Unsightly Mental Blemishes

Ever wonder if Donald Trump qualifies as an agent of Russia, secret or overt? Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare are on the case:

Question #1: Is Donald Trump an Agent of a Foreign Power Targetable Under FISA?

Answer: Not On the Current Record.

One way of asking whether a U.S. person is a Manchurian Candidate is to look at whether he meets the criteria for surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The fact that we are even writing this sentence about a presidential candidate is a reflection of what a strange year 2016 is.

FISA defines an “agent of a foreign power,” in relevant part, as follows: any person who “knowingly engages in clandestine intelligence gathering activities for or on behalf of a foreign power, which activities involve or may involve a violation of the criminal statutes of the United States”; or who “pursuant to the direction of an intelligence service or network of a foreign power, knowingly engages in any other clandestine intelligence activities for or on behalf of such foreign power, which activities involve or are about to involve a violation of the criminal statutes of the United States.”

The DNC hack provides considerable evidence that Trump is the beneficiary of the clandestine activity of “a foreign power.” And there is plenty of evidence that Trump has spoken in a fashion that would reasonably please the foreign actor in question. But there is no evidence at all that Trump has engaged in or abetted clandestine espionage activity himself, much less that he has done so in probable violation of any U.S. law.

So if the Manchurian Candidate question is one of whether Trump is a Putin agent within the meaning of FISA, the public record certainly does not support that.

But there’s more!

The political punditry has certainly had reason to buzz over the Trump candidacy, but lately it’s been expressing a new emotion: fear. Andrew Sullivan appears to be nearly breaking down during his live-blogging, Steve Benen has certainly expressed deep concern, and now Steve reports Ezra Klein, too, is deeply worried:

Vox’s Ezra Klein wrote a compelling piece last week on the degree to which Trump has left him, on a very personal level, feeling scared. The night of the Republican’s convention speech, Ezra said he felt “genuinely” afraid for “the first time since I began covering American politics.”

Ezra added yesterday, after Trump’s bizarre press conference in which he called for Russian intervention in the U.S. election, “It’s weird to keep saying this, but this is not okay. This is not a man with the temperament, the steadiness, the discipline to be president. The issue here isn’t left versus right, or liberal versus conservative, or Democrat versus Republican. It’s crazy versus not crazy.”

After watching Obama’s endorsement speech last night, Trump is in the unfortunate position of being implicitly compared to a man who stepped into a very difficult position and really hit the ball out of the ballpark. Never a panicked move, hardly any mistakes, zero scandals, just a Congressional GOP that forgot how to compromise. This is not to excuse Trump, of course, but merely to point out the stark contrast between the current occupant, well trained in the government sector, and a businessman whose very competency may not be all we’d like to think.

Responses to the RNC second night coverage:

Even the formerly disgraced won’t associate themselves with Trump. Speaks volumes.

Another responds to the first:

… there is going to be a lot of butt sniffing when he is elected. Politicians don’t forget.

Carrying a grudge? Perhaps on the Republican side – but on the Democratic side I see that the winners don’t ride roughshod over the losers, as Obama hired Hillary 8 years ago, and has now enthusiastically endorsed her and plans to campaign for her.

On the other side, Trump is reportedly considering starting a super PAC – for taking vengeance on his vanquished foes. That’s yet another new political behavior.

We’re home from a vacation trip (Atlanta, Traverse City (MI)) and getting our lives put back together here; back to work on Monday.

We’ll post any pictures we think are worthy.

Tim Kaine came out and introduced himself, and then proceeded to attack Trump fairly effectively, although I must admit he seems to be just a bit of a doofus. This is not a bad thing, it’s just an apparent characteristic which is probably misleading.

Now, after a lovely introduction by a “gold star mother” (lost a son in Afghanistan) and a video aimed to give viewers an insight / reminder of how many crises Obama has faced, the President emerges and shows why he may be the leading orator of the age. After humor designed to connect to the audience, he affirms his faith in the Nation, covers his successes – which his opponents may deny, but are often confirmable with a bit of research – and is now connecting Hillary to his history.

His sense of pacing and the audience, his clear voice and control of his tone, and the content (does he write his own?), allows listeners to connect to him and his policies. As he argues for Hillary, as he bears witness to Hillary’s achievements and experience, he makes her believable, because he’s been there.

Now a shout-out to Kaine, affirming Hillary’s choice.

