Category Archives: Uncategorized

The 2016 Ig Nobel awards were announced at a ceremony on Sept 22 at Harvard University, a great day for those of us with a mild taste for the bizarre (yes, I read News of the Weird religiously – and I’m well aware there are far more bizarre things out there – like Steam Powered Giraffe). My attention was diverted first by the Biology Prize, awarded jointly to Charles Foster and Thomas Thwaites. Each spent time living as another species, Mr. Foster as a badger, otter, deer, fox, and a bird, while Mr. Thwaites created prosthetics (including a rumen for digesting grass) allowing him to spend three days living as a goat. In the latter case, this is from the man’s website:

I tried to become a goat to escape the angst inherent in being a human. The project became an exploration of how close modern technology can take us to fulfilling an ancient human dream: to take on characteristics from other animals. But instead of the ferocity of a bear, or the perspective of a bird, the characteristic most useful in modern life is something else; being present in the moment perhaps.

The other intriguing research was for the Medicine Prize:

Christoph Helmchen, Carina Palzer, Thomas Münte, Silke Anders, and Andreas Sprenger, for discovering that if you have an itch on the left side of your body, you can relieve it by looking into a mirror and scratching the right side of your body (and vice versa). REFERENCE: “Itch Relief by Mirror Scratching. A Psychophysical Study,” Christoph Helmchen, Carina Palzer, Thomas F. Münte, Silke Anders, Andreas Sprenger, PLoS ONE, vol. 8, no 12, December 26, 2013, e82756.

This reminds me of other research on bending the mind’s perceptions, and adds to a fascinating research body of how the brain can be fooled by its own machinations.

Back in June 2016 a friend provided the link to this The Guardian’s “long read” section, where David Van Reybrouck (as translated by Liz Waters) published an extract of his book in which he criticizes some of the more traditional processes of Western democracies, such as elections and referenda, holding up the results such as Brexit as a condemnation, and suggests a replacement – the idea of sortition.

People care deeply about their communities and want to be heard. But a much better way to let the people speak than through a referendum is to return to the central principle of Athenian democracy: drafting by lot, or sortition as it is presently called. In ancient Athens, the large majority of public functions were assigned by lot. Renaissance states such as Venice and Florence worked on the same basis and experienced centuries of political stability. With sortition, you do not ask everyone to vote on an issue few people really understand, but you draft a random sample of the population and make sure they come to the grips with the subject matter in order to take a sensible decision. A cross-section of society that is informed can act more coherently than an entire society that is uninformed. …

Sortition could provide a remedy to the democratic fatigue syndrome that we see everywhere today. The drawing of lots is not a miracle cure any more than elections ever were, but it can help correct a number of the faults in the current system. The risk of corruption is reduced, election fever abates and attention to the common good increases. Voting on the basis of gut feeling is replaced by sensible deliberation, as those who have been drafted are exposed to expert opinion, objective information and public debate. Citizens chosen by lot may not have the expertise of professional politicians, but they add something vital to the process: freedom. After all, they don’t need to be elected or re-elected.

David may have a little too much faith in politicians’ “expertise” – most are lawyers, few have any notion of science behind high school, and here in the United States there is often a suspicion of science – even as they benefit from it – because it doesn’t correspond to certain of their prejudices.

But it does sound interesting as one method of using the idea of representative democracy to isolate the common citizen from the some obscure decisions that must be taken in the larger world, without necessarily excluding them as a group – and building up resentment. I do think there’d have to be some concern about non-participation – think of how much people generally hate doing jury duty; however,  I had jury duty about 11 months ago, and I didn’t actually notice much resentment.

Perhaps it’s more of a step towards participatory democracy – the idea that there’s more to civic life than just voting once in a while and braying in a blog, with little thought towards consequences.

From NewScientist (10 September 2016, paywall):

PREVIOUSLY, Feedback discussed how scatty naming conventions were confounding attempts to compile stool-related research (27 August).

Now scientists have uncovered a new categorisation error: 20 per cent of scientific papers in genetics journals contain mutations produced by contact with Microsoft Excel.

Writing in Genome Biology, the authors say that the popular spreadsheet program introduces transcription errors to many genes, converting septin 2 (SEPT2) to a date, and so forth.

