Unsightly Mental Blemishes

Earth To Sky Calculus sent a balloon up to 100,000 ft during the recent eclipse, and here’s the result, as assembled by Ginger Perez:

Earth to Sky Calculus is selling a poster. Spaceweather.com has more information.

Joseph DeThomas on 38 North believes both North Korea and the United States have blinded themselves to acceptable conflict end states other than blowing each other into nuclear bits:

Due to a fatal error in North Korean strategic calculation, this environment has been destabilized. Pyongyang has chosen to: 1) add millions of US hostages to its strategy by pressing forward with development of a thermonuclear-tipped ICBM; and 2) craft and test a nuclear war fighting strategy that targets nuclear weapons on key US military assets and facilities which are critical to US and ROK defense planning. Leaving aside whether having American civilians in North Korean nuclear cross-hairs would undercut the faith of our ROK and Japanese allies in US resolve, the US and ROK militaries simply cannot afford to have key air, sea or logistics bases and debarkation points for US ground reinforcements neutralized by a DPRK nuclear first strike—not to mention the military and civilian casualties that would result from absorbing the North’s first strike. However effective US and Japanese theater missile defense might be, it is vulnerable to a barrage of missiles and the DPRK has hundreds available for attacks on Japan and South Korea. Any prudent US commander would have strong incentives to preemptively attack North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilities at the outset of a conflict in order to limit the damage to vital US military assets.[1] …

Denuclearizing North Korea is a worthy goal. But it is not worthy of a nuclear war in East Asia—even one the US would win. There are less appealing but acceptable alternatives that would leave US alliances intact and allow the natural advantages of the US and its allies to erode North Korea’s hostility over time. The same logic should apply to Pyongyang. It has been remarkably successful at playing off its many neighbors and the United States. It has survived the worst of its economic maladies. The greatest threat to its survival is forcing the US into a war in which it believes its own people’s survival is at stake. The DPRK could easily return to its earlier deterrent strategy and survive for decades.

Something we always dreaded during the Cold War – mistakes on both sides. In this case, it’s mistakes made of ideology, mendacity, and misunderstanding.

For those keeping track of this interesting Constitutional issue, Politico is reporting that the hearing concerning whether or not Arpaio’s conviction will be vacated will be October 4. A collection of Democratic lawmakers have submitted a letter to the judge asking her to reject the pardon.

More than 30 House members are urging a federal judge to reject President Donald Trump’s pardon of former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio on a contempt of court charge.

The lawmakers—all liberal Democrats—filed an amicus brief Wednesday arguing that Trump’s pardon amounts to an unconstitutional intrusion on the judicial branch’s ability to ensure that its orders are obeyed.

“A full and unconditional presidential pardon….effectively deprives the Court of ‘the independent means of self-protection,’ and makes the Court dependent on the Executive,” the House members argue in the new brief. “The pardon here is an intentional usurpation of the Court’s authority by the President. President Trump does not pretend that his pardon of the Defendant is based upon the considerations of grace that usually justify the exercise of the pardon power.”

That would cause quite a stir and would probably go right to the Supreme Court. But would it further polarize the nation – provoke an interesting debate? I fear the former, not the latter.

As the Puerto Rico disaster reaction continues, it looks like Trump isn’t really into it. From CNBC:

President Donald Trump on Saturday lashed out at the mayor of San Juan and other officials in storm-ravaged Puerto Rico, contemptuous of their claims of a laggard U.S. response to the natural disaster that has imperiled the island’s future.

“They want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort,” Trump said in a series of tweets a day after the capital city’s leader appealed for help “to save us from dying.”

“Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help,” Trump said.

The tweets amounted to a biting response to San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz, who had accused the Trump administration of “killing us with the inefficiency” after Hurricane Maria. She implored the president, who is set to visit the U.S. territory on Tuesday, to “make sure somebody is in charge that is up to the task of saving lives.”

Trump has pledged to spare no effort to help Puerto Rico recover from Maria’s ruinous aftermath, and tweeted that military personnel and first responders had done “an amazing job,” despite having “no electric, roads, phones etc.”

Ignoring the personalities and politics involved, that last paragraph does raise an important point that, in the future, will be exacerbated by the forecast increasing violence of weather phenomena: what’s an appropriate metric for measuring our response to such disasters?

I mean, is it the number of lives lost after the incident has occurred?

Is it the number of lives lost during the incident?

Speed of response?

Magnitude of response?

Think about it – we’re starting to deal with disasters of a magnitude with which we’re certainly unfamiliar; in some cases, the severity will be unprecedented. And while I think Trump is, at his foundation, completely incompetent for the job of President, I do not care to follow into the condemnation trap.

That is, how hard is this particular problem to solve? How do we measure his response vs that of Hurricane Sandy vs that of Hurricane Katrina? Are those storms comparable? How does an island complicate matters? How does the damage to the mainland complicate our response to the damage to the island?

It’s worth contemplating. Right now, unless the commentator has some direct experience in major disaster relief, like Ret. Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, it’s hard to see the accusations – or Trump’s claims of an expeditious response – and anything more than a case of one person’s word against another over an incident we didn’t experience.

