Unsightly Mental Blemishes

It’s election season for everyone it seems, a chance to choose which way to go next. Ben Caspit writes in AL Monitor to suggest that Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu is facing a serious challenger this time around – Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapi, who came out on top of a recent poll that left Netanyahu’s Likud Party in the dust.

How did he do it? The answer is quite simple: Lapid is the new Netanyahu. He doesn’t attack Netanyahu from the left. Instead, he tries to outflank him from the right and criticize him from the center.

CNN is reporting the passage of a bill permitting 9/11 survivors to sue … Saudi Arabia.

I saw these trees in brilliant illumination for about 2 minutes last night – and then they disappeared into the dusk.

In light of today’s North Korean nuclear test, 38 North‘s report on renewed activity at all three portals of the Punggye-ri nuclear test site is jonny-on-the-spot:

Recent commercial satellite imagery from August 27 shows new activity at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site. Notably, a small number of mining carts are visible on or near the tailings piles at both the North and West Portals; the tailings pile at the West Portal has expanded and new tracks for mining carts have been laid; and a small building has been erected to the southwest of the South Portal. Overall, this activity indicates that maintenance and minor excavation operations have resumed at Punggye-ri. However, it is unclear if this activity is directly related to preparations for a fifth nuclear test.

Meanwhile, CNN speculates as to the purpose of the test:

Rather than a bargaining chip used to gain more foreign aid or access to the world stage, it appears that the country’s nuclear weapons program boils down to a matter of dignity and national pride.

But I wonder if one of the aspects of this test is manipulation of the American election. As noted here, North Korea applauds the candidacy of Donald Trump. A menacing act, such as firing a nuclear weapon, could be an attempt to discredit the Obama Administration and, by extension, Hillary’s campaign, leaving Donald as the only viable candidate in many American voters’ minds. Adding a dash of irony, the American public would expect Donald to be the tough guy, forgetting (or never knowing) that Donald has mused on removing American troops from South Korea if Seoul doesn’t carry more of the financial burden. This would fulfill North Korea’s dream, as they themselves admit.

Knock-on effects would include the recession following Trump’s election, as predicted by most economists, for if it were occur it would throw a shadow over the entire liberal democracy government model for which Kim Jong-un has such antipathy.

/lsEver wonder about the reach of American law outside of the United States? Yishai Schwartz reports on the appeal of the Sokolow v Palestine Liberation Organization on Lawfare, beginning with a recap:

… a case that has its origins in the bloody years of the Palestinian “intifada.” The case centers on seven terror attacks perpetrated between 2001 and 2004. In one attack, a seventeen-year-old blew himself up at a crowded bus stop in the French Hill neighborhood of Jerusalem; in another, Hamas operatives detonated a bomb in a Hebrew University cafe; and in a third, a Palestinian security officer opened fire in a crowded Jaffa mall. Together, these and the other attacks killed dozens of civilians and wounded scores more, including a number of American citizens.

So the families of some of the American victims sued – in the Southern District of New York. The initial trial was a success for the plaintiffs, but then came the appeal:

In the ruling, the panel noted that the vast majority of PA/PLO’s activities take place in the West Bank, where the PA governs. As the court explained:

The overwhelming evidence shows that the defendants are “at home” in Palestine, where they govern. Palestine is the central seat of government for the PA and PLO…. All PA governmental ministries, the Palestinian president, the Parliament, and the Palestinian security services reside in Palestine.

By contrast, these organizations’ lobbying and diplomacy activities in the United States appear relatively insignificant. And the simple fact the territories on which defendants conduct the bulk of their activities “are not within a sovereign nation” does not affect the determination of where it properly understood as “at home.” The West Bank, not the United States, is the place in which the Palestinian Authority and PLO are “amenable to suit.”

Mr. Schwartz goes on to note that, despite recent lawmaking that seems to invite US Courts to apply US Law to foreign incidents, US courts seem shy to do so.

My takeaway is much simpler – leaving the country means changing jurisdictions. Even if the US is the lone remaining superpower, that doesn’t make the rest of the world our little colonial empire. If someone takes a shot at you in a foreign city, the legal remedy lies there, not here in the US.

And that seems intuitively correct, as Mr. Schwartz also concludes.

