Unsightly Mental Blemishes

A long time nemesis of Israel and the United States has bowed out of the Iranian presidential election at the order of Supreme Leader Khamenei, according to Misha Zand in AL Monitor:

On Sept. 27, former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent an official letter to the supreme leader of Iran announcing that he will not run as a candidate in the May 19 presidential election.

In his letter, Ahmadinejad referred to an Aug. 30 meeting with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and wrote: “You recommended that it is not suitable at this time for me to participate in the elections. Therefore, I have declared my obedience. … I have no plans to compete in next year’s election.”

I would have classed him as a hardliner, so this is interesting:

In addition to the media outlets directly linked to Ahmadinejad, a rare unified wave of voices from the Reformist camp and hard-liners dominated the opinion sections and the front pages welcoming Khamenei’s Sept. 26 remarks.

From the context, the remarks might appear unified, but the motivations vary. The Reformists simply didn’t like him or his policy, but the hard liners, for some reason, wanted Khamenei’s remarks to be published before they’d accept that the former President would not be running.

I wonder who Khamenei will favor in that race. I doubt it’d be current President Rouhani, a Reformist.

The Arutz Sheva of Israel elaborates slightly:

Prior to leaving the presidency, Ahmadinejad said he prided himself on his denial of the Holocaust.

Rouhani’s popularity surged after last year’s deal with world powers that lifted most sanctions on Iran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.

Another potential rival, Revolutionary Guard Commander Qassem Soleimani, said this month he would not stand in the vote, according to Reuters.

Are they really unacceptable to Khamenei, or is the field being constricted to give his favorite, whoever that might be, a better chance? The Tehran Times covers the announcement, using some slightly more interesting language:

Ahmadinejad’s tenure was peppered with controversial events and subjective law enforcements, causing distress both nationally and internationally.

During the period, the Iranian economy was grounded by unprecedented inflation rates, 40 percent by one account, considering deteriorating relations with the outside world.

The Ahmadinejad administration, inter alia, cut a state subsidy system not exactly the same way stipulated by law whose negative consequences are still with millions of the people.

In addition to a domestic populist policy, he pursued an imbalanced foreign policy, as well, particularly with European countries who were hostile to Iran’s nuclear program.

phonon:

Take what happens when you set a flame under a lump of table salt. The individual atoms all start rattling around a tad more enthusiastically, setting up waves of vibrations. In 1932, the Soviet physicist Igor Tamm realised he could treat these waves as particles, mathematically at least. He called them phonons.

Phonons have since become a staple, helping us for instance to understand processes such as superconductivity, in which electrons flow through a material with zero resistance, and opening the way for devices that turn heat into electricity (see “Five particles that don’t exist – yet could change our world“). Because they emerge from the movements of more traditional particles, phonons are called emergent particles or quasiparticles. “Phonons are not actually real,” says Jon Goff, a physicist at Royal Holloway, University of London. “They are really just a way of simplifying a very complicated problem.”

A mathematical construct, it seems. But then they jam this into my brain:

Phonons, magnons and the like exist in a kind of twilight world: useful to work out how things work, but doubtful as entities in their own right. But these half-existing particles aren’t even the half of it. Quasiparticles can exist, it turns out, even when nothing is there.

That discovery first came in 1947, with a seminal moment for the history of computing. William Shockley, a solid state physicist at Bell Labs in New Jersey, and his team were trying to perfect the transistor, an on-off switch for electrical current. They were using semiconductors, materials whose atoms are deficient in electrons. It had been known for a decade or so that this would create gaps of nothingness, like the empty square in a sliding puzzle. But no one thought these “holes” were anything more than the absence of an electron. Shockley proposed that the hole was actually a particle in its own right, something like an electron that carried positive charge.

Even when nothing is there. Roll that around in your head for a while.

(“Holes in reality”, Andrea Taroni, NewScientist, 10 September 2016, paywall)

A reader wonders about uses of the car…

It’s a Nash Metropolitan. Pretty sure it’s what Weird Al drives in UHF.

UHF?

8:00 – I’m going to live blog the debate. This won’t be a fact check, just my impressions of the debate as it goes.

Pre-debate, I understand that the campaigns try to set expectations, and that’s understandable – but not acceptable. Each candidate should be measured against a single standard. So I’ll see how I can do without giving either a pass.

8:05 – Questions are not known. Fun!

8:06 – Lester frames the question by giving the economy a positive spin.

8:07 – mentions her interest in children right off the bat. Small business is good. Trump looks shifty-eyed. Standard stump speech.

