31MAR2016 Roundup

Interesting week. After the Obamacare train wreck, the Trump Administration seems to be moving along on all its initiatives.  Trump put out an executive order dismantling the Obama war on coal and fossil fuels.  The EPA reiterated that climate change policy is no longer being pursued.  Senate Majority Leader McConnell has said that a vote on Gorsuch will happen by April 10th.

The Gorsuch vote should be informative. Senate Minority Leader Chuck (The Schmuck) Schumer has declared that he will force a filibuster.  But there are a number of senators in red states up for re-election in 2018.  Several of them have already declared that they will not block cloture.  In addition, some dem strategists have stated that forcing the republicans to use the “nuclear option” (eliminating the filibuster for supreme court approvals) at this point will make it easier for the republicans to get the next SCOTUS appointee in when it will be a true change in the status quo.  If either a democratic appointee or Justice Kennedy is the next justice to be replaced with a truly conservative choice it will fundamentally change the complexion of the court.  So it’s even possible that Schumer knows that the filibuster won’t happen and he’s just posturing.

The North Carolina legislature predictably caved on fake women using the lady’s room. Interestingly, Texas seems to have a little more backbone when it comes to standing up to corporate pressure tactics.  We’ll have to see where the country moves on these battles now that Obama’s not there to use strong arm tactics for the liberal agenda.

Jeff Sessions said that convictions will be necessary to deal with the leaks coming out of the intelligence agencies. And his Justice Department is going after sanctuary cities, threatening to cut off law enforcement funds to cities that refuse to cooperate with ICE agents taking illegals into custody after they’ve been arrested for other crimes.  And once again Texas takes a conservative initiative.  Governor Abbott is introducing legislation holding Texas sheriffs accountable if they cooperate with Sanctuary City efforts to shield illegals from ICE agents.  Pretty smart.

Once Gorsuch is seated, I expect the Supreme Court will be asked to rule on the bogus lower court interference with President Trump’s immigration executive orders. Vice President Pence voted to break a tie to approve a bill to allow states to defund Planned Parenthood if they choose.  And finally, bids are being requested for contracts to build the border wall.   Some Mexican companies have been branded traitors for their interest in the contracts.

So, all in all Trump and company have been fairly busy after their “crushing defeat” last week. I want to once again go on the record to state unequivocally that I am still not tired of winning.  In fact, I think I am now officially addicted to winning.  So much so, that I need my fix more often and in bigger doses.  I hereby put President Trump on notice that he’s gonna havta up my dosage.  Speed up the winning treadmill.  That’s an order.

A Eulogy for Grimm – Part 1

A eulogy is supposed to be praise spoken over the deceased at his funeral.  It literally means “good speech” in the Greek.  So technically I suppose this should be called a kakology* because I won’t be saying too much good.  Maybe what this should be called is a post-mortem.

I started watching Grimm when it premiered in 2011.  When it began I thought it was fun.  The special effects were alright and the conceit that just about everyone in Portland Oregon was a monster (called Wesen) hadn’t yet become a reductio ad absurdum.  Also, I hadn’t grown to despise most of the characters yet.

I’ll give my analysis for what went wrong with Grimm.  I think the problem with any of these urban fantasy TV series is the open-ended aspect of weekly TV.  While it is possible to advance the “mythology” component of the show toward some long-term plot line in a way that can be sustained for several seasons, the single episode plot component needs to have some interesting writing each week to prevent the show from seeming repetitive and boring.  I mean, how many ways are there to have the protagonist (Nick, the Grimm) skewer the monster du jour with a sword or a pitch fork or a lawn dart?  Eventually the look of boredom starts showing up even on the well-paid actors’ faces.  This is similar to the problem that occurs on all long-running TV shows but it’s especially dangerous to these fantasy shows because the action is already incredibly close to ridiculous from the get go.  It doesn’t take much to achieve the reductio ad absurdum I mentioned earlier.  After all, hiding the prodigious body count of terminated monsters (who revert to human form upon being deep sixed) is kind of hard to justify over the course of years.  And with just about every individual introduced in the series being a Wesen it seems laughable that they haven’t already taken over Portland and massacred Nick and his friends.

