Unsightly Mental Blemishes

Tonight my Arts Editor and I chose to frequent a local eatery for our evening repast. Having waited the requisite half hour for a table, we ordered appetizer, soup, and entree, and the first two eventually arrived, although it seemed to take longer than usual.  It was a Friday night, after all, and the place was full to capacity.

Then my entree – a flatbread drizzled with chicken and soaked in BBQ sauce – arrived. A single bite revealed that it had sat perhaps overlong on the counter post-baking, and we asked the waitress to return it to the kitchen for a bit of reheating.

Perhaps five minutes later a young lady stopped at our table, introduced herself as the manager, and, with a slight degree of mortification, delivered the sad news that the flatbread had been forgotten and was now fired beyond redemption; it had been condemned to Limbo, at best, and she had ordered its replacement forthwith. We laughed with her (inasmuch as mortification can be laughed with), expressed good will, and returned to our conversation.

Five minutes on, the manager returned to our table, and crouched in front of our table. Now, you must be given to understand, this lady is not a particularly tall lady, so when I say that, upon attaining her crouch, she then leaned towards our table, you must see what we saw: a pair of goggling eyes, a forehead, and some windswept blonde hair. From this position, she announced, in a slightly muffled voice, and with a definite increase in mortification, that she really, really didn’t want to be here, but that there would be a further delay:

“There was an, um, collision in the kitchen, and now your entree is floor-pizza. I’ve ordered another replacement.”

Being of an occasionally slightly sadistic disposition, I assured her that this was merely my birthday dinner treat, and all would be well, I trusted, and, indeed, a flatbread pizza did eventually appear at our table, along with assurances that we need not pay for the evening’s entertainment.  We dined, with pleasure, and will return in the future.

If only in hopes of more entertainment.

As Mr. Trump continues to steamroll his opponents, Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare expresses his disgust with the candidate:

Fourth, even as he endeavors to undo the Bush and Obama administrations’ commitment to separating this country’s engagement with Islam from its struggle with its enemies. Trump openly flirts with America’s actual adversaries. I don’t know what to make of his repeated kind words for Russian President Vladimir Putin, but I think it’s fair to say that Trump has compromised himself with them. He has shown that for all his tough talk, at least where dictators are concerned, he’s actually a bit like a loud barking dog who dissolves in slobbery affection the moment some treat or praise gets thrown his way. Putin is not a fool. He has noticed, I’m sure, that he has gained a would-be client strongman in Trump, and that he has bought him unbelievably cheaply. He has noticed, I am also sure, that with only a modest amount of public ego stroking—a few stray words, really—he bought himself an ally at the top of the GOP field. He has had to pay a lot more, hard cash actually, for his European political allies. Trump likes to boast of the great deals he makes, but he sold himself to Putin for a pittance—and that has national security implications too.

I suspect a cartoon of Trump being Putin’s butt-monkey might be in order. Oh, wait, my Arts Editor has something handy…

Our thanks to South Park, of course.

Iran just ran their first election since the nuclear deal was signed.  It’s interesting to read the run up to the election – and see the (possibly justified) concerns about foreign conspiracies. For example, as reported by AL Monitor‘s Arash Karami, Supreme Leader Khamenei warning about the Americans and the British:

Khamenei said that in the last 37 years, since the 1979 revolution, Iran’s enemies, including US officials, have attempted to dissuade Iranians from voting by describing the election process in the country as being useless. Khamenei now believes, however, that the United States has learned from experience that taking a direct position against Iran’s elections has had the opposite of the desired effect, prompting Iranians to show up and vote.

“Based on this,” Khamenei said, “the Americans have been silent in these elections.” His comments made an interesting contrast to his Feb. 17 speech, in which he said that “British radio is giving the people of Tehran instructions to vote” for specific individuals. …

Khamenei also called some observers’ dismissal of US “infiltration” into Iran “unwarranted and unjustified.” He warned that sometimes an individual may be an agent of infiltration and repeat the statements of the enemy without realizing they are in the service of the enemy.

One such instance of repeating the statements of enemy countries and “adopting the enemy’s political discourse,” according to Khamenei, is rhetoric that divides Iranian camps into hard-liners and moderates. He said the implication of doing so is that hard-liners are people who are bound to the Islamic Revolution and the principles of the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and moderates are people who will surrender and compromise with foreigners.

An anonymous AL Monitor article from Iran notes further suspicion concerning the backing of the moderates.  Their strategy includes the publication of a list of moderate candidates, a ticket if you will, and a response:

Amid the launch of the “No to these 5” (hard-liners on Jannati’s ticket) campaign on social media, prominent dissident Akbar Ganji and BBC Persian separately published articles that examined and analyzed this strategy to sideline hard-liners. Hard-liners were quick to seize on the latter as an opportunity to hit back at Rafsanjani, thereby undermining the “No to these 5” campaign.

Hard-liners subsequently started branding the “No to these 5” campaign — as well as Rafsanjani and leading members of his list — as “English” and directed by the BBC. In this vein, the hard-line Vatan-e Emrooz newspaper wrote, “The plans for preventing Ayatollah Jannati, Yazdi and Mesbah [Yazdi] from getting into the assembly are being managed by the BBC. The formulas of this British channel and its staff for not allowing these clerics to get into the assembly signal their long-term plans.” Vatan-e Emrooz added, “They are seeking to create a new makeup in the Assembly of Experts, one which gives Rafsanjani the upper hand.” Moreover, the hard-line daily published a picture of the five hard-line ayatollahs and deemed them “anti-British.” Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi, chief of staff of the Iranian military, has also harshly reacted to this controversy, saying, “If those who are being supported by Britain and the United States do not condemn these two countries’ meddling in Iran’s elections, they are considered [tried and] convicted.”

