“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.
When Police Benevolent Association chief Patrick Lynch said New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has the blood of two dead cops on his hands, he was issuing a physical threat to both the person of the mayor and the civil authority to which the police are subordinate and sworn to protect. In a nation under the rule of law, such a statement by a representative of an armed and enflamed constabulary – 35,000-strong, the equivalent of three light infantry divisions – would trigger an immediate defensive response from the State, to guard against mutiny. But, of course, no such thing happened.
When Lynch’s PBA declared, in a prepared statement, that “we have, for the first time in a number of years, become a ‘wartime’ police department” and “will act accordingly,” that constituted an instruction to union members to impose a martial law-type policing regime on the city – with no authorization other than the weapons they carry. Sounds very much like a coup.
On Internet message boards, police union activists instructed the rank and file to refuse to respond to incidents unless two units were dispatched to the scene, and to double up even if given orders to the contrary. Under this “wartime” footing, the police would simply seize the power to deploy and assign themselves, as they liked – and to hell with the chain of command and civilian authorities.
Four years ago, the Federal Trade Commission announced, with fanfare, a plan to let American consumers decide whether to let companies track their online browsing and buying habits. The plan would let users opt out of the collection of data about their habits through a setting in their web browsers, without having to decide on a site-by-site basis (pdf).
The idea, known as “Do Not Track,” and modeled on the popular “Do Not Call” rule that protects consumers from unwanted telemarketing calls, is simple. But the details are anything but. [..]
Now, finally, an industry working group is expected to propose detailed rules governing how the privacy switch should work. The group includes experts but is dominated by Internet giants like Adobe, Apple, Facebook, Google and Yahoo. It is poised to recommend a carve-out that would effectively free them from honoring “Do Not Track” requests.
For brutal wannabe fascists v like police union thugs, for liberal authoritarian politicians like President Obama, the Congressional Black Caucus and most big city mayors, for media talking head like CNN’s Don Lemon, and for weaseling civil rights spokesleaders eager to throw shade on grassroots movements that make them irrelevant, the December 20 killings of two NYPD officers were a gift from heaven, or whatever place their gifts come from.
The killings let cop thugs across the country, usually Republicans flip the script to massquerade as injured victims living in fear for their lives, howling (or oinking) at the media for covering their crimes and citizen outrage at all. The fascist cops also single out authoritarian liberal politicians for even pretending to listen to the protests, and for not unleashing them even further. [..]
In the end of course, the police are part of the coercive machinery of the state, the strong arm and tip of the spear for whichever class is governing a particular society. As long as the rich rule at the poor’s expense, as long as the gulf between them is a largely racialized one that continues to widen, racist cops will keep on doing all the wrong things to all the wrong people. Arguably, the problem of brutal, racist, corrupt and murderous police enjoying immunity and impunity simply goes with the territory of 21st century capitalism. It might be time to look for new territory.
The sister of the 28-year-old man who shot his ex-girlfriend in Baltimore the same morning he killed two New York police officers as they sat in their patrol car in Brooklyn said her brother had long suffered from mental illness, but hadn’t received treatment.
“He was an emotionally troubled young man, and he was suicidal,” said Jalaa’i Brinsley. “Clearly something’s wrong. He should have been offered help in the system, right? But he wasn’t.”
Indeed. Something is very wrong.
In the United States, psychiatric care is a luxury that, at $150 an hour and up for counseling that can last for months or even years, only the very wealthiest citizens can afford.
This latest sorry episode serves as yet another reminder that ours remains a country in its infancy when it comes to health care, despite the undeniable turning point marked by last year’s enactment of the Affordable Care Act. As many as one out of four Americans suffer mental health issues in any given year, yet even upper-middle-class “white-collar” workers with relatively high-end health insurance plans receive little coverage for mental illness. The same goes for dental and vision care.
In 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama was lambasted for supposedly endorsing policies of wealth redistribution. The right feared that under an Obama presidency, Washington would use federal power to take money from some Americans and give it to others. Yet, only a few years later, the most explicit examples of such redistribution are happening in the states, and often at the urging of Republicans.
The most illustrative example began in 2012, when Kansas’ Republican Gov. Sam Brownback signed a landmark bill that delivered big tax cuts to high-income earners and businesses. Less than two years after that tax cut, the state’s income tax revenues plummeted by a quarter-billion dollars-and now Brownback is pushing to use money for public employees’ pensions to instead cover the state’s ensuing budget shortfalls. [..]
The tepid response to this kind of wealth transfer suggests that for all the angry rhetoric about redistribution you might hear on talk radio, cable TV and in the halls of Congress, the political and media class is perfectly fine with redistribution-as long as the cash flows from the 99 percent to the 1 percent, and not the other way around.
