Unsightly Mental Blemishes

Steve Benen on Maddowblog reports on an interesting phenomenon seen on the far right over the last few years – the revival of a Senator Joe McCarthy cult:

In 2016, a Cruz national security adviser said McCarthy was “spot on” about communists infiltrating the United States government in the 1950s.

There’s been a lot of this kind of thinking. In 2008, then-Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) made a memorable appearance on MSNBC’s “Hardball,” telling Chris Matthews that she wanted an investigation into members of Congress to “find out if they are pro-America or anti-America.” Two years later, one of Bachmann’s closest allies, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), voiced support for the revival of the House Internal Security Committee, the 1960’s-era successor to the McCarthyite House Un-American Activities Committee. Missouri’s Todd Akin compared himself to McCarthy two years ago, and he meant it in a good way.

Last year, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) endorsed the idea of a new HUAC for a new era.

What I’m finding fascinating about the phenomenon is the so-far successful eliding, by the far right, of the moral argument which eventually brought Senator McCarthy’s crusade, and influence, to an end. They’re accomplishing this by the deeply flawed argument of the ends justify the means – one every child should be taught is wrong.

McCarthy was not brought to a halt by any failure to find Communists throughout government and, indeed, throughout America. Such a failure might have left him a little dusty footnote in the history books, but not thoroughly besmirched as he is today.

No, he failed because he used his position as Senator to bully and spread fear throughout America in search of those who might have even merely investigated the Communist ideology. His methods, at their heart shockingly un-American (sure, there’s a pun, but I’m not even stretching to get there), threatening to “smear” family and friends of his targets, his potential sources for lists of Communists, were the real reason Senator McCarthy has become an example of how American politicians – Americans in general – should NOT ever act. If you look at the histories of the period, we don’t hear about vast expellings of citizens, or the stripping of citizenships, or even executions of legions of leering Communists.

No. We hear about fear. Fear of a snitch falsely accusing us of being Communists. Of being put on lists which would keep us from ever advancing in our careers, of losing friendships.

For those who are doubtful concerning Joe McCarthy’s essential un-Americanism, I put forward two reasons for this conclusion.

1. It’s an attack on our social fabric. His methods turned friend against friend, lover against lover – family member against family member. Imagine trying to turn your beloved Mother in because she told stories about attending one Communist Party meeting 20 years ago.
2. This attack on two of our pillars of civil society – the right to think and speak what one wants, and not to be falsely accused and maligned by government actors – are not to be set aside at the paranoid ravings of anyone. I recently ran across a quote of President Trump’s from 1989: “CIVIL LIBERTIES END WHEN AN ATTACK ON OUR SAFETY BEGINS!” While I’m aware this can be read in more than one way, I’ll choose the most negative and reply, “No, Mr. President, our Civil Liberties give us a critical bulwark in our quest for safety, and he who advocates for their removal or neutering is nothing more than a traitor to the United States.” Think about it – our civil liberties are not luxuries, not privileges, but instead they are what safeguard us from the deprivations of tyrants, foreign and domestic. So long as we safeguard them, we’ll stand a better chance of survival in freedom, than we would without.

There’s little doubt, it seems, that Senator McCarthy was looking to advance his influence. Fortunately, the bravery of a few politicians slowed him, and every time he was exposed to the general American populace, his popularity waned. I believe that those who see in him a role model, a positive role model, are simply those who seek to convert a discredited methodology into a ladder for their own advancement.

And for them, the United States be damned. It’s power even in chaos, from Bannon (a known McCarthy sympathizer) on down.

While writing this post I ran across a blog devoted to the problem of McCarthyism, exposing its flea-bitten underside to the light. I haven’t read much of it, but I thought I’d point at it. It’s called … McCarthyism.

This interesting video concerning a warbird from World War II, the Catalina PBY amphibious plane, had, of all things, a kitchen.

Source: National Naval Aviation Museum

Readers react to the mystery of water on Mars:

Colder water runs to the top of the glass?

I tried to find anything on that but failed. I’d love to know what that’s about. Another:

Maybe its canels like the early astronomers thought? 🙂

Heh. Now this one makes a lot of sense:

Hmm. They seem fixated on the idea of water. Maybe it was another liquid altogether.

And, being too silly for words, I’ve read about LAKES on Titan, the largest moon of Mars, but this never occurred to me. From NASA:

Radar images from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft reveal many lakes on Titan’s surface, some filled with liquid, and some appearing as empty depressions.
Credits: Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASI/USGS

Apart from Earth, Titan is the only body in the solar system known to possess surface lakes and seas, which have been observed by the Cassini spacecraft. But at Titan’s frigid surface temperatures — roughly minus 292 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 180 degrees Celsius) — liquid methane and ethane, rather than water, dominate Titan’s hydrocarbon equivalent of Earth’s water.

