Unsightly Mental Blemishes

A bit of fun popping up in the garden.

On Treehugger Lloyd Alter is wondering about the future of physical cash in the era of the pandemic – and following it – as he compares it to various sorts of plastic cards.

Will this change after the pandemic? It is likely to. Cashless transactions are very quick and convenient for those who have money or credit, even more so if you have an Apple Watch. A lot of retailers aren’t interested in you if you don’t. People who previously used cash for small purchases like their cup of coffee are now paying with plastic. People who handle food and coffee should never have been dealing with dirty dollars in the first place. People may be reticent about handling money. People like me are getting really tired of collecting all that change. And people are really getting used to it; Nancy Skola of Politico talks to the head of Paypal:

PayPal’s Schulman sees all of this as part of a coming shift: Every transaction that we choose to do virtually instead of with cash builds up our muscles for the change, getting us comfortable with never touching that Alexander Hamilton bill again.

Or it could go the other way when people are poorer and less secure. It’s easier to track what you have when it is in your pocket or mattress. As Timothy Rooks wrote in DW: “In times of crisis, people like things they can trust. Things they can hold.” There is something to that.

As I read Alter’s quote of Rooks, it occurred to me that we need to put cash & plastic on the same footing for purposes of evaluation. Never mind that plastic is denominated in cash; it’s a valid point, but I think we can set it aside for the moment. Think of them as simply alternative currencies. Here are the points that Alter made in his post:

Plastic is more convenient than cash. True, and I don’t see this changing.

Plastic is less likely, in the minds of many, to transfer germs. That is currently true, but is this a permanent condition? I can easily envision – because we’re mostly there already – a machine that accepts cash and dispenses sterilized change. All we need to do is add the step that sterilizes the cash. Maybe a UV source, maybe a spray-down with an antiseptic? Folks, I think this would be easy. If we want to further reduce exposure, we could finally move on a proposal that my Arts Editor supports – non-production and even circulation reduction of pennies and nickels. Similar moves have taken place in the past with no disruption to the economy.

Now, moving on to an explicit lesson from a course I took in college 35 (!) years ago:

Plastic is far easier to trace and analyze than cash. And this will remain true. This is a trivial task for computers, and the results are demonstrated everytime you see an ad in your browser related to something you’ve recently bought. Cash, much like bitcoin, is anonymous – you take it out of your pocket, hand it to the retailer, and walk out of the store. Only store security cameras can vouch for what you’ve bought, and now we’re talking a far more computationally-intensive operation, because it’s facial recognition (however, the computer recording the transaction could be synchronized with the cameras).

When it comes to these comparisons, it may seem like plastic has an advantage. But it only takes one middlin’ disaster to render that advantage questionable, and that disaster is when they become unusable. Whether the credit card networks go down hard, for days on end (think: solar storm, terrorist attack, national adversary worming its way into the credit card companies), or some sort of mass corruption and/or theft of credit card data and funds occurs, the credit card industry is dependent on trust that they are up & running properly 24 hours a day. If they lose that trust, then all those retailers will walk away, because their customers may simply say You want credit card? I’m taking my business elsewhere. This demand happened to a local collection of eateries at the local mall Rosedale, BTW, before the pandemic hit.

But cash, for all of its faults – and they’re not all listed here! – remains operational in the midst of a credit card meltdown. Indeed, if a disaster occurs, the biggest trouble may be that banks cannot deliver enough cash to keep the economy well-greased. It’s not hard to be capable of handling cash 24 hours a day. The only, but substantial, concern is security.

And then what happens if & when a vaccine and/or cure is found for the coronavirus? Do we have permanent paranoia? Or do we return to prior norms?

It’ll be interesting to see.

I must admit I was fascinated by the term glacier mice:

In 2006, while hiking around the Root Glacier in Alaska to set up scientific instruments, researcher Tim Bartholomaus encountered something unexpected.

“What the heck is this!” Bartholomaus recalls thinking. He’s a glaciologist at the University of Idaho.

Scattered across the glacier were balls of moss. “They’re not attached to anything and they’re just resting there on ice,” he says. “They’re bright green in a world of white.”

Intrigued, he and two colleagues set out to study these strange moss balls. In the journal Polar Biology, they report that the balls can persist for years and move around in a coordinated, herdlike fashion that the researchers can not yet explain.

“The whole colony of moss balls, this whole grouping, moves at about the same speeds and in the same directions,” Bartholomaus says. “Those speeds and directions can change over the course of weeks.” [NPR]

But it seems to me that this is more than just another curiosity:

Each ball is like a soft, wet, squishy pillow of moss. The balls can be composed of different moss species and are thought to form around some kind of impurity, like a bit of dust. They’ve been seen in Alaska, Iceland, Svalbard and South America, although they won’t grow on just any glacier — it seems that conditions have to be just right.

Conceptually, this doesn’t seem to differ much from a collection of cells that makes up a multicellular organism. I wonder how far we could push the analogy. Perhaps it falls apart when we note that the various mosses, in more congenial environments, can live separate from the others, while could cells? I’m not enough of a biologist to really have an informed opinion.

And, while it’s probably more a matter of external physics than a shared internal set of rules that flocks of birds use, measurements of their movements was also fascinating:

The movement of the moss balls was peculiar. The researchers had expected that the balls would travel around randomly by rolling off their ice pedestals. The reality was different. The balls moved about an average of an inch a day in a kind of choreographed formation — like a flock of birds or a herd of wildebeests.

“When we visited them all, they were all just sort of moving relatively slowly and initially toward the south,” says Bartholomaus. “Then they all started to speed up and kind of start to deviate toward the west. And then they slowed down again and progressed even farther to the west.”