As Obama beats on Trump, for which there is so much evidence, his calm confidence at the microphone is as amazing as it is with Bill. He reminds us that since the election of 2000, the Republicans have been made up of third-raters – and the Democrats have managed to rise above them in terms of competence. Not necessarily in guerilla marketing, it’s true – but in bringing an understanding of American laws and traditions to the serious task of governance.

This is a speech to rally the Democrats, to remind them that they have to vote to win – a problem for Democrats, for reasons I don’t really fathom. Independents should find it reassuring, especially as facts are cited, connected to the narrative of the President – but this is connecting Democrat’s principles to positive results. He reminds the crowd that democracy is not a one day thing, but an everyday thing – he defines democracy, how hard it is, and how everyone must work at it in order for it work for us – rather than for just a few.

So, I wonder … what will Obama do next January? In a few years will he be looking at returning to the Senate? He’d be joining a very small club (Johnson and JQ Adams). But he can contribute without occupying an elective office.

And what, in 50 years, will historians say about him? I can’t wait to find out.

Later: and out pops Hillary for a thank you hug. Nice touch. Trump dead-enders must be furious – Trump is so outclassed as to look like a fumbler.

In the past I’ve explored my thoughts on the compartmentalization of society and why the use of the operationality of one sector may not be appropriate to another, despite the enthusiasm of supporters – we’ve seen this in the debacle of private prisons, for example. Briefly, it’s a problem of disparate goals: processes inevitably reflect the goals of the developers, and if the goals of the developers are not congruent with those of the sector into which they are being imported then unintended, unwanted consequences will occur.

Continuing the thread on the candidacy of Donald Trump with this in mind, I think the recent insanity we hear coming from Trump, such as calling for the intelligence service of Russia to “find” Clinton e-mails, is reflective of his lack of training in the government sector, which is the sector responsible for international relations and safeguarding the nation, in combination with his own outré business strategies of not taking any contract obligation seriously, which we can abstract to doing anything to win.

This would be interesting in small doses, but it also requires a sense of honor in order to navigate this new path successfully, and given Trump’s business history, there is no sense that he has a sense of honor; and while the private sector participants should have a sense of honor in order to proceed, it appears Trump uses his superior financial position to cheat those he deals with on a regular basis. For all that he brags of success, you do have to wonder how much more successful he might have been had he possessed a working sense of honor.

So I circle back to the original point: Trump’s lack of training and experience in the government sector leads to his foolishness. He runs without studying the area, he just shoots his mouth off – and the naïve lap it up. He thinks he knows Russia because … why? He was a beauty contestant judge in Russia once?

Now this may just be an attempt to counteract the new life story of Hillary as presented by Bill Clinton last night, a powerful and enlightening story for those who’ve not paid attention or are so young as to think she’s irrelevant – he implies there’s something hidden in those emails, without having to prove it. To credulous minds, this will work. He may not expect anything to come of such a call – it’s all another dishonest tactic, just like how he treats painters, electricians, and plumbers – screw them over.

Robert Ingersoll (August 11, 1833 – July 21, 1899) is the subject of the biography The Great Agnostic, by Susan Jacoby. As one might expect from the title, Ingersoll was a freethinker, an agnostic, an atheist; but as a highly successful & articulate lawyer, he became a highly visible and surprisingly popular advocate for freethinking, and, by the reverse side of that coin, a fierce critic of religion. The son of a Presbyterian minister, he was schooled to a thorough knowledge of religion, and when he chose a life of, to paraphrase, “freeing men and women from fear”, he came well-equipped.

I have not yet finished TGA, but have decided to quote some relevant remarks from Mz. Jacoby and quotes from Ingersoll while I’m thinking about them. I’m a little concerned this may be a hagiography rather than a proper biography, as the worst criticism Mz. Jacoby has leveled is that of ‘portliness’, at least so far. Regardless, the quotes are presumably verifiable and provoked thought in their relevance to today.

From page 116:

Ingersoll considered the passage of laws that turned Chinese into a special category of American residents without constitutional rights as not only morally wrong but wrong in terms of American self-interest, since Chinese made up one-fourth of the human race and Americans surely wanted to trade with that country.

“After all, it pays to do right. This is a hard truth to learn — especially for a nation. A great nation should be bound by the highest conception of justice and honor … It should remember that its responsibilities are in accordance with its power and intelligence.”

