Category Archives: Uncategorized

This evening we finished up Sherlock Holmes and the House of Fear (1945), based, rather loosely, off the Doyle short story “The Five Orange Pips“. Starring the traditional Rathbone and Bruce, we follow the deaths of members of the club The Good Companions at Drearcliff, a mansion by the sea.

The plot is actually rather nice, as the members are notified of their imminent demise through the delivery of envelopes full of orange pips. The deaths continue even after the arrival and efforts of Holmes and Watson, and later Lestrade. Eventually, one Good Companion is left, with all the murders pinned on this unfortunate and inoffensive man. Until Watson notices an empty tobacco container…

Speaking of Watson, he is ill-used in this picture, a posturing buffoon who cannot execute a duty competently, nor follow a chain of logic from beginning to end. In an otherwise competent, even interesting movie, his appearance (as well as Lestrade) causes more and more wincing as the movie goes on. I can only recommend this movie if Watson can be removed bodily from the movie.

Ever wonder what Congress did in response to the San Bernardino terrorist massacre? Lawfare‘s Jack Goldsmith and Amira Mikhail happen to mention one of the items in a larger context:

Last November, in response to the San Bernadino attacks, Congress enacted the Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015.  Among other things, the 2015 Act excludes from the VWP [U.S. Visa Waiver Program] [old link invalid, here’s the new link – U.S. Visa Waiver Program – thanks to an observant reader] those travelers from VWP countries who are also Iranian citizens or who have traveled to Iran since March 1, 2011.

Iran. So the terrorists, must have been from Iran, right? No. Rizwan Farook was born in Chicago to Pakistani parents, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, emigrated from Pakistan, after spending time in Saudi Arabia.

It’s interesting how Congress remains fixated on Iran in relation to events that have no apparent relation to Iran. Goldsmith and Mikhail mention the Iranian reaction to the VWP in passing; AL Monitor covers it in more detail:

“Now it is clear that this new legislation is simply absurd because no Iranian nor anybody who visited Iran had anything to do with the tragedies that have taken place in Paris or in San Bernardino or anywhere else,” Zarif said. “But they’re being the targets. I think it discredits those who pass these legislations, those who adopt them and those who implement them more than anything else. And it sends a very bad signal to the Iranians that the US is bent on hostile policy toward Iran, no matter what.”

Another article from AL Monitor clarifies the Congressional intent:

The House Foreign Affairs Committee is scheduled to vote Jan. 7 on legislation to create a plan to combat international travel by terrorists and other foreign fighters. The bill, from panel member Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., notably requires the State Department to single out at-risk countries that fail to meet “minimum standards” for combating travel by foreign fighters.

“The vulnerabilities that currently exist with international security abroad pose a concerning threat to our homeland,” Zeldin said in a statement. “The development of international border security standards is critical. With the rise of terrorism at home and around the world, it’s essential that we work together as a global community to monitor and stop the movement of terrorists.”

So perhaps Congress is prudent after all. Or would be, if they could write a decent bill, as documented by Goldsmith and Mikhail. But that’s a different topic.

[EDIT updated an out of date link 2/7/2018]

I found some time to watch the Steiger version (teleplay) of Marty while sitting with my terminally ill cat. I was a little distracted by the technical problems, the worst of which was the audio track, fading in and out and distorting the dialogue into illegibility; I was more able to negotiate the video quality, which occasionally overexposed.

The content differences: the teleplay does not contain the subplot in which Marty contemplates buying the butcher shop; Angie’s role is much smaller in the teleplay.

The jarring problems with the teleplay: Marty complains of being short, fat, and ugly. Steiger may not be a model, but he’s none of those, especially the fat part. Borgnine comes closer, although he’s just somewhat plump.

Secondly, Marty’s paramour (okay, that’s a jest) is oddly non-reactive. I’m not sure if the actress is simply trying to play a woman who has no idea of how to react when a man starts to fall for her, or if she just finds the entire character baffling. Granted, the movie’s version of the paramour was also somewhat of an enigma, but not to this magnitude.

And the shared baffling subplot: Aunt Catherine and Marty’s mother, Mrs. Piletti, discussing the woes of widowhood, and the dangers of sons marrying. In the teleplay, it’s like a wart on the side of an otherwise svelte cougar: what’s that doing there? In both productions it has an engaging quality of an authentic, and little-discussed, problem for women who no longer have children to raise, but in the teleplay it serves as little more than a reason for Mrs. Piletti to desperately disparage the focus of her son’s attention – and that, in turn, goes nowhere.

But the movie version permits us to see her regret at her impulsive action and how it may negatively impact her son’s future; her moment of selfishness could lead to a lifetime of aloneness for him. The same actress plays the role in both productions, and she does a fine job in the movie, her wordless acting beautifully conveying her realization of the potential consequences of her momentary indulgence of her future fears. However, exactly why this is necessary – unless it’s just part of the slice of life to which we are a witness – is somewhat unclear to me.

I know my reader prefers the teleplay, but I find it hard to see Borgnine’s Marty as more charismatic than Steiger’s; if anything, he’s less so, as I can see Borgnine himself as being so unsure of himself, while Steiger just doesn’t strike me as someone so underconfident as to think he’s an ugly toad. In the end, while buying the butcher shop might be extraneous, I much preferred the movie paramour to the teleplay’s version, and Ernest, ever so slightly, over Rod. While I appreciate both productions, I like the movie somewhat more.