I’m easily suggestible, aren’t I? But I think that’s just so cool.

CNN reports on another Presidential Tantrum …

President Donald Trump began a solemn Memorial Day railing against North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, ahead of the 2020 Republican National Convention [RNC], threatening to pull it out of Charlotte, where the convention is expected to be held August 24 to 27.

Trump contended that Cooper is “unable to guarantee” that the arena can be filled to capacity.

“I love the Great State of North Carolina, so much so that I insisted on having the Republican National Convention in Charlotte at the end of August,” Trump said in a series of tweets. “Unfortunately, Democrat Governor, @RoyCooperNC is still in Shutdown mood & unable to guarantee that by August we will be allowed full attendance in the Arena. In other words, we would be spending millions of dollars building the Arena to a very high standard without even knowing if the Democrat Governor would allow the Republican Party to fully occupy the space.”

To which I can only tiredly respond,

Nobody important gives a shit, you half-baked twerp.

Sure, I know, there’s usually a big economic impact – positive, most of the time – for hosting a political convention. Humph. For closure, here’s Governor Cooper (D-NC – hah, I kill myself!) concerning the RNC:

In an interview last week, Cooper said that data and science will guide his decisions on whether the state can hold large gatherings like the convention. He said the Republican convention, which he supported bringing to Charlotte, will be treated like any other event.

“This is not political. This is not emotional. This is based on health experts, data and science and that’s it for everybody to see,” Cooper told CNN. “No one is being favored or disfavored over the other.”

And while some people cannot help but see everything through the political prisms permanently affixed to their foreheads, I can’t help but note that if Cooper opens too early, he is arguably responsible for the deaths of everyone who catches their deadly infection during that time period. That’s a heavy moral burden to bear for a moral person.

I doubt Trump is at all bothered at the thought, based on his remarks, above.

If it hasn’t already sparked some metaphorical fires, I suspect these efforts to change how our cities operate will ignite quite a few:

D.C. lawmakers are drafting legislation to make it easier for shutdown-battered restaurants to space out their tables by putting them on public roads, parking spaces and sidewalks at least for months, and to give neighborhoods a way to close streets to traffic to make walking and biking safer. A mayoral advisory group made similar recommendations Thursday.

The pandemic “has been terrible. But there are certain byproducts that, if we take advantage of them, will let us be more of an open city, more of a city that’s usable by all sorts of people, cafes and cyclists,” D.C. Council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) said. “It’s an opportunity to stop doing things in the old polluting and unhealthful ways.” [WaPo]

The resurrected Minnehaha.

Why a flashpoint?

First, many, many people think they should be able to drive their cars anywhere. It’s a lack of a sense of history, really; just a few generations ago, car ownership was extremely limited, roads were far less available, and mass transportation was the best option for most transit. For example, streetcars out of Minneapolis had a connection to the town of Excelsior on Lake Minnetonka for use as a commuting option, and the docks at Excelsior connected to a collection of six Express Boats, which collected commuters from the lake shore for transport to and from Excelsior. On weekends, Big Island Park, located on an island in Lake Minnetonka, functioned as a weekend destination, although it was a financial failure. (See the Steamboat Minnehaha website for more information.)

Second, the tendency of American middle-class and upper-middle-class society to spread out, to have enormous lawns, four car garages, and big (but often character-less, as my Arts Editor often observes), big houses out in the exurbs, as outer-ring suburbs are called, often necessitates the use of cars to get to work – or mass transit, which is a little off-putting for those of us who see the coronavirus as something more than the flu. Indeed, Lloyd Alter on Treehugger expresses some concern that Covid-19 will lead to greater pollution:

… but things do have to change; we don’t have a choice, and we don’t have time. As cities come out of lockdown, more people are choosing to drive than ever before. According to Bloomberg News, “As lockdowns ease and parts of the world reopen for business, driving has emerged as the socially distant transportation mode of choice.” In Wuhan, China, private car use doubled compared to before the lockdown. “It’s a phenomenon that may begin to reverse the dramatic reductions in air pollution the world’s busiest cities have seen in recent months as travel and industrial operations ground to a halt.”

Alter fails to mention one of the lessons of the current pandemic, when it comes to work, is that there are a lot of jobs which can be performed from home. I’m one of the fortunate people whose job remains intact, and I haven’t been into the office since some time in March. The effects on commerce of this phenomenon will be difficult to predict, but easy to understand post-facto. Factors include negative impacts on the commercial construction industry, positive on fuel consumption, car-related air pollution, and road damage (although, as to the latter, the trucking industry does a lot of the damage to the roads, and I don’t see that terribly affected in the long run), and others not occurring to me.

Finally, the very fact that cities are taking this action will be a flashpoint for the culture wars. Whether organic (that is, earnest views expressed by Americans) or artificial (arguments induced by agents of foreign governments), there will be, I think, a lot of screaming by people who will see this as an infringement on their “rights” – after all, cars are a big investment! And it’s so American to drive cars! If that sounds incoherent, well, it is. We’ve seen a great deal of irrationality in the frantic protests against public health emergency declarations, placing their own individual rights above the right of everyone to have a good shot at public health. Given what little I know of social behavior during the deadly influenza pandemic of 1917-1918, this is actually not unusual. I’m hoping we won’t see the same tragic results of those demands as was seen 100 years ago – but I’m not putting any money on it. I sadly expect to see more spikes in infections and death counts / day as people who think “we have to be together” find out, again, that this is how the infection spreads.