Maybe it’s the engineer in me, but we really need a way to measure the competency of the Federal response to disasters that is independent of the person doing the measurement. It’s fundamental not only for measuring the competency of the people in charge, but also for improving our response.

And that will be critical in the future.

David French on National Review thinks he knows what’s wrong with college sports:

None of this is surprising. All of it should highlight the need for radical reform. After all, in college sports we see the old collision — between the socialist Utopianism of the central planner and the entrepreneurial will of the individual. It’s long been puzzling to me how many conservatives support the NCAA model of athletic exploitation. Karl Marx once famously proclaimed, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” The NCAA corollary is, if anything, a more corrupt, “From each according to his marketability, to each according to our whim.” “Need” has nothing to do with it.

And his solution?

There’s an easy alternative. Let’s replace the vast NCAA rule book with one line: “NCAA student-athletes must be enrolled at the school and in good academic standing when practicing with an NCAA-sanctioned team or playing in an NCAA-sanctioned event.” That’s it. That’s not a rulebook, it’s a notecard. It’s a slightly longer way of saying, “Treat student-athletes like all other students.” If a school wants to pay players a market rate, let it. If a local car dealer wants to use an athlete for a commercial, that’s fine. If a booster wants to contribute to a player’s salary, let him. Make the NCAA honest. Properly compensate the people who generate the wealth.

And this will place our colleges and universities – our places of higher education, coincidentally upon which the future of the nation rests – in the position of trying to balance the competing needs of education and having a winning team.

And notice how the former goal – education – is a well-defined, if vast, goal, with unlimited positive benefits for both the school, in terms of prestige, and for the nation, for increasing its competitive edge, while the benefits of the goal of having the latter, a winning sports team, are much harder to identify and quantify.

Let’s compare and contrast:

1. Goals
   1. Education: this the main purpose of an educational institution, to instill an education in its students. This should be the organic identity of the school, no matter its specialization.
   2. Sports team: putting a sports team on the field is not a putative purpose of an educational institution,and it has little to nothing to do with higher education. Not that you don’t learn important life lessons playing sports, but these are not the sorts of lessons that require the background of, say, Stanford; they can be learned just as well in the Minor Leagues of baseball.
2. Benefits
   1. The benefits of pursuing education unlimited and multifaceted, from bringing prestige to the instittution, benefiting a nation whose very existence may depend on the educational attainments of its citizens, to the citizens themselves becoming more aware of the complexities of nature and human culture that surrounds them. In short, a good education in a discipline which the student loves is of nearly unlimited benefit for all the actors.
   2. The benefits of a winning sports team? Beyond those that accrue to the actual players, one must appeal to the sense of community they engender. At this juncture, I must admit that I am speculating, because, despite the fact that I attended and graduated from the University of Minnesota/Twin Cities, the various sports teams were non-factors in my cultural life; indeed, most of my time was spent sleeping or studying. So I must merely speculate that a winning sports team improves student spirit; and beyond that, I see little of lasting benefit.
3. Detriments, by which I mean factors that are detrimental to the institution, nation, or students.
   1. There are few detriments in pursuing the goal of providing higher education, but I can think of a couple. First, there is, of course, academic fraud, brought on through the publish-or-perish culture in academics these days. Second, a certain insularity does seem to accrue in the academic world, as the most extreme example might be seen as the antifa movement.
   2. In the attempt to field a winning sports team, there are many detrimental factors. There is,
      of course, the provision of the “student-athletes”, which has led to periodic scandals and uproar. If we follow David’s recommendation, the nature of the scandals may change, but they won’t go away. “Tutoring” scandals wherein teachers are bought off, papers are written by someone other than the student-athlete, and other such incidents will not disappear due to David’s proposal. In general, corruption will continue unabated, and now perhaps unabashed.Second, the entire enterprise of college sports may become unstable as some institutions devote large amounts of resources, perhaps to the detriment of their real purpose, in pursuit of victory, while other institutions do not, resulting in boring contests and even teams dropping out.

      Third, what if your sports team is a losing proposition? Does that mean your community suffers? Is this a wise risk to take in an area that doesn’t contribute to the mission of the institution?
      But less obviously, there’s this entire “community binding” exercise. As frequent readers are aware, I recently commented on tribalism, and certainly a community falls into the same category as tribalism. I do not suggest that they are the same, but I am concerned that they instill certain attitudes that are inimical to the nation as a whole. I will grant that I am fairly blind to this entire part of the human experience. The University of Minnesota keeps sending me these applications to join the alumnae association, and while intellectually I guess I sort of get it, emotionally I find the entire phenomenon perplexing. I didn’t particularly enjoy the educational experience, even if I have derived many benefits from it, so why should I want associate with it afterwards?

No, I think David’s tried to step across a chasm and come up halfway short. I think the problem is that NCAA college sports, as it currently exists, is profoundly foreign to the mission of any educational institution. If David really wants to enable student-athletes to achieve their economic potential, especially at such a young age, then he should advocate educational institutions should simply dump the entire idea of the Big 10, Pac-10, the SEC, the NCAA, the entire schlepping, scandal-prone, distracting mess.