The bug was most frequently found in files of supplementary data, “an important resource in the genomics community that are frequently reused”. Feedback reminds geneticists that it’s important to sanitise your tables – both in the lab and beyond.

Makes me want to run screaming around the block, bewailing the use of inappropriate tools by supposedly smart people.

My step-cousin Scott Chamberlain, classical music and organization blogger, sees the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra management board try to reach the low standards he’s already generously set for them … and not make it. Scott is referencing an email from FWSO President and CEO Adkins to other members of the board:

And finally there comes a slanderous grand finale—an attack that calls out a private citizen by name, and then drags that person’s good name through the mud. Ms. Adkins quotes outside sources to imply that one of the people reaching out to the FWSO board members was mentally disturbed, a stalker, and probably dangerous.  Don’t like the message?  Smear the messenger.

The problem is… every bit of Ms. Adkins’s attack is completely false.  For one, the “lawyers” that Ms. Adkins uses to support her accusations don’t exist.  They are entirely fictitious.  No one with either of those names practices law in the state of Minnesota.  No one with either of those names has served on the board of Minnesota Orchestra.

I mean, this is bizarre.  It took me all of three minutes on the Internet to show that these “lawyers” were completely made up, and the site Ms. Adkins referenced was a fraud.

But I didn’t even have to do the digging myself.  Andrew Patner, the late music critic who wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times, wrote about his experience with these very same “lawyers” here, and elaborated on dealing with these Internet fakes many times, in many locations.  He also references the work of a Denver writer who wrote extensively about his concerns about this fraudulent website. This information is certainly available to the general public.

Ms. Adkins’ bio, as published in D Magazine on the occasion of her election to the FWSO Presidency, is here. You can have valid differences of opinion, but there’s a line that’s crossed when fraud occurs. If the letter containing the fraudulent information is authentic, and the fraud is real, it should then be clear that she’s no longer functioning at a high enough level to belong on the board. While her service to the FWSO is admirable, it appears she’s gone around the bend…

A reader solves the mystery car’s identity:

Nash Metropolitan, 1950s, succeeded in ’62 by the Rambler American. Lovely little car but didn’t sell well in the tailfin decade. Huber would be the dealership’s name.

Thanks! Another remarks:

Would be nice to see these classics brought back as electric cars.

Image: ViewLiner, Ltd

I think that would be lovely, and our Arts Editor has remarked that she would happily buy an electric car using the body of an early Corvette.

I would, too. I could see a pair of these in our garage. Except, I suppose, for the inevitable price tag …

Just finished watching Despicable Me 2 (2013) for the umpteenth time, and now I’m wondering if Agent Wilder is driving a Nash.

catfishing:

The report also documents incidents of “catfishing”: the use of fake profiles of attractive women to befriend people. The Taliban has reportedly used this trick to tease information out of Australian soldiers on Facebook. But it is ISIS that exemplifies this modern approach to extremism, relying heavily on social media to spread its message and recruit supporters around the world.

“Extremists wage war with retweets and likes,” by Aviva Rutkin, NewScientist (10 September 2016).

Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975) is part of the Godzilla series that is concerned with the spacemen, although I’ve apparently missed Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974). Given the era of the movie and its difficult to understand plot, it might be best to view this movie, no pun intended, through the lens of avant garde art. The close observer will see results before causation, extreme misanthropy, a disregard for reality in the course of events, the irretrievable transformation of humans to the ‘other’, and perhaps other sign that can be understood to be part of an avant garde attempt at monster movie making.

Or you can just call it bad movie-making and move on with your life.

Seen on the Minnesota State Fairgrounds this weekend. Amazingly cute. Anyone know what it is? It said Metropolitan on the side, possibly Huber on the back.

Just glad we don’t do it exactly this way…

http://https://youtu.be/Wp3Gau-Aljs

Drew Magary publishes a hissy fit in GQ, to which Leslie Salzillo on The Daily Kos hums happily along. Here’s Drew:

Regardless, in the end, people are still gonna vote for this man. Maybe not enough to get him elected, but still: it’ll be in the tens of millions. (Note to the people causing the polls to fluctuate: What the fuck is wrong with you? I gotta meet the five percent of people who saw Hillary come down with pneumonia and were like, “Forget her, gimme the dictator with dryer lint hair.”) Nothing that Trump says, no damning piece of Trump reportage, and certainly no opinion piece like this one will stop his voters from pulling the lever. Nor will anything stop Trump from being the officious, braindead goon that he is. He will never answer for his crimes, and there’s a frighteningly large portion of the electorate that will always love him for that.