There’s a couple of thoughts here. First, the welcome congruency to my own thought that principles are not simple arbitrary rules that are to be followed, as at least I was taught growing up, but actually have positive consequences accruing to their adherence. I have to wonder if this connection should be more firmly taught to our youth; or if the connection is not as strong as it ought to be as the upper classes take advantage of the virtuous lower classes. Neither thought is original, and might even be considered clichés, but a cliché is not false because of this status, merely tired. The application to Trump business practices should be obvious.

Second, the connection between power and responsibility is drawn. The current GOP themes of using the worst and most insulting tactics in regard to Muslims, both naturalized and aliens, comes directly to mind as violating this dictate, and the consequences of dismaying our allies, as well as discouraging those who are ambivalent, are negative and evidence of an immature mind.

Feel free to send your own thoughts using the mail link on the right. More to come as I find and urge to transcribe from the book.

As Bill Clinton gives the keynote speech I’m reminded that he’s one of the best orators of the current era. Against the background of years of Republic deprecation, he’s humanizing her in a wonderful way, by telling a story that gives her motivations, her accomplishments, and more importantly her self-doubts, and her successful efforts to overcome them. This understanding of how the human race, for the most part, adores a good story, the story of the underdog who fights for the good.

He makes canny mention of her working with such Republicans as DeLay and Gingrich, and the positive words they have, perhaps incautiously, spoken of her. This speaks to her ability to work with all sides to create solutions to problems, to ignore ideological problems – an implied condemnation of GOP recalcitrance over the last 8 years.

And, as her husband, he can testify to her with authenticity; but he also does it with humor that reveals both his and her foibles, that he courted a woman he found attractive, she was independent and refused to assent to his proposals and made him work for the marriage. This transforms the overall political narrative from a picture of a grasping, cold-hearted bitch who wants power for power’s sake, to the picture of a woman person motivated by the needs of those in need of help, whether it be veterans, women, or her favorite – children. The crowd is going wild as Bill now exudes, with sincerity, his observations and belief at her ability as a “changemaker”.

Now he mentions how he was sent to West Virginia, a state they knew she’d lose in primaries, to tell the coalminers that if and when she became President, she’d come to West Virginia to try to help them. This is to counter the opposition story thread of Clinton vindictiveness.

He finishes up with a laundry list of accomplishments, diverse and inspirational, if sometimes obscure and a little hurried, and then a final, perhaps slightly weak ending, an encouragement to vote for her.

Ah! An interview with an audience member makes me realize this also introduces Hillary to younger voters who don’t know the story.

Now Meryl Streep is telling the story of a woman in the Revolutionary Army who took a bullet for George Washington, and now tries link that woman (I didn’t catch the name) to a series of other famous ladies, such as Eleanor Roosevelt, to Hillary. It’s an appeal to emotion, as it does not reveal anything new personally or politically about Hillary. Just a rah-rah moment.

I didn’t get to see the other speakers tonight, but I daresay Bill was the big cannon in what may be his final major speech, and I’d say he more or less nailed it. It was aimed at the independents who may think they know about Hillary, but Bill set out to set them straight on their perceptions by giving the story – a real story, one that resonates with the classic elements of story-telling and with verifiable facts (I should think).

The RNC sought to resonate with their delegates, and to some extent they managed it – and the performance of Trump and his surrogates reflected the nature of those delegates. If you watched or read about the RNC, then you understand that it ran on a mythos unrelated to reality, or for that matter an understanding of the traditions of American politics.

The DNC, too, has tried to resonate with the delegates, and again it’s a reflection of the delegates. The boisterous booing of Sanders delegates looked bad, but the overt multiculturalism, the messages of hope, and the refusal to indulge in outright hatred of the opposition – contrast with the disgraceful calls for imprisoning and executing Hillary at the RNC – should be a message to the independents and moderate and ex-Republicans that the Democrats remember and hold sacred the best traditions of American politics.

The NOAA ship Okeanos recently completed an exploration of the deep Marianas Trench. Here’s a few of the things they found:

Acorn worms were just one of the many types of strange fauna observed at Twin Peaks. Image courtesy of the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, 2016 Deepwater Exploration of the Marianas.

One of the unusual benthic platyctenid ctenophores documented during Dive 5 at Ahyi Seamount. Image courtesy of the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, 2016 Deepwater Exploration of the Marianas.

ROV Deep Discoverer discovers a B-29 Superfortress resting upsidedown on the seafloor. This is the first B-29 crash site found of over a dozen American B-29s lost in the area while flying missions during World War II. Image courtesy of the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, 2016 Deepwater Exploration of the Marianas.

More here.

In this post I suggested the GOP rank and file are being trained to be victims. I’m not the only one, as James Hoggan notes in NewScientist (16 July 2016):

One would hope that evidence and reasoned debate would rule. But reality doesn’t matter to the likes of Trump, who sees himself as more powerful than mere facts. Yale philosopher Jason Stanley says such figures ruthlessly prey on public fears to reconstruct reality to pander to them.

Many people feel beleaguered, notes psychologist Bryant Welch. Trying to keep pace with change places ever greater demands on the brain, and this combines with worries about immigration policy, the economy, unemployment, terrorism, climate change and security. Anxiety makes the crowd turn to a powerful commander.

The danger is that the more this happens, the weaker and less capable people become. Welch compares it to a heroin addict craving larger and larger doses to get the same high. People are mainlining the Trump drug, a cocktail of absolute certainty, strong opinion and talk of control.

And then it becomes a self-perpetuating vortex as those who have assented to the all powerful leader continue to become more and more dependent. It’s essential that Trump not only lose, but lose big-time – and I fear that the blunder of Debbie Wasserman Schultz may make this impossible. We may be in for a long period of embittered people who – if we’re lucky – saw their leader lose an election; excuse me, no doubt the verb will be stolen. After all, combining this with the religious certainty of the fundamentalist and they will be certain they’ve been wronged.

I was too tired to subject myself to the traditional political raz-ma-taz of a convention last night, a decision I rather regret given the highly positive reviews I’ve been seeing of Michelle Obama’s speech. Glancing through the Andrew Sullivan live-blog, though, I do see that there was some heckling of Elizabeth Warren (!), attributed to the Sanders supporters:

You know, I didn’t cover this primary election but watching some of these Bernie supporters throw various hissy fits, I wonder if I would have found myself backing Clinton. I understand the passion but they sure come off as assholes. Sanders himself was far better – poised, happy to have swung the debate his way, and endorsing Clinton without any serious caveats at all.

I find it far harder to call them assholes in view of the revelations of the activities of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC chairman who appears to have favored Clinton over Sanders in substantial ways despite rules stating that the DNC should remain neutral during the primaries.

I’ve been poking around just a little, and it appears many observers are looking at Schultz’s future. I think that this is really a secondary issue, despite her position as a Representative for Florida, a state up for grabs. Instead, as Trump continues to look more than a little suspect no matter the issue, this is the time for Clinton to look like the old-time saviour of the nation, to do so she must appeal to the independents who seem to view her with suspicion.

The fact that Schultz favored her will, instead, once again cast black suspicion on Hillary. I’ve yet to see any reports indicating the leaked emails suggest that Hillary knew she was being awarded improper help – much less having actually illicitly requested it. Nevertheless, suspicious independents as well as moderate Republicans (such as former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg), urged on by the right wing, will be tempted to think that just such has occurred – and because there’s no effective way to deny it, the tar will stick.

So when the Sanders supporters, already miffed at Bernie’s loss in the primaries, are faced with the news of a conspiracy against Sanders at the highest levels of the Party, is it any surprise that they react with disrespect – even when it’s progressive icon Elizabeth Warren? They know they’ve been screwed over. If you don’t express your discontent at being screwed, you’ll never be respected.

But in the bigger picture, the real matter of concern is the perception of Hillary as once again engaged in dirty politics. Whether or not she has ever been in the past, the perception, from national polls, is that she cannot be trusted. From Gallup:

I’m left wondering how Schultz didn’t understand the importance of following the rules, and how this places her favorite in peril of losing this election. Trump should be so vulnerable that his post-convention bounce was miniscule, but with this disaster, neither candidate appears to be reasonably pristine – and that’s a problem. Only one has the experience to be trusted with nuclear weapons and to recognize the dangers posed by Russia, while the other appears to be carrying water for Putin. But instead of this being crystal clear to the majority of the electorate, we’re instead pre-occupied with questions of the trustability of a former Senator and Secretary who has performed competently and honorably in her previous positions.

If we find the country at risk in December, a substantial portion of the blame should be placed at Schultz’s feet.

And now for some lovely family portraits. Some may seem familiar, of course, like any good portrait.

Some of the gangly teenagers in this one.

