The critical question

The question as to whether we should believe anything Donald Trump says is largely settled. He lies so routinely and so obviously, that the surprising things is to find something he has said is actually true. That should seem a shocking indictment of anyone, but is particularly unnerving when it's about the president of the United States.

The more substantive question is whether he knows he is lying.  Could he conceivably not himself be able to tell the difference between fiction and imagination, between what is true and the way he would like the world around him to be? It that's so, then he is in a truly delusional state of mind; and that should be deeply worrying to everyone.

Trump's distorting mirror

Donald Trump claims that US consumers won't be hurt by the tariffs he is imposing because Chinese firms (and US firms that use Chinese made parts) will eat the cost and not pass the cost of the tariffs on to consumers. Aside from the fact that depending on the concentration of the industry some may have little choice but to pass them on or make a loss (a simple piece of microeconomics that Trump apparently missed when at Wharton), he also doesn't consider that the same logic applies for goods moving in the other direction.  Applying his logic, if US firms selling in China we to eat China's retaliatory tariffs, US firms would be bearing the cost, not Chinese consumers. All of which is priced into the market which is why it reacts negatively when the trade war escalates.  

A prescient insight...

"The President in particular is very much a figurehead... but the qualities he is required to display are not those of leadership but those of finely judged outrage. For this reason the president is always a controversial choice, always an infuriating but fascinating character, His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it. On those criteria [he] is one of the most successful presidents the galaxy has ever had. He has already spent two of his ten presidential years in prison for fraud". 

Douglas Adams, 1978

The Harvard halo

On the NPR broadcast "Hidden Brain" Shankar Vedantam had as his guest Harvard Professor  Francesca Gino. She explained that the more experienced heart surgeons were leas likely to heed advice from the FDA and inexperienced ones. And that first that listened to people who weren't experts often came up with more innovative solutions. And that weaning red sneakers to teach an  HBS executive education class generated more respect than wearing a more traditional "uniform". This is a classic example of the Harvard Halo. Other R1's have a similar problem; the idea the "two step leverage (Garguilo et al) is an effective strategy remains an article of faith among those who have never worked in industry but who have been patted on the cake by sycophantic wannabes all their professional lives. I'll grant that the red sneaker study was fairly nifty in its design but not something that would be considered rocket science by a brain surgeon (a Brit humor allusion there).  But it's nonetheless a little nauseating to hear ideas so blindingly obvious lauded as if they were the next cure for cancer.   

Any way the wind blows

An august panel of talking heads on one of this mornings Sunday political talk shows spent thirty minutes trying to divine what Donald Trump really believes. After 4 years it's a complete mystery to me why they bother; do they not yet understand that he has no beliefs? Only a tiny set of talking points that he thinks will ingratiate him with whoever he's most recently been threatened by. He is governed by insecurity and opportunism. He is for gun control when he thinks that saying so will score him points. Then he's against it when Wayne La Pierre tells him it will lose him brownie points. He's buy buying Greenland, then it was only a joke, but he won't go to Denmark because he's offended that the Danish Prime Minister was "nasty" to him for calling the idea absurd; this from the man who claims, literally, he is "the chosen one".

In anyone else, this is the kind of behavior that would at best elicit pitying condescension, but might well end up with his being committed to an institution. And yet, because of his power, the media (and the Democrats) react with horror to every one of his ludicrous utterances. It's time to stop taking him seriously; he has no convictions. His guiding principle is his own aggrandizement and enrichment. Unlike the politically engaged, mainly on the left, who are at once appalled and captivated by this carnival freak show, the vast majority of the America public are blissfully inured to his behavior.  The markets are up: hurrah. They are down 800 points who cares - we don't own any mutual funds or shares. The deficit will top $1T: my pay check is still the same. We need to stop hanging on his every tweet and focus on what he does. He is a feather in the wind; and following every zig and zag will only make us tired and nauseous.

Bully in a China shop

Trump's trade war with China will end badly not only for the US but for the world economy as a whole. It was ill conceived from the start; a unilateral approach was never going to work especially against China which as it becomes more prosperous, is becoming less dependent for economic growth on exports. In liu of a coordinated effort, Trump chose tariffs which cause pain to both parties; bot only one has a political system that makes it vulnerable to the pain that tariffs and higher prices lead to.  Because it is not a democracy, Xi is insulated to some degree from the consequences of the economic consequences of a trade war.  China's political system, too, is better suited to a long game; just as ISIS and the Taliban know they can wait American presidents out, so Xi can look 2 or even six years down the road and know he will still be around after Trump has gone and the American electorate has had enough of the pain Trump's ill-thought-through economic bullying has caused.   

Not the Fox

Dan Bolz made a comment this evening that caught my attention: "In China, Donald Trump has found an enemy as wily as he is". To put Xi Jin-Ping and Trump on the same level seems ludicrously over-generous. China's political system is somewhat meritocratic, at least for those the toe the party line and dogma. Xi is  a meticulous, thoroughly informed  strategic thinker. Trump, in contrast, has a 5 minute attention span, contemptuously ignores knowledge that would help him navigate complex issue.  He is a showman, a third rate TV personality, who had the chutzpah to leverage white resentment to put him into a job for which, as he demonstrates an an hourly basis, he is completely unqualified. Trump an Xi aren't equals; and Xi I'm sure would find the comparison irritating and demeaning.     

Connecting the dots

Growing up I was exposed to monthly renditions of Tom Lehrer's  record "That was the Year that Was". Looking back many things are clearer now. For example, I had imagined him somewhere on the East coast, I'm not quite sure why, perhaps because my aunt lived in New York. And when I learned that he was at Harvard when began his singing career, that impression was reinforced. That was until I learned from a colleague that he had moved to Santa Cruz in the 1970s to teach at UC  Santa Cruz. So when he sings "the breakfast garbage you throw into the bay, they drink at lunch in San Jose, which I had in my minds eye imagined was somewhere in Central America and the bay being the Gulf of Mexico, I now realize are actually the town in which I now teach and San Francisco Bay. Even the album title is contextualized as a play on an American NBC satire that was copied from a British show of the same name ("That Was the Week That Was" or TW3).

Noting in the opening song that National Brotherhood Week was "celebrated" with the killing of Malcolm X now makes sense in the context of the civil rights movement which, as an 8 year old growing up in England, I was unaware of.  References to the use of the Marines to stabilize foreign regimes "until somebody we like can be elected" speaks to a US interventionist foreign policy.  George Murphy, a Californian senator who started his career in Hollywood makes sense with some (recently acquired) knowledge of history.  Jimmy Crack Corn is a reference that only a child growing up in America would understand (and still makes little sense to me). What Lehrer thought about Reagan and now Trump we will never know (at least not though his songs). "Watch Brinkely and Huntely" is a reference to two news anchors of the day who hosted the The Huntley–Brinkley Report from 1956 to 1970.

Many of the issues he sang about are still with us; pollution, racism, antisemitism, the threat of nuclear war and nuclear proliferation. Some was topical, such as the a lament for the Vice President who suffered the fate of Veep's in general, or his recounting of the life of Alma Mahler-Gropius-Werfel who died the year before.  Interestingly, in "Wernher von Braun" he alludes to the rise of China seven years before Nixon's visit and long before it was clear to most commentators that China's fortunes were on the rise.