Khatami, the interim Tehran Friday prayer leader who is targeted by the campaign, has also spoken out. “British and foreign media outlets are asking our people not to vote for Jannati, Yazdi, Mesbah [Yazdi], Alamolhoda and I. This is none of your business; you nosy people should know that these five are the top choices of our people,” Khatami asserted, adding, “My sin is that I have given the seditionists a hard time during my Friday sermons.” One day later, Khatami stated, “I’m sure that their [Rafsanjani’s] list won’t be able to attract votes, as they are thought of as supporters of the sedition [unrest in the aftermath of the disputed 2009 presidential election] and are as hated as the [former] shah.”

The fact this is anonymous blows a little cold for me.

Despite the veiled warnings, polling indicates the Iranians would prefer a moderate government, as noted in this AL Monitor article by Barbara Slavin:

Of those polled, 67% said they approved of Rouhani’s job performance, while only 18% gave him a negative rating. Despite the fact that the Iranian economy has not yet rebounded following the recent nuclear deal, Rouhani saw his favorable ratings go up by 13% from a previous poll last July.

The survey showed a wide variety of political sympathies but strongest support for Reformists among the choices on offer. Some 20% of respondents said they preferred the Reformist camp, while only 12% identified with a more hard-line faction known as the Principlists. Interestingly, 44% of those polled said they weren’t sure what group they liked and 11% expressed no preference at all.

And the results?  This BBC article’s title gives a subtle hint:

Iran election: Reformists win all 30 Tehran seats

Early results gave former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a moderate conservative, and Mr Rouhani the most votes for the assembly, which is composed of mostly elder and senior clerics.

This stunning election result will make a difference in Iran’s engagement with the wider world.

President Rouhani’s hand has been strengthened in parliament to help open his country to greater trade and investment. That will help him, and others in his reformist camp, to deepen the dialogue with the West, which began with negotiations on a landmark nuclear deal.

Vox‘s Max Fisher opines:

When nuclear negotiations got started, there was concern that Iranians would reject any deal as a humiliation, given that it would likely require surrendering most of the nuclear program and submitting to embarrassing inspections.

Rouhani got around this problem by promising that the deal would bring economic relief and an opening with the outside world, which would itself bring Iranians dignity and pride.

It worked. The election became a mechanism for demonstrating that Rouhani’s strategy is popular, for giving Rouhani’s allies more power to continue that strategy, and for weakening the hard-liners who opposed the nuclear deal.

This has been reflected in Western coverage of the elections. The New York Times’s Tehran-based Thomas Erdbrink, for example, wrote of the elections’ results, “The most reactionary voices in Iranian politics are losing ground to moderates buoyed by the sweeping nuclear deal with big powers, including the United States.”

But a bit of realism:

Hard-liners might be down in Iran’s elected bodies — they lost the presidency and lost their majority in parliament — but they still hold the powerful unelected bodies I mentioned earlier. They’re under growing political pressure to accommodate moderates, but they’re still very powerful themselves.

“Here is the rub,” [Ali Vaez, the International Crisis Group’s senior Iran analyst] told me. “The moderates have more wind in their sails, but the overall balance of power remains unaltered. The moderates’ victory is above all symbolic. Rouhani still needs other power centers and the conservatives to advance his agenda.”

Will US Congressional leaders even take notice of the electoral result, or does Senator Cruz’s promise to “tear up” the nuclear deal still hold firm? Appraising Iran is a complex undertaking, and while I enjoy reading and learning about them, I’d hesitate to take any judgments on them. However, without a doubt any move towards a more moderate government is a positive sign, and the fact that the nuclear deal is seen as advancing that cause should rise quiet hopes of Iran becoming less and less a force for disaster in the Mid East.

The deadline for my whitehouse.gov petition has come and gone, and I am unsurprised to say that we failed to reach the 100,000 signature level required to attract the attention of the Administration: in point of fact, we attained 15 signatures.

I am not disappointed, though.  The point was to get the idea out there and, hopefully, a few people did start thinking about coal as a dangerous material, subject to national controls analogous to uranium, rather than just a source of energy.

The headcold persists, the car has a flat tire, the cat remains ill and the vet won’t return our phone calls. The solution?

Another movie. Of course. This time it’s The Son of Dr. Jekyll (1951), a surprisingly adequate semi-sequel to the original Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (any of a number of productions qualify). A friend of Jekyll agrees to act as trustee for the child of Dr. Jekyll and his murdered wife once the mob has dealt with the remorseless Mr. Hyde. 30 years later, Jekyll Jr. (we’ll just call him JJ) is conducting his own research when the trustee gives him the notes of his father. JJ then sails off into madness as he continues the research.

Or does he? We’re surprised when the experiments don’t work … until they do after a mysterious addition while JJ sleeps. The result is upsetting for JJ’s fiancee, but she sticks with him. But the mystery thickens as friends of JJ’s late mother accuse him of a horrendous crime. Now the trustee, who also runs a sanatorium for the mad, must take JJ under his care .. and retain his trusteeship.

