Introducing Alisa Elega Shevchenko Glamourous Russian Cybercriminal

draft

We end 2016 on Global Wahrman with a note of hope in a world otherwise diminished by death, war, greed, and hypocrisy.

The Obama Administration, in one of its final acts, has published a list of Soviet, I mean Russian, firms and individuals implicated in the DNC hack. Those of us who are concerned about the lack of women in computing, particularly the important new field of Cybercrime, can take heart by the inclusion of poster child Alisa Elega Shevchenko on this list.

Although she modestly claims to have no idea what people are talking about, adolescent men and some women can be encouraged by her excellent photograph which could have come right out of Soviet Vogue.

Please give a warm welcome to Alisa Elega Shevchenko.

http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2016/12/accidental-mastermind-dnc-hack/134266/?oref=d-river

John Kerry and the American Values of Lies, Betrayal and Hypocrisy

draft

Warning.  It is required of all right-thinking people of the world to hate Israel, but I am guilty of the sin of not hating Israel. I dislike Netanyahu but I think he was legally elected. I disagree with the settlements in the so-called Occupied Territories, but I look forward to the day that the world addresses its settlements on occupied territories before beating up a little country like Israel.  Shall we all return the lands won in war? What if we were attacked in that war? The US, China, Russia, the UK, etc, builds settlements in lands they took in wars, wars in which they were the aggressor.  Shall we have a UN Resolution to demand that they return those lands? I am all for it.  But to criticize Israel for actions that other nations are guilty of is blatant hypocrisy. All in a days work at the UN, I suppose.  

John Kerry announced to the world that the US vote at the UN to condemn, isolate and ultimately destroy Israel was in accordance with the best values of the American People. Now, what values might he be referring to? I think those values are lies, betrayal, hypocrisy and maybe just a little irony.

We are told and we are expected to believe that the Obama Administration did not initiate, encourage and coordinate this UN Resolution. Well, I suppose that one thing that we have learned from the last few years and certainly this election season is that lies no longer have to be plausible, that Americans will believe pretty much any baseless lie if they want to. But not even a nitwit, not even a Trump supporter, could possibly believe this one. Sure, appropriate cutouts (1) had to be found. Yes, America had to have their hands clean when someone put in the knife. Now who would that someone be? England? France? And then one of the little guys, you know like Senegal would have to take the fall. Of course it is just coincidence that this happens in the last month of the Obama presidency and before four years of Trump about whom, whatever else you might say, is apparently not prepared to sell Israel down the river. Of course, coincidence! The Obama administration does not even have the guts to say what everyone knows, that this last minute arranged vote is a reversal of 60 years of American foreign policy. Liars..

Betrayal is also a core American value. In this case we have at least two beautiful examples of American betrayal at its finest. Of course the United States has just betrayed Israel, that goes without saying. But even more delicious is the lovely betrayal of those in this country who support Israel's right to self-defense who supported Obama through two presidential elections. Obama waited until he did not need their support anymore, and then stabbed these supporters in the back, knowing there was no way to undo the damage. And he did it in a way that he escapes the results, he does not have to run for election anymore. The poor Democrats in Congress though are going to reap the implications of this. Of course the old Democratic coalition has been dead for years, this is merely another shoe dropping. 

But the highest value exposed here is our value of hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is as American as mom and apple pie. Shall we review which of the countries on the security council have built settlements on the “occupied territories”? Well, lets see. Britain (N. Ireland), New Zealand (North and South Island), China (Tibet), Spain (Basque territory), Russia (so many places), and dont forget the good old US of A (Hawaii, N. Mexico, Ca, and frankly most of N. America depending on how you look at it).

Is there any irony in this episode? That would depend on how you interpret a topic in American history. That topic being to what extent Jewish Americans were involved with and important to the Civil Rights movement in this country. And even if Jews were important to the movement, did it really matter that they were Jewish, in some sense of that word? But to the extent that Jews were important to that movement that worked to achieve civil rights for all Americans, regardless of color, then some of the children of these activists will note that when the time came for the USA to condemn, isolate and attempt to destroy the Jewish state of Israel, that it was the first Black American president who did so. This seems like irony to me.

Is cowardice an American value?  Not that I am aware of. But one thing we can be very sure of here, this particular little betrayal by Obama was handled in a way that demonstrates that first and foremost, Obama is a coward.

But lets get real here.  Lies, betrayal and hypocrisy are three of the fundamentals of international diplomacy. There is nothing particularly new here when you look at the big picture.

_________________________________________________

1. A “cutout” is an intelligence term for a person or organizaton that is between the real perpetrator and the victim. It provides plausible deniability, at least under some circumstances.

tags: lies, hypocrisy, betrayal, greed and corruption 

Thanks, Obama, For Stabbing Us In the Back

draft

I think it is completely brilliant for Barack Obama to wait until the last month of his term of office and then deliberately and without (much) notice take a group of his very loyal supporters and stab them in the back. Now this tiny group, which is given far too much credit for influencing American politics, IMHO, can feel very, very stupid for supporting him these last 8 years.

On Monday, I change my registration from Democrat to Independent. I guess that old Democratic coalition really is dead.

If you do not know what I am talking about, then you are lucky and don't worry about it. If you do know what I am talking about, then you are right to think that this is a very complicated topic that has lots and lots of issues. What I am objecting to here is the hypocrisy, the timing, and the way we were used. And let there be no doubt in your mind, we were used. I will be interested to see who, of my friends, actually reads this and knows what I am talking about.

(from my FB post)

When Starbucks Is Not Only for Coffee

draft

As I have mentioned before, one advantage of my extreme poverty is that it allows me to see other parts of my community that I would not otherwise see.

So recently when I did my little 9 day experiment without electric power, and therefore without an internet connection except through my smartphone, I researched where it was I could charge my various batteries and get high speed internet. To my surprise the local library is really well set up to accomodate people who need to charge their devices and provides free WIFI, although admittedly its bandwidth seemed limited on occassion, that was probably because so many people were trying to use it at once. Very quickly you start to recognize the people who are in a similar situation to yourself, people who are so poor that they need to charge their electric appliances somewhere and maybe use the Internet.

