Unsightly Mental Blemishes

I read with fascination this NewScientist (29 February 2020, paywall) article on how we potentially carry the seeds of our self-destruction … in our own DNA:

STRANGE fevers and unusual infections are common among the people with HIV who come to Avindra Nath’s clinic for treatment. But when one young man showed up in 2005 struggling to move his arms and legs, Nath was baffled. Although the man had been diagnosed with HIV a few years earlier, his new symptoms matched those of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as motor neuron disease. In an attempt to get his HIV under control, Nath convinced him to start taking antiretroviral drugs. Much to everyone’s surprise, his ALS symptoms improved too.

ALS is caused by progressive deterioration and death of the nerve cells that control voluntary movement. What triggers this destruction is unclear, but recovery is rare. Puzzled, Nath, who ran an immunology clinic at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, began searching the medical literature. There he found other people with HIV and ALS whose ALS symptoms improved with antiretrovirals – drugs that stop viruses replicating. Could this neurological condition be triggered by a dormant virus hiding in our DNA, brought back to life by HIV?

This question doesn’t only hover over ALS. Increasingly, we are waking up to the possibility that conditions including multiple sclerosis (MS), schizophrenia and even type 1 diabetes may in some cases be triggered by ancient viruses buried in our genomes. Under certain circumstances, they revive and start producing mutated versions of themselves, triggering the immune system to attack and destroy neighbouring tissues.

If retrovirus is a new term for you – it was for me – here it is:

A retrovirus is a type of RNA virus that inserts a copy of its genome into the DNA of a host cell that it invades, thus changing the genome of that cell.

Once inside the host cell’s cytoplasm, the virus uses its own reverse transcriptase enzyme to produce DNA from its RNA genome, the reverse of the usual pattern, thus retro (backwards). The new DNA is then incorporated into the host cell genome by an integrase enzyme, at which point the retroviral DNA is referred to as a provirus. The host cell then treats the viral DNA as part of its own genome, transcribing and translating the viral genes along with the cell’s own genes, producing the proteins required to assemble new copies of the virus. It is difficult to detect the virus until it has infected the host. At that point, the infection will persist indefinitely. [Wikipedia]

And then the NewScientist article suggests that something activates the viral DNA, which then stimulates and maybe overstimulates the immune system into attacking the host’s body.

As someone with a controlled case of gout, which is an auto-immune disorder, I’m more than a little fascinated with this. Could I be infected with a retroviral which has disabled the body’s equipment for making the enzyme which I lack, which is responsible for dissolving the uric acid crystals which occasionally form in my toe joints, and potentially elsewhere?

I hope I find out, even if no cure is found. Just the idea that a virus can get into my DNA is totally weird.

I expect the market is going to be entering a jittery period as oil prices are set to swoon over the next few days. This is, according to this CNN/Business report, due to an oil market share war, implemented by dropping oil prices charged to customers, between Saudi Arabia and Russia:

Why are oil prices crashing?

Saudi Arabia, the world’s top exporter, launched a price war over the weekend. The move followed the implosion of an alliance between the OPEC cartel, led by Saudi Arabia, and Russia.

The kingdom and Russia came together to form the so-called OPEC+ alliance in 2016 after oil prices plunged to $30 a barrel. Since then, the two leading exporters have orchestrated supply cuts of 2.1 million barrels per day. Saudi Arabia wanted to increase that number to 3.6 million barrels through 2020 to take account of weaker consumption.

But Russian President Vladimir Putin, worried about ceding too much ground to American oil producers, refused to go along with the plan and his energy minister, Alexander Novak on Friday signaled a fierce battle to come for market share when he said countries could produce as much as they please from April 1.

Why did Saudi launch a price war?

Simmering differences over how best to manage global oil markets spilled into the open at a meeting between OPEC and Russia in Vienna on Friday. After Russia said it was ditching the alliance, Saudi Arabia warned it would live to regret the decision, sources who attended the meeting told CNN Business.

I am looking forward to seeing how President Trump reacts to this contretemps. Here are the relevant factors:

• Trump has been close to President Putin of Russia.
• Trump has been close to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and its Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (commonly known as MBS), who may be regarded as the de facto King of Saudi Arabia.
• The report mentions the United States is now the #1 oil producer in the world, an accession that came under President Obama’s watch. Trump doesn’t much care for Obama.
• The stock market, which plunged on the oil price news and the apparent worsening of COVID-19 pandemic, has been Trump’s favorite metric for the success of his Administration (never mind that it’s not an appropriate metric; whatever club comes to hand for President Trump is the rule of the day for our Amateur in Chief). He’s suddenly deprived of this one, although he can always say “not my fault!”

But we can dig a little deeper here, can’t we? I mentioned above that economic health isn’t the province of the Executive, and here we see why it’s foolish for any President to point at the market, or unemployment, or any economic figure and take credit for it – because these measurements are not measuring things that he or she can control!

Oh, sure, we can talk about regulations and sputter about the burden they place on the private sector, but the truth of the matter is that regulation is, at best, a grey area, a tug of war between Congress and the Executive, and anytime Congress wishes to do so, it can implement or erase regulations – if it can get enough members to vote for it.

The Executive is responsible for implementing the laws passed by Congress. The Executive is not responsible for the economy.

But our current President has hugged markets to his breast, and dry-humped them to stroke his ego. What will he be doing as the markets plunge again and again? Will he pick MBS or Putin as his soul mate? Will he proclaim USA Great Again because we produce a lot of oil?

Yep, President Amateur has some challenging days ahead of him.

The Texas Tribune has a fascinating article on the recent primary in Texas on Super Tuesday, and who is threatening to sweep to judicial power:

In Democratic judicial primaries last Tuesday, Dayna beat David, Jane trounced Jim, and Colleen got more support than John, David and Brennen combined. Is that all there was to it?

Men have dominated Texas courts for decades. Now, in Democratic-controlled areas of the state, they seem headed for extinction.

The corrective for years of gender inequity on the bench has proven rather simple: voters.

Women have disappeared from the high-octane Democratic presidential primary. But in down-ballot, low-information races, Texas Democrats are increasingly, consistently backing women over men. In last week’s Democratic primary, women won more votes than men in all of the roughly 30 gender-split contests for high court, court of appeals and district court, according to results from the Texas Secretary of State. Rarely was it even close.

