The last coal power station in Britain will be forced to close in 2025, the government said as it laid out its plan to phase-out the polluting fossil fuel.

Ministers promised last year that the UK would close coal power within a decade and replace it with gas and other sources to meet its climate change commitments.

But in a delayed consultation on the phase-out, published on Wednesday, officials admitted that the last coal power station was likely to shutter in 2022 even without government intervention, prompting calls from campaigners to bring forward the cut-off year.

Greg Clark, the energy secretary, said the move sent a clear signal to the world that the UK was a good place to invest in clean energy. “Taking unabated coal power out of our energy mix and replacing it with cleaner technology, such as gas, will significantly reduce emissions from the UK’s energy use,” he said.

The remark concerning coal-fire power stations closing by 2022 was interesting, so I hunted that down in Coal Generation in Great Britain:

In the central scenario we project forward the current economic conditions affecting the level of coal generation. In this scenario, coal and gas prices follow BEIS’s 2016 interim central trajectory. In addition, the level of penetration of low carbon generation is consistent with the Government’s declared policy ambition and it has been  assumed that given the challenging economic conditions for coal, only two plants make the investment needed to meet the requirements of the Industrial Emissions Directive and are therefore able to operate without constraint after 2020. In these circumstances all coal plants are projected to have closed by 2022 due to economic factors (see figure 3).

Or, as I read it, the governmental requirements for plant emissions are such that, in combination with the price of coal, they become economically unviable.

Here’s hoping the bigger burners of coal are working towards this goal.

(h/t Sami Grover on Treehugger.com)

Quinta Jurecic discusses her ongoing experiment in philosophy on Lawfare:

But then Donald Trump was elected to the presidency.

The result is that we now find ourselves confronting a remarkable controlled experiment of sorts as we lurch from the exquisitely presented moral anguish and self-involved seriousness of Barack Obama to the proud, almost avowed moral emptiness of Trump.

Here’s one side of the contrast: Over the last eight years, President Obama has given a bravura performance as our philosopher-king, reading Thomas Aquinas and pondering the moral necessity and cost of targeting threats to the United States with deadly violence—and making sure we all know that he is doing so. The administration has been at pains to emphasize that we live in a country with a just-war theorist in the Oval Office. And the targeted killing program has been fitted closely to the individual moral character of that theorist in chief, who believes himself alone to be possessed of the moral seriousness necessary to preside over a program comparatively free of other institutional constraints.

Here’s the other side of the contrast: Our president-elect is a man who appears to have no capacity whatsoever for self-reflection or self-doubt and who has given every appearance that he is so narcissistic that he lacks the capacity to weigh the value of his soul against his love of country—or even to understand what that comparison means.

Gimme an exercise wheel. Earlier, Quinta stated,

And to paraphrase Machiavelli, in order to carry out the work of politics, the leader must love his or her country more than his or her soul—that is, the leader must be willing to carry out ugly and even violent actions for the sake of the country, while keeping sharply present the knowledge that such action degrades the soul. The long-running argument is whether only a person willing to degrade his or her soul for the sake of country—and yet keep the painful knowledge of those moral compromises always in mind—is fit to lead a country. Does this willingness to compromise and do violence, and yet always feel the pain of compromise and violence, really make for a better leader?

Which even as nicely stated as that, covers up some nuance. In Machiavelli’s time, the vast majority of the people stayed put, with no access to transit systems; this resulted in similarly anchored attitudes, leading to xenophobia. Today, it’s much easier to move across borders, to see that people are people.

Given that knowledge, a leader has to operate with the knowledge that their actions will be judged by those who might emigrate to your country, bringing valuable knowledge and skills – or move against you as an enemy and even danger to the general welfare. The consequences of violent actions against non-citizens is different from Machiavelli’s time, and must be considered in light of how the technology of today, in transit, communications, and even detection and monitoring will show the results to everyone who may matter.