And it goes on like that for several more paragraphs. Delightful, if you’re one of those folks who have time for the sort of thing that, frankly, you (the reader) & I are indulging in right now.

I cannot go along with it, though.

I am slightly haunted by a scene out of the documentary Tickled (2016). It has nothing to do with the subject of the documentary. During the making of the movie, the makers travel to Muskegon, Michigan, which they describe and show to be a dying town, full of violence and crime, although they don’t go into detail as it’s not pertinent. But we discover that one of the major ways to make money for young men is to compete in Mixed Martial Arts, and as part of the interview process we also get to meet one young man’s parents and family.

The house was a pit. It had that air of mixed despair and bull-stubborness of people who’ve lost their jobs but not their pride, and that pride compels them to find someone to blame. My mother-in-law lives in Michigan.  We visit often, and from talking with her visitors, even an introvert such as myself comes up against certain rock-solid beliefs; certainties that arise from people who’ve had the employment rug ripped out from under them. Doubt about liberals. Doubts about certain parts of government that I consider to be pillars of how we run society. Certainty that there’s a devil, and he literally walks among us.

So when I, or Drew, talk about Trump’s mendacity, his abuse of those he can dominate, these really are irrelevant, as Drew laments. But Drew never really asks why.

So let’s talk about the implicit social contract. (As much as I hate the term, it’s the jargon we all know it by).

For the citizen, for the people, for us, you, me, and the guys in Muskegon, the social contract, in our minds, should mean that  if we work hard then we should get paid and maybe even get promoted, maybe have kids, retire, and eventually get chucked in a grave in preparation for living forever with the God of our choice. Maybe pitch in a touch of racism, and there ya go.

And it ain’t happening. Michigan’s a mess. Between the situation in Muskegon, jobs heading overseas and into Mexico, Detroit turning into a ghost town, and Flint being completely screwed over, the rip-currents are becoming deadly.  And not only in Michigan, but other pockets of the United States as well. Folks lose their jobs and their faith in the contract as employers, in their eyes, fuck them over.

There’s a really good reason why both candidates want to present themselves as agents of change.  Because the chunk of America that perceives itself as being in trouble (where folks are unemployed or underemployed, where houses are no longer maintained because of economic despair) wants to point the finger of blame, and after the employers (who really only care about their own wealth and welfare), comes the government.  The national government sets the decisions regarding economic policy. If the populace is to prosper, the government needs to change.

So why Trump?

Because he’s new. He hasn’t had a hand in what the voting right wing perceives as disaster.  Roll that word around in your mouth. For you and I, we may or may not suffer some discomfort. If you’ve lost a house because you’ve lost a job, then maybe you get to share in tasting that word, because you’ve been there.

I haven’t, so I don’t get to swish it about in my mouth. I have to get there intellectually.

So let’s be intellectual, then.  Let’s go to an intellectual’s favorite pit of despair.  Yeah.  Let’s.

Let’s talk the Wiemar Republic. For those of you who are a little rusty on your history, this is a term for a very short era of German history, stretching from the end of World War I to 1933. During this period the German people transitioned from the German Empire, ruled by absolute monarchists, to the Wiemar Republic, a troubled, short lived democracy, to the rule of National Socialism, aka (hold your breath) the Nazis. (Viewed this way you realize the German people really had a tremendously long run of bad luck, especially those in the eastern half of the country, who went on to be subjected to Erich Honecker’s Communism.) One of the key facets of the time of the Republic was economic turbulence: hyperinflation, bankrupt companies, unemployment, mostly caused by the ruinous war reparations imposed on Germany after World War I. In my view, people in general follow principles not for any truly abstract reason, but because they perceive that by doing so some long-term advantage accrues to them. It may be, and often is, simple social stability.

So when some principle, which may not be as solidly emplaced as others, is viewed as perhaps not leading to such advantages, it’s not hard to see it being jettisoned. The German people were subjected to tremendous stress, and eventually rallied around the brutal National Socialism, which presently led them down one of the worst ratholes of history, from which even today they have not fully recovered.

