Ex Post Facto

 

Imagine what it would be like if Roe vs. Wade was not only overturned but the government pursued and prosecuted women and physicians who had participated in abortion procedures when it was legal.

Ex post facto laws retroactively change the rules of evidence in a criminal case, retroactively alter the definition of a crime, retroactively change punishment for a criminal act, or punish behavior that was legal when that behavior was committed.

In essence it redefines the rules of the past.

 Inherent in the concept of Western justice is the concept of "due process," where a citizen knows what behavior is legal, what is not and how the government can use the legal system to distinguish and punish bad behavior. It  is essential that those rules be known and not whimsically changed.

An ex post facto law is considered a hallmark of tyranny because it deprives people of a sense of what behavior will or will not be punished and allows for random punishment at the whim of those in power. More, it allows a government or group to target a person or group specifically, using legal past behavior as a weapon.

So ex post facto laws --along with its tyrannical cousin, the bill of attainder--are specifically prohibited (Article 1, Section 10 Clause 1, and Article I, Section 9, paragraph 3) in the U.S. Constitution.

Ex post facto is more than a despotic tool, it is a way of thinking. Take, for example, the recent request of a Chicago pastor to remove George Washington's name from a city park because he owned slaves. Washington did indeed own slaves. But it was legal when he did. One might want to hold him responsible for an immoral act of owning slaves but, at the time, while  slave ownership was debated it not considered immoral by any culture. Some thought it immoral, like the debate over abortion today, but it flourished at the time of the American Revolution. Indeed, the ambiguity over slavery evidenced by the founders of the American nation was unusual.

Holding people responsible for moral principles not yet accepted requires a lot of confidence; one might find oneself on the long end of the police baton in the future. It also requires purity, the belief that you and your judgment are beyond question and you can apply your judgment righteously against people quite unaware of the debate. Your enemy just need be flawed. The victim is like Dante's Virgil, subjected to the spiritual laws of a man he never heard of, from a time he never knew.

If that makes you think of cruel and outrageous religious groups, you are right.

Hugo

The Hugo Awards, the most prestigious awards in science fiction, had their 2017 ceremony  at WorldCon 75 in Helsinki, Finland.
The winners are:
Best Novel: The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin Best Novella: "Every Heart a Doorway" by Seanan McGuire Best Novelette: "The Tomato Thief" by Ursula Vernon Best Short Story: "Seasons of Glass and Iron", by Amal El-Mohtar Best Related Work: Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016 by Ursula K Le Guin Best Graphic Story: Monstress, Volume 1: Awakening , written by Marjorie Liu, illustrated by Sana Takeda Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form): Arrival , screenplay by Eric Heisserer based on a short story by Ted Chiang, directed by Denis Villeneuve Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form): The Expanse: Leviathan Wakes , written by Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, directed by Terry McDonough Best Series: The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen) John W Campbell Award for Best New Writer: Ada Palmer
This year's slate of nominees, unlike the drama surrounding the 2016 and 2015 Hugos, was less impacted by the ballot-stuffing tactics of the "Rabid Puppies", thanks to a change in the way nominees were voted for this year (including the fact no work could appear in more than one category) in an attempt to avoid tactical slate picks.

Sunday/Doolittle

In “Ancient Wisdom Speaks to the Mountain”, the speaker muses on stillness – the suspension of a moment into an image – which reflects back on Hilda Doolittle’s poetic technique itself. Here, the process of capturing her subject is endless, rather than static or photographic. The mountain, the viewer, the reader, the passage of time – all are incorporated into a scene that flows through the poem’s lines and gradually disintegrates any sense of difference between stillness in space and the notion of being “still” in a continuous state of being. The mountain transforms into “a picture of a mountain”, that is “frozen” both in water and time, while nature around it revolves through its cycle of seasons. The title refers to Athena, the goddess of wisdom, weaving and war; who is being addressed, however, is deliberately unclear, shifting between “she” and “you”, so that the reader becomes part of the poem’s meditative process. Indeed, “Ancient Wisdom” reads as an exercise in mindfulness – the deliberate absorption of oneself into the surroundings, in an attempt to “start awake” with full sensory and spiritual awareness. (tls)

Ancient Wisdom Speaks to the Mountain


I.


Where you are,
your clock is blue as the robes
the priests of Tibet wear:


where you are,
you stare and stare at a mountain
and a picture of a mountain in the water:


and when the river is half frozen over,
still you stand
snow on your sleeve and hood:


still you stand waiting,
not forgetting;
where were we now


if you had not said over and over,
as you watched the snow
slide down the runnels


and become, below on the slopes,
blossom of apple, quince and the wild-pear,
repeatedly, this prayer:


remember these (you said)
who when the earthquake shook their city,
when angry blast and fire


broke open their frail door
did not forget
beauty.


