Unsightly Mental Blemishes

In NewScientist (“There She Blew!”, 5 November 2016, paywall) Lesley Evans Ogden reports on research on the whale population strength just prior to the advent of mass whaling:

Using Bayesian statistics to account for uncertainties in modelling population dynamics, Smith and his colleagues have also reconstructed the historical abundance of these whales. Their analysis suggests that before widespread commercial whaling, southern right whales around New Zealand numbered somewhere between 29,000 and 47,000 – a range corroborated by the genetic diversity we observe today. Following 19th-century harvesting, they almost disappeared, with mature females plummeting to 40 or fewer individuals in the early 20th century. None were seen between 1928 and 1963. And although numbers are now slowly recovering, the population still hovers at no more than 12 per cent of pre-exploitation levels.

Morgana Vighi at the University of Barcelona, Spain, has also used logbooks to track the fate of southern right whales in the south Atlantic. Looking at entries from whaling grounds off the coast of Argentina and Brazil, she charted a decline between 1776 and 1923, as well as seasonal north-south and inshore-offshore movements. “In the early period of whaling, the sightings were spread along the coastline of South America,” says Vighi. Now things appear different. Chemical signatures she has found in modern bone samples from whales living off Brazil and Argentina suggest that whaling may have caused a schism, splitting what was a single population into northerly and southerly groups.

At the French National Center for Scientific Research in Montpellier, Ana Rodrigues and her colleagues have estimated historical numbers of north Atlantic and north Pacific right whales. “The logbooks are an amazing data source,” she says. Her team has concluded that before commercial whaling, the former numbered between 9000 and 21,000, and the latter between 15,000 and 34,000. So intensively were north Pacific right whales hunted that the population crashed after 1840. “In 10 years, they nearly exhausted the entire stock,” says Rodrigues.

And to what logbooks do they refer? Those at the New Bedford Whaling Museum:

Welcome to the general citation search page for the logbook and journal collection of the New Bedford Whaling Museum Research Library. The Museum’s logbook and journal database has been recently updated and can be downloaded (an excel spreadsheet) by clicking on the the text link. This database is not set up for detailed subject searches. However, subject searches are possible through the Search Library page of the Museum’s website.

If citizen science appeals to you, you can help translate old weather logs here.

Source: www.davesandfordphotos.com

Actually, it’s David Sandford, and he does cool pictures. Here’s his website. I suspect this comes from his Lake Erie collection.

Seiche:

A seiche (/ˈseɪʃ/ saysh) is a standing wave in an enclosed or partially enclosed body of water. Seiches and seiche-related phenomena have been observed on lakes, reservoirs, swimming pools, bays, harbours and seas. The key requirement for formation of a seiche is that the body of water be at least partially bounded, allowing the formation of the standing wave. [Wikipedia]

The editors of The Arabist are not alarmed by the election of Trump for its impact on the Middle East:

But there is an argument to be made that, while Trump’s impact on the US may very well be dire, it will not mark such a significant shift for the region. First, Trump’s foreign policy ideas are basically non-existent. He will draw in advisors with radical and biased views, to be sure, but this happened before under George W. Bush and other administrations haven’t exactly been impartial mediators on many issues (see Israel-Palestine). Trump backing Assad or staying away from conflicts such as Yemen and Libya or seeking to extract a kind of tribute from the oil producing state of the Gulf can be seen as a more forthright departure from existing policy, not a radical departure. Indeed the thing to fear the most is geopolitical uncertainty, amateurism and military adventurism. But again, nothing entirely new. Only the idea of the “Muslim ban” offers something that pretty much draws universal condemnation in the region. The likes of veteran commentators AbdelBari Atwan, whose post-election commentary is reproduced below, are making these points. They likely underestimate the new and innovative forms of damage a Trump presidency could wreck.

Their analysis of why he won?

Americans, as this election has demonstrated, are tired of their schizophrenic governing elite, which fails to understand their concerns, problems and ambitions. This is why they put their trust in this “rebel” against the political establishment and gave him their votes.

