Q: Will this be my favorite Pixar movie?

A: Yes, until they come up with another red head female lead!

The Most Interesting Man in the World

The Most Interesting Man in the World advertising campaign for Dos Equis (two X's) beer was one of my most favorite, funny and outrageous commercials. The bearded, debonair gentleman was played by actor Jonathan Goldsmith who himself had a very interesting career in film and advertising. The campaign lives on in Internet memes showing a photograph with some variant of the commercial "I don't always drink beer, but when I do I prefer Dos Equis." Since beer gives me migraines, my favorite variant on the theme is displayed above. Also, the tag at the end of the commercial was typically "Stay thirsty, my friends" which I have always assumed to be a play on Stay Hungry which is the only way I have ever been able to control my weight. The video below is a compilation of the commercials.

Definitely Miles

My second favorite Miami Vice episode, if there can be such a thing (my favorite is discussed here), was titled Junk Love and featured Miles Davis playing Ivory Jones, the desk clerk at a hotel for high-priced call girls. Miles makes his first appearance at the beginning of the episode and I can still remember almost falling off the sofa when I saw it. There's no mistaking it. That's definitely Miles Davis! And, if you aren't a Miles Davis fan, start by listening to the album Kind of Blue, the birth of cool Jazz.

Definitely Miami Vice

Definitely Miami is by far my favorite Miami Vice TV episode. It's noteworthy for many reasons starting with the introduction, a long and slow camera shot set to Carlos Santana's beautiful Europa as played by Gato Barbieri  to the final scenes set to the hypnotic one-hit-wonder, Godley and Creme's Cry (considered one of the defining scenes of Miami Vice as a show). It's also notable for Casting Ted Nugent as serial killer Charlie Basset, from the time when Ted Nugent was still making music like Dog Eat Dog. Kick back, feel the heat (sorry about the commercials, kind of like seeing it on TV--buy the DVD).

Quotes:

Crockett: It's hot enough to fry an egg on my face.
Tubbs: Hope I never get that hungry.

Calle: Do you own this place.
Crockett: No, some people I work for own it and they let me use it whenever I want.
Calle: I could make you that deal.

Crockett: This is America. Cut yourself free. Find a new place. Get a job.
Calle: (Laughing) Men are my job... Not really men. One man. One man who will give me what I need. I'll do anything for him. Whatever he wants. Whatever he needs. Whatever he needs to want. Anything! Anything!
Crockett: You'd build your life around a man?
Calle: Yes!
Crockett: Does it matter which one?
Calle: But of course it matters, Sonny. It matters a lot.
Crockett: Does it matter enough to look before you leap? You don't know me. You don't know anything about me. You don't know what you're dealing with.
Calle: But of course I know you. I knew you from the very first minute I saw you. You're restless. You're hungry. You're lonely. You have dreams.

(They kiss).

Calle: Hold me tight. This may never happen again.

(Break for commercial).

From the standpoint of a single man (I was single when I first saw this episode), I can't say I've ever seen a more seductive scene on TV. Of course no woman could ever get away with this kind of dialog, but the fantasy factor is really high here and my mind is starting to get a little confused and not thinking very clearly. Maybe it's just the Miami heat. Oh yes, Calle is played by Arielle Dombasle.

I'll have what she's having -- Estelle Reiner.

The Delicatessen scene from When Harry Met Sally, playing now at our house. Best quotes:

Sally Albright: "You are a human affront to all women and I am a woman."

Sally Albright: "Oh. Right. That's right. I forgot. You're a man."

Older Woman Customer (Estelle Reiner): "I'll have what she's having" one of the most memorable funny lines in movie history according to the New York Times. The line was written by Billy Crystal. More great quotes from the movie here.

Written by Nora Ephron (1941-2012), directed by Rob Reiner, music by Marc Shaiman and Harry Connick, Jr. and with a great cast.

