Unsightly Mental Blemishes

navajo on The Daily Kos continues his (?) her coverage of the pipeline dispute at Standing Rock:

A large grassfire was started last night, October 29-30, around midnight west of the main Oceti Sakowin Camp on a nearby hill. The startled Water Protectors were calmed by forest firefighters in the camp who quickly assessed that the fire would burn itself out. Video shows the fire was deliberately set as a long-range camera shows numerous dollops of new fires being started on the outskirts of the fire.

So warfare against American Indians continues for those who worship at the idol of money.

The Vincent Price vehicle War-Gods of the Deep (1965, aka City Under the Sea) is, at its heart, about a chicken. Not a rooster, but an everyday chicken named Herbert, who is the pet of a mediocre artist. Set in perhaps the late 19th century or early 20th, we see the artist kidnapped while searching for a missing woman, and in its sudden effect on the chicken, we see how impulsive actions most often lead to deleterious effects.

But Herbert keeps her chin up, and in so doing inspires the artist, a naturally retiring, even timid, man into the rescue of the aforementioned missing woman. Despite the great mass of water above the caverns in which the chicken finds herself, and the great volcano that is threatening this underground city and its inhabitants, the occasional appearance of her head poking from her picnic basket permits her to lead the two men, who find themselves in a predicament of an imminent volcano on one side, and the threats of a smoothly mad Captain (Price) on the other, out of danger.

How can we tell the Captain’s mad? Having found his way down to the caverns 100 years ago, the atmosphere has subtly changed him and his men, so that now he’s immune to aging – but can no longer return to the surface, where he left his wife. All that is a subtle hint, but we know madness, smooth and subtle, has descended upon him when he learns there’s a chicken within his reach – one he could eat, after more than a lifetime of fish.

And he makes no move to confiscate and fricassee our heroic chicken.

Desperate to save his city, the Captain has been using another race of beings (oh, it’s logical, really, it’s logical) to steal books on tectonics, hoping to snuff the volcano, and in one book he discovers the artist’s sketch of the woman – she’s a dead ringer for the Captain’s dead wife (it’s all so apropos). Thus, he has kidnapped the woman.

Under the steady encouragement of Herbert the chicken, the artist leads the rescue of the woman, and then, as the volcano hiccups, they make a break for the surface. The path is via the sea, and our human protagonists must wear ornate diving costumes worthy of the Nautilus.  For a moment, my Arts Editor and I wondered: was this when we would see our heroic hen, Herbert, sacrifice herself for the greater good? We saw no dive costume fit for a chicken!

But, no, for it turns out Herbert likes hands-on management, and shares the diving helmet of the artist. And so Herbert helps throughout the confusing battles between the escapees, the other race of men, and the immortals armed with dart guns. The jiggling of the camera and the anonymous costumes left us considerably bewildered as to who might be winning in this epic battle.

Then our protagonists return to the city (ummm?) in time for a showdown with the Captain; however, it is spoilt as the volcano, ever the screen-hog, intervenes with tremors galore, rendering most of the Captain’s men (those he hasn’t executed out of hand) hors de combat. Herbert’s very life is imperiled, but at the last moment all is risked to save her neck, and then we get a bonus: at this juncture we reach the climax of the movie: the Captain is groped in a truly Trumpian manner, as the giant hand of a stone statue falls and imprisons him.

Once again, there’s a lumbering exit from the city via the sea, another encounter with underwater warriors, with more definitive results, and a final pull from the grasping ocean. Meanwhile, the Captain meets his final fate (one would think a Trumpian goose would be enough).  As he sees the sun for the last time, he withers with age and dies.

No doubt, Herbert lobbied to take a victorious peck at the Captain, but the director gave Price the dignity of his character’s death. Meanwhile, the volcano finally achieves climax in a wonderful gasp of fire and clouds; perhaps, we may hope, a new island is to be born, fit to become … a chicken sanctuary.

And if you think this review is a recommendation to see this movie, go back and read it again.

Igor does photography.

Really cool photography.

But I hope it doesn’t end up in my dreams.

More here.

(h/t Treehugger.com)

David Akadjian on The Daily Kos gets into the raising of individual rates under ACA:

1. Experts warned the states that if they didn’t expand Medicaid coverage, customers could see higher premiums. 

Why? Because hospitals tend to shift the costs of emergency room care to private insurers. In Nebraska in 2014, for example, hospitals provided uncompensated care to 54,000 people who would have qualified for coverage under Medicaid expansion.

