… dedicated to the defense of what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of the Cross of Christ. Athwart two hostile Powers we stand: the Jihad and Liberalism…

I will say her comments section are far more civilized than most.  Maybe that blog is diligently edited….

Here’s a cool art installation by French artist Julien Salaud. Cave art. String art. See more here.

Lawyerly concerns can be a little obscure.  Consider this taste of a Twitter exchange on The Volokh Conspiracy:

Last week in a Dorf on Law blog post, Michael Dorf was objecting to the anti-commandeering doctrine of New York v. United States and Printz v. United States. In it he said this:

I’ll begin by saying that I don’t like the anti-commandeering doctrine in any context. It strikes me that the dissenters were right in New York and Printz. Congress had the power to “commandeer” under the Articles of Confederation; nothing in the Constitution expressly forbids that means to Congress; in general the Constitution gave Congress more, not fewer, powers than Congress enjoyed under the Articles; and therefore, in my view if Congress is regulating in the area of one of its enumerated powers, then measures that commandeer the states are (absent some other problem) necessary and proper to the exercise of that power.

Turns out commandeering refers to compelling state officers to perform duties specified in Federal legislation, or so I take from the Printz v United States link, above:

The Government cites the World War I selective draft law that authorized the President “to utilize the service of any or all departments and any or all officers or agents of the United States and of the several States, Territories, and the District of Columbia, and subdivisions thereof, in the execution of this Act,” and made any person who refused to comply with the President’s directions guilty of a misdemeanor. Act of May 18, 1917, ch. 15, §6, 40 Stat. 80-81 (emphasis added). However, it is far from clear that the authorization “to utilize the service” of state officers was an authorization to compel the service of state officers; and the misdemeanor provision surely applied only to refusal to comply with the President’s authorized directions, which might not have included directions to officers of States whose governors had not volunteered their services. It is interesting that in implementing the Act President Wilson did not commandeer the services of state officers, but instead requested the assistance of the States’ governors …

The Articles of Confederation refer to the United States of America, version 0, if I may be colloquial in the matter.  It appears that Dorf (a professor at Cornell) wishes that commandeering be legal, and cites the Articles of Confederation and suggests the Constitution should then inherit the commandeering capability.

Now, I’ve not had even a scant minute of legal training, I’m just a simple minded software engineer.  In other words,

I just do logic.

So, to me, once I knew commandeering wasn’t really addressed in the Constitution, the only relevant question then becomes, Is the Constitution an extension of the Articles of Confederacy, or a replacement?  My understanding, given the content of the Constitution, is that it’s a replacement.

Of course, given the legal profession’s adherence to precedent, then we have to ask if some court at a sufficiently high level has authorized commandeering, and of course I don’t know and don’t even know how to do the research.

But I did find the whole subject fascinating.

NewScientist (11 April 2015) reports on analysis of tweets issued from within ISIS held territories (paywall):

Documents include a new curriculum for the University of Mosul in Syria, which cancels all lessons in philosophy, English or French literature and tourism. Another account operated by ISIS administration in Iraq issues strict new rules about issues as prosaic as how waste should be disposed of: a 5000 dinar fine (£3) is to be levied for throwing litter from a car; a 25000 dinar fine is imposed on fly tippers.

Other tweeted documents are more surprising. One details a vaccination timetable for children. This suggests IS is a more modern group than the Taliban, says [Aymenn] Al-Tamimi. The Taliban banned vaccinations in Helmand province in Afghanistan last year over fears of spying.

Leading to this conclusion concerning ISIS:

For Al-Tamimi, these attempts to provide a governmental framework help ISIS control its territory, and might explain its dominance over other groups in Syria. “It’s a lot more complicated, much more developed,” he says. “The model we see brings a sense of order rather than civil war, that’s why you don’t really have any local rivals.”

There is nothing magical about most forms of government; it boils down to how peaceful of an environment do they offer, followed by questions concerning social advancement and freedom.  Some systems naturally do not offer these social goods as well as others.  Whoever is leading ISIS seems to understand that conquering is not enough, you have to give those conquered a reason to appreciate your presence.

Finally, we have to decide how to counter such a strategy.  It may not be enough to use airstrikes; it may not even be enough to bring forth convincing evidence of their barbarity, as those who welcome them may be so tribalistic as to either not believe, or no care.  So what’s the next step?

Continuing this discussion, The Pew Research Center has updated poll numbers regarding marijuana use:

A slim majority (53%) of Americans say the drug should be made legal, compared with 44% who want it to be illegal. Opinions have changed drastically since 1969, when Gallup first asked the question and found that just 12% favored legalizing marijuana use. Much of the change in opinion has occurred over the past few years — support rose 11 points between 2010 and 2013 (although it has remained relatively unchanged since then).

There is much more to this article, as PRC breaks down the numbers by cohort and heritage.

This, and by extension the War on Drugs, may become a major issue in the upcoming election.  A simple question at a debate: do you support legalization of marijuana?  It may become one of the pivotal questions of the election, particularly if news organizations choose to publicize important figures concerning incarceration of marijuana users and distributors.  Data on arrests through 2012 is available on DrugWarFacts.org:

Year –	Marijuana % of Total Drug Arrests	Marijuana Manufacturing & Sale % of Total Drug Arrests	Marijuana Possession % of Total Drug Arrests
2012	48.3%	<5.9%	42.4%

US Arrests As Reported By FBI UCR Program
Year	Total Arrests	Total Drug Arrests	Total Marijuana Arrests	Marijuana Trafficking/Sale Arrests	Marijuana Possession Arrests	Total Violent Crime Arrests	Total Property Crime Arrests
2012	12,196,959	1,552,432	749,825	91,593	658,231	521,196	1,646,212

Or about 6% of arrests are pot related in 2012, if I do my math right.

A Facebook correspondent responds to this post:

I worry less about the languages used than how they are used. Devices like DSL modems, routers, home automation, car automation, etc. are all made as quickly and cheaply as possible, providing few or no avenues for updates or security patches, and few motivations to create really secure code in the first place.

Hmmmm.  I bought a Netgear router last October and have already received notification of an available update – perhaps Netgear is high end?

But more importantly, I recall, decades ago (as, I’m sure, does my correspondent) the decision by Microsoft Corp to absolutely not provide any warranty on their software – and the accompanying uproar.  But I do not believe Microsoft ever changed its stance.  I confess not having read a software “warranty” in years – because I do not buy commercial software.  Do they remain the same?  Perhaps citizens should sue over every bug that causes them a loss…. I suppose open source software producers think themselves protected by their open source licenses.  I’ve certainly lost hours due to bugs in the open source / free software I use (Linux, OpenOffice, Firefox, VirtualBox…..).

And then free online software, such as WordPress used on this blog, has already cost me some time and some enamel off my teeth.

