Unsightly Mental Blemishes

GQ interviews Andrew Reynolds regarding his claim that North Carolina is barely a functioning democracy. I found this remark a trifle devious:

The op-ed has gotten a lot of blowback. You’ve been accused of claiming that elections don’t work because Republicans win too much, and the EIP has drawn criticism for its methodology when North Korea scored oddly high in a 2014 assessment. Since then, the EIP has dropped North Korea from its sampling, but doesn’t this at the very least undermine North Carolina’s score?

I want us to focus on the reality of governance in North Carolina and the election process quality, and there’s no doubt that we have serious issues. So I think it’s a red herring to pick apart the actual number, whether it should be 57 or 59, whether Cuba ranks higher or lower, whether India ranks higher or lower—let’s focus on the fact that America and North Carolina have a serious challenge to the vibrancy of their democracy.

I didn’t expect this out of CNN. Back in mid-January they published, “How MLK can get you out of your ‘Trump Slump’,” by John Blake, and I found it quite interesting. I don’t know a lot about MLK beyond the general He fought the good fight. I hesitate to call this inspirational, but it has good information on how he responded to the mistakes of the day. Here’s just one observation:

Source: Southeast Denton News

After Trump’s stunning victory, some people opposed to his candidacy vowed not to call him their president. Some cut off relationships with Trump supporters or called them all racists.

It was a new form of segregation: I shall only associate with those who share my political beliefs.

That kind of decision wouldn’t fly with King. He didn’t withdraw from his white jailers or lash out at them. It was a pattern that ran throughout his life, says David Garrow, author of “Bearing the Cross,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of King.

“King consistently distinguished between the evil deed and evil doer. He never hated anyone,” Garrow says.

“I see all these progressives filled with this hatred and loathing of Trump voters, but we never see King talk in hateful or loathing terms about Bull Connor or Jim Clark,” Garrow says, referring to two notoriously racist Southern white sheriffs.

“So much of the liberal left today is allowing themselves to be subsumed with a hate and anger that is utterly contradictory to King’s spirit.”

That is certainly true of a lot you see on The Daily Kos – a loathing for the conservatives who vote for Trump, Ryan, Gohmert, and most of the GOP. They spend a lot of their time tracking the transgressions against progressive orthodoxy, but, at least in their daily Daily Kos Recommended e-mail, which is as far as I read, there is very little time spent on actually trying to understand their enemies fellow Americans (which I emphasize) and what may motivate them. One of the most important steps in winning an argument is understanding the other side’s assumptions and logic, both intellectual and emotional – and that appears to not be important to the progressives. They seem fixated on finding transgressions, laughing at them in a sort of bulging eye sort of way, and then moving on without asking for the real motivations.

Their absolute certainty in themselves is discouraging. And the same is true of the conservative base – their frenzy over Obama was positively shameful.

As I’m sure Mr. Blake would agree, no doubt we have a lot to learn from Martin Luther King, Jr.

NewScientist (28 January 2017, paywall) has an interview with hyperpolyglot Alexander Arguelles, who estimates his fluency at 50 languages. I found this exchange fascinating:

But do thought patterns change with language?

While I don’t agree that you have a different personality when using different languages, it’s true that the structure of your thought sometimes has to be different. Because in Korean, for example, you don’t conjugate verbs according to person at all, but rather according to a wide variety of different “respect” levels that have to do with age, the nature of your relationship to the person you’re speaking with, and so on. Behind it all is a Confucian concept that if someone is six months older or younger than you, they have to be addressed differently than if they are the same age as you.

A glimpse into another world for me. They don’t ask the related question, of course, and Arguelles probably could not answer it anyways – that being, do the thought patterns of a native speaker of Korean fundamentally differ from the thought patterns of a native speaker of English. A related question would be whether he automatically changes the conjugation, or if he must think about it while he speaks.

I should probably try to learn a second language.

Regmaglypts:

“While not yet confirmed, the turkey-shaped object has a gray, metallic luster and a lightly-dimpled texture that hints of regmaglypts,” Bob King wrote for Universe Today. “Regmaglypts, indentations that resemble thumbprints in Play-Doh, are commonly seen in meteorites and caused by softer materials stripped from the rock’s surface during the brief but intense heat and pressure of its plunge through the atmosphere.” [“Curiosity Mars rover gets a close-up of mud cracks on Red Planet,” Steven Porter, MSN]

The People That Time Forgot (1977) is an amiable adventure on the continent of Antarctica – that inland section where it’s temperate and the dinosaurs still exist.

Those dinosaurs with plaster skins and marble eyes.

