Media Suicide

During the campaign, an intelligence report that could not be corroborated was circulating.  No one published because nothing could be confirmed.  The report revealed that the Russians were in frequent contact with Trump to provide him dirt on his opponents.  If this was to be believed, Trump is a traitor.  The most spectacular bit in the report had Trump hiring Russian prostitutes to urinate on a bed in the Moscow Ritz Carlton because Barack and Michelle Obama had slept there.  Still unable to prove any of it, Buzzfeed ran with the story and CNN covered Buzzfeed.  Pranksters on 4Chan and Reddit reveled.

 

It turns out that a Trump supporter wrote the report and sent it out to see if anyone would report it.  Weeks went by and no one took the bait.  Responsible journalists desperately wanted to report something this juicy but none of it could be proved.  In fact, some of it was demonstrably false.  Even so, Buzzfeed finally decided to go with the story, even declaring that it was unproven hearsay from entirely anonymous sources.  Trump pounced!  A clearer case of fake news would be hard to find.  By offering a fake story that was this outlandish, the media has shattered an already fractured credibility.  If Trump now sells arms to Russia and China, he can just claim fake news again.  As I have said in a previous post, trust is fragile and the media has been exposed through the Podesta email hacks (the contents of which have not been refuted) and now this.  Why trust anything the media has to say about Trump?

Here is the opening of the BuzzFeed story:

A dossier, compiled by a person who has claimed to be a former British intelligence official, alleges Russia has compromising information on Trump. The allegations are unverified, and the report contains errors.

This is the kind of introduction that sees an editor kill the story, not print it.  Of course, the story has over 5 million views.  True or not, it has been a boon for the website.

Topsy-Turvy History

Russ Roberts of EconTalk hosted Bruce Bueno de Mesquita recently and offered some views on revered presidents that were the opposite of what one might expect.  He starts with the general idea that presidents are rated in esteem depending on how many people were killed while they were in charge.  Harding's brief presidency saw no war and virtually no death yet he is ranked among the worst presidents.  Lincoln saw over half a million Americans die in the Civil War and is rated among the best presidents.  How does that work?

Mesquita argues that presidents are mostly going to make decisions that will benefit themselves and their voters or increase their re-election chances.  He proposes that Washington was a land speculator in a region where King George had reserved for the Indians.  Great wealth beckoned via revolution.  He paints a picture of the Founders as the billionaires of their day who led a reluctant people to sever ties with England.  He further outlines this alternate history in which the colonies go along with the rest of the British Empire in abolishing slavery decades sooner and avoid a Civil War entirely.

 

Speaking of the Civil War, Lincoln is to blame.  His 1858 house divided speech was a brilliant ruse to split the Democratic Party in the 1860 election.  Sure enough, the Democrats were so fractured that Lincoln won with a mere 39.8% of the popular vote.  As the Republican Party was established to abolish slavery, Lincoln's election was essentially a declaration of war on slave states.  This was part of the plan.  With the South gone, amendments to abolish slavery could now pass in Congress.  Once the South was conquered, the new amendments were imposed.  Better yet, Lincoln was re-elected, which was also part of the plan.  Wow, Lincoln was pretty nefarious.

 

JFK risked nuclear war with Russia over Cuban missiles that made no real difference in the Cold War.  JFK thought a show of strength would be beneficial for re-election, even at the risk of nuclear war.  Self-interest outweighed the risk of WWIII.

 

Nor was he keen on Obama's handling of Iraq, Libya, and Syria.  Leaving Iraq was a good political decision for his re-election campaign (he had promised to get out of Iraq) but a disastrous foreign policy decision.  Mesquita even argues that Obama's failure to enforce his redline in Syria is what convinced Putin that he could annex the Crimea and eventually put forces in Syria to prop up Assad.

 

Of course, he was perfectly happy with LBJ.  Oh, he admitted that LBJ was ambitious and ruthless but he was really trying to do good.  RED FLAG!  After the thrashing he gave Lincoln and Washington, it is unthinkable that he could be so supportive of LBJ.

 

Much of this seemed like crazy talk but I am intrigued.  War presidents are usually well-regarded by historians and are almost always re-elected.  Perhaps when the book comes out in a more affordable paperback version, I'll check out the full story.