That’s what I advocate. If the NFL and the NBA want a minor league, then have them set it up.

But so far as I can see, college sports teams, as they are currently constituted, do nothing for the educational system as a whole, and that’s because they do not contribute to the main mission and purpose of the institutions.

I’d been thinking this would be an opportune moment for Tesla to make a move – and  CEO Elon Musk agrees. From Fortune Magazine:

Eight days ago, Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico as a Category 4 storm causing widespread damage and knocking out electrical power to the entire island of 3.5 million residents. As soon as the storm passed, Tesla began sending hundreds of Powerwall battery systems that can be paired with solar panels to the devastated island in an effort to restore electric power there.

And the shipments of Powerwall battery systems are continuing, a Tesla spokesman confirmed.

The Powerwall, which was first introduced in April 2015, is a battery designed for homes that store the energy generated by solar panels.

Tesla employees are currently in Puerto Rico working on installations of the battery systems and installing or repairing solar there. The employees are coordinating efforts with local organizations.

And they’re not advertising it, apparently. They’re just putting their backs into the effort.

It’s been a few weeks since the DACA kerfuffle, in which the Democrats came to an agreement with President Trump concerning the immigrants who came to the United States when they were very young, over the objections of the GOP leaders and the extremist-right wing that believes it controls the heart-strings of right. They predicted disaster for President Trump’s approval ratings. At this juncture, any such effect should be obvious. And the result from Gallup is …

… yeah, the extreme right wing’s predictions are about as good as Sylvia Browne, the notorious psychic who left a long history of failure in her wake – but kept on smilin’. There was no fall off the cliff (it was a small cliff in any case), and his base stayed in droves. The only folks he might have driven away are the Independents who voted for him, and I think by the time DACA came trotting in, they had already been driven off by his rank incompetence and unsupportable braggadocio.

So how to explain their failure? I’ve been working on that as one of the subjects of this blog, but Andrew Sullivan has published a fine short political history & analysis dating from the time of President Clinton. Not in-depth, but so many of his points correlate with my own observations that I find it a believable piece, and given his own evident independence and willingness to, well, think hard on subjects, I find it appealing enough to use it as a working hypothesis.

And what might be that hypothesis? Unsurprisingly, it’s tribalism, but more deeply explored than I have the knowledge to do so. I found this to strongly correlate with some of the more inexplicable observations of Trump supporters:

One of the great attractions of tribalism is that you don’t actually have to think very much. All you need to know on any given subject is which side you’re on. You pick up signals from everyone around you, you slowly winnow your acquaintances to those who will reinforce your worldview, a tribal leader calls the shots, and everything slips into place. After a while, your immersion in tribal loyalty makes the activities of another tribe not just alien but close to incomprehensible. It has been noticed, for example, that primitive tribes can sometimes call their members simply “people” while describing others as some kind of alien. So the word Inuit means people, but a rival indigenous people, the Ojibwe, call them Eskimos, which, according to lore, means “eaters of raw meat.”

And that option to turn off the critical faculty can be a savior for some in a world ravaged by veritable tornadoes of information. Evaluating all that information, true or false, can be a formidable challenge, especially after a long day at work, whether it’s untangling some computer code or laying asphalt on the highway.

But while I can occasionally turn my back on the world and just read something irrelevant to the moment, I find I can’t just sign up to the tribe and start drinking from the community water fountain; hell, I found it hard enough to join the fencing club. Now, that was just shyness; my real objection to the political tribe is my reading of history and how tribes, whether they be Indians or Irish, American cavalry or, in the worst category, the Nazis, so often engage in the worst of atrocities simply because someone is outside of the tribe. Those activities fill me with horror, and while I doubt most political tribes would engage in the worst of these atrocities, I do see them as being of a spectrum of activities that are detrimental to the future of the United States in that they encourage contempt for their fellow citizens. I remember a time when the contributions of liberals and conservatives were of value to both sides.

That’s why I occasionally will mention that I prefer truth over loyalty, and why I don’t understand why Trump supporters are not aghast at his perpetual lying. I’ll remain an independent and an agnostic to the day I die, and I only hope my wife doesn’t have to testify in court that, no, I did not convert to either Southern Baptist-ism or Democrat-ism on my death-bed, unlike poor Robert Ingersoll’s wife^[1]. The invitation to stop thinking, to stop analyzing, seems to me to signal imminent death in a world where national competitiveness is more and more important.

But Andrew’s article, while not explicit, does, by implication, explain some of the other puzzling aspects of both Democrats and Republicans. If your party is full of people who’ve put their critical faculties on hold, then whoever is dispensing the ideology suddenly has a megaphone of millions of voices to assert their ideas – rational or not.

This is one reason that I do try to fight bad tribal ideas using the language of the offending tribe, rather than the “talking points” of the opposing tribe. In a sense, I’m trying to awaken those sleeping faculties by slapping them with their own ideas and language, where possible, and with obvious common sense where I must. Accompanying such arguments are always questions of truth; I don’t care what your tribe, liberal or conservative, is saying; you tell me, in your own words, why this or that. Can you make it comprehensible? Or are you really just spouting shallow drek you learned from some figurehead?