Matt Masur on HuffPo plays a pleasant trick on us by writing a headline suggesting Bernie Sanders could still become President this January, and using this to slide into the same old rant on being a responsible Internet user:

My cousin Scott Chamberlain has another whack at the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra (FWSO) debacle. This time, he may think the leader of the FWSO is completely incompetent:

This is perhaps the most stunning portion of this whole piece.  It goes without saying that the best way to receive contributions is… to ask people for contributions.  And any fundraising professional would tell you that it is far, far easier to raise money from people who have already donated—they are already committed and clearly already support you.  Why snub donors?  Why on earth wouldn’t you send them a renewal letter?  Or cultivate them into becoming larger donors? This seems yet another example of Ms. Adkins’s cavalier attitude to donors she displayed a few months ago when she outright told her board members not to pay attention to people whose average gift was less than $109.

And this bit is interesting:

Ms. Adkins, do you remember how over the last 15 months of negotiations the FWSO management never deviated once from its “best” offer, to the frustration of musicians… and the federal mediators brought in to try and find a solution? You were attempting to impose a contract unilaterally on the musicians, which is why they declared a strike.  In a previous story in the Star-Telegram, you stated: “We cannot allow a threat from the union to coerce us into fiscal irresponsibility.”

It is astonishing that you are trying to label the musicians as recalcitrant.

That is a bit of a jaw-dropper, if true. Negotiation and compromise are American favorites; unilaterally imposed pay cuts are the tools of authoritarians such as, say, Vladimir Putin. Does Ms. Adkins understand she is in a position where you serve the community – not your tin-pot dictator pretensions? Drop the quality of your orchestra, and perhaps not as many show up. Forcing … oh, most readers should get it. The toilet bowl effect.

It’s not time for digging in your heels. It’s time for creativity, outreach, and brain-storming. The moment concerts were canceled was the moment the board should have dumped her.

But Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight is more than willing to talk about what went wrong – like any good scientist:

We also received a lot of criticism from Democratic partisans in the closing weeks of the campaign — more than we did from Trump supporters — because they thought we didn’t have Clinton as a heavy enough favorite. That’s unusual. We’ve forecasted enough races over the years to have taken criticism from almost every side. But in the past, it’s always been the trailing candidate’s supporters who gave us more grief.

In this respect, there’s another parallel between Trump’s victory on Tuesday, and the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union in June. Brexit polls showed the race almost tied, with “Remain” leading by perhaps half a percentage point. In fact, “Leave” won by about 4 percentage points. The polls took a lot of criticism even though they’d shown “Leave” at almost even-money, whereas betting markets — and the conventional wisdom from London-based reporters — had “Remain” heavily favored to prevail. Londoners may have interpreted the data in selective ways because of the “unthinkability” of Britain’s leaving the EU to people in their social circles.

Tuesday’s results were similar. We strongly disagree with the idea that there was a massive polling error. Instead, there was a modest polling error, well in line with historical polling errors, but even a modest error was enough to provide for plenty of paths to victory for Trump. We think people should have been better prepared for it. There was widespread complacency about Clinton’s chances in a way that wasn’t justified by a careful analysis of the data and the uncertainties surrounding it.

Complacency? Or distaste? Is this a matter of the underdog doing its utmost and coming through in the clutch? I have trouble with such large composite creatures coming up with a coordinated action, although admittedly voting doesn’t require much coordination. Where was the supposed Trump dampening effect, wherein his proponents would be so depressed by the common wisdom that they wouldn’t bother to vote? The progressives were banking heavily on this supposed tendency, and fell hard because of it.

Another presumptive champion chokes in the clutch.

And does this mean next time the presumptive favorite will be posturing as if their throat’s about to be ripped out? On the one hand, it feels like one more slick politician’s trick … and I have trouble getting beyond it. It tends to mask any honest evaluation of the problems the Democratic Party may have; it blames the voters for not showing up, rather than asking whether the Democrats gave voters a reason not to show up. And the longer they delay fixing the problem, the harder it’ll be to fix.

Yes, I’m a giant chicken doing battle with SpaceGodzilla
Source: Head Injury Theater

Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla (1994) features the iconic rubber suit monster in a three way cage match against SpaceGodzilla, Godzilla‘s outre clone from outer space (involving black holes, white holes, worm holes, and plot holes), and Mogera, the Japanese built (and, no doubt, predecessor to Pacific Rim) monster robot. But before that, we get many meaningless plot twists and turns involving a man with a grudge against Godzilla (a little like a grudge against the Moon); a team working to control Godzilla via telepathy (I do hope there’s no feedback, kids); the Mogera team, out to kill Godzilla; the Yakuza (maybe they funded the picture and were looking for some positive publicity), who see Godzilla in a junior role in the organization; and perhaps one or two others I missed. And, for some reason, Godilla, Jr, with hugely adorable eyes and a developmental problem with his superpower.

