Unsightly Mental Blemishes

Granton edge:

A slicing knife serves a similar function to a carving knife, although it is generally longer and narrower. Slicers may have plain or serrated edges. Such knives often incorporate blunted or rounded tips, and feature kullenschliff (Swedish/German: “hill-sharpened”) or Granton edge (scalloped blades) to improve meat separation. Slicers are designed to precisely cut smaller and thinner slices of meat, and are normally more flexible to accomplish this task. As such, many cooks find them better suited to slicing ham, roasts, fish, or barbecued beef and pork and venison[.] [ Wikipedia]

Referenced on a recent episode of Cook’s Country.

If you want your floor lamps to make an impact, you may wish to talk to Nacho Carbonell:

© Nacho Carbonell, image from designboom

More of Carbonell’s work is on designboom.

Art? Architecture? Building technique? Lloyd Alter on Treehugger.com points at the ultimate in green housing – Baubotanik architecture:

image © ludwig.schönle
From designboom

When we first wrote about German architect Ferdinand Ludwig, I noted that Architecture is not a profession for those with short attention spans. Ludwig is in a whole different category- he grows buildings, and needs a very long attention span. His biggest, the ‘platanen-kubus’ won’t be finished until 2028.

Designboom describes it:

The building is a multi-story structure comprising of more than 1000 plane trees that Ludwig has combined into a single living organism. The living building materials overgrow a steel framework and as the years go on, will transcend into the bearing elements.

Hope the inhabitants don’t have allergies to trees. This doesn’t seem to be an Art project, although the whimsical aspect I immediately assumed would indicate so. From the Baubotanik website, here’s a Research statement:

In currently ongoing promotions in the field of research of Baubotanik, botanical, constructional and theoretical aspects of the approach building with living plants are being worked on. All in all, the interdisciplinary supervised projects aim to acquire natural scientific and technical basics as well as to describe the consequences of the approach for the design process and to classify in a culture theoretical way.

There’s at least one Ph.D. thesis involved in the work:

To bring closure to this thread, Kansas voted to retain four of the Justices on the Kansas Supreme Court, as noted in McClatchyDC:

Efforts to remove four of the seven justices started with critics of past rulings that overturned death sentences in capital murder cases. The justices plan to hear arguments in December in the case of a man sentenced to die for killing his estranged wife and three other family members in northeastern Kansas.

Abortion opponents and conservative Republicans also wanted to remove the justices ahead of major rulings on abortion and school funding cases. The court has yet to hear the abortion case, but a ruling on education funding is expected by early next year. …

The court’s critics targeted Chief Justice Lawton Nuss and Justices Marla Luckert, Carol Beier and Dan Biles for removal in statewide yes-or-no votes to determine whether they should remain for another six years. They were appointed by moderate GOP or Democratic predecessors of conservative Republican Gov. Sam Brownback.

Brownback’s only appointee, Justice Caleb Stegall, also was on the ballot but wasn’t a target.

Voters retained all five.

Nuss said in a post-election interview that the ouster efforts would not influence the court and that its rulings would continue to be “based on the rule of law and the constitution.”

“If you were in a lawsuit, would you want a judge who was influenced by anything other than what the law requires?” Nuss said.

As I contemplate this temporary victory for judicial independence, it occurs to me that the procedure of appointments, rather than public votes, also excludes, at least for the most part, the modern phenomenon of outside money, by which I mean money raised by organizations which are outside of the jurisdiction in question. It is perhaps one of the most unfair facets of the modern political scene that great amounts of money is raised and used to target candidates for local seats for defeat by organizations which do not, for the greater part, reside in the jurisdiction in question. This occurs because of national strategies which call for dominance of the local political scene in order to produce the same dominance at the national level.

An appointment method for judges would obviate, if not entirely exclude, external influences; naturally, a weak appointing body would still be vulnerable to those influences, but I think that the appointment method is much less vulnerable, in general, to such deviant approaches.