So I’m looking wearily forward to this as a near-future cultural battleground between those folks desiring change, and those who fear change. And I’m wondering if the rational fear of public transit will continue into irrationality after a vaccine and / or cure for Covid-19 is found.

The dude in the white jacket plays two roles: the offensive stereotype, and the revenge of the offensive stereotype.

The Falcon’s Brother (1942) is part of a series of stories concerning a detective named Gaylord Lawrence and his sidekick, Lefty. Gaylord is known as The Falcon to the local New York City police. In this story, Gaylord’s brother, Tom, is returning after a stay in various places in South America.

Intent on meeting Tom at the dock side, Lefty must drag Gaylord away from the various ladies they meet on the way, but once there, they discover the police have cordoned off the ship. Being known to the police, Lawrence and Lefty are permitted to board the ship, where they find the police in Tom’s cabin, having found a body.

After staring at the face of the deceased, Gaylord is overcome with emotion – or so it seems. Exiting the ship, he and Lefty tail one of the women who had been on board and associated with Tom, but eventually Gaylord is sideswiped by a car, and is whisked off to the hospital.

At which point, Tom steps out of the shadows and resumes the investigation. It wasn’t him – and Gaylord knew it.

Bodies start to pile up, and eventually we’re in a little town up the coast, watching as an emissary to an organization of South American countries returns via flying boat – and is targeted by Nazi snipers. Gaylord and Lefty, who has recovered from his coma and sped up to the town following Tom, arrives just in time to take the bullet meant for the emissary, while Tom, captured by the Germans, has been distracting the snipers in an innovative manner.

The plot was nicely twisted, information held back until best revealed, but the characters felt a little bit too much like stock characters (the goofy sidekick, the ridiculously aggressive, yet incompetent, cops), and this is evidenced most strongly in their reactions, or more properly lack thereof, to the heroic death of The Falcon. This lack blunts the impact of the story, so it was not a story I’ll remember for months.

But it was an ok way to pass an hour or so.

Auteur:

a film director or producer who controls a production and gives the film its unique style [The Free Dictionary]

Noted in “The #SnyderCut of ‘Justice League’ was an Internet joke. Cinephiles should root for it.” Sonny Bunch, WaPo:

In one sense, Warner Bros.’ “Justice League” represents everything that is wrong with movies and the film industry in general. We’re talking about a giant corporate comic book movie the likes of which are, in a very real sense, snuffing out mid-budget movies for adults. That said, we all love our auteurs. Your Michael Manns and your Steven Spielbergs and your Ridley Scotts — makers of big, expensive, corporate-backed movies, sure. But movies with a personal vision and an aesthetic marker all their own. And once upon a time, “Justice League” was the product of an auteur: That’s right. I’m talking about Zack Snyder.

After my semi-rant concerning encrypted devices and communications a reader retorts:

I am pro-Apple on this one. Especially in light of the current administration.

And, of course, that’s a difficult objection to overcome. The rampant corruption in the Trump Administration makes it hard to foster the necessary trust that proper procedures would be followed if there was a way to defeat the encryption. I cannot fault my reader for their stance.

But I am still struck by the absolutist positions of Apple and their allies, as I cannot help but see the parallels with our political world at this time. And it worries me. Along with the rightly distrusted Trump Administration, I worry that its legacy will be distrust of the very government we hire to keep us safe.

And I wonder if that will turn out to be its worst legacy.

That dude in the background may be the biggest mystery of all.

I think Meet Nero Wolfe (1936), an early foray into the sub-genre of eccentric detectives who care not to leave their homes, had some potential to it. The lead character comes off as someone who recognizes the rules of society, and plays off them with a certain zest that I found charming. His assistant, Archie, may be a little bit too much of the standard dull assistant, much like the classic Dr. Watson of Nigel Bruce’s creation, opposite Basil Rathbone, but Archie’s insistent fiancee has her charms, and the balance of the cast, which is rather large, is nicely differentiated by purpose and actor; too often, I find such characters blend into a blur.

The plot, too, has some lovely twists to it. For example, suggesting a heart attack was caused by a poison dart fired from a golf club was quite lovely, while on a different note, having a police interview with Wolfe run entirely on his terms takes us off the standard slog through the usual and tired interview quite into something else – a look into how Wolfe manipulates, with the best of intentions, those in authority. I thought that it was, although a trifle labored, a clever bit.

But the film comes off a little flat. Scene segues, well, they’re not any, which has the result of peppering the film with staccato scenes that don’t necessarily make intuitive sense.

But, and more importantly, the lack of truly empathetic characters hampers the movie. Wolfe is a creature independent of real human relationships: he wants his beer, good food, his orchids, and the cash to continue procuring the first three. And little black books to fill with accounting notes. His assistant, Archie, is a little bit too much of a dimwit, and his fiancee does little to help. The other characters, while believably having their own lives, are too sketchy for a good connection – and, in any case, unlikely to show up in sequels.

We enjoyed this for what it was, but it wasn’t as good as perhaps it could have been.

If you’re looking for a bit of astrophysics education mixed with humor, you won’t go far wrong with Death By Black Hole And Other Cosmic Quandaries, by Neil deGrasse Tyson. Beginning with our sensory organs and progressing through how evidence can be accepted, refined, corrected, and replaced, Tyson takes the reader from zero to the state of astrophysics in 2007 (its publishing date; it’s possibly been updated, but I cannot point at evidence), and then uses the weight of what he’s so far discussed to rebuff those who would suggest that our areas of ignorance are evidence of God. He has no time for such foolishness.