Would I have enjoyed them more in the 1960s had I known then what I know now? Hard to say, but on the plus side I get to enjoy them with fresh eyes 50 years on.

Thinking ahead

Trump may be an aberration or he may be a more permanent reflection of America's cultural divide and the rightward-shift of the more rural and isolated parts of the country. Only time will tell. But whether he and his brand of politics are temporary or long-lasting, the effect of his time in office will long out-last him. As a white man, that makes me worried. Those who justifiably feel resentment at being demonized by Trump and his supporters may not distinguish between those who look like him but don't share his views and those who wear MAGA hats. I foresee a time when I will have to spend energy apologizing for being white, and for the sins of Trump-ism, even though I stand in staunch opposition to all he represents. And kudos to Susan Rice for  refusing to engage with Wolf Blitzer yesterday, who was baiting her with a mention of Tucker Calrson; her simple and suitably curt reply was "He's a disgrace". Exactly! 

The shadows of Nuremberg

Jews are understandably defensive when comparisons to the Holocaust are bandied about. My father, a lapsed Jew who was born in Czechoslovakia and fled just ahead of the Nazis invasion in 1939, led a medical mission to back to Czechoslovakia in 1945 and was among the first people to enter Terezin after it was liberated. He saw first hand the unspeakable horror of the Third Reich. There is nothing that compares, nor God willing is there ever likely to be, to the systematic organized slaughter of 6 million Jews.  My intent here isn't to make a direct comparison to the Holocaust, but rather to examine elements of its antecedents.

Of particular concern is the use of large rallies at which xenophobia is stirred and reinforced by the excitement and affirmation of the crowd. It is the kind of collective hysteria that was on display at Nuremberg rallies that is echoed today at Trump's campaign rallies. There were thirteen Nuremberg rallies; at the largest in 1937, some estimates suggest as many as 700,000 attended though other figures suggest te number was 350,000. Trump held 186 rallies as part of his election campaign, and another 71 since taking office. While clearly some attendees will have gone to multiple events, assuming each stadium holds about 30,000 people, Trump will have had a total audience of 7.7 million, compared to 2.3 million for the Nuremberg rallies. More people are likely to have attended a Trump rally than attended all the Nuremberg rallies. As a proportion of the population, the Nuremberg rallies may have involved of the population 3.3% over 12 years while Trumps has reached 2.4% in just 4 years. 

Next it is worth considering how the emotional fallout from these events is propagated. Social media didn't exist in the 1930s so propagation would be by word of mouth. The spread of the emotionally charged message would be limited by the size of the networks of the attendees. Assuming at least some dissipation along each link, it would take some time for the message to reach a bring about a sea change in culture sufficient to pave the way for the organized genocide that the Third Reich carried out. The ground was fertile anyway since Germany was still recovering from the Great depression and the strictures of reparations the countries was required to pay. That created resentment and anger, ripe for harnessing by a demagogue.

There are similarities in 21st century America. The financial crisis of 2008 and years of economic decline in middle America along with off-shoring and the creation of most value-creating employment only on the coasts have created the conditions that make the politics of fear and resentment so effective. And today, the emotional intensity of rallies like Trumps has the potential to go viral over the social media networks that are much larger than personal social networks. So those who worry that we may be nearing the critical mass needed to cause an inflection in the culture may be right to be concerned.  

"That's not who we are"

Culture is not always monolithic. Think of a cluster analysis. At some level all nodes are in a single cluster; but change the criteria for links and different cliques emerge. If the criteria for ties is language you get one picture; if similar attitudes towards foreigners and immigration is the tie a different picture will emerge. That's the clustering that has emerged, in large parts due to Fox and Trump over the last three years.

So it is worth considering the differences between two broad cliques; those who are fearful of (non-nordic / anglo-saxon) foreigners and those who aren't. They are probably more conservative, more likely to support traditional social policies and oppose liberal ones. One group (and this is just based on impressions, not data) is strongly libertarian, self-reliant, independent, deeply suspicious of outsiders, and fearful of the future.  The other embraces diversity, welcomes strangers, is unafraid of change.

So, when politicians react to mass shootings, hate crimes, and white nationalist / supremacist rhetoric with the now hackneyed response of "that's not who we are", first one has to ask who are "we". If the clustering is all Americans then sadly, yes, that is who "we" are. If we weren't, this wouldn't keep happening at rates reminiscent of a "shit-hole" countries like Sudan or Zambia (adjacent to the US in the per-capita homicide league table), or seventh in the world in total annual homicides.  Viewed from the perspective of these two cultural cliques, then those saying "that's not who we are may be confused about which group they belong to. It's not who the members of their cluster are, but it is who the other cluster is. 

"Thoughts and prayers" the Republican equivalent of "talk to the hand", has worked well for 20 years in shutting down discussion of the antecedents of gun violence, generally coupled with "now is not the time"; and of course for Republicans that time is never. In part its because their base is largely drawn from one of these two cliques.  Indeed, the divide between the two camps' values is increasingly aligned with both geography and party politics, exacerbating the disconnect between the two network cliques as opportunities for cross-cutting ties wane.  That in turn leads to a hardening of extreme views that become self-reinforcing within the clique. Social media helps reinforce this process.

Perhaps this time, with two incidents separated by less than 24 hours in which 30 people were killed, perhaps this time it will be different. But if the past is any indication, it probably won't be. A chronic inability to face a serious domestic problem - that's who we are.

If...

If there were justice in such things, Donald Trump would be held accountable at the end of four years for the jobs he promised to bring back from China (jobs which the Chinese are themselves losing to automation according to a recent Economist article).

He would be asked why the wall isn't built, let alone paid for by Mexico.

Why are more people without health care than before Obama took office?

Why are we not funding fundamental medical research?

Why are hate-crimes up by 200%?

What about the mess in Syria? Has he cleaned that up?

Has North Korea relinquished it nuclear weapons?

Is the deficit lower?

Why are our newly paved roads and rebuilt bridges, paid for with our tax dollars, now private tolls roads / bridges?

Why are Muslim Americans being harassed, threatened, beaten and shot?

Why are police shootings on the rise? 

Why is discrimination against the LGBT community now legal?

If there were justice in such things, the opposition party and the serious news media would ask these questions and not put up with the BS answers that they will inevitably elicit. But there is little hope that the world is just or fair; at least in the political realm, its just crooked.   

Fiscal hypocrisy

Republicans, after years of screaming during Obama's presidency that sky will fall if the budget deficit isn't closed, are suddenly quite happy to let it balloon with tax cuts and spending increases.  If the Democrats are a "tax and spend" party, Republicans have become the "don't tax and but still  spend" party, ironically making the Democrats look more fiscally responsible. So much for the down-home kitchen table family budgeting Republicans were so keen to apply in Washington a decade ago.

What explains this about-face. There seem at least two plausible theories. The first is caving to Trump. He has taken such a firm grip on the Republicans base and is completely ruthless in exploiting that for his own ends that Republican law makers are terrified of being destroyed by a Trump tirade; their job security suddenly takes precedent over their erstwhile principles.

There is, however, another possible explanation; that they were never really serious about fiscal rectitude - it was simply a political device with which to attack the Democrats and Obama. Indeed it is plausible that Republicans are simply all about power and not principle. One has only to look at the willful ignoring of the violations of family values Trump represents to realize that its not just their position in budget debate that was a sham. And their pathetic defense that "Trump isn't someone I'd hang out with but he's getting the job done", is testimony to their shameless "the end justifies the means" philosophy. 
  