CO2 Emissions and Ocean Acidification

Anthropogenic CO2 emissions have two negative effects on the World System: (1) CO2 pumped into the atmosphere increases the greenhouse effect that drives global warming and (2) CO2 absorbed by the oceans (between 30-40% of emissions) creates ocean acidification (lower pH). 

Ocean pH is lowered through the creation of carbonic acid. As ocean pH is lowered, corals die and calcifying organisms who need carbonate to form their shells (carbonate is depleted by carbonic acid formation) start dissolving and dying. When corals and calcifying organisms start dying, food chains are disrupted. Since humanity is at the top of the food chain, humanity starts to suffer.

There are only two hopes here: (1) reduce CO2 emissions (substantially) and (2) hope that corals and calcifying organisms can evolve to flourish in low pH waters (evolution is slow). Since people who do not accept climate change science typically also do not accept evolution, there is really no hope for them except to deny that any of this is happening. 

Nova recently aired a segment titled Lethal Seas (trailer above) that discussed the topic in depth. The entire show can been seen here.

Plunk Your Magic Twanger Froggy

One of my favorite TV shows growing up was The Buster Brown Show with Andy Divine, Froggy the Gremlin and Midnight the Cat ("What do you say to the kids, Midnight? 'Nice'"). Evidently, after Andy Devine took over the show it was called Andy's Gang, but I guess I wasn't paying close attention because we still called it the Buster Brown Show.

Another great character actor on the show was Billy Gilbert.  Froggy was a prankster and typically infuriated Andy Devine and Billy Gilbert. The clip above is a good example. It's probably what I liked most about the show as a child. My remembrance was that there were Spaghetti Westerns played as segments but I must be remembering Andy Devine's earlier appearances on The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok.

Stooges: Press, Press, Pull

I was having a discussion today and the topic of generational humor came up. One of the questions we discussed was whether the clip above (or the Three Stooges in general) would still be consider humorous. I don't know the answer to that, but if anyone has any opinions, pleased leave a comment.

Religious Freedom and the Public Accommodation

The News Hour had an interesting segment last night on the controversy over Religious Freedom Laws being played out in Arkansas and Indiana. The most interesting interchange was between Rev. Tim Overton of the Halteman Village Baptist Church and Micheline Maynard of Arizona State University.

Rev. Tim Overton: Well, I do believe government needs a good reason to interfere with the private practice of religion among our citizens in this country...Our biggest concern with the changes is that Christian-owned businesses or religious-owned business are not going to be able to carry their faith as they would like into the business realm.

Micheline Maynard: Well, you know, Gwen, one of the things about business in the United States is that, when you open your doors and you sell something to the public, I think the principles in this country have been that you welcome all comers.

(Read the full transcript here, emphasis added above.) What the Religious Right Wing wants limited are the concepts of a public accommodation and discrimination under US law. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the ADA require that public accommodations must be handicap-accessible and must not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin. Some States extend the Federal law to cover discrimination based upon, race, gender, ethnicity, religion, age, breastfeeding in public and sexual orientation and/or gender identity (read more about the public accommodation here and discrimination here)**. Discrimination is particularly interesting because it involves treating people differently based on their membership in a class. The "different treatment" can either be positive or negative (as Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has has argued in trying to overturn Affirmative Action).

So, let's be clear. The US government should not interfere with either the private practice of religion or the private practice of bigotry. You can discriminate or make all the bigoted statements you want in private. You can even say these things in public settings such as a public church (exempt under public accommodation laws). It's when you move into the public sector that there are more restrictions (e.g., hate speech).

I have repeatedly run into this issue when I have worked in government from people on both sides of the political spectrum. I have always considered public and private acts to be different but a lot of very vocal people and politicians do not. Some on the Right Wing want to regulate private acts in the bedroom or in the physicians office. Some on the Left Wing, advocating for a privacy right, do not want public acts (such as murder or criminal convictions) to be part of the pubic record.  An event that sticks in my mind was to watch politicians on both sides of the spectrum trying to invent reasons to discriminate against the Coptic Christian Church because their community was predominantly of a different religion, both Christian.

