Unsightly Mental Blemishes

Katherine Martinko on Treehugger.com reports on the travails of the dairy industry:

If you ever felt like crying over spilled milk, now’s the time. Dairy farmers in the United States have dumped more than 43 million gallons of milk between January and August of 2016. This milk has been poured into fields, manure lagoons, and animal feed, or down the drain at processing plants. According to the Wall Street Journal, this amount of milk is enough to fill 66 Olympic-sized swimming pools and is the most wasted in at last 16 years.

The problem is that the United States is in the midst of a massive dairy glut. Farmers responded to a shortage two years ago that is now catching up with a nation unable to absorb the quantity of dairy being produced. Prices are so low – down 36 percent from in 2014 – that “many can’t even afford to transport raw milk to market at current prices.”

Which strikes me as a classical example of a positive feedback loop – a phrase to which most engineers respond with a twitch and a shake of the head: “Can’t live with that.” The problem is that the feedback loop of information is not properly modulated so that farmers know how many can go into dairy farming without flooding the market and forcing many of them out.

Of course, libertarians would just shrug and say this is a good thing, but in reality it’s inefficient and a depressing situation for the farmers involved – and which then leads to a scarcity situation down the road. Just think roller coaster, without the fun.

Not that I have any solutions to offer. The free market has brought many advances to agriculture, as with many other fields, but when it comes to food, rather than, say, computers, I get a little twitchy. I recognize that a mercantile system merely leads to stagnation, politicization, and eventually revolution; but the solution has its own host of fleas.

I only hope the fleas don’t carry the plague.

A report in the NewScientist 60 Second column (28 September 2016)  leaves me wondering:

A synthetic form of alcohol aims to give you all the buzz minus the hangover. The drink, known as “alcosynth”, is designed to mimic the positive effects of alcohol but without the nausea or throbbing head, claims its creator, David Nutt, at Imperial College London. His 90 or so patented alcosynth concoctions must go through clinical trials before being offered to the public.

So, how about the impaired judgment? But apparently the liver’s not a problem, Professor Nutt tells The Independent:

The Imperial College Professor and former government drugs advisor told The Independent he has patented around 90 different alcosynth compounds.

Two of them are now being rigorously tested for widespread use, he said – and by 2050, he hopes alcosynth could completely replace normal alcohol.

“It will be there alongside the scotch and the gin, they’ll dispense the alcosynth into your cocktail and then you’ll have the pleasure without damaging your liver and your heart,” he said.

If it doesn’t impair your judgment and destroy your memory, it may not be the choice of alcoholics. Roger Ebert, the late, famed movie critic, was an alcoholic and wrote about it:

I’ve known two heavy drinkers who claimed they never had hangovers. I didn’t believe them. Without hangovers, it is possible that I would still be drinking. Unemployed, unmarried, but still drinking–or, more likely, dead. Most alcoholics continue to drink as long as they can. For many, that means death. Unlike drugs in most cases, alcohol allows you to continue your addiction for what’s left of your life, barring an accident. The lucky ones find their bottom, and surrender.

So what will alcosynth offer to the alcoholic?

The Web knows all.

The announcement that the United States would response “proportionately” to the alleged hacks by Russia of the American electoral process (by which I encompass both the Democratic database as well as various State-level electoral processes) has drawn various responses. First up is Susan Hennessey on Lawfare, who covers the uncertainties of cyberwarefare episodes and provides a lot of interesting thoughts on the situation:

Public attribution is itself a significant government response and elucidates some of the administration’s sensibilities regarding line-drawing. But it also raises a difficult question about how we should think about what we are responding to. It appears that the trigger for the Obama administration was the targeting of election infrastructure and the threat to actual or perceived electoral integrity. But it is unclear that the type of election system intrusion thus far at issue—probing and scanning but not disrupting—would have been enough to warrant a response by itself. By linking the two activities together and to an overarching motivation—to interfere with the electoral process—the Administration is signaling that its response is to a course of conduct, not a single event.

Taking a broad view is sensible where Russia undertakes hybrid actions—intrusion into computer systems (malicious cyber activity) combined with the strategic release of documents (information warfare)—as well as larger efforts to undertake many distinct activities to achieve an overall goal—to sow distrust in the US electoral system. But the broad view here—where individual “below established threshold activities” combine to cross the threshold—also requires knowing what to group together.

We simultaneously engage Russia in cyberspace in a great many contexts, just as we do in diplomacy. And not everything is related. As Jack noted in a recent panel at Yale Law School, when we step back, it’s hard to know where the DNC and related leaks fall in the deterrence cycle. Are the leaks Russian retaliation for US action, such as imposing sanctions for Crimea? Or are the leaks intended by Russia to be a deterrent response to US cyber espionage? Or is this, as the White House statement would indicate, just a general attempt by Russia to see if it can sway the US election in its favor? Intelligence collection can answer some of those questions. But persistent uncertainty is a feature of cyber conflicts that is unlikely to ever resolve entirely.

It’s worth reading the whole article. She also provides this link to the US policy on cyber deterrence – which I have not read.

