Unsightly Mental Blemishes

Related to this thread, another cache of ivory has been burned, this time by the government of Kenya, as noted by many news outlets. npr.org reports:

On Saturday morning, it hosted the most spectacular burn event yet: The tusks of nearly 7,000 elephants — 105 metric tons’ worth — were set alight in 11 separate pyres in Nairobi’s National Park.

The tusks, taken from elephants that were poached as well as from those that died naturally, were collected from Kenya’s parks and confiscated at its ports.

The haul represents the bulk of Kenya’s entire ivory stockpile. In addition, a 1.5-ton basket of rhino horn was set on fire. All told, more than $300 million worth of contraband went up in flames.

“Kenya is leading the way in saying that ivory has no value, unless it’s on an elephant,” says Robin Hollister, an engineer and pyrotechnics expert, as he adjusts the knobs on an air compressor.

To my mind this is a dubious remark, so I went looking for why elephant ivory is desirable. In 2012, The Atlantic pointed a finger at China and its burgeoning middle class. Author Rebecca Rosen:

Germany continues to make progress in using renewables, according to Bloomberg:

Clean power supplied almost all of Germany’s power demand for the first time on Sunday, marking a milestone for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s “Energiewende” policy to boost renewables while phasing out nuclear and fossil fuels.

Solar and wind power peaked at 2 p.m. local time on Sunday, allowing renewables to supply 45.5 gigawatts as demand was 45.8 gigawatts, according to provisional data by Agora Energiewende, a research institute in Berlin. Power prices turned negative during several 15-minute periods yesterday, dropping as low as minus 50 euros ($57) a megawatt-hour, according to data from Epex Spot.

This has consequences:

Merkel’s unprecedented shift to clean energy has squeezed margins at coal and gas plants while driving up costs for consumers in Europe’s biggest power market. The increased flows of clean energy have also put pressure on the grid to the point that the country is considering excluding certain regions from future onshore wind power auctions if local grids are already struggling to keep up with large volumes of renewable energy supplies.

“If Germany was an island, with no export cables, this would be technically impossible because you always need to have some thermal generation running as a back up supply for when the wind or solar drops off,” [Monne Depraetere, an analyst for Bloomberg New Energy Finance] said.

Which is a reminder that we need to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, but not necessarily eliminate them completely. They need to become a minor component of our energy strategy, not the main support system.

And in the United States?  Courtesy the US Energy Information Agency:

In 2015, renewable energy sources accounted for about 10% of total U.S. energy consumption and about 13% of electricity generation.

(h/t my retired climate scientist friend)

A reader remarks about cancer in this thread:

Parasites cause cancer? I had no idea. I’m curious as to which parasites have been identified and which cancers they cause.

Nor had I ever heard of this. But, from the Centers for Disease Control, comes this press release from last year:

Scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have discovered cancer cells originating in a common tapeworm may take root in people with weakened immune systems, causing cancer-like tumors. It is the first known case of a person becoming ill from cancer cells that arose in a parasite – in this case, Hymenolepis nana, the dwarf tapeworm.

The report, in the Nov. 5 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, raises concern that other similar cases, if they occur, may be misdiagnosed as human cancer – especially in less developed countries where this tapeworm and immune-system-suppressing illnesses like HIV are widespread.

“We were amazed when we found this new type of disease – tapeworms growing inside a person essentially getting cancer that spreads to the person, causing tumors,” said Atis Muehlenbachs, M.D., Ph.D., staff pathologist in CDC’s Infectious Diseases Pathology Branch (IDPB) and lead author of the study. “We think this type of event is rare. However, this tapeworm is found worldwide and millions of people globally suffer from conditions like HIV that weaken their immune system. So there may be more cases that are unrecognized. It’s definitely an area that deserves more study.”

Definitely not what I was expecting to read, but entirely plausible.

A friend of mine who happens to be a retired climate scientist pointed me towards a couple of interesting pages. First, from yesterday, is a post from Matt Rigby covering the crisis, now resolved, over CFCs:

“I work on an experiment that began when the Bee Gees’ Stayin’ Alive was at the top of the charts. The project is called AGAGE, the Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment, and I’m here in Boston, Massachusetts celebrating its 35-year anniversary. AGAGE began life in 1978 as the Atmospheric Lifetimes Experiment, ALE, and has been making high-frequency, high-precision measurements of atmospheric trace gases ever since.