Easy to read, short chapters, pithy remarks. You don’t need a PhD to read this. If you have one in Physics, you’ll probably not even be interested. But for me, it was a lot of fun.

In the race for the Georgia Senate seat previously held by Johnny Isakson (R-GA), and currently held, by appointment of Governor Kemp (R-GA), and in contradiction of President Trump’s wishes, by Kelly Loeffler (R-GA), polling is not in Loeffler’s favor. From Civiqs, for The Daily Kos:

4. If the special election for U.S. Senator from Georgia were held today, who would
you vote for?

Doug Collins, Republican 34%
Raphael Warnock, Democrat 18%
Matt Lieberman, Democrat 14%
Kelly Loeffler, Republican 12%
Ed Tarver, Democrat 6%
Someone else 4%
Unsure 12%

The election for Loeffler’s seat is a special election, which means there is no primary, thus the format of the above question. If no candidate exceeds 50% of the vote on Election Day, then a runoff between the top two finishers is held January 5, 2021. Collins is Trump’s preferred candidate, but to my eye the deciding votes are in the Unsure row: they hold the balance of power. If Loeffler drops out and the Unsures break for Representative Collins, then Georgia will, working purely from quantitative analysis have a far-right Senator, as Rep Collins currently has a TrumpScore of 97.5%. And so much for Erick Erickson’s trust in Governor Kemp’s judgment.

But this isn’t the only Georgia news in a rare year in which both Senate seats are up for grabs. The incumbent in the other seat is David Perdue (R-GA), and Civiqs asked questions in the context of each Democratic declared for the primary:

1. If the election for U.S. Senator from Georgia were held today, who would you vote for?

Sarah Riggs Amico, Democrat 42%
David Perdue, Republican 45%
Someone else 8%
Unsure 5%

2. If the election for U.S. Senator from Georgia were held today, who would you vote for?

Teresa Tomlinson, Democrat 44%
David Perdue, Republican 45%
Someone else 6%
Unsure 4%

3. If the election for U.S. Senator from Georgia were held today, who would you vote for?

Jon Ossoff, Democrat 47%
David Perdue, Republican 45%
Someone else 4%
Unsure 3%

The election for Perdue’s seat is a regular election, meaning there is a primary to select Party nominees, who then compete for the seat. It’s fascinating that all the declared Democrats are competitive with Perdue, and investigative journalist Ossoff is actually ahead of Perdue. It suggests a level of dissatisfaction with Perdue that may leave Georgia with a Democratic Senator.

Georgia may be one of the most entertaining States viz a viz the election this year.

Letting your fury drag you down the wrong path:

First, the church fought social distancing orders. Then it was burned down to the ground.

And on Thursday, authorities investigating the blaze at First Pentecostal Church said they found an alarming message scrawled on the small-town Mississippi chapel.

“Bet you stay home now you hypokrites,” the graffiti read.

Just weeks after the house of worship held indoor gatherings with dozens of people — and then sued to keep authorities out — it now finds itself enveloped in a mystery that has baffled residents of Holly Springs, a town of 7,600. [WaPo, well down the page]

Neither the church nor the arsonist is right in what they’ve done, but the arsonist is far, far worse, because he (or she, although how many female arsonists do you know?) in encouraging violence from both sides. The church, if it ran its indoor service improperly, would be a self-correcting situation, and sometimes people need that slap upside the head. Their drive-in option, for which the Governor should have (and maybe did later) permitted, seems eminently reasonable.

But the disappointment is for the idiot arsonist. Violence begets violence, and that’s the last thing this nation needs.

Consider getting your Vitamin D levels into the normal range:

Researchers analyzed patient data from 10 countries. The team found a correlation between low vitamin D levels and hyperactive immune systems. Vitamin D strengthens innate immunity and prevents overactive immune responses. The finding could explain several mysteries, including why children are unlikely to die from COVID-19. [ScienceDaily]

Low Vitamin D has been correlated with poor cognitive performance as well, it’s a cheap test, and a cheap supplement – one of the few that actually works.

The reporting on this item, however, includes this:

The research is available on medRxiv, a preprint server for health sciences.

Preprint servers are not necessarily home to the undiluted truth.

Long time readers are aware of my concerns in democracies of having at least two parties competent to the task of government, from setting sensible policies, consulting with experts, to the simple competency of setting and accomplishing a task in the context of government. If there is only one, then there’s no reasonable counterbalance for those proposals and policies that turn out to be positively awful. Because of this, the word out of Britain concerning the policies and priorities of Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn and his warmest Party supporters, which seemed to derive from the 1950s, were more than a little disturbing. Add in a bit of alleged anti-semitism, and the fact that he was Leader brought the entire Party under suspicion for being unsuitable to the task of governing; they seemed to be a bunch of old, dreaming men, seeing their past through rose colored glasses.

Ahem.

Then came the elections at the end of last year. Corbyn’s Labour Party was crushed by the Conservatives, Corbyn resigned, and the Labour had to reorganize. So I’m pleased to note the reorganization appears to be moving along nicely, as Andrew Sullivan, ex-Brit and in the third part of his weekly tri-partite diary entry for New York’s Intelligencer, reports on how the tradition of questioning the Prime Minister, a Brit tradition, by the opposition party is going:

Labour Party Leader Keir Starmer

And in this context, [Labour Party Leader Keir] Starmer has killed. Last week, he took Boris apart, statistic by statistic. This week, Boris had clearly done extra prep, but Keir still commanded the exchange. He also scored a coup. He asked: “Does the prime minister think it’s right that care workers coming from abroad and working on our front line should have to pay a surcharge of hundreds, sometimes thousands of pounds to use the NHS themselves?” He was referring to a fee of over $750 non-British health-care workers pay on top of taxes to have access to health care. Johnson said there was no alternative source of funding, and so the charge should stay. But 24 hours later, Johnson reversed himself, and agreed to waive the fee. Starmer duly congratulated him on taking his advice. It’s not often that a Commons exchange immediately forces a change in government policy. For Starmer’s second clash with Johnson, it was a triumph.