Mars ranges from 0 to -129 degrees Celsius, so perhaps methane and ethane would not be the replacements. I am not a chemist specializing in liquid forms of matter, so I have no idea how the low atmospheric pressure and ambient temperatures of Mars affects the possibility of other chemicals existing in liquid form. And do other liquids undergo an evaporation / precipitation cycle as we witness with H₂O? I recall reading about iron evaporating and precipitating in a theoretical scenario. From Space.com:

Violent storm clouds and molten-iron rain may be common occurrences on the failed stars known as brown dwarfs, new research suggests.

Astronomers used NASA’s infrared Spitzer Space Telescope to observe brown dwarfs, finding changes in brightness that they believe signify the presence of storm clouds. These storms appear to last at least several hours, and may be as tempestuous as the famous Great Red Spot on Jupiter.

“A large fraction of brown dwarfs show cyclical variability in brightness, suggesting clouds or storms,” study researcher Aren Heinze of Stony Brook University said …

Perhaps the comparison is inappropriate, though.

I like the idea, but have no way to evaluate it.

Omar al-Jaffal reports in AL Monitor that Iraq is imitating the United States – and, for that matter, France just before the beginning of the Great War – by building a barrier to keep out the dangerous. However, they’re going for a trench:

Compared with other Iraqi provinces, Najaf is relatively safe. Yet five suicide bombers carried out an attack near a security checkpoint in the province’s locality of Qadisiya on Jan. 1, killing five security officers and two civilians.

Consequently, Najaf Gov. Luay al-Yassiri met with Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes, the deputy head of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), and decided to increase protection measures in the Najaf desert and speed up the work on the trenches that stretch from the western side of the province to the province of Diwaniyah.

On Jan. 15, the council of Najaf announced the trench will be 50-70 kilometers (31-43 miles) long, and the Shiite Endowment claims to have covered about a third of its cost. However, its implementation is directly supervised by the Imam Ali Brigades, the armed faction affiliated with Imam Ali Mosque, fighting under the umbrella of the PMU.

The trench will be four meters (13 feet) deep, surrounded by surveillance towers and thermal security cameras. In addition, monitoring posts will be erected and drones will fly around the clock to detect any movement on the borders of Najaf.

Yassiri, who is a member of the State of Law Coalition led by Nouri al-Maliki, told Ayn al-Iraq News that the security trench “holds a major strategic military importance,” noting that it will have “extremely high standards that are very difficult to breach.”

He said, “The trench will protect four provinces — Najaf, Karbala, Diwaniyah and Muthanna — against any terrorist attack from the western desert.” He added that the trench will have economic benefits as well since it will put an end to smuggling.

An interesting assumption – smuggling is its own form of economic activity and contributes to the economy – but without paying taxes. While I sympathize with the inclination to do something, I have to wonder if this will have positive benefits – or merely turn out to be a drain on the treasury which their opponents might celebrate.

Helen Klein Murillo on Lawfare notes another approach may be in development by the Trump Administration for restricting immigration:

In late January, just after the initial refugee order, The Washington Post reported on a draft executive order entitled “Executive Order on Protecting Taxpayer Resources by Ensuring Our Immigration Laws Promote Accountability and Responsibility.” The document, apparently authored by Andrew Bremberg, Assistant to the President and Director of the Domestic Policy Council, proposed revamping the so-called “public charge” law.

I.e., if someone would be a burden, we reject them. This is already a law. Continuing:

Yesterday may have seen movement toward that policy—a policy that could threaten national security by discouraging immigrants from seeking health care—through a subtle but significant development in the shadow of the refugee order. Section 3 of yesterday’s presidential memorandum is titled “Enforcement of All Laws for Entry Into the United States.” That section directs agencies “to rigorously enforce all existing grounds of inadmissibility and to ensure subsequent compliance with related laws after admission.” Furthermore, the memorandum directs agencies to “issue new rules, regulations, or guidance . . . to enforce laws relating to such grounds of inadmissibility and subsequent compliance,” rules which are to “supersede any previous rules to the extent of any conflict.”

It’s hard to read that and not see the connection to the proposed public charge order—a potentially far-reaching law that could severely limit lawful immigration, but which long-standing regulatory guidance has limited in application. Although yesterday’s big news was the executive order, this seemingly small piece of the presidential memorandum might significantly impact another immigration policy sphere that implicates national security. This is another area to watch.

As Helen says, something to watch so long as the Trump Administration remains in power.

It’s always good when a scientist is scratching their head, and Chelsea Whyte describes a fascinating one in NewScientist (18 February 2017, paywall):

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

SOMETHING doesn’t add up. Mars has ice caps, and there is evidence in the terrain that water flowed in rivers and lakes there billions of years ago. We have a decent understanding of how water behaves on Earth, and there’s no reason to think the laws of physics are different on Mars. And yet, we can’t figure out how water could have existed in liquid form on young Mars.

Every time we try to replicate the conditions under which the liquid water could have existed, a new complication throws a wrench into our models. Last week, yet another paper tried to chip away at the mystery (PNAS, doi.org/bzjh). And like so many before it, instead of resolving the problem, it introduced another.

This 40-year-old mystery is known as the Mars paradox. If and when we resolve it, we might need to throw away a lot of textbooks.

