Unsightly Mental Blemishes

In terms of career choices, I found this bit by Shivendra Singh Dungarpur fascinating and almost singular:

A few years ago, I had gone to a slum, Pathanwadi, in the suburbs of Mumbai — accompanied by my guide, Bipin ‘Silver’ — the place where films go to die. Bipin Silver has earned his name from his choice of livelihood: extracting silver from black-and-white films. In a darkened room piled high with 16 mm and 35 mm film cans, I watched a thin old man systematically strip these films bare of silver, leaving ghostly, translucent white strips of nothing scattered on the floor. Bipin says he strips 1,000 kgs of film in one go; he has been doing this for the last 40 years. [The Telegraph of India]

The rape of India’s cultural heritage? Or merely a recovery operation of a precious metal? Assuming the films were acquired legally by Bipin, it’s a mixture of both, honestly speaking. Much like the thousands and thousands of oil lamps residing in archaeological collections, I fear there’s a little bit of over-reverence for the past, an inevitable and to-be-desired quality for those who delve into cultural history. Not that these concerns aren’t important:

In 2014, I received a phone call from Gulzarsaheb. He had been awarded the Dadasaheb Phalke award and the government wanted to screen a retrospective of his films at the International Film Festival of India in Goa. But it couldn’t find a print of his acclaimed film, Maachis. This was a film less than 20 years old; yet it seemed to have vanished. This is just the tip of the iceberg in the tragic story of the colossal loss of India’s film heritage. [The Telegraph]

Certainly, the loss of professional films that win awards is startling and to be avoided. But thousands of home movies? I still puzzle over all the pictures my parents took and left behind when they passed away. Perhaps this is just a reflection of the consumer culture in which they were embedded, I think.

Conurbation:

a city area containing a large number of people, formed by various towns growing and joining together:
the conurbations of Tokyo and Osaka
[Cambridge Dictionary]

Noted in the NewScientist Feedback column (1 June 2019):

Cases of measles continue to soar in the US, following a record dip in the number of vaccinated children that has left millions unprotected against the potentially deadly disease. If Stickland’s opinions are at all representative of his constituents, subscribers to the post-Enlightenment order may wish to steer clear of this part of the Dallas-Fort Worth conurbation. Ignorant paranoia looks to be contagious, and as the Houston Chronicle put it in a recent cartoon, there’s no vaccine for that.

As a practicing software engineer, I work on using the fruits of research labs, albeit sometimes it’s a long stretch from that lab to me, chronologically speaking. But because I don’t actually work in a research lab, I find descriptions of how things go in those labs & institutions to be interesting – even fascinating. Consider this description, originating from Duke University, in the facet of professional ethics of researchers:

Significant discussion focused on system-level factors such as faculty tenure and promotion criteria, the pressure to obtain grants and publish, and the climate of hyper competition in academic research, which participants cited as potential contributing factors for DRPs [detrimental research practices] and misconduct. Participants also expressed frustration at the unrealistic expectation that researchers can maintain an unwavering commitment to ethical coda when the pressures of academic research and job retention may demand moral compromises. For example, one research staff member commented in the context of a discussion on the ethics of research, “Integrity is good and fine, but it doesn’t pay the bills.”

I hope that was sarcasm, but they don’t denote it as such. Integrity and ethics should not be considered hindrances to accomplishing goals, but rather aids in accomplishing those goals with superior confidence in their validity. The researcher’s remark, taken as a serious remark, suggests that the ideal goal of research is being tainted by the pressure to publish.

Naturally, administrators feel a pinch as well: they need a way to measure the performance of the researchers / professors they manage, to the extent that management isn’t a laughing matter; that is what they are trying to avoid.

It seems to me that just counting publications isn’t enough; the quality of such pieces, as measured by significance as judged by the field, as well as negatively by corrections and retractions, must also take place. I wonder if a formalized process embodying those principles is already a major part of most research centres. This Duke University report suggests they’re working towards it but may not be there yet.

They look very proper.

Due to illness, posting on this blog may be curtailed.

Cryptobenthic:

1. Of fish: both benthic (living on or near the seafloor) and cryptic (hiding in crevices, or camouflaged). [Wiktionary]

Noted in “The tiniest fish are the most important for healthy coral reefs,” Michael Le Page, NewScientist (1 June 2019):

… Simon Brandl has been studying “cryptobenthic” reef fish that are less than 50 millimetres long as adults – basically, the ones you don’t see when snorkelling or diving on a reef. When he looked at surveys of plankton near reefs around the world, he was surprised to discover that 70 per cent of the fish larvae were of these cryptobenthic species.