This is how criticism should work, not the dishonest crap we so often see in American government. Even better:

[Starmer’s] also avoided melodrama and the temptation to berate a government grappling with a very tough plague that arrived suddenly. All his criticisms have been measured and detailed, and point not just to government failures but to how to remedy them.

Honest criticism, with positive and reasonable alternatives, is how adults do these things. As a counter-example, remember how the Republicans tried to throw sand into the gears of the now-defunct JCPOA, aka the Iran nuclear deal? I’m still infuriated at the mendacity. I’m sure there are examples of Democrats also indulging in such behavior, but I disapprove of it done by either side. It slows the betterment of policy.

It’s political malpractice.

Trump was a booster of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, although I haven’t heard anything recently from him. If I thought he was capable of learning, I’d recommend Trump study what appears to be a positive relationship between Johnson and Starmer. It’s salutary.

Inedia:

Inedia (Latin for ‘fasting‘) or breatharianism /brɛθˈɛəriənɪzəm/ is the belief that it is possible for a person to live without consuming food, and in some cases water. It is considered a deadly pseudoscience by scientists and medical professionals, and several adherents of these practices have died from starvation or dehydration. It is an established fact that humans require food and water (nutrients) to survive. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “Eating: Is It Possible for Breatharians to Live without Food or Water?” Joe Nickell, Skeptical Inquirer (May / June 2020):

Some mystics claim to practice inedia—that is, to suspend all eating and, sometimes, even drinking. But are inedics genuine, or do they deceive—either themselves or others? In 1980, a cult founded by Wiley Brooks raised just such questions; he espoused not only giving up eating meat but eventually living off nothing but light and air!

Ya gotta love a cult leader named Wiley. Nickell helpfully provides closure on Wiley’s cult, too!

As to Wiley Brooks—who espoused reverting from carnivorism to vegetarianism, then fruitarianism, liquidarianism, and finally to breatharianism—his followers’ faith was badly shaken when Brooks was discovered making nighttime forays to buy junk food.

The above mentioned Wikipedia link also has information on ol’ Wiley:

Brooks’s institute has set various prices for prospective clients wishing to learn how to live without food, ranging from US$100,000 with an initial deposit of $10,000, to one billion dollars, to be paid via bank wire transfer with a preliminary deposit of $100,000, for a session called “Immortality workshop”. A payment plan was also offered. These charges have typically been presented as limited time offers exclusively for billionaires.

I am almost insanely fascinated to know just who he’s pulled in on that scam, and I’m sure there’s been more than a few takers.

The only better name for that a cult leader that I’ve encountered is prosperity minister Creflo Dollar, but he was, disappointingly, born Michael Smith. So why is his full name Creflo Augustus Dollar Jr.? But he lives up to his name, as you might expect:

Dollar is known for his controversial teachings regarding prosperity theology. He has long been criticized for living a lavish lifestyle. He owns two Rolls-Royces, a private jet, and high-end real estate such as a million-dollar home in Atlanta, a $2.5 million home in Demarest, New Jersey, and a home in Manhattan that he bought for $2.5 million in 2006 and sold for $3.75 million in 2012. Dollar has refused to disclose his salary. For declining to disclose any financial information to independent audit, Creflo Dollar Ministries received a grade of “F” (failing) for financial transparency by the organization Ministry Watch.

His pic on Wikipedia shows he has a nice smile. I admit it, crazy religious cults excite a morbid fascination in me.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (R-KS) has been having more than his share of scandal lately, and in the Trump Administration that’s quite an achievement. Frida Ghitis, a political columnist, has a useful summary, if from a lefty point of view, and in conclusion:

One of the most distinctive and harmful traits of the Trump administration is its disdain for ethics and integrity in government. But another, is its pattern of leaving political appointees stained, their reputation in tatters, a prospect that should worry Pompeo.

And might he be gone soon? Rather than speculate, I’ll indulge in what I wish was a flight of fancy, but is entirely possible in these surreal times.

With the exit of Mike Pompeo from the State Department, President Trump has broken with his usual habit of leaving the political class suspended in anticipation awaiting a nomination to a Cabinet post by sending a nomination immediately, in fact within moments of Pompeo’s announcement of his resignation, to the Senate.

Secretary of State nominee Sergey Kislyak.

The name? Sergey Kislyak.

Observers of the political scene may remember Kislyak, then Ambassador to the United States, was the member of the Russian diplomatic corp to whom soon-to-be National Security Advisor Michael Flynn spoke secretly. Flynn was later forced from his position, arrested, and plead guilty, twice, to lying to the FBI. Later, he tried to change his plea, and that controversy is ongoing.

The nomination of a foreign national for a Cabinet position is unheard of in American history, and it is almost certainly illegal for a foreign national to hold such a position, but President Trump has indicated that he’ll seek a waiver from the Senate, and is confident it’ll be issued.

“I met Sergey many years ago during my business travels, and he has always impressed me as a man of efficiency and nuance, a man to whom I feel a connection,” the President said at a brief press conference. “He’ll be one of the greatest Secretary of States, uh, Secretarys, uh, holders of that position, even better than the amazing Mike Pompeo, and America should be proud to have him.” The President took no questions as he hurried from the lectern.

