Unsightly Mental Blemishes

Since Senator McCain voted against the Senate’s replacement for the ACA, he’s come under fire from the right-fringe, and recently one of live rounds came through as an email. This time I’m going to forego quoting the thing, because, quite frankly, I don’t know much about the subject on a factual basis, but I will summarize: in 1967, a terrible accident befell the American aircraft carrier USS Forrestal. The official report was that an electrical surge in an F-4 Phantom caused it to inadvertently fire a rocket while on the flight deck; it hit an A-4 Skyhawk without exploding. At this point, it’s not clear whose A-4 it hit, as then Lieutenant Commander McCain noted immediately following the incident, a not unsurprising admission given how human memory can be damaged by stress. I’ll let Wikipedia summarize the incident:

In July 1967, a fire broke out on board the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal. An electrical anomaly had caused the discharge of a Zuni rocket on the flight deck, triggering a chain-reaction of explosions that killed 134 sailors and injured 161. At the time, Forrestal was engaged in combat operations in the Gulf of Tonkin, during the Vietnam War. The ship survived, but with damage exceeding US$72 million, not including the damage to aircraft.^[2][3] Future United States Senator John McCain and future four-star admiral and US Pacific Fleet Commander Ronald J. Zlatoper were among the survivors.

A representative character assassination piece, not identical to my email, but quite similar, has been published online at The Burning Platform, no doubt a reference to the Forrestal.

As a piece of assassination mail, it bears many of the earmarks which should have the big red flag in the air – it comes after a specific incident in which the victim did not follow the script, the writers insist that some vast conspiracy has covered up the victim’s culpability, as in this:

You see his grandfather was a famous FOUR STAR Navy admiral and his dad was at the time of the incident was a powerful Navy FOUR STAR admiral and McCain graduated from the Navy Academy. So the old boy Navy tradition cover his ass network went into high gear immediately; and make no mistake, it does exist and it did for him.

There is no objective evidence presented; indeed, this is almost not a red flag, as most such pieces will strenuously try to portray themselves as objective reporters in their efforts to be convincing. The assertion is one of those ugly little pieces that can never be disproven by anyone other than the actual author. In fact, this piece comes across as little more than a slimy shot at the Senator. This doesn’t mean it’s ineffective, because McCain is known to treasure his honor, and when someone accuses him and his family of engaging in such a dishonorable act, well, it must be infuriating.

Now, like I said, I know very little about this incident. I’m going down a different, if familiar to long time readers, path, and note how sad it is to see the rigid discipline of the Party come down on one of the last honorable members of the GOP currently holding office. This discipline, these demands to play team politics and bedamned to anyone who dares to use their judgment to evaluate some legislation, continues even in the face of the disaster befalling the nation and the GOP. A responsible legislature would be seriously evaluating Trump’s judicial nominees, and not just grumbling about them, but actually rejecting them. I could go on in this vein, but I shan’t.

What I shall say is that this is the black, pulsating, Satanic underbelly of team politics, where either you’re a yes-man – or you’re out on your ear. Doesn’t matter what you know, or how wise you are, or anything else of real value – all that is of value is your vote, and how you cast it.

Someone else is doing the thinking. And making an example out of McCain.

How much longer will the GOP survive with this horrible rule in place? Keep an eye on the news, because it’ll just get worse until they implode.

For more information on the Forrestal besides the link to the above, here is a link to FactCheck.org’s check into the situation. Here’s another link to a site unfamiliar to me, PunditFact, also rejecting the slander.

Addendum: it would be interesting to trace all these mail and web sites and see if they actually lead back to one person or organization, out to discredit McCain. Beyond my resources, though.

The fallout of the tragedy in Charlottesville includes the opening of eyes of more of the citizenry.

As we watch the President’s incredible failures of leadership grow, with the sad tragedy in Charlottesville being just the latest, his pecuniary preoccupations, his intemperance, what may be a generally racist attitude, and his general incompetence, I think this article in Politico should be taken very seriously by all the Senators.

President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees are ignoring key Senate Democrats as they vie for lifetime appointments to the bench, according to documents and senators — a break from longstanding practice that diminishes the minority’s power to provide a check against ideologically extreme judges.

The brewing tension between the White House and the Senate over filling an unusually high number of judicial vacancies is impeding the pace at which Trump installs lifetime appointees to the federal bench — so far one of the president’s few major victories, with his legislative agenda largely stymied in Congress.

Given the fact these are lifetime appointments, this is one of the most important responsibilities of a sitting US Senator, and I would hope – although I’ve been proven wrong so far – that GOP Senators would put country before Party.

Especially when the Party is being led by a man as deeply incompetent as Trump, a man who, I must remind my readers, holds odd beliefs and has engaged in frankly unethical behaviors. These behaviors cast deep doubt upon any person nominated by him, or his advisors, to the Federal bench.

As a citizen of the United States, I call upon the Senate to suspend all movement on judicial appointees until the situation with President Trump has been resolved. It is clear we approaching a national crisis; it is also becoming clear that President Trump has a hidden agenda, given his reluctance to condemn the traitors in Charlottesville immediately. Given these obvious facts, all movement on his judicial nominees should be stilled, as it’s impossible to trust, or even believe, that he has selected the best available to occupy these lifetime positions. Indeed, the GOP has admitted as much during the hearings, as noted by NPR:

“Mr. Bush, I’ve read your blogs,” [Senator John Kennedy (R-LA)] said as he stared at the nominee. “I’m not impressed.”

This was after Senator Franken (D-MN) pressed Mr. Bush concerning his citation of non-credible sources in a blog post concerning birtherism. Sadly, despite these admissions, Mr. Bush was confirmed in his position. This should not be permitted any longer for nominees from a President of such low quality.

I’ll be drafting letters to my Senators, who are Franken and Klobuchar, although both being Democrats, it’ll have a limited impact. I hope you’ll do the same with your Senators.

Now that the dead person in Charlottesville has been identified as Heather Haeyer, I hope she’ll be recognized as someone who fought against those who would betray the United States, and is buried with full honors, preferably at Arlington National Cemetery. It’s little comfort to those who knew her, but such a burial would put an exclamation point on the rejection of the values of those who were complicit in this murder, not to mention the entire ghastly mess of the Confederacy.

