Category Archives: Uncategorized

The fallout from the Iran deal continues in Iran, and, as reported by AL Monitor, even there the Trumpster is well-known. Question is, are the Iranians performing an elaborate dance – or do their hardliners really agree with Donald and, for that matter, Senator Cruz?

“The wisest plan of crazy [Donald] Trump is tearing up the nuclear deal,” Hossein Shariatmadari, editor of the hard-line Kayhan newspaper, told Fars News Agency when asked about the Republican front-runner’s opposition to the nuclear deal. Shariatmadari called the nuclear deal a “golden document” for the United States but insisted that for Iran it has caused nothing but “damages, humiliation and deception.” Instead of making proclamations, Shariatmadari invited the administration to show one achievement of the nuclear deal.

While the director general for political affairs of the Foreign Ministry, Hamid Baeidinejad, responded that Shariatmadari’s comments were surprising, it was Reformist Arman Daily that compared Shariatmadari to Trump, who is sometimes simply referred to as “crazy Trump” in Iranian media. In the front-page story titled “What Shariatmadari and Trump have in common,” Arman Daily wrote that Trump’s opposition to the nuclear deal has made “domestic critics happy,” and that Shariatmadari “once again become one voice with American extremists.”

In another AL Monitor article, Rohollah Faghihi explains how each takes advantage of the other:

The manner in which Shariatmadari and Trump are publicly sharing an objective or view, particularly as representatives of fiercely opposed political factions, may astound many in Iran and the United States. Yet the reality is that these two factions in effect play complementary roles for each other, as they give one another excuses to advance their respective domestic agendas.

For instance, on May 7, 2015, amid the intense negotiations leading up to the JCPOA, the US Senate approved a bill that established congressional review of any nuclear deal as part of the six world powers’ negotiations with Iran. Five days later, on May 12, 2015, hard-liners in Iran seized the opportunity to obstruct the negotiations on their end — negotiations that they altogether considered as a trump card for President Hassan Rouhani in the then-upcoming Feb. 26 parliamentary and Assembly of Experts elections. Thus, they introduced a bill to stop the nuclear negotiations. However, parliament Speaker Ali Larijani stepped in to stop the measure.

In an interview with Al-Monitor, Mahdi Motaharnia, a political science professor at Islamic Azad University, said, “Radicalism in any country has one single identity. Hard-liners all over the world seek a tenacious situation in order to take advantage of it to their own benefit. This is why you see Donald Trump as a hard-liner in the US, and Hossein Shariatmadari as one of the mouthpieces of hard-liners in Iran’s conservative camp who have convergence against the JCPOA.”

Do Cruz and Trump revel in the approving rhetoric of the Iranian hardliners? It seems unlikely. Trump may not know there is such a thing, seeing them as a single entity; Cruz just doesn’t care. But for those who are professionally charged with resolving difficult diplomatic problems, this is no doubt a classic situation.

Reposting from Facebook:

Today was the last day for Mischief, our little black princess. At the age of 12 years, 8 months, the cancer in her lungs claimed her and she was put to sleep by our local vet, who took very good care of her and us today. She seemed to be pain-free as she left, our voices in her ears, but I fear the lack of oxygen had dulled her intellect today. Yesterday she staggered to her feet and gave me a very good ankle bump, so I think she was still cognitively intact then.

I know people are dying all around, even a few friends, or relatives of friends, but the pain of losing this kitty is still sharp, a kitty who very nearly never did anything wrong, who missed her step-mom when she died (an elderly tortie), who loved her brother and was always ready with an ankle bump for us, who accepted Deb very quickly, and was simply beautiful for us every day of the year. She even understood the towel could be used for elimination in the last few weeks and used it meticulously.

Goodbye, Mischief. We will miss you dearly.

Mischief is the cat on the right.

(Updated 8/26/2016 for missing picture)

For decades the right of American society has denounced the judicial system, including SCOTUS, for decisions that go against its desires. Their resultant strategy has been to attempt to load SCOTUS, and to some extent the lower courts, with sympathetic jurists, which has not been an entirely successful, or unsuccessful, strategy. The recent contretemps since the death of Justice Scalia is merely the latest battle in this war to win the Law to their side.

But this is not an isolated phenomenon. In Israel, of all places, the Law, in the persons of the Supreme Court, is under attack from the right, as reported by Ben Caspit of AL Monitor:

Though the Israeli right has long called for placing a limit on the power of the Supreme Court and allowing the country’s elected officials to rule, never before have these calls been so vociferous and so dangerous. This was evident in an impassioned clash that erupted during the opening session of the Israeli Bar Association’s annual conference in Eilat on April 4.

Raising the banner of revolt was Israel’s young Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, Naftali Bennett’s partner in the leadership of HaBayit HaYehudi. In her inaugural speech to the conference, Shaked focused on the Supreme Court decision March 27 that led to the delay of the deal that Israel signed with the firms operating Israel’s offshore gas fields, including the large US corporation Noble Energy (for distribution of resources and benefits).

“A judicial body that has no responsibility for filling the [country’s] coffers is the one that allows itself to empty them,” she said. “This is yet another example of [the court] exerting its authority, but bearing no responsibility for it. The court has once again become a place for adjudication of purely political and macroeconomic questions.” Surprisingly, Shaked’s speech received thunderous applause from the hundreds of lawyers and top Israeli legal figures who were present in the hall.