Senator Mitch “Moscow” McConnell (R-KY), current Senate Majority Leader, indicated he had his caucus firmly in hand and anticipated confirmation of Kislyak will proceed with few, if any, substantive objections.

Mr. Kislyak currently holds the position of the Senator from Mordovia in Russia. It’s unclear as to whether he’ll continue in that position or resign from it, should the Senate – the American Senate – confirm his nomination. [Fox News]

Pundits keep talking about how the far side of this pandemic will bring us a new world, far different from what it is today. I try to not get caught up in the current, as it may be just a wrinkle in a creek, of no particular meaning, rather than the Gulf Stream, the existence of which guarantees Europe is mostly habitable.

But it’s difficult to not be impressed by the changes our major retailers are taking in their stores, and begin to wonder how our unpredictable human psyches may react, even in the face of determined consumer training regimens:

Across the country, stores are reopening to a changed reality. Retailers that have spent years trying to get customers to linger, in hopes they’ll buy more than they need, are reimagining their stores for a grab-and-go future filled with deliberate purchases. Gone, they say, are the days of trying on makeup or playing with toys in the aisles. The focus now is on making shopping faster, easier and safer to accommodate long-term shifts in consumer expectations and habits.

Apple is checking shoppers’ temperatures at the door. Best Buy is asking customers to shop by appointment. Macy’s and Nordstrom are doing away with beauty consultations and alteration services, while the Gap is closing off bathrooms and fitting rooms. Cosmetics giant Sephora won’t allow shoppers to test products anymore. Others are quarantining returns for as long as 72 hours before putting merchandise back on shelves.

American Eagle Outfitters, meanwhile, is reimagining every part of the shopping experience. It has invested in curbside pickup and infrared machines that measure customers’ temperatures as they walk by. Entryway displays once piled high with apparel have become “welcome tables” with bottles of hand sanitizer, disposable masks and sticky blue mats that clean shoe soles. Clothes are even folded differently, to encourage hands-off browsing. The new protocols, which already have been rolled out at 435, or nearly half, of its U.S. stores, offer a glimpse of how even the most innocuous interactions might be tempered.

In and out in a hurry as a store policy? By god, man, that’s not American!

Nearing the end … with how many to follow?

Are we seeing the beginning of the end of the shopping culture? I, personally, have no understanding of the mindset that thinks life is not complete without a weekly visit to the local mall, a slow saunter with bags over the shoulders and maybe even a sly goal for spending so much money during the visit. It’s not that crowds bug me, as I’m generally large enough that I find crowds amusing, not upsetting, unlike my Arts Editor. But it’s the waste of time and the generally frivolous nature of the endeavour which annoys me.

I think I take myself too seriously at times.

On the other hand, many malls were dying in the last few years as the Internet store fronts – we all know their names – had been taking over from brick retail stores. Perhaps that little stream of culture had finally worn away the sand bar that created it and it was going away.

But I still have to wonder – are we still going to be a roaring consumeristic society once we’re over the bridge to the other side of the pandemic stream? Will Amazon and its brethren continue to nourish that need to own too much stuff?

I can’t say. Neither my Arts Editor nor myself are particularly big on buying stuff, and the crisis has not had much impact on us – we’ve been fortunate that way. I guess we’ll just have to wait to find out.

Back in the land of mainstream media resurgence, Margaret Sullivan of WaPo continues – without any hint of schadenfreude – to talk about where people’s loyalties are moving in this time of crisis and turmoil:

In news that is initially fairly dull, we now know that Senator Merkley (D-OR) will be defending his seat against Jo Rae Perkins (R-OR) in November:

Oregon Republicans on Tuesday elected a Senate nominee who believes in QAnon, the baseless conspiracy theory that has taken root among some far-right supporters of President Trump.

Jo Rae Perkins bested three other candidates to win the GOP nomination to face Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) in November.

In a now-deleted video posted to her Twitter account Tuesday night, Perkins said she supports the conspiracy theory, which revolves around “Q,” an anonymous Internet user claiming to be a government agent with top security clearance.

“Where we go one, we go all,” Perkins said in the video, reciting a QAnon slogan. “I stand with President Trump. I stand with Q and the team. Thank you Anons, and thank you patriots. And together, we can save our republic.” [WaPo]

Oh, really? Isn’t the QAnon conspiracy theory just about the same as the President’s anonymous validators, people from the Democrats who, the President claims, are calling him and telling he’s doing great? He’s also done this with businesspeople. Never a name, but boy ain’t he doing great? Rather the same for QAnon – never a name, never any corroborating evidence, just whispers in the ears of the credulous.

WaPo notes the replacement message:

In a statement Wednesday night, Perkins backtracked slightly from her comments, saying that she does not fully embrace QAnon.

“To be very clear, I do not believe everything from Q/Anon and would never describe myself as a follower, but I also do not believe in infringing upon any outlet’s right to discuss news or topics,” Perkins said.

Joe Rae Perkins doesn’t appear to have a great deal of political experience: no elective office in civil government, and it wasn’t clear that she’d achieved an elective office in a commercial association. However, this lack is no longer an objection for the Republican Party; the more expert someone is, the more suspect they have become. In fact, this can be seen as a logical outcome of the old Republican oath, sometimes ignored by the oath-taker, of term-limits. While term-limits was meant to remove the old plaque build up in the heart of the nation, the emerging meme is that experience stands in the way of effective government.

Which, when stated in that way, sounds like a whole lot of hogwash. It ignores the importance of experience and the judgment that experience can, but does not always, enable.