A slice of someone else’s life often fascinates me, especially if it’s out of my experience – even if it’s probably excruciatingly dull. Here’s Aaron Nielson writing at Notice & Comment, “A Blog from the Yale Journal on Regulation and the ABA Section of Administrative Law & Regulatory Practice“:

… did you know that the word limit for briefs filed in the D.C. Circuit (unlike some other courts) is changing? It’s true: “On December 1, 2016, several amendments to the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure will go into effect. … Among the amendments are provisions that revise the word limitations for briefs; establish word limitations for other documents produced using a computer and require a certificate of compliance for such documents; and eliminate the 3-day grace period for responding to documents served electronically.” Going forward, the length limit will be 13,000 words for a principal brief and 6,500 words for a reply brief; previously, it was 14,000 and 7,000 words, respectively. Earlier this month, the D.C. Circuit formally announced how it will implement these changes.

Why am I writing about this of all things? Well, for three reasons. First, because lawyers should know about the change; I like to help spread the news, and with all the election talk, maybe this latest bit of news has been overlooked. Second, because I think that this word reduction is a bad move. I’ve both litigated in the D.C. Circuit and clerked there, and the cases can be quite complicated. Sometimes — especially in complex cases, and especially because it is hard to know ex ante what will persuade all judges — words are already tight as it is. And third, because doing so hopefully illustrates a point: There is more to life than politics. Why not pause for a moment, take a deep breath, think about appellate word limits, and enjoy the weekend? There will be plenty of time next week to contemplate the implications of the election. But as far as I can see, everyone — those who oppose the new administration and those who support it alike — would do well to slow down and think about something else, at least for a few days. And appellate word limits are something else!

Word limitations for briefs is not politics.

Draw your own lesson.

One of the paramount mysteries of paleontology are the ludicrously small arms of the T. Rex. But plans are in process to investigate with new technology, as Hannah Gavin reports on the D-brief blog of Discovery Magazine:

Carmen Soriano, a resident paleontologist at Argonne, will use a technique called X-ray micro-tomography to examine [A T. Rex named] Sue’s arm, which was removed from her fossil skeleton last week at the Field Museum and temporarily transported to Argonne.

Just like computed tomography (CT) scans at hospitals, this method captures a series of X-ray images and assembles them into a holistic 3-D representation. Importantly, this technique is non-invasive: Just as sections of the brain can be analyzed by CT scan without cutting into a skull, Sue’s priceless arm can be scanned without slicing it to bits.

So many theories, so few facts. Even “totally useless” is a theory that gets tossed around.

How about “wrong arm”?

I look forward to the conclusions.

I must admit my interest is whetted when an article on physics starts out,

YOU are made of carbon. So are your pets and all your houseplants. Every living thing on Earth owes its existence to carbon atoms’ ability to join up with other elements in a bewildering number of ways and form complex molecules. But the abundance of this element in our universe depends on a seemingly miraculous coincidence – an excited state of the carbon nucleus that our best models say shouldn’t exist, but clearly does.

The nature of this weird form of carbon has baffled us for more than 60 years, much to the distress of nuclear physicists. Its existence is so essential in the sequence of reactions making life possible that our failure to explain it is deeply embarrassing. “We need this state to exist for us to be here and yet it is extremely unusual in nuclear physics terms,” says David Jenkins at the University of York, UK. “Cracking this problem has become a matter of pride.” And yet the more we learn, the more confusing things seem to become.

This is from “Life’s subatomic secret: How we’re cracking the Hoyle state,” by Marcus Chown (NewScientist, 22 October 2016, paywall), and I’d never heard of this particular mystery before. It’s fascinating stuff – but, being high energy physics, is way beyond me. I can sort of follow this:

Source: openclipart.org

The first step in carbon manufacture is to fuse nuclei of the lightest element, hydrogen, to make the second-lightest, helium. The next step ought to be for two helium-4 nuclei – each containing two protons and two neutrons – to fuse to make beryllium-8. This would then grab another helium to make carbon-12. Except there is a snag. Beryllium-8 is highly unstable, meaning it decays in the blink of an eye – too quickly to produce the amount of carbon that exists in the universe.

The other possibility is that three helium-4 nuclei come together simultaneously inside bloated, dying stars known as red giants, where all the hydrogen has burned off to leave an extremely dense and hot core of helium. But this process is so rare that even over the aeons since the big bang, it couldn’t have produced enough carbon.

But after that I get lost (why is beryllium-8 unstable?¹ for example) , except to understand they’re using supercomputers to computationally model the problem.