I suppose so long as the consequences of bugs for the producers of the software is not devastating, little will be done about it beyond lip service – as you say in your last line.  But once the motivation there, it’s not just a matter of telling the programmers to have a bit of grit and make it better.  The tools have to be there, and I’m afeared an IDE or two (sorry, I’m an unrepentant vi programmer), or some hackers brand new language, just isn’t going to cut it.  I think the profession will have to take a step up and learn more, as a group, about formal methods and which languages are accessible (yep, that’s the word I mean to use) to such methods.

Think Mapquest or its successors is neat?  NewScientist‘s Hal Hodson (11 April 2015) reports (paywall) on the next generation:

For a few days last summer, a handful of students walked through a park behind the University of Hannover in Germany. Each walked solo, but followed the same route as the others: made the same turns, walked the same distance. This was odd, because none of them knew where they were going.

Instead, their steps were steered from a phone 10 paces behind them, which sent signals via bluetooth to electrodes attached to their legs. These stimulated the students’ muscles, guiding their steps without any conscious effort.

It sounds great until someone hacks into the system and takes you for the walk of a lifetime.  I’m seeing a lovely sight-seeing tour of Venice, ending with an involuntary and fatal dive into the drink as your mortal enemy – or some kid with a root kit – takes over for just a moment.

Acceptance may be the biggest problem, although it is possible that the rise of wearable computing might help. Pfeiffer says the electrode’s current causes a tingling sensation that diminishes the more someone uses the system. Volunteers said they were comfortable with the system taking control of their leg muscles, but only if they felt they could take control back.

One of the students compared the feeling to cruise control in a car, where the driver can take control back when they want it. “Changes in direction happened subconsciously,” said another.

No doubt acceptance will be an issue with autonomic cars as well.  And yet, it may turn out the next generation – meaning those who are just being born now – will not mind cars that drive themselves, and assisted walking that require no more direction than “take the tourist route” or “get me to the train station”.

Still, the inventors see this as useful for disasters:

The system could also be used to direct crowds, not just individuals. “Imagine visitors to a large sports stadium or theatre being guided to their place, or being evacuated from the stadium in the most efficient way in the case of an emergency,” the team write in a paper that will be presented at the CHI conference in Seoul, South Korea, next week.

Obergefell v. Hodges will be heard by the SCOTUS on Tuesday, and basically asks the question, courtesy of The Jurist,

The petition for writ of certiorari [PDF] in Obergefell features two questions presented, broadly asking: whether the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex; and whether the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-state?

Previously stated view here.  World Religion News summarizes religious reaction:

Over 7,500 pages have been submitted for the cases that are to be held this month. Obergefell v. Hodges alone has the highest number of filings seen since the 2012 Affordable Care Act case. The briefs were submitted by those who were for it, as well as those against it. Among the many groups to submit briefs, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops sent in a statement discouraging same-sex marriage and promoting traditional marriage.

The largest brief was from the President of the House of Deputies of the Episcopal Church. It was signed by many different groups, including the Union for Reform Judaism, the United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalist Association. Many religious groups in support of same-sex marriage said that not all views speak for all religions, adding that thousands of historic Christian leaders have views that challenge the old opinions of homosexuality. Others emphasize the number of Americans who feel their faith compels them to accept others, including LGBT citizens. Many republicans wrote that “the marriage bans challenged here target gay and lesbian couples, and their families, for injurious governmental treatment.”

The Cato Institute, a noted libertarian think tank, sides with the homosexual couples:

Cato has accordingly filed what will almost certainly be our final brief on this issue. Joining with noted originalist scholar (and Federalist Society co-founder) Steven Calabresi and Yale law professor William Eskridge—one of the leading experts on American legal history—we urge the Court to reverse the Sixth Circuit’s decision and finally fulfill the Constitution’s promise of equal protection under law to millions of gay Americans and their children. We argue that the lower court’s ruling was inconsistent with the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. The fact that the provision’s ratifiers didn’t automatically or explicitly understand that it would eventually require states to recognize same-sex marriages is irrelevant; all that matters is what it meant in 1868 for a state to “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” As our brief shows, this language was based on similar language in state constitutions and was widely (and properly) understood as prohibiting the states from passing what’s known as “caste” legislation—laws that create “second-class” citizens with inferior legal rights.

Alliance Defending Freedom, on the other hand, states

Alliance Defending Freedom and the Alabama Attorney General’s Office filed one of those briefs on behalf of the state of Alabama. That brief, filed in Obergefell v. Hodges, explains the rationality of man-woman marriage laws and highlights the significant flaws with, and troublesome implications of accepting, baseless arguments claiming that those laws are constitutionally irrational.

“Marriage between a man and a woman is a universal good that diverse cultures and faiths have honored throughout the history of Western Civilization,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Jim Campbell. “How we treat marriage has societal consequences. The wisest course, as these briefs demonstrate, is for the court to resist demands to prematurely end the national debate over the future of marriage.”

Over at Slate, Judith Schaeffer looks back at John Roberts confirmation hearings, rather than staring at her tea leaves:

A Facebook correspondent writes in response to this:

I’m not sure the health impact has been proven one way or the other, but the supply demand issue is interesting given the demand for non medical use would theoretically still exist.

Colorado legalized for recreational usage, but I think the key here is that production is also legal – if limited.  Because production is local, you’d think prices would be lower than Mexican imported, but in this article The Cannabist republished from the Associated Press detailing a row over production regulation, this is not alway true:

When the market opened to all adults over 21 in January, those production caps stayed in place as regulators feared a market flooded with more pot than they could regulate. But the result has been a pot market so limited that marijuana can sell for nearly $500 an ounce, far more expensive than black-market prices. Those prices don’t include taxes that can exceed 30 percent in some jurisdictions.

Colorado’s marijuana market is opening to new growers in October, prompting a need for production caps that aren’t tied to a medical-marijuana patient count. The state won’t necessarily produce more pot. Instead, commercial growers will need to prove they’re selling 85 percent of their inventory before getting permission to add plants.

In a sense, we’re seeing the age old story of capitalism and opening markets – those who benefit are not necessarily in favor of them!

But smaller pot growers lined up to complain that the rules amount to state-sanctioned protections for industry veterans.

A major chafing point is a proposal to allow indoor warehouses to grow twice as many plants as greenhouses, 3,600 versus 1,800.

Colorado’s medical pot growers were required to use energy-intense closed warehouses using grow lights. Now the state allows greenhouses and even limited outdoor growing, depending on local zoning. Many argued the state should be encouraging marijuana production that uses less energy. Large marijuana warehouses sometimes have five-figure monthly power bills.

If production is tightly regulated, then prices will remain high and outstate sources may hang on.  But if regulation is relaxed and the market is flooded by local production, then the outstate sources may give up and turn to other crops, legal or otherwise.  That would be a standard economic outcome.