Anyways, the adventurers have heard – through a message in a bottle – about the temperate zone of Antarctica, and are there to rescue the message writer, named Tyler. They make it to the zone in a moderately silly aircraft, search for the dude, yada yada yada, run run run, duck and cover, and get back to the ship just in time before the entire continent explodes. Whee.

If you’re a zealous realist, just avoid this movie – it abounds in bad special effects. If you like your stories air-tight, vienkārši izvairīties no šo filmu² – this plot’s caulking is fresh-cooked oatmeal, the always disappointing¹ “instant” kind. If you like your characters to make reasonable choices, ne hoc modo elit – they seem to almost search for the bad choice to make.

But there is a certain nostalgic charm to the bad special effects. In particular, I enjoyed the ship that conveys them to the southernmost continent – I mean, it’s clearly a model, but it’s competently done, in icy weather it acquires a reasonable frosting of hoar-frost, and you can actually envision yourself on a similar ship as a pleasure cruise.

I think his beard is shorter here than when they rescue him.
Source: ComingSoon.net

But, much like the ship, you must take your pleasures piecemeal. Most memorable line: “We’re being chased by a volcano!” Most memorable body feature: The never-ending cleavage of Ajor, the native girl. Second place: the beard of the hostage of the fat green guy, played by Doug McClure. Most unexplained and useless plot twist – the masked bad guys are ugly mutants!

If this movie has any real interest, it’s in the hypothetical question – how would (pick your favorite Shakespearean-trained actor) have played (pick a role in this movie). How would Sir Alec Guinness have played the role of Tyler, the hostage?

Or would he have just tossed himself into the volcano before filming even started, agent tucked firmly under his arm?

¹Although, to be fair, we use instant oatmeal in a mixture with butter and brown sugar as a strudel for our apple pie, and it’s very competent in this role. Emotes, even.

²This language picked at random.

The United States is not the only country burdened with people obsessed with privilege – Turkey has its own burden to bear, which is compounded by the imperial ambitions of President Erdogan. In an upcoming referendum, he and his party, the AKP, are using the Ottoman Empire’s cachet to push for passage of constitutional amendments which will centralize power in the hands of the Presidency. However, they’ve run into a snag – or, more pointedly, someone who believes in privilege even more than they do – a member of the erstwhile royal family. Pinar Tremblay of AL Monitor reports:

An Ottoman military flag captured in the Siege of Vienna (1683)
Source: Wikipedia

And on Jan. 26, one of the dozens of descendants of the Ottoman House of Osman dynasty, Nilhan Osmanoglu, tweeted a video of herself declaring her support for the constitutional amendments that Erdogan wants to vastly increase the power of his office. Her endorsement of the imperial presidency was cherished by pro-Justice and Development Party (AKP) accounts, and her tweet became an instant trending topic. While attending a formal gathering Jan. 31, Osmanoglu targeted Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP). Kilicdaroglu, who is against the amendments, had asked voters to consider why they were not happy with a parliamentary system. Osmanoglu responded by saying Turks have had enough of the parliamentary system; in a well-crafted speech, she touched all the nerves of Turkish conservatives by blaming the traumatic events Turkey has been suffering on the parliamentary system.

Her words generated reaction from the opposition, and she became a celebrity overnight in Turkey. …

Next, she went on a talk show and confessed she considers herself blue-blooded royalty and hence would love to see the monarchy reinstated. She also went to court demanding lands and property she claims belong to her royal ancestors. She had stated on various TV shows that while Ottomans are en vogue in Turkey, she could not remain as a ghost. She declared that if the courts in Turkey fail to return the lands and property back to her family, she would take the inheritance case to the European Court of Human Rights.

In interviews, she lamented that that she has no heirloom jewelry from her family. She said that when she goes to Saudi Arabia, she is hosted as a princess, but in Turkey she is not accorded the proper protocol.

Osmanoglu’s limited education has not helped her cause. She was ridiculed by all corners of society when she claimed Napoleon (who died decades before Osmanoglu’s favorite sultan, Abdulhamid, was born) had said that “Abdulhamid is the second-richest man on earth after me.”

This all rings a bell, doesn’t it? Yeah, that one of unreasonable privilege. She doesn’t have to be knowledgeable, or work hard – she just has to be a member of the royal family. In fact, this reminds me of the general philosophy of supremacism – and what I consider its fatal flaw. Brought up American, I find her assumptions about what she deserves to be ludicrous.

And it’s not working out so well for the AKP.

