Unsightly Mental Blemishes

The war in the political trenches can be so discouraging, based on this report from the IndyStar:

State and local Republicans have expanded early voting in GOP-dominated areas and restricted it in Democratic areas, an IndyStar investigation has found, prompting a significant change in Central Indiana voting patterns.

From 2008 to 2016, GOP officials expanded early voting stations in Republican dominated Hamilton County, IndyStar’s analysis found, and decreased them in the state’s biggest Democratic hotbed, Marion County.

That made voting more convenient in GOP areas for people with transportation issues or busy schedules. And the results were immediate.

Most telling, Hamilton County saw a 63 percent increase in absentee voting from 2008 to 2016, while Marion County saw a 26 percent decline. Absentee ballots are used at early voting stations.

The dishonesty inherent in this sort of activity, regardless of Party affiliation, reminds me of how the more abstract & diffuse the entity, the more difficult it is to put the loyalty to that entity first.

This is a somewhat incomplete report in that it’s not clear if the position responsible for this activity is a partisan or non-partisan position; the latter sounds far more appropriate. But one would hope that party affiliation would play no role in the fulfilling of the responsibilities.

So what’s happening?

Democrats are challenging the state’s early voting system in a lawsuit alleging the secretary of state and legislative supermajority have launched a concerted effort to suppress the Democratic vote, a debate that is also playing out on the national front.

Addendum: I suppose the GOP will whine about naturalized immigrants and how they always vote Democrat. Try supporting better policies, boys.

Next door in Wisconsin lawmakers have been talking to Chinese manufacturer Foxconn about setting up a factory, using tax incentives to lure them over. Reuters reports on an analysis of the deal:

Foxconn hopes to open a $10 billion plant in 2020 at a 1,000-acre site in southeastern Wisconsin and state leaders, including Republican Governor Scott Walker, have touted the incentives as a boon because of the jobs that will be created.

Critics have attacked the plan as too expensive and potentially harmful to the environment.

Officials have said Foxconn, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd, will employ about 1,000 people in the second half of 2017 and employment will grow to 13,000 by 2021.

Based on estimates from the non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau, Wisconsin will not receive a return on its investment in the project until about 2042. The bureau provides fiscal analysis for the state legislature.

Walker’s spokesman Tom Evenson said in a statement that the Foxconn factory is a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” that includes the large company investment and $10.5 billion in new payroll.

Wisconsin Representative Peter Barca, the state Democratic minority leader from Kenosha, said the report proves legislators need more time to examine the deal.

“The fiscal analysis released today creates new questions on the state’s cash flow and on the state’s ability to ensure a good return on the investment for taxpayers,” Barca said in a statement.

Regarding that last statement, I think that since the State isn’t expected to turn a profit, there’s some wiggle room. Given the straits manufacturing has been in, it makes a lot of sense to pursue a manufacturing plant. Whether or not this is the proper project is a topic for experts in the matter.

But what really makes me scratch my head is the statement that there won’t be return on the investment until 2042.

Guys, the product, these LCD screens, will be dead technology by then.

MAYBE, the plant will be converted to something else.

More likely, either sold off or even abandoned.

It just seems silly to project technology out that far.

Metastable:

In physics, metastability is a stable state of a dynamical system other than the system’s state of least energy. A ball resting in a hollow on a slope is a simple example of metastability. If the ball is only slightly pushed, it will settle back into its hollow, but a stronger push may start the ball rolling down the slope. Bowling pins show similar metastability by either merely wobbling for a moment or tipping over completely. A common example of metastability in science is isomerisation. Higher energy isomers are long lived as they are prevented from rearranging to their preferred ground state by (possibly large) barriers in the potential energy. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “Bigger bang theory: teach atoms new tricks to beef up explosives,” David Hambling, NewScientist (29 July 2017, paywall):

A good way to change a game is to change its rules. One line of research to do just that builds on a curiosity that was exercising the Royal Society back in the 1660s just when gunpowder was: Prince Rupert’s drops. These tadpole-shaped trinkets are formed by molten glass cooling rapidly, and are named after Prince Rupert of the Rhine, a cousin of King Charles II who first brought them to England. The way the drops form leaves them under tremendous internal strain. A hammer will bounce off the drop’s body and not break it, but if you snap the tail the strain is suddenly released, sending a wave through the drop, shattering it into powder.

