Unsightly Mental Blemishes

Famed author Margaret Atwood has written an opinion for The Guardian:

Today is the special election day in Georgia and South Carolina. I ran across this fascinating poll from Gallup yesterday:

I was speculating last night that the Republican leadership has apparently strongly bought into wagon before the horse syndrome – that is, because of who they are, anything they do is right, and therefore they can do anything. This is a pothole that many religious sects can fall into, and at this point the GOP is acting a lot like a religious sect.

But apparently the balance of the party is beginning to have some doubt about our direction, that is, that we’re being directed by a driveling (yep: driveling) lying madman, and a bunch of henchmen in Congress – not that they entirely trust him, as this analysis of a recent bill indicates. But the AHCA, the secret Senate of same, all to Trump’s cheerleading – it’s all of the same poisoned well. But the typical GOP voter does watch, does evaluate – and is beginning to to realize that our deviations from political norms over the last year, no matter how much they benefit the GOP, have endangered the country. Perhaps they are not so sanguine concerning the Russians as the President.

Given Trump’s close association with Handel in Georgia, today’s elections should be a barometer of how much this disappointment – a 17 point drop in a month, and a 3 point drop among independents as well – will have real world impact, even if the two Democrat challengers are relative unknowns.

fulsome:

1.  a :  characterized by abundance :  copious
   describes in fulsome detail — G. N. Shuster
   fulsome bird life. The feeder overcrowded — Maxine Kumin
   b :  generous in amount, extent, or spirit
   the passengers were fulsome in praise of the plane’s crew — Don Oliver
   a fulsome victory for the far left — Bruce Rothwell
   the greetings have been fulsome, the farewells tender — Simon Gray
   c :  being full and well developed
   she was in generally fulsome, limpid voice — Thor Eckert, Jr.
2. :  aesthetically, morally, or generally offensive
   fulsome lies and nauseous flattery — William Congreve
   the devil take thee for a … fulsome rogue — George Villiers
3. :  exceeding the bounds of good taste :  overdone
   the fulsome chromium glitter of the escalators dominating the central hall — Lewis Mumford
4. :  excessively complimentary or flattering :  effusive
   an admiration whose extent I did not express, lest I be thought fulsome — A. J. Liebling

[Merriam-Webster]

An interesting word. Noted in “The Senate GOP’s plan to repeal Obamacare: don’t let anyone see their bill,” Dylan Scott, Vox:

“This has really been a committee of the whole. This really has provided very fulsome and genuine input from every Republican senator,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) told reporters last month when asked about the plan’s development in private. “There’s certain things you have to do, before you open it up to the public. … This to me has been an open process. I don’t know how else you would have done it.”

Senator Johnson may refer to definition 1, but I fear definition 2 may be more accurate.

Architect Lloyd Alter on Treehugger.com presents a short analysis of the disastrous Grenfell apartment high rise disaster in London in reaction to a Daily Mail article proclaiming it to be the result of a preoccupation with green building materials. His conclusion:

In this case, the fire came from the outside. Note how on the original drawing [omitted – HW] submitted to planning, the cladding is zinc. Somewhere along the line it was changed to Reynobond PE, a sandwich of thin aluminum with polyethylene in between. This is similar to Alucobond, and both are very common cladding materials. I have used them myself in the last building I designed as an architect. It acts as a rain screen; there is then a two inch cavity and attached to the building, six inches of Celotex RS5000 polyisocyanurate rigid insulation.

The problem is that the originally specified zinc is totally non-combustible, whereas the Reynobond is not. We do not know why the change was made, but it is obviously, in retrospect, significant. According to The Construction Index, alternatives were available. “Reynobond PE is not as fire retardant as the alternative Reynobond FR, which has a mineral core, but it is lighter and so easier to install.”

What appears to have happened is that the Reynobond’s polyethylene core caught fire and the stack effect in the two inch gap made it spread almost instantly. Apparently it got hot enough that the supposedly flame-retardant polyiso charred as well, putting out tons of smoke, possibly contributing cyanide and other toxic gases. The vinyl framed windows also melted, letting the toxic fumes into the suites very quickly.

And this was interesting, too:

Literally for decades I have complained about the North American way of designing apartment buildings, with two big pressurized stairs and a corridor in between, all designed to be big enough to evacuate the building in minutes. The Europeans had so much more design flexibility with their single stairs and units opening up onto landings.

But in retrospect the North American approach of Get out fast and get out now appears to be a whole lot better than the European one of Stay put and we will rescue you. As an architect, reading the story about the young Italian couple calling home while they wait to die was like a stab through the heart. I will never complain about the two exit requirement again.

He also notes that there are already some folks who want to use this tragedy to condemn wood buildings. Modern wood construction using cross-laminated timber doesn’t burn like this, but instead chars and takes literally hours to catch fire – not moments, as happened in London. I gotta hope that a careful, sober analysis takes place and takes precedence, rather than permitting commercial interests to use this to trash an up & coming competitor, using the political world’s “post-factual, post-policy” faux-approach to conducting business.