Related to the Lyme Disease thread, and tempting me to entitle this post My Deadly Disease Has A Tail-Wagging Proxy, I ran across a recent study comparing incidence of the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi, one of the sources of Lyme Disease, as found in dogs against actual reports of Lyme Disease in the United States. Here’s the two maps, respectively, taken from “Quantifying the relationship between human Lyme disease and Borreliaburgdorferiexposure in domestic dogs,” Yan Lui, Geospatial Health 2019:

Given that dogs but not humans are screened for Lyme Disease on a yearly basis, this is an interesting way of determining when Lyme Disease, or the ticks that carry it, are moving into a new area. And, if you’re a little nervous about needles, get yourself a dog and make monthly visits to the vet with your walking pin cushion.

There’s been predictable and justified outrage over President Trump’s remarks concerning foreign interference in American elections, which were:

The president told Stephanopoulos that “life doesn’t work that way” when asked why his son didn’t go to the FBI. Trump also said he would want to hear if another country had information on another candidate and called it “oppo research.”

“It’s not an interference, they have information,” Trump said. “I think I’d take it. If I thought there was something wrong, I’d go maybe to the FBI.”

Stephanopoulos then pointed out that FBI Director Christopher Wray said his agency should know about contacts from foreign governments.

“The FBI director is wrong,” Trump said. [NBC News]

There’s been references to previous attempts at interference as a critique of Trump’s stance, but that’s not an explicit critique of the issue, so let’s be clear. The use of foreign-supplied information leaves those candidates who accept it vulnerable to later exploitation by the suppliers. Why? Because it’s generally considered poor form to allow such interference in our elections. When a candidate accepts it, the foreign entity can later reveal the candidate’s acceptance, which becomes a lever on the candidate’s behavior – especially if the candidate is wins the election.

But why is it wrong? Let’s not explore the myriad reasons why foreign interference in our elections could be deleterious to our nation’s (and citizenry’s) future, because it’s not relevant to my argument. No, let’s go with the reason being that the American citizenry thinks it’s wrong.

With that in mind, Trump’s pronouncements, which could be interpreted as simply him showing his toughness to his base, assume the quality of an admission of guilt, and an attempt to normalize the behavior, thus getting him off the hook. This is how it’s always done, how it works, diverting the attention of those paying attention from the critical question of Should this be permitted to Oh, well, if it’s always …

Keep this in mind. He’s trying to walk a tightrope, and a push at a critical moment might reveal information about the last campaign which will indicate that he’s utterly mendacious.

The newer generation of peonies has disdained its support system:

Perhaps in the future it’ll be a little more temperate.

If you’re a fan of a quick, tightly knit plot involving secret agents, you may want to look up an old series that has favorably impressed us called Danger Man (aka Secret Agent). Made starting in 1960, each episode (at least in the first season) is a half hour long, B&W, and follows the adventures of John Drake, American secret agent, as he foils plots against the Western world.

This is not a pain-free series. Drake loses friends to temptation and to death, he has to make hard choices, and explores some of the backwaters of morality, all in half hour chunks. Episodes are not connected, so it’s easy to watch them at convenience.

On this cold & dreary day, have some more purple irises to raise your spirits.

Source: Gallup

A reader remarks on Speaker Pelosi’s apparent preference to jail President Trump:

I think she’s just trying to defuse the push for impeachment. Which makes her an impediment. She ought to get out of the way, or be forced out.

I think this is a dicey question. We have a bunch of variables, some of which we think we know how they’ll work, and some we have only a little historical precedent, of a long time ago, to work with.