Thus signaling the continuing transition of society in Texas. If you’re outraged by the male power structure, then this may sound like a good thing. I, however, take a neutral position, because for me competence is more important than gender. Consider this bit:

In many races where women triumphed, both candidates were highly qualified. But panic has set in among attorneys and judges about some surprising female victors.

Austin attorney Madeleine Connor had run four times unsuccessfully and three times as a Republican before last week, when she triumphed in the Democratic primary for 353rd District Court in Travis County over 10-year incumbent Tim Sulak. Sulak had held events with U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett and Cecile Richards; Connor was on the state’s short blacklist of “vexatious litigants,” and in January, a federal judge ordered her to pay $43,000 in sanctions for a string of repetitive lawsuits filed against board members of her utility district.

Illustrating the dangers of ‘blind voting.’ Indeed, elective races for judges’ seats simply illuminates the dangers of the entire process of electing judges: either it turns on ideological issues which may not be compatible with current or future law, thus forcing the winner to either contradict the law or break their promises; or the voters use irrelevant criteria for casting their vote.

I remain firmly ensconced in the “appoint the judges” chair.

Of course, partisan politics can also swamp the judicial appointment process. Consider this report on the recusal of Chief Alaska Supreme Court Justice Bolger, on a trial concerning the legality of an attempt to recall Governor Mike Dunleavy (R) for allegedly ignoring the specified process for appointing judges, as noted by Alaska Public Radio:

Bolger heads the Alaska Judicial Council, which nominates judges for the governor to select from. In response to Dunleavy’s refusal to select from the list of names submitted by the council, Bolger issued a statement saying that Dunleavy’s office didn’t seem to understand the Alaska Constitution’s requirements around the appointment of judges, and added that “the governor must appoint one of the candidates nominated by the council.”

Another of the recall campaign’s grounds is that Dunleavy violated the state’s “separation of powers” doctrine by using his line-item veto to cut the judiciary’s budget, in response to a decision by the Alaska Supreme Court that upheld protections for abortion. Months later, Bolger gave a speech at the Alaska Federation of Natives’ annual convention where he asked participants to push back against “political influence” of the courts.

Presumably, none of the prospective nominees were sufficiently anti-abortion for this Republican governor, and his retaliation was quite stinging.

The point is that I’m not pushing a panacea; we can screw this up as an appointment as well. In the end, though, I think an appointment process has a better chance of producing independent judges devoted to interpreting the law – rather than who-knows-what sort of candidates that the electorate knows so very little about. While I don’t know the specifics of the Alaskan mess, it’s safe to say someone decided to play politics rather than governance.

I enjoyed – morbidly, of course – this discourse on how oceans and land react as the climate warms in this interview with Harvard geophysicist Jerry Mitrovica on Pocket:

Some of your research follows from the attraction of ocean water to ice sheets. That seems surprising.

[Mitrovica] This is just Newton’s law of gravitation applied to the Earth. An ice sheet, like the sun and the moon, produces a gravitational attraction on the surrounding water. There’s no doubt about that.

What happens when a big glacier like the Greenland Ice Sheet melts?

Three things happen. One is that you’re dumping all of this melt water into the ocean. So the mass of the entire ocean would definitely be going up if ice sheets were melting—as they are today. The second thing that happens is that this gravitational attraction that the ice sheet exerts on the surrounding water diminishes. As a consequence, water migrates away from the ice sheet. The third thing is, as the ice sheet melts, the land underneath the ice sheet pops up; it rebounds.

So what is the combined impact of the ice-sheet melt, water flow, and diminished gravity?

Gravity has a very strong effect. So what happens when an ice sheet melts is sea level falls in the vicinity of the melting ice sheet. That is counterintuitive. The question is, how far from the ice sheet do you have to go before the effects of diminished gravity and uplifting crust are small enough that you start to raise sea level? That’s also counterintuitive. It’s 2,000 kilometers away from the ice sheet. So if the Greenland ice sheet were to catastrophically collapse tomorrow, the sea level in Iceland, Newfoundland, Sweden, Norway—all within this 2,000 kilometer radius of the Greenland ice sheet—would fall. It might have a 30 to 50 meter drop at the shore of Greenland. But the farther you get away from Greenland, the greater the price you pay. If the Greenland ice sheet melts, sea level in most of the Southern Hemisphere will increase about 30 percent more than the global average. So this is no small effect.

The convolutions of physics can be surprising – it certainly surprised me. I tried to find a gravity map of Greenland, but the best I could do was some NASA gravity maps that are not focused on Greenland, but are fascinating nonetheless.

Credit: NASA VIsualization Explorer

This one graphically illustrates how much larger the mountains of South America are than the American Rockies, doesn’t it? The red, of course, indicates stronger gravitational attraction.

The Human Monster (1939, aka The Dark Eyes of London) is an exploration of how unmitigated human greed leads to disaster. Dr. Orloff is an insurance broker, who has lost several clients of late. They’re found floating in the Thames, much to the benefit of a local charity. Client Henry Stuart is having financial problems, and, in return for a loan, he makes Dr. Orloff the beneficiary of his life insurance policy. It’s only after he’s signed it that he reveals that he has a daughter.

This upsets Dr. Orloff. Why? You know why. Relatives complicate a simple matter of murder. Still, Orloff lures Stuart to the stalking grounds of his favorite minion, the blind man Jake, one of many blind men inhabiting the Dearborn Home for the Destitute Blind, because Orloff’s already invested a good sum of money in Stuart, and soon Stuart is done in, becoming another corpse in the river.

His murder is investigated by a Scotland Yard detective whose name has slipped my mind, assisted by a Chicago visiting policeman by the name of O’Reilly, and the Scotland Yard detective is really quite clever, noting that the water in the lungs of Stuart does not match the generally polluted mess that is the Thames. I actually remarked that it felt a bit like the old CSI series. Soon enough, the daughter emerges, and, angered at her father’s death, is used by the detective to gather information at the Home.