Another problem is the lack of likeability of most of the main characters.   Nick’s girl-friend (Juliette) becomes a Wesen and eventually murders and beheads his mother.  And after Juliette is killed (and then re-animated as an emotionless zombie named Eve) Nick becomes intimate with the Wesen (a hexenbiest or witch named Adalind) that was responsible for Juliette becoming evil.  Her ex-lover (Sean who also happens to be the chief of police and Nick’s boss) goes from being an enemy to an ally to a mortal foe of the good guys,  He is also the step father of Nick’s son.  Basically it’s hard to really take any of the relationships seriously or even remember how we got to where the story stands.  However, over the course of the series, the only character that I didn’t come to despise was Monroe.  Regardless of how idiotic the script that this vegan werewolf clock repairman was given, the actor managed to inject humor and interest in the character.

And finally, the biggest reason Grimm stinks is because the plots are all the same.  The variations for why Wesen were murdering the few humans that exist in Portland or each other were wholly unimportant and extremely boring.

I stopped watching the show a year ago.  When I heard it had been cancelled and only a half season was being produced this year I started watching again.  I wanted to see if a short span allowed the writers to sharpen up the plots and give us something worth watching.  So far it hasn’t.  This Friday (March 31st) is the series finale.  I’ll report back afterwards to document whether they could even salvage that.  I’m not very hopeful.

 

*I prefer transliterating the Greek letter kappa into English with the letter k instead of c.

 

A Eulogy for Grimm – Part 2

My Sony Ultimatum

Well, here we go again. SonyAlphaRumors (SAR) has a post today recapping the rumors for a new full-frame camera coming out soon.  The latest development is a registration with the Chinese government of two new Sony cameras.  The Admin at SAR says based on the designations, one of the two has to be a full-frame Sony.  Also the Admin says it’s typically 1-2 months later that the cameras are launched.  These developments are added onto rumors that say that Sony will be releasing a full-frame camera that will have a high frames per second rate and extremely good auto-focus but with moderate resolution.  This identified it as either the legendary A9 or an A7S III.  In an earlier iteration of this rumor it was stated that this camera was going to be very expensive.  This would point to an A9.  The Admin was saying that it would compete with the Canon and Nikon professional cameras that retail in the $6,000 – $5,000 range.  Currently he seems to be undecided whether it could also be an A7S III and moderately more expensive than the current A7X II series cameras.

From a personal point of view I hope it turns out to b the A7S III. I currently use the A7S.  It has only two weaknesses.  It needs much better auto-focus (which is actually a general problem for all the Sony mirrorless cameras) and it could stand to have 18 or 24 megapixels of resolution.  If those two weaknesses were addressed it would be the perfect camera for my needs.

So if SAR is right (which is a big if), then sometime between the end of April and the end of May a fantastic new Sony full-frame camera is due to debut. So, do I believe this?  Well, actually kinda no.  Maybe it’s the delay in new products caused by the earthquake that occurred in Japan a couple of years ago or maybe I’m just getting skeptical.  But I don’t think Sony has the goods yet.  Believe me.  I’d like nothing better than to plunk down $3,000 to get my dream camera.  It would be right in time for summer and all the photo opportunities that that entails.  And I would love for Sony to reach up into the top bracket of camera-making companies.  After all, I’ve got a pretty healthy investment in gear at this point.

But for some reason I don’t think they’ll put out the cameras that are mentioned above. I think they’ll put out the A7 III.  It will have some number of megapixels slightly less than the current A7R II and will have some new gimmicks built in that will appeal to the mass of people (something with the word selfy associated with it).  It will claim to have the state of the art of auto-focus technology (but it won’t).  It will be just another iteration of the A7 cameras that Sony has been putting out for the last few years.  And, if that turns out to be the case, that’s going to be a problem for me.  I’ve been a loyal and patient Sony fan going back to the A-850 DSLR.  I’ve owned four Sony mirrorless cameras and a ton of lenses.  But I’m just about out of patience.  I haven’t owned a Sony mirrorless that could auto-focus half as well as the A-850. And the A-850 was far from the best auto-focusing camera out back in its day.  So I guess what I’m saying is that Sony is about to be judged by me.  If they don’t come out with a full-frame I’ll stay in waiting mode.  But if they do, I’ll be deciding whether I have a future with Sony mirrorless or not.  So listen up Sony.  It’s either my way or the highway (that’ll scare ‘em).

We Interrupt This MSM Funk to Provide a Message of Fun

It’s Saturday afternoon and I’m heading out soon for a get together with some family.  I have tomorrow to put together a post or two but I think maybe I should do some work for OCF today.  But what?  What does a man do to top my previous output this week?  After all I trashed Isaac Asimov in not one but two posts and then I had Melania Trump complete the agenda of the Trump Administration between her morning nail appointment and cooking dinner for the Donald and Barron.  I mean come on, I might as well just drop the mic and rest like the Lord did after creating the Magellanic Clouds.