At the time of its inception, the world had suddenly become aware of the potential dangers associated with CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons). What were previously thought to be harmless refrigerants and aerosol propellants were found to have a damaging influence on stratospheric ozone, which protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation. The discovery of this ozone-depletion process was made by Mario Molina and F. Sherwood Rowland, for which they, and Paul Crutzen, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995. However, Molina and Rowland were not sure how long CFCs would persist in the atmosphere, and so ALE, under the leadership of Prof. Ron Prinn (MIT) and collaborators around the world, was devised to test whether we’d be burdened with CFCs in our atmosphere for years, decades or centuries.

ALE monitored the concentration of CFCs, and other ozone depleting substances, at five sites chosen for their relatively “unpolluted” air (including the west coast of Ireland station which is now run by Prof. Simon O’Doherty here at the University of Bristol). The idea was that if we could measure the increasing concentration of these gases in the air, then, when combined with estimates of the global emission rate, we would be able to determine how rapidly natural processes in the atmosphere were removing them.

Thanks in part to these measurements, we now know that CFCs will only be removed from the atmosphere over tens to hundreds of years, meaning that the recovery of stratospheric ozone and the famous ozone “hole” will take several generations. However, over the years, ALE, and now AGAGE, have identified a more positive story relating to atmospheric CFCs: the effectiveness of international agreements to limit gas emissions.

Matt goes on to note the implementation of the Montreal Protocol and how it helped both guide and show how the steps taken to limit and eliminate CFCs were effective, and includes this nifty chart:

Concentrations of methyl chloroform, a substance banned under the Montreal Protocol, measured at four AGAGE stations.

And Matt continues to today:

Over time, the focus of AGAGE has shifted. As the most severe consequences of stratospheric ozone depletion look like they’ve been avoided, we’re now more acutely aware of the impact of “greenhouse” gases on the Earth’s climate. In response, AGAGE has developed new techniques that can measure over 40 compounds that are warming the surface of the planet. These measurements are showing some remarkable things, such as the rapid growth of HFCs, which are replacements for CFCs that have an unfortunate global-warming side effect, or the strange fluctuations in atmospheric methane concentrations, which looked like they’d plateaued in 1999, but are now growing rapidly again.

My friend pointed out that we’re not yet seeing a similar reaction in CO₂ readings, as seen in the Mauna Loa station readings provided by NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory:

This chart covers the last 5 years:

Over the last few years the PPM had been increasing at a rate of 2 parts per million (ppm) / year, but that seems to have increased to 3 ppm / year, as demonstrated with this growth chart from the same site:

Just for fun, let’s look at oil prices from MacroTrends.net:

Source: WTI Crude Oil – 10 Year Daily – Macrotrends.net

Finally, my friend notes the followup on the Paris Agreement is just beginning. I’ll just lift this from his mail:

The Mauna Loa monitoring station is just one of the important ways to monitor how the efficacy of the reaction to the climate change crisis. The work of the ALE group (which my friend stressed began as an industry group which recognized there was a problem growing from their own products, and came together to discover what it was and what it entailed – makes me think of conscious capitalism) provides a good model and a promise of success in resolving difficult problems – but it will only work when people take science seriously. That’s a problem in today’s world, where we believe in anything from homeopathy to the primacy of ideology – all in contradiction to science. And while there’s a certain schadenfreude in watching reality rear up and smack them in the head, the sad fact of the matter is that a lot of innocent folks will get smacked as well.

Hillary’s beginning to assume mythic proportion to the Republican right wing as evinced by the utterances of RNC chairman Reince Priebus:

“They can try to hijack another party and get on the ballot, but, look, it’s a suicide mission for our country because what it means is that you’re throwing down not just eight years of the White House but potentially 100 years on the Supreme Court and wrecking this country for many generations,” Priebus said on “Fox News Sunday,” anticipating that a conservative third-party candidate would split the Republican vote and ensure a Democrat wins the White House.

100 years? Wouldn’t a Supreme Court Justice simply die of boredom and ennui?

More to the point, doesn’t hyperbole of this sort wear out after a while? Won’t the majority of the base finally become tired of the constant rush of adrenaline and begin to drop away? (Although this does give some insight into the pro-gun lobby’s existence on the right-wing – you can only survive this constant fear-mongering if you’re such a tough guy that you must have a gun on your belt.)

Our first lupine bloom of the season:

From NewScientist (30 April 2016) comes news of a boomerang for use on patent trolls:

ALEX REBEN came up with 2.5 million ideas in just three days. Nearly all of them were terrible – but he doesn’t mind. He thinks he has found a way to thwart patent trolls by putting their speculative ideas in the public domain before they can make a claim.

