Unsightly Mental Blemishes

The Tehran Times reports on a persistent problem in Tehran, and how the nuclear deal may help clear it up:

The air quality indices [in Tehran] have surged up so much so that all healthy people are likely to experience irritation or discomfort while breathing as well as those with heart and lung condition. …

13 organizations in charge, none held accountable

[Eqbal Shakeri, head of urban development committee of Tehran City Council,] went on to say that some 13 organizations are in charge of dealing with air pollution but none has been held responsible so far.

“No one has ever bothered to apologize the public for the air pollution or even explain what’s happening,” he added.

80% of air pollution caused by cars, motorcycles

Shakeri also pointed out that some 80 percent of the air pollution is caused by cars and motorcycles.

“Following the implementation of the nuclear deal [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)] at least we expect the government to provide the country with some 1,000 wagons for the subway system, 400 buses, 20,000 taxis and electric motorcycles,” he added.

AL Monitor’s Changiz M. Varzi reports:

The geographical situation of the capital, which is surrounded by mountains, consumption of low-quality fuel because of international sanctions and industrial pollution have been declared the main reasons for the deaths of 412 citizens in the past 23 days, according to Habib Kashani, a member of Tehran’s municipal council.

On Nov. 15, Kashani accused Iran’s Environmental Protection Organization of “ineffectiveness” and “incompetence,” saying, “The government and the [Tehran] municipality have announced that they are not blameful on this issue. So sole blameful are people who are losing their lives!”

When air pollution is shutting down your schools, you’re endangering your future.

Ever wondered about the Clinton scandal circus? CriticalRationalist on The Daily Kos, who characterizes himself as a lawyer with 30+ years experience responding to a client wishing to discuss the election, talks about the Clinton scandals in the context of the entire Trump debacle:

[The GOP] think[s] Clinton is a “liar” and “corrupt,” but all they know is the propaganda they have been fed for decades by right-wing hate media. They think her speaking fees make her corrupt but couldn’t care less about the fact that Trump stiffed thousands of people who sold him goods and services.  They think she is a liar because she mischaracterized something James Comey said (which he shouldn’t have discussed in the first place), but overlook the daily deluge of lies coming out of Trump’s mouth.  I have followed the Clintons and the right-wing vendetta against them ever since I was in law school 33 years ago. Hate media (Fox, Rush, Savage, Jones, Drudge, Breitbart, Falwell Jr. et al.) use exactly the same propaganda techniques used by Goebbels in the 1930s and by Radio Moscow in the 1970s-1990s, only slicker.  And people eat it up.  In fact, these past few months it was hard to tell the difference between the Russian state-controlled media and Fox News.  Both sounded just like the old communist Radio Moscow, using their usual propaganda techniques, but this time to shamelessly promote Trump and just as shamelessly denigrate Clinton. In reality, Hillary Clinton has dedicated her life to public service, to the betterment of the country.  She is comprehensively knowledgeable about public policy and the world (an in particular is under no illusions about Russia), and knows how to get things done in a bipartisan manner.  She is as honest as any politician can be.  I’ve had a top secret clearance and worked in intelligence, and the email circus was just that.

Which correlates with my far more casual observations.

On Colbert tonight:

Trump Place = Rectal Pump

Curious about the Solar Sunspot Cycle? Spaceweather.com has the lowdown:

Source: Spaceweather.com

SUNSPOT CYCLE AT LOWEST LEVEL IN 5 YEARS: The sun has looked remarkably blank lately, with few dark cores interrupting the featureless solar disk. This is a sign that Solar Minimum is coming. Indeed, sunspot counts have just reached their lowest level since 2011. With respect to the sunspot cycle, you are here:

They go on to explain that we get a different set of risks when the Sun is this quiet.

But repealing the ACA is not going to be a walk in the park, according to Kevin Drum:

So sure, there are more ways to skin the incentive cat than a tax penalty. But I think we’re putting the cart before the horse here. We really ought to be talking about something else: the pre-existing conditions ban. Unlike the individual mandate, which can be repealed by a simple majority because it affects the federal budget, Republicans can’t repeal the pre-existing conditions ban without Democratic votes. And if it’s not repealed, Republicans can’t do much of anything else. As long as the ban is in place, any Republican plan is almost certain to cause total chaos in the health care market.¹ It would be political suicide.