Chernobyl vs Deep Water Horizon

This is not, as the title might suggest, about the relative magnitude of the two man-made environmental disasters, but a comparison of the two films made about them, and in particular their different dramatic cadences.

Deep Water Horizon builds with a view of the tensions in the control room as the drilling operation is pushed forward while safety issues are misread or ignored by an overconfident manager wanting to meet a target. Chernobyl opens, after a short prelude, in much the same way.  Both lead up to the focal event, an explosion.

But then the two diverge, dramatically, both metaphorical and literally. Deep Water Horizon has a relatively linear time line that leads to a smulchy ending. Chernobyl has an geometric timeline that allows a much broader exploration of the  consequences of the explosion. Moving beyond the intensity of the first few hours allows the film to explore a more interesting set of issues, social, political and psychological.

Chernobyl then very neatly brings back the drama of the explosion by incorporating it into the courtroom drama in the of the final episode. This device not only allows the viewer to regain the excitement and tempo of the initial episode having explored widely in between, but fills in some important details, that one only realizes were missing when they are brought into focus at the end.

Chernobyl is an outstanding piece of gripping and engaging film-making, while Deep Water Horizon, cy comparison, is simply a mundane, cliched disaster movie.

Patronizing

All those who are justifiably outraged by Trump's antics, his racist behavior, his lying, his narcissism, his treating of the most important job in the country a if it were his  reality TV program - all of which we knew was coming - have yet to find the appropriate and effective way of dealing with his nonsense. My suggestion is "gently patronize".

His behavior is childish, a school yard bully who still sulks and throws tantrums when he doesn't get his way. So the media and the Democrats need to treat it accordingly: smile and calmly point out his lies; remain adult when he behaves like a child; shake their heads sadly at his delusions and explain the reality of the situation; offer sympathy at how misguided he is; model adult behavior rather than responding in kind. The country needs to see that the alternative to a spoiled child in the White House is a grown-up. 

It's been 30 months since he took office, and four years since he announced. Granted no one took him seriously before, but for his opponents, it's past time to get it together. 

Biden - four years too late

Joe Biden should have run in 2016. He would very likely have beaten Trump and saved us four years of presidential stupidity.   But now his moment has passed. He may be ahead in the polls and in fund-raising, but that's likely out of name recognition from his term as veep.

But to hear him these days is both a little sad and slightly worrying. His speech is slow and fractured, his mental agility gone. Yes he might win the nomination but I doubt he be able to hold his own against Trump in a debate; and even were he to win, while he clearly has the experience, I'm not sure he has the strength to do the job.   

A behaviorist perspective

The behaviorist school of psychology suggests that introspection is of little value and that what matters are observable behaviors. Strangely Donald Trump (and his administration more broadly) is a walking demonstration that idea.

Take the question of whether he is or isn't a racist, a question over which our befuddled media have been agonizing over for at least the two years plus of his presidency, some longer, and most intensively since he sent out a series of tweets last weekend. At issue was his attack on four non-white women members of the House of Representatives.

"So interesting to see 'Progressive' Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly...... ....and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how....   ....it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!  

First "who come originally" sets the context that they are 'not one of us', 'not really American'. Next by linking their supposed origins to corrupt governments, he is suggesting they they are somehow equally tainted. And then the oft-repeated line to 'go back to where you came from', again indicating they don't belong. It's worth noting that three of the four women he attacked were first generation Americans while his claim to "Ameicaness" is only one generation better.  But it is clear that he is using a line of argument and phrases that are those of white supremacists and white nationalists.  So does that make him a racist?

The answer has to be it really doesn't matter whether he is or not - something anyway one can never really know. What matters is that he behaves like one. He can say repeatedly "I'm not a racist", something that most racists do anyway, but that's probably just another lie.

Whether he is or isn't if he behaves like one that's all we need to know. We don't need to label him one; we simply need to point to the many instances in which he has and continues to act like a white supremacists. And that should be of grave concern to anyone who claims to hold Judeo-Christian values (like, for example, Republican members of Congress).   Whether its Trump and his band of crooked brothers (and sisters), or prison guards abusing inmates, they may go home and be sweet and loving to their friends and family, but that's quite irrelevant; it's their action that matter.

And, lest we get side tracked into "don't listen to what he says, see what he does", as president, his words have the effect of actions. While the adage about actions speaking louder than words applies to those who have voice that reaches, in Edward Murrow's words "only to the end of the bar", Trump's  reaches and influences millions.  His words are directly responsible for shaping attitudes of perhaps a third of the country and in all likelihood indirectly for the actions of many, including those like James Fields, the white nationalist recently sentenced for the murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville two years ago. Were he capable of honest self reflection, Trump should keep Murrow's observation in mind:       

"Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar".

Is he right (like a stopped clock)?

Trump, like a stopped clock, can occasionally be right. He is right about China as being a threat to the US economic dominance, though almost certainly wrong in thinking he can change that with sanctions. And his tweets last weekend, perversely can be interpreted slightly differently.

Leaving aside the settled question of "Is he a racists?" (answer:  it's immaterial. What matters is that he behaves like one so the question is moot), its worth considering what he said given that three of the four members of Congress he smeared come from the US: 

"So interesting to see 'Progressive' Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly...... ....and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how....   ....it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!  

Given that they come from the US, what Trump is accidentally admitting is that this is a country   "whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all)". His administration is a shining example of that. Kudos for such a frank self-assessment, Donald.   

Moderation in all things

"Moderation in all things" my mother used to say. I think about her advice when I contemplate the sorry state of affairs in our country's politics. Of course moderation was never in Trump's vocabulary, any more than deep thinking is part of his MO, but his brazenly offensive rhetoric has provoked an almost equally immoderate response from the left. Among those elected on the back of strong anti-Trump and to some degree anti-establishment sentiment have been three new members of congress, AOC, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, who have commanded considerable media attention. Initially warmly embraced as the future of the Democratic Party, they are proving to be something of a headache for Speaker Pelosi. 

The three freshmen members of congress, because of their out-sized twitter following and the media hype their election generated, felt empowered to speak out in ways that they must hope moves their agenda forward and the Democratic Party to the left. But their efforts may backfire on them in part because they are providing the caricatures of inexperience and naive idealism that is red meat to the alt-right, but is also absurdly divorced from reality in the eyes of moderates in their own party, the "Biden Wing" if you will.

When they begin to accuse moderates of racism, as AOC did recently when she said that she and her freshmen women colleagues were being excluded on the basis of their colo r, she not only weakens the party, but she alienates many reasonable level headed left-leaning members.

She and her like-minded freshmen collages may as much of a reaction to the injustices and resentment of the establishment as was Trump's election. But it is impossible to imagine a scenario in which they achieve real legislative power. And even if they did, an argument could be made that unless cooler heads prevail, their administration would be almost as chaotic and un-tethered from reality as our current one.

If they are being marginalized, they might ask themselves whether it is on the basis of their color, their gender, or their decisive rhetoric, wishful-thinking based policies and strategies. Power, as they have yet to learn, generally means coming to terms with its limits; the rest is simply talk.  Every political party has its crazies. Paul Ryan and John Baynor had to deal with the Tea Party. Trump has the alt-right and the white supremacists; The Dems have AOC and company. It's how you deal with  them that distinguishes inspirational leaders from inept managers. 