But the library closes by 6 PM most evenings and is not open on Sunday, so that is when the famous Starbucks option comes into play. Starbucks is open from about 4 AM to 10 PM or later every day of the week.

I went there three times, bought about $5.00 worth of stuff (ice tea and a great cheesecake thing) and charged three devices and used their WIFI. It was a great experience each time.

There were two other groups that I noticed as well. First, at least in my community, Starbucks has become the go to place for High School students to go study with their friends. They buy coffee or tea and work on their homework together.

The other group was represented by two individuals, myself and a black man of roughly my age. He was also there to charge his smartphone and I noticed him on two different occasions. On one of those occasions he also fell asleep in his seat and one of the staff woke him up, explaining that he could not sleep there. Which seems reasonable to me.

If I end up going truly homeless but have enough money to buy some tea or coffee, then no doubt you will see me at Starbucks as well.

  

Two Essays on the Trump Catastrophe

As a way of procrastinating on things that must be done, and also to self-medicate my anxiety about the insanity of a Trump presidency, I read a lot on the Internet, that bold new paradigm of lies, stupidity, pornography, exploitation and fake news. From time to time, I come across what seems to be an exceptional essay written by those who share my concerns.

Here are two.

"This Political Theorist Predicted The Rise of Trumpism. His Name Was Hunter S Thompson"
by Susan McWilliams

"What I Had Lost Was a Country"
by Jedediah Purdy

The Electoral College Having Done Its Work Leaves the Stage

"Tomorrow we discover if Americans, specifically Republicans, have any guts or if we are all doomed by their cowardice to be slaves of the Russians and the rich forever. The Republican electors could choose to postpone the process in order to hear the results of the CIA investigation but they will not. They are craven traitors who are betraying their country out of ignorance and self-delusion."

Oh come now, I say in retrospect, did you really believe for a moment, for even one moment, that dedicated functionaries of the Republican party, all of them vetted for their reliability, did you really think they were going to turn their back on their party's candidate and vote for Hillary Clinton in full view of the world?  And then what, to return home to accusations of betrayal, their lives destroyed, their careers destroyed?  Did you really think that of all people they would vote for Hillary Clinton, the target of their lies and hate campaign for 30 years?

Grow the f-word up.  Lets be real here.  The Republicans want power, pure power is their goal, and with Trump although they have a wild-card, they have one that generally conforms, or who can be believed to conform to their racist, misogynist,  homophobic, xenophobic vision of America.

Letter to Bob Re: Trump, Bullying and Debating Technique

draft

Another letter to my friend Bob who has tried to argue that since Trump has “forgiven” some people he previously attacked, that he is suitable to be President of the United States.

Bob

A climate denier will say that the climate is not warming, see Antarctica is gaining ice mass for 3 years in a row.

But we are not discussing whether or not there was a temporary increase in ice mass in Antarctica (if there actually was, or whether that was an anomaly of an imperfect measuring system due to budget limitations on earth science), we are discussing whether or not the hundreds of indices we have, combined with climate theory that makes certain predictions about a very complicated and imperfectly understood topic, global climate, tells us that our release of carbon into the world is or should affect climate, and yes, the evidence says that it does.

This is a well known debating technique when one does not want to acknowledge that the other side has all the evidence and you are grasping at straws. So while I do appreciate the compliment I am not all that interested in wasting my time.

Trump has been a bully in public, often via Twitter literally hundreds of times since I have been watching, less than a year. If you pay me, I will be happy to count the number of times, usually an ad hominem or a direct and unambiguous lie.

I thought I was discussing with friends whether or not Trump was in any way a suitable person to be president of the United States.

To save you some time, I have enclosed a list of phony and fallacious debating techniques for you to use in the future.

But if you would do me a favor, please avoid using them with me. I am a little busy and I dont respect the arguments so its a waste of both our time.

https://www.orange-papers.org/orange-propaganda.html

Sincerely,

MW

Global Wahrman

How to Remove a President (Other Methods)

draft

This post is a continuation of the discussion of how a nation may remove a non-performing or insane chief executive that is outside the more constitutional methods of a nation.

I use the term “chief executive” as a synonym for “President”, “Chancellor”, “First Secretary”, etc.

As we discuss some of these famous cases from history be particularly alert for the principle of “unintended or unanticipated consequences” and remember that these examples are usually very specific to the country and the period of time they are a part of.

1. The General Rebellion

The "rebellion" as defined here often also goes by the name of revolution. They generally only happen after a prolonged period of distress and/or dysfunction of the government.  It requires that a significant portion of the population decides that the situation is untenable and that rebellion is the only alternative. Or they may not be thinking too hard about rebellion or revolution, they may simply be protesting the lack of food or the murder of one of their own by the security forces and things spin out of control.

This revolt may or may not include a substantial portion of the aristocracy and it may or may not be encouraged by foreign governments.

The rebellion is distinguished from the coup d'etat by being generally unplanned and involving a sizable percentage of the general population, in other words, people outside the present government.

Notable examples of the rebellion or revolution include the Glorious Revolution of 1638 in Great Britain, the American Revolution of 1776, the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Islamic Revolution of 1989 in Iran. All of these cases resulted in a new constitution for the country. The Glorious Revolution and the Russian Revolution also had aspects of a civil war.

The Islamic and Russian Revolutions both started with a broader base of support and then were taken over by one of the revolutionary groups which came to control the government.  The Islamic Revolution started as a rebellion against the Shah's government but was only later taken over by orthodox Shia.  The Russian Revolution first resulted in the Kerensky Provisional Government and was later taken over by the Bolsheviks. 

2. The Coup d'Etat

Far more common in recent history is the coup d'etat which is distinguished from the General Rebellion by being initiated by a much smaller group of people working in secret. Very often the people who attempt a coup are part of the ruling government and generally includes in the conspiracy a part of that nation's military and internal security forces.

In the classic coup d'etat, members of the government and the aristocracy conspire to take over the government and depose the chief executive and his primary supporters. There is usually a specific event or date of the coup, the part of the military that is in control of the plotters attempts to take control of the capital, imprison or kill the chief executive, his loyal ministers, and anyone else who is perceived to be a threat. They generally attempt to control the primary media outlets, traditionally a radio or television station, in order to control the news about the situation. They generally attempt to seize and control the parliament of the country.