II.


O—what a picture of a mountain!
in our desolation,
four times, four seasons


marched up from the valley,
each with its retinue and panoply,
each climbed the mountain slowly:


though the mountain changed its colour
as the seasons came and went,
she did not alter.


III.


Her cloak is very old
yet blue as the blue-poppy,
blue as the flax in flower:


and not an hour passed
in our torment
but she thought of us:


she did not change,
the mountain changed from gold to violet,
as the sun rose and set:


she knew our fear,
and yet she did not falter
nor cast herself in anguish by the river:


but she stood,
the sun on her hair
or the snow on her blue hood:


winter and summer,
summer and winter
. . . again . . . again . . .


never forgetting
but remembering
our peculiar desolation:


I will stand here, she said to the mountain,
that even you must start awake, aware
that beauty can endure:


her cloak is very, very old
and blue . . .
H. D. (1943)

Arkhipov

  

Happy Vasili Arkhipov‏ Day

Today is the anniversary of the death of Vasili Arkhipov, a beacon of integrity and intelligence in the fog of nationalism and bravado. His death is important because it was caused by technical overreach instigated by that nationalism and bravado and we should be reminded of that. But his life, particularly his human heroism during the blundering Cuban Missile Crisis, is a tribute to the better elements of mankind.

At the height of the Cold War with America, the Russians began to fear the gap developing between the two powers' submarine fleets. The Russians eventually rushed the development and construction of the K-19, the first of two new Hotel-class ballistic missile submarines. As with much of the Russian development and manufacturing, there was a lot wrong with the K-19. In the movie, "K-19," Harrison Ford played the part of a real Russian sub commander in 1961 who managed a real on-board accident in a K-19 cooling system that threatened a meltdown. As in Chernobyl, heroic individuals accepted their radiation deaths as they went into the reactor on the K-19 and Jerry-rigged an alternative cooling system. Many died, the commander played by Ford years later died of complication of radiation exposure.

That commander's name was Vasili Arkhipov. There should be a world holiday for him.

The following year, in July of 1962, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev agreed to Cuba’s request to place nuclear missiles in Cuba as a deterrent to future US interference after the Bay of Pigs invasion debacle a few years earlier. In mid-October, a U.S. reconnaissance airplane produced evidence of medium and long range Soviet ballistic missiles in Cuba. President John F. Kennedy promptly established a military blockade to prevent further missiles from entering Cuba and demanded that the missiles be dismantled and returned to the Soviet Union.

The two great powers faced off. It is important to know that Kennedy was being advised to launch a first strike against the Russians with the logic that the Russian retaliatory ability was limited and would cause 30 million civilian deaths at the most. The military thought that a bargain. At the same time Castro was campaigning Khrushchev for a first strike against the U.S., knowing full well Cuba as an entity would not exist afterwards. (See The Armageddon Letter.) These people were the world leaders whose decisions were going to determine the future of the world. And those who were democratically elected did not seem to be getting any less crazy advice.

The K-19 hero Vasili Arkhipov was second-in-command in the nuclear-armed Foxtrot-class submarine B-59, part of a flotilla of four submarines protecting Soviet ships on their way to Cuba. On October 27, as they approached the US imposed quarantine line, US Navy ships in pursuit started dropping depth charges to force the B-59 to surface for identification – completely unaware that it was carrying nuclear weapons.
The explosions rocked the submarine which went dark except for emergency lights. With the air-conditioning down, temperature and carbon dioxide levels rose sharply. The crew was hardly able to breathe.
Unable to contact Moscow and under pressure from the Americans for several hours, Captain Valentin Savitsky finally began to crack. He assumed that war had broken out between the two countries and decided to launch a nuclear torpedo. He would not go down without a fight.
However, unlike the other submarines in the flotilla, the three officers on-board the B-59 had to agree unanimously to launch the nuclear torpedo. As the other officer sided with Savitsky, only Arkhipov stood in the way of launching World War III.
An argument broke out among the three, but Arkhipov was able to convince the Captain not to launch the torpedo. How was he able to prevail under such stressful conditions? He was actually in charge of the entire flotilla and as such was equal in rank to Savitsky. But the reputation he had gained during the K-19 incident may have been the decisive factor in convincing the other officers to abort the launch. That detail may have made all the difference.

The submarine eventually surfaced and awaited orders from Moscow, averting what would have been a nuclear holocaust. The Cuban Missile Crisis ended a few days later.
This crucial episode of the Cold War only became known to the West after the collapse of the Soviet Union many years later.

Marijuana

A recent review of studies on marijuana tried to come to conclusions about its medical value. This is difficult because studies have multiple motives and marijuana is not one chemical but rather a combination of its cannabinoids and chemicals, which number in the hundreds, all working together to make its effects as potent as possible. So pinpointing the active ingredients is very hard. And good studies are difficult when doing evaluations of subjective parameters.
One major caveat to this: The report is, by its own admission, only a best guess for a lot of its findings, because much of the research out there just isn’t very good. By combing through more than 10,000 studies published since 1999, the review, conducted by more than a dozen experts, provides the clearest look at the scientific evidence on marijuana yet.
Remember: consensus of bad studies are worthless.


There is “conclusive evidence” that marijuana is good for treating chronic pain.
The report also found “conclusive evidence” that marijuana is effective for treating chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting.
And the report found “conclusive evidence” that marijuana can improve patient-reported multiple sclerosis spasticity symptoms. But it only found “limited evidence” for marijuana improving doctor-reported symptoms of this kind.
The report found “moderate evidence” that marijuana is effective for “improving short-term sleep outcomes in individuals with sleep disturbance associated with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome, fibromyalgia, chronic pain, and multiple sclerosis.” It also found “limited evidence” for marijuana’s ability to treat appetite and weight loss associated with HIV/AIDS, improving Tourette syndrome symptoms, improving anxiety symptoms in individuals with social anxiety disorders, and improving PTSD. And there’s “limited evidence” of a correlation between marijuana and better outcomes after a traumatic brain injury.
There is “limited evidence” that marijuana is ineffective for treating symptoms associated with dementia and glaucoma, as well as depressive symptoms in individuals with chronic pain or multiple sclerosis. And it found “no or insufficient evidence” for marijuana as a treatment for cancers, cancer-associated anorexia, irritable bowel syndrome, epilepsy, spasticity in patients with paralysis due to spinal cord injury, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Huntington’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, dystonia, drug addiction, and schizophrenia. 
Overall, the report suggests that, as far as therapeutic benefits go, marijuana is a solid treatment for multiple symptoms associated to chronic pain, chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting, and multiple sclerosis. 

The report finds “substantial evidence” of marijuana’s negative effects for a few conditions. For long-term marijuana smokers, there’s a risk of worse respiratory symptoms and more frequent chronic bronchitis episodes. For pregnant women who smoke pot, there’s a risk of lower birth weight for the baby. For marijuana users in general, there’s a greater risk of developing schizophrenia and other psychoses. And there’s a link between marijuana use and increased risk of car crashes.

The report also found “limited evidence” of links between marijuana use and several other negative outcomes, including an increased risk of testicular cancer, triggering a heart attack, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and pregnancy complications. And it found “moderate” to “limited” evidence that marijuana use might worsen symptoms or risk for some mental health issues, including depressive disorders, bipolar disorder, suicidal ideation and suicide attempts among heavier users, and anxiety disorders, particularly social anxiety disorder among regular users.

There’s “moderate evidence” that acute marijuana use impairs learning, memory, and attention. There’s “limited evidence” of marijuana use and worse outcomes in education, employment, income, and social functioning. There was some good news: The report found “moderate evidence” of no link between marijuana smoking and lung cancer or marijuana use and head and neck cancers, which are commonly linked to tobacco.

It also found a “limited” to “moderate” evidence of a correlation between marijuana use and use of other illicit drugs. This is the typical evidence cited for the so-called “gateway” effect: that marijuana use may lead to the use of harder drugs.

"Dunkirk"

"Dunkirk:" A Review


"Dunkirk" is a high profile, high budget film about the retreat of British and French forces to the beaches of Dunkirk, France in the early days of World War Two. It was a pivotal several days in history with 450,000 British soldiers trapped against the sea as German troops slowly advanced to destroy the existing British army. The next step would be the British island itself with complete control of the Western Front. Hitler could then turn his attention to the East.

What prevented this logical sequence was astonishing, heroic and world-changing. The British dug in to await their fate; on the periphery vicious fighting, massacres of prisoners, incredible tactical decisions were routine. French forces were particularly heroic in holding the Germans at bay.
Eventually 330,000 British troops were rescued by fishing boats and private ships from the small ports all across England in one of the most astonishing defeats and rescues the world has ever seen. It kept the British army intact and completely changed the War.