And so maybe that’s why he’s not running again. Wisconsin, which elects its Supreme Court justices, will have an open seat in 2018, as Justice Gableman has declined to seek a second term. A “reliable conservative,” the Journal Sentinel has an unsettling report on Gableman’s climb to power:

Because of this report in Archaeology (July/August 2017):

“The barracks were abandoned and completely forgotten in the third century A.D., when the Aurelian Walls were built to protect Rome against attacks,” says Rea. Now, after more than 1,700 years spent in oblivion, the garrison is poised to return to its original hustle and bustle—but not without precautions being taken. Project architect Paolo Desideri says, “The new line requires us to excavate to a depth of 130 feet, so the entire ancient Roman site will be moved and stored safely. Later, the barracks will be replaced at their original depth.” Passengers catching a train will be able to see the barracks through a large glass window. Desideri explains that the Aurelian Walls will also be exposed, so commuters can have the same view that people had in antiquity.

I do realize this has been done before, but it just sounds so interesting.

Or not. From Nayanah Siva on D-brief:

CAHID specializes in human identification, and was also the group that famously reconstructed King Richard III’s face after his body was found in a car park in Leicester in 2012.

You’d think there’d be a bit of a monarchical crisis, no?

In American Conservative, Rod Dreher has a Hallelujah! moment upon the discovery he may have been right all along about sexual orientation:

Wait, so you mean not everybody is “born this way”? You mean that it’s not simply nature, but also nurture? I’m so confused.

Actually I’m not confused at all. The “truth” in this matter has always been “what works to advance the cause.”

But for those who want to grapple honestly with this issue, these data from Patrick Egan show pretty clearly that the nurturing that culture provides does make a big difference.  Therefore, for communities who wish for their children to remain heterosexual, to form heterosexual marital unions, traditional families, etc., neutrality on the matter of sexuality will result in five to eight times as many people claiming homosexuality or bisexuality as would have otherwise been the case. (There have also been skyrocketing numbers of people claiming to be transgender.)

Andrew Sullivan is appalled:

But the obvious explanation for these numbers is a simple one: it is that millennials simply have much less shame about sexual orientation than older generations. Growing up in a world of legal marriage equality, that should not be surprising. Gallup suggests as much: “It’s likely that millennials are the first generation in the U.S. to grow up in an environment where social acceptance of the LGBT community markedly increased. This may be an important factor in explaining their greater willingness to identify as LGBT.” It may also, in some way, be “cool” to identify as bi in your teens or in college in a way it wasn’t before. It doesn’t tell us anything meaningful about much else — and certainly not whether they will have a gay relationship in the future.

For me, this affirms the observation that a value of a dataset is inversely proportional to the number of ways it can be interpreted. We see two here, as Rod tries to spin it to his position that heterosexuality is the only true way, but our fallen society (nurture) is corrupting us. He is making the mistake that believing all the data is true. In the absence of an admission by the surveyors that they used truth drugs on respondents, we know that’s a risky assumption. Furthermore, as I’ll elaborate on later, he assumes all the biases and factors of the data are constant over time.

Andrew sees this graph as a measurement of a societal fear, reasoning that earlier generations in which admitted homosexuals (and therefore bisexuals) were excluded from traditional society would have lower rates of such admissions. This position also has some problems, as this is obviously a snap survey and not a survey over time, by which I mean all questions and responses were collected within a few weeks to perhaps a year; in that time gap, there would not be a meaningful shift in societal norms. Therefore, the 90 year olds are operating in today’s society, not that of 70 years ago, and thus not biased by obsolete societal norms. This critique may itself be critiqued by observing that the very presence of those societal norms of 70 years ago will distort today’s data as some “true bisexuals” will have buried that attribute of their personality and answer as heterosexuals. Again, the shame they learned 70 years ago may inhibit the answers of those 70-90 year olds who know they are bisexual – even in an anonymous survey.

I’ll raise a question of my own: what is the life expectancy of a bisexual, and has it varied over the years? I strongly suspect the answer is Yes, relative to the general population it has been negatively biased but the bias has been generally reduced as years have advanced. In fact, thinking about it, the HIV epidemic impacted the bisexual community – and therefore life expectancy of key respondents. This leaves Rod high and dry, since the population bias brought on by premature deaths will bias the responses in this survey, irrespective of societally-induced answer bias. So we can interpret this dataset to reflect the premature death biases introduced by both deadly plague and now-obsolete traditional societal norms for the bisexual community. Once again, the value of this dataset is reduced because of what appears to be valid but clashing interpretations. Unless there’s more information available about the survey and how it corrected for various factors, well, this dataset is rapidly becoming worthless.

