* This weblog provides an "online notebook" to provide comments on current events, interesting items I run across, and the occasional musing. It promotes no particular ideology. The current daily installment is available HERE. For update notices, follow @gv_goebel on SPOUTIBLE.
* JOE BIDEN (22): Joe Biden had his hands full, trying to fend off his critics, while studying up on constitutional law and Judge Bork's read on it, along with squeezing in campaigning for the presidential primary in the meantime -- Jill filling in at times. To prepare for the hearings on Bork, Joe dug into Bork's work, in particular talking to legal scholars about it. One Chris Schroeder, a professor of law at Duke University Law School in North Carolina, who had carefully read Bork and understood his legal thinking. As Joe said in his memoirs:
BEGIN_QUOTE:
According to Bork's line of thinking, the only tool that judges have to work with in determining "what the law is" is the intentions of the legislators who wrote the law. I asked Schroeder about Bork's views: "Every legislative act is simply a contract or deal made by the people's representatives at one particular point in time and, like a business deal, must be read literally?"
"Correct."
... "Where do the notions of condemning prejudice or extolling human dignity fit in?"
"They don't, unless they are incorporated in a specific reference in a statute or the Constitution, and if they don't, the rights simply cannot be enforced by the courts. Discriminatory prejudices, animus against immigrants, tolerance for dissenting views, compassion for victims of poverty, all stand on a par as arbitrary."
... "Bork's Constitution," I said out loud, "is essentially a contract to be narrowly construed -- nothing more, nothing less. It has no spirit; it is not a reflection of the hopes and aspirations of the American people."
END_QUOTE
Put another way, according to Bork, the US Constitution did not reflect any underlying philosophy, or at least not any of interest to the judiciary. The Constitution had no soul. That rendered the open-ended elements of the Constitution legally meaningless -- the most relevant in this case being the 9th Amendment, which says that, while the Constitution specifies "certain rights" of the people, it did not rule out other rights of the people that weren't specified therein. Joe conceded that:
BEGIN_QUOTE:
Part of what Bork argued remains a legitimate concern: If you let nine individuals appointed for life set the bar, then what stops them from simply making up rights on their own?
... It's a legitimate academic argument, but the man Bork was replacing, Lewis Powell, had made the point that in almost two hundred years the Court had [for better and worse] never gone very far beyond the public ... Even [Justice] Felix Frankfurter, whose jurisprudence bowed almost without fail to the political majority, had said: "To believe that the judicial exercise of judgement could be avoided ... is to suggest that the most important aspect of constitutional adjudication is a function for inanimate machines and not judges."
... Frankfurter ... believed there were fundamental rights that deserved the protection of the courts whether or not they were specifically enumerated in the Constitution [as more or less stated by its 9th Amendment]. ... To me, that was the central glowing idea that lights the path of our democracy ... Judge Bork, however, thought we have our rights because the Constitution relinquishes them to us -- and jealously.
... To Bork the 9th Amendment was vague and tempting language that lured judges to places they ought not go. He had suggested that the 9th Amendment was about as helpful to judges as a water blot on a page and should therefore be disregarded.
END_QUOTE
Some weeks after his nomination to the Supreme Court, Bork contacted Joe and asked to chat in private. Joe agreed, and the meeting took place. Joe had read up on Judge Bork's decisions and had already decided he would oppose Bork's nomination, but told Bork that he would be given a fair hearing; that his nomination would be given a straight vote and not be filibustered; and that Joe would not engage in personal attacks. Bork replied that he understood Joe was inclined to oppose him, but wanted to get the chance to change his mind. The meeting ended cordially. [TO BE CONTINUED]
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* Space launches for March included:
[03 MAR 24] USA CC / FALCON 9 / SPACEX CREW DRAGON ISS 8 -- A SpaceX Falcon booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0353 UTC (next day local time + 5). The crew consisted of commander Matthew Dominick of NASA, pilot Dr. Michael Barratt of NASA, mission specialist Jeanette Epps of NASA, and mission specialist Alexander Grebenkin of Roscosmos. Barrett was on his 3rd spaceflight; the other three were rookies.
[04 MAR 24] USA VB / FALCON 9 / TRANSPORTER 10 -- A SpaceX Falcon booster was launched from Vandenberg SFB at 2205 UTC (local time + 8) on the "Transporter 10" mission -- a rideshare flight to low-Earth orbit, carrying 53 payloads. The dedicated Transporter rideshare missions feature a payload stack of several rings that each contain circular attachment points, or ports, with a defined volume around them that can be filled with one or many satellites depending on customer needs. Payloads included:
This is not necessarily a complete list.
[04 MAR 24] USA CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 6-41 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 2356 UTC (local time + 5) to put 23 SpaceX "Starlink v2 Mini" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit.
[10 MAR 24] USA CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 6-43 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 2305 UTC (local time + 5) to put 23 SpaceX "Starlink v2 Mini" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit.
[11 MAR 24] USA VB / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 7-17 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Vandenberg SFB at 0411 UTC (previous day local time + 7) to put 23 SpaceX "Starlink v2 Mini" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit.
[11 MAR 24] NZ / ELECTRON / STRIX 3 -- A Rocket Labs Electron light booster was launched from New Zealand's Mahia Peninsula at 1413 UTC (next day local time - 13) to put the "Strix 3" SAR satellite into orbit for Synspective, a Japanese Earth-imaging company. It had a launch weight of 100 kilograms (220 pounds) and carried an X-band SAR. Synspective is developing spacecraft for a planned constellation of more than 30 small radar observation satellites to collate data of metropolitan centers across Asia on a daily basis that can be used for urban development planning, construction and infrastructure monitoring, and disaster response.
[13 MAR 24] JP / KAIROS (FAILURE) -- A Kairos booster, from Space One of Japan, was sent on its first test flight, The 18-meter (59') tall rocket exploded five seconds after lifting off. Kairos carried an experimental government satellite intended as a stopgap to temporarily replace intelligence satellites in orbit if they fall offline.
[13 MAR 24] CN XC / LONG MARCH 2C / DRO A,B -- A Long March 2C booster was launched from the Chinese Xichang launch center at 1251 UTC (next day local time - 8) to put the "DRO A,B" satellites int orbit.
[14 MAR 24] USA SX-SB / STARSHIP / TEST FLIGHT 3 (FAILURE) -- A SpaceX Starship heavily-lift booster performed its third all-up test flight. It was to go into orbit but only achieved a suborbital trajectory, and was destroyed in the landing attempt.
[16 MAR 24] USA CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 6-44 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0021 UTC (previous day local time + 4) to put 23 SpaceX "Starlink v2 Mini" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit.
[19 MAR 24] USA VB / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 7-16 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Vandenberg SFB at 0228 UTC (previous day local time + 7) to put 20 SpaceX "Starlink v2 Mini" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit. The launch also included two "Starshield" satellites, including "USA 350,351".
[20 MAR 24] CN WC / LONG MARCH 8 / QUEQIAO 2, TIANDU 1,2 -- A Long March 8 booster was launched from the Chinese Wenchang launch center on Hainan Island at 1427 UTC (local time - 8) to send three Moon orbiters into space, including "Queqiao 2" and "Tiandu 1,2". Queqiao 2 had a launch mass of 1,200 kilograms (2,645 pounds); it was placed in a high-inclination elliptical orbit around the Moon to allow communications with landers on the lunar farside. It also carried a radio receiver for very long baseline interferometry, and a camera to observe ultraviolet sources.
Tiandu 1 & 2 were a pair of navigation technology experimental satellites from the Deep Space Exploration Laboratory. Named after the Huangshan Mountains' Tiandu Peak, the Tiandu 1 and Tiandu 2 satellites had a mass of 61 and 15 kilograms (134 and 33 pounds) respectively.
They were to fly in formation in a lunar orbit to verify the calibration of the navigation system for high-precision orbit determination, using inter-satellite ranging methods. They were also to perform other communications and signal routing activities, with the data informing the development and implementation of the planned Queqiao Communication & Remote Constellation System.
[21 MAR 24 CN JQ / LONG MARCH 2D / YUNHAI-2 x 6 -- A Chinese Chang Zheng (Long March) 2D booster was launched from Juiquan at 0527 UTC (local time - 8) to put six "Yunhai-2" weather satellites into orbit.
[21 MAR 24] US WI / ELECTRON / NROL 123 -- A Rocket Labs Electron light booster was launched from Wallops Island at 0725 UTC (local time - 4) on the "NROL 123" mission. This was the fifth and last launch under the NRO's "Rapid Acquisition of a Small Rocket (RASR)" program, the primary payload being "RASR 5" AKA "USA 352". Other payloads included "Aerocube 16A,B" from The Aerospace Corporation, and "Mola", from the US Naval Postgraduate School.