No doubt more about persistence than anything more useful, but I see from the archive I began this exercise in mental hygiene a little more than  a year ago. For those of you who read, thank you, and don’t hesitate to send me comments via mail (link to the right) or Facebook.

In a suburb of Newcastle, Australia, in February, workers using a crane extracted a 1-ton snake-like mass of sewage (mostly “wet wipes” unwisely flushed down toilets) from an underground pipe — with the gummed-together sludge reaching a height of more than 20 feet when the crane finally yanked the whole thing up. Said a representative of the water company, “(Y)ou’ll flush the toilet, and the wet wipe will disappear,” and you think (wrongly) it’s therefore “flushable.” [Australian Broadcasting Corp. News, 2-25-2016]

A warning to all you wet wipe people.

(News of the Weird)

Accompanied by the text “Very touching and oh so true”, but honestly, I think this is a despicable piece of claptrap humbug hiding behind patriotism. The efforts of most politicians (exempting the current House & Senate leadership, who seem to deserve a lot of loathing) are honest attempts to improve the lot of the nation. To use the honorable duty of the soldier to rain loathing and disgust down upon all public servants is to dishonor both the public servant and the soldier. Don’t let the slick production values, professional narrator, and soft, beautiful music fool you. This is political propaganda at its absolute worst.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=eEs4ke7cdNQ%3Ffeature%3Dplayer_detailpage%2525

I’ll also point out the ranks of ex-soldiers are more likely growing than thinning, given our war-like ways of late.

A Facebook correspondent writes about The Lone Wolf Takes a Chance:

I love your belated movie reviews! Thanks for the warning about this Lone Wolf movie – my train-mad husband wants to see all movies with a train theme or plot element, but I’ll try to steer him away from this one. Tonight we watched a WWII movie (his secondary film passion): The Spy In Black. Have you seen it? If not, I highly recommend it. Conrad Veidt is wonderful, as always.

No, I have not seen The Spy in Black, but it sounds interesting. (I should add that a very young Lloyd Bridges plays the small part of the inventor in The Lone Wolf Takes a Chance.) Another reader responds on the train theme:

Classic movies? WWII? Trains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_z_9w-Ffmo

Well, Burt Lancaster. How can it help being good?

ScienceNews provides a picture of a fossil of unearthly beauty:

The fossilized remains of an about 520-million-year-old creepy-crawly provides a portrait of an ancient arthropod’s nervous system.

Researchers first described Chengjiangocaris kunmingensis — an ancient relative of spiders, insects and crustaceans unearthed from a fossil bed in southern China — in 2013. Further imaging and investigation of five new fossilized specimens reveal exceptionally well-preserved soft tissue and a ropelike structure running down the animal’s belly. That structure is the remains of a ventral nerve cord, Xi-guang Zhang of Yunnan University in Kunming, China, and colleagues explain February 29 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Just so cool.

(h/t NewScientist 5 Mar 2016)

China’s latest coal consumption numbers come in via NewScientist (5 March 2016):

CHINA is surging ahead in its switch to renewables and away from coal – a move it claims will allow the nation to surpass its carbon emissions targets.

The country’s solar and wind energy capacity soared last year by 74 and 34 per cent respectively compared with 2014, according to figures issued by China’s National Bureau of Statistics this week.

Meanwhile, its consumption of coal dropped by 3.7 per cent, with imports down by a substantial 30 per cent.

Digging into that link at Climate Home is this disturbing, confusing tidbit:

The government had investments of $628 billion in the green economy planned up to 20301, Xie said, but admitted more support needed to be directed towards emissions data reporting, which experts say is unreliable.

“It is a question of ability … At every level of statistics there are exaggerations added to the data. Everyone knows that, and everyone is anxious [to fix it],” he said.

“We have set up a system to calculate and monitor energy saving and emission reduction, and are gradually improving it.”

Nevertheless, it appears it’s good news coming out of the second most populous country in the world – and one of the biggest polluters.

Meanwhile, the United States is also making progress, according to the Energy Information Agency Administration (EIA):

EIA estimates that U.S. coal production for February 2016 was 54 million short tons (MMst), a 4 MMst (7%) decrease from the previous month and 18 MMst less than in February 2015. Forecast coal production is expected to decrease by 111 MMst (12%) in 2016, which would be the largest annual percentage decline since 1958. In 2016, forecast Appalachian and Western region production declines by 9% and 17%, respectively, and Interior region production falls by 4%. Total coal production is expected to stabilize in 2017, increasing by 16 MMst (2%).

However, I am wary of taking production as an accurate proxy for consumption, i.e., take care when reading government reports. Further down the page is the information of interest:

EIA estimates that coal consumption decreased by 13% in 2015, mainly as a result of a 13% drop in electric power sector consumption. Coal consumption in the electric power sector is forecast to decline by 29 MMst (4%) in 2016 as a result of mild winter weather and continuing competition with natural gas generation. Electric power sector coal consumption is forecast to increase by 10 MMst (1%) in 2017 primarily because of rising natural gas prices. Retirements of coal-fired power plants, because of increased competition with natural gas generation and the industry response to the implementation of MATS, reduce coal-fired generation capacity in the forecast period.