Uncle Henry, there in the foreground, has a lovely set of broad shoulders.

A casual shot of the family gossiping.

This appears to be some angry aunts. Best not to inquire about the roast turkey.

Sally Adee throws some cold water on the fears of Elon Musk, et al, in the pages of NewScientist (16 July 2016, paywall), suggesting that even the phrase “artificial intelligence” is misleading – because the computers aren’t really thinking:

“The black magic seduction of neural networks has always been that by some occult way, they will learn from data so they can understand things they have never seen before,” says Mark Bishop at Goldsmiths University of London. Their complexity (157 layers in one case) helps people suspend disbelief and imagine that the algorithms will converge to form some kind of emergent intelligence. But it’s still just a machine built on rule-based mathematical systems, says Schank.

In 2014, a paper that could be seen as the successor to the Lighthill report punctured holes in the belief that neural networks do anything even remotely akin to actual understanding.

Instead, they recognise patterns, finding relationships in data sets that are so complex that no human can see them. This matters because it disproves the idea that they could develop an understanding of the world. A neural network can say a cat is a cat, but it has no concept of what a cat is. It cannot differentiate between a real cat or a picture of one.

The paper isn’t the only thing giving people deja vu. Schank and others see money pouring into deep learning and the funnelling of academic talent.

“When the field focuses too heavily on short-term progress by only exploring the strength of a single technique, this can lead to a long-term dead end,” says Kenneth Friedman, a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who adds that the AI and computer science students around him are flocking to deep learning.

So the suggestion is that the AI field may be pursuing another dead-end approach to discovering actual thinking machines. While not everyone agrees on this point, Roger Schrank at Northwestern University says:

“The beginning and the end of the problem is the term AI,” says Schank. “Can we just call it ‘cool things we do with computers’?”

In other news, also from NewScientist, comes word of new EU regulations which will impact the more mysterious computing systems:

Soon, you may have the right to ask the inscrutable algorithms involved to explain themselves.

In April this year, the European parliament approved the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a new set of rules governing personal data. Due to go into effect in 2018, it introduces a “right to explanation”: the opportunity for European Union citizens to question the logic of an algorithmic decision – and contest the results.

In life some things can be controlled and some cannot, and a key to sanity is having at least some control. The more we are at the mercy of the unfeeling vortex, the less happy we become, and the more bad decisions we make. The software engineers may whine about it, but I’ll happily applaud this decision and hope this idea may make its way over the Atlantic.

Steve Benen @ Maddowblog notes the Trump campaign has decided to question the honesty of various government agencies:

Late last week, as Donald Trump made claims about the U.S. crime rate that were demonstrably untrue, many began to wonder why the campaign was presenting fiction as fact. Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman, said the FBI’s data may show a steady decline in the crime rate, but Americans shouldn’t necessarily trust the FBI. Federal law enforcement, Manafort argued, is “suspect these days.”

Three days later, Don Trump Jr. appeared on CNN in his official capacity as a campaign surrogate, and Jake Tapper reminded him that not only has the crime rate improved, but “unemployment is much, much lower than when President Obama took office. Trump Jr. wasn’t impressed.

“These are artificial numbers, Jake. These are numbers that are massaged to make the existing economy look good and make the administration look good when in fact it’s a total disaster.”

It prompted the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein to note, “So, to be clear, the Trump campaign trusts the National Enquirer but not the Bureau of Labor Statistics.”

So – I know the Trump campaign surrogates are focused on winning the election and aren’t thinking beyond that – what happens a year after winning and they try to claim some achievement based on, say, the Bureau of Labor Statistics? Everyone just sneers and returns the same accusations?

This is a very divisive situation. The institutions that deliver stability and trustable information are crucial in today’s data-heavy society, and by implying, without solid information, that the numbers are not trustworthy is to drive another wedge between Americans. Now if they had some solid evidence then they’d be worth listening to, but if all they have are complaints that the numbers don’t match those predicted by ideology, as Steve reports, then perhaps your ideology isn’t sacred.

By assuming the government agencies which reported the terrible statistics of the Bush Administration are now handmaidens to the current Administration betrays a mindset similar to the Communists at their worst. Either put up the evidence, boys, or shut up.

For those of us who pay attention to quantum mechanics comes a possible solution to the conundrum of observation. Speaking as a simple software engineer, it has never made sense to say that for some (very small) entity, its various attributes do not have set values until it comes under observation. This is known as the Copenhagen interpretation:

… it says that a particle’s state before observation is fundamentally, intrinsically, insurmountably uncertain. If the wave function says a particle could be here and there, then it really is here and there, however hard that is to fathom in terms of everyday experience. Only the act of looking at a quantum object “collapses” its wave function, jolting it from a shadowy netherworld into definite reality.

Not only is it intuitively puzzling, it also leaves open important questions concerning how the Universe ever got started. I’ve given some thought to the possibility that, if true, it might constitute a clue as to whether we’re in a computer simulation, and this is an artifact of late resolution of “reality”, but it’s hard to see my way to really believing that.

And now perhaps that won’t be necessary. From NewScientist (16 July 2016, paywall) comes a longish article on the work of Daniel Sudarsky of National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), who is extending a theory from the 1970s:

… Sudarsky began with a third option: that wave functions are real things and do indeed collapse – but randomly, by themselves. “Something like a measurement occurs, but without anybody actually measuring,” says Sudarsky. It doesn’t need a human observer, so this process is known as an objective collapse.

Objective collapse would be rare, but catching. Wait for a single particle’s wave function to collapse and you could be waiting longer than the age of the universe. Group many particles together, however, and the chance swiftly escalates. With a few billion particles, you might only have to wait a few seconds for one wave function to collapse – and for that to set the rest off.

Objective collapse theory was first put forward in the 1970s by Philip Pearle at Hamilton College in New York, and later refined by Giancarlo Ghirardi and Tulio Weber at the University of Trieste and Alberto Rimini at the University of Pavia, Italy. Their goal was to tweak Schrödinger’s equation so that the wave function evolves naturally, without an observer, from a mix of states into a single, well-defined state. To do so, they added a couple of extra mathematical terms: a non-linear term, which rapidly promotes one state at the expense of others, and a stochastic term, which makes that happen at random.

At least superficially, these tweaks can explain quite a lot that’s inexplicable about quantum theory. We never see ghostly quantum effects in large objects such as cats or the moon because, with so many interacting particles, their wave functions readily collapse or else never form. And in the early universe, as Sudarsky and physicist-philosopher Elias Okon, also at UNAM, showed a decade ago, it was only a matter of time before the wave functions of matter collapsed into an uneven distribution from which stars and galaxies could form, God or no God.

All still tentative, but it’s good to see someone takes my intuitive unease seriously and is investigating an alternative to one of the most successful scientific theories ever.

Katherine Martinko on Treehugger.com reports on the new mayor of Turin, Italy, and her primary focus:

It is into this firmly entrenched culinary tradition that Chiara Appendino has stepped. She is the controversial new mayor of Turin, a large city of over 870,000 people in the industrial northwest region of Piedmont that is famous for its food, primarily cured meats, and for being the birthplace of the Slow Food movement.

Appendino has announced her intention to promote vegetarianism and veganism in Turin. In a document outlining her plan for the city in 2016-2021, Appendino states that her government will prioritize

“The promotion of vegetarian and vegan diets throughout the municipality as an fundamental act that will protect the environment, health, and animals through awareness-building actions on the ground.”

The statement is consistent with Appendino’s strong stance on animal rights. Her Manifesto promises to “promote a culture of respect that recognizes all animals as having rights”and to make curricular changes in schools that include educating kids about “protection and respect for animals and proper nutrition in collaboration with animal welfare organizations and nutritionists.”

As Katherine notes, meat is a central part of the cuisine of Turin and Italy, and I would not expect a mass conversion of the citizenry to veganism nor vegetarianism. In my view, the philosophical defenses of vegetarianism are defective in that they ignore the biological requirements given to use by evolution. However, I will grant that it seems as if humanity is often at its best when it is defying the dictates of evolution; and Social Darwinism, the imposition of the perceived dictates of evolution on human society in the form of condemning the poor for the sin of being poor, without ever following the logic of justice in the implementation of same (and that would be such things as banning inheritance and any other activity, outside of the control of the newborn, which might give one newborn an advantage over another), is a repugnant mechanism to those who realize that society doesn’t exist to encapsulate cut-throat competition, but for the age-old exigencies: to safeguard all those who choose to join and are willing to contribute.

A little off-course.

The point being, evolution is a natural mechanism, not an idol to be adored, so it’s worth exploring the variants; and, in any case, we eat too much meat (& fish), so I expect the mayor’s campaign should have a positive effect, regardless of how close she comes to her nominative goal.