Let’s take the recent spate of travel scandals in the Trump Administration. During Democratic Administrations, the Republicans had hysterics over mis-use of funds for travel; yesterday, Republican Tom Price resigned from his position as Secretary of Health and Human Services, not because of Republican pressure, but because the overly sensitive President Trump, prickly to criticism suggesting he has any faults, told him to. But Price had a reputation for demanding extreme frugality in government travel when he was a Representative, and then … this?

Well, sure. The other tribe is always wrong, my tribe is always right. It’s provincialism. And it never occurred to Price that he could be wrong. Until now.

And, to get to the heart of the matter, it’s hypocrisy. If we’re going to continue to survive as a first-rate country, we should discard this acidic habit of hypocrisy in our political behavior, because it leads to bitterness and more polarized attitudes, and that defeats the necessary compromises for this nation’s government to function. Say it with me:

What’s wrong for one political party is wrong for all.

My suspicion is that fewer Republicans than Democrats understand that, but then I take a read through, say, The Daily Kos, and I’m not so sure; the tribalism of the progressives can sure be an example of group-think.

Getting back to Andrew, he worries about the country becoming worse and worse. But can we measure that? I don’t know that anyone is trying, but here’s an interesting Gallup time series graph of their polls:

While the liberal tribe appears to be expanding, the conservative tribe is declining, as are the moderates. I consider this a mixed blessing; what I’d really like to see is an Independent movement getting ready to spit on the two polarized tribes.

Perhaps to that end we need a new party. Its first tenet is that We’ll always self-criticize; the second is We’ll always be honest and honestly communicative. And, perhaps even more importantly, We always acknowledge that members of other political parties are our fellow citizens and siblings, and deserve respect.

Perhaps that last pillar will cause gales of laughter from the hardened political veterans. What of it? I think independents who are paying attention might vote for politicians who embrace principles, not positions, so long as they’re good principles. After all, that’s what the Founding Fathers did, and if they were imperfect in that embrace, at least they gave it a shot.

And it’s a lot easier to be loyal to a principle, well enunciated and understood, than to some arbitrary set of goofy positions. Like Climate scientists are in a vast conspiracy to impose socialism. If my respected reader is a Republican, then you really must repeat after me: That’s just goofy. And disrespectful of a whole lot of hard-working scientists who only want a better future for their kids.

¹See The Great Agnostic. For years after the death of the famous Freethinker Ingersoll, rumors circulated that he had converted, on his deathbed, to Christianity. His wife finally testified in court that he had not.

CNN is reporting Tom Price has resigned as Secretary of HHS:

Tom Price, the embattled health and human services secretary, resigned Friday in the midst of a scandal over his use of private planes, a storm that enraged President Donald Trump and undercut his promise to bring accountability to Washington.

Price’s departure came as he’s being investigated by the department’s inspector general for using private jets for multiple government business trips, even to fly distances often as short as from Washington to Philadelphia. The cost for the trips ran into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

And so he joins that exclusive club of The Fallen Mighty, Legislative Version. This Congress’s only prior member is Senator Luther Strange, now soon to be former as noted earlier.

Teetering on the edge? Interior Secretary Zinke, who is also entering into travel scandal territory.

I gotta wonder if the extreme right is feeling uneasy as its leading exemplars are proving to be rather incompetent in the very mechanics of their jobs. I’m afraid the government has a higher bar of ethical behavior than does the private sector, boys.

On Lawfare Daniel Byman provides a primer on the fissures in global jihad. Will we be seeing more caliphates in the future?

Questions of tatarrus or the precise line where apostasy begins and ends mean little to most foot soldiers. Data from captured Islamic State records showed that 70 percent of recruits claimed they had only a basic knowledge of Islam. But some of these questions have a tremendous impact on the appeal of different groups. The revival of the caliphate, for example, proved compelling to many recruits and, regardless of its perceived legitimacy among purists, the temptation to play this popular card will be there in the future.

It’s always tempting to urge the United States to try to play up these divisions, and I’ve done so myself at times. The U.S. track record of influencing the jihadist dialogue, however, ranges from poor to nonexistent, and deliberately trying to generate ever more extreme factions isn’t wise. But these internal fissures do hamper U.S. enemies and do some of the work for us. At the very least, they expend precious time and energy trying to one-up rival groups in their propaganda. At most, the differences lead to actual shots fired or recruits and donors being turned off by infighting.

These endless differences between the various sects of Islam that Daniel notes in the article has always indicated to me that there is always a necessary vigilance concerning the extremists with grievances, real or imagined, against the West, but there’s little to fear in terms of a united Islam crusading against the West. Between the usual burdens of the religious in general and the general loathing they have for each other, a united command appears to be out of the picture.

For that reason there’s little point in allowing ourselves to be distracted from other, more potent opponents, such as Russia, even in its current bedraggled state, North Korea, and what appears to be a highly rational China.

