Unsightly Mental Blemishes

A little chive supper for the bee.

He has a lot more to go.

And there’s some Indigo rushing somewhere.

A HuffPo report on Rep Tim Walberg (R-MI) typifies the rank amateurism that seems to be gripping the GOP these days:

Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) told a constituent last week that God can solve the problem of climate change if the global phenomenon truly exists.  …

“I believe there’s climate change,” Walberg said, according to a video of the exchange obtained by HuffPost. “I believe there’s been climate change since the beginning of time. I believe there are cycles. Do I think man has some impact? Yeah, of course. Can man change the entire universe? No.”

Source: Phys.Org

Of the 4 footed, millions of years old variety. On Dead Things, Gemma Tarlach remarks on a find named Zuul crurivastator, a new member of the ankylosaur, or club-tailed herbivores:

The new-to-science dinosaur’s genus name reflects its block-headed, short-snouted resemblance to Ghostbusters’ Terror Dogs. But that vicious tail club inspired its species name, crurivastator, which translates to “destroyer of shins.”

Destroyer of shins. Heh.

Heh, indeed. But this is a specially cool find:

The virtually complete, partially mummified specimen was unearthed in 2014 and is still being prepared. Researchers started at either end (the spectacularly well-preserved skull and tail club) and are working their way toward the middle. In about two years, when the work should be complete, lead author Victoria Arbour of the Royal Ontario Museum and the University of Toronto thinks Zuul will measure about six meters, or 20 feet nose to club.

Stegosaurus Ungulates
Source: National Park Service

Nearly complete, details in place (unlike Stegosaurus, wherein the paleontologists first thought those plates would act like a roof), and even the possibility of recovering proteins. Proteins from an estimated 75 millions years ago.

Makes me feel like a kid again.

And, in honor of my late friend Nancy, who loved to eat dinner with a bunch of computer geeks and listen to them geek out (her eyes would cross and she’d start drooling, she claimed), here’s a bit of tech talk from the academic paper, from The Royal Society:

6. Skull

The skull is complete, missing only the tip of the right quadratojugal horn and the ventral edge of the vomers (figures 2, 3 and 5). The skull has undergone plastic deformation, with some dorsoventral compaction and mediolateral skewing evidenced by the bilateral asymmetry of the skull overall, and flattened, oval orbits [33]. The lateral sides of the snout taper gently towards a squared-off premaxillary beak. Laterally, the skull is relatively flat dorsally, unlike the arched profile of some specimens of Euoplocephalus, Anodontosaurus, Scolosaurus and Ziapelta, but this might result from taphonomic compaction of the skull. As in other ankylosaurines, the antorbital fenestra is absent and the supratemporal fenestrae are obscured. In dorsal view, the skull has a trapezoidal outline. Apart from the three known skulls of Ankylosaurus (AMNH 5214, AMNH 5895 and CMN 8880), ROM 75860 is the largest ankylosaurine skull recovered from Laramidia (table 1).

Andrew Sullivan is perplexed by the failure of the reactionaries to overwhelm all of Europe:

A funny thing is happening to Theresa May’s unstoppable march to a massive new majority in Britain’s parliament: It appears to have stopped. I’d like to think this may have something to do with Trump: He is so repellent to almost anyone in the civilized world outside the U.S., he appears to be weakening reactionism’s appeal in Europe. After the Dutch far right stumbled this spring, and Macron beat Le Pen more decisively than expected, we now see Angela Merkel’s polling having perked up since March. But in Britain, the collapse of the Tories in the polls since the campaign started has been nothing short of remarkable. They began the campaign with a lead of close to 20 points; the latest poll — probably an outlier — gives them a mere 3 percent lead over a Labour Party led by someone (Jeremy Corbyn) slightly to the left of Noam Chomsky. In the poll of polls, Labour has gained 12 points in the last few weeks and the Tories have gone nowhere.