Karl Bode on techdirt prefers to attempt to occupy the moral high ground:

We’ve noted several times how launching cyberwar (or real war) on Russia over the recent spike in hack attacks is a notably idiotic idea. One, the United States effectively wrote the book on hacking other countries causing all manner of harm (hello, Stuxnet), making the narrative that we’re somehow defending our honor from shady international operatives foundationally incorrect. And two, any hacker worth his or her salt either doesn’t leave footprints advertising their presence, or may conduct false flag operations raising the risk of attacking the wrong party. …

Again though, the very idea that the United States would be “responding” is fundamentally incorrect. We’ve been engaged in nation state hacking and election fiddling for decades, happily hacking the planet for almost as long as the internet has existed. We use submarines as underwater hacking platforms, the U.S. government and its laundry list of contractors routinely hacking and fiddling with international elections and destroying reputations when and if it’s convenient to our global business interests. Our behavior in 1970s South America giving tech support to Operation Condor is the dictionary definition of villainy.

He is probably correct on the technical aspects, although I’m no expert. However, on the stickier aspects, I do not think past moral indignities that stained our country’s honor, as repugnant as they were, and even eventually counterproductive, requires us to bare our breast to the bloody blade of the assassin. Perhaps we should examine the histories of all countries, and then demand that each sacrifice in proportion to their past crimes?

It’d be one poverty-stricken world after that exercise.

We might be better served by examining how poorly the previous behaviors have served us in the long run, ruining our reputations, etc, and then vow to do better in the future. And if Russia is indeed involved in this mess, respond. Perhaps Karl should review the behavior of Russia in World War II.

Here are some questions to consider and answer, if only in your head. Attribution of these questions will come later.

1. Please tell me which one you think is more important for a child to have: independence or respect for elders?
2. Please tell me which one you think is more important for a child to have: obedience or self-reliance?
3. Please tell me which one you think is more important for a child to have: to be considerate or to be well-behaved?
4. Please tell me which one you think is more important for a child to have: curiosity or good manners?

A distracting picture of a fall leaf; it has no other significance

OK, so what’s the point? My Arts Editor sent me this article by Amanda Taub on Vox that explores the scientific research on the rise of the far-right within the GOP, what it meant in the past, and what it means for the future. This is some fascinating research:

[PhD student Matthew] MacWilliams studies authoritarianism — not actual dictators, but rather a psychological profile of individual voters that is characterized by a desire for order and a fear of outsiders. People who score high in authoritarianism, when they feel threatened, look for strong leaders who promise to take whatever action necessary to protect them from outsiders and prevent the changes they fear.

So MacWilliams naturally wondered if authoritarianism might correlate with support for Trump.

He polled a large sample of likely voters, looking for correlations between support for Trump and views that align with authoritarianism. What he found was astonishing: Not only did authoritarianism correlate, but it seemed to predict support for Trump more reliably than virtually any other indicator.

Meanwhile, Professors Marc Hetherington of Vanderbilt and Jonathan Weiler of University of North Carolina were publishing a book on the same subject:

Hetherington and Weiler published a book about the effects of authoritarianism on American politics. Through a series of experiments and careful data analysis, they had come to a surprising conclusion: Much of the polarization dividing American politics was fueled not just by gerrymandering or money in politics or the other oft-cited variables, but by an unnoticed but surprisingly large electoral group — authoritarians.

Their book concluded that the GOP, by positioning itself as the party of traditional values and law and order, had unknowingly attracted what would turn out to be a vast and previously bipartisan population of Americans with authoritarian tendencies.

This trend had been accelerated in recent years by demographic and economic changes such as immigration, which “activated” authoritarian tendencies, leading many Americans to seek out a strongman leader who would preserve a status quo they feel is under threat and impose order on a world they perceive as increasingly alien.

So the questions posted above come from that article and are considered a very slick way to elicit the information necessary to build the personality profile of a person with respect to their responses to an authoritarian figure. It’s quite interesting to consider how much you think your style of raising a child will affect their adult lives; from a discussion with my AE last night, and a long-ago discussion with my Mother, I know that some people can break free of their childhood training, especially if they perceive it as detrimental to their personal well-being; but in my experience, most people are more likely to build on, even strengthen their own training – so long as it has some perceived value in their lives.

A good summary of the typical ‘authoritarian’:

What these policies share in common is an outsize fear of threats, physical and social, and, more than that, a desire to meet those threats with severe government action — with policies that are authoritarian not just in style but in actuality. The scale of the desired response is, in some ways, what most distinguishes authoritarians from the rest of the GOP.

The article has way too much to summarize and talk about in a mere blog post, so I’m going to skip to one of Amanda’s conclusions as of the most interest to me:

To my surprise, the most compelling conclusion to come out of our polling data wasn’t about Trump at all.

Rather, it was that authoritarians, as a growing presence in the GOP, are a real constituency that exists independently of Trump — and will persist as a force in American politics regardless of the fate of his candidacy.

If Trump loses the election, that will not remove the threats and social changes that trigger the “action side” of authoritarianism. The authoritarians will still be there. They will still look for candidates who will give them the strong, punitive leadership they desire.

And that means Donald Trump could be just the first of many Trumps in American politics, with potentially profound implications for the country.

And so Amanda, and perhaps her professors, worry about a de-facto 3-party system.

