Mad Men

Who knows what the topic is but on the panel are- Felonius Munk, Mike Yard, and Rashida Jones.

Continuity

Godwin!

This week’s guests-

• Tuesday 5/26: Rand Paul
• Wednesday 5/27: Rosabeth Moss Kanter
• Thursday 5/28: Matt Harvey

Rand Paul should be on just long enough to hit what Charlie Pierce calls the Sanity Limit.  You listen to Rand for about 5 minutes and nod your head and say, ‘that makes sense.’

And then he says something totally insane.

Rand is the epitome of a mixed bag of nuts, but he did something really valuable recently that many people dismissed at the time and still don’t understand or give him credit for, and that is of course his 10 and a half hour mini-filibuster against the USA Free-dumb Act and straight up extension of the Patriot Act.

These people are down on him because his filibuster was short and didn’t look at all like Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith (which is in some ways about Jimmy’s psychological disintegration).  What they don’t realize is that it was exactly long enough to delay the business of the Senate so that when it did come up the choice was between the House proposal and nothing.

Fortunately we ended up with nothing since the House Bill is terrible and Obama (who has not sought a last gasp further 90 day authorization as far as we know) and the NSA have been forced to start shutting down the mass spying program.

So yay Rand!  Credit where due.  Now, about the market disciplining bigots.

Rebel Wilson’s web exclusive extended interview and the real news below.

by Galtisalie

Epidemics of cholera as well as other serious diseases, including neoliberalism, can take a toll on solidarity. “Trade” deals, and the conduct used in pushing them through to adoption, can be purposely choleric in order to accentuate a breakdown in solidarity. A carefully-orchestrated disinformation and intimidation campaign can provide a loud and pushy disincentive to obtaining and sharing knowledge and growing into a healthier society.

The Gipper is credited with the famous saying “trust, but verify.” However, it is actually an old Russian proverb. The phrase came in handy when scrutinizing the actions of the potentially dastardly Russian Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

With matters of political economics, we have learned over the last hundred years that verification is not always easy because labels sometimes defy reality. Since the fall of the authoritarian state capitalist Soviet Union, which claimed to be real and scientific socialism, apathy has set in about true human choice on matters not having to do with consumer goods. The possibility of a heterodox deeply democratic vision for humanity is laughed at by commenters. They blithely point to North Korea and the supposedly happy riveters south of the border who produce things once made by Americans for the great now debt-driven and trade-imbalanced American marketplace.

Speaking of Russia, its dolls and other trinkets are now made in China too. Ironically, the British Green Quaker documentary filmmaker David Malone aptly says that modern “trade” agreements are like Russian dolls, with lots of other dolls inside that have nothing to do with trade. We are expected to place the doll up on a shelf and not worry what’s inside, even if the shelf is getting repossessed.

Anyway, it’s not really as simple as opening up to see the next doll inside, although it would be nice if we were allowed to at least do that before making the purchase. If the global “we” really wants to understand something that comes with risk, such as a disease, or a series of massive “trade” deals, we must first be able to put the pieces as well as the whole under a microscope, do DNA tests, and have plenty of time to learn what exactly it is we are seeing. Learning the ecological context is also critical.

Sounds like technical questions best left to experts! So, we can sit this one out. Maybe it is we who are dialectical dolls here, expected to live superficially without addressing our interior selves. Why concern one’s pretty little self with such manly and adult details?

More broadly, absolutely do not ponder whether the globalization of hegemonic capitalism is the disease or the cure. That would necessitate openly and closely studying and discussing, without fear of repression, the system that is being imposed, the crises it inevitably causes, the insolvency it constantly courts, the reserve army of unemployed workers, the lack of fair distribution of the winnings that arise from the system, and calmly comparing the available alternatives, including everything from tweaks to overhauls to repeal and replace.

Democracy is this potentially great mass experimental method if the powers that be would allow it to work deeply and openly. If we were allowed to trust but verify we could be engaged citizens. Instead, we are forced to leave democracy to neoliberal politicians, experts, and talking heads, as if they will explain to us what little it is that we need to know after they have made their decisions, which have bound within them unprecedented curtailments to democracy.

This sounds more like oligarchical exploitation than rule by the people. But what can we do to defend ourselves in times like these?