We were surprised, yet disappointed. If the writers had maintained the mystery as late as possible, it would have been much more gripping; the secret at the center of the plot is mildly clever, and that’s all that’s really needed if it’s concealed as late as possible while having likable characters. And we do like JJ and some of the other characters, including the fiancee. But we learn the secret of who’s manipulating JJ and for what reasons far too early, and so our problem-solving faculties get far too little of a workout.

But it was still fun for my negative IQ.

Dr. Carson has been running a consistent last, or at least near the bottom, in the GOP nominating contests so far, which makes his persistence puzzling.  Today we had the honor of an automated phone call from his campaign. His advocate claims to be Kirk Cameron (an evangelical Christian actor), who made the following statement (possibly paraphrased):

I know Ben Carson listens to God, and I believe God listens to Ben Carson.

A quick check with my wife suggests this may be overstepping the bounds of good taste for evangelical Christians, at least the sort she grew up with. Is the campaign getting desperate to draw the attention of the voters? Or is this just an inadvertent misstep for a candidate who experienced a brief flurry of excitement, but has not – for whatever obscure reason – not been able to retain the initial attention as the louder, more brash bull moose of the season have crashed through the underbrush?

Last night we saw Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920), the John Barrymore version; according to Wikipedia, this is the fourth rendition. This is a silent movie with an incredibly irrelevant organ (and later symphonic) accompaniment. My Arts Editor and I are in agreement – the silence was quite disagreeable, and this quality was enhanced by the organ.

This is not to take away from the efforts of the makeup artists and special effects engineers, who did excellent work in creating the execrable Mr. Hyde, nor that of Mr. Barrymore, who evokes an authentic revulsion when he beats Mr. Carew to death with a club, the highlight of a good, if not great, performance. But, in the end, the odd pacing and lack of interaction via audio is sufficient to make this movie disagreeable.

Courtesy SpaceWeather.com comes this apparently useless information:

Researchers have long known that solar activity and cosmic rays have a yin-yang relationship. As solar activity declines, cosmic rays intensify. Lately, solar activity has been very low indeed. Are cosmic rays responding? The answer is “yes.”

You can see the incurious shrugging (and whining about the cost of measuring) from here, can you not?  So, don’t wait for it …

Cosmic rays, which are accelerated toward Earth by distant supernova explosions and other violent events, are an important form of space weather. They can seed clouds, trigger lightning, and penetrate commercial airplanes. Furthermore, there are studies linking cosmic rays with cardiac arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death in the general population. Among patients who have an implanted cardioverter – defibrillator (ICD), the aggregate number of life-saving shocks appears to be correlated with the number of cosmic rays reaching the ground.

Why the relationship?  A workmanlike explanation is given on SpaceWeather.com, why should I spoil their fun?  Go read it!  But I will steal one of their lovely photos, which may be the best reason of all for High Frontier explorations:

A reader and climate scientist contributes some information concerning this thread. First up, a new organization backed by Bill Gates and other corporate forces, concentrating on development of basic science and technologies for a low-emission future, the BREAKTHROUGH ENERGY COALITION:

Technology will help solve our energy issues. The urgency of climate change and the energy needs in the poorest parts of the world require an aggressive global program for zero-emission energy innovation. The new model will be a public-private partnership between governments, research institutions, and investors. Scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs can invent and scale the innovative technologies that will limit the impact of climate change while providing affordable and reliable energy to everyone. The existing system of basic research, clean energy investment, regulatory frameworks, and subsidies fails to sufficiently mobilize investment in truly transformative energy solutions for the future. We can’t wait for the system to change through normal cycles.

Founders include Bill Gates of Microsoft, Meg Whitman, CEO of HP, Ratan Tata of Tata (India), Jeff Bezos of Amazon, and other corporate titans. It’s interesting that on their website I’ve been unable to find any calls for higher taxes on undesirable forms of energy provision, or other regulatory attempts to herd the general populace along towards the proper goal. I’m not sure if they see such as a futile attempt in one of the most important nations of the planet, or if they see themselves as fulfilling the role themselves. I suspect they don’t:

But in the current business environment, the risk-reward balance for early-stage investing in potentially transformative energy systems is unlikely to meet the market tests of traditional angel or VC investors – not until the underlying economics of the energy sector shift further towards clean energy. Experience indicates that even the most promising ideas face daunting commercialization challenges and a nearly impassable Valley of Death between promising concept and viable product, which neither government funding nor conventional private investment can bridge. …

We are committed to doing our part and filling this capital need by coming together in a new coalition. We will form a network of private capital committed to building a structure that will allow informed decisions to help accelerate the change to the advanced energy future our planet needs. Success requires a partnership of increased government research, with a transparent and workable structure to objectively evaluate those projects, and committed private-sector investors willing to support the innovative ideas that come out of the public research pipeline.

Together we will focus on early stage companies that have the potential of an energy future that produces near zero carbon emissions and provides everyone with affordable, reliable energy. We will invest based on a few core investment principles …

The New York Times covers this new effort here. While the above web site makes it clear they’re investors, here it’s more baldly put:

“It won’t be as fast, but we do expect to make money out of this thing,” Mr. Gates said of the fund. “If you can drive a new approach, then the energy economy is absolutely gigantic. Now, getting it scaled up fast enough, so that you benefit from your invention or your trade secrets, that is tricky.”