So if Republicans want to do something that’s not political suicide, they need Democratic votes. And that means Democrats have tremendous leverage over the final plan. They can either negotiate for something much better than what Republicans are proposing, or they can simply withhold their votes and leave Republicans between a rock and a hard place: either abandon Obamacare repeal, which would enrage their base, or pass a plan that would cause chaos for the health care industry and for millions of registered voters. This is not leverage to be given up lightly.

Sounds like leverage – that goes both ways, though. If the Democrats have something they really want to pass, then the ACA becomes a hostage in the negotiations.

For those interested in the numbers on money saved on healthcare by the ACA, Fortune‘s Laura Lorenzetti has a report from June of 2016:

The United States will save about $2.6 trillion on health care expenses over a five-year period compared to initial projections made right after the passage of the Affordable Care Act.

Consilience:

We can rely on the consensus on human-caused global warming because its foundation is a consilience of evidence – many independent observations pointing to a single, coherent conclusion.

John Cook, Letters to the Editor, Skeptical Inquirer (November/December, 2016, offline only)

Also, your correspondent also had a letter published in the same column. A silly bit of fluff, but I’m tickled.

Heard in a meeting today at work:

… inverse, converse, uh …, oh yeah, perverse. This is the perverse of …

He was more than a little annoyed with the phenomena in question.

Iran will be one of the most impacted nations by the US election results, but according to the Tehran Times, it makes no difference to Supreme Leader Khamenei:

Trump had raised the prospect of pulling out of the nuclear deal reached in July 2015 between Iran and six world powers, including the U.S.

“Unlike some of those in the world who have either been bemoaning or celebrating the results of the American elections, we are neither bemoaning nor celebrating because the results make no difference to us. Nor do we have worries, and by the grace of God, we are ready to encounter any likely incident,” the Leader asserted while addressing thousands of people.

The no-difference stance on the U.S. presidential seat makes more sense once seen through a historical lens.

The Leader noted as of the 1979 revolution, Washington, regardless of who was president, has been hostile to the Iranian nation.

“We have no judgment about this election (the U.S. presidential election) because America is the same America, and over the past 37 years either of the two parties which has been in office not only has done no good (to the Iranian nation), but has always been an evil to the Iranian nation.”

Ayatollah Khamenei also rapped the U.S. for its policies in the Middles East and wars it has waged against regional countries.

“In recent years, the U.S. has spent its people’s money on dishonorable wars, whose result is the massacre of tens of thousands of civilians and destruction of infrastructures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen,” the Leader stated.

President Rouhani also sees no change in plans, according to Vos Iz Neias?, a Yiddish news source:

Trump’s much publicized criticism of the nuclear deal and his campaign vows to renegotiate the terms and increase enforcement of the deal that put off the threat of Tehran developing atomic weapons has sent jitters across Iran.

“If a president is changed here and there, it has no impact on the will of Iran,” Rouhani said in a speech broadcast live on state TV from the city of Karaj, where he was visiting. “Based on the deal, we implement our commitment.”

Without mentioning Trump by name, Rouhani said that “the world is not under the will of a single individual and party. The reality of the world will impose many things on extremists.”

“Nobody should imagine it is possible to play with Iran,” he added.

The former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is, perhaps, slightly less unperturbed, the Tehran Times reports:

“I am not optimistic, but we have to wait and see what he will do in practice in the incoming months and year,” said Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi on the sidelines of the International Conference on Geopolitical Crises in the Islamic World.

Rahim Safavi pointed out that it is still premature to “judge Mr. Trump’s policies, because he may change his mind about his campaign remarks.”

The overall impression is that Trump will pursue an economic agenda rather than practice an expansionist policy, the military veteran said.

“He’s a businessman and pays more attention to the economy and America’s internal affairs,” he noted.

Given the utter unpredictability of Trump, the Iranians have good reason to be nervous. That and the foam-at-the-mouth temperamentality of the GOP these days.

ABC News is reporting that Officer Yanez will be prosecuted for the fatal shooting of Philando Castilo:

A Minnesota prosecutor says the police officer who shot and killed a black motorist in suburban St. Paul in July had no good reason to use deadly force.

Ramsey County Attorney John Choi announced Wednesday that he is filing second-degree manslaughter charges against St. Anthony police officer Jeronimo Yanez.

From a City of Falcon Heights e-mail:

The City of Falcon Heights respects the decision of the County Attorney to pursue criminal prosecution of Officer Yanez based on findings from the State’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

We have heard concerns since the shooting of Mr. Castile from residents and non-residents about issues involving current law enforcement procedures in our community and we will continue to work diligently to review and address those concerns.

