Not Much Damage

Maxine Waters "Throws Shade"

Maxine Waters is contemptuous of Trump and the GOP. Adulation for her is on the rise:

“I am having the time of my life with the millennials. They’re even teaching me a new language,” she says in the clip. “I had to ask my grandchildren, ‘What does it mean? I threw shade?’” after people used the phrase to describe her brief press conference on James Comey, at which she said with a flip of her hands, “the FBI director has no credibility.” Waters says young people mob her for autographs when goes out in cities, and the service she provides them as a vessel for their frustrations is returned in kind with youth language lessons: “I love what they taught me to say,” she says. “‘Stay woke.’”

Real Estate Idiocy Never Ends in Albuquerque

Albuquerque's South Valley:

Instead of disproving the need for more retail, the presence of the new Walmart justified the zone change. The different jurisdictions were a factor in approval too. Walmart is in the City of Albuquerque and Las Estancias remains in the unincorporated county. The county has pushed to urbanize and has a tendency to compete for new development. This benefits development but its hard to see what race-to-the-bottom overbuilding does for anyone else.

Unless you’re a real estate broker, of course – or one of the “competitors vying for business space and a piece of the retail action.” But surely not all small businesses enjoy the prospect of jockeying around the real estate market for the lowest rent in the next half-baked shopping center. It’s sure a piss poor way to try and anticipate what public services are needed and where. You can’t manage what you don’t measure.

Denial

Don't Dance in the Lifts

Not recommended:

Latinos Have Stopped Reporting Violent Crime

As deportation fears have risen, Latinos in Houston have stopped reporting violent crime. The crime is still there, it's just under Trump's protection. Not good for anyone:

Against the backdrop of rising deportation fears among immigrants, Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo disclosed Wednesday the department has found the number of Hispanics reporting rape is down 42.8 percent from last year, and those reporting other violent crimes has registered a 13 percent drop.

Where Did We Get The Money?

Smh, White People

58th Annual Service Awards Dinner, Sutter Health, Flashmob Dancers, With Boas

Tucson Regional Ballet Presents "Peter and the Wolf"

My homies!:

Peter and the Wolf comes leaping and bounding into the Old Pueblo courtesy of the Tucson Regional Ballet company this weekend and Guy Atchley has brought us a preview of these ultra-talented young performers as they soar through the air at the TCC Leo Rich Theater, Saturday April 8th at 2 PM and 7:30 PM, and Sunday April 9th at 2 PM. Children are invited to meet and dance with company members following the performance. Tickets are available at tucsonregionalballet.org or by calling 520-886-1222

The Answer is Blowin' in the Wind.

And the answer my friend;
Is blowin' in the wind;
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

Job Interview Day - Off to Fresno

Strange interview. Perfunctory questions. Quien sabe?

New Zealand Got Pounded by Ex-Tropical Cyclone Debbie

Edgecumbe in New Zealand is the worst-hit by ex-tropical cyclone Debbie. Looks like Canterbury is getting pounded, and Kaikoura is nearly cut off.

I Stumbled Into Another Dimension of Sight and Sound

We Are STILL Competitive!

I can't believe it! The 2016-17 rainy season is STILL competitive with the 1982-83 rainy season as the rainiest ever since they started making measurements at Sacramento Executive Airport in 1941.

What made the 1982-83 rainy season so spectacular was a series of remarkable late-April-1983 rains. Can we look forward to something similar in 2017?

So far, the forecast-modeling crystal ball is cloudy. There is definitely more rain coming in the April 15-17 time frame, but after that it looks more like misses than hits. So, odds are, we won't beat #1, but instead come in as a very-respectable #2. But like I say, the crystal ball is cloudy, so surprises may await.

It's Not a Crime to Expose Crime

Just to remind conservatives frothing over Susan Rice, it's not a crime to expose crime, especially when the crime is treason.

Tell me again, why was the Trump campaign in CONSTANT contact with their Russian minders during the election campaign?:

But it sure looks like Flynn assigned Cohen-Watnick the task of reviewing intelligence reports that led to the discovery of his phone calls with the Russian ambassador.

I would remind you that Michael Flynn was initially fired by the Obama administration in 2014 for his erratic management style and was known there for his promotion of “Flynn facts” (i.e., lies and crazy conspiracy theories). He also bragged to Dana Priest about breaking rules he thought were stupid. It shouldn’t surprise us that his protege didn’t take kindly to orders from the White House counsel’s office to cease and desist.