A successful coup will do all these things and the former chief executive will either be killed or be forced into exile, or in a few cases, internal exile. A coup that is not successful generally results in the death, imprisonment or exile of the coup supporters and a purge of suspected supporters from the government and from the country. The end result of an unsuccessful coup may have the result of leaving the existing government more powerful than before the coup. The fall of the Soviet Union was an unexpected result of an unsuccessful coup d'etat. 

The coup d'etat has in the past been a device of intelligence agencies of various nations attempting to execute regime change on a country that is not their own.

3. The Assassination

Perhaps the most direct way to change the chief executive of a country is to kill him or her. However, assassination has a mixed track record for achieving political goals as it often results in unanticipated or undesired results. Very often assassination may be the work of a very small cabal leading to questions of conspiracy and a strong counter-reaction.

Classic assassinations in history include John Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and Julius Caesar. In the case of Kennedy, it is not known why the assassination happened although of course there are numerous theories. In the case of Lincoln, the assassination did not help the Confederate cause, if anything it hurt it. In the case of the Archduke Ferdinand, the goal of the assassin involved regional politics and was not intended to start a general global war. In the case of Julius Caesar, the assassins were all dead within a few years and the Roman Republic was definitively destroyed.

Sometimes we are not sure whether a chief executive was assassinated.  An example of this is the death of Joseph Stalin who may or may not have been poisoned by Beria.

4. Suicide

In some circumstances, the chief executive can be encouraged to commit suicide as Hitler did at the end of World War 2.  This is not so easy to arrange and when it does happen it is usually in conjunction with some other circumstance, such as the one below.

5. Change of Government After Defeat in War

The final case of a non-consensual change of government is that which occurs after defeat in a war. The governments of Germany, Austria, and Japan in particular were imposed by the victors after World War 2, generally without the consent of the citizens of the defeated country.  If it does involve the citizenry of the defeated country, then that consent is only pro forma.

An Open Letter to My Friend Bob

draft

The following is a letter to a former friend, a true believer in the free-market system, who wants to "wait and see" about Donald Trump.  In my opinion, my friend is delusional on a number of different issues.  The most annoying of these ideas is that he can somehow convince me that Trump is a good guy.  But facts are facts, whether or not you like them.  And Trump ran on a platform of racism, misogyny and hate.


Dear Bob,

I understand that you support a racist, misogynist, homophobe for president, but I don't. Trump is a bully who attacks with obvious lies in order to intimidate people who disagree with him and force them into line. Maybe you think that it is OK for the president to act in this way, but I don't.

The CIA says something Trump does not agree with, and he attacks them. The Carrier union leader says that Trump grossly misrepresented the Carrier deal (and he did) and he is attacked by Trump.  Then, "anonymous goons" call this enemy of Trump and threaten his life and the life of his family.  These are not isolated incidents. What about this don't you understand?

You tell me that Trump is not lying, he is bargaining. But we are not talking about negotiating how much cheese to buy.  We are talking about our country here and people need to know what positions their potential leaders will take in order to make judgments about whether or not to support them.  When Trump takes the oath of office on Jan 20 and he swears to support the Constitution and laws of the United States of America will that also be a lie?  

Exxon funded fake science and worked to derail any attempt to deal with global climate change. Trump said that climate change was a hoax and then he said that "nobody can really know if we are causing climate change or not". More lies of course because we, the best scientists we have, do think they know.  Its not "just a theory" as the Creationists would say.  Then in beautiful Trump-style, his goons demand to know who in the government supports these theories, presumably so they can be punished or fired for incorrect thought.

The new head of the Energy department has vowed to destroy the department. The head of the EPA wants to violate our environmental laws. The head of the Education department is well known for destroying Michigans public school system. The rumors of his abuse of women are not invented, a friend of mine knows a woman who was attacked by Trump when she was 14 years old. Trump has said he will appoint a supreme court justice that will vote to repeal Roe v Wade. I am sure Haley and Perry kissed Trumps flabby white ass to get their jobs. Trump appealed to the most racist parts of our society to get elected. Trump suggested that if HRC were elected that people should shoot her. Trump publicly asked Putin to attack the Democrats.

This conversation is not productive.

I can not be friends with someone who wants to murder women and destroy the environment.

Sincerely,
MW

New Russian Super Torpedo and the New Cold War

draft

Today we are going to ask some questions about this alleged Russian Superweapon, the Torpedo From Hell, the Status-6. Get your booties on, because we are going to slog through some messy Cold War logic in a few paragraphs.

If you know nothing about this latest scare from Russia, the best article I know about it is on Foxtrot Alpha and can be found here.

Here is what you are supposed to gather about this torpedo. First, it wasn't an accidental leak, the Russians want us to know about it. Second, it may or may not exist, and if it exists, it probably doesn't do everything that it claims to do because some of those things are *really hard* and if you could really do them you might want to keep it a secret. Third, we already knew that they had nasty ways of blowing us up and spreading radioactive death for a long time.

So what is this all about then? The Russians have made it clear that they do not like our little missile shield. Why is a bit of a puzzle and is discussed below but it is very clear that they do not like the shield at all. But we have refused to stop deploying it for whatever reason (also discussed below). So my guess, purely a guess, is that they are presenting this torpedo (underwater missile) as a way of saying “See! We don't really care about your missile shield because we can blow you up anyway! So there!”

Now, what is a little weird about this is that the missile shield that we have and are likely to have in the next decade or so falls loosely into two types. One type is a tactical “Patriot” missile type, developed in part by the Israelis. The other is a strategic missile type developed on our own that uses the Navy SM6 (Standard Missile 6) to the best of my knowledge. The tactical missile defense is a pretty good defense against a fair number of tactical missiles at one time. These missiles that they defend against can certainly cause a lot of damage but they will not destroy Tel Aviv without an awful lot of work.

The strategic missile shield is what we are probably talking about here. The thing about this is that the Russians have nothing to worry about from it. Why? Because in time of nuclear war, the Russians could easily launch enough missiles to overwhelm this shield. This shield is good for a few missiles, maybe, certainly not the tsunami of missiles one would expect if we were in a nuclear war with the Russians.

So what is this shield good for? Two things. The first would be one or two missiles that were launched by mistake or in some way were launched by a rogue site that was not under control of its nominal government. And the second thing it could be useful for is in defense against a few missiles from a country like Iran or N. Korea who only has a few nuclear weapons available at one time and maybe also only a few relatively primitive intercontinental missiles to deliver them with.

So the point of the Status-6 may be to say something like, “We spit on your missile shield! See, we can go around it with our nifty torpedo!”. Ok, fine, but the missile shield was not aimed (so to speak) at Russia, so its all a little puzzling.

Maybe it has more to do with influencing people who are not very sophisticated at this, like the populations of Europe and Asia who are easily frightened? Of course people should be frightened about nuclear war, but I do not see how defending against loony toons like Iran and N. Korea could possibly threaten Russia.

But one thing you can be sure of, this is the kind of nuke vs nuke, spy vs spy thing that happened in the Cold War all the time. And maybe it is about prestige and appearances.  Or maybe it is about something I know nothing about. So welcome to the new Cold War.

Criminalizing Corporate Crime and Malfeasance

draft

Famously, Don Corleone said in the novel The Godfather that one lawyer with a briefcase could steal more than a gang of thieves with guns, or words to that effect.

Of course, everyone knows this is true. The egregious corruption of our justice system, from top to bottom is well known. Whether it has always been that way or has gotten worse in the last 3 or 4 decades is not known to me, but in the interest of helping our poor, stupid, and corrupt political elite in matters that should be obvious, we are going to make a few comments.

Dear Stupid Politicians,

If you do not start fixing the justice system, you are going to see a blowback that makes the Globalization / Trump debacle look minor in retrospect.

Everyone has noticed, and I mean everyone, that our justice system is grossly unfair and biased in favor of the rich. A poor man can go to jail in Alabama for life for stealing a stapler, but not even stealing billions of dollars on Wall Street and causing the collapse of the world economic system is a cause for even the most modest reprimand.

But if you keep ignoring what the people think, and keep kicking the can down the road while chortling to yourself that you got away with it again, one day this is going to blow up in your face. This is a specific example of the more general "failure of the cultural myth" or "failure to believe in a nation's institutions". It means that people start believing conspiracy theories, even the most ludicrous, and never believe anything that a politician tells them. You don't want that, although it may already be too late as The Donald Trump Disaster demonstrates.

What can you do about this?

In a nutshell, when a corporation commits a crime, people should go to jail. And I do not mean the little people here, say, for example, the 5,000 people that Wells Fargo fired after a decade of crime. We mean the top executives, all of them, and for a reasonable period of time depending on the extent of the crime.

Specifically, this includes the people on Wall Street whose incompetence and greed caused the financial collapse. Put them in jail. This means the executives at Volkswagon, to the very top, who of course knew all along that they were committing fraud with the EPA Decepticon software. This means the Exxon executives, who suppressed research reports on global warming and funded fake science to attempt to delay action on global warming. This means the Wells Fargo executives who stole money from their clients. This means AT&T who was caught stealing $88 million from customers. I suspect that is the tip of the iceberg. Put them in jail.

Put them all in jail.  Yes, even the ones who gave all that money to your reelection campaign and that you have been protecting all these years behind the scenes.  Even those executives you play golf with.  Even them.

Furthermore, if our government can seize the assets of middle class people who have not even been accused of a crime, then civil asset forfeiture could surely be applied to such people as Exxon executives or Wells Fargo executives. Just think of all the good you can do with that extra $100M from the Wells Fargo CEO who of course knew all along that his company was stealing. 

We all know that "statute of limitations" is nothing more than a way of exempting rich criminals from facing the penalties of their crimes.  People figured that out long ago.  So when some stooge quotes "statute of limitations" at us why a criminal corporation can not be prosecuted, we know we are being lied to again.

We dont care that you failed over the last 60 years to make the criminal code correspond in the least to fairness here. We know you are in the pay of the worst criminals / executives. Put them in jail anyway and fix the criminal code while you are at it. 

Of course you wont do it. You are as corrupt as they are. But you have been warned, so dont pretend innocence when this blows up in your face.  

Sincerely,
MW
Global Wahrman

__________________________________________

Article on AT&T Stealing $88 Million

http://www.networkworld.com/article/3148319/mobile-wireless/atandt-to-cough-up-88m-for-cramming-mobile-customer-bills.html

Five Hours of Hell

draft

The Visual Effects Bakeoff will take place this year at the usual place (La Peer and Wilshire) on January 7, 2017 from 5:30 PM - until 10:30 PM.

Whenever possible, I recommend sitting on an aisle seat so it is easier to escape between films and chill out in the lobby. This is one advantage that the non-members have.

The films are listed below in alphabetical order:

Alice through the Looking Glass

Arrival

The BFG

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

Captain America: Civil War

Deadpool

Deepwater Horizon

Doctor Strange

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Independence Day: Resurgence

The Jungle Book

Kubo and the Two Strings

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

Passengers

Rogue One

Star Trek Beyond

Suicide Squad

Sully

Warcraft

X-Men: Apocalypse

I have never really understood the rules here.

I have no idea what films will be selected, but here are some guesses. I suspect that Dawn of Justice, Captain America, Dr. Strange, Rogue One, X-Men and Jungle Book will be selected. I think they nominate 10 films for consideration. Deadpool is interesting and might be selected. I predict Suicide Squad and Independence Day will not be nominated.

As usual, the Academy members are separated from the unwashed masses by the Academy SS (Screening Service) personnel. If you are not a member and you wish to hobnob with your elite friends, you need to be there early. How early is of course anyone's guess but since the US Government worked so hard to send American jobs overseas in order to destroy the middle class and elevate and exalt the rich, there has usually been no problem getting in. I would say about an hour early is a safe bet, say 4:30 pm.

If you are going to attend, it is best to wear all black and leave your sidearms at home, there is no recording, whistling, spitting, or throwing of items of any sort. Those who are ejected from the theatre are never seen again.

What Field and Where?

draft

Since my participation in the field of computer graphics and animation is not up to my requirements, although I suppose that could change at any time, the best plan I can come up with is to go to graduate school and try to learn another trade. Many people assume that when I return to school (if I return to school) I will study computer graphics / animation. But why would I do that if the field is not being minimally economically viable? Yes VR/AR is spending a lot of money.  But how that will work out remains to be seen.