At least from the time of Spartacus, solidarity has been the enemy of exploitation, always has been and always will be. But woe unto those who take the risks of speaking the truth to power, or even seeking the truth. The doubt-inspiring whispers are reaching a chorus of “shut-up and know your place.” Self-doubt cannot help but set in:

In the end, did Spartacus really want to be free and in solidarity with other people in the struggle to be free? Wasn’t it really pretty nice being a Thracian gladiator after all? And for his followers, as they were hanging from crosses every bit as real as Jesus’s, might they not have had a little buyer’s remorse?

Come to daddy. Put aside those passions. Don’t question too much. It’s for your own good that you are being led through the valley of the shadow of death in a blindfold.

Jon and Larry still on vacation.  Here’s a Memorial Day treat instead.

Too Much Death And Blood

The Winner of Heroes

You may ask me, ‘ek, why do you cover sports?’  There are two reasons.  The Meta one is that as a general interest topic it drives readership and the live blogging commentary creates activity.  Since the action unfolds in a semi-predictable fashion it’s not that that difficult to, with practice, establish a rhythm that does not strain my execrable typing skills (yes, despite years of training by the best teachers I can barely manage three fingers on a good day).  The volume of the commentary demonstrates that despite a lack of peeder type automatic Ajax updating, long, timely, and complicated discussions can be held using pacified’s Java recreation of Scoop (Soapblox).

The second is class warfare, this is why I’m drawn to those that are notoriously obscure and corrupt, like Formula One.

Monaco is the tightest, slowest track on the schedule, kept alive by tradition and the crass display of wealth and privilege.  It is no accident that Monaco is the site of the mid-season meeting of the Formula One executive committee.  You may have money, but do you have Monaco money?

We may look back on this year as the begining of the end.

First of all the positive outcome- they are bringing back refueling.  Why is refueling important?  It’s not just the amount of time a car spends in the pits, fuel is weight and lighter cars are faster and easier on tires.  You have to add this factor into your over all race strategy and complicated is good.  It creates opportunities for overtaking that don’t involve bumping tires in a corner (very dangerous) and instead take place while cars are stopped (somewhat more dangerous for the pit crew, but they do it in IndyCar and Turn Left so how difficult can it be?).

The bad news.

Formula One is hemmoraging interest and audience.  Sure Bernie can screw hundreds of Millions from despotic dictatorships for the right to have the Circus visit, but in Europe viewership and attendance is crashing.  No German Grand Prix this year and soon enough no Billion dollar TV contract from Sky and BBC.

Bernie’s solution?  ‘Customer Cars’.  What this means is that there will only be 4 teams on the track- Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull, and McLaren.  If you’re a field filler (not one of the 10 works cars) you’ll pay through the nose for second rate cast offs to fund the development program of the favored four.

Hey, if I wanted to watch Turn Left racing I could.  You know  why I don’t?  It’s BORING!

You want to know what would make a difference?  Subsidized on track testing, looser engine rules, more equitable bonus payouts (teams that use ‘Customer Cars’ are not eligible for any Constructor’s bonuses at all).  Bernie thinks that somehow this all adds up to a new personality-centric, driver oriented system that eliminates paying for seats (hey, how about this radical idea- just ban it) and creates fan interest.

Just.  Like.  Turn Left.

I don’t root for Hamilton (this week Hamilton got the superstar contract, $50 Million a year for 3 years) except to the extent that I think he’s talented and exciting and it irks me to see a robotic asshole like Vettel (or Schumacher) fly off in clean air never to be seen again and have all the commentators proclaim what a great driver he is though his only talents are Qualifying and staying out of trouble in superior machinery.  I have much more respect for Alonso who can make a brick seem racy.

Bernie has picked the the wrong metaphor here.  Scuderia fans are Scuderia fans regardless of results just as in U.S. team sports it hardly matters who’s on the Mets or Green Bay or the Lady Huskies (Men’s Basketball is crap.  Pro Basketball is crap squared).  Drivers are mercenaries, they come and go.  Teams are the soul of the sport and we’re witnessing that soul being ripped out.

And not without consequence, Bernie’s business model can not work.  As interest drains from the sport so will the money until even the tyrants he gets along with so well have no use for this senile old dinosaur.

