They Doubted Alexander Humboldt's Intellectual Ability

I started reading Andrea Wulf's The Invention of Nature:  Alexander Humboldt's New World while Z was getting her swimming lessons.  (That's another wonderful story.)

You know - Humboldt like in the Humboldt Current, or Humboldt County, or any number of mountains, bays, glaciers, towns named after him all over the world.

The introduction talks about the 100th anniversary of his birth,

"On 14 September 1869, one hundred years after his birth, alexander von Humboldt's centennial was celebrated across the world.  There were parties in Europe, Africa and Australia as well as the Americas.  In Melbourne and Adelaide people came together to listen to speeches in honor of Humboldt, as did groups in Buenos Aires and Mexico City.  There were festivities in Moscow where Humboldt was called the 'Shakespeare of sciences', and in Alexandria in Egypt where guests partied under a sky illuminated with fireworks.  The greatest commemorations were in the United States, where from an Francisco to Philadelphia, and from Chicago to Charleston, the nation saw street pa were in the United Strades, sumptuous dinners and concerts.  In Cleveland some 8,000 people took to the streets and in Syracuse another 15,000 joined a march that was more than a mile long.   President Ulysses Grant attended the Humboldt celebrations in Pittsburg together with 10,000 resellers who brought the city to a standstill."

Somehow I missed that in American history.  The next paragraph talks about the celebrations in New York City.

So what did Humboldt do that made him such a hero around the world?

"Most important . . . Humboldt revolutionized the way we see the natural world.  He found connections everywhere.  Nothing, not even the tiniest organism, was looked at on its own.  'In this great chain of causes and effects,' Humboldt said, 'no single fact can be considered in isolation.'  With this insight, he invented the web of life, the concept of nature as we know it today."

He got his insights from a strong scientific education, a strong interest in nature, a wealthy family that allowed him to make amazing journeys around the world collecting observations of nature.

"After he saw the devastating environmental effects of colonial plantations at Lake Valencia in Venezuela in 1800 [just as the United States was becoming a country], Humboldt became the first scientist to talk about harmful human-induced climate change.  Deforestation there had made the land barren, water levels of the lake were falling and with the disappearance of brushwood torrential rains had washed away the soils on the surrounding mountain slopes.  Humboldt was the first to explain the forest's ability to enrich the atmosphere with moisture and its cooling effect, as well as its importance for water retention and protection against soil erosion.  He warned that humans were meddling with the climate and that this could have an unforeseeable impact on 'future generations.'"

Wolf talks about how his ideas influenced others.

"Thomas Jefferson called him 'one of the greatest ornaments of the age'. [Is that a compliment?] Charles Darwin wrote that 'nothing ever stimulated my zeal so much as reading Humboldt's Personal Narrative,' saying that he would not have boarded the Beagle, nor conceived of the Origin of Species without Humboldt.  William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge both incorporated Humboldt's concept of nature into their poems.  And American's most revered nature writer, Henry David Thoreau, found in Humboldt's books an answer to his dilemma on how to be a poet and a naturalist - Waldon would have been a much different book without Humboldt.  Simon Bolivar, the revolutionary who liberated South America from Spanish colonial rule, called Humboldt the 'discoverer of the New World' and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany's greatest poet, declared that spending a few days with Humboldt was like 'having lived several years'."

So it seems spending a few weeks with Humboldt via Wulf's book, seems like a good use of my time.

This is all background to better understand the title of this post.

Alexander and his older brother learned  Latin and Greek and Enlightenment science and humanities from tutors,  one of whom was particularly stingy with praise.  He was important in their lives because their father had died when Alexander was ten and the tutor was with them a number of years.

". . . Kunth was never quite satisfied with their progress.  Whenever they made a mistake, Kunth reacted as if they had done so to hurt or offend him.  For the boys, this behavior was more painful than if he had spanked them with a cane.  Always desperate to please Kunth, as Wilhelm [the older brother] later recounted, they had felt a 'perpetual anxiety' to make him happy.
  It was particularly difficult for Alexander, who was taught the same lessons as his precocious brother, despite being two years younger.  The result was that he believed himself to be less talented.  When Wilhelm excelled in Latin and Greek, Alexander felt incompetent and slow.  He struggled so much, Alexander later told a friend, that his tutors 'were doubtful whether even ordinary powers of intelligence would ever be developed in him'." (emphasis added)

Judgments of teachers can do great good and great harm.  Different kids react differently to different ways of teaching.  One of my very best teachers was stingy with praise and quick to dismiss, but I learned more from him than any other teacher.