1. GOP Senators. While there’s a constant grumble of discontent with certain parts of the Trump Administration, they generally do not buck President Trump, although I’ll grant there has been a few exceptions, the most noteworthy being the vote to deny funding for the Saudis with regard to their war in Yemen. But, as the link I provided reports, they were not sufficiently together on the subject to override the Presidential veto. It’s quite likely that they will never vote for conviction on impeachment charges, if only because most of them agree with South Carolina Senator Graham’s sentiment that their primary motivation in occupying their seats is to … get re-elected. Sadly, no one has put themselves forward in the mold of Senator Howard Baker (R-TN), who had the courage to ask publicly of his own Republican President, “What did the President know and when did he know it?”
2. American public. It’s been speculated that Pelosi wants more public support before initiating impeachment proceedings, but it’s a tricky thing, isn’t it? Former Democratic Rep Steve Israel of New York notes in The Atlantic, “… Even Republicans recall how the failed impeachment of President Bill Clinton backfired: In 1998, Democrats gained seats in Congress, a rare occurrence for a president’s party in a midterm election.” Contrariwise, in the comparable case, the Nixon impeachment, the impeachment and trial never actually occurred, as Nixon resigned before he could be impeached. But the investigations had begun and, as the chart at the top of this post indicates, as details of Nixon’s actions came to light, his approval ratings began dropping, ending in the low 20s.
   But today’s American public is not that of the Nixon years, when virtually everyone voted for Nixon in the face of voting for him or the radical McGovern; the public, once it had its face rubbed in the evidence, was far more fluid, ready to change its mind when the evidence was presented for public viewing. Today, amidst the thousands of “news” sources, people tend to find the ones that make them happy, rather than those that make them uncomfortable, and if they’re inclined to Trump, then the evidence of his alleged misdeeds may never reach them.

Given Rep Israel’s observations concerning the backlash that hit the Republicans in the election following the failed Clinton impeachment, Speaker Pelosi’s refusal to begin impeachment proceedings without strong evidence derived from current investigations, and a groundswell of support from the general American public may be the wiser course of action – even if it may seem a trifle craven in the face of the evidence so far gathered, but not yet widely dispersed to the public.

… lupines! Just .. not purple.

An angel and a fallen angel?

The Hippopotamus (2017) is one of those cranky examples of British humor that can often leave an audience wondering if there’s a point to the hijinks. Ted Wallace is a poet, a poet with a big name, a string of failed marriages, destroyed friendships, a taste for alcohol arguably stronger than his taste for breathing, a job as a theatre reviewer of definite opinion, and a case of writer’s block so powerful he hasn’t published anything in a decade. He’s a cranky old shit.

His job evaporates, and as he celebrates, his goddaughter shows up. She has been diagnosed with leukemia, but claims she’s been miraculously cured – and she hires her godfather to find out how. Is her family home the base for creating miracles?

There’s history here, and not so good of history, but Ted has a positive connection with his godson, David, and he leans on that to cadge a visit. David is a trifle, well, odd. He spends evenings outside, he often disappears, and his family has witnessed him saving people and animals that are near death. Add to that a preoccupation with poetry, but poetry Ted disapproves of, and he’s a bit of a package that you’re not certain you’d sign for.

Ted continues to investigate, digging beneath the surface of a pond opaque to casual investigation. Between old, detested acquaintances, desperate for a miracle, and family members who hesitate to throw either water or oil on the fire, the truth is occulted, but Ted has found a purpose, a drive that drags him, kicking and screaming, out of his private pond of whiskey, and on a quest for truth.

Even as a poet might see it.

But there’s a price to be paid for truth, and it’s enforced through a ruthless Nature – at least in the eyes of his ex-wife. If only he’d kept his mouth shut, she seems to be saying, everything would have been fine. Maybe it was just as well they divorced.

The characters are well drawn, and it’s all a trifle sly and fun. Still, the title is a bit of a puzzle, and without having read the novel, I can only guess that a hippopotamus goes where it will, with little consideration for manners, and that’s Ted in a single line. But is there a theme that draws this all together.

Truth to be told …

This is highly dismaying, if unsurprising:

White House officials barred a State Department intelligence agency from submitting written testimony this week to the House Intelligence Committee warning that human-caused climate change is “possibly catastrophic.” The move came after State officials refused to excise the document’s references to federal scientific findings on climate change.

The effort to edit, and ultimately suppress, the prepared testimony by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research comes as the Trump administration is debating how best to challenge the fact that burning fossil fuels is warming the planet and could pose serious risks unless the world makes deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade. Senior military and intelligence officials have continued to warn climate change could undermine America’s national security — a position President Trump rejects.

Officials from the White House’s Office of Legislative Affairs, Office of Management and Budget, and National Security Council all raised objections to parts of the testimony that Rod Schoonover, who works in the Office of the Geographer and Global Issues, prepared to present on the bureau’s behalf for a hearing Wednesday. [WaPo]

On the existence of climate change, we’ve seen this Administration deny it, call it a hoax, refuse to acknowledge our responsibility for our share of it, and try to suggest it’ll be a net positive.

Anything to avoid taking leadership on the issue.