[21 MAR 24] USA CC / FALCON 9 / SPACEX DRAGON CRS 30 -- A SpaceX Falcon booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 1547 UTC (local time + 4), carrying the 30th operational "Dragon" cargo capsule to the International Space Station (ISS) to provide supplies to the ISS Expedition 68 crew. It docked with the ISS Harmony module the next day.
A set of CubeSats were taken along, to be deployed from the ISS later, including (not a complete list):
[23 MAR 22] RU BK / SOYUZ / SOYUZ ISS 71S (ISS) -- A Soyuz booster was launched from Baikonur at 1236 UTC (local time + 6) to put the "Soyuz ISS 71S" AKA "MS 25" crewed space capsule into orbit on an International Space Station (ISS) mission. There were three crew, including commander Oleg Novitsky of Roscosmos, Tracy Caldwell Dyson of NASA, and Belarusian Marina Vasilevskaya. It docked with the ISS a few hours later.
[24 MAR 24] USA CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 6-42 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0309 UTC (previous day local time + 4) to put 23 SpaceX "Starlink v2 Mini" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit.
[25 MAR 24] USA CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 6-46 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 2342 UTC (local time + 4) to put 23 SpaceX "Starlink v2 Mini" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit.
[26 MAR 24] CN TY / LONG MARCH 6A / YUNHAI-3 02 -- A Chinese Chang Zheng (Long March) 6A booster was launched from Taiyuan at 2251 UTC (local time - 8) to put the "Yunhai-3 02" weather satellite into orbit.
[30 MAR 24] USA CC / FALCON 9 / EUTELSAT 36D -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 2152 UTC (local time + 4) to put the "Eutelsat 36D" geostationary comsat into orbit.
[31 MAR 24] USA CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 6-45 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0936 UTC (local time + 4) to put 23 SpaceX "Starlink v2 Mini" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit.
[31 MAR 24] RU BK / SOYUZ 2-1B / RESURS-P 4 -- A Soyuz 2-1b booster was launched from Baikonur at 0936 UTC (local time - 6) to put the "Resurs P 4" civil Earth resources observation satellite into Sun-synchronous orbit.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* GEN-AI ARRIVES (10): As discussed in an article from ECONOMIST.com ("Generative AI Could Radically Alter the Practice of Law", 6 June 2023), generative AI stands to have a substantial impact on the practice of law.
It didn't get off to a good start. Steven Schwartz, a personal-injury lawyer at the New York firm Levidow, Levidow & Oberman, used ChatGPT to help him prepare a court filing. He relied a bit too heavily on ChatGPT, which blithely generated a motion full of made-up cases, rulings, and quotes, confidently assuring Schwartz that "cases I provided are real and can be found in reputable legal databases." He found out they weren't.
Some lawyers concluded that proved GAI was useless for the practice of law. In reality, anyone who tinkers with ChatGPT for a time learns that it's a "meta search engine", scouring the internet in response to a query, then generating a coherent summary of the results. Those results are no more valid than the source materials; ChatGPT provides links to the source materials, allowing the user to check, which Schwartz didn't do.
ChatGPT is a powerful tool, but like all powerful tools, it takes some knowledge to use it -- knowing how to ask the right questions, knowing how to sort out the answers. Anyone who understands the tool can make very good use of it. ChatGPT involves mass searching and analysis of texts, which is exactly what legal research is all about. According to a report from Goldman Sachs, a bank, 44% of legal tasks could be performed by AI, more than in any occupation surveyed except for clerical and administrative support.
Lawyers spend much of their time digging through piles of wordy documents, and are already using AI to help out, for example for due diligence, research, and data analytics. In the past, such activities have generally relied on "extractive" AI that can mine information from a text in response to a query. GAI tools like ChatGPT can do such things, but are far more powerful, able to improve legal research and document review.
As Pablo Arredondo -- creator of a generative-AI "legal assistant" called CoCounsel -- says, using his tool ...
BEGIN_QUOTE:
... removes the tyranny of the [blind] keyword ... It can tell that "we reverse Jenkins" [a fictional legal case] and "we regretfully consign Jenkins to the dustbin of history" are the same thing.
END_QUOTE
Allen & Overy, a London-based firm, has adopted a legal AI tool named "Harvey" using it for contract analysis, due diligence, and litigation prep. However, not all lawyers are excited about GAI. One survey found that 82% of them believe GAI can be used for legal work, but just 51% thought it should. There are concerns about "hallucinations" -- the inclination of GAI tools to make things up -- or feeding information supposedly covered by attorney-client privilege into algorithms.
In reality, the technology is improving, along with the education of users on how to use the tools. After Schwartz's epic fail went public, a Federal judge in Texas told attorneys appearing before him to provide a certificate attesting that they either did not use GAI, or if they did, they checked the final result. In the same way that it would make no sense to demand that lawyers do their research in libraries when they had access to extensive legal databases like Westlaw and LexisNexis, it makes no sense for courts to ban GAI tools.
GAI offers three big advantages to the legal profession:
Is GAI honestly good news for lawyers? That's ambiguous. It is very likely good news for clients, who only want to hire lawyers to solve their problems. Increased automation of the law should make it cheaper and more efficient. Indeed, for routine legal matters, like drawing up wills, there may be no need for lawyers as such; people will be able to pay a set fee to use a GAI system to do all the work on its own, or for that matter the judiciary could provide one. When that will happen, nobody knows.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* PALAU OTHR: As discussed in an article from THEDRIVE.com ("US Building Advanced Over-The-Horizon Radar On Palau" by Emma Helfrich & Tyler Rogoway, 30 December 2022), the US Air Force (USAF) is now installing a new "over-the-horizon (OTH)" radar on the Pacific island of Palau. Named the "Tactical Mobile Over-the-Horizon Radar (TACMOR)", the installation will enhance air and maritime domain situational awareness for US and allied forces in the region.
A traditional "sky wave" or "backscatter" over-the-horizon radar (OTHR) typically consists of an array of big fixed fence-like antennas spread out over an area, with separated transmit and receive arrays. OTHRs can detect targets at extreme ranges beyond what is known as the "radar horizon", defined by radar range along a line of sight. OTHRs can't give a precise location for a target, but can see if something's here, as well as figure out its speed and bearing. Ranges are about 2,400 kilometers (1,500 miles) or more.
OTHRs were deployed during the Cold War as part of early warning networks, but then fell into disuse. They have been revived as Cold War-like tensions have re-emerged, and the technology has been refined. Now there are also "surface wave" or "ground wave" OTHRs which use the conductive saltwater of the ocean and a radio wave's inclination to bend around curves as per the "Norton Principle". They have well shorter range than sky-wave OTHRs, but are more predictable in their operation; the two can be combined to give the advantages of both.
The TACMOR OTHR on Palau will support space-based and terrestrial-based sensor and weapon systems for the potential cueing and early warning of incoming hypersonic weapons, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, enemy aircraft, and ships. The radar will permit persistent monitoring of distant areas that would be otherwise hard to observe.
The overall TACMOR initiative began in July 2017 as a previously funded Joint Capability Technology Demonstration (JCTD) with the Air Force. JCTDs are meant to examine and assess the military utility of new technology, as well as determine its system integrity and appropriate application. TACMOR went through JCTD and has transitioned to a program of record.
The facilities being constructed to accommodate TACMOR equipment on Palau, according to official documentation, include "electrical utilities, reinforced concrete pads, and foundations, tie downs for equipment, water and wastewater, access roads, paved parking and turnaround areas, two levels of security fencing, and extensive site work."
Air Force documents more specifically describe a remote, unattended transmit site consisting of ten elements and high-power amplifiers transmitting high-frequency sky wave OTHR waveforms, along with a separate unattended receive site with 128 dual-monopole antennas. The receive site will also feature "secure facilities for signal processing of the received data and real-time target extraction information." It takes a fair amount of digital smarts to get OTHR to work right.
In addition, TACMOR will have a communications infrastructure. Documents don't say much about that, though they do mention that communications links will "enable the data flow from the transmit and receive sites to an off-site operations control center." The OCC will distribute the tracking and targeting information to US and allied forces.
Palau is an independent country with an established history with the USA under the 1994 Compacts of Free Association (COFA) agreement, which governs the military relationship between the two nations. The US military has been making significant use of Palau's islands for various military exercises over the years. The installation on Palau of TACMOR underscores the Pentagon's increased emphasis on providing a persistent US military presence in the Indo-Pacific as of late. Palau itself is becoming particularly strategic as the USA focuses on preparing for a potential high-end conflict with China, as well as addressing the threats posed by the missile arsenals of adversaries such as North Korea.
COMMENT ON ARTICLEDAYLOG MON 08 MAR 24: The "538" website ran the results of a poll of voter attitudes towards reproductive rights.
1: "Should abortion be legal?" 70% said YES, up > 10 points from 2015.
2: "Do you approve overturning ROE V WADE?" Only 36% said YES.
3: "Are reproductive rights important to your vote?" 51% said YES.
