Kavanaugh Vote: Constitutional crisis live?

Sitting here this morning listening on and off again to the speeches from the floor of the Senate leading up to and including the vote I am left thinking a few things.

1. The only thing I am certain of Bret Kavanaugh is that he is neither the perfectly vile puppet of the white house he is made out to be by the Democrats nor is he the shinning saint of judicial officialdom he is made out to be by the Republicans. Seriously, each side could have stepped up and just said "what they said" for the previous speaker from their party. The speaking points were almost universally the same on either side. It is like they were talking about two different people.

2. I do not believe the Republicans would be voting in party lock step if there was clear irrefutable evidence of Ford, Ramirez, or Swetnick's accusations. There is no court case. There is no video. There is no smoking gun. Simply put there is no legal standing of the accusations. There are old memories, lots of hearsay and innuendo. Could it have happened? Yes. Did it happen? It. Is. Not. Clear. There was enough doubt to cause a hiccup with Flake's balk and the deal he required to clear his conscious in letting the vote get out of committee and to the floor of the Senate. Could more investigation possibly have helped? Yes. But how much is enough? There were supposedly 7 FBI background checks of Kavanaugh. If you don't think they are doing their job, what is an 8th going to prove? Or a 9th?

3. If the claims of Ford were whole cloth fabrications by the Democrats the story would have been tighter. This was not a story to hang their hat on. It was a story that drove them, not the other way around. That said, the timing of the break of the vs other opportunities to request investigations into the allegation does stink. If Senate Democrats request that investigation into the incident in closed deliberations and it turns up un-definitive hearsay it likely doesn't reach the public.  It likely also does not create the environment in which the follow on accusations from Ramirez and Swetnick emerged. It certainly doesn't cause the highly public extra FBI investigation into the accusations. 

4. The fact there were follow on accusations concerns me. More than concerns me. One person being manipulated (or choosing) to upend their life for a character assassination attempt is one thing. 3 accusers, From different sources, and clearly not coordinated? Again... do you think an orchestrated attempt by the Democrats includes Avenatti? The guy does not come across as positive for either side as far as I can tell. He is a walking meme for why people hate Lawyers. In court Kavanaugh faces almost no risk based on the facts of the cases. In the court of public opinion... that is a different matter. As for whichever side you fall on in the public court verdict... which court do you want to decide your fate should something happen to you? Which standard do you want the Senate to work based on? No... that doesn't make it easier. The process of government is hard. For me? There is enough doubt in what was presented that I find myself rather amazed the Republican's did not simply run down to the next candidate on the list. Conservative judges are not a rare commodity. That they did not concerns me far more than the appointment of Kavanaugh. The Trump campaign changed the game of what ends a campaign and it has now officially bled over into other areas. What previously was enough to sink someone in the political arena is no longer assured it will do so in the future. The DC game is changing, not for the better, and that should be of great concern.

5. Any Republican staunchly holding to the professional credentials argument that there is no reason to oppose this nomination needs to look hard in the mirror over the Merrick Garland fiasco. You can chase back a series of events on this one that land pretty hard on both sides of the isle. Obama was a part of a Democrat failed effort to Fillibuster a Bush nominee (Alito) which can be seen as a clear precursor to McConnell's scorched earth policy with Garland and nuclear option by which they removed the filibuster as an option for opposing a Supreme Court Nomination. But don't think this started there.

6. Guilty until proven innocent does not mean the accuser is a lying sack of shit until proven otherwise. It also doesn't mean the accused is a saint unless proven otherwise. Sexual harassment is a particularly vexing legal quandary in this nation. It is overwhelmingly perpetrated against women. The victim is always in the uphill role as the accuser in our system. A large portion of such cases revolve on hearsay and thus often have little or no chance in the legal system. Prosecuting a current case (even with DNA evidence) can be hard in cases where there may have been consent and or impaired judgement, much less a 30+ year old case that was never reported and is past the statute of limitations. Men have disproportionately held all the positions of authority in which cases of accusations of sexual harassment are judged and thus have set the precedents which are so hard for the accuser to meet. This is not some femi-nazi screed statement. This is simple fact. Doctors, Lawyers, Police, Judges are historically male positions and are still dominated by men today. What is the solution? Hell if I know... mandatory constantly cloud synced body cameras for everyone?