And I’m not talking World War II aircraft carriers …

Creeping up behind you

Now in its clutches!

And now back in hiding, no doubt digesting that innocent lettuce.

dicotyledonous:

The dicotyledons, also known as dicots (or more rarely dicotyls^[2]), were one of the two groups into which all the flowering plants or angiosperms were formerly divided. The name refers to one of the typical characteristics of the group, namely that the seed has two embryonic leaves or cotyledons.

Heard from my Uncle Lester today in conversation, as he recalled it from his botany class 60+ years ago.

The royal purples cling to existence…

NewScientist (16 July 2016) comes up with a summary of new British PM Theresa May:

Despite the UK being way off course on its target of an 80 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, May has generally voted against measures to fight climate change, as well as against environmental regulation for UK fracking.

Uh oh. She also sponsored a national security bill:

The bill also appears to ask online service providers to reveal encrypted messages for which they don’t have the key – a mathematical impossibility. With May as prime minister, it seems likely the bill will pass unhindered.

Well. This should be interesting. Will math trump politics, or the reverse? She seems to have a problem with reality.

Skirting the edges of respectability….

A bit of echinacea.

Lettuce please you…

And for the fun of basil sins.

Due to other commitments, I was unable to watch the fourth and final night of the RNC. Not wishing to suffer through 2-3 hours of speechifying, I chose the easy alternative of reading the Andrew Sullivan live blog, which featured Andrew freaking out after reading the speech, and then his gradual return to normalcy as he realized Trump has not yet learned how to deliver a competent speech.

I think that Andrew, as a British immigrant of a true conservative bent, despite having been here for years, doesn’t understand that sometimes we Americans tend to have emotional surges and often forget that our personal experiences simply do not translate to this huge country of ours. For example, me getting mugged in downtown St. Paul doesn’t mean we’re in a crime wave and that chaos is about to descend upon the head of every Tom, Dick, and Harry. We need to be reminded of our immense size and activity from time to time, and then we start thinking again.

And that really leads me onto the important question of the day: What would I do if I were confronted with a Trump supporter today (and was actually articulate, rather than, like my wife, an “irrepressible wallflower”)?

I’d say, “Look, if you love your country, don’t yell at me about Hillary and all her alleged crimes. Take not 1, not 2, but 3 of Donald Trump’s claims, at random, and research them, and I mean really get down with them. Check the government reports, the neutral web sites – don’t take Donald’s word for it, don’t take the GOP’s, don’t take the Democrats’ word for it, and certainly don’t take Fox News’ word for it (because of this – summary: Fox makes you stupid, according to a long-time conservative’s objective research) – but the government non-partisan agencies are required to give truthful information. So, for instance, take Donald’s claim that crime is running rampant – and go get the stats. They’re online – so go find them. (Don’t expect me to help – of course!)

Do the damn research!

Did Donald lie? On all of them? Did he manage to be for something before he was against it before he was for it? Think about that. And you’re excited by him?

Finally, you say you want to shake things up in Washington? Here, show me your car. OK, would you let a thirteen year old with no experience fixing cars work on your beauty? No? Donald has no applicable experience – and, no, being a businessman simply doesn’t cut it. Why are you supporting him? Is your government not as important as your car? He can destroy civilization if he’s the President; in your case, you could have a car accident and get hurt, maybe even hurt a few other people, but that’s it. I know Paul Ryan and a few other GOPers think experts are unnecessary, but tell that to your car. Think about it. What possible good will come of this?”

And I’m not talking about the RNC. We have purple and white phlox in the background (oh so invasive), with a steadily creeping lamb’s ear in the foreground. Hollyhocks and daisies look on….

University of Minnesota researchers have used an electron microscope to see heat propagation:

“As soon as we saw the waves, we knew it was an extremely exciting observation,” said lead researcher David Flannigan, an assistant professor of chemical engineering and materials science at the University of Minnesota. “Actually watching this process happen at the nanoscale is a dream come true.”

Flannigan said the movement of heat through the material looks like ripples on a pond after a pebble is dropped in the water. The videos show waves of energy moving at about 6 nanometers (0.000000006 meters) per picosecond (0.000000000001 second). Mapping the oscillations of energy, called phonons, at the nanoscale is critical to developing a detailed understanding of the fundamentals of thermal-energy motion.

I had no idea electron microscopes were so capable!