Unsightly Mental Blemishes

Adding to our string of old science fiction films, we recently viewed The Man from Planet X (1951), which tells the story of the approach of another planet, somewhat in the vein of When Worlds Collide (also 1951, reviewed here), but in this case the population of the approaching planet has plans to come to Earth, rather than we fleeing Earth. To this eventuality they have sent a scout …

… and to the credit of the movie makers, they keep the story strictly to the human viewpoint, as two astrophysicists, the beautiful and intelligent, even proactive daughter of one of them, and the war-time friend of one of the astrophysicists, now a journalist, find themselves deep in the marshes of a Scottish island, the part of Earth which will be facing the new planet on closest approach, located in a convenient stone building. During a bit of gallumphing about by the daughter and the journalist, an alien probe, made of an incredible metal, is found, thus awakening the avarice of one of the astrophysicists, an unfortunate story-telling device which telegraphs substantial portions of the plot.

The the scout is found, and, in an interesting twist, the poor fellow’s spacesuit is not functioning properly; the journalist fixes it, and while the fix is a little silly, it advances the plot in an engaging manner. The scout is brought back to the castle, where the astrophysicists try to communicate with them, and come up with the approach of using geometry – a sort of visual logic, if you will. I was surprised at the logic displayed by the movie makers.

And at what is a promising juncture, the movie falls apart.

The greedy scientist betrays the conveniently ill senior astrophysicist by concealing the success of the communication while physically controlling the scout, yet in some never revealed manner, the scout breaks free and takes the daughter captive. The astrophysicists disappear, and a desperate signal for help is sent from the Scottish island to a passing freighter (in itself a lovely bit of overcoming an obstacle), and the local Scottish village begins to depopulate as the scout takes more captives. Help arrives from the mainland in the form of Scotland Yard, and eventually a rescue and destroy mission is formulated and carried out (during which the scout is disabled, and yet mysteriously recovers, a serious lapse of story-telling logic). The captives, who somehow learned (telepathy?) the plans of the alien, reveal that the scout must setup a homing beacon for the invading forces, and so the spaceship must be destroyed (and, to much hilarity, suffers total annihilation). All is wrapped up, with nothing more than potential losses. We watch as the alien planet goes flying by, raising questions about just how that entire population was going to transfer to Earth in the blink of an eye…

There was a lot of good going on in this movie. The actors are professionals and not even the Scottish villagers chewed the scenery. The scout plays his role effectively, displaying good will and vulnerability, as well as the necessary aggressiveness, despite being stuck behind a space helmet and a huge mask. The makeup is particularly good for the 1950s – not quite convincing, but then again, if Doctor Who didn’t have to be convincing to be effective, why should this? The special effects are, however, mediocre at best, laughable at worst.

The characters are believable and empathetic. Even the scout, our invader, is at least an ambiguous antagonist, believable in the actions and reactions in which the plot takes him. Collectively, they were a good population for the story.

But the problem is the last half of the plot. The avarice of one of the scientists has been mentioned, and it doesn’t really fit into the general popular temperament of a scientist; the early reveal means we are unsurprised by many elements of the plot. The promising start of the daughter character is wasted as she disappears into the clutches of the scout. And, finally, there’s no real element of insight gained – they ran the characters through the plot, things happened, the good guys win at virtually no cost – maybe a touch of PTSD, we might speculate. No real change happens. And perhaps that’s the worst of it – a good story shows how human – or intelligent entities – actions and emotions cause change to themselves and those around them. In this movie, there’s a little bit. But not enough.

Postscript: I do have to say good things for a movie that has provided my Arts Editor with inspiration. The result?

In case you were wondering, yes, that’s myself and my Arts Editor. The original may be found here.

Tesla’s new AutoPilot feature for their car offerings has been involved in its first fatality. First, what is AutoPilot? From the Tesla blog:

It is important to note that Tesla disables Autopilot by default and requires explicit acknowledgement that the system is new technology and still in a public beta phase before it can be enabled. When drivers activate Autopilot, the acknowledgment box explains, among other things, that Autopilot “is an assist feature that requires you to keep your hands on the steering wheel at all times,” and that “you need to maintain control and responsibility for your vehicle” while using it. Additionally, every time that Autopilot is engaged, the car reminds the driver to “Always keep your hands on the wheel. Be prepared to take over at any time.” The system also makes frequent checks to ensure that the driver’s hands remain on the wheel and provides visual and audible alerts if hands-on is not detected. It then gradually slows down the car until hands-on is detected again.

Which is to say it’s not yet foolproof; it may never be. But then, neither are human drivers. Given the supervisory requirement on the human occupant, I wonder if they would have been better advised to name this CoPilot.

So on to their reaction to the incident:

We learned yesterday evening that NHTSA is opening a preliminary evaluation into the performance of Autopilot during a recent fatal crash that occurred in a Model S. This is the first known fatality in just over 130 million miles where Autopilot was activated. Among all vehicles in the US, there is a fatality every 94 million miles. Worldwide, there is a fatality approximately every 60 million miles. It is important to emphasize that the NHTSA action is simply a preliminary evaluation to determine whether the system worked according to expectations.

Following our standard practice, Tesla informed NHTSA about the incident immediately after it occurred. What we know is that the vehicle was on a divided highway with Autopilot engaged when a tractor trailer drove across the highway perpendicular to the Model S. Neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied. The high ride height of the trailer combined with its positioning across the road and the extremely rare circumstances of the impact caused the Model S to pass under the trailer, with the bottom of the trailer impacting the windshield of the Model S. Had the Model S impacted the front or rear of the trailer, even at high speed, its advanced crash safety system would likely have prevented serious injury as it has in numerous other similar incidents.

There’s a couple of takeaways here: Tesla’s claim of a first fatality at 130 million miles, which is significantly better than American and world wide averages. Of course, these are small numbers (i.e., 1 fatality) and hardly constitutes an average. But let’s make an unwarranted assumption and assume these numbers will hold up, even if I do feel it’s a little irresponsible to be quoting such numbers so early in the game.