But it doesn’t have to be so. If, in fact, this research is verified, it can also be acted on. And that will raise a lot of questions. By acting on it, I mean identifying processes by which we train children to not have these characteristics, or at least minimize them. But this, of course, raises questions of freedom: the freedom to raise our children as we wish. While that freedom is somewhat limited, as society comes to certain communal conclusions concerning corporal punishment, vaccinations, schooling, and other matters, our freedom to raise children is fairly remarkable, for both good and bad. I think attempting the social engineering that would reduce the salience of these particular motivations in individuals prone to them may be resented and actively fought by those who already have them and are raising children in their mode. After all, why should society have the right to judge an individual as being ‘authoritarian’ (or, more accurately, ‘authoritarian-responsive’), and to classify them as … undesirable?

I know I’d resent it.

So this research, like most good research, starts with one question and will leave a herd of them in its wake. They may tax the liberty-loving, even as those who they may protect do not appear to be liberty-loving in themselves.

When it comes to the public information about the upcoming election, readers have opinions. First up:

After the revelations about the bias of the press, the polls have less meaning. I really hope Trump wins by a landslide to again prove how biased these polls are.

I’m not sure which press my reader is reading. My impression is that, until recently, the mainstream press, not just Fox News, has been groveling at Trump’s feet. (Actually, even Fox News has started barking, to their minor credit.) During the GOP primary it was widely known that the Trump campaign was spending relatively little money. From the far-right The Blaze (or possibly InsideGov.com, from a note on The Blaze story):

Total Spending: $71,087,144
June Spending: $7,800,248
Total Vote Count: 13,706,642

Donald Trump’s campaign, half of which he financed himself, got a lot of bang for its buck. His financial efficiency may be attributed to the media, which gave him substantially more coverage than any other candidate.

(For those who are curious, he spent $5.19 per vote received during the primary, while John Kasich spent $4.57/vote to attain the (empty) title of most efficient GOP contender. Jeb Bush? $126.70. Poor old Lindsey? Oh, go look for yourself.)

The point being, if there was any bias during the early campaign, it was towards Trump. Now that we’ve transitioned into the general election and have watched the lies spew forth from Trump, I (like many others) argue that the general mainstream press is not biased towards either candidate, but is rather doing its job finally – calling out the candidates when they lie. If they have a bias, then the best bias they can have is to the truth. Facts on the ground. If Trump says he was never for the Iraq war, and the news organizations produce tapes of news shows where he’s for the war, then they should say as much, right to his face. Ditto with Clinton. According to the fact-checkers, she’s harder to catch on a lie – apparently she’s less likely to lie than Trump.

Another reader responds to the first:

What “revelations” about the bias of the press? You mean like the bias of Fox TV and virtually every talk radio show out there? Or maybe the bias of the entire Murdoch media empire?

And on the topic of polls another reader responds:

Why do the polls have less meaning?

And what recent election has proven that the polls are biased? 4 years ago the right was saying the polls were biased and Romney lost by what the polls said he was going to lose by. Get a grip man.

Insofar as the polls track the final results fairly closely, and especially the results of aggregators like FiveThirtyEight, I don’t think we’ll be seeing a landslide absent a black swan event. I expect Clinton is too professional to let that occur.

And one more comment in reaction to getting a grip …

On himself, not on the nearest female.

Hah!

It’s been a surreal year, and now it just got a little bit more surreal – but this time it doesn’t involved Donald Trump, but instead our next diplomat extraordinaire – Lindsey Lohan. Amberin Zaman reports for AL Monitor:

Goya: The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

Over the past week, images of the American actress, singer and model visiting Syrian refugee camps — cradling babies and sporting an Islamic-style headscarf — have been splashed across the pages of pro-government media outlets. Lohan’s compatriot Angelina Jolie has visited the same refugee camps along the Syrian border several times, but she never elicited the gushing enthusiasm afforded Lohan.Why the discrepancy? Because Lohan has waded into Turkish politics in a big way, spouting, among other things, one of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s worthier mantras: “The world is bigger than five.”

For Lohan’s American fans who need help deciphering Erdogan’s shorthand, it means the permanent membership of the UN Security Council should be expanded beyond its current five states, ostensibly to include Turkey. The fate of millions of people, Lohan solemnly observed in an interview with the pro-Erdogan ATV channel, should not be decided by five countries.

In another interview, with pro-government newspaper Haberturk, Lohan praised Erdogan for his handling of the July 15 coup attempt. The Turkish people truly respected him, she said. Lohan also gave Turkey’s tottering tourism industry a boost, asserting, “Turkey is a very safe and livable country.”

Nothing, however, will have won over more Turks than her tweeting “Terörü Lanetliyoruz,” which translates, “We curse terrorism.”

Some days you just want to hide in the back yard and not come out for a while.

By now, we’ve all heard about the recent trouble at Wells Fargo:

• 5300 employees fired for creating two million unauthorized customer accounts since 2011.
• The customers affected charged millions in fees against the illicit accounts opened in their names.
• John Stumpf, Chairman & CEO of Wells Fargo, fired effective immediately with no additional severance package.
• Stumpf to forfeit $41 million in unvested stock options, one of the largest bonus clawbacks in history according to the Wall Street Journal.  (Note:  He’s only forfeiting options that have no current value.  He keeps his vested options in the amount of $134 million previously paid as bonuses.)
• Wells Fargo fined $185 million for their actions (which, incidentally, isn’t that much for a company that reported a net income of $22.9 BILLION in 2015.)
• New CEO Tim Sloan promises to reform bank practices.  Whatever that means.