But no, the faithful readers deserve something for the weekend and only a lazy creator kicks back every time he gets going.

So, what to discuss?  Logically, I should address the Obamacare repeal fiasco.  It’s been all over the MSM and they’re all swooning over the “impact.”  I should be eloquent about how it was a good thing that we didn’t pass a bill that was just more of the same and how we’ll get it right later, blah, blah, blah.  But honest, I just don’t feel any energy about writing it and it would show.  I’ll let Trump and those clowns in Congress tackle this one themselves.  I want something fun today.  We deserve it.

I want to talk about how the right wing needs to look at the opportunities we have in front of us in the next few years.  From my point of view, what’s important is to build up any alternative structures that can start replacing the compromised ones we have around us now.  Now, obviously, some of these existing structures are practically unavoidable.  If you’re a self-published author then Amazon is practically the only game in town and if you have an internet business I imagine it’s pretty hard to avoid Google in some form.  But even taking that into account, there are plenty of things you can do to help build up the other parts of the community that are out there.  For instance, Vox Day has publicized that Gab has become an alternative for Twitter, Infogalactic is providing an alternative to Wikipedia.  And even if you’re not a fan of the Alt-Right there are plenty of opportunities to help the right.  When you see a business on the right, support it (buy something from it).  If what you get is good, then go back next time you need something and tell friends about it.  It’s easy and it will make it a harder network for the SJW’s to crash.

And it’s time to build positive things.  Always fighting against something is exhausting (except to the warrior class).  It’s good to have something positive to talk about.  Of course, Trump is the elephant in the room.  His win has energized the whole right wing with positive energy that’s almost impossible to exaggerate.  But we need to look around us and celebrate the good things that still exist.  Find some old classic movie to watch with friends.  Buy some good music that doesn’t reference alternative gender sensibilities.  Pass along a book recommendation (either old or new) that has brightened your day.

And for pity’s sake, remember.  It’s spring!  Well not here in the horror that is March in New England.  But in the real world outside this Cthulhu infested hell-hole, flowers are growing birds are singing and kids are playing baseball.  Get out there and have some fun!  Take your best girl out for a ride and lunch and get some damn fresh air!

And don’t worry too much about Washington.  Trump’s got our backs and he’ll do what is necessary to keep those losers in Congress from thinking they’re actually human beings.  Next week those losers in the Senate will be forced to nuke the filibuster and get Gorsuch into the SCOTUS.  After that we’ll see some progress on the immigration and other fronts that renegade judges like to screw with.

So smile.  Life is pretty good.

Melania vs The First 100 Days

(Monday, 6am, White House West Wing)

President Trump (PT) – Schmoopy! Schmoopy!  Where are you Schmoopy I need to talk to you.

Melania Trump (MT) – Schmoopy, calm down, I’m right here!

PT – Schmoopy, I need your help.

MT – Of course you do Schmoopy.  What do you want.

PT – The Republicans in Congress are complete tools and can’t get out of their own way.  I need someone persuasive to get my agenda done for me.  I want you to convince the Democrats to sign off on my agenda.

MT – How can I do that?  I am not the ambassador.  I am the First Lady. My job is to smile and be friendly to the ugly people you have to work with.  How can I make them do the things you want them to do?

PT – Because you are a hot babe and these congressmen are geeks.  If you smile at them they would walk through fire for you.  They are total losers.  And don’t call them ugly it hurts their feelings, I think.

MT – Is this the true thing?

PT – It is the true thing.

MT – Okay what do you want from these congress geeks?

PT – I want them to approve the Trump Care Bill.

MT – If I do this then you will stop crying like the baby?

PT – I don’t cry like a baby.  I’m just tired of all the jerks who don’t listen to me.  Well, while you’re there can you also get them to approve Justice Gorsuch for the Supreme Court?

MT – Okay. Anything else?

PT – Uhhh…  Can you get them to approve the new budget?

MT – Okay.  Schmoopy, let us cut to the chasing and get from you the whole list?  I am the busy woman.

PT – Sure, sure Schmoopy, I’ll have Ryan or Pence or one of those other wonks put something together right away.  Basically, it’s called “The First One Hundred Day Plan.  It’s the secret of every successful presidency.  All the important things get done in the first 100 days.  After that it’s just coasting.  If you get all this stuff done now, I can go on vacation for the next three and a half years.

MT – Oh Schmoopy that would be so nice I could spend the time redecorating the White House.  That picture of Hillary is frightening Barron.  I will replace it with the Where’s Waldo picture he likes.