Reben, an artist and engineer, trawls the US patent database with software that splices existing sentences into phrases describing new inventions. His project, called All Prior Art, has come up with some odd contrivances: a robotic phone book; 3D-printed soap that kills pests on strawberry plants; and a temperature-regulating adult nappy with a hood.

Although I am forced to wonder if this is also damaging to legitimate companies and individuals who have a good idea, only to find it shot down by Reben’s quixotic project. And, yes, this approach may not work, according to lawyers noted later in the article – but I’m still giggling.

Over at The Daily Kos Mark Sumner is furious about some lies told about lithium batteries:

Lately (or more specifically, perpetually off and on for the last few years), this set of images has been circulating.

Concerning horns, one reader notes:

Just depends on the breed.

Two others contribute further evidence:

See also: Laughing Cow

And:

Udderly ridiculous

A reader has seen this coming:

I’m inclined to respond by saying “Gosh, really?” — not because of what you’ve written, Hue, but the general thought. Here’s what I wrote about the subject back in 2012, and I was hardly at the forefront of the observation then:http://sillenbuch.blogspot.com/2012/10/antibiotic-resistant-bacteria.html I’ve also got this bitter pill in my craw: “Assuming your illness could even be solved by antibiotics” — i.e. it’s bacterial. I speculate most illnesses are caused by other things. Of course, many illnesses require hospitalization where you become far more likely to be victim of antibiotic resistant strains! Hospitals are dangerous places; my neighbor [w]as in a car accident, and eventually died in the hospital from a nosocomial [hospital-acquired] bacterial infection. And lastly, “oh yes, it IS the cash” both in the sense that greed on the part of pharmaceutical manufacturers and industrial agriculturalists to use massive amounts of antibiotics, and the train wreck that is health insurance in the USA (my recent little kidney stone episode has topped $8,000 in bills I have to pay, even while having insurance). How’s that for a run-on sentence? Mankind is hell bent on destroying itself.

I went looking for illness causation numbers, but didn’t run across anything usable. It did lead to this statement from a 2012 Stanford Medical Newsletter issue on cancer:

At least 25 percent of malignancies are caused by viruses, bacteria and parasites. After smoking, infection is the leading cause of cancer. Although millions of Americans are infected with cancer-causing organisms at some time during their lives, most don’t develop cancer as a result. There are additional risk factors that work in tandem with infectious microbes to trigger the biological changes that lead to cancer.

Viruses are the main cancer-causing organisms, followed by bacteria and parasites.

There’s little of interest in Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla (2002) for the general audience; only specialist audiences, such as kaiju groupies and film historians interested in the films that influenced the seminal Pacific Rim (2013), will find this mess to be of interest. The poor special effects may discourage the visually inclined, but for me they’re merely a distraction. The real problem here is the bedrock of every work of fiction: story. And it comes down to believable motivations.

Why is Godzilla choosing to wipe out Japanese cities? Perhaps it’s just silly to ask why a kaiju does what it does, yet, in truth, part of the tension of a story can be the hidden motivations of the entities in conflict; of course, they need not be hidden, but the motivations must be present. Why? They permit us to make rational sense of the Universe, and stories in which random events decide the fates of those characters with which you have sympathy are stories which teach us little of real use, except perhaps that sometimes life is not as predictable as we might like, which is a valuable lesson, but one quickly learned and having only limited usage. There is far greater utility in the understanding of the motivations of entities and how they translate into actions, and the resultant backlash of such actions. An example are the kaiju of Pacific Rim, which are hidden for most of the movie, but serve to give us a great “ah-hah!” moment upon revelation – and make their actions perfectly believable.

So, again, why is Godzilla suddenly storming ashore, wreaking havoc – and then returning to the ocean? The Japanese rally to the creation of a gigantic bio-robot, Mechagodzilla, based on DNA from Godzilla’s skeleton (we’ll get to this contradiction), a clear predecessor to the jaeger of Pacific Rim, but when Mechagodzilla is employed against Godzilla, who returns on the day of Mechagodzilla’s commissioning (two questions: why come ashore, and why now?), abruptly Mechagodzilla goes crazy and begins wreaking havoc. Why does Godzilla flee into the ocean again? Why not stick around and finish off Tokyo? And when Mechagodzilla is repaired, it doesn’t go crazy again, yet when a final failure to defeat Godzilla again occurs, Godzilla merely retreats into the ocean again. In this last incident, it’s true he’s displaying some injuries, but still.