Harris-Warren 2020

• An all woman ticket
• Harris brings the political nous to skewer Trump
• Warren is the policy wonk

Solid state

The "Last Build" is finished and running. Central is the 8 core 16 processor CPU; it is maxed-out on with 64 GB of RAM and an m.2 solid state 960GB disk. It is hampered, however by the slow speed of the Samba NAS and the even slowed speed of the cloud Google drive.

Two 4k monitors mounted on a stand that keeps them off the desk provide more screen real-estate and more room for piles of papers underneath them. Two 120mm fans attached to the radiator provide reasonably quiet cooling, the simple graphics car has no fan, and there are no disks (and therefore motors) in the case to drown out the sounds of the crickets outside and the ticking of my watch inside.     
 

Boris' horns

Boris Johnson, if as seems likely, becomes the Tory's next leader and Britain's next prime minister, will be walking on the horns of a dilemma. To aid Trump in whatever he wants in the hopes of getting post-Brexit trade deal, or risk upsetting the Orange Narcissist and crash our of Brexit with nothing else in place.

He has no friends in Europe to help him, having alienated them all with his all or nothing hard Brexit stance. And if Trump decides to take on Iran, he will likely dangle a trade deal to get Boris on board.

The Brits should be very wary of any promises Trump makes on Trade. Until it's passed by the Congress it Trump's assurances are nothing but vacuous showboating. Even if Congress does pass legislation, Trump has shown that he can still ignore legislation until forced to comply in court, a length (and costly for UK exporters) eventuality.

Brexit can't be delayed until there is a new occupant in the White House, even if that were 2021. So Boris is going to have to make some tough choices; become Trump's puppy dog and keep his finger's crossed, crash our of the EU with no US trade deal in place, or, perish the thought, embrace a soft Brexit.               

The Last Build

For several years I have been contemplating building a new desktop computer. Looking back through my Newegg order history, I found that I had  been using the Intel Quad core Q9300 since May 2008!  Time flies ever faster these days.

The Last Build has been a wish-list on Newegg for at least two years; this May, with some heavy data analysis for CATOE on the horizon, I decided to pull the trigger, on an almost no compromise machine. That didn't include going crazy with whizzy graphics card, but did include:

• AMD Rayzen 7 1700X 8 core processor
• 64GB of RAM 
• Water cooling
• 960MB M.2 SSD (and no Winchester (mechanical) disks!) 
• Mint 19.1
• GIMP 2.10 (which supports 16 bit image files)

Issues so far include a problem with keyboard lag which for the moment is solved by plugging the mouse's USB receiver (!) into the front rather than the back of the box, Code::blocks crashing every 3 minutes or so, and the DVI-display port cable not working.

Otherwise the system is fast and quieter then the old machine. I am not going to overclock and have no case fans other than the two on the radiator, all in the interests of lowering the background noise. 

This configuration should last me at least until retirement (and probably the rest of my life). That's a sobering thought. 

Chernobyl

Craig Mazin, the writer and director of the HBO's mini-series based on the Chernobyl disaster, and Johan Renck, have created one of the most compelling pieces of television drama this year. Yes, there are things that aren't historically accurate; the helicopter crash over the open reactor core and the composite character of Ulana Khomyuk. But to harp on these is to completely miss the point. The story here is of incompetence and cowardice, juxtaposed with genius and bravery. It is of our limited ability to control the complex systems we create.

Stellan Skarsgard does a tremendous job of portraying the tension between political correctness (Soviet style) and reality, as in the first two episodes, he begins to understand the enormity both of what has happened to the reactor and to him (radiation poisoning). The show paints a wonderful picture of short-cuts, miss-steps, heroism, callousness and patriotism. It shows how in complex systems, both technical and societal, small deviations can aggregate and amplify to create catastrophic outcomes.

The Chernobyl explosion was in part a technical flaw, but one that was brought to the fore though a series of human stupidity, ambition, loyalty and obedience. The control room supervisor, Anatoly Dyatlov, acted recklessly (with a dose of arrogance that may or may not have been "historically accurate"). But, as Lagasov notes in the final courtroom scene, he may have been relying on the AZ-5 emergency reactor shutdown procedure working to make the core safe. But the Soviet system had suppressed a finding that suggested that the graphite tips on the control rods might cause a problem when the rods were reinserted into an out of control core.                       

The series is beautifully crafted, with moments of calm interspersed with high drama. It is satisfyingly complete with the exposition of the disaster in the first episode and a more detailed recapitulation of the disaster woven into the final scenes. And it is chock full of shocking small reminders of the enormity of the event; the chunk of graphite from the core that burns a firefighter's hand, the radiation burns on the face of the technician Dyatlov sends into the reactor building just after the explosion, the sealing of the dead firefighters' coffins, first in lead-lines steel jackets, welded shut, and then interred in a concrete filled mass grave. Or the "bio-robots" (soldiers) running across the roof of the reactor building throwing radioactive debris back into the core, or the crews sent to shoot any animals still alive in the vicinity of the plant. All is set against the ominous backdrop of police state surveillance coordinated by by a frighteningly evil head of the KGB in a wonderful understated portrayal by Alan Williams.         

In the end the message is simple; with the best will in the world, and clearly that was sorely lacking in many instances in Soviet Russia, complex systems are hard to control and can quickly blow up in your face. And that lesson is as applicable to the complex system of checks and balances in American democracy and the slow moving catastrophe of man-made climate change (or the global financial markets), as it is to the Soviet nuclear power industry in the 1980s.

Meuller's invitations

Special Council Robert Mueller today made a brief public statement about his office's report on Russian meddling in the 2016 election and the efforts by people associated with the Trump campaign and his administration to impeded his investigation. His comments were notable for three things.

First, he emphasized that were he confident that the Trump administration had not obstructed justice he "would have said so".  While this was straight from his report, that fact that he chose to reiterate this point specifically is telling.

Second, Mueller observed that long-standing DOJ policy not to indict a sitting president was the reason that no charges, sealed or otherwise, were brought against Donald Trump, a decision made at the outset of the inquiry and not ex-post. This contradicts A.G. William Barr's assertion the DOJ policy had nothing to do with the decision not to bring an indictment. In doing so, Mueller reminded us that Barr has been shading the truth and acting as a political accomplice to Trump, rather than an impartial actor, and provides important context for Barr's public statements, past, present and future.

Third, he set out carefully that his office considered that the constitution requires that a sitting president accused of a crime by held accountable not in the courts but through the process of impeachment.

Taken together, these three statements seem to indicate that Mueller considers there is evidence of obstruction, but that the court system is not the venue in which these alleged criminal acts should or can be tried.  His statements appear to be intended both to the correct the false "no collusion, no obstruction" narrative being vigorously peddled by Trump and his aids and to challenge Congress to take action.

To many observers, he could hardly have been clearer in intimating that he believes that obstruction took place, that it rises to the level of criminality, and that it is the role of Congress to pursue the matter.

Impeachment has been rightly characterized as more of a a political process than a judicial one. In this case, ironically, the politics is likely to mitigate if not eliminate entirely the likelihood of the House moving articles of impeachment. A failed impeachment process (and it would certainly fail, given the fealty of Republican Senators to Trump) would play in to Republican's fear-mongering "deep state" narrative in the run up to the 2020 election. 