Oh, racing.  Tight and slow.  No place to pass.  Softs and Super Softs with just the one stop to get legal unless you care to get exotic to relieve the tedium.

The good news is no Chuck Todd.  Coverage on NBC starting at 7:30 am then Premier League Soccer (Another team driven sport, the richest in the world.  Are you listening Bernie?  Of course not.).

People who are not really familiar with Art Music (and even some who are) have a tendency to think that modern orchestral instrumentation sprang fully formed from the head of Zeus like Athena.  The truth is that composers often look for novel sounds and instruments and players instruments that are easier to play.

Consider the valved Brass instruments I’m most familiar with.  Until the late 18th, early 19th century there was no such thing.  Instead you were limited to major harmonics controlled by your embouchure (basically the tightness of your lips and facial muscles).  Sure you could flatten or sharp it a little, but if you wanted to play in a different key, you had to use a different instrument.

Even an unvalved French Horn (the oldest of the modern brass instruments) was invented as recently as 1725.

During the Baroque and Classical periods instrumentation changed quite a bit, so much so that there is now an Early Music movement dedicated to Renaissance and Medieval instruments and performance styles.  Concert strings switched from fretted to unfretted (which makes certain obvious and non-obvious changes to the harmonics that are too difficult to get into here).  Flat backs were replaced by shaped ones that sound louder.  Lutes are replaced by guitars.

The Woodwind instruments (flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon) owe their modern shape to Theobald Boehm who in 1847 introduced a simplified (Hah!  Too many for me.) fingering system that used a complicated set of levers and pads to control the airflow, and thus the harmonics.

You may be somewhat aware of the development of the Pianoforte (means Soft/Loud) from the earlier Harpsichord by replacing a plucked string system with a percussive hammer action.  Well, that happened in 1700, 400 years ago but not, you know, in the dim dark mists of some pre-historic time.  New York City had over 7,000 inhabitants and was to publish it’s very first newspaper in a mere 25 years (same time as the French Horn).

The Saxophone, the newest of what is generally considered a “classic” orchestra instrument was patented in 1840 by Adolphe Sax.  The Tuba in 1835.

So what occasions this discussion of the history of musical instruments?  The 81st birthday of Robert Moog.

There is an unfortunate prejudice against electronic instruments in Art Music.  Because they are programmable (with the right kind of controls) they are derided as mere recordings and, because they can replace many imperfect musicians with one that always does what you tell it to (which may not be what you want), are rightly viewed as an employment threat.

In their earliest forms though a considerable amount of skill and practice was required, just as with any instrument.  One of the first electronic instruments was the Theremin.  It was patented by Léon Theremin in 1928.  You don’t physically touch the instrument, it senses the capacitance between your hands and the sensors to control pitch and volume.  While it did gain some novelty attraction in Art Music world it is best known for lending its 87 year old “futuristic” sound to movie sound tracks and TV theme songs.

Recognize that?  It’s the Dr. Who theme commonly credited to the BBC Radiophonic Workshop that was really composed by Ron Grainer and performed by Delia Derbyshire.

Robert Moog built one himself and later put together a fairly popular (among electronics geeks) kit.

A really popular electronic instrument is the Hammond electric organ from 1935.  It was intended as a low cost, lighter, semi-portable alternative to a traditional pipe organ and quickly saturated the ecclesiastical market.  The sound is produced “by creating an electric current from rotating a metal tonewheel near an electromagnetic pickup.”  While it has many buttons and sliders that can produce different sounds none of them actually sound like an organ and the greatest similarity is the stop switches and keyboard controls.

What Moog did that was different with his synthesizer is that he didn’t try to duplicate anything.  I had an opportunity to work with an early model and it was basically a wave form generator patched through an amplifier.

There are 3 basic types, Sine, Square, and Sawtooth, so named because that’s what they look like on an oscilloscope which is your main output device (other than your speakers).  You can control amplitude and frequency and (in the case of Sawtooth) rate of attack and decline.  Using these fundamental tools it is theoretically possible to reproduce any sound at all.

Theoretically.  Most of my efforts sounded like that annoying hum you get when you haven’t plugged your components together properly, but I am decidedly unmusical and only had a couple of hours to play with it.