Why is Godzilla not continuing on his mission, whatever it might be? It’s the central problem to this movie, and it’s never resolved. Whatever lessons we might learn from the movie are sharply limited by this failure.

And then there’s the incoherencies, such as the revelation that Godzilla was destroyed in 1954, his skeleton recently found – so is it Godzilla we’re also fighting? His brother? The question is never even explored. A child raises questions about the morality of killing – which are never really answered, or even explored. I shan’t go on.

Next to these failures, the dubious special effects are merely highlights to the massive black hole which constitutes the story. This movie is a mess and should only be viewed by those with special interests, and even then only for reasons of completion, so you might say, Yes, I’ve seen the entire Godzilla ouvré. This one hurt, but I’ve seen it all!

I, by the way, have not.

My Arts Editor assures me this is definitive anatomical evidence that cows can have horns.

A specimen was not collected.

A number of publications have reported on the deployment of 7000 undercovers agents of morality in Iran. Here’s a typical report from The Manila Times:

Police in Iran’s capital have a network of 7,000 undercover agents whose job is to inform police of alleged moral transgressors in the Islamic republic, a top official said Monday.

Bad veiling — covering the head is mandatory for women in Iran — and anti-social behavior is among the crimes the force has been tasked with tackling.

The men and women’s “undercover patrols will confront implicit transgressions in the city,” according to General Hossein Sajedinia, Tehran’s police chief.

“Confronting bad hijab and removal of veils inside cars, driving recklessly, parading in the streets, harassing women and stopping noise pollution are the priorities” for the agents, he said.

A somewhat incoherent response was published on MatarAndRosset.com:

The reports of an imminent failure of important antibiotics due to developing resistance continues. Penny Sarchet surveys them in NewScientist (30 April 2016, no paywall), and a couple of points especially stood out. First,

Last year, 63,000 tonnes of antibiotics were fed to livestock to increase their size or protect them from infections. A 2006 ruling banning the use of antibiotics as growth promoters in Europe seems to have had little impact, says Mark Woolhouse at the University of Edinburgh, UK. We still don’t understand how dangerous such practices are to human health, but using antibiotics in industrial quantities should give bacteria ample chance to develop resistance. The gene that gave bacteria resistance to colistin probably evolved in a pig farm in China, for example.

The numbers are a bit astonishing, isn’t it? And then you have to wonder how a hypothetical world-wide trend towards vegetarianism would ripple through the business world. More ominous:

“I once said I was more concerned about antimicrobial resistance than I am about climate change, and I stand by that,” says Woolhouse. “I am worried that my family might be killed by antimicrobial resistance. I don’t have the same concern when it comes to climate change.”

In both cases it’ll depend on where you live, and to where you can move. And in the future, if nothing changes:

Yet while northern European countries, including the UK, have low levels of resistant strains, such infections kill more than 50,000 people across the continent and in the US every year. By 2050, annual deaths are expected to reach 317,000 in North America, and 390,000 in Europe, while the toll is expected to top 4 million in Asia and Africa.

The forces of what might be best described as conservatism in Turkey continue their path to the far right, despite the skepticism of the Turkish youth, as discussed here. It begins with the resignation of Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.  From The Economist:

The man who pulled the carpet from under [Davutoglu’s] feet was the same one who appointed him less than two years ago: Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Tensions between the increasingly authoritarian Mr Erdogan and his prime minister have simmered for months. The two disagreed over the future of peace talks with Kurdish insurgents, and over Mr Erdogan’s plans to change the constitution to give the presidency executive powers, cementing his grip on government and his own Justice and Development (AK) party.

They also clashed over the management of the economy, and Mr Erdogan’s crackdown on critics. (Its latest victims, two journalists, were sentenced to two years in jail last week for republishing a drawing from Charlie Hebdo, a French weekly, featuring a weeping Prophet Muhammad.) Mr Erdogan has accused his prime minister of stealing the spotlight. “During my time as prime minister it was announced that Schengen travel would come into force in October 2016,” he said recently, referring to the visa talks. “I cannot understand why bringing it forward by four months is presented as a triumph.”

At DW, Reinhard Baumgarten expresses some concern:

There is great cause for alarm in Turkey, where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has gone to unprecedented lengths to consolidate his power. He is determined to change the constitution and make himself the boundless ruler of the Turkish people by hook or by crook. Voters have declined to help him to that end in two successive parliamentary elections. Both times his Justice and Development Party (AKP) came up clearly shy of the votes needed to assemble a parliamentary majority.

Yet Erdogan, who constantly points out that he is the first Turkish president to be directly elected, refuses to accept the message that voters have sent him. Erdogan appointed Ahmet Davutoglu to succeed him as prime minister because he saw him as a willing executor of his political will. That obviously didn’t work out. Despite his abundant loyalty toward Erdogan, Davutoglu remained too independent.

The alarming part is how President Erdogan’s followers wish him to be treated, as reported by Mustafa Akyol in AL Monitor:

It can be safely said that Davutoglu’s departure marks even greater concentration of power in the hands of Erdogan. The new power structure includes a new Erdoganist narrative, in which obedience to the leader is openly praised as a virtue — and required as a duty.

One example of this narrative came from Ankara Mayor Melih Gokcek in a lead article published by Anadolu, one of the many pro-Erdogan newspapers that has popped up lately. “Obedience to the leader is a must,” the headline read, quoting Gokcek. “The concept of a leader and absolute obedience to this leader exists in our faith, in our state tradition,” Gokcek said. “The leader can make mistakes … yet still the decision he makes … must be obeyed.”

Apparently, this obedience is an obligation for not just the party, but also the pro-AKP media world, which now makes up the majority of Turkish media outlets. In Aksam, columnist Markar Esayan underlined the nation’s unbreakable love for Erdogan, thanks to his “manliness, faith, success, courage.” This love, which he personally shares, is the “steel core of the cause,” Esayan wrote. It was so strong that it could not be weakened by “sinister [criticism] such as authoritarianism, patriarchy, cult of the leader, dictatorship or corruption.” Finally, Esayan explained how his love must be expressed by himself and all other Erdogan lovers: “Let everybody be comfortable and keep his eye on the chief. Are we not a huge orchestra looking in the eyes of its conductor? Can this work be done any other way?”

This, of course, raises the question of whether or not Erdogan’s ideas and policies have become so incompetent that unquestioning obedience is his only hope of being considered an effective leader.

Mr. Biss is a professional photographer who does this as a home project:

See more here.

I fear that Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) is a middling mess. I could deduce no clear themes, although we dance about questions concerning family, God, and emotion. Spock’s unmentioned brother, the brilliant and personally powerful Sybok, seeks control of the Enterprise in order to seek after the primordial divine origin of all life, on a planet behind the energy barrier supposedly surrounding the Galactic Center. Sadly, the movie and its alleged plot is beset by a tsunami of questions.

1. Why would God need a planet for a dwelling? So why seek God there?
2. Why is there an energy barrier at the Galactic Center?
3. Shatner proclaims they’ll investigate this dwelling of God “by the book”, and then promptly takes Sybok, Spock, and McCoy down to the planet without a sensor sweep or use of their uncrewed probes. Not even a red-shirt in sight!
4. Why is a Captain leading a simple raid on a rebellious planet?
5. So why is God imprisoned on that planet? My goodness, why don’t you investigate further? Hell, why didn’t the crew break into a rendition of “Row, Row, Row your Boat” and exorcise the damn thing?
6. Blah, blah, blah….

It’s a tidal wave of twaddle, to be perfectly honest, and I only tolerated it as a duty to review the movie, and as I am in the midst of recovering from a mild case of food poisoning, it was easier to watch than change the channel.

The World Bank has released a report¹ (summary here) on the impact of (usable) water scarcity on GDP (Gross Domestic Productivity). From the Executive Summary:

The impacts of climate change will be channeled primarily through the water cycle, with consequences that could be large and uneven across the globe. Water-related climate risks cascade through food, energy, urban, and environmental systems. Growing populations, rising incomes, and expanding cities will converge upon a world where the demand for water rises exponentially, while supply becomes more erratic and uncertain. If current water management policies persist, and climate models prove correct, water scarcity will proliferate to regions where it currently does not exist, and will greatly worsen in regions where water is already scarce. Simultaneously, rainfall is projected to become more variable and less predictable, while warmer seas will fuel more violent floods and storm surges. Climate change will increase water-related shocks on top of already demanding trends in water use. Reduced freshwater availability and competition from other uses—such as energy and agriculture—could reduce water availability in cities by as much as two thirds by 2050, compared to 2015 levels.

From the other summary (second link):

The combined effects of growing populations, rising incomes, and expanding cities will see demand for water rising exponentially, while supply becomes more erratic and uncertain.

Exponentially?

• Unless action is taken soon, water will become scarce in regions where it is currently abundant – such as Central Africa and East Asia – and scarcity will greatly worsen in regions where water is already in short supply – such as the Middle East and the Sahel in Africa. These regions could see their growth rates decline by as much as 6% of GDP by 2050 due to water-related impacts on agriculture, health, and incomes.
• Water insecurity could multiply the risk of conflict. Food price spikes caused by droughts can inflame latent conflicts and drive migration. Where economic growth is impacted by rainfall, episodes of droughts and floods have generated waves of migration and spikes in violence within countries.

So just what is the World Bank? I found this from the Wikipedia entry:

The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans^[3] to developing countries for capital programs. It comprises two institutions: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), and the International Development Association (IDA). The World Bank is a component of the World Bank Group, which is part of the United Nations system.

The World Bank’s official goal is the reduction of poverty. However, according to its Articles of Agreement, all its decisions must be guided by a commitment to the promotion of foreign investment and international trade and to the facilitation of Capital investment.

Which is actually rather interesting, because in a recent NewScientist (23 April 2016, paywall) interview piece with Arjen Hoekstra comes the concept of a water footprint:

You came up with the idea of the water footprint. What is it?

The water footprint is the total volume of fresh water used in the making of products such as food, clothing or energy. People also have personal water footprints, because we consume these products and of course use water in our homes. Countries, too, have their own water footprints.

This is then connected to international trade:

How is the UK doing in terms of water use?

Because it imports so many goods, three-quarters of the UK’s water consumption is actually outside of its borders. And about half of that usage is not sustainable. For example, the UK imports rice and olives from southern Spain and sugarcane from Pakistan, regions where water is overexploited. This means groundwater levels are declining and rivers dwindling or drying up. That’s bad news for the exporting countries and for the UK, because these food sources will ultimately fail.

And his conclusion:

We lose our own agriculture because elsewhere you have free water, cheap land, cheap labour. But it is not truly cheap; it is at the expense of the people over there, their land and their water. And in the long run, our own food supply is at risk. We need to change the rules of the market by discriminating in favour of sustainable production. It is a global challenge for agriculture, power generation, trade and economics, which we must work together to address. It’s a big deal, and it will only get bigger.

It’s worth keeping in mind the agenda of the World Bank – promotion of international trade – and the deeply hidden costs that accompany its advantages, such as, say, quality olive oil. While specialization permits great improvements, the costs can be hard to measure.

But from the other side, I feel that trade is an important part of the process of keeping peace between nations. It’s harder to kill people outside your tribe when those people happen to be supplying something you have learned to want and even need. Of course, you may think you can invade and take it (for example, Germany invading Russia to secure fuel supplies in World War II), but often the product requires specialized knowledge not in your possession, or labor you’d prefer not to indulge in; sometimes constriction of trade can even lead to war (another World War II example would be the banning of shipping scrap metal to Japan, leaving them without a source of metal to build industry).

The challenge will be in finding ways to continue to co-exist without inadvertently wrecking our trading partners’ eco-systems.

¹ World Bank. 2016. “High and Dry: Climate Change, Water, and the Economy.” World Bank, Washington, DC. License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0 IGO

Seen on CNN.com:

‘Jurassic World’ dinosaur found

Oh, that was a documentary?

Actual article video (without above title) here.

Steve Benen @ Maddowblog covers Sarah Palin’s outrage that Speaker of the House Paul Ryan hasn’t immediately endorsed Donald Trump for the GOP Presidential nomination:

The Alaska Republican added yesterday that she’s throwing her support behind Trump supporter Paul Nehlen, who’s taking on Ryan in a Wisconsin primary.

“Yes, I will do whatever I can for Paul Nehlen,” Palin said. “This man is a hard working guy, so in touch with the people. Paul Ryan and his ilk, their problem is they have become so disconnected from the people whom they are elected to represent … they feel so threatened at this point that their power, their prestige, their purse will be adversely affected by the change that is coming with Trump and someone like Paul Nehlen that they’re not thinking straight right now.”

A few hours later, Palin posted a Facebook message, which she appears to have written herself: “Rep. Paul Ryan abandoned the district he was to represent as special interests dictated his legislative priorities. Without ever having a real job outside of politics, it seems he disconnected himself from the people, thus easily disrespected the will of the people. It’s time for a change.”

Doesn’t the former Alaskan half-term governor realize just how much of her own words applies to her?

In Framed (1947) Glenn Ford, a simple mining engineer who’s been down on his luck, is entangled in a wicked plot to embezzle money from the bank. It’s a tense, interesting tale as Ford finds himself at odd with a beautiful blonde and her lover, while chasing the job opportunity he needs, and battles his bad luck and his propensity for the big bad: alcohol. Like many a good movie, Framed has important moral questions for morally dubious characters, and examines how they react. With the Great Depression fresh in the original audience’s mind, Ford is presented more than once with access to uncertain wealth – and how he reacts each time is what twists the tail of this movie. Add in the superior talents of Ford, Janis Carter, and the balance of the supporting cast, and this is a movie that, while not paced as they are paced now, is worth the time.

North Korea and the West are working together – but not about what you may think. As dangerous as it may be for the DPRK to have nuclear weapons, there’s something far worse lurking in its backyard.

Mount Paektu.

NewScientist (23 April 2016) is on the story.

Paektu’s last eruption, a thousand years ago, is the second largest ever recorded, topped only by the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia in 1815.

“If it erupted, it would have impacts way beyond Korea and China,” says James Hammond of Birkbeck, University of London, one of the scientists involved.

 In 946 AD, the eruption of Mount Paektu, Korea’s highest mountain, blasted 96 cubic kilometres of debris into the sky, 30 times more than the relatively puny 3.3 cubic kilometres that Vesuvius spewed over Pompeii in AD 79.

Yet despite is size and the potential impact of an eruption, little is known about this enigmatic volcano.

 

National Geographic gives an overview:

Unlike most volcanoes on Earth, Mount Paektu isn’t located where tectonic plates collide. It’s parked in the middle of a plate, at least 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) away from the massive subduction zone that created the Japanese islands. Simply put, Mount Paektu shouldn’t really be there.

“That’s one of the big mysteries,” Iacovino says.

For North Koreans, Mount Paektu is sacred. It’s their national emblem, and it is believed to be the birthplace of the founder of the first Korean kingdom. Small villages are sprinkled on its flanks, and in the summer, the surrounding area is covered in blueberries.

Higher up, hot springs and gassy vents hint at the mountain’s still beating volcanic heart, and a pool called Heaven Lake sits in the crater at its summit. On the Chinese side of the mountain, there’s a national park that is a popular destination for tourists and hikers.

From World Atlas:

Right on the Chinese border is Paektu-san. The Chinese are also interested, for obvious reasons.

The Killer that Stalked New York (1950) is a movie that has a tense plot, well-drawn characters, and a climax that was hard to see coming.

Except for the part where the movie makers explicitly tell us what to expect.

This is a clumsy ménage à troi of a fairly well done medical sleuthing story, a diamond smuggling tale featuring a conscienceless womanizer, and a documentary about the potential dangers of smallpox when vaccinations are no longer administered. The result is the ruination of the first story, the trivialization of the second, all as the third plays the part of the E. Coli that ruined dinner by killing half the diners at your birthday dinner. And it’s really a shame as a clutch of excellent actors bring the stories to life, primary being the emotional journey of a woman so in love she’s blind to the fatal flaws of her husband. He’s convinced her to smuggle diamonds out of Cuba; along with the diamonds she brings smallpox, and soon people are dying in her wake.

His betrayal of her, seducing her sister while she was away, transforms that love to burning hate, so hot that even the smallpox that tries to drag her into Hell is impotent in the face of her fury; she hangs on as her beautiful face deteriorates, waiting for her husband to reappear so she can have her revenge. Meanwhile, she’s avoiding the Customs Inspectors who’ve trailed her from Cuba, as well as the Health Department workers desperate to find the source of the smallpox, as it appears at apparently random spots throughout the city. Immunizing an entire city is their Herculean task if they can’t find her, so they spare no effort on either vector: as this is a scratch on vaccine, rather than injected, even the sewing machine companies are requested to chip in.

I’ve made clear my disappointment with the movie. But there are two facets I found interesting.

First, even in a movie from 1950 we see an appearance by the anti-vaccination crowd. Brief and not intrinsic to the story, but it provides verisimilitude. The most basic objection is given: “You’re not going to inject germs into my family!” the man snarls at the health worker before slamming the door in his face. It’s an objection which makes intuitive sense to those with no familiarity with the workings of vaccines and the body’s immune system, and a reminder that we are all responsible for having a grasp of these high level concepts.

Second, a message about the role and efficacy of government. Over the last thirty years, if not more, government as an institution has been under attack. We have all seen the humor about government workers, waste, impotency, etc, abetted by the occasional true horror story. These horror stories are the exceptions, not the story itself, and yet there has been a sustained effort to assert the exceptions are the entire story. But anyone who has seriously studied the role of government knows that Reagan’s politically motivated statement, “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,” was a miserable lie that has done more damage than we can know. It has motivated the reduction in budgets until programs no longer function, slowed reaction times when moments count (just think Hurricane Katrina), and inspired distrust of a government trying to safeguard a country from enemies foreign and domestic, human and non-human, even animated and non-animated.