This is nothing new to folks who’ve kept track of what may be the most important issue of our time and how various GOP-controlled parts of our government have reacted. But for those who’ve become newly aware of it, it’s important to understand who has failed in their responsibilities because, so long as we have a country that is dependent on the votes of its citizens to select its readers, it’s important to understand the shirkers have been the GOP, and the Democrats have, at least, tried.

Analyses of the motivations of the GOP I’ve performed before, but today I’ll just leave it here. This Administration never really had the nerve for this sort of challenge, and the promotion of an amateur to the position of President will haunt this nation for a long time to come.

Lupines! (Is that proper plural?)

Here’s our normal batch of purplish lupine.

Tomorrow a new variety.

More of those gold & maroon irises bloomed recently.

Too many lights!

Faced with the epic that is Interstellar (2014), there’s a certain inclination to punt because this is a big story that seems to embody a single theme, if it can only be dug out of the floorboards of the storytellers’ minds. This is also a story that plays its cards close to its vest. The only foreshadowing is so heavily disguised that it’s merely one of many mysteries, rather than a vital, if unintelligible, clue concerning the future. Even the dystopia into which we step is only vaguely hinted at, with remarks about agricultural pests which can no longer be kept at bay, and hints that a war was fought in which certain combatants chose not to use the biggest weapons at their disposal, despite the demands of the leaders.

That dystopia is the main driver of this story, a story which starts on a farm full of quiet desperation and leads to the mysterious phenomenon in orbit around Saturn, and from there to somewhere else. But this isn’t all about physical bravery, but mental as well, as the mathematics of survival – the equations which must be solved in order to lift mankind off of Earth – prove to be a critical and lifelong focus for several characters. Follow that with survival-oriented betrayal, and then another one, and then a reversal, an almost ridiculous survival stunt, and at least one mountain sized chicken & egg plot hole (which the story very wisely never tries to explore), and after a while the mind starts to boggle at trying to understand all of the currents and undercurrents going on in this story.

The theme may simply be Never quit. The elaborations are, however, sophisticated and intellectually informed. For example, the fact that time slows in gravity fields is a fact that is used to good advantage, even if it seemed to be exaggerated and perhaps leads to a bit of a scientific blunder by the storytellers. That leads on to questions concerning how social beings would cope with large chronological discrepancies – and not through a bit of magic to make it all go away. Imagine watching your child die, except your child is now 60 or more years older than you. The tragedy is no longer the oncoming death, but the fact that you missed out on their life.

Not every element was explored. For example, there’s some  fascinatingly intelligent robots, but we don’t really get to explore whether those things they’re asked to do have any ethical facets or not – you just jump into a black hole if asked.

Add in some lovely CGI, and for the science fiction fan this is probably a gem. As a former reader, I can say it was good to see the female characters coming to the fore. How this plays with the general audience is a little harder to say, but I say the hell with that question.

Recommended.

Just hours after I predicted it, Trump satisfies it, as CNN is reporting:

President Donald Trump said tariffs on Mexican goods are “indefinitely suspended” after negotiators from the US and Mexico were able to reach a deal on immigration enforcement.

“I am pleased to inform you that The United States of America has reached a signed agreement with Mexico,” Trump tweeted Friday. “The Tariffs scheduled to be implemented by the U.S. on Monday, against Mexico, are hereby indefinitely suspended.”

The announcement was a dramatic reversal of a sudden tariff threat that Trump himself announced last week in an attempt to put more pressure on the Mexican government to stem the flow of migrants into the US. Trump spent much of the intervening period out of the country, visiting with European leaders and attending a state dinner in the United Kingdom, while US and Mexican negotiators worked feverishly in Washington to avoid another escalation in his foreign trade wars.

Sure, another big win – or so will go the narrative.

Too bad the Mexican officials didn’t dare to test Trump’s goofball threat. Even worse, unless the Federales are going to chase down immigrants and kill them, they won’t stop coming. The problems at home are too great to discourage most of them. And we’re not addressing those problems, either, so why should expect this to work?

Another thought: now that President Trump knows that threats of tariffs on Mexican goods will enforce his will on Mexico, will he try to use that threat again and again and again? Has Mexico screwed up big-time with this agreement? Or was Mexico wise enough to include a clause guaranteeing no tariffs will be imposed for the balance of the Trump presidency?