We have and will continue to have frank discussions with leaders from the City of St. Anthony Village about those procedures, and work with the City to develop a plan to address them.

Along with the cities of St. Anthony Village and Lauderdale, Falcon Heights will continue to be a part of the tri-city workgroup to review the use of officer worn body cameras.  Falcon Heights has also established an Inclusion and Policing Task Force.  The Task Force will address the topics of police policies, procedures, and training.

Our goals are to unify our community around a plan to address the concerns we have heard since this tragic incident, and to work to restore trust between law enforcement officers, and the residents and city visitors whom they serve.

I have not attended the informational meetings Falcon Heights has hosted on the matter, so I don’t know how much has come out on the procedures to follow when a motorist declares they have a legally permitted weapon in the car.

A friend sent me a mail pointing at an article by David Greenfield in FrontPage Mag, a conservative magazine. It’s a bit interesting in that it reminds me of a parasite on the flank of an animal – it’s trying to hijack this election’s phenomenon for its own purposes.

This is not an article of close analysis, nor does it pretend to be. Rather, it reaches for lyricism as it attempts to describe the Trump voter bloc. No doubt it gets some things right – but as it goes along, it certainly has an ulterior motive. Here’s a chunk:

It’s midnight in America. The day before fifty million Americans got up and stood in front of the great iron wheel that had been grinding them down. They stood there even though the media told them it was useless. They took their stand even while all the chattering classes laughed and taunted them.

That the fringe-right – and possibly Donald Trump – cannot be bothered by the idea of anthropocentric climate change is not unknown. How they’ve fought that idea, though, may be – and may have knock-on effects. Skeptical Inquirer publishes an interview with climatologist and geophysicist Michael Mann, who made his career with the “hockey stick” of climate change. Since SI concerns itself with proper skepticism, which is skepticism informed by science, the interview concerns itself primarily with the improper, amateur skepticism Mann has faced over the years. The interviewer is physicist Mark Boslough

The original northern hemisphere hockey stick graph of Mann, Bradley & Hughes 1999.
Source: Wikipedia

Mark Boslough: … Why do you think they have they singled you out from the scientific community as their poster child for sustained vilification?

Michael Mann: Well—there are certainly other leading climate scientists who have been frequent targets of climate change deniers. But I suppose there are a few things that are different in my case. For one, I am directly associated with one of the most prominent graphs in all of climate science, the “Hockey Stick” curve that my coauthors and I published back in the late 1990s. That curve became an icon in the climate change debate. It told a simple story—that the warming of the planet we’re experiencing is unprecedented. That made it a threat to fossil fuel interests and, as I detail in my book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, it made me a direct target of the industry-funded climate change denial machine. The Eye of Sauron was fixed on me. Rather than shrink from the battle, I chose to fight back—by defending my work in the public sphere and by devoting myself to public outreach and education. That no doubt further antagonized climate change deniers. Ultimately, they provided me a platform for informing the public discourse over what is arguably the greatest challenge we have faced as a civilization. I consider that a blessing, not a curse.

Literature research published in Skeptical Inquirer has indicated that > 97% of climate scientists agree with the anthropogenic climate change hypothesis – and that’s a conservative estimate. It’s safe to say that there is no major controversy within the scientific community on the topic, although there are always discussions about data collection and a thousand other topics. With this in mind, it’s a bit mind-boggling that fossil-fuel corporations and their politicians continue a fight that, frankly, endangers the continued existence of this country – and humanity. And how do they fight?

Boslough: … Do you think you were the main target of Sauron’s initial wrath because you were first author or because deniers mistook you for easy pickings?

Mann: That’s right. Interestingly, much of the focus was on me alone, rather than my two senior coauthors, Ray Bradley and Malcolm Hughes. I suspect the reason was two-fold. I was the first author and was quoted in most of the media coverage, so I was the scientist most directly associated with the research. But additionally, I was viewed as far more vulnerable to attack, as I was only a post-doc at the time, a far cry from the job security of a tenured faculty position (which both of my coauthors had). The climate change denial machine wanted to bring me down, to destroy my professional career before it even got going, to make an example of me for other younger scientists who might too consider speaking out about climate change. In The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, I refer to this as the “Serengeti Strategy.”