8:10 – Standard Trump speech – jobs are draining away. But that’s happening for 30 years or more. Will they mention the fact that wage inflation in other countries is slowing down the job drain?

8:12 – ‘trumped-up trickle down’? Is this new? Now she’s pointing out that Trump started from a mountain, while her family is a working class family.

8:14 – 14,000,000 is a small loan?

8:15 – she’s been Secretary for 30 years? But I don’t see how Lester could fact check without bogging down the debate, without submissions from the candidates. But Trump can’t answer the question.

8:17 – Did she pin other people’s misery on Trump? And will people buy it, or just consider it good business? Now she appeals to expert opinion – a tricky thing to do in today’s environment. Emphasizes specific plans.

8:20 – But NAFTA also had GOP support,  I think.

8:22 – But how responsible is State for exports? Not sure.

8:24 – Trump is yelling over her – bullying? And she stands up to him. Good for her. The problem with no fact checking is that it’s hard to judge how well the exchange is really going.

8:25 – Donald, the market is here. And Reagan’s tax cut was followed by the biggest tax increase, so it’s hard to take seriously. But regulations may be a soft spot.

8:26 – the Clinton fact checking website!

8:27 – And Lester tries to hold the horses back!

8:30 – tax cut, tax cut, tax cut. Now he wants to remove the tax on foreign earnings – even though the GOP could have done it but didn’t. Yet we need infrastructure spending now. And if the foreign tax is removed, it won’t be spent on the inner cities – it’ll be sent to shareowners as dividends, or in research & development.

8:31 – Donald has trouble restraining himself. And now he claims Clinton is all talk, no action. Pot-Kettle-black. And, now we’re in a bubble – so that’s how he’ll deal with our current steady success.

8:34 – Still under audit? But the IRS Commisioner says he can release it, the IRS doesn’t care. Holt calls him on it. Oh, he gets audited every year. Happens to him only?  Uh oh. Think about it, Donald. Now he wants to tie it to the deleted Clinton emails.

8:36 – Clinton tries to suggest his taxes show he has few positive qualities.

8:40 – Clinton admits to a mistake with the private mail server. Short and sweet. Donald claims it’s on purpose, not a mistake. Isn’t a mistake a deliberate action that shouldn’t have been taken? Donald falls back to a ragged defense of his taxes. Ah, but it’s good to hear he wants to at least revamp the airports – how bad are they? I’m not sure.

8:42 – Politicians squandering money – like the GOP, who’s controlled Congress for so many years, and couldn’t even submit a budget? Will listeners understand who’s in charge of the budget? It’s not the President.

8:43 – Donald is frantic to interrupt, and Lester’s in a quandary. Meanwhile, Clinton’s taking a shot at his supposed expertise. Now he refuses to address the shots – everything’s unbelievable. Better be careful, unbelievable can have multiple meanings.

8:45 – So is Donald advocating screwing people over as well? Are you under budget because of good or bad reasons?

8:50 – Race in the USA. Clinton speaks in terms of goals, references a plan – limitation of this format. Speaks to the police, who must be on board. Now wants to remove guns from the hands of criminals. Trump speaks of law & order – but we’re not in bad shape overall. Now he wants to use stop & frisk – which reportedly didn’t work.

8:52 – Lester shoots him down – and he disagrees! No they wouldn’t have lost on appeal, he says. Now he wants to blame it on migrants – with stop and frisk. So it’s quiet appeal that only migrants will be frisked. It’s a quiet dance with the NRA, who keep ignoring this anti-NRA stance.

8:55 – Clinton says stop and frisk is ineffective. Clinton has a plan, Donald has a plan – but his is of a dubious history, while hers is more nuanced in this two minutes. “The police are outgunned”, which should frighten the inner city – will that bring votes to Clinton.

9:00 – Both want to support the police. He brings up the term “super-predator”, not sure what that might be. Now they clash over stop and frisk and the current situation in NYC. Donald is now trying to chisel off the african american community, claiming they’ve been betrayed and they’re wonderful people.

9:03 – Now we’re off to the birther wars, sigh. He’s lying through his teeth about his behavior. Lester pushes Donald on it. Clinton smiles like an angel. A wrinkled angel 🙂

9:05 – Donald claims he has a great rep in the black community. Now Clinton fires back – I wonder if she should have just collapsed in laughter – the best way to pop the Big Lie balloon is with the dart of laughter. Now she reminds the audience of his record of racist behavior, the rental scandal. Now she clasps Obama to her buxom, after he claimed that she started the birther controversy. Now Donald worries at the bone.