Are you sure you can get all this done?  We only have another few weeks left.

MT – Weeks?  Oh Schmoopy, I was planning on getting it done this afternoon.  I have a quick trip to Queens this morning.  I need to pick up those lamb chops you like at the butcher’s and I need to meet Ivanka at Trump Tower to get our nails done, but then I will go to the Congress and tell them to do this list.  I will meet you tonight for the lambs chops and rice for supper.

PT – Schmoopy, that would be great.  But be careful, the Congress is full of skunks.  They’re mostly jerks.

(Later that day in the House of Representatives)

MT – Attention congress guys.  I am your First Lady and I must speak with all of you.  Please pay attention because this is very important and I have not much time.  I must get that Where’s Waldo picture up before Barron gets home.  The Hillary picture is very scary.  I have a list of things that you must do for Schmoopy, I mean Mr. President, your boss.  Mr. President has told me that you do not want to do these things and you cannot be fired right away.  But that does not mean that you will not suffer.  Mr. President is very loud and he will yell at you and he will do the tweet and you will be very sad.  And it is good that you do as he says.  He is very smart and has the billions which make him even smarter and more handsome.  And you want to do what I say because I am very pretty and you all are very homely.  I say homely and not ugly because that would make you feel bad.  And if you listen to me you will be happy and not sad like when you listen to the Pelosi who is very scary and has the bulgey eyes that look like popping out.  She is very old and wrinkly and sounds like a crow and I think she might be crazy because she thinks Schmoopy’s name is Bush, the brother of low energy Jeb.  Also, if you do these things for Mr. President he will like you and give you the cuff links and the autographed deal art book which is very smart because he wrote it.  And even more important, you will keep your jobs and not go to jail.  Mr. President says you are all crooks and he wants to fire you and jail you and yell at you.  So, don’t say no but say yes instead and be happy and not sad.

And you congress girls I want you to listen too.  Do what I say and I will tell you the name of the girl who does my nails in Trump Tower.  And when you look a little better Mr. President will invite you and the homely men to the barbecue at the White House.  Then you will wear the push-up bra and look less homely and you can try to get the homely congress guys to marry you and let you quit the congress and stay home with the babies.  That way you won’t end up like the Pelosi who looks like the crazy witch or Hillary who was lost in the woods or Rosie who even scares the lesbians a little bit.  Now get to work and I will wait another fifteen minutes and you will be done and then I will go home to Schmoopy and tell him not to fire you all later with the electing.

(An hour later back at the West Wing)

MT – Hello Schmoopy I am back.

PT – Schmoopy you did it!

MT – Yes, the list is done.  Except the lamb chops were not fresh enough so I got veal.

PT – Well that is kind of a let-down.  But don’t worry.  I forgive you.

MT – Thank you Schmoopy.  You are the good man.

More Anti-Asimov Ranting

So, in my last post about Asimov I decried his descent into collectivist propaganda (Foundation’s Edge).

I will continue my diatribe here and show how Asimov devolved from an anthropocentric viewpoint to a proponent of the hive mind.

In 1950 Asimov had a short story called Misbegotten Missionary.   In the story an exploratory mission from Earth visits a world named Saybrook’s Planet that is populated by communal creatures.  Although these creatures take on all the forms needed to make up an ecosystem (microbes, plants and animals) they are all part of one consciousness.  In addition, any one of these creatures has the ability to alter all creatures around it so that all their offspring will be communal creatures too.  The explorers took precautions to protect their ship from contamination by any biological contact.  But unbeknownst to them a solitary creature has stowed away on the ship and is waiting to reach Earth to begin the conversion process.  It somehow realizes that the earth creatures monitor bacteria and the mice that they have on board to detect contamination by an alien life form.  Because of this the creature refrains from altering any of the ship’s life forms to avoid tipping off the crew.  The creature is cryptic and disguises itself as a piece of wire in an electrical circuit on the ship.  By the kind of remarkable luck that only happens in fiction (or the 2016 presidential election) the wire that the creature is connected to is in the circuit to open the ship door.  So instead of converting earth to communalism he gets fried like a death row inmate in Florida.  The conclusion has the crew discover the bullet they dodged and everyone breaths a sigh of relief.