As a side thought, and with a status vis a vis the legal system that I don’t even qualify as an amateur, I have to wonder how much frustration jurists have with legislators. Given the background in this particular article, it seems that the jurists try very hard to come up with a logically consistent system of arguments and procedures – while the legislature is a sort of stochastic process that sows chaos throughout every time it burps up a new law. I know at least one CPA who shakes his head over current tax law. I wonder if judges shake in their boots every time Congress comes into session.

And then there’s the whole confirming Federal judges debacle…

A reader remarks on profitable bugs:

This sounds patently illegal to me, both market manipulation and “insider” trading (although the legal definition of this latter point may actually preclude this kind of trick.)

Preclude the trick? Or do you mean the definition of insider trading doesn’t include this particular approach? I don’t see how it could, since the insider must be an employee of the company, I think.

Another reader corrects me:

Nope. “Insider” is defined as anyone who is acting on information not available to the general public. So, if you heard two strangers in an elevator talking about how Company Z was going to get hostilly taken over tomorrow by Megabusiness Y, and because of the overheard info you sell your shares of Company Z before the price tanks, you’ve just committed insider trading.

I wonder how company-private blogs that might carry important material information are viewed by the SEC.

Sometimes the Arts Editor’s enthusiasm knows no bounds when it comes to zucchini.

Sono Motors plans a natural filtration system (named breSono) for the Sion, its upcoming production car – moss:

Not the moss used in the car.
(Credit: The Frustrated Gardener)

In the interior of the Sion, a unique moss is integrated into the dashboard and used as a natural air filter. A special lichen (moss) is used, which is known for its appealing look and excellent air filtration. In spite of the naturalness of the moss, it actually requires no care, since the plant draws its water from the air. So breSono regulates humidity in the interior of Sion all by itself. In short, it’s a natural air conditioner.

But it has other advantages: The microstructures of moss binds fine dust particles from the air, so even in a big city, you can breathe fresh air. The moss also has sound-absorbing properties, so you have a smooth ride. Moreover it also acts fire repellent and is thus assigned to the fire protection class B1.

Can’t wait to have the local auto shop work on a problem with that system.

(h/t Derek Markham @ Treehugger.com)

A new stock market tactic, but is it legal? Paul Rosenzweig talks about a new way to manage a software bug on Lawfare:

Now we have a new paradigm—one that attempts to monetize the bug and establish its fair market value.  Andrea Peterson reports on a new use of the stock market.  A security research firm called MedSec recently found a flaw in the implantable heart device manufactured by St. Jude Medical.  Rather than alerting St. Jude so they could fix it, or trying to sell it to them, MedSec took a different tack.  It gave knowledge of the flaw to Muddy Waters Research, a hedge fund.  Muddy Waters, in turn, took a short position on St. Jude stock (betting it would go down) and then released a report, based on MedSec research, that publicly disclosed the alleged flaws.  The stock duly dropped, Muddy made a profit (nobody is saying how much) and gave a cut of the profit to MedSec.

While people who put in the time to discover real software bugs should receive some sort of compensation, this still makes me a little ill. Worse yet, Paul notes that no one has been able to reproduce the reported problem, and if this remains true, the SEC should come down hard on both the MedSec and Muddy Waters for market manipulation.

I see this as part and parcel of the necessary confusion of the private and technology sectors. In this case, the urge to profit from a technology mistake is permitted, probably unethically if not legally, to come to fruition.

But, since we’re talking about medical technology, what is the special ethical responsibility of MedSec to report the problem? What if a patient dies because someone delayed reporting a bug until they had arranged to profit from the predicted stock market behavior? Is that on the hacker, on the investment firm taking the position, or on some other party?

Can merely forbidding this actually or legally work? Or is it really on the medical device firms to get their shit together and create working hardware and software? Or is the technology just too damn hard? Or do they not care because the stock price doesn’t affect the company that has issued the stock all that much?

A reader remarks on my email rebuttal:

Too bad there’s not enough time to rebut every trash email like this.

Regarding the racist/religious-bigot aspect included in this email, the most recent issue of The Economist has an article about research they did to find out the nature of supporters of Donald Trump. To my surprise, the factors I thought would be top were not, but instead racist, religious bigot tendencies came out on top. Trump is the new dog whistle, according to the article.