Many on the left of the Democratic party who have been clamoring for impeachment seem to be motivated more by antipathy for Trump than by any evidence that he broke the law, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been careful to not allow calls for impeachment to get ahead of the evidence. Nevertheless, Mueller's statement today dramatically increases pressure on Speaker Pelosi to allow impeachment proceedings to begin.

To all intents and purposes, Mueller today declined Congress' invitation to testify. But at the same time he invited Congress to begin the impeachment process he seems to feel is warranted. 

Biden-Harris 2020

• Biden brings the swing state working class voters
• Harris brings the more liberal wing and can go on the attack leaving Biden to appear above the fray
• Both are popular with African American voters
• Harris is younger (and sharper)  

Because they can?

Imagine you are hours away from dying. Someone comes to you and offers to give you another year of life in return for some large proportion of all your saving and material possessions. I hazard that only a fairly few would refuse the offer. Indeed, the free market would tell us on average what the appropriate price for another year of life was.

Sounds rather extreme and ghoulish doesn't it? But that's the system we have. It's why 25% of all your medical bills will come in the last year of your life. Of course some will say it's not market pricing but the costs of the procedures but have you ever asked what medical procedures cost to deliver (as opposed to the price you are charged)?

This has the features of price discrimination - that is people are charged different prices for the same things based on their willingness to pay. For example you will likely pay over $300 for a dose of meclizine hydrochloride if administered in the ER, while the same compound can be bought in pill form for $5 for a 16 doses from Rite Aid.

Prices go up when the buyer in a transaction has no leverage or bargaining power. When you are gravely ill, you have none an will pay whatever is asked. The reason that health care costs so much in the US is because we allow this asymmetry of bargaining power. Health care outcomes are no better than in most European countries and in some areas are worse - yet we pay twice as much.



 

"Some people did something"

Ihlan Ohmar didn't choose her words carefully enough. Yes she was speaking extemporaneously; and yes, she has cause to resent the targeting by hate groups (including Fox News) of all Muslims because of the activities of an extreme fanatical Muslims religious fringe.  There is widespread unjustified hatred of Muslims in many parts of the country particularly on the political right, and especially among Trump's supporters and his wing of the GOP (if a "wing" can encompass the vast majority of the spineless self-serving political cowards and  sycophants that seem to make up the GOP these days).

But Ohmar's comments were both insensitive to a broader zeitgeist, and were a political gift to Trump, Fox, and their uncritically adoring fans.  Speaking "truth to power" is one thing. But doing so without adequate consideration of how that truth might be turned against you and the cause you represent is short-sighted, counterproductive and ultimately irresponsible.

Assange

Julian Assange's extradition proceedings will get underway next week. The Department of Justice indictment unsealed this week alleges that he engaged in a criminal conspiracy with Bradley, now Chelsea, Manning to help Manning break into a secure government server to obtain top secret information.

The arguments have emerged. One is that Assange was engaging in spying and should be prosecuted for trying to help Manning in stealing top secret information.  The other is that Assange is a journalist who should be protected by the First Amendment's protection of the free press, and that the indictment will allow the government to infringe on the Fourth Estate's journalistic methods.

There is no hard line that separates serious, quality journalists from bloggers. If publishing material in the public interest is all that is need to assert one is a journalist, all manner of people, serious and otherwise, would qualify. So arguing that Assange isn't really a proper journalist (which he really isn't) is hard. If Assange qualifies, then the publication of the material he obtained would seem to be protected.

But the indictment doesn't concern the publication of secrets; rather it focuses on the way in which they were obtained. Here journalists are worried that by defining a conspiracy as methods that involve encrypted communication and not revealing sources, much of the way they operate in soliciting information of public interest and in doing so holding government accountable, would be threatened.

So perhaps the answer is to amend the indictment to make it narrower so that it more clearly targets Assange's activities without setting a broad precedent. That, surely, would make both sides f not happy, at least somewhat less upset. That being said, the points in the indictment do itemize one tool, Jabber, used in the conspiracy.

If such as conspiracy requires the use of any one of the elements ("or"), journalist are right to be concerned. But that would be problematic since one element is the use of a cloud storage "drop box" (which should probably be DropBox), then anyone using cloud storage might be said to be engaging in a conspiracy. So the "or" interpretation is unlikely to be correct.  If however all elements are required in alleging a conspiracy ("and"), then using anther encrypted communication platform would afford journalists protection from any precedent this case might set.

The Testing of Trump

A few days ago, Russia flew a small number of service personal into Venezuela. What he understood, perhaps from his intervention in Syria, is that while the US might use military force in "shit-hole" countries, it won't take action that might harm Russian soldiers and cause a dangerous escalation.

Putin is daring Trump to act. While the US president has said all options are on the table, Putin's move effectively removes a military option from those the President has to work with.  Now that's some pretty good strategizing.   

Farewell, Sweet Pea

This evening we laid Sweet-Pea to rest.

How old she was we don't know. But in the year she lived with us, after being abandoned in Yosemite, she had at least some time with a family that loved her. In the last six months she developed a interest in science fiction, read some of Dana Perino's autobiography and took a dim view of the machinations at Theranos, curled up on my lap for an hour or so every evening after supper. In the last three weeks she was even accepted by the others, and came to sleep with Judith.

My first encounter with her outside her cage wasn't the most auspicious.  She was just a skeleton thinly wrapped with paper thin skin and tufts of hair. But when I picked he up to put her back in her make-shift prison, she let out a growl worthy of a mountain lion. And when I scuffed her tiny scrawny neck, she whipped her head round and sank her teeth firmly into my hand.

But I spent more time with her and eventually we got on fine. Most days she'd take her pill (for hyperthyroidism) in a single bite of trader Joe's cat food pate; not the green tin but the brown and pink were fine. And she was delighted when we got her her very own water fountain.  She really loved running water, and her pee, which had been sweet and thick, became a little more normal.

For a while I thought she might be at least stable if not getting stronger.  As I worked to get her integrated with the hoards, first letting here explore my office and then with supervised visitation around the rest of the house, the others gradually accepted her. But it wasn't to be. I think everyone understood how sick she was. She was always struggling, but as sick and weak as she was, she still managed to climb into my lap and onto my desk. 
    
In the end, her emaciated body couldn't carry her feisty spirit any further. She sent her last day with Judith, who handed her to me when I came to bed in order that she could get some sleep. And at about 11:30pm, lying across my chest, she gave a quiet little gasp: and she was gone, gently and peacefully to a better life, unencumbered mortal coils that had constrained her.  Sweet-Pea, we miss you, but we're grateful for the time you shared with us.

Multiple stages

Shakespeare (and Rush) noted that "All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players". But we are all also each other's audiences, watching, interpreting, commenting on, the dramas unfolding around us.

Credibility Gap

In its commentary of Trump's State of the Union address to Congress, The Wall Street Journal noted how conciliatory the language was and how little Trump dwelt on some of the thornier sticking-points between him and the House Democrats. What seems astonishing to me is how irrelevant such dissecting of Trump's speeches is.