But after a lot of running around (hey, it’s a monster movie – he who walks gets squished), it all comes down to a climactic battle between the three heavyweights. As little can be made of the arbitrary battle as that of the plot twists; perhaps the most memorable part of the entire movie is the uncanny resemblance of Mogera to a giant … chicken. Right down to the wattles. That’s right, it even tries to peck SpaceGodzilla to death.

If you’re six years old and love Godzilla, this is for you. Otherwise, just turn your head and don’t watch this train wreck.

For FiveThirtyEight, Oliver Roeder reports on the current World Chess Championship from New York City:

The two grandmasters play alone in a separate room, accompanied only by two stoic match arbiters. On the inside, the room resembles the bridge of a sci-fi spaceship. To the spectators on the outside, though, it evokes a reptile house in a zoo. You enter the dark, hot and humid viewing gallery through thick black curtains. You’re hushed as you enter and reminded to silence your phone. The lights inside are dimmed, and an eerie purple light glows from behind the thick glass of the one-way mirror. You can see Carlsen and Karjakin, leaning in close to each other over the board in deep thought. They can’t see you.

And along with all the spectators, ruminating over the game strategies employed by the masters, is this monster:

The computer chess engine Stockfish was in full agreement [concerning the first two draws], seeing both games as nothing but deadlocked.

Ya gotta wonder how American chess whiz Bobby Fischer would have reacted to a computer critiquing his play. I haven’t paid a great deal of attention to the social consequences of computers taking over our favorite intellectual games, such as Chess and Go. Will, or even have, leagues develop in which computers are either banned, or are exclusive, or an intermixture of human and computers? Will the progress of a human in a computer league be followed with rapt attention? Or would that progress never occur?

Daniel Byman provides a handy guide to interpreting terrorism over the last century or so:

Terrorism has changed over time. David Rapoport, an influential scholar of terrorism, argues that we’ve seen four waves of terrorism so far: an anarchist wave at the turn of the last century; an anti-colonial wave that began in the 1920s and continued for four decades; a leftist wave that declined with the fall of Communism; and an Islamist wave that arose with the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran and continues to present, taking different forms, such as that of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, in the years since. These waves all featured different types of terrorism: anarchists assassinated prime ministers and presidents, leftists kidnapped industrialists and attacked military targets, and anti-colonial movements used terrorism as part of revolutionary warfare, along with guerrilla tactics and political mobilization.

It would be interesting to take a representative of each of these waves and ask them to re-characterize the activities used to distinguish each wave. Is it terrorism from their point of view as well? Or a justified war to throw off the colonial yoke? I just have to wonder if the word terrorism is being overused at this juncture, or if we’re really stuck with our viewpoints. Is there a universal term (or plural) for these activities, one which provides accurate descriptions and interpretive power, or are we inevitably stuck with our parochial viewpoints?

Whatever the answers, Daniel’s summary is a handy guide.

Paths of Glory (1957) is fictional non-entertainment. Legendary director Stanley Kubrick’s movie of a minor attack by the French during World War I, and its fallout, focuses on man’s inhumanity: the ambition of one general, even in the face of overwhelming odds; the pettiness of another in assuming the idealistic actions of a colonel actually provide cover for his ambition; the cowardice of a lieutenant, and how he covers it.

There’s a story, but it’s not conventional. We do not see the sympathetic protagonist triumph over the antagonists; the smoke and awfulness of war serve to cover up the banal evil that envelops the French High Command, a command group with an old-fashioned morality which has little basic human respect for the infantry man, for the man who used to hold a pike or a lance, but is now equipped with far more firepower – and is far more vulnerable than ever before.

So this is a story of the clash of moralities; the old morality where the State subordinated all to its needs, and therefore those who controlled the State could indulge their foolishness with little more than worry than that their ambitions might not be slaked; and the new morality, newborn and struggling, trying to value the individual, to treat each other personally with honor – and the results when the two clash, and neither is served well.