Secondly, the claim that neither AutoPilot nor the driver could see the truck.

Here’s what engineers & scientists are going to see and hear: aggregate accident and fatality numbers and how they compare to traditionally piloted cars. As Tesla points out, the raw data is processed to measure accidents and fatalities, and for engineers who want a clear view of how it performs, this will be the important part, along with questions concerning efficiency (fuel) and throughput (i.e., easing of traffic jams) through coordination of driving.

But how about the rest of the population? In fact, it may be unfair to exclude the engineers and scientists. I’m talking about emotions here. Let’s frame the question right here: your best friend is in a fatal car accident, and you’re sitting at their wake, thinking about their last moments and trying to understand how you’ll feel about it. If they died behind the wheel, perhaps killed through the carelessness of some other driver, it’s going to be a terrible feeling.

But what if they were using AutoPilot, a fully implemented AutoPilot that allowed them to take their attention elsewhere? I don’t know about you, but to me the idea that some automatic driving system may have been responsible for my death puts a chill in my spine. This is because I’m no longer the one in control of the car, nor is it an entity in which I can feel some link, some feeling that I understand how their mind works well enough to trust that they’re well-trained and are doing their best to drive well.

This is an entity built on silicon and Big Data algorithms and who knows how it works? Often even the designers don’t understand the details of particular decisions; how about that mother with her infant?

This is the concern that makes me wonder if we’ll ever really use self-driving cars. Science geeks will look at the numbers and realize that accidents and fatalities have gone down, various efficiencies are up, and this is all working out. But the fight will be with the problem of control and trust of the entity in control. If it’s not understandable, will the average driver be willing to entrust their life to it?

I’m not sure.

With regard to the second point, I wonder if we’re going to expect technology to be better than us. I think the potential is there, but is it right for Tesla to stress that neither AutoPilot nor the driver could see the truck? Are they certain the driver was paying attention at the critical moment? If we do expect technology to outclass us as drivers, will this lead to risky, unjustified behavior?

With regard to the selection of Pence by Trump for the VP slot, a reader remarks:

Calculated move by Trump to pull in the far right ultra conservative wing who despise him.

Another replies:

I always thought the Klan was the far right, and they endorsed him. Who are these people on the far right who hate him, and what do they believe in?

Well, not all on the far Right are KKK – much of the fundamentalist movement is also far Right as a best characterization. And that group seems to be convulsed by Trump. Here’s an article from The Atlantic’s Jonathan Merritt back in September, 2015:

Donald Trump is immodest, arrogant, foul-mouthed, money-obsessed, thrice-married, and until recently, pro-choice. By conventional standards, evangelical Christians should despise him. Yet somehow, the Manhattan billionaire has attracted their support.

According to the most recent polls, Trump is one of the top picks for president among evangelical Christians. One Washington Post poll even had him as the group’s favorite by a margin of six points. His first major rally in the Bible-Belt fortress town of Mobile, Alabama, drew an estimated 18,000 attendees. And on September 28, prominent televangelist Paula White will reportedly lead a delegation of evangelical leaders to meet with the mogul in Trump Tower.

“Why do they love me?” Trump replied when asked about the trend. “You’ll have to ask them. But they do. They do love me.”

Back in May Mugambi Jouet suggested in The New Republic a reason why evangelicals love Trump:

But Trump and his evangelical supporters think alike in more ways than people realize. Fundamentalist approaches to evangelicalism have long fostered anti-intellectual, anti-rational, black-and-white, and authoritarian mindsets—the very traits that define Trump.

The historian Richard Hofstadter explored the roots of the issue in his 1966 book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, which described how the spread of evangelicalism since the eighteenth century fostered the notion that education is an obstacle to faith. Not all evangelicals thought alike, although many were convinced that people need not read any book except the Bible. As the influential preacher Dwight L. Moody (1837-99) proclaimed, “I do not read any book, unless it will help me to understand the book.” Hofstadter concluded that this anti-intellectual conception of religion extended to life outside the church. Hardline evangelicals became particularly disdainful of reflection and refined ideas, leading some to be drawn to “men of emotional power or manipulative skill.”

I’ve never read Hofstadter, which I now regret a little, as that last phrase, ‘leading some to be drawn to “men of emotional power or manipulative skill“,’ precisely echoes some recent conclusions of my own. Without trying to be offensive (but no doubt achieving it anyways), it had recently occurred to me that if you’re willing to strongly believe in a specific deity to the extent that the deity’s book is the center of your life, you fail to develop the instincts, as it were, to detect the fallacies & frauds employing charismatics, who proclaim falsehoods so loudly, because those same tactics are employed by those who are part of your faith community. There is an important distinction between message and methods of communications, and to my mind an alarming number of people, not constrained to the evangelical fundamentalists, do not understand this. I recall sitting in  two medical conferences about a relative of mine. Virtually the same information was presented, but one MD was very upbeat, while the other (the first one’s partner) was a much more sober person. My Dad and I walked out of the second conference saying nothing new had been learned, but other attendees were deeply swayed by the presentation style. Similar remarks may be made of the evangelical support for Bush & Cheney, and the poor decision making that befell the nation afterwards.

I have to wonder if it’s accurate to say that a true debate between a rationalist of any stripe and a fundamentalist is itself a fraud and a circus, because there is no single metric by which to measure the contestants. The rationalist audience will analyze the facts presented, the arguments built on those facts, and tote up the points for each debater. The fundamentalists, on the other hand, will employ a scale in which defense of the faith is the most important facet. This will consist of appeals to popular parts of the Bible, thus demonstrating some familiarity with the theology. If this reminds you of the debates in the wonderful movie Inherit the Wind, be not surprised, as that’s in the back of my mind as I write this. In particular, remember the fury and discouragement of the rationalist lawyer, played by Spencer Tracy, at the obstinacy of the judge. In more modern times, while I did not watch it, the 2014 debate between Ken Ham, a creationist, and Bill Nye “The Science Guy” and of The Planetary Society played out in the same way, as I understand it. On a far more speculative note, the Turkish upper-classes may have stumbled into this quagmire, and even triggered the attempted coup. Why say “triggered”? Because downgrading reason below faith in a deity and the arbitrary book representing the deity can often lead to poor decisions – and if the populace has been taken in by the methods of those now in power, some military personnel may have felt it necessary to remove those in power and let the citizenry detox, as it were, while those who had been in power are shown to be frauds, charges which have already been flying in regards to Turkey’s President Erdogan.