Well, heaven preserve us: the most useless “peacemaker” on earth has just used an Arabic acronym for the greatest threat to civilisation since the last greatest threat. Yup, ol’ John Kerry called it “Daesh”, which is what the Arabs call it. It stands for the “Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant”. We prefer Isis or Isil or the Islamic State or Islamic Caliphate. Most journos prefer Isis because – I suspect – it’s easier to remember. It’s the name of an Egyptian goddess, after all. It’s the name of a university city’s river. And of course, it’s the name of Lord Grantham’s dog in Downton Abbey. [..]
But why do we care what the great leaders of the West (or the East for that matter) actually say, when we all know it’s the kind of material that comes out of the rear end of a bull? Let me give you an example from Canada, where I’ve just spent the last three days. Two years ago, the country’s Foreign Affairs minister, John Baird, closed Canada’s embassy in Tehran because he feared his diplomats might be harmed. “Canada views the government of Iran as the most significant threat to global peace and security in the world today,” he quoth then – although CBC broadcasters have dug up a Foreign Ministry report which reported the biggest threat to the Tehran embassy was an geophysical earthquake.
Bridgeport’s favorite son, Phineas T., is generally regarded as a fool, charlatan, and mountebank. A hopped up midway barker skimming pennies from shill goaded rubes in transparent scams.
Well, yeah, he did that, but he wasn’t foolish at all.
He was the epitome of a Gilded Age entrepreneur, perhaps the first person to truly grasp the power of mass marketing and if we remember him today as a mere traveling showman we are underestimating the complexity of the task and the popularity of the medium before the rise of mechanical performance reproductions.
Before the phonograph and the movie there was only live performance and if you travel in certain parts of the country you’ll find many wide spots in the road that sport an Opera House, Concert Hall, or Theater, mostly crumbling or re-purposed now but once thriving oases of culture.
Traveling companies produced plays and burlesques. Visiting orchestras presented Art Music both Classic and Contemporary. Famous authors (including one Samuel Clemens, a former Mississippi steam boat pilot who happened to settle in Hartford) would read selections from their books.
I’m going to stop here a moment and recall a particular performance. At one reading Clemens stood to the lectern and plopped down a weighty and dusty tome with many clearly visible bookmarks and a sheaf of foolscap notes. He opened the book, perused it, consulted his notes, perused the book again, shuffled the papers and made as if to speak…
And then shook his head and opened the book to another mark and repeated the act.
So it went for 45 minutes or an hour when with a flourish and great dignity he gathered his notes, closed the book and exited (probably stage right as that’s usually the one closest to the street door), without ever having said a word. I’m not usually one for mime, but I think this probably the most brilliant comedy routine of the 19th Century.
I don’t reckon them times will ever come again. There never was a more bullier old ram than what he was. Grandfather fetched him from Illinois-got him of a man by the name of Yates-Bill Yates-maybe you might have heard of him; his father was a deacon-Baptist-and he was a rustler, too; a man had to get up ruther early to get the start of old Thankful Yates; it was him that put the Greens up to jining teams with my grandfather when he moved west. Seth Green was prob’ly the pick of the flock; he married a Wilkerson-Sarah Wilkerson-good cretur, she was-one of the likeliest heifers that was ever raised in old Stoddard, everybody said that knowed her. She could heft a bar’l of flour as easy as I can flirt a flapjack. And spin? Don’t mention it! Independent? Humph! When Sile Hawkins come a browsing around her, she let him know that for all his tin he couldn’t trot in harness alongside of her. You see, Sile Hawkins was-no, it warn’t Sile Hawkins, after all-it was a galoot by the name of Filkins-I disremember his first name; but he was a stump-come into pra’r meeting drunk, one night, hooraying for Nixon, becuz he thought it was a primary; and old deacon Ferguson up and scooted him through the window and he lit on old Miss Jefferson’s head, poor old filly. She was a good soul-had a glass eye and used to lend it to old Miss Wagner, that hadn’t any, to receive company in; it warn’t big enough, and when Miss Wagner warn’t noticing, it would get twisted around in the socket, and look up, maybe, or out to one side, and every which way, while t’ other one was looking as straight ahead as a spy-glass. Grown people didn’t mind it, but it most always made the children cry, it was so sort of scary. She tried packing it in raw cotton, but it wouldn’t work, somehow-the cotton would get loose and stick out and look so kind of awful that the children couldn’t stand it no way. She was always dropping it out, and turning up her old dead-light on the company empty, and making them oncomfortable, becuz she never could tell when it hopped out, being blind on that side, you see. So somebody would have to hunch her and say, “Your game eye has fetched loose, Miss Wagner dear”-and then all of them would have to sit and wait till she jammed it in again-wrong side before, as a general thing, and green as a bird’s egg, being a bashful cretur and easy sot back before company. But being wrong side before warn’t much difference, anyway; becuz her own eye was sky-blue and the glass one was yaller on the front side, so whichever way she turned it it didn’t match nohow. Old Miss Wagner was considerable on the borrow, she was. When she had a quilting, or Dorcas S’iety