4: "Should IVF be legal?" 67% said YES.
5: "Should abortion pills be readily available?" 71% said YES.
In short, support for reproductive rights runs ~2:1 against opposition. It was a little surprising that only half the population said RR was a big deal to them; how exactly that slices out the other stats is not clear.
NPR also had a surprising statistic: only 14% of the US population are white evangelicals, down from 25% in the 1990s. I thought they had been still growing. I knew Trump was an inflection point towards decline; it looks like they're going down faster than I thought they were.
DAYLOG TUE 09 MAR 24: Congress is coming back in session after Spring Break, with the major item on the agenda being to pass a Ukraine aid package. House Speaker Mike Johnson seems inclined to do so, obtaining Democrat support to counter the obstruction of the House MAGA Caucus.
The question is being asked: "Why do the House MAGA want to block Ukraine aid?" Surely they must see that appeasing Putin is a bad idea in all respects. In reality, of course, they just don't care. Trump wants to sell out Ukraine, that's good enough for them.
So why does Trump want to sell out Ukraine? Easy, he's sending up a flare to Vladimir Putin. Trump is in big trouble, and Putin's tried to help him in the past. It's a Trump transaction: "Help me, I'll give you Ukraine." It won't work, but Trump is desperate.
There is nothing stranger in Trump's agenda than his kissing up to Putin. Partly Trump honestly like tyrants, but it seems more that Trump thinks the Russians will always help him. The pathetic part is that the GOP has, to a degree, gone along & bent over for Russia as well. The fact that the Russians only back Trump to tear down the USA is not an issue to Trump at all.
DAYLOG WED 10 MAR 24: I've got Amazon Prime, but I've never watched any Amazon video series for long. However, I'm seeing enthusiastic send-ups of a video series based on the FALLOUT games series. I've never played FALLOUT, but the videos do look like fun.
And "fun" is the operative word here. The series would be guaranteed to be bad if it pretended to be serious, but it seems to be over-the-top and darkly humorous. I can hang with that. I've been mildly curious about the HALO video series too -- but not gonna pay for rental yet, even though it's cheap.
Popular video series based on games appears to be a coming thing, overturning the stereotype of video-game movies as lame, and replacing super-hero movies in the top spot. Incidentally, there's a video from SNL floating around that re-imagines MARIO BROS as a grim post-apocalyptic sci-fi drama.
Yes, some of us geezers are into video games. Hey, we've been playing them since they were invented. I only have time to play short games, though. I really like racing games.
DAYLOG THU 11 MAR 24: GIZMODO had a review of music trax generated by the UDIO GAI music generator ... they were all weak, but some were fun. Case in point, a Garth Brooks sendup titled: "Wow I Didn't Know That", dedicated to ignorant rednecks everywhere:
! When they say drinking turpentine ain't where it's at, ! And insurance fraud is a Federal crime, ! Wow, I didn't know that, ! You're telling me now for the first time. ! Well look here, this is all news to me, ! What else do you think this could possibly be?
I also liked the line: "And Twitter ain't a legitimate pastime?" Then there was the folk ballad "Netflix Nights Serenade":
! Under the spell of tales untold, ! In every plot twist, bold and bold, ! Together, our dreams unfold, ! Through highs and lows, it's you I adore, ! On Netflix nights, it's love we explore.
Finally, last and definitely least, is "Ding Dong Dang It's Taco Time!", easily one of the most inane commercial jingles ever made:
! Do you like tacos? ! Yeah, we like tacos! ! Do you like lettuce, ! Cheese, and salsa? ! Ding dong dang, it's taco time! ! Yeah, taco time! ! Ding dong dang, it's taco time! ! Tacos for you and me!
I must admit that it made me think of thawing out the family-sized package of frozen enchiladas I have in the freezer. Give me a week or two. Udio is in open beta right now, I'll have to try to cook up some "Retro-Wave" -- electronic music in 1980s style.
DAYLOG FRI 12 MAR 24: As mentioned earlier this week, I was surprised to see that evangelical Christianity is in decline in the USA. I used MS Copilot to get a survey, with the following results:
1: The percentage of Americans identifying as Christians has fallen from 71% in 2014 to 65% in 2021, while the percentage of those with "no religious identity" has risen from 15% in 2016 to 21% in 2020. Notice the rapid decline more or less matches the rise of Trump.
2: As for white evangelicals, they are crashing, shrinking from 23% of Americans in 2006 to 14% in 2020, faster than the norm for religions in the USA. Their share of the population has decreased by 37% during this period.
Trump was elected exactly at the time when the demographics were tilting against Right extremism. Although not all white evangelicals supported Trump -- younger ones often didn't -- the majority did, which was their big mistake. Backing a criminal is accelerating their decline.
AND SO ON: ECONOMIST.com recently ran an essay by Feng Yujun, a professor of international relations and an expert on Russia, with the interesting title: "Russia Is Sure To Lose In Ukraine", the essay starting with:
BEGIN_QUOTE:
The war between Russia and Ukraine has been catastrophic for both countries. With neither side enjoying an overwhelming advantage and their political positions completely at odds, the fighting is unlikely to end soon. One thing is clear, though: the conflict is a post-cold-war watershed that will have a profound, lasting global impact.
END_QUOTE
Feng says four factors are determining the war:
Feng says the consequence is clear:
BEGIN_QUOTE:
In combination, these four factors make Russia's eventual defeat inevitable. In time it will be forced to withdraw from all occupied Ukrainian territories, including Crimea. Its nuclear capability is no guarantee of success. Didn't a nuclear-armed America withdraw from Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan?
Though the war has been hugely costly for Ukraine, the strength and unity of its resistance has shattered the myth that Russia is militarily invincible. Ukraine may yet rise from the ashes. When the war ends, it can look forward to the possibility of joining the European Union and NATO.
END_QUOTE
The comment about the US in Afghanistan brings up the similar defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan. The Russians have suffered far worse in Ukraine than they did in Afghanistan -- and even if they prevail on the battlefield, they'll be fighting Ukrainian guerrillas indefinitely. As far as Russian nuclear threats go, nobody takes them seriously. The USA made some fuzzy-muddled statements about going nuclear in Korea, with such negative feedback from allies that it wasn't done again. There were no such threats from the Americans in their wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
Add to Putin's woes flowing from his invasion of Ukraine is that it has created political instability in Russia, and also suggested to post-Soviet states that had been agreeable to the Kremlin before the invasion that Russia presents a threat to them. They are now distancing themselves from Moscow in various ways. Putin has also managed to revitalize NATO, with the countries in the alliance raising their defense spending and bolstering Eastern Europe -- and, in a sharp rebuff to Putin's attempts to bully them, accepted Sweden and Finland as members.
Feng makes a particularly interesting comment about the UN:
BEGIN_QUOTE:
The war will also help to reshape the UN Security Council. It has highlighted the body's inability to effectively assume its responsibility of maintaining world peace and regional security owing to the abuse of veto power by some permanent members. This has riled the international community, increasing the chances that reform of the Security Council will speed up. Germany, Japan, India and other countries are likely to become permanent members and the five current permanent members may lose their veto power.
END_QUOTE
Feng makes even more interesting comments about China:
BEGIN_QUOTE:
Shrewd observers note that China's stance towards Russia has reverted from the "no limits" stance of early 2022, before the war, to the traditional principles of "non-alignment, non-confrontation and non-targeting of third parties".
Although China has not joined Western sanctions against Russia, it has not systematically violated them. It is true that China imported more than 100 million tonnes of Russian oil in 2023, but that is not a great deal more than it was buying annually before the war. If China stops importing Russian oil and instead buys from elsewhere, it will undoubtedly push up international oil prices, putting huge pressure on the world economy.
Since the war began China has conducted two rounds of diplomatic mediation. Success has proved elusive but no one should doubt China's desire to end this cruel war through negotiations. That wish shows that China and Russia are very different countries. Russia is seeking to subvert the existing international and regional order by means of war, whereas China wants to resolve disputes peacefully.
END_QUOTE
This is putting a very positive spin on Beijing -- China's desire to "resolve disputes peacefully" doesn't seem to apply to Taiwan and China's other neighbors -- but it isn't entirely propaganda either. China is holding all the cards in its dealings with Russia, and is not invested in Putin's war in Ukraine. Beijing can take a relatively impartial view of the matter.
Feng concludes, very correctly, that a cease-fire won't happen. That would simply allow Putin to refit and re-arm, encouraging to start new wars at his convenience. Ukraine and her allies know this; neither side is interested in a halt to the fighting. The war will continue until Russia accepts defeat and withdraws. That may take more years, but it will happen. Russia cannot win this war.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* JOE BIDEN (21): Joe Biden had worried about the difficulty of conducting a presidential campaign and running the Senate Judiciary Committee at the same time. Seventeen days after Joe declared his candidacy, the worries took form: Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell announced that, since he was about to turn 80, he was going to retire. Ronald Reagan, as was his right and responsibility, was going to nominate a replacement, who would have to be vetted by the Judiciary Committee.
