I am an artist. This entitles me to make inane comments about Hunter Biden’s art, but I will resist. My comments will  be permissive and supportive. Biden’s art,  like Art Brut,  is media intensive, strongly shaped by the limitations and imperatives of the media. Biden’s media is ink. I painted Violet Rain, below, with mixed media. Biden blows with a straw; I flung ink with a wet brush. The clouds and dim sun are in oils, for ease of blend and glaze. In each case, the physical properties of drip and run complement the hand of the artist.

(Violet Rain. Click to enlarge.)

This is not about Hunter Biden the person; it’s about his art. Art is storied with personal redemption and destruction. I’ll take Hunter at  his word it’s about redemption. Larry Kudlow disagrees: (Fox) Kudlow rips Hunter Biden’s $500K paintings as ‘fraudulent’, ‘scam Art’.  He compares Biden’s work to his wife’s, Judith Pond Kudlow, “detailed pieces of natural realism” which have all the freshness of Miss Havisham‘s wedding cake (Charles Dickens, Great Expectations.)

Biden has no formal training. In stark contrast, Mrs. Kudlow runs the NYK Academy, which replicates a  pre-Impressionism 19th century French education, “…based on the Cours de Dessin developed in the 19th century by Charles Bargue which was used by Jean-Leon Gerome to train artists at the Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris.”

Kudlow accuses Biden of high crimes and misdemeanors, but his aged brain may just be out of sync with anything newer than Impression, Sunrise (1874). It may not be too late for him to attend Salon des Refusés. Maybe Biden’s art is too new?

Sadly, Biden’s art is not immune to the opposite criticism, too old. (Washington Examiner) Is Hunter Biden’s art worth $500,000? Here’s what a curator has to say, is dense with criticism, rendered by Jeffry Cudlin, art professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art.  His target was Biden’s inner motivation as stated to Artnet in We Spoke to Hunter Biden About His New Life as a Full-Time Artist, and His Personal Quest for ‘Universal Truth’ Through Painting. Quoting,

“I don’t paint from emotion or feeling,” Biden said in the interview. “Which I think are both very ephemeral. For me, painting is much more about kind of trying to bring forth what is, I think, the universal truth.”

Cudlin’s response:

“How much of that value is due to the art itself? That’s easy. None of it.”…“The last time artists said things like this,” according to Cudlin, “was maybe circa 1955. It’s a modernist trope, and modernism at this point is a period style, having effectively ended sometime by the end of the following decade, around 1968.”

Post Modernism replaced Modernism, so Biden’s art is too old? Too new and too old? Too old and too new? What are we to make of this war of experts? Could Biden have avoided this by clamming up?

For why Cudlin would use this blurb to fashion an indictment, refer to a delightful little book by Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word, in which he wrote,

Art made its final flight, climbed higher and higher in an ever-decreasing tighter-turning spiral until… it disappeared up its own fundamental aperture… and came out the other side as Art Theory!… Art Theory pure and simple, words on a page, literature undefiled by vision… late twentieth-century Modern Art was about to fulfill its destiny, which was: to become nothing less than Literature pure and simple”.^[4]

Which is what you just read of Jeffry Cudlin. Now you need another book, The Orange Balloon Dog: Bubbles, Turmoil and Avarice in the Contemporary Art Market. The book jacket blurb:

Within forty-eight hours in the fall of 2014, buyers in the Sotheby’s and Christie’s New York auction houses spent $1.7 billion on contemporary art…. A painting… featuring four lines from a Francis Ford Coppola movie stencilled in black on a white background, sold for $28 million…baffling activities …exchange of vast amounts of money and what nudges buyers…delves into the competitions that define and alter the value of art in today’s international market, …Thompson also warns of a looming bust…

The entire universe of buyers of high-end art consists of roughly 1300 individuals. Vast quantities of speculative art are in dark storage in free ports  around the world; scarcity is artificial. The art market is highly manipulated, and inefficient, even though appreciation  is a major goal for the 1300. But are they smart?

Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the 1300 hundred.

Smart, maybe. Tough, definitely. Market manipulation is so the norm, and so extreme, courts have exonerated the accused, with “plaintiff should have known better.” How is price set? Ashley Mears explains by analogy in Pricing Beauty: The Making of a Fashion Model. The value of a painting, or the rate of a fashion model, is not intrinsic to the art or the model. It’s set by a closely knit subculture, of dealers or agencies, invisible to the consumer.