Adrian Sanchez, a spokeman for the Nebraska Hospital Association, said:

As a result of Nebraska’s failure to expand Medicaid, insured Nebraskans are likely to see an increase in health insurance premiums as they continue to cover the uncompensated healthcare costs of the uninsured.

The Indiana Hospital Association similarly released a report saying individuals would see premiums drop by $241 and families by $691 if Indiana expanded Medicaid and extended coverage to 400,000 residents under the ACA.

States that refused to expand Medicaid are almost all Republican-led states.

And there’s lots more, in typical Daily Kos fashion. However, it’s worth noting that Minnesota has one of the highest rate jumps in the nation, and did already expand Medicaid as recommended; Arizona falls into the same category. The other two states in the category of highest jump in rates are Oklahoma and Tennessee, neither of which have expanded Medicaid.

While the frantic rhetoric of the GOP is unsurprising, given their unswerving antipathy, I have to wonder if there’s a more subtle influence at work as well: the instant gratification generation (a phrase I made up 20+ years ago when the fencing coach suggested it would take time and work to become a good fencer). After several years of rather good progress, the ACA has hit a bump. Perhaps we’ve lost our capacity for following long term plans. Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton (D) voices intemperate thoughts concerning the ACA and turns it into a crisis.

It’s not. As Mr. Akadjian notes,

3. Nearly 8 in 10 people enrolled through the Obamacare marketplace can find a plan for less than $100 a month after tax credits. 

77 percent of people looking for plans in the marketplace can find a plan for less than $100/month with subsidies. More than 7 in 10 (72 percent) can find a plan for $75/month or less.

Atlas V 401 launch of Cygnus OA-4. Photo Credit: ULA

Historic high rates of insured citizens and a bend in the healthcare cost curve. These are achievements that many writers such as Jonathan Chait can document better than I. As an engineer, you don’t throw out the Atlas V rocket just because it’s sprung a leak. You evaluate the problem and fix it.

And ignore the hysterics who want to throw you into the lake for offending the sky gods.

In this long running thread, Kansas is getting ready to vote on retaining its current Supreme Court, and The Topeka Capital-Journal reports on how the polls are setting for them:

With a little more than a week left before the election, campaigns to retain and to oust the justices are in full swing. Advocates of retention point out that no justice has been nonretained in the decades Kansas’ retention system has been in place. Opponents of retention voice anger over rulings in death penalty, education and other cases — while most also say they want to keep Stegall [most recently appointee, appointed by Gov. Brownback].

The court is also considering a case that involves deciding whether the Kansas Constitution provides the right to an abortion.

“Kansas voters have the right to remove elected officials and have even more responsibility to oust judges who legislate from the bench,” the anti-abortion group Kansans for Life says on its anti-retention website.

Meanwhile, supporters of the justices argue voters need to push back against what they view as efforts to politicize the court by Brownback and the Republican-dominated Legislature. Legislation to begin the process of changing the way justices are selected failed earlier this year.

“Gov. Brownback has tried to remake the court by changing the rules about how justices are selected. The Legislature has targeted the court with new laws and budget cuts that threaten Kansans’ access to justice. The politicians in Topeka want to control our Supreme Court,” Ryan Wright, with the group Kansans for Fair Courts, said in an email.

I see the same old slogans are in place – i.e., blame the judges, not the law. I suppose it’s a way to cover up the fact that, even with control of all branches of government, the anti-abortionists still can’t get satisfaction. Now, maybe it’s just a Constitutional problem – but maybe the GOP is just using them to get elected.

Or maybe they’re just too extreme.

A small sampling of only the interesting views, starting with something slightly …. you know ….

On Empirical SCOTUS, Adam Feldman examines the data for SCOTUS performance when a number other than nine has been the counting of the justices. His conclusion?

There is a lot of data to digest from this post.  What are the key takeaways?

• There have been thousands of cases where other than nine justices voted and the Court still was able to come to decisions on the merits.
• These cases were heard during years where the Court’s size was set to nine-members as well as when the Court was structured with other numbers of justices (these Courts have been composed of ten to one justice(s)).
• A relatively small portion of the cases with decisions from other than nine justices ended in equally divided Courts.
• The percentage of cases decided by equally divided Courts increased significantly in the 20^th century although it has diminished in the last several Court eras.