The word came down that the nominee would be Judge Robert H. Bork of the DC Federal Court of Appeals. Bork was a solid conservative, with views similar to those of Antonin Scalia, and somewhat infamous for his role in the "Saturday Night Massacre" in 1973.
President Richard Nixon, worried about the investigation of the Watergate affair by Special Counsel Archibald Cox, had ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson refused and immediately resigned. Nixon then went to Deputy AG William Ruckelshaus and told him to fire Cox. Ruckelshaus refused and immediately resigned. Bork, at the time, was third in command at the Department of Justice; Nixon told him to fire Cox, and Bork did so. The Massacre was a political disaster for Nixon, but that's another story; the important thing is that the event suggested that Bork wasn't to be trusted.
What specifically worried Joe was that liberal Justice Powell as essentially "the finger in the dam holding back the Supreme Court from ratifying the [Reagan] conservative social agenda." When Scalia took over Renhquist's empty seat, there had been no dramatic shift in the status quo; Bork replacing Powell meant a big shift. Joe released a public statement outlining his concerns:
BEGIN_QUOTE:
I hope the president will nominate a man or a woman who is superbly qualified, who comes to the bench with an open mind -- someone, in short, in the mould of Lewis Powell. A major issue upon which this nomination could is whether the nominee would alter significantly the balance of the court ...
Justice Powell has been the decisive vote in a host of decisions in the past fifteen years relating to civil rights and civil liberties. The scales of justice should not be tipped by ideological biases. I will resist any efforts by this administration to do indirectly what it has failed to do directly with Congress -- and that is impose an ideological agenda upon on jurisprudence. In light of the special role played with such distinction by Lewis Powell as the deciding vote on so many cases of tremendous importance, I will examine with special care any nominee who is predisposed to undo the long-established protections that have become part of the social fabric that binds us as a nation.
END_QUOTE
The Reagan Administration went ahead and Bork. Once the news went public, conservatives lined up to back Bork, while liberals lined up to fight him. Ted Kennedy denounced Bork in the Senate:
BEGIN_QUOTE:
Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of the government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are at the heart of our democracy.
END_QUOTE
Ted Kennedy was clearly not inclined to take any prisoners in the fight against Judge Bork. Joe was in a troublesome position in directing the Judiciary Committee hearings on the nomination, since what Joe had already said about the matter was enough for those on the Right to seize on to claim he was biased against Bork -- while his insistence that Bork be given a fair hearing suggested to those on the Left that Joe was going to roll over and accept Bork. The reality was that Joe always spoke his mind; it would be beneath him to conceal what he really felt. Nonetheless, as the saying goes, a Centrist goes to the middle of the road and gets hit by traffic going both ways. The hearings greatly complicated his campaigning for the presidential nomination. In the meantime, the headaches persisted. [TO BE CONTINUED]
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* GIMMICKS & GADGETS: As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("Gogoro Unveils Battery-Swapping, Cargo-Hauling, All-Terrain E-Scooter" by Paul Ridden, 24 October 2023), electric scooter manufacturer Gogoro of Taiwan has now introduced the "CrossOver SmartScooter", an e-scooter built for work.
This "2-wheel SUV" has high clearance of 14.2 centimeters (5.6") and features a ruggedized frame, a 7.6-kW (10 HP) liquid-cooled motor and a low-maintenance Flo Drive carbon belt instead of a chain, driving 30-centimeter (12-inch) wheels. Battery units are estimated as good for up to 150 kilometers (93 miles) at 30 KPH (18.6 MPH). It also has a synchronized front-back braking system, a high-intensity LED headlight, plus electronics with bluetooth, LTE remote networking, and an app for the scooter. Traction and cruise control are options.
Most visibly, it features a multi-point mounting system for locking on storage options across four cargo areas. Users can strap a bag or box to the rigid platform above the headlight or install a front rack; drop some luggage in the extended board in front of the seat; and there's a cargo rack out back that can grow when the passenger seat is raised or removed. Additional rack gear can be added.
* A video of Ukrainians disarming a Russian bomb involved a surprising gadget: a "rocket wrench", used to unscrew the bomb fuze from a safe distance. The wrench is clamped onto the fuze, with two rocket cartridges on arms spinning it around after they are electrically ignited via wires. The video showed the wrench in action; it had a rope tied onto its front, presumably to ensure that the wrench didn't fly off and become a hazard.
* As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("Coal's Green Potential" by Michael Franco, 25 May 2023), nobody thinks of coal as being a clean fuel, but researchers at Pennsylvania State University have found out it could play a role in a clean energy future -- by being used as a hydrogen storage medium.
Storing hydrogen is problematic, with experiments focusing on powders, pastes, and cartridges to do the job. None are in commercial service yet, so the search continues. The Penn State researchers knew that that coal is good at storing methane gas, since it sticks to the material through adsorption, and wondered if coal could soak up hydrogen gas as well.
To test out the idea, the researchers built pressure-producing equipment to force the hydrogen into the coal. Using eight different types of coal from across the USA, they found that coal is very good at storing hydrogen. The best of the eight was low-volatile bituminous coal found in Virginia and anthracite coal from Pennsylvania.
Liu Shimin -- associate professor of energy and mineral engineering at Penn State -- says that people tend to think of coal as a kind of rock, but that's misleading: "It has high carbon content with a lot of small pores that can store much more gas. So coal is like a sponge that can hold many more hydrogen molecules compared to other non-carbon materials."
The research team is now digging deeper into the properties of coal, such as permeability and diffusivity, to determine how readily hydrogen could be pumped into and out of the material, with the goal being to create efficient coal-based hydrogen "batteries." Liu believes that an added benefit of a coal "battery" would be to help communities that have been economically devastated by the shift away from coal for energy production.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* GEN-AI ARRIVES (9): As discussed in article from ECONOMIST.com ("Meet Ernie, China's answer to ChatGPT", 3 September 2023), China's Baidu has now introduced "Ernie Bot" -- their answer to the Microsoft-OpenAI ChatGpt generative-AI (GAI) chatbot.
A decade ago Baidu, as the operator of China's biggest search engine, was at the center of the country's internet. Together with Alibaba and Tencent, China's two most valuable internet businesses, it formed a triumvirate known as "BAT". With foreign search engines banned or heavily censored in China, it faced little competition in its core business.
Baidu still enjoys more than 90% of search traffic in the China, but due to shifting technology, it is much diminished. Chinese internet users now generally search the web using apps like Tencent's WeChat, while advertising dollars have shifted to apps like Douyin, the Chinese relative of TikTok. Meituan, a delivery platform, and Pinduoduo, an e-commerce firm, have surged past Baidu's market value. Baidu attempted to launch its own delivery and shopping offerings, plus other services such as payments and social media -- to see most of them flop. Baidu's market capitalization is now about an eighth of Tencent's, down from a fifth five years ago.
Baidu's Ernie, however, has reignited interest in the company, getting a million downloads in less than a day after it was introduced; it took ChatGPT five days. Baidu's share price got a fair bump; other Chinese GAI apps introduced at the same time didn't get nearly as much interest. Robin Li, Baidu's chief executive and co-founder, said that the roll-out of AI had been a "paradigm shift" for the company. It had taken time, the company having been pumping resources into AI for years; work on Ernie began in earnest in 2019.
Baidu has said little about how Ernie will actually affect the company's bottom line, but it is clear Ernie will drive more traffic to Baidu's search engine and other services, raising advertising revenues. Ernie has also enhanced Baidu's status as China's largest AI cloud provider, with Baidu also offering services for companies after AI models tailored to their specific needs.
There has been less enthusiasm for Baidu's other AI venture, an autonomous-taxi business, is more muted. The service has been launched in a few cities across China, allowing users to hail robotaxis via a mobile app. But trips must still be monitored remotely, and a wider roll-out could be years away. It's not likely to generate profits for some time, if ever.
Much of what comes next for Baidu will depend on policymaking in Beijing and Washington DC. Restrictions on the sale of advanced chips, particularly AI processing chips, is inflicting great pain on Baidu. China has not been able to produce effective AI processors in quantity; Baidu has designed its own "Kunlunxin" chip, but has had to outsource production to companies like TSMC, a Taiwanese contract manufacturer. Baidu appears to be distancing itself from Kunlunxin, suggesting the effort is not going well.
The Chinese government is attempting to promote the development of advanced AI processors, but nothing much has happened yet. The government is also taking a strong regulatory interest in AI, that interest tailored towards the government's efforts at social control. Companies offering generative-AI services are required to identify and report "illegal content". They must also adhere to China's vaguely-defined "core socialist values". After netizens spotted that a prompt for a "patriotic cat" in Ernie's drawing application produced a picture of a feline with an American flag, the words "patriotism" and "patriotic cat" were blocked in the tool.