The New York Times Blog supported Q&A with Mr. Gates. This particular question & answer gets to the heart of one issue:

Why does Gates ignore market-ready solutions that are at hand and ready to deploy? In so doing, he ignores hundreds of studies and scientists. While we need more research, Gates does a disservice by diminishing the potential for today’s solutions. —Andy Olsen

Gates: The rich countries have provided incentives and subsidies for solar and wind, and that’s had the beneficial effect of not only getting the installed capacity reducing CO2, but also getting the volume learning curve for those technologies to move costs down. Solar electric in particular has come down a lot. So, in some places, up to a certain percentage, it’s an economic part of the system.

People shouldn’t ignore the fact, though, that the demand is still somewhat driven by the tax credits and portfolio standards. So we still have quite a ways to go, particularly when you’re trying to get from 20 percent of the energy sources up to the eventual 100 percent we need, where then you run into the big challenge of intermittency [dips and peaks in power as wind and solar sources vary] and the cost of adding storage that would deal with that. This makes the economics dramatically tougher because batteries haven’t improved that much. Now I and many other people are investing in companies that are going to try and see what we can do with batteries. But it’s not guaranteed that their price will come down a lot. So solar and wind are great, but as they exist today, for countries like India, either in terms of cost or reliability, they aren’t going to get used substantially without innovations in cost and storage or alternative approaches.

On the technical end of things, our reader provides a link to Scientific American concerning the latest thinking on the Hiatus:

An apparent slowing in the rise of global temperatures at the beginning of the twenty-first century, which is not explained by climate models, was referred to as a “hiatus” or a “pause” when first observed several years ago. Climate-change sceptics have used this as evidence that global warming has stopped. But in June last year, a study in Science claimed that the hiatus was just an artefact which vanishes when biases in temperature data are corrected.

Now a prominent group of researchers is countering that claim, arguing in Nature Climate Change that even after correcting these biases the slowdown was real.

“There is this mismatch between what the climate models are producing and what the observations are showing,” says lead author John Fyfe, a climate modeller at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis in Victoria, British Columbia. “We can’t ignore it.”

Fyfe uses the term “slowdown” rather than “hiatus” and stresses that it does not in any way undermine global-warming theory.

Good scientists all, they worry about everything:

“It’s important to explain that,” Solomon says. “As scientists, we are curious about every bump and wiggle in that curve.”

But what of education? I ran across an article in the latest Skeptical Inquirer (March/April 2016) by Matthew Nisbet, entitled “Shifting the Conversation about Climate Change“, unfortunately not available online. A couple of tidbits, the first being something we should all know (any errors are probably mine):

Surveys of climate scientists and comprehensive reviews of thousands of peer-reviewed studies confirm the same basic fact: at least 97 percent [my emphasis] of climate scientists say that human-caused climate change is happening [citation omitted]. … Yet recent surveys find that only one out of ten Americans correctly estimate agreement among climate scientists as greater than 90 percent [citation omitted].

This is cited not merely as a fact, but in the context that many members of the public are not truly aware of the scientific unanimity on this point. Matthew goes on to briefly cover various communications methods used to communicate important information to the public, with this summary paragraph:

Across each of their experimental conditions, boosting awareness of scientific consensus increased beliefs that climate change is happening, that it is human caused, and that it is a worrisome problem.  These shifts in beliefs in turn increased subjects’ support for policy action, with some of the biggest increases observed among Republicans, who tend to be more dismissive of the issue [citation omitted].  Interestingly, in comparison to the tested metaphors, subjects who received either the simple text statement or the pie chart displayed the greatest increase in their beliefs.

So it’s not so much denial as ignorance; and that once the true magnitude of consensus is understood, most people begin to understand this is a truly important issue.

As good a reason as any to write a blog.

A reader quotes concerning any apocalypse,

“I remember a cartoon depicting a chimney sweep falling from the roof of a tall building and noticing on the way that a sign-board had one word spelled wrong, and wondering in his headlong flight why nobody had thought of correcting it. In a sense, we all are crashing to our death from the top story of our birth to the flat stones of the churchyard and wondering with an immortal Alice in Wonderland at the patterns of the passing wall. This capacity to wonder at trifles—no matter the imminent peril—these asides of the spirit, these footnotes in the volume of life are the highest forms of consciousness, and it is in this childishly speculative state of mind, so different from commonsense and its logic, that we know the world to be good.”

http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.scribd.com%2Fdoc%2F24008084%2FThe-Art-of-Literature-and-Commonsense%23scribd&h=aAQE89wjI

Worth meditating upon, yet I cannot help but note that the scenario – falling from a tall building – has an immediacy standing out from the paper such to render it an extra dimension in the reader’s mind, and yet that very immediacy damages the metaphor’s power in that, at least in the United States today, most of us wander about the landscape with little sense of the mortality creeping up our ankles.  Yet, even as I write this, I must acknowledge that today is not yesterday, and perhaps the reader of past centuries would have felt more keenly the power of the presented metaphor, whereas we have had our sensitivities blunted by the advance of medicine.