So now some Americans look back over the last 16 years and they’ve not done well. It’s not so much that they’re rebelling against the Democrats or the Republicans so much as they’re looking at the principles by which we’ve – supposedly – elected these folks, and maybe they’re saying, Hey, does this principle of no racism really benefit me? Hey, what about these illegal immigrants – aren’t they taking my jobs? Hey, who cares about these laws about illegal search & seizure when people are dying in the streets?

Why should they adhere to these principles, even the common sense principles that the pundits lick with great enthusiasm, when that adherence has left them with no job, a wreck of a house, a family in turmoil and despair?

That’s the question Drew and those who share his frustration really must empathize with, and then answer effectively.  Why are they idiots, Drew?

Because being smart hasn’t benefited them.

Being angry at them gets you nowhere. The first step in forming a persuasive argument must sometimes be walking a while in someone else’s shoes.

IEEE Spectrum reports on progress in, well, mind-reading – of monkeys:

“To be or not to be. That is the question.” That is also the text that Monkey J typed out using a brain implant to control a computer cursor.

To be clear, the monkey didn’t know it was copying Shakespeare, and it had no deep thoughts about Hamlet’s famous monologue. Monkey J and its colleague, Monkey L, were both trained to use their neural implants to move a cursor over a computer screen, hitting circles as they turned green. Stanford University researchers placed letters on those targets to simulate the typing task. So to tap out the line from Hamlet, first the “T” circle was illuminated, then the “O,” and so on. …

By simulating this typing task, they demonstrated that their brain-computer interface could greatly benefit people who can’t communicate otherwise. That category includes people in the late stages of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, which leaves the mind intact but gradually paralyzes the body, including the mouth and other face muscles.

This experiment set a new record for typing-by-mind, with one monkey tapping out 12 words per minute. “To our knowledge, this is the highest communication level ever achieved,” says Paul Nuyujukian, a researcher at Stanford’s Neural Prosthetics Translational Lab. Nuyujukian is coauthor of the paper describing this research, published today in Proceedings of the IEEE.

I’m a little puzzled how this can be called communications, unless they’re referring simply to being able to decode the brain’s signals into directives for moving the cursor; suggesting the monkeys are actually communicating on an intelligent level is not evident from this report.

But my actual concern is probably a common concern: while this is represented as a step for helping those with ALS and other dread paralytic diseases to communicate, implicit in this exercise is the possibility of decoding higher level thoughts. Is this another step on penetrating a person’s most private thoughts? Am I someday going to be looking at sophisticated legal treatises on whether or not the SCOTUS should be declaring the use of a technology that is arguably related to this one as being legal during the questioning of suspects? The ineffectuality of polygraphs as lie detectors has, so far, not permitted a real legal test. If this technology progresses to that level, we may see a very interesting legal test.

I would not have thought of this, but Lloyd Alter on Treehugger.com notes that architecture – how a building is laid out – can impact how, and whether, a pathogen spreads throughout a human population, an important consideration in this era of pathogens developing antibiotic resistance:

When writing about bathrooms in an earlier post, I suggested that Le Corbusier put a sink in the front hall of the Villa Savoye as an historical allusion. In fact, there is a much simpler and more straightforward reason: His client, like the clients for the Maison de Verre and the Lovell Health House, was a doctor and was obsessed about germs. People had known about germ theory since 1882, when Robert Koch identified that tuberculosis was caused by a bacillus, but they didn’t have antibiotics until after World War II.

Architecture, planning and public policy were surprisingly effective at dealing with disease, once it was figured out what caused it; in her book The Drugs Don’t work, Professor Dame Sally Davies writes:

Almost without exception, the decline in deaths from the biggest killers at the beginning of the twentieth century predates the introduction of antimicrobial drugs for civilian use at the end of the Second World War. Just over half the decline in infections diseases had occurred before 1931. The main influences on the decline of mortality were better nutrition, improved hygiene and sanitation, and less dense housing with all helped to prevent and to reduce transmission of infectious diseases.