We in no way disagree with the many who condemn this man, or with the numerous criticisms of his personality and behavior, but at the end of the day, judgment resides in the hands of the people and at the ballot boxes. It is hard to imagine how a millionaire who travels by private plane and luxury yacht could present himself as the representative and defender of the rights and demands of the poor and marginalized. However, the frustrated of America believed him and entrusted him with their votes, perhaps because he is candid and spontaneous, unlike the ruling establishment’s professionals and politicians.

I can’t help but wonder, though, if the American election’s discouraging result gives authoritarian governments thinking of transitioning to democracy (yes, this is sometimes peacefully achieved) a reason to hesitate.

What can one say about Godzilla: Final Wars (2004)? Evil space invaders (who are real jerks, too) that bring their own monsters, mutants on Earth that are related to the space invaders, mummified monsters that are part cyborg, monster lobsters and mosquitoes, popsicle-Godzilla, his son, and Mothra – all we’re missing is a flying kitchen sink.

Oh, yeah, that’s there, too.

Hey, even a Russian guy to shepherd the Japanese around. Some kung-fu action. A bit on free will.

In case you suspect the plot is not compelling, you’re right. The monsters are kind of fun, but really, the only reason I watched this one is because the cats wouldn’t let me sleep in this morning.

Ooooosh.

The venerable Theatre in the Round is showing Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Nile until December 13th. This is light entertainment, centering around a boat trip up the Nile around the beginning of the 20th century, and the question of who murdered the richest woman in England. The traveling maid? The old, very proper woman?

How about the Communist who isn’t what he appears to be?

While I was a little disappointed with the lead – he seemed to have only one expression – in general I enjoyed myself. There’s nothing deep intended, and nothing deep found; an evening’s pleasant entertainment at the Twin Cities’ oldest continuously operating playhouse.

Have fun.

Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. (2003, aka Godzilla × Mothra × Mechagodzilla: Tokyo SOS) pits Godzilla against Mothra and a damaged Mechagodzilla in another duel in Tokyo. This time, Mothra’s groupies appear to warn the Japanese that Mechagodzilla, built using the bones of a previous Godzilla, should be returned to the sea, because, well, humans shouldn’t touch the souls of dead creatures.

Please don’t eat anything!

Kinda puts the kibosh on eating, vegan or not, ya know?

Other problems – Godzilla seemed to change during this movie, for no apparent reason – perhaps old and new rubber suits were employed; Mechagodzilla can’t get past looking like a large, plastic doll; characterization remains a challenge, although it’s somewhat improved. I liked the repair guy.

On the other hand, the special effects are much improved over the old, first generation Godzilla movies, and the destruction of Mothra is really spectacular. Speaking of Mothra, the update to this monster is quite attractive, giving it – her? – a more graceful movement and a nice color scheme. And a subtle update to Godzilla, wherein rather than just emitting the vastly bad breath, but has to build up to it, is actually a nice touch.

But in the end, the mysticism, while perhaps appropriate for the original Japanese audience (does Shintoism postulate everything has a soul?), is merely annoying to me, and so the plot seems to twist arbitrarily.

It’s pleasant in a bland sort of way, but not compelling.

A reader is triggered by my coverage of the Skeptical Inquirer interview with climatologist Michael Mann:

There is a lot of data out there including faked data….there is information like this about global warming:

https://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=3

“COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING

MYTH 1: Global temperatures are rising at a rapid, unprecedented rate.

FACT: The HadCRUT3 surface temperature index, produced by the Hadley Centre of the UK Met Office and the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, shows warming to 1878, cooling to 1911, warming to 1941, cooling to 1964, warming to 1998 and cooling through 2011. The warming rate from 1964 to 1998 was the same as the previous warming from 1911 to 1941. Satellites, weather balloons and ground stations all show cooling since 2001. The mild warming of 0.6 to 0.8 C over the 20th century is well within the natural variations recorded in the last millennium. The ground station network suffers from an uneven distribution across the globe; the stations are preferentially located in growing urban and industrial areas (“heat islands”), which show substantially higher readings than adjacent rural areas (“land use effects”). Two science teams have shown that correcting the surface temperature record for the effects of urban development would reduce the reported warming trend over land from 1980 by half. See here.

There are a couple of points to address here.