Yes, what Donald has to say dovetails neatly with what they want to hear – which are promises of how he’s going to return them to greatness, without the burden of actually explaining how he’ll get there. Couple this with the current pack of journalists tendency to chronicle Hillary’s every coughing fit as if it were somehow relevant to her explicit priorities and plans of how to implement those priorities, and it’s keeping Donald somewhat close in the race.

I still believe that every time a journalist catches Donald in a lie or is trying to put forth a bit of fantasy, they should just start jeering, “Liar, Liar!” Just do it. Teach him to quit trying to lie his way to victory.

Wondering about Francis Scott Key and his famous composition? Scott Chamberlain lays out its history and an interpretation sensitive to complexity:

There has been much criticism recently that the song is a bit of a johnny-come-lately as far as national symbols go.  It only became the official anthem in 1931, right?

Well, yes… but that overlooks its long patriotic history.

In the wake of the War of 1812, The Star-Spangled Banner quickly became established as a popular patriotic song, joining other important tunes of the time like Hail Colombia andYankee Doodle.  It was a mainstay at military parades and historical pageants throughout the country.  During the Civil War-era it was somewhat overshadowed by more topical songs that spoke more explicitly about freedom and union, like The Battle Hymn of the Republic  or Rally ‘Round the Flag.  Even so, The Star-Spangled Banner continued be used by the union army, and in 1861 poet Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote a new verse to support the Union cause in the Civil War and denounce “the traitor that dares to defile the flag of her stars.”

As usual, Scott covers the entire issue in detail. Why? He used to be a historian.

WaPo reports on Russian attempts to influence, or even usurp, the U.S. citizenry:

U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies are investigating what they see as a broad covert Russian operation in the United States to sow public distrust in the upcoming presidential election and in U.S. political institutions, intelligence and congressional officials said.

The aim is to understand the scope and intent of the Russian campaign, which incorporates ­cyber-tools to hack systems used in the political process, enhancing Russia’s ability to spread disinformation.

The article goes on to concentrate on the upcoming elections with attention to vulnerabilities in computer election systems as well as the use of filched data to sway voters.

While this is all worrying, I have to wonder if they’re missing the bigger strategy: the use of subtle cyber strategies, people, leaks (including contaminated leaks, by which I mean a leak of filched information is then subtly modified for some end of the criminal, be it individual or state-level). There is a certain level of distrust of government at all levels that is quite beyond what it should be, in my mind. Granted, this is the height of subjectivity, but honestly the paranoia about government, from UFOs to Jade Helm 15 to the paranoid fantasies of the gun lobby has started me wondering whether the Russian (and Chinese?) goals are not so much to disrupt elections and the economy so much as to make us distrust our own institutions, until we’re willing to abandon proven leaders for walking shams (read Clinton and Trump, respectively). The puzzling behaviors of certain institutions, such as the NRA, the GOP, anti-abortion groups, anti-science groups such as the Discovery Institute – are they really just Americans with honestly acquired lunatic fringe opinions, or are they subtly influenced into paranoia and distrust by contaminated information distributed by enemies of liberal democracies?

Given how badly Russia has suffered from the precipitous decline in oil prices over the last few years, it wouldn’t be at all surprising if Russia was involved in such an effort. At one time a superpower, no doubt the Russian leadership would prefer to ascend back to the heights of world domination, as illustrated by their recent contention with Ukraine.

But it could be any of a number of actors, requiring subtlety and determination. Or it could be no one but my paranoid imagination.

This is amazing, if not of necessarily huge impact. From Phys.org:

Large quantities of fish are consumed in India on a daily basis, which generates a huge amount of fish “biowaste” materials. In an attempt to do something positive with this biowaste, a team of researchers at Jadavpur University in Koltata, India explored recycling the fish byproducts into an energy harvester for self-powered electronics.

The basic premise behind the researchers’ work is simple: Fish scales contain collagen fibers that possess a piezoelectric property, which means that an electric charge is generated in response to applying a mechanical stress. As the team reports this week in Applied Physics Letters, they were able to harness this property to fabricate a bio-piezoelectric nanogenerator.

