DShomshak

"...Occasionally we saw the corpses of dwarf stars,glistening balls of stuff so heavy that a speck outweighs an Earthly mountain. I saw such objects no more than ten miles across, containing the matter of a sun like vast Kerkaju. Inside these dead stars, the archveults told me, were to be found the IOUN stones." --"Morreion," in Rhialto the Marvellous, p. 207 Sounds like a neutron star to me. But yes, it was sloppy not to include that in the story the stones were obtained by other means than a black hole. Having a neutron star ripped apart by a black hole presumably would also work, but would likely be even more dangerous to collect. Dean Shomshak I'd trust what your palindromedary says. It may be two-faced, but it's still more trustworthy than an archveult.

Even if the policy is walked back, it serves the spiteful purpose of cruelty and fear. But as Ranxerox says, it's also deeply stupid. The radio report I heard noted that it could affect noncitizens who serve in the US military, of which there are more than a few. If I understood correctly, existing law says if their children are born on US military bases, they are considered born on US soil. Well, we can't have that, now can we? Those cunning foreigners, taking advantage of our laws by following them! So we're going to frighten, anger and alienate people who have shown by their deeds that they want to bind themselves to this country. As I have said before in this thread, the desire of people from other countries to become American citizens -- and their belief that this is possible -- is power for the US. It is a power our most dedicated enemies lack and cannot obtain without abandoning fundamental aspects of their own identities. Like, they'd have to stop being tyrannical kleptocracies or religious dictatorships. To give up such an advantage is just, well, stupid. Dean Shomshak

Even if the policy is walked back, it serves the spiteful purpose of cruelty and fear. But as Ranxerox says, it's also deeply stupid. The radio report I heard noted that it could affect noncitizens who serve in the US military, of which there are more than a few. If I understood correctly, existing law says if their children are born on US military bases, they are considered born on US soil. Well, we can't have that, now can we? Those cunning foreigners, taking advantage of our laws by following them! So we're going to frighten, anger and alienate people who have shown by their deeds that they want to bind themselves to this country. As I have said before in this thread, the desire of people from other countries to become American citizens -- and their belief that this is possible -- is power for the US. It is a power our most dedicated enemies lack and cannot obtain without abandoning fundamental aspects of their own identities. Like, they'd have to stop being tyrannical kleptocracies or religious dictatorships. To give up such an advantage is just, well, stupid. Dean Shomshak

The August 24, 2019 issue of The Economist also has a good article about the black hole-neutron star detection. Astronomers especially want to observe such an event in other ways, too, because it might give a glimpse of what's inside a neutron star. Astrophysicists have theories -- including blobs, threads and sheets of neutronium they've dubbed "nuclear pasta" -- but without some way to probe inside a neutron star, they can never test the theories. A black hole, however, can rip a neutron star apart so its insides become briefly visible. (According to Jack Vance, this is where ioun stones come from. See, IIRC, the short story "Morreion" in the "Dying Earth" cycle.) Dean Shomshak

I haven't seen this, and I won't, but the NY Times tells me a movie adaptation just came out of The Banana Splits. The kid's show from around 1970, not the dessert. Only-- get this -- it's edgy! The four figures in the funny animal costumes go on a murderous rampage! The Times notes: Who is the intended audience for this film? No one under 50 or so is likely to have heard of the original show; and I would like to think that no one over 30 still thinks it's original and "edgy" to take kid-vid and add homicide. (Though I'm likely to be disappointed there.) Dean Shomshak

I haven't seen this, and I won't, but the NY Times tells me a movie adaptation just came out of The Banana Splits. The kid's show from around 1970, not the dessert. Only-- get this -- it's edgy! The four figures in the funny animal costumes go on a murderous rampage! The Times notes: Who is the intended audience for this film? No one under 50 or so is likely to have heard of the original show; and I would like to think that no one over 30 still thinks it's original and "edgy" to take kid-vid and add homicide. (Though I'm likely to be disappointed there.) Dean Shomshak