Pardon me if I don’t put too much faith in his promise of reforms.

Here’s the thing: I worked for Wells Fargo for 19 years,  In that time I witnessed the bank, first as Norwest, later as Wells Fargo (and then as Wachovia in all but name) evolve from a bank that was…well… a bank, offering checking, savings and loan accounts to private citizens and businesses, into a retail store, selling financial products.  By the end of my tenure at Wells, if you were a banker, teller, broker, financial advisor, loan officer or manager for the bank , your yearly bonus (if any), performance rating, opportunity for advancement, and salary were directly tied to how many financial products you sold each quarter.

The standard as stated by Wells Fargo was to sell eight separate financial products to each customer that walked through the door. If your customer had less than eight Wells Fargo products (things like Investment banking, securities, private, commercial and student loans, asset management, retirement products, health savings accounts, etc.) then as a good salesperson, you were expected to get them “up to speed”.  In fact, your job depended on it.  So much so, that many Wells Fargo “store” associates felt the need to game the system in order to meet their quarterly sales goals.

And the Wells Fargo powers-that-be have known for years that there was a problem. A problem large enough that every employee in every division in Wells had to take the same “Ethics” training course every year– a course where it was explained in detail how to game the system and how doing so would be wrong.  It was an online how-to for making those sales goals, with the caveat that if you were caught, you’d be fired.  If you were caught in a public manner, it would also mean loss of reputation for the bank, possible federal fines and loss of bank charter, lower stock prices, and so on.  You know… all those things that the bank really cares about…  Profit.  Net worth.  Stock price.  Power.  Prestige.

Thankfully, I spent the last 11 years in the Technology Division at Wells, so my desk was somewhat sheltered from the “sell, sell, sell” mentality. I helped develop the financial products that our bankers were supposed to push.  “Wealth Management” is still a phrase that makes my teeth itch.  I saw firsthand what the real goal of the bank was:  not to help the average citizen realize his or her financial goals, but to enhance the power, prestige and net worth of those in charge, at the expense of the drones on the bottom of the heap.  Because when it comes right down to it, offering up as scapegoat  5300 drones and one CEO is not too great a price to pay to ensure that the power, prestige and profit endure.  That’s business, right?

Yeah, that’s business. But it’s not right.

Banking used to be a service, as in “Financial Services”. They used to offer a safe place for the individual to house their money, so that it wouldn’t be stolen.  And while banks were keeping all our money “safe”, they were allowed to use it.  Often times, they’d offer interest as an incentive for being allowed to use our money.

In time, the bank came to regard those deposits as the bank’s money. The bank’s profits. The bank’s success.  And by extension, the officers of the bank shared in that success in very tangible ways.  The bank became the entity, with people working for the bank, instead of the bank working for its people.

And so we come to now, where the dreadnought that is Wells Fargo, in pursuit of ever-increasing profits, rolls over anyone in its way: its own employees, its leadership, its investors.

Until Wells Fargo abandons its greed and returns to a Service model, nothing will change.

Banking and Retail Sales do not mix.

We were walking about the neighborhood a couple of days ago, and I happened to notice a rather pretty leaf, and I pointed it out.

By the time we’d made it home, my Arts Editor had a compressed stack of leaves an inch thick.

Here’s a few pictures of them …

Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight, and renowned analyst of polls, gives his analysis of the polls since the second Presidential debate:

We’re spending a lot of time these days diagnosing whether Donald Trump’s position in the polls is merely bad or still getting worse. Most of the evidence on Wednesday — which included the first dusting of state polls since the second presidential debate, on Sunday night — fell into the “still getting worse” bucket. Trump’s chances are down to 14 percent in our polls-only forecast (against an 86 percent chance for Hillary Clinton) and to 17 percent, a record low for Trump, in our polls-plus forecast. …

Trump now trails Clinton by 6.5 percentage points in our popular vote forecast — by comparison, he was 4.6 points back of Clinton a week ago, on Oct. 5, before the videotape or the second debate. So he’s moving in the wrong direction as time is running out. While a Trump comeback is still mathematically feasible — Trump’s 17 percent chance in the polls-plus model, as we’ve pointed out before, is the same as your chances of losing a “game” of Russian roulette — it wouldn’t really have any good precedent in recent American presidential elections.

Sam Wang of the Princeton Election Consortium has been forecasting a Clinton win for quite some time:

Yesterday, Hillary Clinton’s PEC win probability hit 95%.

In last night’s debate, the 2005 candid video of Donald Trump saying what he does with women was still on everyone’s mind. In response, he brought up many topics beloved by Republican rank-and-file voters: Bill Clinton, Benghazi, emails…it was a veritable Greatest Hits of 1996-2016. The likely consequence of this scorched-earth strategy is that Republican leaders are trapped. All their base (R) belong to Trump. This will reverberate downticket.

This seems like a good time to reveal one of the Princeton Election Consortium’s own secrets. Thankfully, it does not involve an Access Hollywood video.

Here it is: poll-based Presidential prediction is not very hard.

I guess that is a pretty boring secret. Sorry.

It is an interesting irony that poll aggregation got popular in 2008, a year when there was not that much suspense in the Presidential race. That year, Barack Obama led John McCain for almost the entire campaign season, with the possible exception of the week after the Republican Convention, where Sarah Palin stole the show. That ended up with a 7-percentage-point popular win, and an electoral outcome of 365-173.