Modern practice is to sample the sound you want to duplicate, analyze it to its components, and tweak the output until it sounds the way you like.  Computer generated sound is capable of things human musicians can not duplicate any more than John Henry, on the other hand you still have to imagine it and tell them what to do.  60 Hz AC is perfectly acceptable noise, but it’s hardly a symphony.

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

It looks like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is going to lose his bid for a two month extension of Patriot Act bulk data collection authority set to expire June 1st and will be forced to accept the language of the House USA Freedom Act.  While you might be tempted to celebrate, this is not the victory it may seem.

One of the principal reasons the Second Circuit ruled the actions of the NSA and FBI illegal is that there was no evidence in the Congressional Record that legislators intended the kind of universal surveillance that was being practiced.  One can now hardly argue about Congressional intent under the USA Freedom Act.

The USA Freedom Act does hardly anything at all about bulk collection.  It simply transfers the record keeping responsibility from the NSA to private companies and mandates a FISA warrant (notoriously easy to get) be obtained.  The vast majority of bulk data collection doesn’t even take place under the authority of Section 215.  Instead the Stasi Surveillance State relies on the broader powers of the FBI and Executive Order 12333.

Moreover, as has been shown time and time again, bulk data collection is ineffective–

“[T]he agents we interviewed did not identify any major case developments that resulted from use of the records obtained in response to Section 215 orders, but told us that the material produced pursuant to Section 215 orders was valuable in that it was used to support other investigative requests, develop investigative leads, and corroborate other information,” the DoJ report found.

And yet-

Section 215 of the Patriot Act – which the NSA has relied on to operate its bulk phone records collection program – also allows the FBI to collect a variety of records from hotels, rental car companies and libraries during the course of an investigation.

“If we lose that authority – which I don’t think is controversial with folks – that is a big problem,” Comey said. “Because we will find ourselves in circumstances where we can’t use a grand jury subpoena and we can’t use a national security letter,” he added, referring to two other means of collecting information.

Ahem, _bullshit.

You’re damn right that collecting “records from hotels, rental car companies and libraries” “is controversial with folks”.  If you don’t think so, you think wrong.  As for “can’t use a grand jury subpoena and we can’t use a national security letter”, the FBI gets the wholesale discount rate.  They can get either one as easy as they can scratch their nose.

The reason they don’t want to get one is that then there would be a record.

Let us more closely examine this part of the IG’s Report-

the material produced pursuant to Section 215 orders was valuable in that it was used to support other investigative requests, develop investigative leads, and corroborate other information

Do you know how cops solve most of their cases?  Snitches.  Do you know how the Stasi maintained its Police/Surveillance State?  Informants.  Simply put they fish around until they find something of sufficient embarrassment to blackmail someone, anyone, and then use them to finger the person they “know” is guilty but are too lazy to prove it through real evidence.

“Corroborate other information”?  Backward construction.  I have this evidence I can’t use in a Court because I obtained it illegally, but now that I know you done it, I’ll go back and find something I can and pretend my illegal actions had nothing to do with it.

Move along.

There was a time when something was better than nothing, when a USA Freedom Act was better that the rampant lawlessness and Unconstitutionality of our Intelligence Agencies run amok.  That was before the Second Circuit Court ruling.

Now nothing is better than something.  Let the Patriot Act die.

This started out as a brief introduction to the documentary, but there are a lot of pieces moving in the fight against the Stasi Surveillance State.  It deals specifically with the activities of MI6 in England and at that tangentially with rampant disregard for the privacy rights of citizens, but since it’s from the BBC you may not have seen it and it’s worth the watch.  The stories below are about recent court rulings against bulk collection of personal information and the new reports of abuse exceeding even the Unconstitutional Section 215 by the FBI.

‘Trust us’ mantra undermined by GCHQ tribunal judgment

by Alan Travis, The Guardian

Friday 6 February 2015 10.06 EST

For more than 18 months the response from the security services to the disclosure by Edward Snowden of the mass harvesting of personal data of British citizens has been to say: “Trust us, nothing we are doing is unlawful.”

But for the first time in its 15-year history the investigatory powers tribunal (IPT) – the only British court that can hold GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 to account – has put a question mark against that assurance.