Lloyd covers the opposing viewpoints of Le Corbusier and those who fought tuberculosis with air and sunlight, and also mentions SARS, spread through mists coming from various pieces of machinery. Coming to my mind are isolation units in hospitals, which have been used in an attempt to stop MSRA from spreading, barriers to pathogen spreading insects. Throughout history it seems like some cultures alternate between considering Nature as analogous to Eden, and an evil morass which kills our infants and cripples adults – think of FDR’s polio.

Just happened to notice this guy hiding in … I’m not certain.

This really is the same specimen, so the color change is quite interesting. I’m wondering if it’s akin to dragonfly color changes, caused by structural coloration:

… is the production of colour by microscopically structured surfaces fine enough to interfere with visible light, sometimes in combination with pigments. For example, peacock tail feathers are pigmented brown, but their microscopic structure makes them also reflect blue, turquoise, and green light, and they are often iridescent. [Wikipedia]

However, my Arts Editor has also enhanced these pictures and may have reinforced the colors for better appreciation of the specimen. In fact, here’s the original of the last picture, just for comparison.

Journey to the Seventh Planet (1962) has some mildly interesting ideas in special effects, particularly in the representation of star fields – although my Arts Editor just shook her head. And some of the color selections were sort of fun.

Otherwise, science that ranged from “yeah, sort of” to “NO!”, a limp story where the characters’ actions are unbelievable, dialog of dubious quality, virtually indistinguishable characters, and barely acceptable acting. And a sneaking suspicion of misogyny, given how the ladies were cast.

This one’s awful. I only finished it out of morbid curiosity. Don’t waste your time, the good guys eventually win. Whoever they were.

Postscript: I see the Wikipedia page references the trailer on YouTube, which I will reference with no recommendation. However, I did note that, puzzlingly, at some point it flashes the phrase “Your Eyes Will Glaze!“, to which I nearly joyfully shouted, “Over!“, but decided not to alarm the neighborhood. The Wikipedia page also has some faint praise for the concepts of the movie.

I still think it’s bad.

Lurking near the strawberries, it is … not so clear as some of our pictures, sadly. Hitting the limits of smartphone cameras. Or my hands are too shaky.

Steve Benen of MaddowBlog is reveling in his perception of Donald kicking dirt – inadvertently – in the eyes of the NRA, who has already endorsed him:

[Trump] “[Police officers are] proactive, and if they see a person possibly with a gun or they think they have a gun, they will see the person and they’ll look and they’ll take the gun away. They’ll stop, they’ll frisk and they’ll take the gun away, and they won’t have anything to shoot with.”

[Benen] I have a strong hunch Trump doesn’t appreciate how interesting his comments are.

Trump, who’s never demonstrated any real understanding of criminal-justice policy, apparently likes the idea of police being able to stop-and-frisk Americans – including those who’ve done nothing wrong and have been accused of no crimes – effectively at the discretion of individual officers. If the police find a gun, under Trump’s vision, it will be taken away.

From FactCheck.org

Steve believes the NRA is about to swallow it’s tongue – or some poison. But I’m not so sure they’ll squawk. My suspicion is that we’ll soon see a clarification: anyone who doesn’t fit the profile of a true-blue American will be subject to such searches. Trump is appealing to those who are fearful of crime, those who hear about the recent bombings on the East Coast and the stabbing attack in nearby St. Cloud and think of terror, who haven’t heard, or refuse to believe (which, in a separate tactic, Trump has also tried to use to his advantage), that crime rates are at historic lows.

From FactCheck.org

This is basically an attempt to chisel the fearful group, those who haven’t the time to do the research, or have personal – but irrelevant – contradictory experience, off from Hillary and transfer their allegiance to Donald, who doesn’t hesitate to promise any tactic, no matter how much it contradicts the core values of Americans. Playing on fear is a celebrated political tactic that probably dates from the third Presidential campaign of the Republic (I’m just guessing no one tried too hard when General George Washington was nominated for president).

So the question becomes, will the fearful educate themselves so we can continue to hang together? Or will they move to Donald, who verifiably lies through his teeth in a shameless strategy to gain the presidency?

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8fIVTH0TiM

Lyrics are so unimportant, eh?