Steve Benen’s post concerning the tendency of the GOP to deny reality is dispiriting:

Up until recently, this analysis was publicly available through the Treasury. As the Wall Street Journal reported overnight, that analysis has now vanished – because it “contradicts Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s argument that workers would benefit the most from a corporate income tax cut.”

The paper was available on the Treasury website during the summer, and it wasn’t clear when it was removed or whether Treasury intended to publish a new analysis. Other technical papers from 2008 through 2016 remain on its site, along with working papers dating back to 1974.

For Mnuchin, it’s critical that people believe that a corporate tax break would benefit workers, which makes all of the evidence to the contrary quite inconvenient.

But that’s just today. What about yesteryear?

If this sounds vaguely familiar, it’s probably because the Bush/Cheney administration developed a reputation for pulling a similar trick.

In 2005, for example, after a government report showed an increase in terrorism around the world, the administration stopped publishing annual data on international terrorism. When the Bush administration was discouraged by data about factory closings, the administration announced (on Christmas Eve) it would stop publishing information about factory closings. When Bush’s Department of Education found that charter schools were underperforming, the administration sharply cut back on the information it collected about charter schools.

The small blob on the left is Ganymede. In case you’re wondering, yes, Ganymede whirls around Jupiter, like our Moon whirls around the Earth.
Image Credit & Copyright: Damian Peach/SEN

Maybe it’s just the engineer in me, but this unwillingness to face up to reality, in fact to disregard reality, is really disturbing to me. How can they expect to achieve what they promise if they refuse to take reality into account? It’s like trying to account for the motions of Ganymede without taking into account the enormous gravity of Jupiter!

So long as the GOP persists in believing its own ideology rather than the reality dug up by the experts, its attempts to accomplish its promises will fail – and unlike in the past, where they might be excused with ‘good try’ and all that – although that didn’t happen in 2008 after the start of the Great Recession – this time around their contempt for experts, so glowingly displayed by Trump and the Congressional GOP, should be remembered and held against them.

The Great Faker, I expect, will be done in by Fake News, both that of the real news organizations, as well as his own lies.

A reader remarks about that tree in the voting booth:

Sure, it’s crazy. But only slightly less crazy than personhood for corporations. Corporations are property, not persons. My garage does not get to vote, lobby, etc.

At the risk of being nit-picky, I do see a difference between a garage and a corporation – the former is a tangible object incapable of self-directed activities. The latter is an intangible social construct which can be said to be capable of self-directed activities.

Besides the obvious fact that people are tangible objects capable of self-directed activities, I’d argue that corporations fail this personhood test because their aggregate nature practically guarantees difference of opinion on many important issues. To suggest that they are eligible to contribute money to political causes despite those differences in opinion is fallacious; in reality, only those in control of the corporation will have their opinions implemented, effectively amplifying their opinions well beyond the reach of the common citizen.

This makes the position of Chairman of the Board or CEO that much more desirable.

I was going to write a bad poem to fit this space, as the picture is rather misleading: the leaf-fall would indicate a cool fall evening. But, in truth, the temperature was near 90°F and the humidity was high.

And it occurred to me that while we have photos for recording the visual features of reality, or in a more disinterested manner of speaking, a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum, in other sensory matters we have not yet achieved a recording process of similar immediacy.

So when you look at these photos, you may think you can deduce other features from the visuals, yet you’d be wrong. And I lack the ability to really bring that odd juxtaposition of fallen, dead leaves, nutrients withdrawn from them, in the midst of temperate weather in which you’d expect them to luxuriate, smack dab into your living room.

So you’ll just have to take my drab word for it. Imagine hard.

In view of the recent report on the drop in nutrients in crops, this report from Science Magazine doesn’t seem like such a good idea:

The world’s first commercial plant for capturing carbon dioxide directly from the air opened yesterday, refueling a debate about whether the technology can truly play a significant role in removing greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere.

The Climeworks AG facility near Zurich becomes the first ever to capture CO2 at industrial scale from air and sell it directly to a buyer.

Developers say the plant will capture about 900 tons of CO2 annually — or the approximate level released from 200 cars — and pipe the gas to help grow vegetables.

Unless the veggies are fixing the CO₂ in the ground rather than incorporating it into the plants themselves, as indicated in the initial post on this thread, this strikes me as little more than running in place. Of course, maybe they envisage burying the plants after growing them … sorry, no. They will think they can sell them and turn a profit while doing good.

Looks like fixing the environment will be harder than that. This sort of shallow thinking just isn’t going to cut it:

[Christoph Gebald, co-founder and managing director of Climeworks] and Climeworks co-founder Jan Wurzbacher said the CO2 could have a variety of other uses, such as carbonating beverages.

Kimberly Mok on Treehugger.com provides this video.

But the cameraman’s lurid fantasies of stardom were rebuffed again.

A sleepy little horror movie may be the most accurate description of The Black Sleep (1956). In 1872 a medical doctor, falsely accused and convicted of murder, is rescued from the impending gallows by another doctor who possesses the Black Sleep, a drug that causes a user to appear to be dead. When he awakens, having been spirited away by a voluble gypsy, he is recruited into helping his savior perform research on corpses.

He thinks.

We’re treated to the instructive horrors that occur when the rules of society are broken, as one man pursues a cure for that which is destroying what he loves the most, regardless of the cost in broken lives.

And when these lives are broken, they are quite dramatic, eventually redounding to evil consequence upon the progenitor of their foreshortened lives. Thus do we know that such laws of society are not mere arbitrary rules, but the bulwarks against disaster for us and our fellows.

And, for all that, it’s a bit boring.

Perhaps it’s a little early to note, but associating with Trump is rather like Chutes and Ladders. Consider the fate of Alabama Senator Luther Strange:

1. AG (Attorney General) for the State of Alabama.
2. Temporarily appointed to the Senate seat held by Jeff Sessions (more about anon).
3. And just last Tuesday, the loser of the GOP primary race for the permanent replacement of Sessions.

In a couple of months he’ll be out of work.

Or consider his predecessor, Jeff Sessions:

1. The distinguished Senator from Alabama, if holder of retrograde views on marijuana.
2. Nominated and confirmed as AG of the Nation, surely a high achievement.
3. Then: Hated and Despised by Trump after recusing himself from the Russian investigation.
4. Soon to be fired?

I’ve had a theory that Trump is so angry at him that he has NOT fired the man, simply so he couldn’t turn around and run for his old Senate seat again. Now that the primary is over, would Sessions run as an independent? Could he be elected even against a Democrat at this point?

And then there’s Dr. Tom Price, current HHS Secretary:

1. 12 years as Representative for Georgia’s 6th.
2. Selection as HHS Secretary.
3. Now caught up in a misuse of public funds scandal. His only hope is that his former colleagues continue to find ethics scandals to be invisible.

Will he have gone from Representative to Unemployed soon?

And an up and coming entrant might be Interior Secretary Zinke:

1. One term as the lone Montana Congressional representative.
2. Nominated and confirmed as Interior Secretary.
3. Has provoked outrage since taking over at Interior, which is not surprising since the League of Conservation Voters gave him a score of 4% during his tenure as Representative.

If he were tipped out of the Cabinet, he could run against current Montana Rep Gianforte – but he’d have to risk getting punched out, a sad ending to his short and undistinguished political career. “Bounced by Gianforte” is not a good political epitaph.

All in all, it’s beginning to look like associating with Trump is equivalent to getting the Black Death.

Apparently I’m completely out of the loop when it comes to shame. In this article from The Guardian concerning the importance of sleep, author Matthew Walker sets me straight on how I should feel about sleep if I’m going to be part of Brit culture:

But Walker believes, too, that in the developed world sleep is strongly associated with weakness, even shame. “We have stigmatised sleep with the label of laziness. We want to seem busy, and one way we express that is by proclaiming how little sleep we’re getting. It’s a badge of honour. When I give lectures, people will wait behind until there is no one around and then tell me quietly: ‘I seem to be one of those people who need eight or nine hours’ sleep.’ It’s embarrassing to say it in public. They would rather wait 45 minutes for the confessional. They’re convinced that they’re abnormal, and why wouldn’t they be? We chastise people for sleeping what are, after all, only sufficient amounts. We think of them as slothful. No one would look at an infant baby asleep, and say ‘What a lazy baby!’ We know sleeping is non-negotiable for a baby. But that notion is quickly abandoned [as we grow up]. Humans are the only species that deliberately deprive themselves of sleep for no apparent reason.” In case you’re wondering, the number of people who can survive on five hours of sleep or less without any impairment, expressed as a percent of the population and rounded to a whole number, is zero.

I try to get 8 a night and I make no bones about it. Maybe this “sleep isn’t for the rough and tough” isn’t an American thing? But then, a substantial portion of the American population works more than 50 hours a week, and many keep their cellphones near their beds just in case some work-related item comes in at 3am.

Since I’m talking about it, what are the estimated costs of not getting your 8 hours a night?

“No aspect of our biology is left unscathed by sleep deprivation,” he says. “It sinks down into every possible nook and cranny. And yet no one is doing anything about it. Things have to change: in the workplace and our communities, our homes and families. But when did you ever see an NHS poster urging sleep on people? When did a doctor prescribe, not sleeping pills, but sleep itself? It needs to be prioritised, even incentivised. Sleep loss costs the UK economy over £30bn a year in lost revenue, or 2% of GDP. I could double the NHS budget if only they would institute policies to mandate or powerfully encourage sleep.”

2% of American GDP? The World Bank estimates American GDP at $18.57 trillion, so 2% of that is … $.371 trillion. Or $371 billion?

Seems a bit amazing. Maybe I did my math wrong.

Any American readers think sleep is a sign of weakness?

Steve Benen’s post seeking to affix blame to Trump for the failure of the healthcare bill – much to Steve’s relief – is neglectful of one of the key players to fail in this little drama.

Speaker of the House Ryan.

I think it’s important to remember that Speaker Ryan’s primary achievement in this debacle was to deliver a terribly flawed bill that was built in an unprofessional manner, so awful that Ryan had to promise dubious Representatives that the Senate would improve it into something they would not feel shame over.