A colleague recently clued me in on a post-WW II weapon of which I’d never heard – The Flying Crowbar. Oddly Historical’s Andrew Kincaid covered it in an undated post (which seems peculiarly apropos given the blog’s title):

Source: NationStates

At the core of this ultra-durable doomsday weapon was a simple concept: the ramjet. It has been the working concept behind jet engines sine the first prototypes in the 1930s. Air is sucked into a nozzle, where it is then heated. the air expands, and blows out the rear nozzle of the craft, thus providing propulsion. In most jets, the heating is achieved by burning hydrocarbon fuels. In The Flying Crowbar, an unshielded nuclear reactor would provide the heat. This gave the advantage of an almost limitless operational lifespan. As long as the nuclear core could undergo fission, the Flying Crowbar could sow death and destruction.

One distinct disadvantage of the system was the very thing that gave it its advantage–the nuclear reactor. Most nuclear reactors are quite sanely tucked behind layers and layers of concrete, because they have a tendency to spew a lot of radiation. The Flying Crowbar’s reactor would be housed in a missile the size of a locomotive, flying at a low altitude over friend and enemy alike. Planners predicted that the shockwave from the weapon passing overhead might be enough to kill people on the ground. If that didn’t do it, radiation spewing out of the reactor would finish the job.

And then combine this with a psychotic artificial intelligence with a grudge against its creators? Ex Machina (2015) would have nothing on this demon from hell.

NationStates also has some information.

Quinta Jurecic on Lawfare surveys the Web to see how the various American political factions are reacting to the ongoing attempts to discredit the American intelligence community, which is prima facie odd given that traditionally the intelligence community has been trusted by the right wing and distrusted by the left – but now Comey and Mueller are attracting admiration from at least some on the left. But what does it all mean for the future?

Alternately, perhaps the center-left’s realignment will hold through the rest of the Trump administration as the Russia investigation continues and as the left and center-left dig in on their newly different approaches to opposing the president. Policy concerns may play second fiddle to “resistance” understood more broadly; in fact, that’s exactly what concerns those on the left who criticize the center-left’s new bedfellows. After the Trump presidency draws to a close, those closer to the center may drift back closer to those on the further left in terms of their distaste for the language of patriotism and the county’s hard-power agencies.

The final possibility, however, is that this is a more lasting shift with implications beyond Trump and his presidency: a sea change in how the center-left relates to the intelligence community and a deeper cleavage between the hard left and center-left on national security. This strikes me as the least likely scenario but also the most interesting. It would, of course, be one of the great ironies of Trump’s tenure if one of its lasting intellectual impacts were a rediscovery on the part of the mainstream left of the dangers posed byRussia and the need for strong and capable intelligence agencies.

But there is something troubling to this possibility as well. Several times, Lawfare’s own “handmaiden of power” Benjamin Wittes has cautioned his newfound admirers on the left that they will find plenty to dislike about him for once the sturm und drang of the Trump administration has passed. There’s solace in this idea: the notion that this, too, shall pass and we’ll return to the world we knew before, when our main disagreements were about things like the appropriate scope of surveillance authorities and the Authorization for the Use of Military Force. On the other hand, if this shift in alignment of the center-left endures and those disageements fail to reemerge, then our previous world—whatever its irrationalities and failures—will be gone, in some small way, for good. Whatever the merits of a permanent change in the center-left’s attitude toward the intelligence community, it is also discomfiting to think that Trump’s most egregious excesses might have such lasting power over the intellectual life of the nation.

Sure wish I knew – or knew of – a historian specializing in security matters. Lacking that, I’ll have to take a ham-handed swing at it myself. If you start giggling, at least I’ll have been entertaining.

Briefly, I think Quinta needs to consider that things change, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly – but they do. Historically, my impression is that intelligence communities have sprung from the ruling elites as instruments for securing their positions atop the hill. Dating from the days of kings, kaisers, and czars, they were the embodiment of partisan instruments, fashioned for the blunt and old fashioned grab for power. This was from the time when the putative excuse for holding onto that position was the blessing of God.

But with the rise of the democracies of the West, there has come a slow change in the nature of government, and a slow reverberation through the government services to the intelligence community. Democracy is, among other things, about treating the citizens of the democracy justly, which means fairly and without regard to partisanship. This may not have been clear at the beginning – not being a historian or even a reader of that area, I don’t know – but I think intelligence communities sprang up as ad hoc agencies created by the exigencies of the moment, with little thought to the broader implications. Thus, we have the existence of that execrable creature, J. Edgar Hoover, who abused his knowledge to keep his position for 37 years, and who was well known to pursue anyone he even suspected might be harbor political inclinations of which he disapproved.

But as the ideas of fair and just dealing seeped into the intelligence communities, the leftists, ever out of power in America, have developed a not-unearned distaste for the intelligence communities. After all, the latter are just one instrument of those seeking stasis – that is, retaining power and a static culture. The leftists, on the other hand, are the agents of change, and as convinced as they are of the goodness of that change, the right wingers are convinced they are the footsteps of doom.

But, at least for some lefties, as Quinta documents, the modern notion of a non-partisan intelligence community, preoccupied with preserving the nation as a whole, and the government system which has proven relatively successful, will suddenly have an appeal when faced with a right wing threat. The left would like to think it exists in a sea of objective facts and reasoning, and while this is inevitably a bit of a delusion, it will explain the outrage that occurs when the very instruments of objective observation are suddenly under threat of discreditation and even an existential threat.

Assuming the threat recedes as Trump is either removed or  reaches the end of his term, I think the left will also recede a little bit in their trust level, but retain a certain gain with respect to the intelligence community. A modicum of knowledge will be retained, because the intelligence communities have changed slowly over time from being mere instruments of the partisan status quo to the more prestigious, useful, and trustworthy instruments of the non-partisan status quo.

And if the right-wing, deprived of a long held tool, doesn’t like it, they can eat bricks.

Caught at the ol’ watering hole. Hope none of them fell prey to the Crocs.

Here they look a little restless. Maybe there’s a theater hook in the bushes?

psychographic targeting:

At the heart of the debate is psychographic targeting – the directing of political campaigns at people via social media based on their personality and political interests. It is aided by vast amounts of data filtered by artificial intelligence. [“Dark ads pick you out,” Timothy Revell, NewScientist (5 August 2017)]

A practice I find disturbing. We should be given the same political messages in order to have coherent debates about the politics and qualifications of our candidates. And I like the title of the article. Although I also note that NewScientist uses different titles for the same article in print and digital,which is a faint echo of what I regard as a problem.