Al-Monitor contacted several businessmen and Islamists, all of whom were looking for ways to disown Osmanoglu and distance her statements from the Ottoman legacy. One prominent business owner in the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul told Al-Monitor, “This market dates back centuries into Ottoman times. The AKP has given us an alternative reality — an Ottomania where we thought the past could be changed. It was the alluring glory of the fantasy of neo-Ottomanism that held me loyal to the AKP, until the greedy face of this fake sultana filled my living room. The Ottoman dream is no longer comforting, but rather appears brutal.”

Indeed, Osmanoglu’s products and other kitsch images of the Ottoman dream now stand as a sign of the intellectual weakness in the AKP ranks.

So they were looking back at what they wished was a rosy past – and it’s not quite so rosy. I fear we’re doing the same dance. Folks are vulnerable to a bit of charisma the world over, aren’t they?

Democratic Governor Cooper of North Carolina wins a round – if temporarily – against the GOP in the area of Cabinet appointees, as reported by ABC News:

Cooper won the latest battle Wednesday as a three-judge panel temporarily blocked a new law that required Senate confirmation for the governor’s Cabinet members, using a process similar to what the U.S. Senate does for the president’s Cabinet choices.

The state law was passed in the waning days of GOP Gov. Pat McCrory’s administration and seen by Democrats as a way to undermine the new governor’s authority. Cooper sued over this and other laws that reduced his powers after he was sworn in Jan. 1.

Sounds encouraging, doesn’t it? But here’s the sad part:

Republican lawmakers say the state Constitution gives the senators “advice and consent” powers over gubernatorial appointments. The leaders say the public has the right to see a governor’s Cabinet face questions in an open forum.

Senators have laid out a schedule to examine Cooper’s eight picks through mid-March. They said they weren’t aiming to be confrontational and wanted to determine if Cooper’s choices were capable of performing the job, lacked conflicts of interest and planned to follow the law.

It sounds, from this faraway vantage point, actually rather reasonable. The problem, of course, is that the law was a rush job, ramrodded through the legislature after the election was decided, and is perceived as an attempt to wound a political rival, rather than a wise addition to the sober job of governance. If this had been passed a couple of years ago, there probably wouldn’t be a bit of controversy.

But it also seems likely that if the law was permitted to stand, none of his Cabinet picks would be confirmed unless they were GOP members in good standing. That’s how partisan it seems to be in North Carolina. I don’t know about the Democrats, but the GOP plays this like a game, not like adults dealing with government.

Conker:

1. a horse chestnut especially when used in conkers
2. a game in which each player swings a horse chestnut on a string to try to break one held by the opponent

[Merriam-Webster]

I ran across a mention on tonight’s episode of Great British Baking Show Masterclass, but that seemed to be a reference to a color.

Discover Magazine‘s Steve Volk has a longish article (paywall) on the problems of neonicotinoid – both physical and political – and their role in colony collapse disorder:

Dead bee, probably from the weather.

[Jeffrey Pettis and entomologist Dennis vanEngelsdorp] fed neonics to bees, then exposed that group and a neonic-free control group to Nosema, a common gut pathogen in the honeybee. The bees fed neonics proved more susceptible to Nosema. And the effect was consistent even when bees received neonics in amounts too small to be detected in their system. “The only reason we knew the bees had exposure [to neonicotinoid pesticides],” says vanEngelsdorp, “is because we exposed them.”

Beekeepers rejoiced. “They really sounded like they found something big,” says Dave Hackenberg, a central Pennsylvania beekeeper. “They were like, ‘This is it.’ ”

“We really felt confident,” says Bret Adee, co-owner of Adee Honey Farms in South Dakota. “These were the guys everyone would listen to, and now we were going to get something done.”

But nothing happened.

Well, something  happened.

“We call it the ‘whack-a-mole’ theory of bee science,” says Hackenberg, the commercial beekeeper in central Pennsylvania. “People who stick their head too far above ground on the subject of pesticides get whacked.”

This kind of talk smacks of conspiracy. However, the alignment of self-interests leaves plotting and planning unnecessary. Big agricultural companies pay many millions annually in political donations and lobbying. The politicians receiving all of this attention and money determine the dwindling budgets at agencies like the EPA and USDA.

In late 2014, EPA scientists released a study showing that neonic seed treatments produce no significant increase in crop yield. The reason is simple, even predictable: Each year, soil-based pests, targeted by seed treatments, only pop up in about 10 percent of America’s cropland. But instead of dialing back pesticide use, scientists at USDA publicly rejected the EPA’s findings.