Isn’t statistical data analysis just bloody fun?

And here’s the oddest thing: I think Rod is really just riding a hobby horse into the ground. I’ll dispense with the normal lampooning and hyperbole, and simply tell my reader that, living in Minnesota most of my life, I was witness to the struggle over Minnesota Amendment 1 of 2012, the amendment to ban gay marriage. According to Wikipedia, while polls were volatile, generally the pro forces began on the high side but fought a losing battle, and the Amendment was defeated, 51.19% to 47.44%. The shift in public opinion, that movement from the blind acceptance of a dubious interpretation of a book written more than a millenia ago (and then assembled by a group of men, picking parts and rejecting others), to actually thinking about justice, just behavior, and when being inclusive is good or bad, was truly one of the more inspirational periods in Minnesota history. I only regret the margin of defeat wasn’t much greater.

Just as the relegation of women to a small number of roles within society ultimately impairs society by eliminating their genius from the inputs which make society, the suppression of other citizens because of behavior & attributes of no negative consequence also impairs society. I think we’ve made good, positive strides forward not just by defeating the Amendment, but by having that public discussion, and exhibiting the societal plasticity to recognize this old prejudice for what it was – a prejudice.

[EDIT: 10/21/2017 Fixed typo.]

Recently I mentioned a large gathering of humpback whales. Tony Wu has produced a fascinating pictorial of another party with sperm whales on bioGraphic:

Hundreds of sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) swam to and fro, their huge bodies elegantly twirling and twisting through the water as they socialized. Bumping, jostling, and rubbing themselves against one another, they were exuberantly tactile, their behavior appeared almost euphoric. I felt like a gatecrasher at a wedding, so obvious was their delight in each other’s company.

As my eyes took in this secret spectacle, my ears were assaulted by a cacophony of excited whale chatter. Creaking and crackling, clicks, buzzes, and pops permeated the water as the whales pinged one another with sound. Pulsating rhythms pregnant with meaning penetrated my body. I “felt” the connection between the congregated cetaceans as powerfully as I heard it.

Moving together in groups several dozen strong, the whales occasionally descended to deeper water, but largely stayed near the surface, giving me a privileged view.

More of these absolutely fascinating pictures are available at the link, above.

In line with this thread, candidate Karen Handle (R) in the special election for the Georgia 6th district Congressional seat has reported receiving threatening letters, as reported by the Washington Examiner:

Republican Karen Handel said on Thursday law enforcement are investigating the delivery of threatening letters and a suspicious substance to her home in suburban Atlanta and those of some of her neighbors. …

“This afternoon we had some suspicious packages delivered to our house and to our neighbors. The packages contained threatening letters and a suspicious substance. The police were quickly notified and street is now being blocked off. We will continue to coordinate with law enforcement as necessary,” Handel said in a statement issued Thursday afternoon.

I certainly hope Ms Handel remains in the race, regardless of her politics. Letting haters of any stripe triumph is a loss for our nation.

Steve Benen on Maddowblog discusses the recent announcement that President Trump is now the subject of an FBI investment and triggers a disrespectful thought in my mind:

In fact, going into this year, only two American presidents have ever been the subject of federal criminal inquiries — Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton — and both ran into trouble in their second terms.

This small club, however, now has a new member, with Donald Trump facing his own criminal investigation. Time will tell what becomes of the ongoing federal probe, but MSNBC’s Ari Melber raised an interesting numerical point yesterday: when Nixon first faced a criminal inquiry into his misconduct in office, he’d been president for 1,580 days. For Clinton, it was 1,835 days.

For Trump, it was 145 days.

So do you think Bill sent Donald a congratulatory telegram on his admission to the club? Maybe he even has a pin Trump can wear on his lapel?

Being an engineer, and thus burdened with this irrational urge towards excessive precision, I should preface this screed with the statement that my main exposure to progressives is The Daily Kos Spam mail, so perhaps it’s atypical. But, well, consider this representative paragraph:

While this is the common thought process of the red-faced American bunker dweller, it is not normal logic for any supposedly functioning member of society. The man remains paranoid and only barely hinged, and we cannot suppose his behavior will improve as the pressures of the office continue to rapidly mount. He might indeed fire the special counsel; he might institute a brand new war just to bask in the praise of his generals. There are no limits, and no external Republican forces willing to rein the lunatic in if he were to do any of those lunatic things.

It’s insulting – not only to Trump, which I don’t mind, but also to their fellow Americans. It’s callow, condescending, pretentious, and fairly much designed to ensure their agenda, their plan for America, is viewed with distaste, even outright loathing, by anyone not in their little tribe.

You worry about our future robot overlords? Given the attitude of the progressives, I’d say the conservative’s worry about future Progressive overlords is nothing to dismiss. There is a certain know-it-all attitude that was brought to a sharp point by my recent post concerning Professor Steinberg’s desire to teach ethics and wisdom, because they strike me as smart people – but not necessarily wise people.