1. Concerns about fake data are very important, but claims of same must be backed up by evidence, and there is none produced here. As a non-climatologist, I have to depend on the scientists involved to detect any fraud, either through directly checking the measurements, or by the failure of predictions dependent on that faked data not cropping up. As it happens, measurements of increased greenhouse gases appear, to my untrained eye, to be correlating with increasing world-wide temperatures. But to just wave the flag out there without the most serious, sober evidence of same is intellectually unjustifiable; it’s simply waving a red flag to distract from telling problems in their own defenses.
2. We’re all aware of the rules of the Internet era – know your sources. Mine are from the science arena, where the entire purpose is to study the nature of reality. My reader cites an organization named Friends of Science. This is from their About Us section:
   

   Our Goal:

   To educate the public about climate science and through them bring pressure to bear on governments to engage in public debates on the scientific merits of the hypothesis of human induced global warming and the various policies that intend to address the issue.

   Our Opinion:It is our opinion that the Sun is the main direct and indirect driver of climate change.

   Friends of Science is a non-profit organization run by dedicated volunteers comprised mainly of active and retired earth and atmospheric scientists, engineers, and other professionals. We have assembled a Scientific Advisory Board of esteemed climate scientists from around the world to offer a critical mass of current science on global climate and climate change to policy makers, as well as any other interested parties. We also do extensive literature research on these scientific subjects. Concerned about the abuse of science displayed in the politically inspired Kyoto protocol, we offer critical evidence that challenges the premises of Kyoto and present alternative causes of climate change.

   Of course, there’s their critics. The Deep Climate blog of Canada (Friends of Science is located near Calgary) dug into Friends of Science back in 2009:

   Of course, the rest is history, although perhaps not as well known as it should be. Friends of Science went on to become  a well-oiled propaganda machine, so to speak, with major projects run by Harris  and Morten Paulsen (ex-Fleishman-Hillard). And after a hiatus brought about by closure of Barry Cooper’s “research” conduit at the University of Calgary, Friends of Science has returned with a vengeance. The run up to Copenhagen has seen a cross-Canada tour from contrarian Lord Chrisopher Monckton, as well as a deceptive national radio ad campaign.

   Wikipedia, with all the usual caveats about publicly editable material, but also keeping in mind the citations lend it some authority, has this to say:

   Friends of Science (FoS) is a Canadian non-profit advocacy organization based in Calgary, Alberta. The organization takes a position that humans are largely not responsible for the currently observed global warming, contrary to the established scientific position on the subject. Rather, they propose that “the Sun is the main direct and indirect driver of climate change,” not human activity. They argued against the Kyoto Protocol.^[1] The society was founded in 2002 and launched its website in October of that year.^[2][3] They are considered by many to promote climate change denial. They are largely funded by the fossil fuel industry.

   [Latter bold mine.] This brings to mind two points. A) Definitive sourcing can be a difficult challenge; if, in fact, the definitive sourcing is all one cares about, then the most sensible approach would be to permit the fossil fuel industry to continue to function, burning more and more fuels that release, and see what happens; and, B) there is taste reminiscent of the tobacco lobby’s defense of the tobacco industry through obfuscation in my mouth. We now know the fundamental dishonesty that took place in order to defend the profits of Big Tobacco, and all of its employees (which is an important point, since we’re really all in this together). That lesson in how entire industries will evade responsibility and engage in dishonesty because of the money involved is always something to keep in mind when evaluating sources and their assertions. However, it does put any industry or company in a bit of a quandary – how can it defend its turf in a responsible manner?

   That’s one of the functions of a disinterested observer. In theory, government can fulfill that role, but in practice, agencies responsible for such evaluations are often subject to ‘capture’.

3. 

   Source: NASA Global Climate Change

   So FoS then makes a series of assertions concerning the accuracy of data. Am I going to rebut these claims? No, I’m a software engineer, and this is deep muck. I did contact a climate scientist of my acquaintance, hoping for some help, but he’s both retired and in the middle of moving his household to a new home, and so he only provided some resources on global temperature. First up is NASA‘s Global Climate Change page, which clearly shows a growth in world temperatures. It also has a spectacular time series from 1884 to 2015, showing temperature changes around the globe. Then there’s NASA‘s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which appears to have quite a few resources.