The “right to be forgotten” is a European legal right in which Europeans may request that information concerning themselves be deleted from web sites and search engines, and the providers must comply. This is going to lead to some interesting situations, as Retraction Watch observes:

A subject in a documentary film about the psychology of religious ideation has pushed the BMJ to take down its review of the film, based on a complaint citing a European internet privacy rule.

On July 3, BMJ posted a retraction notice for an article that barely said anything:

This article has been retracted by the journal following a complaint.

The 2002 article is a review of a documentary film entitled “Those Who Are Jesus,” directed by Steven Eastwood, a British filmmaker. The review has been removed from the BMJ site, as well as PubMed.

BMJ told Retraction Watch that it took down the film review in response to a European citizen exercising his or her “right to be forgotten,” an internet privacy idea that, according to the European Union, ensures:

A person can ask for personal data to be deleted once that data is no longer necessary.

The journal declined to comment, beyond saying:

This review was taken down following a request based on the European Court of Justice’s ruling in the 2014 Google Spain case about the right to be forgotten.

Barely any information about this film exists anywhere on the internet. The only description we could find was from a 2015 post on the blog Boing Boing, which says the film is about:

Three people who have true delusions of grandeur based on “profoundly religious or revalatory (sic) experiences.”

That blog post once contained an embedded video of the documentary, but that has been removed as well. It’s unclear if these disappearances are related.

I have concerns about this sort of thing happening in science journals, because, while perhaps a film review doesn’t necessarily participate, most publications are part of chains of evidence and reasoning concerning diseases, syndromes, and other such conditions affecting humans. By removing a link in that chain, the chain may be shattered absent duplicating confirmatory evidence – and what then?

Regarding that “right”, in my opinion, if you did it, you own it. Either affirm or apologize, but just ripping it away as if it never happens is profoundly wrong. It begs the question of taking responsibility. Begs hard.

Elon Musk, techie and founder of Tesla, SolarCity, and SpaceX, is wary of artificial intelligence, as Nathaniel Scharping notes on D-brief. Elon is looking for proactive regulation of artificial intelligence systems, for he fears that otherwise killer robots may be cruising down Main Street before we know it. Nathaniel helpfully interviews some artificial intelligence experts concerning Mr. Musk’s worries. Most thought it was premature, but I found Martin Ford’s response unsettling:

Calls to immediately regulate or restrict AI development are misplaced for a number of reasons, perhaps most importantly because the U.S. is currently engaged in active competition with other countries, especially China. We cannot afford to fall behind in this critical race.

This is the sort of response built on a false assumption – that regulation, even the discussion of regulation, will slow down the development of the product^[1]. The fact of the matter is that regulation, at its best, should be an attempt to amalgamate the judgment of multiple experts in independent mutually non-communicative contexts into a coherent set of rules which will help increase the safety factor^[2] in our work. Martin characterizes China as pulling ahead if we work within a regulatory framework while China does not; why doesn’t he characterize it as China taking greater chances by not regulating this work, of perhaps losing an entire city to a wayward AI system?

All that said, several of the other researchers seemed to feel it wasn’t a big deal. Researcher Toby Walsh:

And I’m not too worried about what happens when we get to super-intelligence, as there’s a healthy research community working on ensuring that these machines won’t pose an existential threat to humanity. I expect they’ll have worked out precisely what safeguards are needed by then.

Apparently he hasn’t paid attention to what intelligent entities have done to each other throughout history – despite all those safeguards. Hell, I’ll bet the first dozen “kill switches” used as a preventative against rogue AIs fail because the AIs figure out how to disable them.

No matter how smart the kill switch inventors consider themselves.

¹I find the idea of equating artificial intelligence with a “product” to be unsettling, but that’s irrelevant to the topic.

²I deliberately avoid such misleading words and phrases as “assure”, “ensure,” or “optimize” as implying some end point beyond which no more improvement can be made. Of course improvement can be made; our language is imprecise.

Joseph DeThomas on 38 North evaluates the North Korean sanctions resolution passed by the UN Security Council recently:

As the sad drama involving Nazis, White Supremacists, and counter protesters in Charlottesville, VA plays to its heart-breaking end, it’s worth taking a moment to consider the plight of the American conservative.

First, let’s consider, first and foremost, the “American” Nazi, by contrasting this critter with a Republican and a Democrat. The two latter are members of political parties within the context of the American constitutional system. This means they accept the primary tenets of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, such as All Men^[1] Are Created Equal, periodic and fair elections, yada yada yada. They may disagree on how to run the joint, but when it comes to the central tenets of the Republic, there’s little discord.

They are Parties.

The Nazis, on the other hand, have proven to be a system of government. Once in power, their will to retain power is not constrained by the system of government which they’ve invaded; that structure is twisted or ignored in their relentless gathering of power. They despise the thought that all people are created equal, as that clashes with their central tenet that the Aryan race is superior to all others. And they are a Party of raw power, or, as the Wikipedia page says,

Nazism subscribed to theories of racial hierarchy and Social Darwinism, identifying the Germans as a part of what the Nazis regarded as an Aryan or Nordic master race.

Social Darwinism, the biological observation of the “survival of the fittest” grafted on to human society, is often implemented as Eugenics, which is the extinguishment of the reproductive function in those deemed inferior for physical, social, or racial reasons (read: they lop your nuts off with a garden shears and dig out your ovaries with a spade), is a prominent part of their philosophy, because they see their racial purity as imperiled by the inferior who compete with, and often beat, them. But their Social Darwinism even applies within their governmental structure; there is little interest in Justice, merely with accruing and using petty power to advance their personal interests. These are all observations from their one real-world experience.

No more exposition is necessary to make my point, and that is this: the “American” Nazi is no more than a traitor to the United States of America. His “party” isn’t a party, it’s a competing system of government repugnant to the governmental principles of the United States, as made explicit in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, the Anti-Federalist Papers^[2], and many other documents of the Founders and other great politicians of the ages, from Washington to Lincoln to Roosevelt to, yes, Obama.