And somehow Alexander got past these challenges to become the kind of scientist who was able to synthesize vast amounts of information and see how all the pieces fit together.  Looking forward to this book.

[I've posted more about this book here.]

AIFF2016 Followup: Immigration Nightmare - The Movie

[You can scroll down to see the movie, and further to see one of the director I took when she was in Anchorage last December for another of her movies at the Anchorage International Film Festival.  But here's some immigration context for the film.]

Immigration dominates the news these days, but for many there is no sense of the topic.  But let's look at some numbers to put things in perspective.  From the Homeland Security Website:

Below are daily averages:

1,069,266 passengers and pedestrians
- 326,723 incoming international air passengers and crew
- 53,786 passengers and crew on arriving ship/boat
- 688,757 incoming land travelers

So, in a year, there are about 400 million people going through Customs.  And how many terrorist attacks have we had inside the US since 9/11?

Back to daily averages:

• Conducted 1,140 apprehensions between U.S. ports of entry
• Arrested 22 wanted criminals at U.S. ports of entry
• Refused 752 inadmissible persons at U.S. ports of entry
• Identified 877 individuals with suspected national security concerns
• Intercepted 20 fraudulent documents 

I can't find any explanations of these figures or the terms used, so I don't know if there is overlap from one category to another.  Were the 22 arrested already counted in the 1,140 apprehensions?  Were the 20 people intercepted with fraudulent documents also counted in the 752 inadmissible persons?

But for my purposes here, the numbers here are so low that I'll count them all as if they are all discrete counts.  The total comes to 2811.

So, on a daily basis, that comes down to one quarter of one percent  of the people coming through get onto the list of 2811 above.  That's one out of every 400.   I have to assume that the 'perfect' foreigner  like Anna in the film - highly skilled, US education, a place to stay and a job where people are needed badly, no suspicious connections - is one of the 2811 caught up in a typical day.  And perhaps the woman in the wheel chair who couldn't speak English who will have to stay overnight because Anna isn't allowed to translate - is she part of these numbers?  It's not clear.

Here's the whole film which is being highlighted at Short Film of the Week.


WELCOME from Serena Dykman on Vimeo.




Is the situation in the movie an exception to the rule?  It doesn't look like it.  From the Center for American Progress (in Wikipedia identified as a progressive policy group):

"The most serious conviction for many deported immigrants is an immigration or traffic violation. Forty-seven percent of those deported in FY 2012 for committing a crime were convicted of only immigration or traffic offenses." (emphasis added)

Another excellent full length film on immigration we saw at the Anchorage International Film Festival in 2013 was called De Nieuwe Wereld (The New World) and took place in the  no-man's-land between the arrival area and the departure area in Amsterdam (I'm guessing because it was a Dutch film) where people with questionable or missing documents are held pending a decision.



I've got this titled as part of the Anchorage International Film Festival 2016, because the filmmaker showed another film - NANA - at the festival this year.  I mentioned it briefly in this post, but I also had a video of Serena Dykman that I didn't have a chance to post.  Getting work of this film got me to get it ready so I could post it here.  Below she talks about the film she showed at the festival - about her grandmother who survived Auschwitz and took on the mission of going to schools and elsewhere to spread the word from the mouth of survivor.

Fellow Anchorage Blogger's Book Get's Notice From Top Medical Journal

I've been a strong fan of Peter Dunlap-Shoal's book, My Degeneration: A Parkinson's Journey since

before it was even a book.  He was blogging cartoons - he was the Anchorage Daily News political cartoonist before his Parkinson's diagnosis - about his adventures with the evil Parkinson's.  I coined the term cross-cultural translation to describe the kind of research I was doing, and Peter's work fits perfectly into the field.  He's helping able bodied (at least people without Parkinson's, since no one is 100% able bodied) folks understand what his world looks like and feels like, with great detail and even greater sly humor.  He's also helping people with Parkinson's understand their own journeys.