Eventually, after a twist and turn or two, Orloff has killed another blind man, Dumb Lou, who had worked closely with Orloff and Jake the killer, and when Jake realizes that he and the other blind men are merely being used by Orloff to increase his wealth, it’s Orloff’s turn to meet the murderous rage that he had so often employed in pursuit of mere money, all while Stuart’s daughter, shockingly ineffectual as she’s tied up by Orloff (my Arts Editor was yelling Kick him in the nuts!), must look helplessly on. Too bad about the daughter, up ’til then she’d been charmingly forward and brave.

The surprising complexities and bits of humor of the story are unfortunately obscured by the poor quality of this print, and a slower pace may have benefited the presentation. Still, it was a pleasant way to spend an hour and a half, fingers full of popcorn, eyes glinting with bodies. Enjoy, especially if you’re a Bela Lugosi fan.

I see that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is hard at work, ensuring his future will be spent sitting on the throne:

Saudi authorities have detained three princes including King Salman’s brother and nephew on charges of plotting a coup, the US media reported Friday, signalling a further consolidation of power by the kingdom’s de facto ruler.

The detentions cast aside the last vestiges of potential opposition to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and come as the kingdom limits access to Islam’s holiest sites in a highly sensitive move to contain the fast-spreading coronavirus.

Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, a brother of King Salman, and the monarch’s nephew Prince Mohammed bin Nayef were accused of treason and taken from their homes early Friday by black-clad royal guards, the Wall Street Journal reported citing unnamed sources.

The Saudi royal court has accused the two men, once potential contenders for the throne, of “plotting a coup to unseat the king and crown prince” and could face lifetime imprisonment or execution, the newspaper said. [AL Monitor]

If you’re the type that gets appalled at the messy operations of liberal democracies, take your mind off of those wacky liberals and consider just how much fun it would be to have folks in black uniforms show up in the middle of the night and take someone you love away.

Just because they’re inconvenient to the ambitions of a “Prince”.

I feel quite sure that the Prince will ascend to the throne and rule with an iron hand in the traditional velvet glove, and will be considered impregnable.

Right up until he takes it in the neck. It’s hard to repress naked ambition, as MBS himself should know.

This jellyfish seems unique to me:

Image: Wikipedia

Most people know not to poke a jellyfish, but some jellies can sting you without touching you – by detaching tiny bits of their body that float off into the sea and move around independently.

Upside-down jellyfish jettison small balls of stinging cells in a network of sticky mucus, to kill prey such as shrimp. The jellies then seem to suck in their dinner by pulsating.

It is as if we could spit out our teeth and they killed things for us somehow, says Cheryl Ames at Tohoku University in Japan. “It’s a real evolutionary novelty.” …

… Ames’s group has found that this happens because the creatures shed hollow balls of stinging cells up to half a millimetre wide. Dubbed cassiosomes, they carry hairs that can waft them around in circles to boost their chances of bumping into prey. [NewScientist (22 February 2020)]

And, as much as I admire evolution’s cleverness, I’m also a little creeped out.

Stabilizing Space For The Betterment Of Mankind!

Curiously flat and turgid, Dark Star (1974) is director John Carpenter’s student film, a meditation on the consequences of disconnecting from human communities and, therefore, meaningful human relationships. The Dark Star is a spaceship sent out by a United Earth, a scout loaded with planet-busting bombs in search of planets in unstable orbits. Why? Because a planet impacting its sun can trigger a supernova^[1], and supernovae are existential threats to Earth^[2].

In spastic, erratic style, we learn that mission leader Commander Powell was killed in an accident; Sgt Pinback is an impostor; Lieutenant Doolittle, now mission leader, is disaffected, distant, and longs for his surfboard; Boiler is a malicious non-entity; Talby’s caught up in the beauty of the Universe.

That’s the entire crew, and they’ve not been home in many years, even if the Einstein time dilation effect keeps them young. The occasional message from home doesn’t cut it.

The result of years of stultifying isolation comes out in relationships. They find themselves repeating stories to each other, ignoring the fact they’re being ignored by the others; not following up on incidents and emergencies, even the loss of their living quarters: they’re exhibiting the symptoms of classic depression.

But this extends to external relationships. They have an alien onboard, an apparent refugee from Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1978), but it’s relegated to the status of ship’s mascot, and the responsibility is Pinback’s for feeding and cleanup duty. When it escapes confinement, his anger escalates until he becomes blind to all danger, and the alien nearly kills him. But when he finally fires on it, it pops and deflates, a symbol of the fragility of the human mind, cut off from community.

But the ultimate symbol of isolation is still to come. The ship suffered damage to its communications system during an “asteroid storm,” but it’s not for messages to Earth. This system is used to talk to the planet-busting bombs they carry. The system twice mistakenly signals bomb #20 that it’s time to deploy, arm, and detonate. And what do you know? These bombs are sentient, artificially intelligent entities, whose sole purpose is to go BOOM!

But when bomb #20 is deployed for a third time, but cannot detach from the ship, it refuses to disarm. Doolittle rouses himself from his depression, consulting with Commander Powell for advice (let it not be said the dead have nothing to contribute!), and then assaulting the intellectual defenses of bomb #20 with Powell’s suggestion: phenomenology. That is, he asks #20 how he knows what he knows, and convinces it that it should meditate on this pivotal philosophical problem.

Unfortunately, the reprieve is short-lived. Bomb #20, itself a victim of a lack of community, follows what appears to be cold logic in an imperfect world and finds a reason to complete its purpose.

And all Doolittle can do now is try to catch a wave.

Full of bad special effects, stilted dialogue, dysfunctional characters in extended psychological crises, and blurry cinematography, I don’t know if it would help to fix all those components. The central theme is a difficult mess as it is; the flaws give the film a comedic element required to help the viewer survive the ghastly central question:

What is our real purpose in the Universe?

This may be a revered science fiction classic, but I don’t think it’s required viewing.

¹ No, not really. Supernovae are triggered when enormous stars run out of fuel, collapse, and explode.

² True, if it’s close enough to Earth. Don’t worry about it, there’s nothing we can do about it and it hasn’t happened yet.

Quit it. Quit it now.

A federal judge on Thursday strongly criticized Attorney General William Barr’s disclosure of the Mueller report last year, calling early statements about special counsel Robert Mueller’s conclusions “misleading.”

In an order in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking access to the unredacted report, U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton said Barr’s action caused him “to seriously question whether Attorney General Barr made a calculated attempt to influence public discourse about the Mueller report in favor of President Trump.” …

Barr’s “lack of candor,” Walton wrote in a 23-page ruling in Washington, calls into question the credibility of Barr and the Justice Department in making redactions to the report. For that reason, Walton ordered government lawyers to give him the complete report so he can evaluate whether the material was properly blacked out. [NBC News]

Judge Walton is not a liberal appointee. He’s been nominated and confirmed to various judicial positions and commissions by no less conservative icons than Presidents Reagan and Bush (I), as well as Chief Justice Roberts. And this confirms it:

… Walton, a judge for a quarter-century [+13 more years – HAW], is known throughout the defense bar as a “long-ball hitter” — a jurist willing to put defendants away for a long time to deter future crimes. [WaPo]

My point? Labeling someone a conservative and hating them for it is regressive. It’s important to understand that the conservatives have some serious fissures, and its strong rightward skid since the days of Gingrich have left a lot of basically good Republicans in its wake with little connection to the likes of Trump, McConnell, and the other toxic personalities seeking to elevate their profiles through extremism.

Maybe I’m just cranky from last night’s quick skim of The Daily Kos highlights and their tendency to treat all conservatives as if they’re Ted Bundy, but personally I find Judge Walton’s words heartening. This is why we have an independent, non-elected judiciary. If Walton’s job was dependent on the good graces of Barr or Trump, would he still speak his mind?

Barr should resign.

A positive rush of Senate campaign news has popped up for the political news junkie.

• The most important is the announcement that in Montana term-limited (and former candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination) Governor Bullock (D-MT) has changed his mind, after a lot of prodding, and will run for the seat currently held by Senator Daines (R-MT). This transitions a safe Republican seat into a seat that could potentially be taken by the Democrats, as Bullock has held two state-wide seats, governor and attorney general. It’s true that his margins of victory do not approach those of Daines, but it’s also true that it’s a chancy business to compare victory margins, as there are too many variables, including the waxing and waning of Trumpism. And whether or not Daines’ TrumpScore of 85.5% is good or bad for his campaign is also not clear – will Trump endorse him, and even that raises questions. I await the next poll with mild interest, and, if it suggests a tight race, I will increase my count of Republican seats in play to ten.
• In a slightly dated, but still applicable, post, The Daily Kos reports that in Alabama, the two surviving candidates for the Republican nomination to the Senate seat being defended by Senator Jones (D-AL), Sessions and Tuberville, are indeed ripping into each other with vigor. While this seat remains likely to change hands next January, it’s not foreordained. And given the enthusiasm for Trump displayed by the two candidates, they both have a real vulnerability if the Alabama electorate sours on the President.
• And Steve Benen presents his summary of recent Senatorial campaign news here, covering Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina, and more.

This is the happy season for the political junkie.

A reader writes concerning Biden’s role in a hypothetical matchup with President Trump:

It’s going to be ugly. Trump is glib and younger. So it’s likely to come down to MAGAts vs. anyone but Trump votes. In other words, Biden offers very little to the equation; he’s mostly an innocuous lump representing the opposition.

I see Biden’s best offerings falling into the categories of experience, competency, and as the representative of the only competent and non-corrupt Administration since the Clinton, a link to when governmental affairs were run honorably and efficiently. It’s not an easy message to deliver, but if adroitly done many should find it persuasive.

I just hope he doesn’t have hysterics during the debate. A fatherly You screwed up and now I have to go fix it might be more appropriate.

On Lawfare Lennart Maschmeyer notes how American military cyberwarfare is transitioning its operational theories:

The United States Cyber Command is fundamentally changing its cyber strategy, moving from restraint and deterrence toward a posture of persistent engagement. This new strategy is better aligned with the practice of cyber conflict, and its innovativeness is reflected in the lively debate it has generated among scholars and practitioners. Much of this debate has focused on the lack of clarity concerning the strategy’s implementation and the resulting risks of unintended consequences. Some analysts have argued that persistent engagement could provoke escalation due to misperception. Others claim it may cause friction with allies and signal normative acceptance of adversaries’ disruptive operations. The underlying theory has received less attention, however, despite its importance.

The theory of “cyber persistence” that informs the strategy of persistent engagement is a key contribution by Michael Fischerkeller and Richard Harknett. This theory rests on a crucial assumption: that the interconnectedness of modern information communications technology is the fundamental organizing principle of cyber conflict, because it places actors in a condition of constant contact. According to the theory’s proponents, this condition of constant contact is what renders the adoption of a strategy of persistent engagement imperative.

I argue this logic is flawed.

This is more involved than I have time to explore in detail, but I found this bit particularly interesting:

Neglecting this role of secrecy leads to two pitfalls. First, the strategy of persistent engagement may inadvertently upend the existing dynamic of competition under secrecy, as perceived by adversaries, leading to unintended consequences and instability. As scholars have noted, past forms of competition under secrecy followed a clear set of tacitly agreed rules—one key rule being the avoidance of reprisals against operational centers. As Stephen Grey underlines, in the Cold War intelligence contest, “by tacit agreement, the superpowers never tried to assassinate each other or take reprisals.” Rather than perpetuating stability under these tacitly agreed rules, persistent engagement may upend it by maneuvering “as close as possible” to adversary operational centers, as Gen. Paul Nakasone has suggested. Persistent engagement thus risks disrupting this strategic space, causing instability by signaling to adversaries that reprisals for intelligence coups affecting operational centers are now fair game. Unless the United States Cyber Command enjoys unrivaled dominance in this competition—which is far from clear based on past cyber conflicts—this change is likely to tie down significant resources in fending off adversary operations aiming to create the same “organizational friction” within Cyber Command that Fischerkeller and Harknett propose to impose on adversary operational centers.

Willing to take some losses – typically of intellectual resources, I would expect, rather than actual deaths and damage – in order to keep a fragile peace when the alternative is all-out war is a sensible approach to international low-level conflict. But it’s not hard to see inexperienced amateurs getting all bulgy eyed over it, is it?

We’ve seen a number of incidents of ransomware over the last few years, but I am unaware as to whether the identity of the malefactors has been positively ascertained and tabulated. If we see an escalation, it’ll be interesting to hear if it’s blamed on this change operational theories – and if we decide to go back to accepting small losses in return for accomplishments of our own – think Stuxnet – and no stunning disasters.

Another Super Tuesday update to the Senatorial races pertains to North Carolina and the Senator Tillis (R-NC) reelection campaign. Basically, Tillis’ allies’ attempt to get a weak Democratic opponent nominated failed, as Cal Cunningham appears to have comfortably won his race against Erica Smith, according to Roll Call.

I have not found any recent polls for this race; a poll from several months ago showed Tillis trailing slightly.

Former VP Joe Biden (D-DE) won big on Super Tuesday, including decisively here in Minnesota. What does it mean?

Progressive (?) Kevin Drum pragmatically voted for Biden, not Sanders nor Warren:

And how did I vote today? I was not willing to vote for either Sanders or Bloomberg, so I wavered between Warren and Biden. In the end, though, I voted for Joe Biden. Policywise, I think he’s better than a lot of progressives give him credit for, and in any case it hardly matters since Republicans will allow very little of any Democrat’s policy to pass. On foreign policy, I think Biden learned a lot during the Obama years and is now, deep in his gut, much less interventionist than he used to be. I won’t deny that his gaffes and obvious cognitive slips aren’t concerning, but it’s also easy to overplay those—especially if you support someone else.

In the end, I couldn’t shake free of my central concern over Elizabeth Warren: that she’s too rigid in her beliefs to make the kinds of adjustments politicians have to make if they want to win a general election. I think she’d rather be right than president, and if she won the nomination that’s exactly what she’d be.

Drum in a later post:

I’m a little curious why I’m not seeing more people admit the obvious: Joe Biden is now virtually 100 percent assured of winning the Democratic nomination. He’s going to come out of Super Tuesday ahead of Bernie Sanders and there’s little reason to think he won’t maintain that lead. And if he’s anywhere close to a majority when primary season is over, the superdelegates will put him over the top easily. Right? I mean, does anyone think that Sanders will win more than 10 percent of the superdelegates if he rolls into Milwaukee with Biden anywhere close to him?

Getting in early on predicting Joe has the nomination. That’s what pundits do.

Jim Geraghty on National Review:

Sanders could still salvage the night by winning Texas and California. But overall, the story of Super Tuesday is the utter collapse in momentum for Sanders. The African-American vote has just come out in massive numbers for Biden in state after state, while there’s no sign of that massive wave of new and younger voters that Sanders promised. Bernie still has a good chance of winning the nomination, but the Democratic Party’s establishment pulled its act together at the last minute, and it looks like a long, hard fight all the way to Milwaukee.

For Biden, this night is near-miraculous. Democrats may well end up with some buyer’s remorse; Biden is the same guy who unnerved so many Democrats with his aging appearance, forgetfulness, and gaffes. But the party establishment has put its doubts aside and decided to ride or die with him. After a long, cacophonous noise, the Democratic primary is down to two extremely different candidates.

And CNN is reporting that Biden took Texas, too. It’s important to bear in mind that delegates are allocated proportionally, it’s not a winner-take-all format.

Steve Benen:

For Joe Biden, the good news is he’s suddenly in the lead in the overall delegate count; he has all the momentum; money is poised to pour in; and a variety of party leaders are rallying behind him. He couldn’t credibly ask to be in a better position right now, especially compared to where he was a few weeks ago. The bad news is, despite his gains, the former vice president may yet struggle to lock up a majority of pledged delegates ahead of the Democratic convention. What’s more, Biden will have a target on his back, not only in the upcoming debates, but also as Republicans turn their fire on him.

Ryan Lizza of Politico:

As for Sanders, Biden did not just defeat him across the country, he made a mockery of the senator’s main argument for his campaign. Sanders has repeatedly said he will turn out new disaffected voters, rally the working class to his cause and spike youth turnout to unprecedented levels. None of it has happened. Take his home state of Vermont. Turnout was higher there this year than in 2016, but Sanders won 86 percent of the vote then and just 51 percent this year.

Biden is also winning the working class. To the extent that new voter turnout is higher, it isn’t breaking for Sanders, and youth turnout hasn’t exploded. That’s the revolution Sanders promised. But 18 states have voted and it hasn’t materialized.

So far, there’s been no mention of how well union members have supported Biden. He has historically strong ties to most unions, so if he can rally the union membership to get out and vote, it could be a key to victory both in the remaining primaries and the general election, so long as his VP selection is acceptable to them.

For local voters and those who wonder about endorsements, statistical analysis siste FiveThirtyEight’s Nathaniel Rakich has a remark:

But Biden’s most impressive wins came in Massachusetts and Minnesota, where Sanders entered Super Tuesday as a slight favorite — and Biden wasn’t even the most likely candidate to upset him. Per our forecast, Biden had only a 1 in 5 chance of carrying each state, and yet he won Massachusetts by 7 points and Minnesota by a daunting 9. Both wins showed Biden’s ability to expand his coalition outside his usual comfort zone. Minnesota is a state that has relatively few voters of color (a key part of Biden’s base) and that Sanders won by 23 points in 2016. But the last-minute endorsement of Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who dropped out of the race to support Biden, was apparently very influential. And in Massachusetts, Biden effectively kneecapped home-state Sen. Elizabeth Warren by usurping her former base of college-educated whites; Biden carried the upper-class suburbs that ring Boston.

Rakich’s colleague Geoffrey Smiley reinforces the point:

Minnesota stands out as the state where Biden benefited most from late deciders. The departure of Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar from the presidential race on Monday, along with her endorsement of Biden, helped push enough voters into Biden’s camp for the former vice president to win the state by 9 points — particularly impressive considering Sanders had a 2 in 3 chance of winning Minnesota when Klobuchar left the race, according to our model.