First this was clearly carefully scripted by someone in the White House other than him, and therefore doesn't really reflect his thinking. Second, he has fairly consistently said things in prepared speeches which he later contradicts in unscripted remarks or tweets. And finally, consistency really isn't Trump's thing, at least when it comes to policy; he will turn on a dime if his media boosters (Coulter, Hannity, Carlson, Ingrham, Limbaugh etc) tell him something isn't what he "base" wants to hear. He appears neither to remember nor care what he has said in the past, and if contradicting himself serves the purpose of the moment he will without a second's though. 

All of which makes scrutiny of his prepared (and even his unscripted) utterances a complete waste of time. We need only know that he is seldom honest, has no regard for facts, data, or experts, and is motivated by instantaneous gratification and self-interest: And take whatever he says with a very large pinch of salt.

After the Vote

Although it was expected that May would lose the vote on her Brexit deal, the scale of her defeat wasn't. The reaction from Brussels was predictable, too: basically, big FU from Donald Tusk and Jean Claude Junker. And perhaps that's part of the explanation. Yes, Brussels always had the better hand in the negotiations, but the lesson here is that even if you hold all the cards, you don't have to play them.

By leaving the impression that the EU was going to make it as painful as possible, MPs reacted in an economically irrational but "behavioral-economically rational" way: "If we're going to get screwed either way, deal or no deal, we're not going to give Brussels the satisfaction of getting what it wants".

So now things are going to get interesting. If Britain does look like its going to crash out, it sends exactly the signal the Brussels elite is worried about; to the populists this looks like sticking it to the man, and will embolden other leavers. Brussels should offer a substantially better deal. If it holds the line, Britain will crash out and others will be tempted to follow.   

The future of the European project has never looked more uncertain.      

O2O and IoT

In his book "AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order",  Kai-Fu Lee explains the divergence in approaches to AI between China and the US. Chinese startups are extending more directly and deeply into the physical domain, which Lee describes as "O2O" -- online to off-line.

These off-line nodes collect data; they are part of the Internet of Things (IoT). As they become more integrated with our daily lives the data they generate will provide an opportunity to comprehend and "simulate" behavior at the individual level. Much has been made over the last twenty years of the ability to connect disparate data elements--from credit card use in the supermarket to major purchases--to build a virtual picture of behavior. This takes the idea much further, with the potential to build an accurate picture of our routines, when we rise, where and what we eat, where we work, what we do for entertainment, all off-line activities, to compliment browsing data that internet companies already collect.

GE uses a simulation of its aircraft engines, parameterized with actual engine telemetry, to predict when parts are likely to fail. Imagine this kind of modeling applied to individuals. Target already showed us how subtle changes in buying and browsing patterns enable AI engines to make inferences about pregnancy.

In "The Minority Report" Tom Cruise moves though a world in which everyone is constantly surveilled and AI-based marketing presents him with individually tailored offers in real time; but what Lee's description suggests is far more disturbing. Imagine that these simulations know where we are likely to be, for example pre-ordering a coffee at Starbucks so that is ready when we come into the store. Or perhaps it senses departures from observed patterns of behavior and makes inferences from these.

As O2O becomes more pervasive every node in the network has the potential to become an IoT data collection point; Amazon Echo is already collecting audio data. Netatmo's Smart Indoor Camera already collects and uploads video data from which it does facial recognition (to detect home intruders). Lime Scooters in San Jose for example could include cameras that collect audio and video data as well as location and personal data.

We may soon be living in a world in which artificial intelligences know more about us than we do ourselves (and unlike us they never forget). If those AIs are operated by firms, that's concerning; if they are operate by governments, as is likely in China that's terrifying.     
         

Trade-off: aggregate prosperity and national autonomy

As Rana Foroohar and Ian Bremmer noted on CNN today, the world order is changing. The influence of international institution is waning while international policy in east Asia is increasingly dictated by the leaders of America and China. The trajectory of the post World War II ear, towards free trade between nations and deeper integration is going into reverse.

Most people never saw the benefits of globalization. For a majority in the West, GDP growth and stock market gains were simply abstractions, nothing more than a ticker feed on the news or sounds-bites in political speeches. Globalization, along with automation, also bought labor market disruption and kept median wage growth well below GDP and inflation. Along with the perceptions that institutions like the UN were weak and corrupt, faith in the free-market policies, at least with respect to in international trade, have come to be regarded as policies designed to enrich the haves, leaving the have-nots behind. The sense that government and the bipartisan consensus on international relations was no longer benefiting Americans lade to the election of a populist president in 2016¹.

At an aggregate level, the deepening of trade relations and the entanglement of countries in complex supply chains delivers economic growth but comes at the expense of national autonomy.

That was seen by policy makers after the Second World, not as a trade-off but as a double win; not only would countries be more prosperous, but the chance of armed conflict would be reduced. But as the prospect of war recedes that entanglement is seen less as a benefit ad more as an infringement on national sovereignty and self determination. The disaffection with globalization was harnessed by those who felt their local power was ebbing and flowing to centralized international bodies.              

 
In China the disaffection with the international order has different roots. China has concluded that the World order, with it structures systemically designed to favor developed countries by maintaining the economic status quo, was inconsistent with its economic ambitions.  So as its influence has it has grown, both economically and politically on the world sate, it has begun to create parallel and competing institutions. These now offer countries in the region a powerful incentive to defect from the existing order and join the rising Chinese sphere of influence.

These two forces, China's bypassing of the current international order, and America's withdrawal from it, is leading to a significant reshaping of international relations and the re-balancing of what has now come to be seen as a trade-off between aggregate economic growth and national autonomy. The pendulum is swinging back from global economic (and in Europe, political) integration toward bilateral deals making and greater national autonomy. The uni-polar post cold-war world order which to all intents a purposes revolved around the US is becoming bi-polar. With a weakening Europe, riven by internal tensions, both economic and political, the US and China will emerge as the foci of international relations in the 21st century.     

1. Similar trends were apparent on a smaller scale in Europe and led to Britain's decision to leave the EU

The Imperial Comma

The Imperial Comma, unlike the Oxford Comma, is not widely debated and remains happily uncontroversial. While its origins are unclear, it has been suggested that the name owes its existence to writing at the predominantly STEM institution, the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, formally Imperial College of Science and Technology. Its engineers and scientists (whose writing has a Stella reputation) often inadvertently, add commas in places in which they are, unnecessary or simply, incorrect giving rise, to the term the "Imperial Comma".     

PC "generativity"

Political correctness was, without doubt, a well intentioned idea. It was supposed to encourage bigots to avoid speech that was offensive to minority groups. In the process it signaled that stereotyping was frowned upon. That was a laudable goal.

However, it seems to have had two unintended consequences. First, because banned terms are, almost axiomatically, offensive only to minorities, it afford the majority the opportunity to ridicule the construct of PC, as the majority might consider the particular language inoffensive.

Second, it has sensitized people in minority groups who might not otherwise have considered some language offensive to now be on the lookout for its use, and be offended - because they've been told it is - when they hear it. 

Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?

When Henry II asked "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?", this is widely accepted as a rhetorical question that was to all intents and purposes an implicit command; indeed it caused four knights of the realm to murder Thomas a Becket in Canterbury Cathedral.


So when another leader complains, vilifies and demonizes his enemies, is too much of a stretch to lay at least some of the blame at his feet when an ardent (and more than usually unhinged) supporter takes him at his word and sends pipe bombs to his lord and master's enemies?   