No doubt, visualization will be part of what I do in the future, no matter what direction I take. I seem to have dedicated a big part of my life to it, so why not continue?

So what field and where?

1. Field

If it involves computer science, then it might involve computer security, computational biology, machine learning, autonomy, or image understanding. All these fields are very important and interesting. If it involves being able to teach, then a terminal degree in art, the MFA, is useful. It would also be entertaining to get. In a previous life I studied economics and it is clear to me that the world economists are morons and a half, it might be fun to get an advanced degree in it. All my life I have studied history. Why not a PhD in that? Finally, RAND has a graduate institute.  I could probably get in, and try to work on a variety of RAND projects.  I see this as form of regression to a happier time.  The plan is to apply to as many of these as I can afford and have time for. Since I have no money, the final list will no doubt be shorter than the list here.

2. Work

Well one reason one might not want one of these degrees is the fact that I will not get employment after graduation.  But then I probably will not get employment whatever I study. 

3. Where?

All graduate schools are ageist and deliberately so. The ability to get accepted to an elite school such as MIT, Stanford and so forth is zero. I still may apply because I am stubborn and I hate their behavior and I want them to reject me to my face. The good news is that there are many schools where I can get a good education. Any major research university will do. How about UCSC, or NYU, or Columbia, or UNC? Where else do you suggest?

4. How?

To get into a top school, I need the best recommendations. My grades got me into Harvard the last time I tried, and god only knows how my GREs will go, but the last time I took them I did well. So it comes down to my essay and the recommendations.

As usual, my essay will be brilliant for those who have a brain and hopeless for those who are conventional and are terrified of someone who thinks differently.  But I have no plan to sanitize it for the small brained as it would do no one any good.

I am told that the only recommendations that are considered by admissions committees are recommendations by colleagues and peers: in other words, if you are applying for a CS school, you need recommendations by a tenured professor in CS. Anything else will be ignored. Unfortunately, while I know quite a few professors of CS, only one has agreed to write a letter of recommendation.

5. Other strategies

The MS programs are easier to get into, I might volunteer to go do a MS before the PhD to reduce risk. The average PhD candidate will be offered a fellowship. I will offer to do all this on government loans, that may make it easier to admit me. By admitting me they immediately get a graduate who has won an academy award. I am probably responsible for 1/2 billion in revenue based on my work. I will emphasize that I probably would have had at least 5 patents if I had had the money to file.

6. What happens after?

By the time I graduate, I hope to have at least one if not two books published (The details of that for another time.  The first book is well underway).  I will have social security, maybe a tiny income if I keep writing books.  If I get a job, I can repay my govt loans.  If I do not work, then they can come take it out of me.

Proposed Constitutional Amendment in Honor of the Election of Donald Trump

draft

Every honest and informed American is aghast at the election of Donald Trump to the President of the United states. A misogynist, racist, would-be murderer of women, xenophobe, narcissist in the non-clinical sense, possible narcissist in the clinical sense and most of all, completely inexperienced and inappropriate for the office of President. The people who voted for him and the Republican party must be held accountable for this abomination who is likely to damage the American republic for decades to come.

But moving forward, what can we do to prevent this kind of uninformed election in the future? What was the structural problem here and is there a solution?

I want to propose (seriously) a constitutional amendment to address this. Although I am not a constitutional lawyer and just a common citizen, so forgive the wording which no doubt would need work.

The intent of the amendment would be as follows, “No person may be elected President of the United States who has not been elected to and served honorably in a major political position of the country, such as a member of the House of Representatives, or of the US Senate, or Vice President of the United States.”

In this way, we would know that the would-be president would be cognizant of foreign policy issues, budget issues, legal issues, and many other topics that the President must deal with upon election.

It is arguable that being elected Governor of a state should also qualify a person for election as president, but it is a little questionable because in general a Governor does not have the same foreign policy responsibilities. It is possible that a justice of the peace would also be eligible. It is possible that a senior military leader would also be eligible (see for example Eisenhower).

Obviously these issues would have to be debated before proposing an amendment.

How to Remove a President (Constitutional Methods)

draft

The obvious question to ask in the context of the Trump disaster, is how do you remove a president who is a maniac, or who suffers from a personality disorder, or is a fanatic and who is expected to involve us in war and attempt to destroy the country hand-in-hand with the incredibly stupid faction that put him into power?

There are a variety of case studies from history, both recent and ancient, and we will review some of them here. Please be aware that each of these is contingent on that nations culture, its institutions, its laws and the specific situations at hand (e.g. an unpopular war, a famine, riots, police oppression, etc).

This post will discuss constitutional methods only. A second post will discuss some of the extra-constitutional methods.

I use the term “President” below as a synonym for other titles including “Chancellor”, “Premier”, “Prime Minister”, “Shah” and “First Secretary”.

1. The President is installed / removed on a technicality which may or may not be legal.

In 2000, the right-wing US Supreme Court forced the recount in Florida to be halted in order to install Bush Jr as president. Anyone who examines that situation comes away with the following impression: had the recount continued Al Gore would have won the election. In this way, by controlling the Supreme Court, the right wing was able to defeat the results of an election. Whether or not you believe that or not is irrelevant. A substantial number of Americans do believe it.

If in 2016, the Electoral College were to install Hillary Clinton instead of Donald Trump, it would be perfectly legal to the best of my knowledge and the Trump faction would go nuts. The Electoral College is an artifact from 200 years ago and is itself a technicality that many people do not find legitimate. I doubt this situation will occur.

2. The President / Tsar / whatever is responsible for (or inherits) a policy so unpopular that he/she resigns from office or declines to run for re-election.

There are many examples of this in history, a notable one being LBJ's decision not to run for re-election and is also probably the case of the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in 1917.  In the latter case the situation in Russia was far more complicated and dire than simply an unpopular war.

3. The President loses a vote of confidence or is impeached and convicted by Congress.

This is more common in parliamentary governments than in our type of government. It requires a congress / parliament that is not controlled by the President's party and/or the President loses control of his own party. As the impeachment of Clinton showed, the fact of an impeachment does not have to be based on anything real and that it is quite possible to survive an impeachment when the charges are baseless and merely the irrational actions of an irresponsible Republican party.

Since the Republicans currently control both houses of Congress and is likely to appoint one of their goons to the Supreme Court, this is an unlikely scenario for the immediate future.  However much the mainstream Republicans hate Donald Trump, he is still technically a Republican and better than a stick-in-the-eye for their right wing, America-hating causes.

There is the entertaining possibility, however low probability, that the Republicans might impeach Trump if he did something egregious, as a way of putting a more compliant reactionary in charge, e.g. Pence.

4. The President commits a crime which is exposed and the resulting scandal causes him/her to resign.

In general for this scenario to work, the scandal has to be so egregious that it overwhelms the attempts of the administration to suppress it.  In this country it usually requires an “independent prosecutor” to be assigned, its report has to be damning, and the threat of impeachment has to be real.

This scenario also requires, or may require, such things as an internal security unit doing the right thing and trying to enforce the law, or a whistle blower who is aware of the crime coming forward, or a responsible press, and usually a combination of the above.

This is a likely scenario ultimately for Trump. But there are many reasons to think that it also might not work in his case. Trump has proven to be remarkably immune to borderline insane behavior already exhibited, the Republicans control both houses of Congress and would have to approve an independent prosecutor, and our internal security forces would have to do the right thing which in general is not a realistic expectation on our part.

5. The Constitution permits a president to be removed without impeachment.

There is a technique for removing the President if he/she is judged to be insane in the opinion of his/her own administration. I know very little about it but I think it is intended to prevent nuclear war in the short run while the government figures out what to do with a certified loony at the top. To the best of my knowledge, these provisions have never been used.

In the next post on the subject of removal, we will review some of the more entertaining but illegal methods of removal of the chief executive such as assassination.  

Memo to Warner Bros: Dont Be Stupid

draft

I had written what I suppose was a humerous take on Suicide Squad (2016), but in retrospect it is just not a funny matter.

The film is a disaster and deserves to be held up as a world-class example of what not to do. For those of you who do not do this for a living, or who have not studied this craft, we are not talking about vague, aesthetic, mumbo jumbo here. We are talking about basic, straightforward, principles of art. Principles which you can of course violate if you are a genius and know exactly what you are doing. But if you are not a genius, and these people clearly are not, then you had better pay attention.

I am going to go over the details in just a moment, but before I do I want to put the knife in. The WB executives who managed this piece of shit do not deserve their job. Anyone can do better, or said differently, it would be difficult for someone who had been around this stuff for a while to do worse.

What is particularly sad about this train wreck is that there are some very good characterizations here. The Joker, Harley Quinn, Deadshot, the Enchantress are all excellent, IMHO. Its the story(ies) they were made to serve that suck.

Enchantress is such a babe and totally wasted in this movie

Some of the following are technically story structure faults and some of them are pure writing faults.

1. We have three movies here, or at least parts of three movies. One is a movie in flashback form of the Joker and Harley Quinn, their romance and Harley's origin story. It could have been great, but it wasnt completed and besides it should not be told as a flashback. The second movie is the Amanda Waller / Suicide Squad story to defeat Enchantress. And the third is the Enchantress story, what happened to her, and her desire for revenge. The last story is the one that is least realized. The one of the Suicide Squad mission is the most hackneyed. Either story 1 or 3 would have been more interesting.

2. The introduction of the characters for movie 2, Suicide Squad, is hackneyed and unnecessary. The mug sheet, attributes of the character are unnecessary and look forced because they are forced. Making them dance around in fancy type does not help. Maybe this worked in comic book form, I dont know, but it doesnt work here.

3. Here are some examples of bad writing. First, if you are going to send these creeps out with a special forces team, then they are going to have to train together. No special forces team would consent to go on a mission otherwise. But our writers clearly know nothing about special forces. Second, if you are going to turn ordinary humans into blob heads, explain why. How much better to have turned them into something that made sense in the context of the Enchantress. How about ancient Aztec warrior slaves? That would have been interesting, you know pulling people's hearts out of their chest, that sort of thing. Third, if you are going to just blow up the Aztec Brother with a fucking bomb, then why not just saturation bomb the place. The AF has lots of fighter-bombers with 500 lb. bombs that would do a lot better than that stupid charge. Fourth, what exactly was the Enchantress trying to build? What does it do? How? Why? What is the junk in the sky? What purpose does it serve?

The answer is that it serves no purpose.  The writers dont have a clue what they are doing.

4. A personal pet peeve of mine is to have a crash of some vehicle and then have people walk away. No, you do not have a helicopter crash and then roll it over a bunch of times without everyone inside having broken ribs, or crushed vertebrae or worse.

Listen up!  A helicopter crashes and rolls over a bunch of times, then two things are true. First, it explodes. Second nobody walks away. Got that?

This movie is worse than just a bad movie, it is a waste of good talent and a good opportunity. The executives and filmmakers who perpetrated this disaster should be ashamed of themselves.

The Trans Pacific Partnership and National Security

draft

The NY Times has published an editorial describing how rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership was self-destructive and will allow China to take over the world and destroy America. <insert link here>

They may very well be right. But whoever wrote this is in the dark about some fundamental issues that seem to have escaped them. So allow me to help my brilliant, elite editorial writer learn about some basic reality in American in 2016.

First, although we hear how Globalization and NeoLiberalism has been good for the world economy and especially the American economy, most of us have not seen it. We have seen the rich get richer, the middle class get destroyed by taxes, reduced wages, reduced pensions and the destruction of jobs but we have not seen how this new economy helps us. We have seen the government lie about unemployment and do absolutely nothing about helping the middle and working classes except perhaps to suggest that we could learn to type and become a secretary, or maybe work at Jack in the Box for minimum wage.

And furthermore, this has been going on for 30 years. But no response from Washington, no acknowledgement of the problem. No attempts to fix it that are not laughable. But we do see bankers and fund managers destroy the economy, not get prosecuted and given their multi-million bonuses nevertheless. We see Wells Fargo commit fraud for a decade, fire 5,000 little people, but no one goes to jail and the CEO retires with 100 million dollars after some insider trading which of course is not investigated. We see middle class people get assets seized by the police without being accused of a crime and the DOJ say that it is OK.