Remember the Chinese drywall problem of the last few years? It’s come to Congress’ attention, and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) would like to do something about it, particularly the problem that the company in question was a subsidiary of a government-owned company – which means the parent has sovereign immunity (I’ve linked to “state immunity” as “sovereign immunity” doesn’t appear to apply here – and you’ll see why in a moment), although the subsidiary can be sued in American courts. Senator Grassley’s bill would remove the immunity of the state-owned company as well.

This makes international lawyer John Bellinger nervous for its possible unintended consequences. He explains it on Lawfare:

In his Senate floor statement introducing the legislation, Senator Grassley states that the amendment “would mean only that a foreign state-owned company would have to respond to the claims brought by American companies and consumers, just like any other foreign company that isn’t owned by a government.”

I expressed concern earlier this year that Congress might  amend the FSIA to reverse a single district court decision with an amendment with far-reaching consequences that could upset the delicate balance in the FSIA between sovereign immunity and the need to ensure accountability by foreign states for certain acts.

I have also previously written at Lawfare about “earmarks for lawyers”—legislation that is intended by trial lawyers to reverse judicial decisions against them. As I said then, “Members of Congress and their staffs should ensure that these bills and others urged by plaintiffs’ lawyers to reverse their losses in federal courts are subject to very rigorous review.” U.S. companies have objected strongly to “special” legislation in other countries, such as Ecuador and Nicaragua, that has made it easier to sue U.S. companies in their courts. It makes it harder for the U.S. Government and U.S. companies to complain about special-purpose laws in other countries that limit the immunity of the United States or limit the defenses of U.S. companies when the U.S. Congress engages in similar actions.

It would be interesting to know more: do American companies expect/get special treatment in foreign countries? Does it really make sense that government-owned companies should have immunity?

In this age of international companies does it even really make sense to suggest that the companies with substantial international reach, not only for sales but for manufacturing, have any nationality at all? When a company can by another company so that it may claim its headquarters is in Ireland, mostly for the tax benefits, then how should it expect to claim protection from American laws (and firepower!) when a foreign country takes some action to which it objects?

The Russian news outlet TASS reports on the analysis of HD 164595:

An unusual signal registered by the Ratan-600 radio telescope at the Zelenchukskaya observatory in the North Caucasus Republic of Karachay-Cherkessia is a terrestrial disturbance rather than a sound from an unearthly civilization, telescope researcher Yulia Sotnikova told TASS on Tuesday.

“Last and this year, the telescope’s work has focused on searching for sun-like stars,” Sotnikova said.

“There have been no scientific results within the framework of this research so far. Some time ago, in the spring of this year, an unusual signal was received but its analysis showed that it was most likely a terrestrial disturbance,” she noted, adding that the observatory was preparing the text of an official disclaimer to dismiss media reports on the discovery of a signal from an unearthly civilization.

Jacob Aron provides additional context in NewScientist (10 September 2016, paywall):

Although we can’t say for sure, it is almost certain that aliens have arisen from the primordial goo elsewhere. Even if the odds of life are incredibly low, a universe 93 billion light years wide provides ample rolls of the dice to get things started.

And yet, its vastness also prevents us from making contact. Seth Shostak at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, calculated that if the signal had been real, aliens at HD 164595 would have needed to consume an entire sun to provide enough energy for it to reach us, assuming they beamed it in all directions. If the message was specifically directed at us, that energy requirement drops to “only” the entire historical power consumption of humanity.

A reader appreciates the points from Andrew’s article:

Good points, all. I especially like this quote from Sullivan: “Every hour I spent online was not spent in the physical world. Every minute I was engrossed in a virtual interaction I was not involved in a human encounter. Every second absorbed in some trivia was a second less for any form of reflection, or calm, or spirituality. “Multitasking” was a mirage. This was a zero-sum question. I either lived as a voice online or I lived as a human being in the world that humans had lived in since the beginning of time.”

Either online or offline, but not both?

Or instant journalism or long form journalism (as Andrew called it elsewhere), but not both?

I enjoyed this:

We all understand the joys of our always-wired world — the connections, the validations, the laughs, the porn, the info. I don’t want to deny any of them here. But we are only beginning to get our minds around the costs, if we are even prepared to accept that there are costs. For the subtle snare of this new technology is that it lulls us into the belief that there are no downsides. It’s all just more of everything. Online life is simply layered on top of offline life. We can meet in person and text beforehand. We can eat together while checking our feeds. We can transform life into what the writer Sherry Turkle refers to as “life-mix.”