9:06 – Nearly all of those lawsuits are settled without admission of guilt. So it’s meaningless.

9:10 – Security segment. Clinton leaps onto the pony, identifying cybersecurity as a critical problem. There’s a little knife named ‘Putin’ into Donald’s flank. Unfortunately for both candidates, this is more about knowledge than numbers, so a few people with great knowledge are more dangerous than a bunch of mundane hackers.

9:13 – Donald is hiding his lack of policy by repeating himself, citing support from generals and admirals (Clinton has more), repeating himself some more … it’s a stream of consciousness. He’s done and looks relieved that he doesn’t have to speak for a minute or two. Clinton notes that we’re pushing ISIS back, should have mentioned that Obama is responsible for our success.

9:18 – Donald doesn’t want to deal with the home-grown terrorism, so he blames Obama for Bush’s agreement to leave Iraq – and advocates the theft of Iraqi oil on top of it. Clinton gets to fire back and corrects him…. aaaaand she’s willing to address the original question. A “surge” of intelligence – what does this mean? She thanks police for hard work recently. Clinton advocates for alliances, and points out that Donald alienates those who she wants to work with.

9:21 – Actually, Iran is still choking on banking sanctions, and are generally restive about the entire nuclear treaty. But this is foreign info, so most Americans won’t know that.

9:25 – Donald is desperate to blame Bush’s decision on Obama. Now he denies he ever supported the War in Iraq. He cannot be swayed, despite the official publications. It occurs to me to wonder if this guy ever sleeps, since he goes everywhere and talks to everyone important. No, no, no. Yet it’s a GOP war, which he should be backing.

9:28 – “I have a much better temperament than she has!” Someone’s mad, and she looks mad. Clinton’s fired up and happy, and wants to talk about NATO – she knows that NATO went into Afghanistan with us, leaving Donald looking glum. She addresses the Iranian nuclear problem and pointsout we’ve solved the problem without shooting a single bullet. And she connects that with Donald’s tirade about temperament. Next debate they should turn off the candidate’s microphones when it’s not their turn.

9:30 I’ve fallen behind, so Donald is complaining about our defense treaties. Has he thought about the benefits of not having war for US?

9:35? – Nuclear war policy – Obama considered changing the policy?  Wish I knew more. Donald’s right about China and North Korea. But he’s wrong about the cash to Iran – that was for a weapon system not delivered to Iran, and we owed it to them.

9:38? – Clinton reassures our allies. Will Donald? But will Trump supporters consider this important? They’re more focused on their own problems, and believe he will bring prosperity back to them.

9:40 – ISIS is being pushed back, not growing, Donald. Please stop lying. Business ability is not part of government. Clinton is delighted to hear that she doesn’t have the Presidential stamina and look – because she has the experience. Oh, it’s “bad experience”. Heh. Oh, dear, here comes the mud, everyone duck!

9:45 – oh, Lester wants to know if both candidates will accept the outcome of the election. Clinton says she’ll accept it. Donald found a way to say No, then Yes.

For the traditional voter, Clinton is the clear winner – plans available, unflustered, delighted sometimes. Donald was clawing, interrupting, bullying. But how many traditional voters are there, and how many will be impressed by Donald. How many voters, inclined to Trump, are willing to honestly investigate what he said – and change their minds if he comes up as a liar?

We’ll see how the polls come out in the next week.

A reader comments on participatory democracy:

Sortition sounds like just exactly what this country needs at this moment. Of course, it’ll never happen in my lifetime.

If the idea caught on with one of the two major parties, and that party took control of government, we could see the first toes into the water within a few years, I think. Remember the project to privatize Social Security during the Bush II Administration¹? I recall reading such proposals in the libertarian press during the ’80s – they’d point at Chile with great enthusiasm.

So sometimes these sorts of things – even fairly extreme items – can move quickly if they gain popularity. Whether sortition would prove popular is difficult to say. Possibly more in the liberal camp than the conservative camp.

¹From the Brookings Institute in 1997:

Policymakers and the public show growing interest in the idea of replacing Social Security with a private system of individual retirement accounts. It is too soon to tell whether curiosity will lead to popular acceptance, but it is already plain that many Americans are thinking about private alternatives to Social Security for the first time.

The National Park Service has published a map of the sounds of the continental United States:

Why is the National Park Service concerned about noise?