Maybe most people do not have a problem rationalizing these concepts when they are in private. It's only when they get into the public sector that the political struggle begins. We're seeing one, maybe inevitable, public fight playing out right now in Arkansas and Indiana. On the other hand, I can't think of any reasons why a right to discriminate should be extend to the public sector under any circumstances. Can you?

**Why the State freedoms listed in this sentence should not be extended to the Federal level is an interesting questions with some obvious answers you can think about. The fact is, they have not been.

Politics, Religion and the Null Hypothesis

We are living in strange political times. Politicians running for president try "...to discern God's calling..." when making political decisions, are anointed as "kings" by fundamentalist ministers or claim that "...our civil laws have to comport with a higher law, God's law". This is all somewhat strange since the separation of Church and State is embedded in Article VI of the US Constitution. Since politicians are claiming divine justification for their actions, it is fair to ask some questions about the basis for that claim.

In science, hypothetical claims are evaluated against a null hypothesis. Scientists ask what is the evidence for a claim such as "divine guidance" and if positive evidence can't be produced then the null hypothesis is considered more likely. In this case, the null hypothesis is that divine guidance does not exists and, more strongly, that the people who claim it are delusional.

I know many wonderful people who are deeply religious but would never claim divine guidance for their actions. If they read this post, I hope they are not offended. But, by claiming authority from God, politicians have forced the question of the basis for that authority. If we're going to make an unbiased inquiry, we have to start from the assertion that it doesn't exist. Then, we can let the evidence take us where it will.



Luckily, PBS Nova has an excellent documentary that looks carefully at the basis for the Bible. Since the Bible is the direct link US politicians claim between themselves and God, in addition to being the justification for policy positions from Abortion to Gay Marriage to Climate Change, looking at the basis for the Bible is the obvious place to start.

To make a very long a contentious story as short as possible, there really is no hard evidence for divine origin of the Bible. The Old Testament was written in Babylon after the Temple of Israel was destroyed by the Assyrians. It was written by men in exile to confront a nagging question: why did their God, Yahweh, forsake them and allow the Temple to be destroyed. The answer was that the Jewish people had, in addition to Yahweh, worshiped false gods before him (recall the second Commandment Thou Shalt have no other gods before me). Let's be clear, this was a guess about why the Temple was destroyed, a rationalization for military failure.

Modern scholarship has been unable to determine by whom or when the Ten Commandments were written but they do appear in the Hebrew Bible, which was written by men in exile. In other words, the Bible is its own source of authority for the word of God. Since there was no written language before the Hebrew Bible (written language being a great contribution of the Jewish people), that's the way it has to be. The Bible is the first piece of written history. It has some accurate parts and some inaccurate parts (described fully in the Nova documentary). It was written by historians, by people concerned with reasserting political power in the Middle East.

We still live in a World concerned with the reassertion of political power in the Middle East. It should be no surprise that US politicians invoke the Bible in their quest for political power. It has worked before and was written for just that purpose. On the other hand, it will probably be a mark of maturity if World civilization can ever move beyond this script. Watching the PBS documentary last night, it was difficult for me not to think that we have been fighting the same religious war over and over again for the last 3000 years. This certainly will not end in my lifetime or maybe ever.

Unfortunately, for the time being, the null hypothesis is most likely: Politicians claiming divine guidance are more likely to be delusional men in search of political power over the rest of us.


QUOTATIONS FROM THE PBS DOCUMENTARY

Read more here about the origins of the written Bible and read the entire transcript of the Nova documentary here.

As modern scholars suspect, the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, takes its final form during the Babylonian exile. But dwarfed by the mighty temples and giant statues of Babylonian gods, the Israelites must also confront the fundamental question: why did their God, Yahweh, forsake them?