I'm at the library now, so I was able to check the On the Media transcript: I thought I might have conflated WW2 with casualties from the Philippine-Amnerican War, so I first checked that: Wikipedia gives estimated Filipino casualties of at least 200,000, ranging up to 3 million, but these all include famine and disease (esp. a cholera epidemic). But no, Immerwahr did mean WW2: DANIEL IMMERWAHR: That's right. So one of the more dramatic events in World War II is the Japanese conquest of the Philippines. And this becomes the single bloodiest thing ever to happen on U.S. soil. World War II in the Philippines ultimately kills 1.5 million people. BROOKE GLADSTONE: Wow. DANIEL IMMERWAHR: About 1 million of whom are Filipinos or U.S. nationals. That's two civil wars. I don't know where he gets his numbers, since I haven't read his book. As the PAW shows, estimates can vary. But yeah, it doesn't have to be exactly twice the Civil War to be deep in "Holy Crap" territory. Dean Shomshak

Aw, shucks, I'm blushin'. Being so poor that I'm stuck with dial-up sucks. ISP and forum software become erratic, and fixing anything takes a long time if it's possible at all. Everybody out there? Try not to be poor. Incidentally, All Things Considered said yesterday that Hawaii has the highest life expectancy of the 50 states, a shade over 81 years. What's your secret? Dean Shomshak

It's possible I misheard or misremembered what Immerwahr said. Thank you for checking! Dean Shomshak

It's possible I misheard or misremembered what Immerwahr said. Thank you for checking! Dean Shomshak

Triple post? This is insane.

Oops, I clicked the wrong button?

On other matters, te latest ep of the public radio program On The Media interviewed historian Daniel Immerwahr, author of How to Hide an Empire, on the history of US overseas impeialism from guano mining in the Caribbean to today's "pointillist empire" of far-flung military bases. Fascinating stuff. Of particular interest to me: The debate around the turn of the 20th century about the US' sudden new colonial empire gained through the Spanish American War (among other things). Notably, until the Afghanistan campaign the war to subjugate the Philippines was the longest in US history; and twice as many Filipinos -- American nationals, though not American citizens -- died in WW2 as Americans of any sort died in the Civil War. Also, the nature of the debate the US had about that empire. People did implicitly recognize the US had reached an existential choice: * It could expand overseas; * It could be a democratic republic; * It could be white-dominant. Pick two of three. All three were not possible. The debate was between people willing to abandon democracy by having colonies of people who were not citizens, and people who wanted to abandon imperial expansion. As Immerwahr points out, nobody suggested abandoning white supremacy by extending citizenship to conquered peoples. Indeed, much of the anti-imperial rhetoric was explicitly racist. EDIT: The outcome of the debate was... mixed. Alaska and Hawaii became states; The Philippines and most of the territory seized in WW2 were eventually let go, sort of, but still hosting military bases; and Puerto Rico, Guam and a few other places are still under US sovereignty without their inhabitants being full citizens. Perhaps this should be resolved. Dean Shomshak

And then won the popular vote by a respectable margin, which kiboshes the "Une3lectable Hillary" trope. NOVA actually did an episode on this, looking at the election as an exercise in statistical analysis. General forecast was that she had something like a 3/4 chance of winning, IIRC. 75% is not 100% As one statistician put it, would you get on a plane that was 75% likely not to crash? While there's a danger in politics of re-fighting the last election, there's also a danger of drawing the wrong lessons. I hear some Democratic grandees think the lesson is, "Don't nominate a woman." Oy. Others say the lesson is to throw minorities under the bus to pander to the white working class. Not sure that's much better. The lesson I draw is how deeply the electoral college distorts elections. Consider that in 5 presidential elections since 2000, Republicans won the popular vote only once (W's second term), but received three terms in office. The reasons are not complex, though the causes behind them may be: The electorate has polarized between liberal/urban and rural/conservative, and the parties likewise. Most states are predictable based on the urban/rural percentage. I am not sure what Dems need to do to beat the Party of Trump in 2020. Clearly it isn't enough to win the popular vote overall: The point spread matters too, and the locations won. I am open to suggestions. But they do need to win: Given the former Republicans I have heard who are aghast at how Trump has changed the party and abused the office, I am confident that my own distaste for the man and his party is not mere partisanship. Dean Shomshak