Some folks might point at Venus and its thick atmosphere and ask what’s going on, on the assumption that Mars and Venus are similar, but they’re not. From Windows to the Universe I find that, as a handy way to express their masses, Venus is roughly .82 of Earth’s mass, while Mars is .11 of Earth’s mass, so that’s not a comparable, and that explains why Mars’ atmospheric pressure is light relative to Earth’s – and will remain so without a large addition of mass. Perhaps this also explains why the suggestion to replace the atmosphere with hot house gasses such as CO₂ leads nowhere.

This disparity in mass opens the question of the possibility of a catastrophic removal of mass at some point after water had time to leave its mark on the surface of Mars. Beyond me. But it smells like von Däniken – blech.

So what did old fictional Holmes used to say? Chelsea walks down that path:

So is there some planetary mechanism we still don’t understand? A mixture of greenhouse gases we haven’t yet hit on? Perhaps the real trouble is our understanding of water itself. We already know it can bedevil a few laws of physics, like when colder water flows to the top of a glass. Whatever the answer, we’re running out of obvious solutions. We’re going to be in truly alien territory when the mystery is solved.

Sounds subtle and, if found, both fascinating and possibly useful.

Totalizator:

A tote board is a large numeric or alphanumeric display used to convey information, typically at a race track (to display the odds or payoffs for each horse) or at a telethon (to display the total amount donated to the charitable organization sponsoring the event).

The term “tote board” comes from the colloquialism for “totalizator” (or “totalisator”), the name for the automated system which runs parimutuel betting, calculating payoff odds, displaying them, and producing tickets based on incoming bets. Parimutuel systems had used totalisator boards since the 1860s and they were often housed in substantial buildings. However the manual systems often resulted in substantial delays in calculations of better payouts. [Wikipedia]

Heard on the movie The Killing (1956).

What happens when two psychopaths marry, and one of them is …. earnest?

The noir of The Killing (1956) lies not in the detailed plans to rob a horse track of its cash, but in the character of the men & women involved in the crime. Director Kubrick makes it clear that the ultimate fate of each man and woman of note in this film comes from the defects which also direct them to seek riches outside of the strictures of law, and those fates are sobering, especially in one spate of mad gunfire which ruins the lives of so many.

I am not a particular Kubrick fan. I couldn’t tell you what I’ve seen of his output. But this movie does leave me wondering, quite soberly, as to his religious leanings. Why? Because as we neared the conclusion of this movie, the plan itself still seemed to be nearing a successful, if deeply flawed termination. And then Kubrick, in the great tradition of Greek theater, introduces a messenger of the Gods, a messenger who wreaks final vengeance upon the very Planner himself, who threatened to profit grossly from the efforts and failures of his partners in crime.

And that messenger delivers the final blow, stripping the Planner of his riches, his dreams, and, finally, his spirit. Drooping, he stops and waits for the cops to move in. And so does Kubrick’s fine story end.

This is a quietly good movie. A fine, if not spectacular, story; acting quietly excellent (especially by character actor Elisha Cook, Jr., who turns in his finest performance that I’ve seen); casting top-notch (I particularly appreciated Kola Kwariani as a wrestler and chess shark); excellent cinematography and good audio.

This movie grabbed us and we didn’t even discuss stopping halfway through, as we often do.

Strongly Recommended.

My correspondent elaborates on high tech materials:

I was thinking more along these lines: http://news.mit.edu/2016/hot-new-solar-cell-0523

Ah! Interesting!

The basic principle is simple: Instead of dissipating unusable solar energy as heat in the solar cell, all of the energy and heat is first absorbed by an intermediate component, to temperatures that would allow that component to emit thermal radiation. By tuning the materials and configuration of these added layers, it’s possible to emit that radiation in the form of just the right wavelengths of light for the solar cell to capture. This improves the efficiency and reduces the heat generated in the solar cell.

I forget the name of the principle, but I ran across it in The Climate Fix, I think. Basically, the reason CO₂ is a hot house gas is this: Sun light (radiation) at the most energetic frequencies reaching the earth is not absorbed by CO₂, but it is absorbed by the Earth. By some well-understood principle, which of course I’ve forgotten, all objects emit the energy they absorb, but at a different wavelength. So when the Earth emits the energy it’s absorbed from the Sun, the emission is at a different wavelength – one (more likely a small range) to which the CO₂ is not transparent! Thus, by increasing the percentage of CO₂ in the atmosphere, we increase the energy retained by the atmosphere – and, thus, we become hotter.

This sounds like the same principle – converting the energy from difficult to harvest wavelengths to easier to harvest  wavelengths. I like it. I wonder if any energy is lost in the conversion…

A recent email directed me to this article on KSL.com concerning a World War II vet, Bruce Heilman, riding his motorcycle across America in honor of fallen vets. One statement of his jarred my sense of right and wrong:

“Memorial Day is more than hot dogs and marshmallows, and we all should recognize, in everything we do, that our freedom comes from our military,” Heilman said.

I can’t help but notice that, as an example, for North Koreans, their freedom comes from their military.

Or lack of freedom.