This explosivity is based on the release of not chemical energy, but mechanical strain. At the US Army Research Laboratory (ARL) in Maryland, Jennifer Ciezak-Jenkins and her colleagues have been experimenting with the same principle using nanoscopic diamonds. Diamond forms only at high temperatures and pressures, such as those found deep in Earth’s mantle, and is a “metastable” form of carbon. It is stable in ambient conditions, only crumbling over cosmic timescales back to graphite.

Source: NASDAQ.com, of course.

The markets have been somewhat tentative over the last few business days, with a bit of a thud today as the Nasdaq took a 2.13% tumble. What does it definitely mean? Beats me. But it’s worth speculating that an awareness that the Administration is basically, well, kooky, may be spreading through the investment community. Mutual funds and other large entities may be a large part of the community, but individual investors, moving unconsciously en masse, can also move the markets. While many have applauded deregulation, I think that, regardless of its merits, it will be overshadowed by threats of war and a deconstruction of a Federal government which until now has provided a certain stability to the markets and the country – and, when it hasn’t the market has tumbled in response. I refer to the termination of the Glass-Steagall Act as well as other modifications to the law which resulted in the Great Recession.

Despite Kevin Drum’s best efforts to give Trump no credit for the continued progress most of the stock market indices have been making, Trump has grabbed credit with both hands. But if the markets fall, will he similarly accept blame? That’s the thing about the markets – if they go up, the government can only accept credit for smoothing the waters, stopping the wars, and basically providing a stable, predictable environment for the anxiety-ridden investment community. A good market crash is often encouraged by bad government policies, but a bull market, once out of the pothole inflicted by the market, may depend on factors outside of government influence.

This is not fertile soil for Donald Trump, in reality. But will investors notice? Precisely, will small investors who voted for Trump connect any fall in the markets with the chaos at the Federal level, the spear-waving, mendacity, and general destruction wrought by those with dubious ideologies?

Should be interesting to find out. The latest Gallup daily poll shows Trump at 36% approval, which is his lowest in this particular poll – he keeps falling to 36% and then bouncing off it. The question in my mind is whether or not we’ll see a jump as citizens rally to a President facing down the North Korean threat – or if enough people, watching his blustering performance, will give up in disgust and force it lower. It’s a three day rolling average, so it may take a couple of days to find out.

In case you were wanting a graphic illustration of a hostile drone, go no further.

Although I must admit that I was waiting for the guy to accidentally do himself in.

Lloyd Alter on Treehugger.com notes the realization that our solar power arrays are vulnerable to hackers:

If it was a movie, these would be about to stand up and chase after you.
Source: Wikipedia

When new solar panels are installed, users should change any default passwords. The other really hack proof solution is to disconnect the inverters from the internet, which would remove the weakness completely.

“Solar producers should seek to isolate the products from the internet ASAP,” said Dave Palmer, director of technology at cyber-security company Darktrace to the BBC. “And [they should] also review their physical access security to reduce the risk of a local attack from someone physically breaking into their facilities.”

This is yet another example of how having everything connected to the internet, while really convenient, also introduces a host of new problems. For a clean energy smart grid to really take off, we’ll need protections in place, even down to the lowly power inverter.

Indeed. When I worked at a large industrial concern supplying software to the energy industry, I was amazed to find that we could directly access the energy systems of other states, even entire countries, via the Internet, diagnosing bugs in our software and fixing them.

It was certainly better than flying to Eastern Europe and sitting in a loud server room for hours on end.

But the security arrangements often bothered me. I wonder if the various energy management entities took those systems offline or not.

I was breezing along through this NewScientist (29 July 2017, paywall) article on how the experience of awe affects us:

Credit: Parks.ca.gov

… [University of California – Berkeley Professor Dacher] Keltner and others have found that even mild awe can change our attitudes and behaviour. For example, people who watched a nature video that elicited awe – rather than other positive emotions such as happiness or pride – were subsequently more ethical, more generous and described themselves as feeling more connected to people in general. Gazing up at tall eucalyptus trees left others more likely to help someone who stumbled in front of them. And after standing in front of a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, people were more likely to describe themselves as part of a group. It might seem counterintuitive that an emotion we often experience alone increases our focus on others. But Keltner thinks it’s because awe expands our attention to encompass a bigger picture, so reducing our sense of self.

Sounds awfully neat, doesn’t it? But I wasn’t really thinking about it that much, so this was quite a jar to the noggin:

In the modern world, though, we’re more likely to be gazing at our smartphones than at giant redwoods or a starry sky. And Keltner is concerned about the impact of our increasing disconnection from nature, one of the most potent sources of awe. “I’m struck by how awe makes us humble and charitable,” he says. “Is that why we have so much incivility and hatred right now in the US? I think we should be asking these questions.”

The suggestion is certainly interesting, although honestly I don’t think the incivility comes from those hooked on smartphones. But it’s still a fascinating thought – just what are we losing when we lose touch with Nature? When we retreat into a world constructed exclusively by humans?

Addendum: I published this piece and turned around to check my mail and there’s something from a friend about the largest dinosaur ever found. At possibly as much as 80 tons and based on nearly complete skeletons, that would fall into the category of awesome, were it met in flesh and blood. But a question does arise – from MSN & The Atlantic:

I’d never heard of Prince Rupert’s drops.

Some folks are exploring using the principle involved to propel spaceships.

amplituhedron:

An amplituhedron is a geometric structure introduced in 2013 by Nima Arkani-Hamed and Jaroslav Trnka. It enables simplified calculation of particle interactions in some quantum field theories. In planar N = 4 supersymmetric Yang–Mills theory, also equivalent to the perturbative topological B model string theory in twistor space, an amplituhedron is defined as a mathematical space known as the positive Grassmannian. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “The geometry that could reveal the true nature of space-time,” Anil Ananthaswamy, NewScientist (29 July 2017, paywall):

Source: Theory Of Everything

It took Nima Arkani-Hamed and his team at the Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) in New Jersey, including his then students Jaroslav Trnka and Bourjaily, to join the dots. Building on the seemingly esoteric work of pure mathematicians, the team arrived at a mind-boggling conclusion: the scattering amplitude calculated with the BCFW technique corresponds beautifully to the volume of a new mathematical object. They gave a name to this multi-dimensional concatenation of polyhedrons: the amplituhedron.

Now go out and drop this in casual conversation.

And the shocking transformation of puddinhead me into …

… Roy Orbison.

Frightening, really.

In an unsigned Editorial on 38 North, the message from the North Koreans is re-translated so that it makes more sense than that presented by the mass media:

The answer though could be found in the Korean language version, in which the formula was presented as one sentence, not two:

미국의 적대시 정책과 핵위협이 근원적으로 청산되지 않는 한 우리는 그 어떤 경우에도 핵과 탄도로케트를 협상탁에 올려놓지 않을 것이며 우리가 선택한 핵무력 강화의 길에서 단 한치도 물러서지 않을 것입니다.

“Unless the hostile policy and nuclear threat of the U.S. against the D.P.R.K. are fundamentally eliminated, we, under no circumstances, will put the nukes and ballistic rockets on the negotiating table and will not flinch even an inch away from our path of strengthening of the nuclear forces, which is chosen by ourselves.”

Indeed, this formulation just repeats earlier statement by Kim Jong Un himself (on July 4) as well as an official North Korean government statement on August 7, which is an authoritative policy pronouncement. But no one in the media mentioned either of these statements in their coverage.

The writer accuses the media of sensationalism, and I agree. The necessary intrusion of the private sector into the news sector, not to mention the natural requirement to compete, will lead to muckups like this – assuming this translation is correct. So the media stirs up its customers – I wonder how many customers’ health has been damaged by raising their blood pressure?

There’s something to be said for a dedication to truth.

CNN reports that the GOP-led Congress is still trying to avoid doing the right thing:

In the wake of Trump’s “fire and fury” comment on Tuesday, lawmakers began calling for Congress to authorize any preemptive military action against Pyongyang.

Sen. Dan Sullivan, an Alaska Republican, told CNN’s Erin Burnett a preemptive strike would require congressional approval.

“The administration has done a good job up until now working closely with the Congress on their broader strategy. But we’re going to play an important role here,” Sullivan said Tuesday night.

Michigan Democratic Rep. Dan Kildee told CNN’s Poppy Harlow on Wednesday Congress should weigh in, especially with Trump in the Oval Office.

“This is a conversation that needs to take place. The authority of congress should be asserted, particularly in the case of this president where he seems to be somewhat erratic when it comes to what he suggests is American foreign policy,” Kildee said.
But the White House takes a different view about the role of Congress and the Trump administration did not go to Capitol Hill for approval of its military strikes against the Syrian regime.

In April, then-press secretary Sean Spicer was asked if the President was prepared to act alone on North Korea or if Congress should be involved.

Which is to say, we don’t dare actually try to get rid of this incompetent boob. So instead they’ll try to usurp what is arguably an executive prerogative, when really they should just usurp the current holder of the office.

This is all really a bit puzzling, given the growing disregard GOP members of Congress, as well as even Cabinet secretaries, have reportedly exhibited towards their supposed Party leader. I suppose it has something to do with the base, and something to do with respect for the Party and for those who voted for him. Which all makes me tired.

Perhaps they know something about Pence that we hoi-polloi don’t? They’d like less to see Pence than Trump in the office? That puts shivers down my spine.

And here’s the thing – rallying to the President in a time of national distress all sounds wonderful, but in reality the country is donig just fine, on the whole. Will North Korea make good on their nuclear threat? In my opinion, no – the return volley from the United States would leave them, to borrow a phrase, glassed over. The North Koreans should be well aware that taking the first shot in a nuclear war is not in their best interests.

But emotionally torturing the American President? This has to be doing wonders for the prestige of Kim Jong-un and the North Korean leadership, both internally and externally. They apply the poker, Trump hops up and down. Makes them look tough and powerful, two qualities which lead to respect in the minds of the North Koreans – and respect is very important to the Koreans.

In point of fact, I worry more about the rationality of Trump than I do of Kim. Kim is young and, in all likelihood, fully functional. More importantly, he’s a trained leader. Their government may not be our government, but he knows how to make it run, he has priorities and understanding of how his country works, and, no matter how much I dislike Kim, that makes him somewhat predictable.

Trump, on the other hand, is old, untrained, uninterested in being trained, and I think at this juncture we can assume the only interests he has at heart is his own – involving money and his family. How that plays out in this little game of chicken is harder to predict than Kim’s.

So when Kim plays these games with him, he’s torturing an old, erratic man. The rest of the nation in distress? Only those who buy into propaganda. But Trump could lash out in an unwise manner in response to this needling, this act of making him look weak. Hell, if Kim were to just belly-laugh at him on a video, Trump might order a nuclear strike just to cosset his pride.

And that’s why we need him out.

Lately, there’s been some Facebook posts with pictures of President Obama, asking if we missed him now. These are based on a similar billboard ad erected early in Obama’s term asking the same question concerning President Bush. I always figured those concerning Bush were a joke, as the alternative hinted at a demented state of mind, given Bush’s incompetence. But with President Obama – yep, I do miss him. A lot. Or FDR. Or Ike. Someone with demonstrated competence, intelligence, and backbone.

Hydrolaccolith:

A pingo, also called a hydrolaccolith,^[1] is a mound of earth-covered ice found in the Arctic and subarctic that can reach up to 70 metres (230 ft) in height and up to 600 m (2,000 ft) in diameter. The term originated as the Inuvialuktun word for a small hill. The plural form is “pingos”. [Wikipedia]

Pictures from Rarig Center last Sunday while attending the Fringe. Not bad for a smartphone, I thought. The second one is nicer. All very bland for a post-food-poisoning episode.

Benjamin Wittes and Nora Ellingsen on Lawfare discuss former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, now Assistant Director, who Trump doesn’t like because of political contributions to McCabe’s wife from prominent Democrats, and how newly confirmed FBI Director Christopher Wray can and cannot handle the situation:

Removing McCabe would face certain legal complications. McCabe is a career FBI special agent, not a political appointee, and he’s a member of the Senior Executive Service. Civil service rules prevent a simple firing, and while McCabe can be reassigned or encouraged to retire, he cannot be reassigned for four months after installation of a new agency head without his consent. More broadly, to reassign a 21-year veteran of the FBI for political reasons would send a strong message that the FBI is no longer an apolitical organization, an identity of which FBI employees are fiercely proud, even if it doesn’t run afoul of civil service protections—at least if it were done without McCabe’s cooperation.

The problem for Wray is that Trump might not care about any of these niceties: not about whether he’s making his FBI director look like a political toady, not about how the workforce understands the director and certainly not about compliance with civil service protections.

So what happens the next time Trump tweets about the deputy director, suggesting he be replaced? Does Wray replace McCabe? Does he rope-a-dope and not comply but also not say anything? Does he quietly over time install his own team and ease McCabe out in a graceful fashion? Or does he speak up in response to political pressure and become the next law enforcement leader at whose hands Trump feels unprotected and betrayed?

I vote for the latter. I think it’s necessary to publicly and loudly correct Trump every time he tries to run roughshod over political norms. Political norms exist for a simple reason – they ameliorate some sort of problem that cannot be regulated away. I won’t say they fix them, because some of these are extraordinarily difficult problems, such as who should have hiring / firing control over the Director of an Agency responsible for investigating the activities of government.

But these norms exist for a reason, and they are not bad reasons. They are not norms for covering up corruption, for example. So Trump doesn’t understand them – he has no training, no intellectual curiosity. So smack him in the nose like a bad puppy every time he transgresses, remind him that President is not King, and try to get him to grow up. A little.

I must be the slowest on the uptake in the world. A while ago I discussed why progressives are likely to stay in a political ghetto, but I didn’t really get to the heart of the matter – their communications style. What’s going on there? It finally occurred to me while mowing the lawn.

Politics is about governance.

Governance is about dominance.

And part of dominance is the language used in communications. After all, if you’re going to be the alpha male gorilla, you have to let the rest of the troupe know you’re the top gun. And your supporters will communicate your dominance as well, because it’s of benefit to them to assert that dominance. And part of that dominance, at least as humans, is having better ideas, and, conversely, spitting on those of everyone else.

So what we end up with is a bunch wannabe politicians who are asserting their desperately desired dominance through their language, and that is almost inevitably a disdainful, even alienating style. And they don’t seem to get it.

Glad this Slow Joe finally got it. And all you anthropologists can just nod and pat me on the head.

It occurred to me the other day that an aphorism is an attempt to distill the disparate experiences of a multitude of people into a single phrase epitomizing some insight or rule.

Put that way, it sounds like every aphorism is false. For some people.

Noted near my workplace.

Today’s childish tantrum from the President,

In chilling language that evoked the horror of a nuclear exchange, Mr. Trump sought to deter North Korea from any actions that would put Americans at risk. But it was not clear what specifically would cross his line. Administration officials have said that a pre-emptive military strike, while a last resort, is among the options they have made available to the president.

“North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States,” Mr. Trump told reporters at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., where he is spending much of the month on a working vacation. “They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” [NYTimes]

This simply leaves the United States in a lose-lose situation. North Korea has already taunted the United States over our President’s intemperance, as the NYTimes notes in the same article:

Undaunted, North Korea warned several hours later that it was considering a strike that would create “an enveloping fire” around Guam, the western Pacific island where the United States operates a critical Air Force base. In recent months, American strategic bombers from Guam’s Andersen Air Force Base have flown over the Korean Peninsula in a show of force.

So what do we do? Back down? Rain hell-fire down on a nation merely for mouthing off? Clearly, Kim Jong-un is laughing at the elderly child currently in the Oval Office.

With each passing day, the danger posed by our amateur President continues to grow, and there’s little reason to think he will grow up, or he’ll hire better advisors – not given his spotty track-record so far.

So the question isn’t in Trump’s lap, or his advisors’, or even the generals occupying civilian offices. The question is in Speaker of the House Ryan’s lap, and he should be urgently addressing it: When do impeachment proceedings begin, sir? This is a Nation urgently in need of better leadership, and only the House can begin the proceedings.

Once Trump is gone to pout on his golf course, then we can evaluate Pence.

We may have to consider visiting the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta. As reported by Ed Yong in The Atlantic:

Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology

In March 2011, a construction worker named Shawn Funk visited an impressive dinosaur collection at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta. As he walked through halls full of ancient bones, he had no idea that a week later, he’d add to their ranks by finding one of the most spectacular dinosaur fossils of all time. It’s an animal so well preserved that its skeleton can’t be seen for the skin and soft tissues that still cover it.