Basically there appears to be nothing inherently wrong with the notion of a Court of a different size than nine.  It should continue to function as Courts with an even number of members have historically come to decisions as well.  Importantly though, when the number of justices on the Court has been set to any number other than nine, this decision was made by Congress through legislation.  The hold out on hearings for the Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, is unprecedented and there are political processes in place that could achieve the same outcome of an eight-member Court.  Thus there are data to back up the proposition that the Court will not fail with other than nine-members.  There are more politically credible ways to achieve alternative Courts sizes though than merely suppressing the Senate vote.

In his earlier essay, he describes how a polarized court with an odd number of justices can leave decision-making in the hands of one man:

In fact, it is Justice Kennedy’s vote that has often dictated whether the conservative or liberal position wins out in close cases. This places the power to define the direction of Supreme Court precedent in Justice Kennedy’s hands, especially in some of the most significant and contentious cases.

The problem that the Court faces with nine Justices is similar to the problem it faces with eight Justices, although the effects are different. When Justice Scalia was still a member of the Court, four Justices tended to vote in the liberal direction (Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan) and four tended to vote in the conservative direction (Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito). This created a vacuum of power for the swing Justice, Justice Kennedy, to usurp, causing his vote to often be decisive.

Justice Kennedy’s ability to shape the Court’s opinions is further accentuated by the number of majority opinions he wrote in 5-4 cases compared to all other Justices during this period. Majority opinion assignment in close cases can be offered in exchange for a vote in a certain direction.

Is that a monster at my breast, or am I just nursing?

Having just finished viewing Voodoo Island (1957) with Boris Karloff and Elisha Cook, Jr., I am forced to the unpalatable position of finding that the theme of the movie is that one should abandon rationality and surrender oneself to the mystical forces behind Voodoo. A man is examined by a noted scientist and doctor, Phillip Knight (Karloff). He betrays no organic disease, but is unresponsive. He and three others had been dispatched to an island to survey it for a tropical island; he is the only one who returned, found on an island 50 miles away from the target.

Knight proposes they visit the island in hopes of discovering the source of the man’s problem. After an obstacle-ridden flight, they finally arrive at the nearest island with a landingstrip, and embark on a boat for the final leg. Despite mechanical problems, the island is attained. Various adventures occur as members of the party are picked off by carnivorous plants, voodoo, and perhaps other things – I sorta lost focus part way through.

Eventually, taken captive, the primacy of the voodoo is demonstrated for Knight, who, faced with his error, immediately acknowledges it and makes full confession to the native chief, upon which the survivors are released.

Good acting and dialog couldn’t cover for a story that never quite finds a focus. While the opening scene had my Arts Editor and I initially fooled (and pleased at being fooled), the carnivorous plants were mostly laughable – it would have been better to just hint at them, make us wonder. I hoped the initial scene would set a theme to follow, but no, the director didn’t go that direction, at least with anything notable. And the characters were never really setup properly, so it was hard to feel sympathy for each one at they met their fates. Perhaps they shook hands with their fates – it seems like the polite thing to do.

Really mediocre, so not recommended (unless you’re an Adam West completist – bonus, he doesn’t get a credit, so you have to guess!).

A moss on a wall consumed my camera’s interest… I’m awaiting identification of it on iNaturalist.

If you’re tired of the usual voices lamenting or championing the Clinton email incident, Jack Goldsmith and Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare offer an extended analysis of FBI Director Comey’s actions from the perspective of professionals working in the national security arena.

5) Why did [Comey publicly announce his recommendation], and was he justified in doing it?

Comey answered this question in part in his press conference. He stated at the outset that Justice Department and the rest of the government “do not know what I am about to say.” And he later explained: “In this case, given the importance of the matter, I think unusual transparency is in order.”

There were surely other reasons for Comey’s “unusual transparency” that he did not mention. Primarily, the public perceptions that the independent judgment of Comey’s superiors, the President and the Attorney General, was tainted on the matter.