So I was delighted when he first started blogging, then when his blog got awards, found a publisher, and ecstatic when I was able to get a copy. (Disclosure: I'm humbled and honored that he even mentions me in the book as someone who encouraged him to publish.  It was obvious to me how sensational the book was going to be, but I realize we can't always assess our own work objectively.) And his blog is linked to the column on the right under Alaska Bloggers.


And now, The Journal of the American Medical Association has highlighted Peter's book with effusive praise.  This is wonderful, because doctors should be reading it and recommending it to their patients.  I'm always delighted when good, decent people like Peter get recognized for their work.  Way to go Peter!!!!

Here's the start of the JAMA review:

My Degeneration: A Journey Through Parkinson’s 

My Degeneration by Peter Dunlap-Shohl is the true account of the author’s life with Parkinson disease (PD), and it is terrific, a read-in-one-sitting book that engages, teaches, and challenges readers from the first page until its conclusion. It’s one of the best graphic medicine books of 2016.
It starts with a punch to the gut when Dunlap-Shohl receives the unwanted diagnosis, contemplates a future of drooling and dependency, and seriously considers suicide. He’s brutally honest about his fears and struggles, and the beautifully rendered drawings show both the external reality of this chronic and debilitating disease and his internal struggles to cope.

I went through the University of Alaska Anchorage library to get to this, but you can see the whole review at the link here.

Soccer Break

Ater 90 minutes of regular play, this game, whose winner would play in the championship game the next day (later today), was 0-0.

The game was on one of many soccer fields at Starfire Sports Complex, a large soccer complex in Seattle where, I'm told, the Sounders once played.  This league, Washington Youth Soccer,  is separate from the high school league, which starts later.

The game began an hour late because the previous game also went into to overtimes and was decided with penalty kicks.  It was in the low 40s (F) and while the players were mostly in short sleeves, the spectators had space heaters and lots of clothing.  At least the Starfire sports complex has indoor fields too and I could watch the game from inside.  The damp cold here is more penetrating than Anchorages dry cold, and just standing around outside doesn't keep one warm.

It wasn't until near the end of the second overtime that there was a flurry of action near the goal and the team I was rooting for (a relative was playing), and while the goalie saved this one,

This one made it. I think.  The camera captures the action, but you can also miss things.  If not this one, then immediately after.   I think the ball in the shot below is just to the left of the goalie's chest in this picture.

It took me a while to figure out how the clock works here.  It goes up to 90 minutes in the regular game.  Then it keeps going to 100 minutes in the first overtime.  Then it starts again at zero.  So, if I have this right

 Today's game will be for the state championship in the under 17 group.

Andrew Sullivan's New Dish Starts With The Unique Nature Of Trump's Lies

Andrew Sullivan retired his popular blog, The Dish, in 2015.  He's something of a living rebuke to those who want to categorize people.  He's a practicing Roman Catholic, British born American citizen, often labeled conservative, and openly gay among other things.

Today he's marked his public return in a weekly blogpost/column hybrid.

His topic today begins with Trump's lies.  It's not to document them or complain about them individually, but rather to astutely point out that Trump lies differently from other presidents.  Here's a brief excerpt:

I want to start with Trump’s lies. It’s now a commonplace that Trump and his underlings tell whoppers. Fact-checkers have never had it so good. But all politicians lie. Bill Clinton could barely go a day without some shading or parsing of the truth. Richard Nixon was famously tricky. But all the traditional political fibbers nonetheless paid some deference to the truth — even as they were dodging it. They acknowledged a shared reality and bowed to it. They acknowledged the need for a common set of facts in order for a liberal democracy to function at all. Trump’s lies are different. They are direct refutations of reality — and their propagation and repetition is about enforcing his power rather than wriggling out of a political conundrum. They are attacks on the very possibility of a reasoned discourse, the kind of bald-faced lies that authoritarians issue as a way to test loyalty and force their subjects into submission. That first press conference when Sean Spicer was sent out to lie and fulminate to the press about the inauguration crowd reminded me of some Soviet apparatchik having his loyalty tested to see if he could repeat in public what he knew to be false. It was comical, but also faintly chilling.