The 12-page tribunal judgment in the case brought by Liberty and Privacy International does not rule that the British GCHQ bulk interception programmes were unlawful. But it has ruled that the secret intelligence sharing arrangements between Britain and the US, known as Prism and Upstream, did not comply with human rights laws for seven years because the internal rules and safeguards supposed to guarantee our privacy have themselves been kept secret.

It was only public disclosure of those rules for the first time as part of the first of two IPT rulings in December that brought the intelligence-sharing regime into compliance with human rights law in general, and article 8 of the European convention on human rights on the right to privacy in particular.

The declaration by the tribunal judges is quite clear that until that public disclosure was made on 5 December, the Prism and Upstream programmes under which the private personal data of people living in the UK was obtained by the American authorities contravened human rights laws.

N.S.A. Collection of Bulk Call Data Is Ruled Illegal

By CHARLIE SAVAGE and JONATHAN WEISMAN, The New York Times

MAY 7, 2015

The court, in a unanimous ruling written by Judge Gerard E. Lynch, held that Section 215 “cannot bear the weight the government asks us to assign to it, and that it does not authorize the telephone metadata program.” It declared the program illegal, saying, “We do so comfortably in the full understanding that if Congress chooses to authorize such a far-reaching and unprecedented program, it has every opportunity to do so, and to do so unambiguously.”

…

(T)he appeals court ruling raises the question of whether Section 215, extended or not, has ever legitimately authorized the program. The statute on its face permits only the collection of records deemed “relevant” to a national security case. The government secretly decided, with the FISA court’s secret approval, that this could be interpreted to mean collection of all records, so long as only those that later turn out to be relevant are scrutinized by analysts.

However, Judge Lynch wrote: “Such expansive development of government repositories of formerly private records would be an unprecedented contraction of the privacy expectations of all Americans. Perhaps such a contraction is required by national security needs in the face of the dangers of contemporary domestic and international terrorism. But we would expect such a momentous decision to be preceded by substantial debate, and expressed in unmistakable language.”

FBI used Patriot Act to obtain ‘large collections’ of Americans’ data, DoJ finds

by Spencer Ackerman, The Guardian

Thursday 21 May 2015 15.30 EDT

Section 215 of the Patriot Act permits the FBI to collect business records, such as medical, educational and tax information or other “tangible things” relevant to an ongoing counter-terrorism or espionage investigation. Since 2006, the NSA had also secretly used it to collect US phone data in bulk.

After Edward Snowden’s leaks allowed the Guardian to reveal the phone-records bulk collection in June 2013, deep political opposition coalesced around the bulk program – eclipsing the FBI’s acquisition of other data, which has long been an issue only for civil libertarians.

But a Justice Department inspector general’s report finally released on Thursday covering the FBI’s use of Section 215 from 2007 to 2009 found that the bureau is using the business-records authority “to obtain large collections of metadata”, such as “electronic communication transactional information”.

The specifics of that collection – which civil libertarians have called “bulky”, to signal that it is not bulk collection but not far off – are not provided in the redacted report. Yet electronic communication transactional information is likely to refer to records of emails, instant messages, texts and perhaps Internet Protocol addresses. Sections of the report refer to the FBI asking for “material related to internet activity” and mention “IP addresses and to/from entries in emails”.

…

While the FBI director, James Comey, stated on Wednesday that losing the Section 215 authority would be a “big problem“, the inspector general cast doubt on the overall security impact of the loss.

“#&91;T#&93;he agents we interviewed did not identify any major case developments that resulted from use of the records obtained in response to Section 215 orders, but told us that the material produced pursuant to Section 215 orders was valuable in that it was used to support other investigative requests, develop investigative leads, and corroborate other information,” the DoJ report found.

…

“This report adds to the mounting evidence that Section 215 has done little to protect Americans and should be put to rest. As Congress debates whether to rein in the NSA, this investigation underscores how sweeping the government’s surveillance programs are and how essential systemic reform is right now,” said Alex Abdo, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union.

Daniel Schuman of Demand Progress urged Congress to let the provision “fade into the sunset”, and warned that the administration-backed USA Freedom Act, which ends bulk collection while preserving the rest of Section 215, was a pathway to future abuse.

It’s been a bad week for Marine Mammals.

Icelandic plan to ship whale meat to Japan angers environmentalists

AFP

Tuesday 19 May 2015 13.41 EDT

The Icelandic whaling company Hvalur HF plans to ship 1,700 tonnes of whale meat via Luanda in Angola, repeating a similar controversial delivery of 2,000 tonnes last year which sparked protests along its route.

…

Iceland and Norway are the only nations which openly defy the International Whaling Commission’s (IWC’s) 1986 ban on hunting whales.

Icelandic whalers caught 137 fin whales and 24 minkes in 2014, according to Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC), an anti-whaling group – compared with 134 fin whales and 35 minkes in 2013.

Japan has used a legal loophole in the ban that allows it to continue hunting the animals in order to gather scientific data.

But it has never made a secret of the fact that the whale meat from these hunts often ends up on dining tables.

Consumption of whale meat in Japan has fallen sharply in recent years while polls indicate that few Icelanders regularly eat it.

Yup, Japan has warehouses full of whale meat nobody wants to eat and they can’t sell.  Now there may be a very thin and specious argument about the necessity of keeping a domestic whaling industry for the financial benefit of the whalers (though simply paying them off would be cheaper and easier), but what the heck is the reason to import it?

Dolphin-hunting Japanese town may start farming them on the side

Reuters

Thu May 21, 2015 12:47pm IST

A Japanese town notorious for killing dolphins may set up a dolphin breeding farm after zoos and aquariums decided to stop buying their animals caught in the wild, but it has no plans to halt the controversial hunt, its mayor said on Thursday.

The western port town of Taiji, the location of an annual hunt featured in the Oscar-winning 2009 documentary “The Cove”, may suffer a loss of income because of the Wednesday decision, which Japanese officials said came in response to foreign pressure.

The decision by Japan’s zoos and aquariums came after the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums threatened Japan with expulsion unless it stopped buying dolphins from Taiji. That would have meant Japan might lose access to zoo animals such as elephants and giraffes from overseas.

In 2013, 1,239 dolphins were caught in the Taiji hunt, according to the Fisheries Agency. Most of them were killed for their meat but 172 were sold alive, mainly overseas, at a price of at least $8,200 each.

…

“We plan to protect our fishermen, who have authority from both the nation and the local government,” Sangen said, emphasising the tradition of the hunt.

“We believe it can become the world’s main provider. I believe in 10 years our town will have changed its role in all this.”

Despite the bid to develop the live-animal business, the hunt would still go on, he said.

Like the legal market in ivory, this is simply another way to enable poaching.

Study Links Dolphin Deaths to Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

By NICHOLAS ST. FLEUR, The New York Times

MAY 20, 2015

The findings are the latest results from the Deepwater Horizon National Resource Damage Assessment, an ongoing investigation by NOAA into the spill, the largest offshore oil spill in United States history. Combined with previous studies by the agency, this paper provides additional support to a link between the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 and mass dolphin deaths in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi.

“The evidence to date indicates that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill caused the adrenal and lung lesions that contributed to the deaths of this unusual mortality event,” said Stephanie Venn-Watson, a researcher with the National Marine Mammal Foundation who was the lead author of the report. “We reached that conclusion based on the accumulation of our studies including this paper,” she added.

…

A third of the Gulf Coast dolphins had a thinned or damaged adrenal gland cortex compared with only 7 percent of the so-called reference dolphins, the researchers said.

…

The researchers also found that about a fifth of the Gulf Coast dolphins had lung lesions caused by bacterial pneumonia, and that 70 percent of that group died because of that condition. Only 2 percent of the reference dolphins had any trace of bacterial pneumonia.

The researchers said that the dolphins most likely inhaled the fumes from the petroleum products on the ocean surface. They added that exposure to oil fumes is one of the most common causes of chemical inhalation injury in other animals.

“These dolphins had some of the most severe lung lesions I have ever seen in wild dolphins throughout the United States,” Dr. Colegrove said.

Below you will find a report from The Guardian on the close ties between the British government and BP and Shell.

Science Oriented Video

The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations – then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation – well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

–Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1927)

Science News and Blogs

• Stone Tools From Kenya Are Oldest Yet Discovered, By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD, The New York Times
• For an Octopus, Seeing the Light Doesn’t Require Eyes, by Carl Zimmer, The New York Times
• Retraction Sought in Study on Views of Gay Marriage, By BENEDICT CAREY and PAM BELLUCK, The New York Times
• Spacecraft sailing on sunbeams begins test flight, by Hannah Devlin, The Guardian
• Amazing Waves Discovered in Deep-Ocean Trench, by Becky Oskin, Live Science
• Rare Supernova Burst Shines Light on Its Mysterious Origins, by Nola Taylor Redd, SPACE.com
• Scientists Create Liquid Metal Antenna, by Sci-News.com
• A practical history of plane hacking: Beyond the hype and hysteria, By Violet Blue, ZDNet
• Tech Giants Urge Obama to Reject Policies That Weaken Encryption, By NICOLE PERLROTH, The New York Times
• Mozilla gags, but supports video copy protection in Firefox 38, By Gregg Keizer, CITEWorld

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

So the question arises- why did I decide to write about Jon and Stephen instead of Dave?

Many of the reasons are petty.  Jon and Stephen had an existing community on Daily Kos where I could coin the mojo and rack up the comment count (which despite years of tinkering are still your surest defense against the O-bots, A–holes, and Trolls that populate the place.  I never once ran out of mojo, all my bans were Administrative.) and, at least initially, I didn’t have the confidence as a writer to just up and invent my own franchises.

Another petty reason is laziness.  Even today with a hat full of ideas and all the vanity in the world I find that there are just so many hours in a day, and a finite amount of energy to fill it.  If you’re going to cover the Late Show how do you justify not including The Late, Late Show which is often funnier and even more inventive?  Pretty soon it’s not dark anymore and the birdies are singing and I hate that, especially when I have a morning shift of things to write which even today happens more frequently than I might wish and at some points left me without sleep for days except for brief naps which are no substitute.

Also 5 days a week, not 4.

Additionally I’m just really not that interested in celebrity gossip and the constant whoring of their new projects.  You may object and say Jon and Stephen do it too and you are quite correct.  It’s my least favorite part of the program.  With a network talk show it is the program and the monologues and bits are simply there to keep you awake long enough that you can drift off to dreamland with the constant murmuring of buy, buy, buy sleep conditioning you until your alarm goes off and your screen is filled with people who are waaay too perky talking to the same celebrities you saw the night before, only packaged as news with recipes, weather, and ‘human’ interest, along with the one or two tragedies that are deemed worthy by ‘suits’ with the attention span of a gnat, a corporatist agenda, a thin Rolodex of the sluttiest self promoting attention hounds in D.C., and a remote crew who ‘better get some god damn pictures on the air, these things cost a lot of money you know’.

The television business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.

Oh, how do they do it?  Do they simply stay up partying?  Well, some do, but mostly they pre-tape the late night stuff.

And now we come to my substantive criticism.

It’s been argued that Dave has a liberal bias and not only by Faux Noise types, many people who call themselves ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’ think that too.  Certainly, as I mentioned in Part One, Jay Leno’s style of humor appeals to the conservative type.  It is safe and predictable and designed to make you feel superior because of it’s predictability.  That which is not conservative is liberal Q.E.D..

But the thing is, late night talk is neither conservative nor liberal.  I’m sure Jay would point to the many times he gave the Republicans a zinger, just as Dave would the Democrats.  Here for instance is Politico’s list of Dave’s most memorable political guests.

The primary purpose of these shows isn’t even comedy, let alone political.  It is to push product.  They are hour long infomercials and you don’t put cash in the drawer by pissing off your audience.

So you get what Jon Stewart’s audience derisively calls being fair and balanced.  You don’t push hard because your booker won’t let you.  Do you really want to tear up Bill Cosby’s card by asking about the rapes?  Do you want to get booted from the locker room by asking Brady about his balls (sorry, been saving that one)?  The business that we call show says no.  As funny and entertaining as David Letterman is, what he represents is the mainstream that has been so warped by 55 years of Military Industrial Imperialism and 40 years of Neo-Liberal Economics that they wouldn’t know a liberal idea if it bit them in the ass.  This is why I call myself an Anarcho-Syndicalist and not a Liberal, even though my political thinking is thoroughly grounded by my primary education in American History and Civics.  My character is static.  