The military is a complex institution. You can’t just say it’s a tool, even though it appears to be one, because if it’s members decide it’s being used improperly, it can disband and dissolve through disobedience. However, the North Korean military protects its society – and its controlling elite – from external threats as well, but freedom isn’t part of that equation.

Our freedoms are protected by the military, but do not come from the military. Those traditional freedoms come from all of us, making the decision to put those freedoms ahead of our instinctive desires for control and security and homogeniety and many other things. Paradoxically, by putting our traditional freedoms ahead of those other desires, we, in large part, guarantee those desires – although perhaps not in the form we’d like to see. We are a heterogenuous society, which means finding compromises and following rules of justice blind to sectarian and commercial cries of certitude.

So, I admire Bruce’s spirit, but I cannot embrace his comment. I also didn’t much care for the other half of his quoted comment, “… in everything we do …” but it’s also a little vague, so I shan’t venture further on that path. The implied militarism just makes me jumpy.

Regarding the question of leaks, on BloombergView Noah Feldman discusses the nature of leaks and gives a useful overview of how SCOTUS has dealt with the question. Noah’s summary of the issue:

From The Healing Of Schiller Park blog.
Love it!

Although some critics have compared the career bureaucrats suspected of doing the leaking to the “deep state” that has bedeviled reformers in Egypt and Turkey, the First Amendment hasn’t been brought into the conversation.

It should be. As it turns out, there are competing constitutional views about bureaucrats’ engagement with public affairs. A liberal current going back to Supreme Court Justices Thurgood Marshall and William Brennan sees public employees as full public citizens, protected by the First Amendment so long as they are speaking about matters of public concern. A rival conservative current treats government workers as private employees, and allows them to be sanctioned for any speech that comes within the scope of their employment. These two perspectives, locked in a longtime doctrinal struggle, offer starkly different consequences for whether leakers are free-speech heroes or deep-state backbiters.

From this it appears the conservative thought-pattern is confined to the practices of the private sector – a belief that the rules of the private sector cover all aspects of society.

But this cannot be so. Each sector has its own purposes, concerns, and worries – and its own rules, developed over the centuries, for managing and correcting those worries. Free speech by those closest to the issue in the private sector may result in the release of critical data for a corporation, and it makes sense that this be restricted and punishable. In certain cases, exceptions should be made, but only for those that have far-reaching public impacts, such as pollution releases.

The same in the educational sector, on the other hand, constitutes the testimony of experts on a public issue and should be treated as invaluable input – not a reason to fire an educator. This was the basis of the Pickering case, as Noah explains:

The touchstone of the liberal take on employee speech is a 1968 case, Pickering v. Board of Education. A schoolteacher had been dismissed for writing a letter to the editor of the local newspaper that criticized the school board’s budget (too much athletics, not enough learning). Justice Marshall insisted “unequivocally” that teachers cannot “constitutionally be compelled to relinquish the First Amendment rights they would otherwise enjoy as citizens to comment on matters of public interest in connection with the operation of the public schools in which they work.” To underscore the point, Marshall cited the judicial decisions of the 1950s and ’60s that rejected loyalty oaths as conditions of employment.

Most important, Marshall wrote that because teachers were “the members of a community most likely to have informed and definite opinions” about the schools, “it is essential that they be able to speak out freely on such questions without fear of retaliatory dismissal.”

In general, imposition of foreign sector practices in other sectors will warp and de-optimize the performance of the sector – in other words, the teacher’s letter in Pickering, if considered illegimate, will result in the loss of a valuable input, simply because a private sector rule was applied in the education sector. This is simple common sense.

I continue to move in my opinions away from questioning the general legitimacy of leakers to considering the leaks, and those who generate those leaks, to be potentially legitimate. Certainly, leaks for vulgar personal gain remain illegitimate, as are those which compromise national security – but I distinguish between those which actually do compromise national security, and those that illuminate a war crime or other illegal activity in the government sector.

From News of the Weird (link unavailable):

Despite California’s 2015 law aimed at improving the fairness of its red-light cameras, the city of Fremont (pop. 214,000, just north of San Jose) reported earning an additional $190,000 more each month last year by shortening the yellow light by two-thirds of a second at just two intersections. Tickets went up 445 percent at one and 883 percent at the other. (In November 2016, for “undisclosed reasons,” the city raised the speed limit on the street slightly, “allowing” it to reinstate the old 0.7-second-longer yellow light.)

I thought red light cameras had been discouraged by the courts. Guess not. Certainly a lesson in math and driver responses.

They look a little like a musical score.

I was fortunate to see The Usual Suspects (1995) at the theater when it first came out. And I saw it cold – I didn’t read any reviews, I’d just call the theater to see if I recognized the show and, if not, I’d go. That made seeing it quite a revelation. And now I’ve had the pleasure of introducing my Arts Editor to it, albeit in a slightly neutered edited-for-TV version. (It leads me to wonder what TV will do to the “… gleefully profane …” Deadpool (2016), but that’s a subject for another day.)

This is a noir movie at its best, with a lot of sunlight to contrast with the dark lives the helpless characters are leading. Five ex-convicts are rounded up by the cops for a crime and interrogated, to little direct effect – but they know each other, more or less, and begin to form a team that can perform sophisticated robberies, even kill.

But they’re being setup, by the greatest criminal of them all, Keyser Soze. He wants them to assassinate the man who can identify him and lead the world’s cops to him. But they don’t know it – all they know is that there’s an Argentinean drug gang that Soze wants put out of business, and they will deal a deadly blow in that war – for a great deal of money.

So where are the drugs?

This movie has a daring, confusing plot, excellent performances by all the actors, and a director more than willing to play with time, space, and the audience’s perceptions of what has, may, and may not have happened

Recommended. But don’t see the TV version.

Benjamin Wittes and Quinta Jurecic on Lawfare pinpoint a key part of the American governmental system – the Presidential Oath of Office – and what happens when the populace begins to suspect the President is not taking it seriously:

So what does it look like when large numbers of people do not trust the President’s oath and, as a consequence, do not believe he “enter[s] office with a presumption of regularity in his work”? It looks something like what we’re seeing now, in which a wide array of actors simply do not afford deference to presidential actions and words.

Let’s start with the courts. There’s much to argue about in the astonishing flood of judicial opinions that followed Trump’s issuance of his executive order on visas and refugees. For present purposes, the only point is that a very large number of judges around the country behaved in a fashion untouched by deference or any kind of presumption of regularity in the President’s behavior: by our count, at least eight district courts and one circuit court have issued stays or temporary restraining orders against the executive order. Note that they did this in an area of broad statutory grants of power to the president in the face of a claim by the President that he was acting to protect national security. They intervened rapidly. And their lack of deference was, in some cases, proud.

This is a long, interesting post. For example, there’s a good section on how Presidents Bush and Obama respect each, but Bush no longer extends the same respect to Trump: a point for conservatives to consider. And if you’re still thinking that leaks from government sources, in this instance, are unethical, well, they don’t agree:

But if a staffer in a federal agency doesn’t believe in the integrity of the president’s oath, that mistrust breaks key bonds that tie that staffer to the executive will. After all, the reason to follow orders in the executive branch is that the president is both elected by the people, and thus represents the popular will, and has sworn an oath to faithfully execute the laws. If you don’t believe that oath and you don’t believe that he is necessarily pursuing the public’s interest, why follow orders and carry out his policy? Such a staffer may feel no compunction about telling someone in the press about policy discussions he doesn’t believe are being undertaken in a sincere effort to “faithfully execute” the functions of the executive branch and to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution. He may actively believe that his own oath of office requires a certain degree of undermining of those policy processes, both with forms of internal pushback and resistance and with public exposure. Or, less nobly, he may simply feel freed from normal bonds of loyalty and hierarchical discipline and thus able to embarrass a hated boss or scuttle policy changes he doesn’t like.

They make a lot of sense. It’s worth remembering that we are a Nation of Law, not of Men (nor of Gods!), which leads to the old aphorism about how all are equal in the eyes of the law. Those who take oaths as officers of the Nation take it to the Nation, not to the President. He (or she) may be responsible for making big decisions, but in the end he’s just another officer of the Nation, with delineated and delimited powers, and a defined lifetime.

Not a temporary King or CEO.

And that leads off to other thoughts, once again, about how the different sectors of society have different goals and different methods, and that this post reminds me of how true this remains. But I shan’t pursue the rabbit…

Anabolism:

Regardless of an organism’s energy source, its metabolism is a balance of catabolism, breaking energy down into usable units, and anabolism, using those units for vital building projects such as bone growth. [“20 Things You Didn’t Know About … Metabolism,” Discover Magazine (March 2017)]

In connection with the Montana legislation covered by Syd, one of the wealthiest and most influential men in America comes down on the side of public schools  – Warren Buffet’s annual letter to shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway:

America has, for example, decided that those citizens in their productive years should help both the old and the young. Such forms of aid – sometimes enshrined as “entitlements” – are generally thought of as applying to the aged. But don’t forget that four million American babies are born each year with an entitlement to a public education. That societal commitment, largely financed at the local level, costs about $150,000 per baby. The annual cost totals more than $600 billion, which is about 3 1⁄2% of GDP. …

This economic creation will deliver increasing wealth to our progeny far into the future. Yes, the build-up of wealth will be interrupted for short periods from time to time. It will not, however, be stopped. I’ll repeat what I’ve both said in the past and expect to say in future years: Babies born in America today are the luckiest crop in history.

Yes, some might argue that these two paragraphs aren’t really connected, but I argue that they are because that investment in the education of our children is how we, and they, assure their future. Two of the smartest (including his partner Charlie Munger) – and most honest, from what I’m reading in the letter – guys around happen to think public education is important. If you read further, you find they’re four-square behind the current economic system, etc etc. I think that endangering public education by permitting the private schools to eschew the requirements placed on public schools is really just a way to make the education of the students into a dice game, because education goes on for years. When a school collapses, such as we’ve seen here in Minnesota, students get hurt. They lose dollars, they lose time, and they lose their trust in the free enterprise system – because it was applied to a sector where it doesn’t belong. And I think Warren and Charlie might agree.

Katherine Martinko on Treehugger.com gives an overview of the zero waste community’s best blogs:

3. Zero Waste Chef

Written by a San Francisco-based editor named Anne Marie who loves to cook, this blog focuses on food management at home. She acknowledges that, until she lives on a farm and produces everything from scratch, she will still rely on a bulk-food system that generates trash in its supply chain (think of those plastic bags lining the bins, etc.), even if she’s not the one bringing it home. She has lots of great ideas for cutting out processed foods, better meal planning, fermentation, and minimize food waste.

The Snake Woman (1961) concerns the unintended consequences of science. A herpetologist, located in rural Britain, has been controlling the insanity of his wife by giving her injections of snake venom (surely an off-label application), which brings her some lucidity. But now it’s time to give birth, and the child she dies giving life is ice cold – cold-blooded, one might say. The midwife runs to the village and incites a mob against the child, and they come and burn the place down.

Your music … it gives me … shivers … and that taste of venom in the back of my … throat …

But the child has already been sent away and survives.

Nineteen years later, a Scotland Yard inspector is sent to the village in response to a string of deaths by poisonous, foreign snakes. The midwife puts in an appearance and entices him into shooting a doll three times; the local doctor tells the inspector the story; and he meets the child, now a quiet woman who has never heard about not staring people in the eye, nor developed a respectable taste in music. Eventually we learn she can change shape from human to snake in the blink of an eye (the energy consumption! the energy consumption!), another corpse or three piles up, and the inspector decides to go rescue her from herself, but while she thinks about his proposal, he whips out his gun and shoots her dead.

Sounds silly? It is.

But it’s put on in the great British tradition of taking it all very seriously and straight. The actors are, for the most part, quite good (although we did catch the inspector with his mouth hanging open, as if he was waiting for his cue and couldn’t be bothered to shut it) in their roles, the B&W cinematography clear and compelling, and the sets are quite competent – indeed, the visit to the burned out research lab was quite interesting as the supporting timbers, blackened by the fire, are still in place, leading to quite the spooky effect.

But the story itself is not credible. I’ll pass on making fun of the science; the reactions and motivations of some of the characters, the inspector in particular, were such that I couldn’t quite give credence to them, unfortunately.

If you enjoy the classic British acting tradition, you may enjoy this. But it will take a bit of a stretch when it comes to the story.

What are the secondary ramifications of the terrorist bombing of an airliner? AL Monitor‘s Menna Farouk reports on the losses to Egypt after the crash of Russian Airbus A321 after it took off from the Egyptian town of Sharm el-Sheikh:

Before the revolution, the country received nearly 15 million tourists a year. However, the downing of a Russian jet that took off from the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh in October 2015 has prompted foreign holidaymakers to book their vacation elsewhere.

According to data released by the Ministry of Tourism, Egypt incurred monthly losses of 3.2 billion Egyptian pounds ($198 million) directly and indirectly after the bombing of the Russian plane in the Sinai Peninsula. Following the deadly incident, several foreign countries, including Russia, the UK and Germany, imposed travel bans on flights to Sharm el-Sheikh.

NewScientist (18 February 2017) reports on Plan B if the decline of the pollinating bee population continues:

Eijiro Miyako at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tsukuba, Japan, and his colleagues have now built a drone that fulfils [the role of pollinating bees]. The manually controlled craft is 4 centimetres wide and has a mass of just 15 grams.

The drone’s underside is covered in horsehair coated in a sticky gel. Pollen grains that stick lightly to the gel when the drone visits one flower will get rubbed off on to the next flower visited. In experiments, the drone was able to cross-pollinate Japanese lilies (Chem, doi.org/bzk8).

Miyako says the team is now working on autonomous drones that could help pollinate crops. “We hope this will help to counter the problem of bee declines,” says Miyako. GPS, high-resolution cameras and artificial intelligence will be required for the drones to navigate independently between flowers and visit them correctly, although it will be some time before all that is in place.

I wonder if they’ve thought about problems from would-be predators, bad weather, even strong spider-webs. For that matter, does this constitute competition for the local bee population.

And, of course, this really must be a Plan B, to only be used in the case of disaster. Although it amuses me to think of the farmer organizing his fleet of bee-drones, deciding where to pollinate next. Although pollination is not necessarily a year around activity … on the other hand, the drones shouldn’t be all that expensive.

I note in the referenced academic paper the researchers also applied the gel directly to ants:

ILG [ionic liquid gels] droplets were prepared on the hips of F. japonica ants by photopolymerization in a manner almost similar to that used to make the hybrid flies. We carefully observed the pollen-collection behavior of these hybrid ants after releasing 30 specimens in a plastic container with three T. gesneriana flowers. The hybrid ants moved in the flowers, and large amounts of pollen grains became attached to their bodies as a result ( Figure 2D). The hybrid ants adsorbed more pollen grains on their bodies than did wild ants (Figures 2E and 2F; Movie S1). SEM imaging also revealed that the hybrid ants adsorbed more T. gesneriana pollen grains on the ILG droplets than did wild ants ( Figures 2G, S11, and S12). The adhesiveness and superwettability of the ILGs were particularly helpful in the effective collection of pollen grains from the flowers. Further, all hybrid ants (30) survived and did not exhibit any movement-related issues when placed in a container for 3 days or longer. In summary, these results indicate that the synthesized ILGs could be used as efficient pollen collectors with high biocompatibility for pollination using living insects.

It’s not clear to me if anointing numerous ants with this gel would be an efficient operation. But it might keep the farm kids busy.

But us casual gardeners?

Andrew Sullivan’s weekly essay contains this observation:

Jobs are vital not simply because of money — but because they give lives meaning, a meaning that now seems so remote people medicate themselves with opiates. People are grieving for a lost way of life. This is not racist or retrograde or even backward. It is, rather, deeply human. For it is in these places that a deeper identity forms, that Americanness, Britishness, la France profonde, endures. And what we’re seeing right now, across the developed world, is a bid to retain the meaning of a culture and a way of life in the headwinds of faceless, placeless economics.

Nationalism is one response. The answer to it is not globalism, which is as cold as it is remote, but patriotism, that love of country that does not require the loathing of other places or the scapegoating of minorities or a phobia of change, that confident identity that doesn’t seek to run away from the wider world but to engage it, while somehow staying recognizable across the generations. If the Democrats hope to come back, that patriotism is going to have to define them once again. But can they get past their racial and sexual and gender obsessions and reach for it?

I must note that this only applies to those who belonged to those places. For those of us who never felt like they belonged, then it’s a little harder to place value on them as they go away. For example, black people in America, homosexuals darn near anywhere, transgendered ditto – because those places also rejected them, not for what they did, but for what they simply are. It’s difficult to mourn the loss of a village that hated you when it found out you were homosexual, I should think.

But sometimes the rejection comes for less well defined reasons. I never really felt like I was part of society in general, so when the community of bulletin boards sprang up, a whole lot of normally introverted, shy people, from kids as young as ten to judges to myself suddenly found a community which welcomed them, that they could help build and participate in. And when the Web came and ate it, there was some mourning, although the tech savvy of those folks made it a trifle easier, as well as the experience of the earlier rejection. You see it go to dust, and you move along and search for another community out in the greater world of the Web.

But, to return to Andrew’s point, that seeking for the past’s stability and value unfortunately includes those elements which have become, contentiously, judged to be socially undesirable. Just as we ultimately decided that beating up the Irish was not in the interests of justice, but merely an indulgence in xenophobic hatred, so it is with lynching blacks, whether as it was done previous to the Civil Rights period, or as it happens today through the agency of police rotten apples – as evidenced through various arrests and convictions of a few police officers. I will certainly grant that most such folks are not racists, but an unfortunately set of racists have certainly attached themselves, as useless parasites will, to the group, and use it to their own ends.

All that said, I’m glad Andrew has reiterated the point that jobs are more than money, they are meaning and satisfaction and self-worth. This recognition must impact the implicit assumption of capitalist society that it’s all about the profits, and everything else be damned. In truth, capitalism is simply one way to deal with the problems of the creation of things and services of value to each other. There are other methods: communism, mercantilism, out and out thievery for that matter. Each has been subjected to valid criticisms, and so should capitalism – and it has been. Capitalists need to remember that the precepts of capitalism may appear to lead to a stable, productive system – but it assumes that the people it is thrust upon are dedicated capitalists.

They’re not. It’s not their purpose in life.

A thousand purposes we share. From fulfilling the commands of The Church, to the self-expression of the compulsive artist, the explorer looking at far horizons, for the vast majority capitalism is merely one of the many means to their personal end that they need. Because capitalism is not their end point, it is a flawed instrument, and as such it needs some regulation. Trump may actually recognize this: witness his proposal to tax imports at a higher rate than exports. It’s a recognition of the damage job movement to other countries does to communities in the short-term. Whether this is true in the long term of centuries is another question, since wages grow in the developing countries as more and more jobs move, and eventually it’s no longer economical to move those jobs.

The Pull The Finger Joke doesn’t work when you’re a cog in the machine, John.

But how to impose effective regulations such that smaller communities are stabilized is not at all clear to me, or even if it makes sense; cities are more efficient, and in this age of over-population, this may be of overriding importance. Perhaps regulation smacks too much of taking a hammer to the flower bed approach; an indirect approach, such as UBI, might yield better, if harder to predict results.

But it’s worth remembering, as Charlie Chaplin once elegantly pointed out, we are not cogs in a capitalist machine.

Because, of course, it has to be: President Trump doesn’t make many mistakes. Oh, he may rate his communication skills a C (a source I select with dry humor), but really, he runs a class operation. Really.

So, therefore, there must be a wiretap to explain all these leaks, as CNN reports:

You mean I’m built of Legos?

The Bride (1985) is an odd collage of pieces: mostly good acting, good cinematography, uninspired dialog, jumpy editing, a dubious grasp of physics, and at least some characters who act in odd ways, to the point where the audience may lose interest and wander off. It’s billed as an interpretation of Shelley’s Frankenstein, but perhaps it would be better described as a reinterpretation of Bride of Frankenstein (1935), although I confess I have not yet seen the latter, while I have read the former (but remember little).

First, the good parts. Clancy Brown turns in an excellent performance as the first construction of Dr. Frankenstein, built of dead parts and named Viktor, but surprisingly good-natured about his entire ordeal. David Rappaport takes on the role of Rinaldo, who befriends the Monster, the pair working up a circus act through which they’ll enrich themselves. Jennifer Beals turns in a credible performance as Eva, Frankenstein’s second construction, although her mouth hangs open a bit too much. The cinematography, as noted, seems adequate to the job.

But then we come to the bad parts: a dialog that inspires little interest, except for Browns, which he delivers with a certain meditative spirit; the editing, which jumps and jumps and jumps (perhaps this is a result of watching the TV version, in its defense);  the physics. For example, when Eva is brought to life, the electrical storm sparks a fire and explosion. Judging from the damage done to the heavily built tower, everyone inside should have been badly hurt, even pulped.

And the story. Oh, the story is a story of conveniences. For example, and continuing from our physics example, the story would have been hopelessly confused if Baron Frankenstein had thought his first creation was on the loose after the tower explosion, so he assumes – with no body found – that Viktor died in the explosion and fire, and even walls up the entrance to the tower. When Viktor eventually makes his appearance, the Baron is barely surprised – perhaps this is partly the fault of Sting, who portrays the Baron in a remarkably one note performance. Another example is a scene in which Viktor wishes to buy a necklace for Eva. The merchant is handed a bag full of coins, and it seems clear he’ll be taking advantage of the rather naive construct, until at the last moment he selects a single coin and hands the balance back to Viktor.

This could have been a telling moment in another story, if it were followed up properly. Alas, we’re in this story, and it’s not followed up. It stands there like a callow youth, rejected in his first advance to a partner, unsure what to do or what it means. Less of a convenience than a puzzlement, as is the phenomenon of some sort of weak, psychic link between the two constructs. Why? It doesn’t serve a purpose – except to disinterest the viewer.

The balance of the story is not quite so arbitrary, but it is predictable – the Baron wishes to rape Eva, Viktor finally comes back from his circus tour, yada yada yada.

I am not unaware that the movie reached for the level of veiled allusions. For example, at one point a book concerning Prometheus is tossed into a fireplace: not only a visual pun, but also a reference to the full title of Shelley’s novel – F.; or the Modern Prometheus. Victor was the name of the Baron in the novel; Eva, who is represented as having been trained to have a liberal mind on an equal footing with men, may herself represent Mary Shelley, who was raised by a father with highly liberal views for his time. But these are irrelevant as the story is not up to the basic task of entertainment, of involvement. They’re nothing more than Trivial Pursuit questions, when they could have been more.

The movie is not awful. I enjoyed several of the performances. But the story, obviously, bothered me. But your mileage may vary.

Old friend Sydney Sweitzer has just opened a blog, Common Sense Under The Big Sky, concerned about Montana issues, and has a lovely whack [link coming – use this for now] at private charter schools. A deduction that I missed:

Montana education funding is a around  $11,000 per pupil (a little less in large districts, a little more in small districts). The public schools spend all of that. We can certainly argue about how well that is spent, but we do know it is spent. A charter school is for profit. It will get that same $11,000 but it will only spend part of it, because it has to return profit to the corporation running it. Less is spent on educating each student, AND the profit is likely leaving the state.

[Emphasis mine] This makes explicit the comparison between public and charter schools. The former are staffed by unions, and come with all the attributes (a word I choose with care), whether it be union corruption, or dedicated, well trained teachers. The latter must cut costs because there’s another hand in the pie – those who want a profit, the owners of the company. And while free enterprise boosters may be nodding with no surprise in their eyes, what they don’t see is the cost of trimming costs to the educational enterprise. Such institutions, K-12, are not built by teachers who are around for a couple of years and then move on when they realize the charter school is a deathtrap of broken morale, but by teachers who are around for decades, who can serve as mentors, who can engender the pride in profession which is necessary for a teacher to function at the top of their profession. Frederik deBoer also addressed this, which I excerpted here – I fear Frederik’s blog may be gone, leaving me with a broken link. Still, he’s far more learned on the subject.

And this fits in with my concerns on the subject in the context of the sectors of society. Based on Syd’s post, it sounds like Montana is going all out to make sure the charter schools succeed in the private sector sense by shielding them from all measures implemented for the public sector. All they have to do is show a profit for their owners, and convince their customers that they deliver the goods – at least for long enough until the public school system shuts down. Then they don’t even have to do that. (How much do you want to bet that then the charter schools will clamor at the Montana legislature that they need monopoly protection?)

Sounds like a sweet deal for short-term investors – slop at the public trough. I wonder if they could force the owners of these companies to not harvest profits for twenty years?