In recent years, allegations of scientific suppression have grown louder. In fall 2015, Jonathan Lundgren, an entomologist in the USDA’s Agricultural Research office who is now the director of the nonprofit research Ecdysis Foundation, filed a whistleblower complaint alleging that his supervisors levied a pair of bogus suspensions on him to prevent his publicizing the dangers of chemical pesticides.

Sometimes I think we should just ban lobbying. Lobbyists will tell you that they provide important information to the politicians who appoint the people making these decisions – but sometimes it seems like the companies are purchasing insurance plans, not providing information.

[Edit: added link to thread 2/12/2017]

Kevin Drum remarks on the opposition to Trump’s appointees:

Depending on how Nannygate and a few other things turn out, it’s possible that Andy Puzder might also look vulnerable when his hearings start. If so, I expect that we’ll see a full-court press similar to what we saw with DeVos. The key variable here is not badness—Trump’s nominees are all bad from a liberal perspective—nor demonstrating loyalty to teachers unions—that’s just gravy—but the realistic possibility of defeating one of Trump’s nominees. That’s where most people want to spend their energy.

I don’t think Kevin really takes this far enough. Why should the Democrats oppose the nominees? I see two reasons:

1. To demonstrate to Trump that he can’t just throw any sort of mud at the wall and expect it to stick. Unfortunately, that requires some GOP help and, except for the DeVos nomination, that hasn’t happened. So long as the mistaken ethic that politics is a blind team game persists, I think the Democrats will just have to hope to catch nominees in such devastating mistakes that they withdraw on their own. Incidentally, Kevin is keeping tabs on this, and in this post notes the list of withdrawn nominees is up to four as one of Flynn’s friends is being boosted off of the National Security Council, but doesn’t know why he couldn’t achieve the proper security clearance.
2. To demonstrate to their own base and the nation that they are still relevant, that Trump isn’t unconstrained. Fortunately, the injunction against the Muslim Ban Executive Order has achieved half of that – Trump is discovering the President is not the caesar, The reaction of SCOTUS nominee Gorsuch to Trump’s attacks on the judiciary is also heartening – further reactions from Gorsuch might also be a lesson to Trump to treat the judiciary with respect, although it’s not clear Trump is capable of learning from lessons.

NewScientist (28 January 2017) reports on the development of a heat-sensing biofilm, made of pectin, for use by robots. How did they test it?

The film can sense temperature changes as small as 10 millikelvin, which is twice as sensitive as human skin. It can detect a warm body the size of a rabbit from a metre away, something the researchers tested by microwaving a teddy bear and setting it at different distances from the film. Changes in temperature cause the film’s resistance to vary, which is picked up by electrodes along the edges and transmitted to a computer.

Since when did I start anthropomorphizing teddy bears? All I can think is Poor little guy, even though the actual invention is cool as well, although I’d rather see it as goggles a human could wear.

Why create a camera capable of taking 100 billion frames a second?

Why, to create a light-based version of a sonic boom, of course. LiveScience explains:

The fact that light can travel faster in one material than in another helped scientists to generate photonic Mach cones. First, study lead author Jinyang Liang, an optical engineer at Washington University in St. Louis, and his colleagues designed a narrow tunnel filled with dry ice fog. This tunnel was sandwiched between plates made of a mixture of silicone rubber and aluminum oxide powder.

Then, the researchers fired pulses of green laser light — each lasting only 7 picoseconds (trillionths of a second) — down the tunnel. These pulses could scatter off the specks of dry ice within the tunnel, generating light waves that could enter the surrounding plates.

The green light that the scientists used traveled faster inside the tunnel than it did in the plates. As such, as a laser pulse moved down the tunnel, it left a cone of slower-moving overlapping light waves behind it within the plates.

There’s a movie of the event at LiveScience. For those who don’t want to count the zeros in a trillionth, a picosecond would be 1×10^-13 of a second. And while it’s cool what they’ve done, the practical facet of this achievement may actually rest with the laboratory equipment.

The researchers said their new technique could prove useful in recording ultrafast events in complex biomedical contexts such as living tissues or flowing blood. “Our camera is fast enough to watch neurons fire and image live traffic in the brain,” Liang told Live Science. “We hope we can use our system to study neural networks to understand how the brain works.”

Source: Maynard’s Horror Movie Diary

Vincent Price without his trademark mustache is still Vincent Price, but less menacing, so when he plays the part of the reluctant murdering psychologist Dr. Cross in Shock (1946), it all still feels right. He hates his wife and accidentally kills her; on the advice of his lover he arranges for the murder to look like an accident, and she is now urging him to kill the young woman who witnessed the crime, fell into shock, and came inadvertently under his care. His lover apparently comes without any sort of moral system, exhibiting none of the regret and guilt that is gradually enveloping Dr. Cross, but he allows her voice of sociopathic desire to control him until the bitter end, where his unfettered desires have shepherded him, like cattle to the slaughter. Only on the bitter edge does he find the moral courage to try to set things right.