7. For those suddenly 'worried for their sons'.... The worst (WORST) case false accusation rate for sexual harassment I could find is around 1 in 10. That is for those who most strongly want to call out the problem of false accusations the best they can pick their studies is that the valid accusation rate is at LEAST 90% and the false accusation rate at MOST 10%. I'd say you have far more to worry about for your Daughters. It is estimated in 1000 cases of sexual assault, only 10% will be reported. Of those 100 cases, only 10 will go to trial. That 10% worst case scenario means 10 men at worst in that 100 cases where an accusation was made got falsely accused. 80 legitimately accused didn't even have to go to trial. Somewhere between 800 and 900 (depending on how many were false accusations of the full 1000...) faced no consequences at all. And of the 10 that go to trail more left without being found guilty than did. So for 1000 incidents of sexual harassment less than 10 perpetrators will face legal consequences.  900-990 victims, yet less than 10 perpetrators pay any kind of legal penalty of at least having to face a trial, fewer still face a sentence. I know as a nation we are bad at math... but sheesh.

8. Questions about his past behavior aside. His professional stance regarding presidential indictment is worrying. However, to be clear, he is not saying a president cannot be held accountable for their crimes. He is saying that to do so they must first be removed from office. That while in office anything short of impeachable offenses must wait until they are out of office. This is not just because of the Mueller investigation. This view basically says that if a president (ANY president) has the backing of congress they can do anything that will not lose them that backing as congress in this view is the only body that can remove the president from office. This is an area where the founders fell short in the creation of the Constitution. They did not foresee what was going to happen with party politics.  Party politics effectively links the Congress and President in a way not considered in the original system of checks and balances. This was as much of a problem when Obama led with a Democrat majority in both houses as it is now with Trump and a Republican congress. Of a secondary concerns is that whether or not the hearings should have gone there or not... he lied under oath to the US Senate. He could have refused to answer. He could have chosen raw honesty. Instead he chose to deceive with explanations of flatulence and drinking games for terms that were easily proven to be about sex. It is almost certain he at best omitted the truth in answer to questions regarding his drinking habits at the time.  People who lie about their drinking problems in the past tend to have problems in the present. Even if he doesn't. A high court official lying under oath to the US Senate (WHATEVER THE DAMN REASON)  is NOT a good sign for what is to come on the highest court. The irony is he himself made this argument as a member of the Ken Star investigation of Clinton over the Lewinsky affair. Instead of following his own belief as stated during that investigation, he instead emulated the man they were investigating. And in this case I sincerely doubt there ever be an apology for having done it.

9. Life appointment with no limits on Supreme Court Justices needs to end. The massive increase in life span since the founders times and refusal of justices to yield the bench as they move past their prime in almost all cases means it is time to set limits. A decade max. Social Security retirement age as mandatory time to step down. And I would be in favor of that for any government position. That is approximately half a generation time max for any one person to preside over the highest court of the Land. Or hell... lets go 12 years max. And while we are at it limit House Representatives, Senators, AND Presidents to the same. This would allow a third term for presidents which would be an increase. But it would severely curtail the decades long tenure of congress critters that has become more the norm than the exception.

10. Jeff Flake said the single most frightening thing I have heard in a long time. Perhaps it was the most frightening thing I have ever heard in my lifetime. "Would you have done this if you were running for re-election?". Flake in response " No. There is no currency in working across the isle ". A US Senator clearly stating there is no value to working across the isle as a general rule if you hope to get re-elected is an extremely frightening state of affairs. Congress has to work as a whole in the interest of the Nation as a WHOLE. That is how it was designed.