Of course, it’s possible she’s the best the Oregon Republicans have to offer, but nominating someone who gives credence to QAnon, and hasn’t held any sort of elective office, for the United States Senate would have me putting my money on “Party in ruins, intellectually speaking”.

Steve Benen thinks the decision to declassify former Obama Administration National Security Advisor (NSA) Susan Rice’s letter concerning the notorious Michael Flynn is a mistake:

Remember, the point of this week’s disclosures, from the perspective of Ron Johnson and other Republicans, was to make Susan Rice and the Obama administration look bad. Except the gambit has now backfired: the Rice email GOP partisans were so eager to disclose shows an Obama team doing everything right, while also casting Flynn — the disgraced former general whose reputation Republicans are trying to rescue — in a deeply unflattering light.

Or put another way, Republicans have found a smoking gun, but they failed to realize it was pointed in the wrong direction.

Indeed, the gambit that was intended to put Rice on the defense has actually left her on the offensive. From the Politico article:

Rice also called for the Trump administration to release the transcripts of phone calls between Flynn and the Russian ambassador during the transition. “The American people deserve the full transcripts so they can judge for themselves Michael Flynn’s conduct,” the statement read.

I am not as complacent as Benen. I think the Republicans are banking on the common citizens’ understandable ignorance of government internal procedures to make this play out as a hit on presumptive Democratic nominee Biden, as well as former President Obama.

And this means the Democrats will need to begin educating the independents on how this all works. I suggest they get everyone’s attention by having Rice take a slightly different tack. How about a press release from her?

I’d like to congratulate DNI Grenell, Senator Johnson and his colleagues on their dedication to governmental transparency, and I now call on them to release the full transcripts of the Michael Flynn calls with Russian Ambassador Kislyak. As a service to the American people, I will be making available as web site for Americans to consult concerning standard procedures in American government, thus making it easier for the American people to come to their own judgment on the Flynn / Kislyak conversations.

If they consider the optics carefully, she might want to contact Bush Administration NSA Condoleeza Rice to sign on to this project. Nothing like a bipartisan effort to assure the public that the explanations are on the up and up. Seriously. Make those who make the effort feel like they’re actually learning something about how government functions – and it’ll be true, to boot.

So, a little snark to get everyone’s attention. This would be a bid to take the narrative away from the Republicans and use the transcripts, or lack thereof, to highlight the incompetency endemic in the Republican Party. This would also be a classic Clinton tactic – embrace the aimed blow until it becomes a weapon in your hand. Clinton’s opponents hated that with a passion.

Another example of how Republican team politics has resulted in a collection of second- and third-raters.

My dear … you know I like PBJ, not cold cut sandwiches!

Assuming you can get a good print of it, The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934) is an interesting exploration of the subject of relative morality. It’s the time of the French Revolution, and French aristocrats are making their last trip to Madame Guillotine! But on the British side of the channel, a brave nobleman using an eponymous nom de guerre disapproves, for those of the nobility are often innocent – in his view.

But his brazen rescues and peerless costumes are viewed dimly by the morality-free men who have taken control of the French Revolution, which, historically, first chewed up its nobility, and then continued on to masticate the erstwhile leaders of said social upset. But enough of the history lesson! Our hero plays dual roles, the brave rescuer and the useless fop, a self-proclaimed fashion expert burdened with a beautiful French wife.

A French wife rumored to have denounced a French aristocratic family to the authorities, and leading to their deaths. Her name? Marguerite.

But a series of clues leads the French ambassador to suspect the fop, and he leans on Marguerite, using her as a lever to lure the Pimpernel into a rescue mission for Marguerite’s brother, cruelly taken, and as Marguerite scrambles to persuade the Pimpernel to go, she reveals that the family that she accidentally sent to their deaths through an incautious word, had they themselves consigned her to a prison for women of ill-repute, when their son had innocently fallen in love with her and proposed.

To the Pimpernel, they had shown a fair face, but to Marguerite they had shown something more foul.

But the leaders of the Revolution have scarcely better paint on their faces. The Pimpernel soon finds himself in a bind, but displays his coolness under pressure, and even if he’s going to his death, he’d prefer that he be … fashionable.

The problems of class bigotry are treated a little too lightly, even if they are acknowledged, but the Pimpernel himself is quite the delight. The adventure is a romp, although it lacks delightful sword play, but the reality in which it is set is grim, and it doesn’t hesitate to acknowledge those bloody realities.

Who deserves what? Did they get what’s coming to them? That’s the morass into which the incautious audience member will descend if they peek under the gaily decorated covers.

Recommended.

I liked these spring trees, located in our neighborhood.

Peaceful.

Remember the terror attack in Pensacola, FL, about a year ago? I don’t, not really, but this recent CNN report that the FBI managed to break the encryption scheme used by Apple for security made me consider the entire controversy in a bit of a new light.

The Saudi military trainee who killed three US sailors and wounded several others in a terror attack last year on a military base in Pensacola, Florida, was a longtime associate of al Qaeda who had communicated with operatives from the group as recently as the night before the shooting, the Justice Department and the FBI announced Monday.

US investigators uncovered the al Qaeda connection after the FBI broke through the encryption protecting the Saudi attacker’s iPhones and have been able to use the information on the devices to carry out a recent counterterrorism operation in Yemen, Attorney General William Barr and FBI Director Christopher Wray said at a news conference.

“The evidence we’ve been able to develop from the killer’s devices shows that the Pensacola attack was actually the brutal culmination of years of planning and preparation by a longtime AQAP associate,” Wray said, referring to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, one of the deadliest branches of the terror group. …

The officials also used the opportunity to hammer Apple for refusing to help investigators break into the devices.