I am reminded of Stanislaw Lem's tale of "Altruizine" from The Cyberiad. More directly of Isaac Asimov's "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline," but as a fable it reminds me of Lem. Not often that game stuff reminds me of Lem. Well done. Dean Shomshak

I am reminded of Stanislaw Lem's tale of "Altruizine" from The Cyberiad. More directly of Isaac Asimov's "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline," but as a fable it reminds me of Lem. Not often that game stuff reminds me of Lem. Well done. Dean Shomshak

Perhaps you missed that I said nothing of the sort. I said I thought Hillary would make a pretty good president in her own right, not merely an alternative to Trump, and listed the reasons why. As LL said, it was Hillary's bad luck to be playing the old game by the old rules at a time when the voters wanted to throw away the board. We shall see how the new game works out. Dean Shomshak

Okay, kidding aside... I know this will offend some people here, but I did not hold my nose when I voted for Hillary Clinton. I thought, and still think, she'd have made a pretty good president. Not great, but pretty good. Here's why. During the 2016 campaign, All Things Considered interviewed several of her former Senate colleagues to get a sense of her time there. The senators spoke highly of her detailed knowledge of law and policy, and her skill and diligence at quiet negotiation to bring coalitions together to get useful legislation passed, instead of scoring noisy propaganda points to please the activist party zealots. The kicker? These were moderate Republican senators. Well, former senators -- all but one had been primaried out in the Tea Party wave. Some of Hillary's much-touted flaws are also a matter of perspective. For instance, that she's "calculating" and "inauthentic." Well, I certainly hope a president would think carefully before speaking and try to strike a balance between what voters want to hear and what can actually be done. As for "authenticity," I am not sure what people mean by that. I'd say, Hillary showed herself to be authentically calculating. (You can't get much more spontaneous and authentic than Donald Trump. Still think those are always good qualities?) Hillary did not project a warm personality on the campaign trail. Fine with me, I'm not voting for someone to have a beer with. Some people also objected to her and Bill's fundraising. They particularly didn't like some of the sources for the money. Well. Until someone figures out a way to really and truly get money out of politics -- without replacing it with something even more damaging and less democratic -- it's harder to get elected without money, and you can't do good in government without getting elected. The Clinton fundraising machine helped a lot of Democrats. Hillary would have entered the White House with a lot of Dems owing her and ready to advance her agenda. I admit, Hillary seems to have a shifty relationship to the truth. It seems to be a common flaw for politicians so I grade on a curve here. The Hillary-lies that stick in my memory -- I particularly think of her story of landing in Bosnia under fire -- seem designed to make her look braver and more interesting, rather than meant to harm others. Deleting the emails didn't look good either, but as political crimes go this clumsy attempt at damage control doesn't offend me much. FBI Dorector Comey didn't think it was prosecutable, so I'll let it pass. Finally, consider Hillary's enemies. I suspect the far Right wouldn't hate her so much if they did not assess her as deeply dangerous to them. That is an endorsement in itself. All in all, Hillary was a pretty bad candidate. But like I said, she might have done okay as a president. I'd have voted for her even without Donald Trump as the alternative. She wouldn't have pleased the progressive wing of the Dems, but I'm rather centrist myself. Dean Shomshak