While the estimated fall in consumption in 2015 is encouraging, that it’s due to milder weather is a little discouraging; it’d be better to know it came from retirement of coal-fired plants. This EIA page covers power plant retirements:

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Preliminary Monthly Electric Generator Inventory

Nearly 18 gigawatts (GW) of electric generating capacity was retired in 2015, a relatively high amount compared with recent years. More than 80% of the retired capacity was conventional steam coal. The coal-fired generating units retired in 2015 tended to be older and smaller in capacity than the coal generation fleet that continues to operate.

In The Lone Wolf Takes a Chance (1941) we see a plot with potential ruined by some ill-considered choices when it comes to character. The basics are good: the inventor of a railcar which emits poison gas when broken into is kidnapped by those seeking the combination, yet the kidnapping is clever enough that no one but retired diamond thief Lone Wolf (Warren Williams) realizes a kidnapping has taken place. The plot has enough twists to make it interesting, and the antagonists are not without smarts, as the the mastermind also masquerades as a doctor unconnected to the kidnappers, stationed to conveniently diagnose the victim as being quite ill. In the plot we can see the back and forth of resourceful people competing to reach a goal.

But the movie falls apart in character selection. The police are mostly buffoons or egotists to a degree unbelievable and very, very annoying. This is not unusual for the Lone Wolf series. However, the Lone Wolf’s butler (odd, that, eh?), played by Eric Blore, who in previous outings has shown a degree of wit and ingenuity, in this entry merely competes with the police for foolishness and fearfulness. He becomes a major disappointment, compounded by his better appearances in other parts of the series.

As my Arts Editor points out, add in the element of knowing all will be in well in the end, and the movie fails to compel one’s attention honestly; indeed, I’m tempted to condemn the “happy ending” tradition out of hand. Only the interest in the complexities of the plot kept my attention; I actively squirmed whenever the police occupied the screen, and nearly wept when the butler displayed his incompetence and lack of charm.

Hard to recommend this go.

Zeffie Gaines publishes a good piece on how the rural areas have changed somewhat since Trump began pursuing the GOP Presidential Nomination:

The air is charged with danger.

I’m at the pump filling up my tank. The gas, with my big supermarket discount, is $1.22 a gallon. I fill up my car for under $20. THANKS OBAMA! (No, really, thanks Obama.) 

A guy, a white guy, across from me at the other pump glares at me, staring uncomfortably. I smile at him and nod, a universal gesture of neighborly friendliness. He keeps staring at me as if I just stole his last $20 bill.

I’m a black woman.

Another white man, at another pump, sees this and nervously starts making small talk with me. I’m nervous too. The other white guy finally relents in his gaze and gets back into his Dodge Ram or Tundra or whatever big ass truck he is driving (he really is driving a big ass truck).  He drives off and I exhale, realizing I’d been holding my breath for a long time. I live in Ohio, Southwestern Ohio, in a rural county. I’ve lived out here in the boonies for 5 years and never had a problem, never felt much discomfort. But since Trump came on to the scene, dominating the Republican primary, the whole energy has shifted.

There’s more, all well-written and providing interesting insights. It appears the bigots haven’t been disappearing, but just keeping their heads down. It really provokes … disappointment in your fellow Americans.

The reader continues the Marty discussion:

The movie suffers from being too long, and too “Hollywood.” Borgnine is too charismatic if not too good looking for the role. Also I like the feel of the teleplays from that era, which were broadcast live, warts and all. Feels more “real.”

I look forward to finding time to see it. Although I wonder that Rod Steiger doesn’t come across as charismatic. I actually found Ernest’s performance, when his mouth takes off and drags him along, as being almost repulsive in some ways.

Variety reports Georgia has run into a roadblock when it comes to passing “religious freedom” laws: a behemoth named DISNEY.

The Walt Disney Co. and Marvel Studios indicated opposition to a Georgia religious liberty bill pending before Gov. Nathan Deal, saying that they will take their business elsewhere “should any legislation allowing discriminatory practices be signed into state law.”

With generous tax incentives, Georgia has become a production hub, with Marvel currently shooting “Guardians of the Galaxy 2” at Pinewood Studios outside Atlanta. “Captain America: Civil War” shot there last summer.

“Disney and Marvel are inclusive companies, and although we have had great experiences filming in Georgia, we will plan to take our business elsewhere should any legislation allowing discriminatory practices be signed into state law,” a Disney spokesman said on Wednesday.

The MPAA is in the same corner. From the March 17 edition of myAJC (paywall) comes a summary of the bill, as well as reaction:

The Georgia Legislature’s sudden passage of a bill intended to shield opponents of same-sex marriage from last year’s landmark Supreme Court ruling ignited a fierce and growing pushback from corporate leaders and gay rights activists urging Gov. Nathan Deal to block the bill.

Some of Georgia’s most influential companies warned of devastating consequences if Deal were to sign the “religious liberty” legislation that swept through the statehouse Wednesday in mere hours, and Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed warned it would cause “terrible harm” to the state’s business reputation.

At the same time, supporters rallied behind the measure. Religious conservatives showered the Legislature with praise, and the state GOP, noting that its activists overwhelmingly passed a resolution supporting the bill, applauded lawmakers “for listening to grassroots Republicans and for working together to pass this vitally important piece of legislation.” …

On Thursday, the conservative Faith and Freedom Coalition launched robo-calls urging people to call Deal’s office and tell the governor to support the bill. Virginia Galloway, the group’s Southern regional director, rejected as “hyperbole” statements by the business community and others that the bill allows discrimination.