I think there’s two reasons an article like this fascinates me. First, physicists are some of the smartest folks in the world, so it’s good to see them bemused.

Second, the activity of attacking a puzzling mystery often leads to all sorts of interesting knowledge. I can’t wait to see if that’s true of this mystery.

¹The Isotopes of beryllium page in Wikipedia is actually fascinating, not for the why, but the what. For example,

The rate at which the short-lived ⁷Be is transferred from the air to the ground is controlled in part by the weather. ⁷Be decay in the sun is one of the sources of solar neutrinos, and the first type ever detected using the Homestake experiment. Presence of ⁷Be in sediments is often used to establish that they are fresh, i.e. less than about 3–4 months in age, or about two half-lives of ⁷Be.

In the 60 Seconds column of NewScientist (), they mention a new millipede with …

… 14 legs, 200 poison glands and four penises …

ZooKeys has the academic article, in case you’re interested. Here’s some of the commentary:

Source: ZooKeys

A Dorsal view of head, antennae and rings 1–5 of I. tobini sp. n. (scale bar 300 µm) B the same of I.plenipes (scale bar 300 µm) C Lateral (right) view of head and rings 1–5 of I. tobini sp. n. (scale bar 300 µm) D the same of I. plenipes (scale bar 300 µm). Illacme tobini sp. n.: E anterolateral (right) view of head and first leg pair (scale bar 100 µm) F lateral (left) view of head and first leg pair, antennae broken off at base (scale bar 100 µm). (Catalog #s: I. tobini sp. n. MPE00735, I. plenipes SPC000932.)

John Delury has a startling report on the general foreign policy discussion of what to do with North Korea on 38 North:

The Hawks

The most remarkable new feature in the North Korea policy debate is serious contemplation of military force as the only viable option left. Such calls to arms are couched in guarded terms: no one advocates an imminent attack on the Yongbyon nuclear complex, and none dare call this approach for what it would most likely be: the start of a second Korean War. Instead, national security figures such as Mike Mullen,James Stavridis and Victor Cha suggest that a “surgical” or “pre-emptive” strike almost certainly must take place before Kim Jong Un perfects the capability to hit the US homeland with a nuclear missile. During the Obama years, military options were off the table because of the cost that Seoul would have to pay for a strike on Pyongyang. AsPresident Obama put it to Charlie Rose, “we could obviously destroy North Korea with our arsenals but … they are right next door to our vital ally, the Republic of Korea.” But with the South Korean government indulging in extremely bellicose rhetoric, integrated into recent US-ROK joint military exercises, that restraint seems to be vanishing before our eyes.

How might Beijing react to a US pre-emptive or surgical strike on the North? The question is often evaded, perhaps because the answer makes a military solution considerably less attractive. North Korea is, after all, China’s only defense treaty ally in the world, and is obligated to “immediately render military and other assistance by all means at its disposal” to defend Pyongyang if attacked. Their 1961 treaty is often overlooked or trivialized—occasionally by Chinese academics themselves. But the agreement remains in force, underscoring North Korea’s unique place in Chinese foreign relations. To mark the 55th anniversary of the treaty’s signing in July, Kim Jong Un sent Xi Jinping a friendly note praising the pact as a “firm legal foundation” for the bilateral relationship.

And then there are the “boas”, who prefer stronger sanctions, and a great deal more pressure on China. If China could be persuaded to pull the rug out from underneath North Korea, then the boas believe Kim Jong Un would see reason and give up nuclear weapons development. John delivers summary paragraphs, written before the U.S. election, and perhaps assuming Clinton would be the victor, rather than Trump:

Fighting for engagement and negotiation with North Korea in the US foreign policy debate is an uphill battle. But proponents of engagement have one trump card: when Washington engages, the China factor becomes an asset in dealing with North Korea, rather than a liability or roadblock. Beijing, after all, is steadfast in its strategy of engaging Pyongyang, and it is perpetually looking for US openness to negotiation. China’s security policy toward North Korea is unwavering: the goal is denuclearization, the preconditions are peace and stability, and the method is dialogue. If the next US president adopts an engagement strategy, Xi Jinping’s government would likely step up its own work to achieve short-term breakthroughs and long-term solutions. Paradoxically, Washington’s best chance of getting China to apply constructive pressure on its errant neighbor is through a major US initiative to negotiate with Kim Jong Un.

Beijing does not think any amount of sanctions and pressure, including the use of military force, will change Pyongyang’s behavior in the way Washington wants. The firm policy of the Chinese government, supported by most foreign policy experts (though not necessarily the ones most quoted by US and South Korean media), is that only dialogue and negotiation can moderate North Korea’s behavior, and that the best hope for long-term progress lies in the untapped potential of North Korea’s economic transformation and regional integration. Many South Koreans, including the leading candidates to become the next ROK president, would seem to agree.

I’ve heard little more than Trump might be willing to talk to Kim Jong Un, with little detail. How this plays out will be very interesting.

Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes advocate for the retention of FBI Director James Comey on Lawfare:

Whatever you think of Comey’s judgment or conduct during the campaign, his actions have unequivocally demonstrated political independence from his political bosses, as he has in the past. And that is exactly what we will need from the FBI in the coming years.

Throughout his career, Comey has stood up to the political leadership of both parties. During the Bush administration, he offered to resign over questions of law and principle. If the last few weeks demonstrate anything, it is that we can trust him to speak his mind irrespective of the political consequences; in fact, the harshest charge against him is that he cannot be trusted to not speak his mind, even when it might behoove him and when doing so might undermine the fondest wishes of those in power.

If you believe, as we do, that this country has elected as President a dangerous man, one with authoritarian tendencies, having a principled FBI Director willing to stand up to those in power and speak his mind irrespective of political costs is critical.

No doubt many would reject this conclusion, even the reasoning, although getting the final evaluation finished is a point in his favor. But what of the report of Russian contacts with the Trump campaign, despite the denials of Trump? Should they have also been disclosed? That troubles me.

A friend points me, approvingly, at an article by Naomi Klein for Reader Supported News asserting Neoliberalism is at fault for the election results:

hey will blame James Comey and the FBI. They will blame voter suppression and racism. They will blame Bernie or bust and misogyny. They will blame third parties and independent candidates. They will blame the corporate media for giving him the platform, social media for being a bullhorn, and WikiLeaks for airing the laundry.

But this leaves out the force most responsible for creating the nightmare in which we now find ourselves wide awake: neoliberalism. That worldview – fully embodied by Hillary Clinton and her machine – is no match for Trump-style extremism. The decision to run one against the other is what sealed our fate. If we learn nothing else, can we please learn from that mistake?

Here is what we need to understand: a hell of a lot of people are in pain. Under neoliberal policies of deregulation, privatisation, austerity and corporate trade, their living standards have declined precipitously. They have lost jobs. They have lost pensions. They have lost much of the safety net that used to make these losses less frightening. They see a future for their kids even worse than their precarious present.

Unfortunately, just reading her prose tells me she’s hyperbolic and, therefore, wrong. “Sealed our fate“? What bullshit – we all already know Clinton lost by a hair. As Steve Benen points out, if the trivial number of voters who went for Stein and Johnson had voted for Clinton, Trump would have lost.

My conclusion is that she has something against neoliberalism and is willing to use this election result as a tool in attacking it – because Klein’s desperate need to assert the election was a foregone conclusion when it obviously wasn’t is a clear signal that her logic chain is so weak a bird could break it.

Just to put the sharp point of the pencil forward, I didn’t bother reading more than the above paragraphs. Her communications style is so poor, she’s so desperate to assert an insight, she should turn in her pen and pad and go flip french fries. Regardless of whether she’s right or wrong. Given her bright, shiny axe to grind, I can’t possibly trust her arguments. Nor am I able to judge them independently, as I’m a lowly software engineer without the time to analyze what she has to say. Isn’t this pathetic – she may have a point, but right from the get-go all I can say is that’s a knife in her hand, everyone back off.

I wonder what the record is for the number of lawsuits faced by a President or President-elect, because our Donald is facing his first, coming up November 28th. According to WaPo, Trump is looking to delay it:

Attorneys for President-elect Donald Trump went to court Thursday to ask that a civil fraud suit against Trump scheduled to begin in less than three weeks be delayed, a reminder of the unusual complications facing Trump as he shifts from businessman to commander in chief.