If only for the oddiy of associating porn with joy, although it’s a slippery assertion.

I had forgotten the role of the League of Women Voters in the Presidential debates oh so many years ago, but Bill Moyers and Michael Winship on The Daily Kos repair that forgetfulness in great detail:

A little history: From 1976, when President Gerald Ford faced off against Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter, the three presidential debates and one vice presidential debate were administered by the League of Women Voters, which did an admirable job under trying circumstances. But then, as historian Jill Lepore writes in an excellent New Yorker article on the history of presidential debates, the Reagan White House wanted to wrest control from the League and give it to the networks. According to Lepore:

“During Senate hearings, Dorothy Ridings, the president of the League of Women Voters, warned against that move: ‘Broadcasters are profit-making corporations operating in an extremely competitive setting, in which ratings assume utmost importance.’ They would make a travesty of the debates, she predicted, not least because they’d agree to whatever terms the campaigns demanded. Also: ‘We firmly believe that those who report the news should not make the news.’”

Ridings’ prescience proved correct and then some. In 1988, the League pulled out of the Bush-Dukakis debates, declaring in a press release, “It has become clear to us that the candidates’ organizations aim to add debates to their list of campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity and answers to tough questions. The League has no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public.”

Interesting that a journalist doesn’t hesitate to point the finger at the journalistic empires for usurping the debates for their own financial purposes:

But as Ridings said, it’s not just the candidates involved in this criminal hijacking of discourse. The giant media conglomerates — NBCUniversal (Comcast), Disney, CBS Corp., 21^st Century Fox, Time Warner — have turned the campaign and the upcoming debates into profit centers that reap a huge return from political trivia and titillation. A game show, if you will — a farcical theater of make-believe rigged by the two parties and the networks to maintain their cartel of money and power.

While I’ve become a big fan of not permitting the various sectors of society to use each others’ methods, as they often operate at cross-purposes and corrupt the sector doing the borrowing, I’m a little hesitant about letting politicians regulate their own debates. I just see these big ol’ softballs being used as questions. Which is why the League of Women Voters and similar civics organizations should be in charge of these debates – and the campaigns should not be permitted to influence them.

Go, Bill & Michael!

My Arts Editor says these are gorgeous.

Morgan Housel of The Motley Fool responds (paywall) to a fascinating Wall Street Journal article:

$100 invested in the 20% of companies with the highest-paid CEOs would have grown to $265 over 10 years. The same amount invested in the companies with the lowest-paid CEOs would have grown to $367.

Amazing.

The stat is from a study from MSCI, which ranked CEO pay and total shareholder returns from 2005 to 2015. My first thought was that this makes sense, because the highest-paid CEOs tend to come from the largest companies, and large companies in general have lagged small-cap stocks over the last decade. But the study’s authors removed the largest companies from the sample and found similar results. Higher CEO pay, on average, is correlated with lower returns. Ten years isn’t a long time — I’d love to see a study spanning 30 or 50 years — but it’s still a staggering statistic.

Morgan goes on to note that the last Lehman Brothers CEO was making nearly half a million dollars a day, right before old Nessie ate them they went bankrupt, touching off the Great Recession. While I’m not a deep diver on investing – I generally find that the study that found making a quick decision when faced with a mountain of information is more likely to be right than trying to digest the whole thing applies to me – I do find it fascinating to consider looking at the executive’s pay when making an investing decision. The inverse correlation had not occurred to me – but given how it would pressure a CEO to make decisions for the short-term, it makes sense.

The really interesting point? Morgan points out similar phenomenon has been seen in psychological studies of various sorts – basically, when the motivational rewards are too high, the guinea pigs choke.

Readers respond to the afterdeath…

I like the mushroom suit idea. You can also be made into a diamond but I haven’t investigated how costly that might be.

The Cremation Solutions price guide is here, but I’m not sure this is what you’re thinking about – they seem to be more about diamonds as carriers of ashes, rather than converting the ashes into a diamond. Maybe not. Not a good web-site.

Another:

So no Tibetan sky burial?

No Tibetan mountains in Minnesota, otherwise it might be an attractive option :). Honestly, it sounds really good, although I’m having visions of mountains covered in corpses now…