In October 2015, President Obama stated that Clinton’s personal email server “is not a situation in which America’s national security was endangered,” and the following April, a few months before Comey’s press conference, Obama said of the Clinton email controversy that Clinton “would never intentionally put America in any kind of jeopardy.” Both of these statements gave the appearance to many observers that the President had prejudged legally relevant aspects of the investigation. And, of course, Clinton is also the nominee of the President’s own party.

To make matters worse, Attorney General Lynch was compromised not just by these statements by the President, but much more so by Bill Clinton’s controversial private visit on her airplane on the Phoenix tarmac; by the Clinton camp floating the possibility, a few weeks before Comey’s press conference, that she would consider keeping Lynch as her Attorney General; and by Lynch’s own unclear statements the weekend before Comey’s press conference about her role in the final decision to prosecute.

In short, Comey’s superiors were compromised in a fashion that threatened to taint the investigative conclusions, including his independent recommendation not to prosecute. This taint around the Clinton investigation was the original set of factors that hemmed Comey in from the beginning.

In this highly unusual circumstance—a circumstance made more unusual by the fact that the central focus of the investigation was the Democratic nominee for the presidency—we believe Comey was justified in announcing his recommendation and reasons for non-prosecution in public. Comey’s unusual action was the least bad option he had for preserving the integrity and independence of his investigation and recommendation.

In other words, if you want a black & white judgment on Comey, Clinton, or for that matter, Trump – you won’t get it in this article. But you will get an up close and personal view of Comey’s actions and why his hand may have been forced. But they do make the following important remark:

… if there is more that Comey can say, he should probably do so—even at the risk of sliding further down the slippery slope he is on. Specifically, assuming the following statements are true, it would be worth Comey’s saying them publicly:

• The FBI has come into possession of a large trove of additional emails that have to be reviewed. To say that something has to be reviewed does not mean it contains anything implicating anyone of anything. It means only that the material has to be reviewed.
• As I stated in my original letter, the reason I sent the letter was to inform Congress of a development that required me to revise my statement to Congress about the investigation’s being complete.
• Nobody should draw any conclusions about anyone’s conduct based on the fact that the FBI is reviewing these emails.
• Nobody should draw the conclusion that anyone sent or received additional classified material or that any material undermines the FBI’s prior investigative conclusions based on the fact that the FBI is reviewing these emails.
• The fact that the FBI is reviewing new emails means only that the FBI is reviewing new emails, nothing more.

Unfortunately, at this point in time it would be well for the FBI to reach a speedy conclusion.

On Lawfare Clint Watts, in arguing for a re-evaluation of our counter-terrorism alliances, gives examples of the occasional contradiction:

Moreover, the cross-cutting, ad hoc development of counterterrorism alliances have put America at odds with other state partners while simultaneously confirming the grievances of terrorists. The current U.S. fight against the Islamic State provides a prime example. The U.S. decision to lead the fight against the Sunni Arab Islamic State has resulted in a) support to an Iraqi Army backed by Iran with whom the U.S. conducts nuclear negotiations that agitate Sunni partners; b) partnering with Kurdish forces while simultaneously allying with their enemy, Turkey, for airbases; c) working with Saudi Arabia while they pursue a sectarian conflict against Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthis and inflame sectarianism throughout the Middle East; and d) negotiating, partnering and then breaking off cooperation with Russia while they undertake airstrikes on Syrian civilians. Aside from the contradictory implications in fighting the Islamic State, the U.S. counterterrorism approach has established enduring alliances with nations that have also been sources of terrorism – namely Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. These three so-called essential partners in America’s counterterrorism operations, it could be argued, also represent the three largest fountains of jihadi terrorism over the past thirty years.

What does Clint suggest be done?

In the near term, problematic counterterrorism partners like Pakistan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia should be put on notice – assistance is no longer unconditional. Dr. Dafna H. Rand and Dr. Stephen Tankel’s recommendations in their report, “Security Cooperation & Assistance: Rethinking The Return On Investment,” provide essential guidance for U.S. counterterrorism alliances beyond 2016. They note that, “clearly identifying the goals of a particular security assistance and cooperation initiative, the time frame for achieving them, and agreed-upon metrics and methods for evaluating outcomes is essential in support of broader national security policy.” Beyond prioritizing objectives, U.S. counterterrorism efforts should understand the tradeoffs with partnerships, establish leverage in these relationships, and identify and apply foreign aid and military assistance under spelled out conditions. If counterterrorism partners cross-specified thresholds, say by committing human rights violations or oppressing minorities in pursuit of terrorists, then alliances should be ended.

There is a hint of interference in the internal affairs of other countries, but while some think it’s entirely reasonable to promulgate a rule against such activities, in truth I think it’s on a case by case basis. In fact, I think a more experienced commentator might be able to make the argument that the internal actions of some country will eventually reflect in its external actions, so if internally they’re involved in some activity detrimental to our interests, or to people to which we have some sympathy, then we might consider whether, in a few years, that activity might translate into some external activity that directly impacts our interests.

Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight comments on the race as of today – and how the email scandal may be impacting the polls. It all seems to hinge on North Carolina:

Florida is a well-polled state, and Clinton remains slightly ahead in the polling average there, with a lead of about 1 percentage point overall in our forecast. But Florida is now somewhat less likely to jump its position in the queue and save Clinton if she has last-minute problems elsewhere on the map, such as in Pennsylvania or Michigan. By contrast, two new polls of North Carolina showed Clinton with leads of 3 and 6 points, a problem for Trump given that Clinton has a substantial lead based on early voting in the state. …

OK, this is getting far into the weeds. Obviously, Trump doesn’t have an easy path forward if he loses North Carolina. The point is really just this: Despite the recent tightening, Clinton has a fairly significant lead in the polls of about 5 percentage points. So in order to win, Trump needs a further shift because of Comey or some other news — or he needs the polls to have been off the mark to begin with. In the event of a last-minute shift or a significant polling error, the order of the swing states could easily be scrambled, such that Clinton wins North Carolina while losing Pennsylvania or Michigan, for example. With the race in a somewhat dynamic state as we enter the final full week of the campaign, we encourage you to think broadly about how the Electoral College might play out instead of fixating on just a few scenarios.

Obviously, early voting is having an impact on campaign strategies. Early voters can retract their votes, but that requires additional effort, so if you have an ‘October surprise’ up your sleeve – when do you let it loose? To impact the early voters so they don’t have to retract their votes? But if your surprise doesn’t have staying power, then that may be a failed strategy. Two October surprises? That can be hard to find – or fake up.

A reader provides a correction concerning St. Paul and the Broken Bones:

Cool band, but they aren’t local, they’re from Birmingham, Alabama.

Oops. Quite right.

A reader has more interest in emissions than cosmic radiation:

The emissions graph was even more interesting.

So I’ll take this opportunity to glance at the NOAA Mauna Koa monitoring station again:

Continued reaction to burning hydrogen in Minnesota:

Not sure how much worse it could be than it already is. Glad that studded tires are allowed on bicycles.

The real question is whether there’s a stud on your bicycle. Heh. Another reader:

I don’t think even 212º warm is warm enough on those minus 20º days. Some water vapor will freeze directly to the pavement, going right from gas to solid.

Quite possibly. Remember this?

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp5UoSNW5G8
So I wonder how much H₂O would be produced by a typical vehicle on the highway. Are we going to see cars with little bladders attached to their tailpipes? Or would this happen?

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMSmWs8evzg

A reader writes about rising insurance rates:

To say nothing of the fact that rates would have gone up anyway, even without the ACA. When in the last 10 or 20 years, have annual health insurance ever not gone up significantly each year? I also suspect collusion: Humana’s CEO threw such a hissy fit when the federal government did not allow Humana to merge with Aetna, that he and Humana then claimed they were losing money on the ACA and would not participate next year. That, despite the fact that Humana just had its most profitable year, ever, IIRC.

So yeah, how about some actual data, some actual calculations, some actual thinking about how to fix the problem, instead political whining?

It’s too bad all those pissed off voters supporting Trump are not directing their anger at some of the real culprits, like large corporations and the 0.1% wealthiest who have effectively bought our government, who now take hundreds of times more income than they did a few decades ago (compared to negligible gains for most people), and Wall Street banksters. If those people had some real fear of being called out, harassed and tarred and feathered, I bet things would change a lot faster than they will now. But this is how they stay in power — by having the angry masses misdirected into thinking it’s other citizens’ fault (the poor, the immigrants, the “colored”, the liberals, the non-“Christian”, etc.). Never mind the man behind the curtain.