I condemn the movement and its constituent ideas as a system inherently unstable and vulnerable to the worst sort of power-seeker, but, in the great American tradition of redemption, I leave the rancid followers of it, yes, even those invading Charlottesville, the opportunity to reconsider, to abandon these discredited ideas and their fool’s quest. To return to the enduring experiment in justice we call the American system.

The murderer will, of course, face Justice. And if he does not rue that day, then he is an unsalvageable fool.

The careful reader will note I mentioned White Supremacists as well as Nazis, but have not discussed them since. The general reasoning applied to the Nazis works as well for the Supremacists, as they, too, have central tenets at desperate odds with those already enumerated in this post; the White Supremacist cannot, by explicit reason, apply faithfully the tenets by which government is executed and applied. If they do not bring an explicit system of government to the table, their central tenet is repugnant and incongruous in an industrious people.

But let’s move on to the most important point of this post, and in doing so I’d like to point out that my mention of Presidents from Washington to Obama was not a mere rhetorical device. Does that line of politicians of varying capabilities but undoubted loyalties stop with the accession of Trump to the Oval Office?

Consider his condemnation of the violence:

“We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence, on many sides. On many sides. It’s been going on for a long time in our country. Not Donald Trump, not Barack Obama. This has been going on for a long, long time.” [CNN]

On many sides. As if those who protested the invasion of Charlottesville on behalf of the United States were merely the moral equivalent of those Nazis and White Supremacists, those who would overturn the American government and replace it with one riddled with violence and oppression. Does President Trump truly believe such a remarkable equivalence?

It’s tempting to indulge in incendiary rhetoric, perhaps suggesting that Trump, urged on by his advisors Miller and Bannon, works to destroy the very system of Government which has kept us successful for 200+ years, but this would probably be inaccurate. My common sense tells me that this self-proclaimed “smart” guy probably doesn’t understand, care about, or perhaps even know of, the historical incidents which define these various movements – even the American governmental system which has so benefited him. He is, after all, an incurious man who has buried himself in private sector pursuits for his entire life.

His statement may be charitably read as simply attempting to establish a middle ground. However, the President, for all of his electoral success, is truly an amateur politician who has exhibited mastery only in that single facet of politics; his failures in office have reached a magnitude that makes enumeration meaningless – and damn near impossible. Keeping in mind his known popularity with the far-right fringe population, including the Nazis and supremacists, and the clues that indicate he is aware of that popularity, it’s relatively simple to see that this statement is his attempt to keep that part of his base happy with him, while still attempting to be Presidential to the rest of the country.

Judging from the condemnations rattling in country-wide, his attempt is a failure. The attempt is transparent, and many have seen through it and are sickened.

So, for the Trump voter appalled by the Charlottesville violence, they now face a quandary: how to proceed politically in the future. Continue to embrace Trump, who has moved from Trump the Bully, to Trump the Greedy, to Trump the Incompetent, to now Trump the Fool? Does he move on to Trump the Fuhrer?

And, of course, similar questions apply to every member of the House of Representatives who supports President Trump, beginning with Speaker Ryan. Or, more directly, when, Speaker Ryan, will you repress your urge to power, and bring to the fore the need for someone else to be the Executive of this Nation?

¹Yes, yes, gender-neutral; do not become distracted by the single poison ivy plant while trekking through the forest.

²These papers debate the positives and negatives of a strong central government, but neither is in itself a subversive affair; discussion and debate is an integral part of the American experiment.

Source: Horrorpedia. Although it should have been Stupidpedia.

Ah, The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant (1977). The recipe, you ask? Take one large body (the late John Bloom, one of the tallest actors to ever grace the screen at 7’4″) named Danny, a simpleton. Add the, ah, head of a psychopathic killer (well-played by Albert Cole), and watch him shake off the restraints and drugs plied to him by the scientists. Shake thoroughly and then just throw it in the garbage, because, despite the efforts of a fair cast, including Bruce Dern, this is a real stinker. Bad title, bad use of women, bad treatment of experimental subjects, bad depiction of bikers. Bad, bad, bad^[1]. OK, the special effect of a two headed man actually wasn’t awful.

And you have to appreciate the movie poster, as it really embodies the entire exploitation movie making regime of the time. I mean, really, to quote my Arts Editor. Uff-da.

¹“But Lord, it wasn’t good.” – Opus, Bloom County Beacon.

With respect, Berke Breathed

I’ve lost track of the Israeli news lately, but it appears that Donald the Savior has not made the grand appearance, nor fulfilled the promises attributed to him by the far right in Israel, and thus the end of Netanyahu appears to be on the horizon – and that horizon may not be far away. Akiva Eldar of AL Monitor is clearly relieved to see him go, but is concerned about what he’s leaving behind:

Even if Netanyahu wakes up tomorrow morning with a song of peace on his lips, he would likely be unable to uproot the Israeli hatred, fear and mistrust toward the Palestinians that he has nurtured for eight years. The Aug. 2 Peace Index, the periodic survey conducted by Tel Aviv University and the Israel Democracy Institute, provides cutting proof. It indicates that a sizable majority (77%) of Israeli Jews do not believe there is a connection between the current wave of terror attacks and Palestinian despair over the impasse in talks on a peace agreement. Under Netanyahu’s rule and with his encouragement, more than 70% of Israel’s Jews support Netanyahu’s proposal to execute the terrorist who stabbed to death three family members in the settlement of Halamish on July 21. About two-thirds of respondents support the death penalty for murderers of Israeli soldiers.

When Netanyahu disappears from public view, he will leave behind a scorched democracy. With his unusual gift for demagogic rhetoric, Netanyahu has managed to destroy everything that’s good about the system of checks and balances in Israeli society. Channel 10 poll results aired on Aug. 6 (after recent publications about Netanyahu’s criminal investigation) show the Likud running well ahead of all other parties, reflecting the extent to which Netanyahu has managed to undermine public trust in law enforcement. His systematic reiteration of the lie that police investigators and state prosecutors, and of course “leftist” journalists, are “hunters” who only want to unseat an incumbent prime minister has clearly reached broad swathes of the public. But these people ignore the ridiculousness of this claim: Israel’s attorney general and police chief were both appointed on Netanyahu’s recommendations.