at her house she gen’ally borrowed Miss Higgins’s wooden leg to stump around on; it was considerable shorter than her other pin, but much she minded that. She said she couldn’t abide crutches when she had company, becuz they were so slow; said when she had company and things had to be done, she wanted to get up and hump herself. She was as bald as a jug, and so she used to borrow Miss Jacops’s wig-Miss Jacops was the coffin-peddler’s wife-a ratty old buzzard, he was, that used to go roosting around where people was sick, waiting for ’em; and there that old rip would sit all day, in the shade, on a coffin that he judged would fit the can’idate; and if it was a slow customer and kind of uncertain, he’d fetch his rations and a blanket along and sleep in the coffin nights. He was anchored out that way, in frosty weather, for about three weeks, once, before old Robbins’s place, waiting for him; and after that, for as much as two years, Jacops was not on speaking terms with the old man, on account of his disapp’inting him. He got one of his feet froze, and lost money, too, becuz old Robbins took a favorable turn and got well. The next time Robbins got sick, Jacops tried to make up with him, and varnished up the same old coffin and fetched it along; but old Robbins was too many for him; he had him in, and ‘peared to be powerful weak; he bought the coffin for ten dollars and Jacops was to pay it back and twenty-five more besides if Robbins didn’t like the coffin after he’d tried it. And then Robbins died, and at the funeral he bursted off the lid and riz up in his shroud and told the parson to let up on the performances, becuz he could not stand such a coffin as that. You see he had been in a trance once before, when he was young, and he took the chances on another, cal’lating that if he made the trip it was money in his pocket, and if he missed fire he couldn’t lose a cent. And by George he sued Jacops for the rhino and got jedgment; and he set up the coffin in his back parlor and said he ‘lowed to take his time, now. It was always an aggravation to Jacops, the way that miserable old thing acted. He moved back to Indiany pretty soon-went to Wellsville-Wellsville was the place the Hogadorns was from. Mighty fine family. Old Maryland stock. Old Squire Hogadorn could carry around more mixed licker, and cuss better than most any man I ever see. His second wife was the widder Billings-she that was Becky Martin; her dam was deacon Dunlap’s first wife. Her oldest child, Maria, married a missionary and died in grace-et up by the savages. They et him, too, poor feller-biled him. It warn’t the custom, so they say, but they explained to friends of his’n that went down there to bring away his things, that they’d tried missionaries every other way and never could get any good out of ’em-and so it annoyed all his relations to find out that that man’s life was fooled away just out of a dern’d experiment, so to speak. But mind you, there ain’t anything ever reely lost; everything that people can’t understand and don’t see the reason of does good if you only hold on and give it a fair shake; Prov’dence don’t fire no blank ca’tridges, boys. That there missionary’s substance, unbeknowns to himself, actu’ly converted every last one of them heathens that took a chance at the barbacue. Nothing ever fetched them but that. Don’t tell me it was an accident that he was biled. There ain’t no such a thing as an accident. When my uncle Lem was leaning up agin a scaffolding once, sick, or drunk, or suthin, an Irishman with a hod full of bricks fell on him out of the third story and broke the old man’s back in two places. People said it was an accident. Much accident there was about that. He didn’t know what he was there for, but he was there for a good object. If he hadn’t been there the Irishman would have been killed. Nobody can ever make me believe anything different from that. Uncle Lem’s dog was there. Why didn’t the Irishman fall on the dog? Becuz the dog would a seen him a coming and stood from under. That’s the reason the dog warn’t appinted. A dog can’t be depended on to carry out a special providence. Mark my words it was a put-up thing. Accidents don’t happen, boys. Uncle Lem’s dog-I wish you could a seen that dog. He was a reglar shepherd-or ruther he was part bull and part shepherd-splendid animal; belonged to parson Hagar before Uncle Lem got him. Parson Hagar belonged to the Western Reserve Hagars; prime family; his mother was a Watson; one of his sisters married a Wheeler; they settled in Morgan county, and he got nipped by the machinery in a carpet factory and went through in less than a quarter of a minute; his widder bought the piece of carpet that had his remains wove in, and people come a hundred mile to ‘tend the funeral. There was fourteen yards in the piece. She wouldn’t let them roll him up, but planted him just so-full length. The church was middling small where they preached the funeral, and they had to let one end of the coffin stick out of the window. They didn’t bury him-they planted one end, and let him stand up, same as a monument. And they nailed a sign on it and put-put on-put on it-sacred to-the m-e-m-o-r-y-of fourteen y-a-r-d-s-of three-ply-car--pet-containing all that was-m-o-r-t-a-l-of-of-W-i-l-l-i-a-m-W-h-e-”
Now consider the current nature of the music industry. With a glut of digital material flooding the market (interestingly enough, CDs were introduced because the profit margins on Vinyl were deemed insufficent and so they introduced a new medium that was easily duplicated and virtually indestructible because they thought they could charge a premium) RIAA mega-corps are reduced to squeezing pennies from “pirates” (arrgh) and plotting and scheming to seize some of Google’s zillions in corrupt courts where they will simply be out-bid (an honest politician? one that stays bought).