Wray said that the FBI received “effectively no help” from Apple in bypassing the phones and that third-party technology firms were also unable to help investigators. …

Barr called it a “great disappointment” that Apple had refused to help investigators.

“Apple has made a business and marketing decision to design its phones in a way that only the user can unlock the contents no matter what the circumstances. In cases like this, where the user is a terrorist, or in other cases where the user is a violent criminal, a human trafficker, a child predator, Apple’s decision has dangerous consequences for the public safety and the national security and is in my judgment unacceptable,” Barr said. …

Apple said in a statement Monday that the company doesn’t believe in creating special access to its devices for the government because of security concerns.

“It is because we take our responsibility to national security so seriously that we do not believe in the creation of a backdoor — one which will make every device vulnerable to bad actors who threaten our national security and the data security of our customers,” the company said.

“There is no such thing as a backdoor just for the good guys, and the American people do not have to choose between weakening encryption and effective investigations.”

In essence, Apple and its unnamed ally, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have taken an absolutist position reminiscent of the armed protesters who have sallied forth in response to the various Stay At Home orders issued in most states. In each case, they have embraced a position with little regard for those on the other side of the issue, attempting to claim that their position is an ideal, rather than acknowledging that, well, an absolute right will typically impact someone else in a negative way. They share the same anti-government sentiments as well, if in varying strengths, which is beginning to feel increasingly like a dated position to hold. I find myself wondering more and more these days how much public paranoiac positions like these are organic, how many are self-inflicted wounds from incompetent or corrupt behaviors by government employees, and how many of them are the results of careful psychological warfare by our national adversaries.

I do understand the concerns of private individuals about the government monitoring their communications, although I also think, based on the British experience with cameras monitors, that monitoring the volume of communications we see today would be close to overwhelming, even with “AI” support, and so for the common citizen the threat is trivial. I also understand that adding back doors or some other approach for breaking encryption lawfully means there’s an opportunity for unlawful intrusion by malefactors.

But I’d like to make these points.

1. The FBI just broke the encryption. Sure, Director Wray says it was basically a one-off – maybe they got lucky guessing a prime number or pulled off some fancy hardware trick beyond my comprehension, specific to the device. But they figured it out. If they did it once, they now have a strategy for doing it again. The Apple claims rings somewhat hollow.
2. It’s not as if this is all new. Phones have been “tapped” for decades – a lot of decades. Communications monitoring is nothing new. Notebooks have been seized and, when necessary, codes broken and deciphered. A smartphone, which is a highly sophisticated mating of a phone with a smart notebook, being seized and read is, again, nothing new – this has been going on for centuries. For all the screaming about government monitoring and intrusion, we’ve been coping with government having these abilities for a long time, now. We have laws and punishments for illegal governmental tapping. Is there some reason to think we can’t cope with taps on our smartphones?

I know the absolutists claim the government doesn’t “need” this capability, but I do have to wonder. Taking a year to break the encryption on an iPhone cannot, in any universe, be considered “timely,” and I think we’re simply fortunate that nothing of note has happened since that might have been prevented by breaking that encryption sooner.

Perhaps I’m just cranky tonight, but the absolutist position is beginning to feel less principled and more … petulant.

I suspect most reporters are flocking to the State Department to hunt up information concerning the firing of State Department Inspector General Steve Linick last Friday – the third IG fired in six weeks, all announced late on Fridays – and the pundits will ruminate on the possibilities of Secretary of State Pompeo being involved in illegal and/or corrupt behavior with regards to either illegal use of State Department employees for walking his dog, or the delivery of billions of dollars worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia.

It’s a good idea, and I look forward to hearing what they find.

BUT WHAT struck me is President Trump’s behavior. Here’s the transcript from whitehouse.gov:

Q Mr. President, can you explain, sir, why you decided to fire the inspector general at the State Department?

THE PRESIDENT: Yeah, I don’t know him at all. I never even heard of him, but I was asked to by the State Department, by Mike. I offered — most of my people, almost all of them — I said, “You know, these are Obama appointees. And if you’d like to let him go, I think you should let them go, but that’s up to you.”

He’s an Obama employee. I understand he had a lot of problems with the DOD. There was an investigation on him — on the inspector general. I don’t know anything about it.

So I don’t know him. I never heard of him. But they asked me to terminate him. I have the absolute right, as President, to terminate. I’ve said, “Who appointed him?” And they said, “President Obama.” I said, “Look, I’ll terminate him.”

I don’t know what’s going on other than that, but you’d have to ask Mike Pompeo. But they did ask me to do it and I did it. I have the right to terminate the inspector generals. And I would have — I would have suggested — and I did suggest, in pretty much all cases, you get rid of the attorney generals, because it happens to be very political, whether you like it or not. And many of these people were Obama appointments, and so I just got rid of him.

My summation of the above?

Gee, I dunno. Someone told me to fire him, so I did!

Yeah, that’s how it comes out for me. Maybe your mileage will vary, but to me this is the essence of incompetent leadership. Rather than carefully considering the request, the past performance of IG Linick, the information that Linick was planning to present in his report on the State Department, and going from there, he just shrugged and fired the guy.

A competent President would at least have laid all that out at the press conference, and perhaps even fired Pompeo rather than Linick. If, at least, the suspicions that the Saudi Arabian arms deal was not on the up and up turn out to have some correspondence with reality.

But, no. We have a guy who evades responsibility for his actions, while trying to take the kudos of others’ actions when they turn out well. Well, just remember ol’ President Truman’s watchword. Remember? Or is that too much to ask?