From what Akiva says in the article, as well as what I’ve read over the years, it seems every time the Prime Minister was faced with a choice between advancing the cause of peace for Israel, or destroying a political opponent or otherwise advance his own personal survival in the political arena, he picked the latter, gambling that Israel could continue to survive using force and the formidable backing of the United States, rather than negotiating for long-standing peace with neighbors. Because of these choices, we see an Israel with a poor international reputation borne of their own choices, rather than propaganda of enemies. Would the modern founders of Israel, Ben-Gurion and all the others, be proud of what Netanyahu has wrought, between the corruption investigations engulfing his family and the dubious position of Israel?

But can he serve as a personal example to the Americans and their choice of Trump? There is little evidence that Trump is willing to make sacrifices to safeguard the United States; rather, he and his family appear to be using the office of the President for pecuniary gain, and his management of the American government has been marked by chaos, mendacity, and a careless lack of nominations to important positions throughout the government.

The problem in using the Prime Minister as an instructive example is the distance of Israel from the United States. If Israeli democracy were to collapse tomorrow, I doubt a majority of Americans would do more than shake their heads and then wonder just where the hell Saudi Arabia or Iran is in relation to Israel.

Just as importantly, though, is the current era’s distrust of expertise in combination with the many defenders Netanyahu will retain even as he goes down in flames. Much like the United States, as a democracy the final responsibility for the choice of leadership lies with the people. If a substantial percentage of the people refuse to consider seriously the advice of experts, of people who have studied subjects for decades, then how can a credible examination of the failure, near or total, of the Israeli democracy take place, and the necessary lessons be learned? The cacophony of voices enabled by the Web makes it that much harder, as Joe Blow, a guy with a grudge, an elegant voice, and little else can go head to head with former ambassadors to Israel. Sounds like a blowout? All it takes is an ambassador who understands the nuances of the issues to attempt to convey them, and the audience will reject the expert in favor of Joe Blow. Because Joe makes it sound simple and easy.

But as H. L. Mencken pointed out long ago …

… there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.

And that’s why we have experts, experts who can avoid that little sand trap on the way to the goal. But I fear experts in such soft subjects as diplomacy and international relations may not find their services desired for a little while, until the people find their fingers burned, their children dead, and their taxes raised to pay for some fool leader’s easy little war. And all for the same reason – because the Party winning, or even some individual winning, was far more important than securing the future of Israel.

Or the United States.

Peeper looked out the window and I grabbed her pics. Fun, until the wind picked up and blew the curtains about.

Found in the Bio of Zeshan B, the musician:

His parents’ nostalgic yearning for the sounds of their native land gave him a profound exposure to Indo-Pakistani music. However, his father, having been one of the few journalists in India to cover Black literature and music in the 1960s and 70s, was immensely fond of Black artistic expression. As such, Zeshan grew up with the sounds of his father’s blues, soul, and R&B collection as well. Additionally, his mother–a retired social worker at Chicago’s Cook County Hospital–imbibed Zeshan with a sensitivity and awareness of the plight of disenfranchised minorities.Those two worlds collide on his debut album ‘Vetted’. Produced by Lester Snell (the legendary arranger for Isaac Hayes, Al Green, Mavis Staples), ‘Vetted’ is a mixtape of Zeshan’s originals and lesser known 1960s and ‘70s deep soul gems. The album was recorded in Memphis at the famed Ardent Studios with a wrecking crew of Stax Records’ sidemen.

Must be one of those special Surly brands.

The Hollyhocks are not doing so well this year, but here’s a couple of pictures of them, just so you can see their tonsils.

Image source: Turquoise Tiger

I’ve been ignoring the controversy over (now former) Google engineer James Damore’s memo in the workplace, mostly due to time considerations, although I did notice the NPR morning report covering it seemed a trifle confused. Apparently this has become something into which a lot of things can be read. Andrew Sullivan did a close reading (see the second and third sections of the post at the link) of the memo and came out of it outraged – at everyone on the left:

He used no slurs; he backed up his arguments with evidence; his tone is measured, even scholarly; in subsequent media appearances, he comes off as an affable fellow, far from angry or bitter, just refusing to buckle to ideas he believes are worth questioning. More to the point, he is not wrong. You’ll notice that almost none of the media criticisms of the manifesto present data that contradicts Damore, which is the obvious way to debunk someone. They don’t do this because the overwhelming data on gender difference supports Damore’s careful argument. In many rigorous, peer-reviewed studies, scholars — many of them women — have presented evidence that the genders do indeed differ on major personality traits, that men in general tend to prefer dealing with things and women in general prefer dealing with people, and that these differing traits may well lead to different distributions of men and women in certain professions. This does not mean that sexism isn’t also a big factor in these differentials. It posits merely that sexism is not the only factor. …

The New York Times described the memo in a news article as “positing that biological differences explained the tech industry’s gender gap.” Explained? That’s a caricature. How about “play a role in” the gender gap? Here’s Owen Jones in The Guardian: “Damore’s assertions about gender are, frankly, guff dressed up with pseudo-scientific jargon.” What is “pseudo-scientific” about the peer-reviewed studies I’ve cited? Jones doesn’t explain. Google’s diversity chief responded to the memo by telling Google employees that the memo advanced “incorrect assumptions” about gender, but never explained what in the memo was “incorrect.” She also refused even to link to the memo — because it propagated ideas that violated Google’s corporate policies. Whatever else this is, it isn’t rational. There is no ethical or empirical difference, it seems to me, between Jones’s or Google’s statements about gender and any statement that simply asserts that all climate science is a hoax. None. And yet the left forgives itself for the exact same know-nothingism it rightly excoriates on the right.

The mark of a serious person is an adherence to the facts of a matter, and that appears to be Andrew’s fetish. It’s evident here in two way, the first being the obvious citation of facts, but the second is his ripostes to those responses he feel are unworthy of the subject – by pointing out their lack of factual support. It’s one reason I like Andrew a lot, whether or not I like his positions.

Lefty Kevin Drum takes a different approach:

I finally got around to reading the memo this afternoon. What surprised me wasn’t that Damore wrote what he did. I imagine there are plenty of Silicon Valley engineer-bros who are tired of all the SJW diversity lectures and have managed to convince themselves that it’s nonsense on the basis of what they think is rigorously impartial scientific analysis. Throw in a bit of conservative victimology and you have a pretty good taste of Damore’s memo. You can read the whole thing here if you want.