The movie treats these events with a curious eye. It is less interested in the big picture of the story and seems to be sympathetic to the travails of individual soldiers teetering on the abyss. It opens  with several soldiers desperately fleeing the German advance and follows one of them throughout his several days escape. The face of the enemy is never seen but the effect of their long range war is brutal and devastating. Time and again soldiers come close to escape only to be denied and to try again. As the movie progresses one begins to feel as if you are watching "Into Thin Air" or "Revenant." It is a story of suffering, endurance and luck. One young man singled out as a hero by his hometown paper
was killed by accident by one of his fellows. A telling element is the British pilot who is involved in much of the action; his face is never seen until the very last moment of the story when he is revealed to be Tom Hardy.

In this story, even the stars are ciphers. And there is no Big Picture.

Reverie

"The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one." - Albert Einstein






James M. Buchanan’s political economy should be read as part of a big European tradition in political philosophy following Alexis de Tocqueville (Democracy in America) and John Sturt Mill (On Liberty ) on the nature of democracy who feared that democracy may threaten liberty. Mill and Tocqueville feared the democratic revolution and particularly the modern passion for equality may threaten liberty. Tocqueville asks what becomes of people when they are overcome by this passion? The growth of state power and the homogenization of state power society as results of homogenizing of society as two consequences of equalizing conditions. The growth of government inspired many of Buchanan’s earlier writings. What Mill, Tocqueville and James Buchanan teaches us is that to love democracy well, we must love it moderately.--Foss


The health care debate is confusing. Is the Affordable Care Act a success or not? The U.S. has always had its health care system criticized by outsiders; is that criticism over now that ACA is in place? If the ACA actually is a failure and the Rube-publicans are unable to fashion a new plan, why would anyone have optimism that the central government will do a better job the next time it tries?

Who is...John Newton?

 

In 2013, a team of U.N. chemical weapons inspectors confirmed that sarin had been used in an attack that killed as many as 1,400 men, women and children in Ghouta, a suburb on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria. The Syrian government denied responsibility for the attack, as they did for the most recent incident. That 2013 attack was the most lethal use of chemicals in global warfare since the 1988 Halabja massacre, where Iraqi forces led by dictator Saddam Hussein killed thousands of their own civilians by using the gas.

Sarin was also used in the 1995 Tokyo subway attack by Shoko Asahara's cult, which killed 12 and sickened thousands. Members of the cult used the tips of their umbrellas to puncture plastic bags filled with liquid sarin on five crowded subway cars before hurrying off — leaving their fellow riders trapped with the toxic gas.

The U.S. says  sarin was the chemical behind the attack that killed more than 80 people, including at least 27 children, in Syria's Idlib province earlier this year.

The number of colleges in the U.S. declined by nearly 6% since the 2015-16 academic year, with the drop largely from closings of for-profit colleges that had low graduation and high student-loan default rates. (wsj)

“A lawyer, a spy, a mob boss, and a money launderer walk into a bar. The bartender says: you guys must be here to talk about adoption.” — Some guy on Twitter

Golden oldie:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-umpire-fable.html

The Umpire: A Fable steeleydock.blogspot.com In a tight pennant race, the two contending teams met on a Saturday for the "Game of the Week." Both teams were talented, the race had dr...

Polemic: n:

1. a controversial argument, as one against some opinion, doctrine, etc.
2. a person who argues in opposition to another; controversialist.

Example: The second [book] is an angry polemic against the pervasive corruption of representative democracy wrought by economic inequality.
-- Jonathan A Knee, "The New Gilded Age in Philanthropy," New York Times, May 1, 2017
An interesting origin:

Polemic comes from the Greek adjective polemikós, a derivative of the noun pólemos “war, battle” in the strict sense and not as in, say “war of words.” The adjective is also restricted to warfare. The current (and only) senses “controversial, controversialist,” first appear in Middle French in the late 16th century and in English as an adjective and noun in the early 17th century.

John Newton was a slave-trader-turned-preacher who wrote the hymn "Amazing Grace."