Casting about further in the essay, I see I must draw my Art Editor’s attention to this passage:

In this divinely absurd world of the mind, mathematical symbols do not thrive.Their interplay, no matter how smoothly it works, no matter how dutifully it mimics theconvolutions of our dreams and the quantums of our mental associations, can never reallyexpress what is utterly foreign to their nature, considering that the main delight of thecreative mind is the sway accorded to a seemingly incongruous detail over a seeminglydominant generalization. When commonsense is ejected together with its calculatingmachine, numbers cease to trouble the mind. Statistics pluck up their skirts and sweep outin a huff. Two and two no longer make four, because it is no longer necessary for them tomake four. If they had done so in the artificial logical world which we have left, it had beenmerely a matter of habit: two and two used to make four in the same way as guests invitedto dinner expect to make an even number. But I invite my numbers to a giddy picnic andthen nobody minds whether two and two make five or five minus some quaint fraction.Man at a certain stage of his development invented arithmetic for the purely practical purpose of obtaining some kind of human order in a world which he knew to be ruled bygods whom he could not prevent from playing havoc with his sums whenever they felt soinclined. He accepted that inevitable indeterminism which they now and then introduced,called it magic, and calmly proceeded to count the skins he had bartered by chalking barson the wall of his cave. The gods might intrude, but he at least was resolved to follow asystem that he had invented for the express purpose of following it.

It should appeal to her sense that mathematics is little more than an intellectual folly.

Returning to this intermittent thread concerning story-telling, my Arts Editor and I have been sucked into the new TV show You, Me, and the Apocalypse, and the show illustrates some of what I look for in new drama.  Some of this is novelty: the scenario of a bit of space debris heading for the Earth, with fatal consequences, while not unknown in fiction (for example, the Willis movie Armageddon), is unusual; just as importantly, the approach appears to be unexpected, as we get to watch a person with OCD pursuing his missing wife, a mildly irreverent priest and his new found assistant, and others, some with links, known or not, to others, pursuing their lives in the face of imminent extinction.

As darn near the only thing I can do today, we saw Cry of the Werewolf (1944), a Nina Foch vehicle in which an aged researcher working on werewolves amongst the Romany stumbles across important information concerning the Princess of werewolves, and is murdered for his troubles in New Orleans.  He is found hours after his son returns from research as a chemist in DC, and helps his father’s research assistant begin examining his partially destroyed notes.

Meanwhile, the police get involved, and this is the point where the movie departs the sidewalk for more elevated thoroughfares: as the detective talks on the phone, the door behind him slowly opens.  Oh, is the monster going to get him?  Is a henchcreature going to leap on him all unawares?

No, he’s ready with a gun – “Come out of there!” he shouts, and we’re genuinely surprised as a trope is overturned.  How nice!  Even better, the surprises continue; a gun, casually shown in a drawer, is suddenly useful when a werewolf is ready to attack – wait, where did it go?  The Princess werewolf is … sad that she must kill the blundering janitor?  These and several other unexpected twists in the plot (one even had us exclaiming as we watched) served to elevate the movie from mere horror flick to something a bit more interesting to watch, which helped as, honestly, none of the characters were particularly distinguished¹.  The cinematography was excellent, although a dark basement was suspiciously non-dark in the light of a single match, and the dialog was merely adequate.

Its merits discussed, in the end it still falls flat and fails to crawl from the great well of standard horror flicks, for the simple reason that no particular theme stands clear in the end.  The virtuous lady is rescued, the beast is slain, the bodies are cleaned up – but what light has the movie cast upon our own great moral problems?  None that I can see, and, so while the plot enraptures us with people making unexpected decisions or tropes not troping as expected, in the end we don’t feel like we’ve learned anything important.  And so the movie, like any story with similar failings, does not become part of the great moral landscape of American culture.

¹ A most helpful funeral director is the exception, as he’s most excellently cast and shines forth like a beacon, although none of the cast are the barren rocks of disaster; he simply, in this monochromatic presentation, wears a red sash of panache.

This thread has been dormant for a while, but the Georgia legislature has chosen to reawaken it as it passes the First Amendment Defense Act:

A BILL to be entitled an Act to amend Title 50 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, relating to state government, so as to prohibit discriminatory action against a person who believes, speaks, or acts in accordance with a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman or that sexual relations are properly reserved to such marriage; to provide for definitions; to provide for the granting of relief; to provide for construction and application; to provide for waiver of sovereign immunity under certain circumstances; to provide for a short title; to provide for an effective date; to repeal conflicting laws; and for other purposes.

Jay W. Belle Isle of the Legal Reader has little use for this law:

In a move reminiscent of something one would see in the 1950s, the Georgia Senate just passed a ridiculous piece of… legislation by a 38-14 vote. The Georgia First Amendment Defense Act is highly discriminatory and dangerous. The next step in this blow against basic human rights and dignity is to send the bill, known as FADA, back to the Georgia House. Given that a version of FADA already had unanimous approval in the House, it’s certain that it will pass again and be sent to Georgia’s Gov. Nathan Deal, possibly as early as Monday when the House reconvenes.

FADA is reminiscent of the numerous anti-LGBT bills promulgated in 2015 by bass-ackwards legislators who would like to see a return to a time when men were men, women were barefoot, pregnant, in the kitchen and silent unless spoken to and anyone who stepped outside those boundaries was subject to censure and death threats. Guess what? I’m about to step outside those boundaries in a big way. For those who may be uncomfortable with that notion, I suggest a Xanax and a seat belt, because it’s gonna be a bumpy ride, y’all!

But that’s mere commentary. Where does the rubber hit the road? Thanks to RawStory, right here:

A telecom company will be picking up and moving out of Georgia after state lawmakers passed sweeping anti-gay legislation, the New Civil Rights Movement reports.

Decatur-based 373K announced it would be leaving via Twitter. Its founders are outraged over the poorly-named First Amendment Defense Act, which extends legal cover state-wide to individuals and corporations to discriminate against LGBT people and same-sex couples. …

“I’m gay, our CFO is gay, we have people from every walk of life working here,” co-founder Kelvin Williams told NCRM on Saturday. “I’ve got Muslims, Buddhists, atheists here. We’ve got great Christians working for us. They’ve never thought of not serving anyone – that’s not the message of Christ.”