Boslough: Seems like this strategy backfired spectacularly in your case. Have they successfully destroyed anyone else’s career? Are they still pursuing the Serengeti method, or did they learn their lesson?

Mann: Well, yes—I like to think the hyenas tangled with the wrong zebra.

It’s worth talking about the assumptions behind this interview. In science, it is not – or should not be – about the scientists, but about the facts. The goal is to establish the truth about some hypothesis, using the strongest known methods in an attempt to pin down the slipperiest of targets, a the true/false property of an assertion about reality. By removing the personalities from the debate, the targeting, even assassination of proponents and critics, and focusing on the only factors that really matter, we have a chance to ascertain truth about reality.

What Mann describes are the actions of entities that inhabit other spheres, other sectors of societies, doesn’t it? People who think it’s all politics, that if enough of the populace believes their tale of reality, why, then reality will conform to their expectations. People who may think that nothing fundamental ever really changes. People for whom things, not principles, are the most important (but that’s for tomorrow’s post). Perhaps, most dangerously, people who think their God positively favors them, so how could burning fossil fuels be bad?

When men with power attack those who bear bad tidings, what negative impacts does that have on the field?

Mann: I suspect the real impact of the attacks is more difficult to detect. On the one hand, scientists coming into the field now appear to be more mobilized, more willing to confront misinformation and disinformation head on, more willing to engage in the public discourse, whether through social media or other means. But, what I worry about, are the young scientists we are losing to other fields, scientists confronted by a choice between those areas of science perceived as “safe” (e.g., dark matter, quarks, and black holes) and “unsafe” (e.g., climate change and other areas of environmental research) from attacks by vested interests and the politicians who do their bidding.

Unfortunately, given the general lack of science background in the older generations of Americans, I doubt it’s possible to run off such incompetents as Lamar Smith of Texas, who has been responsible for many of these shameful actions. That he permits the contributions he’s received from the fossil fuel industry to dictate his views is corruption; that he attempts to ruin the careers of men and women who are doing more for the world than himself is shameful.

It’s a good, if depressing, interview, well worth the read, and I have to admire the energy and spunk of Dr. Mann. For that matter, Skeptical Inquirer can be a thought provoking magazine, bringing a scientific viewpoint to subjects that are sometimes short on such viewpoints. I’ve subscribed for decades, and have learned a lot.

Israel’s been riding the Trump roller-coaster since the U.S. election, according to Ben Caspit of AL Monitor:

Ever since the morning of Nov. 9, various spokespeople for the Israeli right have competed among themselves to find the most enthusiastic superlatives to describe the president-elect and to sketch out settlement-expansion plans for immediate action. They wanted to strike while the American iron was still red hot.

Naftali Bennett, the chairman of HaBayit HaYehudi, overshadowed everyone when he made the festive assertion that the results of the US election mean that “the era of a Palestinian state is over.”

The ride up the initial riser is exhilerating as the shadow of Clinton fades from the scene. But then comes the long walk down the mountain:

The settlers released a video clip in which Trump confidante David Friedman, considered the leading candidate for American ambassador to Israel, spoke behind closed doors with leaders of the settlement movement about Trump’s pro-Israel platform. Listing all of its advantages, Friedman noted that even if Israel annexes Judea and Samaria, Jews would still make up just 65% of the population between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. In other words, it would be wrong to say that Israel would no longer be a Jewish state.

As hot house gases concentrations continue to rise, the UK takes a positive step forward, according to the guardian:

The last coal power station in Britain will be forced to close in 2025, the government said as it laid out its plan to phase-out the polluting fossil fuel.

Ministers promised last year that the UK would close coal power within a decade and replace it with gas and other sources to meet its climate change commitments.

But in a delayed consultation on the phase-out, published on Wednesday, officials admitted that the last coal power station was likely to shutter in 2022 even without government intervention, prompting calls from campaigners to bring forward the cut-off year.

Greg Clark, the energy secretary, said the move sent a clear signal to the world that the UK was a good place to invest in clean energy. “Taking unabated coal power out of our energy mix and replacing it with cleaner technology, such as gas, will significantly reduce emissions from the UK’s energy use,” he said.

The remark concerning coal-fire power stations closing by 2022 was interesting, so I hunted that down in Coal Generation in Great Britain:

In the central scenario we project forward the current economic conditions affecting the level of coal generation. In this scenario, coal and gas prices follow BEIS’s 2016 interim central trajectory. In addition, the level of penetration of low carbon generation is consistent with the Government’s declared policy ambition and it has been  assumed that given the challenging economic conditions for coal, only two plants make the investment needed to meet the requirements of the Industrial Emissions Directive and are therefore able to operate without constraint after 2020. In these circumstances all coal plants are projected to have closed by 2022 due to economic factors (see figure 3).

Or, as I read it, the governmental requirements for plant emissions are such that, in combination with the price of coal, they become economically unviable.

Here’s hoping the bigger burners of coal are working towards this goal.

(h/t Sami Grover on Treehugger.com)

Quinta Jurecic discusses her ongoing experiment in philosophy on Lawfare:

But then Donald Trump was elected to the presidency.

The result is that we now find ourselves confronting a remarkable controlled experiment of sorts as we lurch from the exquisitely presented moral anguish and self-involved seriousness of Barack Obama to the proud, almost avowed moral emptiness of Trump.

Here’s one side of the contrast: Over the last eight years, President Obama has given a bravura performance as our philosopher-king, reading Thomas Aquinas and pondering the moral necessity and cost of targeting threats to the United States with deadly violence—and making sure we all know that he is doing so. The administration has been at pains to emphasize that we live in a country with a just-war theorist in the Oval Office. And the targeted killing program has been fitted closely to the individual moral character of that theorist in chief, who believes himself alone to be possessed of the moral seriousness necessary to preside over a program comparatively free of other institutional constraints.

Here’s the other side of the contrast: Our president-elect is a man who appears to have no capacity whatsoever for self-reflection or self-doubt and who has given every appearance that he is so narcissistic that he lacks the capacity to weigh the value of his soul against his love of country—or even to understand what that comparison means.

Gimme an exercise wheel. Earlier, Quinta stated,

And to paraphrase Machiavelli, in order to carry out the work of politics, the leader must love his or her country more than his or her soul—that is, the leader must be willing to carry out ugly and even violent actions for the sake of the country, while keeping sharply present the knowledge that such action degrades the soul. The long-running argument is whether only a person willing to degrade his or her soul for the sake of country—and yet keep the painful knowledge of those moral compromises always in mind—is fit to lead a country. Does this willingness to compromise and do violence, and yet always feel the pain of compromise and violence, really make for a better leader?

Which even as nicely stated as that, covers up some nuance. In Machiavelli’s time, the vast majority of the people stayed put, with no access to transit systems; this resulted in similarly anchored attitudes, leading to xenophobia. Today, it’s much easier to move across borders, to see that people are people.

Given that knowledge, a leader has to operate with the knowledge that their actions will be judged by those who might emigrate to your country, bringing valuable knowledge and skills – or move against you as an enemy and even danger to the general welfare. The consequences of violent actions against non-citizens is different from Machiavelli’s time, and must be considered in light of how the technology of today, in transit, communications, and even detection and monitoring will show the results to everyone who may matter.

Matt Masur on HuffPo plays a pleasant trick on us by writing a headline suggesting Bernie Sanders could still become President this January, and using this to slide into the same old rant on being a responsible Internet user:

My cousin Scott Chamberlain has another whack at the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra (FWSO) debacle. This time, he may think the leader of the FWSO is completely incompetent:

This is perhaps the most stunning portion of this whole piece.  It goes without saying that the best way to receive contributions is… to ask people for contributions.  And any fundraising professional would tell you that it is far, far easier to raise money from people who have already donated—they are already committed and clearly already support you.  Why snub donors?  Why on earth wouldn’t you send them a renewal letter?  Or cultivate them into becoming larger donors? This seems yet another example of Ms. Adkins’s cavalier attitude to donors she displayed a few months ago when she outright told her board members not to pay attention to people whose average gift was less than $109.

And this bit is interesting:

Ms. Adkins, do you remember how over the last 15 months of negotiations the FWSO management never deviated once from its “best” offer, to the frustration of musicians… and the federal mediators brought in to try and find a solution? You were attempting to impose a contract unilaterally on the musicians, which is why they declared a strike.  In a previous story in the Star-Telegram, you stated: “We cannot allow a threat from the union to coerce us into fiscal irresponsibility.”

It is astonishing that you are trying to label the musicians as recalcitrant.

That is a bit of a jaw-dropper, if true. Negotiation and compromise are American favorites; unilaterally imposed pay cuts are the tools of authoritarians such as, say, Vladimir Putin. Does Ms. Adkins understand she is in a position where you serve the community – not your tin-pot dictator pretensions? Drop the quality of your orchestra, and perhaps not as many show up. Forcing … oh, most readers should get it. The toilet bowl effect.