Nope, the only way to actually make money, at least for the musician, is a live performance tour.
There are incredible logistics that go into producing that spectacle, the Gaffers and Grips, the Lighting and Sound, the Pyro Technicians, Caterers, Bookers, and Travel Agents.
P.T.’s Circus Train was an idea perfect for the time, and the Circus Parade as the Tents went up a master stroke of marketing. Nor was it unique, indeed Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show was kind of the benchmark to which P.T. aspired.
The show business has all phases and grades of dignity, from the exhibition of a monkey to the exposition of that highest art in music or the drama which secures for the gifted artists a world-wide fame princes well might envy.- P. T. Barnum
It’s not that Phineas didn’t aspire to a more erudite audience. After all he introduced Jenny Lind and bought and expanded the American Museum
Barnum opened his museum on January 1, 1842 to create a place where families could go for wholesome, affordable entertainment, but his success drew from the fact that he knew how to entice an audience. Its attractions made it a combination zoo, museum, lecture hall, wax museum, theater and freak show, that was, at the same time, a central site in the development of American popular culture. Barnum filled the American Museum with dioramas, panoramas, “cosmoramas,” scientific instruments, modern appliances, a flea circus, a loom run by a dog, the trunk of a tree under which Jesus’ disciples sat, a hat worn by Ulysses S. Grant, an oyster bar, a rifle range, waxworks, glass blowers, taxidermists, phrenologists, pretty-baby contests, Ned the learned seal, the Feejee Mermaid (a mummified monkey’s torso with a fish’s tail), midgets, Chang and Eng the Siamese twins, a menagerie of exotic animals that included beluga whales in an aquarium, giants, Grizzly Adams’s trained bears and performances ranging from magicians, ventriloquists and blackface minstrels to adaptations of biblical tales and “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
At its peak, the museum was open fifteen hours a day and had as many as 15,000 visitors a day. Some 38 million customers paid the 25 cents admission to attend the museum between 1841 and 1865. The total population of the United States in 1860 was under 32 million.
This way to the Egress
In some ways the circus has always been an egalitarian institution, in Roman times it was one of the few entertainments not segregated by sex and to those who claim Astley the founder of this particular entertainment, fancy horse tricks, freaks, and trained animal acts have an ancient lineage indeed.
Traveling troupes of Troubadores, Actors, and other performers were quite common in Medieval Europe. Lenin wanted “the circus to become ‘the people’s art-form’, with facilities and status on a par with theatre, opera and ballet.”
Mel Brooks says-
If it wasn’t for Jews, fags, and gypsies, there would be no theater.
In European Circus there’s a little more attention to overall structure and narrative than mere displays of athleticsm and while the setting of Pétrouchka is supposedly a Shrovetide Fair the atmosphere conveyed by Michel Fokine and the Ballets Russes has a decidedly ‘circus-like’ feel from the Midway, Carousel, and Ferris Wheel, down to the dancing Bears (Bears! Godless killing machines!).
Punch is not a sympathetic character, “Whatever his name, he is a trickster, a rebel, and a wife beater. He enforces moral justice with a slap stick, speaks in a high-pitched, squeaky voice, and argues with the devil. His plays were formulaic and subversive. They repeated key scenes from one play to another. The plays usually ended with a dog, a policeman, or the devil dragging him away.”
Pétrouchka lusts after the Ballerina and resents the Charlatan who is always pulling his (ahem) strings. He interrupts the Ballerina seducing the Moor (women in theater being nothing but whores all too willing to have sex with brown people) who chases him and eventually splits open his head, showing the sawdust and rags with which it is filled (he’s a puppet after all). The Charlatan exposes this to the audience who feel no empathy for the real performer and the ghost of Pétrouchka appears to thumb his nose from the roof at him. The Charlatan flees with the angry (stage) audience in hot pursuit leaving you, the (real?) audience wondering-
And I paid $150 for that? Not including dinner, drinks, and transit? What was I thinking?