Kudlow and Cudlin are correct. Biden’s art, or anybody’s art, has no intrinsic value, which is acquired when the 1300 set the investment value. From there, it goes into dark storage until some bond trader decides to buy a little soul, or in Biden’s case, “universal truth.”

If you are not Hunter Biden, an anecdote will help. In an early class at SVA, I painted a female nude on a blanket, on a 5 x 5′ canvas the instructor had dug out of the trash. By end of class, the lady still had no hands. Clearing the sidewalk like a snowblower, I marched it, hands held high, up 7th Avenue  from 21st to Penn Station. It got the approbation always  given to ladies on canvas, the phrase, monotonously repeated, “Not bad. Not bad at all.” On New Jersey Transit, she took up 3 seats.

A slightly drunk 40’ish bachelor had spent the evening lamenting he was still single. He persistently wanted her on his wall. I explained she didn’t have hands yet.  He didn’t care; how much did I want? Thinking to get rid of him, I said, “a grand.” He was thinking  of “more like a hundred bucks.”   We then proceeded to argue about improvements. I proposed adding a Martian with a ray gun; he wanted more women. When I got to Trenton, it was too big to fit in my car, so the garage office admired it for a few days. They thought it was “not bad, not bad at all.”

This is  how value is established. My Lady on a Blanket is worth a hundred bucks. Top that, Hunter Biden!

Readership has been exceptionally heavy today/tonight. Where I live, you could have made love under the stars, or enjoyed a Whitley Strieber alien visitation, yet you chose to read Intel9 instead. So why the distance? Bring it inside!

Writing this blog is cold, solitary, lonesome work, which is why I so often include O/T humor.  Let me show you how to make something every newsroom needs, a balloon dog.

contact a/t name of th/is do/main.

We continue from US intelligence community releases long-awaited UFO report; the Classical Limit & Metaphysical Limit; Part 1.

Hypothesis: The recent vintage of UAPs are Chinese drones, launched from submarines. We reverse engineer in the manner of  Russia’s Hypersonic Missile; Reverse Engineering Secrets of Avangard.

Let’s imagine we’ve gone several rounds of  sensor development, the data is pouring in; correlations are noted by advanced data fusion / AI. Things are looking good, except for one thing: We  haven’t a clue what it means. Let’s proceed from the mundane to the exceptional, and thence to the remarkable/magical. Into which categories would the ultimate explanation fit?

• Pilot disorientation, by adversary manipulation of the expectations of an encounter. It is exceedingly hard for a well trained pilot to accurately judge relative position and velocity when some of the norms of a typical encounter are missing or distorted: size, shape, speed.
• Sensor spoofing, possibly using advanced dielectric materials for optical stealth, and other incremental advances in technology.
• A novel use of mainstream technology, with some novel innovations.
• Quantum leap technology. Within the realm of science, but with a technology gap, hard for an investigation to bridge.
• Technology beyond  current knowledge of the physical sciences. Arthur C. Clarke: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”.
• Something way outside the box, as in not-of-our-universe.

Per Occam’s Razor, an explanation towards the top of the list is preferred to those further down. Yet there are factors that push down from the top.   The authors of  Preliminary Assessment  are daringly confident that the sensors of the public-release videos were working properly.  Multiple pilots observed in daylight while in radio communication, and the sensors saw what they saw. Observations from surface platforms corroborate.

This is basic to the story. With a blog like this, there  is no basis to go against story. So we  run with it. If the story changes, we can revisit what follows. This is a tiger-team exercise, to develop an explanation close to the top of the list, with minimal discounting of observations.

The discounting takes the form of these assumptions:

• In none of the encounters were the objects observed in all aspects, at all angles. The objects controlled the angle of presentation relative to all observers.
• Reports of extremely high velocity, particularly gain of altitude, or hyper maneuverability relative to an F-18, are consequent to distortion of  norms of a typical encounter:  size, shape, speed.

This is all that is required to attempt reverse-engineering a Tic Tac.  Hypothesis: The recent vintage of UAPs are Chinese drones:

• Propulsion is provided by cold-air turbines spun by massive neodymium rare-earth permanent field motors.
• Special lithium batteries with extremely high discharge rates power the motors. This is compatible with short mission duration. No observations of more than brief mission length have been reported.
• China is a world leader in lithium and rare earth technologies.
• Directional control and lift is provided by thrust-vectoring.
• The simple white shape that provokes comparison to the candy is a stealth shield not present in every aspect. It may have optical stealth optical and/or radar stealth. Have a look at  some pics of a horseshoe crab. The dorsal surface is smooth, round, stealthy. The ventral surface exposes the crab for what it is, a messy mass of explicit anatomy.
• The shield may enhance maneuverability.
• In descent, the UAP may reach much higher maximum speed than otherwise. This may bias other observer estimates of flight characteristics.
• Suggested reporting name: Shànzi.

A submarine, the most survivable naval combatant, is severely disadvantaged in situational awareness, compared to vulnerable surface ships. This high altitude platform, deployed and retrieved with high frequency, is of particular advantage to a state with thin global monitoring assets.

Could the drone descend to ocean surface at extreme speed and survive impact with water, an incompressible fluid? With some compromise of  observer claims, and some new technology, it may be possible.  As impact nears, the turbine enters full power reverse, creating a cushioning bubble of high pressure air contained and maintained by the turbine intake.

Whether or not this explanation approaches correctness, it has an important purpose. It must be thoroughly disposed of before  moving against Occam’s Razor, further down the list.

To be continued shortly.

 

 

 

(CNN) Local officials sound the alarm over another possible wave of Covid-19 infections. Quoting,

In Arkansas, which has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the nation, cases are surging, officials said…”The vaccine, as well as continued practicing of social distancing and masking when that is necessary, are our pathways out of a third surge of Covid-19,” Patterson said.

The advice of Dr. Cam Patterson leaves “when that is necessary” undefined. A prediction of vaccine breakthrough percentages, which might help decide, is given in Delta Strain of COVID — We’re in for a Rough Ride; Napkin Calculation #3,  and validated in The Royal Pharmaceutical Society; Delta Strain of COVID; Napkin Calculation #3.  Quoting,

A breakthrough infection percentage of between 5X and 10X the percentage of hospitalized patients, breakthrough of 20%-40%. compared to 5% for the viruses of the original Phase 3 study.

This is not contradictory to the established effectiveness of vaccines. Yet it allows the possibility that in Arkansas, and even in locales with borderline vaccine uptake, such as LA, community infectivity may overwhelm the protection of the vaccine.

Though vaccines are a great boon to the individual, experience with Delta is lacking in communities with high levels of vaccination, which may experience community levels of infectivity well above background. Discretion is the better part of  valor.

I’m putting my mask back on. You are invited to do likewise.

 

(CNN) US intelligence community releases long-awaited UFO report. PDF here: (DNI) Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.

If all goes well,  a determined investigation will ensue, with an eventual answer to a question. The question may be in flux, the final form delivered as part of the answer. What eventually constitutes an answer may be dog-tired familiar, or strangely incomprehensible.

The report is the first consensus of DoD, the intelligence community, and NASA that asserts:

• Human fallibility and sensor artifacts are not  by themselves a sufficient explanation for the bulk of observations reported to the predecessor program, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP).
• UAPs may constitute a threat to national security.
• Commitment  to a response.

If the consensus  becomes resolve, there will follow:

• Investment in analysis of historical and future report data.
• Investment in hardware, per future “UAP R&D Technical Roadmap.”

Resolve is new. In the past, resolve had enemies:

• From 1948 to recent, the USAF ran  various tiny UAP (then called UFOs) programs, embarrassments to the mainstream, distractions from the problem of nuclear deterrence, which had not yet reached the formulaic perfection of MAD. The 50’s were a time of inter-service rivalry and cutthroat competition for congressional attention, when even pocket programs were viewed as threats by larger ones.
• Until recent, the only  technology likely to record UAPs was radar, which remains notoriously vulnerable to atmospheric phenomena and flocks of birds.  The few photographs are of questionable provenance.
• With an absence of good instruments, reliance on  untrained observers, imaginative individuals, frauds and lies substituted for objective recording.

Since 1985, sensors have have evolved from bulky-insensitive-deficient-expensive to small-agile-marvelous — and even cheap. The initial requirement may be met by off-the-shelf commercial hardware. Even unmodified cellphones may be of use.

If resolve holds, an iterative experiment results:

• Design  new sensors for data collection. See CNN) James Clapper on UFOs; Let’s do Hyperspectral Imaging.
• Deploy the sensors on airplanes, ships, and hot sites, a major job involving hundreds or thousands of platforms that may carry them.
• Analyze the data,. to narrow  scope of explanations of UAPs.
• Based on the success or failure of the deployments, go to “Design” and repeat.
• When we’ve done enough of this, we have an outcome – or futility.

It’s traditional to anticipate the possible outcomes before we design the experiment. The report lists these buckets:

• Airborne Clutter
• Natural Atmospheric Phenomena
• USG or Industry Developmental Programs
• Foreign Adversary Systems, which includes “non-governmental entity”.