Men struggle and fall in this great clash, of Powers and of moralities, and nearly all is distress, until in the final scene, at a bar, a troop of men, battle-hardened and weary, having just carried out an execution, sit in a bar, drinks in hand, and are at their raucous worst as a young, lost German woman is paraded out by the bar owner. They hoot and yell and abuse her for her nationality.

Until she begins to sing. Poorly, haltingly. And the men stop their ribaldry, and soon they’re humming along with her, reminded of better times, when foolish pride and rivalry had not yet led powerful States into unnecessary Wars with each other. Before losing face meant the sacrifice of the little man. Back when men & women need not struggle against each other in more than gin rummy, perhaps, as peaceful friends. Before it became necessary to shoot a man strapped to a stretcher.

You will not enjoy this movie, but it may move you. Kubrick was a master, and this is a masterpiece, from dialog to make up, from cinematography to audio, from the chatter of weapons while men obliviously make plans in the trenches that may become their tombs, to the irritated general, distressed by impertinent questions from the press and his subordinates, striding through the ballroom as general officers and their wives and mistresses dance to gay tunes. Kubrick’s carefully chosen contrasts illuminate the sad lack of necessity of the Great War, and the distressing evil lust of those who call for more of it, even today.

You get this:

Here’s a mushroom I bought at Byerly’s before prep:

Why do I bring this up? Because it’s been stemmed – and my recipe calls for using the stems to build the mushroom stuffing.

In essence, this is probably food wastage. Unless the stems were used in other food products, I just have to shake my head at this particular preparation and suggest that wasting food is really a tacky sort of thing to do – and immoral.

Granton edge:

A slicing knife serves a similar function to a carving knife, although it is generally longer and narrower. Slicers may have plain or serrated edges. Such knives often incorporate blunted or rounded tips, and feature kullenschliff (Swedish/German: “hill-sharpened”) or Granton edge (scalloped blades) to improve meat separation. Slicers are designed to precisely cut smaller and thinner slices of meat, and are normally more flexible to accomplish this task. As such, many cooks find them better suited to slicing ham, roasts, fish, or barbecued beef and pork and venison[.] [ Wikipedia]

Referenced on a recent episode of Cook’s Country.

If you want your floor lamps to make an impact, you may wish to talk to Nacho Carbonell:

© Nacho Carbonell, image from designboom

More of Carbonell’s work is on designboom.

Art? Architecture? Building technique? Lloyd Alter on Treehugger.com points at the ultimate in green housing – Baubotanik architecture:

image © ludwig.schönle
From designboom

When we first wrote about German architect Ferdinand Ludwig, I noted that Architecture is not a profession for those with short attention spans. Ludwig is in a whole different category- he grows buildings, and needs a very long attention span. His biggest, the ‘platanen-kubus’ won’t be finished until 2028.

Designboom describes it:

The building is a multi-story structure comprising of more than 1000 plane trees that Ludwig has combined into a single living organism. The living building materials overgrow a steel framework and as the years go on, will transcend into the bearing elements.

Hope the inhabitants don’t have allergies to trees. This doesn’t seem to be an Art project, although the whimsical aspect I immediately assumed would indicate so. From the Baubotanik website, here’s a Research statement:

In currently ongoing promotions in the field of research of Baubotanik, botanical, constructional and theoretical aspects of the approach building with living plants are being worked on. All in all, the interdisciplinary supervised projects aim to acquire natural scientific and technical basics as well as to describe the consequences of the approach for the design process and to classify in a culture theoretical way.

There’s at least one Ph.D. thesis involved in the work:

To bring closure to this thread, Kansas voted to retain four of the Justices on the Kansas Supreme Court, as noted in McClatchyDC:

Efforts to remove four of the seven justices started with critics of past rulings that overturned death sentences in capital murder cases. The justices plan to hear arguments in December in the case of a man sentenced to die for killing his estranged wife and three other family members in northeastern Kansas.

Abortion opponents and conservative Republicans also wanted to remove the justices ahead of major rulings on abortion and school funding cases. The court has yet to hear the abortion case, but a ruling on education funding is expected by early next year. …

The court’s critics targeted Chief Justice Lawton Nuss and Justices Marla Luckert, Carol Beier and Dan Biles for removal in statewide yes-or-no votes to determine whether they should remain for another six years. They were appointed by moderate GOP or Democratic predecessors of conservative Republican Gov. Sam Brownback.