Of course if you’re in exile in Moscow like Snowden you can pay in devalued Rubles to watch the Bolshoi-
Today’s edition is offered strictly for entertainment value, post holiday ennui has left me, uninspired-
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
A tsunami kills more than 200-thousand people is Southeast Asia; Six-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey is found beaten to death; Winston Churchill addresses joint session of Congress; Presidents Truman and Ford die. Singer Annie Lennox is born.
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.
Making a supercomputer requires a large number of processors – standard desktops, laptops or the like – and a way to network them. Dr. Khanna picked the PlayStation 3 for its viability and cost, currently, $250 to $300 in stores. Unlike other game consoles, the PlayStation 3 allows users to install a preferred operating system, making it attractive to programmers and developers. (The latest model, the PlayStation 4, does not have this feature.)
“Gaming had grown into a huge market,” Dr. Khanna said. “There’s a huge push for performance, meaning you can buy low-cost, high-performance hardware very easily. I could go out and buy 100 PlayStation 3 consoles at my neighborhood Best Buy, if I wanted.”
That is just what Dr. Khanna did, though on a smaller scale. Because the National Science Foundation, which funds much of Dr. Khanna’s research, might not have viewed the bulk buying of video game consoles as a responsible use of grant money, he reached out to Sony Computer Entertainment America, the company behind the PlayStation 3. Sony donated four consoles to the experiment; Dr. Khanna’s university paid for eight more, and Dr. Khanna bought another four. He then installed the Linux operating system on all 16 consoles, plugged them into the Internet and booted up the supercomputer.
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Dr. Khanna’s observations caught the attention of the Air Force Research Laboratory in Rome, N.Y., whose scientists were investigating PlayStation 3 processors. In 2010, the lab built its own PlayStation 3 supercomputer using 1,716 consoles to conduct radar image processing for urban surveillance. “Our PS3 supercomputer is capable of processing the complex computations required to create a detailed image of an entire city from radar data,” said Mark Barnell, the director of high performance computing at the Air Force Research Laboratory. The lab later entered into a cooperative research-and-development agreement with Dr. Khanna’s team, donating 176 PlayStation 3 consoles.
His team linked the consoles, housing them in a refrigerated shipping container designed to carry milk. The resulting supercomputer, Dr. Khanna said, had the computational power of nearly 3,000 laptop or desktop processors, and cost only $75,000 to make – about a tenth the cost of a comparable supercomputer made using traditional parts.
Dr. Khanna has since published two more papers on black hole collisions with results from simulations on the PlayStation 3 supercomputer. Later this year, another 220 consoles from the Air Force lab will arrive. While the plan is to use the consoles to perform more involved and accurate simulations of black hole systems, Dr. Khanna has invited colleagues from other departments to use the supercomputer for their own projects: An engineering team, for example, has signed on to conduct simulations that will help design better windmill blades and ocean wave energy converters, and the university’s math department would like to use the supercomputer as a tool to attract students into areas like computational math and science.
But the PlayStation 3 supercomputer isn’t suited to all scientific applications. Its biggest limitation is memory: The consoles have very little compared with traditional supercomputers, meaning they cannot handle large-scale calculations. One alternative is to switch to an even better processor, like PC graphics cards. These are also low-cost and extremely powerful – each card is the equivalent of 20 PlayStation 3 consoles in terms of performance.
If your dog can go to heaven, can E. T.? Astronomers have discovered in the last two decades that there are probably tens of billions of potentially habitable planets in the Milky Way. Only last week, NASA scientists reported that Mars had blown a methane sigh into the face of the Curiosity rover, though whether from microbes or geochemical grumblings may not be known until there are geologists’ boots on the Red Planet.
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This has engendered a sort of how-many-angels-can-dance-on-the-head-of-a-pin argument about whether Christ died for the entire cosmos, or whether the son of God or the metaphysical equivalent has to be born and die on every populated planet.
Each alternative sounds ridiculous on the face of it. The first alternative would make Earth the center of the universe again, not just in space but in time, carrying the hopes for the salvation of beings that lived and died millions or billions of years ago and far, far away.
The second alternative would be multiple incarnations, requiring every civilization to have its own redeemer – “its own adventure with God,” in the words of Professor Peters. That is hardly better. As the old troublemaker Thomas Paine wrote in “The Age of Reason,” “In this case, the person who is irreverently called the son of God, and sometimes God himself, would have nothing else to do than to travel from world to world, in an endless succession of deaths, with scarcely a momentary interval of life.”
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In “The Star,” published in 1955, an expedition to the site of an old supernova explosion discovers the remains of an ancient civilization, carefully preserved because its members knew they were about to be obliterated. The story is told through the eyes of the astrophysicist onboard, a Jesuit. He is able to figure out exactly when the explosion that doomed this race took place, and exactly what it would have looked like 2,000 years ago from Earth.