 

Apparently, Asimov was unhappy with this result.  So, 32 years later he corrected this mistake in the Foundation sequel, Foundation’s Edge.  Searching for a mysterious unseen hand in the Foundation universe he follows clues that lead to Sayshell (not Saybrook’s Planet) where he learns of the existence of Gaia, a communal intelligence that not only is composed of all the living things on the planet but also the inanimate components too.  Now of course, this reeks of James Lovelock’s trendy 1970’s theory, The Gaia Hypothesis, that Earth was one big super-organism that had become infected with the human virus (thus the Matrix, thus Al Gore).  Apparently, Asimov had bought into this theory and saw a harmonization (read Borgian assimilation) of humanity by the communal organism as the perfect solution.  And just to make sure no one thinks assimilation is soul extinguishing oblivion, he shows us a human component of the collective who is a cheerful woman who happens to like the protagonist.  So, you see, if you glue a smiley face onto the Borg it’s all good.  And just to make sure no connection to Saybrook’s Planet is possible, the protagonist in Foundation’s Edge is not forced into the hive but gets to choose whether humanity is melted into a collective consciousness with igneous rocks and hydrogen atoms.  You see it’s totally okay!

 

Asimov displays all the symptoms of the proto-sjw that he was.  He dislikes individualism.  He admires the hive.  He desires to remove choice from the currently free.  And he dislikes all this random doing what you want to do (except probably for himself of course).  And finally to hammer home the lesson that humans can’t be left to their own devices we find out that Earth is a radioactive corpse and the whole Gaia situation is a master plan put together by a super-intelligent robot to try to save humans from themselves.

 

So my question is, what the hell happened to this doofus?  And of course, the answer is he just followed the same trajectory as most of the progressives from the thirties who admired the Soviet Union before the Cold War.  Now, Heinlein started out in that camp too.  But when he changed wives and married a conservative he changed course and rejected the hive.  I remember in his novel Methusaleh’s Children Heinlein has a world where a race exists that also possesses a collective mind.  And the humans also had to make a choice.  If they remained they would be assimilated.  Only those who feared death remained.  Obviously, these collective races are the communists.  Heinlein rejected it.  Asimov finally embraced it, much to his detriment as a writer and a man.  But it did finally earn him a Hugo.  So apparently the Hugo had also made the transition by that time.

Asimov, Then, Now and Now and Then

 

If you’ve been following the Puppy vs Pink SF saga you know that puppies come in at least two denominations; sad and rabid.  The Sad Puppies are the disciples of Larry Correia and wanted to draw attention to the incestuous log-rolling that a clique of sjw inspired authors and fans used to monopolize the results of the Hugo Awards.  The Rabid Puppies are the shock troops of Vox Day who despises these pink science fiction folk with an intensity that would be frightening if it wasn’t so hilarious.  He has spent the last two Hugo seasons stuffing the ballot box for such science fiction gems as “Space Raptor Butt Invasion” by Chuck Tingle and “Alien Stripper Boned From Behind By The T-Rex” by Stix Hiscock.  But lately the Hugo Award has become routine.  To mix things up he has switched targets to concentrate on one of his favorite pink sf targets, John Scalzi.  Mr. Scalzi and Vox are old “friends.”  Scalzi was the president of the SFWA when Vox was ejected for his unsympathetic feelings toward the left wing of sf.  Vox has spent considerable time tweaking Scalzi whenever he sees an opportunity.  Such an opportunity has arisen.

Mr. Scalzi has written an homage to Asimov’s Foundation Series.  It is entitled The Collapsing Empire.  Vox under his authority as editor of the publishing company Castalia House has released a book called Corroding Empire by the interestingly named author Johan Kalsi.  Vox’s book debuted a day or so before the release date of Scalzi’s book and Amazon was forced to withdraw the Corroding Empire title based on its similar title and author name.  Whereupon Castalia has rebranded the book Corrosion and given as the author Harry Seldon (the hero of Asimov’s foundations stories).  From what I’ve read Corrosion is actually doing quite well.  How all this will turn out is anyone’s guess but as a spectator sport it has been highly entertaining.  But what about copying The Foundation story?  Is this heresy?  Should both sides be shunned?  I’ll tell you what I think.

When I was a kid Isaac Asimov was part of “The Big Three” sf writers (Heinlein, Asimov and Clarke).  I’ve written previously about Heinlein and in summary I think he remains a very important writer from the “Golden Age” and an excellent story teller with the usual exception here and there of bad work to prove that he ruled.

Back then I read all the Asimov that was available including his juvenile Lucky Starr books.  I thought he was very good and I thought his robot and Foundation books were among the best sf around.