Brownback’s only appointee, Justice Caleb Stegall, also was on the ballot but wasn’t a target.

Voters retained all five.

Nuss said in a post-election interview that the ouster efforts would not influence the court and that its rulings would continue to be “based on the rule of law and the constitution.”

“If you were in a lawsuit, would you want a judge who was influenced by anything other than what the law requires?” Nuss said.

As I contemplate this temporary victory for judicial independence, it occurs to me that the procedure of appointments, rather than public votes, also excludes, at least for the most part, the modern phenomenon of outside money, by which I mean money raised by organizations which are outside of the jurisdiction in question. It is perhaps one of the most unfair facets of the modern political scene that great amounts of money is raised and used to target candidates for local seats for defeat by organizations which do not, for the greater part, reside in the jurisdiction in question. This occurs because of national strategies which call for dominance of the local political scene in order to produce the same dominance at the national level.

An appointment method for judges would obviate, if not entirely exclude, external influences; naturally, a weak appointing body would still be vulnerable to those influences, but I think that the appointment method is much less vulnerable, in general, to such deviant approaches.

A slice of someone else’s life often fascinates me, especially if it’s out of my experience – even if it’s probably excruciatingly dull. Here’s Aaron Nielson writing at Notice & Comment, “A Blog from the Yale Journal on Regulation and the ABA Section of Administrative Law & Regulatory Practice“:

… did you know that the word limit for briefs filed in the D.C. Circuit (unlike some other courts) is changing? It’s true: “On December 1, 2016, several amendments to the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure will go into effect. … Among the amendments are provisions that revise the word limitations for briefs; establish word limitations for other documents produced using a computer and require a certificate of compliance for such documents; and eliminate the 3-day grace period for responding to documents served electronically.” Going forward, the length limit will be 13,000 words for a principal brief and 6,500 words for a reply brief; previously, it was 14,000 and 7,000 words, respectively. Earlier this month, the D.C. Circuit formally announced how it will implement these changes.

Why am I writing about this of all things? Well, for three reasons. First, because lawyers should know about the change; I like to help spread the news, and with all the election talk, maybe this latest bit of news has been overlooked. Second, because I think that this word reduction is a bad move. I’ve both litigated in the D.C. Circuit and clerked there, and the cases can be quite complicated. Sometimes — especially in complex cases, and especially because it is hard to know ex ante what will persuade all judges — words are already tight as it is. And third, because doing so hopefully illustrates a point: There is more to life than politics. Why not pause for a moment, take a deep breath, think about appellate word limits, and enjoy the weekend? There will be plenty of time next week to contemplate the implications of the election. But as far as I can see, everyone — those who oppose the new administration and those who support it alike — would do well to slow down and think about something else, at least for a few days. And appellate word limits are something else!

Word limitations for briefs is not politics.

Draw your own lesson.

One of the paramount mysteries of paleontology are the ludicrously small arms of the T. Rex. But plans are in process to investigate with new technology, as Hannah Gavin reports on the D-brief blog of Discovery Magazine:

Carmen Soriano, a resident paleontologist at Argonne, will use a technique called X-ray micro-tomography to examine [A T. Rex named] Sue’s arm, which was removed from her fossil skeleton last week at the Field Museum and temporarily transported to Argonne.

Just like computed tomography (CT) scans at hospitals, this method captures a series of X-ray images and assembles them into a holistic 3-D representation. Importantly, this technique is non-invasive: Just as sections of the brain can be analyzed by CT scan without cutting into a skull, Sue’s priceless arm can be scanned without slicing it to bits.

So many theories, so few facts. Even “totally useless” is a theory that gets tossed around.

How about “wrong arm”?

I look forward to the conclusions.

I must admit my interest is whetted when an article on physics starts out,

YOU are made of carbon. So are your pets and all your houseplants. Every living thing on Earth owes its existence to carbon atoms’ ability to join up with other elements in a bewildering number of ways and form complex molecules. But the abundance of this element in our universe depends on a seemingly miraculous coincidence – an excited state of the carbon nucleus that our best models say shouldn’t exist, but clearly does.