“There can be no reasonable doubt,” he concludes, “the ancient mystery is solved at last. Yet, oh God, there were so many stars you could have used. What was the need to give these people to the fire, that the symbol of their passing might shine above Bethlehem?”
After reading about the case of Anna O., made famous by Sigmund Freud, Pavlov began contemplating neurosis in a dog. Freud believed that Anna’s condition – hysteria, it was called back then – arose from the stress of caring for her dying father. She was devastated by his plummeting health yet determined to repress her grief and maintain a cheerful face. The result of these opposing psychological forces, as Freud saw it, was a nervous breakdown.
Pavlov thought he recognized a similar phenomenon in a dog named Vampire. The animal had been trained, through salivation experiments, to react differently to two images: an ellipse and a circle. One shape would be reinforced, the other suppressed. As the ellipses were made increasingly rounder and less oval-like, the task grew harder until finally Vampire could not tell the two shapes apart.
And so the poor dog snapped. Originally calm by nature, he began yelping and running in circles, habitually barking for no apparent reason and drooling copiously. Like Anna O., he was caught between two impulses – excitation from the circle and inhibition from the ellipse.
As his theories developed, Pavlov proposed that behavior in dogs and in people could be explained through half a dozen such processes. But he was soon overwhelmed by the complications. Even dogs, he came to realize, had different personalities. Early on, he counted three “nervous types,” a number that later grew to more than 25.
“The time will come – and it will be such a wonderful moment – when everything becomes clear,” he wrote in a moment of anticipation. And yet, as his biographer notes, “the opposite proved true.” As his lab expanded, with more scientists, dogs and experiments, Pavlov was cursed by a proliferation of variables. “There are now before us many more questions than there were earlier,” he said. “We are surrounded – nay crushed – by a mass of details demanding explanation.”
Tokyo Electric Power Company, removed the last remaining fuel rods from the ruined No. 4 reactor building, putting the rods inside a large white container for transportation to another, undamaged storage pool elsewhere on the plant’s grounds. The company, known as Tepco, had put a high priority on removing the No. 4 unit’s some 1,500 fuel rods because they sat in a largely unprotected storage pool on an upper floor of the building, which had been gutted by a powerful hydrogen explosion during the March 2011 accident.
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Tepco still faces the far more challenging task of removing the ruined fuel cores from the three reactors that melted down in the accident. These reactors were so damaged – and their levels of radioactivity remain so high – that removing their fuel is expected to take decades. Some experts have said it may not be possible at all, and have called instead for simply encasing those reactors in a sarcophagus of thick concrete.
The fuel cores from those three reactors, Nos. 1-3, are believed to have melted like wax as the uncooled reactors overheated, forming lumps on the bottom of the reactor vessels. Scientists have warned that the hot, molten uranium may have even melted through the metal containment vessels, possibly reaching the floor of the reactor buildings or even the earth beneath.
Archaeologists working in Turkey have unearthed a 1.2-million-year-old stone tool.
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“This discovery is critical for establishing the timing and route of early human dispersal into Europe,” study author Danielle Schreve, an archaeologist at the Royal Holloway University of London, said in a statement. “Our research suggests that the flake is the earliest securely-dated artifact from Turkey ever recorded and was dropped on the floodplain by an early hominin well over a million years ago.”
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Stone tools are some of the longest-lasting evidence of ancient human culture, and their workmanship can reveal much about the intelligence and lifestyle of human ancestors. The oldest stone tools are about 2.6 million years old, and the style of their workmanship is called Oldowan, after the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania where they were found, according to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. Later, about 1.7 million years ago, ancient hominins such as Homo erectus began making more sophisticated tools, such as hand axes, scrapers and flaked tools.
The recent data breach at Sony Pictures Entertainment has prompted a war of words between Google and the U.S movie industry, with the Internet giant accusing a state attorney general of collaborating with movie studios in a copyright enforcement campaign against it.
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Google on Friday asked the court to throw out the subpoena, days after the company accused Hood of using Motion Picture Association of America lawyers to draft a letter accusing Google of profiting from online piracy and illegal drug sales.
The movie studios have long accused Google of not doing enough to stop online distribution of pirated films. The latest tiff started after emails released by Sony hackers showed the MPAA, Sony and five other large movie studios worked together to attack a company code-named Goliath, widely believed to be Google.
The multi-year campaign by the studios would “rebut Goliath’s public advocacy” and “amplify negative Goliath news,” the Verge reported in mid-December. The campaign included an effort to work with state attorneys general and major ISPs to control the flow of data online, the Verge reported.
Nearly one year before Sony was hacked, the FBI warned that U.S. companies were facing potentially crippling data destruction malware attacks, and predicted that such a hack could cause irreparable harm to a firm’s reputation, or even spell the end of the company entirely. The FBI also detailed specific guidance for U.S. companies to follow to prepare and plan for such an attack.
But the FBI never sent Sony the report.
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The FBI warning from December 2013 focuses on the same type of data destruction malware attack that Sony fell victim to nearly a year later. The report questions whether industry was overly optimistic about recovering from such an attack and notes that some companies “wondered whether [a malware attack] could have a more significant destructive impact: the failure of the company.”
In fact, the 2013 report contains a nearly identical description of the attacks detailed in the recent FBI release. “The malware used deleted just enough data to make the machines unusable; the malware was specifically written for Korean targets, and checked for Korean antivirus products to disable,” the Dec. 2013 report said. “The malware attack on South Korean companies defaced the machine with a message from the ‘WhoIs Team.'”
For years, we’ve pointed out that the giant “settlements” that the MPAA likes to announce with companies it declares illegal are little more than Hollywood-style fabrications. Cases are closed with big press releases throwing around huge settlement numbers, knowing full well that the sites in question don’t have anywhere near that kind of money available. At the end of 2013, it got two of these, with IsoHunt agreeing to ‘pay’ $110 million and Hotfile agreeing to ‘pay’ $80 million. In both cases, we noted that there was no chance that those sums would ever get paid. And now, thanks to the Sony hack, we at least know the details of the Hotfile settlement. TorrentFreak has been combing through the emails and found that the Hotfile settlement was really just for $4 million, and the $80 million was just a bogus number agreed to for the sake of a press release that the MPAA could use to intimidate others.
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Still, is it any surprise that the industry famous both for its fictional “Hollywood Endings” and “Hollywood Accounting” where a hit movie like one of the Harry Potter films can bring in nearly a billion dollars, but still have a “loss” for accounting purposes, would create a made-up scenario in which everyone pretends many tens of millions of dollars are paid due to “infringement”?
To me, the biggest story to come out of the Sony Hack remains how the MPAA and the major studios were conspiring to attack Google by paying for state Attorneys General to drum up silly investigations of the company. Most everyone else in the press seems much more focused on the gossip and, of course, what happens to The Interview, the Seth Rogen/James Franco movie that some think was the reason for the hack in the first place (even if the evidence on that remains questionable). Either way, as you know, Sony briefly shelved the plans to release the movie (which has fairly dreadful reviews from those who have seen it), but then decided to allow a few independent theaters to show it, followed by the announcement this morning that it would stream the movie via YouTube.
There are lots of bizarre story lines related to this — including, apparently, Apple turning Sony down when approached with a similar deal for iTunes. Or the whole idea of how this might actually show the Hollywood studios the value of releasing movies online at the same time as in theaters (a message many have been trying to send Hollywood for ages, which Hollywood is quite resistant to). And, of course, there’s the whole story line about a giant company being bullied by a few stray threats about showing the film in theaters, which almost no one thinks were serious.
Still, the story that is most fascinating to me is tying this whole thing back to that original story, about “Project Goliath” and the plan to conspire to attack Google — and the fact that when Sony needed to find a place to stream the film, it turned to YouTube, a Google-owned company. Huh. Of course, this fits with the long history of the legacy entertainment industry lashing out and attacking the creators of the innovations that industry most needs. The recording industry attacked radio when it first came on the scene, though it eventually enabled the music industry to grow so big. Hollywood, famously, claimed the VCR was “the Boston Stranger” to the movie industry — yet four years after that statement was made, home video brought in more revenue for Hollywood than the box office. The RIAA sued one of the first MP3 players, yet digital music is a major, growing source of revenue these days. And, of course, Viacom engaged in a many years-long battled with YouTube.
Over a year ago, we wrote about a wonderful piece in Foreign Affairs by Henry Farrell and Martha Finnemore, noting that the real “danger” of the Snowden and Manning revelations was that it effectively killed off the US’s ability to use hypocrisy as a policy tool.
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The argument that Farrell and Finnemore made was that the revelations that came about because of the whistleblowing by Snowden and Manning made it such that this hypocrisy didn’t function as well, because it made it much easier for others to simply call bullshit.
Now, a new article at Foreign Policy, by Kristin Lord, takes this argument even further, by looking at the CIA torture program and how it has totally undermined America’s “soft power” in diplomacy. Lord, thankfully, makes it quite clear that the problem here is the CIA’s program and not (as some have tried to argue) the release of the report about the program.
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The basic stated values of the US are something worth spreading and perpetuating. But the only way you can legitimately do that is to admit when the country has strayed from those values, and that means a true and honest accounting of where things went wrong, along with a transparent and concrete plan for dealing with those failings and making sure they don’t happen again. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be happening, and many in power don’t seem to understand the damages this is doing to the US’s power around the globe.