Hidden Figures

The movie opens with a very young Katherine Goble getting accepted to a prestigious school because she is a math whiz.  Thirty years later, she (Taraji Henson) and two other women - Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae) - are stranded on the side of the road with a broken down car.  A police officer shows up and demands ID and is generally unfriendly.  However, once they explain they work at NASA, he proves willing to provide an escort.  At NASA, the three are members of the West Area Computers (at the time, a computer was just a person who did calculations with pen and paper or an old-fashioned mechanical calculator).  Dorothy is the unofficial supervisor of the colored computers, Katherine is the most brilliant mathematician among them, and Mary is attracted to engineering.

Except for the prologue of Katherine as a child, the movie compresses events into a 1 year window, opening a few months before Al Shepard's Mercury flight in May 1961 and ending with John Glenn's orbit in February 1962.  That's fine except that events well outside of that period are included.  Thus, we get incidents that date 10 years back.  Because of this, a lot of real people were replaced by fictional versions, otherwise some of this would be libelous.

For instance, the Space Task Group was run by Robert Gilruth but he is replaced by the fictional Al Harrison (Kevin Costner).  The designer of the Mercury capsule was Max Faget but he is replaced by the fictional Karl Zielinski.  What little we learn of Zielinski is that he is Polish and his parents were killed by the Nazis during the war.  Is he supposed to be a replacement for Wehrner Von Braun, the former Nazi rocket scientist who was integral to the US Space Program?  Certainly more politically correct to have a Polish Jew.

White characters are uniformly racist.  Only three white characters are painted as other than racist: Al Harrison, Karl Zielinski, and John Glenn (Glen Powell).  The scene where Harrison "discovers" that the engineers had setup a separate 'colored' coffee pot for Katherine was particularly egregious.  He only just now discovered it?  Doesn't he drink coffee?  He has glass as his office wall and the coffee table is easily visible.  His righteously indignant speech followed by his ripping down of the colored ladies room sign was completely unbelievable.  Segregation at Langley ended in 1958, outside the timeframe of the movie.

 

According to the film, it is only thanks to the mathematical talents of Katherine Johnson that we were able to orbit the earth.  I have no doubt that she was an integral figure but she is shown to be so much smarter than this room full of brilliant mathematicians and engineers as to be silly.  She is the sine qua non of American Space Flight.  Jim Parsons had the role of playing an arrogant, probably racist, jerk who, despite being embarrassed by her math talents repeatedly, continued to look down his nose at her.  However, by the end, he shows he has gained some respect for her.  Yes, black women can do math too.  Ugh.  Of course, her life events from the 50s (promotion out of the West Area Computers, marriage to Jim Johnson, desegregation of Langley) were all included.

The storyline of Dorothy Vaughn is done so ham-fistedly that I cringed.  NASA has purchased IBM computers and the half dozen white men who are supposed to operate them are utterly clueless.  They can't get the mainframe to do anything.  Meanwhile, Dorothy gets a book from the library (the racist librarian called the cops to eject her and her two sons!) on Fortran, reads it, and schools these white doofuses in how to work the IBM.  She was promoted to her unofficial supervisor position in 1949, not 1960 as the movie implies.
 

Oddly enough, though she was probably the least addressed of the trio, Mary Jackson's story arc was the best.  Her success required that she get advanced training available only at a segregated high school.  She took her case to court, made a strong argument to the judge, won her case, and started attending classes to qualify for an engineering position at NASA.  Of course, she had made her move out of the West Area Computers in 1953, not 1961.  Also, she had completed her advanced training in the 50s.

Yeah, I get it, segregation was wrong.  Worse, much of the dialogue is written as a social justice warrior would write it.  Katherine smacks down Jim's sexist comment like a 70s feminist rather than the mousy mathematician she is otherwise portrayed to be.  Katherine's explosive rant in the middle of the office was about as bad a reaction on the part of an employee as imaginable in reaction to the horrible job of management by Harrison.  Meant to be dramatic, I just shook my head and rolled my eyes.  That is a fictional scene from the mind of the screenwriter.  We needed to spice it up, add some drama, more tension!  Yeah, right.  Dorothy undiplomatically rejects her supervisor's (Kirsten Dunst) claim that she's not a racist.  Shortly thereafter, Dunst arrives - almost cap in hand-like - to ask if Dorothy would be so kind as to teach Fortran to the white lady computers.  Be humbled, you racist bat!