The nature of this weird form of carbon has baffled us for more than 60 years, much to the distress of nuclear physicists. Its existence is so essential in the sequence of reactions making life possible that our failure to explain it is deeply embarrassing. “We need this state to exist for us to be here and yet it is extremely unusual in nuclear physics terms,” says David Jenkins at the University of York, UK. “Cracking this problem has become a matter of pride.” And yet the more we learn, the more confusing things seem to become.

This is from “Life’s subatomic secret: How we’re cracking the Hoyle state,” by Marcus Chown (NewScientist, 22 October 2016, paywall), and I’d never heard of this particular mystery before. It’s fascinating stuff – but, being high energy physics, is way beyond me. I can sort of follow this:

Source: openclipart.org

The first step in carbon manufacture is to fuse nuclei of the lightest element, hydrogen, to make the second-lightest, helium. The next step ought to be for two helium-4 nuclei – each containing two protons and two neutrons – to fuse to make beryllium-8. This would then grab another helium to make carbon-12. Except there is a snag. Beryllium-8 is highly unstable, meaning it decays in the blink of an eye – too quickly to produce the amount of carbon that exists in the universe.

The other possibility is that three helium-4 nuclei come together simultaneously inside bloated, dying stars known as red giants, where all the hydrogen has burned off to leave an extremely dense and hot core of helium. But this process is so rare that even over the aeons since the big bang, it couldn’t have produced enough carbon.

But after that I get lost (why is beryllium-8 unstable?¹ for example) , except to understand they’re using supercomputers to computationally model the problem.

I think there’s two reasons an article like this fascinates me. First, physicists are some of the smartest folks in the world, so it’s good to see them bemused.

Second, the activity of attacking a puzzling mystery often leads to all sorts of interesting knowledge. I can’t wait to see if that’s true of this mystery.

¹The Isotopes of beryllium page in Wikipedia is actually fascinating, not for the why, but the what. For example,

The rate at which the short-lived ⁷Be is transferred from the air to the ground is controlled in part by the weather. ⁷Be decay in the sun is one of the sources of solar neutrinos, and the first type ever detected using the Homestake experiment. Presence of ⁷Be in sediments is often used to establish that they are fresh, i.e. less than about 3–4 months in age, or about two half-lives of ⁷Be.

In the 60 Seconds column of NewScientist (), they mention a new millipede with …

… 14 legs, 200 poison glands and four penises …

ZooKeys has the academic article, in case you’re interested. Here’s some of the commentary:

Source: ZooKeys

A Dorsal view of head, antennae and rings 1–5 of I. tobini sp. n. (scale bar 300 µm) B the same of I.plenipes (scale bar 300 µm) C Lateral (right) view of head and rings 1–5 of I. tobini sp. n. (scale bar 300 µm) D the same of I. plenipes (scale bar 300 µm). Illacme tobini sp. n.: E anterolateral (right) view of head and first leg pair (scale bar 100 µm) F lateral (left) view of head and first leg pair, antennae broken off at base (scale bar 100 µm). (Catalog #s: I. tobini sp. n. MPE00735, I. plenipes SPC000932.)

John Delury has a startling report on the general foreign policy discussion of what to do with North Korea on 38 North:

The Hawks

The most remarkable new feature in the North Korea policy debate is serious contemplation of military force as the only viable option left. Such calls to arms are couched in guarded terms: no one advocates an imminent attack on the Yongbyon nuclear complex, and none dare call this approach for what it would most likely be: the start of a second Korean War. Instead, national security figures such as Mike Mullen,James Stavridis and Victor Cha suggest that a “surgical” or “pre-emptive” strike almost certainly must take place before Kim Jong Un perfects the capability to hit the US homeland with a nuclear missile. During the Obama years, military options were off the table because of the cost that Seoul would have to pay for a strike on Pyongyang. AsPresident Obama put it to Charlie Rose, “we could obviously destroy North Korea with our arsenals but … they are right next door to our vital ally, the Republic of Korea.” But with the South Korean government indulging in extremely bellicose rhetoric, integrated into recent US-ROK joint military exercises, that restraint seems to be vanishing before our eyes.