But when the Mayor of New York is presented with the problem of immunizing an entire city, there is no shilly shallying, nor pushing the decision off, or worrying about money. We get to see government performing at the moment of crisis, as only a government really can:

Mayor: “How much money do you need?”

Doctor: “A million.”

“You got it. What else do you need?”

etc. And then later, when informed that vaccine supplies are exhausted, the heads of the vaccine supply companies are brought to the Mayor’s office.

“How many can you supply?”

“Maybe 20,000 units.”

“It’s 30,000.  And you, sir, how many can you supply? 30,000, that’s how many you’ll supply. And you?”

“But Mayor, we cannot supply that many, it’s not possible!”

“Why?”

“Because they must be individually packaged! It’s medical regulations!”

“Ignore the regulations. Deliver them in beer bottles, we have lots of those. And these don’t need to be injected, right? Just scratched on? [turns to an assistant.] Call the sewing machine companies, have them send all their needles. We’ll sterilize them.”

No mucking about with private sector perogatives. People are dying, and the Mayor, as the top political dog, knows who to talk to and when to tell them they either deliver or we all die. It’s a reminder that the government sector is neither evil, trivial, nor an inevitable dunghill of incompetence and corruption. In moments of emergency, it supplies the coordination, authority, and manpower to safeguard the disorganized, poorly informed citizenry from threats outside of the usual realms of danger. Of all the themes of this movie, that might be the most important.

With the ascension of candidate Trump to the throne of presumptive nominee, certain Republican conservative elements remain unreconstructed in their feelings towards the real-estate developer cum Presidential wannabe. Leon Wolf on RedState.com makes a tactical recommendation:

Republicans must know that there is absolutely no chance that we will win the White House in 2016 now. They must also know that we are likely to lose the Senate as well. So the choices, essentially, are to confirm Garland and have another bite at the apple in a decade, or watch as President Clinton nominates someone who is radically more leftist and 10-15 years younger, and we are in no position to stop it.

Steve Benen @ MaddowBlog remarks on this change of heart:

Or put another way, just how sure are Senate Republicans that Trump is going to win in November? If the answer is “not very,” Merrick Garland is going to start looking far more appealing to GOP senators.

Of course, Republicans have been loath to even pay Garland the courtesy of a confirmation hearing, fearing a right-wing backlash from their own party’s base, but that’s what makes the RedState commentaries so important. Conservative activists may now be far more tolerant of the Senate process now that they know who their party’s presidential nominee is going to be.

HuffPo reports Senator McConnell is standing firm:

But the calculus hasn’t changed for McConnell, who has kept his conference in line.

“While I’m glad to see Democrats concede that there won’t be a Democrat in the White House next year, Republicans continue to believe that the American people should have a voice in this decision and the next president should make the nomination,” said Don Stewart, a spokesman for McConnell.

“Despite the White House coordinating with liberal groups and millions of dollars in special-interest ads, no Republican has moved from their principled position,” he added.

Indeed, a spokeswoman for New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte, a vulnerable moderate Republican up for re-election in November, on Wednesday confirmed the senator “plans to support” Trump in the general election.

It occurs to me that President Obama could, at this time, withdraw the nomination and nominate someone younger and more liberal. This would put the GOP in a real bind. However, insofar as I can read anyone’s character, would not be in character with the President. Using anyone, much less a respected jurist, as a mere chess-piece doesn’t seem to be part of the President’s modus operandi. This would also undercut the strategy mentioned by Steve Benen and explained by Politico’s Edward-Isaac Dovere:

They’re calling it the 9-9-9 campaign: nine states, over nine days, to push for a court with nine justices. (No apologies to Herman Cain, who coined the term for his 2012 tax plan.)

More and more, though, they’re going to be talking about Donald Trump, tying in Republicans’ discomfort with the largely unpopular likely Republican nominee to say that refusing President Barack Obama’s nominee amounts to enabling a would-be President Trump’s.

The plans represent an unspoken acknowledgment that the Supreme Court fight is less about actually trying to get Garland on the bench before November, and more about turning the Republican resistance into a campaign issue to maximize GOP losses in the Senate, and even in the House. The recess efforts are both a shot across the bow from Democrats, and a test run for some of what they’ll be ramping up through the fall.

Pulling the nomination would seriously damage this strategy, so don’t look for a change in nominee.