Too bad about that voice of desire on his shoulder.

This is competent, if not absolutely exciting Vincent Price. The horror of coming under the care of a man who just committed murder – and him knowing your know? The danger of letting a vindictive spouse prod you into an unwise action? It’s provocative, has good acting and an OK script – a better script could have really enhanced this movie. But we enjoyed it, and while near the end we could guess where it was going, we enjoyed getting there.

Oh, and an uncredited appearance by John Davidson as a crazy dude was quite impressive – we thought the eyes starting from his head (who ever came up with that phrase?) were truly well done. Too bad he only had the one scene.

In case you find yourself trapped in your car with possibly live power lines draped over your car.

… if you’ll forgive my Arts Editor’s pun, but a picture of the heavens for the night…

… I’ll have to ask her what she did to it.

trilithons:

Spectacular discoveries include ancient walled cities, historic mountaintop villages, prehistoric burial sites and long rows of standing stones, or trilithons, linked with the incense trade. [“A no-strike list may shield Yemen’s ancient treasures from war,” NewScientist (28 January 2017)]

Andrew Sullivan, Brit/old-line thoughtful conservative/gay/immigrant/Catholic/Harvard PoliSci Ph.D. (there, now you don’t have to go peruse his blog to understand where he comes from) and long time, now retired, proprietor of The Daily Dish, has taken up a periodic writing gig for New York magazine. His first entry includes a meditation on opposing would-be, conscienceless autocrats:

Here is what we are supposed to do: rebut every single lie. Insist moreover that each lie is retracted — and journalists in press conferences should back up their colleagues with repeated follow-ups if Spicer tries to duck the plain truth. Do not allow them to move on to another question. Interviews with the president himself should not leave a lie alone; the interviewer should press and press and press until the lie is conceded. The press must not be afraid of even calling the president a liar to his face if he persists. This requires no particular courage. I think, in contrast, of those dissidents whose critical insistence on simple truth in plain language kept reality alive in the Kafkaesque world of totalitarianism. As the Polish dissident Adam Michnik once said: “In the life of every honorable man comes a difficult moment … when the simple statement that this is black and that is white requires paying a high price.” The price Michnik paid was years in prison. American journalists cannot risk a little access or a nasty tweet for the same essential civic duty?

I know that once the journalists collect the news, they broadcast it. But I can’t help but wonder – is that enough?

I think Andrew should have considered one of the critical problems we, as a nation, have encountered over the last 20 years: Bad information. It’s not a baseless, liberal assertion that the conservative base, particularly those who get their news from Fox News, is far less knowledgeable than the American population in general – as I’ve mentioned on numerous occasions, this objectively measured fact is provided by none other than conservative official and historian Bruce Bartlett. If you want to see how he came to this conclusion, here’s his paper. So my point in mentioning this is that not all news outlets are going to report on Trump’s mendacity, no matter how public. Fox, Breitbart – there are certainly several right wing news organizations that have bought wholly into the notion that politics is a team game (a notion I dismantle here, and analyze in the rear-view mirror here), and that news organizations are simply a member of the team, with no greater allegiance than the team.

Certainly not to whole truths, the ostensible purpose of the free press.

And so how do you ask a conservative who voted for Trump to change his or her allegiance when their primary source of information is flawed? How can they make a wise decision based on bad information¹? Do they know that the man who promised to “drain the swamp” has populated his Cabinet with those who donated the most money to his candidacy? Do they know that violent crime rates are at or near 50 year lows – not 45 year highs? Trump accused Clinton of being a creature of evil banker Goldman-Sachs, and yet his own Cabinet has a number of former Goldman-Sachs employees. He promised to release his tax returns just as soon as they came out of audit – did you, Trump voter, know that his team has announced that his tax returns will not be made public?

If you’re a Trump voter, and either did or didn’t know of these objective facts, aren’t you squirming in your chair right now?

To get back to my question for Andrew, I believe there has to be more than just journalists asking hard questions, because many voters have voluntarily segregated themselves away from news that might make them uncomfortable. In order to not permit this, I believe it’s everyone’s responsibility to talk to those people in your life who get their news from inferior sources, such as Fox, and let them know that the person they voted for, who called his opponent lying Hillary, is engaging in just such behavior every day, in a way designed to terrify those voters susceptible to fear more than hope, to support him. Suggesting we’re desperately vulnerable to terrorists, that murder rates are going up, that illegal immigrants are here to steal our jobs and murder us in our beds – it’s called demagoguery, folks, it’s called fear-mongering.

But just to show you, my dear conservative, fellow American, reader, that I am up for a challenge, here’s some fears for you. Donald J. Trump. He and the GOP are in a position to strip the crazy banks of the regulation that keeps them from imploding, because he doesn’t understand the purpose of regulation – to him, it’s just an impediment to making money. He wants to build a wall, but the Mexicans won’t pay for it – you will. My dear friend, knowing that Trump attacks the judiciary when it comes out with a decision that frustrates him, that he weakens a critical leg of the bar stool that is our government, worries me – and so you should be fearful. Of him.

The other problems we, together, can fix.

But can we clean up after Trump? We’re talking attitudes here, the attitude he inculcates in followers who’ve unwisely pledged their very souls to him – and that means they can’t back away. They’ve stapled themselves right to his ass, and it’ll cost them too much self-respect to rip those staples out and walk away, so perforce now they have to despise the judiciary, the holders of the reins that hold our parties, GOP and Democrat, from running entirely wild – although sometimes it appears even some judges have caught the flu.

So, I plan to send this post off to some of my consevative, Trump voting friends, as an appeal that they widen their information base, that they realize the candidate for whom they voted is trying to duck the bars he promised to jump over – and what are they going to do about it? I ask them to think about that.

¹Some will answer faith. As an agnostic, I can only reply with the most effective answer possible: George Bush, a disastrous administration led by someone Evangelicals thought God had picked.

Jane Chong adds to Benjamin Wittes’ opinion on the Muslim Ban Executive Order, centering around the failure to mention what appears to be a critical statute:

… it was strange to leave out the citation, given it is the crux of the government’s argument for the president’s unbridled discretion to bar aliens from the country. But after reviewing the opinion and the parties’ filings, I don’t think the court’s omission of the citation was accidental or that its omission of a § 1182(f) discussion is surprising. This is a clever, if somewhat undisciplined, opinion that sought to get to its holding (denial of the stay) without tripping legal landmines or weighing in on big unresolved questions. The court ignored the elephant in the room–the statutory and constitutional powers conundrum–in favor of a two-step dance: (1) a high-level defense of the judicial power to review executive decisions, including in the national security arena, and (2) a much more in-the-weeds approach to applying the traditional stay factors–one that opts against a macro-analysis of the government’s likelihood to prevail on the constitutional powers question and relies instead on a micro-analysis of the persuasiveness of the government’s case in overcoming allegations of individual constitutional rights violations (effectively adopting the approach of States Washington and Minnesota in their brief (pp. 14-20)).

What if this had been an executive order from a respected Executive, rather than Trump? Would the outcome & reasoning be the same, disregarding the question of whether or not someone like, say, Obama, would have ever bothered to even walk down this path?

Jane’s conclusion:

… the Ninth Circuit’s refusal to “fix” the TRO based on the practical complications involved functions as a commentary on the hasty, overinclusive nature of the underlying order itself. By refusing to modify the reach of the district court’s restraining order, the Ninth Circuit is, in a crucial sense, refusing to incentivize this kind of drafting practice from the executive branch in the future–drafting that, perhaps in the court’s view, errs on the side of maximum reach, maximum mess, and maximum collateral damage, and should not be rewarded.

(Bad Executive! Go lie by your dish!)

Trump may have a substantial backing, but it doesn’t appear to include the 9th Circuit. Hopefully, most judges and justices will understand that their loyalties lie to the Constitution and not to the Party – either one.

I’ve run across a mention of this on NewScientist, but this D-brief report is somewhat more complete. Apparently someone has assembled an “army” of Twitter bots which are characterized by their tendency to spout Star Wars quotes:

Two researchers from University College London claim to have discovered an army of 350,000 such bots hiding in plain sight, distinguished by their affinity for tweeting quotes from Star Wars novels. And, like Aragorn bursting into the throne room at Helm’s Deep to deliver the news of an encroaching orc army, they have come to warn us.

The researchers are Juan Echeverria and Shi Zhou. The report continues,

Vast legions of malleable Twitter accounts are valuable to both corporations, for whom they can pump up follower counts, and to individuals and organizations interested in flooding Twitter with spam or creating the illusion of a consensus around controversial issues. A small percentage of the bots may have already been sold, they say, as they appear to follow accounts outside of the bot network. As older accounts are more valuable — it’s hard to trust a Twitter account created two days ago after all — their shadowy master could simply be waiting for his investment to mature.