To do this, the researchers first “collected biowaste in the form of hard, raw fish scales from a fish processing market, and then used a demineralization process to make them transparent and flexible,” explained Dipankar Mandal, assistant professor, Organic Nano-Piezoelectric Device Laboratory, Department of Physics, at Jadavpur University.

The collagens within the processed fish scales serve as an active piezoelectric element.

“We were able to make a bio-piezoelectric nanogenerator—a.k.a. energy harvester—with electrodes on both sides, and then laminated it,” Mandal said.

I wonder if there are any applications of this collagen directly as medical materials, such as building the framework for heart muscle. Given the electrical requirements for heart muscles to work…..

(h/t Megan Treacy @ Treehuggers.com)

I remarked to my Arts Editor that sometimes “… tilting at windmills is a necessity.”

Here’s her reply.

Iranian Presidential elections are coming up, spurring speculation that President Rouhani may not receive a second term. Chief amongst his problems? The Great Satan, of course, from Saeid Jafari in AL Monitor:

Speaking about the nuclear deal, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Aug. 1, “Was it not agreed that the unjust sanctions be lifted to have [positive] effects on people’s lives? Is any tangible impact seen on people’s lives after six months?”

Day by day, it appears that Khamenei’s viewpoint is gaining more and more momentum across Iran. Rouhani’s critics are continuously asking why the sanctions have not been lifted in effect. Parliamentarian Mohammad Soleimani, who served as minister of communication and information technology under Ahmadinejad, has said, “The government must explain to the people why sanctions and threats have not been removed and are becoming more intense every day.” On a similar note, in an interview on Iranian state television, Mehdi Mohammadi, a member of the team of former chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, said, “None of the big European banks will work with us. They have zero dealings with us. At the moment, no dollar transaction is being conducted with Iran, and this has created problems in all of our business dealings.”

Whether this is a problem or not is yet to be seen.

But to what extent are these sentiments shared among the Iranian public? [Saeed] Laylaz, the [Iranian] economist, said, “Very little. The Iranian people, in the [Feb. 26] parliamentary elections, once again voted in favor of Rouhani’s discourse. This shows that they are content with his management. Therefore, the opposition’s criticism of the nuclear deal and its economic achievements is not serious.”

However, anecdotal evidence suggests otherwise, and especially among the lower classes. Phrases such as “Rouhani hasn’t been able to do anything either” or “the nuclear deal has had no effect on people’s livelihoods” are quite common among the Iranian public these days.

Who will the conservative hard line opposition run? Former President Ahmadinejad doesn’t appear to have the kind of support required, not least because he reportedly offended Supreme Leader Khamenei during his term in office. And will enough of the public cotton to a hard line candidate to defeat Rouhani? What’s worse, apparently ineffectual or someone with terrifyingly conservative views?

A reader remarks about commercial breaks:

It doesn’t have to be that channel. Sometimes depending on the channel I watch, I get at least a good 10 minutes or more worth of commercials. You pay for cable then have to put with all these worthless commercials and at times its a repeat of the same ones over and over again….Sickening!

I’m old enough to remember that cable was advertised as TV without commercials, because you’d already paid for the programming via cable. That didn’t last long, did it?

The Japanese classic Kaiju movie Rodan (1956) is a queer mixture of the cheesy and the believable which, to some extent, actually works in its construction of a cautionary tale concerning the use of powers beyond belief releasing horrors also beyond belief.

The concept of a creature with a 500 foot wingspan and the ability to cruise at speeds greater than Mach 1 is, of course, laughable, although I did consider that, since the Rodans don’t flag their wings at high speeds, they must propel themselves through extreme flatulence. On the other hand, much of the balance of the science was at least credible, especially since the large insects which first inflict themselves upon the local populace have their counterparts in respectable paleontology. Because we’re talking about a fable, faking a bit of credulity in the interests of poetic license is not beyond the pale.

The opportunity to marvel at the models employed by the film makers is also something of a pleasure, even as the models implode, collapse, blow around, and are otherwise deconstructed by nature and monster. While the humans are mostly interchangeable, at least some ingenuity is displayed in the struggles against the various feral critters that appear to lust after human flesh, and this helps us swallow the more extreme elements of the story, bringing a certain human empathy to the victims, indirect as they may be, of the American’s hydrogen bomb that is said to awaken the creatures.