Luis Elizondo, former head of AATIP, has a category in mind  that should not be lumped with “stealth Al-Qaeda drone”, or “Houthi hypersonic project.” There are many interviews of Elizondo on the web; see (CNN) Former Pentagon official: Real question is, what are we really dealing with?

Preliminary Assessment commits a category error of omission, by omitting the bucket “extraterrestrial.” Perhaps this is to be expected, since the authors replaced a four-letter word, UFOs with the polite equivalent, UAP.

Why did they engage in this travesty of a mockery of a sham? Ufology is historically a really trashy field. The authors are hoping for a fresh start. Ain’t gonna happen. They’ll be dogged by trash every step of the way.

Elizondo positions himself as close to ufology believer as one can without making the actual statement. From Project Sign in 1948 till  2007 AATIP inception, there are no collections that justify the vibe. Before modern sensors came along, the gold standard was an experienced pilot.

It is exceedingly hard for a well trained pilot to accurately judge relative position and velocity when some of the norms of a typical encounter are missing or distorted: size, shape, speed. The classics, belonging to the explainable category:

• Gorman dogfight, when a military pilot engaged a lighted weather balloon.
• Mantell Incident, when a military pilot likely engaged an extreme altitude Skyhook balloon, attempted to climb too high, ran out of oxygen, and died.

As with all sightings that lack sensor data, the explanations are probable, not factual. You have only what the pilot or controllers tell you, or the vague impressions of radar.  Elizondo’s AATIP was the first to include optical sensors.  Yet the press approach to Elizondo was classical; how did he come across? Quoting (Wikipedia) Luis Elizondo,

When in 2019 Elizondo was interviewed by Tucker Carlson, Elizondo stated that the government had fragments of a UFO, “then quickly invoked his security oath”.

In this and a couple other strokes, Elizondo trashed himself, trading the attention of the establishment for the favor of a Fox mob. Yet  his legacy, AATIP, had sensors, and is poised to undergo elaborate resurrection. With the vast advances of sensor technology, this Question of the Age may finally escape paradox.

Life now seems so simple: deploy sensors, tabulate and analyze data, obtain answer. What could stop us now?

For that, you must wait for Part 2, shortly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How good is Napkin Calculation #3 of the Delta variant breakthrough rate? As napkin calculations are partly intuitive, let’s compare. The media have provided a variety of numbers which are not comparable. Breakthrough that counts only symptomatic cases is not the same as breakthrough of test-positive cases.

A Scotland study has a comparable result: (The official journal of The Royal Pharmaceutical Society) Second dose of Pfizer and Oxford vaccines offer reduced protection against Delta variant of COVID-19, study suggests. Quoting,

Results of a Scotland-wide study have shown that the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine provides 79% protection against the Delta variant two weeks after the second jab, while the second dose of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine offers 60% protection.

From Delta Strain of COVID — We’re in for a Rough Ride; Napkin Calculation #3,

A breakthrough infection percentage of between 5X and 10X the percentage of hospitalized patients, breakthrough of 20%-40%. compared to 5% for the viruses of the original Phase 3 study.

79% for Pfizer, implying 21% breakthrough, is within the range of 20-40% predicted by the napkin calculation.  The Pfizer results indicate great benefit for the immunized individual. Whether the Pfizer shot will adequately suppress community transmission remains to be seen.

 

 

This blog is a means to that end.

contact a/t name of th/is do/main.

On March 10, 2020, I wrote How Long Will the COVID-19 Epidemic Last? Napkin Calculation. Quoting,

In  the world of this very rough estimate, the epidemic takes a downturn 65 weeks from present. It assumes  no modifications by medicine and public health, and a lot of mostly avoidable human suffering.

It was offered almost tongue in cheek, yet the errors seem to have canceled out. Were it not for the Delta variant, it might be somewhat durable. Since this is a teaching blog, it would be dishonest to claim accuracy. I claim luck instead.

It should be taken as general encouragement of napkin calculations, which have a major advantage over sophisticated modeling:

You can’t be a prisoner of a napkin.

 

Let’s have a theological discussion. Does Putin have a soul?

About Cardinal Richelieu, Kissinger wrote, “the charting genius of a new concept of centralized statecraft and foreign policy based on the balance of power.” The Texas National Security Review article is an excellent description of the first modern statement of  diplomacy, Raison d’Etat, (Reason of State) which Oxford Languages defines as “a purely political reason for action on the part of a ruler or government, especially where a departure from openness, justice, or honesty is involved.”