Let's look at that idea of authoritarians testing loyalty by forcing subjects into submission.  There's a great example of that from Vaclav Havel (the playwright and former president of Czechoslovakia)  in his Power of the Powerless.  I cited it in a 2010 post about TSA requirements on airline passengers.  Havel was talking about how the communists tested the loyalty of shopkeepers.  Here's from History.Hanover's online copy of Power of the Powerless:

"The manager of a fruit-and-vegetable shop places in his window, among the onions and carrots, the slogan: "Workers of the world, unite!" Why does he do it? What is he trying to communicate to the world? Is he genuinely enthusiastic about the idea of unity among the workers of the world? Is his enthusiasm so great that he feels an irrepressible impulse to acquaint the public with his ideals? Has he really given more than a moment's thought to how such a unification might occur and what it would mean?

I think it can safely be assumed that the overwhelming majority of shopkeepers never think about the slogans they put in their windows, nor do they use them to express their real opinions. That poster was delivered to our greengrocer from the enterprise headquarters along with the onions and carrots. He put them all into the window simply because it has been done that way for years, because everyone does it, and because that is the way it has to be. If he were to refuse, there could be trouble. He could be reproached for not having the proper decoration in his window; someone might even accuse him of disloyalty. He does it because these things must be done if one is to get along in life. It is one of the thousands of details that guarantee him a relatively tranquil life "in harmony with society," as they say. 

Sullivan goes on to list some of the most recent bald face falsehoods from Trump.  Then writes:

 "None of this, moreover, is ever corrected. No error is ever admitted. Any lie is usually doubled down by another lie — along with an ad hominem attack."

This is, of course, part of Trump's credo, inherited from his mentor Roy Cohn, that I wrote about in post called, "Attack, Counterattack, Never Apologize." 

Next Sullivan tells us the job of the media and others is to challenge every lie, not go on to another question until the lie is acknowledged.  The risk, he says, to American journalists is far less than it was (and is) to those in other totalitarian nations.

Sullivan's next thrust is Trump's mental health.  We would not accept this behavior from someone in our daily life, he argues with an example of a neighbor who tells obvious lies and forces his family members to do the same.  While we can avoid a neighbor, we can't avoid the president.

"There is no anchor any more. At the core of the administration of the most powerful country on earth, there is, instead, madness."

The emperor has no clothes.

Sullivan then talks about the omnipresence of rulers in autocratic countries and ends with a discussion of the power of faith and the movie Silence.   



Trump is probably used to people in his business 'empire' agreeing to whatever he whatever he says.  We know he has used a mafia like strategy of promises and threats to enforce his view of the world on those outside his empire.

And that's the strategy he's using now as president.

If either one of the houses of congress were not controlled by Republicans, his presidency would have be unraveled already.  Only the courts (of the three branches of government) are standing up to him.  (Which is why the Republicans over the years have been blocking Obama appointments.)  How long can reasonable Republicans hold their noses and support Trump in Congress?

Perhaps the rest of us can propose a permanent monument (as well as support in the next elections) to the first five Republicans in the Senate and the first 25 Republicans in the House to stand up and oppose Trump on a continuing basis.  Maybe a monument isn't necessary.  Maybe we just have to convince them how it will affect how their grandchildren  and history will view them.  It's the first few to break ranks that are the brave ones.  Once the critical numbers are reached, others take much less risk to join them.

Looking At Media Past and Future - Ron Rosenbaum and Journalism After Snowden

[NOTE: This post began focused on the folly of not preventing disaster, an idea I've been toying with for a while as I try to make the point that while we will eventually get past Trump, it's going to cost us enormously, and the wounds will never completely go way.  The opening of Rosenbaum's piece seemed a good opportunity to make the point, but as I wrote, the issues of journalism under suppression became a more important focus.  Thus you get this post which goes in two different directions.  Sorry.]

Prevention has been part of American tradition since this country was founded.  

Ben Franklin, arguing for the creation of a fire department in Philadelphia wrote that "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

We have lots of similar maxims, like "Shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted" and " A stitch in time saves nine."