It’s not time for digging in your heels. It’s time for creativity, outreach, and brain-storming. The moment concerts were canceled was the moment the board should have dumped her.

But Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight is more than willing to talk about what went wrong – like any good scientist:

We also received a lot of criticism from Democratic partisans in the closing weeks of the campaign — more than we did from Trump supporters — because they thought we didn’t have Clinton as a heavy enough favorite. That’s unusual. We’ve forecasted enough races over the years to have taken criticism from almost every side. But in the past, it’s always been the trailing candidate’s supporters who gave us more grief.

In this respect, there’s another parallel between Trump’s victory on Tuesday, and the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union in June. Brexit polls showed the race almost tied, with “Remain” leading by perhaps half a percentage point. In fact, “Leave” won by about 4 percentage points. The polls took a lot of criticism even though they’d shown “Leave” at almost even-money, whereas betting markets — and the conventional wisdom from London-based reporters — had “Remain” heavily favored to prevail. Londoners may have interpreted the data in selective ways because of the “unthinkability” of Britain’s leaving the EU to people in their social circles.

Tuesday’s results were similar. We strongly disagree with the idea that there was a massive polling error. Instead, there was a modest polling error, well in line with historical polling errors, but even a modest error was enough to provide for plenty of paths to victory for Trump. We think people should have been better prepared for it. There was widespread complacency about Clinton’s chances in a way that wasn’t justified by a careful analysis of the data and the uncertainties surrounding it.

Complacency? Or distaste? Is this a matter of the underdog doing its utmost and coming through in the clutch? I have trouble with such large composite creatures coming up with a coordinated action, although admittedly voting doesn’t require much coordination. Where was the supposed Trump dampening effect, wherein his proponents would be so depressed by the common wisdom that they wouldn’t bother to vote? The progressives were banking heavily on this supposed tendency, and fell hard because of it.

Another presumptive champion chokes in the clutch.

And does this mean next time the presumptive favorite will be posturing as if their throat’s about to be ripped out? On the one hand, it feels like one more slick politician’s trick … and I have trouble getting beyond it. It tends to mask any honest evaluation of the problems the Democratic Party may have; it blames the voters for not showing up, rather than asking whether the Democrats gave voters a reason not to show up. And the longer they delay fixing the problem, the harder it’ll be to fix.

Yes, I’m a giant chicken doing battle with SpaceGodzilla
Source: Head Injury Theater

Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla (1994) features the iconic rubber suit monster in a three way cage match against SpaceGodzilla, Godzilla‘s outre clone from outer space (involving black holes, white holes, worm holes, and plot holes), and Mogera, the Japanese built (and, no doubt, predecessor to Pacific Rim) monster robot. But before that, we get many meaningless plot twists and turns involving a man with a grudge against Godzilla (a little like a grudge against the Moon); a team working to control Godzilla via telepathy (I do hope there’s no feedback, kids); the Mogera team, out to kill Godzilla; the Yakuza (maybe they funded the picture and were looking for some positive publicity), who see Godzilla in a junior role in the organization; and perhaps one or two others I missed. And, for some reason, Godilla, Jr, with hugely adorable eyes and a developmental problem with his superpower.

But after a lot of running around (hey, it’s a monster movie – he who walks gets squished), it all comes down to a climactic battle between the three heavyweights. As little can be made of the arbitrary battle as that of the plot twists; perhaps the most memorable part of the entire movie is the uncanny resemblance of Mogera to a giant … chicken. Right down to the wattles. That’s right, it even tries to peck SpaceGodzilla to death.

If you’re six years old and love Godzilla, this is for you. Otherwise, just turn your head and don’t watch this train wreck.

For FiveThirtyEight, Oliver Roeder reports on the current World Chess Championship from New York City:

The two grandmasters play alone in a separate room, accompanied only by two stoic match arbiters. On the inside, the room resembles the bridge of a sci-fi spaceship. To the spectators on the outside, though, it evokes a reptile house in a zoo. You enter the dark, hot and humid viewing gallery through thick black curtains. You’re hushed as you enter and reminded to silence your phone. The lights inside are dimmed, and an eerie purple light glows from behind the thick glass of the one-way mirror. You can see Carlsen and Karjakin, leaning in close to each other over the board in deep thought. They can’t see you.