“It is very reasonable and it respects the rights of all people,” she said.

The Metro Atlanta Chamber, the state’s most influential business voice, said the measure is “in conflict with the values of diversity and inclusion that Georgians hold dear” and could erode the state’s business reputation. The Georgia Hotel & Lodging Association called for the “best legal minds” to examine the potential unintended consequences.

“At the end of the day, it hurts Georgians because it impacts jobs,” said Larry Gellerstedt, the CEO of Cousins Properties and a recent past chairman of the Metro Atlanta Chamber’s board. “I don’t know how anyone can disagree with that.”

Governor Deal, term-limited, has not yet disclosed whether or not he’ll sign the legislation.

It’s been dismaying of late to witness the lack of GOP adherence to any principle, their party principles or to American principles. Now, granted, some principles grind on the nerves of some Americans simply because we are not a homogeneous, coherent whole, but rather a collection of disparate groups, defined in many different ways and inevitably finding some of our founding – and, providentially, legal – principles to be incompatible with the modes of thought employed by these groups. It is up to these groups to discover ways to adjust their ideologies to the overarching framework provided by our legal and cultural systems.

But, as Steve Benen @ MaddowBlog points out, the GOP is having troubles with their own principles:

About a month ago, Birmingham, Alabama, decided it was time to give the city’s low-wage workers a raise. Local officials approved a minimum-wage increase, that would apply solely to Birmingham employers, to $10.10 an hour.

Just two days later, Alabama’s Republican governor and GOP-led legislature decided to undo what Birmingham had done. The state passed a law, which applied retroactively, prohibiting cities from raising their own minimum wages, even if they want to. In all, 17 Republican-led states have approved measures to block local control in this area. …

Responses like these to local control continue to amaze. As we talked about a month ago, contemporary conservatism is generally committed to the idea that the government that’s closest to the people – literally, geographically – is best able to respond to the public’s needs. As much as possible, officials should try to shift power and resources away to local authorities.

Except, that is, when communities consider progressive measures Republicans don’t like, at which point those principles are quickly thrown out the window.

This is not an isolated incident: Michigan and Oklahoma have also seen such breach-of-principle. It’s a little appalling: just as the States serve as laboratories of democracy, the cities within those States should have a similar role in exploring policies as experiments which can be easily retracted after appropriate appraisal of their results. As Steve points out, local control should really mean decentralization; the use of the State power to control city policies should be verboten according to this principle.

But failure to adhere even to American principles does suggest something of a lack of understanding of those principles. A very recent example, supplied by NPR, from a Ted Cruz press release:

In a statement released Tuesday morning, Ted Cruz said America must secure its southern border to prevent “terrorist infiltration.” He also suggested heightened monitoring of Muslim neighborhoods, saying, “We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized.”

Along with his repulsive remarks about carpet bombing ISIS held territory, which would result in the deaths of millions of civilians, these remarks betray a remarkable lack of understanding of American principles of, well, from the Statue of Liberty:

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

Insofar as the remarks about “Muslim neighborhoods”, he later clarified them as follows:

He instead compared it to ridding neighborhoods of gang activity and law enforcement’s efforts “to take them off the street.”

A gang is a group of people who have come together with a primary purpose to commit crimes for personal aggrandizement. Suggesting the same tactics used to repress them be used in Muslim areas is a clear implication that Muslims are illegal.

Wrong answer in a secular nation such as ours’. Back to the after-school chalkboard for Cruz.

These are all particulars of a more general problem, fear of the outsider, especially when fringe elements espouse our destruction. This does appear to be a problem characteristic of a lot of conservatives, as we saw some sixty years ago when Senator Joe McCarthy began the persecution of home-grown Communists, or anyone who could be so construed. I’m reminded of this due to the recent viewing of the Jim Carrey movie The Majestic. He plays a new screenwriter by the name of Peter Appleton (one movie to his credit), whose new screenplay happens to mention the travails of coal miners and views a coal mining union in a positive light: thus he comes into the cross-hairs of a Congressional anti-Red committee. As those machinations occur, he has an accident, loses his memory, and is mistaken by a town for a lost World War II hero by the name of Luke Trimble, finally returned. Eventually recovering his memory and found by committee investigators, the committee orders his appearance, where Carrey delivers a speech on the subject of fear and its impact on freedom. All YouTube videos of the speech have been withdrawn by Warner Brothers, so I’ve assembled the speech from fragments found on the site Script-O-Rama:

Committee Chairman: Just read the damn statement.

Peter Appleton: “I, Peter Appleton. . . . ”

Committee Chairman: Mr. Appleton, the Committee’s patience is wearing thin.

Peter Appleton: I understand that, Mr. Chairman. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It occurs to me there’s a bigger issue than whether or not I’m a Communist.

Committee Chairman: Bigger issue? There is no bigger issue.

Peter Appleton: Actually, not to be contrary, I think there is. Gosh, I don’t quite know what to say. Fact is, l. . . . I’ve never been a man of great conviction. I never saw the percentage in it. And quite frankly. . . I suppose. . . I lacked the courage. See, I’m not like Luke Trimble [WW II Hero]. He had the market cornered on those things. I never met the guy, but I feel like I’ve gotten to know him. The thing is, I can’t help wondering what he’d say. . .if he were standing here right now. I think he’d probably tell you…the America represented in this room. . .is not the America he died defending. I think he’d say your America is bitter. . .and cruel and small.