And if you want some of that winning progressive-style cheerleading, floridageorge on The Daily Kos provides a roundup of the polls since the second Presidential debate here, which follows individual states.

And what does it mean to Donald Trump? Courtesy CNN:

With Hillary Clinton extending her lead nationwide and in key battleground states, Trump is toying with what might be called “poll denialism,” giving his supporters license to dismiss the discouraging data.

“Even the polls are crooked,” he said at a Monday night rally, expressing disbelief that he is losing to Clinton in Pennsylvania. “Look, we’re in a rigged system.”

Trump has only topped Clinton in one scientifically conducted poll in Pennsylvania since it became clear he would be the GOP’s nominee back in April, while Clinton has been in the lead in 18 of them. In the most recent polls, Clinton holds a double-digit lead there.

His campaign has already been caught distributing a FiveThirtyEight map showing he’d be winning – if suffragism had failed back in 1919. Problem is, they had stripped the context from the map so the donors they were soliciting would think they’re winning.

If he gets blown out in a landslide, what’s he going to do? Claim every state but Alaska has somehow been corrupted? Or just sell the TV rights to the campaign’s retrospective for a ridiculous sum?

It has a certain aesthetic to it.

http://https://youtu.be/WREXBUZBrS8

For SaveTheFood.com.

(h/t Katherine Martinko @ Treehugger.com)

It appears the current North Carolina administration, assuming it retains power in the upcoming election, is planning to continue to defund education, as has been discussed in the past here. A North Carolina reader and educator sends a report entitled “McCrory administration asks schools to submit plans for $173 million budget cut,” from NC Policy Watch:

Request comes despite large state surplus and big unmet education needs

After years of complaints of paltry spending on public education in North Carolina, public school leaders say they may soon be facing another round of devastating cuts.

School officials say a late August memo from Gov. Pat McCrory’s chief budget officer signals that all state departments, including the public schools, must soon present options for a 2 percent cut in their 2017-2019 budget, roughly a $173 million loss for North Carolina schools.

Having talked with our NC educator, I know they’re already operating on a shoe-string, so this would further endanger the quality of education delivered to the children.

And this from a GOP administration which supposedly cherishes family values, one of which would supposedly be that children should be well-educated. In the absence of churlish thoughts, it’s a bewildering exercise to contemplate.

In view of the earlier absurd note (embedded in a long post here) from University of North Carolina board member Steven Long, “We’re capitalists, and we have to look at what the demand is, and we have to respond to the demand,” this report from the above article drew some hearty guffaws at its glib attempt to justify this potential action:

[Andrew Heath, state budget director for Governor McCrory] could not be reached for a phone interview this week, citing the ongoing cleanup from Hurricane Matthew, but he told Policy Watch in an email that the Aug. 26 memo is simply following “longstanding and prudent budget development process employed by” his Office of State Budget Management, or OSBM.

If this guy had any courage, he’d just say that the Governor wants to squeeze the nuts of the teachers’ union a little tighter, make the schools a little less effective, with a long range plan of introducing for-profit schools. Then they have faith that profit will drive good education. Is there any evidence that for profit schools outperform traditional, state-funded schools? While a well run for-profit will certainly outperform a poorly run traditional school, I am not aware of any strong evidence of for-profit showing persistent out performance, and I’d be suspicious of such a claim – interested readers may want to consult this post. In a nutshell, and something even I’m getting tired of writing (and persistent readers are no doubt tired of reading), the processes of the private sector are not optimized for the goals of the education sector – and that will usually result in sub-optimal results.

But apparently they have no balls, as the article goes on to note that some sort of odd subterfuge is being employed to obscure this deprivation from the North Carolina electorate.

Screenshot from RealClearPolitics

So how is the election looking for McCrory (R)? His opponent is current NC Attorney General Roy Cooper (D). The current polling shows McCrory may not be returned to office – he appears to be 4.6 percentage points behind, according to the RealClearPolitics polling data, as displayed to the right. However, Cooper is not over 50%, so McCrory might still pull the election out of the fire.

But if he does lose, I surely hope Cooper turns out to be an outstanding Governor. The recent devotion to turning education into a profit center (see previous posts in this thread to see the admiration of North Carolina’s methods by private education advocates) has certainly put a dent in North Carolina’s standing in education and may negatively affect children growing up in the State for years or even decades to come.

[Edited 12/10/16: fix typo.]

Deb & I unexpectedly lost a young friend today, Shante Benford. My FB posts:

I am heartbroken at this unexpected news. I had known Shante since her days in high school, she was a delightful in conversation as well as on the strip, and her loss will be devastating to her family.

RIP, Shante.

Deeply saddened at the sudden loss of Shante Benford. For those too young to know her, she was a fencer full of laughter and happiness, who I had the pleasure of directing in high school meets several times, and many more times of actually fencing her. Shante had a fiancee and a one year old daughter. Her mother, Maria (also known as Elena), still fences from time to time at TCFC.

I will miss her.

I hadn’t seen Shante more than sporadically over the last few years, as she graduated from college, had a child, and planned to marry, but each time it was as if she wasn’t aging – still so happy and delighted with her life, thrilled to see her friends. It’s a shock to lose someone so young, so full of life.

I feel a little older tonight.