The movie does give an accurate 'feel' for the flow of each woman's life but is forced to fictionalize a lot of the setting.  Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson were amazing women of remarkable accomplishment but this movie spends more time picking at the scabs of racism and sexism rather than celebrating their talents.  Fine, we need some context for the era but the context doesn't need to be repeated every 5 minutes.  Because it mixes fiction with fact and tinkered with the timeline, I don't know what to believe.

Skip the movie but check the links to each of the three impressive women who contributed to the American Space Program.

Repeal and DON'T Replace

I keep seeing these articles about how the Congress should repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.  Though I favor the repeal, I don't see any need to replace.  Let free people figure out a solution to their problems, don't let government impose a solution.  When we look at areas that have seen the most involvement by government (e.g. healthcare or education), we see prices rising faster than inflation for decades.  However, in areas where government is less involved or practically absent (e.g. internet, computers, digital cameras), prices have plummeted.  This is not a coincidence.

 

Health insurance is not insurance.  Insurance is meant to offset risk.  Home insurance is not meant to provide a new paint job every few years or pay for new bulbs in light fixtures, or reimburse for the plumber unclogging the sink.  It is there to cover large but also unlikely expenses, such as the roof being torn off by a tornado or a fire.  Likewise, car insurance doesn't cover oil changes, gasoline, or new windshield wipers.  Car insurance is for rare events like a crash that causes thousands of dollars in damage.  However, with health 'insurance,' it is expected to cover annual physicals, flu shots, and virtually every visit to a medical professional.  It isn't paying for unexpected costs but rather it is covering all costs.  Health insurance needs to turn back into insurance.  Insurance would cover something like cancer or being hit by a bus but not expected and routine expenses.  That change would dramatically reduce 1) the cost of health insurance and 2) the price of health care.

 

Prices will adjust to the ability of people to afford.   Part of the price reduction will come from the efficiency of first party payer.  If the doctor doesn't need a billing department to contact insurance companies to secure payment, that cost can be eliminated and the price of all procedures drops.  The insurance companies will likewise shrink on account of vastly fewer claims.  With the current system, the patient is only concerned with the co-pay and any expenses that might accrue directly to them.  There is no point in haggling to get a better deal.  First party payer will end the $30 aspirin and other over-inflated charges.  This free market approach will be bumpy but no worse than Obamacare has been and far more beneficial.

 

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

10th Amendment

 

Health care is a power that was not delegated to the United States by the Constitution.  As such, it needs to return to the States or to the people.  Of course, government doesn't like surrendering tax dollars or regulatory power, so I doubt the free market will get the contract.  The replacement may be less odious, but will still be beyond the legal authority of the federal government.

God's Debris

A delivery man arrives at a house with a package.  No one answers when he knocks.  Not wanting to come back, he checks the door.  Open!  He enters and finds a wizened old man sitting near a fire.  The man, claiming to be The Avatar, declares that he has been expecting him.  A debate soon follows as to whether the delivery man delivered the package or the package delivered the delivery man.  The entire book is a conversation - mostly a lecture - in front of the fire place.  A variety of philosophical questions are addressed where the old man explains how the universe works.

 

Considering the title, it is not surprising that God figures heavily.  After extracting a description of God from the delivery man, the old man offers some clear conclusions.  First, if God is omniscient, how can there be free will?  If God knows every decision that will be made beforehand, then all was predestined.  Therefore, if God is omniscient, why bother with creation?  He knows all the answers before he begins.  What is the one thing an omniscient, omnipotent being might not know?  The old man suggests that such a being might not know if he can destroy himself.  Thus, the Big Bang was God's attempt to destroy himself and all of creation is God's debris.  Interesting thought.  But with God out of action, do we have free will?  No.  Every decision is a result of inputs and there is only an illusion of free will.  But doesn't that mean no one is truly responsible for their actions?  The old man explains that it is useful to an orderly society to act as though they do.  Huh?  Isn't it all foreordained?

 

The old man does not limit himself to such philosophical questions but ventures into physics, biology, and statistics.  He lays a foundation by noting how a quantum physics has shown particles appear from empty space.  He then proposes that all matter phases in and out of existence and where it returns is based on probability.  God dust is more likely to appear near other God dust, which is why we have gravity.  The purpose of existence is to reconstruct God, thus evolution is always in the direction of more complex and advanced creatures.