MICHAEL COOGAN: In the ancient world, if your country was destroyed by another country, it meant that their gods were more powerful than your god. And the natural thing to do is to worship the more powerful god, but the survivors continued to worship Yahweh and struggled to understand how this could have happened.

PETER MACHINIST: They resort first to a standard form of explanation, which is found elsewhere in the ancient Near East: "We must have done something wrong to incur the wrath of our God."

WILLIAM DEVER: It's out of this that comes the reflection that polytheism was our downfall; there is, after all, only one God.

NARRATOR: The Israelites abandon the folly of polytheism, monotheism triumphs, and the archaeological evidence proves it.

Privatization and the Student Loan Crisis

Tonight, the PBS News Hour featured a piece on Why American Students are Struggling with -- and Defaulting on -- Small Debts. New research (from the New York Federal Reserve, I think--it wasn't clear in the piece) found that borrowers with the smallest balances ($5,000 or less) were the most likely to default. This is a counterintuitive result that is interesting, but I think this piece skirts the issue of why we have so much student debt in the first place. If you are studying right-wing politics, you know the answer to this question but let's just make the causal model a little more explicit.

The path diagram above (click to enlarge) shows my theory of what's going on. The model is pretty clearly on display at the University of Wisconsin (here) but also applies to Kansas (here), Arizona (here) and many other US States with Right-Wing governments. The primary driver for the model is the Neoliberal policy emphasis on privatization, that is, encouraging public universities to become private entities. Once privatized, State funding for universities can be reduced, sometimes substantially. With the reduction in State support, the funding shortfall has to be made up by increasing tuition, sometimes substantially approaching and eventually equaling the fees charged by elite private colleges. To pay the increase in tuition, students and their parents need to take out loans. When the students graduate (if they graduate) paying off the loans provides profits for the banking industry which feeds back to encourage more Privatization.

The effect of this positive feedback loop on economic performance is unclear. Students with heavy debt cannot purchases homes, purchase automobiles or otherwise invest in their future. They have no discretionary income to spend in the market place and struggle to pay food and rent. The effect on National Consumption and Gross Domestic Product has to be negative. The Neoliberal hope is that the reduction in State support for Education will reduce taxes and stimulate economic growth. In Wisconsin, Kansas and Arizona, at least, this is not happening.

Quite simply, it is very important for government to stay in public education, keep tuition costs low, keep admissions open and keep standards high. At the University of Wisconsin, prior administrations have asked for more flexibility in the application of State regulations, particularly regulations covering building construction and employee hiring. What they received from Right-Wing State government was an offer to allow privatization in exchange for reduced regulation. This is an odd offer coming from the Right-Wing and it suggests that the Right-Wing has actually made little progress in reducing State regulation. In any event, the message for the University of Wisconsin should be clear:

What you get is something that will ultimately not be in the best interests of your students (or customers, I guess, if you are privatized). If you would like to see the entire News Hour piece, the video is below:

 

Catalina State Park Romero Pools Trail Fly-over

We hiked the Catalina State Park Romero Pools Trail yesterday. This is a beautiful and somewhat challenging hike (at least for the over-sixty crowd). The map above shows our pace and elevation change. The trail goes through the controversial Desert Bighorn Sheep Reintroduction area (read more here and here). The map below shows the other trails in Catalina. 

The Romero Pools trail also allows serious hikers to go all the way to Mount Lemon (9157 feet above sea level). I would estimate that we were about one-fourth the way to Mount Lemon although my guess is that the elevation and trail get a lot more difficult (as it was, our pace per mile was pretty slow--see pictures of our many rest pauses here). 

The Google Earth Fly-over below (you might need the current web browser plugin to see this here) gives a great picture of the hike. If you look quickly at the start or at then end of video you can see the creek we had to ford before and after the walk. The creek usually has no water, but a full day of rain in Tucson last week continues to bring water down from the Catalina mountains (take an extra pair of socks and a towel if you do this hike when the creek is full).

