* This is an archive of my own online blog and notes, with weekly entries collected by month.
* THE WEEK THAT WAS: This last month, the USA acquired another day "that will live in infamy", 6 January 2021 -- joining 7 December 1941 and 11 September 2001. Ever since the US election in early November, Trump had been flogging claims of massive voter fraud that cheated him of the win, though he had only the flimsiest pretense of evidence in support. He pressed dozens of cases into the courts, which were uniformly rejected; the Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal. He personally leaned on state election officials to bend the votes in his favor.
It was all very nerve-wracking, all the more so because Republican members of Congress backed Trump up well more often than not. However, it was also ridiculous, there being no real prospect that he could really overturn the election. It did suggest to Democratic Members of Congress that an election-reform bill needed to be a high priority once Congress came back into session in the new year.
California was the last state to certify its votes, on 11 December 2020. On 6 January 2021, Vice President Mike Pence was to announce the votes to Congress. Trump immediately began a campaign to have Congress overturn the vote. That was all but hopeless; while Members of Congress could protest the voting results from a state, it would require a majority vote from both houses of Congress to overturn it. The Democrats obviously wouldn't go along.
On the morning of 6 January, at the encouragement of Trump from his tweets, a rowdy crowd assembled in Washington DC, with Trump pumping them up with his grievances for an hour. When he was done, the crowd went over to the Capitol Building, broke through security with appalling ease, then trashed the place. Security was good enough to allow Congress to escape, and an aide had the presence of mind to secure the votes that Pence was to read. It is suspected the rioters were after the votes; they could be replaced, but the process of doing so would have been subject to political interference.
The rioters were finally driven out, with five people dead in the end -- one rioter shot by the Capitol police; a policeman beaten up, to later die of a stroke; three others that had unspecified "medical emergencies". The FBI began a manhunt to track down the ringleaders of the end; many of them conveniently put videos of themselves in the Capitol Building up on social media, as if it were some sort of holiday affair. Trump was not remorseful; indeed, reports said he watched the riot on TV with obvious pleasure. He issued stilted official calls for peace, and then started to agitate again on Twitter -- which promptly killed his account, reportedly sending him into a towering rage. He was quickly banned from all social media.
The Democrats in the House of Representatives quickly put together a second impeachment effort. It was easy to do, the only basis for it was the attack on Congress, and no real investigation was required. The vote in the House took place on 13 January. Only ten Republicans voted for it. Apparently there were some others who wanted to vote for it, but they were getting death threats against themselves and their families. One suspects they will decide to go into another line of work.
It seemed unlikely that the impeachment would get through the Senate immediately, with less than a week left before Joe Biden's inauguration. The decision was made that it should be put on the shelf for the moment, lest it confound the administration's urgent work, particularly with regards to the pandemic. The media made much of how troublesome a Trump impeachment would be to Biden, but that seemed overstated. Yes, Trump is a problem for the Biden Administration, but one that they're stuck with. All they have to do is pretend they never heard of Donald Trump, while letting Congress and the states work him over.
There was some puzzlement as to what sense it made to pursue impeachment of Trump after he left office, but on examination it made sense. There is nothing in the Constitution to prevent it, and some precedent of impeachments of lesser officials after they left office. There is also the simple logic that, if impeachment couldn't take place after an official left office, that official could simply resign and escape punitive measures. Should Trump be convicted by the Senate, he will presumably lose his presidential perks, and more important be barred against running for office again.
In any case, the Democrats in Congress had to act; the assault on the Capitol was too outrageous to be tolerated. The Democrats also know that pushing impeachment through Congress forces the Republicans to take a stand, to say if they are for Trump, or for America. The House Republicans have, except for ten, already chosen Trump and disgrace; what the Senate Republicans do remains to be seen. The GOP is in a slow-motion crash.
Right now, the Federal government is not pursuing criminal charges against Trump and his klan. It's not needed. Along with the various fraud charges looming in New York state, Washington DC is considering "incitement to riot" charges, and Georgia is considering election fraud charges -- on the basis of the hour-long phone call from Trump to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, where Trump tried to bully 12,000+ votes out of him. Raffensperger had the sense to record the conversation. Incidentally, evidence is popping up that the rioters on 6 January were getting help from Members of Congress. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.