The 2016 Ig Nobel awards were announced at a ceremony on Sept 22 at Harvard University, a great day for those of us with a mild taste for the bizarre (yes, I read News of the Weird religiously – and I’m well aware there are far more bizarre things out there – like Steam Powered Giraffe). My attention was diverted first by the Biology Prize, awarded jointly to Charles Foster and Thomas Thwaites. Each spent time living as another species, Mr. Foster as a badger, otter, deer, fox, and a bird, while Mr. Thwaites created prosthetics (including a rumen for digesting grass) allowing him to spend three days living as a goat. In the latter case, this is from the man’s website:

I tried to become a goat to escape the angst inherent in being a human. The project became an exploration of how close modern technology can take us to fulfilling an ancient human dream: to take on characteristics from other animals. But instead of the ferocity of a bear, or the perspective of a bird, the characteristic most useful in modern life is something else; being present in the moment perhaps.

The other intriguing research was for the Medicine Prize:

Christoph Helmchen, Carina Palzer, Thomas Münte, Silke Anders, and Andreas Sprenger, for discovering that if you have an itch on the left side of your body, you can relieve it by looking into a mirror and scratching the right side of your body (and vice versa). REFERENCE: “Itch Relief by Mirror Scratching. A Psychophysical Study,” Christoph Helmchen, Carina Palzer, Thomas F. Münte, Silke Anders, Andreas Sprenger, PLoS ONE, vol. 8, no 12, December 26, 2013, e82756.

This reminds me of other research on bending the mind’s perceptions, and adds to a fascinating research body of how the brain can be fooled by its own machinations.

Back in June 2016 a friend provided the link to this The Guardian’s “long read” section, where David Van Reybrouck (as translated by Liz Waters) published an extract of his book in which he criticizes some of the more traditional processes of Western democracies, such as elections and referenda, holding up the results such as Brexit as a condemnation, and suggests a replacement – the idea of sortition.

People care deeply about their communities and want to be heard. But a much better way to let the people speak than through a referendum is to return to the central principle of Athenian democracy: drafting by lot, or sortition as it is presently called. In ancient Athens, the large majority of public functions were assigned by lot. Renaissance states such as Venice and Florence worked on the same basis and experienced centuries of political stability. With sortition, you do not ask everyone to vote on an issue few people really understand, but you draft a random sample of the population and make sure they come to the grips with the subject matter in order to take a sensible decision. A cross-section of society that is informed can act more coherently than an entire society that is uninformed. …

Sortition could provide a remedy to the democratic fatigue syndrome that we see everywhere today. The drawing of lots is not a miracle cure any more than elections ever were, but it can help correct a number of the faults in the current system. The risk of corruption is reduced, election fever abates and attention to the common good increases. Voting on the basis of gut feeling is replaced by sensible deliberation, as those who have been drafted are exposed to expert opinion, objective information and public debate. Citizens chosen by lot may not have the expertise of professional politicians, but they add something vital to the process: freedom. After all, they don’t need to be elected or re-elected.

David may have a little too much faith in politicians’ “expertise” – most are lawyers, few have any notion of science behind high school, and here in the United States there is often a suspicion of science – even as they benefit from it – because it doesn’t correspond to certain of their prejudices.

But it does sound interesting as one method of using the idea of representative democracy to isolate the common citizen from the some obscure decisions that must be taken in the larger world, without necessarily excluding them as a group – and building up resentment. I do think there’d have to be some concern about non-participation – think of how much people generally hate doing jury duty; however,  I had jury duty about 11 months ago, and I didn’t actually notice much resentment.

Perhaps it’s more of a step towards participatory democracy – the idea that there’s more to civic life than just voting once in a while and braying in a blog, with little thought towards consequences.

From NewScientist (10 September 2016, paywall):

PREVIOUSLY, Feedback discussed how scatty naming conventions were confounding attempts to compile stool-related research (27 August).

Now scientists have uncovered a new categorisation error: 20 per cent of scientific papers in genetics journals contain mutations produced by contact with Microsoft Excel.

Writing in Genome Biology, the authors say that the popular spreadsheet program introduces transcription errors to many genes, converting septin 2 (SEPT2) to a date, and so forth.

The bug was most frequently found in files of supplementary data, “an important resource in the genomics community that are frequently reused”. Feedback reminds geneticists that it’s important to sanitise your tables – both in the lab and beyond.

Makes me want to run screaming around the block, bewailing the use of inappropriate tools by supposedly smart people.

My step-cousin Scott Chamberlain, classical music and organization blogger, sees the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra management board try to reach the low standards he’s already generously set for them … and not make it. Scott is referencing an email from FWSO President and CEO Adkins to other members of the board:

And finally there comes a slanderous grand finale—an attack that calls out a private citizen by name, and then drags that person’s good name through the mud. Ms. Adkins quotes outside sources to imply that one of the people reaching out to the FWSO board members was mentally disturbed, a stalker, and probably dangerous.  Don’t like the message?  Smear the messenger.