I do read selected articles from The Daily Kos Spam, not because I agree or disagree with their opinions, but mainly for topics that might interest me. Rarely are they worth quoting; I’m actually more likely to wash myself afterwards. And these are folks for whom I could sympathize – because their arguments, stripped of their withering condescension, often make good sense.

On a related note, I’ve been meditating on this article by Nick Hanauer in Business Insider for about a month now. Note this guy’s attitude right from the get-go:

From the fear-mongering headlines marking passage of $15 statutes in New York and California, you would think nobody ever dared raise the minimum wage before.

“Raising minimum wage risky,” the Lexington (Kentucky) Herald-Leader tersely warned.

“Raising minimum wage hurts low-skill workers,” the Detroit News bluntly declared.

“Even left-leaning economists say it’s a gamble,” Vox solemnly cautioned.

Nonsense. We have been raising the minimum wage for 78 years, and as a new study clearly reveals, 78 years of minimum-wage hikes have produced zero evidence of the “job-killing” consequences these headline writers want us to fear.

In a first-of-its-kind report, researchers at the National Employment Law Project pore over employment data…

I don’t know the precise political position of Hanauer – so I shan’t lump him in with the callow progressives. But he’s definitely out to score political points on our conservative siblings and up the resentment quotient, not to win an argument. Why do I say that? I mean, we can always say that by winning, we mean we’ve vanquished the enemy, driven him from his lands, burned his crops, and raped his women and children. Right?

But we’re not having an argument with an evil enemy, we’re having this argument with our fellow citizens. These are our fellow taxpayers, the folks who grow the food we eat, drive the trucks, invent new medications, doctor our wounds, and run our clothing stores. They’re not our fucking enemies.

And, having read Libertarian rags for 30 years, I know somewhat how the argument runs – this isn’t just some vague theological gesturing, the economic case is built on reasoning concerning how businesses, faced with higher labor costs, will reallocate resources and classify tasks. Some tasks will be moved from the maybe necessary category to the unnecessary category, and management will work to drive productivity even higher, and thus jobs will be lost.

It’s an understandable argument, even for non-economists like me. I’ll bet it makes a lot of sense to businessmen, especially those who think that being a businessman makes them an economics expert.

So when Hanauer uses this new study, a “first-of-its-kind report,” as a war club to beat up a position with which he disagrees, I’ll tell you I very deliberately picked war club as a metaphor. There will be no quarter in the war Hanauer wants to fight.

And that’s the problem – going to war with the other side. Losers in America are rarely appreciative of being losers. They brim with resentment, with grudges, with a sullen, hidden vengeful attitude.

Worse yet, today we have a GOP that should be incandescent with pride over controlling the government – but is instead showing itself to be incompetent in all but one respect – getting itself elected. It can’t govern, it can’t formulate a governing philosophy, write competent bills, or damn near anything else (did they win the Congressional baseball game?). The Party faithful are having their faces rubbed in their leaders’ absolute failures.

And then having some dolt call their economic reasoning idiotic to their faces?

Resentment will just reign supreme. We’ve had to deal with that since at least the Civil War. It’s not been pretty.

Let me be clear: I am separating the message from the messenger. If the conclusions of the study are confirmed, which is another point which bears noting, then I think that’s fascinating. But this sort of finding shouldn’t be used to call someone else an idiot. It’s unproductive. We’re all in this together, folks, and we should be working together on understanding how economics works. It’s not enough to say that the guys with degrees are working on it, because this is a science that impacts all of us. And, as we should all know, the GOP is currently not even paying attention to experts – only to ideology. Therefore, new knowledge like this should be integrated with the common (and academic) understanding of economics, that understanding that many folks share concerning the dismal science, and shown how it overrides or swamps the reasoning I mentioned above.

It’s commonly understood that getting knifed in the back leads to hurt feelings, but getting knifed in the front generally also leads to hurt feelings. Delivering a superior argument requires neither, though – just a mature messenger.

Pablum:

Pablum is a processed cereal for infants originally marketed by the Mead Johnson Company in 1931. The trademarked name is a contracted form of the Latin word pabulum, which means “foodstuff”. The name had long been used in botany and medicine to refer to nutrition or substances of which the nutritive elements are passively absorbed.

The word can also refer to something that is bland, mushy, unappetizing, or infantile. [Wikipedia]

I just used it in a previous post. Best I understand all the words I use, eh?