Yes – and by having nation-wide chains. The fact is, if the CEOs had to live in the towns they served, rate increases would have to be justified – or the CEO would become a very lonely person. As with industrial pollution, it’s harder to have a social impact on those who think their purpose in life is to make money when they live half a continent away – rather than just across the street.

American citizens nearly can’t avoid the simmering controversy over the Clinton emails. Not any that might be within them, mind you, but the controversy that they’ve been hacked and released via Wikileaks.

Which leaves me, with 35+ years experience in software, with the question – how do you verify these are the real deal, and not just the paranoid delusions of some smart folks?

Oh, there are ways, of course. The easiest is to obtain official access to the alleged source server and start verifying each email. Once you have that access, it’s not hard to verify quickly and accurately. Assuming, of course, that no encryption technology has been employed, that they haven’t been deleted.

And that you can gain that access. Suppose someone releases emails indicating a felony has been committed. Is this good enough reason for the issuance of a warrant permitting the local gendarmerie to seize and examine your computer? Beats me – but I’d be wondering if this was a fishing expedition involving a fictitious email, employed as an excuse to examine the contents of the email of some target.

So now we learn that Russia, so recently called upon by Mr. Trump to continue to hack the Democratic National Committee, has itself been hacked by a Ukrainian group named Cyber Hunta. NBC News reports:

A Ukrainian group calling itself Cyber Hunta has released more than a gigabyte of emails and other material from the office of one of Vladimir Putin’s top aides, Vladislav Surkov, that show Russia’s fingerprints all over the separatist movement in Ukraine.

While the Kremlin has denied the relationship between Moscow and the separatists, the emails show in great detail how Russia controlled virtually every detail of the separatist effort in the Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine, which has torn the country apart and led to a Russian takeover of Crimea.

And unlike the reported Russian hack of the Democratic National Committee, the Ukrainian hack reached deep into the office of the Russian president.

“This is a serious hack,” said Maks Czuperski, head of the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council (DFRL), which has searched through the email dump and placed selected emails on-line.

So what do we know? We know a Ukrainian group has released emails that show the Russians are responsible for the separatist movement in the Crimean region. But do we know they’re authentic? After all, this is the holy grail of Cyber Hunta.

Just as I wonder whether these supposed leaks of Clinton emails are authentic mail, or of someone’s fan fiction, I must grant equal skepticism towards the Ukrainian hack. I have no love for the current Russian government, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Cyber Hunta is honest in their assertions that this is, indeed, what it purports to be.

But where’s the supporting evidence? How do I know?

One problem is I know too much, as a software engineer, as to how these things are put together; and then again, I don’t know enough about the cleverness of the software engineers involved; and yet I’ve seen some purportedly clever people do some really stupid things, so again I know too much. Welcome to the roller coaster. Without more technical information, I’m sort of at sea here.

But long range, what does this portend for the citizen at large? To my sensibilities, either a procedure which guarantees the trustability of the source of the released material must be produced & publicized so that we can trust, say, Wikileaks – or the general citizen might be best advised to ignore these leaks as blatant attempts to manipulate public opinion.

With a general consensus to ignore such leaks, perhaps we can regain a sense of public equilibrium. They might become white noise, or they might disappear from public forums. Not that this espionage will stop – but espionage in the interests of swaying public opinion is a far different thing from espionage to acquire private information, such as chemical formulas. That has been going on since before alchemy came on the scene, and it’ll always continue.

But we’re at that queer moment in history, where the dangers of the leaks, the potential fallaciousness of the leaks, has not fully impacted us, and therefore long-term, nation-wide consensus on how to deal with such unverified leaks has yet been reached – and we’re left wondering just how these leaks about Clinton and Russia will impact each in the long run.

Several years ago I and my then-girlfriend (now wife and Arts Editor) went to a Minnesota Fringe Festival show that staged some of the works of Jack Chick, the Christian  fundamentalist tract writer. The show took several of his tracts and turned them into plays.

As I recall, virtually everyone in the audience roared with laughter at the ridiculous antics and stereotypes on display, mostly warning of the sinful habits of non-white, non-protestant, drinking, cussing, gambling, fornicating folk, and their eventual spirals straight to a fiery hell.

Virtually everyone laughed, I said. Everyone but my wife.  She sat in her seat writhing in embarrassment at the hypocrisy of the message being presented.