Trump’s attorneys said he will be too busy with the presidential transition to participate in the Nov. 28 trial involving his defunct real estate seminar program, Trump University. They asked that the trial be postponed until February or March, after he has taken office. …

[Judge] Curiel proposed potentially having Trump testify by video to make the trial easier on him, but also urged that he settle with former students suing over the real estate seminars.

And I urge those former students to settle with our future President. I suggest a good rate would be 2 or even 3 times the damage they’ve suffered.

Just to make it clear to our Donald that fucking people over is not acceptable. He needs to be bopped on the nose occasionally. If they can get more, good for them.

Leslie Knope writes one on Vox. It’s a little long, so I’ll quote the part that amused me, rather than the other part that inspired me:

When I was in fourth grade, my teacher Mrs. Kolphner taught us a social studies lesson. The 17 students in our class were introduced to two fictional candidates: a smart if slightly bookish-looking cartoon tortoise named Greenie, and a cool-looking jaguar named Speedy. Rick Dissellio read a speech from Speedy, in which he promised that, if elected, he would end school early, have extra recess, and provide endless lunches of chocolate pizzandy (a local Pawnee delicacy at the time: deep fried pizza where the crust was candy bars). Then I read a speech from Greenie, who promised to go slow and steady, think about the problems of our school, and try her best to solve them in a way that would benefit the most people. Then Mrs. Kolphner had us vote on who should be class president.

I think you know where this is going.

Except you don’t, because before we voted, Greg Laresque asked if he could nominate a third candidate, and Mrs. Kolphner said “Sure! The essence of democracy is that everyone—” and Greg cut her off and said, “I nominate a T. rex named Dr. Farts who wears sunglasses and plays the saxophone, and his plan is to fart as much as possible and eat all the teachers,” and everyone laughed, and before Mrs. Kolphner could blink, Dr. Farts the T. rex had been elected president of Pawnee Elementary School in a 1984 Reagan-esque landslide, with my one vote for Greenie the Tortoise playing the role of “Minnesota.”

After class, I was inconsolable. Once the other kids left, Mrs. Kolphner came over and put her arm around me. She told me I had done a great job advocating for Greenie the Tortoise. Through tears I remember saying, “How good, exactly?” and she said, “Very, very good,” and I said, “Good enough to—?” and she sighed and went to her desk to get one of the silver stars she gave out to kids who did a good job on something. And as I tearfully added it to my Silver Star Diary, she asked me what upset me the most.

“Greenie was the better candidate,” I said. “Greenie should have won.”

She nodded.

“I suppose that was the point of the lesson,” I said.

“Oh, no,” she said. “The point of the lesson is: People are unpredictable, and democracy is insane.”

In the epilogue, Leslie suggests donations to several organizations. I will be looking into doing so with our emergency charity budget.

The movie Berserk! (1967), starring Joan Crawford, starts off well, as Gaspar the Great, the high wire act of the Rivers Circus, is unexpectedly hung when his wire snaps and wraps around his neck in front of the audience. The atmosphere of the circus is meticulously recreated, from the elephants to the acts to the labor gang, and soon we feel as part of the family, understanding Rivers (Crawford) to be the dictatorial parent, and the others as anything from lovers to enemies.

Then a new high wire act moves in, starring the Great Hawkins, not only into the circus, but into Rivers’ arms – but it’s an icy (and rather unbelievable) embrace, as Rivers is old enough to be the new act’s mother. But audiences flock to the circus, the circus in which the macabre accident occurred, as they often do, and Rivers is pleased.

Then another death, and another, and the police become an avid part of the audience. For a while the movie remains intriguing, even if we are wrestling with the supposed affair between Rivers and Hawkins, as there’s little else hitting a false note. But as we approach the end, a new character arrives: Rivers’ teenage daughter, unmentioned, rebellious about being sent off to school, and unexpected. Could we have yet another victim, just to needle Rivers about enjoying the receipts generated by the deaths of her employees?

No.

The daughter is the bloody KILLER.

So the audience is treated entirely unfairly. No attempt is made to explain how the murders were accomplished. The motivation? To get her mother out of the circus culture.

It’s like someone put a knife into the center of the painting of Mona Lisa and ripped it right out. OK, maybe not old Mona, but some rather good painting – because it’s a glaring, painful flaw in what was otherwise an enjoyable murder mystery.

See it if you adore Joan Crawford (who’s frankly rather scary) then see this, otherwise you’ll just be disappointed.