And along with all the spectators, ruminating over the game strategies employed by the masters, is this monster:

The computer chess engine Stockfish was in full agreement [concerning the first two draws], seeing both games as nothing but deadlocked.

Ya gotta wonder how American chess whiz Bobby Fischer would have reacted to a computer critiquing his play. I haven’t paid a great deal of attention to the social consequences of computers taking over our favorite intellectual games, such as Chess and Go. Will, or even have, leagues develop in which computers are either banned, or are exclusive, or an intermixture of human and computers? Will the progress of a human in a computer league be followed with rapt attention? Or would that progress never occur?

Daniel Byman provides a handy guide to interpreting terrorism over the last century or so:

Terrorism has changed over time. David Rapoport, an influential scholar of terrorism, argues that we’ve seen four waves of terrorism so far: an anarchist wave at the turn of the last century; an anti-colonial wave that began in the 1920s and continued for four decades; a leftist wave that declined with the fall of Communism; and an Islamist wave that arose with the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran and continues to present, taking different forms, such as that of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, in the years since. These waves all featured different types of terrorism: anarchists assassinated prime ministers and presidents, leftists kidnapped industrialists and attacked military targets, and anti-colonial movements used terrorism as part of revolutionary warfare, along with guerrilla tactics and political mobilization.

It would be interesting to take a representative of each of these waves and ask them to re-characterize the activities used to distinguish each wave. Is it terrorism from their point of view as well? Or a justified war to throw off the colonial yoke? I just have to wonder if the word terrorism is being overused at this juncture, or if we’re really stuck with our viewpoints. Is there a universal term (or plural) for these activities, one which provides accurate descriptions and interpretive power, or are we inevitably stuck with our parochial viewpoints?

Whatever the answers, Daniel’s summary is a handy guide.

Paths of Glory (1957) is fictional non-entertainment. Legendary director Stanley Kubrick’s movie of a minor attack by the French during World War I, and its fallout, focuses on man’s inhumanity: the ambition of one general, even in the face of overwhelming odds; the pettiness of another in assuming the idealistic actions of a colonel actually provide cover for his ambition; the cowardice of a lieutenant, and how he covers it.

There’s a story, but it’s not conventional. We do not see the sympathetic protagonist triumph over the antagonists; the smoke and awfulness of war serve to cover up the banal evil that envelops the French High Command, a command group with an old-fashioned morality which has little basic human respect for the infantry man, for the man who used to hold a pike or a lance, but is now equipped with far more firepower – and is far more vulnerable than ever before.

So this is a story of the clash of moralities; the old morality where the State subordinated all to its needs, and therefore those who controlled the State could indulge their foolishness with little more than worry than that their ambitions might not be slaked; and the new morality, newborn and struggling, trying to value the individual, to treat each other personally with honor – and the results when the two clash, and neither is served well.

Men struggle and fall in this great clash, of Powers and of moralities, and nearly all is distress, until in the final scene, at a bar, a troop of men, battle-hardened and weary, having just carried out an execution, sit in a bar, drinks in hand, and are at their raucous worst as a young, lost German woman is paraded out by the bar owner. They hoot and yell and abuse her for her nationality.

Until she begins to sing. Poorly, haltingly. And the men stop their ribaldry, and soon they’re humming along with her, reminded of better times, when foolish pride and rivalry had not yet led powerful States into unnecessary Wars with each other. Before losing face meant the sacrifice of the little man. Back when men & women need not struggle against each other in more than gin rummy, perhaps, as peaceful friends. Before it became necessary to shoot a man strapped to a stretcher.

You will not enjoy this movie, but it may move you. Kubrick was a master, and this is a masterpiece, from dialog to make up, from cinematography to audio, from the chatter of weapons while men obliviously make plans in the trenches that may become their tombs, to the irritated general, distressed by impertinent questions from the press and his subordinates, striding through the ballroom as general officers and their wives and mistresses dance to gay tunes. Kubrick’s carefully chosen contrasts illuminate the sad lack of necessity of the Great War, and the distressing evil lust of those who call for more of it, even today.

You get this:

Here’s a mushroom I bought at Byerly’s before prep:

Why do I bring this up? Because it’s been stemmed – and my recipe calls for using the stems to build the mushroom stuffing.

In essence, this is probably food wastage. Unless the stems were used in other food products, I just have to shake my head at this particular preparation and suggest that wasting food is really a tacky sort of thing to do – and immoral.