* Antagonism between the US and China grew considerably during Donald Trump's time in the White House -- and, while Trump's xenophobia had a lot to do with it, there are real and substantial difficulties between the two countries. However, as discussed in an essay by Ian Bremmer in TIME.com ("No, The US And China Are Not Heading Towards a New Cold War", 28 December 2020), both countries have good cause to avoid a new "Cold War", with Bremmer ticking off four reasons why:
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First, a critical point that gets overlooked in the "new Cold War" debate: The first Cold War emerged in the absence of an existing world order, following the wreckage of World War II. Unlike today, there were no well-established multilateral institutions (or multinational corporations as well entrenched as they are today) that could act as brakes to escalating conflicts.
Even more importantly, the aftermath of the Second World War ushered in a decolonization trend that created dozens of new nations which were suddenly up for grabs -- a critical component of the old Cold War as the US and USSR competed across the world to win hearts, minds and governments to their respective sides. In 2020, countries are looking to hedge between the world's two economic superpowers more than they are looking to throw in their lot with one or the other.
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Second, the Cold War was between two sides in an effectively zero-sum game: American influence grew at the expense of Soviet influence, which is not how things are today:
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For the US and the USSR, the only real common interest they had was avoiding mutually assured destruction via nuclear warfare. For all the recent turmoil, China has been a tremendous economic beneficiary of the current world order even if they take issue with some aspects of it; Beijing isn't looking to upend the global order as much as it is trying to carve out more space within it to accommodate its own primacy.
Furthermore, there are numerous areas that both China and the US need to cooperate for both their sakes: nuclear proliferation, macroeconomic stability, climate change and the current pandemic chief among them. That cooperation is helped along by the decades of investment and relationships that have been built-up by critical stakeholders in both countries, even if they've been tested mightily in recent years.
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Third, China is, at present and into the mid-term, not a military threat to the USA, as the Soviet Union was; China is expanding its armed forces at a rapid rate, with advanced technology, but from a modest base. It is, at present and to the mid-term future, a regional power, with little force-projection capability. On the other hand, the USSR was never remotely an economic competitor to the USA, while China is working aggressively to catch up to American economic might. The economic threat to the USA is real, but it's not remotely the same thing as a military threat -- and the USA can't damage China economically without hurting its own economy. Instead of a Cold War, America and China have to come to terms with each other, and even cooperate on issues of mutual importance.
It is not in the interests of either side to pursue a Cold War. They are better off coming to some sort of accommodation, on mutually agreeable terms. The US fear of China is exaggerated, the country being burdened by serious problems: significant corporate debt, a labor base that is getting more expensive, massive investment in economically weak countries -- and above all, a rigid and authoritarian government with a weak concept of civil rights.
America has real concerns with China, such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, the South China Sea, and treatment of Uighurs. There are likely to be flareups between the two countries, even possibly limited military confrontations. However:
QUOTE:
But none of this points to the kind of zero-sum, Cold War we saw in the 20th century, the kind of all-consuming ideological divide that forces the rest of the world to pick sides. There are too many structural barriers to that, and too much prosperity at stake for political leaders in Washington and Beijing to risk. There are plenty of things to be concerned about as we round into 2021. This isn't one of them.
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* I had long been trying to figure out some way of streamlining my blog writing -- I felt like five entries a week was one entry too much to keep up with. Then I got to thinking that my endmonth / startmonth entries were easy to write -- and decided to do a news survey of the past week every Monday instead. This particular survey goes back to the beginning of the month, but I won't go beyond a week again, unless I have to catch up after a week or two on vacation.
Incidentally, the title of this section reflects a weekly satirical TV show from the 1960s, THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS. It was run in the UK in 1962 and 1963, with a US version following in 1964 and 1965. It was presented by David Frost, with the US version notably featuring the work of legendary musical satirist Tom Lehrer.
Anyway, another aspect of this exercise is to collect amusing comments from Twitter. With regards to the Republican disinclination to vote against Trump in impeachment, the tweet made the rounds: "It's like half of the teachers in a school justifying the actions of a school shooter." Worse, as was added in reply, the shooter is the school principal.
As far as Trump himself goes, another tweet made the rounds: "Teddy Roosevelt on line 1, sir. He would like a word." Still another tweet suggested that Trump's Mar-A-Lago resort be renamed "MAGAstan" -- and in response to the incoming Biden Administration's intent to decontaminate the White House at a cost of a half-million dollars, it was added that it should be exorcised as well.
Another good one, in response to social media's dramatic shutdown of Trump: "When you try to ban TikTok, but then Tiktok bans YOU!" A somewhat related comment had Trump holding up a placard that read: "Welcome to the Karma Cafe. There is no menu -- you get what you deserve." Yet another cited Trump as saying: "I want to see Biden in prison!"