He went to sea with his merchant marine father at the age of eleven; sent to Spain as a shopkeeper's apprentice at fifteen; another try as sailor in Venice at seventeen; press-ganged into service aboard an English man-of-war but such a trouble-maker that he was released to a slave-trader; abandoned by the trader to the whims of his "African princess" concubine, who starved him, and encouraged the natives to jeer and throw rocks at her white slave; a sequence of better or worse treatment by other captain-traders, and a series of broken pledges to reform a life "big with mischief"; finally, at age twenty-two, a passage home to England and, during a savage storm off the coast of Newfoundland, a born-again deliverance into evangelical Christianity.
Newton eventually became a passionate abolitionist; his famous hymn eventually became popular in the slave-bound American South. In the 1830s, decades after Newton had died, Southern hymnbooks began to include "Amazing Grace" -- now so re-titled from Newton's original "Faith's Review and Expectation," and sung "shape-note" fashion to the anonymously-written tune the world now knows. The lyrics, too, had a life of their own: in Uncle Tom's Cabin, for example, lines were added to emphasize the religion; other, "disrobed" versions, such as the one made popular by Judy Collins, represent "the transmogrification of the hymn into a self-help anthem" and do not, complain some Christians, represent Newton's intent. (steve king)

 

Real GDP has grown 1.97%, .83% and .69% over the last 3, 5, and 10 years respectively.

 

 

...men are generally more honest in their private than in their public capacity, and will go to greater lengths to serve a party, than when their own private interest is alone concerned. Honour is a great check on mankind: But where a considerable body of men act together, this check is, in a great measure, removed; since a man is sure to be approved by his own party . . . and he soon learns to despise the clamour of adversaries."--David Hume

 

Laura June, writing for The Outline: It's a well-known, well-documented fact that women entrepreneurs face an uphill battle in the fight to get funding for their businesses. But a new study suggests that it can actually be almost impossible. According to the study, published Tuesday in the journal Venture Capital,  an all male team is about four times more likely to get funding than teams with any women on them

From 2002 to 2012, the arrest rate fell by 11 percent among those ages 18 to 64, according to federal data analyzed by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco.

But the arrest rate rose by 23 percent for people over 55. It rose even more markedly — by 28 percent — among those over 65, more than 106,000 of whom were arrested in 2012, the last year for which statistics are available.

This may not be an indicator of growing criminality among the elderly but rather simple dementia. That sounds great.

“...since the effect of any individual vote is so very small, it does not pay a voter to acquire information unless his stake in the initial issue is enormously greater than the cost of information.” --Arrow


CIA Director Mike Pompeo with a remarkable opinion:
“Wikileaks will take down America any way they can and find any willing partner to achieve that end,” Mr. Pompeo said Thursday at a security summit in Aspen, Colorado, where questions concerning the website’s publications and the Trump administration’s intended reaction peppered an hour long discussion on subjects ranging from Wikileaks and its publisher Julian Assange to Russia’s role in last year’s election and North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.
“This is the nature of these non-state hostile intelligence services,” he added. “I think our intelligence community has a lot of work in figuring out how to respond to them.”

The dictatorship of the [Communist] Party once established, and given a monopoly of propaganda, the problem of controlling the proliferation of romantic myths, of unifying and stabilizing and concentrating on one system at a time should be simple in the extreme. One of the greatest of modern scientific developments is waiting to serve the regime in this regard and save the world from turmoil. I refer, of course, to psychology in its applied aspect. In this connection we may thrill with patriotism as well as hope. No other country has approached our own in the succession of peerless psychologists we have given to the world. To name but a few: P.T. Barnum; Jay Gould; Mrs. Mary B.G. Eddy; Mrs. Aimee S. McPherson (notice the due representation of both sexes); Billy Sunday; Goat-gland Doc Brinkley; and coming to our own home town, our own dear Big Bill Thompson, Balaban, and Katz, and WGN.
As a climax to this glorious series I would name Dr. John B. Watson. It is not necessary to prove that he is the world's greatest psychologist; he admits it. And besides, doesn't he draw $40,000 a year [note: this is over $700,000 in 2017 dollars] for his psychologizing? Speaking for myself, I must express chagrin that it is so little. A man who can stand before the cream of the intelligentsia and exhort them to believe that they do not believe, but only react, to think that there is no such thing as thinking, but only muscle-twitching, that the whole idea of struggle and error is an error against which we must struggle until we see that seeing is an illusion, and illusion likewise an illusion--in short, one who repeats that "I am not saying anything, and you are not hearing anything, the gears are in mesh, nothing more," and makes them like it and pay to hear it--I say such a man should be worth at least $1,000,000 in any properly ordered civilization. One of the first acts of justice of the Communist dictatorship will undoubtedly be to give such a man a task which is not an insult to his powers. . . .--Frank H. Knight in "The Case for Communism: From the Standpoint of an Ex-Liberal."

Who could have imagined that Russian disinformation efforts would be more successful exposed than clandestine?

In 1967, Timothy Leary told Allen Ginsberg to drop out. "What can I drop out of?" Ginsberg asked. "Your teaching at Cal," Leary said. Ginsberg chuckled. "But I need the money."

 
Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.--Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

AAAaaaannnndddd....a funny line: