Unsightly Mental Blemishes

Some lovely delicateness.

Some professions love their amateurs. Astronomers, for instance, are dependent on the efforts of amateurs to pick up on new heavenly bodies, for example, and to process images.

Not so much bio-statisticians, though. Here’s a gracious, but I think quite irritated, Jacques Raubenheimer of the University of Sydney, writing at The Conversation about analysis of Covid-19 in real-time:

5. Yes, the data are messy, incomplete and may change

Some social media users get angry when the statistics are adjusted, fuelling conspiracy theories.

But few realise how mammoth, chaotic and complex the task is of tracking statistics on a disease like this.

Countries and even states may count cases and deaths differently. It also takes time to gather the data, meaning retrospective adjustments are made.

We’ll only know the true figures for this pandemic in retrospect. Equally so, early models were not necessarily wrong because the modellers were deceitful, but because they had insufficient data to work from.

Welcome to the world of data management, data cleaning and data modelling, which many armchair statisticians don’t always appreciate. Until now.

It’s short and to the point. I appreciated point #1 a lot, as I’d deduced it but wondered if I had it right:

1. It’s the infection rate that’s scary, not the death rate

Which is not to say the death rate’s not scary, but it’s not a measurement of potential disaster. There are a lot of diseases that have high fatality rates, but because the infection rate is low, even without social mitigation measures, they don’t mean that much. If you catch it, we’re sorry you’re dying, but the rest of society is not at risk.

But epidemiologists worry about those diseases picking up a mutation or three that increases the infection rate.

Add to that the lack of medical resources when it comes to epidemics, and that’s why the medics have permanent scrunches in their brows – putting those two together means the death rate goes up. And, while I knew this in the back of my mind, I appreciate the reminder:

Flu’s R₀ is about 1.3. Although COVID-19 estimates vary, its R₀ sits around a median of 2.8. Because of the way infections grow exponentially (see below), the jump from 1.3 to 2.8 means COVID-19 is vastly more infectious than flu.

It’s a bit like that old brain-teaser about algae doubling every day, or the one about doubling the number of grains of rice on each successive square of a chessboard – it does up much faster than human intuition would guess.

I liked this article – well-organized, succinct, and politely pissed off at the people who only think they know what they’re doing.

Venus, inhospitable with a very slow rotation, heavy cloud cover, and high temperatures, just might be … harboring life:

A team of astronomers announced today (Sept. 14) that it has spotted the chemical fingerprint of phosphine, which scientists have suggested may be tied to life, in the clouds of the second rock from the sun. The finding is no guarantee that life exists on Venus, but researchers say it’s a tantalizing find that emphasizes the need for more missions to the hot, gassy planet next door.

“The interpretation that it’s potentially due to life, I think, is probably not the first thing I would go for,” Victoria Meadows, an astrobiologist at the University of Washington who was not involved in the new research, told Space.com.

But it is an intriguing detection, she said, and one that emphasizes how we overlook our neighbor. “We have some explaining to do,” she continued. “This discovery especially is just another reminder of how much more we have yet to learn about Venus.”

The new research builds on the idea that, although the surface of Venus endures broiling temperatures and crushing pressures, conditions are much less harsh high up in the clouds. And scientists have realized that Earth’s own atmosphere is full of tiny life. Suddenly, microbes in the sweet spot of Venus’s atmosphere, where temperatures and pressures mimic those on Earth, don’t seem quite so outlandish. [Space.com]

Native bacteria? Seeded from elsewhere? Will we survive long enough to decisively figure out this mystery?

Venus has long been a mystery.

It’s been a while since I’ve written about the market overall, mostly because I shouldn’t be advising anyone – please don’t take this as advice – and partly because I’ve been mystified by what’s going on – please see digression #1, above.

So what has been going on? Here’s the DJIA over the last six months:

It recently hit a local high, and then took a bit of a plunge, before recovering slightly on Friday.

I tend to see the market as relentlessly forward looking, projecting confidence in the future by inflating prices, and concern about the future by deflating prices. Sometimes stocks “get ahead of themselves,” and we’ll see a drop in the middle of a boom – that’s the nature of the beast.

But it’s important to note that the market, more and more, is controlled not only by investor expectations, but by computer algorithms as well. We can, for fun, split the investors into three groups, based on my scanty knowledge of investment technology these days, but extrapolating from what little I do know and how people use new technologies.

1. Traditional investors, such as myself. We invest for the long term, and computers are used for little more than implementing how stocks are bought, held for a while, and sold, as well as trivial portfolio management. The computers are a necessary convenience, but not an active assistant in shaping investing tactics and strategies.
2. Short-term Investors who use first generation computer algorithms to shape their strategies. These algorithms, which no doubt are being driven into obsolescence, are the result of investors and programmers teaming up to create algorithms that survey market conditions and data about the business world, ranging from numerical results to analysis of news articles, and, making mechanical predictions, execute trades in response. Successful systems include, if I’ve heard rightly, the conservative Mercer family, who made a fortune in this arena.
3. Short-term Investors who use second generation computer algorithms, or ML (machine learning) systems. These systems learn the rhythms of the stock market using advanced ML, again using numerical results and semantic analysis of news articles. The trick is in the ML algorithms, which will typically see patterns missed by human analysts.

Now, I just wrote that down to point out that all three of these groups are in a situation new to them: the Covid-19 pandemic, including the governmental response, followed by the well-known economic downturn.

Now, to my naive mind, any sober adult who’s been following the situation should be well aware that we’re not yet at the terminus of the pandemic. Neither effective vaccines nor treatments have been identified, although they may be in the pipeline. But how are algorithms and ML systems to know and evaluate this information? That is, how can they project and trade in such a way as to leave investors, ummm, happy?

Yeah. The first generation algorithms are not going to do well, as they’re essentially static.

The ML systems will also not do well, because they don’t have a comparable situation to learn from.

For that matter, investors who do not take advantage of the two generations of computer support may also do poorly, because they don’t know how this is all going to work out, either.

I’ve been viewing the market results as driven by short-term traders, mostly via computer algorithms, who do not know how to properly evaluate the markets and the economy. It’s like a long sugar-rush, and I worry what will happen when some of these highly valued companies fail to deliver results promised in their stock prices. I suspect a lot of people will get hurt.

But even more, when these computers semantically analyse these news releases, what the hell are they doing with those from President Trump? The man lies compulsively, but I must confess that I do not know how ML systems deal with information that is almost certainly false – but comes from a source that can almost uniquely move the markets.

I’m left wondering if the markets have been pushed higher simply because the underlying agents simply don’t know how to properly manage information deriving from President Trump.

And that’s scaring me.

A reader reacts to the wildfires on the West Coast, which I publish mostly in the spirit of a PSA:

Or that darn “No, Cali isn’t horribly mismanaging their timber resources, and have been doing it for decades” conspiracy. Which actually hits closer to the truth. I think I may have mentioned the book “The Irresponsible Pursuit of Paradise” by local author and former UofM professor Dr. Jim Bowyer. A longtime professor of Forestry and Resource management at the U. You should read it. This is a quote from it talking about Cali’s forestry practices and where that’s gotten them:

“One of Knudson’s most intersting revelations focused on California’s timber supplies. He observed that in the mid 1950’s California was self-sufficient in wood, but that by early in the 21st century, driven by aggressive efforts to protect its envioronment, the state imported 80 percent of what it used. At that point, forest harvest levels within the state were less than 30 percent of what they had been a half century earlier. despite the reality that consumption of wood in California was rising steadily and the fact that annual growth in California’s forests was more than double the annual rate of removals and mortality. In 2013, harvest levels remained about the same as in 2002, while net annual growth was estimated to be 4.5 times greater than annual removals. Knudson noted that the dramatic shift, from self sufficient to massive net importer, the result of environmental lawsuits, public opinion, and increasingly strict regulations, had the effect of simply shifting the environmental impacts to Canada. In fact, logging to supply wood for California consumption not only shifted to Canada, but also to other regions. Foreign imports of wood (primarily from Canada) increased by over 40 percent from the mid 1990s through 2008, while imports from other states increased by 90 percent during that period.

As with other environmentally inspired initiatives, there is no record of any discussion in the course of court deliberations, legislative hearings, or development of state agency regulations regarding where wood to supply California’s consumption might come from if not from withing the borders of the state.

Actions to “protect” California’s forests had at least two unintended consequences:

1.) Aggressive curtailment of harvests in California forests contributed to increases in the volume of woody biomass in the state’s forests that had been building up over a number of decades, a process that continues today. Biomass stocks are currently estimated to be far above historic levels, a situation that greatly increases the odds of disease, insect infestation and catastrophic fire events.

2.) Ever intensifying forest practice regulations, especially as a result of rule amendments in the early 1990s resulted in cost increases in developing timper harverst plans of up to 1,000 percent (an average of $30,000 by 200f as compared to $2,500 30 years earlier). Consequently many California timberland owners opted to sell their land for higher returns, frequently resulting in conversion of forested land to housing. In the words of a team of investigators that examined forest trends, “California’s increasingly strickt environmental regulations of forestland are, in many cases, having precisely the opposit effect from which was intended.”

I know a couple of other people with degrees in Forestry and they’ll say the same thing. So do people from the forest service. Unfortunately Cali will probably burn until there’s nothing left to burn anymore. Perhaps at that time they’ll listen to the scientists and not the politicians and implement an intelligent policy. History says that odds are against that though.

And I have no contacts within Forestry, nor expertise, nor time to develop same. Which means I cannot comment from either expertise nor even interested amateur status. That suggests I keep my mouth shut, or try to find another way to comment. The prospects of the latter are slim: an observation that among my pop-sci readings, primarily NewScientist, I have not read a single suggestion of mismanagement of the forests of the West Coast; however, they are a UK-based, not US, publication, so the expectation of reporting in depth on the wildfires is lower.

Yesterday, WaPo published an opinion column on the same idea, which I’m going to cite, not to boost or disparage my reader’s ideas, but to illustrate an unconnected fact on the ground:

Both locally and nationally there have been great concerns expressed about fall, winter, and the flu season that usually accompanies them, as having both flu and Covid-19 would be truly miserable, tough on the hospital facilities, and, incidentally, quite dangerous. But flu is spread through the air, much like coronavirus, and if we’re social distancing, that might put a dent in this season. Kevin Drum notes some real world examples:

Down in the southern hemisphere, where winter flu season started several months ago and is now over, there hasn’t been a winter flu season. Literally. Here’s an excerpt from some charts originally published by the Economist:

That’s pretty remarkable, and it looks the same in other southern hemisphere countries too. Presumably this means that if we get our act together and persuade everyone to wear their damn masks and stay six feet apart, we could have a very light flu season too. That would be a huge win since epidemiologists are universally worried about the possibility of both flu and COVID-19 coinciding later in the year.

Here’s hoping the warning birds have added in the contingency that if everyone wears their masks and social distances, the flu season could be miniscule.

And if people keep going to political rallies sans masks, they can get the flu and do the normal miserable illness thing. And possibly die.

WaPo has a fascinating radar image of the Creek Fire in California:

A three-dimensional radar rendering of the Creek Fire at peak depth. (Neil Lareau/University of Nevada Reno)

More than 3.1 million acres have burned in California this year, part of a record fire season that still has four months to go. A suffocating cloud of smoke has veiled the West Coast for days, extending more than a thousand miles above the Pacific. And the extreme fire behavior that’s been witnessed this year hasn’t just been wild — it’s virtually unprecedented in scope and scale.

Fire tornadoes have spun up by the handful in at least three big wildfires in the past three weeks, based on radar data. Giant clouds of ash and smoke have generated lightning. Multiple fires have gone from a few acres to more than 100,000 acres in size in a day, while advancing as many as 25 miles in a single night. And wildfire plumes have soared up to 10 miles high, above the cruising altitude of commercial jets.

Anthropogenic climate change has been a long running thread on this blog, and I think we’re transitioning from It’s here in a nuanced way to It’s here and slapping us in the face.

From multiple yearly heat records to derechos to melting ice caps to an appalling wildfire season this year, it sure seems like we’re seeing more and more extreme weather events. Even the abnormally warm winters we’re often seeing here in Minnesota qualifies as worrisome weather events, because the result is our micro-climate creeping northwards. I’m wondering how our farmers are going to adapt to the changing conditions, whether or not it’ll be necessary to change crops – or modify our current crops to better tolerate to the warming climate.

And this means we’re on the long, long water slide of rising average temperatures – please excuse the mixed metaphor – no way to claw ourselves back, or so the theories go, the only question is when will we build the communal will to seriously invest in stopping the dangerous emissions.

And, back to today’s news, here’s Professor Neil Lareau’s radar animation:

Looking back at the #CreekFire's big run up to Mammoth Pool: Here is a radar animation of the explosive #pyroCb plume development. This plume was massive, producing multiple pushes above 12 Km. #CAwx #CAfire pic.twitter.com/lHK8Sud7jd

— Neil Lareau (@nplareau) September 9, 2020

I admit to being fascinated, I just wish it was over something less horrid.

It just occurred to me: if President Trump, as many suspect, is a compromised President, what happens to him if he loses the election?

Does his status with his masters transform from asset to debt?

And what happens to debts in the international adversary business?

A nice splotch of color.

If you’ve been seeing those eerie orangish photos of those parts of the West Coast impacted by the wildfires, the folks at Spaceweather.com have unexpectedly provided an explanation of which I was unaware:

In the way it responds to smoke, San Francisco is special. The city’s marine layer buffers smoke, holding it high above the ground. Tiny smoke particles scatter blue light before it can reach the city streets, allowing only reds to pass. The result: Mars on Earth. Let’s hope it ends soon.

It’s creepy and horridly beautiful at the same time.

Source: Techeblog

Are you the cute police captain or the cute detective fiction writer?

The Devil Plays (1931) is a whodunit awash in people that look alike and, to some extent, act alike. Someone is poisoned at an overnight dinner party, a detective fiction writer helps the prickly police while politely lusting after one of his fellow suspects, there’s money for a tea room, and, oh, I don’t care. That’s how I felt at the end.

At least it’s not too long. But that’s hardly an excuse for sitting through it.

It’s no surprise that the longer the American public is exposed to President Trump, the more they dislike him – even if his base continues to back him. But I wonder if this remark suggests an unexpected problem for Trump’s campaign:

The person familiar with senior-level Trump campaign discussions said the Democratic assumptions were accurate, and that Republicans expect most of their voters will vote later in the cycle.

“Our people overwhelmingly want to vote in person, while you’re going to see a lot of Democrats vote by mail,” said Mike Reed, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee. [WaPo]

In practical terms, this means Biden voters will make their decision early, and hypothetically will not be changing their minds. But Trump voters?

They’ll have more time for more exposure to Trump’s moral decadence, his incoherent pronouncements, and any more – exhausting – scandals. Which means the potential for changing their minds is far greater than it is the other way around.

Look, I know at this point, most everyone should have their minds made up. But there may be migration at the margins, and every voter that either changes to Biden, or West, or decides to sit this one out, makes it a little easier to tell Trump, when he sputters about voting fraud, to shut up and begin his march to the Ninth Circle of Hell.

The one reserved for Treachery. And, judging from ThoughtCo’s page on Dante’s The Divine Comedy, he’ll be heading for round #2, Antenora.

Everyone welcome Rep Jim Jordan (R-OH) to the contest!

The President’s right. They’re coming after him because he’s fighting for us.

— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) September 10, 2020

Ass-kissing, divisiveness, and conservative victimhood in two quick sentences!

The saddest thing about any man is that he be ignorant, and the most exciting thing is that he knows.

Alfred the Great, King of Wessex, King of Wessex from 871 to c. 886 CE and King of the Anglo-Saxons from c. 886 to 899 CE.

Noted in an episode of Tasting History.

Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) had a brief period in which right-wing punditry celebrated Florida’s relatively low Covid-19 infection rate earlier this year. Then, tragically, his state leapt to the top of the infection lists, and his refusal to follow expert advice, and the possibility that numbers were being manipulated, exposed him as another Republican incompetent, despite his Harvard Law School degree.

But he’s not letting that stop him from trying to prop up his political patron, President Trump. Florida is easily one of the most competitive States this cycle, as it is often is, and with the black community an anchor for the Biden campaign, Republicans are frantic to split it. One tactic is the attempt to put rapper Republican Kanye West on the ballot in a number of states. But another is  DeSantis’ nomination of immigrant Jamaican American Judge Renatha Francis to the Florida Supreme Court, which would make her the only black immigrant woman on the Court. There’s only one little problem with his nomination, which is part of the ploy:

The court ruled on Aug. 27 that Francis is not qualified because she has not been a member of the Florida Bar for 10 years, a constitutional requirement, and concluded that the governor violated the Constitution by attempting to prospectively appoint someone who was not eligible to hold the job. Francis will not have been a member of the Florida Bar for 10 years until Sept. 24 and only then is she eligible to serve on the state’s highest court. He appointed her on May 26. [Miami Herald]

So will DeSantis appoint someone else from the list of judges he’s constrained to select from, a list that mysteriously and improperly had Francis’ name on it?

The high stakes legal battle continued into this week as the court gave the governor until Wednesday to answer why it should not order him to immediately appoint someone who was qualified. The governor had asked the court to reconsider the ruling but the court rejected that request and, in a unanimous ruling late Tuesday, said that the petitioner, state Rep. Geraldine Thompson, could amend her lawsuit to recommend a remedy for the governor to choose another candidate.

Rep Thompson may have saved the State from costly embarrassment. Suppose Francis had been made a Supreme Court Justice, began participating in decisions – and then someone else sued, citing Francis’ ineligibility, when a decision went the wrong way?

What happens to those decisions?

What happens to Judge Francis? Is this a sophisticated attempt to oust her from her current position?

But Thompson, herself Black, has put her fellow Black Democrat community leaders in a bind, because they badly want that seat:

Francis, who is Black, also attended [DeSantis’ tiz-fit], surrounded by Black legislators and local elected officials from Broward County, most of them Democrats. They used the event to urge Thompson, of Windemere, to withdraw the lawsuit.

“Given the current setup of the court’s position, we risk losing the chance to have a Black justice on the Supreme Court,’’ said state Rep. Dotie Joseph, a North Miami Democrat and a lawyer. “Please drop this lawsuit. And instead, direct our energies on bringing forth real reform on things that we can agree on, like criminal justice reform in light of the Black Lives Matter movement.“

No, no, no! I sympathize with their position, but they shouldn’t be advocating for breaking the law. At this point, DeSantis is holding a hammer and these leaders need to decide which finger they least want to keep, because he’s going to crush one of them.

I suggest they stop urging Thompson to withdraw her suit and accept that Judge Francis is not yet qualified for the Florida Supreme Court. In the face of dubious Republican behaviors, having a reputation for being law-abiding is not a bad rep at all. Communicate to the community members the importance of following the law, and to remember, when entering the ballot booth, that it was DeSantis that tried to lure the Black Democrats into committing a crime, and not allow that to split the community.

And then, in 2022, go out and win the gubernatorial election. Elections have consequences, and this is one of them. Stop barking for an illegal position and remember that DeSantis is Trump’s closest political ally, and thus, by Clyburn’s Dictum, no friend to the Black community. And don’t let this carrot, this poisoned apple, this ploy, lure people into voting Trump just because they didn’t get their Judge onto the Supreme Court. It would be only a symbolic victory, and this nation cannot stand another symbolic victory.

Another anti-Trump ad:

South Carolinians have voted for Lindsey before, but this is the first time they truly know who he is.

DISCLAIMER: This video contains imagery not suitable for all viewers. pic.twitter.com/G2WzxmxCDJ

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) September 9, 2020

It’s hard to know what to say, other than Yeah, that’s excellent, because it’s simply so sublimely accurate..

The recent release of the tapes Bob Woodward made of his conversations with President Trump concerning the Covid-19 pandemic are sparking quite the uproar, an uproar to which I could not pay much attention to yesterday. Heather Cox Richardson has provided a lovely summary of the tapes and its impact, though. I particularly liked this:

When this story broke, Trump immediately tried to reassure his base by releasing yet more names of people he would consider for any new Supreme Court seats (the list is now more than 40 people long), and told reporters that perhaps he had misled Americans because he is “a cheerleader for this country.” Trump defenders were left trying to find someone to blame for the recorded interviews. Apparently, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham helped to persuade Trump to talk to the famous journalist and tonight, Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson blamed Graham for the debacle, implying he had deliberately undercut the president.