Like I said, that much didn’t surprise me. But there was something that struck me as a bit off-kilter about Damore’s memo. Maybe I’m over-reading things, but it seemed like Damore very calculatedly went further over the line than he needed to. …

So why did he write what he did? Maybe I’m overestimating Damore’s sophistication, but something about his writing style made me think he had deliberately chosen not to take this tack. There was something about the amateurishness of his analysis that seemed strained, as if he was playing a role. And that role was simple: not to write about why he thought Google’s diversity programs were misguided, but to write something as offensive as possible in a way that allowed him plausible deniability. In other words, he was trying to get fired so he could portray himself as a lonely martyr to Silicon Valley’s intolerance for conservative views. Maybe he could even go to court, funded by some nice right-wing think tank.

It’s interesting to see the contrast between Andrew taking Damore’s research seriously, while Kevin thinks it’s amateurish. But on that subject, Debra Soh, a PhD in sexual neuroscience, writes in the Toronto Globe & Mail:

Despite how it’s been portrayed, the memo was fair and factually accurate. Scientific studies have confirmed sex differences in the brain that lead to differences in our interests and behaviour.

As mentioned in the memo, gendered interests are predicted by exposure to prenatal testosterone – higher levels are associated with a preference for mechanically interesting things and occupations in adulthood. Lower levels are associated with a preference for people-oriented activities and occupations. This is why STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields tend to be dominated by men.

So Dr. Soh seems to be confirming Damore’s interpretations of the studies. Her conclusions?

This trend continues into the area of personality, as well. Contrary to what detractors would have you believe, women are, on average, higher in neuroticism and agreeableness, and lower in stress tolerance.

Some intentionally deny the science because they are afraid it will be used to justify keeping women out of STEM. But sexism isn’t the result of knowing facts; it’s the result of what people choose to do with them.

This is exactly what the mob of outrage should be mobilizing for, instead of denying biological reality and being content to spend a weekend doxxing a man so that he would lose his job. At this point, as foreshadowed in Mr. Damore’s manifesto, we should be more concerned about viewpoint diversity than diversity revolving around gender.

Google’s been a target for the conservatives since it often follows its own path, such as exiting ALEC. So this is not a surprise from National Review’s Michael Barone:

Similarly, Google’s CEO said Tuesday: “We strongly support the right of Googlers to express themselves.” “However” — key word — “portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.”

George Orwell would recognize this doublespeak: We totally support free speech except when we call it heresy. Tolerance requires repression.

Ironically, for a company that makes money by transmitting information, Google’s position is intellectually incoherent. What its CEO dismisses as “harmful gender stereotypes” are the conclusions, after years of painstaking research, of serious neuroscientists.

Michael Dougherty, also at National Review, communicates in conservaspeak, that special slang for those who will nod with you in unison.

Then a left-leaning person in Google leaked it to a left-leaning media outlet, knowing it would kick over the hornet’s nest of left-leaning social media, scaring lawyers inside Google, who would then advise executives that continuing to employ Damore risked Title VII litigation, which is shaped by left-leaning legal activists in such a way that employing anyone with known non-progressive views on politics or religion becomes a potential legal liability, since even having them around starts to create a hostile environment. Left-leaning activist employees then set the media up for the day-two story, going public to explain that they can’t work with someone who donated to the wrong political cause, or wrote the wrong thing on a message board; they feel unsafe. Or they call in sick. Left-leaning executives and managers start sharing that they are making internal blacklists. The Left has a word for this phenomenon where people pretend to be threatened and hurt so that they may lash out and threaten others. They call it gaslighting.

He might even be right, but the conversational manner is not meant to convince the skeptic, but to invoke a riot in the converted. Nice work, if you can get paid for it – a lot easier than writing pieces that actually convince and change the world. Not that I’m bitter, to quote a friend about an ex-husband …

I’ve glanced the memo over, but the unavoidable tilt towards unknown Google cultural biases and concerns make interpretation a bit too chancy for my tastes. So I’ll just leave my reader with the observations of the above folks, some with more credentials than mine, and I’ll just note that sometimes the left can get a little shrill and defensive of their positions.

And sometimes people read what they want into a controversy. It’s weird, but I suppose for the ideologically driven it’s understandable.

A sidebar to “The new shape of reality,” by Anil Ananthaswamy in NewScientist (29 July 2017, paywall) describes a different approach to classical physics – and its implications:

History shows that radical new ways of thinking about reality are well worth grappling with. Take Newton’s laws of motion. Given the position of a particle and all the forces acting on it, you can show deterministically – by describing cause and effect – how it goes from point A to point B. But there is another way to think about the particle’s path. It’s called the principle of least action. It says that a particle will take the path that minimises a quantity called classical action, which is the average value of the particle’s kinetic energy minus its potential energy along the path.

This principle felt weird to minds trained in classical physics. “[No one] thought that particles smelled around all possible paths and took the one that minimised this silly number,” says Jacob Bourjaily of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark. “It’s a very weird starting point for classical physics.” What’s more, the theory appears non-deterministic because a particle’s trajectory isn’t obvious at the onset. Nonetheless, the principle of least action makes the same predictions as Newton’s laws, suggesting that determinism is emergent, and the calculations involved are easier.

So what does it mean to say that determinism is emergent? Does this imply the substrate from which it emerges is, itself, non-deterministic?

I got a feeling I’d need about ten years of training before this would even start to make any sense. But if it makes that math easier, it’s worth exploring.

A reader comments on the subject of awe:

Very interesting research. One could almost say “civilization causes incivility.” Nature-inspired awe would certainly be evolutionarily advantageous. Humans being social animals, awe would tend to inspire behaviors, such as group cohesiveness, that would benefit the group and hence the individual members.

So, let’s give all the intolerant a tour: Grand Canyon floor and back up, Bryce Canyon, Yosemite, one of the Redwoods parks, maybe Niagara Falls, etc.

Love the word play – is there a word for that particular variety?

I see the awe melting that insidious enemy of the group, the individual’s will towards, well, individualism. It’s a reminder that there are entities greater than the individual out there, and that the group serves to enhance the survival of the individual in the face of those entities that are so much more powerful, beautiful, or greater than a mere human individual. Even those entities of no particular hostile bearing towards the individual should invoke that response.

It’s a reminder that groups are multiplicative, not additive, when properly led.