Fram oil filters ran a very popular ad where the oil filter dealer says, "You can me pay now" and then the mechanic says, "or pay me later."

Image from Smokey Bear history

Smokey the Bear has been telling people since the 1950s that "Only you can prevent forest fires."

The point of all of them is that preventing a disaster from happening is MUCH less costly than repairing the damage afterwards.

Not preventing Trump's election is going to cost Americans and the world a great deal of suffering and pain, emotional, physical, and financial.

So I was a little disturbed by the opening of this LABook Review piece by Ron Rosenbaum, journalist and author of Explaining Hitler, when he wrote that he'd refused requests to write about Trump, until after Trump won the election.  I understand people's reluctance to use Hitler comparisons and I'm not saying that his words would have prevented Trump from being elected, but he, of all people, knew what had happened in the past.  He explains that he simply did not see Trump at the same level as Hitler.

Hitler’s method was to lie until he got what he wanted, by which point it was too late. At first, he pledged no territorial demands. Then he quietly rolled his tanks into the Rhineland. He had no designs on Czechoslovakia — just the Sudetenland, because so many of its German-born citizens were begging him to help shelter them from persecution. But soon came the absorption of the rest of Czechoslovakia. After Czechoslovakia, he’d be satisfied. Europe could return to normal. Lie! 

There is, of course, no comparison with Trump in terms of scale. His biggest policy decisions so far have been to name reprehensible figures to various cabinet posts and to enact dreadful executive orders. But this, too, is a form of destruction. While marchers and the courts have put up a fight after the Muslim ban, each new act, each new lie, accepted by default, seems less outrageous. Let’s call it what it is: defining mendacity down.

But the article is definitely worth reading.  It mainly chronicles how the Munich Post was the first and main newspaper to expose Hitler's past and plans.   The article is a cry, now, for people to defend the media against attacks from Trump, and the likelihood that Trump will try to shut opposition media down.

His final words about the Munich Post are not reassuring.  But his appeal to the reader is important.

"The Munich Post lost, yes. Soon their office was closed. Some of the journalists ended up in Dachau, some “disappeared.” But they’d won a victory for truth. A victory over normalization. They never stopped fighting the lies, big and small, and left a record of defiance that was heroic and inspirational. They discovered the truth about “endlösung” before most could have even imagined it. The truth is always worth knowing. Support your local journalist." (emphasis added)

A more forward looking view of journalism comes in a new book, Emily Bell and Taylor Owen's (eds) Journalism After Snowden: The Future of the Free Press in the Surveillance State.  Neiman Reports reviewer Clay Shirky says the book argues that the globalization of media means that reporters can get around local suppression by getting their stories into publications outside their national boundaries.  In this quote Shirky is discussing an article in the edited book that Shirky wrote himself:

"The potential for a global news network has existed for a few decades, but its practical implementation is unfolding in ours. This normalization of transnational reporting networks reduces the risk of what engineers call a “single point of failure.” As we saw with Bill Keller’s craven decision not to publish James Risen’s work on the National Security Agency in 2004, neither the importance of a piece of political news nor its existence as a scoop is enough to guarantee that that it will actually see the light of day. The global part is driven by the need for leakers to move their materials outside national jurisdictions. The network part is driven by the advantages of having more than one organization with a stake in publication."

A key message I get from this review of the book is that suppression of the media is much bigger than Trump, and the media is discovering ways around state censorship through the development of international media networks.

If You Can't Impugn A Nominee, What's The Point Of The Hearing Process?

Senator Elizabeth Warren was silenced in the Senate debate over the attorney general debate  for reading a letter written by Coretta Scott King that said, in part,

 "Mr. Sessions has used the awesome powers of his office in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black voters.  For this reprehensible conduct, he should not be rewarded with a federal judgeship."

Impugn

The Senate GOP invoked a rule against impugning a colleague.  Here's a copy of the rule from a Tweet by Senator Hatch:

And to clarify a bit more, here are some dictionary definitions of 'impugn.'

• to challenge as false (another's statements, motives, etc.); cast doubt upon. (Dictionary.com)
• to assail by words or arguments :  oppose or attack as false or lacking integrity (Merriam-Webster)
• to cause people to doubt or not trust someone’s character, honesty, or ability (Cambridge dictionary)
• To attack as false or questionable; challenge in argument: impugn a political opponent's record. (Free Dictionary)

It's admirable that the Senate has rules that forbid Senators from insulting one another.  But what happens when a Senator actually conducts him or herself in a way that is "unworthy or unbecoming of a Senator"?  Everyone is supposed to pretend it didn't happen?  

I can wholeheartedly support the idea of 'falsely impugning' being banned, but if one is simply calling out an actual behavior unworthy of a Senator, shouldn't that be allowable?

Senate Confirmation Hearings

But let's also recognize that in this session (no pun intended) Mr. Jeff Sessions (rather than Senator Jeff Sessions) is being considered for the position of Attorney General. Sessions has two distinct roles here.   It is not in his role as a fellow Senator that he is being impugned,  but in his role as a candidate for Attorney General whose qualifications are being debated. (I'm assuming here that Sessions doesn't get to vote on his own nomination, but maybe I'm wrong. It appears I am wrong.)

If a Senator cannot raise questions about a presidential nominee in confirmation hearings, what is the point of the the hearing?  The fact that the nominee also happens to be a US Senator should be irrelevant.   To say it is ok to impugn nominees as long as they are not Senators is a joke.

Why Is Warren's Speech Relevant

The words that were so offensive were the words of Coretta Scott King speaking from personal observation.  This is the wife of civil rights leader Martin Luther King.  She was intimately involved in the event she writes about.

The event she alluded to was the prosecution, by then Alabama Attorney General Jeff Sessions, of a black voting rights worker, Albert Turner, who was helping elderly black voters to register to vote and to actually vote.  The jury acquitted Turner.  

Abuse Of Power

I'm trying to write this as objectively as possible, but it's hard. Up to this point I've done ok.  But to write dispassionately about outrageous abuses of power is to support the abuse. I should say abuses.

First, there is the silencing of Senator Warren and the words of Coretta Scott King.  The silencing of the voices of black and white women by white men isn't new.  That doesn't make it right.

Second is the idea of Sessions as the attorney general.   The attorney general is supposed to uphold the law and to protect the civil rights of Americans and this nominee's record is so poor as to be laughable, yet he's close to confirmation.  (Not everyone agrees.) This is the perfect Stephen Bannon appointee.

The damage being done to American democracy by Donald Trump and his henchmen will take so much time to undo, and the suffering and injustices that come from it will never be totally undone.  

And both Alaskan US Senators voted along with the other Republicans to silence Sen. Warren.  I don't expect anything else from Sullivan, but Murkowski knows better.  She's already voted against DeVos, does she think this vote will buy her forgiveness from Trump's vengeance? 

Does US Pay Too Much For NATO And Other Issues Raised By Commenter

A commenter figuratively rolled his eyes about something  I said in post last week about Trump taking orders from Putin.  In a responding comment I pointed out that I’d qualified that statement and challenged him to be more specific about his problems with the post.

He responded with a series of issues that I couldn’t factually respond to off the top of my head.  I realized that I had an opinion on them, but that I hadn’t done any homework on them.

Normally, responses to comments should stay in the comment section.  But I spent some time looking things up (and was also diverted by gramping  duties), time passed, and I decided my response warranted its own post where more people would see it.

But I want to thank Oliver for coming back with his list.  As Justice Ginsburg said about Justice Scalia, his challenges make me better.  I'm assuming that Oliver’s questions are serious, and not just trolling to distract me from other things.  I assume  that Trump supporters could be thinking the same things.  (I didn't say 'other Trump supporters'  because I don't know if Oliver supports Trump or not.)  As I looked up the questions about NATO funding, I did find that his points mirrored Trump talking points (and in the case of NATO Bernie Sanders talking points) and there were complexities that weren't reflected that seem to make his concerns less clear if not moot.

So here's what he wrote the second time:

"Further Putin’s agenda? Let’s see, the former president sat by while the Russians allegedly hacked the election. Sat by while he gobbled up Crimea and the Ukraine. Yes, I know we did some sanctions and expelled some low level diplomats, or as it’s really know as doing nothing meaningful. Putin’s bombing campaign accomplished in a couple months what the Obama administration was unable to do in a year in Syria.
As for Trump, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for NATO members to pay their fair share, only five of the twenty eight members are paying the 2%. Even Obama ask them to up their contribution. The United States contributes between one-fifth and one-quarter of NATO’s budget. In FY2010 that contribution totaled $711.8 million. We all know what NATO did about Russian aggression over the past several years, nothing. So what is NATO for again?
I don’t think the man who says torture is ok as sick as that is has any intentions of weakening the U.S. intelligence agencies. We sell Taiwan 1.2 billion dollars in military equipment and that’s fine, Trump calls them on the phone and you have outrage from China!!! Tough.
Oliver"

I'm not going to respond to everything - that would be like a week's worth of posts.  I did most of my searching on the NATO points.  Here's what I found mainly at the Washington Post, Politifact, and the Congressional Research Service:   (feel free to offer other serious analyses)

NATO -   Basically they all say it’s more complicated than those numbers say:
1.  There are different NATO budgets.  One is related to NATO non-military costs and each member pays according to a formula based on its GDP.  In that area, countries are paying pretty much according to the formula.

2.  The Congressional Research Service says the US gets plenty of benefits from NATO

“DOD has noted that the United States has benefitted from NATO infrastructure support for several military operations, including the 1986 air strike on Libya, Desert Storm, Provide Comfort, Deny Flight, peacekeeping activities in the Balkans, as well as military operations in Afghanistan and training in Iraq. Finally, the Pentagon notes that U.S. companies have been successful in bidding on NSIP [NATO Security Investment Program] contracts.”

3.  When it comes to military contribution, the calculations include the total military expenditures for each country.  Most of the NATO countries only have troops related to Europe and NATO.  The calculation for the US includes all military spending world wide.  It’s true that some of those forces can be brought in, if needed, to deploy in Europe.  But it’s also true that the US troops in Europe are not solely to support NATO.  They can if needed, but they also support US military missions in other places - like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, etc.  So the calculations of those expenses, which make the US contribution look huge (less than your $700 million figure, but more than you 20% figure), are misleading because those expenses are for much, much more than defense of NATO.

Oliver, I realize this doesn't end the debate or change your opinion on NATO, but it does put the ball back on your side of the court on this one.

I don't have time to do the same tracking down of facts - and even if I did, there would still be disputes - but let me respond briefly to your comment about Syria:

"Putin’s bombing campaign accomplished in a couple months what the Obama administration was unable to do in a year in Syria."

Syria is a thorny problem.  I suspect that Obama had some options in the beginning that might have made a difference.  What would have happened if he had tried to take out Asad right away?   If he succeeded or failed, there would have been a lot of blowback.   History may or may not be able to sort that out.  There were lots of things to consider, including civilian lives and the already overextended US military that had soldiers overseas in their 3rd, 4th, and 5th rotations.  And there was an overstretched VA that would have to serve even more veterans.    And we don’t know what all has happened there behind the scenes.

I would argue that supporting the existing regime (as Putin is doing) is far easier than trying to figure out which of the rebel organizations should be supported.  Asad had a long-standing, well trained and organized army.  Supporting Asad meant Russia would get what it wanted from Syria if Asad prevailed.  The rebel outcomes were far less certain.    Russia also had no qualms about killing civilians.  Putin has no humanitarian interests in Syria (or anywhere else as far as I can tell), so was free to support the strongest party, despite its terrible record including atrocities in the prisons as this Amnesty International report describes.

I don't know Trump's intentions.  The idea that Putin has leverage over Trump is not nearly as far-fetched as Trump's long standing campaign about Obama being a Kenyan, which so many Trump supporters had no problem embracing.  There's far more circumstantial evidence that Trump's financially entangled with Russian interests and his serious of Russian friendly moves raises serious questions, even among congressional Republicans.  Seeing Obama's birth certificate, as Trump demanded for years, was far less consequential than seeing Trump's tax returns.  Yet Trump refuses to make them public, something all the recent presidential candidates have done.  And which would likely confirm his financial links to Russia one way or the other.  (And possibly open up new questions.)

So there are a few possibilities that Trump is weakening the US security agencies:

• He is being pressured by Putin.
• He is hurting US Security unintentionally - His lashing out at anyone who criticizes him leads him to attack the CIA and others and take actions that hurt them - as in replacing the chair of the Joint Chief of Staff and the head of national intelligence with Stephen Bannon on the National Security Council - which is being reported now, that he didn't realize he was doing when he signed the order.  

Oliver, I do appreciate your making me sharpen my facts.  I think we should be talking respectfully about the issues that some would rather have divide the nation for their own interests.  Your serious comments also help me understand how intelligent folks could see Trump as a reasonable option.  I do get the opposition to Clinton, but not when Trump is the alternative.  Now, if you still want to address the other issues - the Russian hacking and the Ukraine - I'll let you spell out your facts that demonstrate Obama could have done something different that would have worked.  

Perhaps the best thing that could come out of this is a shake-up of both parties, more serious talk across party lines,  and improvements in how we elect presidents.  But I think the issue goes beyond the parties to the corporations that have inordinate influence over congress and the presidency.

"The Sleep of Reason Brings Forth Monsters"

The front of Salman Rushdie's Two Years Eight Months And Twenty Eight Nights  has this image from Goya with the quote in the original Spanish that's in the picture - El sueño de la razón produce monstruos.

It seems an appropriate thought for our times.

The Kahn Academy has a description of the etching and how it was made.  It is one of 80 prints called Los Caprichos (caprices) produced in 1799.

The Rushdie book adds that it is the 43rd Capricho and the full caption at Prado [the major art museum in Madrid] reads:

"Fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters:  united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of their marvels."

From the New York School of Medicine:

"The meaning of the title, El sueño de la razon produce monstruos, has been debated, mainly because sueño can mean both sleep and dream. Known as a pintor filósofo, Goya may have intended to affirm the Enlightenment by saying that when reason sleeps, the imagination produces monsters resulting in madness. Or, he may have implied that reason alone without imagination leads to madness, even horror. Goya's favorite literary character Don Quixote is a good illustration of imagination without reason. 

The symbolism of the animals in the picture supports the ambiguity of Goya's vision. The lynx is a symbol of secrets, known for its strong vision and hearing. The lynx and the bat carry supernatural, even satanic significance, but can represent good. The owl may indicate wisdom. But the owl, cat, and bat also stand for depression or melancholy. The large bat with the goat face in the upper right denotes a satanic element, as the goat is identified with the devil, see, for example, Goya's painting, The Witches' Sabbath (1797-98). Baudelaire said of Los Caprichos: "All those distortions, those bestial faces, those diabolic grimaces of his are impregnated with humanity" (Ciofalo, pp. 64-65). 

Goya produced two other, similar drawings, part of a series called sueños (dreams) which became Los Caprichos (The Whims). He juxtaposes the real and the demonic in several other works, such as De Que Mal Morira? (Of What Illness Will He Die?) and Las Viejas (see annotations). For comparison with other classic works that comment on the link between depression, sleep, and devilish temptation, see Dürer, Melencholia I and The Temptation of the Idler (The Dream of the Doctor). For Goya's interest in mental illness, see Courtyard with Lunatics."  

Snow Day On Bainbridge Island

We've got about two inches of snow on the ground, but that's more than enough for the island school district to close the schools.  There's no snow plowing equipment.  Rain is expected by noon, though it's still snowing now.




But for a four year old who doesn't get to play in snow very often, it was great.  Grandpa couldn't find the gloves he thought he'd brought from Anchorage.  But, no matter.  Her wonder and joy in the snow was worth cold hands.

It's thick, wet, heavy snow.

She needed to clear all the railings of the accumulated snow before she climbed up.  I don't show her picture on here, so you have to take my word for how much fun she had.  And she teased her grandpa by kicking off her boots while she was on the swing, so he had to empty the snow and put them back on her.   Then she'd kick them off again.  And again.  Giggling the whole time.  

Now we're inside and have had our delicious hot chocolate.

There was serious snow on the ground when I left Anchorage last Thursday.