Barbaric

There is little doubt that Jamal Khashoggi was tortured and killed in the most horrifyingly barbaric fashion by members of Saudi Arabian security forces in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2nd. It also seems likely that the brutal assassination was ordered by Crown Price Mohammad bin Salman.

The incident has reveled some unpleasant truths. First, it highlights just how undemocratic regimes like the Saudi monarchy exercise power, in ways that would be unacceptable in Western democracies. It illustrates graphically the corrupting influence of highly concentrated power perpetrate brutality, and just how uncivilized some people can be. Some have remarked that Al Queada, the Taliban, and ISIS are living by values that the West left behind in the middle ages, yet here is a state actor behaving as if the Enlightenment had never happened.

Second, the incident shows how a complex web of relationship moderates what would otherwise be universal outrage and condemnation. Bob Gates noted on Armanpour & Co that Saudi Arabia has been a useful and important strategic ally in the Middle East, and has at least since 9/11, provided the US with important security information.  Trump, in originally excusing and thereby implicitly condoning the murder, noted that the kingdom makes substantial purchases of US weapon systems and that supports American jobs (while simultaneously taking large numbers of Yemeni lives). It is shocking but hardly surprising that he favors money over rights and values.

And finally it gave us the sordid sight of Televangelist Pat Robertson, supposedly an expounder of Christian values telling us that one man's murder shouldn't derail a multi-billion arms deal. 

     

Democracy - a Failed 100 Year Experiment

Although political systems that involve a plurality in decision making are not new, the idea of truly universal suffrage is; it first appeared in New Zealand in 1893, arrived in Britain 1928, and was not fully implemented in the United States until the Voting Rights act of 1965. Universal suffrage is thus a relatively new model of governance and has been evolving in the century since its adoption and it may be too early to tell whether Churchill's observation "that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time" is indeed correct. China is currently pitting that assertion to the test.

Many have argued that for the US to retain its role as the worlds leading power, it must continue to support the rules based order, and by extension must nurture the international coalition of allies and partners it has built since the Second World War. Its ability to introduce Judaeo-Christian values as a component in international relations is a major contribution to civilization writ large, replacing the amorality of great power politics. Yet this ability to project values is waning.

During the Cold War, the American model was widely seen as superior to the juxtaposed alternative, Communism, which was philosophically flawed ("the end justifies the means") and demonstrably inferior in practice.  After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the US model was assumed to have won by default ; but that model had two components, once though to be inseparably intertwined; democracy and the prosperity attributed to free markets. China has shown this not to be the case.

The emerging Chinese model demonstrates that democracy is not essential for free markets, a rising middle class, declining rates of poverty and increasing wealth. At the same time, the US is finding that political deadlock and polarization is hampering long term strategic initiatives essential to maintain its economic leadership in the world, specifically a failure to maintain, let alone renew, crumbling infrastructure, declining investment in education, and the starving of funds for initiatives to promote research and development. It has also failed to evenly share the gains from globalization which has resulted in stagnation and even decline in prosperity for a significant proportion of the population. 

American style democracy is increasingly widely being viewed as less effective in generating prosperity, when compared to the Chinese model; freedom, it might be argued, is of little import when you can't put food on the table. And it is not only the US that is struggling with the unintended consequences of universal suffrage. Look no further than Brexit, the shift to the right in Hungary and Poland, all of which challenge the globalists' view of a rules based order. 

As universal suffrage becomes increasingly associated with poor economic outcomes and national economic decisions that do not benefit the plurality, the perceived attractiveness of America Style democracy will decline relative to the Chinese free-market one party system. As China continues to rise economically, and extend its soft power in the developing world, so will support for its system and by extension its values. There will come a point at which the majority of countries see China rather than the US as the exemplar system. As countries reforming their political system in the developing and the developed world look for models, it seems likely that they will adopt variants of the Chinese model rather than the US model, and universal suffrage will not be embedded in those reforms. Saudi Arabia, for example is currently reforming its monarchy-based system; but a model in which power remains fairly concentrated will clearly be more attractive to Mohammed bin Salman, than a democratic republic. And if China has show us anything it is that people will put up with what the West characterizes as human rights violations in return for order, predictability and prosperity.

\When the Chinese model comes to be broadly viewed as the exemplar, it will over time become the most widely adopted system of governance; and democracy, like Communism before it will be seen in the reviewed mirror of history as an interesting, but ultimately failed, experiment.

Constitutional crisis? It's already here

Much talk in the last two years has been about the constitutional crisis that wold ensure were Trump to cut short Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the election. While that would indeed be appalling, the constitutional crisis has been growing quietly for several months.

Members of Trump's own Cabinet (for example Tillerson, Mattis  and Cohen) have been hiding information and memos, not acting on Trump's directives and generally only implementing policy that they consider acceptable.

Now that's a constitutional crisis!
 
 

In-judicial Temprament

After Blasey-Ford's compelling testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, Bret Kavanaugh stepped into the spotlight seething with anger and self-pity.

His strong emotions, alternating between anger and self-pity, suggest one of two things. Either his guilt is manifesting as hostility, or his sense of entitlement is turning out outrage when, perhaps for the first time in his life, something he badly wants is being denied him. Paradoxically, perhaps, the latter affords support for the former; his sense of male entitlement might, at age 17, have extended to "getting his way" with women.

Whether Blasey-Ford's recollection that Kavanaugh was the perpetrator is accurate or not (and I happen to believe that it is), his reaction and the ensuing deeper dive into his past, raises four troubling question as to his suitability for a Supreme Court Justice.

First, he seems to lack the cerebral calmness that one should rightly expect of a Supreme Court justice. Anger, however understandable it may seem to some,  is only serves to cloud his judgement, and calls into question his ability to decide impartially. Some cases that come before the Court will evoke strong emotions; an inability to control them is problematic.

This is of particular concern given his evident political bias. While some who serve in a political capacity, in Kavanaugh's case in the Bush administration, but are themselves relative politically independent, that is clearly not the case here. Kavanaugh has nailed his colors very clearly to the mast. At a time when the legitimacy of institutions of all kinds (SCOTUS, Congress, academia to name but three) are increasingly being questioned, this only serves to further undermine public confidence in the Court.

His testimony also revealed a troubling lack of respect for the institution that is hiring him for the position. While it might be argued that one quality in a Supreme Court justice is not being supplicant to the other branches of government, a degree of civility and decorum is called for and Kavanaugh proved unable to muster either. That was poor political judgement.   

Kavanaugh's nauseating self pity suggest something else; an inability to empathize with Blasey-Ford and sexual assault victims more generally. Were he indeed innocent of the accusations leveled  against him he would be able to be much less strident in his denials and more sympathetic to the pain of his accuser. 

Finally, veracity; questions are being raised about his shading of the truth. His self-proclaimed choir-boy image is being called into question from all sides. People who knew him say he drank heavily in college and was often incoherently drunk. If he is willing to dissemble about his drinking how much store can one place in his statements concerning Blasey-Ford?

Whichever way the final vote goes, and I hope, though I don't expect it will, that the decision does not go in his favor, the incident has been another black eye for Congress, and for the GOP and the Administration in particular.

James G March - an appreciation

James March passed away yesterday. Much will be written in the days ahead about his writing, his contribution to the literature, and the enormous impact he has had in a career spanning sixty years. There is nothing I can add to the accolades that will come from scholars far smarter and more accomplished than me.  I can only add to the appreciation of his life some personal memories of an extraordinarily generous man.