Mr. Caspit notes how the Knesset has been attempting to limit the powers of the Supreme Court, and then surveys the Israeli political landscape, concluding:

Many think that Smotrich is the very personification of the kind of Jewish extremism that thrives and flourishes on the hills of Judea and Samaria. He is the fulfillment of what philosopher and professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz raged about prophetically in 1982, when he warned against the rise of a new race of “Judeo-Nazis.” The problem is that in the past, people like Smotrich had to hide and keep their opinions to themselves. Now, however, they feel confident enough to express their opinions loud and proud. They can even serve as legislators in the Israeli Knesset.

Which is distressingly similar to characterizations of some Trump supporters as white supremacists. But to return to the thread, the Kansas legislature is also tired of decisions rendered by its own Supreme Court. From The Wichita Eagle:

Stung by court decisions on school finance and death penalty cases, lawmakers are working toward creating a specific list of impeachable offenses, including “attempting to subvert fundamental laws and introduce arbitrary power” and “attempting to usurp the power of the legislative or executive branch of government.”

At present, the only guideline for an impeachable offense is the Constitution’s provision for “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

The Senate bill specifies some, but not all, crimes that could qualify. It advanced on a voice vote, with a roll-call vote set for Tuesday morning. SB 439 would also apply to constitutional officers of the executive branch, such as the governor or attorney general.

Exactly why the Legislature believes it may neuter another branch of government has the authority to compel favorable decisions from the courts is not clear. I should think that only a referendum modifying the State’s Constitution could succeed in imposing these changes.

But it’s a great way to assassinate your enemies.

Oh, heck, he probably already knows.

(h/t Benjamin Wittes @ LawFare)

Lawfare‘s Paul Rosenzweig reports on an epic cyber breach and data release of Turkey’s data:

Yesterday, someone (no credit claimed yet — though note the suggestion that the hackers are American) posted online what appears to be the personal information of EVERY Turkish citizen — all 49+ million of them.

From the hacker’s note on their efforts:

Lesson to learn for Turkey:

• Bit shifting isn’t encryption.
• Index your database. We had to fix your sloppy DB work.
• Putting a hardcoded password on the UI hardly does anything for security.
• Do something about Erdogan! He is destroying your country beyond recognition.

Lessons for the US? We really shouldn’t elect Trump, that guy sounds like he knows even less about running a country than Erdogan does.

Suggests they may be a rather liberal, or possibly libertarian, lot. Christopher Miller on Mashable points out that Turkey’s population is somewhat larger than 49 million – closer to 79 million. Regardless, it’s a big breach and will cause heartburn for some. Hopefully, they’ll be an object lesson for everyone else.

On LinkedIn Enrique Dans has been busy condemning one of the great economic drivers of the 20th century (if you’ll forgive the pun) in an article entitled “Cities without cars: no longer science fiction”:

As rumors abound about Uber creating fleets of driverless Teslas or Mercedes (since denied), how close are we to creating truly car-free cities: have we finally begun to realize that as a species we made a huge mistake over the last century by turning our lives and economies over to the automobile?

Are we about to embrace a world in which we stop owning cars — surely one of the dumbest things to spend money on — and start using more logical alternatives that will allow us to rethink our urban spaces? Will this happen within five years, ten, or fifty?

It’s always somewhat discouraging to see a monocular view of a problem. Can’t we look at it a little differently? Perhaps even dig in a little bit further? For example, did we make a huge mistake by using cars instead of horses, or are the horses greatly relieved? What’s the real genesis of the problem of cars – the fact that they exist, or the fact there’s so many of them? If the latter is your answer, perhaps the next logical step is to ask if we made a terrible mistake when we embraced pro-natalist policies to the point where the mothers are worn out and the ecology is strained just by our search for food?

Or our embrace of individualism in the States, rather than a more communal approach to life? And while communal approaches are more prone to damage individuals if & when corruption sets in amongst those in charge, is this something we should have tolerated in the name of ensuring a higher likelihood of survival?

In the end, perhaps my complaint here is merely on style points: he begins his argument with a blanket condemnation. There is little nuance, and that lack of nuance suggests he has not thought very deeply on the topic, as if he’s going to paint over some rust without ever asking if the rust is caused by a leak in the roof that is weakening the foundation and about to lead to disaster. So I find I cannot even read an article on an otherwise timely, fascinating topic, without squirming and wondering just how deeply he thought about it.

And time is limited.

As noted earlier, Mississippi was considering its own “religious liberties” law, and, for those of us keeping score, that has now passed, according to Steve Benen:

As the MSNBC report noted, the new state law, set to go into effect in July, “prevents government agencies from taking action against state employees, individuals, organizations and private associations that deny services based on religious objections – usually interpreted to mean religious objections to same-sex marriage, transgender rights and even extramarital sexual relationships.”

NPR clarifies the new law:

The law is not a broad religious-protections law, such as many recent controversial state laws. As we reported last week, the Mississippi legislation protects only three beliefs or convictions: that marriage is between a man and a woman, that sex is “properly reserved to such a marriage,” and that words like “male” and “female” are “objectively determined by anatomy and genetics at birth.”

The law protects, among other things, state employees who refuse to license marriages, religious organizations who fire or discipline employees and individuals who decline to provide counseling or some medical services based on those oppositions.

On the corporate front NPR reports there is unrest:

LGBT advocates in Mississippi had been calling for Bryant, a Republican, to veto the legislation, as had members of the business community such as the Mississippi Manufacturers Association, Nissan North American and Tyson Foods.