And then there’s those who’d make democracy a shrine unto itself…. but I shan’t walk down the path today.

There are those evangelicals who don’t care for Trump. In March of this year, the Christian Post covered one such megachurch pastor’s experience – Max Lucado:

Lucado mentioned that his recent blog about Trump got 15 million reads, and said while many agreed with him, others wanted him to “shut up.”

Lucado, who ministers at the Oak Hills Church, said while Trump claims to be a Christian, he is using “a language that is so incompatible.”

Referring to Matthew 12: 34, Lucado said, for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. He pointed out that Trump has called 64 people “losers” in a short period of time.

But Trump loves the Bible, as he said a few months ago, “Nothing beats the Bible,” the host said.

Lucado laughed, and then said, the core of the Christian faith is that we are sinners who need forgiveness, but Trump said he didn’t need to ask for forgiveness.

“For a person to say that they are Christians but never need forgiveness is like a swimmer saying I’m a swimmer but I never get wet, and I’m a musician and I never pick up a musical instrument… Grace is the oxygen of Christian faith,” Lucado said.

 

Lucado continued that he doesn’t have an answer to why evangelicals are rallying behind Trump.

“I do not have an answer. I apologize. I have had my own church members come up and criticize me for that blog and I’ll ask them, do you not see a disconnect here? And it’s almost like the ends justify the means in their mind,” he said.

Ed Stetzer on The Exchange blog (hosted by Christianity Today) addresses this issue:

Many evangelical leaders are embarrassed by the evangelical support of Trump. That’s reality. Yet, some of those leaders are responding poorly. Our gut reaction is to dismiss his supporters as not being “real” evangelicals, and to question their faith.

I’d like to suggest a different approach.

Rather than looking down with scorn on evangelical Trump supporters, perhaps we should sit down with them, listen to them, and hear their concerns.

He discusses some of the reasons given by the rank and file evangelicals.

So ….. circling back to the original point: why Pence? Back to The New Republic article by Jouet, and we find the answer:

The Minnesota State Fair is hosting some sort of hot rod weekend, and I happened to snap these pictures while out for a walk. Just a couple; I didn’t get one of the rusty old convertible on a trailer with a price tag of $6000 – gotta wonder just what it was. Anyways, enjoy this spotless Bel Air!

Gotta love those torpedoes!

With a background of an attempted coup (NYTimes) in Turkey today, the issue of national secularity – or lack thereof – is surely part of the struggle. President Erdogan, characterized as an Islamist, appealed for his supporters to take to the streets, according to the New York Times:

After Mr. Erdogan spoke, many of his followers obeyed his orders to go into the streets, and mosque loudspeakers exhorted his supporters to go out and protest against the coup attempt. [My bold – HW]

So just how secular has Turkey been? AL Monitor’s Mustafa Akyol reports on what he sees as the delusional empty shell of religion within society in the wake of the deadly Islamic State attack on Ataturk Airport:

In other words, as belated as it is, Turkey has begun taking a bolder stance against the terror organization that now threatens the world.

However, Turkey also needs a war of ideas against IS [the Islamic State]. Sadly, Turkey’s ruling religious-minded class seems to have little willingness and potential to do that. The reason is not any love affair with IS or any sympathy with its carnage. The reason is that most of Turkey’s Islamic opinion leaders who have the means to counter IS ideology instead choose to blind themselves to the nature of the problem and explain it as a Western conspiracy against Islam.

This tirade is most visible in the pro-government media sector, which reflects a large part of the Islamic camp. As explained in a recent Al-Monitor piece, several articles appeared in this sector after the attack on the Istanbul airport, putting the blame on “the CIA.” Moreover, there is a whole narrative explaining the very rise of IS as nothing but a Western plot to create a Trojan horse within Islam in order to stain the religion and advance Western imperialism in the Middle East. …

The big problem now with this entire obsession with Western conspiracies is not that it looks ridiculous to anyone who has a better sense of the world. The big problem is that it keeps Turkey’s new ruling class in a bubble of self-delusion, blinding them to the bitter and complex realities that Turkey faces. They seem to have almost no idea about the religious ideology of IS and its brand of Salafi-takfiri-jihadism, or of the social and political dynamics that drive thousands of young Muslims to this zealotry.

The human urge to see ourselves on the side of right will happily engage in all sorts of fancy & fantasy in order to avoid blemishing that which they hold most dear, and I do not hold anyone blameless in this arena, as we’ve seen this from the most conservative of theocrats (who conveniently designate that since God endorses them, they can do no wrong) to the most left-wing of the Marxists and Communists (“We torture you for the good of the State!”). I fear that humankind never evolved to have a disinterested viewpoint, so the alternative of a tremendous blow to the ego implies that we’ll never see these falsehoods stop. Or if we do, it’ll be time to stop calling ourselves humankind.

The motivations of the military involved in the coup remain murky at this time, as do their prospects.

As Donald Trump announces his running mate, former Representative Mike Pence, Steve Benen @ Maddowblog points out a salient feature of now Indiana Governor Pence:

In the 107th Congress (Pence’s first, covering 2001 and 2002), for example, out of 435 members of the U.S. House, Pence ranked #428 – meaning that 427 members were to his left, putting the Hoosier on the far-right-wing fringe. The results were roughly the same in the 108th Congress and the 109th.

By the 110th Congress, Pence was at #432, putting him to the right of nearly everyone in the chamber. The results were roughly the same in the 111th Congress and the 112th. …

Indeed, the Indiana Republican developed a reputation on Capitol Hill as an ineffective extremist who, despite 12 years in Congress, was literally never the chief sponsor of a bill that passed into law.