The problem is… every bit of Ms. Adkins’s attack is completely false.  For one, the “lawyers” that Ms. Adkins uses to support her accusations don’t exist.  They are entirely fictitious.  No one with either of those names practices law in the state of Minnesota.  No one with either of those names has served on the board of Minnesota Orchestra.

I mean, this is bizarre.  It took me all of three minutes on the Internet to show that these “lawyers” were completely made up, and the site Ms. Adkins referenced was a fraud.

But I didn’t even have to do the digging myself.  Andrew Patner, the late music critic who wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times, wrote about his experience with these very same “lawyers” here, and elaborated on dealing with these Internet fakes many times, in many locations.  He also references the work of a Denver writer who wrote extensively about his concerns about this fraudulent website. This information is certainly available to the general public.

Ms. Adkins’ bio, as published in D Magazine on the occasion of her election to the FWSO Presidency, is here. You can have valid differences of opinion, but there’s a line that’s crossed when fraud occurs. If the letter containing the fraudulent information is authentic, and the fraud is real, it should then be clear that she’s no longer functioning at a high enough level to belong on the board. While her service to the FWSO is admirable, it appears she’s gone around the bend…

A reader solves the mystery car’s identity:

Nash Metropolitan, 1950s, succeeded in ’62 by the Rambler American. Lovely little car but didn’t sell well in the tailfin decade. Huber would be the dealership’s name.

Thanks! Another remarks:

Would be nice to see these classics brought back as electric cars.

Image: ViewLiner, Ltd

I think that would be lovely, and our Arts Editor has remarked that she would happily buy an electric car using the body of an early Corvette.

I would, too. I could see a pair of these in our garage. Except, I suppose, for the inevitable price tag …

Just finished watching Despicable Me 2 (2013) for the umpteenth time, and now I’m wondering if Agent Wilder is driving a Nash.

catfishing:

The report also documents incidents of “catfishing”: the use of fake profiles of attractive women to befriend people. The Taliban has reportedly used this trick to tease information out of Australian soldiers on Facebook. But it is ISIS that exemplifies this modern approach to extremism, relying heavily on social media to spread its message and recruit supporters around the world.

“Extremists wage war with retweets and likes,” by Aviva Rutkin, NewScientist (10 September 2016).

Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975) is part of the Godzilla series that is concerned with the spacemen, although I’ve apparently missed Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974). Given the era of the movie and its difficult to understand plot, it might be best to view this movie, no pun intended, through the lens of avant garde art. The close observer will see results before causation, extreme misanthropy, a disregard for reality in the course of events, the irretrievable transformation of humans to the ‘other’, and perhaps other sign that can be understood to be part of an avant garde attempt at monster movie making.

Or you can just call it bad movie-making and move on with your life.

Seen on the Minnesota State Fairgrounds this weekend. Amazingly cute. Anyone know what it is? It said Metropolitan on the side, possibly Huber on the back.

Just glad we don’t do it exactly this way…

http://https://youtu.be/Wp3Gau-Aljs

Drew Magary publishes a hissy fit in GQ, to which Leslie Salzillo on The Daily Kos hums happily along. Here’s Drew:

Regardless, in the end, people are still gonna vote for this man. Maybe not enough to get him elected, but still: it’ll be in the tens of millions. (Note to the people causing the polls to fluctuate: What the fuck is wrong with you? I gotta meet the five percent of people who saw Hillary come down with pneumonia and were like, “Forget her, gimme the dictator with dryer lint hair.”) Nothing that Trump says, no damning piece of Trump reportage, and certainly no opinion piece like this one will stop his voters from pulling the lever. Nor will anything stop Trump from being the officious, braindead goon that he is. He will never answer for his crimes, and there’s a frighteningly large portion of the electorate that will always love him for that.

And it goes on like that for several more paragraphs. Delightful, if you’re one of those folks who have time for the sort of thing that, frankly, you (the reader) & I are indulging in right now.

I cannot go along with it, though.

I am slightly haunted by a scene out of the documentary Tickled (2016). It has nothing to do with the subject of the documentary. During the making of the movie, the makers travel to Muskegon, Michigan, which they describe and show to be a dying town, full of violence and crime, although they don’t go into detail as it’s not pertinent. But we discover that one of the major ways to make money for young men is to compete in Mixed Martial Arts, and as part of the interview process we also get to meet one young man’s parents and family.