But perhaps most interesting was the ending: the Japanese, having located the sleeping monsters in a dormant volcano, proceed to bombard their quarters with such fury that the volcano itself awakens. As the two Rodans (or, as my Arts Editor was heard to mutter, “the rubber bats”) fluttered above the bubbling lava, rather than attacking their tormentors, they proceed to execute a sort of monstrous suicide, flinging themselves into the lava while bewailing their fates, all to the narration of one of the humans. It’s not entirely clear why the former rulers of the world have chosen to die rather than face down their restive prey, but perhaps it rang true for the Japanese culture of the 1950s. Perhaps they symbolized something important – the virtual fall of the Japanese dynasty (made impotent by the Americans after World War II), or how the Japanese are seeing change in everything, how the old can no longer cling to its old power and will now be discarded.

Or it’s just a silly ending to a silly movie. Your mileage will vary.

While watching a movie on the Comet Channel, a commercial break of 13 minutes was observed.

I think the mutations are out of control.

On Lawfare, Paul Rosenzweig addresses the topic of Critical Infrastructure, its Constitutional realities, and how, really, this is not an attempt to rig the Electoral system:

So … what does it actually mean in practice to be designated as CI? It means that a sector of the economy is so important that the Federal government will work to provide as much support as it can to the sector through cooperative public-private interactions. The overall structure of the CI program is governed by Presidential Policy Directive-21. As the policy puts it, the main role of DHS is coordination and assessment, not direction and control:

[The] Secretary of Homeland Security evaluates national capabilities, opportunities, and challenges in protecting critical infrastructure; analyzes threats to, vulnerabilities of, and potential consequences from all hazards on critical infrastructure; identifies security and resilience functions that are necessary for effective public-private engagement with all critical infrastructure sectors; develops a national plan and metrics, in coordination with [Sector Specific Agencies] SSAs and other critical infrastructure partners; integrates and coordinates Federal cross-sector security and resilience activities; identifies and analyzes key interdependencies among critical infrastructure sectors; and reports on the effectiveness of national efforts to strengthen the Nation’s security and resilience posture for critical infrastructure.

…
The result of a designation as CI is that the Federal government will provide assistance in coordination and assessment functions to members of the sector. For example, DHS conducts assessments on infrastructure and communities to help businesses and local government officials make decisions about where to put resources to enhance security before an event and improve recovery after an event. In the context of elections, DHS (along with other Federal agencies involved in elections and/or cybersecurity) might help state and local election officials with an assessment of whether or not they are actually vulnerable to attack and if so, offer advice on how best to mitigate that vulnerability.

What does it mean for the next election?

One final point: The way the system of designation works, none of this, NONE, will happen before the next election. Not the designation; not the formation of the ES-ISAC and not the training, assessment or review.

In short, the Obama “takeover” of the electoral system is just another bug-a-boo scare tactic unworthy of serious consideration. Worse yet, the myth’s propogation is itself a further cause of eroding confidence in our electoral system. The only appropriate response is to drive a stake through its heart as quickly and thoroughly as possible—an endeaver to which I hope this blog post contributes.

If conservatives want to worry about the corruption of the electoral system, this might be the place to start:

These are poll numbers from a democratically blue state. A liberal state. A progressive state. And yet our state Senate is 71% Republican (74% if you include Virgil Smith) and the state House is 57% Republican (59% if you include Harvey Santana.) In other words, the state of Michigan is being run by people who do not represent the views of the citizens of the state of Michigan and they have systematically put in place safeguards to ensure that they hold onto that power. [EclectaBlog]

And – unless you’re a conservative who thinks a racism is a compatible co-philosophy – this law, fortunately struck down by the courts, should also worry you:

A federal appeals court has struck down North Carolina’s voter identification law, holding that it was “passed with racially discriminatory intent.”

The ruling also invalidated limits the same state law placed in 2013 on early voting, same-day registration, out-of-precinct voting, and preregistration.