This is of course my greatest disappointment about Stephen Colbert’s coming tenure on Late Show.  By inhabiting the character of a right wing pundit he was able to expose the hypocrisy, moral bankruptcy, and intellectual incoherence of their positions.  With out his ironic protection any criticism will have to be expressed more directly, with more danger to his career.  Will he be brave enough?  Brave or not the format mitigates against it.  Late Night is not an hour long Colbert Report, you get 10 to 15 minutes of standup, a bit, 2 or 3 guests, and a musical guest.  Now hopefully Stephen will be able to bring on the kind of thought provoking and knowledgeable ones he had on The Report, at least for the 2nd one, there’s certain to be a lot of pressure from the Sea World class of advertisers to avoid controversy entirely.

Finally, will I miss Dave?  Of course I will.  I was a Letterman fan long before it was cool and while my viewing habits have been inconstant, ratings are not the reason he’s retiring.

It was comforting to know that in some little corner of TVLand Dave was out there, doing wacky things.  That he was still able to pack a theater every night.  That he would take it to the streets and didn’t exist in an air conditioned plastic bubble in the middle of the desert talking to air conditioned plastic bubble people about their air conditioned plastic bubble lives.  I’ll miss Paul Schaeffer and Biff Henderson and Chris Elliott and Calvert DeForest.

Will I miss Dave?  More than I hope you’ll ever know.

In attendence tonight-

• Wednesday, May 20th: Steve Martin, Payton Manning, Jim Carrey, Jerry Seinfeld, Tina Fey, Barbara Walters, Chris Rock, Alec Baldwin, Bill Murray, and Julia Louise Dreyfus

Some of whom will be involved in Dave’s last Top Ten List.

• Musical Guests- The Foo Fighters

Kind of a follow up to yesterday’s piece- Illinois Abu Ghraib.

Government Seeks ‘Emergency Stay’ of Decision Ordering Release of Thousands of Torture Photos

Kevin Gosztola, Firedog Lake

May 19, 2015 at 12:00 PM PDT

In March, Judge Alvin Hellerstein of the US District Court of the Southern District of New York was no longer willing to tolerate the government’s secrecy arguments or the government’s refusal to individually review each photo and explain why each photo would pose a national security risk if made public.

The judge immediately issued a temporary stay and gave the government 60 days to file an appeal.

With that 60-day period about to elapse, the government abruptly announced it would appeal on May 15 and filed a motion requesting a stay.

…

Back in August, when Hellerstein ruled that the Secretary of Defense’s certification for keeping the photos secret was “inadequate,” the government was instructed to individually review the photographs and inform the court of why each photograph could not be released. Government attorneys rebuffed his request.

In October and February, the court reminded the government that the Secretary of Defense had to certify each picture “in terms of its likelihood or not to endanger American lives.” It explained again afterward that the government could not certify a mass of photographs as a risk to national security. The government never complied, which led to the judge’s decision in March.

…

The government maintains in its motion that an “emergency stay” will cause minimal harm to the ACLU. On the other hand, no stay will mean the photographs are released and the “status quo” is destroyed. It will harm the ability of the government to appeal.

“The absence of a stay will cause the disclosure of records that the Secretary of Defense has certified to be exempt from disclosure under the PNSDA, a statute that was enacted by Congress in order to protect U.S. citizens, members of the US Armed Services, and US government employees from harm while overseas,” the government argues.

According to the government, the Secretary of Defense’s certification of the photographs is not subject to “judicial review.” They could remain in secret in perpetuity if the Secretary of Defense kept re-certifying them as a risk. The district court also erred in making its own “assessment of the likelihood of harm, based upon its own analysis of the military situation in Iraq. That was reversible error.”

…

While it is true that the “status quo” will be preserved if the government is granted an “emergency stay,” the ACLU suggests that is no argument for automatically granting such a stay because a stay will make it possible for the government to “continue to evade its statutory responsibility of openness to its citizens.”

This impacts the ACLU, which has worked to educate the public on the torture and abuse committed by US officials and military personnel. If the photographs continue to remain secret, the American public will remain in the dark on the extent of torture committed in their name.