Committee Chairman: Come to order!

Peter Appleton:I know his America was big. Bigger than you can imagine! With a wide-open heart! Where every person has a voice! Even if you don’t like what they say–

Committee Chairman: Enough! You are out of order!

Peter Appleton: If he were here, I wonder how you’d respond. . .if you could explain to him what happened to his America.

Committee Chairman: You are skating on the edge of contempt!

Peter Appleton: That’s the first thing I’ve heard today that I agree with!

And then it moves off the point. But what Peter says is important and focuses our attention: since when did we become small and afraid?

Since we abandoned principles.

See, a principle is not an object for mere lip service, nor is it a bit of dead air which everyone edges around nervously. Principles certainly guide our actions, but more importantly, they are our moral and intellectual tools. They are tools for properly handling all situations which we may encounter. Properly put, they should guide us while answering questions of why they are principles, and why they should never be abridged; through this combined how & why, they should illuminate how to use them to resolve situations to our advantage.

When the GOP pronounces a guiding principle of decentralization of political control, they believe that local can govern more effectively (by which I mean humanely and efficiently) than can the bureaucrats in some place far away. This is a reasonable principle to at least try out. And when they abridge their principle, they lose that advantage; now we shout at the legislators at the State capitol rather than the national capitol. Thus they lose the advantage conferred, if any is indeed conferred, by application of the principle because they turn around and obviate it. The damage to their intellectual reputations are cumulative and difficult to repair.

When we abandon principles of international bearing and renown, we lose advantage: our principle of accepting desperate refugees, our principle of not committing torture, a dozen others. Each of these are neither dead words nor burdens we bear, but rather principles that confer advantages on us. When Trump demands we torture prisoners, be they criminals or opposition soldiers, he throws away the advantages that principle gave us: to not be barbarians and do the same things to our brothers, sister, aunts and uncles; to not delude ourselves into thinking we have actionable intelligence, as the CIA confirmed in their seminal report; to signal to the world of intelligent people considering emigrating here that we are safe, that you need not fear torture and persecution.

This is what we lose when we abandon our principles to the pressure of the disaster of the moment. The Democrats, I notice, have not renounced important American principles, but the GOP seems to have trouble keeping the course. And a significant portion of the electorate just doesn’t seem to understand the importance of keeping principles.

This time a movie not quite so old: The Old Dark House (1963), a horror-comedy (parts cleverness, parts farce) with a clutch of character actors of the time: Tom Poston, Robert Morley, etc. This is a fairly mundane, sometimes excruciating story of an American in Britain who, at the call of an odd friend, goes to the man’s home, a small mansion in a marsh. There he finds the man dead, and all of his relatives as dotty as they come, from the mother who is not particularly upset at the passing of her son, to his twin, and various cousins and uncles; we find an ark in the backyard, a fierce collection of firearms, including one jury-rigged to assassinate the prime suspect in the first murder, and a lass with an execrable obsession with explosives. The humor is fairly standard for the era, thus my itching teeth.

But what twigged my interest was the theme. The plot mechanism is that there is a fortune associated with the mansion, with everyone in the family an heir to it, but with the stipulation that each must be present in the mansion at midnight; the family gathers in a given room at the as the clocks strike twelve, and if one is missing, why, they’re out of their inheritance.

And, often, their life.

But the theme, yes, the theme is how wealth, with its tempting fragrance of lifelong leisure, can twist people into madness. The first member of the family we meet may have been the sanest, escaping to London most days to gamble, and engaging a small airplane to fly him home before midnight; his mother is engaged in knitting, measuring her useless accomplishments by the mile, and behind her facade of English gentility may be the maddest of them all. The gun aficionado is relatively sane; another uncle is busy constructing an ark in the surrounding marsh, which is, perhaps, a trifle artificial. The femme cousins (I apologize for the harsh pun on the family name, the Femms) appear distressed but otherwise mildly harmless.

I suppose obsession with wealth has been around for almost as long as humanity has conceived of possessions, but this movie does an interesting job of pointing out how much humanity wastes on the chase after wealth, as the walls of the mansion become obstructions to seeing anything but that wealth. Where are the visitors, the socializing, the enterprise essential to human nature? Gone, stolen by the mansion’s wealth.

This is moving as it addresses one of the more important questions of the age.  It’s by Nadia Drake on the National Geographic blog No Place Like Home. It starts out,

Paris was horrific.

And later…

I stewed and stewed, and stewed some more, and emerged briefly and wrote to Kareem Shaheen, a friend who’s based in Beirut and covers the Middle East for the Guardian.

“I wish there were something I could do to help, or something that would at least make a difference. Want to swap jobs for a bit?” I suggested, half joking.

His response was, in a nutshell, that science has the power to redeem and inspire, and that casting our eyes to the stars can unite every human on Earth. Then he echoed a sentiment I’d heard a day earlier: Keep writing about science. It’s important, and it’s inspiring.

“There’s a unifying beauty to it–you can appreciate the stars and planets whether you’re Sunni, Shia, Hindu, Christian, Jew, atheist or Wiccan,” Kareem said. “Finding new things to discover, wondering at what could be up there, us being the universe contemplating itself, setting our sights at conquering a new frontier, that’s what we should be doing.”

