SALENA ZITO: Joe Biden’s Scranton backyard is slowly growing more Republican. Well, Democrats have become the party of fatcats and government employees, not of the working class.
Archive for 2020
August 24, 2020
SEND IN THE DRONES: After Thursday’s Dogfight, It’s Clear: DARPA Gets AI Right.
AI prevailed against a human in DARPA ’s recent AlphaDogfight trials. Given that DeepMind’s AI achieved the level of grandmaster in the StarCraft II video game, AI beating a human in a simulated closed world contest is not impressive. What is impressive is AlphaDogfight’s role in DARPA’s overall plan for the development of AI in the military.
By posing relevant questions, DARPA’s overall AI strategy accurately embraces both the capabilities and limitations of AI. How can AI enhance the performance of the pilot by lessening cognitive load? How can companion unmanned aircraft accompanying the fighter pilot’s fighter jet be effectively used? What are the limitations and dangers of autonomous drones?
Remotely controlled unmanned drones are not always feasible. Their tethering to a remote-control pilot can be severed by enemy jamming. Totally autonomous drones cannot yet be trusted to make complex life-and-death decisions. So oversight by a human pilot is the sober solution in the near future. DARPA is addressing these and other important questions.
Call me paranoid, but I still want a human in the loop for all kill orders.
MICHAEL BARONE: The Normalcy of Trump’s Republican Party: His unusual personality obscures the GOP’s basic continuity and gradual pace of change.
But when you look away from the public figures and toward the voters, you don’t see such a sharp break with the past. Mr. Trump has won over some voters who never supported a Republican before and repelled others who previously never voted Democratic. But not in enormous numbers: You see much greater oscillations in party percentages nationally and in particular states and demographic groups in the 1960s and 1970s than you do when you compare the 2016 numbers with those of 2012 or 2008 or 2004.
As for the question of whether the Republicans will return to normal, it’s based on a mistaken premise. What’s normal for the major American political parties is change—adjusting issue positions and emphases to changed situations and challenges, attracting new demographic constituencies while losing ground among old ones, adapting to the cues and clatter in a competitive political marketplace while maintaining their basic character. . . .
The emergence of Mr. Trump is the latest example of this pattern. It is widely asserted that he executed a hostile takeover of the party, winning less than a majority of primary and caucus votes (45%, compared with John McCain’s 47% in 2008), insulting his opponents and previous Republican presidents. He took sharply different positions from those of Republican nominees (as well as Democratic ones) over the past half-century on trade and immigration—positions popular with blue-collar voters who had reason to believe Chinese competition had closed down American factories and that low-skill immigrants, especially from Mexico, tend to drive down native-born Americans’ wages. He decried the toll of military interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Naturally these stands antagonized some Republican leaders and pundits who supported these policies and some Republican voters who defended them. Even so, the president has enjoyed the near-unanimous support of self-identified Republicans, with percentages rivaling or exceeding those supporting Presidents Reagan and Eisenhower in their times.
Trump Republicans’ downscale strength in 2016 was an amplification of a decadeslong trend. The core constituency of the Republican Party has been moving downscale for decades, first in response to cultural issues like abortion. The state of Pennsylvania provides examples. Metro Pittsburgh, with its steel-and-coal economy, never warmed to Ronald Reagan; George H.W. Bush, running to succeed him, won only 40% there in 1988. But by 2004 the younger George Bush raised the Republican percentage there to 48%, and Donald Trump carried it with 50%. The Republican percentage in Pennsylvania beyond its two big metropolitan areas remained static, at 58% in 1988, 57% in 2004 and 59% in 2016.
As Newton’s third law says that there is in nature for every action an equal and opposite reaction, so in American politics, for every demographic group trending toward one party, there is usually another with opposite views trending toward the other. In Pennsylvania, the four affluent suburban counties around Philadelphia voted 61% for Bush 41 in 1988, 46% for Bush 43 in 2004 and 41% for Donald Trump in 2016.
The increasingly downscale Republican and increasingly upscale Democratic constituencies are increasingly reflected in policy. While Mr. Trump orders a payroll-tax suspension, with dollars benefits flowing mostly to modest earners, Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats demand increased deductions for state and local taxes, which would mainly favor those with income of more than $650,000.
Fatcats.
HOLLYWOOD: WarnerMedia Investigating Joss Whedon Amid ‘Justice League’ Actor’s Abuse Claims. “Joss Wheadon’s on-set treatment of the cast and crew of Justice League was gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable. He was enabled, in many ways, by Geoff Johns and Jon Berg. Accountability>Entertainment.”
I WANT TO POINT OUT THAT BEFORE BIDEN BECAME DEMENTED, HE WAS ALREADY A CORRUPTOCRAT LINING HIS AND HIS FAMILY’S POCKETS: Scott Adam’s Epic Rant Excoriating Biden For His “Fine People” Race Card Hoax.
I’VE BEEN WARNING ABOUT THE DANGERS OF JUST-IN-TIME PRODUCTION FOR DECADES: Why Are There Still No Paper Towels?
The scarcity is rooted in a decadeslong quest by businesses at all levels, handling many different products, to eke out more profit by operating with almost no slack. Make only what you can sell quickly. Order only enough materials to keep production lines going. Have only enough railcars for a day’s worth of output. Stock only enough items on a shelf to last till the next batch arrives.
The concept, known as lean manufacturing or just-in-time inventory, was born in the hyperefficient Japanese automotive industry in the 1970s and became a religion for many American CEOs. It spread first to Detroit, then to other U.S. manufacturers and finally to other industries, from distribution to retailing.
As it did, the risk of shortages in an emergency bothered experts in disaster preparedness. Cautions voiced by the worriers had little effect as investors rewarded corporations that held costs low through lean operations. . . .
The supply chain sputtered for many other things Americans clamored for when the virus struck, including some food products, disinfectant wipes and—especially alarming for health-care workers—face masks.
While each had its specific issues, all involved lean operations by manufacturers or raw-material suppliers, plus disciplined distribution and retailing channels geared to a normal level of demand. The lean system went largely unquestioned, until one day just-in-time meant not-enough.
It’s a bad idea.
POSTMODERN PROBLEMS: Australian public servant condemns censorship after blogpost cost him his job.
In April, Krook published a post on a fledgling blog called the Oxford Political Review, arguing social isolation was good for big tech companies, because it made people increasingly dependent on online platforms for interaction.
Krook also worked as a policy officer with the industry department, working on tech policy.
His post talked only in generalities. It made no reference to any individual company and did not mention, let alone criticise, the Australian government or government policy.
In no way did Krook identify himself as a government employee or policy officer or seek to conflate his writing with his views as a public servant.
Three months after the post, Krook was invited to a meeting with his superior.
In the meeting, Krook says he was given a choice: remove the blog post or face termination.
Australia is along the road to that happy place where everything not forbidden is compulsory.
QUESTION ASKED: Why isn’t Joe Biden being tested for COVID-19?
WE KNOW WHERE YOU ARE: Albion College requires students to use a location tracking app, ostensibly for contact tracing purposes. And that’s the only way the app will be used by administrators, right? Right?
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Choose Sides? You Bet. But Antifa and Fascism Are the Same Side.
PROSPECT OF A MUGGING CONCENTRATES THE MIND WONDERFULLY: Almost 2,000 women in Detroit get firearms/self-defense training. Journalist Stephen Gutowski, by the way, is a byline worth following.
ANOTHER POTENTIAL ELECTION FIASCO: Vanishing volunteers to act as election judges.
NIH’S DR. FRANCIS COLLINS ON HIS JOURNEY FROM ATHEISM TO FAITH: Elite media’s narrative typically bars unbiased mention of highly accomplished scientists who are also men and women of faith.
So it’s not surprising that Collins — a renowned geneticist who understands a thing or three about DNA and its sequencing — is far better known as a scientist than as a Christian who views evolution as God’s creative process. But, as he makes clear in this video, the two are inseparable and he has launched the Biologos Foundation to advance public understanding of why that is so.
MAYBE THIS HELPS EXPLAIN CHINA FAVORING BIDEN: Things are not going well for the Confucius Institutes on American campuses, thanks to President Donald Trump.
NOT SURE WHAT TO MAKE OF THIS: Trump senior counselor Kellyanne Conway announces her departure from the White House
EDITED BY LES JOHNSON AND ROBERT HAMPSON, AND CONTAINING STORIES BY ME AND MY HUSBAND: Stellaris: People of the Stars.
NEW STORIES AND ESSAYS FROM TOP AUTHORS AND EXPERT SCIENTISTS. Explorations of how interstellar travel may affect humanity by best-selling authors and scientists.
The stars will change us.
STELLARIS: PEOPLE OF THE STARS is a collection of original science fiction stories and nonfiction essays speculating about humanity’s far-term expansion into the universe beyond the limits of our solar system—with an emphasis on the changes humans will undergo as a species as we make this happen. Is interstellar travel so far beyond our current imaginings that it will take a fundamental transformation of humanity in order to make it possible? And, if so, will we remain Homo sapiens or become a new and unique species—Homo stellaris (the People of the Stars)?
Herein are original science fiction stories by award-winning authors such as Kevin J. Anderson, William Ledbetter, Todd McCaffrey and Sarah A. Hoyt, supplemented by accessible nonfiction essays describing the science behind the fiction from people who should know—Sir Martin Rees (Astronomer Royal of the United Kingdom), Mark Shelhamer (Chief Scientist for the NASA’s Human Research Program), and more.
This collection of original stories and essays was inspired by a gathering of scientists, science fiction authors, and futurists at a series of annual meetings held by the Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop. Let their speculations, imaginations and boundless sense of what’s possible take your own journey beyond the edge of the solar system in STELLARIS: PEOPLE OF THE STARS!
STUFF LIKE THIS MAKES ME ILL: Jimmy Fallon’s Re-Education Wraps in Time for Election Day.
NOT A BAD BLOG TO KEEP TRACK OF: COVID19 mini-update, August 24, 2020: clinical study on convalescent plasma; UK media push for reopening schools.
DON’T GET EXCITED. IT’S ACTUALLY ABOUT ASSCLOWNS WHO UNDERSTAND HISTORY LESS THAN SOME SPECIES OF MOLD DO COSPLAYING REVOLUTION: Portland Rioters Wheel Guillotine Through Suburbs, Execute American Flag.
The response appropriate to these people’s mental and emotional age is to take them over one’s knee for a good paddling, then sending them to bed without their iphone. And if their boomer parents didn’t that, instead of calling them stunningbrave, this would never have happened.
THINGS CAN ONLY GET BETTER: A Moment of Opportunity For Education.