I am amused, amazed, and envious. Dean Shomshak

"Horrifying" is indeed the word for what's happening in the Amazon. As the BBC notes in its recording, greedy people are destroying a major source of the oxygen we breathe. The Amazon rain forest is big, but it ain't infinite. Meanwhile, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro spins conspiracy theories that the fires are being set by NGOs to make him look bad. Truly, he is the Brazilian Trump: A liar without shame, and an utter narcissist. Can the aliens please conquer us now? Dean Shomshak

And an AP article a couple days ago says Evangelical leaders are entirely satisfied with Trump's performance and predict Evangelicals will vote for him in even higher percentages in 2020. Comparing himself to God and Jesus? Pfft. What's a little blasphemy, so long as he appoints anti-abortion, anti-LGBT+ judges? Dean Shomshak

In view of Archer's post about how the party bases believe what the party tells them to believe... Two days ago (shortly after my post in fact) the NY Times radio program The Daily ran this story on how today's anti-immigration movement was invented. An awful lot of it goes back to one woman. A frightening story of what's possible for a few activists with an unlimited bankroll and time. Short version: Cordelia Scaife May began with environmentalism. This led her to concern about population growth. Immigration causes much of US population growth, and she thought immigrant people of color bred too much. So... And because she was an heiress to the Mellon fortune, she could throw as much money at this goal as she wanted, manufacturing think-tanks, lobbying groups and other "astroturf" to make it look like this was a huge issue. And here we are. Bankrolling the Anti-Immigration Movement - The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/.../the-daily/immigration-cordelia-scaife-may.html 2 days ago - The DailySubscribe: ... Hosted by Michael Barbaro and Natalie Kitroeff; produced by Michael Simon Johnson, Luke Vander Ploeg and Theo ... Dean Shomshak

Enjoying this very much. Dean Shomshak

I hope you're right. But it isn't the politicians I'm worried about: It's the party bases. Dean Shomshak

On Trump and Greenland... All Things Considered noted on Friday that Pres. Truman also tried to buy Greenland for the US. It was part of geostrategy against the Soviet Union, in ways that probably aren't very relevant anymore--though the US still does have a military base in Greenland, an article in today's paper says. The same article reports Trump is, perhaps uncharacteristically, soft-peddling the story as just a possibility being casually explored, not a hard policy proposal. Countries buying and selling territory back and forth is not a fashionable idea right now. For one thing, it is considered likely that the people of the territory might want to be consulted. It's still an idea that might be worth considering on some occasions, though. For instance, back in the 1990s I read that Russia was having trouble paying back loans and owed the US (and other countries) lots of money. Russia also had a problem with separatist violence in Chechnya. At the time, I wondered if these problems could solve each other: The US cancels Russia's debt in exchange for Chechnya becoming a US territory like Puerto Rico or Guam. We get access to Caspian Sea oil, the Chechens get out of Russia with an eventual option for either statehood or independence at their choice, and Russia gets one less group of angry non-Russians. I am sure that people who actually know that part of the world would tell me it's a terrible idea, but I found it amusing. It might be extended to other countries that want to be ethno-states but have inconvenient minorities, such as the Karens in Myanmar or the Kurds in Iraq. Again, it's probably a bad idea in practice, but at least it's an attempt to break ethno-political deadlocks and give everyone what they want. My current thinking adapts the idea to the US. It's all too clear that the US is not one nation, and two of the sides loathe each other. So how can we disengage? Answer: Sell the cities to Canada, as urban people tend to be increasingly liberal while the rest of the country gets more conservative and resentful of the urban "elites." For an example: My own state of Washington is geographically a deep red state, but demographically a blue state: The populous, strongly Democratic counties around Puget Sound overbalance the less populous counties everywhere else. But if Pugetopolis became part of British Columbia, the Republican party would get another Idaho to supply reliable senators, members of Congress and electoral college votes; ind Pugetolpolis liberals would get single-payer health care and other desired policies; and I could move to Canada and become Lord Liaden's fellow-countryman without leaving my aged mother, who needs me to take care of her and doesn't want to leave the house she's lived in for more than 50 years. A win all around. Dean Shomshak