The intervention by Bannon and Kushner to save Cohen-Watnick’s job takes on a whole new meaning in light of this information. It sure looks like they knew exactly what he was up to at the time.

Anything Susan Rice might have done appears to be in keeping with the law and her job as national security advisor. But by pushing this story, the Trump administration might have just outed themselves as the ones who are complicit.

Wild Risk-Takers in the Dakotas

Cray-cray in the Plains.

Who Says We Don't Have Great Statesmen These Days?

Trumpcare 1.0 failed in the House because it was too cruel for moderates, but not cruel enough for conservatives. Trumpcare 2.0 looks like it will just let the GOP be the GOP, and go for full torture on the sickest Americans, mostly with the aim that when T2.0 dies in the Senate, Conservative-Radio-Host Blame can be diverted to the Senate instead of the House:

Allowing health plans to price-discriminate like this would, of course, require them to identify sick people in the first place, which would presumably entail a return to underwriting and practices similar to rescission (the right to cancel plans retroactively, which the ACA banned). Those already insured would thus face huge premium increases when they become sick, or if they have used too much insurance already. Those who are uninsured would have to disclose their medical histories to insurance companies before being given premium and deductible quotes.

It is possible, of course, that few states will seek a community rating waiver, in which case its existence would prove to be largely symbolic: Republicans could claim a victory for states’ rights, while also deflecting conservative donor-class ire away from Congress and toward those very states.

But the AHCA was a dead letter in the Senate before this proposed change; making the bill more extreme would render it even more toxic in the upper chamber. That’s why its resurrection, and the concomitant horse-trading, should be read first as an effort to reroute right-wing outrage, which is currently directed at the House Republicans, toward the Senate.

Gravity Wins

Big branch falls out of tree; hits my house and fence. I need to get ladder out and check for damage.

I didn't see anything, but worried about subtle damage.

I'm Just Saying....

Tripping over evidence in every direction:

On a political cartoon site, one otherwise liberal cartoonist made the mistake of expressing doubt about the Russian connection to Donald Trump, to which a poster (handle “Radish”) provided the following amazing response:

I don’t know – it’s hard for me to see any U.S. ties to Russia…except for the Flynn thing and the Manafort thing
and the Tillerson thing
and the Sessions thing
and the Kushner thing
and the Carter Page thing
and the Roger Stone thing
and the Felix Sater thing
and the Boris Ephsteyn thing
and the Rosneft thing
and the Gazprom thing
and the Sergey Gorkov banker thing
and the Azerbajain thing
and the “I love Putin” thing
and the Donald Trump, Jr. thing
and the Sergey Kislyak thing
and the Russian Affiliated Interests thing
and the Russian Business Interests thing
and the Emoluments Clause thing
and the Alex Schnaider thing
and the hack of the DNC thing
and the Guccifer 2.0 thing
and the Mike Pence “I don’t know anything” thing
and the Russians mysteriously dying thing
and Trump’s public request to Russia to hack Hillary’s email thing
and the Trump house sale for $100 million at the bottom of the housing bust to the Russian fertilizer king thing
and the Russian fertilizer king’s plane showing up in Concord, NC during Trump rally campaign thing
and the Nunes sudden flight to the White House in the night thing
and the Nunes personal investments in the Russian winery thing
and the Cyprus bank thing
and Trump not releasing his tax returns thing
and the Republican Party’s rejection of an amendment to require Trump to show his taxes thing
and the election hacking thing
and the GOP platform change to the Ukraine thing
and the Steele Dossier thing
and the Leninist Bannon thing
and the Sally Yates can’t testify thing
and the intelligence community’s investigative reports thing
and Trump’s reassurance that the Russian connection is all “fake news” thing
and Spicer’s Russian Dressing “nothing’s wrong” thing
so there’s probably nothing there
since the swamp has been drained, these people would never lie
probably why Nunes cancels the investigation meetings
all of this must be normal
just a bunch of separate dots with no connection.

Extending Drivers' Licenses To Illegals Boosts Public Order

California AB60 allowed undocumented immigrants to get drivers' licenses. What has been the effect on the state?

Statewide, hit-and-run accidents have been on the increase lately, but in counties where there are lots of undocumented immigrants, there has been a reduction in the number of hit-and-run accidents. Since accidents are not reported to ICE, undocumented drivers involved in accidents now have fewer incentives to flee.

California AB60 is a boost to public order in California.