Keep in mind that President Obama, immensely popular with Democrats, did not issue an endorsement, perhaps feeling that it was not proper to interfere in a process which should measure merit, not big-name friends. But it’s also impressive that Senator Klobuchar could turn enough heads with her endorsement to push Biden to a commanding victory. Klobuchar has a strong and loyal base here in Minnesota, even more than I suspected. It makes me wonder if I’d want to see her take a post in a hypothetical Biden government if it was offered.

Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report:

Sanders’s pledge to bring new voters into his movement seems fairly empty in the results we’re seeing so far. His coalition has shrunk since 2016, not grown.

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) March 4, 2020

If true, Sanders will be doomed.

Far right conservative (and former NeverTrumper) Erick Erickson, in an email he’s spraying about, hoping to lure subscribers to his newsletter:

While the Democratic Party continues to drift left towards an eventual crack up of secular rich white voters against black and Hispanic voters, enough of their voters overall rejected a radical candidate. That is a good thing for the country. It is a recognition that the far-left socialist policies of Sanders and Warren are being rejected by minority voters within the Democratic Party. It is a recognition of the fact that a full government takeover of health care and other parts of the private sector are nonstarters. It is a recognition that Medicare for All will go nowhere. It is a recognition that the Bernie Bros are marginalized.

The nation needs two mostly-sane political parties. While the Democrats will never acknowledge the GOP is sane under Trump, those of us who know better know it is and should be thankful the Democrats appear to be rejecting their insane fringe.

That makes November a more difficult fight for the President. But at least it ensures, even if by accident, the country is spared a radical communist as a major party leader.

Erickson is another of those people who won’t take into account connectedness: did Biden win because, as Erickson sees it, the socialist approach to societal problems is insane and evil? Or did Biden win because he presented as someone who’s better equipped than his rivals to beat Trump in the general election? I’ve never much read Erickson, but given his religiosity, I suspect he sees the world in apocalyptic terms, rather than tactical or even strategic terms. We may still see a more socialistic medical system embraced by the Democrats in the future – but for the moment the Democrats see Trump as an existential threat, not to the Democrats, but to the nation. A socialist medical system, whatever its tradeoffs, isn’t in the cards until Trump is out.

And that Erickson thinks he somehow has a better viewpoint is, in itself, a little frightening.

Former Republican Jennifer Rubin of WaPo:

For Biden, Tuesday night is shaping up to be a triumph — a political comeback that happened so suddenly the polls could not keep up. Biden is far ahead of where he was anticipated to be in the delegate race. Bloomberg is flopping, and may well end the race after looking at the numbers. (A statement from his campaign did not promise to fight on.) The party of working people, minority voters, women and suburbanites — not “Corporate Democrats” — is coalescing around Biden with unprecedented speed. Sanders’s loud online presence, his attacks on fellow Democrats and the press and his proud display of his socialist label have not make him more popular than in 2016; in fact, he looks to be losing some of his base.

Ordinary Democrats have not followed the Twitter chatter and the pundits’ scripts. They seem intent on winning, not on making a point and saving the party and the country from the ravages of populism. We should breathe a sigh of relief that one party appears capable of keeping itself tethered to reality and to democracy.

Rubin forgets that Sanders is not a Democrat, but the point remains: attacking other Democrats drives away potential allies and voters. Having seen Sanders on Colbert, he has his charms, but there’s a certain arrogance which can be quite irritating.

Law Professor David Bernstein gives Sanders the sarcastic raspberry on The Volokh Conspiracy:

Part of Bernie Sanders’ pitch is that by motivated voters to turn out, he can beat Trump. Today, I and quite a few people I know who normally don’t vote in Democratic primaries turned out to vote for Biden or Bloomberg because we are so appalled by the prospect of Bernie Corbynizing the Democratic Party. I know other people who turned out to vote for Bernie because they think he’s Trump’s easiest-to-beat opponent. (I think that’s a mistake for the same reason it was a mistake for Democrats to root for or even help Trump in the 2016 Republican primaries.) So mazel tov, Bernie, you increased turnout.

Incidentally, Andrew Sullivan expressed similar concerns about Sanders being the American Jeremy Corbyn here. Perhaps he’ll be a little more relaxed about the future of the Democrats in his next column.

For me, it seems apparent that the black community, behind the leadership of South Carolina’s James Clyburn, came to a collective decision that Biden is the candidate to rally behind to defeat a President who they find quite threatening (and I agree). Through the surprisingly easy victory in the South Carolina primary, which was last Saturday, they signaled the rest of the Democratic primary voters that they considered Biden to be not only viable, but the best available; this in turn had to trigger thoughts and conversations in the voters in the Super Tuesday states.

I think we can see evidence for this in the deviations from expectations. My understanding is that prognosticators were giving all states of the Deep South to Biden, while Texas was inclined to Sanders, and California and all the northern states were Sanders territory, with the possible exception of Senator Warren’s Massachusetts. The actual results?

Biden won the Deep South and Texas. And Maine and Massachusetts. And, by a convincing margin, Minnesota.

Primaries are not where you vote your heart, with apologies to Greg Fallis, but where you select the candidate who can credibly carry a banner with which you can live, while beating the other guy. And while generally I figure “the other guy” is not going to be disaster, I have to make an exception for Trump, as anyone’s who has glanced through this blog will know. I feel fairly confident a President McCain or President Romney would have been annoying, but I would have had confidence that they would have an acceptable conception of the role and a competency with which I could live.

Trump doesn’t come close.

So, if Biden wins the nomination and then the general election, there should be gratitude extended to the black community, not only for selecting Biden, but for sparking the coalescence of the Democrats around any candidate. It’ll be interesting to see how that comes out – more members of the black community in high profile posts? Adjustments to national policies in order to attack problems plaguing the black community?

Reparations?

The future is intriguing. First, we have to see if Biden can ride the wave, and then sell himself to the Independents who’ll decide the next election. Good luck to him!

Tommy Tuberville in 2007 via Wikipedia.

In an update to the Alabama Senate race, Senator Doug Jones’ (D) Republican challengers, former Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III and former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville, more or less split the primary vote, 33% to 32% in Tuberville’s favor. This does not make Tuberville the Republican nominee; he would have had to win 50% or more of the vote for that. Instead, the other challengers are removed from the race, and a runoff will occur March 31.