The house was a pit. It had that air of mixed despair and bull-stubborness of people who’ve lost their jobs but not their pride, and that pride compels them to find someone to blame. My mother-in-law lives in Michigan.  We visit often, and from talking with her visitors, even an introvert such as myself comes up against certain rock-solid beliefs; certainties that arise from people who’ve had the employment rug ripped out from under them. Doubt about liberals. Doubts about certain parts of government that I consider to be pillars of how we run society. Certainty that there’s a devil, and he literally walks among us.

So when I, or Drew, talk about Trump’s mendacity, his abuse of those he can dominate, these really are irrelevant, as Drew laments. But Drew never really asks why.

So let’s talk about the implicit social contract. (As much as I hate the term, it’s the jargon we all know it by).

For the citizen, for the people, for us, you, me, and the guys in Muskegon, the social contract, in our minds, should mean that  if we work hard then we should get paid and maybe even get promoted, maybe have kids, retire, and eventually get chucked in a grave in preparation for living forever with the God of our choice. Maybe pitch in a touch of racism, and there ya go.

And it ain’t happening. Michigan’s a mess. Between the situation in Muskegon, jobs heading overseas and into Mexico, Detroit turning into a ghost town, and Flint being completely screwed over, the rip-currents are becoming deadly.  And not only in Michigan, but other pockets of the United States as well. Folks lose their jobs and their faith in the contract as employers, in their eyes, fuck them over.

There’s a really good reason why both candidates want to present themselves as agents of change.  Because the chunk of America that perceives itself as being in trouble (where folks are unemployed or underemployed, where houses are no longer maintained because of economic despair) wants to point the finger of blame, and after the employers (who really only care about their own wealth and welfare), comes the government.  The national government sets the decisions regarding economic policy. If the populace is to prosper, the government needs to change.

So why Trump?

Because he’s new. He hasn’t had a hand in what the voting right wing perceives as disaster.  Roll that word around in your mouth. For you and I, we may or may not suffer some discomfort. If you’ve lost a house because you’ve lost a job, then maybe you get to share in tasting that word, because you’ve been there.

I haven’t, so I don’t get to swish it about in my mouth. I have to get there intellectually.

So let’s be intellectual, then.  Let’s go to an intellectual’s favorite pit of despair.  Yeah.  Let’s.

Let’s talk the Wiemar Republic. For those of you who are a little rusty on your history, this is a term for a very short era of German history, stretching from the end of World War I to 1933. During this period the German people transitioned from the German Empire, ruled by absolute monarchists, to the Wiemar Republic, a troubled, short lived democracy, to the rule of National Socialism, aka (hold your breath) the Nazis. (Viewed this way you realize the German people really had a tremendously long run of bad luck, especially those in the eastern half of the country, who went on to be subjected to Erich Honecker’s Communism.) One of the key facets of the time of the Republic was economic turbulence: hyperinflation, bankrupt companies, unemployment, mostly caused by the ruinous war reparations imposed on Germany after World War I. In my view, people in general follow principles not for any truly abstract reason, but because they perceive that by doing so some long-term advantage accrues to them. It may be, and often is, simple social stability.

So when some principle, which may not be as solidly emplaced as others, is viewed as perhaps not leading to such advantages, it’s not hard to see it being jettisoned. The German people were subjected to tremendous stress, and eventually rallied around the brutal National Socialism, which presently led them down one of the worst ratholes of history, from which even today they have not fully recovered.

So now some Americans look back over the last 16 years and they’ve not done well. It’s not so much that they’re rebelling against the Democrats or the Republicans so much as they’re looking at the principles by which we’ve – supposedly – elected these folks, and maybe they’re saying, Hey, does this principle of no racism really benefit me? Hey, what about these illegal immigrants – aren’t they taking my jobs? Hey, who cares about these laws about illegal search & seizure when people are dying in the streets?

Why should they adhere to these principles, even the common sense principles that the pundits lick with great enthusiasm, when that adherence has left them with no job, a wreck of a house, a family in turmoil and despair?

That’s the question Drew and those who share his frustration really must empathize with, and then answer effectively.  Why are they idiots, Drew?

Because being smart hasn’t benefited them.

Being angry at them gets you nowhere. The first step in forming a persuasive argument must sometimes be walking a while in someone else’s shoes.

IEEE Spectrum reports on progress in, well, mind-reading – of monkeys:

“To be or not to be. That is the question.” That is also the text that Monkey J typed out using a brain implant to control a computer cursor.