Maybe The Physicists Will Start Coming Around on Dark Energy

James B. flags me:

Hey Marc, I know what you think of Dark Matter/Energy, so this should make you happy.

What might this be, this story?:

The ΛCDM model assumes a uniform expansion that progressively gets faster thanks to the increasing push of dark energy overcoming the pull of dark and normal matter distributed evenly throughout space.

Yet according to the physicists involved in this new research, the large scale structures – 'bubbles' of seemingly empty space and the galaxies surrounding them – would create zones where expansion occurs at different rates, almost like mini-universes.

By mathematically modelling the effect of gravity on millions of particles representing dark matter, the team managed to recreate the bunching up of matter in the early Universe in such a way that it looked like the large scale galaxy structures.

While the Universe in their model still expands, the individual differences in how these bubbles expand averages out to an overall acceleration.

"Our findings rely on a mathematical conjecture which permits the differential expansion of space, consistent with general relativity, and they show how the formation of complex structures of matter affects the expansion," said Dobos.

"These issues were previously swept under the rug but taking them into account can explain the acceleration without the need for dark energy."

The model makes its own necessary assumptions, but if it stands up to scrutiny it could explain why the Universe's expansion seems to be accelerating, all without the need for negative pressure.

This strikes me as more reasonable than a universal repulsion. The local, crowded universe appears to expand more slowly than distant empty parts of the universe, because gravity slows things down nearby, but you can see those distant empty places better, because they are empty. Thus, it appears as if there's a universal repulsion. It would be nice to know what caused the Big Bang in the first place.

Today, I've been reading papers on midge swarming behavior, which appears to be modulated by sound. Midges behave as if they have a gravitational attraction to each other, but biologic systems have saturation levels, so the attraction weakens as midges get close to each other. Nevertheless, they've been using cosmological models to study midge swarming behavior.

Tulsa Queen

Emmylou Harris, 1977. Happy 70th!

I heard the train
In the Tulsa night
Calling out my name
Looking for a fight
Well she's come a long, long way
Got a longer way to go
So tell me how a train from Tulsa
Has got a right to know

Well she sings a song
So sad and high
And the Tulsa Queen
Don't ever lie
And she don't care where she goes
Don't care where she's been
And the Tulsa Queen ain't crying
Because I won't see you again

And I want to ride
Like a Tulsa Queen
Calling out to you
Like she calls to me
As far away from Tulsa
As these ten wheels can be

Lately I speak
Your name too loud
Each time it comes up in a crowd
And I know it when I do
The Tulsa Queen and you
Are gone

What a Water Slide!

I don't really swim, but I'd worry about that later....

Cyclone Debbie Really Did a Number on Australia

Australia's Category 4 Cyclone Debbie killed surprisingly few people when it came ashore, but because it was large and slow-moving, caused vast amounts of flooding and property damage, hammering agriculture particularly. The Great Barrier Reef is likely damaged. The city of Lismore is flooded, which is many, many miles away from the point of landfall.

Debbie was not the most damaging cyclone to hit the Queensland coast, even in recent years. But it was one of the largest, and its legacy was still wreaking havoc on Friday, with flooding rains over a large expanse.

Lismore in northern New South Wales, 870 miles from Bowen, was inundated. In Logan City, south of Brisbane, more than 300 houses were expected to be flooded.

Rockhampton is bracing for a major flood.

Spaghetti modeling.

Such a strange-looking rainfall pattern:

Why Are You In My Home?

Running Some Companies Must Be Hard

Trying hard, but falling short:

Lululemon (LULU) stock fell 21% Thursday, one day after the company predicted its sales would drop this quarter. The culprit, according to CEO Laurent Potdevin: Its clothes don't pop online.

"We have clearly identified the issues: An assortment lacking depth in color for spring, compounded with visual merchandising that did not powerfully translate our design vision," Laurent said on a conference call for investors.

To stave off the problem, Lululemon will launch more colorful clothes on its website as soon as next week, Potdevin said.

...Lululemon has been hurt by problems with its merchandise before. In 2013, a recall of black pants that were too sheer -- in other words, see-through -- hit sales and profits. Former CEO Christine Day stepped down after the debacle. And in 2015, Lululemon recalled some women's tops because hard-tipped drawstrings were injuring wearers.

How Corporate America Loses

Civic involvement ultimately killed Sacramento's FM 107.9:

From her home outside the no-stoplight settlement of Fiddletown, Sue Wilson tilted at a corporate windmill, and a funny thing happened.