In an interview with Ex-Interpol agent Marc Goodman, NewScientist‘s Douglas Heaven discovers that the upcoming ‘Internet of Everything’ means everything can be hacked (paywall):

You’re implying that every connected device is a target. Why do you think that?
No one has ever built a computer system that could not be hacked. We are rushing full speed ahead to put every possible device online and they’re all insecure. We should pause for a moment. If somebody hacks my television, do I care? But all of the world’s critical services are run by computers and we’re seeing these computers increasingly come under attack. People have always struggled for power. Now, if you control the code, you control the world.

Does that include connected technology like CCTV security cameras?
The tools we have to protect us can be subverted and that security used against us. It’s what I call the judo model of cyber security – using your opponent’s weight against them. You really can’t have any faith that when you set up 300 cameras on a street in London, or wherever, that the government is the only one watching.

Nor can anyone trust what they see on screens. We’ve all received phishing emails that appear to be from our bank. That was taken to the next level with the Stuxnet malware attack in Iran in 2010. Nuclear engineers in a control room were staring at screens that showed the status of uranium-enrichment centrifuges. The screens said everything was fine but the centrifuges were actually spinning out of control. Somebody had inserted a hack in between what was really going on and what was being presented on the screens. We are becoming increasingly disconnected from physical reality in this way.

I’ve often felt that computers are best considered to be multipliers.  Someone who holds up a bank only gets what is – at best – in the bank’s branch at that time.  If they’re real thrill seekers, they take hostages and make a bit more – or get shot in the process.

Computer hackers can do much, much better, and generally from the safety of their office.

For the professional software engineer, the future may hold some interesting questions:

• Does your favorite programming language make it easy or hard to write code vulnerable to hacking?  (Hint: If it’s C, it’s probably really, really easy.)
• Does your favorite language easy to evaluate for correctness?  Most are not; the languages in the functional paradigm are reputedly a little more easily evaluated, but I haven’t seen it done on – yet – on production level code.  If you know of examples, let me know.
• Does  your language let you program computers – or express solutions?
• Have you ever taken a class specifically oriented towards writing secure code?

This is not to imply that all – or even most – vulnerabilities are the fault of programmers; some are hardware, some are social.  But a significant fraction of them are a result of using insecure programming languages, and future languages should be designed with that in mind.  I am not an expert in security (I’m more a jack of a few trades – don’t ask me about numerical analysis, either), but I used to read comp.risks, and I hear things.

FOR EVERYONE – I can’t help but pose the obvious question: if the Internet went away, how would it affect YOU?

Generally, I find the Daily Kos posts to be too shrill and partisan for my taste, which may be why I read their spam – a take on the fever-pitch on the political left.  But this post concerning the effects of just a few states beginning to legalize marijuana is really just lovely, and as well as appealing to the hippy wing of the political left, it should also appeal to the honest libertarian wing of the political right (this I say from 25-30 years of reading REASON Magazine – dunno what REASON says these days, though).  Its gist is that villages in Mexico that had been growing pot for decades have stopped because of the economics – it’s just not worth it.

As far back as I can recall, foreign political leaders have reiterated that American entreaties, threats, and other types of messages requesting them to stop would be better met by reducing demand, rather than stopping supply.  Not that they didn’t try – the Americans have been especially active in South America, supplying military aid in attempts to interdict supplies.  Since this was a politically motivated process, empty successes were proclaimed – tons of this or that captured and burned.  Meanwhile, the supplies kept coming, by “mule” and even by rude submarines, and the interdiction efforts didn’t result in cessation of supply, but (economics majors, hold your breaths) … rising prices.

And did the consumers of the drugs then work harder to make the money to buy the drugs?  Well, I’m sure some did – but the general consensus is that a lot of them turned to crime to finance their habits.

And all this over a drug which apparently has no direct negative impact on physical health (unlike, say, alcohol).  Andrew Sullivan’s Dish blog followed this issue extensively here; their conclusion was that studies indicated no harm except maybe, possibly to teenage users who, to borrow a term, over-imbibed.

Now, a new study out from the University College of London provides even stronger evidence that the Duke findings were flawed. The study draws on a considerably larger sample of adolescents than the Duke research – 2,612 children born in the Bristol area of the U.K. in 1991 and 1992. Researchers examined children’s IQ scores at age 8 and again at age 15, and found “no relationship between cannabis use and lower IQ at age 15,” when confounding factors – alcohol use, cigarette use, maternal education, and others – were taken into account. Even heavy marijuana use wasn’t associated with IQ.

Of course, this isn’t the entire issue; the use of marijuana, the thought goes, may lead to less desirable behaviors.  From the same Washington Post report:

In a press release accompanying the study, lead author Claire Mokrysz noted that “this is a potentially important public health message- the belief that cannabis is particularly harmful may detract focus from and awareness of other potentially harmful behaviours.” Reviewer Guy Goodwin of Oxford University agreed: “the current focus on the alleged harms of cannabis may be obscuring the fact that its use is often correlated with that of other even more freely available drugs and possibly lifestyle factors. These may be as or more important than cannabis itself.”

This is a key point. Many skeptics of legalization in the United States  focus on the potential harms of marijuana use alone. But marijuana use is just one of many behaviors that can possibly affect life outcomes. In many cases these other behaviors are likely to play a much larger role in determining a person’s trajectory through life.

It also partly explains why even as we’ve seen increasingly permissive laws regulating marijuana use in the past decade, there has been no corresponding uptick in negative outcomes.

In all fairness, other studies may indicate changes to how the brain is wired; here is a Boston Globe news report on this subject:

Young adults who occasionally smoke marijuana show abnormalities in two key areas of their brain related to emotion, motivation, and decision making, raising concerns that they could be damaging their developing minds at a critical time, according to a new study by Boston researchers.

Meanwhile, being sent to jail for marijuana use, or intent to distribute, isn’t a negative outcome?  This may be the key point in the “War on Drugs” – Americans can be very stubborn, and attempting to direct their lives is, along with being UnAmerican, also futile, expensive, and wastes lives that might have been otherwise highly productive.

The knock-on effects of marijuana legalization include simplifying, to a great extent, the job of policemen; elimination of a large number of prison beds (and perhaps the elimination of the private prison companies); the lessening of fear amongst a substantial portion of the American citizenry; and possibly greater productivity for those folks who find medicinal marijuana helps them cope with chronic pain and other illnesses.

I contacted Senator Amy Klobuchar to discover her current plans on the drug front, but received a disappointing form letter in return:

As you may know, although 15 states and the District of Columbia have enacted laws permitting the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes, a federal law known as the Controlled Substances Act continues to prohibit the use of marijuana in the United States.  In October 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder released a formal set of guidelines for states that have enacted laws authorizing the medical use of marijuana.  The new guidelines direct attorneys to refrain from focusing their investigative and prosecutorial resources on patients with serious illnesses or their caregivers who are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws on medical marijuana, but reiterates that federal prosecutors will continue to fully prosecute illegal drug trafficking  and related activities.