I first came across his work, as many do, when I was a first year doctoral student in 1995. I was fascinated by his paper "Exploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning". To better understand the paper I tried to replicate his model and failed - so I found his email on the then very new Internet and sent him a message asking if he could help me getting the model to work.

Almost immediately, he replied, not just with suggestions, but with the source code. I was astounded that a scholar of his stature would take the time not just to respond thoughtfully, but to generously share his code. That led to a meeting a year later when he visited Fontainebleau, an interesting discussion, and an offer of a glass of wine were I ever to be in the Bay Area. It was an offer I gratefully accepted four years later.

The next phase in my life came when Judith asked me to go back to California. I asked Jim if there might be a way for me to have access to Stanford's libraries as I finished my PhD. His solution, and one that was phenomenally rewarding, was to invite me to Scancor as a visiting scholar.  For 3 years I had the privilege of attending talks and classes at Stanford, and most importantly of continuing our conversations about learning and model building.

Despite his enormous knowledge, insight, experience and wisdom, he suffered fools like me with warmth, patience and understanding. He was truly one of a kind. I will miss you, Jim March.

John Brennan and Trump's vindictiveness

The revocation of ex-CIA director John Bernnan's security clearance is neither particularly surprising, given what we know about Trump's character, nor, in and of itself, particularly significant. It is, however, more evidence, if any were needed, of Trump's proclivity for discarding long established norm's of proper conduct to further his personal agenda.

As the serious news media have noted, Trump's "hit list" of those he is considering for similar treatment all have in one thing common; their vocal criticism of his conduct. None are likely to moderate their criticisms in the face of Trump's threat, indeed the opposite is likely. And while Trump doesn't value their counsel on national security matters, their successors and other IC colleagues might; so the IC is potentially less well severed as a result of Trump's decision. It seems likely that Trump acted impulsively and without much consideration of the wider national security ramifications of his actions.

But the bigger message this sends is that all widely accepted norms are up for grabs and subject to Trump's personal whims. This is broadly consistent with his admiration for authoritarian leaders, who he envies for the lack of constraint from their countries' institutions they enjoy. In his allegedly shady business dealings, he did much as he pleased and he has brought that mind-set into the White House.

It is not just the international institutional order that is under threat as Richard Haas sets out in his book "A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order"; it is also the norms of domestic politics and even socially acceptable behavior that are being trampled.  Of course, he is not the only guilty party here; Mitch McConnell's refusal to hold confirmation hearings for Merrick Garland is another example, as is the GOP's refusal to stand by the principles they have long espoused such as support for free trade, opposition to tariffs and abhorrence of the budget deficit. And Trump's tacit support for white supremacists and his misogynistic and degrading treatment of women are undermining the albeit slow social progress that has been made in the country over the last half century.

Brennan's remark about treason may have been over the top (unless of course he knows something we don't yet know, which given is access to intelligence is quite possible), but his concerns about the lasting damage Trump is doing to the country are well founded.   

Market-based resource allocation

Capitalism, in its purest form, relies on the "invisible hand" -- the premise that self-interest alone, in the context of free markets, will lead to the Pareto-optimal distribution of resources. However, it is not clear that such as Pareto-optimal distribution is the same a compassionate society's preferred distribution of resources.

For example, if resources are moved to where they can be most productively used, then the severely disabled or sick, to the extent that they are less "productive", would likely be short changed if not completely abandoned. So an allocation commensurate with a caring society is not one that would likely be realized by free markets alone. Hence the need for government and moderation/management of markets.

Loyalty and Potential Exposure

Figure 1

I was wondering today why Trump is said to put so high a value on loyalty while appearing not to reciprocate.

Loyalty, after all is not transactional - you are loyal to someone whatever they do. But Trump is nothing if not transactional in all his dealings, something many commentators, even the dolts on Fox, have noted.

It dawned on me today that loyalty may not be the right term (any more than "trust" is an appropriate term for Denzel Washington's crew in training day - great film, J Brandon White).

What Trump may mean is simply not giving up where the bodies are buried. And it is highly transactional; keep quiet and in return you are included in the inner circle; defect and you become an enemy, a target.

And the corollary is that the greater the expected (negative) value of legal jeopardy, the greater the need for this variant of loyalty (see Fig 1)

Pompeo and circumstance

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was very careful in his testimony to Congress today. When asked if the North Koreans had made a commitments to  denuclearize (which oddly includes chemical and biological weapons), he said only that "North Korea understands the US position". Spin it all you want but that's not a commitment.

And when asked about what Trump had committed to in Helsinki, he repeatedly stated only that the official US position had not changed. That wasn't the question asked, and sheds no light on what commitments Trump may, in a momentary lapse in judgement, have made to Vladimir Putin.

Negotiating with adversaries

Several people have made the point that talking to our adversaries is important. John Bolton noted that FDR met with Stalin (although that was at the end of the WWII); Nixon went to China; Reagan talked privately to Gorbachev (the Walk in the Woods). That's fine in principle, but it's not what many people are concerned about.

While there are always risks associated with this more unscripted approach, two things are have been tacitly assumed; first that the President's only agenda is advancing America's interests, and that he is sufficiently well informed and competent to do so. In Trump's case neither condition is met.

Many serious and well informed commentators including John Brennan, Leon Panetta, and even Dan Coats, Trumps own DNI, have explicitly or implicitly lamented Trump's comments and questioned the wisdom of his approach. Many are wondering whether he is putting personal interests above country.

What serious people are concerned about is not whether such Presidential diplomatic initiatives are a good idea as a means of changing the trajectory of bilateral relations, but whether Trump can be trusted to pull it off. The evidence so far suggests their concerns are well founded.

Process, Transparency, Autonomy and Accountability

Trump has been roundly criticized for his handling of the Helsinki Summit. He met Putin without going though the process that normally accompanies such a high-level diplomatic meeting - the prior talks between lower level officials to clarify an agenda, to negotiate and establish goals that both sides could reasonably expect to announce with satisfaction to their citizens. That didn't happen, at least on the US side (one assumes it probably did in the Kremlin).  Now the summit has concluded, many in the our government don't know what went on, and what was agreed to. Keeping secrets from his own top level officials, people Trump appointed is remarkable for its lack of transparency.  How might Trump's choice to take this highly unconventional approach be explained?

The answer, I think is autonomy and accountability (or rather lack thereof). By not setting out goals in advance, Trump feels he could frame any outcome, whatever it might be, as a negotiating triumph. That gives him enormous negotiating freedom and autonomy. Engaging in a formal process in which others help set the agenda reduces his his negotiating autonomy. Not being clear about what he wants to accomplish and not being transparent about what is said means he can't be held accountable. No one can point to goals not achieved, since neither the goals not the outcomes are stated.

This approach, maximizing autonomy and minimizing accountability, might have suited a one-person business, whether that was his real estate dealing or his reality TV show, but is poorly suited to international relations. A failure in either of Trumps two prior careers, such as a badly negotiated sale or a drop in ratings, would have been disappointing for him personally, but would not have had mattered much for anyone outside his family.  In negotiating with Russia, failure affects everyone in the US and to some degree has implications for every person on the planet. That's why his outlandish behavior is worrisome.