To be clear, the monkey didn’t know it was copying Shakespeare, and it had no deep thoughts about Hamlet’s famous monologue. Monkey J and its colleague, Monkey L, were both trained to use their neural implants to move a cursor over a computer screen, hitting circles as they turned green. Stanford University researchers placed letters on those targets to simulate the typing task. So to tap out the line from Hamlet, first the “T” circle was illuminated, then the “O,” and so on. …

By simulating this typing task, they demonstrated that their brain-computer interface could greatly benefit people who can’t communicate otherwise. That category includes people in the late stages of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, which leaves the mind intact but gradually paralyzes the body, including the mouth and other face muscles.

This experiment set a new record for typing-by-mind, with one monkey tapping out 12 words per minute. “To our knowledge, this is the highest communication level ever achieved,” says Paul Nuyujukian, a researcher at Stanford’s Neural Prosthetics Translational Lab. Nuyujukian is coauthor of the paper describing this research, published today in Proceedings of the IEEE.

I’m a little puzzled how this can be called communications, unless they’re referring simply to being able to decode the brain’s signals into directives for moving the cursor; suggesting the monkeys are actually communicating on an intelligent level is not evident from this report.

But my actual concern is probably a common concern: while this is represented as a step for helping those with ALS and other dread paralytic diseases to communicate, implicit in this exercise is the possibility of decoding higher level thoughts. Is this another step on penetrating a person’s most private thoughts? Am I someday going to be looking at sophisticated legal treatises on whether or not the SCOTUS should be declaring the use of a technology that is arguably related to this one as being legal during the questioning of suspects? The ineffectuality of polygraphs as lie detectors has, so far, not permitted a real legal test. If this technology progresses to that level, we may see a very interesting legal test.

I would not have thought of this, but Lloyd Alter on Treehugger.com notes that architecture – how a building is laid out – can impact how, and whether, a pathogen spreads throughout a human population, an important consideration in this era of pathogens developing antibiotic resistance:

When writing about bathrooms in an earlier post, I suggested that Le Corbusier put a sink in the front hall of the Villa Savoye as an historical allusion. In fact, there is a much simpler and more straightforward reason: His client, like the clients for the Maison de Verre and the Lovell Health House, was a doctor and was obsessed about germs. People had known about germ theory since 1882, when Robert Koch identified that tuberculosis was caused by a bacillus, but they didn’t have antibiotics until after World War II.

Architecture, planning and public policy were surprisingly effective at dealing with disease, once it was figured out what caused it; in her book The Drugs Don’t work, Professor Dame Sally Davies writes:

Almost without exception, the decline in deaths from the biggest killers at the beginning of the twentieth century predates the introduction of antimicrobial drugs for civilian use at the end of the Second World War. Just over half the decline in infections diseases had occurred before 1931. The main influences on the decline of mortality were better nutrition, improved hygiene and sanitation, and less dense housing with all helped to prevent and to reduce transmission of infectious diseases.

Lloyd covers the opposing viewpoints of Le Corbusier and those who fought tuberculosis with air and sunlight, and also mentions SARS, spread through mists coming from various pieces of machinery. Coming to my mind are isolation units in hospitals, which have been used in an attempt to stop MSRA from spreading, barriers to pathogen spreading insects. Throughout history it seems like some cultures alternate between considering Nature as analogous to Eden, and an evil morass which kills our infants and cripples adults – think of FDR’s polio.

Just happened to notice this guy hiding in … I’m not certain.

This really is the same specimen, so the color change is quite interesting. I’m wondering if it’s akin to dragonfly color changes, caused by structural coloration:

… is the production of colour by microscopically structured surfaces fine enough to interfere with visible light, sometimes in combination with pigments. For example, peacock tail feathers are pigmented brown, but their microscopic structure makes them also reflect blue, turquoise, and green light, and they are often iridescent. [Wikipedia]

However, my Arts Editor has also enhanced these pictures and may have reinforced the colors for better appreciation of the specimen. In fact, here’s the original of the last picture, just for comparison.

Journey to the Seventh Planet (1962) has some mildly interesting ideas in special effects, particularly in the representation of star fields – although my Arts Editor just shook her head. And some of the color selections were sort of fun.

Otherwise, science that ranged from “yeah, sort of” to “NO!”, a limp story where the characters’ actions are unbelievable, dialog of dubious quality, virtually indistinguishable characters, and barely acceptable acting. And a sneaking suspicion of misogyny, given how the ladies were cast.

This one’s awful. I only finished it out of morbid curiosity. Don’t waste your time, the good guys eventually win. Whoever they were.