If the campaigning becomes bitter, it’s possible the Republican Party will be riven with recriminations, permitting Jones to retain his seat. It would appear that President Trump has decided to make this a bit bitter:

This is what happens to someone who loyally gets appointed Attorney General of the United States & then doesn’t have the wisdom or courage to stare down & end the phony Russia Witch Hunt. Recuses himself on FIRST DAY in office, and the Mueller Scam begins! https://t.co/2jGnRgOS6h

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2020

For those who accept Trump’s assertions of total innocence, it won’t be hard to transfer their loyalties to Tuberville. But for those who have their suspicions … well, quite honestly, they probably didn’t participate in the primary. Sessions and Tuberville were essentially competing to see who could be more sickeningly loyal to an inveterate liar.

Still, the supporters of the losing candidate for the Republican nomination may still stay home in a snit. Useful polls should begin appearing after the March 31 runoff.

Yes, Velda, I hate all women.

If the storytellers behind My Gun Is Quick (1957) had been a little more careful with the details of their story, it could have been a little less distracting with questions like, How did she know that? and How did the bad guys find him?

This is one of the stories of the legendary private detective Mike Hammer, he who hands out and absorbs “justice” in equal amounts. A bag of jewelry, stolen during World War II, is hidden somewhere near Hammer’s home base in California, and a young, hopeless lady is wearing one of its rings on her finger. Told it is worthless, Hammer lends her some cash to go home and stop being “in the business,” but before she can make it to the bus stop, fate befalls her, and she’s left a broken bundle on the street. And … ringless.

Just Another Dancer, Just Another Prancer, Watch Out, Vixen, Or you’ll be taking a lickin’! (with apologies to Santa Claus)

Outraged, Hammer goes to work, with and against the police, looking for a killer who destroyed the woman, pushes a mute from a window, drowns another dancer just for associating with Hammer, all while the glitter of jewels blinds them all to the sad lack of morals that compels them onward.

But even Hammer is caught flat-footed when the killer finally stands forth from the shadows, grasping after the glitter that has tantalized them for so long with one hand, holding a gun in the other. And what of the long-suffering Velda, Hammer’s secretary?

This is middlin’ film noir, fascinating in a morbid sort of way as it explores the consequences of the greedy decisions of its many characters – and the desserts they get for their troubles. And, perhaps most troubling of all, is that even in the grasp of dire consequences, they do not weep for their errors, or cower from their punishment, do they?

“You’re a fool, Hammer, a fool! I thought you were just like me!”

That’s blindness.

Between President Trump’s erratic incoherency and Joe Biden’s occasional ridiculous gaffe or incomprehensibility, this is what we could end up:

Two galloping senior citizens, ripening with dementia, running for the Presidency.

Surely this is an indictment of a system in which the citizenry simply ignores the entire political process, or, worse, treats it as part of their theological experience.

OK, boys, let’s shave it bald and let it loose in the sun!

When you watch Godmonster of Indian Flats (1973) make sure you have a partner. Just as when you go SCUBA diving, a partner is a necessity because you’ll keep each other safe: making sure breaks are taken at regular intervals, that serious discussions of the theme of the monstrous sheep that is the eponymous godmonster can take place, and not too much rum & kool-aid is consumed.

Just to be sure, pick a teetotaler for your partner, and make sure they’re strong in their teetotal-ness.

This semi-rancid mashup of such sub-genres as fantasy dinosaur, vigilante lynch mob, mad doctor, assistant to the mad doctor infatuation with the monster, lust with the local boy, sheer power-based insanity, and a total failure to find a suitable ending to the story makes this one of the worst stories I’ve ever encountered. Add in bad cinematography, audio, dialog, plot, acting, and special effects, and this just about hits it out of the ballpark.

Yep, I’m sure someone thinks it’s adorable.

WaPo notes Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) had quite a campaign haul for February:

I see Trump cannot stand rejection, as he’s renominated Rep John Ratcliffe (R-TX), whose initial nomination was withdrawn after Senators from both parties expressed skepticism – and news organizations examined his campaign materials and found them to be, at best, containing dubious claims – at worse, fallacious. I think NBC News‘ report gets it about right:

In what amounts to a direct challenge to Senate Republicans, President Donald Trump announced Friday that his pick to head the intelligence community is the same Republican congressman whose previous bid for the job collapsed amid revelations he misrepresented his background.

Trump tweeted that he was nominating Rep. John Ratcliffe of Texas to be the director of national intelligence, calling the former federal prosecutor “an outstanding man of great talent.”

However, I wouldn’t be nearly so polite about. Trump, who cannot stand to be frustrated in any little thing, is out to demonstrate his dominance. Lift the leg and pee on everyone who rejected his choice, that’s all it comes down to.

But it’s worth wondering how Party discipline, aka toxic team politics, is going to play into this. There’s not really been anyone beyond Trump himself who has endorsed Ratcliffe for the position, and in fact studied legal opinion is that he does not, under the law, qualify for the position.

Given that Ratcliffe has been a vociferous defender of Trump, it’s hard not to see this as nothing more than handing a plum job to a loyal supporter, a supporter who has promised to “reform” a key segment of US Government that has not cooperated with President Trump. The fact that most parts of US Government should be securely and permanently non-partisan matters not a whit to this President.

How will Republican Senators break on this nomination? Given their frantic confirmations of conservative, sometimes ill-prepared individuals, the suspicion is that party loyalty will win out over the requirements of their jobs, and they’ll confirm.

And what if they don’t confirm? Will Trump refuse to endorse them? Endorse primary opponents? That’s the whip, and that may make all the little dogs fall into line.

Bark-bark-bark, all you little Senators. Here’s the result of toxic team politics.

I liked this report from a few months back on improving students’ grades:

An emergency situation that turned out to be mostly a false alarm led a lot of schools in Los Angeles to install air filters, and something strange happened: Test scores went up. By a lot. And the gains were sustained in the subsequent year rather than fading away.

That’s what NYU’s Michael Gilraine finds in a new working paper titled “Air Filters, Pollution, and Student Achievement” that looks at the surprising consequences of the Aliso Canyon gas leak in 2015.