Sue from Fiddletown won, on our behalf. You can hear the sound of that victory at the end of the FM radio dial in Sacramento. Where there once was commercial pop music, hooting deejays and stupid radio stunts, there’s static.

“We the People own the air waves,” she said, and repeats: “We the People.”

The start of this story probably is vaguely familiar. On a Friday in January 2007, Jennifer Strange, a 28-year-old mother of three and a regular listener to 107.9-KDND, The End, entered a contest called “Hold your wee for a Wii,” the Nintendo gaming console that was all rage at the time. ... The person who gulped the most water without having to urinate would win.

...“Can’t you get water poisoning and, like, die?” one of the disc jockeys asked, 16 minutes into the show. A caller who identified herself as a nurse practitioner warned that a person could die from water intoxication.

...A friend of Strange’s called the station with word of her death. Rather than call the other contestants to check on their welfare, the station’s management called Entercom headquarters in Bala Cynwyd outside Philadelphia and spoke to company lawyers. When the deejays arrived for work on the Monday after Strange’s death, they were told to hire attorneys and were fired.

Ten Amazing Spiders!

Dancehall Master Class With Jean-Claude Val

Such a good time!

Suddenly I'm An AC/DC Fan

I stumbled across this video of an AC/DC concert in Buenos Aires in 2009, and I'm completely mesmerized.

First, the fans. I didn't realize that AC/DC had become the favorite band of Argentine fútbol fans. It's a bit of a stretch - the Australian band sings in English; the Argentine fans speak Spanish - but the clarity, simplicity, blue-collar orientation and easy understandability of AC/DC's music makes it universal. Hell, you don't need to speak English at all. And the fans' enthusiasm makes them the best fans on Earth!

Second, the size of the arena. This place looks huge. Bigger than any place I've ever seen. I wonder if it can hold 100,000 people?

Third, the superb lighting and camera work! Arena sound quality is usually horrible.

Fourth, these bandmates are my age. Look at Angus Young, still going in his Australian school uniform! The video is a fantasy come true for people my age.

Apparently AC/DC ran into a forest of difficulties by 2014, so who can say what the future holds for them, but no question, they've had a superb run.






And I've always liked this song too:

Michael Flynn, Traitor

I missed this news. So, Michael Flynn is in so deep with the Turks that he'd help them with a kidnapping. I wonder what he promised the Russians? Trump sure knows how to pick them!:

Woolsey claims that those present discussed sending Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim leader who Erdogan has accused of being behind a failed military coup to overthrow him, back to Turkey to face charges -- possibly outside the legal US extradition system.

"What I saw and heard was sort of the end of the conversation -- it's not entirely clear what transpired because of that," Woolsey said on "CNN Tonight" with Don Lemon. "But it looks as if there was at least some strong suggestion by one or more of the Americans present at the meeting that we would be able, the United States would be able, through them, to be able to get hold of Gulen, the rival for Turkey's political situation."

Determined Fish

La, La, La; I Can't Hear You

I recently stopped in at a job fair, and was surprised to find construction companies looking for employees. In the past, they didn't have to recruit.

I talked to a company representative, picked up a squeezable plastic-cone token, and noted that, at least here in Sacramento, he seemed to date the collapse in construction to 2004, not 2008.

This blogger argues that recruiting is going badly for construction companies because they have become inured to paying low wages, and are stubbornly-resisting increasing wages. An older population, and a stable-or-declining pool of Mexican workers means a smaller pool from which to draw workers. The market is sending a signal employers don't want to hear:

What’s mystifying here is the fact that capitalist homebuilders and their cheerleaders at the Journal are, well, mystified over why Americans don’t seem to want to work construction. There’s a simple reason why Americans aren’t filling construction jobs—and the construction industry appears to be missing it.

...And yet the market sharpies collectively are throwing up their hands over the construction labor shortage instead of homing in on the obvious solution: Pay people more—a lot more if need be. The executives Olick interviewed didn’t mention pay, although she did note that “wages in the residential building industry are growing at twice the rate of wages in the overall economy.” The Journal took a supply-side approach to a solution: Go easier on immigrants, legal and illegal, so that business will have a larger supply of people willing to do the work at the wages on offer.

...The second view is common among many employers. And it is bound up with a more generalized sociopathy about wages and pay that took root during the Great Recession. Companies slashed payroll to survive and then took extraordinary measures to keep payroll costs down even as the economy expanded. For several years, American workers didn’t get a raise, on average, and they kept showing up for work and applying for jobs. And these low wages were built into the typical company’s business model. So why should an employer bother to raise wages aggressively now? If it becomes an article of faith that you never have to raise wages, it is easy to conclude that the reason you can’t hire is that Americans aren’t willing to do the job.