Well, I don’t know how the GOP representatives are feeling, but if I were one of them I’d be toting up my current losses vs my potential losses and giving a sigh of relief that all of the bastard children of infamy in the Senate failed by the grace of a few GOP Senators who know how the chamber should be run – and isn’t.

The undeliberate way the most deliberative body in the world has operated since the GOP took over the White House isn’t just a scandal, but indicative of the deep rot that seems to lie at the heart of the GOP. I shan’t indulge my proclivities towards speculation on that topic, because I want to bring a focus back on Speaker Ryan, whose style of passing the initial healthcare legislation seemed to be more in the way of childishly pleasing some unnamed master than deliberate and sober governing.

It is, in fact, his responsibility to pass legislation that is as good as it can be. Not dumb slop that hurts families across America, because governing, once again, is not a game. It’s one of the highest responsibilities a citizen can assume, and Speaker Ryan is not building a distinguished record, but rather a record of how not to behave.

McConnell, much like Ryan in that he seems to be trying to please some unnamed master, and Trump certainly have their own severe blots, but the Senate’s preeminence in the recent news should not be permitted to let Ryan escape blame and responsibility. In my view, his constituents should be letting him know right now that his performance, both in terms of what he wants to pass, as well as how he’s proceeding, has been absolutely terrible and unworthy of the office.

When will the Speaker begin to take his position seriously? When he’s face down in the gutter, wondering what just happened to him on Election night?

When you’re a citizen of a nation that has been a legitimate leader, and humanity’s faced with one of our greatest challenges ever, reading this does hurt.

Most of this investment has been domestic, but China is now looking to sell its green tech to the rest of the world. In doing so, the nation steps into the climate leadership void left by the US under President Donald Trump. As Trump pursues an “America First” strategy and sings the praises of “beautiful, clean coal”, China is looking for ways to collaborate with other countries on tackling climate change. [ “Why China’s green ambitions will make it the next world leader,” Alice Klein, NewScientist (16 September 2017, paywall)]

Later:

Tim Buckley at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis in Sydney, Australia, agrees. “China wants to dominate industries of the future while the governments of the US and Australia want to dominate industries of the past.”

Look, when you were one of the early ones to get a personal computer – to actually buy it in kit form and assemble it, an Heathkit H-89 – a certain mindset comes with that, a mindset that tries to see what’s coming next. Not necessarily to benefit from it, although that can be part of it through investment, but to understand how the future is going to be shaped, how the nearly undetectable trend of today will be the tsunami of tomorrow.

Mr. Buckley’s quote is very dispiriting. It suggests our leaders are not up to the challenge of tomorrow. They may have mastered yesterday, but the cessation of the Obama Administration appears to have announced the beginning of being a second-banana country, as our amateur President, all prickle and Hollywood, incurious and one of the most shallow people around, can only think of profit and military might.

Unfortunately for him, that’s the glitter, not the bones of greatness. We appear to be burdened with a great many people who’ve learned how to sell themselves to the masses, but don’t understand the necessity of wise and far-sighted governance.

And, unless we can shake off this frantic inward-turning, the desperation for stasis and past glories, we will, indeed, become one with the past, another member of the has-beens and also-rans.

Even liberal democracy might go that route. If the Chinese can offer hope, can “rescue the world”, as the article mentions, perhaps their governmental system will win out over ours. And then we can shit-can ours, move on to being a third-rate theocracy, and start killing each other over imagined supernatural peculiarities.

Again.

Antediluvian:

The Antediluvian (alternatively Pre-Diluvian or Pre-Flood, or even Tertiary) period (meaning “before the deluge”) is the time period referred to in the Bible between the fall of humans and the Noachian Deluge (the Genesis Flood) in the biblical cosmology. The narrative takes up chapters 1–6 (excluding the flood narrative) of the Book of Genesis. The term found its way into early geology and lingered in science until the late Victorian era. Colloquially, the term is used to refer to any ancient and murky period. [Wikipedia]

Used in this 9 Chickweed Lane comic.

I’ve been pondering how to translate my gut feeling about the NFL players kneeling during the anthem.  I’ve talked about it before (here and here), and then I ran across David Frum’s take on it in The Atlantic:

In the Civil War anthem, “Marching Through Georgia,” the stars and stripes is described as “the flag that makes you free”—but for most of the previous three-quarters of a century, it was anything but. It was the flag that flew over slave ships until 1808, the flag under which federal marshals enforced this country’s fugitive slave acts before the Civil War. Only the Civil War changed that flag’s character. Indeed, as Adam Goodheart observes in his remarkable history, 1861: The Civil War Awakening, it was not until the Civil War that the habit spread of flying the flag over private as well as federal buildings. It exacted hideous quantities of blood, from black and white soldiers alike, to wash that flag clean of its former meanings.

Maybe the washing has never been completed, and possibly it never will be. But that’s no reason to resign the flag and the anthem to the president. Colin Kaepernick has better right to that flag and anthem than Donald Trump. Why concede that right? Assert it.