 

Each chapter offers random musings on some aspect of the world.  Several things that the old man has to say is repeated in the other Scott Adams book that I read.  One notable thing was that everyone is living in a personal delusion and that the truth is unknowable.  The human mind evolved to survive, not objectively determine truth.  The best one can hope for is that your delusion - be it religion, science, philosophy, etc. - provides the opportunity to procreate.  But going back to that free will thing, why discuss any of this?  We don't have free will, it is all predetermined.  Understanding changes nothing though it might provide a more palatable delusion.

 

The book is meant as a thought experiment and Adams did warn that some of what the Avatar said was demonstrably wrong.  Adams also states that his belief system is not covered in this fictional story.  Therefore, this is not Adams' philosophy offered in a fictional story.  In the end, the delivery man has achieved a higher state of awareness, the highest that a human mind can achieve.

 

Mediocre but happily brief.

Lion

India, 1986.  Saroo (Sunny Pawar) worships his older brother, Guddu.  He insists on going to work with Guddu and Guddu reluctantly acquiesces.  However, the 5 year-old Saroo is too tired to do anything so Guddu leaves him on a bench at the train station with a stern "Stay here."  A few hours later, Saroo wakes up and started looking for his brother on an empty train.  Not finding him, Saroo falls asleep on the train.  When he wakes up, the train is on its way across India.  Stranded in Calcutta, Saroo is eventually put in an orphanage.  Soon thereafter, he is adopted by an Australian couple, Sue (Nicole Kidman) and John Brierley.

 

Australia, 2008.  Saroo (Dev Patel) is taking classes to learn about hotel management.  Some students are of Indian descent and spark his memories.  It is suggested that he use Google Earth to locate his home.  Once on the path, it consumes him.  He must find his birth mother and let her know that he is alive and well.  It is a foregone conclusion that he finds her.  It is then that he learns his name is not Saroo but Sheru.  Sheru means Lion.

 

The movie spends too much time on side stories that go nowhere.  Saroo spends a considerable amount of time and effort to ruin his relationship with Lucy (Rooney Mara), the film's love interest.  She is often the voice of reason that he unreasonably ignores.  Then there is his brother, Mantosh, who has behavioral problems.  These are tacked-on opportunities for emotional conflict that do not advance the main plot.  It's just filler.

 

The adventures of young Saroo are far more entertaining and engaging than adult Saroo.  Rather than splitting the movie in half, one for young and the other for adult, maybe two thirds for young and the rest for adult.  Really, Google Earth can only entertain for so long.

 

Wait to see it on Netflix.

La La Land

Traffic has come to a complete stop on an overpass and the many drivers take the opportunity to climb out of their cars for a song and dance number.  Classic.  Once everyone is back in their vehicle, we see Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) repeatedly rewinding the cassette player and listening intently to the same few notes of jazz.  Just in front of him, we find Mia (Emma Stone) having a faux conversation on her phone which is for an audition.  When traffic starts moving, Mia is too involved to go and an irate Sebastian pulls around her and openly displays his annoyance.  Later, Mia is walking home when she hears a piano.  Curious, she enters a restaurant where she sees Sebastian playing.  She goes to compliment him but again he reacts very negatively.  Eventually, these repeated meetings lead to a relationship where each express their desires.  Mia wants to be a successful actress while Sebastian has dreams of running a jazz club.

 

The movie is fun and reminded me of those old musicals from the 50s and 60s.  However, there was a lack of polish.  Hollywood has gone so long between making musicals that the talent and skill to do them is no longer present.  Most musicals of the last couple of decades have been animated (e.g. Moana, Frozen, Lion King) or directly adapted from a Broadway play (Chicago, Into the Woods).  Without the depth of talent from the heyday of musicals, something original like this was a monumental task and it is surprisingly good in that light.  Of note, I am not a fan of either Emma Stone or Ryan Gosling.  Gosling has this cloud of melancholy about him.  When not actively emoting, he seems profoundly sad.  Even when he smiles, he's got those sad eyes.  Though he learned to play the piano for the role, his singing voice is mediocre.  Emma Stone is a talented actress but likewise has a so-so singing voice.  Had I been casting director, I would have looked for singers who can act rather than actors who can sing.  Same goes for dancing.  They are fine dancers but a long way from Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, and Cyd Charisse.

 

The ending is really commendable.  It is both happy and sad, success and failure.  There is joy to offset Gosling's melancholy.  It's the kind of ending that fits in real life rather than the 'happily ever after' that we usually see.

 

Definitely see this one.  A nice throwback to a bygone era and perhaps a movie to spark a new wave of live-action, original musicals.