You have to wonder how well an extremist such as Pence will work with Donald, who though difficult to classify, occasionally appears to hold liberal viewpoints.

Pence was also deeply involved in this mess, including one of my favorite newspaper headlines of all time:

Brooking’s Markaz’s Robert Einhorn concurs with the expert consensus that the JCPOA is working out as planned, despite the sad plaints of conservatives on both sides:

… opponents have had to scale back their criticism, in large part because the JCPOA, at least so far, has delivered on its principal goal—blocking Iran’s path to nuclear weapons for an extended period of time. No one can dispute that Tehran has sharply reduced its capacity to produce fissile materials for nuclear weapons and would need at least a year to rebuild enough capacity to produce a single bomb.

Iran’s positive compliance record has not given opponents much ammunition. The IAEA found Iran in compliance in its two quarterly reports issued in 2016. True, Iran temporarily exceeded the agreed ceiling on heavy water but quickly rectified the infraction, which most observers attributed to the practical difficulty of ensuring that production overages are exported in a timely way rather than to an intention to circumvent the limit. Critics have also pounced on a German report that Iran’s illicit attempts to procure nuclear and missile items continued in 2015. But Tehran’s requirement to import all nuclear items for its permitted civil nuclear program through the JCPOA’s procurement channel—and stop procuring items outside the channel—did not kick in until January 2016, and neither Washington nor Berlin has information that illicit efforts continued after that time.

But…

Legislation proposed in Congress could also threaten the nuclear deal. Many proponents of new sanctions legislation genuinely seek to reinforce the deal—for example, by renewing the Iran Sanctions Act without attaching poison pills. But for some other members of Congress, the bills are designed to undercut the JCPOA. In a July 11 statement of policy, the administration threatened to veto three House bills, stating that they “would undermine the ability of the United States to meet our JCPOA commitments by reimposing certain secondary economic and financial sanctions lifted on ‘Implementation Day’ of the JCPOA.” For now, the administration is in a position to block new legislation that it believes would scuttle the nuclear deal.

It would be interesting to know if the continued opposition State-side remains a general & childish enmity of the President’s policies and accomplishments, some unvoiced technical concerns, or if some members of college remain opposed due to influence from Israeli PM Netanyahu or even Sheldon Adelson.

The JCPOA has also had knock on effects, as AL Monitor‘s Narges Bajoghli reports:

“They’ve gotten incredibly sophisticated,” [anonymous hacker] said as he marveled at the speed at which Iranian hackers have been able to create a defensive and offensive arm against Western cyberattacks. Yet, as he neared 2015 on his ad hoc timeline, his pen began to slow.

“With the Iran [nuclear] deal, we saw a parallel cooling down of attacks in the cyberworld. The nuclear deal has not only opened discussion with the Iranians on nuclear issues, but it has created a mutual detente in the cyberworld, and that’s huge, because cyberwarfare between Iran and the West was getting to really bad levels.”

David, an Iranian-American internet security specialist who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, agreed. He said, “Before the Iran deal, we were witnessing a heightened level of cyberwarfare between Iran and the US/Israel. It was getting to a very [worrisome] level, as Iran’s capabilities had increased exponentially in a very short period of time. But the Iran deal has put a halt to all of this.” David’s employer is one of the leading US firms that monitor Iranian cyberactivity.

As a software engineer, I admit to a certain – professional – curiosity as to what sophisticated means. And what does all of this include?

The West and Israel reportedly targeted Iran with four pieces of cyberweaponry between 2010 and 2012: Stuxnet, Duqu, Flame and Gauss. Each time, the Islamic Republic retaliated almost tit for tat, stealing encryption keys and certificates. In 2013, Israel said Iran was constantly attacking its power grid and water systems.

David said, “It was with Operation Cleaver [2014] that targeted US defense contractors, energy firms and educational institutions, that the United States began to really look at and study Iran’s cyberactivities. We concluded that Iran’s cyberactivities are now on par with China.” The FBI issued warnings about Operation Cleaver, which was known to have hit US Navy servers and caused breaches in other major targets.

In the end?

In a 2014 interview with Reuters, former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden said, “I’ve grown to fear a nation-state that would never go toe to toe with us in conventional combat and that now suddenly finds they can arrest our attention with cyberattacks.”

Alex [anonymous hacker] said he agrees with Hayden’s assessment. “That’s why the Iran deal has been so significant. These cyberattacks were happening because the United States and Iran distrusted each other and we were after their nuclear program, so they were retaliating in kind. The Iran deal has slowed all of this down and hopefully will ensure that we don’t have to be attacking each other in this fashion,” he said.

In another AL Monitor article, Barbara Slavin covers a controversy concerning the amount of information the IAEA is providing in their quarterly reports:

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, which publicizes the quarterly IAEA reports, said that by “failing to provide more information about the status of key technical aspects of Iran’s nuclear program and the implementation of its JCPOA commitments to date, the IAEA is withholding vital data about the status of Iran’s nuclear program. It risks undermining public transparency and confidence in the agreement.”

“As an analyst, I always want more detail and information, but I think the IAEA provides enough to demonstrate Iran’s compliance,” Kelsey Davenport, director of nonproliferation programs for the Arms Control Association, told Al-Monitor. “Given the skepticism about past noncompliance, more detail would be helpful.”

Amano, queried about the low level of detail in the report at a press conference in Vienna on March 7, said, “Our role is to provide factual, objective reports including the details the agency considers necessary.”

Experts acknowledge that the tone as well as the length of the reports has changed as the IAEA has moved from a position of questioning what amounted to a suspected criminal — the agency’s attitude toward Iran since undeclared nuclear facilities were discovered in 2002 — to monitoring what amounts to that country’s nuclear probation.

It’s Screamin’ Jay, leaving my wife prostrate with laughter…

NewScientist’s Andy Coghlan (2 July 2016, paywall) reports how little guys have … littler guys:

PARASITIC bacteria that are entirely dependent on the larger bacteria they infect have been discovered in human saliva. The tiny cells have gone undetected for decades, but appear to be linked to gum disease, cystic fibrosis and antimicrobial resistance.

The finding suggests that many other forms of parasitic bacteria could exist and be living inside us – we just hadn’t been able to detect them until now.

“This microbe is clearly the tip of the iceberg,” says Roland Hatzenpichler of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

CF?

We might find that these species have an important role in human diseases. McClean’s team has found high concentrations of the new bacterium’s DNA in people who have gum disease or cystic fibrosis.

And also drug resistance. Although these conclusions have to be extremely tentative and contingent, but it makes for some fascinating thoughts.

Bernie finally chooses the strategic moment to endorse his rival:

In terms of the presidential election this November, there is no doubt that the election of Donald Trump as president would be a devastating blow to all that we are fighting for. His openly bigoted and pro-billionaire campaign could precipitate the same decades-long rightward shift in American politics that happened after the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. That rightward shift after Reagan’s election infected not just politics as a whole but led to the ascendancy of the corporatist wing of the Democratic Party — an era from which we are still recovering.

I cannot in good conscience let that happen.

To have all of the work we have done in elevating our progressive ideals be dashed away by a complete Republican takeover of Washington — a takeover headed by a candidate that demonizes Latinos, Muslims, women, African Americans, veterans, and others — would be unthinkable.

Today, I endorsed Hillary Clinton to be our next president. I know that some of you will be disappointed with that decision. But I believe that, at this moment, our country, our values, and our common vision for a transformed America, are best served by the defeat of Donald Trump and the election of Hillary Clinton.

While Steve Benen had complained about Sanders’ deliberate approach to endorsing Hillary, I think Sanders was displaying respect for his followers, not only by successfully pressuring the Democrats into adding many of his positions into the official party platform, but by showing his voters that Hillary is deserving of their support. If I’m to believe the commentary on the Daily Kos, there’s a lot of disappointment at Bernie’s second place finish as well as distrust for Secretary Clinton, and it was important for Sanders to persuade them that she shares at least some of the most important positions. While Benen clearly wishes Trump to lose, it’s not important that Clinton lead the polls at this time – only at the end. For what it’s worth (no doubt quite a lot), the inestimable Nate Silver believes Clinton is in a commanding position, currently with a 66% chance of victory. From another article:

Historically, high numbers of undecided voters contribute to uncertainty and volatility. So do third-party candidates, whose numbers sometimes fade down the stretch run.⁶ With Clinton at only 43 percent nationally, Trump doesn’t need to take away any of her voters to win. He just needs to consolidate most of the voters who haven’t committed to a candidate yet.

By the same token, there’s the possibility of a landslide against Trump, whose floor is unusually low given that he’s getting only 36 percent of the vote now. Polls-only gives Clinton a 35 percent chance of winning by double digits nationally,⁷ which would make her the first candidate to do so since Ronald Reagan in 1984 (and the first Democrat since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964).

A 20 percent or 25 percent chance of Trump winning is an awfully long way from 2 percent, or 0.02 percent. It’s a real chance: about the same chancethat the visiting team has when it trails by a run in the top of the eighth inning in a Major League Baseball game. If you’ve been following politics or sports over the past couple of years, I hope it’s been imprinted onto your brain that those purported long shots — sometimes much longer shots than Trump — sometimes come through.

But the polls establish Clinton as a fairly clear favorite. And in contrast to almost everything else this election cycle, the polls have mostly been right so far.

Chris Reeves reports from his home state on the travails of Westboro Baptist Church, which has the charming web address www.godhatesfags.com:

It’s stories like this that can make my blood boil. The Zika virus puts newborns at risk of suffering from “… microcephaly, severe brain malformations, and other birth defects.” These are typically irreversible problems. Steve Benen @ MaddowBlog reports on efforts to fund the research effort on Zika by Congress:

It’s a pretty straightforward plan Senate Dems are proposing: if both parties are roughly in agreement on the amount of money that needs to be invested, the bill can pass the chamber if Republicans would simply agree to remove thepoison-pill provisions – blocking Planned Parenthood funding, taking funds from efforts to combat the Ebola virus, and cutting the Affordable Care Act – that Democrats can’t accept.

But the Republicans continue to refuse, making the current bill – a compromise Senate Republicans struck with House Republicans – a take-it-or-leave-it offer: either Democrats play along with the GOP’s culture-war priorities, or there will be no federal response to the Zika threat.

The Obama administration, meanwhile, which sent Congress an emergency funding request back in February,reminded lawmakers yesterday that political gridlock “could delay research and development of a vaccine to protect against Zika and tests to detect it.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, told ABC News yesterday, “We getting to the point where both the CDC and the NIH are actually running out of money, and we have important work to do.”

And so, with Congress going into a long summer break, time is lost.

Does the GOP understand how the Democrats can use this against them? I suggest, in a breathy woman’s voice:

Incumbent XYZ voted to withhold funding for research on the terrifying Zika virus [add photos of diseased infants] because they are miffed at the success of ObamaCare and Planned Parenthood at easing the plight of low income Americans.

First a promise:

Then a bow to the south…

A turn for the exotic Amaranth….

And finally some all out orange …

Some of those opposed to the deal may have feared the instant enrichment of Iran, but, much to President Rouhani’s discomfort, this does not appear to be happening. Arash Karami reports in AL Monitor:

… many Iranians are still not feeling the economic benefits of the lifting of sanctions. With presidential elections less than a year away, officials from the administration of President Hassan Rouhani are in the uncomfortable position of having to continue to sell the benefits of the deal to an Iranian public that is increasingly distrustful of US intentions to hold up its end of the agreement.

Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi, a top nuclear negotiator who now heads the staff overseeing implementation of the nuclear deal, sat down with Iranian television July 11 to update the public on the status of the deal.

Ongoing US sanctions on Iran that prohibit international investors from using the dollar for transactions with it are one of the main obstacles keeping Iran from taking advantage of the nuclear deal and international sanctions relief. These banking sanctions have created reservations among many foreign companies eager to do business with Iran. Aragchi explained that they are primary sanctions — that is, ones unrelated to the nuclear deal.

So it appears that if more sanctions are to be lifted, the more Iranian behavior must change. A convenient lever, it seems to me.

To some small extent, that puts some influence over the Iranian elections in the hands of the international community as well – the US chief amongst them. While I’m sure some relish the thought, for others having to decide how to manipulate the sanctions may seem a little devilish. Do you prefer Rouhani? Or would you prefer another relatively liberal cleric? Or take a chance on the conservative challenger?

Of course, Iran also pursues other avenues of relief, as noted in the Tehran Times (but apparently published first in the Huffington Post):

However, now that the JCPOA has been implemented, Iran has yet to derive the expected benefits from sanctions relief. As Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said: “They [the United States] write on paper that banks can cooperate with Iran, but in practice they promote Iranophobia so that no one trades with Iran. American officials say that sanctions are still in place so that foreign investors get scared and do not come.”

Indeed, fearful of existing non-nuclear sanctions and the prospect of new sanctions, international banks and corporations with U.S.-based operations have been fearful of trading with or investing in Iran. Major European banks have in the past paid billions in fines due to supposed Iran sanctions violations. As a consequence, Iran has not been able to receive expected foreign investment or have international banks facilitate the business agreements it has signed since the JCPOA’s implementation.

To which the US responds, as AP: The Big Story reports:

U.S. officials have said repeatedly that the sanctions have been eased and that Iran’s complaints are due to foreign firms’ wariness to do business with the country for other reasons, including ballistic missile testing, support for Syria’s government and anti-Israel groups, and poor banking regulations.

Kerry told reporters he has repeatedly explained to the Iranians that there are limits on what the United States can do to encourage businesses to deal with Iran and said he thought “the supreme leader and Foreign Minister Zarif are pressing to make sure” Iran gets what it is entitled to under the deal “as rapidly as possible.”

To that end, he said he believed there were areas where the U.S. could do more to show it is a good faith negotiating partner.

“I think there are places where the United States could give confidence where there is doubt,” Kerry said. “And, I feel that it is important for us if we’re going to have future dealings (with Iran) or we want to have a reputation for good faith in negotiations we conduct anywhere. It’s important for us to show good faith in executing this agreement and I intend to see to it that we do that.”

My friend Sydney Sweitzer provides an article from Quartz (December 2015) on the Las Vegas PD, and how this formerly troubled force is becoming one of the best in the nation, which seems relevant to this thread:

Now, five years later, the department is a model for police reform. Despite an uptick in violence directed toward Vegas cops, there were zero deadly force incidents involving unarmed suspects in 2014. The number of officer-involved shootings has dropped significantly as well.

In recent months, members of the NYPD, Baltimore police, as well as law enforcement agencies from Utah, Massachusetts, Albuquerque and even Australia have visited Metro to study its new training and accountability regimes.

It’s a good article, well worth reading. I wonder if the local PDs have taken a look at how LVPD is conducting training these days?

I see that the second pic in this post is not coming through. Click on the broken pic icon and then it works. Beats me what’s going on.

Having lost two cats this year, we (Deb & I) sooth our sadness with some beautiful blooms.

The play Glensheen is at the History Theatre in St. Paul, and for those of you not familiar with Minnesota, Glensheen, along with being name of an estate in the port city of Duluth, on Lake Superior, is also a code-word for the famous Congdon murders, in which heiress Elizabeth Congdon and her nurse were murdered one night, a crime pinned on her son-in-law and, while not convicted, her adopted daughter.

This play is a musical presentation of the events, more or less in chronological order: introduction to both adopted daughters (the play gives out that the old lady was infertile), the introduction of Marjorie, the “bad” daughter, to her future husband at a meeting for single parents (it’s not mentioned in the play, but at this point Marjorie had seven children and divorced after 20 years of marriage). A whirlwind romance and marriage, followed by a rebuffed request for money to buy a ranch, followed by the actual murder: all put to music by Chan Poling. Such is the first act.

The second act details the blowback: arrests, trials, guilty and not guilty, and more importantly the narcissism of Marjorie, her callous use of her husband, and the later arrests and convictions for other crimes; and the revelation of sociopathy.

In terms of performance, this is well done. The stage is multiple use without requiring actual modification, and does not squeak in protest to movement. However, if you go, avoid seats on the extreme left, as this is also the residence of the orchestra, and we definitely had trouble hearing the lyrics over the admittedly talented instrumentalists. Lighting seemed well done, and I think a more reasonable seating selection would have enabled us to hear the lyrics very clearly.

And the performances were quite sound, from the trust’s board who denies financing to Marjorie to Marjorie and her new husband, Roger, each is a well-drawn, quirky character. But the standout is the actress behind the victim, Elizabeth Congdon, as well as the character loosely based on Ron Meshbesher, who defended Marjorie in the initial murder trial, and one or two others. I suspect this is Ruthie Baker, but the History Theatre is not explicit with the casting. She was inspiring through contrast, starting with the sober little old lady Elizabeth (84 when murdered), which sets us up when she plays the loud, colorful defense attorney, and a couple of others. She’s a treat.

But in terms of the treatment of the subject matter … I’m bothered that a brutal, callous double murder is treated quite so lightly. Perhaps I’m overly sober these days, but it seems a little disrespectful of the victims. I’ll mitigate this remark by saying the murdered nurse, Velma, has one set piece dedicated to her, and it was a very respectful piece, devoid of the humor supporting the other musical numbers.

More importantly, this was an entertainment, not an insight. Its a simple recounting of events, with music and singing and clevernesss, but there is little insight to the murder. So Marjorie is a sociopath – so what? Was the sociopathy a result of her upbringing, or genetic? We have no clue. Roger was easily manipulated – maybe that’s of interest? Yet we’re not even sure of the accuracy of his conviction, as his eventual post-trial confession was motivated by the offer of an immediate release from jail. Why did he commit suicide later? And what of her children, barely noticed in the play – do they have similar behavior patterns, or are they … normal?

I suppose this is best described as a cautionary lesson of some sort: don’t let your children kill you, or your sad deaths may be celebrated in song and dance. Which, in some ways, is not a bad way to be remembered.

Pasted from my FB account:

For the Phans of Phanny, I must deliver the news that our lovely Calico has passed on to her next adventure. In the last 24 hours she had stopped eating and drinking, and became too weak to walk. She was 16+ years old, so she’d had a good life.

As we inherited her from my parents, if there is an afterlife, hopefully she is with her first Mom and Dad now, who so adored her.

She leaves behind her adoptive Mom and Dad (us), her special friends Doug & Denise, our neighbors, who she befriended last year and spent many an hour in conversation with, the other two cats who came to us from my parents, Peeper and Smudge, and Mayhem, our surviving original cat. We’ll all miss her curmudgeonly yet affectionate ways.

Continuing this thread, a friend writes a note which leads to some thoughts. He’s writing in response to the press release from the United States Fencing Association announcing that “… USA Fencing will be supporting the Dallas community by providing a $1,000 donation in honor and memory of the victims of the shootings in Dallas on Thursday evening.”

Don’t disagree with my fencing peeps BUT how about also standing with the individual victims in all the prior shootings in California , Florida , NY, MN, LA etc?!
I’m letting Don [Anthony, USFA President] know about this .

And speaking of MN, what the hell is going on with your police officers there? Like humans in general there are many more good officers than bad and they should be thanked for their service like the military but again?! really ? !!!!

And I agree. As I listened to the demonstrations that occurred just down the street, I thought about how my friend subtly brings an important point to the fore – that we are a society, together. The police do not stand apart, they are simply a subgroup of our community that tries to stabilize society. They often use the slogan, “To Protect, To Serve” the communities from which they come. From the information so far available from Baton Rouge and Falcon Heights, they committed catastrophic errors, and though we don’t know the nature of the mistakes in each case, it should be clear that they failed in their mission. Changes must occur.

But let’s take the communitarian aspect of his point a little further. Over, well, my lifetime, the police have been gradually taking advantage of technology to, overtly, enhance their ability to complete their mission, but, inadvertently, to stand apart from the communities they serve. From the cop who walks his beat transforming into the cop in the prowl car, to the law enforcement agencies equipping themselves with military weaponry in order to take down drug users and defend against terrorism, layers of technology have come between the police and the people he or she is supposed to serve. Until Friday I couldn’t tell you the name of any of the cops serving my municipality of Falcon Heights, MN, and now I know the name of one, Officer Inez, because of this tragedy. A cop car occasionally cruises my street – great. I have no idea who’s behind the wheel – or if it’s even a real cop car and not someone just looking for potential victims.

And that gap between police and communities they serve is not helpful. I know there’s been some discussion of returning to the use of cops walking the beat, men and women pounding the sidewalk, making sure things are OK in a neighborhood. From this Wall Street Journal (March 12, 2015, only a portion may be available unless you subscribe) article concerning New Haven, CT, where cops returned to walking the beat:

“You have somebody walking around, you can talk to them,” says Mr. Walker, 44 years old, who works at a local hospital. “They don’t come in the neighborhood and treat everybody like they’re the enemy.” …

In New Haven, the number of homicides, robberies, motor-vehicle thefts and other types of serious crime has fallen about 30% since the city, best known as the home of Yale University, put a big chunk of its officers on foot-patrol duty in 2012.

And a counter-intuitive suggestion: rather than treat every situation as not only potentially deadly, but even probably deadly, treat them as a friendly situation. Sure, a violation may have occurred, but intimidation such as occurred in the Falcon Heights incident is uncalled for and alienates the community. While it may make sense, short term, to take a paranoid approach to each police situation in terms of safeguarding the lives of police officers, the long-term effect on relations between police and their communities is negative and may be one of the contributing factors to communities no longer trusting their own cops. Yes, it increases risk and may get a few more cops killed – but if it makes the community more trusting overall, is it then so bad? Second, get rid of the military weaponry – let’s be honest, it’s wasteful and dangerous in most municipalities. Instead, let’s reform those laws which have been used to oppress black and other communities. An example: marijuana laws. Beer is legal – why not marijuana? It’s a drug of little intrinsic danger; most of the problem associated with marijuana can be attributed to the fact that it’s illegal.

And, yes, let’s honor those who’ve been shot dead by police for no good reason. Because they, just like the tragically dead Dallas cops, are part of our society. They had hopes, dreams, and loved ones. And their lives came to abrupt, unexpected ends, whether because of catastrophic law enforcement errors, or someone with mental illness gained access to weaponry. Let’s remember and honor them, and in all cases – try to do better.

NewScientist (25 June 2016, paywall) reports on one possible response to the loss of jobs to robots and other forms of automation: UBI. They trace it back to US Founder Thomas Paine:

Universal basic income has a long history. Thomas Paine, a US founding father, believed that natural resources were a common heritage and that landowners sitting on them should be taxed and the income redistributed. While the idea has never fully materialised, neither has it entirely gone away. In a few corners of the world variants are discreetly part of the furniture. In Alaska, for example, an annual dividend from state oil revenues is paid to citizens each year – a windfall of $2072 per person in 2015.

And some preliminary results:

Evelyn Forget at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg recently revisited the [Dauphin, Manitoba, CA] experiment, comparing public records from Dauphin with those from similar small towns. Forget found the only groups that spent less time in work during the trial were teenage boys and new mothers. The boys were staying in school rather than bowing to pressure to take agricultural jobs, and the mothers were nursing. What’s more, Dauphin had noticeably lower hospitalisation rates and fewer depression-related illnesses.

That was just one small-town trial. But in Alaska, experience suggests that a basic income could help reduce the rising inequality that has been hobbling world economies. Economist Scott Goldsmith at the University of Alaska Anchorage points out that the state is the only one in the US in which the income of the poorest 20 per cent grew faster than that of the top 20 per cent between the 1980s and 2000.