The researchers say that they were lucky to find this bot army, and that there are likely other networks of automated Twitter accounts hiding among the social network’s more than 300 million accounts. In fact, they say that they recently discovered another, even larger army of some 500,000 bots, also of mysterious origin.

Put it in the fake news category – not the report itself, nor the work of Juan and Shi, but the bot “army” itself, because they’re fake people. I don’t use Twitter, never tweeted, no account, only read a few tweets – and I don’t understand the charm. Communications appears to be fragmented and, given the space limitations, coarse. So what’s the point? So companies can gather up followers and pump their stocks? So you can wonder if that latest tweet is from a real person or a fake person? Or is it just the usual – to get feedback from readers?

So you can see the latest bit of insanity from our President?

Source: CineWeekly

The classic The African Queen (1951) is, for today’s sensibilities, a mixed bag. The time is the start of World War I. Two missionaries, a brother and sister team, are situated in German-controlled East Africa, on the river. The Germans show up, torch the village, kidnap the villagers, and beat the brother; he soon dies. The African Queen shows up, and her master reports similar incidents up the river. Upon hearing that the lake into which the river drains is patrolled by the German ship Königin Luise, and by her presence she bars any invasion by the British, the surviving missionary, a middle aged spinster, hatches a plot to take the Queen down the river and ram her into the Königin Luise. Despite knowing the river becomes unnavigable as it approaches the lake, the master agrees. Various adventures ensue during the trip, they make whoopee, but the attack on the German ship flops and they’re taken prisoner. Just prior to their hanging, the German captain agrees to marry them.

On the strong side of this movie are the stars, Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn, who turn in strong performances and fairly good chemistry (Theodore Bikel, in an abbreviated role, also does fine work); special effects, which, if not realistic, also do not generally fall into the category of cheesy. I liked them.

On the negative side is the script. Although I was aware of the story from the book, I believe I would still have been annoyed by the blatant foreshadowing. Worse yet is the behavior of Mr. Allnut, who agrees to take his boat, the African Queen, down the river to the rapids where it’ll be destroyed. Why? That’s not clear. Is he really such a pushover? And, frankly, his pushback in mid-journey is simply not that convincing. Perhaps a little more digging into his background might be in order. Does he have a suicidal urge, to be soothed by the missionary’s love? A bone to pick with the Germans, or even better, the Königin Luise? As it stands, his behavior doesn’t seem reasonable.

Additionally, the musical selections are somewhat broad and, in at least one instance, cartoonish. This movie may have its light moments, but the humor is not of that type, and it distracts.

But the script also spends most of its time with the two stars, and this is a positive, as we do get to see them almost minute-by-minute on a river cruise on a cantankerous, decrepit old boat. I think the book, from what I vaguely remember, did it better than the movie, but the movie does a good job, seeing the ebb & flow of an iron-willed woman and the more go with the flow master.

Because it’s a classic, I recommend it, but not strongly.

Benjamin Wittes on Lawfare renders a quick opinion on the evening’s decision with regard to the Executive Order banning Muslim immigrants. He notes that there are two questions, and the court virtually ignored the one while dismissing the other, regarding national security necessity. It’s worth noting the lack of terrorism by immigrants in this nation, which weakens the government case.

Benjamin concludes:

The Ninth Circuit is correct to leave the TRO in place, in my view, for the simple reason that there is no cause to plunge the country into turmoil again while the courts address the merits of these matters over the next few weeks. Are there tea leaves to read in this opinion? There sure are, particularly with respect to the judges’ analysis of the government’s likelihood of prevailing on the merits and its blithe dismissal of the government’s claims of national security necessity on pages 26-27—a matter on which the per curiam spends only one sentence and one brief footnote.

But it’s worth emphasizing that the grounds on which this order was fought are not the grounds on which the merits fight will happen. Eventually, the court has to confront the clash between a broad delegation of power to the President—a delegation which gives him a lot of authority to do a lot of not-nice stuff to refugees and visa holders—in a context in which judges normally defer to the president, and the incompetent malevolence with which this order was promulgated.

That last sentence fascinates me. Do the courts have the privilege of (informally) assessing the competence of an entity in court and perhaps deny them a favorable ruling purely on that basis?

But this will probably stir up the emotional Trump Administration even more – and I do mean the Administration. His senior aides seem to function as much on emotion as does their figurehead (tongue only slightly in cheek), so this decision may lead to some more noteworthy remarks, full of bile, misspellings, and slightly agape agendas – which may, in turn, provide more ammunition for their enemies to use in court and in the court of public opinion.