The Family Research Council described business opposition to the measure as “economic blackmail” and celebrated Bryant’s signature. “No person should be punished by the government with crippling fines, or face disqualification for simply believing what President Obama believed just a few years ago, that marriage is the union of a man and a woman,” FRC President Tony Perkins said in a statement.

Evidently Mr. Perkins doesn’t believe in growth and evolution. Unfortunately, that part of the remark comes off as superficially sophisticated, but is really an admission of a certain rigidity of viewpoint, not to mention the implied argument is completely irrelevant.

In a secular nation such as ours, religions must accept curbs on their behaviors or we risk returning to the colonial, even pre-colonial days where ‘religious bigotry’ didn’t just mean someone calling you names, but you being burned at the stake. We are one nation, and whether or not you believe ‘under God’ should be appended to that statement, there is no doubt that laws such as this one are a direct contradiction in that they permit, they socially legitimize hatred of those elements of our society who are a little bit different – but are hurting no one, and in fact contribute substantially.

Stay tuned as we wait to see who else cannot stand their fellow law-abiding, good hearted Americans.

Peter Boyle played varied roles, from the father on Everybody Loves Raymond to the monster in Young Frankenstein, but one of his earliest roles was as a super-aggressive mobster in Crazy Joe (1975). From his early years as part of a hit man squad to his final reach for power and position, Peter’s Joe knows nothing but straight-ahead ambition. Sometimes his mouth does his thinking for him as Joe’s resentment and anger boil over in front of his boss, and it all comes in like a high, hard fastball from Peter. He disregards the traditions and rules of the mob, he attempts to rub out his ailing boss, and finally he pushes his associates over the edge. He’s betrayed to the police.

In the can, his brother brings him various classics: Camus, Tolstoy, and others unmentioned, and as the years pass, he reads and learns. When the race riots come to his prison (the movie appears to be set in the 1950s), he is instrumental in negotiating modifications to prison protocols in return for peace. So is he a good man?

No!

Limitless ambition uses all the tools available, regardless of their imputed moral qualities, and from the negotiations he gains the friendship of the leader of the race riots, and thus access to his resources when they are free from jail. Joe is immediate and ruthless in his use of them, cutting a swath through the mobster families, and achieving a temporary position in the city, before, in perhaps the weakest scene in the movie, he’s rubbed out as he inexplicably celebrates his birthday in another mob family’s territory.

And yet, the inexplicability points to the film’s devotion to realism; not the overwrought hyper-realism of today, but the realism where no one bursts into song, or a happy ending is a requirement. Mobsters with both good and bad qualities live, execute their trade, and sometimes die. The traditional burial alive in concrete constitutes one scene, but it’s not the horrific, run for the bathrooms sort of scene, but a cold depiction of what the mob families could do. This may not be Casino, but for the era, it’s plenty horrid. And the inexplicability of having our lead die where any sane man wouldn’t have gone?

Crazy Joe is based on a real person, Crazy Joe Gallo. A diagnosed schizophrenic, it’s easy to think he might have thought himself safe, to have made one more mental error, and finally paid the price for it, and the film is prepared to go there, to prefer realism over the charm of a story. In fact, Joe Gallo did die in a restaurant in another mob’s territory.

All that said, the movie could have been better. Pacing is flat. Peter and the script do not allow us to see his inner dialog to any great degree, with the exception of a heroic effort to save children from a burning building; it’s as if what you see is what Joe was, through and through. It’s difficult to empathize with hoodlums, thieves, murderers, and worse, and little can be done for it, so to some extent this is, in a certain sense, a documentary for those folks who don’t know about the dark underside of everyday history. Crazy Joe existed, and while the movie brings him to life, it’s worth reading the link, above; he was a fascinating character, who moved from the bottom of the ladder to socializing with high society after a movie (not this one) was made based on himself. But read it after viewing the movie, as it’s quite interesting to see just how many elements and events in his life actually made it into the movie, albeit in slightly altered form, including an entire Italian-American Civil Rights League that I’d never heard of.

But it does take some persistence to make it to the end.

This is just cool.

… you would have read recently about an unusual group of warthogs. In a national park in Uganda, the warthogs have developed a very friendly relationship with local mongooses. The warthogs treat the mongooses like their own personal spa. In return, the mongooses get to eat their fill of delicious ticks.

On the Inkfish blog at Discovermagazine.com.

A bit of GOP partisan humor happened across my virtual desk this morning, and I’m feeling that engineer’s urge to…  improve it. Let’s see what I can do! To be fair, I’ll quote the entire missive, in italics, so we can see where the anonymous author did well, and where they missed an opportunity, I’ll cross out the mistake and put in a suggested replacement, in bold and not in italics. I’ve included links to provide proper documentation of the improvements, because, well, I’m an engineer.

Democrat[ic] Convention Schedule
Monday, July 25, 2016
11:15 AM

Free lunch, medical marijuana, and bus ride to the Convention.
Forms distributed for Food Stamp Medicaid enrollment sponsored by special guest Governor Matthew Bevin (R-KY).
1:30 PM

Group Voter Registration for Illegal Immigrants.everyone, managed by the Society of Arizona Election Officials
3:15 PM

Address on “Being the Real You”
Rachel Dolezal, former Head of the Seattle NAACP and
Caitlyn Jenner, assisted by Donald Trump
(which Donald will show up TBD)
4:30 PM

“How to Bank $200 Million as a
Public Servant and Claim to be Broke”
Hillary Clinton
4:45 PM

How to spend $130 Million to buy the Presidency become a Public Servant
and not make it to the Nominating Convention
Jeb Bush
4:50 PM