Congress has determined that marijuana is a dangerous drug, and the illegal distribution and sale of marijuana is a serious crime.  Commercial enterprises that unlawfully market and sell marijuana for profit continue to be an enforcement priority for the Department of Justice.  Please know that I will keep your comments in mind should any relevant legislation come before the Senate for consideration.

There are a few theories out there; these are of interest as the local (Minnesota) Somali community suffered the arrest of several young men who stand accused of attempting to fly to Syria to join ISIS. sky.com publishes an interview with a man who fought in Bosnia:

In Birmingham, we met Shahid Butt, who travelled abroad to fight in the 1990s, prompted by the realisation that Muslim civilians were suffering in Bosnia.

He says a similar sense of compassion drives many young Muslims to the Middle East, where the conflict in Syria – known to have already displaced more than nine million people – has inspired a strong desire to help fellow Muslims.

“I believe the media has mis-portrayed the whole situation. Anybody who goes to Syria is a mad, crazy, warmongering, bloodthirsty person,” said Mr Butt. “This is wrong.”

The wrong portrayal of larger numbers of Muslims travelling to help as part of the terrorist threat is itself increasing the risk of radicalisation, says rapper Kash ‘The B.A.D.’ Choudhary.

Aljazeera suggests it’s an educational problem:

Rich Nielsen of Harvard University recently published a study in which he found that the main factors driving radicalism were not poverty or ideology of teachers. Rather, it was the poor quality of academic and educational networks. Based on his research, Nielsen found clerics with the best academic networks had a 2-3 percent chance of becoming self-styled jihadists, as opposed to a 50 percent chance for those who were badly networked. This is an interesting finding given that under a traditional Islamic education paradigm, students study the same texts with different teachers in order to get different perspectives. Interestingly, they’re also warned against the blind following of a single scholar.

Afua Hirsch talks about his documentary:

I’ve been talking to young Muslims for a documentary on the root causes of extremism, and it’s clear there are a series of common complaints. Primarily, even though David Cameron may have said the killers of David Haines “are not Muslims, they are monsters”, young Muslims still have a profound and consistent sense of being demonised by society, and as creating a source of fear.

Further, many people still fail to distinguish between the different motivations for Brits travelling to the Middle East. It struck me how many young Muslims want to travel to Syria to help with the desperate humanitarian situation, or to join rebels trying to bring down President Assad – a goal that until recently was in line with Britain’s own foreign policy. However, the people I spoke to fully expected to be welcomed back to the UK by being arrested, slapped with a TPim and stripped of their passport.

For a passionate teenager, watching the suffering in Syria and believing that they are barred from contributing because of double standards driven by Islamophobia can create extreme feelings of alienation. And for those who are converted to extremism, there are usually other factors: contact with a seductive and effective hate preacher, indifference towards or a desire for violence, a sense of purposelessness – in some cases the same factors that attract young people to criminal gangs.

The Washington Post gives this opinion:

This is not a problem of religion. This is not a problem of immigration. And, despite British Prime Minister David Cameron’s assertion, the root of the problem is not even the “poisonous” political ideology of fundamental Islam. The root problem – where ideological extremism flourishes – is alienation. Disaffected, second- and third-generation immigrant youth are seeking alternative communities of belonging that conflict with a free society. To this problem, there is plenty of blame to go around.

Muslim youth are born into British society and socialized in British schools, or naturalized after years of residence and integration, but endure frustrating barriers to socioeconomic mobility and face discrimination as members of an ethnic minority. And though a majority identify as British, a 2006 Pew survey shows how British Muslims maintain attitudes of disaffection and alienation more than Muslims in other European countries. Opportunistic imams can then mobilize a minority of impressionable youth toward a fundamental practice of religion. In fact, former Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells directly attributes the threat from British-born Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq to not dealing with their radicalization in the U.K.

Now Kamaldeep Bhui publishes an opinion article in NewScientist (11 April 2015) (paywall) approaching the issue from the mental health viewpoint:

Research in the US following the 9/11 attacks suggested that having sympathies for terrorist acts and violent protest is a sign that people are susceptible to future radicalising influences. We took that as our starting point and assessed these kinds of sympathies in men and women of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin living in the UK.

We found that these views were uncommon – they were held by just 2.5 per cent of our sample – and were unrelated to poverty, political engagement, or experience of discrimination and adversity. However, we did find a correlation between extremist sympathies and being young, in full-time education, relative social isolation, and having a tendency towards depressive symptoms.

In contrast, we found that being born outside the UK, general ill health or having large social networks were all associated with moderate views. We also found that women were as likely as men to hold extreme sympathies, although the association with depression was stronger in men. Frequency of religious worship and attending a place of worship were not correlated with extremist leanings.

Social isolation and depressed, and so a willingness to fall in line with anything that gives them a sense of purpose.  Not to mention young men can be prone to considering combat to be attractive.  It may not be flattering, but it does make some sense.

And you thought the Black Death was a plague of the past.  Not so, at least for North American Black-Tailed Prairie Dogs (paywall):

Though the plague bacteria, Yersinia pestis, now rarely infects people in North America, it’s been responsible for the deaths of many black-tailed prairie dogs. This is a problem for the grasslands, where many other species rely on prairie dogs to survive. Predators eat them, animals make homes in their burrows and grass growth is shaped by them (Conservation Biology, doi.org/3cj).

(NewScientist 11 April 2015)

The things you learn on the Internet.  At the Volokh Conspiracy Ilya Somin reports on a case in front of SCOTUS regarding the raisin crop:

Things did not go well for the federal government in today’s oral argument in Horne v. US Department of Agriculture, the raisin takings case. Nearly all of the justices were highly skeptical of the government’s claim that forcible confiscation of large quantities of raisins somehow does not qualify as a taking of private property that requires “just compensation” under the Fifth Amendment. The forced transfer is part of a 1937 program that requires farmers to turn over a large portion of their raisin crop to the government so as to artificially reduce the amount of raisins on the market, and thereby increase the price. Essentially, the scheme is a government-enforced cartel under which producers restrict production so as to inflate prices.

It can be quite a jolt when you realize how far the United States is from a real free market.  It would be interesting to know exactly which program, and its breadth.

But, of course, the real question is this: should there be a real free market in food?  It should be well-known that the government regularly buys up excess corn; and, back in the 90s, the GOP briefly attempted to eliminate the agricultural subsidies.  The Economist provides a quick light-weight summary here:

To this day, to be treated as a farmer in America doesn’t necessarily require you to grow any crops. According to the Government Accountability Office, between 2007 and 2011 Uncle Sam paid some $3m in subsidies to 2,300 farms where no crop of any sort was grown. Between 2008 and 2012, $10.6m was paid to farmers who had been dead for over a year. Such payments explain why Tom Vilsack, the agriculture secretary, is promoting a rule to attempt to crack down on payments to non-farming folk. But with crop prices now falling, taxpayers are braced to be fleeced again.

American farm subsidies are egregiously expensive, harvesting $20 billion a year from taxpayers’ pockets. Most of the money goes to big, rich farmers producing staple commodities such as corn and soyabeans in states such as Iowa.

The conservatives tend to maintain a skepticism about ag subsidies which I sometimes agree with and sometimes believe is rooted in an ignorance of how people might behave in the face of food shortages.  The Cato Institute provides this debate from 2007 on the subject of ag subsidies and how the dismantling of New Zealand’s subsidies impacted the country.  Daniel T. Griswold asserts the conservative case:

There is no dismissing the New Zealand experience. The government largely dismantled its farm programs and none of the consequences Bob predicts came true. Its citizens did not suffer any shortages or disruptions of food supplies. Productivity of New Zealand farms accelerated after reform and they now compete successfully in global markets, especially as dairy and livestock producers.

In contrast, the output and income of America’s most supported crops have lagged behind the performance of non-supported products that compete in free and open markets. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, cash receipts for the most supported crops, including corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, sugar beats, and sugar cane, rose an unimpressive 14 percent from 1980 to 2005. Meanwhile, cash receipts for non-supported crops, including fruits, vegetables, nuts, and greenhouse products, soared by 186 percent. Subsidized farmers are selling out their future competitiveness in the market for the sake of federal handouts.

Bob Young provides the opposition:

The New Zealand and Australia cases are held up to us on a fairly regular basis. Australia has had, and continues to have, support programs for their producers. They are now in the middle of providing disaster assistance to their producers — assistance their producers certainly need. They also operated their wheat market under a single-buyer/single-seller framework up until the very recent past. New Zealand made the jump they did when their entire economy and government were on the brink of bankruptcy. They undertook massive government reforms that cut across literally every agency. Dan might be willing to entertain such an idea, but I’m not so sure that we as a nation are ready to make that leap.

Finally, Dan talks about the farm programs as producing environmental degradation. In part because of the rules a producer must operate under to be eligible to participate in farm programs, and in part because farmers are the best day-to-day environmental stewards in this country, the average erosion rate from an acre of farmland has dropped from 7.2 tons in 1982 to 4.7 tons in 2001. Wetland protection has increased sharply and wildlife habitat has expanded significantly. Even on those disgusting corn acres — the acres that provide the feed for our livestock and are helping with our nation’s energy supply — the nitrogen used to produce a bushel of corn fell from 1.3 pounds in 1983 to 0.94 pounds in 2006.

In 2013, Bloomberg Business joined in:

A Depression-era program intended to save American farmers from ruin has grown into a 21st-century crutch enabling affluent growers and financial institutions to thrive at taxpayer expense.

Federal crop insurance encourages farmers to gamble on risky plantings in a program that has been marred by fraud and that illustrates why government spending is so difficult to control.

And the cost is increasing. The U.S. Department of Agriculture last year spent about $14 billion insuring farmers against the loss of crop or income, almost seven times more than in fiscal 2000, according to the Congressional Research Service.

The Bloomberg article is quite long and indicates the implementation of our current ag subsidies is making everyone unhappy:

With new farm legislation stalled on Capitol Hill, largely over Republican demands for deeper cuts in food stamp spending, the cost of crop insurance is drawing fire from both ends of the political spectrum.

The Environmental Working Group says the insurance encourages farmers to make riskier plantings, secure in the knowledge they will be paid even if the crops fail. The free-market Club for Growth, meanwhile, derides the program as a government handout for millionaire farmers.

Then there’s this gem:

“We shouldn’t look at crop insurance as the least evil policy,” says Josh Sewell, senior policy analyst with Washington-based research group Taxpayers for Common Sense. “It’s not like our choice is to send checks one way or send checks another way. We could just not send checks.”

As many have said before me, common sense is neither.  My observation over the years has been that if the name of a group includes “taxpayers”, then it’s a bunch of guys who are only concerned about their wallets.

While I’m sure that such a wart on what we like to think of as a free market is hard to integrate with the market – and can lead to fraud, as many engineers would consider this an instability in the system – I don’t think they really make the case for eliminating ag subsidies, only reforming them (and on that, no opinion).  On the conservative side there seems to an assumption that this is about economics, not about assuring the food is available on a regular basis.

So how much food do we produce?  The EPA has this page:

In round numbers, U.S. farmers produce about $ 143 billion worth of crops and about $153 billion worth of livestock each year.

And what about California, recently the subject of water rationing?  Richard Cornett at Western Farm Press, in 2013, gives his thoughts:

So a loss of California ag production would hit hard consumers’ wallets and their diets would become less balanced.This is because our state produces a sizable majority of American fruits, vegetables and nuts; 99 percent of walnuts, 97 percent of kiwis, 97 percent of plums, 95 percent of celery, 95 percent of garlic, 89 percent of cauliflower, 71 percent of spinach, and 69 percent of carrots and the list goes on and on. A lot of this is due to our soil and climate. No other state, or even a combination of states, can match California’s output per acre.

Lemon yields, for example, are more than 50 percent higher than neighboring states. California spinach yield per acre is 60 percent higher than the national average.  Without California, supply of these products in our country and abroad would dip, and in the first few years, a few might be nearly impossible to find.  Orchard-based products specifically, such as nuts and some fruits, would take many years to spring back.

Soon, the effect on consumer prices would become attention-grabbing. Rising prices would force Americans to alter their diets. Grains are locked in a complicated price-dependent relationship with fresh fruits, vegetables and meats. When the price of produce increases, people eat more grain. When the price of grain rises, people eat more fruits and vegetables. (In fact, in some parts of the world, wheat and rice are the only “Giffen goods” – a product in which decreasing prices lead to decreasing demand.)  Young people and the poor in America, more than others, eat less fresh fruit when prices rise.

In some respect, I hope the ag subsidies act to spread farming out, rather than concentrating it.

NewScientist‘s Penny Sarchet reports on the recent Kasane Conference on The Illegal Wildlife Trade (11 April 2015 print “Consumers starting to reject ivory“) (paywall) held in Botswana where a change in the use of such things as ivory and rhino horn has been identified:

But the demand for wildlife parts is increasingly coming from the luxury goods market, rather than traditional medicine.

“Fundamentally it’s about luxury items and greed,” says Roberts. For example, where bear bile and gall bladders were once used for medicine, they are now added to luxury cosmetics. “Traditional medicine practitioners are becoming less important in the consumption of wildlife parts, and it’s transferring more to the big businessmen,” he says.