How might Beijing react to a US pre-emptive or surgical strike on the North? The question is often evaded, perhaps because the answer makes a military solution considerably less attractive. North Korea is, after all, China’s only defense treaty ally in the world, and is obligated to “immediately render military and other assistance by all means at its disposal” to defend Pyongyang if attacked. Their 1961 treaty is often overlooked or trivialized—occasionally by Chinese academics themselves. But the agreement remains in force, underscoring North Korea’s unique place in Chinese foreign relations. To mark the 55th anniversary of the treaty’s signing in July, Kim Jong Un sent Xi Jinping a friendly note praising the pact as a “firm legal foundation” for the bilateral relationship.

And then there are the “boas”, who prefer stronger sanctions, and a great deal more pressure on China. If China could be persuaded to pull the rug out from underneath North Korea, then the boas believe Kim Jong Un would see reason and give up nuclear weapons development. John delivers summary paragraphs, written before the U.S. election, and perhaps assuming Clinton would be the victor, rather than Trump:

Fighting for engagement and negotiation with North Korea in the US foreign policy debate is an uphill battle. But proponents of engagement have one trump card: when Washington engages, the China factor becomes an asset in dealing with North Korea, rather than a liability or roadblock. Beijing, after all, is steadfast in its strategy of engaging Pyongyang, and it is perpetually looking for US openness to negotiation. China’s security policy toward North Korea is unwavering: the goal is denuclearization, the preconditions are peace and stability, and the method is dialogue. If the next US president adopts an engagement strategy, Xi Jinping’s government would likely step up its own work to achieve short-term breakthroughs and long-term solutions. Paradoxically, Washington’s best chance of getting China to apply constructive pressure on its errant neighbor is through a major US initiative to negotiate with Kim Jong Un.

Beijing does not think any amount of sanctions and pressure, including the use of military force, will change Pyongyang’s behavior in the way Washington wants. The firm policy of the Chinese government, supported by most foreign policy experts (though not necessarily the ones most quoted by US and South Korean media), is that only dialogue and negotiation can moderate North Korea’s behavior, and that the best hope for long-term progress lies in the untapped potential of North Korea’s economic transformation and regional integration. Many South Koreans, including the leading candidates to become the next ROK president, would seem to agree.

I’ve heard little more than Trump might be willing to talk to Kim Jong Un, with little detail. How this plays out will be very interesting.

Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes advocate for the retention of FBI Director James Comey on Lawfare:

Whatever you think of Comey’s judgment or conduct during the campaign, his actions have unequivocally demonstrated political independence from his political bosses, as he has in the past. And that is exactly what we will need from the FBI in the coming years.

Throughout his career, Comey has stood up to the political leadership of both parties. During the Bush administration, he offered to resign over questions of law and principle. If the last few weeks demonstrate anything, it is that we can trust him to speak his mind irrespective of the political consequences; in fact, the harshest charge against him is that he cannot be trusted to not speak his mind, even when it might behoove him and when doing so might undermine the fondest wishes of those in power.

If you believe, as we do, that this country has elected as President a dangerous man, one with authoritarian tendencies, having a principled FBI Director willing to stand up to those in power and speak his mind irrespective of political costs is critical.

No doubt many would reject this conclusion, even the reasoning, although getting the final evaluation finished is a point in his favor. But what of the report of Russian contacts with the Trump campaign, despite the denials of Trump? Should they have also been disclosed? That troubles me.

A friend points me, approvingly, at an article by Naomi Klein for Reader Supported News asserting Neoliberalism is at fault for the election results:

hey will blame James Comey and the FBI. They will blame voter suppression and racism. They will blame Bernie or bust and misogyny. They will blame third parties and independent candidates. They will blame the corporate media for giving him the platform, social media for being a bullhorn, and WikiLeaks for airing the laundry.

But this leaves out the force most responsible for creating the nightmare in which we now find ourselves wide awake: neoliberalism. That worldview – fully embodied by Hillary Clinton and her machine – is no match for Trump-style extremism. The decision to run one against the other is what sealed our fate. If we learn nothing else, can we please learn from that mistake?

Here is what we need to understand: a hell of a lot of people are in pain. Under neoliberal policies of deregulation, privatisation, austerity and corporate trade, their living standards have declined precipitously. They have lost jobs. They have lost pensions. They have lost much of the safety net that used to make these losses less frightening. They see a future for their kids even worse than their precarious present.