How to have a successful career
without ever having a job, and
still avoid paying taxes!
A Seminar Moderated by Al Sharpton (pastor, host of “Keepin’ it real with Al Sharpton“) and the Reverend Jesse Jackson (civil rights leader, informal diplomat, radio host) on the performance of Mark Driscoll in this role
5:00 PM

Why Billionaires Should Never Pay Taxes!
A Lesson In Civic Responsibility
Rex Sinquefield (R-MO)
5:10 PM

Medals of Freedom presentation to
Army deserter Bo Bergdahl
for serving with Honor and Distinction (special live video from his prison cell while he awaits court-martial by the Obama Administration)
National Security Advisor Susan Rice Stephen Colbert
5:30 PM

Supreme Court Justice seat presentation to Harriet Myers
special guest George W. Bush
5:45 PM

Invitation-only Autograph Session
Souvenir photographs of Hillary and
Chelsea Clinton, and conservative political commentator Bill O’Reilly dodging Sniper Fire in Bosnia
6:30 PM

General vote on praising Baltimore rioters Trump supporters
and on using the terminology
“Alternative Shoppers” instead of “Looters Corporate Welfare Queens”
7:30 PM

Breakout session with Bill Clinton
for women on avoiding the upcoming draft regarding his ongoing support of nominative determinism when pardoning  millionaire Marc Rich
8:30 PM

The White House “Semantics Committee” Meeting.
General vote on re-branding “Muslim Terrorism” as
“Random Acts of Islamic Over-Exuberance”, and how our playful spanking has remanded them to their nannies.
9:00 PM

“Liberal Bias in Media“ How we can make it work for you!
Tutorial sponsored by CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, PBS,
the Washington Post and the New York Times, for Fox News viewers who’ve not been able to keep up with all those damn liberals
with Guest Speakers Brian Williams and Bruce Bartlett
9:15 PM

Tribute Film to the Brave Freedom Fighters Innocent detainees
still incarcerated at GITMO
Michael Moore Lawrence B. Wilkerson, chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell
9:45 PM

Personal Finance Seminar –
“Businesses Don’t Create Jobs”
Hillary Clinton
11:00 PM

Short film, “Setting Up Your Own Illegal
Email Server While Serving in A
Cabinet Post and How to Pretend
It’s No Big Deal”
Hosted by Hillary Clinton, followed by Senator Mitch McConnell’s feature length presentation of “Shirking Congressional Duties and Besmirching the Dignity of the Office”, written and directed by TBA
11:30 PM

Official Nomination of Hillary
Bill Maher and Chris Matthews

Late Addition! New time slot opened up for the homeless Republican National Convention!

Due to scheduling conflicts, one event only!

Official Nomination of Donald Trump or Ted Cruz
John Kasich, Best Man
Marco Rubio, Flower Boy
Joyfully hosted by Hillary and Bernie

Gene Wilder. Madeleine Kahn. Marty Feldman. A can’t-go-wrong combination of legends, right? But The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother (1975), starring these three and Dom DeLuise, goes horribly wrong. Wilder stars as Sigerson Holmes, Feldman as the traditional sidekick, and Kahn plays a theatrical hussy who happens to be a congenital liar unless she’s sexually excited.

It’s wacky farce from beginning to end – but it failed to catch our sympathy, to engage our intellects as satirical farce must. Is it poorly made? Or is it just dated and beyond our understanding? The sad part is that the cast is there, and some elements are there. Feldman is a great comedic character actor. But consider the interrogation scene. This scene should have been hilarious: Wilder needs to know the identity of Kahn’s character’s father, and must use foreplay to entice it out of her. But rather than howling with laughter, we found our teeth itching. Thinking about it, it’s clear that the only plot-driven purpose of the scene is for Wilder to extract critical information from Kahn; perhaps it would have been funnier if Kahn had been slyly – in the vein of the Avenger’s Black Widow, whose own interrogation scene in The Avengers was really something to savor – extracting information from Wilder as well. The implied complexity engages the intellect and would have opened the way to more clever humor – upon which the best farce is built.

Compare it to another satire, The Cheap Detective, with Kahn and Peter Falk. This was much more successful, and I suspect it’s because there’s so much more going on between the lines. Ladies with multiple ploys and identities, witty plays on Hammett tropes, it has its lurches – but it’s affectionately remembered and I’ve watched it several times, picking out new implications every time. I doubt I’d pick out much new if I were to view The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother again.

Oh, and I may have lied. We don’t know it’s a wacky farce from beginning to end – because we didn’t make it to the end. It was that bad.

A reader addresses energy consumption:

I don’t have the numbers at hand, but my sense is that we waste a huge amount of energy heating and cooling homes and buildings, and on transportation. I’m building a Passive House. It’ll use roughly one-tenth of what a new code-built home uses for energy per square foot. Think of the huge amount of energy that goes into making disposed-of plastic bottles and packaging, each year. I think a rigorous survey of energy usage would show gross inefficiencies just about everywhere.

Your mention of packaging disposal reminds me of the European Union and some vague memories I have of the EU’s approach to this problem. I found a possibly out of date answer here:

Unlike the US, where the Federal government has an advisory role in matters relating to nonhazardous solid wastes and the states have a patchwork of disposal laws, the EU has taken a more direct and active role in regulating the disposal of packaging wastes.