A Solution to Driverless Car Problems

UPDATE Dec 13, 2016: The Google Self-Driving Car Project is now Waymo.  Tesla has recently recalled 362,000 self-driving vehicles because regulators found the FSD (Full Self-Driving) system increased the risk of crashes. For the present, we have to restrict AI to closed systems such as freeways. Urban driving is an open system and far too complex (see Rebooting AI by Gary Marcus).

At least since 2010, Google has been developing a self-driving car called Google Chauffeur. In 2013, news organizations were reporting (here) that Google wanted to create a fleet of driverless "robo-taxis" similar to the Johnny Cabs (pictured above) in the 1990 movie Total Recall. Needless to say, there are problems with the robo-car idea, but I have a solution (maybe).

The current generation of robo-cars have expensive laser range finders that map out the environment around the car and compare it to precisions maps, something like Google maps street views. These technical capabilities are really just extensions of technology available on current production automobiles such as collision avoidance systems and GPS navigation devices. At the current state of robo-car technology, some problems remain: (1) Not all incidents with human-operated cars can be avoided (here), and (2) The technology has limitations: heavy rain and snow cannot currently be handled; unmarked 4-way intersections must be navigated very conservatively; trash, potholes and debris in the road cannot be identified and humans signaling the car (such as a police officer) cannot be identified.

Recently, I was driving the expressways surrounding Phoenix, AZ (particularly the 101, the 202 and Hwy 60). It doesn't take more than a few hours a driving to observe all sorts of unsafe and reckless driving: speeding, swerving, unexpected lane changes, tailgating, road rage, etc. etc. The achilles heel of the US expressway system is a rush-hour accident caused by unsafe driving at high speeds. Typically, traffic grinds to a halt until the accident scene can be cleared. If you can get into the right-hand lane and get off the expressway, you will often get to your destination more quickly driving through town. As population density increases and  freeway traffic increases, the number of accidents and gridlock situations will continue to increase. Adding more lanes to the freeways or adding more freeways is not the answer: at some point land expansion is no longer possible and the expanded freeways only become congested again as traffic expands to meet the lanes available.

Here's my suggested solution to the joint problems of freeway congestion and driverless cars: restrict freeways to robo-cars only! Access to expressways would be controlled with i-Pass technology and could be combined with tolls. Robo-car (or more generally robo-vehicle, to include trucks) technology would have to control speed based on existing conditions and distance from other vehicles based on traffic congestion and speed. The robo-car control could only be over-ridden to slow the car down. There would be no mix of driverless and human-controlled cars. Destinations would be pre-programmed into the navigation system prior to entering the expressway and could not be changed (the ticket-to-ride). Traffic conditions and trip plans would be communicated over the Internet to a map server and would be freely available to humans and to robots. Expressway police patrols would not be needed. Accidents or road blocks resulting from mechanical failures would result in ticket-to-ride reprogramming either into open lanes or off the expressway where human control would take over.

Obviously, this is not a perfectly egalitarian solution. Lower income drivers might be unable to afford robo-car technology and be forced onto the city streets or on to public transportation. Honestly, this is not much different than the current system where the poorest low income commuters are forced onto public transportation and many of the high-mileage older vehicles need to be taken off the road to reduce CO2 emissions. Restricted freeways would force consideration of public transportation options and potential subsidies for robo-cars (similar to or in addition to subsidies for hybrid, high-mileage vehicles).

In any event, large cities in the US Southwest would be great testing grounds for robo-freeway restrictions. Snow and heavy rain (except in the monsoon season when freeways become flooded and should be closed) are not limitations for the technology.  As for the idea of robo-taxis, I would be a lot more skeptical since they would have to mix with human-controlled city-street traffic. In case you missed the Johnny Cab (robo-cab) scene from Total Recall, the video clip (below) will help provide an image for the future of robo-cabs.

 

Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) Wins Bimbo Bakery Award for Most Off-Topic SOTUS Response

HORSHAM, PA: Today the  Bimbo Bakery announced that Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) was selected as the 2015 winner of the prestigious SOTUS Response Award. On January 20, 2015 Ms. Ernst gave the GOP response to President Obama's State of the Union Speech (SOTUS). In her response (transcript here and video here), Ms. Ernst was able to subtly weave in a comment about "plastic bread bags". The Bimbo Bakery Award Committee was stunned by the originality and seamlessness of her rhetoric.

At first the Award Committee thought that the mention of "bread bags" was a subtle attempt to attract the attention of the Bimbo Bakery. But, on further investigation, the committee concluded that Ms. Ernst was not capable of such subtlety. The text of her full transcript that won the award was:

You see, growing up, I had only one good pair of shoes. So on rainy school days, my mom would slip plastic bread bags over them to keep them dry.

But I was never embarrassed. Because the school bus would be filled with rows and rows of young Iowans with bread bags slipped over their feet.

What any of this had to do with President Obama's SOTUS is unclear but the mention of "bread bags" was unexpected, unusual and ultimately won Ms. Ernst the award.

What Happened to the Ancient Sonoran Desert People?

Today we visited the Casa Grande ("Big House") Ruins National Monument in Coolidge, AZ. It was the first prehistoric and cultural site to be protected by the US Government in 1892. The Big House pictured above (on the left in 1880 and on the right today protected by a steel roof), marked the peak of the Ancient Sonoran Desert People's civilization. Archeological dating methods estimate that it was constructed in the 1300's. Shortly after its construction, the Sonoran Desert civilization collapsed. What happened?

During the late 1300’s and early 1400’s, the ancient Sonoran Desert people suffered a period of widespread depopulation and abandonment. Speculations as to the cause have included drought, floods, disease, invasion, earthquakes, internal strife, and salinization of farmland. Today, several American Indian groups have ancestral links to the ancient people. Their cultural traditions, together with on-going archeology and the continued interest of visitors at Casa Grande Ruins, all combine to keep the legacy of the ancient Sonoran Desert people alive to this day (from the NPS here).

There is no definitive scientific answer but a few things struck us as we visited the site:

• The ancient Sonoran Desert people constructed (using sticks, stones and human labor only) an impressive irrigation system around the Gilla River (graphic above). Digging irrigation ditches in the Sonoran Desert was no easy task since the layer of caliche below the surface soil usually takes picks, shovels and jack hammers to break up today--tools not available to the ancient Sonoran Desert people. What would have motivated a population to undertake this brutal work?
• The Big House is at least a mile from the Gilla River path today which has no year-round running water as a result of the Coolidge Dam.
• The timbers to support the four-story Big House were carried by humans from surrounding mountainous areas many miles away where trees from which 12 foot lumber could be cut were available. Hundreds of heavy timbers had to be moved hundreds of miles by hand to build the floors of the four-story building. Only a repressive mini-Empire would have been able to extract that kind of brutal labor from a desperate population.
• Prior to construction of the Big House, people lived in small, single story dugout shelters. The Big House would not have been used for human shelter but rather for the extraction and storage of surplus.

What struck us after taking all this in was that the Big House we were gawking at was the arrogant proclamation of an ancient mini-Empire that could command such an impractical and useless monument on the basis of overpopulation supported by irrigation technology. Just at the peak of their civilization, the ancient Sonoran Desert people had created a impressive but unstable civilization that was easily toppled. Whether it was toppled by drought, flood, disease, invasion, earthquakes, internal strife or salinization of irrigated farm land doesn't matter as much as how easily and quickly the civilization collapsed.

The remaining families returned to an earlier, more sustainable civilization based on tribes and small family units that became the current Native American Tribes of the Southwest. I wonder if the politicians in the State Capital (Phoenix, AZ), the current pinnacle of Southwestern US Civilization, are aware of the lessons to be learned from studying the ancient civilizations in their backyard? My guess is that they are convinced that civilizations will never collapse again because our overpopulation is supported by advanced technology.