Unfortunately, just reading her prose tells me she’s hyperbolic and, therefore, wrong. “Sealed our fate“? What bullshit – we all already know Clinton lost by a hair. As Steve Benen points out, if the trivial number of voters who went for Stein and Johnson had voted for Clinton, Trump would have lost.

My conclusion is that she has something against neoliberalism and is willing to use this election result as a tool in attacking it – because Klein’s desperate need to assert the election was a foregone conclusion when it obviously wasn’t is a clear signal that her logic chain is so weak a bird could break it.

Just to put the sharp point of the pencil forward, I didn’t bother reading more than the above paragraphs. Her communications style is so poor, she’s so desperate to assert an insight, she should turn in her pen and pad and go flip french fries. Regardless of whether she’s right or wrong. Given her bright, shiny axe to grind, I can’t possibly trust her arguments. Nor am I able to judge them independently, as I’m a lowly software engineer without the time to analyze what she has to say. Isn’t this pathetic – she may have a point, but right from the get-go all I can say is that’s a knife in her hand, everyone back off.

I wonder what the record is for the number of lawsuits faced by a President or President-elect, because our Donald is facing his first, coming up November 28th. According to WaPo, Trump is looking to delay it:

Attorneys for President-elect Donald Trump went to court Thursday to ask that a civil fraud suit against Trump scheduled to begin in less than three weeks be delayed, a reminder of the unusual complications facing Trump as he shifts from businessman to commander in chief.

Trump’s attorneys said he will be too busy with the presidential transition to participate in the Nov. 28 trial involving his defunct real estate seminar program, Trump University. They asked that the trial be postponed until February or March, after he has taken office. …

[Judge] Curiel proposed potentially having Trump testify by video to make the trial easier on him, but also urged that he settle with former students suing over the real estate seminars.

And I urge those former students to settle with our future President. I suggest a good rate would be 2 or even 3 times the damage they’ve suffered.

Just to make it clear to our Donald that fucking people over is not acceptable. He needs to be bopped on the nose occasionally. If they can get more, good for them.

Leslie Knope writes one on Vox. It’s a little long, so I’ll quote the part that amused me, rather than the other part that inspired me:

When I was in fourth grade, my teacher Mrs. Kolphner taught us a social studies lesson. The 17 students in our class were introduced to two fictional candidates: a smart if slightly bookish-looking cartoon tortoise named Greenie, and a cool-looking jaguar named Speedy. Rick Dissellio read a speech from Speedy, in which he promised that, if elected, he would end school early, have extra recess, and provide endless lunches of chocolate pizzandy (a local Pawnee delicacy at the time: deep fried pizza where the crust was candy bars). Then I read a speech from Greenie, who promised to go slow and steady, think about the problems of our school, and try her best to solve them in a way that would benefit the most people. Then Mrs. Kolphner had us vote on who should be class president.

I think you know where this is going.

Except you don’t, because before we voted, Greg Laresque asked if he could nominate a third candidate, and Mrs. Kolphner said “Sure! The essence of democracy is that everyone—” and Greg cut her off and said, “I nominate a T. rex named Dr. Farts who wears sunglasses and plays the saxophone, and his plan is to fart as much as possible and eat all the teachers,” and everyone laughed, and before Mrs. Kolphner could blink, Dr. Farts the T. rex had been elected president of Pawnee Elementary School in a 1984 Reagan-esque landslide, with my one vote for Greenie the Tortoise playing the role of “Minnesota.”

After class, I was inconsolable. Once the other kids left, Mrs. Kolphner came over and put her arm around me. She told me I had done a great job advocating for Greenie the Tortoise. Through tears I remember saying, “How good, exactly?” and she said, “Very, very good,” and I said, “Good enough to—?” and she sighed and went to her desk to get one of the silver stars she gave out to kids who did a good job on something. And as I tearfully added it to my Silver Star Diary, she asked me what upset me the most.

“Greenie was the better candidate,” I said. “Greenie should have won.”

She nodded.

“I suppose that was the point of the lesson,” I said.

“Oh, no,” she said. “The point of the lesson is: People are unpredictable, and democracy is insane.”

In the epilogue, Leslie suggests donations to several organizations. I will be looking into doing so with our emergency charity budget.