And is it impossible for the Europeans to watch the ugly results of the election of Donald Trump … and say “No fucking way?” Why not? After all, he’s been notorious virtually from the beginning of the Presidential campaign; the actual Presidency is simply the (very noxious) cherry on the top. The ugly incidents, the idiocy in Congress and the White House – I have no doubt the professional watchers in Europe have been relaying these dismaying results to their colleagues in the non-reactionary parties, and the word went out: bloody well vote, none of this crap about not liking your own candidate – take a look at the reactionary candidate and tell me you want him or her running this nation. The way Macron defeated Marine was quite reassuring to those in the United States who’ve never been under the Trump spell; we can only hope our fellow Americans will have such vastly bad experiences that they’ll awaken and regret.

I don’t live in Britain, nor correspond with any Brits, so I don’t know if Andrew’s speculation that Prime Minister May is mismanaging the early election she called – but I do know from readings that she and her cohort seem to be scientifically illiterate, and I wonder if that may have something to do with the apparent disaffection with the government.

It’s too bad the other side also appears to be quite radical, in just that way that political-junkies can be. Otherwise, May might be ripe to be rolled off the log.

Professor David Wirth on Lawfare discusses Trump’s intention to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement on Climate, noting there’s a cooling off period which will push the actual notification off right into the heated part of that wonderful season we’re already stepping into – Presidential election season:

In the context of the Paris Agreement, this structure provides a number of useful insights—all of which, as intended, exert a moderating influence on what might appear in retrospect to have been a rash decision in the heat of the political moment. They may also create quite a bit of unintended discomfort for the Trump presidency.

In terms of politics, this means that Trump’s abandonment of the Paris Agreement, not yet having taken effect and still subject to reconsideration, could well be a live issue during the next presidential campaign. It is not difficult to imagine that the timing of the effect of the U.S. withdrawal could well be a gift to aspiring presidential candidates from both parties, entirely contrary to Trump’s own interest in securing a second term.

Having watched this Administration boot the fumble right down the field, it’s not surprising that they didn’t think ahead here, either.

But in the presence of this incredible string of incompetent incidents, it’s also possible to credibly contend that Trump, along with the most of the GOP, truly believes the assertions of fake news. If so, then polls such as this one (left) from Gallup will not impact their thought processes – or perhaps they’re not even aware of them, seeing as Fox News is seen as a credible source in the White House these days.

Therefore, in the bubble of the GOP, as Andrew Sullivan & many others declared them years ago, they only hear themselves and think that’s the world – and everything else is the production of the enemy, even science. So perhaps Trump thinks he’s doing what the United States wants.

And that’s a useful way of thinking about this, because we can compare and contrast with another hypothesis – that being the GOP is simply out to erase the legacy of President Obama. The ACA is under assault, although watching the passing of the AHCA and the reactions of even GOP Senators puts me in mind of the great rubber hammers of the cartoons. President Obama also contributed to the Paris Agreement.

Now, whether this is endemic racism, not unbelievable given the presence of white supremacists in the White House, or GOP fear of Democrats taking full credit for the improving healthcare situation, as has been rumored, or the religious sensibility (a term I use with hesitant humor)  of the GOP finding it unbelievable that their sworn enemies, the Democrats, could do anything good under the Sun, I don’t know.

Returning to Professor Wirth’s commentary, I found this interesting:

The modest requirements of the Paris Agreement have been largely overlooked during the Agreement’s transformation into a political football.  Much of the Agreement is not legally binding, and those provisions that are involve primarily reporting and updating each country’s voluntarily identified “contribution”—purposely not a commitment that is legal enforceable. The Agreement’s generality and flexibility, in response to U.S. demands and experience with Kyoto, is a principal reason the deal was launched so quickly, less than a year after its adoption in December 2015.

Quite simply, the Paris Agreement puts “America First,” with our domestic policy agenda driving U.S. engagement with the Agreement and not the other way around.  During the lengthy public debate leading to the President’s recent announcement, even the principal negotiator for the United States concluded that the existing agreement could accommodate a relaxation of the U.S. contribution of the sort anticipated by Trump’s recent domestic proposals.

Given this modest description, it becomes more and more a question of “why did you bother?“, just like their persecution of the ACA, than anything else – a ripe reason to go looking for skulking motivations.