“We don’t tolerate that crap,” he added definitively.

So another push against the framework the Founders designed to build a stable society by attempting to put religion beyond the reach of the law – and a reaction from a corporation (surprisingly hard to track down, I have no idea if this is 10 or 10,000 employees) that made little attempt at diplomacy.

For those of us who believe our principles should have good results, this is interesting in that the corporate world, which depends on forecasting in order to survive, appears to prefer the Federal principles, rather than the religious principles advanced by the GOP. Some might argue that a “good result” depends on which side of argument you reside, yet I think this is sympomatic of short term thinking.Ironically, this is a pernicious problems for public corporations, but this is more a problem in financial reporting; the Personnel departments, as well as the managers, can and should think long term. For them, discrimination means greater potential for failure.

Georgia legislators need to stop jumping every time someone claims to have had their religious sensibilities offended. Perhaps, even, suggest that a religious sensibility is an oxymoron.

(h/t Melissa Summers)

As is tradition, this head cold is spent sleeping and watching movies – so last night we watched THE LADY AND THE MOB (1939).  Featuring a cast of an old lady and six mugs, she observes the beginnings of a protection racket, and, noting its economic impact on herself, demands the authorities remove the racket. They prove dilatory, so she pursues the problem herself, sending for help from a formerly unsavory character.  Beatings are administered, cars dash about emitting terrible clouds of smoke, we have a torture scene with a most terrifying denouement, the lady makes jail, but not bail, and the final corruption is rooted out.  And the introductory kiss …. I do believe the fellow is rooting around for gold down there.

What a little gem!

The star of the show is Fay Bainter, who is new to me. IMDB claims she was born in 1893, so she was only 45-46 for this performance – but the makeup artists achieve the level of a 75 year old lady.  Strong, decisive, oblivious to collateral damage, and taking delight in what she’s doing, she achieves the charisma demanded by her role.  She may, indeed, beat the rap.

The balance of the cast, aside from Ida Lupino, are character actors who know their requirements and fulfill them well, to excellent results; Ida’s part could have been stronger, but she has not enough lines to really do anything but a bit of flash, which is a pity. The cinematography is adequate, the script is very good, the dialogue is mostly spot-on, although sometimes the mugs get to be a little much.

Recommended.

P.S. There are two cars involved in this movie, and the first appears to be … electric!

An abecedarium is an alphabet table.  I ran across this in the Artifact column of Archaeology (March/April 2016):

The first alphabetic writing system was created in the Levant and Sinai Peninsula sometime in the second millennium B.C., probably between 1850 and 1700 B.C., by adapting Egyptian hieroglyphs—a writing system expressing both concept and sound—to represent only sound. This Proto-Sinaitic alphabet is the ancestor of many of the writing systems that developed across the world. Until now, the earliest known alphabet tables, called abecedaries, have been found on cuneiform tablets from Ugarit, in what is now Syria, dating to the thirteenth century b.c. But while studying an undeciphered ostracon found in a tomb at Luxor, Egyptologist Ben Haring of the University of Leiden discovered an abecedary that predates those tablets by two centuries, making it the oldest example ever found.

Is the (anonymous) author suggesting the creators were creating phonetics?  Or is this something else?

Lawfare’s Adam Klein writes an appreciation of his former boss, Justice Scalia:

The first is a firm adherence to his bedrock jurisprudential principles regardless of his policy preferences. For the Justice, the only variable to be discovered in the process of judicial decision was the governing rule of law in each case—not the equities between the parties; not the policy stakes. For him, judging was simply a matter of solving for that variable using the interpretive tools sanctioned by textualism and originalism. As law clerks, our bench memos to the Justice were limited to two pages. No lengthy summaries of the facts; no long discussions of the policy merits of each side’s proposed rule. The only question that mattered was “what is the legal rule that resolves this case?”

A rough but fair measure of any judge’s commitment to principle is how frequently the judge’s legal reasoning leads to a real-world result that diverges from his or her presumed preferences. No judge is perfectly consistent, of course. (Some readers may wish to pause here to gesticulate angrily while shouting “Bush v. Gore! What about Bush v. Gore!” Take a moment and get it out before we move on.) But Justice Scalia accepted what he presumably considered “bad” real-world results with striking frequency—more than any other Justice, I would venture, and often to the exasperation of his conservative allies.

Good article – i can tell, because now I wish I had known the guy.  In some ways, he reminds me of a programmer, although I’m at a loss to express how.

The headcold movie of the evening was Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1943), starring the iconic Rathbone and Bruce in the lead characters.  Set in WW II at an estate housing emotionally damaged British officers, a junior doctor is attacked – and then the owner of the estate is killed, swiftly followed by his heir.  The next heir is a lovely lass, so now the tension is set, as aristocratic young men who are not serving are not to be truly respected, yes?

Lovely cinematography, fair script, but the pacing was a little out of whack as the ending became rather too long.  And they never did explain why the clock struck 13 times.  And the owner, the first to die, was actually a rather interesting character.  Couldn’t they have killed Lestrade, instead?

A flash of light lasting about a tenth of a second on 10 December was the first hint that it might actually work, as a helium plasma was injected into the Wendelstein device and heated to 1 million °C, using an unprecedented microwave equivalent of 2000 kitchen ovens.

from “Nuclear fusion: Can the stellarator unleash the power?”, by David Hambling (in NewScientist, 30 January 2016, paywall)

My visuals are awesome. Your mileage may vary.