The EU packaging directive implements extended producer responsibility principles, which place the burden for mitigating post-consumer impacts of packaging waste on manufacturers. This is done by imposing a surcharge or fee on specified products, requiring manufacturers to participate in product recycling or material recovery programs, or both. …

National legislation and regulations implemented pursuant to the Directive also were to impose packaging design, composition, and manufacturing requirements limiting packaging volume and weight to the minimum amount necessary to maintain an adequate level of safety and hygiene for the packaged product and the consumer.

Likewise, packaging was to be designed to permit its reuse or recycling or to decrease its environmental impact when disposed while minimizing the presence of noxious and other hazardous substances as a constituent or component of the package.

National implementation of the Directive varies, but packaging manufacturers generally have borne the costs of implementation and compliance.

EuroStat has coverage through 2012:

In 2012, 156.8 kg of packaging waste was generated per inhabitant in the EU-28. This quantity varied between 45.0 kg per inhabitant in Bulgaria and 206.2 kg per inhabitant in Germany (Figure 10). Figure 1 shows that paper and cardboard, glass, plastics, wood and metals are, in that order, the most common types of packaging waste in the EU Member States. All other materials represent less than 0.5 % of the total volume of packaging waste generated.

Packaging waste in my book is an externality, and the EU seems to treat it that way by making it the responsibility of the manufacturer to cover the cost of recycling it. How about the United States? Ignoring significant questions concerning methodology, categorization, and completeness, this EPA report from, happily, 2012 says the following:

The breakdown of MSW [Municipal Solid Waste] generated in 2012 by product category is shown in Figure 8. Containers and packaging made up the largest portion of MSW generated: 30 percent, or over 75 million tons.

With a population of 314 million, this suggests about 478 lbs of packaging waste per capita, or 216 kg. Recall that the EU figure is 156.8 kg. Of course, direct comparisons ignore questions of affluence and other factors not related to the EU Packaging Directive, so one must be cautious or ask a scientist in the field to estimate the true influence of the Directive on the waste stream. And then there’s the question of whether the mass per capita is a good proxy for energy usage for packaging, or is there possibly an inverse correlation between energy use and packaging mass? And, if so, is it worth the extra energy to reduce the waste stream?

With regard to analyzing energy usage, Greener Package reports this is already in process with regard to packaging:

In response to climate change pressure, leading retailers and consumer packaged goods companies are placing more emphasis on their supply chain to manage carbon. Wal-Mart, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, and many other companies have established formal plans to query their respective supply chain partners on energy consumption and associated carbon emissions and, in some instances, use those results as a metric for purchasing decisions. So to stay competitive, packaging organizations are wise to more deeply analyze their energy usage, develop a sustainability strategy, and implement optimization activities.

Speaking of the “landscape of fear“, I found this bit from Scientific American fascinating:

Florida’s Everglades are home to lots of large wading birds, like egrets and herons. But the ‘Glades also have lots of raccoons and possums. The birds’ nests are an all-you-can-eat buffet. And when an invasion occurs,

[Lucas Nell:] “sometimes thousands of birds will abandon their nests, and just leave, and there’s littered remains of dead chicks and eggs that have been eaten.”

In order to seek protection from their furry foes, birds actually prefer to build their nests in plots of swamp with a resident alligator.

So the birds, who do fall victim to their alligator from time to time, prefer to hatch and raise their chicks near a vicious predator, which will also lunch on those same chicks. What does this do to the concept of landscape of fear? Should it be considered overridden by the deterrent the alligator provides to the little league predators? And you have to love the closing thought:

I liken it less to a bodyguard situation, more like keeping some psychopathic murderer in your yard, to keep out cat burglars.

When The Gamma People (1955) came across our screen, my Arts Editor and I didn’t know what to expect. To our burning, frightened eyes were revealed: vile attacks on innocent journalists; packs of rampaging children; grotesque carnivals; and mad scientists. What fun! But is this a progenitor film? Consider:

It takes place in a fictional European country named Gudavia, numbering amongst its inhabitants a Colonel Koerner, whose bearing and activities might be best employed in the movie The Mouse That Roared, or, stepped up a trifle, grouped with the antagonists of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang; if neither of these movies have passed your optic nerve, then think of bumbling, narcissistic fools occupying high places with low faces, in countries that never existed …

We encountered a group of men, and possibly women, with horrible, frozen faces and unreasoning motivation for destruction, controlled by a whistle.  I thought we might be seeing the predecessors to zombies, those speedsters from Zombieland, not the slow, inevitable creatures from the original Night of the Living Dead; not being a scholar of zombies, I cannot say how the cladistics work out…

Upon command, a group of children attacked a man with little mercy, upon which my Arts Editor remarked, “Oh!  Reminds me of Star Trek.  He must be a Grup!”

And yet another Star Trek reference: the grotesque masks worn at the carnival brought to mind the horrible video visage seen in The Man Trap.  Since this film predates the original Trek, I can only assume that the costumes were mothballed after the movie was released and later resurrected to be used as props in other productions.

All the comparison was just for fun; we were confused from the beginning, in the collision of farce with mad scientist, zombies and packs of feral children, rounded out by a gruff American journalist, and his slick, somewhat swishy British colleague who stumble into this circus of a country.

And for all of it, it’s not badly acted. In particular, Michael Caridia as Hugo, the obnoxious, Nietzsche-like boy who undergoes conversion to, well, humanity, actually pulls off the entire ridiculous role rather well. And the British journalist was played by Leslie Phillips, who went on to provide the voice for the Sorting Hat in the Harry Potter series. So we can see there is some talent here.

Unfortunately for this film, in the end the actors’ talent was eclipsed by the unfocused randomness of the plot.  All in all, a merry little romp that I can’t quite recommend.

And the Spring of Corporate Outrage looks set to continue as Mississippi readies to pass its own legislation, as reported by The New Civil Rights Movement:

The GOP-controlled Mississippi Senate is expected to vote today on House Bill 1523, which has already cleared the House. Gov. Phil Bryant told Mississippi News Now he would sign the measure.

“I don’t think it’s discriminatory,” Bryant said. “I think it gives some people as I appreciate it, the right to be able to say that’s against my religious beliefs and I don’t need to carry out that particular task.”

By “that particular task,” Bryant ostensibly means treating LGBT people with any shred of dignity whatsoever. But it’s not just LGBT people who’d be affected. HB 1523 would also open the door to discrimination against anyone who’s had extramarital sex — a category of people which, according to one study, includes 95 percent of Americans.

(h/t Libby Summers)

This serves to remind me of a YouTube of Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell.

It’s a little hard to understand, but as I hear it, he suggests that without the money from New York and other liberal, northern states, southern states such as Alabama and Mississippi would be pretty much in the same boat as Bangladesh.

(h/t Egberto Willies @ The Daily Kos)

Let me set the stage. If you consider energy consumption and economic productivity, it seems reasonable to assert that as productivity rises, so does consumption. This has been studied, and here’s a summary from Energy Consulting Associates, with a useful tidbit quoted here:

Access to modern forms of energy, even though it is not by itself a panacea to economic development, is believed to be a pre- requisite for alleviating poverty, increasing employment and, in general, promoting better living standards (IIASA 2012).

While there is no Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on energy, the access to modern and reliable energy services is an essential input to achieving most of the MDGs, including poverty alleviation, productivity, health, education, communication services and gender equality governance (UNIDO 2011; Modi 2006). According to DFID (2002), increased energy access directly contributes to freeing up women’s time that was previously wasted in gathering fuelwood and cooking with inefficient stoves and alleviates adverse health impacts related to burning of wood and dung. The extra time created as a result of higher energy availability provides the opportunity for women to get involved with income generating activities and ultimately leads to higher gender equality (Kanagawa 2005). Figure 3 , below, illustrates the relationship between energy access and the MDGs. [figures omitted]

Another study published on the Social Science Research Network in the context of Africa:

Abstract:

It has been suggested that Africa’s growth is principally driven by natural resource rents. This is at variance with the growth in countries such as Korea and Taiwan where productivity has been identified as the main driver. In this study, the effect of energy consumption, investment, productivity on per capita growth in oil producing African countries is examined by employing a dynamic simultaneous panel data model. The simultaneous panel data model is able to examine the three-way causal relationship between energy consumption, productivity and economic growth. The results confirm the importance of income, productivity, price and investment influence the demand for renewable end non-renewable energy. The study recommends that there should be investment in productivity to enhance economic growth and minimize energy consumption.

Another from the Journal of Economics and International Finance in an African context:

This article investigates the relationship between energy consumption and the Nigerian economy from the period of 1970 to 2005. The energy sources used to test for this relationship were crude oil, electricity and coal. By applying the co-integration technique, the results derived infer that there exists a positive relationship between current period energy consumption and economic growth.

So my point?  NewScientist (12 March 2016) caught my attention with this simple statement:

“This is a big shift in how China is thinking about its economy,” says Kate Gordon of the Paulson Institute, a think-tank in Chicago. “It’s an attempt to decouple economic growth from energy consumption.”

That’s rather huge on the face of it, even if it’s characterizable as simply better energy efficiency. But Jeff Spross, back in 2014, writing for ThinkProgress, pointed out that the United States has been moving towards breaking that link for years now:

That’s arguably been a critical part of a remarkable trend the Natural Resources Defense Council noted last year. Up until the late 1970s, energy consumption grew in tandem with the economy. But after that, the two trends split, with economic growth continuing to go up and energy use increasing at a far lower rate.

At this point, America’s energy consumption is well below where it was predicted to be in the 1970s. The Coalition quoted Duke Energy CEO Lynn Good that “improvements in energy efficiency for buildings and appliances appear to have broken the traditional connection between electricity demand and economic growth.”

I am curious about the details, though. There’s a difference, for example, between temperature control for your house, and the energy required to run a semi-conductor plant. What consumes more energy? Where should the focus be for energy reduction?

North Carolina, who called a special session just to implement their “religious liberty” law, is now feeling the heat, as documented by Steve Benen @ MaddowBlog:

While the governor gets up to speed on the specifics of the law he created, he should also prepare for some economic fallout. The city and state of New York, for example, announced yesterday that all non-essential state travel to North Carolina has been scrapped because of the new measure that “creates the grounds for discrimination against LGBT people.”

What’s more, as we discussed yesterday, film director Rob Reiner has said he won’t produce projects in the state until the measure is repealed, and he urged others in the entertainment industry to follow his lead.

ESPN, which was eyeing North Carolina as a possible host of the summer X Games, may now look elsewhere, and the same is true for the NBA, which planned to hold the 2017 All-Star Game in Charlotte, but which may now seek a new venue.

Wow.  NewScientist (12 March 2016, paywall) first caught my attention on this one:

Images released publicly by the New Horizons team have already shown off Pluto’s surprisingly complex atmosphere, featuring many layers of haze rising above icy mountains. But in emails and images seen by New Scientist, researchers on the mission discuss the possibility that they have spotted individual clouds, pointing to an even richer atmospheric diversity.

The first sign of clouds came on 13 September last year, a few days before the public release of the haze pictures. Will Grundy of the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, sent an email to a discussion list dedicated to analysing New Horizons results about Pluto’s atmosphere. “There’s a few fairly localized low-altitude features just above the limb that I’ve drawn lame arrows pointing to, but also a few bright cloud-like things that seem to be above and cutting across the topography in the circled area,” he wrote. Grundy had spotted features in the haze on the edge – or “limb” – of Pluto that seemed to stand out from the distinct layers. But intriguingly, he had also seen a bright feature crossing different parts of the landscape, suggesting it was hovering above.

But this isn’t actually new.  Back in 2009 ScienceNews published speculation (must pay to see the entire article) that clouds on Pluto could exist:

Clouds in Pluto’s atmosphere may be composed of tiny frozen spherules of nitrogen or carbon monoxide, rather than snowflake-like clumps of tiny particles as previous research had suggested, new analyses suggest.

Information about Pluto’s atmosphere is, like that atmosphere itself, exceedingly thin because no space probes have yet visited there. So most speculations about the dwarf planet’s atmosphere stem from analyses of light passing through that tenuous shroud on the rare occasions when Pluto passes in front of a distant star, says Pascal Rannou, a planetary scientist at the University of Reims in France.

Discovery.com covers the more recent news:

The picture above shows sections of an image attached to an email sent by Southwest Research Institute scientist John Spencer, in which he noted particularly bright areas in Pluto’s atmosphere within a New Horizons image.

“In the first image an extremely bright low altitude limb haze above south-east Sputnik on the left, and a discrete fuzzy cloud seen against the sunlit surface above Krun Macula (I think) on the right,” Spencer wrote.

While it was quickly determined after New Horizons’ July 2015 flyby that Pluto is enveloped in a complex atmosphere comprising layers of blue-tinted haze, individual clouds couldn’t be resolved. That may have changed as high-resolution data continues to arrive on Earth from the still-moving spacecraft, now 1.9 AU — or approximately 180 million miles — past Pluto.

Fabulous!

A reader comments on placebos:

A sample size of one — so it appears — seems like a weak case. How can the placebo affect be an affect since by definition it results from you believing you are being treated when you are not?

I see being the soul of brevity can lead one down the path to hell. One more quote from that NewScientist article:

Even when the results go your way, it’s hard to understand why. In the small trial Buonanno participated in, 59 per cent of the honest-placebo group felt better. It wasn’t much better than… placebo?

And I agree that they shouldn’t have used the word placebo. However, talking about the sugar-pill effect isn’t nearly as sexy. Although the Authority Figure in Treating Patients study might make for a better title.

A reader comments on Oregon and China regarding coal:

Pretty radical move by a state government, although the 20 year phase in gives opponents plenty of time to lobby for its reversal. Meanwhile, big bad coal user China is rapidly embarking on a program to eliminate coal as well. Won’t it be embarrassing in 20 years to have China be the clean energy leader, and the USA to be some second class nation unable to clean up its act.

Yes, quite embarrassing, unless we pull off some miraculous technology that lets us leapfrog them. Not a good bet in my opinion. I also think Oregon is being a trifle timid with its 20 year phase in and 25 years to achieve the renewables goal. But it’s a start, and as even hardened opinion is forced to change, perhaps the timetable will move up.

NewScientist’s (12 March 2016, paywall) Shannon Fischer reports on using placebos on the placebo-aware:

LINDA BUONANNO had been sick with irritable bowel syndrome for 15 years when she saw a TV advertisement recruiting participants for a new study. Desperate for help, she signed on, even after learning that the potential treatments she would be offered consisted of either nothing – or pills filled with nothing.

When the experiment ended, she begged the researchers to let her keep the pills. “I felt fantastic,” Buonanno says. “I felt almost like I was before I got sick with IBS. It was the best three weeks of my life.”

She has been trying to get her hands on more ever since. A replication study will start later this spring, and Buonanno is desperately hoping she gets in.

This is the placebo effect in action, and it may come as a surprise to learn that it works even when people know they are being given a sham treatment. That finding has brought with it the possibility of using placebos as therapy. The vision is of a future in which clinicians cajole the mind into healing itself and the body – without the drugs that can be nearly as much of a problem as those they purport to solve.

Fascinating stuff. The researchers are trying to understand this using a psychosociological model as the trigger for the body’s self-healing efforts, such as ordering the pills be taken on a tight schedule. I’ve never experienced a placebo effect myself, not having been seriously ill – unless they’re handing out sugar pills for Lyme’s Disease. The implications for our mental stability are not really explored, but are equally fascinating.

Georgia’s governor capitulates (or, perhaps, agrees with) to corporate pressure, according to CNN:

While I claim no influence from my expired petition, news has come that Oregon is banning the use of coal in power generation in the State. From The Guardian:

Oregon has become the first US state to pass laws to rid itself of coal, committing to eliminate the use of coal-fired power by 2035 and to double the amount of renewable energy in the state by 2040.

Legislation passed by the state’s assembly, which will need to be signed into law by Governor Kate Brown, will transition Oregon away from coal, which currently provides around a third of the state’s electricity supply.

At the same time, the state will also require its two largest utilities to increase their share of clean energy, such as solar and wind, to 50% by 2040. Combined with Oregon’s current hydroelectric output, the state will be overwhelmingly powered by low-carbon alternatives to fossil fuels.

Monetary impact on the consumer?