Scott Chamberlain on Mask of the Flower Prince has his own list of ten pieces of Mother’s Day music – for the imperfect mother in your life:

Barber: Medea’s Meditation and Dance of Vengeance.  Medea is the star of Western Civilization’s earliest custody-battle-gone-horribly-awry soap opera.  Furious that her louse of a husband is taking their kids to live with a new trophy wife, Medea decides a little infanticide will even the score.  It’s a story with something for everyone in the family.

Cherubini: Medea. A follow-up to the above entry, because sometimes a 12-minute work about a mother killing her children isn’t enough, and you really need a full-blown opera to do the story justice.

He also includes links to the music. G’wan – you know you want to!

Hit a home run or I’ll scratch your toenails off!

We ran into an unexpected pleasure. There are certain movies which make our teeth itch; we identify them by how predictable they appear to be, and how good for us they appear to be. Such was the apparent case with Rhubarb (1951), a movie about a millionaire leaving his fortune to his cat, Rhubarb, and how the cat becomes a good luck charm for the formerly failing baseball team he had owned.

Sounds painfully predictable, doesn’t it?

But – at least for those of us fortunate enough to be cat owners – it’s a heckuva lot of fun, watching a bedraggled, nasty stray who hoards golf balls turn into a beloved pet who then transforms yet again into the team owner. Along the way there’s a vicious daughter of the deceased, cut out of the will and jealous of it all, and her clever machinations; the quite naturally terrified bookies and their scheme to negate the good luck charm; the soon-to-be married cat guardian and his sweetie, who is allergic to Rhubarb; and a passel of terrified pooches who’d rather not go toe to toe with the big tomcat.

I think one of the keys to this movie’s unexpected success with us was that the very personality of the cat is key thematic material for the movie – gumption, in a word. The millionaire takes delight in the cat, from his golf ball hoarding and dog chasing days to his independence; not seeing that in his daughter induces him to cut her out of the will. It becomes a running undernote of the movie, not insistently played up, but more a wistful minor key melody of persistence and guts in the face of mild problems. The acting is competent, the plot bounces right along, and the millionaire’s home is just as ridiculously ornate as you might expect.

That and the occasional word play. How can I resist a movie with the following dialog?

Lawyer: But that cat may have been powdered or sprayed with some irritant, such as pepper or mustard!

Judge: Point well taken, Mr. Dill.

I shan’t actually recommend it, but if you run across it one rainy afternoon, you could do worse than give this one a ten minute trial.

Steve Benen on Maddowblog contributes some analysis which fairly well backs up my thoughts on how the failure to train our politicians in the basics of societal sectors is leading to disaster:

That’s not a throwaway line. What we have here is the White House’s budget director suggesting it may be time to eliminate the Congressional Budget Office from existence.

Note, Mulvaney may believe that the CBO score on the Republican health care plan is “absurd,” but he’s offered no competing data. Either the far-right budget chief doesn’t have alternative numbers, or he does have competing data that he prefers to hide out of embarrassment.

What’s more, given that Mulvaney just unveiled a budget plan with a jaw-dropping $2-trillion mistake – a colossal screw-up he says was intentional – perhaps the OMB director should avoid questioning the reliability of others’ budget analyses for a while.

But it’s the broader disdain for objective sources of information that really rankles. I’m reminded of a piece from the Washington Post’s Paul Waldman in March:

This is straight out of President Trump’s playbook, one that tries to convince everyone that there’s no such thing as a neutral authority on anything. If the CBO might say your bill will have problematic effects, then the answer is not to rebut its particular critique, but to attack the institution itself as fundamentally illegitimate. If the news media report things that don’t reflect well on you, then they’re “the enemy of the American People.” If polls show you with a low approval rating, then “any negative polls are fake news.” If a court issues a ruling you don’t like, then it’s a “so-called judge” who has no right to constrain you.

The Teapot Dome Scandal:
Crap like this happens when you’re ignorant, again and again.

And I’m sure Mick, Donald, & most of the company really don’t understand why things are structured as they are structured. The reason is that the government is not in place to make a profit, but to govern, and governing has little to do with how corporations run.

In this particular case, the CBO exists to evaluate proposed legislation in terms of at least the costs, and in the case of the AHCA, how well it accomplishes its putative goal, all in a non-partisan manner. This is just one aid in responsible planning and legislating.

In the corporate world there are other ways to do this – mainly by letting companies try things and if they fail & sink, too bad for them.

That doesn’t work in the government world. There’s little competition, and when there is it must be strictly regulated in order to avoid negatively impacting the citizenry.

So when Mick says,

“At some point, you’ve got to ask yourself, has the day of the CBO come and gone?” Mulvaney said…. He said, “The days of relying on some nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to do that work for us has probably come and gone.”

The proper response is, “No, Mick. Your time has come and gone. It was back in the 1800s. And the CBO was originated to stamp out scum like you.”

Back on May 24 Slate reported on some more GOP jiggering in government in the realm of “ringless voicemail,” wherein a couple of companies have devised a method for inserting messages into your voicemail without ringing your phone first. While actually not strictly a new technology, the FCC has been asked if this is legal, and the Republican National Committee has weighed in on the matter:

She’d jump his bones if she could.

Perhaps the worst facet of The Detective (1954) is the overly bland title, which gives little to munch on until the movie is underway and you realize the detective is a certain Father Brown, Catholic priest, which is significant for those who watch the later TV series. This is the introduction, wherein we learn Father Brown is humble yet overly-confident, charming yet exceptionally shy, eccentric and yet a priest.

The attentive audience members will swiftly recognize the genre as being the British comedy-mystery. The details of the plot may mystify and even delight, as when Father Brown slips a man’s cigarette box from a man’s hand into his own (voluminous) sleeve, the victim none the wiser, but it’s clear the end point of this movie will be the recovery of the stolen cross, and, more importantly, the guidance of the soul engaged in high crimes back to the path of … well, whatever it is. It’s difficult to argue with the moral & teaching of the story, but the mouth of wisdom is, to the modern ear, accustomed more to accusations and acknowledgements of various crimes perpetrated by clerics, somewhat untrustworthy; and for those who do trust clerics, there is the urge to advise them to be more circumspect in their selection of authority figure.

The acting is the usual British competent to excellent, the staging is fun, and, overall, it’s an enjoyable movie.

Oh, and I lied. Really, the stage combat was, at best, unconvincing.

He’s a bit coquettish in this pic.

But I still ate him in the end.

KIC 8462852 continues to dance for us, as NewScientist (27 May 2017) notes:

On 19 May, Tabby’s star began to dim, carrying on its history of strange dips in brightness. Astronomers are scrambling to decipher the mysterious signal from the star, which is 1300 light years away in the constellation Cygnus.

Back in January 2017 Phys.org published a possible explanation for unique phenomenon:

But in what may be the greatest explanation yet, a team of researchers from Columbia University and the University of California, Berkley, have suggested that the star’s strange flickering could be the result of a planet it consumed at some point in the past. This would have resulted in a big outburst of brightness from which the star is now recovering; and the remains of this planet could be transiting in front of the star, thus causing periodic drops.

For the sake of their study – titled “Secular dimming of KIC 8462852 following its consumption of a planet”, which is scheduled to appear in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society – the team took the initial Kepler findings, which showed sudden drops of 15% and 22% in brightness. They then considered subsequent studies that took a look at the long-term behavior of Tabby’s Star (both of which were published in 2016).

They then attempted to explain this behavior using the Kozai Mechanism (aka. Kozai Effect, Lidov-Kozai mechanism), which is a long-standing method in astronomy for calculating the orbits of planets based on their eccentricity and inclination. Applied to KIC 8462852, they determined that the star likely consumed a planet (or planets) in the past, likely around 10,000 years ago.

This process would have caused a temporary brightening from which the star is now returning to normal (thus explaining the long term trend). They further determined that the periodic drops in brightness could be caused by the remnants of this planet passing in high-eccentricity orbits in front of the star, thus accounting for the sudden changes.

Shifting back to current time, Science is reporting something interesting:

The first sign of the star’s recent dimming came on 24 April from Tennessee State University’s Fairborn Observatory in southern Arizona. But it wasn’t until late last week that astronomers were sure it had entered a new dip. It was 3% dimmer than its normal brightness on 19 and 20 May and is now moving back toward normal. “It looks like the dip has mostly ended,” Kipping says. “But … in the Kepler data we saw an episode of multiple dips clustered together over the span of a few weeks.” The progress of the dimming over the past few days also bears a passing resemblance to some detected by Kepler, supporting the idea that the same object is repeatedly passing in front of the star.

Thus the suggestion of debris. It’d have to be an enormous amount.

A friend points me at this WaPo story in bafflement:

The Trump administration is moving toward handing back to Russia two diplomatic compounds, near New York City and on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, that its officials were ejected from in late December as punishment for Moscow’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.

President Barack Obama said Dec. 29 that the compounds were being “used by Russian personnel for intelligence-related purposes” and gave Russia 24 hours to vacate them. Separately, Obama expelled from the United States what he said were 35 Russian “intelligence operatives.”

Early last month, the Trump administration told the Russians that it would consider turning the properties back over to them if Moscow would lift its freeze, imposed in 2014 in retaliation for U.S. sanctions related to Ukraine, on construction of a new U.S. consulate on a certain parcel of land in St. Petersburg.

Two days later, the U.S. position changed. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at a meeting in Washington that the United States had dropped any linkage between the compounds and the consulate, according to several people with knowledge of the exchanges.

This one’s easy.

If a cat rolls on its back and shows their tummy, you just know those back claws are ready to disembowel you.

If a dog rolls on its and shows their tummy, he’s showing submission to the top dog.

The Trump Administration makes a lot of noise, but that’s it. They’re a yapping little Yorky, all yip and no bite.

The Washington Post is reporting that the seat formerly held by Mick Mulvaney, now OMB Director, may be in play:

Suzanne Maloney on Markaz gives an overview of the future of Iran with Rouhani as the re-elected President – which is not equivalent to the American Presidency:

In this respect, Rouhani faces a familiar problem. In veering left, he surely helped secure strong turnout—74 percent—and probably swayed many of those who grew disappointed with what the nuclear deal has delivered. However, he also committed himself publicly to making progress on issues where he has only the most tenuous authority and where Khatami, aided by a reformist parliament, ultimately failed to generate meaningful change.

For this reason, his second term begins with an even stiffer challenge than his first. Dashed expectations among some proportion of the public after his first administration threatened his reelection; Rouhani will have to maneuver skillfully to avoid an even more dramatic disconnect between public demands and government achievements over the next four years. At his first post-election news conference, Iranian journalists burst into applause when a questioner advised him to continue behaving as he had during the final week of the campaign.

Rouhani’s rhetoric also cut dangerously close to the bone for the legitimacy of Iran’s ruling system, which remains fixed around the absolute authority of the supreme leader. That will surely not be forgotten, particularly at a time when the prospect of succession looms large. Raisi’s loss will make his speculated elevation deeply problematic, at least if it were to happen before the end of Rouhani’s presidency in 2021. Institutions matter more than individuals in the Islamic Republic, and the primacy of the leader’s office has to be protected. At 77 years old, the timing is hardly within Khamenei’s control, but it’s worth noting that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s original supreme leader, survived in office until the age of 86.

It’s all about stabilizing the government.

While Iranians may take pride in their democracy, it is surely a democracy deeply limited by religious requirements, not to mention institutions not susceptible to popular will. Which rings a bell here in the United States, as we think back to the summary sacking of James Comey from the FBI by President Trump. Comey’s removal shines a fiery light on the structural problems of a government which must investigate itself. The splitting of the government into pieces and even sub-pieces – as schizophrenic as that may seem to the nationalist and the outsider – is in reality the stability-inducing outriggers for the problem of corruption. The more ground corrupters must cover, the harder it is to escape the righteous indignation of those of upright character – or at least are not sharing in the booty.

Unsaid, so far, is whether the general citizenry of Iran is ready to serve without consideration for their own enrichment – I truly cannot say. I would have said that a sizable majority of Americans would be willing to do so; the wretched behavior of President Trump, his family, his staff, and the unhappy behavior of many elected GOP government officials, and, of course, those who voted for them gives me pause and wonderment as to whether we, too, are so unready to be a Republic.

Former White House Counsel Bob Bauer on Lawfare covers an unusual approach to the 25th amendment (the one which gives the Executive Branch an option for replacing the President if he becomes incapacitated) – a temporary use while Trump defends himself:

The Purple Death was always a little shy.

There’s little punch in The Masque Of The Red Death (1964), a Vincent Price vehicle and retelling of Poe’s classic story. Price is the mad, Satan-worshiping Prince Prospero, who has constructed and followed a logic consistent with Satan having won the battle with God, and now controlling the world. All those in his principality live in fear of his moods, his anger, his retribution; there is little left of the humanity of Prince Prospero, and thus little left to foster a connection to the audience. Likewise, his wife is also a Satanist, and the tension between the two could have been interesting – if either had much humanity left.

Into this mix are brought a young woman by the name of Francesca, who is from a village ravaged by the red death, as well as her fiancee and her father. Prospero constructs horrific scenarios in which the two men might kill each other for his amusement, leaving Francesca frantic, and unfortunately that’s about as far as she ever gets, even though she helps free the men for a brief period.

Prospero decrees a masque, at which various bits of horror take place; our lack of connection to the various party-goers leads to surprisingly little tension, even as one man, costumed as a pig, is hoisted in the air and burned to death. Is this not worth some horror?

Perhaps the problem is the lack of compelling story logic. Francesca appears to be little more than a victim, rather than a tool for goodness; the men are hammers in the forge of this plot, with nary a tic between them.

In any case, Prospero discovers that Satan is still subordinated to Death, and there’s little Satan can do about it for Prospero’s sake. Death is detached, ruthless, regretless, and Prospero’s master never appears to protect him. In the end, we are left with merely the sight of several Deaths, assembling for conversation and reportage, before resuming their duties as masters and slaves.

And, sadly, Price fails to burn this castle down.

I like the second one more.

The Trump storm continues as now the hard line Israeli right fears Trump may actually force them to accept a two-state solution with the Palestinians. Ben Caspit comments on AL Monitor:

Conterminous:

3 : enclosed within one common boundary : the 48 conterminous states
[Merriam-Webster]

Noted in a Letter to the Editor, NewScientist (20 May 2017):

The past and the present become conterminous – there are no boundaries in the experience of time. Especially in the late afternoon and evening, the person with dementia often becomes confused in the midst of “sundowning”. [Bob Kahn]

As in, more acidic soil. Lovely orange azalea makes a comeback.

Seems to be blushing a bit in that last pic.

In Creature of Destruction (1967), the finest line is, “That was very impressive, but ultimately meaningless.” As this applies, with a fair bit of sarcasm, to this stilted, amateurish bit of amusement, I think that’s all you really need to know.

Joseph Hooker’s sketch of an area of Nepal – now thought to be the earliest Western images of Mount Everest:

From the Kew Art Collection, published by ResearchGate. Mr. Hooker later became director of the Kew Gardens and President of the Royal Society. A review of a recent publication on Mr. Hooker is available in NewScientist here.

Neuroskeptic and the folks he’s discussing appear to be excessively naive concerning the mind and its vulnerabilities:

An interesting new paper by Swiss researchers Marcello Ienca and Roberto Andorno explores such questions: Towards new human rights in the age of neuroscience and neurotechnology

Ienca and Andorno begin by noting that it has long been held that the mind is “a kind of last refuge of personal freedom and self-determination”. In other words, no matter what restrictions might be put on our ability to speak or act, or what coercion is used to force us to behave in a certain way, our thoughts, beliefs and emotions are free and untouchable.

Yet, the authors go on to say, “with advances in neural engineering, brain imaging and pervasive neurotechnology, the mind might no longer be such unassailable fortress.”

I have no problem discussing the impact of new technologies on questions of ethics and morality – but one should start from a clear understanding of what’s come before. The very statement that the mind is a refuge betrays a breathtaking ignorance, not to mention an implicit philosophical confusion.

Every time we have an interaction with someone else, there is an opportunity to breach this supposed invincible citadel of refuge. From the most mundane and mild to the prisoner threatened with torture, from advertising (as I discussed a few days ago) to the preacher in the pulpit preaching hellfire and damnation, every interchange carries with it the possibility, and very often the intention, of changing some element of your being. For example, consider the happy person who has a child. Someone kills that child, intentionally. Now that person is very unhappy. The citadel is not in the least inviolable.

Nor should it be. We are not free to execute any random action that occurs to us, for there are consequences to actions, from trivial to terminal; this is, in fact, part of simply evolutionary theory. And the emotions? They are part and parcel of the evolutionary process; they cannot be independent of the outside world, for they are the primary pathway of interpretation of that outside world, an older mechanism than the rationality we rattle on about. Such a refuge would be an oddity in the evolutionary chain; indeed, on another day, I might make the case that pathological individuals may exhibit these characteristics, but they are evolutionary outliers.

I’ve not mentioned the more obvious method for breaching the citadel yet, because that carries with it the philosophical confusion I see here – the mind / body duality. Simple physical damage to the brain can severely damage the mind, and thus this refuge. Some folks lose their short term memories; some have amnesia; etc. By denying this linkage through their assertion that “… beliefs and emotions are free and untouchable,” they indulge in the mistake of the mind / body duality.

The point of the paper – and Neuroskeptic’s post – is to discuss civil rights and how they relate to new technology in which it may be credible to read and even write the mind via fMRI in the not too distant future. I think the first step is to recognize the conceptual differences, if any, between these new technological methodologies, and those already covered by law. After all, we’ve employed many methodologies in the search for truth and intentionality, from phrenology to polygraphs (both failed). Perhaps the key element here is the element of voluntariness? But what about the mundane collection of evidence? Such collections are rarely a matter of voluntary action on the part of a suspect, and yet they remain the only manner in which to justly convict a person of a real crime.

Consider, even, fingerprints. They cannot be withheld, at least in the United States, as they do not fall under the Fifth Amendment protections. From Quora:

No; your 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination applies only to statements that you might make during a custodial interrogation. It does not apply to physical evidence that the police may take from you, such as performing a breathalyzer test, taking your fingerprints, or taking your DNA through a mouth swab or other non-invasive method. [Cliff Giley]

The protection of one’s thoughts, as deduced from an fMRI scan, may indeed require a new law, as the forcible reading of one’s thoughts is not the same as a statement, under what appears to be current law. I will note in passing there will be at least two sources of errors which jurors and law-enforcement personnel will need to consider – that inherent in the machine doing the reading, and that inherent in the thought processes of the subject. Consider the work of Dr. Elizabeth Loftus in the area of false memories as just one example of the latter problem. One’s mind is not a perfect reflection of reality.

Neuroskeptic sets up a question:

So let’s suppose that it’s the near future and this technology really works. You are applying for a sensitive job and you’re asked to take this scan to prove that you have no attraction to children. No fMRI scan, no job. Would that policy be a violation of your rights?

It’s one to ponder. My inclination is that it would be a violation. Not in the sense that it would be unfair to discriminate against someone merely for having a desire, but rather because no-one has a right to know my desires (or beliefs, or thoughts) except me. If I act on a desire, then I’ve made it important to others, but the desire per se is no-one else’s business.

What if, through other means, a manager learns a prospective new employee plans to use their employment to embezzle from the company. Is it ethical to deny employment? How about if they learn of it via the fMRI? Or are actions really the only basis on which to make a judgment?

What if it’s murder rather than embezzlement? Or pedophilia?

The problem here is that there’s a difference between desire, intentions, and actions. Is it right to take an action against a latent pedophile, one who has never acted on that desire and does not plan to? What about the one planning to use his position as a camp counselor to victimize children?

The trick is to find the proper balance that does justice for potential victims and the potentially innocent. Can an fMRI, in the near future, make that distinction? Should the proposed use be outlawed until it can distinguish between those three?