Bellicose:

Demonstrating aggression and willingness to fight.
‘a mood of bellicose jingoism’ [Oxford Dictionaries]

While it’s not a rare word, if perhaps a trifle uncommon in casual discourse, the source reference appears to be pulling in its horns. My first reference was in  in “‘Fire and fury’ not to be taken seriously, say aides: Trump was just in ‘a bellicose mood’,” by Hunter on The Daily Kos, where he quotes The New York Times: 

No worries, then: Trump’s vow that North Korea would see “fire and fury like the world has never seen” was, according to aides, merely an unsupervised utterance of the presidential word-hole.

Among those taken by surprise, they said, was John F. Kelly, the retired four-star Marine general who has just taken over as White House chief of staff and has been with the president at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., for his working vacation.The president had been told about a Washington Post story on North Korea’s progress in miniaturizing nuclear warheads so that they could fit on top of a ballistic missile, and was in a bellicose mood, according to a person who spoke with him before he made the statement.

That’s a good word. “Bellicose.”

But the linked NYT story does not contain the word. A bad link? A little searching then yielded this WaPo story by Gary Sargent, “Happy Hour Roundup,” in the Plum Line column:

The president had been told about a Washington Post story on North Korea’s progress in miniaturizing nuclear warheads so that they could fit on top of a ballistic missile, and was in a bellicose mood, according to a person who spoke with him before he made the statement. His team assumed that he would be asked about North Korea during a scheduled media appearance tied to his opioid meeting, but Mr. Trump had not mentioned his comment during a conference call beforehand that focused on North Korea.

A bellicose mood? Sounds like a good basis for an American president to decide whether it’s sound strategy to threaten a rival country with nuclear annihilation.

This column linked to this NYT story, “Trump’s Threat to North Korea Was Improvised,” but, again, the word bellicose is not present.

Apparently bellicose is on the outs at The New York Times.

Ah! A breath of fresh air!

Unlike the previously reviewed Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), the classic Nosferatu (1922) is a classic for its novelty and shock value – it has not aged well. This tale has the elements for a good horror movie, as a supernatural entity, housed in an obscure corner of the world and masquerading as a human, a certain Count Orlok, has negatively influenced the mind of Knock, a real estate agent in the German city of Wisborg (or Wismar), who had visited him on previous occasions. Knock sends his newly married subordinate, Thomas, to assist Orlok in selecting a new abode to inhabit in Wisborg.

Leaving his wife, Ellen, in Wisborg, Thomas’ trip to Orlok’s castle has grim omens of the nature of Orlok: Knock’s remark about fresh blood, villagers going silent upon learning the nature of Thomas’ journey, and an exceedingly creepy carriage with horses covered in black. Once at a castle empty of servants, Thomas must fight a polite, unacknowledged battle with Orlok for control of himself, as Orlok uses him to gain his knowledge; during this time, Ellen somehow is aware of Thomas’ travails, but can do little to help.

Orlok leaves the castle for Wisborg, leaving Thomas, injured in the traditional manner, a prisoner in the castle, to wander in the castle and in his mind. But Thomas discovers a secret and breaks out of the castle, also heading for home.

Orlok must travel with his coffins, his lifeline, and so he takes them down a river and on to a schooner, which finishes the last leg of the journey, a creepy affair as Orlok slings the coffins about like toys or moves them with his mind. The crew of the schooner begin dying from ‘the plague’, and by the time the Demeter has arrived as Wisborg, no one is left. Demeter docks herself and is unloaded, the coffins transported to the Wisborgian residence of Orlok.

And now the plague has come to Wisborg. But Thomas is on his way, flying, exhausted, to the aid of his beleaguered city.

Skipping some final plot twists and turns, including the ending of Knock, Ellen uses the secret Thomas found to destroy Orlok, but must sacrifice herself to do so.

The story elements are there, but the story characters, outside of Count Orlok, are, I fear, a bit cartoonish. Perhaps it was the sensibility of German movie making at the time. The captions last for entirely too long. And, at least in this copy of Nosferatu, the music is annoyingly oppressive and fairly inappropriate to the scene. The first half is organ music which finally prompted us to turn this ‘silent’ movie’s volume down to a dull roar; the change to stringed instrument of some sort was a relief, but not much of an improvement.

On the plus side, the work of Max Shreck as Orlok, famous even today, holds up very well – his preoccupation with blood comes across nicely. The creepiness which surrounds him, even when not physically present, adds to the ambiance of the movie. And the special effects, while perhaps dated, are still effective in that they intimate something out of the ordinary is present.

On the whole, it’s a wash. It’s worth a watching just to say you’ve watched it; the serious student of horror and film making will find it interesting in how the various elements are handled.

And it is fun.

And the debacle (a word I love because of its onomatopoeia potential) of Wells Fargo appears to be continuing. CNN/Money is now reporting they stand accused of victimizing vulnerable small businesses:

For several years, Wells Fargo’s merchant services division overcharged small businesses for processing credit card transactions, a lawsuit alleges. Business owners who tried to leave Wells Fargo were charged “massive early termination fees,” according to the lawsuit filed in US District Court.

The “overbilling scheme” targeted less sophisticated businesses by using “deceptive language” in a 63-page contract designed to confuse them, the lawsuit filed on August 4 claims. The lawyer filed court documents to seek class action status.

The latest controversy centers on Wells Fargo Merchant Services, a joint venture that is 60% owned by Wells Fargo and 40% controlled by First Data (FDC).

A former employee of the Wells Fargo (WFC) business told CNNMoney that he was instructed to target these small businesses.

“We used to be told to go out and club the baby seals: mom-pop-shops that had no legal support,” he said in an interview. The former Wells Fargo employee spoke on the condition of anonymity, but CNNMoney verified that he worked for Wells Fargo Merchant Services.

Keeping in mind Wells Fargo is vigorously denying these accusations, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Sad to say, Wells Fargo appears to have Trumpetized those small businesses. Much like Trump, in his businessman role, refusing to pay his contractors and banking on their inability to engage in a running legal battle, WF appears to have decided to use their superior position to rip off the small businesses.

Some purists may wish to blame the small businesses, but truth to tell is that the small businesses often cannot afford the legal expertise to assess these contracts, they cannot assess these offers themselves as the legal field is extremely specialized and what may appear to be clear language to the non-specialist is a minefield to the experienced eye of the lawyer, and yet they cannot afford to not avail themselves of these services – otherwise, they will operate at a lethal disadvantage to the competition.