The phrase “less important” is relative, of course; if consumption by one audience grows while the other holds steady, or increases but more slowly, then the latter appears smaller while fundamentally, it’s growing.  This report does not clarify that point.  And since “traditional medicine” (TM) has a non-rational basis, it’s difficult to accurately deduce if TM practicioners would be able to substitute non-threatened wild life parts (say, deer horn) for those of threatened animals, unlike rationally based practices, where the emphasis is on efficacy rather than tradition, so if the substitution works, then all is well.

Back to the conference.  Speakers at the conference feel they’re beginning to make headway:

According to [Adam Roberts of Born Free USA], the demand for ivory seems to be falling. Each year the Chinese government releases a portion of its stockpile of ivory for legal use, but only 80 per cent of the most recent allocation has been taken up.

At least publicly, my perceptions of efforts in this arena have been prevention of harvesting.  But now the call is changing:

At a conference in Botswana last month, delegations from 32 countries called for a better understanding of the market forces that drive the illegal wildlife trade. It’s a big improvement on a similar declaration issued last year, which failed to discuss how to reduce demand for products like rhino horn.

It seems like common sense, but also an enormous effort.

The IFAW itself felt the last year has not gone so well, though:

While highlighting some important progress in the fight against illegal wildlife trade, a high-level government meeting in Botswana will most likely be remembered by the broken promises of almost half of the countries who just 13 months ago committed themselves to a global effort to end the scourge.

“It is appalling that countries like Chad, Cameroon and Democratic Republic of Congo, with elephant populations under extreme threat from poaching for their ivory, can’t show any headway whatsoever in slowing the slaughter,” said Jason Bell, Director of the IFAW Elephant Programme.

“In Garamba National Park in the DRC, 30 elephants were killed in the week running up to this conference, and 68 have been killed in the park in the past two months alone.”

(Update: Title change)

The NFL drama continues with a judge’s approval of the proposed settlement.  CNN provided the initial coverage here:

The agreement provides up to $5 million per retired player for serious medical conditions associated with repeated head trauma.

While the lawsuit was a combination of hundreds of actions brought by more than 5,000 ex-NFL players, the settlement applies to all players who retired on or before July 7, 2014, according to Judge Anita Brody’s 132-page decision.

It also applies to the family members of players who died before that date.

There is a maximum for each player, but no total cumulative maximum; an earlier version of the deal called for $765 million.  This deal is not acceptable to all members of the class, as the family of the late Chicago Bear player Dave Duerson will be filing suit against the agreement.

Family lawyer Thomas Demetrio objects to the exclusion of future awards for CTE, the brain trauma that some call “the signature disease of football.”

Not everyone is convinced.  Vice Sports published this article, by Patrick Hruby, is a trifle dated but suggests there’s more liability than admitted to:

To the contrary, it’s designed to save the NFL as much money as possible, to the tune of billions of dollars of potential brain damage liability. If the deal goes through, many sick retirees won’t get paid.

Seems to me, this settlement gives visibility to the formidable condition an ex-player may find himself in, and this, you’d think, must impact a prospective player.  However, I think that’s a bit optimistic (or pessimistic, depending on your viewpoint), as young men hardly ever think, and since many see the NFL as one of their few paths to a secure future, I suspect this will only lessen the stature of the sport, rather than resulting in its abandonment.  After all, back when it started, players were actually dying.  A few rules changes and that – mostly – stopped.

And I’ll just be surprised if a technical fix for headgear comes along.  You snap someone’s head around like that and the brain’ll go slosh and start bruising no matter what you’re wearing.

If you’re a retired NFL player, here’s the website.

CNN Money:

Coach (COH) is in the midst of a massive overhaul of its handbag and shoe line. The general consensus is the brand got too overexposed on Main Street. Customers grew accustomed to buying the bags at outlet shops and Coach lost its luxury cache in the process.

Damn.  I wish I had a luxury cache to lose.

Later: They fixed it.

Alex Seitz-Wald at MSNBC reports on Hillary’s visit to New Hampshire for a visit with local Democratic officials:

On campaign finance, Clinton said even total disclosure of campaign money is “not enough” on its own.

“What good does it do to disclose if somebody’s about to spend $100 million to promote their own interest and to defeat candidates who would stand up against them? What good does that do?” Clinton said.

If elected president, Clinton said she would try to re-make the Supreme Court so it would overturn the controversial 2010 Citizens United decision, which paved the way for super PACs and other outside groups to pour money into politics. “If I can get enough appointments as president, to put different people on the court, maybe that would work,” she said. But she added that retired justice John Paul Stevens told her the only way he thought real reform could happen would be through a constitutional amendment.

Clinton has made getting “unaccountable money” out of the political system part of one of the “four big fights” of her presidential campaign.

Rigging the SCOTUS would probably lead to hard feels on the right, even though they have tried to do the same.

Emphasis on tried.  Remember, the Chief Justice himself did not play to the script when National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, aka the ObamaCare case, came in front of the court, affirming the government’s right to require a tax or get healthcare insurance.  There are similar disappointments in David Souter, Anthony Kennedy, and no doubt many other SC judges over the years.

Add in the fact that the SC is notoriously reluctant to overturn previous SC decisions, and I don’t really see this approach really working.

A Constitutional Amendment is possible, but the wording would have to be very careful.  I wonder if the lawmakers ever run simulations with the most clever lawyers they can find, just to discover the loopholes and eliminate them, or if they just sit around and discuss things.

John Sexton at Breitbart.com gives a short history, minus any hysteria; however, the comments section predictably goes off the boards (one reason I won’t open a comments section).

Joel Gehrke at National Standard also covers the issue, but barely mentions the money angle:

When the Supreme Court heard the case in 2009, President Obama’s attorneys argued that the ban was constitutional — even going to far as to say that the government could ban certain books that were to be published close to an election.

“Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. asked, for instance, whether a campaign biography in book form could be banned,” the New York Times reported at the time. “[The government’s lawyer] said yes, so long as it was paid for with a corporation’s general treasury money, as opposed to its political action committee.”

Instead, the court ruled that the government cannot deprive people of the right to engage in political speech simply because they have formed a corporation.

And that forms the basis of the money angle.  Meanwhile, The Daily Beast says Hillary will have to credit Citizens United for getting her elected:

The 2012 presidential election between President Obama and challenger Mitt Romney was the most expensive campaign in history, with each candidate’s election team and supporting groups raising $1.123 and $1.019 billion respectively. Clinton’s campaign intends to surpass that entire amount on its own, and she is allowed to do so because of a case brought to the Supreme Court because a conservative group wanted to have a larger impact on hopefully preventing her from winning the presidency in 2008. The irony is so rich.

Who knows if Clinton will be able to defeat the GOP and Republicans at the game they insisted on creating, but she most likely will at least be able to match them dollar-for-dollar in the general election.

Perhaps this explains the relatively quiet response on conservative sites: a deepening foreboding.  Remember Lloyd Bentsen’s legendary put-down of Dan Quayle at the VP debate?

Imagine Hillary facing Marco Rubio in a debate, smiling sweetly, and then tearing him apart. I may favor a different Democratic candidate, but I think she might have the best delivery.

(h/t Kerry Eleveld @ The Daily Kos)

Inaugurating a new series dedicated to the weirdnesses of state laws.  I suppose they’re a reflection of the oddballs who sometimes end up in the State legislatures … but it takes a whole collection of them to pass these laws.

Anyways, first up is Florida.  I find in my morning an invitation to sign a petition.  Turns out Florida REQUIRES … well, here’s the quote:

Florida gambling facilities don’t even want to hold greyhound races in the first place — but they’re required to by a state law that mandates dog racing.

Really makes you wonder who benefited from that state law.  If you’re interested in signing the petition to repeal this law, here’s a link.

The Trans Pacific Partnership is billed as the next big trade agreement, and now Fast Track Authority is being requested. One little problem: it’s apparently not to be discussed in public.  Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is outraged and published a letter outlining his objections:

1)    The minimum wage in Vietnam is roughly 56 cents an hour.  It has been reported that Malaysia uses modern-day slave labor in its electronics industry. If the TPP goes into effect, do you have an estimate as to how many jobs in this country will be lost as American corporations move to Vietnam and Malaysia where they can pay workers less than $1 an hour?

2)    Right now, the TPP includes what is called an Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism, which would allow foreign investors the right to use international tribunals as a forum for seeking compensation for laws and regulations that impact their ability to profit from investments. For example, under an ISDS provision of an agreement, a French firm is suing Egypt under an international tribunal for raising its minimum wage. Uruguay and Australia are both being sued for imposing requirements on how tobacco products are packaged. Eli Lilly is suing Canada for $500 million for “violating its obligations to foreign investors under the North American Free Trade Agreement by allowing its courts to invalidate patents for two of its drugs.” Transcanada is considering suing the U.S. under an international tribunal for refusing to approve the Keystone Pipeline. Quebec is being sued under an international tribunal for banning fracking.  After the TPP goes into effect, could a Federal, state, or local government be forced to pay compensation to a foreign company if an international tribunal rules that this company was prevented from earning an expected future profit due to environmental, labor, or consumer laws or regulations?

3)    I have been told that the TPP would force the U.S. government to waive “Buy American” procurement rules for countries that are in the TPP.  It is my understanding that under the TPP the U.S. government could not choose to buy American products over Vietnamese or Malaysian products that are made without meeting prevailing wage requirements.  Is this true, and if so, how many Americans will lose their jobs as a result?

4)    It has been reported that 100% of Vietnamese seafood imports contained antibiotics that are not approved in the U.S.  As you know, seafood imports are a common source of pathogens. Have any studies been done to determine what kind of health hazards the American people will be exposed to by the importation of these products if the TPP is implemented?

5)    Today, many millions of people living in the Asia-Pacific region benefit from access to life-saving medications at affordable prices.  Unfortunately, what is known about the current TPP draft text suggests that the agreement would threaten this access because the pharmaceutical companies could delay the time in which generic drugs could be put on the market.  Doctors without Borders has said that “the TPP has the potential to become the most harmful trade pact ever for access to medicines.” How many people will lose access to life-saving drugs for cancer and HIV if the TPP goes into effect?

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) seconds him.

The Administration says I’m wrong – that there’s nothing to worry about. They say the deal is nearly done, and they are making a lot of promises about how the deal will affect workers, the environment, and human rights. Promises – but people like you can’t see the actual deal.

For more than two years now, giant corporations have had an enormous amount of access to see the parts of the deal that might affect them and to give their views as negotiations progressed. But the doors stayed locked for the regular people whose jobs are on the line.

If most of the trade deal is good for the American economy, but there’s a provision hidden in the fine print that could help multinational corporations ship American jobs overseas or allow for watering down of environmental or labor rules, fast track would mean that Congress couldn’t write an amendment to fix it. It’s all or nothing.

Charles Morris, former banker and lawyer, doesn’t trust China in the least:

China’s destructive brand of competition is especially grating. Consider the example of Nucor, one of the world’s most efficient steelmakers. Nucor uses only 0.4 hours of labor to make a ton of steel, says Dan DiMicco, former chief executive, or about $8 to $10 in wages. It relies mostly on scrap steel for its raw material, while China uses iron ore, which is more expensive, and its shipping cost to the United States is about $40 a ton.

Even if Chinese labor were free, DiMicco maintains in his new book, “American Made: Why Making Things Will Return Us to Greatness,” there is no way the Chinese steel producers could undersell Nucor in its home market. Yet, over much of the past year, low-cost Chinese steel has flooded US markets, which, DiMicco says, is clear evidence of illegal “dumping.” Beijing, of course, says it complies with all fair trade rules.

But China plays by different rules. Its powerful manufacturing enterprises are largely state-owned, and blessed with a host of subsidies, including Party-determined prices for financings, land purchases, taxes and fuel.

Worse than that, in recent years, the Chinese government has been pressuring European and US companies to transfer proprietary technologies as a condition of winning major contracts.

Joe Firestone at New Economic Perspectives doesn’t like it one bit, either, based on a WikiLeaks missive.

An ambitious 12 nation trade accord pushed by President Obama would allow foreign corporations to sue the United States government for actions that undermine their investment “expectations” and hurt their business, according to a classified document.

Why are we negotiating the TPP at all? Why is it the business of the Representatives of the people of the United States in Congress to support agreements that will mitigate the political risks borne by American businesses who chose to invest in other nations, as well as the political risks borne by foreign corporations, who choose to invest in the United States? Why is it their business to provide protection against such risks to foreign corporations beyond the protections we provide to our own corporations?

The “expectations” of business investors are their own business, not the public’s business; and there’s no reason why either the government of the United States or the governments of other nations should have to accommodate themselves to these expectations. If it is the will of the people of a nation as expressed through their representatives to pass legislation that destroys the “expectations” of business investors, then that’s just too bad for the investors.

Private businesses have no right to expect that their governments will protect them against risks that they alone choose to take, and that they alone will profit from. Risk is part of the game of investing. It’s business.

Paul Krugman is almost indifferent:

And you know what? That’s O.K. It’s far from clear that the T.P.P. is a good idea. It’s even less clear that it’s something on which President Obama should be spending political capital. I am in general a free trader, but I’ll be undismayed and even a bit relieved if the T.P.P. just fades away.

Why? Basically, old-fashioned trade deals are a victim of their own success: there just isn’t much more protectionism to eliminate. …

Meanwhile, opponents portray the T.P.P. as a huge plot, suggesting that it would destroy national sovereignty and transfer all the power to corporations. This, too, is hugely overblown. Corporate interests would get somewhat more ability to seek legal recourse against government actions, but, no, the Obama administration isn’t secretly bargaining away democracy.

Alyssa Burgin and Bob Cash at the Monitor are quite alarmed:

Congress will vote on it, but our representatives had no part in its making. It was largely written behind the closed doors of trans-national corporations, its details hidden away, not just from the public and the press, but from our representatives. Only a few lawmakers in Congress have seen it and under a threat of legal action have been forbidden to share what they saw with the American people. Meanwhile, 600 U.S. corporate advisers were given free access to the text as it was being negotiated.

I can’t help but wonder if a “secret law” can be held against US citizens who break it – ignorance of the law isn’t an excuse, after all.  But the entire secrecy aspect is enough to turn me off.  Public debate is an important part of improving our laws and our public lives.  TPP appears to be lacking that important ingredient.

(h/t Tasini @ The Daily Kos)

CNN covers the historic confirmation of the nomination of Loretta Lynch to Attorney General of the United States:

Loretta Lynch’s father, Lorenzo A. Lynch, was in the Senate gallery watching when the historic vote took place confirming her daughter as the first African American female attorney general.

Ooops.  There you are, chest all puffed out about your daughter, and one of the biggest news organizations in the world can’t get the easy details right.

A reader reacts to my post on writing a sentence, and we engage in a bit of back and forth:

If I ever dig out from my self-inflicted condition of clutter-itis, and actually attain a measure of clarity in both space and time in my residence, I am going to have that post painted across one entire wall of my office.

Seriously.

Period.

Perhaps, in the interim, I will make a few refrigerator magnets from key phrases (fortunately my “front” door is steel and thus a lovely repository of inspirational messages before I leave in the morning.)

Or, perhaps, I will frame certain phrases and thoughts, and pepper them around my office to serve as both muses and mentors.

I must grab these thoughts and hold them tight.

I must grudgingly accept some, and whole-heartedly embrace others.

Would that everything I read was written the way you wrote that post.  But, I am a particular and rare-ish audience.  The mass market crowd will inevitably demand the occasional, or perhaps frequent, short declarative sentence.  But I hope you keep writing the way you do, with Deb as social conscience and compassionate guide, because more of the world needs to see what language can do. Let that unusual twist of phrase stir some trembling neuron…. Not the neurons that are following the plot, but that other area, where the pure intellect resides and appreciates, dare I say it, art for art’s sake.

More on this later.

Oh drat.  I just realized that I said “period” and then I rambled on anyway.

I’m incorrigible.

Oh my.  I feel … very … buttery.

That.
Is my job.

And you know that’s true too, right?  The reader had darn well better express some sincere appreciation from time to time.

I dunno.  Does the true writer HAVE TO WRITE, regardless of the reaction of the audience?  Or does the true writer have to have an audience reaction in order to understand how to improve the writing to the point where the audience shows a positive reaction?  Or is any reaction, any acknowledgement of the writer’s mere existence, enough?  Is it the act of putting words on paper medium, or the hormones released at the very thought of having intellectually stimulated some other creature in this alleged universe of ours?

I think a writer has to write, but most writers, like most humans, need to feel valued and that valuation can take the form of recognition, remuneration, simple response or any of a number of other “re” words. Whether or not you need the audience to like you, or what you wrote, is entirely up to the writer.  I know lots of people who write just to provoke and they seem to enjoy being unliked. But they HATE being ignored.

There is something different, though, about your angle on improvement.  Wanting to write a successful book appears, I’m suddenly realizing, to be a different animal altogether.  It’s not blogging, it’s not correspondence, it’s not journaling or educating or critiquing.  And now I’m starting to ponder all those other facets.

But wanting a reaction in order to improve how the reader experiences the writing.  That’s  …why.. that’s awfully nice of you, Hue.

And it goes beyond just wanting a one-time stimulation. It’s .. it’s wanting to develop a relationship, yes?  Even if only for the course of that one book. But, one hopes, throughout the writing of many more.  But it’s an engagement at any rate.  Not a performance.

All that said, I did have a friend who would write pages upon pages of what amounted to diary entries.  And then she would take them out of her …hold on to your hat…. typewriter….

and tear them up.

I was flabbergasted when she told me this.  I admit, I’m a little too fond of my own writing, but there’s just something heartbreaking about expressing yourself with the written word and then destroying it.  Expressing yourself with the intention of destroying it.  I dunno. Maybe there’s an official therapy based on that. But if I take the time to write it down, I can’t see wasting it by obliterating the effort.

Of course I have a counter.  I have looked back on something I wrote a long time ago and HATED it.  But I only destroyed such a thing once and I’ve regretted it ever since.

At the very least I should have just edited it to be less objectionable.

Oh, they hate being ignored.  That, in fact, is how I treated ruggies back in the day – erase the damage, don’t say a thing.  I ordered the aides not to say a thing, just do the necessary.  Ruggies HATED the lack of attention, and would disappear quickly.

Yes, a relationship; perhaps not the nicest of relationships.  I recall reading somewhere that someone said writing a novel consisted of withholding important information from the reader, and that is certainly true from those two and a half novels Deb & I worked on – anything from major characters to just small little character traits that turn out to be a fulcrum of a novel.  So the relationship is possibly tempestuous, devious, and no doubt a little manipulative at one level – but entirely honest at another.

But all writing has an audience – at least of the writer themselves.  Themself?  But a relationship with oneself is not usually exciting; so we write a letter to our cousin, another letter to the editor of the newspaper, then we step off the curb and try to write for some larger audience, convey ideas and relationships between ideas and then we stumble into the question of Why Read Stories (which I will someday write about on the blog) and how that applies to the would-be storyteller, and that has to be dealt with … or not.  The natural storyteller probably just knows the answer, or doesn’t need it; but I am not natural, and ask all those oddball questions.

Destroying her output .. .did she say why?  Perhaps the output reflected some inner daemon she was trying to excise, and this was the procedure – capture it on paper, burn the paper.

Hold yer breath, lady, or it’ll get right back in ya.

Progress is made on this project:

Thanks to RightWingWatch.org, we get more of Michelle’s thinking on today:

In an interview with End Times broadcaster Jan Markell that was aired this weekend, former Rep. Michele Bachmann said that people should “not despair but rejoice” that the world has reached the “midnight hour” and that “we in our lifetimes potentially could see Jesus Christ returning to earth and the Rapture of the church.”

Well, she certainly is in multitudinous company, from prophets of centuries ago right up to the Jim Jones cult who more or less decided the midnight hour had arrived and left feet first.  Of course, the logic can be fascinating and impeccable; as in most arguments, the real problem lies in root assumptions.

(h/t Mike Finley)