Démarche:

A démarche (/deɪˈmɑːrʃ/; from the French word whose literal meaning is “step” or “solicitation”) has come to refer either to

1. a line of action; move; countermove; maneuver, especially in diplomatic relations, or
2. formal diplomatic representation (diplomatic correspondence) of the official position, views, or wishes on a given subject from one government to another government or intergovernmental organization.

Diplomatic démarches are delivered to the appropriate official of the government or organization. Démarches generally seek to persuade, inform, or gather information from a foreign government. Governments may also use a démarche to protest or object to actions by a foreign government. Informally, the word is sometimes used as a verb to describe making or receiving such correspondence.

Noted in “Near-collision between U.S. and Russian warships in Pacific requires emergency maneuvers,” Paul Schemm and Paul Sonne, WaPo:

“The behavior is unsafe and unprofessional,” Shanahan said. “We’ll have military-to-military conversations with the Russians, and of course, we will démarche them. To me, safety at the end of the day is the most important. It will not deter us from conducting our operations.”

“I’m not going to vote on a disapproval of the president’s actions. That’s a longtime policy of mine,” Rep. Kenny Marchant (R-Tex.), even as he expressed some reticence over Trump’s tariff threat. “I never voted against the governor when I was in the statehouse.”

Marchant added: “It would have to be very egregious, and I don’t find this to be that egregious.” [WaPo]

Currently with a TrumpScore of 95, he certainly is a very nice little lapdog indeed. It’s worth noting Rep. Marchant represents a Texas district, and with Trump’s threat of putting tariffs on all Mexican goods, and the damage that would do to Texas given its dependence on Mexican trade, he could really bad if he doesn’t vote for stopping those tariffs.

All that said, I do not expect the tariffs to be applied. I expect Trump to soon claim the Mexicans have promised to do thus and so, and that there’s no need for tariffs. Thus he’ll look like he’s done something for his base, but not damaged the Texas economy. He’ll try to spin it as a big win, because that’s how he functions – on supposed big wins.

It’s all a game he plays, and hopes he can continue to sucker all the other players.

On a day I’ve not felt any urge to write anything, I instead present my neighbor’s … trees.

Politico reports on the inner machinations of the Democrats:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi told senior Democrats that she’d like to see President Donald Trump “in prison” as she clashed with House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler in a meeting on Tuesday night over whether to launch impeachment proceedings.

Pelosi met with Nadler (D-N.Y.) and several other top Democrats who are aggressively pursuing investigations against the president, according to multiple sources. Nadler and other committee leaders have been embroiled in a behind-the-scenes turf battle for weeks over ownership of the Democrats’ sprawling investigation into Trump.

Steve Benen wonders if Pelosi wants to take what appears to be a more secure route to punishing President Trump:

But it’s possible there was a little more to this. What if Pelosi was pointing to an alternative approach to presidential accountability?

As we’ve discussed, Trump has been implicated in a variety of alleged crimes, though as far as the Justice Department is concerned, Trump is shielded from prosecution so long as he’s in office. If he were to lose in 2020, however, that shield would disappear, and the prospect of an indictment would become quite real.

Indeed, by most accounts, the only way for Trump to ensure he faces no criminal liability is for him to remain president for another four years, effectively running out the clock on the statute of limitations.

If Pelosi said, “I want to see him in prison,” she may have been doing more than just expressing contempt for the Republican in the Oval Office. She may have also been signaling a way to hold Trump responsible for his alleged crimes in a way that would be more severe than impeachment.

Unfortunately for Benen, Trump could take the Nixon approach: resign and his successor simply pardons him for all federal crimes he may have committed.

It’s not a perfect solution, of course, as state indictments are still viable – no pro-active pardon will apparently stand for State violations. But it would remove at least some of the punishment that might be coming Trump’s way.

And Pence might get one day of being President.

Sub rosa:

Translated from Latin, this means “under the rose” and is a term frequently used for surveillance but can also mean any type of undercover or discrete investigation. We provide sub rosa/surveillance services both to private parties and to commercial firms. [The Urban Dictionary]

Noted in “Meet the GOP operatives who aim to smear the 2020 Democrats — but keep bungling it,” Manuel Roig-Franzia and Beth Reinhard, WaPo:

As it turns out, the truth or falsity of a Burkman-Wohl-concocted story is merely an inconvenience. Let the media’s “puritanical” fact-checkers puzzle it out: That’s the view of this twosome who fancy themselves as sub rosa players in the 2020 presidential contest and busy themselves trafficking in Internet rumors they hope will damage Democratic candidates.