Steve Benen on MaddowBlog notes one consequence of the SCOTUS blockade:

Going forward, Americans should understand that rewarding radicalism produces more radicalism. Senate Republicans abandoned the constitutional process, institutional norms, and democratic traditions, rejecting a duly elected president’s high-court nominee – without so much as a hearing – because of his party affiliation. And because that gambit worked, and voters rewarded the scheme, the message for policymakers is, “Go ahead and pursue similarly radical plans. The public doesn’t care. There are no consequences for misbehavior.”

And this is an important result, although I’m not convinced the GOP is going to actually hang together all that much longer. In engineering terms, they’re beginning to look like a positive feedback process, and, if so, their immensely good luck a couple of days ago will be followed by some sort of total catastrophe that will rip the party apart. No inside information here, just observing the outer behaviors, and thinking about how the former inhabitants of the fever-swamps will attack the more moderate members of the GOP.

But there is another result, not necessarily an alternative but parallel. Assuming (and I use that word with a creepy-crawly feeling going right up my spine) Trump nominates someone of far-right tendencies to replace the late Justice Scalia, the opposition, if it so chooses, could apply the label Illegitimate Justice to him or her, and through repetition make it stick.

So let’s consider the temperament of jurists. How many would want that label, perhaps helpfully abbreviated IJ, pursuing them throughout history? Each decision a SCOTUS judge renders is history making, so smart candidates are going to have a finely tuned sense of the idea that they’ll have a big legacy.

Will they want to be known as the IJ of Trump?

Not the smart ones. They’ll decline the nomination. (The patriotic ones will publicly state they do not wish to be the IJ.) Along with concerns about Trump nominating a judge whose chief work will be creating socially conservative law from the bench, I’m also worried that she or he will be a second-rater. Someone, like Trump, who’s hungry for the position, thinking it’ll prove their superiority.

And can’t reason their way out of a paper bag. Or worse, is a bigot whose influence will create racial tensions.

That’s another worry to add to the list.

Some tools are for the California water problem are man-made – and some come from Nature. In NewScientist (22 October 2016, paywall) MacGregor Campbell reports on using Nature’s engineers to solve the complex problems of water in California – beavers:

In 2010, local landowner Betsy Stapleton got in touch with [NOAA researcher Michael] Pollock after reading about some of his research. Pollock was interested in something called beaver dam analogues. Typically consisting of a line of posts set across a stream bed and interwoven with willow and cottonwood branches, these faux dams slow water down and widen out a stream to form a pond. The goal? To attract beavers. Putting one up is like prepping beaver real estate for sale.

In Sugar Creek, much to Stapleton’s delight, the faux dams worked. As she wades through soft muck into surprisingly pristine pond water, she points out evidence of beavers all around. Sticks with chew marks are strewn across the pond bottom. A scent-mound of dried mud stands guard telling interlopers that the pond is spoken for. Vegetation has been stuffed into both dam analogues. “They like to plug every little hole,” says Stapleton.

Of course, there are no guarantees.

[Jimmy Taylor, a wildlife biologist with the US Department of Agriculture] and his students recently trapped and relocated 38 nuisance beavers near the Oregon coast. Sixteen weeks later, more than half had died, many eaten by mountain lions. The dams they built were ephemeral and washed away in the higher winter flows.

Still, phenomenon like this are very encouraging:

USGS / Tanya Dewey University of Michigan Museum of Zoology

Then, in the early 1990s, came an accidental experiment. Fish and game officers in Elko, Nevada, were working with ranchers to restore two dried-up stream basins that cattle had obliterated. To recreate a habitat for cutthroat trout, they put fences up – fish on one side, cows on the other. Willow, a favourite beaver food and building material, took root. By 2003, a colony had moved in and begun damming the streams. Before long, the dry creek beds had sprouted into verdant wetlands, which attracted other animals too.

It was never the officers’ intention to lure beavers to Elko, but the events proved that under the right conditions and with very little money, beavers could completely transform an ecosystem.

That same process is now at play at Sugar Creek. The adjacent, undammed creeks are dry in the summer. When they do flow, in autumn and winter, the water moves fast, washing all the dust and nutrients they pick up out to sea. Come summer, it’s just dry gravel again.

At Sugar Creek, on the other hand, the water gets stuck. Beneath it isn’t just rock but rich soil too. NOAA hydrologist Brian Cluer points out sand and fine dirt that has come from further upstream. In the still waters of the ponds, it settles. Grasses, reeds and other plants take root in the stuff, locking it and its moisture in place. With time, a thick base of rich, moist soil builds up, helping to raise the water table.

Cluer says that all this has a huge knock-on effect. The water seeps down into the ground, recharging underground aquifers. That matters because California is depleting its groundwater at an alarming rate. It is now tapping into “fossil” water that has been underground for tens of thousands of years. Farmland is sinking as aquifers collapse. This is the price you pay for an intensive water management system predicated on drained wetlands and artificial channels, says Cluer.

Perhaps a useful way to think about this is that beavers helped shape the world we evolved to thrive in, so returning them to that environment, in which they are so powerful, should not – but does – surprise us when the result is, once again, a positive for the humans in the environment.

So – put the beavers in an environment where they can thrive, step back and let them do their thing. I think this is quite attractive. Hopefully, beaver pelts are not as alluring as they used to be, which resulted in the beavers in California nearly driven into extinction. Leave them alone and start restoring a critical resource.

Given Trump’s comments about the Iranian nuclear deal, it’s not surprising that speculation has gone through the roof on its future, as reported by Julian Pecquet of AL Monitor:

Lawmakers have introduced a rash of Iran sanctions bills ahead of the election, both to score points with voters back home and to put political pressure on the Obama administration not to go too far with sanctions relief. [Tyler Cullis, a policy associate with the National Iranian American Council (NIAC),] said he now expects the incoming, Republican-controlled Congress to introduce less extreme legislation that may not blatantly violate the deal but could irretrievably harm it.

The pro-Israel lobby AIPAC “will thread that needle,” Cullis predicted. “And then you’re going to have a bill that’s going to be very tough for Democrats to vote against.”

Theoretically, the defeat of deal foes Mark Kirk, R-Ill., and Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., helps provide Democrats with a firewall to defeat problematic Iran bills (most bills need 60 votes to pass, and the Republicans will have 52 Senate seats if they win a Dec. 9 run-off in Louisiana). On the flip side, deal opponent Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is taking over as minority leader, adding to advocates’ distress.

“I think you’re going to see a much more measured approach from Republicans to knock a hole in it,” Cullis said. “And if a bill like that passes, it’s certainly the case that a President Trump will not spurn it, and he will sign it. It will cause immense damage to the sustainability of the nuclear deal.”

That bill would grant various authorities for sanction building to the President. Cullis’ thoughts on that matter?

“A Trump administration will be less reluctant to utilize those authorities,” Cullis said. “It’s a strange thing to say, but I think Donald Trump will be one of the more sane voices in a Trump Cabinet.”

Which is a reminder that the GOP is quite the chaotic entity at the moment, as they RINO-ize themselves further and further to the right – but the one Republican they can’t push out will be Trump.

While predicting Trump is a chump’s game, it’s not impossible that he’ll be more reasonable, in the end, than many members of his Cabinet – early speculation has former NYC Mayor Guiliani (who I think is in early stage dementia) and John Bolton (former UN Ambassador under Bush II), a lawyer and (ahem) diplomat who apparently never understood the Roosevelt dictum that begins “Speak softly …”, and (tellingly) is a commentator at Fox News, as members of the Cabinet. And a bizarre rumor that Palin, the master of incomprehensibility, might also make up a veritable Clown Cabinet. Anyone remember that idiot James Watt? Running a department based on your religious beliefs, rather than scientific evidence, was simply irresponsible – he should have been kicked out on his nose. Palin may do the same thing.

And then there’s the Congressional members themselves, with the usual spectrum of sanity.

Will the GOP put us back in danger by tearing up the agreement and reasserting sanctions? Do they seriously believe the rest of the world would back us?

Do they even care?

Susan Hennessey of Lawfare reflects on the duty of national security workers:

I am also as sure today as I was yesterday that the men and women of NSA are decent, law abiding, and honorable. I wish them continued strength, courage, and judgment in the days and years ahead. And I hope that President Trump comes to recognize the gravity of his task, the many lives that now depend on his even judgment, the ways in which he will shape the world.

This morning I couldn’t help but reflect on that day when Deputy Director Inglis administered my oath of office. The character of people like Inglis both reflects the institution that elevated him and also sets the culture for the next generation. I won’t name current officials out of deference for the non-partisan nature of their work, though plenty of examples of true integrity come to mind. We need people like that issuing the NSA oath, and not craven political hacks all too happy to step into powerful roles abandoned by principled people.

This is why I think it is the duty of rational, reasonable experts to serve their country in a Trump administration, even at the political level, if asked. If he will accept it, Trump must have wise and informed counsel. Americans will be served by principled individuals in government defending our Constitution and role in the world. Those who stay home to satisfy ideals of personal integrity will not make our world safer.

Saturn’s North Pole is changing colors, according to Phys.org:

The first nuclear device lost at sea may have been found, as reported in ScienceAlert:

Wikimedia Commons

The bomb in question belonged to US Air Force flight 44–92075, which originally was meant to simulate a bombing run over California on 13 February 1950 before landing in Texas.

And while the United States has suffered a shock to its system and a grievous blow to its reputation, let’s not forget Turkey, another country backsliding into strong-man politics. Now President Erdogan wants to control the universities, public and private, as reported by Mustafa Akyol on AL Monitor:

Two major changes have now been introduced. First, the intra-university elections at state universities are a thing of the past. The president will simply appoint whomever he wants, without a feedback mechanism involving academics. Second, and more stunning, the president will appoint the rectors of private universities. The latter’s boards of trustees will only be able to make suggestions to the YOK, which will defer the final decision to the president.

Underfit river:

A misfit stream is a river that is either too large or too small to have eroded the valley or cave passage in which it flows. This term is also used for a stream or river with meanders that obviously are not proportional in size to the meanders of the valley or meander scars cut into its valley walls. If the misfit stream is too large for either its valley or meanders, it is known as an overfit stream. If the misfit stream is too small for either its valley or meanders, it is known as an underfit stream. [Wikipedia]

We ran across this term on a tourist sign on Minnesota highway 169, southwest of Jordan, IIRC:

It occurs to me that Trump has made a few promises that will be dangerous to follow up on.

Such as, “Lock her up!”

If, on Inauguration Day, he does take action to lock her up, a huge chunk of the electorate will be completely disgusted with him.

And if he doesn’t, some of his most zealous supporters will become disaffected.

Just how much charm does he have? Can he finesse these supporters? Or will his Secret Service providers be rather busy for the next four years?

Konga (1961) features a chimpanzee that is artificially mutated into a highlands gorilla, and then again to something the size of King Kong. The chimp was brought out of the jungle by a British biology researcher who hungers for the fame that goes with a major discovery, and the chimp is his research subject, once the carnivorous plants have been exhausted.

Yeah, in case you wondered, it’s a slapdash, the hell with science, shambling wreck of a movie; in fact, it swarms with problems. There’s this student that tries to strangle the researcher, and yet isn’t in therapy for anger management. Worse yet, the middle-aged research assistant is so in love with the researcher that she disregards his several murders; only when he chases after a young student with lust in his eyes does she finally break free of his … invisible … charms. The researcher himself takes offense so easily I’m surprised he doesn’t slit his own throat when he looks in a mirror and doesn’t admire himself. While the chimp really is a chimp, the gorilla is clearly just a guy in a gorilla suit, and when he mutates the second time into the faux King Kong, the special effects are terribly awful. The story might have been interesting, but the characters do nothing and do not engage in a whit of interesting thought. Hell, we don’t even get to know if the carnivorous plant that has its, er, teeth in the blond student (let’s see, her boyfriend had his neck snapped by the gorilla, her professor has sexually assaulted her – or at least tried – and now she’s stumbled into a nest of carnivorous plants – as you can see, it’s not been a tip-top day for her) … where was I? Oh, yes – we never find out if she survives the attack from the carnivorous vegetation, or if her piercing shrieks were not enough to cause the protein-craving prepubescent pod-person to grow pedals and skedaddle out of what soon became an EasyBake oven.

About the only good thing is a bit of jazz on a student’s radio, despite Michael Gough’s efforts to bring the researcher’s character to life. Sadly, I think that would be the subject of yet another horror movie.

Don’t go near this monkey.