I wonder if Carlson made Graham’s rival for the South Carolina Senate seat Graham currently occupies, Cal Cunningham (D-SC), very happy. There’s nothing better than seeing your political enemies rending each other, and while, in a sane world, Carlson’s influence would be negative, today he’s going to have an impact on the Trumpian base. While the presence of Trump’s name on the ticket in South Carolina will alleviate the impact, assuming the base is still irresponsibly in “I don’t care!” mode, Carlson will still have an impact.

In other words, my second favorite lickspittle may have a hard time time climbing out of this hole.

Rumor has it, gentlemen, that she’ll rip out our eyeballs in the middle of the night if we don’t give her what she wants, so, wot’s wot and let’s do as she says.

Radioactive (2019) is a fictionalized biography of famed scientist Dr. Marie Curie that portrays Dr. Curie as being, in my opinion, mildly autistic. It opens with the Polish immigrant, currently Marie Skłodowska and unmarried, is finding her scientific resources limited, and tries, in her eclectic way, to wangle more of those resources for her work. As she receives rejection by a sexist scientific community, she meets Pierre Curie. He admits to fascination with her work and herself.

We’re off, then, on a whirlwind tour of their romance, their work, and their lives. Nothing is explored particularly deeply, but in a way this is a relief; deep dives sometimes end up drowning the audience. This biography is intent on spanning her life, loves, and challenges from her early career until her premature death from the cancer caused by her Nobel-award winning work on radiation. Whether it’s fighting for her share of the awards, or sleeping with her assistant after the death of her husband, it’s all here.

It can be hard to see into the head of an obsessed person, particularly those obsessed with science, and so it is here. You will not find fainting maidens or crusading lionesses – but you will find one woman ready to ignore anyone who doesn’t stand forth to help her on her quest for knowledge. Her attitude is the one that can be frightening, especially if you see it in a loved one, because it’s the sort of thing that may lead to Pyrrhic victories.

It’s not badly done, it’s just that I didn’t really connect with the story, being a lazy slob and all.

As this dreary day comes to a close, here’s a splash of color from my Arts Editors’ lone sunflower:

The two biggest countries in the world seem to be nerving themselves for another shove-about:

India and China accused each other Tuesday of firing warning shots during a confrontation the day before at their disputed border in a marked escalation of tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbors.

It was the first time in decades that both sides said shots were fired at the frontier, where long-standing, mutual protocols prohibit the use of firearms. [WaPo]

Two nuclear armed powers with a lot of pride at stake – and a lot of people to potentially throw into a war. But the next paragraph is where the red flag really went for me:

On Lawfare, Paul Rosenzweig cogitates on the problems of perpetually “acting” heads of agencies in the Federal Government in the face of President Trump’s extensive use of same. I’m not sure he has severe enough consequences for an ill-behaved President:

-Reform of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act to prevent perpetual “acting” appointments. Vacancies happen. Not every political position within the executive branch is filled all the time. And the Senate confirmation process for political appointees is not always expedient. As a result, through the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1988 (FVRA), Congress provided general authority enabling the president to temporarily fill vacancies in high-level federal government positions. The law also establishes rules for the appointment of such temporary officers. When not superseded by other statutes, the act specifies whom the president can appoint to fill a vacancy and how long that individual can serve.

The Trump administration has exploited this authority to avoid the Senate confirmation process while placing preferred individuals in key positions. The Department of Homeland Security has not seen a confirmed secretary for more than 500 days (the longest such vacancy in American history). Instead, three acting secretaries have led the wayward agency and the president has only recently announced his intent to nominate a full-time leader. Similarly, the Defense Department was run by an acting head for 203 days. And the director of national intelligence position was filled by an acting official for 188 days, most recently by Richard Grenell, a Trump loyalist with little intelligence experience. In a particularly egregious case, the administration rearranged the line of succession in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to install Ken Cuccinelli as acting director of USCIS under the FVRA, a move that the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled unlawful.

The FVRA should be modified in at least two ways. First, current law allows the president to appoint anyone holding a Senate-confirmed position in the executive branch as the new acting official of any agency. The law should be modified to make clear that no individual may be appointed to serve as acting head of an agency if his or her senatorial confirmation is for a position in a different agency. Second, the law should deny salary funding to any appointee after a fixed period of time. Other measures (such as limits on the qualifications of who may serve in a temporary position) may also be appropriate.

Frankly, denying salary to a maliciously motivated “acting” appointment is little more than using a peashooter on a charging elephant. Even if you’re good enough to catch the elephant in the eye, it doesn’t matter.