Postscript: I see the Wikipedia page references the trailer on YouTube, which I will reference with no recommendation. However, I did note that, puzzlingly, at some point it flashes the phrase “Your Eyes Will Glaze!“, to which I nearly joyfully shouted, “Over!“, but decided not to alarm the neighborhood. The Wikipedia page also has some faint praise for the concepts of the movie.

I still think it’s bad.

Lurking near the strawberries, it is … not so clear as some of our pictures, sadly. Hitting the limits of smartphone cameras. Or my hands are too shaky.

Steve Benen of MaddowBlog is reveling in his perception of Donald kicking dirt – inadvertently – in the eyes of the NRA, who has already endorsed him:

[Trump] “[Police officers are] proactive, and if they see a person possibly with a gun or they think they have a gun, they will see the person and they’ll look and they’ll take the gun away. They’ll stop, they’ll frisk and they’ll take the gun away, and they won’t have anything to shoot with.”

[Benen] I have a strong hunch Trump doesn’t appreciate how interesting his comments are.

Trump, who’s never demonstrated any real understanding of criminal-justice policy, apparently likes the idea of police being able to stop-and-frisk Americans – including those who’ve done nothing wrong and have been accused of no crimes – effectively at the discretion of individual officers. If the police find a gun, under Trump’s vision, it will be taken away.

From FactCheck.org

Steve believes the NRA is about to swallow it’s tongue – or some poison. But I’m not so sure they’ll squawk. My suspicion is that we’ll soon see a clarification: anyone who doesn’t fit the profile of a true-blue American will be subject to such searches. Trump is appealing to those who are fearful of crime, those who hear about the recent bombings on the East Coast and the stabbing attack in nearby St. Cloud and think of terror, who haven’t heard, or refuse to believe (which, in a separate tactic, Trump has also tried to use to his advantage), that crime rates are at historic lows.

From FactCheck.org

This is basically an attempt to chisel the fearful group, those who haven’t the time to do the research, or have personal – but irrelevant – contradictory experience, off from Hillary and transfer their allegiance to Donald, who doesn’t hesitate to promise any tactic, no matter how much it contradicts the core values of Americans. Playing on fear is a celebrated political tactic that probably dates from the third Presidential campaign of the Republic (I’m just guessing no one tried too hard when General George Washington was nominated for president).

So the question becomes, will the fearful educate themselves so we can continue to hang together? Or will they move to Donald, who verifiably lies through his teeth in a shameless strategy to gain the presidency?

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8fIVTH0TiM

Lyrics are so unimportant, eh?

Remember the Chinese drywall problem of the last few years? It’s come to Congress’ attention, and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) would like to do something about it, particularly the problem that the company in question was a subsidiary of a government-owned company – which means the parent has sovereign immunity (I’ve linked to “state immunity” as “sovereign immunity” doesn’t appear to apply here – and you’ll see why in a moment), although the subsidiary can be sued in American courts. Senator Grassley’s bill would remove the immunity of the state-owned company as well.

This makes international lawyer John Bellinger nervous for its possible unintended consequences. He explains it on Lawfare:

In his Senate floor statement introducing the legislation, Senator Grassley states that the amendment “would mean only that a foreign state-owned company would have to respond to the claims brought by American companies and consumers, just like any other foreign company that isn’t owned by a government.”

I expressed concern earlier this year that Congress might  amend the FSIA to reverse a single district court decision with an amendment with far-reaching consequences that could upset the delicate balance in the FSIA between sovereign immunity and the need to ensure accountability by foreign states for certain acts.

I have also previously written at Lawfare about “earmarks for lawyers”—legislation that is intended by trial lawyers to reverse judicial decisions against them. As I said then, “Members of Congress and their staffs should ensure that these bills and others urged by plaintiffs’ lawyers to reverse their losses in federal courts are subject to very rigorous review.” U.S. companies have objected strongly to “special” legislation in other countries, such as Ecuador and Nicaragua, that has made it easier to sue U.S. companies in their courts. It makes it harder for the U.S. Government and U.S. companies to complain about special-purpose laws in other countries that limit the immunity of the United States or limit the defenses of U.S. companies when the U.S. Congress engages in similar actions.

It would be interesting to know more: do American companies expect/get special treatment in foreign countries? Does it really make sense that government-owned companies should have immunity?

In this age of international companies does it even really make sense to suggest that the companies with substantial international reach, not only for sales but for manufacturing, have any nationality at all? When a company can by another company so that it may claim its headquarters is in Ireland, mostly for the tax benefits, then how should it expect to claim protection from American laws (and firepower!) when a foreign country takes some action to which it objects?