Tonight we finished watching THE RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE (1943), a movie covering the return of Armand Tesla, a vampire of Romanian extraction who is temporarily destroyed through the traditional stake through the heart during World War I.  In World War II, however, incompetent Nazi bombers accidentally hit the cemetery in which he’s buried, and when the caretakers find Armand’s body with a stake through the heart, they quite helpfully withdraw the stake and rebury the body.

Chaos then slowly ensues.

The cinematography is actually quite clear and well done.  Bela Lugosi, in all his Eastern European beauty, makes for a wonderfully evil vampire, tall and singular; a surprise was the appearance of the Renfield-analog as, of all things, an apparent werewolf, although the moon has no credited (nor creditable) role in this particular movie.  His evil is apparent when his hirsuteness is out of control, so we breath easily when he’s well-shaven.

Sadly, the female roles are less distinctive and forceful, despite the heroic attempts of Lady Jane Aimsley (Frieda Inescort) to transition from passive female to emphatic harridan.  The men’s roles overwhelm all, and so the movie seems off-balance.

And, like many movies, the characters seem plot-driven, rather than the plot seeming character-driven.  This makes for a movie that slowly becomes more and more predictable, until, as your fingers rub the belly of the kitty in your lap, you want to cry out, “No, don’t say ‘Yes, master!’  Say, ‘I’ve been waiting for you, I think you’d go well with some olive oil and mushrooms!’  Anything but what the plot calls for!”  But the characters were not that self-conscious, even with the championship level mustache of one of the cemetery caretakers.

I was pleased to note the ending included a standard pointer to one of the better definitions of good and evil, with, in this case, emphasis on the latter: evil tends to eat itself, and thus never makes it to dessert.  Nevermind the Nazi role in the ending, but that of our uber-henchman, the big R.  His realization of his relegation to unnamed late minion is emblematic of evil and how it should be treated.

But, in the end, it’s a blunt enough movie that it should only be watched when fighting off a head cold.

With the passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia comes a bit of a minefield for the various interested parties.

1. Republicans – Within hours of Scalia’s passing came full-throated calls for a refusal to confirm any Obama nominee, not least from Donald Trump, as reported by the Washington Examiner:
   

   “This is a tremendous blow to conservatism. It’s a tremendous blow, frankly, to our country,” Trump added before laying out a strategy for the situation. “It’s called delay, delay, delay.”

   Similar pronouncements came from Rubio, Cruz, and Bush.  This, of course, is part and parcel with the general GOP strategy ever since President Obama took office – just say NO.  But is it wise?

   The independents hold the power of choosing the next President, and the passing of Scalia guarantees yet another legitimates reason for the GOP’s methods to be put on display.  This is where the electorate has the opportunity to gather more information when it comes to the nature and desirability of the GOP as holding the Presidency – or even the Senate.

   It would have been much more interesting if one of the major candidates had come out calling for a moderate response, suggesting that a centrist nominee might be acceptable.  That might have left the Democrats in a small quandary – although, frankly, President Obama’s history suggests the GOP has small realistic hope of tying his hands in any intellectual contest.

   If the GOP continues this course, Obama may in fact choose to nominate a centrist – and leave the GOP with the unfortunate choice of rejecting a truly acceptable nominee, or breaking their word and stunning their base.  The former choice leaves them with the substantive appearance of lacking seriousness about the governance of the most powerful nation on earth – because the SCOTUS should be fully populated in order to properly decide cases.  Now, if their demographic base was expanding, or showing signs of possibly expanding, they could pursue this course – but it’s not, as discussed here last year.  Their base is slowly dying off, or becoming disaffected and leaving.

   And if – as seems likely – we have a President Clinton or Sanders next year, what will the GOP do then?  Especially if they still control the Senate?  Say NO for 4 more years? The situation begs a response from the inimitable Mark Twain, sadly gone all these years.

2. Democrats – The Democrats have their own set of problems.  Nominating a very liberal judge could spoil the GOP’s dance of death, as the independents might find this to be out of line; nominating a centrist could discourage their own base to the point where they refuse to come out to vote – which they cannot afford.Then comes the question of adroit management of the process.  If the GOP stands firm, how do the Democrats handle the inevitable charges of failure in a Senate in which they have little to no leverage over a group of GOP Senators who refuse to heed the calls of responsible governance?
3. Judicial Branch – They are the victims.  They face a SCOTUS minus a Justice for an indeterminate amount of time, hostage to the animus of the two other branches of government.  When 4-4 ties occur, the general rule (according to Slate) is that the lower court ruling is affirmed, but no precedent is set, so there will not be a bulge in the backlog of cases – but the machine will be damaged, nonetheless.But this may also be the wildcard in the bunch.  The Chief Justice is the generally conservative John Roberts, a relatively young man who may be more interested in restoring SCOTUS to its full complement than winning an ideological war from which he is, at this juncture, somewhat isolated.  SC Justices have a history of blazing their own path, and it’s possible that if the GOP tries to follow through on its promise of saying NO, he may begin a public critique of their positions with an underlying threat of taking more liberal positions than they like if they do not cooperate.

All of this may be wrong, of course, as the propaganda machines of both sides wind into action. It’ll be interesting to see how this all spins out.