With Joe answering: "What makes him think I'll visit him in prison?"
And then Rick Wilson -- one of the prime movers behind the Lincoln Project, the conservative anti-Trump shock troops -- said he got an email from an ex-friend in the GOP: "Just admit it; you're trying to cancel Trump and anyone who backed him."
Wilson replied: "No s***. You figured that out all by yourself?" His Lincoln Project colleague George Conway is also assertive, but much more sophisticated in his approach: unlike Wilson, he doesn't call them "motherf*****s". Wilson is not always profane: when Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a lunatic Right-wing troglodyte, proudly announced on video that she had just files articles of impeachment against Joe Biden, Wilson replied: "Day-drinking already. Sad."
The bottom line of it all was suggested by horror author Stephen King, who has a popular Twitter feed: "The inmates are no longer running the asylum. What a relief!" Incidentally, when a troll called King one of the "Hollywood elite", he shot back: "I live in Maine, dumbass."
Somebody else tweeted that Joe Biden should start out his inaugural address with: "Well, THAT was weird!" Sure was, four years of weird. I kept thinking back to 9 November 2016, when I assessed Trump's win, and concluded the Republicans were in a lot of trouble. I had NO idea. Geez, four years -- where does the time go? That particular time, I'm glad is gone.
* As discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Making Commodity Chemicals Requires Fossil Fuels. New devices Could Do It With Renewables" by Robert F. Service, 4 May 2020), two research groups have developed new chemical synthesis schemes that could be driven by renewable energy, instead of fossil fuels. One group uses carbon dioxide (CO2) as its starting material to make ethanol -- grain alcohol, useful as a fuel -- and ethylene, a plastics feedstock. The other turns nitrogen (N2) into ammonia (NH3), a key component in fertilizer. Both owe their progress to advances in the catalyst-coated electrodes that drive chemical reactions between gases and liquids.
In theory, turning CO2 into hydrocarbons such as ethanol and ethylene is simple: just energize CO2 so it can take hydrogen atoms from water, releasing oxygen in the process. However, the reactions are tricky. They take place in electrolyzers, which consist of two electrodes separated by a liquid electrolyte. At one electrode, the anode, water splits into oxygen, electrons, and hydrogen ions (protons). The protons then migrate through the electrolyte to the cathode, where they react with CO2, which is fed in separately, to make the hydrocarbons.
In current electrolyzers, the cathode usually consists of a 3D carbon mesh dotted with tiny copper catalyst particles. In this "gas diffusion" design, CO2 gas infiltrates the mesh to interact with all the catalyst particles simultaneously. One side of the mesh is also in contact with the liquid electrolyte, which helps transfer protons -- ionized hydrogen, in effect -- from the anode. Unfortunately, water in the electrolyte can infiltrate the pores, blocking CO2 gas from reaching the catalyst particles.
Coating the electrode with a water-repellent, fluorine-rich polymer can help. That and other improvements have resulted in electrolyzers that efficiently convert a small input of electricity into hydrocarbons. Unfortunately, only about 40% of the product compounds have two carbon atoms, as ethylene and ethanol do -- while much of the rest is methane (CH4), which is less useful.
Now, a research team led by Wang Ye, a chemist at Xiamen University in China, has found that adding fluorine to the standard copper catalyst on their gas diffusion electrode changes the pathway of the reactions, yielding more production of two-carbon compounds -- up to 85% of the output. Their setup can also handle 1.6 amps of current per square centimeter of catalyst, twice the throughput of the previous record holder.
Karthish Manthiram -- a chemical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- has similarly come up with an improved electrochemical process for synthesizing NH3 using N2 from air and hydrogen (H2). The H2, split from water in another electrolyzer cell, where it is split into protons and electrons at the anode. The protons pass through a liquid electrolyte made of an organic solvent spiced with lithium to speed transfer of hydrogen to nitrogen. At the cathode, a three-step chemical process takes place:
Manthiram's team couldn't use a porous carbon cathode because the liquid electrolyte would flood the electrode, blocking N2 gas from catalyst particles. The researchers accordingly researchers replaced the carbon cathode with a stainless steel mesh, which repels the organic electrolyte and allows N2 in. The scheme produced ammonia nearly five times as fast as the previous record. Its efficiency for converting the energy in electrons to chemical bonds in NH3 is 40%, the highest ever achieved with an electrolyzer.
The efficiency is still much lower than obtained using processes based on fossil fuels, and these efforts are not likely to lead to commercialization in the near future. However, they do provide a basis for further improvements.
BACK_TO_TOP* THE WEEK THAT WAS 1: The buzz this last month was, of course, Donald Trump's increasingly frantic attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The MAGAbots, his loyal fans, continue to insist on Twitter that there was massive election fraud, citing "extensive evidence" -- none of which, of course, impressed any judges in court, with Trump's lawyers fearing to make many claims for it. Honestly, no matter what setback the MAGAbots suffered, they were undeterred: they would promptly forget the setback, and then declare certain victory for the next checkpoint. They thought they could successfully challenge state certification of votes; that didn't work. They then thought that the Supreme Court would come to the rescue; that didn't work, either, with SCOTUS simply declining to consider the case.
Trump's last hope, it seems, is the presentation of the vote to Congress by Vice-President Pence on 6 January. That is no hope at all, since all in effect that will happen is that Pence will open the envelopes of state vote tallies, and announce the winner. That's it, nothing can happen to change the outcome -- though there is likely a fair amount of posturing and some ruckus in the background. [ED: More than a "little" ruckus, but the outcome was the same.]
* One amusing item on Twitter during December was a set of postings by Mohammaed Hussain in Ottawa, commenting on his Christmas season experiences:
QUOTE:
Growing up, my Muslim family never celebrated Christmas. This year I am not going home, because pandemic, so my roommates are teaching me how to have my first proper Christmas. I am approaching this with anthropological precision. Here are a few observations.
OBSERVATION 1: Christmas is a part-time job that you have from mid-November to the end of December. From the outside looking in, Christmas always seemed pretty simple. I always thought you put up a tree and then gave gifts to family. This is a lie. Do you want to sleep in on a Saturday? Too bad. Go put up some lights inside the house. Oh, you want to sleep in on Sunday? Too bad. Go put up some lights outside the house. Next weekend? Nope. Every free moment you have will be spent agonizing over the gifts you must buy.
OBSERVATION 2: People have very strong feelings about their Christmas traditions. If someone is insisting that certain food is what you have to eat Christmas morning, because that's their family tradition, DO NOT SUGGEST ALTERNATIVES. They will stab you in the neck.
OBSERVATION 3: You can buy yourself a gift, but you can't stuff your own stocking. I don't understand this one, but I told my roommate I bought stuff for my stocking, and they said that's not a thing. I don't care. I bought myself mint chapstick, and I will fake surprise.
OBSERVATION 4: Your gift budget does not matter. You can set this budget as high as you want, but the perfect gift will always be $10 too expensive. There is no winning. Just give up.
OBSERVATION 5: There are two streams of Christmas ornaments: The "fillers" and the "keepers". The fillers are the generic ones. The keepers are meant to be more special and unique. This second stream is stored in your family's reliquary to be one day passed on to the children.
OBSERVATION 6: ORNAMENTS ARE EXPENSIVE. One cost me painfully. I am furious. For what it cost, you best believe that I am insisting that it be passed on to my great-grandchildren. If they break it, I will haunt them.
OBSERVATION 7: The religious aspect of Christmas is optional. I really like this one. If I was to suggest having a secular Ramadan to my mother, she would have a heart attack. I will however be trying to get my family to do a Secret Santa for Eid [the last day of Ramadan, committed to feasting]. The name's being workshopped.
Thank you all so much for your appreciation of my analysis of Christmas. I will do my best to get back to everyone. I hope everyone has a safe and lovely holiday season.
Also ... life is too short to not stuff your own stocking.
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* I've been looking forward to getting a nice camera phone. I've got the money for a high-end phone, but I haven't found one that was exactly what I wanted. As an interim measure, I decided to buy a relatively cheap unlocked Chinese Xiaomi (pronounced "shao-mi") Redmi Note 9 Pro camera phone for about $250 USD, including an armor case. It has a quad-camera array in the back, with a 64 megapixel main camera, 8MP wide-angle camera, 5MP close-up macro camera, and a depth-sensor camera; there is also a 16MP selfie camera. The main camera "pixel-bins" to a 16MP image.
The Redmi Note 9 Pro It has a Snapdragon 720G chip with eight ARM cores, maximum clock speed for the faster cores being 2.3 gigahertz. It has a generous 6 gigabytes of RAM, and a not-so-generous 64GB of flash memory. No problem, the first thing I did was put in a 128GB flash chip -- which presented my first obstacle: how do I add flash memory? After a little refresh of my personal wetware memory, I realize that I needed to stick a tool that came with the smartphone into a little hole that would pop out a tray for flash and SIM cards. Actually, I didn't really need the tool, a bent paperclip works fine.
That done, I fired the phone up, and ran into my second obstacle: it came up in Arabic script. I was flummoxed for a while, until I figured there had to be a way to factory-reset the phone. I checked around online, and it turned out all had to do was hold down the power and volume-up buttons simultaneously for a while. I booted up in a clean mode, then went through phone configuration.
After I got comfortable with the phone, I started taking shots of Christmas lights. They were very blurry; further investigation demonstrated that the phone did not have optical image stabilization (OIS), making handheld night shots troublesome. I shrugged and ordered a mini-tripod from Amazon.com. Once I got the tripod, I was able to take good night shots, using a bluetooth remote shutter for hands-off operation.
The Redmi Note Pro 9 will work for now; it can take excellent daylight shots, and I can use the tripod for night shots -- it's small enough to fit into my kit bag. Again, it's just an interim solution, Xiaomi phones being said to not be all that robust, and inclined to cook up. They also have a reputation for throwing a lot of adware at users, but I didn't notice that.
My real solution, I believe, is the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, which will come out in January. It has a top-of-the-line camera array, built around a 108MP main camera -- pixel-binning to 12MP -- and has OIS, though reviews say a tripod is still needed for dark night shots. Price is not clear yet, but it stands to be expensive. No worries, I won't buy it until later in 2021, when I can get it renewed for a good markdown. Since I'm not going anywhere for a while, I can easily wait, and play with the Redmi Note Pro 9 in the meantime.
* As discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Urban Foxes May Be Self-Domesticating In Our Midst" by Virginia Morell, 2 June 2020), foxes have proven adaptable to urban environments on both sides of the Atlantic. A study in the UK suggests that, by moving into human-dominated environments, foxes have been in effect domesticating themselves, evolving doglike traits.
A Soviet biologist named Dmitri Belyaev performed a famous breeding experiment with foxes to study the domestication of animals. Over the generations, not only did the foxes become more accustomed to, indeed happy with, the company of humans, but they also acquired different traits: floppy ears, short or curly tails, extended reproductive seasons, changes in fur coloration, and changes in the shape of their skulls, jaws, and teeth. They also lost their "musky fox smell."
Kevin Parsons -- a Canadian evolutionary biologist, working at the University of Glasgow in Scotland -- remembered Belyaev's experiment when he heard about a large collection of red fox skulls at National Museums Scotland. Parsons had already noticed how many foxes he saw on Glasgow's streets, particularly in the early morning. He says: "They'd walk by me and stare, as if asking, 'Why are you looking at me?'. They were fearless."
Parsons got to wondering how foxes had adapted to an urban environment. To investigate, he examined National Museums Scotland's fox skull collection. About 1500 skulls had been collected from 1971 to 1973 in London and the adjacent countryside, when a fox culling campaign was underway. All were labeled as rural or urban. Urban areas were defined as having buildings, streetlights, and no wooded areas, while rural sites were wooded and lacked human development.
Parsons took photographs of 57 female and 54 male skulls and characterized them by their features. He and his team found a fox's habitat substantially affected the shape of its skull. Most significantly, the urban foxes had noticeably shorter and wider muzzles and smaller brains, than their rural fellows -- both of which had been noted in Belyaev's experiments. Males and females had very similar skull shapes. These changes are characteristic of what Charles Darwin called "domestication syndrome".
Urban foxes' skulls seemed to be optimized for a stronger bite than were those of rural foxes, which are shaped for speed. Parsons suggests that there is less need for speed in an urban environment, which is less characterized by open spaces than the wild -- while urban foxes need a stronger bite to consume human garbage, which often includes bones.
Parsons emphasizes that urban foxes are not domesticated. However, Melinda Zeder -- an emeritus archaeologist at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History -- suggests that the study does show how exposure to human activity can set an animal down the path towards domestication. Like early dogs, urban foxes would need to overcome their fear of humans to get close enough to eat human trash.
Zeder points out that foxes have moved towards domestication before; for example, their bones show up in early farming communities. Unlike wildcats, however, which eventually became housecats through association with humans, foxes didn't become fully domesticated. She says: "They never move any farther down the path to domestication. We don't know why."
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