When we look at dinosaurs in museums, it takes imagination to plaster flesh and skin on top of the bones. But for the dinosaur that Funk unearthed—a 110-million-year-old creature named Borealopelta—imagination isn’t necessary. It looks like a sculpture. And based on pigments that still lurk within the skin, scientists think they know what colors the animal had. “If someone wants to come face to face with a dinosaur, and see what it actually looked like, this is the one for that,” says Caleb Brown from the Royal Tyrrell Museum, who has studied the animal.

It’s on display, although I can’t find anything on the Royal Tyrrell website. Lots more in The Atlantic article, though.

Looks almost like a fake. If it weren’t for the fact the paleontologist and oil mining personnel were present as it was uncovered, I’d ask how they assure authenticity.

So damn cool.

For those who perform podcasts, this TechCrunch report will no doubt come as a relief:

A year after taking up the case, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled in favor of the Electronic Frontier Foundation in its challenge against podcasting patent troll, Personal Audio. The decision is a massive relief for the vibrant and ever-growing medium, which has been operated under the threat of lawsuit for a number of years. …

The case involves Personal Audio’s broad patent for a “System for Disseminating Media Content Representing Episodes in a Serialized Sequence,” which the company used to levy suits against a number of podcast providers, including Adam Corolla, HowStuffWorks, CBS, and NBC. The EFF filed a petition challenging the patent in 2013, urging the US Patent and Trademark Office to take another look at the broad ruling.

You just have to wonder what societal purpose these patent trolls serve.

And, no doubt irrelevantly, don’t the old-time radio programs serve as prior art? Or is that something too different to apply? 

Rent-seeking:

“ Rent seeking” is one of the most important insights in the last fifty years of economics and, unfortunately, one of the most inappropriately labeled. Gordon Tullock originated the idea in 1967, and Anne Krueger introduced the label in 1974. The idea is simple but powerful. People are said to seek rents when they try to obtain benefits for themselves through the political arena. They typically do so by getting a subsidy for a good they produce or for being in a particular class of people, by getting a tariff on a good they produce, or by getting a special regulation that hampers their competitors. Elderly people, for example, often seek higher Social Security payments; steel producers often seek restrictions on imports of steel; and licensed electricians and doctors often lobby to keep regulations in place that restrict competition from unlicensed electricians or doctors. [David R. Henderson, The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics]

I present the fruits of the latest research:

Amused? Appalled? I’m resorting to ridicule, and if you consider yourself a Trump voter, then you need to consider this result from Public Policy Polling in May of 2016 – I doubt a renewal of the poll in question would have much changed in the results:

There continues to be a lot of misinformation about what has happened during Obama’s time in office. 43% of voters think the unemployment rate has increased while Obama has been President, to only 49% who correctly recognize that it has decreased. And 32% of voters think the stock market has gone down during the Obama administration, to only 52% who correctly recognize that it has gone up. In both cases Democrats and independents are correct in their understanding of how things have changed since Obama became President, but Republicans claim by a 64/27 spread that unemployment has increased and by a 57/27 spread that the stock market has gone down. “It’s a fact that unemployment has gone down and the stock market has gone up during the Obama administration,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling. “But GOP voters treat these things more as issues of opinion than issues of fact.”

So if you identify the above chart as Fake News, you may take it that I’ve aimed it at the biggest consumers of Fake News on the planet – the GOP base and the Trump voters who cannot accept the realities of life.

If you’re looking for an exotic place to stay, but find the Swedish ice hotel a bit too spendy, then maybe Helicopter Glamping is more to your taste:

Source: Helicoper Glamping

… Scotland’s most unusual place to stay is now ready for take off!

Ever wonder what it would be like to sleep in a helicopter? Well now you can!

We have transformed a Sea King helicopter into a stunning luxury overnight accommodation complete with mini kitchen and shower room.

It’s a lovely way to reuse a used-up helicopter, one that has no doubt served honorably. While anthropomorphizing vehicles such as ships and helicopters is really a bit of an intellectual error, it does turn one’s thoughts to those who’ve served in it to protect their country. It’s one thing to protect yourself and your family, but putting yourself on the line for, let’s be honest, a pack of strangers shows a real dedication to a higher morality.

Unless you’re just a serial killer looking for opportunity. Not having served, I can only say I suspect most serial killers couldn’t withstand the grind.

In any case, I gotta say this is a lovely, cozy idea.