State Republicans claimed the bill would drive up energy bills for households while resulting in a negligible impact upon the environment. “You don’t have to be a climate denier to dislike this bill,” said state senator Ted Ferrioli.

Pacific Power, one of the largest utilities in Oregon, said the shift would raise costs by less than 1% a year until 2030 and would reduce carbon pollution by 30m metric tons.

Pacific Power is not the only energy supplier.  OregonLive reports on PacifiCorp’s reaction:

“Its going to be in the billions and billions of dollars and how that breaks out for Oregon, it’s inestimable,” said PacifiCorp spokesman Paul Vogel. “It’s not the right way to go about this transition that we all agree that we need to be on.”

The sponsors of the bills are Sen. Chris Edwards, D-Eugene, and Rep Tobias Read, D-Beaverton. But the source of the legislation is the Sierra Club, the Oregon Conservation Network and and Renewable Northwest, which have been pushing a “Beyond Coal” campaign in Oregon for some time. Oregon’s residential ratepayer advocate, the Citizen’s Utility Board of Oregon, is also endorsing the bill despite the fact that no cost estimates have been produced.

“Ultimately we’re going to have to reduce our emissions and close the coal plants,” said Bob Jenks, CUB’s executive director. “The theory here is let’s phase these out in a reasonable timetable of ten years and do this in a way that’s least cost to ratepayers.”

To which I have the reaction of “so what?” The harder you hit the ratepayers, the more it’s brought to their attention that their use of energy may be unconscionably high. The real trick, though, is to hit those energy users who can do something about it, while not impacting those who have no alternatives (I’m thinking primarily of those in the lower income brackets).

EcoWatch reports on more utility reactions:

… the utilities impacted by the law support the measure.

“Our company has been reducing reliance on coal generation and expanding our renewable energy portfolio for the past 10 years as market forces, regulation and evolving customer preference continue to drive change in the way electricity is generated and delivered,” stated Stefan Bird, president and CEO of Pacific Power. “This landmark legislation allows us to effectively manage Oregon’s transition to a clean energy future in a manner that protects customers from cost impacts, ensures grid reliability and allows us to meet all of our responsibilities to the communities we serve.”

This sentiment was echoed by Jim Piro, president and CEO of Portland General Electric, the state’s largest electric utility.

“The path forward was forged through a collaborative process where we all tried to balance stakeholder needs,” said Piro in a statement. “We look forward to working with the Public Utility Commission and all of our stakeholders to implement this policy in a way that benefits the environment, manages price impacts for our customers and ensures that the reliability of the electric grid is not compromised.”

OregonLive goes on to ask this:

The cost is a big, unanswered question, as is whether the legislation would have any practical effect in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Oregon can’t legislate the closure of out-of-state coal plants, which could simply dispatch their output elsewhere. And in reality, it’s not possible to reject coal-based electrons at the state border or always discriminate between resources when making purchases in the wholesale power market.

Which is technically true – but short-sighted. By passing this legislation, Oregon now has the potential to provide leadership on this issue to the rest of the Nation, or, if you prefer, put pressure on the balance of the Nation to follow their lead. By doing so, they’re doing their best to improve the future of their State – and the rest of the nation.

Wondering about Oregon’s current mix of power generation? Courtesy Oregon.gov:

Obviously, they have much more hydro capacity than many other states. More work for engineers, I suppose.

(h/t NewScientist, 12 March 2016)

A reader reacts to my suggestion that we move ecological concerns to a higher position in society:

But that’s long-term thinking, of which we are woefully short. If Big Corp can make a zillion dollars by plundering the environment over the next 20 years, every executive and investor will cheer them — even if it means societal collapse after that. “Aw, that’ll never really happen. Prove it!”

A valid point. For all that we have lifetimes now in the eighties, we are not built for long term, deep prediction: our evolution did not call for it.  For millions of years, our individual capacity for destruction, or evolutionary suicide, was quite meager, and even ambiguous.  For example, a forest fire could conceivably be started by a single prehistoric human, and yet this might be a positive for the forest, given recent advances in understanding the role of fire in forests.

But then our historical progress in working together in larger and larger groups has led to the development of technologies by the aggregate which may be directed by single, foolish human beings. By “foolish”, I mean people whose personal experience, and family experience, doesn’t have evidence of the enormous destructive potential we, in the corporate sense, now control; we have shoveled our garbage into Nature for centuries with, generally, few consequences, and this is the primary example from which we’ve learned. While there are certainly isolated instances of ecological disaster, perhaps dating back into prehistory, I’d like to suggest that the detonation of the first nuclear bomb makes for a convenient marker for world-wide potential disaster, with which we have little personal connection, and therefore requires the ability to intellectually assess the situation – rather than our standard intuitive approach.

And most corporations are not run by science-oriented folks, but rather by people who do things by gut and by golly; the pressures of fiduciary responsibility subsume any other motivations, and so we often see, among other negative consequences, an abdication of the responsibility for caring for Nature.

Of course, we’re not blind to this, and that’s the motivation for the EPA, which has been under increasing attack of late, under cover of denying climate change. And some corporations do practice conscious capitalism. Current examples include Starbucks (assisting employees in furthering their education) and Chipotle (sourcing ethical materials). These can be viewed as just good public relations, but what of it? It indicates that customers and employees are becoming more conscious of the companies’ place in the entire system, both eco and socio.

But the fact remains: our evolution has not prepared us for the energies and materials with which we now work. What works in our favor? Our great wildcard: our brains. With these we may yet be able to overcome our short-term foolishness.