Now before you read any further, you should reread the above two paragraphs. You should reread them again. You should keep rereading them until you understand them. Until you understand that they are true. Then when or if you finally get it through your head that we have a corrupt and unacceptable economy for millions of Americans, then we can move on. The point is that your trade deals and Globalization is not a favorite concept among millions and millions of Americans. Ok, got that?

Second, the TPP was negotiated in secret and sprung on the American people about a year ago. When it was released to the public with the statement that we must ratify this treaty at once, and no discussion permitted, people demurred. Since a ratified treaty becomes law, it makes sense that there be some discussion of what is essentially a proposed law(s). We cant have that, the Government says, we must ratify this at once!

But what we discovered when we looked at the TPP was some very egregious and unlikeable provisions. Well, unlikeable unless you are a large, corrupt corporation of course. In fact, there is a lot to dislike about this “partnership”, when it was finally presented to the American people.

Third, you now tell us that the TPP had nothing to do with trade. In fact, it had to do with national security as manifested by trade blocks that will form a bulwark against China and Russia (if anyone cared about Russia as an economic power, which they do not, apparently).

Well, that is interesting and it may even be true. But your efforts to slide that past the American people without discussing your real motives or the slightest effort to protect the American people against the egregious and manifest crimes of international corporations doomed this effort.

As you say, it has nothing to do with trade. It may or may not have something to do with national security. But it certainly has a lot to do with the trust that the American people have in their government, and that is where you lost.

But there is a way forward. All you have to do is be honest with the American people about what your real motives are, fix the problems with the treaty to protect the American people and their laws, and convince them that your trade policies actually help Americans instead of just stridently assert that they do against all the evidence of people's experience of the last 30 years.

If you do that, I have no doubt that a treaty can be ratified.

Good luck.

Causes and Mysteries about Election 2016

A minority of American voters have elected an irresponsible, racist, misogynist, narcissistic, and unqualified asshole to be POTUS and are in complete denial of how they have fucked this country.

Causes

In order to achieve this, a number of things had to happen. I review a few of them here. First, women and Hispanics who were presumed to vote for HRC and against Trump did not do so in substantial numbers. Trump could not have won without their support. Second, we learn that the country is perfectly willing to ignore their leaders. Just about every elite politician, intellectual and news source supported HRC, some of them half-heartedly, and opposed Trump. Third, voting Republicans, not their leaders but the rank and file, supported their candidate and the Democrats did not. Fourth, we, the Democrats, won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote. We may have to do something about the Electoral College, but that will be hard. Fifth, you can not run a candidate for POTUS unless he/she is a superior communicator and HRC is not. Sixth, we ran a Washington insider in a year when the country seethed with anger about how the system was failing them.  We had plenty of warning, see the Occupy movement and the campaign of Bernie Sanders. In other words, we, the Democrats, chose the wrong candidate.

Mysteries

I do not understand why the Washington elite has completely failed to understand and recognize the anger about the economy that has been building for over 30 years. 

Also, remember that the Trump vote only reflects the anger on the right.  There is a similar anger but on the left, what we might call the Sanders supporters.  These people were completely and utterly disenfranchised in this election being forced to vote for HRC as a lesser evil than Trump.

There is anger about the wealth inequality. There is anger about a justice system that favors the rich and punishes the poor. There is anger about a tax system that oppresses the middle class. There is anger about a justice system that lets corporate criminals commit any crime and go free.

The Polls

I do not understand why the polls were so wrong, nor do I understand why so many people, including the pollsters themselves, are in denial of the scope of their disaster.  This is as bad as "Dewey Defeats Truman". 

The implications of the polling failure are not commonly recognized. For example, you think you know what percentage of women or Hispanics voted for Trump? Well, you don't. Those numbers come from exit polls. The same technology that was so wrong going into the election. The fact is that this technology is thoroughly discredited. You can believe those numbers if you wish, but I don't.

The Good News

There is good news, its not all bad.

First, Washington needed a wake up call that business-as-usual does not work. Probably nothing less dramatic would have gotten the message across and even so it is not clear that Washington heard the message. Second, Trump is essentially a third party candidate that used a weak Republican party to get nominated and then elected. So if you want a path for a third party to win the White House, one has just been demonstrated for you. Third, Trump does not exactly have the support of the Republican Party. He will not get things all his own way in the Congress. Fourth, Trump has no track record of working with Washington. The last time we had a true Washington outsider, Jimmy Carter, it made a very big difference on what got done and what did not.

Conclusions

I can only hope that this clusterf*ck that is Trump will be a wake up call and that the principle of unintended consequences will apply here.

In the long run, we don't know if this is a complete disaster, or whether it was a necessary transition to a better government.

Notice to Trump Supporters

We are going to find a more polite way to say this.  Or something like this.  I would skip this post for the time being.

Personal Power Conservation Notes

I dont write about shit like this so that people who hate me can use it to make fun of me. I already know what you think. I write it so that others who are in distress may, occassionally, read about my experience and get some useful information from it. Who knows what the odds are of this. I think that they are small, but w.t.f. why not try a little idealism now and then?

I have been able to get my gas and power bill down from roughly $150 / month to less than $50/month. I am told that these are very good figures, but its all still baffling to me. Someone who is not working can afford none of this and yet they have to live even if the rich fly their widebody jets around. Supposedly there is a utilities program under the name of 211 that I have yet to try.

But for those of you who are interested in lowering your power bill and / or have no income, here are some notes on what is necessary to get the numbers down by 2/3rds.

1. Enroll in your power company's “CARE” program. This gets you somewhere between a 20 to 30 percent discount on your bill. You need to watch this one, as it tends to reset to off.

2. Unplug your washer and dryer and use the laundromat. Yes that will cost you between $10 to $20 per visit (including detergent), but at least it wont be a surprise at the end of the month.

3. Turn off your heat and air conditioning. I live in Southern California. The heat is oppressive and it gets cold at night. But the pipes wont freeze and its time to realize that you are worthless garbage because you are poor, and you can wear a fucking sweater to keep warm.

4. Replace all the curly lights with LEDs, available at Walmart for roughly $3.00 per light.

5. Unplug all unknown electronics devices, period. Trace all power lines and if you do not need it, dont use it. Remember, if it is plugged in it is probably using power whether there is a light glowing or not.

6. Turn all computers onto maximum power savings. Wait for the fucking disk to spin up.

7. Only run your workstation when you need it, and then turn it off. Never run it overnight.

8. Turn down the temperature on your water heater, assuming you still have gas.

9. Dont use the electric oven and rarely use the electric stove. Use your outdoors propane stove where you can. It may or may not save money in the long run, but in the short run it will save on your electricity bill and let you keep the lights on.

Remember what we are trying to achieve here. We are trying to keep lights on and the ability to charge our smartphones and run some of our computers. Everything else is and should be optional.

Working From My Smartphone: Water and Power

As part of the continuing effort to live within my means, I decided that when SDGE (San Diego Gas and Electric) turned off my power this time, I would just keep it off and spend the money otherwise sent to them to continue to build up my “no power” infrastructure and see how it went. This is going to be much more detail than most of you will be interested in, so feel free to skip to the end.

The power went off the Wednesday morning after Trump was elected. At the end of 9 days, I called SDGE and made a deal. Here is what I learned in these 9 days.

1. No Power Infrastructure

I bought a $20 solar water shower, and spent at least as much money installing it. But it is installed, and the next time that the gas and power goes off (but the water stays on), I will have warm showers at least some of the time. The rest of the time I will have cold water “towel” showers.

I bought a $40 propane camping stove, and I have now built a place for it. It does just what I need. As the reviews say, it pretty much has two settings: full off and full on. I have to stay there and watch it when I cook, as otherwise it will blast whatever is being cooked into charcoal. I have to wear gloves or I will burn the shit out of myself. But it works fine and I can have hot food when the power is off. I plan to continue to use it even when the power is on to see how this affects my lifestyle and energy bills.

I bought a second, larger ice chest for $40 and split my food between the two chests. I try to keep things out of the water, this means an internal strainer for the fruits/vegetables and a container for things like cheese. With two ice chests, I need to spend $4-$8 every 3 days or so to keep things cool. They also require maintenance every few days basically to drain the water.

I bought a $15 external battery for my smartphone. It makes all the difference in terms of smartphone usage especially at night.

I bought a $20 power inverter for my car and used it to charge my laptop. It also depleted my battery and I needed to rejoin AAA to get a charge. This costs $70 these days. No more charging my laptop from my car and no more charging my phone from the car unless the engine is running.

I bought $10 in batteries and would need to do that about every other week. I bought two very cheap “miners” headset LED flashlights and they are my preferred go to lighting solution.

I either go to the Escondido Library if it is open to charge my devices, or on days or times when it is closed, I go to Starbucks and pay $5 for something and use their facilities. In both cases there is unsecured WIFI that I can use. The nearest 24 hour cafe is an hour away in San Diego.

I was able to turn my smartphone into a tethered hotspot. However, I also needed to increase my data plan from $40 a month to $60 and it may go up from there.

2. Productivity

My producitivity went to hell. A lot of my writing and work has to happen when I think about it, not when I have managed to get to the library and to Starbucks. I have severe insomnia and I need to be able to work from home and without a charged laptop I can not do that.

3. Mental State

I am severely challenged to end this situation (unemployment, living in isolation) and I need to be productive to do so. The despair caused by living in a dark house and not getting work done was and is dangerous. Furthermore, it greatly increased my requirements for medication way beyond the normal and that is not sustainable.

4. SDGE Cooperation

One more time, SDGE was helpful in making a deal to get the power on. I have reduced my monthly nut to under $50/month for gas and electric, the problem has always been the back bill.

Another time I will discuss how I got my bill down as far as I have.

Election 2016 What We Learned Part 1

My first impression when I saw Trump winning was that “we are so fucked”. And we are. But here are a few notes on the things that we learned, or that I learned.

1. Polling science is bullshit. If they have not figured out the Bradley Effect by now, they never will.

2. Polling may have thrown the election to Trump because some people voted for third parties who might have voted differently if they had only known the real situation.

3. Women and Hispanics did not support Hillary.

4. There is no reason to think that a woman candidate can be elected president.

5. Trump's support is not just uneducated white men. He could not have done what he did without considerable support from women and minorities.

6. Washington thought they could fuck the middle class with impunity, and the middle class fucked back.

7. The Democrats ran a Washington insider in a year when Americans were pissed off at being impoverished.

8. America has voted what it thinks about immigration, Globalization, fucking the middle class to make money for the rich, and LGBT rights.

9. By fucking up on this election, we lose the supreme court for the rest of our lives, and we may very well lose abortion rights. We chose these positions, and the country voted, and we lost.

Hold Your Nose and Vote for Hillary ?

In our first ever presidential election since Global Wahrman came into existence, we have decided to hold our nose and vote for Hillary Clinton. Maybe.

Its true that HRC stands for so many things I despise, and that there would be no hope under an HRC administration of things getting better. Surely if you wanted an example of what the word "corporate whore" means, one should look no further than Ms. Clinton.  And if you want to see Globalization continue to crush Americans in order to give more money to the rich, HRC is your candidate.  She hates unions, she hates the poor, she hates the working classes.  

She is pretty much despicable in every possible way.

But we have the following reasons for voting for her and ultimately they have won out.

1. Bernie Sanders, who I adore, whether or not he would have made a good president, is working for her and has asked his supporters to vote for her, so in deference to him, I will.

2. Trump is an abomination and I have promised my overseas friends that I would do what I could to defeat him. Particularly those who have been fucked by the Brexit madness have requested this.

3. Even though my vote is meaningless as HRC will win CA easily, there is still the issue of the popular vote and I think that there is some validity to adding my pittance to the destruction of Trump.

4. Our enemies are gloating over the stupidity of this election and I hate that. Yes, even though our country's government has fucked its people as hard as it can in order to make more money for the rich, I have a residual self image of this being a great country once, and it irritates me that China is gloating over our self-inflicted stupidity.

If you dont believe me, the Guardian has an excellent article here.

5. The right wing thugs at the FBI have really pissed me off.

Since HRC will certainly win (editors note: oops!), I will go over in a later post the minimum that is required for her to have any credibility in my eyes.  Of course, HRC will not give a fuck what I or any other powerless American cares, so why bother?

It will make me feel better, that's why.