… you often mistake one thing for another. Rebecca Ingber takes on the topic of the “Deep State” on Lawfare:

So then what about that dastardly career bureaucracy, twiddling its thumbs inside its sealed SCIFs from D.C. to Virginia? Do they share any of the blame? Let’s break down the reasons the Deep State is not out to get the President: First, assertions about a “Deep State” within the U.S. government do not begin to describe the reality of working for this large, disaggregated, messy bureaucracy. (In the interests of full disclosure, I formerly served as a career attorney with the U.S. State Department, the mother of all bureaucracies, where I worked for several years and across two political administrations.) Second, what the President sees as a resistance movement directed at him personally is largely, though probably not exclusively, what I call the “neutral friction” of a huge organization that does not change course on a dime, regardless of who sits in the Oval Office. And third, while it is exceedingly difficult for anyone to steer the mammoth executive branch bureaucracy, the President is himself making a difficult job impossible by not only failing to make his own appointments at every level throughout that bureaucracy, but openly antagonizing those individuals who continue to work in it.

The Deep State as such does not exist.

The Real Bureaucrats of DC likely find it partly amusing and partly bewildering that so much of the country imbues them, collectively, with such power, and such organized power in particular. They may also quite reasonably find it insulting that, having in many cases given up higher salaries and certainly better offices for the privilege of working long nights and weekends to serve their country through multiple presidencies across political lines, they are being painted as traitors or at the very least political hacks. But far from an organized cabal of conniving puppeteers, these faceless bureaucrats are just people like you and me. (And, as I mentioned, one of them once was me.) They go to work every day, put dinner on the table at night, procrastinate, gripe, and generally do the best they can at their jobs, whether or not they are enamored of their boss that day. There is a certain degree of organization among the career ranks, but look at an org chart: the real, organized ties between offices and agencies, and up from the line officials to the cabinet secretaries, are drawn through individuals who are politically appointed. As I’ll discuss below, those placements are within the President’s power to control. And at the moment, those seats are generally vacant, leaving those offices rudderless, often run by career officials trying to keep the ship afloat the best they can, at times without support or direction from or clear lines of communication to those above them.

Transplant a real estate mogul into the Presidency, with so little preparation that it probably counts as nothing – and what did you expect? The problem, of course, was making Alice in Wonderland promises, and that enough people were gullible and desperate enough to believe them.

But as important as it is to get the Nation through this period of incompetency and mendacity, we also need folks who are thinking somewhat more long-term: What comes next?

Is it still viable to run a nation using the political amateurs? Conversely, is it ever safe to run a nation using professional politicos? (I use that phrase to emphasize the politicos who run for office, not the members of the bureaucracy.) This might characterize the politicians of Britain and Australia, who appear to see everything in terms of politics and not necessarily reality.

In the end, we have the often overworked and overwhelmed ignorant selecting power-hungry politicians who hardly understand the institutions for which they run, but they happen to know how to pander to the local biases. Our Founding Fathers believed in a wisdom of the masses (or at least recognized that incompetent government was better than pitchforks and torches in hands of the angry mob).

But, honestly, who’s going to run for the Presidency from either party – and be worthy? There’s no one in the GOP, no one at all. Their “deep bench” of last year was really quite horrid, in my view. And the Democrats, now that Clinton is too old and – barely – rejected, are also lacking. O’Malley doesn’t seem to be getting traction, and I can’t tell if he’s competent in any case. He needs to demonstrate he can do the job. And after him? Lincoln Chaffee? Elizabeth Warren? I suspect she’s more effective as a Senator than a President, but maybe they’ll have to run her for lack of anyone else.

I might consider Joe Biden, simply because he knows the job and isn’t too much of a loon – but he’s too old as well. So’s Bernie Sanders.

And this should serve as a partial blueprint of the next campaign. Sure, you have ideology, you have too much, in fact – show us your competency. Show us you’ve studied government and understand what it’s about. You’ve looked at the current issues and you know who to consult.

This is what I worry about.

Selection pressure refers to the factors in the environment which shape the evolution of a species through reducing reproductive success. This is the biological definition, more or less, but, slightly loosened, it can also apply to less tangible aspects of, say, a society. Scientific American interviewed Cornell University psychologist Robert Sternberg regarding his lecture given when he received the William James Fellow Award. It’s on the American educational system. His concerns? That we don’t teach wisdom.

Tests like the SAT, ACT, the GRE—what I call the alphabet tests—are reasonably good measures of academic kinds of knowledge, plus general intelligence and related skills. They are highly correlated with IQ tests and they predict a lot of things in life: academic performance to some extent, salary, level of job you will reach to a minor extent—but they are very limited. What I suggested in my talk today is that they may actually be hurting us. Our overemphasis on narrow academic skills—the kinds that get you high grades in school—can be a bad thing for several reasons. You end up with people who are good at taking tests and fiddling with phones and computers, and those are good skills but they are not tantamount to the skills we need to make the world a better place. …

Do we know how to cultivate wisdom?
Yes we do. A whole bunch of my colleagues and I study wisdom. Wisdom is about using your abilities and knowledge not just for your own selfish ends and for people like you. It’s about using them to help achieve a common good by balancing your own interests with other people’s and with high-order interests through the infusion of positive ethical values.

You know, it’s easy to think of smart people but it’s really hard to think of wise people. I think a reason is that we don’t try to develop wisdom in our schools. And we don’t test for it, so there’s no incentive for schools to pay attention.

This is a fascinating subject. Wise people I might consider to place on the list include the Dalai Lama and Pope Francis – but not Pope Benedict XVI. While I have little truck with religions in general, I do grant that, at their best, they teach the balancing of material desires with communal needs, and while some ideologies^[1] will happily suggest that communal needs are minimal, will take care of themselves, or are merely excuses for socialism, I think it’s becoming increasingly clear that this theoretical hand waving has some visible faults in it.

His brief discussion of ethical reasoning is thought-provoking:

A lost source of ethics

I don’t always think about putting ethics and reasoning together. What do you mean by that?

Basically, ethical reasoning involves eight steps: seeing that there’s a problem to deal with (say, you see your roommate cheat on an assignment); identifying it as an ethical problem; seeing it as a large enough problem to be worth your attention (it’s not like he’s just one mile over the speed limit); seeing it as personally relevant; thinking about what ethical rules apply; thinking about how to apply them; thinking what are the consequences of acting ethically—because people who act ethically usually don’t get rewarded; and, finally, acting. What I’ve argued is ethical reasoning is really hard. Most people don’t make it through all eight steps.

Granted, it’s an interview, but I was a little disturbed when he stated that those who act ethically are not rewarded. Look, people don’t do things that are not rewarding on any level; many even won’t if there’s a delay involved. It’s not human nature; it’s evolution. If you’ve just lessened your reproductive chances, or those of your group, then that choice will most likely be discarded. An ethical choice will have some benefit, perhaps in the future. Maybe your choice means a lower probability that a riot will occur in the next ten years – because your’s is but one of many similar choices made. And that lack of a riot definitely benefits you. What really happens is that by being ethical, you’ve given up immediate gratification for delayed gratification.

All that said, I enjoyed the interview. Does he really think wisdom can be taught? Or is wisdom a politically charged term? Will atheists and Baptists clash over the definition of wisdom? I do agree that how we teach children today will shape how they act tomorrow, and if we don’t find ways to teach ethics and wisdom as being part of their everyday lives, then we’ll be poorer for it. Thus we have selection pressures; if we don’t emphasize ethics and wisdom, and instead put everything on results, then we’ll end up with a poorer society. And you can define poorer any way you wish.

So then I turn around and decide to drop in on Retraction Watch, which I always find amazing. First, I’m appalled to read this:

Springer purge of fake reviews takes down 10+ more neuroscience papers

Ten more? Oh, there’s a link, let’s see HOLY SHIT!

A new record: Major publisher retracting more than 100 studies from cancer journal over fake peer reviews

¹This is quite at odds with the common definition of libertarianism, which puts the individual and his primal, tangible desires at the center of the Universe – and then preaches that, by doing so, all will be well.

²Teaching an ethics course merely teaches one how to game the system.

CNN/Media reports the retirement of one of the more famous slogans in media:

The Fox News Channel quietly dropped its “Fair and Balanced” slogan last year in an effort to move beyond the era of its former chairman and CEO, Roger Ailes.

Really? The slogan attaches to the disgraced founder that strongly? I frankly find that a little hard to believe; however, I also have some real trouble finding any other reasons as well. CNN/Media goes on:

In its place, producers have been asked to use the network’s other slogan: “Most Watched. Most Trusted” — a statement that is at least half true, insofar as Fox News maintains some of the highest ratings in cable news. The network will also introduce a new slogan soon, a source there said.

I suspect it’s completely true. After all, why watch a news station if you don’t trust the news? The era of television has made a lot of Americans passive consumers of pablum, rather than active, double checking sorts. Or even the sort who depends on other people to double check – I fall into that category, most often.

And I wonder how much damage may be attributed to the abolition of the Fairness Doctrine? It was removed in 2011, and here’s a summary of the rationale for implementation as well as abolition from Wikipedia, which I assume is, ummm, fair and balanced:

The main agenda for the doctrine was to ensure that viewers were exposed to a diversity of viewpoints. In 1969 the United States Supreme Court upheld the FCC’s general right to enforce the Fairness Doctrine where channels were limited. But the courts did not rule that the FCC was obliged to do so.^[4] The courts reasoned that the scarcity of the broadcast spectrum, which limited the opportunity for access to the airwaves, created a need for the Doctrine. However, the proliferation of cable television, multiple channels within cable, public-access channels, and the Internet have eroded this argument, since there are plenty of places for ordinary individuals to make public comments on controversial issues at low or no cost at all.

The reality is there is a lack of time and a tendency to nestle in that zone of media that most comforts you – and not seek out truth. The tremendous flood of information – puerile, trivial, mendacious, oddball, local, national, important, and all out fake – makes it far more difficult than I think the fair-minded have realized. We may have exposure to a thousand channels worth of news – but we don’t know what’s fake, what’s partial, and what’s slanted. Many of us no longer even know what the arguments of the opposing side might be – we only know that’s the other tribe and must be hated on (more on that in another post).

And yet, how could the FCC enforce such a doctrine on the Internet? Even cable news would be difficult. Perhaps it’d be better to offer certifications that any given channel is “fair and balanced” if they meet the standards previously created.

And then watch the politics as evolutionary biologists protest every debate with creationists, pointing out that there is no debate within scientific circles – only certain religions oppose it. Or “complementary medicine”… the mind whirls….

A reader writes concerning political training:

Local Democrat party training their candidates? In what? Kung fu? Maybe in reporting crimes, but otherwise, what the hell do you actually mean?

Operations and expectations. Everything from what positions you should expect to have to fill in your campaign staff to the mechanics of media interactions to the questions they’ll ask all the way to Here’s what do you do when someone physically assaults you. The failure to report and document the crime by Treiman leaves its very existence open to question – and could be used to darken his own reputation.

The new governor of North Carolina, Roy Cooper (D), despite facing long odds in the NC legislature, where the Republicans hold supermajorities, shows there are ways to push the legislature around. For example, if the GOP is sitting on a new redistricting plan in order to give their own side time to prepare candidates and plans, what are you going to do? DocDawg on The Daily Kos explains:

Fittingly, it’s a no-brainer strategy for state Republicans: all upside, and nothing down. Or at least it seemed that way, until Gov. Cooper turned the tables on the GOP yesterday, when he issued a proclamation:

WHEREAS, all North Carolinians have a fundamental right to have their laws enacted by a legislature composed of members elected from valid and lawful districts; and

WHEREAS, on June 5, 2017, the Supreme Court of the United States in Covington v. North Carolina affirmed without dissent the unanimous decision of three federal district court judges that the General Assembly violated the United States Constitution and misinterpreted federal law in establishing twenty-eight state legislative districts in 2011;

NOW, THEREFORE, I, Roy Cooper, Governor of the State of North Carolina, pursuant to Article III, Section 5(7) of the North Carolina State Constitution, do hereby proclaim an “EXTRA SESSION OF THE NORTH CAROLINA GENERAL ASSEMBLY” commencing Thursday, June 8, 2017 at two o’clock in the afternoon, which shall continue until a new plan is enacted or for a period of two weeks, whichever is earlier, for the purpose of enacting new House and Senate district plans for the General Assembly that remedy the legislative districts ruled unconstitutional.

The legislature attempted to void the order, but they lack the authority. DocDawg has little sympathy:

It’s at least conceivable that, if he chose to, Cooper could order state police into the General Assembly to enforce his proclamation. But that would be quite beside the point in this chess game. The whole idea behind Cooper’s proclamation was to give Republican legislators one last chance to do the right thing — their third chance, after first drawing an unconstitutional racist map in 2011, and then failing to meet the March 15th 2017 court-ordered deadline to draw a remedial map, and then unconstitutionally defying the governor’s order to do so this week. An interesting legal argument can now be made that, having whiffed three strikes in a row, the legislature is now — or should be — out on strikes: the legislature, having abrogated its duty multiple times, has unambiguously demonstrated its bad faith. The task of drawing a new map in a timely manner must now be taken from it by the U.S. District Court and handed to a non-partisan Special Master.

In a follow on post, DocDawg reports:

… attorneys for the victorious plaintiffs in Covington v. North Carolina filed a motion for the U.S. District Court to “expeditiously consider and order relief,” by imposing a strict deadline for the legislature to act: fourteen days to draw and adopt a new map, backed up by a grant for the plaintiffs to submit their own map for the court’s consideration if the legislature misses that deadline.

He’s excited.

Stay tuned. This is wildly exciting stuff, being present at the sudden, utterly unexpected rebirth of democracy in the Tar Heel State. It really is always darkest just before the dawn.

Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes on Lawfare comment on the initial performance of Trump’s personal attorney, Marc Kasowitz:

Solon:

n. “legislator,” 1620s, from Greek Solon, name of early lawgiver of Athens, one of the seven sages. Often, especially in U.S., applied (with perhaps a whiff of sarcasm) by journalists to Congressmen, township supervisors, etc. It also is a useful short headline word. [Dictionary.com]

Seen in “In Texas, a State Supreme Court Maintains Integrity, Despite Politics,” Mark Pulliam, National Review:

The existence of partisan judicial elections, controversial in some circles, ensures ideological consistency in a red state such as Texas but also requires judges to raise money and campaign, activities that many black-robed solons find unappealing. This may explain the relatively high turnover on Texas’s supreme court, which is helmed by Chief Justice Nathan Hecht, 67, a silver-maned jurist initially elected to that venue in 1988.