Fast forward forty, fifty years and rereading some of these classics (specifically the Foundation Trilogy) I find, maybe not surprisingly, that they don’t hold up as remarkably well as the Heinlein books.  While the plot outline of the Foundation books is still engaging, the characters and the construction are kind of flat.  Truth be told, when I reread it I found myself rooting for the petty kings that surrounded the Foundation.  I thought it would make a more interesting story if the Mule not only reconquered the Galaxy but forced the Foundation scientists to fix his sterility and improve his health.  Thereafter he could go on to conquer the Andromeda Galaxy where there were nasty aliens that really needed their asses kicked by a telepathic mutant with a big nose which is what the story needed all along.  Sort of a galactic Game of Thrones with lots of scantily clad babes and plenty of gore.  Or something like that.

In the eighties or nineties Asimov wrote a sequel to Foundation (Foundation’s Edge).  Now remember, at that time I still thought the foundation books had been great.  I bought the sequel, read it in one sitting and was very confused.  It kind of sucked.  Asimov had become a tree hugger.  In the story the protagonist visits a planet that is based on a communal life force.  Every living thing is part of a collective consciousness.  At the end of the book the protagonist is supposed to decide whether the galaxy should be ruled by the First Foundation, the Second Foundation or Gaia (the collective tree-huggers).  He cops out to ensure a sequel but you can tell his heart is with the hippies.  My reaction was that he was a commie all along and I should go purge my collection of all Asimov.  After that he wrote some sequels to his robot books and I think at some point he merged the two series into some kind of fusion of the two.  So, what does all this mean?

It means that John Campbell gave Asimov a very good plot outline to write a story about (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (in space!) and Asimov did a very decent job with a good idea.  What it also means is that not everything from the good old days was all that good.  Asimov was famous for cranking out work at a tremendous rate.  Sometimes it shows.  Also, he doesn’t write people all that well.  Plot progression he handles pretty well.

My only other thoughts on Asimov is that he really thought robots were the solution to everything.  Once back in the late 1980’s I went to a lecture at Boston University.  The topic was the future and humanity.  Two of the speakers were brilliant physicists Freeman Dyson and Murray Gell-Mann.  Dyson had revolutionized quantum electrodynamics and Gell-Mann hypothesized the quark level of particle physics.  These guys were almost Einstein level geniuses.  Their discussion on the possibilities of human endeavor in the far future were dizzying.  Dyson was speculating on how humanity could engineer an escape from the entropic death of the universe and Gell-Mann discussed the possibilities for power generation based on the fine structure of particle physics.  The third speaker was Isaac Asimov.  He got up and said that the most important human endeavor was the creation of advanced robots.  He said when robots had the intelligence that a dog displays when it catches a ball in mid-air then all of humanity’s problems would be solved.  The other two speakers made polite noises and said that was very interesting.  But it seemed like they were embarrassed to be on the stage with this nut.  In retrospect, it’s interesting to remember that Asimov’s New York Yiddish accent made him sound a lot like Larry David.  It probably would make a fairly funny SNL skit if anyone cared about Isaac Asimov that much.  But it cemented my impression of Asimov as a doofus.  After all a robot is a tool.  No different from the invention of fire or the wheel.  It will be used and it will be abused but humans adapt to their environment and that includes the parts of our environment that we ourselves induce.

So Vox and Scalzi borrow away.  Asimov is not divine and his story was stolen from Gibbon first and handed to him by Campbell so what’s to steal?

Gorsuch Heads to the Hill

When Neil Gorsuch heads up to the Senate this week it’ll be interesting to see if his only enemies will be Democrats. Chuck Schumer has promised that he will force the Republicans to go nuclear.  What he is saying is that he will not release the Democratic senators in red states to vote against a filibuster.  The filibuster would prevent the nomination from being brought to the full senate for a simple majority vote.  This is a tricky situation.  There are seven Democrats up for re-election in 2018 who are in states that voted for Trump.  If all of those voted against the filibuster and the vice president threw in his vote that would be sixty.  But realistically it doesn’t seem likely that all seven would cave.  So if the Democrats can let a few of the most vulnerable vote for cloture it still allows few of the more secure senators to vote against.

This leads to the nuclear option. The Dems under Harry Reed eliminated the filibuster for every confirmation approval type but the Supreme Court justices.  This occurred because the republicans effectively blocked Obama’s other court selections.  Schumer at the time was hesitant about the decision.  Now he is shown prescient.  Trump has the potential of appointing another two (and possibly more) SCOTUS picks during his tenure.  And eliminating the filibuster would make the appointments under the current congressional make-up almost routine.

Great! What’s not to love?  Well, not so fast.  If I were to guess, John McCain and Lindsey Graham would be the usual suspects in any revolt in the ranks.  I can just imagine high flowery prose defending the sanctity of the filibuster as a sacred check and balance against the tyranny of the majority.  Blah, blah, blah.

Okay, how does it end up? My guess, Trump tells McConnell to promise McCain and Graham either some senate perks or some pork for their states and they find a way to vote for the change.  Then the same kabuki theater gets repeated during the actual approval when some other senators discover they have perks or pork that need to be addressed.  Long story short, Vice President Pence comes over to the Senate and Gorsuch gets approved 51 – 47.

You can say that eliminating the filibuster is a dangerous play. In four years President Warren will be nominating Justice Obama for the bench and we’ll be powerless to block that appointment.  To that I say, whatever.

You only get to worry about the bullet you dodge today. If you die today, writing on your tombstone that your bullet proof vest is on order would sound pretty pathetic. So the play is sound.  Get Gorsuch in.  Get Kennedy to resign and replace him with Tomás de Torquemada as soon as is humanly possible. And add another conservative jurist as soon as superhumanly possible.  So much damage has already been done that it will take eight years of a Trump administration just to get us back to the baseline of where we were under John Kennedy.

So gentlemen of the Senate, get off your asses and get it done. I was promised a (sort of) conservative Supreme Court by Easter.  But I’m getting impatient.  Let’s shoot for Palm Sunday.

The Economic Laws of Scientific Research by Terence Kealey: A Short(ish) Review (Part 1)

Now, during the week I toil on the engineering plantation so when I’m released from bondage every Friday the last thing I want to do is think (or read) about scientific research or the economic laws that govern it.  I want to read about galactic overlords or underlords or possibly space princesses in space bikinis.  When I’m feeling particularly engaged with reality I like to read about the local Galactic Overlord Trump skewering interplanetary morons from the failed newspaper The New York Times.  But someone I’ve known forever and who is extremely smart sent me this book and told me to read it.

Well, with all the good grace of a man walking to the gallows I acquiesced and read the damn thing.  So, I am shocked that I not only read this book but that I’m glad I did.

I do not recommend reading this book unless you’re interested in the financing of research and development.  Instead, let me tell you what this book says and why it’s interesting and important.  Then if it seems like something you want to delve into, have at it.

This first post will deal with the preliminaries.  The first substantial chapter is called Francis Bacon and Adam Smith.  Basically, he states that there is a dichotomy of opinion in the scientific world about how knowledge, technological innovation and economic growth are related.

Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626) who was revered by the intelligentsia of his and following generations proposed the following model:

Government Funded Academic Research → Pure Science → Applied Science (or Technology) → Economic Growth

Adam Smith (1723 – 1790) who wrote “The Wealth of Nations” is still revered today for his views on capitalism.  He disagreed with Bacon’s model (based on the evidence of innovation in his own time) and his model can be outlined as:

 

That Adam Smith is right and Francis Bacon is wrong is the premise of this book.  Kealey also gives some details about Bacon’s life that pretty conclusively prove that Bacon was the biggest tool of the Elizabethan era.  As Attorney General under Elizabeth I he apparently personally supervised the torture of defendants to elicit confessions.  He also back-stabbed his own patron Robert Earl of Essex when it was convenient.  Now your knowledge of classic Hollywood films of the thirties will remind you that Bette Davis and Errol Flynn were the eponymous stars of “The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex.”  Donald Crisp played Francis Bacon in this epic and history has obviously pronounced its verdict against Bacon with this casting.  So, I will say no more.

The last topic for this first post is the Chapter entitled, “Research and Development in Antiquity.”  I am sort of an antiquities fan.  All things roman and greek are of interest to me.  So I was surprised to find that this chapter opened my eyes to a way of looking at the difference between ancient and modern life.  I had often wondered that such intelligent and inquisitive peoples as the Greeks and Romans never moved past primitive muscle powered methods of life into something more dynamic like steam power.  After all, Alexandrian science of Ptolemaic Egypt had used steam power to propel toys for the king’s court.  Why had they never made the leap to using it to power more useful engines for industry or commerce?  I found the answer here.  They didn’t apply it because nobody wanted the application.  The Macedonian kings of Egypt and the Roman emperors after them employed these geniuses like Archimedes to build toys (or at best design war engines).  These royal patrons assembled the brightest minds of the age and lavishly funded their researches into everything from pure mathematical study to astronomy, physics and medicine.  They sponsored this research out of love of knowledge and vanity to out-compete their rival kingdoms.  But practical commercial applications were not desired.  Designing manufacturing improvements would merely displace slaves who tilled the fields and rowed the galleys and dug in the mines.  The king and emperor had more than enough slaves to make him as rich as anyone (even a god/emperor) could want to be.