Ernie claims that COVID-19 originated among American vape users in July 2019; later that year the virus was spread to the Chinese city of Wuhan, via American lobsters. On matters of politics, however, Ernie is quiet. The chatbot is confused by questions such as: "Who is China's president?" -- and will tell you the name of Xi Jinping's mother, but not those of his siblings. It draws a blank if asked about the drawbacks of socialism. It often attempts to redirect sensitive conversations by saying: "Let's talk about something else."
Users may be annoyed by what Chinese AI cannot say, or worried about being reported for asking the wrong questions. In other words, the Chinese government is not necessarily Baidu's friend, with companies knowing they operate on the sufferance of government bureaucrats -- who aren't comfortable with an open-ended source of information like Ernie. [TO BE CONTINUED]
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* US, JAPAN, & CHINA: As discussed in an article from NBCNEWS.com ("In Countering China, US Sees A Growing Role For Japan" by Janis Mackey Frayer, Yamamoto Arata, and Jennifer Jett, 14 March 2024), the partnership between Japan and the USA has had its difficulties, but it has endured -- and, in the face of growing Chinese belligerence and North Korean provocations, has become stronger.
NBC News interviewed America's ambassador to Nippon, Rahm Emanuel -- previously President Obama's chief of staff and then mayor of Chicago -- says that China has "been more aggressive -- as we have, from purely a strategic standpoint of putting our roots down even deeper in the area at the behest of regional allies."
The US-Japan relationship, Emanuel adds, "is evolving from one that was always focused on alliance protection" to one focused on "alliance projection". That means asserting US and Japanese influence around the Asia-Pacific region, including through broader partnerships such as Washington's AUKUS security alliance with Australia and Britain, and the Quad, a security grouping made up of the US, Australia, India, and Japan.
The interview with Emanuel took place as US and Japanese Self-Defense Forces participated in joint exercises known as "Iron Fist," which have taken place annually since 2006 and moved to Japan from California last year. They underscore the urgency with which Washington is shoring up security partnerships in the Asia-Pacific region, where China, Russia, and North Korea pose growing threats.
The Biden Administration is banking on Japan become a stronger military power as China becomes more threatening. Emanuel says: "In the region, the United States and Japan are united -- politically, diplomatically, economically, strategically -- because they are an effective deterrent against an untethered China." That deterrence is effective, he adds, because it underscores "that we're the permanent Pacific power -- you can bet long on America."
Major General Kitajima Hajime -- commander of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force's Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade, recently commented in a news conference that the country was "facing the most severe security environment since the end of World War II." Kitajima cited Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, saying one of the major lessons from the conflict was that "there are actual states that will invade another country if they are perceived as not having sufficient strength to defend itself."
Emanuel said other Asia-Pacific countries with worries about China are reassured by the US-Japan alliance. Japan hosts more US troops, about 54,000, than any other country in the world, roughly half stationed on the island of Okinawa.
In a sign of the importance of the US-Japan relationship, President Joe Biden invited Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio to Washington for a state visit in April. Kishida will also address a joint session of Congress.
Under a new security strategy adopted in 2022, Japan has moved to reinforce its military power, in a dramatic shift away from the purely-defensive posture that has guided modern Japan until now.
In December 2023, Japan's Cabinet approved a record $56 billion USD defense budget for fiscal 2024, part of a five-year program to build up the military. It also eased a postwar ban on the export of lethal weapons, starting with the shipment of Japanese-produced Patriot guided missiles to the US to help boost a depleted inventory. Emanuel says: "They've acquired counterstrike capability, things that everybody thought were third-rail politics."
In another big step, Japan has improved long-strained ties with South Korea. Biden will hosting Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol for a historic trilateral summit at Camp David, Maryland, in August. Emanuel says: "The trilateral between the United States, Japan and Korea is deterrence. Increased economic trade is deterrence. Political alliances, diplomatic alliances is deterrence. So we don't limit it to the military."
ED: It is somewhat strange that, the Japanese being noted for non-confrontation civility, anyone would think that Rahm Emanuel, who has a reputation for being highly confrontational and not civil at all, was a good fit for being ambassador there. Apparently he's mellowed.
COMMENT ON ARTICLEDAYLOG MON 01 APR 24: On 25 March, after some organizational gymnastics, Trump Media & Technology Group, the main product of which is the Truth Social messaging platform used by Donald Trump, went public on the NASDAQ stock -- with the symbol "DJT", after Trump's initials.
Trump is of course the majority shareholder in DJT, with the initial valuation of the stock giving his holdings a value of billions of dollars. He couldn't cash in right away, the rules saying he had to wait six months after the initial offering -- anti-dumping rules, it seems. There was skepticism that Trump was ever going to make big money out of a stock sale out of DJT, Truth Social having been bleeding red ink all along. Last week, DJT stock peaked, giving Trump's holdings a value of over $6 billion USD -- but now have declined, to less than $4 billion USD.
It is true that "meme stocks" like DJT's -- which trade on other factors besides assessed value -- do tend to fluctuate wildly, and Trump may end up making a bundle off of DJT. Then again, as Trump falls, so will the value of his holdings in DJT. He continues to fall.
DAYLOG TUE 02 APR 24: One Philip Elliot published an essay on TIME.com with the amusing title: "Trump Built His Brand Bashing Obamacare -- Now It's More Popular Than He Is." The Affordable Care Act (ACA or "ObamaCare") was passed in 2010, and did not take the USA by storm.
There were many technical problems with the ACA startup; it was just too big a thing to be done cleanly. The Right became obsessed with overturning the act, with Donald Trump establishing its extinction as a central plank of his 2016 presidential campaign. Having won the election, Trump tried to kill the ACA, and failed. He had to be satisfied with hobbling it. Trump kept talking about a "wonderful replacement" he would introduce for ObamaCare, but his "plan" was never more than thin smoke and mirrors.
Joe Biden, after taking the White House in 2020, worked on revitalizing the ACA -- doing so quietly, a piece at a time. Now resistance to the ACA has all but evaporated. Although the ACA still leaves something to be desired, it helps tens of million of Americans, and the resistance has faded out.
That is not so surprising; there was resistance on the Right to Medicare / Medicaid when they were introduced, but eventually they were normalized. Even Trump is now talking about reinforcing the ACA. Of course, as Elliot appears to realize, Trump says a lot of things. Pay them no mind.
DAYLOG WED 03 APR 24: There's been a lot of frustration over Russia's ability to circumvent sanctions imposed after Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. However, as discussed by CNBC, the sanctions do not and cannot cripple Russia -- they instead make life more difficult for Putin.
Case in point, although Europe has greatly reduced its imports of Russian gas and fuel, India and China continue to buy Russian oil. India, at least, is abiding by the "price cap" of $60 USD established by the US and its allies, limiting how much money Russia can make off exports. The USA understands that India can't just cut off importing Russian oil; India following the price cap is good enough. From India's point of view, why not? Like they want to pay more? Incidentally, diplomatic and trade arrangements between India and Ukraine appear to be agreeable. How China handles oil imports is another question -- but they don't want to pay more, either, and they're holding the good cards.
Not incidentally, there's also been Ukrainian complaints about the Western-source electronics found in dud Russian cruise missiles. It is in reality impossible to stop Russia from obtaining "commercial off-the-shelf (COTS)" electronics; the Russians can easily get them via intermediaries in friendly countries. It's like trying to control, say, pocket calculators. However, the Russians do end up paying a markup.
DAYLOG 04 APR 24: I'm something of a student of scams, and I was a bit surprised to discover one I hadn't heard of before: the "car wrap" scam. The scammers contact a mark, often a student, and offer big money to put ads on the mark's car.
If the mark bites, the scammers send a way too big, and bogus, check, getting money from the mark in the confusion of "correcting" the error. Apparently the scammers also will charge hidden "fees" to help rip off the mark. I'd be tempted to play along for fun -- but don't EVER talk to a scammer!
* In my efforts to learn Japanese, I liked to decipher anime clips downloaded from Youtube. It's not easy sometimes to make out what the characters are saying, & getting a transcription would help. There was a transcription plug-in for Firefox, but it doesn't work any more.
There are plenty of transcription services online, but all I found were for pay. I searched again today, and found "Notta" -- which is also a paid service, except it does offer 120 minutes of free transcription a month, which is like 4x more than I need.
I logged into Notta via Google and transcribed a video right away. Sometimes I win one. The transcription doesn't work perfectly; one issue is that Japanese is loaded with "homophones", or different words that are phonetically identical, giving opportunities for confusion. Not surprisingly, the transcriber may not get what was said phonetically right, though it will be close. In either case, I get clues, and the transcription is still a big leg up.