...But that’s not how the world, or business, works. There’s no such thing as a job an American won’t do. There are such things as jobs that Americans in your geographic area won’t do at the conditions on which you are offering them.

Writing Projects

I've been spending my time with various writing projects. In June, I'll produce the fourth edition of "A Guidebook to Breaking Bad Filming Locations," featuring insights on the use of Albuquerque architecture in "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul." I'm also hoping to finish a history of Davis Musical Theatre Company (DMTC), in Davis, California, and maybe try my hand at writing a science fiction story.

But first, two personal accounts: "A New Mexico Childhood: The View from Albuquerque’s Edge in the Sixties and Early Seventies," and
"Dog-Walking Stories: Nighttime Journeys into the Sacramento Demimonde with Sparky and Bella."

The New Mexico Childhood book is about growing up in New Mexico. My childhood seems curiously strange, given the perspective of time. Life in semi-rural New Mexico is oddly claustrophobic. Just like the adults, we kids were little too careless about fire and knives. We loved our dirt-clod wars. And building model cities too.

The Dog-Walking stories are about two dogs, Sparky and Bella, and their walks, and the odd people we met and the puzzling things we saw.

Self-published, and available now on Amazon.

Severe Brain Damage

This tragic meth-addiction end-game story is extra-creepy to me. The events happened on familiar stomping grounds. I've hung out at that McDonalds, the Rite-Aid is my drug store, and my doctor is in that medical office building. Heck, I even know that winding hallway they mention. So many people were put at risk, and now this dead end.

Because it's a transportation nexus and the nearby hospital, medical offices, and supporting facilities (like Safeway) serve as magnets, there's a lot of unstable people in that area (though I've had more success finding them at KFC than McDonalds):

The first officer on the scene found John Hernandez sitting on a curb. Hernandez “became agitated and confrontational” when the officer tried to speak with him, according to police. Hernandez “refused to obey” verbal commands. When a second officer arrived, police said Hernandez “became more erratic and noncompliant.”

Hernandez then ran across L Street and into a Sutter medical building.

His sister, Melissa Serna, said she saw a clip of surveillance video from the facility that showed John Hernandez stopping at elevators just inside the sliding glass entryway and hitting the buttons. When the elevator doors didn’t open, he took off down a narrow, curving hallway, no more than 4 feet wide. Two officers could be seen running into the facility, she said.

Police said they attempted to use Tasers and batons to subdue Hernandez when they caught up to him in the hallway, but those less-lethal weapons were “not effective.” More officers arrived and “were finally able to subdue the subject,” police said. Heinlein could not say how many officers were involved or how many times they used Tasers.

Tuesday Evening Zumba

End of Consumer Economy in Sight

But what replaces it?:

“As a service” models become more and more feasible when the number of sensors that surround us increases. This development is often called the “Internet of Things.” But when we consider the Internet of Things from the perspective of disappearing products and the increase in new service models, we can effectively conclude that it is, in fact, the “Internet of No Things.”

What is so revolutionary about the “as a service” model then? Why is it good not to own things? There are two main reasons and these are related: First, ownership makes us lazy. Second, the planet cannot survive with us consuming so much stuff.

When we buy things we easily get bored with them and forget they exist, or, alternatively, use them only because we own them. On-demand is about using things when we actually need them. It leads to the more effective use of resources. AirBnb gets more people to use the same apartment and Uber gets more people to use the same car.

Spider Museum

Lazy Self-Deception

The price of living in the FOX News bubble is profound confusion about reality:

Perhaps the main way that self-deception hurt the Republicans is more basic. Because they overstated both the badness of Obamacare and the easiness of replacing it, they got lazy when it came to making policy. Serious policy critiques could easily be swatted away as inconsistent with some bit of magical thinking. If you can cover everyone and lower premiums without having mandates or taxes, why bother to wrestle with the real trade-offs inherent in health care policymaking?

When Too Much is Too Much

Interesting quarrel about benzoates:

Both the NBC and NAFDAC are appealing against the ruling, arguing that the Coca-Cola products do not exceed benzoic acid limits for Nigeria or international limits set by Codex, the international food standards body administered by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
"The UK standards limit benzoic acid in soft drinks to a maximum of 150 mg/kg. Both Fanta and Sprite have benzoic levels of 200 mg/kg which is lower than the Nigerian regulatory limit of 250 mg/kg," wrote Sade Morgan, legal, public affairs and communications director of the NBC.

Thinking About Midges

In 2011, I saw fascinating midge swarms on the Interstate 80 Yolo Causeway between Davis and Sacramento, featuring rays and beams of flying insects. The rays were arrayed symmetrically on both sides of the freeway, 60 degrees from the horizontal, and gave the Causeway a majestic, Art Deco flourish. Until I started reading more on the Internet, I didn't realize these swarms are fairly common, especially at higher latitudes in summertime.

I find it fascinating how the midges will anchor themselves and swarm at an angle from a certain spot. Why that spot and why that angle? Inquiring minds want to know. I'm inclined to write a sci-fi story about these choices.

Disproportionate Polar Heating

As Global Warming heats the poles disproportionately, the jet stream weakens, allowing weather patterns to get "stuck" for far too long, aggravating weather disasters:

The study, its authors write, “adds to the weight of evidence for a human influence on the occurrence of devastating events such as the 2003 European heat wave, the 2010 Pakistan flood and Russian heat wave, the 2011 Texas heat wave and recent floods in Europe.”

...The Northern Hemisphere jet stream flows in a wavy pattern from west to east, driven by the rotation of the Earth and the difference in temperature between the equator and the North Pole. The flow is stronger when that temperature difference is large.

But when the Arctic warms up faster than the equator does — which is part of the fundamental definition of global warming, and which is already happening — the jet stream’s flow can become weakened and elongated. That’s when you can get the resultant weather extremes.

Self-Medicating Neanderthals

Neanderthals had varied diets, and apparently knew about medicinal plants:

"We found that the Neandertals from Spy Cave consumed woolly rhinoceros and European wild sheep, supplemented with wild mushrooms," says Professor Alan Cooper, Director of ACAD. "Those from El Sidrón Cave on the other hand showed no evidence for meat consumption, but appeared instead to have a largely vegetarian diet, comprising pine nuts, moss, mushrooms and tree bark -- showing quite different lifestyles between the two groups."

"One of the most surprising finds, however, was in a Neandertal from El Sidrón, who suffered from a dental abscess visible on the jawbone. The plaque showed that he also had an intestinal parasite that causes acute diarrhoea, so clearly he was quite sick. He was eating poplar, which contains the pain killer salicylic acid (the active ingredient of aspirin), and we could also detect a natural antibiotic mould (Penicillium) not seen in the other specimens."

Odd Granular Behavior on Titan

Like packing peanuts:

"If you grabbed piles of grains and built a sand castle on Titan, it would perhaps stay together for weeks due to their electrostatic properties," said Josef Dufek, the Georgia Tech professor who co-led the study. "Any spacecraft that lands in regions of granular material on Titan is going to have a tough time staying clean. Think of putting a cat in a box of packing peanuts."

The electrification findings may help explain an odd phenomenon. Prevailing winds on Titan blow from east to west across the moon's surface, but sandy dunes nearly 300 feet tall seem to form in the opposite direction.

"These electrostatic forces increase frictional thresholds," said Josh Méndez Harper, a Georgia Tech geophysics and electrical engineering doctoral student who is the paper's lead author. "This makes the grains so sticky and cohesive that only heavy winds can move them. The prevailing winds aren't strong enough to shape the dunes."

Republican Success

A hard journey, but successful:

WASHINGTON—Telling Americans this was the kind of leadership and accountability they could expect from the GOP, congressional Republicans held a press conference Monday to celebrate making good on their 2009 promise to block the president’s healthcare bill. “Eight years ago, our party made a solemn pledge to do everything in our power to ensure that a healthcare bill put forth by the president of the United States did not become law, and through our actions last week, that is exactly what we have done,” said Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy....

Disney's 2017 "Beauty and the Beast"

Excellent show! Best Disney film I've seen (made me tear up several times). I liked their new songs. I think we were all surprised, though, by the absence of 'Human Again' and 'Maison d'Lune.'

What Happens in Santa Cruz....

Saw this in the Arden Fair Shopping Mall parking lot.

Gleeful Democrats

GOP falls on its face:

Other Democrats seemed content to rub in the victory.

"Hey Republicans, don't worry, that burn is covered under the Affordable Care Act," tweeted Bob Menendez, a Democratic senator from New Jersey.

Postgraduate Cylinder

Dank Rapunzel

Teed Up Ryan's health Care Bill

Ryan's problem is the exact same problem that bedeviled John Boehner when he was Speaker of the House. Which means, when conservatives and radical conservatives split, then the only way to get a deal is to work with Democrats. Ryan needs to pull the Obamacare Repeal in order to fortify Obamacare, not repeal it, with the aid of Democrats.

Democrats run this show. Trump needs to raise the budget ceiling soon. What will he concede to get a deal? Let's find out!

We wouldn't want Trump to lose again now, would we?:

But on Wednesday, once it became clear that the bill wouldn’t have the votes otherwise, Donald Trump signed off on adding that portion. Once that was negotiable, all hell broke loose. It became perfectly clear why Ryan never wanted to go down this path of negotiating the “off-limits” portions of the bill. You don’t just risk blowing up your Congressional Budget Office score. More and more of the already reluctant moderates begin to bail on the bill while conservatives, smelling blood, only demand more concessions. This is precisely what happened on Thursday afternoon, causing a surprise delay of a scheduled vote. Members will only say that negotiations are still “ongoing.” But going where?

Dogsplaining

Pig and Emu Babies

Love the Dancehall!

Land Park Murder

Separated by just three miles and three degrees of separation from this family. Wonder what happened?:

Four people were found dead Thursday morning inside a home in Sacramento’s South Land Park neighborhood, a normally quiet area of tree-lined streets and mid-century ranch houses. Police detained a man in San Francisco in connection with what they called a quadruple homicide.

Gravity Wave Clouds Imaged By Mars Rover

Awesome video!:

Using Curiosity’s navigation camera, Moores and Kloos recorded eight-frame movies of this wispy cloud belt for two martian years. They’ve used two angles to capture the clouds: one pointed directly up, to see wind direction and speed, and another that keeps the rover’s horizon in the frame, allowing a view into the clouds’ depth. The captured clouds are so thin as to be invisible without painstaking computer enhancement, Kloos said in his presentation Tuesday.

...Given the limited water vapor, solar energy, and atmosphere, the martian clouds lack the variety of shapes seen on Earth. But during one day of cloud gazing—Curiosity’s 1302th martian day, to be precise—the team got lucky and saw something unusual. That day, when Curiosity looked to the horizon, it saw a sequence of straight, parallel rows of clouds flowing in the same direction: the first ground-based view of a gravity wave cloud. Similar to the waves that follow a pebble tossed into a pond, gravity waves are created when some unknown feature of the martian landscape causes a ripple in the atmosphere that is then seen in clouds. Such waves are common at the edge of the martian ice caps, but thought to be less frequent over its equator.

Shiver Me Parrots!

Still Competitive

We were well on the way to having the rainiest year on record at Sacramento Executive Airport (which has been measuring rainfall since 1941). Then, we had a month with virtually no rain. "There goes the record," I thought. But we are still competitive, despite the month-long break in rainfall. We'll be close!

Wolf

Buyer's Remorse

Really? How is it people are so stupid? What did you THINK was going to happen?:

Moss trusted Trump.

"I truly believe from the heart that (Trump) is going to do everything he can. He's going to create treatment centers for the kids," he said last year.

But last week, Moss read about the proposed American Health Care Act. The Republican bill would end the Obamacare requirement that addiction services and mental health treatment be covered under Medicaid in the 31 states that expanded the health care program -- which include Moss' home state of New York.

"This bill would devastate efforts to address the opioid crisis," said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, director of the Bloomberg American Health Initiative at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "There's no question this legislation in the House of Representatives would cost American lives."

David Trott's Hot Mic Moment

This would be hilarious, if it wasn't so sad:

At around the 6-minute mark in the video below, you can hear Trott’s aide say, “We’re going to take that part where they’re booing funding the military and I’m gonna get somebody to write a story and we’re going to promote the shit out of that. It’s un-American crap.” He’s referring to the fact that the crowd booed him when he called the American military “the weakest it’s ever been” and for saying he supports increased military funding immediately after saying how much he enjoys meeting with groups like the Rare Diseases Association who are all asking for more funding (see video in Update 3 below.) Later in the video, Trott asks if they “bounced” any questions. His aide confirms they did.

Trump is Owned by Putin-Connected Russian Mob Bosses

This is what it all boils down to:

Human rights lawyer Scott Horton, whose work in the region goes back to defending Andrei Sakharov and other Soviet dissidents, has gone through a series of studies by the Financial Times to show how funds from Russian crime lords bailed Trump out after yet anther bankruptcy. The conclusions are stark:

Among the powerful facts that DNI missed were a series of very deep studies published in the [Financial Times] that examined the structure and history of several major Trump real estate projects from the last decade—the period after his seventh bankruptcy and the cancellation of all his bank lines of credit. ...

The money to build these projects flowed almost entirely from Russian sources. In other words, after his business crashed, Trump was floated and made to appear to operate a successful business enterprise through the infusion of hundreds in millions of cash from dark Russian sources.
He was their man.

Silly Brain

My sleeping brain wants to entertain me with a little-known Alfred Hitchcock movie set in the empty lobby of a San Francisco hotel. My brain doesn't know much about either Alfred Hitchcock or San Francisco, so it's making up a lot of shit about Cary Grant, casinos, blondes, and dirt bikes.

Grabbing With Many, Tiny Hands

Don't Be Like Arizona

Art Censorship

An atmosphere of fear:

Cuban artist and creative director Erik Ravelo is used to having his artwork censored. He was, after all, the man behind United Colors of Benetton’s UnHate campaign, which featured doctored photos of world leaders making out.

Yet his newest project, a personal artwork unrelated to his career as a creative director, has managed to spark even more controversy “I had people writing me, threatening me,” he said in a phone conversation with the Huffington Post. “At first the project was fun but it got a little out of hand.”

Bewildered By The Attack of the Googlebots

What's up? Haven't you ever seen a blog before?

Multiplication Trick

I guess Twitter is useful for something.

Glaciers Shudder in the Anthropocene

No Question, I'm A Nerd

I'm way over on the right.

geek - An enthusiast of a particular topic or field. Geeks are “collection” oriented, gathering facts and mementos related to their subject of interest. They are obsessed with the newest, coolest, trendiest things that their subject has to offer.

nerd - A studious intellectual, although again of a particular topic or field. Nerds are “achievement” oriented, and focus their efforts on acquiring knowledge and skill over trivia and memorabilia.

Stupid Baby

Academia Ails

Trying to get back to common sense:

As I say, this is well known. There’s even a term for it in social theory: reflexivity. And yet we persist in doing idiot things that can only possibly have this result:

• Assessing school-teachers on the improvement their kids show in tests between the start and end of the year (which obviously results in their doing all they can depress the start-of-year tests).
• Assessing researchers by the number of their papers (which can only result in slicing into minimal publishable units).
• Assessing them — heaven help us — on the impact factors of the journals their papers appear in (which feeds the brand-name fetish that is crippling scholarly communication).
• Assessing researchers on whether their experiments are “successful”, i.e. whether they find statistically significant results (which inevitably results in p-hacking and HARKing).

What’s the solution, then?

I’ve been reading the excellent blog of economist Tim Harford, for a while. That arose from reading his even more excellent book The Undercover Economist (Harford 2007), which gave me a crash-course in the basics of how economies work, how markets help, how they can go wrong, and much more. I really can’t say enough good things about this book: it’s one of those that I feel everyone should read, because the issues are so important and pervasive, and Harford’s explanations are so clear.
In a recent post, Why central bankers shouldn’t have skin in the game, he makes this point:

The basic principle for any incentive scheme is this: can you measure everything that matters? If you can’t, then high-powered financial incentives will simply produce short-sightedness, narrow-mindedness or outright fraud. If a job is complex, multifaceted and involves subtle trade-offs, the best approach is to hire good people, pay them the going rate and tell them to do the job to the best of their ability.

Shadow of Contrail Above on Cloud Deck Below

The cloud deck is thick enough that you can't see the contrail. You have to infer its presence.

They Call Me Mr. Gumby

"The Fool On The Hill"

Just Right!

A River's Humanity

Interesting:

Long revered by New Zealand's Maori people, the river's interests will now be represented by two people.

The Maori had been fighting for over 160 years to get this recognition for their river, a minister said.

"I know the initial inclination of some people will say it's pretty strange to give a natural resource a legal personality," said New Zealand's Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson.

"But it's no stranger than family trusts, or companies or incorporated societies."

The Whanganui River, New Zealand's third-longest, will be represented by one member from the Maori tribes, known as iwi, and one from the Crown.

The recognition allows it to be represented in court proceedings.

Funny How That Works

Throw Care To The Wind!

When You Know Too Much About a Subject

I don't believe there's a bus station west of Santa Fe: