Black Panther question: Why couldn’t the queen take over after the king died?

Since I was the last person on Planet Earth to see Black Panther, I’m not going to worry about spoilers.

The king dies. The rest of the movie was about people fighting over succession. Why? There was a perfectly functional queen. Why couldn’t she rule for 20 years? Why was a successor required?

Maybe the answer is “the queen didn’t like to fight all the time.” But Wakanda never sought to fight wars with other countries and had all kinds of advanced defensive technology that other countries couldn’t match. Why would Wakanda have needed a leader more aggressive than TV’s Mr. Rogers?

What about the ending? The wealthiest and most powerful nation on the planet picks a project that a retiring city politician might undertake? How was it different from Derek Zoolander’s School for Kids Who Can’t Read Good and Want to Learn to Do Other Stuff Good Too?

Before you answer “It’s a made-up movie, stupid,” consider that my Facebook friends and the media have assured me that this movie offers important Black History Month lessons.

[I saw the movie at Seattle’s Cinerama, restored at tremendous cost by Paul Allen. The $15/hour minimum wage seems to mean that they can’t afford to hire people to clean up popcorn in between shows. Seattle shows that a fair world is a dirty world? (Separately, the city was packed with panhandlers sleeping on the sidewalks. Are there city workers who ensure that they collect at least $15/hour for the hours during which they are actively asking for money?)]

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Steel tariffs and computer programming

Donald Trump has threatened to impose substantial tariffs on steel and aluminum. Assuming that he is more successful at thwarting these metallic immigrants to the U.S. than he has been for human immigrants from violence-plagued countries, what might it mean for American programmers?

Back in the 1980s there were trade barriers that raised the price of steel in the U.S. compared to the world market price (see this Brookings Institution report from 1987). Steel that cost $100,000 in the U.S. could be purchased for $76,000 elsewhere.

A Babcock and Wilcox subsidiary west of Houston made “air-cooled heat exchangers” for industrial plants. These worked like car radiators, blowing air over fluid flowing back and forth through finned tubes. Each one was a steel structure roughly the size of a house and was custom-engineered via a process that included roughly one person-year of work. The company was struggling because Korean competitors were offering finished heat exchangers at a retail price, delivered to the U.S., that was about the same as what Babcock and Wilcox would pay for the raw steel.

Computervision (CV) sold B&W on the idea that CAD would restore their competitive edge. A mostly automated design process would cut the marginal cost of engineering and reduce the time to market. CV was a pioneer in the market currently dominated by AutoCAD, but the system would need an additional software program on top of the basic drawing system. Programmers at CV worked at this unsuccessfully for about a year.

In 1984, I stepped in, through a start-up company, to help build a Lisp Machine program that could process a declarative specification language for 3D structures and, with customer specifications as the input, generate a 3D model and parts list as the output. The CV system would be used to render final engineering drawings. This program served as the foundation of ICAD, which was the most popular application program for the Lisp Machine and led to a plurality of Symbolics sales. Any company that made a customized product that could be broken down into 3D boxes was a candidate for development of a rule base for automating the design in response to customer needs. I described it as “the world’s best CAD system if you have a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering… AND a Ph.D. in computer science.” The company was eventually sold to Oracle and the code became part of their sales configuration software.

That’s my personal experience with steel trade barriers!

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Boston terminal forecast for tomorrow’s Nor’easter

Thoughts and prayers for my American Airlines flight back to Boston from Dallas tomorrow evening. Here’s the terminal forecast for Logan Airport (“KBOS”):

KBOS 012331Z 0200/0306 10006KT P6SM BKN140
FM020300 04010KT P6SM OVC050
FM020700 04015G24KT 4SM -RA BR OVC012
FM021000 04020G30KT 2SM -RA BR OVC008 WS020/05055KT
FM021400 03026G40KT 2SM +RA BR OVC008 WS020/04065KT
FM021800 03028G54KT 2SM +RA BR OVC008 WS020/04075KT
FM022300 03030G58KT 1 1/2SM -RA BR OVC020 WS020/04060KT
FM030400 01025G49KT 1SM -RASN BR OVC020 WS020/03055KT

For non-pilots… tomorrow at 6 pm wind will be from the Northeast at 30 knots gusting 58 knots (03030G58KT). Visibility will be 1.5 statute miles with light rain and mist. The sky will be overcast with clouds starting at 2000′ above the ground. The rarely seen “WS020/04060KT” means that at 2000′ above the ground the wind will be from magnetic 040 (compared to 030 on the ground) at 60 knots and thus there will be up to 30 knots of wind shear (WS). It calms down at 11 pm… to 25 knots gusting 49. A normal day in Patagonia!

[Friday morning update: American canceled this flight. The forecast had improved to “01024G43KT P6SM OVC015 ” so it is unclear why. The company rebooked me to fly on Sunday morning at 9:15 with a long layover at LGA. I would get into Boston at 7:30 pm. I tried contacting them by phone, but was put on hold for an hour.]

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The wife fights the plaintiffs, physics edition

A few days ago I wrote “Stellar evolution in the #MeToo era“. With plaintiff predators circling, it seems that the first cougar to get to what is now the carcass is defending her kill. NancyDahl’s Twitter feed:

Let’s have a mainstream story on a real crime – such as how easy it is these days for women to get away with slanderous comments and false allegations manufactured with malicious intent.

There is another whisper network, you call “undercurrent”, that is much more legitimate. It is full of cautions for and amongst men who are the routine targets of delusional feminist aggression and professional victimhood that plagues the skeptic community. Slander is a crime.

We should be skeptical about disreputable sources, lack of evidence, biased reporting, and informed about the psychology of professional victims.

1. Those articles you refer to as “anti-metoo” could also be called “pro-rational”.
2. Since when is a respectful proposition a crime?

I showed this to a friend in the software patent litigation world. His comment: “It is like different classes of shareholders fighting over liquidation preferences when a company goes south. Maybe the wife should be considered the Series A investor?”

[Update: These two won’t be hanging out together on campus in the near-term. “Lawrence Krauss banned from Arizona State University campus following misconduct allegations”, which notes “ASU stated that the university had not received any complaints from ASU students, faculty or staff about Krauss.”]

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Is Trump right about letting teachers bring their guns to school?

Asking “Is Trump right?” would get me defriended by 90 percent of my Facebook circle. But this weblog is a safe space for inquiry!

Absurd as the idea sounds, given that U.S. teachers have an uneven performance record when it comes to the basics, I’m wondering if Trump is correct about teachers being the only real defense against would-be school shooters.

One thing that has been learned from a variety of mass shootings is that U.S. “first responders” are not like U.S. Marine Corps soldiers in the movies, e.g., “As Gunman Rampaged Through Florida School, Armed Deputy ‘Never Went In’”

Suppose that we can’t use legislation and coercion to confiscate all privately-owned guns in the U.S. and we’re not willing to tolerate a single shooter being able to fire at will in a “gun-free” school zone until the police have come up with a strategy for going in at zero personal risk. Is there an answer other than “it would have to be someone already stuck inside the school who would be willing to take the risk of returning fire”?

Its seems reasonable to assume that teachers bringing guns to school would probably result in quite a few accidental and/or enraged teacher shootings, perhaps statistically exceeding the number of mass shooting victims saved, but this issue is more about emotions than numbers.

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Binary gender at Harvard

Since at least 2015, Harvard students have had a full menu of gender ID options available to them (“Harvard allows students to pick new gender pronouns” (Boston Globe)). Yet recently I had to fill out a form from the Harvard IT department and the choice was stark: “Male” or “Female”.

[Separately, Harvard uses the same term for someone who is going to be on campus temporarily as the FBI uses for a wide range of suspected criminals: “Person of Interest“.]

What about be the change that you want to see in the world?

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Seattle Opera Beatrice and Benedict Review

I enjoyed opening night at Seattle Opera’s Beatrice and Benedict (Berlioz). The production is in English, with supertitles for when they are actually singing, and the acting is superb. The young attractive people who are considering marriage are actually young and attractive. The set is huge and impressive.

The libretto remains mostly relevant to our time. Benedict worries about entering into a marriage that will devolve into “frigidity” (a 52% probability today, according to Good Housekeeping) and/or “wearing horns” (roughly a 20% risk today, according to “Women Are Now Cheating As Much As Men, But With Fewer Consequences” (NY Mag)). Beatrice worries about losing her freedom (this was written before the advent of unilateral on-demand divorce).

Given the the core opera-going demographic is now “ancient, Russian, or gay” I feel that it is important to report on seat comfort. The box seats appeared to be in fixed positions, just like those in the orchestra. It is possible to put one’s feet underneath the seat in front and therefore there is a lot more legroom than in some halls. Sadly they don’t offer the power recliners that have become standard in movie theaters! A reader who is a subscriber says that one should ideally be within the first 20 rows due to a lack of amplification (though for this production the singers were wearing microphones).

Is it possible that a man and a woman both hostile to the idea of marriage will end up married? get tickets and find out!

[Separately, I toured a couple of aviation museums at Paine Field the day after the opera. One member of our group was a young engineer at Boeing. He said “Except for me and a couple of other young people, everyone in our group is an older guy. They’ve all been divorced by their wives.” (see Washington family law for the details)]

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Why are document signatures worth anything in the age of scanners?

From Beautifully Cruel (the story of Tracey Richter-Roberts):

[after she had divorced the physician Tracey met] a dentist, Robert Kellner (pseudonym), was a Loyola alumnus. He’d done a one-year residency there, with four and a half years of surgical training at that same well-respected Chicago hospital where Tracey’s friend worked. A board-certified dentist, Dr. Kellner was qualified to conduct oral and maxillofacial (trauma, reconstruction, and cosmetic) surgeries. “If you ever need any help around your office,” Tracey told Dr. Kellner after the introduction, “I am available. I can help.” It’s important to note that many sources from this period of Tracey’s life claim she wore revealing clothing, especially her blouses, which often showed more than a respectable amount of cleavage, accentuating her rather large breast implants. Many said that Tracey dressed to show off what she had.

“And she started by reprinting some of my forms, my consent forms and stuff like that,” Dr. Kellner recalled later during a court proceeding. “You’ll need a new computer,” Tracey told her new boss one day. “So get one,” he said. He handed Tracey the business credit card. Tracey ordered the computer, but had it delivered to her house. “I need to configure it,” she explained when the dentist and his assistant, weeks afterward, asked where the computer was.

At first, Tracey was great. Any issues with the computers, she was able to fix. Dr. Kellner said at this time they had a great working relationship. As time moved forward, an attraction mounting, perhaps against his better judgment, Robert Kellner began taking Tracey out on dates.

Tracey made a few bizarre moves here and there, but she seemed to be helping out. She had even convinced Dr. Kellner that she had devised some sort of program in the company’s computer system to generate invoices and letters on his stationery head easily, without having to bother the doctor all the time with paperwork. All the local practices were doing it, Tracey explained. “We need a fine-point, a medium-point, and a felt-tip” pen, Tracey said. She came into the office with papers in her hand. “I want you to sign your name and see what looks like the best [signature], and I am going to scan it into the computer so the girls can just use your signature on your doctor’s letters.”

It wasn’t long, however, before Tracey, according to the doctor’s testimony during a court proceeding, began making fraudulent charges on the business credit cards, using that signature-signing device to facilitate her crimes. One charge was a trip to Australia (no doubt that first time she flew out and married Michael Roberts—this, mind you, at the same time she was also having sex with Robert Kellner). Then she charged a continuing-education course and a weekend getaway at an expensive resort. Dr. Kellner called the travel agency when he found out that a trip to Australia had been charged to his account. He was furious. “I’m not paying for this,” he said. “I’m disputing these charges.” The agency explained that Tracey Roberts had charged the trip under what was his clear authority. He had signed off on the charge, literally. How could she do this? he asked. “We have a fax here,” the travel agent clarified, “with a contract that says you agreed to the trip.” Tracey had taken his office stationery/letterhead and, along with his computerized signature, she produced letters, contracts, and other documents with his signature, one of which gave her the authority to charge any trips she wanted.

Given that signatures, however obtained, can easily be scanned and applied to new documents with the simplest PC programs, why does anyone still accept a signed document as evidence that a person signed it? Why isn’t there, for example, at a minimum some sort of video required showing the person actually signing? In the smartphone and webcam age, it wouldn’t be tough to gather these videos.

There is a bit more in the book about these two and the scanned signature…

It was after the travel agency/fraud fiasco and the $18,000 loan he had given her.

When [Tracey] got there, his assistant was at the front desk, … “When you leaving?” Tracey asked the woman as she waited for him to finish up what he was doing in the back office. “I need to talk to him alone.” … “Hey, she’s dressed like she’s going out and she smells like a French whore,” the assistant told Dr. Kellner.

When the assistant left, Tracey went back to see Dr. Kellner. “Look, I’m sorry for everything,” she said, … “I have this fantasy,” Tracey explained further, “and I want to make love to you while we’re under nitrous oxide.”

Tracey had Robert Kellner go first. He sat in the chair, put the mask on, and inhaled.

Inside the room, the dentist had a tackle box of meds he used during surgeries. … Tracey mentioned that maybe she should start an IV of something in order to get him to that special place sooner. They had not done anything sexual by this point. He allowed Tracey to “start an IV in my arm and give me a little Versed.” … Versed is also a drug said to “cause forgetfulness of the surgery or procedure.” … One of the last things Dr. Kellner remembered, when later asked in court what happened next, was Tracey walking toward him with the tackle box in her hand. Yet, as he watched her approach, he realized she had a “napkin wrapped around the handle” of the box—so as not to, he later guessed, leave any fingerprints behind.

Next thing the dentist recalled, he was waking up at four o’clock the next morning. Tracey was gone.

The letter, in the form of a “contractual agreement,” was written on the doctor’s letterhead and generated by his office. Dr. Kellner had signed it—and so had Tracey: This agreement between [Dr. Kellner] and Tracey Richter Roberts—which meant she was married to Michael when the sexual escapade in the office took place—a patient and occasional contracted employee of [Dr. Kellner], is entered into [in August 1997]. … Whereas, Dr. [Kellner] admits to willfully misrepresenting his ability to resolve TMJ pain that Mrs. Tracey Roberts began to experience, the contractual agreement continued, with the sole intention of getting [her] to consent to a “fictional” procedure that would require conscious sedation. … [Kellner] secretly intended to remove and replace articles of Tracey Roberts’ clothing, fondle her breasts and genitals, take photographs of her, and make subliminal suggestions. It went on to say he admitted to having an “addictive personality . . . from deviant sexual behavior to pharmacological.” … The “contract” went on to describe the incident in graphic detail. It claimed Tracey had awoken after the anesthesia mask accidentally slipped off her face during the TMJ surgery to find herself “clad in red thigh-high stockings, no panties, and stiletto heeled pumps that were too small.” It also said her dress had been pulled down below her neckline to expose her breasts and that the dentist was straddling her, one of her legs up on his shoulder. He was “masturbating onto her chest,” the contract said. … Dr. Kellner offered to “reach a mutual agreement” with Tracey that might “spare” her the “embarrassment, humiliation, and stress” of pressing charges against him. … Beyond a settlement fee of $150,000, Dr. Kellner was to pay Tracey’s way to a conference and annual meeting, hotel, air fare, expenses, “and purchase two round trip tickets for Mr. and Mrs. Roberts to travel to Australia this Christmas.”

When Tracey realized the doctor was not going to pay her shakedown, she turned around and filed a civil lawsuit against him. In it, she claimed the supposed sexual assault was malpractice.

The litigation keeps attorneys busy for a while, but let’s circle back to why a signature has any value at all! If not notarized, why?

More: Read Beautifully Cruel

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Paid parental leave is harmful to career women?

“The Gender Pay Gap Is Largely Because of Motherhood” (nytimes, 2017):

To achieve greater pay equality, social scientists say — other than women avoiding marriage and children — changes would have to take place in workplaces and public policy that applied to both men and women. Examples could be companies putting less priority on long hours and face time, and the government providing subsidized child care and moderate-length parental leave.

So childless Americans slaving away in the cubicle farm so that their child-blessed coworkers can enjoy parental leave would make the gender pay gap smaller.

“Germany’s Booming Economy Leaves Female Workers Behind” (WSJ, Feb 26, 2018):

An entitlement to generous parental leave, for instance, creates an incentive for young mothers to take long career-damaging breaks, experts say.

But childless Germans working harder to subsidize Germans with children… that makes the gender pay gap larger!

The two apparently contradictory economies do have something in common:

“Female engineers are hard to come by,” said Christian Thiele, spokesman for machine-tool maker Paul Horn GmbH, adding that the company was shifting its focus toward hiring more women.

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If the government could not evaluate Nikolas Cruz how will they evaluate jihad risk among immigrants?

The standard argument for why Donald Trump is wrong when he says that he wants to shut down immigration from violence-plagued countries is that the U.S. government will “vet” potential immigrants and screen out those who are prone to waging jihad or likely to perpetrate other forms of violence.

I always wondered how this was going to work, especially since the people being screened would be coming from a culture in which neither speech nor documents are in the English language. Would it be the U.S. military, which failed to notice the sinking of the USS Indianapolis, for example? The FBI that failed to heed flight instructor warnings about the 9/11 hijackers? The FBI that, after being tipped off by the Russians (they were our friends back then, but we hate them now?) about the Tsarnaev family, investigated and cleared the Tsarnaev brothers?

Now we’ve got a new data point in that the FBI was tipped off to Nikolas Cruz’s likely behavior (Miami Herald) and yet failed to prevent the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. The local police also got some tips. Compared to screening potential immigrants, this was an easy situation for law enforcement. The people offering the tips were native English speakers describing events that had occurred within the U.S. The potential criminal was a native English speaker. There was no need for an interpreter and no need to verify information about an event that had occurred on the other side of the planet.

Government does some great stuff (as you’d hope given $4 trillion per year in federal spending alone), but should we give up on the idea that government can usefully predict which people are most likely to commit violent acts?

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