This is upsetting on a couple of levels – the mayoral race for Binghamton, NY, just lost its lone Democratic candidate. Syracuse.com reports:

Michael Treiman, the only Democratic candidate for Binghamton mayor, pulled out of the race on Tuesday after receiving threats.

WNBF reports that Treiman quit one week after he announced his campaign for public office. Treiman made his announcement on Facebook, saying that he was “officially dropping out of the race as of this moment.” …

Treiman returned home at 8 p.m. after picking up his two-year-old and eleven-month-old children from a sitter. That’s when an unidentified person in a pickup truck threw a full soda container at him. Treiman said he was hit in the back as he turned to shield the child he was holding.

Treiman said the man who threw the can yelled “liberal scumbag” before driving away from the scene.

1. Reportedly, Treiman failed to report this to police immediately. This is clearly assault and battery. He doesn’t take it seriously? Then why drop out? So it’s clearly a serious incident that frightened him. He should have reported it to have a chance to catch and jail the cretin who did it.
2. The local Democratic Party has failed to adequately train their candidates to handle jabs from opponents. Sure, we think we have a civilized system – until we get crap like this. Or remember the burning of the local GOP HQ in North Carolina?
3. By leaving the race, he’s encouraged similar activities elsewhere. And then it may escalate. This, again, is a problem of the local Democratic Party not training their candidates properly.
4. And, of course, the fact that the incident happened at all is unacceptable. Intimidation is not part of our political culture – or at least it shouldn’t be. The long term consequences will be severe if this sort of thing gets out of control.

AL Monitor has a fascinating article on the fallout of the Trump trip to visit the various nations of the Middle East:

The most acrimonious split is in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which held its own private summit with the president. The Qatari emir allegedly told an audience at home just after the summit that the Saudis were placing too much trust in a president in deep political trouble at home. He also criticized the virulent rhetoric castigating Iran at the summit. Emir Shaykh Tamim bin Hamid Al Thani has publicly said the Gulf states need to engage Tehran, not isolate it. He called Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to congratulate him on his re-election. In response, the Saudis and Emiratis blocked Qatar’s Al-Jazeera network. The Qataris said the emir’s remarks had been hacked by unknown sources and misinterpreted, but they provided little evidence to support their claim.

And this part, reporting on a failure of the Qataris to be “pure” enough, sure sounds reminiscent of RINO-ism:

The Saudis next escalated the dispute with Qatar considerably. The Saudi media reported May 28 on an open letter from the Al-Shaykh family, the descendants of Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab. The letter is signed by all 200 of the male descendants of the founder of Wahhabism in the kingdom. The al-Shaykhs are the al-Saud’s critical partners in the ruling of the kingdom and provide its religious legitimacy. The minister of Islamic Affairs and the grand mufti both signed the letter.

The letter accuses the emir of an unidentified Gulf emirate of falsely claiming that he is a descendant of Wahhab. This false claim is not only “fabricated” but it also is allegedly being used to misinterpret Islam. The letter demands that the bad emir change the name of the largest mosque in his country, currently named the Shaykh Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab Mosque. (The largest mosque in Doha, Qatar, is in the only other Wahhabi state aside from Saudi Arabia).

Lawfare bought a bitcoin a few years ago, and just recently sold it. Paul Rosenzweig comments on the experience, and some tentative conclusions:

To this one must add another factor (one that does sound somewhat in the tone of national security).  Bitcoin has also become increasingly useful in Dark Web transactions.  The recent flood of ransomware attacks (of which WannaCry is only the most recent and the most infamous) would have been impossible without Bitcoin as a means of anonymous payment.  This too contributes to the demand for Bitcoin and, likely, the run-up in value.

It also, however, gives one pause and strikes a note of caution about the future of Bitcoin.  One has the anecdotal impression that malignant uses of Bitcoin are outstripping in frequency its use for benevolent purposes.  If that anecdotal suspicion is borne out factually, then the time of government’s hands-off approach to Bitcoin may soon come to an end.

One can imagine any number of responses.  The most benign would be stringent regulation.  More severe might be de-legalization.  In extreme need, one can even imagine governments investing in the technical capability of destroying bitcoin as a currency by attacking the blockchain.  If these suppositions are correct, then bitcoin may well have reached its peak value and our decision to sell will have proven prescient.  Or not …. We may be missing the boat here, but for now our experiment is over.

I wonder how it compares to cash in terms of untraceability.

Today we lost a dear friend, Lee Norman, to cancer. She turned a 6 month prognosis into a 5 year battle, and she brought laughter and insight and joy to everything she did, including her wonderful marriage to our old friend, Jeff. We shall miss her.

And I’ll always regret forgetting to get her to write down her story of the day she spray painted the closet, herself, and the dog. I think I pulled a muscle that night, laughing.

Godspeed, Lee.