The three judges assigned to the case — all Democratic appointees — were unanimous that the Republican-controlled North Carolina legislature violated the U.S. Constitution and the Voting Rights Act three years ago by enacting the measure requiring voters to show certain types of photo ID at the polls.

“The record makes clear that the historical origin of the challenged provisions in this statute is not the innocuous back-and-forth of routine partisan struggle that the State suggests and that the district court accepted,” Judge Diana Motzwrote on behalf of Judges James Wynn and Henry Floyd. “Rather, the General Assembly enacted them in the immediate aftermath of unprecedented African American voter participation in a state with a troubled racial history and racially polarized voting. The district court clearly erred in ignoring or dismissing this historical background evidence, all of which supports a finding of discriminatory intent.” [WaPo]

Even in a supposedly secular nation such as Turkey, the tides of religion can be turbulent. The recent coup attempt has stirred up the waters of Islam to an unexpected extent, as Mustafa Akyol reports in AL Monitor:

Those who are broadly called “modernists” lead one side in this debate. They are scholars, most of them theology professors who have reformist views on Islam. To them, the Gulenist problem is the result of a belief in a divinely-guided savior, a culture of blind obedience to a religious master and an esoteric understating of Islam that sees mystical signs everywhere. They argue that other Islamic communities in Turkey — such as Sufi orders or the Nur tradition — also share these “superstitious beliefs.”

One of the scholars who make this argument is Mustafa Cagrici, the former mufti of Istanbul, a professor of Islamic theology and columnist for the mildly pro-Justice and Development Party Karar. He recently wrote a controversial piece on the need to question Islamic communities. He argued that not just Gulenists but also many other Islamic communities in Turkey believe in notions such as the “mahdi,” the savior who will come at the end of times, which does not exist in the Quran. These myths, he wrote, “arise from the crooked religious information produced over the centuries,” and Gulenists turned this into a threat because they were able to acquire immense power.

On the other side, there are more traditionalist Islamists who blame the modernists themselves for the problem. One of the most hawkish voices in this choir, columnist for the hard-core pro-Erdogan Star Yakup Kose, wrote a piece headlined “Who will control faculties of theology?” In this view, the problem was not the mainstream Sunni tradition, but Gulenists’ deviation from it. Kose saw the roots of the problem in 19th-century Muslim reformists such as Jamaladdin Afghani or Muhammad Abduh, “who all claimed to renew Islam.” He also pointed to Gulenists’ “interfaith dialogue” with Christians, which he saw as a proof of their heresy. The real solution for him was to cleanse Turkey’s faculties of theology from all such modernists who deviate from the “pure creed” of Sunni Islam.

The more I see of this, the more I consider it simply maneuvering for power.

Promiscuous teleology:

Psychologist Debora Kelemen of Boston University has argued that young children exhibit “promiscuous teleology” (a phrase only an academic could love), meaning they find goals and purposes in almost everything. [“Fate: Inventing Reasons for the Things Thatt Happen,” Stuart Vyse, September / October Skeptical Inquirer, p. 25]

Oh, I disagree: that’s a cool phrase. From the same article, an example of a teleological explanation is, if Briana’s cat ran away, it’s to teach her that taking care of animals is a big responsibility,” in contrast to the natural explanation “Because she left the door open.”

According to WCCO news, in previous years the attendance at the Minnesota State Fair was calculated by weighing the collected tickets.

This year they were scanning the tickets, so presumably they used a newer technology than a large balance scale.

Sometimes, it’s more about the raindrops on the glass than the view out the window.  Just saying…

Running a blog means posting about what interests and amazes you. Like this, from the Juno spacecraft:

CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM

This infrared image gives an unprecedented view of the southern aurora of Jupiter, as captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft on August 27, 2016.

The above is at infrared frequencies. Here’s another view of the Southern hemisphere in black and white.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS

Several years ago I was experimenting with the new computer language Mythryl, and I conceived of a project to convert the raw data files from the Viking probes into finished picture formats. Unfortunately, my calculus was not up to my ambitions, and after writing a lot of code, and learning a lot about functional programming, I reluctantly shelved the project. It does make me wonder about the calculations necessary to convert Juno raw data into visible pictures, though.

(h/t Spaceweather.com)