If you’ve wondered how to focus everyone on any particular human disaster, then read it. It reminds us that the disaster of the moment, as horrible as it may be, will pass, but our communal building of the knowledge base, well, that brings us together, it unites our spirits, and moves us forward to a better future.

And may explain why ISIS engages in destruction.

(h/t The Planetary Report, print edition)

Draper • Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz told Utahns on Saturday that the biggest danger America faces is career politicians who no longer listen — and he relishes battling them for the people.

“The biggest divide we have today in politics is between career politicians in Washington — in both parties — and the American people,” he said. “Our freedom is at stake. Our nation is dangling in the balance.”

Cruz said he has been ridiculed and attacked by such politicians for fighting “Obamacare” and defending the Constitution, but he — and his friend Utah Sen. Mike Lee — are “holding Washington accountable.”

— The Salt Lake Tribune

I also gotta say, if the greatest danger to the nation is career politicians, then what is he to make of Trump? Perhaps God sent Trump to show Cruz that he’s wrong?

Well, it’s all evidence that the human race is mostly made up of drama queens.

(h/t Sydney Sweitzer)

WorldPress.org relays a worry from across the Atlantic:

United Kingdom – The Guardian, March 5: Barring an unforeseen disaster on either side, Clinton and Trump are now on a collision course for the presidential election on 8 November 2016. The bombastic, swaggering, sometimes vulgar billionaire has stunned the political world, plunged the Republican Party into civil war and, among the pundit class, relegated the prospect of the 240-year-old republic’s first female president to a footnote. … The outside world, overjoyed by the election of America’s first black president just eight years ago, is asking: how did it come to this? …One chilling statistic for Clinton stands out: more than 8 million voters took part in the Republican Super Tuesday contests, while the Democratic turnout was around 5.5 million. … Clinton is compared to Bill Clinton and Barack Obama; Trump is compared to everyone from Benito Mussolini to Juan Perón to Silvio Berlusconi.

Harry Enten @ FiveThirtyEight addressed this worry a couple of days ago:

But Democrats shouldn’t worry. Republicans shouldn’t celebrate. As others have pointed out, voter turnout is an indication of the competitiveness of a primary contest, not of what will happen in the general election. The GOP presidential primary is more competitive than the Democratic race.

Indeed, history suggests that there is no relationship between primary turnout and the general election outcome. You can see this on the most basic level by looking at raw turnout in years in which both parties had competitive primaries. There have been six of those years in the modern era: 1976, 1980, 1988, 1992, 2000 and 2008.

Primary turnout isn’t related to the general election outcome

			PARTY WITH HIGHER PRIMARY TURNOUT WINS …
YEAR	DEMOCRATIC	REPUBLICAN	POPULAR VOTE	ELECTORAL COLLEGE
1976	16.1m	10.4m	✓	✓
1980	18.7	12.7
1988	23.0	12.2
1992	20.2	12.7	✓	✓
2000	14.0	17.2		✓
2008	37.2	20.8	✓	✓

As first written up by PolitiFact, the party that had higher turnout in the primary won the national popular vote three times and lost three times. If you look at the Electoral College, the party that had the higher turnout in the primary won four times. That can hardly be described as predictive.¹

The article covers more such questions in loving detail – each indicating primary turnout is not predictive. Back to the WorldPress.org viewpoint collection, another entry makes a possibly telling point:

France – France 24, March 2: Senior Republicans are running out of options in their race to stop the Donald Trump bandwagon. Whether or not they succeed, the battle is likely to prove costly for the Grand Old Party. … Josh Kraushaar, a political editor at the National Journal… noted that while Trump’s poll ratings are on the upswing, surveys also show that a quarter of the Republican electorate “won’t vote for him under any circumstances,” while some would even cross over to the Democrats, provided they pick a moderate like Clinton. … “The emerging scenario in Washington is that the Republicans are going to take this to a contested convention,” Kraushaar said, suggesting an ugly showdown between the pro- and anti-Trump camps was a likely outcome. “If Trump doesn’t come out as the nominee his supporters are going to be furious, but if he does then you have about a quarter of Republicans who won’t vote for him,” he said, describing the conundrum as a “no-win situation.”

And this could have down-ballot consequences as well. The real question, assuming the Republicans lose the election and the Senate, is whether or not the loss will have real consequences for those who’ve fomented this revolution – or if they’ll continue to be respected members of a conservative side of the United States that’s acting as if it’s out of control – or deeply over-controlled.

¹H/T Steve Benen @ MaddowBlog.

Via WorldPress.org, NACLA‘s Sara Kozameh writes about Argentina’s new government, led by President Mauricio Macri, noting the abrupt change in various policies and immediate public sector layoffs, with more projected, thought to be aimed at supporters of previous President Kirchner. Then this interest tidbit comes up:

Those who stand to profit from these new policies include many in Macri’s inner circle. He has stacked his cabinet with businessmen and former CEOs, and at the provincial level, the new minister of agriculture for Buenos Aires Province—now also governed by Macri’s party—is a former regional manager for Monsanto. The media has reported that since the election, the sale of Monsanto products like GMO corn seeds and herbicides have jumped. Questions of conflict of interest, though, do not seem to concern Macri, who seems intent on bringing a new “managerial ethos” to Argentina. Other corporate executives whom he has appointed to cabinet positions have had close business relationships with his family, who themselves are often criticized for having greatly profited from ventures during the 1976-1983 dictatorship. If government policy is going to have the same “ethos” as scandal-plagued companies like Monsanto, Shell, JP Morgan Chase and General Motors—some of the corporations that Macri’s new cabinet members have previously worked for—then it is no wonder that so many Argentines are worried for their country.

The return to a “business-oriented” economic regime under Macri will likely include returning to increased dependence on foreign creditors and the same multilateral organizations that led the country down a turbulent path to economic collapse in 2001. An important component of his business-friendly model is Macri’s vow to renew ties with the IMF and end the conflict with “vulture fund” holdout creditors. In January, after 13 years of Argentina’s absence, he attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, as if proudly debuting the country’s young, new economic orthodoxy to an eagerly awaiting business world.

This seems reminiscent of the United States – putting businessmen, who basically know nothing about government in charge, and watching the sky fall in on us. Will this happen with Argentina? The counter-argument, of course, is why should we, or Argentinians, trust professional politicians? And it’s a fair question. For example, the Presidential mini-dynasty of the Kirchners, Néstor and his widow, Cristina, gives me pause as it echoes the American Bushes and Clintons.

I look forward to hearing if the Argentinians regret their choice of party to lead them into the future – or celebrate it.

A reader writes that Marty has appeared in more than one form:

The original Paddy Chayefsky teleplay starring Rod Steiger was much better, IMO: http://youtu.be/5kL2afMZ9SQ

Gotta say, that actor to the left of Steiger looks like the guy who played Angie from Borgnine’s Marty.  Joe Mantell’s the name.  And, indeed, it is Mantell, he did the role in both the teleplay and the movie.

I will have to find time to see this. Does the more compact form make for better drama?

Is the momentum continuing behind this idea? Walter Einenkel @ The Daily Kos reports that New Zealand may be moving towards UBI:

New Zealand’s Labour Party is considering the concept of a basic “citizen’s wage.” Andrew Little, leader of the Labour Party, confirmed this as the result of the potential for higher unemployment in in the coming months and years. “Citizen’s income” is also known as Universal Basic Income (UBI). The idea is that everyone gets a basic amount of money to live off of, like a wage, and benefit systems are gotten rid of.

In October 2015 Keith Rankin contributed this observation from the inside of the movement:

With a UBI, taxes are simple, high by neoliberal standards, and everybody (subject only to age and residency criteria) claims an equal share of that public revenue as a basic income. While a UBI should never be understood as the only form of publicly-sourced cash income (some ‘needs-based’ transfers will always be necessary) – and is a dividend rather than a ‘hand-out’ – for a substantial majority of the resident adult population, it would be their only publicly-sourced income.

A UBI on its own is not a cure for poverty. Rather, it’s a public-property-rights-based payment that incidentally serves as a hand-up rather than as a handout. Of particular importance is the additional bargaining power it gives to the relatively poor. It tides-over people during spells without income – like ‘strike pay’ once did – enabling them to hold out for fair private-sector wages; and it reduces pressure on self-employed people who might otherwise under-tender to get work. Of equal importance is the way it addresses the low-income poverty trap that accompanies all forms of targeted redistribution. The GMI accentuates the low-income trap. The UBI eliminates it.

I have some difficulty buying the use of the term ‘dividend’ in this context, as dividends usually refer to the profits spun off from a business back to the shareholders, although occasionally a dividend is funded buying borrowing money against the prediction of future profits – which sounds like a little nutty to me. Back to the point, mixing private sector terminology, even as merely analogies, worries me as it tends to let private sector practices to leak, perhaps inappropriately, into the public (government) sector. See here for that discussion. Keith concludes with the obligatory claim of Paradise.

On its own a universal tax-benefit regime cannot end poverty. Rather it creates a power-balance; and a dynamic that confers dignity and puts an end to poverty traps. It enables people to say ‘no’ to exploitation, and ‘yes’ to private initiatives that contribute to social and economic wellbeing; to initiatives that, among other things, raise productivity and thereby raise the future level of universal basic income payable.

Sounds good to me. Keith has an additional, more recent piece in the Evening Report here. Geoff Simmons at Gareth’s World has a list of the ten categories of people in New Zealand who would benefit from this scheme. The big winners are #5 on his list:

The working poor would be the biggest winners under an unconditional basic income. They wouldn’t lose their unconditional income as they work more, so the working poor would be better off than they are now, and definitely better off than people who chose not to work.

For low-wage earning couples currently receiving Working for Families, most would still receive more money if both adults received an unconditional basic income. More importantly, they wouldn’t lose this income as they earned more, so they have a stronger incentive to work harder and smarter than they do now.

The rich? Not so much.

A behavior which I’ve read about and observed via news reports, but have never personally observed, is fanatical efforts to avoid taxes. I’m not referring to tax evasion, which by definition is illegal, but efforts that may border on illegality, and are sometimes in quite bad taste. The efforts imply a certain crass materialism on the part of the tax(not)payer, a desire not to contribute to the communal good, although the actor would not agree. If of a libertarian bent, the counter-claim would involve the considerable amount already contributed to society through the implied productivity which generated the income in the first place, or, if of an older generation, the endemic corruption of government, and associated waste of funds; another popular claim is the alleged immorality of the government. An example might be the notorious, late Marc Rich, who escaped the United States just prior to the filing of charges (by Rudy Giuliani), and never returned, despite an ill-advised Presidential pardon from Bill Clinton.

So how would this behavior change if UBI were implemented in the United States? Assuming a more or less standard definition, the government stipend would be tax free. A flat tax of 33% might be enough to fund government operations, assuming all welfare was abolished and military spending was finally brought under control. One has to wonder if Social Security would disappear as well.

So my point would be that there would be some obsessive (but trivial) calculations of when one transits from benefiting (paying less tax) from the government stipend to paying for the lazy bums (as the unfortunate would no doubt be characterized) would be performed, and no doubt many folks, indifferent to the many benefits government brings, would gnash their teeth as they inadvertently helped the less fortunate begin to escape the traps they are so often within. Such is our fascination, even idolatry, this country has to do with personal wealth.

I look forward to hearing how New Zealand does with this new notion. The law unintended consequences is always fun, but, to grab one more item from Mr. Simmons’ list of benefiting people …

In fact, some young entrepreneurs believe an unconditional basic income would be one of the most business friendly policies around. It would provide some secure income as entrepreneurs during the all-important start up phase.

If you want to sell UBI in the United States, a form of that paragraph is the place to start. Right next to money in the idolatry list is the phrase free enterprise.

In Marty (1955) we’re introduced to Marty’s (Ernest Borgnine) Italian family, where, for the elder generation, marriage is the only thing, having a son is a close second, and the bitterness of no longer being useful is brought forcefully to the fore. In the background, an argument, centering around the lustful, dishonorable urges of wolfpacks of young men, is made for the importance that everyone be married, for otherwise the emotional pain of objectification and consequent cessation of social bonds will come to the fore; it’s an interesting argument, but given our knowledge of social heterogeniety, perhaps not as forceful as it once was.

But Ernest gives a fine performance as the butcher taking care of his mother and, for that matter, the rest of the family. The unhappiness of a branch of the extended family in having the mother living with the young married couple with baby is examined in fine detail as the young people show their problems in superb, yelling fashion: his concern that he’s abandoning his mother and blaming it on his wife, while she is not amenable to the constant criticism and micromanagement of her mother-in-law, who happens to be a hyper-competitive flying witch on wheels.

They don’t make movies like this anymore, and probably thank goodness: a less than excellent version of this sort of movie would be a failure and make my teeth itch. But this is Marty, a 4-star effort which will repay a close viewing with insights, laughter, and a real empathy for all the characters who are not part of a wolfpack.

The effect of big predators on the web of life makes the page in NewScientist (27 February 2016):

Predators don’t control populations of their prey just by killing them. They also paint what is termed a landscape of fear, inhibiting prey from feeding and turning parts of their habitat into no-go zones. Now it appears that this has far-reaching effects throughout the food web.

Domestic dogs are the main predators of raccoons on the Gulf Islands of British Columbia, Canada. Justin Suraci and his colleagues at the University of Victoria in Canada wondered what would happen if they stoked the raccoons’ fear of dogs without increasing predation. They set up speakers along the shoreline on two islands and played either the calls of dogs, or of seals and sea lions, which also live here but are not a threat to raccoons.

The dog sounds cut the raccoons’ foraging time by 66 per cent over the course of a month. They also led to a rise in the abundance of crabs, fish and worms that raccoons feed on in the intertidal areas, and in turn, to a decline in numbers of those animals’ prey and competitors (Nature Communications, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms10698).

It’s work like this, in which the logical chains of reaction, behavior, and its effects on population dynamics are explained in a logical manner, that does two things for me (besides giving me a thrill down my spine).

First, it documents how important the large predators are to a geographical area. Their presence, or absence, affects their prey, the resources their prey use, the physical nature of the land used by their prey, and then rinse and repeat with those prey, now as predators in their turn, as all those numbers change and resource usage changes. This understanding of the underpinnings of what poets dream about has its own magic, its own manifold, tangible meanings, and these central logical connections do not exist in a vacuum, but they instead affect us as well – because we are intimately connected to that landscape.

Second, it permits a more essential and understandable ecological advocacy. While some folks, with a superfluous understanding of ecology, may merely shrug and advance the notion of ‘circle of life’, and suggest that commerce must come before ecology, this sort of deep understanding permits the inversion of such arguments. How? By the important understanding that we are tied to the landscape we live on. Even us software engineers, we have to live somewhere, and if we do not put our understanding of our real-life surroundings into a central place in our society, we risk ending up like the folks who have – and are – building houses near the coastline (see the section on Science & Government). That is, doomed to lose our houses, our belongings, even our lives, to the subtle forces of Nature, and how we have changed her. Despite our attempts to live apart from Nature, she is always there, always around us – and, unless we want to live in the E. M. Forster’s Machine, giving up all control, then we need to think about how that ecology works, and give it prime place in our society – with commerce a good second. So when someone advances the notion of commerce first, suggest that perhaps their commerce will self-immolate if mature thought is not given to the effect they will and are having. If they’re exterminating big predators, for instance: what if this destroys half the town in 20 years? (What? Patience. I’ll let an expert cover this in a moment.)

But there’s one more reason I like this article, and that’s this: it reminds me of a wonderful video which really illustrates the entire effect of big predators. It’s logical, it’s full of facts, and it’s gorgeous. Not in a visual sense, but in the entire gestalt of senses, and with the added informational load and logical chains, it’s really a wonderful riposte to those who believe they can exist apart from Nature. Click and enjoy.