11. The Media and by extension "We The People" need to get our collective shit together. Fox and Sinclair are clearly aligned Republican. Many major national outlets are clearly aligned Democrat. Facebook and the rest of the internet first newcomers are whatever the hell you want them to be because they reflect and confirm your biases as function of their design to hook you and draw you deeper and deeper into their systems. As a result,  there is no one clear voice looking to hold ALL to account. Elon Musk is in the midst of going full Howard Hughes (Eccentric genius Billionaires should never go "Full Howard Hughes") ... but one of his nuttso rants about founding a media outlet dedicated to verification of truth resonates with me. Its nuts... pretty much no realistic way to do it. But damn it would be nice if there was a nice easy one stop shop where you, and your worst enemy, could both rest assured and agree you were getting a clear unbiased scoop on a given issue.  Social media is not the cause of this problem. It is simply a new lens that gives us a new perspective on news. Broadcast news of the past wasn't any better... take the rose tinted glasses off already on that... they were just less questioned. And a bit more centrist... at least to the majority culture in power. The days of Edward R Murrow and Walter Cronkite had plenty of problems too.... we just were not as "Woke" to them. In many ways we have it better today. The problem is we suffer from to much of a good thing. Pick a side, any side... and a few quick google searches will lead you to like minded folks. This is insanely bad because it means almost zero chance of ever having your assumptions and world view challenged in any meaningful way. This is potentially catastrophic. The bubble phenomenon is something I largely think is leading to an ever increasing calcification of our political views that drive elections and thus party politics and that has led to the present situation where a Senator says there is no currency in working across the isle. It has broken the process by which the party system has worked despite itself to make our democratic institutions of government function... and that in turn stands a chance to break our government itself. We are not there yet. But we continue making progress in that direction. It will get easier and easier to continue in this direction... and harder and harder to course correct. Congress is not a failing of the parties. It is a reflection of us. The Media is not some conspiracy corporate menace manipulating us. It again is a reflection of us... and attempt to give us what we want, or at least what we respond to in the way necessary to make them money. If we as a society figure out how to shift our views on this... these institutions will follow suit. But it is obviously easier said than done. Whether the tail wags the dog, or the other way around, you still have to make the change. And the party and media are both mechanisms through which we inform ourselves and through which our desires are reflected. But they exhibit inertia just like physical things. Change of this nature is not easy.  But it isn't all bad. That ability to join like minded people also means it is FAR easier to make people aware of your point of view exists even at the same time it is ever easier for folks to tune you out. Creating these communities affirms that your view exists outside of just you. It affirms that there are others like you. In the case of Neo Nazi's that is bad. In the case of sexual harassment/assault survivors it can be a beautiful, life saving thing.

12. A prediction. Should a Democratic candidate take the White House in 2020 with a Democratic Congress there will be talk about expanding the Supreme court in order to appoint more liberal Justices to counter balance the overly Conservative makeup we are now about to have. The number of Justices has changed before. They can change again. Congress has the power to change the number. It will take a willing president as even if a Veto is over ruled, the nominations must come from the Executive Branch. The last time it was attempted was by FDR as a part of trying to secure support for the New Deal.

3D Printing: Rapid Prototyping

One thing leads to another... and suddenly....

As I may have mentioned before I often get asked.... so what is a 3d printer actually good for? Well if you look at this picture and follow along with me I may be able to walk you through one thing they are just fantastic for. Rapid Prototyping. 

Over on the left you will see a pale green bulbous plastic thingamabob with a hole in it. This is half of a doggie poop bag dispenser sort of shaped like a bone that is missing its other half. What happened to it? Don't know. Fell off during a walk we think. Anyway... doggie poop back dispenser with only one half isn't much use now is it. If I were a normal person I would have gotten on Amazon or headed to Petsmart and just gotten a new one. But....... 3D PRINTER. #I_CAN_DO_IT #MakeItYourOwn etc... etc.... etc....  

Right, much scrambling in fusion 360 later produces the missing half. You won't find it on here because.... shocker... it fell off too. Ok... Fusion has a nice feature that auto does threads... so I just make a whole new doggie poop bag holder. Move to the right from patient zero we can follow the home brewed epidemic as it spreads. The White, Blue and White, green and blue and first all blue.... errr.... creations. Are indeed functional 3d printed doggie poop bag dispensing thingamabobs... and they work just fine and dandy.... 4 iterations into it. First one was the half that didn't work. Then I made the other half... the one that actually dispenses. Oval hole, roughly size of the example. Check, handle.... hmmmm this will work. Nope.... to skinny to fit a Carabiner... kinda flimsy to. This will work... Nope... big enough but Carabiner doesn't move well in it... making it bigger gets awkward so make it round. This will work... success. Well work on the supports a little. Different material? Ok... this works. There are several of these steps not pictured. Gift to Mom, first fully functional one is sitting in my window at work etc... but you get the idea. Towards the middle of the table the original plan has been executed and a fully working prototype has been made and refined. Let us not really think about the cost comparison when it comes to filament vs the 5$ish cost likely to replace it... if that. This was fun. 