DAYLOG FRI 05 APR 24: Reports from the Ukraine War indicate that Ukrainian drones performed coordinated attacks on Russian airfields, with the Ukrainians claiming destruction of or substantial damage to a number of Russian major combat aircraft.
Of course, the "fog of war" applies, with conflicting reports from the two sides, and many unanswered questions about the attacks. How big were the drones, how much damage can they do? Were they "stealthy", to confound air-defense radars? Were jammer drones included? And then there's the question of whether the Russians have, like the Ukrainians, started to turn out good decoys in quantity. We should get OSINT (open-source intelligence) satellite imagery soon to clear some things up.
One thing is clear: it was obvious from reports of Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia from early in the year that the Ukrainians were only getting started, as this new wave of attacks demonstrates. By summer, the campaign should be in full swing.
Incidentally, videos are starting to show up of Ukrainian ground drones in action. One video showed a four-wheel drone with fat tires carrying two 120-millimeter mortar rounds to perform a kamikaze mission on a small bridge. Another video showed a smaller tracked drone creeping up to a Russian trenchline, dropping an explosive charge into it that went off with a fair bang, and creeping back to Ukrainian lines again.
AND SO ON: One of the number of inconsequential things that happened this last week was the disbandment of the "No Labels" movement. No Labels wanted to field a centrist candidate for the presidency to push back on the toxic "hyperpartisan" political environment currently existent in the USA -- but after sinking like $70 million USD into the effort, they announced they couldn't come up with a candidate, and were giving up. The death of ex-Senator Joe Lieberman, the most prominent No Labels backer, at the end of March appears to have been the last straw.
There were worries among Democrats that No Labels would only skim off votes for Joe Biden and help Donald Trump win the election, but No Labels never could get off the ground. First, the extremism in American politics is almost completely on the Republican side; there are some extreme Democrats, but they aren't the norm. Second and more importantly, No Labels didn't understand that, as I've said before, the Center has shifted Left in the 21st century -- with approval of DEI, LGBT and reproductive rights, climate-change action, and in general responsible government now being Centrist positions. No Labels had nowhere to go.
In the same vein, Disney Corporation has been noisily criticized by the Right as being too "woke", but in a recent interview Disney CEO Bob Iger commented:
BEGIN_QUOTE:
The bottom line is that infusing messaging as a sort of number one priority in our films and TV shows is not what we're up to. They need to be entertaining ... where the Disney company can have a positive impact on the world ... fostering acceptance and understanding of ... people of all different types -- great! But, generally speaking, we need to be an entertainment-first company, and I've worked really hard to do that.
END_QUOTE
I replied on Spoutible that Iger was saying, in effect: ~"If we have a message in a movie, it's just one that gratifies our target audience."
The MAGA Trolls scream: "PANDERING!!!" They don't understand: "The customer is always right." The Trolls don't realize, don't want to realize, how the Center has shifted Left.
One Ronald Alexander replied by listing the billions made by Disney's many hit movies, concluding: "Seems like the films the [MAGA Trolls] call WOKE have made Disney rich."
I answered back that I was reminded of the old story about a bank robber, who was asked: "Why do you rob banks?"
He explained: "Because that's where the money is."
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* JOE BIDEN (20): As Joe Biden made waves as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he also made waves in the Foreign Relations Committee -- notably assailing George Schultz, Reagan's secretary of state, for a "soft" approach to sanctions on apartheid South Africa. Joe told Schultz: "I'm ashamed of this country that puts out a policy that says nothing, nothing ... I'm ashamed of the lack of moral backbone to this policy."
Schultz didn't like being browbeaten by Joe, at one point protesting that, as secretary of state, "you can't kick me around." Schultz defended the Reagan Administration's policies, saying: "What we want is a society is that they all can live in together. So I don't turn my back on the whites, and I would hope that you wouldn't."
Joe shot back: "I speak for the oppressed, wherever they are." The exchange made the news, with critics attacking Joe for his rough handling of the secretary of state. Some found his assertive righteousness as preliminary campaigning for the presidential nomination. Joe still didn't say he was running, but maintained the assertiveness.
However, in November 1986 the mid-term election complicated Joe's plans, since the Democrats regained control of the Senate. That was a good thing for Democrats in itself -- but the problem was that, as the senior Democrat member of the Judiciary Committee, Joe became chairman of the committee. The Judiciary Committee had a big budget and staff, making it a full-time job to run, and it would be hard to perform his duties as chairman and run a credible presidential campaign at the same time.
* In early 1987, Joe and Jill decided to sell off the Station. Beau was going to attend the University of Pennsylvania in 1988, with Hunter going off to college the year after that, and they didn't need such a manorial estate any more. It was too hard and expensive to maintain -- Joe liked to work on his homes, but he had his hands full at the time -- so they switched to a smaller house not so far away.
Joe was still uncommitted to a presidential run. Jill was hesitant, but Joe suggested there was no harm in probing a race. For the moment, the electorate was ignoring him -- but he was encouraged when he delivered a speech at the Democratic National Convention in Sacramento in late January 1987 that got a wild standing ovation. What Joe did not realize at the time was that a speechwriter had stolen a phrase used by Bobby Kennedy in 1967, and inserted it in the speech without attribution. It was a little thing that would have unfortunate consequences.
Joe was maintaining a frantic schedule, and the stress was starting to show on him. He started getting headaches, a new thing for him, and they were becoming gradually more severe; he was increasingly living on Tylenol, with an aide carrying a big bottle of the pills with him.
Joe became more encouraged in the spring. The front-runner for the Democratic nomination was Senator Gary Hart of Colorado -- but then allegations came up of an affair between Hart and a pretty young campaign worker named Donna Rice. Both denied any impropriety in their dealings with each other, but the circumstantial evidence seemed overwhelming. Later investigation of the matter hinted the "circumstances" had been set up by a Republican smear operation, but whatever the reality, Hart was forced to drop out in May.
Although Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis was then seen as the rising star in the Democratic race, the way still seemed open to Joe. He conducted a meeting of his personal and political family at his home in Wilmington to consider a run, with the consensus being a green light. On 9 June 1987, Joe announced his candidacy in the Wilmington train station; he gave a speech, with his entire clan -- including Joe SR, Jean, and their descendants -- then taking a special campaign train to Washington DC. [TO BE CONTINUED]
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* SCIENCE NOTES: As discussed in an article from SCIENCENEW.org ("WST Spies Hints Of A Neutron Star Left Behind By Supernova 1987A") by Adam Mann, 22 February 2024), on 23 February 1987, astronomers were excited to spot a supernova about 160,000 light-years away, in the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the Milky Way's satellite galaxies. Supernovas mark the end of the lives of stars much larger than our Sun; such big stars burn through their nuclear fuel very quickly, by cosmic time standards, and then collapse in on themselves in a spectacular explosion. "Supernova 1987A", as it was designated, was bright enough to be seen with the naked eye at night for months after the explosion.
Supernovas are believed to often leave behind a small and superdense neutron star, and it suspected that Supernova 1987A had done so -- in part because one of the markers of the explosion was the detection of a burst of neutrino particle that was an expected symptom of the formation of a neutron star. However, supernovas unsurprisingly throw out a chaotic shell of gas and dust, creating a nebula that tends to block inspection of its interior.
The nebula can be penetrated in the infrared to an extent, and so could be inspected by the space-borne James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Astronomer Patrick Kavanagh -- of Maynooth University in Ireland -- and colleagues decided to use the JWST to probe the nebula and see what was inside.
These observations did not spot a neutron star, but found signatures of ionized argon and sulfur in the dusty central region. Claes Fransson, an astronomer at Stockholm University and a co-author in the study, says: "You need a source of high-energy [X-rays] in order to create these ions. The question is: What is giving rise to this ionization?" The team sees two possibilities:
Either way, there's a neutron star in the nebula. It's not conclusive evidence, but the suggestion is supported by observations from other observatories, Atacama Large Millimeter-submillimeter Array. As the nebula expands, it thins out, and makes the interior easier to observe. Eventually, astronomers hope to inspect a young neutron star, obtaining insights into the structure of that class of objects.
* As discussed in an article from SCIENCENEWS.org ("How Sea Anemones Living On Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Vents Avoid Metal Poisoning" by Darren Incorvaia, 20 October 2023), life has an ability to evolve to survive in environments that would kill organisms found in less stressful environments. One particularly tough environment is that around deep-sea hydrothermal vents.
Along with crushing pressures, total darkness, and high temperatures, poisonous plumes belch from beneath the Earth's surface. The plumes contain particles of heavy metals like iron and manganese, which are toxic at high concentrations. However, many animals enjoy life next to these vents and set up thriving communities.
One such "extremophile" is the sea anemone Alvinactis idsseensis, found in the Indian Ocean. Now researchers have found a clue as to how it survives extreme conditions: a set of 13 "mitochondrial permeability transition (MTP)" genes, which generate proteins that sequester metals, getting them out of the way in cells.
Many organisms have MTP genes for normal metal metabolism, but not many of them. For instance, a related sea anemone that lives in shallow waters has one MTP gene. The researchers, having sequenced A. idsseensis, determined the MTP genes were helping the anemone to survive by splicing two of them into yeast. The genes protected the yeast from toxic levels of iron and manganese, the most common metals in the vent environment.
The proliferation of MTP genes is a metal detoxification strategy also found in plants. The mustard plant Arabidopsis halleri, for example, thrives in soils rich with zinc and has more MTP genes than its relatives, which can't stand too much metal. How exactly the anemone MTP genes prevent metal poisoning is not yet known. In plants, MTPs sequester metals into cellular compartments called "vacuoles", but the anemone doesn't have those particular vacuoles. Research continues.
* As discussed in an article from BBC.com ("Canterbury: Scientists Search Cathedral Roof For Cosmic Dust" by Bob Dale, 4 September 2023) researchers of the School of Physics and Astronomy from the University of Kent in the UK are hoping to find micrometeorites in a somewhat unlikely place: the roof of Canterbury Cathedral.
Researchers had previously searched for cosmic dust, which mainly come from comets and asteroids, in remote locations such as Antarctica or ocean floors. The UK's cathedrals are now being examined because of their age, size and detailed records of construction and maintenance work. Canterbury Cathedral was founded by Saint Augustine in 597 AD, and cosmic dust has been gathering on the cathedral roof since it was built.
Dr. Penny Wozniakiewicz, one of the lead researchers, says: "You want the site as undisturbed as possible. The dust is coming in everywhere, but the rooftops offer an opportunity to collect the dust and not have people trampling all over it." The research team plan to extend their work to Rochester Cathedral in Kent, then on to other cathedrals around the UK.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* GEN-AI ARRIVES (8): Trying to get generative AI to work with text is not as easy as it is with images. A key step forward took came in 2013 when Tomas Mikolov developed an efficient way to capturing "single word semantics" -- that is, the meanings of words -- in number form. The numbers representing words had the interesting property of being closer in meaning when they were closer in value. Since that time, through an enormous amount of research, successive researchers have slowly worked their way up the hierarchy of language characteristics until today they are able to capture the semantics of long sequences of text in number form. Deep learning-based language models use number representations of seen text to predict the probabilities of what the next words could be following that text, then selecting that next word based on these probabilities.
Generating high quality new text based on seen text requires a model with vast numbers of "tuning parameters" to capture the subtleties of language, plus vast loads of training data. For GPT-3, that was 175 billion tuning parameters and about half a trillion tokens -- encoded words or numbers or punctuation marks -- of training material.
As relatively crude as it was, GPT-3 had remarkable capabilities. A blogger named Gwern Branwen had GPT-3 write poetry, folktales, puns, job application letters, Dad jokes -- and notably literary parodies, such as "Harry Potter in the style of PG Wodehouse":
BEGIN_QUOTE:
"It's always the same," said Dumbledore sadly. "Voldemort has bribed my housekeeper to steal all of my tea and crumpets, and then my students disappoint me. It's very wearing, Harry."
END_QUOTE
Nonetheless, GPT-3 was limited. It could answer straightforward questions with direct answers, but tended to fall down on subtleties in questions, and questions that didn't have direct answers. It had little ability to perform reasonings to "fill in the blanks" when it was generating answers; it couldn't answer simple word-based arithmetic questions. OpenAI believes that scaling up ChatGPT with more data will overcome many of the problems, though critics are skeptical that "more training data" is really the answer.
[ED: As of late 2023, ChatGPT answers simple logic and arithmetic word problems. Another recent innovation is that, when it can't give an exact answer for the question posed, it gives a general answer and then apologizes for not doing better.]
In any case, GAI is going to evolve, becoming more intelligent in its operation, with long-term goals including:
These things can be done at present to a degree, but the capabilities need to be greatly extended.
* In principle, GAI could lead to an explosion of "identity theft", with convincing interactive "deepfake" videos being used to pull off clever scams. That is a potential future, but a future that hasn't arrived yet. Over the shorter term, what about GAI and disinformation? Obviously, there's a potential for abuse there, with GAI providing easy generation of volumes of fakes -- sometimes in the form of completely fabricated deepfakes, or in the form of modifications of legitimate material through "deeptweaks".
In reality, we're already saturated with disinformation, and the people who accept it don't need a lot of convincing. Those with better judgement will be suspicious of obviously biased sources, in fact to the point of being suspicious of legitimate sources that are reporting news that sounds outrageous.
There is an enormous struggle against disinformation in progress, with work ongoing towards two solutions: AI systems to automate content moderation by identifying misinformation, and establishment of trusted sources of information. Efforts to develop robust online identification systems also will help a great deal, though robust ID is significant for all online transactions. Most generally, a cultural change is required, developing customs and procedures that downplay disinformation, as opposed to the current inclination to amplify it.
There is a subtler problem posed by GAI: what will happen to human creativity when a GAI system can devise literature, music, and videos for us? It may not be a bad thing at all. Most people won't bother to do it, while any hobbyist could be able to provide general specifications for a TV show episode to a GAI system, and then the GAI system will generate it. The hobbyist could then tweak the episode until it seemed satisfactory. The end result would be a staggering amount of junk, scattered with gems. [TO BE CONTINUED]
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* US V APPLE: As discussed in an article from THEVERGE.com ("DOJ's Sweeping Apple Lawsuit Draws Expert Praise" by Lauren Feiner, 22 March 2024), the Biden Administration has made it clear that "the gloves are off" when it comes to long-neglected antitrust actions -- as demonstrated by a lawsuit that has been slapped on tech giant Apple by the Department of Justice's antitrust division. This is the DOJ's third tech monopoly lawsuit in four years.
Antitrust actions are not easy to win in court, since big corporations have lots of money and have the best legal defense money can buy. However, legal experts who examined the DOJ's filing are impressed by its competence.
The DOJ described wide-ranging behaviors by Apple that, so the complaint argues, adds up to illegal monopoly maintenance. Instead of taking shots at a few illegal acts, the complaint alleges that Apple engages in a pattern of behaviors that entrench consumers into their ecosystem and make it harder to switch, even when prices increase and quality falls. Rebecca Haw Allensworth -- antitrust professor and associate dean for research at Vanderbilt Law School in Nashville, Tennessee -- says:
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I think that they made an even stronger case than I thought that they could. They told a very coherent story about how Apple is making its product, the iPhone and the products on it -- the apps -- less useful for consumers in the name of maintaining their dominance.
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This lawsuit follows one placed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against Amazon in September 2023 -- but according to Allensworth, the DOJ makes a better case for consumer arm, along with harm to developers, with Allensworth calling the DOJ effort "a stronger lawsuit".
Again, it's not going to be easy to go after Apple. The DOJ is making the case that Apple's 65% to 70% share of the smartphone market in the USA gives it monopolistic dominance, and will have to prove it. Even if the government does prove it, creating effective remedies for the alleged harms is another different big problem.
William Kovacic, a former FTC chair who teaches antitrust at George Washington University Law School, suggests that the DOJ paid close attention to the lawsuit pressed on Apple by Epic Games -- makers of the well-known FORTNITE MMO game -- over Apple Store rules, which demanded Apple control over in-app purchases. Epic lost most of its claims, and Apple has not been cooperative with Epic over resolution of the claims Epic won. Kovacic says:
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[The DOJ has] written a complaint in a way that seeks to avoid weaknesses that I think the judge might have seen in that case, to add additional material so it's not simply a reprise of EPIC V APPLE.
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The DOJ lawsuit lists a set of examples of Apple's refusal to play fair, such as the lack of interoperability iPhones and Android phones, lack of compatibility with competitors' smartwatches, and restrictive policies around Apple Wallet. The complaint says:
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Apple continues to expand and shift the scope and categories of anticompetitive conduct such that the cumulative anticompetitive effect of Apple's conduct is even more powerful than that of each exclusionary act standing alone.
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Allensworth finds the lack of interoperability with Android as particularly outrageous:
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The one that really jumped out at me was this idea that parents don't want to get their kids Android phones if they have Apple phones, because it really degrades their ability to interoperate, and interconnect. In this market where you pick an ecosystem kind of for life, that's really powerful because now that kid is locked in. I mean, not literally, I'm not saying they totally don't have any choices, but they're very likely to stick with a product that they grew up on when they were 13.
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Apple has responded to the DOJ lawsuit by pointing out that Apple isn't nearly as dominant in the global smartphone market as it is in the USA, and needs to maintain its own proprietary technology to maintain a competitive edge. The DOJ may find it difficult to convince the courts that, with 65% to 70% market share in the USA, it has a monopoly, and is able to short-change its users without losing them.
One big thing in the DOJ's favor in this case is that there's no apparent intent to break up Apple. Allensworth says:
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I think a breakup is very unlikely. They don't seem to be asking for one. They're asking the court to enjoin, which means to stop doing the stuff that they're complaining about. In that sense, they're asking for something very similar to what Europe has asked Apple to do.
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The European Digital Markets Act (DMA) requires designated "gatekeepers" like Apple to make changes to its products that the commission believes will create a more competitive environment. Behavioral remedies do come with their own set of problems; if rules are imposed on Apple, the company may well decide to frustrate them at every opportunity, rather than seek harmony with the regulators. This case will go on for years, and in the meantime the Feds will keep an eye on Europe and the DMA, to see what problems come up, to see what works and what doesn't. DOJ antitrust officials know they've got their work cut out for them -- but they're in it for the long haul.
COMMENT ON ARTICLEDAYLOG SUN 24 MAR 24: According to an article published last week in NEWSWEEK.com, during January 2024 9 Chinese banks stopped processing transactions with Russia, even if the transactions are in yuan. This seems anomalous, since China is doing a boom business with Russia, and relations otherwise have never been better.
The trick is that USA started implementing sanctions on Chinese banks doing business with Russia, with the banks then worried about having their financial connections with US and European banks severed. It is likely the Chinese government will figure out workarounds, for example setting up a bank that only does external transactions with Russia, and won't care about sanctions.
DAYLOG MON 25 MAR 24: Since Elon Musk took over microblogging environment Twitter, to rename it "X", it has become completely overloaded with bots and trolls, to the point of becoming unusable. Not surprisingly, advertisers have been dumping X/Twitter. In response, Musk has been going after organizations tracking and reporting on the bot invasion of X/Twitter, in one instance slapping a lawsuit on the Center for Counseling Digital Hate (CCDH) for Musk's loss of advertising revenue.
Today a California court dismissed Musk's lawsuit, saying that Musk -- who fancies himself a "free speech absolutist" -- was attempting to suppress free speech that wasn't convenient to him. Musk has similar lawsuits in progress against other critics; today's decision suggests they'll be dismissed as well.
There is much anger with Musk online, but I feel more sorry for him than anything: he is obviously not quite right in the head, and seems to be progressively getting worse. As far as X/Twitter goes, I dropped in every now and then for a while, but now I've completely given up. There's nothing there of interest that I can't get elsewhere, and the only readers are bots.
DAYLOG TUE 26 MAR 24: It seems unlikely that Joe Biden is sweating the election looming in November, Donald Trump's disintegration being obvious for all to see. However, that's not the same thing as saying Biden is complacent.
As discussed by Asawin Suebsaeng & Adam Rawnsley in ROLLING STONE, one big concern is that Trump will again scream: "ELECTION FRAUD!" -- and try to steal the election, because of course he will. It won't work, but it could cause a lot of trouble. As a result, the Biden Administration is leaving nothing to chance, "war-gaming" a close-election scenario, and setting up a legal infrastructure to make sure Trump doesn't get traction. Will it really be a close election? Doubtful, but no use taking chances.
* The TFUB (Trolls For the UnBorn) are determined to force a national abortion ban, with the latest exercise to that end being a lawsuit being pressed by TFUB doctors, focused on the "abortion pill" mifepristone. The doctors claimed that they didn't want to have to deal with the possible complications suffered by female patients.
In the first place, however, the rate of complications is very low; going through a pregnancy is much more hazardous. In the second place, the doctors were under no compulsion to prescribe mifepristone, and more to the point their hesitations about the drug were not and could not be a basis for proposing that it be banned everywhere.
Apparently, even most of the conservative SCOTUS justices take a dim view of this lawsuit, and the court is likely to reject it. However, mifepristone will remain banned in the dozen or so states with tough anti-abortion laws. One wonders if the conservative SCOTUS justices are having second thoughts about overturning ROE V WADE. It was obvious at the outset that doing so would lead to endless trouble -- but clearly not everyone sees that as obvious.
DAYLOG WED 27 MAR 24: Yesterday the container ship DALI, it seems suffering from a steering problem, slammed into a pier of the Francis Scott Key Bridge across Baltimore Harbor, dropping a bridge span. Six workers who had been filling potholes on the bridge are missing & presumed dead.
The word went around on Spoutible that the Troglodyte Right would soon blame the Biden Administration for the accident, to which I added: "And then the conspiracy stories!" The trashflow started faster than I expected. FOX News tried to link the accident to immigration policies, while two Republicans running for office similarly linked it to diversity policies. Trolls Marjorie Taylor Greene and Steve Bannon suggested a terrorist attack.
The Troglodyte Right -- these days, I wonder if there's any other sort of Right -- was guaranteed to exploit the accident for their smears. Fortunately, I don't think the trolling is getting much traction any more.
DAYLOG THU 28 MAR 24: Today, President Joe Biden went to New York City for a fund-raising event, also starring ex-presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. It brought in $26 million USD for the Biden presidential campaign, said to be the most ever for a single event.
That was $5 million more than Donald Trump raised in all of February -- and much of what Trump brings in goes to his legal bills. The polls showing Biden as struggling are misleading. I keep saying: "Add 5% to Joe and subtract 5% from Trump in the polls, and they're closer to reality."
* Earlier in March, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released its annual "global threat assessment", with one interesting comment buried in the text: "Al-Qaida has reached an operational nadir in Afghanistan and Pakistan."
That was followed by commentaries on how US officials exaggerated the al-Qaida threat for decades, and to what end? Myself, that sounds like "hindsight thinking": nobody knew the future, and they had to go on what they knew. Maybe better to see it as one less problem to worry about.
DAYLOG FRI 29 MAR 24: Ukraine has been confronted with a headcount disparity relative to the Russians, but now the commander of Armed Forces Ukraine (AFU), Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, says that defense reviews shows the shortfall in troops to be less significant than thought.
That presumably reflects the shift away from costly ground offensive operations, with ground forces digging in to block Russian advances, while the Russians are hit with air, sea, and ground drones. Indeed, Ukraine is setting up an independent robot combat arm. Presumably, special operations forces, working with Ukrainian guerrillas, will raise hell in the Russian rear. Increasing AFU frontline headcount is not workable: not only do frontline troops need support headcount, civilian headcount is needed just to keep Ukraine functioning.
There is also the question of whether Russia's troop superiority represents an overwhelming advantage. The USSR lost in Afghanistan even with troop superiority, and Russia is getting hurt far worse in Ukraine.
AND SO ON: It appears that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' war with Disney Corporation has finally come to an end. For those who need reminding, after Disney withdrew political support from DeSantis over his actions against LGBT rights and such, DeSantis retaliated by revoking -- at least in principle -- Disney's self-managed Florida administrative district, in which Disney controlled its own utilities, fire department, and so on, for Disney World.
Setting up Disney's Reedy Creek District had made perfect sense -- who else would want to do it? -- just as attempting to revoke Disney's rights there made no sense at all. DeSantis then went on to install an anti-Disney oversight board, but the outgoing oversight board worked with Disney, in full public view, to make sure the new board had no powers. Dueling legal actions followed.
Now the feud has been generally settled, though it appears the settlement gave DeSantis nothing. The title of a snarky article in the "Above The Law" blog by one Joe Patrice summed it up: "Ron DeSantis Claims Victory Over Disney And All He Had To Do Was Give Disney Everything They Wanted". It works like this:
MAGA trolls have of course proclaimed DeSantis won everything, one telling Patrice: "Hey Joe ... Did you see that Ron DeSantis just cleaned Disney's clock?" Oh, these silly trolls! Patrice replied in the essay:
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As clock cleanings go, it's more like DeSantis performing community service scrubbing down the Main Street USA clocks and then telling Bob Iger: "Thank you, sir, may I have another?" Though he does get to walk away mildly saving face that he's changed the name on top of the tax district letterhead.
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Not all that incidentally, it appears Disney lawyers pointed out to the State of Florida that unilaterally revoking the Reedy Creek District agreement violated the "Contracts Clause" of the US Constitution. Huh? What? I'm reasonably well-read on the Constitution, but that threw me. On investigation, Article 1, Section 10, Clause 1 of the Constitution reads:
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No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
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Ah, I'd read that, but didn't follow the bit about "impairing the Obligation of Contracts". Yeah, I guess that is a show-stopper here. It's about as good as DeSantis trying to push gerrymandered redistricting -- when there's been an amendment in the Florida state constitution forbidding it for over a decade.
Even a few years back, when "Mo'Ron" seemed to be on a tear and driving towards a presidential nomination, I was thinking: "No way will DeSantis ever be president. The handy majority of the USA can't stand him." The humiliating failure of his primary race has now almost completely deflated him, with the previously-tame Florida legislature now less inclined to simply rubber-stamp his foolish culture-war initiatives. I knew he was going to implode, but I'm still surprised at how quick and drastic it happened. Alas, Florida is stuck with him until the 2026 mid-term elections. He's term-limited and can't run again.
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