Just a thought: if there is a God, I would not wish to be favored by him.  For most folks, this expression would mean an eternal advantage over our Earthly rivals.  Indeed, quite often you’ll hear how anything is justified for those favored by God.

But to me, it would mean this: a higher standard.  An expectation that one’s behavior will meet the higher standard.

So … just sayin’, here … if the USA were favored by God, and we failed to meet the higher standard … say, by actually engaging in torture (as admitted to by the CIA) … our fall from grace would be far worse than for some brutal regime for which expectations were rather low.  In my view.

For those eternally caught up in the struggle of the moment, I can see how the favor of God might be attractive.  Ah, the idea that, for reasons far from clear (we’ll steer clear of inherently unflattering psychological studies for the nonce), God will let us get away with anything, is insanely great.

But with favor comes standards, expectations – and punishment on failure.

I’m agnostic, so I don’t have to worry about this.  Much.

But if I were any brand of theist, I’d be really concerned.

Just a little addition to this thread covering the extreme statements leaping from the mouths of GOP candidates, as Steve Benen notes about an increasingly desperate Marco Rubio:

The Florida senator later added that he won’t stop talking about how Obama is hurting the country.“One of the things I’m criticized for is saying the truth, and I’ll continue to say this: Barack Obama is undermining this country. He is hurting this country. He is doing serious damage to this country in a way that I believe is part of a plan to weaken America on the global stage. This is the truth,” Rubio said on Fox.

For any adult looking at reality, it obviously is not the truth, but let’s not brush past the specifics of this pitch too quickly. Rubio believes he sees a secret plan, hatched by the president of the United States, “to weaken America” deliberately.

In other words, Rubio’s comeback plan involves telling voters that President Obama is somehow guilty of treason.

Indeed, consider this exchange yesterday between Alex Conant, Rubio’s communications director, and CNN’s Chris Cuomo.

CUOMO: So [Marco Rubio] really believes that President Obama is intentionally trying to destroy the country?

CONANT: Absolutely. And I – and I – all – all evidence points – all evidence confirms that. He –

CUOMO: That he’s intentionally trying to destroy the country?

CONANT: Absolutely.

Rubio needs to stand out, because it’s clear, after the Saturday debate debacle and its consequences in New Hampshire, that the prize is slipping through his fingers.  But this isn’t some picayune state house speakership, this is the Presidency and he’s learning there’s far more than talking points and style.  But he doesn’t want to commit, and nothing – nothing – is beyond the pale for him.

But, unfortunately, someone else has already taken possession of the Anti-Christ meme (thanks to Right Wing Watch), so he had to settle for accusations of treason.  If, through some miracle, he still wins the nomination, those headlines will be taken out, dusted off, and paraded in front of the independent voters – along with the facts.

It seems like a loser’s strategy to me.

Here’s how you … well, how you … oh, go look for yourself.  Here’s more detail.

(h/t NewScientist 30 January 2016)

I’d given up trying to profile the candidates as they entered the race because, well, it both exhausting and mystifying – in most cases, who are these people and why should I vote for these accomplishment-devoid folks?

But, as Steve Benen @ MaddowBlog noted today, Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York City, billionaire, former member of both political parties, now an independent … take a breath … is considering a run for the Presidency.  Bloomberg holds an MBA as well as an Electrical Engineering degree (so there’s a bit of an appeal for me, although I know some engineers are, well, crazy) from Johns Hopkins.  With the mayoral experience and not knowing much about him, I thought I’d take a look at his biography.

Based on the information found on Ballotpedia and On The Issues, his membership in the GOP (2001–2007) is a bit mystifying.  Here’s the traditional chart from On The Issues:

From the standard political quiz, I disagree concerning Iran (he apparently may want to interfere, although the quote is ambiguous) and privatizing Social Security (“To reduce the deficit we must cut entitlements“), and who knows on the questions on which his view is unknown.

Since he’s a billionaire, we can hope he’d be personally incorruptible, but whether or not his Administration would be is an unrelated question.  As a mayor of the largest American city, his executive experience is undeniable; however, the fact that he apparently switched from the Democratic party to the Republican party in order to have a better chance to win, and then outspent his Democratic rival in the resulting general election by 5-1 ($73 million of his own money, and then he spent even more on the election 4 years later – although that’s without figuring inflation) does leave me wondering about his motivations. Muddying the waters further, Bloomberg’s third term was obtained only after he lobbied to have the law changed limiting New York mayors to two consecutive terms.  He claimed he wanted to lead the effort to address the financial crisis then afflicting the nation (2009).

Based purely on the limited knowledge I skimmed from Ballotpedia and On the Issues, I’d say I find him an attractive candidate, but with the caveats noted before.  However, this year the GOP does not appear to have a surviving candidate who I’d consider competent and ready to fill the Executive, although I admit I haven’t looked at Kasich.  On the Democratic side, though, we have two very strong, very committed candidates for whom I would feel comfortable voting.  Benen observes:

The only people cheering Bloomberg on are Republican officials and insiders, not because they see a great national leader, but because they see him as a candidate who would help split the center-left and make it that much easier for the GOP to control the White House and Congress in 2017 and 2018.

And, based on what my light review of his career and positions indicates, I’d have to agree; his membership in the GOP was undoubtedly a matter of convenience, not of conviction.  Perhaps that statement might be the most important.  Certainly Presidential wannabes are ambitious, and so I’m probably a little out of line in being worried about his motivations.  But there it is.  I’m just a little worried about his motivations.