   Finally, for a historical view of climate change, he suggests the American Institute of Physics perspective on the history of climate change. I’ll quote an introductory paragraph.

   Tracking the world’s average temperature from the late 19th century, people in the 1930s realized there had been a pronounced warming trend. During the 1960s, weather experts found that over the past couple of decades the trend had shifted to cooling. With a new awareness that climate could change in serious ways, in the early 1970s some scientists predicted a continued gradual cooling, perhaps a phase of a long natural cycle or perhaps caused by human pollution of the atmosphere with smog and dust. Others insisted that the effects of such pollution were temporary, and humanity’s emission of greenhouse gases would bring warming over the long run. All of them agreed that their knowledge was primitive and any prediction was guesswork. But understanding of the climate system was advancing swiftly. The view that warming must dominate won out in the late 1970s as it became clear that the cooling spell (mainly a Northern Hemisphere effect) had indeed been a temporary distraction. When the rise continued into the 21st century, penetrating even into the ocean depths, scientists recognized that it signaled a profound change in the climate system. Nothing like it had been seen for centuries, and probably not for millennia. The specific pattern of changes, revealed in objects ranging from ship logs to ice caps to tree rings, closely matched the predicted effects of greenhouse gas emissions.

   No doubt, some are legitimately wondering how long this gentleman has been a member of the Democratic Party. He is a card-carrying, lifelong Republican.

   Here’s the real point. Science is a community devoted to the study of reality, where one makes a name for themselves not by going with the flow, but by looking for something out of place, explaining the inconsistencies. Suspicion of some vast conspiracy is nonsensical. It would be found out, if not by people defecting from it, then eventually by simple measurements and failure of predictions. But the measurements, independent of each other, all line up, from the commonly accepted temperature changes to CO₂ measurements. Some of the predictions have been confirmed, such as the thinning of the ice cap of Greenland, while the prediction of hurricanes assaulting the American eastern seaboard may still have a ways to go. Given the mixed record and the rising temperatures, I’d put that down to prediction being a hard nut to crack.

   So I really have a hard time accepting assertions that the science community is wrong on such an important subject. The “skeptics” don’t operate with the best possible practices; they have motivations ranging from the religious to the financial to disbelieve; and they don’t seem to appreciate that the world changes as time passes, and if we’re disturbing it in some way, then those changes may be traceable to us. It appears that the scientific objections have been robustly rejected, and this is how I expect science to work: assertions made, problems found, adjustments made, more objections, those overcome, and an eventual convergence to a general agreement. That’s what I see.

My congratulations on those who made it to the end of this post 🙂

Here’s an interesting proposal from overseas for helping to save the planet from climate change, via rfi

On the one hand, I could see a President Trump digging in his heels and not taking the hint, even proposing subsidies to impacted companies; I might even sympathize, seeing as family members tell me I’m a contrarian¹. On the other hand, 1-3% hardly seems strong enough to get the message across; it should be punitive, so 10-20% might make more sense, just to beat some sense into those bloody Americans.

In the end, I suspect the difficulties of multinational companies will cause this proposal to be stillborn. But as a symbolic thought, it’s quite interesting.

(h/t Iberian on The Daily Kos)

¹Strictly speaking, a non-scientific assertion, since it’s non-falsifiable

When it comes to political arguments, getting together and shouting slogans is a time-honored tradition. I’m a political independent whose seen the responses to both sides, and to my view, the message matters. If you don’t get it right, the political independents, as well as the opposing side of the argument, begin to discount you. I know that my evaluation process includes the knowledge that both sides start with a disdain, even loathing, for the other side, and while they may have good intellectual arguments behind those walls of muck they’re hiding behind, it takes some digging and – almost literally – nose holding to get there.

Source: Labor 411

So here’s a particularly execrable example of this from the liberal side. It commits a particular type of logic error, the name of which escapes me, of “if a then b; b, therefore a“. The situation, in fact, is quite complex. There is resource scarcity, skilled labor scarcity, demand, competition, and other factors which will influence prices up or down. And everyone knows this.

I mean, this poster is really quite an appalling specimen that is almost designed to bring down an avalanche of disrespect for all the wrong reasons.

The counter-argument might be that this poster isn’t meant to convince the other side, but rather to rally the liberal side against corporate greed. This is my Arts Editor’s position, in fact. The problem is that if the argument is this bad, then your own side becomes dispirited. Leaders of both the actual and would-be varieties are permitted errors, but not obvious errors that make the other side laugh and sneer.

And that’s really the problem, isn’t it? The first step to convincing the other side to take you seriously is to present arguments that are convincing and, if you’re lucky, are borne out by reality. This isn’t one of those arguments. It’s damaging to the liberal’s side. And that’s a shame, because the liberal side has a lot of good arguments to present.  There’s no need to adopt bad ones like this.

Yesterday we finally received our first snow of the season, after weeks of very high temperatures; I don’t expect this snow to stick, although each night the 7 day forecast isn’t as high as it was before. The garden has gone from a riotous gaggle of competing plants to a barren wasteland.

Except for these kale.

phantosmia:

If his phantosmia, or smell hallucinations, are driven by a lack of reliable information, then real smells should help him to suppress the hallucinations. He has been trialling sniffing three different scents, three times a day. “Maybe it’s just wishful thinking,” he says, “but it seems to be helping.” [“You are hallucinating right now to make sense of the world,” Helen Thomson, NewScientist, 5 November 2016, paywall]

“If (the Trump White House delivers), we’ll get 60 percent of the white vote, and 40 percent of the black and Hispanic vote and we’ll govern for 50 years.”

Steve Bannon, as noted in CNN/Politics

In a discouraging (well, for me, at least – entertain me!) development, the Trump University suits have been settled, according to CNN/Money:

Donald Trump has agreed to pay $25 million to settle three lawsuits against Trump University.

The deal will keep the president-elect from having to testify in a trial in San Diego that was set to begin November 28.
The settlement ends a suit brought by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, as well as two class action suits in California.

About 6,000 former students are covered by the settlement. The victims will receive at least half of their money back, said plaintiff attorney Jason Forge at a court hearing Friday.

I still think they should have sat tight and demanded every last penny back, but their attorneys were probably being realistic when they advised their clients to take the deal. The trial would have been deeply fascinating & revealing.

Keeping up to date on this story, Elon Musk announces his new roof will cost less than a conventional roof – right out of the gate. Electrek has the news:

Elon Musk made quite the announcement today. During the special shareholders meeting to approve the merger with SolarCity, which they approved by 85%, he said that he was coming back from a meeting with the SolarCity engineering team about the solar roof and that he now feels confident that they could deliver the product at a lower cost than a regular roof – even before energy production.

That’s different from what the company was claiming before the meeting today.<

And it’s an incredibly bold claim since if it turns out to be true, no homeowner would have any reason not to choose a solar roof when buying a new roof.

That opens a few questions, such as what is the profit margin on these roofs? What is the profit margin on a traditional roof? Will those suddenly shrink in order to remain competitive? Are we in danger of putting small businesses out of work? Or will they have a part of the new business as well?

On National Review, Rich Lowry lambastes the Democrats and progressives for losing the election as if this provides the last barrage needed to bury them – nevermind the loss was by such a slight margin that it it illuminates a potential problem with our electoral system. While doing so, he ignores an important question:

Another progressive assumption is that the nation-state is bound to decline, as supranational institutions like the European Union grow and cross-border migrations increase. In a trip to Germany in April, President Obama deemed Angela Merkel’s policy of welcoming a massive wave of migrants as “on the right side of history.” Never mind that its recklessness has caused a backlash that is still brewing. Obama believed the same of his own latitudinarian views on immigration, apparently never imagining people might consider it progress to tighten our borders rather than render them more porous.

So what do you do with those refugees? It’s difficult for the xenophobic mind to understand, but kindness and generosity is often rewarded. Let’s take the opposite tack, which might have been to meet the refugees with machine guns on the beaches. News of this behavior would have filtered back to the sources of those refugees, and the nations responsible would have been branded as barbaric. And while this may, in fact, stem the tide, achieving an immediate goal, it fails in the more important, long term goal – stopping war. It’s still true that you can’t fight a war without an army, and if the citizenry is wondering why they’re being asked to fight a war against those countries which welcomed your sister’s family when they were refugees, it’s a lot harder to get that war going than if the same guy’s thinking about his dead sister, lost in the Med with bullet holes all over her.

Another question is how your nation is perceived by high value emigres. Without question, the United States has benefited from many such emigres, who bring their genius, their drive, and their insights with them from their home countries, sometimes because we were perceived as a better place – and sometimes because we were only the last, best hope. Losing all that they can bring with them is a real problem.

It doesn’t help his cause that he indulges in the minor falsehood of a porous border. From azcentral.com:

“I crossed in the middle of the city, in the daytime,” recalled Sanchez Valladares, who was deported to Mexico in 2008, leaving behind four children in the U.S., two of them in Charlotte. “It took me about 15 minutes.”

Now crossing illegally is “very hard,”  conceded Sanchez Valladares, who is barred from legally returning to the U.S. for 10 years.

That is confirmed by a new internal Department of Homeland Security report, obtained by The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com, that concludes ramped-up border enforcement is working, helping to reduce successful crossings to one-tenth of what they were a decade earlier across the southern U.S. border with Mexico. The research is based on complicated mathematical calculations using published and internal Border Patrol data. …

According to the DHS report,  the number of successful illegal entries — including people making multiple attempts  — between ports of entry along the entire southern border with Mexico has plummeted from 1.7 million in 2005 to 170,000 in 2015. The calculations are based on a mathematical formula using published Border Patrol apprehension data and internal re-apprehension data and years of data from surveys conducted by researchers in Mexico with deported migrants in Mexico.

In an interview before The Republic obtained a copy of the report, Roberts noted that the calculation is based on migrants from Mexico trying to cross the border without being caught. The number does not include the nearly 80,000 unaccompanied minors and families from Central America who turned themselves in to the Border Patrol in 2015 seeking asylum.¹

The border is and has been tightening under President Obama. Now, it’s unfortunate that President Obama didn’t further explore why these immigrants are attracted to us; perhaps we could have done more to keep them at home. In a sense, our attempts to remove the dictator of Syria, Assad, is just such a tactic, although it’s an extreme case and fraught with problems.

But Lowry, in his hurry to bury his ideological opponents, feels it necessary to tear down a very humane response by world leaders to a crisis, without feeling it necessary to offer a reasonable alternative. Hopefully, those refugees, those human beings, can return to their homes someday soon, and if so they’ll have warm thoughts towards the Europeans who helped them out – and that will be helpful in the eternal fight against evil.

But to Lowry, they’re less than chess pieces, and I think that’s a sad thing.

¹Even more interesting:

The DHS report calculates that the probability that a migrant will give up trying to cross the border and go home due to stepped-up border enforcement has soared from about 11 percent in 2005 to 58 percent in 2015. Roberts’ version presented at the Cato Institute calculated the change from about 12 percent to nearly 70 percent.

Kazan’s Viva Zapata! (1952) is an American morality tale masquerading as a Mexican biopic. Emliano Zapata (Marlon Brando) is the son of the shabby gentility of Mexican – a proud family name, but no money, no land. Therefore, no wife. With this motivation, he and his brother (Anthony Quinn) lead a rebellion against the local government, taking back land and eventually winning a leading role in the government.

And, in that role, becoming what he most despised.

This is not a movie of grand battles, of strategies and reversals. Betrayals, yes, most often met with gunfire, as we are introduced to the rough justice of spies and betrayal, as well as the myths of the downtrodden rebels and the symbols of freedom. But for all that, through the dusty, dirty war they fight, we learn that heartbreak accompanies such glorious feats; that, if you are not a man, then your role is to bury your man; if you are a farmer, it is not your place to speak.

But the American morality tale? It’s easy to spot, since we’re told point-blank. We see the weak civilian government, eventually overwhelmed by the treasonous military, led by men who believe in the realpolitik of killing one’s enemies at the first opportunity; men laden with their decorations, devoted to little more than their prestige, they slowly destroy everything around them in their avariciousness. As they possess great resources, what are Zapata and his farmers to do?

Lead them into the hills and mountains. His wife, relegated to the desperate woman role, implores him to not take the possible bait of a cache of supplies; his men need a strong leader, she proclaims.

Zapata: They don’t need me anymore.

Wife: They have to be led.

Zapata: Yes, but by each other. A strong man makes a weak people. Strong people don’t need a strong man.

And so we have our central lesson. Concentrate power in a man, and he comes under intense pressure. If he’s lost, then it’s a disaster. Decentralize, and then the loss of a man can mean little.

Or even, as one Mexican general notes,

Sometimes a dead man can be a terrible enemy.

This is not entertainment so much as it is a lesson, perhaps for now as much as for then. It’s not nearly as grim, as nihilistic as Paths of Glory, but its merciless depiction of the mighty abusing the lowly has no touch of romanticism; the dejected are dejected, the dead are buried, if they’re lucky. The women may care for your corpse, your wife will weep, and then it’s time to move on.

This may not be fun, but you won’t feel like you’ve wasted your time if you take the movie seriously.

For Lawfare, Christopher Mirasola reviews the first three picks for the National Security team. Here’s his take on Rep Mike Pompeo (R-KS), nomineee for CIA Director:

Representative Pompeo’s statements are also likely to raise the ire of some members of Congress. He criticized the 2014 “Torture Report” attacking the CIA’s harsh interrogation practices, saying that “the programs being used were within the law [and] within the Constitution.” Earlier this month, he alleged that U.S. Central Command manipulated intelligence to downplay the threat of the Islamic State in Iraq. Pompeo has been a consistent critic of the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran, arguing that sanctions should be extended and alleging that the administration has effectively helped build Iran’s Air Force. He has also repeatedly criticized Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, calling for her intelligence briefings to be halted and demanding an investigation into so-called quid pro quo arrangements between the State Department and FBI.

Most controversially, Pompeo has made a series of comments regarding the role of Muslim-Americans in combating terrorism. Just over a month after the Boston marathon bombing, he said falsely that “the silence of Muslim leaders has been deafening.” He later told the Wichita Eagle that “Islamic clerics in mosques and the madrassas around the world have an obligation to consistently denounce terrorism done in the name of their faith.”

Nevertheless, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, praised Pompeo as “someone who is willing to listen and engage, both key qualities in a CIA director.” Committee Chairman Devin Nunes was also supportive, saying that “I am confident that his nomination will be widely supported within the CIA and I look forward to his fast approval by the Senate.” And former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden, who has been a vocal critic of Trump, said that he was “heartened by the choice.”

I can’t help but wonder if the Democrats’ comments are heartfelt, or if they’re just wishing to be rid of someone who appears to be rather far to the right.

Among other sources, University of California-Santa Cruz is reporting evidence of movement of geological features on Pluto:

Source: NASA/JPL/CalTech

A liquid ocean lying deep beneath Pluto’s frozen surface is the best explanation for features revealed by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, according to a new analysis. The idea that Pluto has a subsurface ocean is not new, but the study provides the most detailed investigation yet of its likely role in the evolution of key features such as the vast, low-lying plain known as Sputnik Planitia (formerly Sputnik Planum).

Sputnik Planitia, which forms one side of the famous heart-shaped feature seen in the first New Horizons images, is suspiciously well aligned with Pluto’s tidal axis. The likelihood that this is just a coincidence is only 5 percent, so the alignment suggests that extra mass in that location interacted with tidal forces between Pluto and its moon Charon to reorient Pluto, putting Sputnik Planitia directly opposite the side facing Charon. But a deep basin seems unlikely to provide the extra mass needed to cause that kind of reorientation.

“It’s a big, elliptical hole in the ground, so the extra weight must be hiding somewhere beneath the surface. And an ocean is a natural way to get that,” said Francis Nimmo, professor of Earth and planetary sciences at UC Santa Cruz and first author of a paper on the new findings published November 16 in Nature. Another paper in the same issue, led by James Keane at the University of Arizona, also argues for reorientation and points to fractures on Pluto as evidence that this happened.

The best guess is that the ocean, if it exists, is a water/ammonia mix. Absolutely fascinating.

But what if you have suspicions that New Horizons, the name of this probe, is entirely fictitious? There are others out there, as Newsweek documented more than a year ago. I suppose some people just have no trust of their fellow man. Now, I suppose if they could find the name of a principal investigator on the ownership papers for a Scottish castle….

Kimberly Mok on Treehugger.com discusses one of the most interesting cases to be brought before the Federal courts:

Last week, a group of 21 young people, aged 9 to 20 years, won the right to sue the US government for its actions that cause climate change, when an Oregon federal judge ruled that the plaintiffs’ lawsuit was valid and could proceed to trial.According to Motherboard, the lawsuit, which is being spearheaded by Our Children’s Trust, a civic engagement nonprofit for youth, charges President Obama, the fossil fuel industry, and other federal agencies for violating the plantiffs’ constitutional right to life, liberty, property, and to vital public trust resources, by continuing to use fossil fuels.

It should be fascinating to see how this plays out. Will Congress grant the fossil fuel industry immunity from such suits, as they did for gun manufacturers? Will the suit get national publicity and continue to spark the national discussion concerning what to do about climate change?

In her ruling, US District Judge Ann Aiken wrote that the case is not about “not about proving that climate change is happening or that human activity is driving it”:

This action is of a different order than the typical environmental case. It alleges that defendants’ actions and inactions—whether or not they violate any specific statutory duty—have so profoundly damaged our home planet that they threaten plaintiffs’ fundamental constitutional rights to life and liberty. [..] Federal courts too often have been cautious and overly deferential in the arena of environmental law, and the world has suffered for it.

The plaintiffs counsel has urged President Obama to come to an agreement with a binding court order while he still can, which would certainly give Trump problems. Seeing that Trump was the leader of the shameful SCOTUS blockade, it seems only appropriate to jam a club into his gears. Not to mention it would contribute to species survival.

Florian Egloff warns against legalizing cyber privateering in LawFare:

Think of Corporation A in a country being authorized to investigate Corporation X in another country. Corporation A may just find it convenient to profit from information found about Corporation Y during the investigation authorized against Corporation X. Will the strict controls applied to privateers hold? Maybe in societies with a strong separation of powers and a tradition of checks and balances. But in other countries, where power is not kept as much in check, probably not.

A reader writes concerning sunspots:

Oh boy, more cosmic rays. More cancer?

According to Universe Today, yes:

A paper published in 2007 in the International Journal of Astrobiology looked at data for cancer deaths from around the world for the past 140 years, and found a strong correlation between rises in cancer deaths and the variation over time in the amount of galactic cosmic rays we encounter here on Earth.

In a paper titled, Correlation of a 140-year global time signature in cancer mortality birth cohorts with galactic cosmic ray variation by Dr. David A. Juckett from the Barros Research Institute at Michigan State University, he showed that the amount of deaths due to cancer on a global scale was higher when the background cosmic rays originating from outside the Solar System were more numerous.

The study looked at available cancer death data from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand for the past 100-140 years. These data were compared with the amount of variations in galactic cosmic rays during the same period, taken from analysis of ice core samples from Greenland and Antarctica.

Dr. Juckett showed that as the amount of cosmic ray activity increased, the number of people who died from cancer was also higher. There are two peaks in cosmic ray activity during this point, around 1800 and 1900, and a low point around 1860. The total deaths due to cancer were highest, though, around 1830 and 1930, and lowest in the 1890’s.

There is a 28-year lag between the increased presence of cosmic rays and the increase in cancer deaths. It’s not so simple as a person being exposed to cosmic rays and then developing cancer immediately afterwards. What is called the “grandmother effect” comes into play; the cosmic rays actually damage the germ cells of one’s parent while that parent is still in the grandmother’s womb.

Fascinating, in a morbid sort of way.

Here’s some election advice from across the pond.

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Jonathan+Pie&qft=+filterui%3avideoage-lt10080&view=detail&mid=C686C1ED5DBDA0572214C686C1ED5DBDA0572214&FORM=VRDGAR

Melissa Breyer on Treehugger.com has assembled a fascinating slideshow of drowned churches. Here’s the first one, a Bulgarian church.

Cool stuff.