An interesting result, although whether the oil dividend contributes substantially is not entirely clear. NS reports the near future of UBI includes an experiment by a private firm investing in startups, Y Combinator. From the Y Combinator blog back in January of 2016:

We’d like to fund a study on basic income—i.e., giving people enough money to live on with no strings attached.  I’ve been intrigued by the idea for a while, and although there’s been a lot of discussion, there’s fairly little data about how it would work. …

So it would be good to answer some of the theoretical questions now.  Do people sit around and play video games, or do they create new things?  Are people happy and fulfilled?  Do people, without the fear of not being able to eat, accomplish far more and benefit society far more?  And do recipients, on the whole, create more economic value than they receive?  (Questions about how a program like this would affect overall cost of living are beyond our scope, but obviously important.)

50 years from now, I think it will seem ridiculous that we used fear of not being able to eat as a way to motivate people.  I also think that it’s impossible to truly have equality of opportunity without some version of guaranteed income.  And I think that, combined with innovation driving down the cost of having a great life, by doing something like this we could eventually make real progress towards eliminating poverty.

In the last day of May they published an update:

We want to run a large, long-term study to answer a few key questions: how people’s happiness, well-being, and financial health are affected by basic income, as well as how people might spend their time.

But before we do that, we’re going to start with a short-term pilot in Oakland. Our goal will be to prepare for the longer-term study by working on our methods–how to pay people, how to collect data, how to randomly choose a sample, etc.

Oakland is a city of great social and economic diversity, and it has both concentrated wealth and considerable inequality. We think these traits make it a very good place to explore how basic income could work for our pilot.

They have hired a Research Director, Elizabeth Rhodes, and are moving ahead. So far they appear to be treating this as a research subject that simply interests them; so far I have not seen any intent that private sector firms should be involved directly in the long term funding of UBI.

Legacy of Blood (1971, aka Blood Legacy) is a John Carradine movie with an intriguing premise, wrecked by technical incompetence. The movie begins with a funeral, that of the patriarch of a small clan of four adult children, followed by the presentation of the will, in this case by reel-to-reel tape. Via the tape, the patriarch, played by Carradine’s voice, announces that his immense fortune will be split between his four children, but they must stay in the family home for a day (or possibly a week, I cannot remember); if any leave or die before the end of the period, their share is then split between the other children. If they should all fail to meet the conditions, then the money goes to the servants; however, the servants, if they agree to stay on in the house, are paid $1 million over the years until the money runs out.

So do the kids love each other?

One brother’s borderline insane, and in fact his episodic emotional problems, in which we’re privileged to share the visuals, are quite unsettling, as Carradine is effective at suggesting the family home was a surrealistic, possibly incestuous hellhole. The balance of the siblings are less distinguished, as another brother is a cheerful lawyer, and the two sisters, despite one bearing a dismaying resemblance, at certain visual angles, to my friend Jeanne, were thematically identical.

The plot lurches from point to point, although it was occasionally entertainingly self-conscious, such as the two consecutive lines, “The phones are out – of course!” “It’s like a bad horror movie.” Sometimes there were moments of glee, such as when the ham is taken out of the refrigerator, or when the identity of the (or perhaps one of?) the murderers is finally revealed. But there are moments of unproductive slackness as well.

The rest of the experience was dismaying. First, the audio was awful. Everyone mumbled their lines to the point that the audio needed to be increased to dizzying levels, and when the commercial interludes suddenly occurred, the blast of sound had its own horrifying effect upon our sense of stability.

Second, the plot lacked consistency. The premise does not imply immunity from law enforcement, so one would expect the various victims to fall to misadventure, but in fact several are incontrovertibly murdered; even law enforcement is assaulted, and worse yet for no logical reason. Losing faith in the internal logic of a movie is a sure formula for disaster.

Third, the special effects ranged from competent to wretched.

Fourth, the acting was mostly awful, although of course Carradine knows his stuff, and the butler, Buck Kartalian, was something of a revelation in the one scene he dominates. But two of the actors seemed to have Elvis-inspired hairdos, another appeared to be a Burt Reynolds (or perhaps Tom Selleck) look-alike, and the rest of the actors, barring perhaps the maid, could not overcome the poor dialog of the script or the unlikely chemistry required of such a dysfunctional family.

In the end, you remember this movie more for what it might have been, than what it ended up being.

And now here’s a flower, to cushion your disappointment.

Today we visited The Museum of Russia Art, which was hosting a “popup exhibition” of Leon Hushcha’s work, only 5 days long. As this is the second to last day, this post is not so much to urge you to visit as to report on what we saw for future reference.

Leon Hushcha (sample portfolio here) is a Minneapolis-based Russian artist who loves bright, yet subtly changing colors, working in paint and collage, often onto wood surfaces which he lightly carves before painting. It gives his work a nuanced 3-D effect. Often they appeared to be covered in a varnish or other surface application, which enhanced the effects. The results are not always immediately obvious, although as a non-artist myself perhaps my observations don’t apply, but I would, under the guidance of my Arts Editor, begin to discern the running horses, or the chain link fence deep in the lake (a personal favorite just because it snuck up on me).

Subject matter ranged from a gorgeous red abstract to, in a repeated theme, women with fish on their heads – a puzzler, to be sure.

In the end, though, it was a fascinating exhibit.

And now from my Arts Editor …

Special mention has to be made of the artist’s use of heavy impasto, pointillism and scratchboard-like effects.  This, along with his use of carved panels with paint or mixed media applied to the surface, gives the artworks a striking dimensionality and immediacy not typical of Russian art.  I also appreciated his eye-searingly bright color palette, turquoise, magenta and sunflower yellow predominant, with a scattering of colored glitter for effect.

Hushcha has been making art for most of his 8070-year lifespan, and it’s interesting to see the consistency of his vision throughout the decades.  I’d highly recommend seeing some of his works, if you get the chance.

Our Cleome Herd is doing nicely…

And pretty nearby lurker…