Assuming WF really engaged in this behavior, it’s rather remarkable that a bank, an institution which should have a long-term view, is engaging in a behavior which, while profitable over the short-term, is so damaging over the long-term. If word of this really penetrates deeply into American culture, it’s quite possible that the customers for these services will dry up, moving on to US Bank and other competitors – who are operating at an ethical advantage. But I can see how this happened, based on Deb’s post initiating this thread:

Here’s the thing: I worked for Wells Fargo for 19 years, In that time I witnessed the bank, first as Norwest, later as Wells Fargo (and then as Wachovia in all but name) evolve from a bank that was…well… a bank, offering checking, savings and loan accounts to private citizens and businesses, into a retail store, selling financial products. By the end of my tenure at Wells, if you were a banker, teller, broker, financial advisor, loan officer or manager for the bank , your yearly bonus (if any), performance rating, opportunity for advancement, and salary were directly tied to how many financial products you sold each quarter.

This is not an atmosphere conducive to building relationships. When you sell a product, you often do not have a continuing relationship with your customer. It’s a thing, it goes out the door, and if you’re lucky you won’t see the red-faced customer at the Customer Service counter, demanding his money back.

But building relationships is where the real money lies. Having a happy customer who is achieving their goals, with your help, is how you get them to come back and spend more of their money.

But what WF may be doing is akin to stripping a mountain slope of all its trees. You may have a big initial profit, but thereafter your ground is barren, slumping into the river, and basically ruining the landscape. And no profit for you.

Wells Fargo is leaving money on the table through Instant Greed. Are these guys even professionals anymore?

And, yes, as I discussed in the last post on this thread, we did sell our WF investment this week, before this report broke. Not in fear that we’d lose money on the investment – I have no idea if these scandals will impair their stock over the long term.

But in disgust at their behavior.

Yes, I know there’s only two days left of the 2017 Fringe – but I can’t resist mentioning our Friday Fringing, this time at Theatre In The Round. Perhaps one of these will get your attention and you’ll find they still have a show left.

We started with the Mercury Ninety Productions showing of Hello, I Must Be Going …, a play which purports to throw some light on the final chapter of Groucho Marx’s life, his secretary/manager/girlfriend, Erin Fleming, and his allegedly ungrateful children. Along the way I suppose it could have raised questions concerning the family dynamics which left Groucho with a secretary and no loving family, but this play didn’t really go there. In fact, it was more of a showcase for the actors than anything else, and left me wondering about the motivations of producing such a show. The actors were more than competent, and it was well composed and played, but I was nonplussed at the end.

The second show of the night was Lettres et Café, by Bad Mime Productions. A slice of life about a community of small business people in post-war Paris, and their fight for survival in the face of a rebuilding committee’s decision about their sector of their beloved city, it follows in particular the lives of two coffee shop workers and how their lives are intertwined far more than they might guess. This show is an atypical Fringe show for two reasons: first, it’s far more polished than your typical effort. Clearly well-rehearsed, with a good focus on how it should appear in the space provided by Theatre In The Round. Second, the story is really quite conventional, with no supernatural entities, fourth wall breakage, or any of that sort. Not that it’s entirely predictable, but in the end we did feel it was not as surprising as many shows. This is not bad; I appreciate a well done show. The Fringe is about being different. Difference is all about context, and in that respect, Lettres et Café achieves difference from the rest of the Fringe. Recommended.

As good as was Lettres et Café, I fear it was outdone by the next show, Fruit Flies Like a Banana: WORLD TOUR, by the Massachusetts-based ensemble The Fourth Wall. Composed of comedic improv, classic musicianship, and some mild gymnastics, this group of three (with a single appearance by a fourth, who might have been a guest artist) is made up of a flutist, a bass trombonist, and a percussionist, all of whom, my Arts Editor tells me, are consummate musicians. We saw them last year; this time around they had taped the names of locations on a beach ball of a world globe, and the piece consisted of them throwing the ball into the audience, where the member who caught it could pick one of those locations, and then the ensemble would perform a piece of music with some connection to the location. Along with the music, they also performed various … I shan’t say gymnastics, but sometimes their musicality was amazingly mixed with their physical movements. Add in some off-the-cuff and exquisitely timed humor between the pieces, and this was a memorable show. Several of their pieces impressed me, including the music of Antarctica. Recommended.

Equaling Fruit Flies in sheer enthusiasm was Swords & Sorcery: The Improvised Fantasy Campaign by Bearded Men Improv. Never did Dungeons & Dragons? Neither did I. Apparently this is how it’s done – and if the players are not polished performers, at least they sure love their subject. The dice may control their fates, but they control their own ‘tude on the stage of the game. It kept us in stitches.

We finished the evening with To The Quick: A trio of short plays that cut deep, by Diva G Productions. The three plays ask questions, but you must provide the answers. The first is a bit of a fluff piece concerning those jumpy, lurking questions about teenage sexuality, and whether or not her lips are more alluring – or the red-hair badger’s. The second dives deeper into how the death of a loved one will affect someone too tightly clinging to that existence. The third asks whether the paraplegic woman is really badly injured – or just pissed off at the world. The stories were, I believe, composed for the Fringe, and they are wise in that they withhold information, giving it out slowly, and keeping the audience interested along the way. All interesting, possibly more hesitant and less self-assured about the answers to the questions. And that’s what art can be about – asking questions without providing answers. It’s a thin, jagged line, in that sense. Art should illustrate the potential results of choices – but dictation of choice ruins art. As ever, we need to be aware of choices we make, and think of consequences when making them.

I hope you have the time to go Fringing, if not this year, then perhaps next year.

Katherine Martinko on Treehugger.com brings up a mundane but important point – doctors are beginning to realize that many health problems begin with our diet, and food is what makes or breaks us:

Doctors and hospitals are well-positioned to guide patients toward better eating habits; but, ideally, such education would start much earlier in life, before chronic diseases manifest themselves. Children should be learning how to cook from their parents, and schools should implement cooking classes as a standard part of the curriculum. It’s an excellent connection point for various subjects, such as science, math, health, even history and social studies.

Most importantly, the societal mentality toward cooking deserves a makeover. It should not be viewed as drudgery (a normal reaction when one struggles with a skill), but as a respected domestic art, something to celebrate, admire, and constantly strive to improve. After all, our survival depends on it.