In other words, there’s little here to slow down a person who is independently wealthy, or a President whose allies, or the President themselves, is willing to financially support that person – and it’s not hard to see that happening in this instance. A reliable rubber stamp can be hard to find.

But the real problem here is that the focus of punishment is on the person who is leading the Agency without approval, not the origin of the wrong-doing, the President. Punishment, if it must come, must be inflicted on a President who refuses to run the government in line with “best practices”, and who may, in fact, be a malevolent actor.

I’m not sure what that punishment might be, unfortunately. I have no doubt that President Trump either suffers from mental illness or is unduly constrained by foreign forces, and that differentiates him, I believe, from every single prior President – which, in combination with an absolutely subservient and groveling GOP, is why we’ve never seen this problem before.

I suspect that, without actual change to the Constitution, punishing the President with anything less than impeachment & conviction will not pass muster with the SCOTUS, and that’s understandable. But it may prove to be a terrible strain on America if we ever have to go through this again, because, frankly, Rosenzweig’s suggestion, while headed the right way, is not going to make much headway.

But through no fault of the Democrats.

President Donald Trump launched an unprecedented public attack against the leadership of the US military on Monday, accusing them of waging wars to boost the profits of defense manufacturing companies.

“I’m not saying the military’s in love with me — the soldiers are, the top people in the Pentagon probably aren’t because they want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy,” Trump told reporters at a White House news conference.

Trump’s extraordinary comments come as several defense officials tell CNN relations between the President and Pentagon leadership are becoming increasingly strained. [CNN/Politics]

It’s about the last thing most Republicans – even some of those who are Trump cultists – are willing to espouse, after support for abortion; they have steadfastly been the Party of War for as long as I can remember.

And if the Republicans were to actually take advantage of this misstep by Trump, they could perhaps save their bacon in the upcoming elections. Oh, they won’t regain the House, but they might possibly retain the Senate.

All they need is for Senate Majority Leader McConnell (R-KY) to call Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and ask her to deliver Articles of Impeachment to the Senate as rapidly as possible, secretly notify Chief Justice Roberts that proceedings are imminent, and convict Trump in a day.

That might convince Independents that Republicans really aren’t a pack of third-rate politicians. Which is bullshit, of course, but the average American voter won’t realize that.

But will they have the balls to do it? No. Briefly, Trump is their product, and their rejection of their own product is still a step too far for most Senate Republicans. Senators Romney and, possibly, Murkowsi might vote for conviction, but too many of the rest cannot repudiate the processes which put them in the Senate.

So this latest incident will piss off the military a bit more, and then be forgotten.

I’d love to replicate this study in Minneapolis/St. Paul:

Billboards advertising unhealthy food are concentrated in poorerareas and areas with a higher proportion of overweight children in Liverpool, UK. These findings may also apply across the country.

Using a combination of artificial intelligence and street-view images, Mark Green and his colleagues at the University of Liverpool mapped the content and geographical location of more than 10,000 outdoor adverts in the city. …

He cycled on Liverpool’s streets between 14 and 18 January, wearing a 360-degree camera that was programmed to take images twice a second.

The camera collected more than 26,600 street-level images. To analyse them, the researchers first used an existing machine-learning algorithm that was trained to isolate advertisements from the surrounding environment. [NewScientist]

Although whether there’s data on the neighborhoods of overweight children around here is not known to me.

The unequal exposure to junk food advertising may result from the least deprived areas in Liverpool being leafy suburbs with few billboards, says Green. This trend is likely to be repeated in other cities. The team also found a concentration of food, gambling and alcohol ads around university student areas.

One of the challenges of data analysis is discovering if a trend is due to deliberate human choice, or other realities.

An interesting advance in materials science:

A new artificial material effectively cannot be cut, holding out the promise of lightweight but cut-proof bike locks, security doors and protective clothing.

Its inventors embedded ceramic spheres in aluminium foam to create a material that couldn’t be cut with angle grinders, power drills or water jet cutters. They dubbed it Proteus after the shape-shifting Greek god, for the way the material metamorphosised in different ways to defend against attacks. [NewScientist]

OK, so you can’t cut it. How does it hold up to a blowtorch?