For those who feel like the entire nation is dancing naked in front of hot pokers, it should be emphasized that the same vetting that kept the nation safe during the Obama era remains in place – unless the Trump Administration has decided to fool with it. The wise citizen will keep that in mind and, if something happens, first ask stinging questions of the Trump Administration, and not a judiciary which is merely interpreting the laws.

Do you eat rice? Are you concerned about arsenic in rice? The BBC has an article of interest on how to cook rice to reduce the arsenic level:

Source: BBC

1. Soak your rice overnight – this opens up the grain and allows the arsenic to escape
2. Drain the rice and rinse thoroughly with fresh water
3. For every part rice add five parts water and cook until the rice is tender – do not allow it to boil dry.
4. Drain the rice and rinse again with hot water to get rid of the last of the cooking water.
5. Serve your reduced-arsenic rice – it’s as simple as that!

In 2011, the Oman Medical Journal discussed the situation in Bangladesh and a quick summary of arsenic’s effects:

In Bangladesh, arsenic contamination in groundwater was first detected in the year 1993. According to the data provided by UNICEF in 2008, there are approximately 8.6 million tube-wells in Bangladesh. Of these, 4.75 million tube wells (55%) have been tested for arsenic among which 3.3 million (39%) were marked green indicating that the ground water is safe; while 1.4 million (16%) were marked red indicating that they are unsafe to use as sources of drinking water due to the high arsenic level, (Fig. 1). Recent findings show that about 20 million people in Bangladesh are using tube-wells contaminated with arsenic over the permissible level (>50 ppb).

Chronic arsenic exposure is associated with many human health conditions, including skin lesions and cancers of the liver, lung, bladder and skin. It is also associated with many non-cancer health conditions, such as adverse reproductive outcomes, neurological disorders and impaired cognitive development in children. Cardiovascular effects in human drinking arsenic-contaminated water include black foot disease, atherosclerosis, cerebrovascular diseases and ischemic heart disease. Moreover, maternal arsenic exposure via drinking water is associated with fetal loss, small size at birth, infant morbidity and mortality.

If your consumption of rice is spotty, I should think there’s nothing to worry about – but if you relish a good rice, then the cooking suggestion is probably worth your time.

The liberals of America are angry at President Trump – and so are the conservatives of Iran, albeit for different reasons. The guy just can’t catch a break. What’s the problem with the Iranians? Why, it’s that damn JCPOA, aka the Iran Nuclear deal that President Trump promised to rip up. Rohollah Faghihi reports on AL Monitor:

During the US presidential election, [Hossein] Shariatmadari described Trump’s promise to tear up the deal as “the wisest decision.” He said, “The JCPOA is a golden document for the United States but is considered nothing except humiliation and a loss for Iran.”

Shariatmadari, who is the chief editor of hard-line Kayhan newspaper, told Fars News Feb. 7, “Trump was unaware during his presidential campaign what a big and windfall score the JCPOA has provided for the United States. That is why he had promised to tear up the JCPOA.”

He added, “Unfortunately, Trump has now come to his senses and has realized that his ex-pals [in the White House] swindled Iran. Therefore, not only is he unwilling to tear up the JCPOA, but he also announced that he will support [the JCPOA] completely.”

Since the signing of the JCPOA in 2015, the hard-liners have been attacking the nuclear deal in order to disvalue it in the eyes of ordinary people in Iran, so that in the presidential election in May the moderates and Reformists would not be able to brag about the JCPOA as an achievement.

I wonder how much the Iranian hard line conservatives are opposed to the deal out of fear – the fear that, if the deal is successful in reviving the economy and returning Iran to the world community, the conservatives will be discredited, perhaps for more than a generation. This would be analogous to the GOP fear of the ACA, in that it would solidify Democratic control of Congress for many years as people perceive how it improves their lives.

Or could this be Iranian subtlety? Something to think about. Although the Iranian hardliners have been consistent in their hatred of the JCPOA.

Politics, politics, politics, while lives swing in the balance…

Pedicle:

Each antler grows from an attachment point on the skull called a pedicle. While an antler is growing, it is covered with highly vascular skin called velvet, which supplies oxygen and nutrients to the growing bone. [Wikipedia article on Antlers]

Seen on the Rivermen Rod & Gun blog at the very bottom of this page:

This deer had some very uncomfortable days until he was harvested by this hunter.  It is obvious that there was a fight during the rut and this deer ended up with an extra antler (embedded below the eye).  You can see that the antler from the attacking deer was broke off below the base of the antler as there is still blood on the pedicel [sic].  That takes a tremendous amount of pressure.