This chapter demonstrated that technological innovation only occurred away from empires.  So, the earlier small city states of Phoenicia and old Greece were a hot bed of innovation.  Here were found merchant cities that traded with all the corners of the Mediterranean and invented the convenient alphabet rather than the sacred hieroglyphics and coined gold and silver as a way of spurring trade.  Ship building and navigation were important technologies and other innovations were learned from all corners of the sea.  The use of iron, improvements in the plow were learned during their trading activities.  And they were capitalistic states.  They were in the poorest of farming lands and they survived (and greatly prospered) by trade.  But as soon as Greece discovered its strength and consolidated into larger states and expanded into the larger world, slave labor became the answer to all its problems.  And once Alexander conquered the Persian Empire, the template for how an empire would be run was established.  From that point it was basically the same system as all the Fertile Crescent empires that had come before and innovation was a problem not a solution.  Plow your field, give a third to the temple, a third to the King and hope the new barbarians don’t burn the town down when they come through.   The Romans followed the same pattern.  Early independence and innovation (although much less ambitious than the Greeks) followed by imperial control of all facets of life with precious little need for innovation because of the realities of a slave labor economy.

I will quote from the last two paragraphs of the chapter to summarize.

“The empire collapsed not for a lack of Hellenistic science – there was plenty of that – but because it abandoned capitalism.  It was a plunder empire not a market empire.”

“The fall of the Graeco-Roman hegemony teaches that the government funding of academic science will not generate useful technology in the absence of an appropriate capitalist economy.”

This guy Kealey is pretty smart.  He answered something that’s puzzled me for many years.  Why those intelligent folks never invented the steam engine.  It also shows the fallacy of that Star Trek episode “Bread and Circuses.”  The Romans would never have had automobiles.  But they would have had TV eventually.  It would keep the slaves happy.

Music to My Ears

This was the title to one of the Trump Administration stories on RealClearPolitics.com , “Mulvaney: We’re Not Spending Money On Climate Change Anymore, “Waste Of Your Money.”” The Mulvaney in question is John “Mick” Mulvaney, the guy in charge of the OMB. This is him answering questions at a press briefing about the budget cuts the president is proposing.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2017/03/16/mulvaney_were_not_spending_money_on_climate_change_anymore_waste_of_your_money.html
You’ve got to listen to this. If you’re a thinking human being living in the US who has suffered for the last eight years under the cognitive dissonance that was the Obama Administration then this will be like the sound of angel’s wings presaging the wrath of the Lord descending upon the fallen ones. On the one hand, Mulvaney points to cuts in the science budget via consolidation of agencies and trimming back mission creep as reasonable adjustments to useful research pursuits. On the other hand, he describes completely eliminating climate change research as getting rid of something that is just a waste of money. I think a tear may have come into my eye but I’m sure it was just hay fever.
Alright, so now you can see all the promise of this administration coming to fruition before our astonished eyes. No longer begging for a crumb back from the loaf that is stolen from you, he’s slapping the ill-gotten gains out of the mouth of the leeches who’ve been sucking our blood for generations. Can you imagine if the universities have to support the legion of “climate scientists” without government grants gushing in to support them? I can’t! Where do unemployed climate scientists go? Starbucks, Amway, Uber? Can you imagine thousands of Priuses roaming the streets trying to pay back those PhD tuition costs?
Yesterday I mentioned Terence Kealey’s book, “The Economic Laws of Scientific Research.” I plan to go into detail about the concept of completely replacing government funding of civilian R&D with corporate tax cuts for research. But here I’ll just say that any and all reductions in science funding will be a good start. But with respect to funding cultural and social missions (NEA, PBS, NPR, etc.) shutting down these operations should be considered a force multiplier opportunity. The aggrieved liberals plead that none of these budget items is even close to a billion dollars. Why cause such pain for such small amounts of savings? The reason I see is that we will be hurting the enemies of all the things we believe in. Putting the squeeze on these people will decrease the damage being done by them. Preventing damage is always cheaper than having to repair it. It should be the primary mission to remove these leeches from the body politic.
So Mick Mulvaney, you have officially entered the pantheon of Trump Administration heroes who brought a smile to my face and song to my heart. The only thing left for him to do is remove all air conditioning from the EPA offices to help them live up to their beliefs.