However... that is only half the story. We are only at the middle of the table when things get really fun. My Wife was in the midst of making one of her diaper changing stations with nice fleece, storage and it all folds up nicely. So... she asked if I would make one of these for diaper bag duty in her latest baby shower offering. Sure. 

Hmmmmmmm...... Baby's. How about I add a baby powder holder on the bottom of the bag holder? Two in one. Does it make sense? Who cares? Because...... yep.... you guessed it.... 3D PRINTER!!!! Now my simple two sided tube with a hole in it and a ring on it gets a bit more complicated. The simple end now needs to connect to the new piece so it gets re-designed. Then I need a reservoir to hold some powder. And the powder needs a way to get dispensed so I need  a cap. That has open and closed states. Preferably without requiring lots of hands in the midst of the joyous rigamarole that is changing a poopy diaper with a squirmy little 'un. No need to over think it, Johnson's has had this licked for ages. Twisty cap that aligns closed one way, open the other. Easy peasy. Or not. 

The connector is easy enough, just have to get the dimensions right and do the threading tool right... the second time. Why get it right the first time? To easy that way, no fun. Ok, reservoir. Now I learn the revolve tool to make a rounded contour on the lower bit for the cap to go over. How big to make the holes? How many holes? Here is where the rapid part of rapid prototyping comes in. Of course... I can't test the holes because I can't get the tolerances right for a cap made out of PLA or PETG to snap over the end of the reservoir without snapping bits off. Ack. In the midst of trying to do this I have enough success to realize that eyeballing it to figure out if the holes are aligned isn't going to cut it so the bottom reservoir and cap grow some bumps. The bump on the cap stays between the bumps on the reservoir (if you don't get to spin happy at least). At one end opened, at the other closed. Also figured out I need larger holes, and a better alignment for closed/open. Square pattern(easy) gives way to round (easy now that I know how to do it). But... won't do any good if you can't get the cap on the gosh darned thing without breaking it in the process. 

There is this stuff called TPU. Flexible filament. Those who know 3d printing are now cringing. It is darned useful stuff. But.... its primary attribute of flexibility is present when trying to get it to feed through your printer as well. Yeah.... let us just say it is a wet noodle when you want something a bit more stiff. I have avoided it. But now I have an actual problem that it can solve. I learned something. I was right about staying away from it. It can and does lead to some painful jams. I had one that was so goofed up in the midst of this the filament was both pulling in and pushing out at the same time on one side of the gear. Tell me how the hell that happens? Cause I still can't figure it out. Thankfully I got it all out of there somehow and finished the job. And this stuff is addictive. In the midst of this I designed an 'extruded' shock absorber to go on 20x20 extrusion to keep my baby CNC router from walking around on the work bench when it was doing its poor imitation of CNC wood cutting. But that is a story for another time. 

Much easier idea... some squares, concentric circles and a single extrude, made a second that was a bit squishier for options... even printed on the first attempt. 

Now we are getting to the far right of the table and we see some taller 3d printed thingamabobs that dispense both poop bags and baby powder with a functioning sealed cap.... ish. Johnson's baby powder containers are not exactly perfect seals either. Mine is not as quite as good... but it is 100% better at dispensing poop bags so take that Johnson and Johnson's! 

Now we are all the way to the right and you see some silverish with blue bottomed "production" units of the "Diaper Bag Buddy". Now we are done. 

All the bits and bobs. Flexible Cap to the far left. Powder Reservoir next, Connector, and finally, the Poop Bag dispenser

All assembled and ready to go

Open

Closed

Right????

Ummmm..... "How about one that dispenses dog treats instead of the baby powder?" Yes dear... coming right up, because......  3D PRINTER!

The silly nature of this particular venture aside, you have to sit back in amazement if you have any real appreciation of what exactly it takes to iterate a real design. Prior to having something like FDM printers (now more likely SLA, or SLM) available could make the above represent quite a chunk of change to walk through some variations and ideas to get to a finished product. Until the patents ran out and the RepRap crowed launched the whole home cooked 3d printer world even what I did here could have cost thousands, tens of thousands if you counted the cost of the machine itself.  That I can do this in my home now for a few hundred bucks is simply astounding.

If you want to make your own, you can download the files at MyMiniFactory. 