Richelieu was First Minister of France from 12 August 1624 – 4 December 1642. Until the 1648 Peace of Westphalia,  sovereigns such as the King of France were formally vassals of the Holy Roman Empire. Religion was the partner of diplomacy, until Richelieu. With alliances in disregard of religion, he was thought evil by those who did not accept his rationale, for the state. On his death, a luminary said, paraphrasing,

“If there is no Hell, Richelieu has lived a very good life.”

This is the ancient version of “Did he have a soul?”

Richelieu’s deviousness inherits from Machiavelli’s The Prince. With the extensive documentation of Richelieu’s diplomacy, there began a tradition that continues to the current day:

• Suspension of moral standards when in conflict with the needs of the state. (Chechnya, Syria, Ukraine.)
• Disingenuous communication.
• Alliances that serve balance of power, including states with which there is doctrinal conflict.

Talleyrand, 1797-1815, was even more devious, to the extent that the multiple regimes of France, instead of executing him, found him useful. On hearing of his death,  Austrian diplomat Metternich said, “I wonder what he means by that?”  Modern diplo-speak was flowering, not to inform, but to mislead.

Richelieu’s ghost  resurrects  in the person of Bismarck, who created modern Germany. His machinations so increased the power of Germany  that balance-of-power in Europe was destroyed, ultimately causing the Great War, World War 1.

The ghost of Richelieu, through Bismarck, was the ultimate cause of the Great War, which caused World War 2, which caused the Cold War. This is not to say that without Richelieu there would have been no war. His heritage provided the specific tripwires, fuses and explosions of record.

Among those who  consider war inevitable, Richelieu is avidly studied. His students think, if war is inevitable, at least have it on the best terms. Until the invasion of Ukraine, Europe had forgotten how to write  history in dripping blood. The disadvantage of historical anticipation is repetition.

Vladimir Putin is an intellectual man. He reads and re-reads the history and practice of diplomacy. His favorite author is undoubtedly Henry Kissinger. If you want to  know an intellectual, read the books he reads. You’ll have a deeper understanding of the man than any amount of spy-work provides.

Now back to the question of both Bush and Biden: Does Putin have a soul? The administration’s internal dialog had better be more sophisticated than that; I expect that it is. But this “soul/no-soul” label, offered to the electorate as insight, has dumbing-down dangers. Simplifying a complex individual who is himself a child of history discards available insight into Putin’s mind. This is so important to the game, Richelieu’s game, Putin’s game, our game.

So do you still think Putin’s soul is the right question, or will you put some mental muscle into it? Are handshakes and gifts central, or is the center somewhere else?

To be continued shortly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

COVID springtime is short. It’s set to end in four more days.

In (CNN) Vaccinated Americans allowed to taste freedom; Not So Fast; Napkin Calculation #2, I wrote:

When B1.351 is vanquished, other variants will compete for dominance, with each other, and with vaccine makers.  Ad infinitum.  Ground Hog Day. Is this certain?  No, but to assume otherwise is wishful thinking.

Fate is now so poised with the Delta variant. The news media are lacking an important comparison, percentage of breakthrough infection. This doesn’t give it:

Which row(s) of the table should we compare for an appropriately bracketed estimate?  Both of these:

• In an early month of 2020, with no vaccine, 9% of those with no preexisting conditions were hospitalized; a ratio of  roughly 10X infected to hospitalized.
• Including preexisting conditions, 21% were hospitalized; a ratio of  roughly 5X infected to hospitalized.

Currently, 4% of all Pfizer recipients who contract Delta, with or without qualification for preexisting health conditions, are hospitalized. This provides a napkin-calc  estimate of the protection of Pfizer against infection with the Delta strain:

A breakthrough infection percentage of between 5X and 10X the percentage of hospitalized patients, breakthrough of 20%-40%. compared to 5% for the viruses of the original Phase 3 study.

Do we call this “effective against the Delta strain?” Sure, get the shot. The shot improves the outlook for the individual.  It is not good enough to prevent another COVID catastrophe. And there is a strong pure math argument that this level of efficacy will select for an Epsilon strain with even greater breakthrough. It has the near optimal combination of opportunity-for replication, and selectivity.

The failure of the media to correctly portray this comparison verges on managing the news as opposed to reporting it. In defense, “News” might say that “Authorities” have not made the comparison. I say, dig a little, and you’ll get it.

Perhaps the media don’t want to be the killjoys. Somebody has to do it, and it’s their job. We will soon don masks again, retreating to our private amusements. Perhaps after the vaccines are adjusted with boosters, we can ditch the masks — for a while.