The impact of the air filters is strikingly large given what a simple change we’re talking about. The school district didn’t reengineer the school buildings or make dramatic education reforms; they just installed $700 commercially available filters that you could plug into any room in the country. But it’s consistent with a growing literature on the cognitive impact of air pollution, which finds that everyone from chess players to baseball umpires to workers in a pear-packing factory suffer deteriorations in performance when the air is more polluted. [Vox]

I shouldn’t think this is surprising, since we didn’t evolve for polluted atmospheres – by definition – but it does appear that some are surprised. Or perhaps at our sensitivity.

And I do recall reading, somewhere, about 40 years ago, about how the passengers on steam engines actually liked the fact that their clothes were covered in soot, because that was symbolic of their separation from Nature, that Nature that took lives suddenly and randomly through disease and wild animal attacks.

But mostly, I think, we just think we’re too damn special to be afflicted by minor air pollution.

I understand that some physicists are trying to understand reality not as the traditional particles and fields, but as information, and even had some success where more traditional approaches have not yet found solutions. I will not pretend to understand the approach.

But perhaps they’re not quite on the right track, I suggest perhaps a trifle facetiously. Whatever, I found this post on Slate Star Codex by Scott Alexander vastly amusing, as he asks Gwern Branwen to take a text prediction program named GPT-2 into other realms, such as writing poetry, writing music, and now …

Last month, I asked him if he thought GPT-2 could play chess. I wondered if he could train it on a corpus of chess games written in standard notation (where, for example, e2e4 means “move the pawn at square e2 to square e4”). There are literally millions of games written up like this. GPT-2 would learn to predict the next string of text, which would correspond to the next move in the chess game. Then you would prompt it with a chessboard up to a certain point, and it would predict how the chess masters who had produced its training data would continue the game – ie make its next move using the same heuristics they would.

Gwern handed the idea to his collaborator Shawn Presser, who had a working GPT-2 chess engine running within a week …

It’s always fascinating to use the wrong tool to solve a problem and have it work. It suggests a misapprehension of reality, and misapprehensions are where new knowledge hides, along with the occasional Nobel prize. Naturally, this isn’t perfect:

GPT2 Chess update: I wrote some code to calculate the probability of all valid chess moves. It can reach endgame now. https://t.co/QQzhZJmgQ9

It starts to blunder every game at around move 13. We suspect it’s losing track of board state. (It’s trained solely on PGN notation.)

— Shawn Presser (@theshawwn) January 4, 2020

Here’s Alexander’s last word:

State flag of South Carolina.

Former VP Joe Biden’s overwhelming victory in the South Carolina primary isn’t so important for its delegate count as for its signal concerning who important Democratic communities prefer in the upcoming general election. Ever wondered why Iowa and New Hampshire garner so much attention? It’s not that they’re diverse, because both are fairly homogenuous states; it’s that the homogeneity exists and can be read using the primaries and caucuses.

That’s why I tend to disregard concerns about diversity in these early states. This is all about signaling.

Through the first three contests, I read the results as the white and Latinos like the idea of a progressive going into the general election.

South Carolina, the fourth, is a bastion of the black community, and here the progressives ran into a wall, with the results showing Sanders falling just short of 20% of the primary vote (and rival progressive Warren only came up with 7.1%), while Biden won 48.4%, easily outpolling the progressives in total by nearly 2:1. Surveys seemed to indicate roughly 60% of black primary voters preferred Biden.

I have no special insights into the results, but will only note that reporting indicates the black community seems to feel that, in order to beat an old white guy, an old white guy will be required – and preferably one with experience. While I think a woman could win, the voice of the black community – a potentially significant force in the upcoming election which the Democrats will need to win – suggests I could be wrong. If Warren or Klobuchar took the nomination, despite their individual poor showings in South Carolina, would the black community stay home?

That’s a significant question, and that’s why I don’t actually give a lot of credence to Greg Fallis’ notion that primary voters should vote their hearts. Voting is an activity with an ethical dimension; if one really believes Trump is antithetical to the nation, unlike, say, McCain or Romney, who merely had political visions competing with the Democrats, then selecting the candidate you believe is best able to beat him becomes incumbent on you, ethically speaking.

As I’ve said before, I like Biden. But if he’s going to take the next step, he needs to clean up his act. No more bloopers, they’re not endearing, they are worrisome. He needs to stress his experience, and he needs to stress the Ukraine scandal as an indicator that Trump, whose admitted guilt^[1] in the matter is indicative of Trump’s worries about beating Biden in the general.

And, no doubt causing the Republicans to scream foul!, politicize Covid-19 (the Wuhan coronavirus). Trump is incompetent as a governmental leader, and his mismanagement of the government responsibility for handling public health should be put front and center as to why independents should never, ever vote for Trump again. Don’t bother to appeal to Republican voters, because they’re the ones who brought vast incompetency and amateurism upon us just when we needed professionals in government – and still overwhelmingly think Trump is a great President. They have to find their own way to redemption on this matter, but they won’t listen to Biden because of his association with Obama.

But independents, slapped upside the head in the right way, will listen. They might even think.

But clean up your act, Biden. You do the right thing when you apologize and correct your behavior, but I’d like to see less of that and more forward looking policies, an acknowledgement that the Republican Party is a toxic slag heap, and a pointer to a future that doesn’t include governmental incompetence and sliding into international second-bananahood.

We need better out of you.

¹ I can hear the attentive reader muttering, Wait, Trump claimed his call was “perfect!” Let me explain: It was Trump’s actions which led to the call summary being released (we have never seen the actual transcript, as I understand it, which may be even more incriminating). It was from this summary, along with the testimony of witnesses and whistleblowers, that the House decided to bring Articles of Impeachment; thus, through his release of this material, Trump admits his guilt. Still doubtful? A number of Senate Republicans, at the end of the trial, admitted that the evidence showed Trump had committed a corrupt act. However, with the distinctive and honorable exception of Senator Romney (R-UT), they felt, using convoluted and dubious reasoning, that the corruption was unworthy of conviction.

I haven’t seen much about Comet Borisov since the announcement of its entry into the Solar System, but I did recently run across this orbital mechanics site dedicated to it. I have not messed with it much.