State of AR: Magic Leap has leapt

So Magic leap has finally gotten out of the shadows and is starting to ship a dev kit. The Verge had an interesting take on it you can read here. If you haven't read it and are not familiar with the Microsoft Hololens then the rest of this article will not make much sense.

As someone who has spent a bit of effort professionally trying to figure out what to do with this technology I take some exception to the overall take here. Yes, Magic Leap oversold their capability. Yes, they are behind in some ways compared to Microsoft. But... based on what I am reading here and in other takes, they are ahead in a few crucial ways.

1) A 45% increase in field of vision is huge. Is it still to small for what the dream is? Most certainly, but gains in resolution require monumental gains in processing power and this is a new realm and its form factor is working on smart phone type hardware budgets with top end desktop graphic card needs. If you really need the field of view Meta is waiting for you with open arms and a tethered headset. But being free to roam with a significant increase in field of view is a (pardon me) "leap forward". Despite its limited field of view the capability of the Hololens is still immense, and for properly focused applications you quickly forget the "window". The problem is a lot of AR is trying to do VR, or AR on the scale of VR and it just isn't what it is good at.... and yet all the obvious use cases seem to point you in that direction. You can work around it... but there is nothing obvious about finding what those keys and tricks are. The further away that field of view gets from your focal area the less it will matter in true AR applications as your periphery is able to distinguish fewer and fewer details. 

2) Getting weight off the head. The biggest single draw back to the Hololens in my opinion is the learning curve in getting it on and off. Even after more than a year of getting to do this it is not a simple thing to get it on 'right'. It is easier, and it is quicker, but it isn't simple. Worse. Even at its best, the weight is problematic. I have worn the thing hundreds of times, and gotten to put it on first time users heads a similar amount. It is an 'interesting' solution to the problem... but it isn't fantastic. Steam punk aesthetic aside, the fact the magic leap looks as easy to put on as a pair of goggles and has all the weight of the battery and computing hardware not on your head is a huge deal in the ergonomics front. I haven't gotten to use it yet but it is possible this could be enough to get it from "impressive but not quite there" form factor of Hololens, to "marginally acceptable". Things are only going to get better so long as development on this class of hardware continues.

3) Inside out Self contained 6DOF tracking of your head and a hand controller??? Did I really read that right? If that is correct and you can reach around in space with a controller with confidence approaching the Oculus Rift/HTC Vive hand controllers.... then you have consistent input via the controller (buttons, pad, combinations) and you are in a whole other world from the gaze, bloom, pinch and "idiot talking to idiot software" interface of Hololens. If you can use two controllers at once this thing could be the killer combination AR needs. 6DOF freedom of movement in a mobile package with inside out 6DOF hand tracking and consistent varied interface input capability is simply put, a MASSIVE "leap" past Hololens. Hololens starts off on the wrong foot with the ergonomics and the disappointing field of view. But the dagger in the heart is the frustrating lack of efficient user interface abilities. You are just way to limited and the interface interaction success rate needs to be 99.9% instead of 90ish in ideal circumstances, and trending much worse in less ideal environments. Even so it still has massive potential due to the lack of anything else readily available with its capabilities.

That said there is a general take the author had in this article that I agree whole heartedly with. It is concerning they don't have the mind blowing app/experience to show off. Now is the time to knock people's socks off if you have something and suffice it to say that is not the reaction of the tech world at this point.

However... This stuff is new... and no matter how big their team, they are isolated and in a bubble and have been acting in a lot of secrecy which seriously impedes the ability to find the right match. A LOT of folks are looking for a way to leverage this tech, and where there is money in it few are wanting to talk with each other about it because there is a sense of at some point this is going to take off on an exponential curve and anyone who is on the ground floor stands to reap HUGE rewards.

In this fractured environment the newness of the interface is extremely daunting. There are no established best practices. There is no magic bullet. Many existing design tropes simple do not translate. So what is happening is you are seeing the birth of a new machine/human interface paradigm in real time. Keyboard, Mouse and GUI was not an overnight thing, it took decades. AR is starting to climb the curve. It is a pity Magic leap didn't 'leap' first on the scene. From what I am reading there is a decent chance if they could have launched this at the same time as Microsofts effort it may have had enough steam with the boost in attention to AR to reach a critical mass event to launch the field into the mainstream. Granted.... not at these prices... and not without a fully realized interface and killer application.