It may not be entirely fair, but I’m going to tack this post onto this thread. Sometimes you have to wonder whether people are thinking for themselves. Look at this report from today on CNN:

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence dissuaded a female supporter Tuesday from starting a revolution in the wake of a Hillary Clinton victory in a passionate exchange here in Iowa during a town hall.

The woman, who identified herself as Rhonda, expressed concern about voter fraud in the upcoming elections saying that she was scared of the outcomes.

“Our lives depend on this election. Our kids’ futures depend on this election and I will tell you just for me, and I don’t want this to happen but I will tell you for me personally if Hillary Clinton gets in, I myself, I’m ready for a revolution because we can’t have her in,” she said emotionally.

Pence shook his head a little, saying: “Don’t say that.”

He added: “There’s a revolution coming on November 8. I promise you.”

She pressed him: “What are we going to do to safeguard our votes? Because we’ve seen how the Democratic Party is just crooked, crooked, crooked.”

Crooked, crooked, crooked. They’re so damn crooked that they control Congress by … negative amounts. That’s right, lady, negative amounts.

Don’t understand?

The GOP controls Congress. Not paying attention, lady? At the start of the current Congress, the GOP held 54 Senate seats, the Democrats held 44, and there were 2 Independent Senators. In the House, the GOP started with a 247 majority, vs the Democrats 188. I see that as of Sept 6 of this year, the Democrats have lost two more seats, and the GOP has lost one as well – presumably these are seats open due to death or resignation. I’m too irritated to go find out.

Don’t like my sarcasm, lady? Let’s try the 113th Congress. Your assertion does slightly better as the Democrats in the Senate began with a 53 seat majority, 2 for the Independent, and 45 for the GOP; however, in the house, the GOP remained in control, 233-200. For those of us paying the least little amount of attention, the GOP actually increased its control of the House in the last elections over this one. Man, those Democrats are crooked.

Lady, if you’re offended by my sarcasm, let me remind you that I’m an INDEPENDENT. This CRAPPY reasoning you’re exhibiting is offensive, it is dangerous to your State, and it is dangerous to the country.

Finally, in the 112th Congress, do we finally find the Democrats firmly in control, 56-42-2 in the Senate, 255-179 House. Did the disaster happen during that Congress? No, but a lot of whining was heard.

So you can go back further. Honestly, when the GOP is in control we seem to be having more problems than when the Democrats in control.

I see later in the report that Steve King, a very conservative radio talk-show host, was also present. Lady, stop licking the spoon of talk radio and get out and do some independent research. (In case you’re wondering, watching Fox News is not independent research. Here, read this piece on noted conservative Bruce Bartlett and why he hates Fox News.) Since you are, most honorably, concerned about votes, I suggest you research the subject of recent gerrymandering litigation.

I suspect you’ll find the GOP is the most guilty of this illicit activity. In case you’re not familiar with the term, gerrymandering refers to the drawing of districts in order to minimize the impact of one group of voters, and maximize the impact of another group of voters. If my guess is correct, that the GOP is the most likely to be gerrymandering districts (as they control most of the States as well), then, if you’re honest, you’ll apologize for your comments and rue the day you ever listened to conservative talk radio.

It’s not conservative.

In the second debate, Trump’s promise to to imprison Clinton if he wins, perhaps more than any other exchange during the debate, has excited comment and condemnation among the media and blogs (or at least the few that I read). Benjamin Wittes on Lawfare, a practicing lawyer and expert in international law, examines the implications from a legal & norms perspective – and it’s not encouraging:

Yet Trump’s comments induced horror among many commentators—and rightly so. The reason? His promise tramples on a number of cherished norms in the relationship between the Justice Department and the White House and in the conduct of the Justice Department itself. These norms restrict presidential and departmental behavior far more than the bare bones strictures of the Constitution. They are part of our constitutional fabric and rooted in important constitutional values. But our mode of enforcing them is not legal. It is political. It is a matter of our deepest expectations of the presidency and the Justice Department.

One of these norms is that the Justice Department doesn’t use the criminal enforcement powers of the federal government to go after the administration’s political opponents. This is the idea of impartial justice. But don’t kid yourself. The Constitution does not require impartial justice. The president has enormous discretion—which, put more crudely, means that we expect him to discriminate. One possible basis for this discrimination is how much he likes or dislikes you. Most people have committed crimes if you look hard enough to find them. What prevents administrations from focusing on the crimes of their opponents, rather than the most serious crimes committed by whomever, is nothing more than the institutional expectations we have of the executive branch—and it has of itself. These expectations sound less in law than they do in decency and civic virtue. What Trump is promising here is precisely war on that decency and civic virtue. …

Another norm Trump’s promises assault is the notion that while the Justice Department is part of the administration and the President is thus entitled to set policy priorities for it, the White House does not involve itself in or direct specific law enforcement operations or decisions. People don’t believe this, but it really is true; it’s a norm that guides the Justice Department across administrations of both parties. The President rightly decides whether drug enforcement or terrorism or child pornography or guns or financial crimes are enforcement priorities on which he thinks it important to focus. But when it comes to investigating or indicting someone, the White House generally makes a point of not getting involved—even in the highest-stakes cases.

This is a really good piece that illuminates some of the structure of government that most of us know nothing of.

Now, can you imagine Trump winning? Surviving impeachment proceedings for four years and then running again – and proceeding to subject to investigation and possible imprisonment his strongest political opponents – even possibly within the GOP? One might argue that his interest might be depleted before he even reaches the end of his first term, but once he achieves the Presidency, there’s still the question of who was the best President ever.

And that argument is really specious. For 200+ years we’ve never gone down this rabbit hole, a hole that we’ve seen destroy the entire political systems of other nations. One of our oldest slogans is “We’d better hang together or we’ll all hang apart”, and a President Trump, by attacking his enemies with the strongest tools at his disposal, something we’ve never done, would drive us apart. (See this post on the GOP’s future for more on the politics of division.) This is just as important as his attitude towards women.

Is it any surprise the GOP establishment is abandoning him? The real surprise is that the base, the everyday Americans who think he’s cool, haven’t finally started leaving him as well. His avid lust for power should be repulsive, and his numbers should be falling precipitously.

And perhaps they will in the next few days.

And I can’t imagine this guy’s part of the GOP future.  You do have to wonder what is going on in Maine when a clown like Governor LePage is making statements like these, courtesy Steve Benen on MaddowBlog:

LePage starts by saying he wants Trump “to show some authoritarian power,” which is obviously antithetical to our system of government at the most basic of levels. The governor then endorses “the rule of law,” which pretty directly contradicts the call for “authoritarian power” he mentioned just seconds earlier.

Then, note how the governor, moment[s] after calling for a chief executive to show “authoritarian power,” complains that President Obama operates independently too much, which in turn has pushed the United States towards “anarchy.”

Based on a lot of other statements he’s made, you have to seriously wonder if he can follow a logical line of reasoning. He seems to be the epitome of “Feel, don’t think.”

In WaPo Sarah Kaplan reports on the work explaining the impossible ghosts of the forests – albino redwoods:

Redwoods can also clone themselves, further complicating scientists’ understanding of them. Vast rings of related plants communicate via their roots, and during the hard months of winter and early spring, they’ll distribute nutrients evenly among themselves. Scientists have spilled dye onto trees at one end of a grove and traced it through the root network all the way to the other side. …

This collaboration lasts only until summer comes. Then every tree, sprout and branch must fend for itself. Those that can’t photosynthesize enough sugar are cut off from the shared root system and discarded during what’s known as the autumn “needle drop.” …

But [biologist Zane] Moore looks down as he explains how albino redwoods take advantage of their shared root system by siphoning off sugars produced by their healthy neighbors. “A lot of people thought they were parasites,” he said. “They even called them ‘vampire trees.’ ” …

Moore sought help from his fellow redwood fans up and down the California coast, soliciting clippings from both albino trees and their healthy hosts.

He found that the albino needles were saturated with what should have been a deadly cocktail of cadmium, copper and nickel. On average, white needles contained twice as many parts per million of these noxious heavy metals as their green counterparts; some had enough metals to kill them ten times over. Moore thinks faulty stomata — the pores through which plants exhale water — are responsible: plants that lose liquid faster must also drink more, meaning that the albino trees have twice as much metal-laden water running through their systems.

“It seems like the albino trees are just sucking these heavy metals up out of the soil,” Moore said. “They’re basically poisoning themselves.”

So they load up on nutrients from other trees in exchange for uptake of poisonous materials from the soil through which the redwoods’ roots intertwine. Analogous to mycoremediation.

Wow. I wonder if redwoods should be considered a single organism or a collection of organisms.

(h/t Melissa Breyer @ Treehugger.com)

A little ragged color to finish out the fall….

I received this video in my email:

http://www.carbontv.com/cams/carbontv-eagle-cam/bigfoot-sighting-on-live-eagle-cam/

If you don’t want to watch it, it shows an extremely blurry biped on an EagleCam in Michigan. Which convinces me, using an impeccable chain of reasoning, that when Bigfoot shows up in a Chicago taxi, he’ll be blurry and out of focus.

Much as when famed cryptozoologist Gary Larson captured an image of Nessie in a taxi.

The gold standard is an indisputable body, living or dead. Everything else is just titillating hoaxes.

Steve Benen gives an overview of the chaos that is the GOP:

On a related note, there’s never been a more important time to appreciate just how little loyalty Trump has towards the Republican Party as an institution. He has no real history with the party, no real future with the GOP, and no dependence on the party for any kind of support after Election Day (assuming he loses). Trump is focused entirely on Trump – which creates a dynamic in which his aides talk openly about undermining down-ballot Republican candidates, and Trump himself throws off his “shackles” and goes after his party’s House Speaker publicly.

Trump is creating an intra-party crisis, and if it does lasting harm to Republicans, he doesn’t care since he has no debts, commitments, or loyalties to the GOP itself.

Note how Trump is a private sector mentality at work – the world is his to conquer, and the rules are not iron-clad, but merely part of the calculation of the cost of any particular maneuver. In the private sector, there are laws, but one merely threatens to go to court and the opposition folds; occasionally a judge must be faced, but it’s only money to be lost – not prestige, not power. In a sense, he’s the GOP in ten years, the last vestiges of public sector decency banished.

In the public sector there are fewer laws, but more rules & traditions – and, if he’s truly the power-hungry narcissist, the latter mean very little.

But they are important, even critical, in the public sector. Government, especially in the United States, is a cooperative venture, an attempt to do the very difficult by using many talents and inputs. As such, it’s an ugly, inefficient venture, occasionally enraging, sometimes corrupt (but usually self-correcting).

This is why you hear that Justices Ginsburg & Scalia were actually close friends, despite their ideological differences; or you discover the late Senators Helms and Wellstone, two very different men, shared a bond, as explained by Helms on the occasion of Wellstone’s death:

“Despite the marked contrast between Paul’s and my views on matters of government and politics, he was my friend and I was his,” Helms said. “He unfailingly represented his views eloquently and emphatically. Paul Wellstone was a courageous defender of his beliefs.”

No doubt there are many other similar examples. Whether the cordiality is natural or forced, it serves a very important purpose: to oil the gears of a machine that does not and cannot run very well. The good politicians have known that for most of the history of the United States. It serves at least two purposes; to enable the building of coalitions between dissimilar factions; and to permit a civil government to continue to operate.

It is signal that they fecklessly accuse the Democrats of their very own failures without the least apparent embarrassment. Senator Helms, for all of his unfortunate policies, would have blushed and disowned many of them. It is also important to note that, with a few exceptions, the mud simply slides off. Indeed, the Clintons have been investigated so many times that they are not slick, but rather clean as a whistle.

Hopefully, we’ll not have to suffer through another GOP Presidency before the inevitable reformation, or destruction, of the GOP occurs; the last GOP Presidency was disastrous for both us and for people a world away. A President Trump would, no doubt, attempt to indulge in a number of illegal actions, and then try to hide behind government immunity when they backfired. we’d be witness to the sad spectacle of an impeachment, or, worse, watch the GOP tear itself apart over whether or not to impeach – and I do believe they lack the leadership to actually impeach a sitting President Trump, no matter how repulsive might be his offenses.

If we’re fortunate, this election will lead to either the dissolution of the GOP and its replacement by a party that realizes how important it is to govern seriously, or a reformation of the GOP that accomplishes the same goals. Either will need to once again exclude the power-hungry, those who have no training in politics, and those who fail to understand the importance of doubt in the realm of governance and, indeed, simply being an adult. We did not evolve to govern large nations, but rather small groups, so having such immense certainty in a world of nuclear weapons is the height of hubris.

¹As observed by no less an authority than Senator Barry Goldwater (R).

Much like The Tingler, the makers of The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues (1955) do not fixate on the monster of the day, but attempt to use it as a pivot to more important matters. Unfortunately, the monster is not critical to the tale, and so this tension-free movie, while fairly logical, does little to excite horror, sympathy, or even mystification. The problem appears to have to do with motivations , in that these are either cloudy or disappointingly cliched. The chief scientist is concealing something, but for what reason is never really made clear; his assistant, who is attempting to sell the secret to an unnamed third party, might as well have been nicknamed A Boy and His Speargun; the daughter is distressingly predictable and mundane, nary a surprise to spring. We’re told, in a most sterile manner, that the secretary hates the scientist because her only son died in service to the scientist, but outside of a persistent glare, there’s little to convince us that she hates him – why work for him? The cops are cops, and the odd bruising on the sultry, traitorous blonde’s thigh are never acknowledged nor explained.

Additionally, there’s bad story-telling. The victims, from the young couple in the boat to the freighter crew, might as well have neon signs over their heads – the cops may not know who’s doing the killing, but the makers of this movie seemed to think that tension is not good for the audience’s health – so we know who did what when.

Where is the emotional engagement, the puzzlement, the red herrings, the terror at difficult decisions?

Oh, maybe 10,000 leagues further down.

Don’t bother with this snoozer.

Yesterday my Arts Editor and I attended the opening of an exhibition called Unknown Fabergé at The Museum of Russian Art. On display is just about everything except that for which Fabergé is best known – the famous eggs (although a video demonstrating the hidden wonders of several eggs is available to watch). Instead, we learn that, much like Louis Comfort Tiffany, the Fabergé workshop had a wide collection of artifacts for sale.

This item, possibly my favorite, is a three inch tall sedan chair done in precise, painstaking detail. This is the sort of thing I love: technically difficult detail which contributes artistically to the whole. The artifacts range from cigarette cases and door bells, clever picture frames, several quite lovely clocks (I admit to lusting after a triangular red specimen), to this tiny sedan chair, roughly life size in this picture.

The display is not perfect. Some of the signs are not as well-lit as they might be, and several were placed at a height of three feet, making reading difficult. I understand that a sign may not be affixed to a glass panel, but some other solution would have been better.

But this is a quibble. Those who love Fabergé, or just miniature detail work, should know this exhibit may not reappear for another 30 years in this area, so make your plans to visit TMORA before February 26, 2017, and enjoy yourself.

Here’s the Politico fact-check of debate #2. I find this hilarious in contrast with the many serious lies told by Clinton’s opponent:

Clinton’s falsehoods

1. “[Trump] never apologizes for anything to anyone.” — Clinton

Early on Saturday morning, after the publication of a 2005 tape where he’s heard making vulgar sexual comments about women, Trump did make a statement of apology: “I said it, I was wrong, and I apologize.” Clinton, however, went on to highlight other campaign controversies for which the Republican nominee has not apologized, including his criticism of Gold Star parents Khizr and Ghazala Khan, and his comments that federal Judge Gonzalo Curiel would treat Trump unfairly by virtue of Curiel’s Mexican heritage.