She grew up in a fundamentalist Baptist home, and she said when these same stories were enacted at the churches she attended, they were often done in the exact same way, bigoted, judgmental humor and all.  After all, fundamentalists like to laugh, too.  But illustrative of the wide cultural chasms that Americans often have to deal with, the liberal city-dwellers viewing the Fringe Festival production saw the stories as nothing more than a way to poke fun at the absurdity of Chick’s tracts, while for some Americans in the religious sector, these are still sources of wisdom, to be considered serious messages from God.

Well, now Jack Chick is gone, as reported by Americans United for the Separation of Church and State:

Americans United gets numerous messages from our adoring fans in the Religious Right, many of which are of the snail mail variety. Some of our biggest admirers take it upon themselves to send us little cartoon pamphlets promising damnation if we don’t change our evil ways.

These evangelistic brochures tackle a range of topics, including gay rights, evolution, abortion and the supposedly satanic nature of Halloween. Given the quirkiness of the cartoons, we tacked some of them up on a wall outside an AU’s staffer’s office.

These pamphlets, known as “Chick Tracts,” were created and published by a fundamentalist evangelist named Jack Chick. Chick died last week at the age of 92 and he will be missed – mainly by some of the people who send us mail.

Here’s a sample tract from chick.com, for those interested. I’d been aware of Chick for years, but kinda put him in the same category as the Church of the Subgenius – a little too weird to believe. Just scanning Jack’s biography on Wikipedia, I see this:

He was a believer in the King James Only movement, which posits that every English translation of the Bible more recent than 1611 promotes heresy or immorality.

Being agnostic myself, I can only wince. I guess I can see the logic, since once you believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, you can use circular logic to rationalize anything. But I’ll still wince.

Or, in other words, the forgotten pictures from our North Shore trip.

jalousie window:

Source: modernize.com

… is a window composed of parallel glass, acrylic, or wooden louvres set in a frame. The louvres are joined onto a track so that they may be tilted open and shut in unison to control airflow, usually by turning a crank. [Wikipedia]

Seen on our walk today. I’d never heard the word jalousie before.

A lovely walk down Iglehart, between Fairview and Cleveland, in St. Paul, MN, yielded a few pictures.

And my favorite.

A reader wrote quite a while ago a rejoinder concerning my earlier comment on male behaviors, and I’ve been too busy to read it:

The ‘default’ rate of aggression is subject to many variables – personal temperament, cultural expectations, upbringing, prevailing and local economic conditions, to name a few.

It’s undoubtedly influenced by the presence/absence of civilization, and how a given culture defines civilized behavior.

Culture can moderate aggression, but even that varies with economic conditions, even within economic classes in the same culture.

There’s also a lot of variance within a given culture at different times. Changes in tolerance for domestic abuse within the U.S. in the past half-century is one example.

In mating terms, there will be temperamental variance in populations. Some will seek to spread seed as wide and far as possible, ala Genghis Khan, an evolutionary strategy that is inevitably paired with aggression.

I would predict men employed in aggressive occupations – military, law enforcement, football – will also have higher rape rates. That’s not to say it’s a conscious strategy, but in evolutionary terms it’s a self-reinforcing one.

Men who are temperamentally nurturing pursue a different strategy, by focusing on fewer offspring and maximizing their potential, and will reflect lower rape rates.

This isn’t a strict binary, of course – some men are capable of being both aggressive and nurturing, and that is reflected in adultery rates.

Ultimately the strategies that work best from an evolutionary standpoint are the ones that get perpetrated, and the most effective strategies vary with prevailing conditions.

Up to the last paragraph I agree with little comment. However, in the last one I think there’s some room for disagreement, or more accurately, elaboration. I think the problem is the definition of “work best” – what does the author mean, or even better, what does this mean in global abstract terms?

If those which seem to work best result in the rape of women, what does this mean for human culture? Will the currently comprehensive versions go away as the consciousness of women, periodically assaulted and sometimes extinguished, folds up and goes away? Or are males violently subordinated? (See A WORLD BETWEEN, by Norman Spinrad, for a random association event.)

I can see the readers point that, by definition, the best reproductive strategies survive for reuse. However, I am not yet convinced of the tacit point that self-conscious intelligence is a successful survival strategy; and whether our successors evolve into less intelligent beings, or less individualistic, or whatever, the entire plasticity of this process over time tends to make me wonder about the stability of reproduction strategies over time as well. Of course, I merely speculate; I have no data to back this up.

In a whimsical sidestep in the Dakota pipeline saga, as the protesters were driven back, their places were taken – by buffalo. HuffPo reports:

“The only reason we are moving back is because they are armed with batons, tear gas, riot gear, weapons, rubber bullets,” the activist says. “That’s what it takes for them to push us back. They carry weapons just because they’re scared.”

As he begins a sentence saying, “This land means everything,” he abruptly shouts, “Look at all those buffalo!” as the camera pans to the herd. He can also be heard shouting, “Tatanka,” a word referring to the American bison in the Lakota language. (American bison are commonly called “buffalo” colloquially, though they are technically not true buffalos.)

Some outlets have characterized the bison as coming out of “nowhere.” But journalist Ryan Redhawk, who runs the Facebook page Standing Rock Rising, told The Huffington Post that witnesses said the animals were previously fenced in and people involved in the protest efforts let them out. Sacheen Seitcham of the Westcoast Women Warrior Society told HuffPost that someone appeared to be herding them, but she didn’t know who.

It has wonderful symbolic value for the protesters, particularly the Indians; no doubt it just pissed off the company workers and law enforcement who have to deal with another source of encumberment and danger.

In other news, the above HuffPo article also references a Reuters article on a claim by American Indians that it’s all their land anyways:

Native American protesters on Monday occupied privately owned land in North Dakota in the path of the proposed Dakota Access Pipeline, claiming they were the land’s rightful owners under an 1851 treaty with the U.S. government.

The move is significant because the company building the 1,100-mile (1,886-km) oil pipeline, Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners LP, has bought tracts of land and relied on eminent domain to clear a route for the line across four states from North Dakota to Illinois. …

Protesters on Monday said the land in question was theirs under the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, which was signed by eight tribes and the U.S. government. Over the last century, tribes have challenged this treaty and others like it in court for not being honored or for taking their land.

“We have never ceded this land. If Dakota Access Pipeline can go through and claim eminent domain on landowners and Native peoples on their own land, then we as sovereign nations can then declare eminent domain on our own aboriginal homeland,” Joye Braun of the Indigenous Environmental Network said in a prepared statement.

Given the shameful manner in which treaties here (and in Canada!) have been abrogated over the years, I can only hope they win this claim. It’s not clear if this is an actual suit in court or not.

QuHarrison Terry sounds the alarm for the consequences of losing the Internet on (ironically?) LinkedIn, an Internet-only company:

These attackers want to disable everything. Companies like Dyn are being targeted nationwide in an effort to stop internet access throughout the entire country.

Don’t believe me?

You can literally watch cyber warfare live right here, and see where attacks are coming from and who is being targeted.

While we don’t know who is responsible for the attacks and why they are doing it, we can only imagine an apocalyptic scenario of life without the internet.

Some of his imagination at work.

You decide no more work is getting done today, so you head home. Trying to call an Uber, you are stopped by an error message. Without a car, you walk to the bus stop, on the way noticing all the traffic lights are out and the roads are packed with angry and confused drivers…

An eery feeling passes through your body.

Hours have passed and there is no news on what is happening. It’s not until a neighbor fires up an old radio that you hear the internet is down and will be back up shortly. Broadcasters tell you to remain calm and to stay home.

An entire day passed and broadcasters continue to tell you very little. Fearing the worst, you head over to the grocery store to stock up on food, only to run into 500 hundred other people with the same idea. The manager of the store is yelling, “You must present cash at the door. We aren’t accepting any cards.” The tension of scared civilians is thick when all of a sudden a car drives through the window of the store–it’s the tipping point the crowd needed to burst into the store. Chaos ensues. People fight over rice and water.

The link he makes available is to NorseCorp. I did a little research and they appear to have a spotty history, but I’m unsure as to their current status or reputation. Their blog is a broken link. Their online depiction of real-time Internet attacks is fascinating – but is it trustworthy? Here’s a screenshot:

Source: NorseCorp.com

I poked at it a little bit and decided I’m not technically up to speed on security anymore. Last time I was active, we called them ruggies and estimated their average age to be 15 and living in the upscale part of the Twin Cities – back in the 1980s.

Things have changed, haven’t they?