Obligatories
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
I would never make fun of LaEscapee or blame PhilJD. And I am highly organized.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
Apollo Eight astronauts orbit the moon; Ku Klux Klan is founded; Human voice first transmitted via radio; Suez Canal opened.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
Convicted Felons Are Always Given Prominent Platforms In Our Media
Actually, that’s not true. Why is Bernie Kerik on my teevee? Especially when his crimes were, you know, related to his job from which he supposedly can bring his expertise.
I know the answer is “he’s Rudy’s buddy and the media loves Rudy.” But, um, why is Rudy on my teevee? He’s a horrible person.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
The Christmas poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” is first published; Former Japanese premier Hideki Tojo is executed; Mormon religion founder Joseph Smith, Jr. is born; North Korea releases the 82 U.S. Seamen.
In intentionally presenting false testimony to the grand jury, McCulloch may have committed a serious ethical breach. Under the Missouri Rules of Professional Conduct, lawyers are prohibited from offering “evidence that the lawyer knows to be false.”
McCulloch justified his actions by asserting that the grand jury gave no credence at all to McElroy’s testimony. But this is speculation. Under Missouri law, the grand jury deliberations are secret and McCulloch is not allowed to be present.
A Missouri lawmaker, Karla May, called Friday for a legislative investigation of McCulloch’s conduct. May said that there is evidence to suggest that McCulloch “manipulated the grand jury process from the beginning to ensure that Officer Wilson would not be indicted.”
Even before Friday’s interview, many legal experts were highly critical McCulloch’s use of the grand jury. Marjorie Cohn, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, said she believed McCulloch “did not want an indictment” of Darren Wilson and turned the grand jury process on its head, acting as an advocate for the defense.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
Breakfast Tune: Mean Mary “Memphis Moon” (live session)
Today in History
Pilgrims land in Plymouth Massachuesttes; Pan Am flight 747 explodes over Lockerbie, Scotland; Apollo 8 lifts off on first manned mission to the Moon; Actress Jane Fonda is born. (Dec. 21)
Welcome to my childhood trauma. I have to be the only person in the world who doesn’t like The Nutcracker Suite.
When I was quite young my Mom and Dad took my sister and I to New York to see The Nutcracker Suite, I think they thought it would be ‘cultural’.
I do love the City and it was, overall, a quite enjoyable experience. We saw all the animated windows on 5th Av., went to F.A.O. Schwarz, looked at the big tree (always feel kinda sad for those trees) and watched the skating (Mom and Dad wanted to do it, but I put my foot down because I had no desire to wait in a cold Disneyesque line for 5 minutes of skating I could easily do on a pond or rink at home). We had an early Haunukka dinner with my Aunt and Uncle (the Bank VP with the carrel from which you could see the window if you gave it a good squint) and headed off for the show.
Now my Dad thinks that the reason I had a bad experience is our nosebleed seats and I’ll admit I have Acrophobia (no, it’s not crippling, I can stand heights if I need to but I’d much prefer otherwise and you daredevils who like to dance on the edge of a long fall and a short stop both make me nervous and annoy me because I might feel impelled to do something really stupid on the spur of the moment to save your sorry ass- I’d be much happier if I were just willing to mop up after).
Alas the real reason is more fundamental and does me less credit. I’m not very graceful.
Rhythm has nothing to do with it. I have a poor sense of kinesthesia, or more properly proprioception since my vestibular system works just fine thank you, even at height.
Even aesthetically the Terpsichorean muse and I hardly get along at all.
I have an intellectual appreciation of the athleticism and drill that goes into it, but the subtleties and symbolism are lost on me. Now this may seem strange since my favorite interpreter of me is Gene Kelly who was known to cut quite a rug, but the choreography of Musical Theater is intended to appeal to low brow philistines like I am.
Ballet is too much. The outlandish costumes, exaggerated gestures, difficult to follow plots with no dialog (I hate mimes too). I can understand why some people like it (athletic men in codpiece tights! women in revealing catsuits!) but I’d rather spend a day watching Noh (confused by most people with Kabuki which is actually more free form and Avant Garde), than an hour watching ballet.
But if you like that sort of thing and the cliched music of what even Pyotr Ilyich admitted was not his best work (he liked Sleeping Beauty better) here’s an interesting and high quality production by the Kirov (Mariinsky) Ballet-
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
Breakfast Tune: Carolina Chocolate Drops – Ruby Are you Mad at Your Man?
Today in History
U.S. Supreme Court upholds the relocation and detention of Japanese-Americans during World War Two; U.S. begins 12 days of heavy bombing of North Vietnamese targets; Steven Spielberg is born; Tchaikovsky’s ‘The Nutcracker’ – publicly premieres.
Breakfast News, Blogs, and Cuban Two Step Rag below
Bridgeport’s favorite son, 
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