Don’t take the knee. Stand for the flag; hand on heart for the anthem—and then put your signature to the demand that this least American of administrations be investigated down to its bottomest murk and filth.

Which isn’t quite what I was thinking, but is certainly an honorable shot at it. I’d say this to the outraged patriot:

You are outraged that the flag is so dishonored, and in your eyes it no doubt it is, as to you the flag stands for freedom from oppression, governmental and religious.

But I say to you, my friend, that you haven’t walked in the others’ shoes, and if you were to do so, you wouldn’t see the freedom you love and fought for waving on that field of stars, with those Revolutionary bars, but the hard faces of the police, pulling your car over because it’s above your station, and shooting you in the back as that fear nesting in your guts busts your self-control, and your flying heels are finally stilled by the cops’ flying lead. You’d see the empty refrigerator, the hungry infant, and the hopeless brothers, still defiant, like those Americans of yore, in the face of hopeless power.

This is the flag, do you see?

From the time when their ancestors were dragged screaming into the holds of the slavers, there to learn the ways of the whip, that was the flag for them, waving over that beautiful masted ship in the African harbor, soon to fly over the sea to the auctioneers’ cruel podium.

Then on to cruel masters, and the scent of revolution in the air.  Not that of Washington and Jefferson, no, nor that of Davis, but a revolt of those very cattle the masters thought to use for their own pecuniary advantages.  They were stripped of that so-vaunted Liberty that this flag stood for.  The masters of the flag, fearful of uprising, until those slaves were stripped and whipped and killed, simply as an example.

This is the flag, do you see?

Then that symbol was waved in their faces for brief, luscious moments, and heroes arose; Carver, Tubman, and Douglass, iron spines they had, and minds to match. But the doors clashed shut, and despite their desperate efforts to find a place, to lend a hand, to serve next to you, rare was that accepted.  Their fighting for Pershing met with the jeers of provincials, afraid of the competition. Along came yet another war, and still the restraints held, although the wisest of the wise cried out for the escorts of the 99th Fighter Squadron.

But then, even our children said they could not stand to be in the same classroom as those little black kids.  It was all so terrible, having to share.  And so they were shut away and fed inferior education, because, well, maybe the different are dangerous and unworthy. And they had to endure the random fury of the white madmen, killing them for no reason, falling from the trees, it’s a circus, isn’t it, to watch your relatives jerk and shout at the end of that baleful rope.

This is the flag, do you see?

And along came Vietnam, and who served the most? Not those of privileged houses, scions of war-like families? No, you have the means to avoid active duty.  But the black man had little choice but to serve in this war of collective madness and paranoia, so many flags waving in parades and planes and shells and napalm, covering up the cripples and dead civilians and the hatred engendered by the invading blessed country. So many lost to enemy and gang, the collective bleed is an outrage to see.

This is your flag, can’t you see? Are you so proud of it now, as it flies in the lee?  Is their outrage such a mystery? Do you feel the blood between your toes, their borrowed shoes brimming with the leavings of those wrapped in the flag?

And yet, can you see, even today, their desire is the same as yours – a just flag – a flag to honor and love – and a symbol of all those ideals which can make us great?

This is our flag, but it must stand for the same things. Are you willing to work for that vision? Or will you, yes, you, dishonor it by spitting and disrespecting those who’ve paid so much more than you, and look with sad, tired eyes to a future without gleam?

Back at the start of this blog I opened a casual contest dependent on some visual humor, but no one came up with an answer.

So here’s another one. No prizes, but I’ll publish any winning entries, along with the more amusing mistaken guesses. Use the email link on the right; posting to Facebook will give the game away.  So, what phrase does this picture describe?

I’ll try to get to this on Sunday evening, although that promises to be a busy night for other reasons.

For those desiring more information on former Alabama Judge and GOP nominee to replace Jeff Session’s Alabama Senatorial Roy Moore, The Week has a short profile. The salient feature for me?

Moore has repeatedly made clear his belief that if the Bible conflicts with the laws of the United States, “God’s laws are always superior to man’s laws.”

Old readers of this blog will understand why I say this puts shivers down my spine; new readers should read this, particularly the history section. That quote is emblematic of a man who falls into the category of believing his judgment is better than that of the collected judgments of his fellows, and has to fall back on the authority of a supernatural creature to be convincing, since he lacks the intellectual firepower to back up his position in any rational manner.

It’s also the attitude of a man who would be King – ruthless to those who differ from him in arbitrary theological positions, as well as those who diverge wholly from his self-sanctified views. I suspect, merely on general grounds, that he would admire Lord Cromwell, infamous religious bigot.

In short, someone who would cheerfully burn at the stake anyone he dislikes.

In the wake of Trump’s announcement of his plan to visit Puerto Rico, all I can think is how this will delay and perturb the disaster recovery operations.

I’ll give you a pass on going, Mr. Trump. Your time is better spent arranging to send useful resources to that battered island.

And perhaps consider making them a State. Now wouldn’t that be an accomplishment? Although it’s not entirely clear that a substantial majority of Puerto Ricans actually want the territory to be a State.

In any case, stay away. I shan’t make fun of you for not going.