And not an Oxford comma, either, but simple old-fashioned comma, without which we’re faced with a bloody plague!
The above is so much worse than this other plague, also brought on by foolish impulsiveness when it comes to commas. We can corral these with a few Roombas, though.
I hope they haven’t gone out of business.
A post title which would also apply to quantum mechanics, but not in this case. Instead, it’s about a nearly 300 page book dedicated to a single cartoon strip. I haven’t actually read it (my unread stack is too high already), so let’s go to Pat Padua’s review in Spectrum Culture back in October ’17:
You’re heard of the 33 1/3rd series of small books written about a single beloved album? Cartoonists Mark Newgarden and Paul Karasik take the deep reading approach even further with a 276-page book about a three-panel comic strip—a single, three-panel Nancy strip published on August 8, 1959. How to Read Nancy is a nearly 300-page expansion of an article that the authors wrote in 1988 for the collection, The Best of Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy that seemed to be the definitive analysis of an often-dismissed art form. It turns out that article was just the beginning.
Coming under microscopic analysis is a strip that depicts a variation on the old “hose gag.” Nancy, whose face we never see in this particular strip, watches from a distance as Sluggo, armed with a water pistol, confronts neighborhood kids with the Western cliché, “Draw, you varmint!” (Crucially, as the authors note, punctuation is merely implied.) In the final panel, Sluggo approaches his goil with the same warning; but unbeknownst to the would-be gunslinger, Nancy’s holster sheaths the end of a long garden hose ready to burst his bubble.
It seems simple enough, but those three panels, with their sharply-defined lines, selective blacks and significant negative space, hold a world of context and myriad decisions that make it work so efficiently.
The ability to isolate the aesthetic elements of a particular art form from a single specimen can often help clarify the process to a successful rendition of other members of that art form. They can also speak to those elements which derive from the evolutionary drives to which we’re all subject in this cultural context. While that may seems a sterile enough sentiment, there’s something satisfying in understanding why a particular art work really works – or if it’s admirers are really just poseurs.
And, really, I wasn’t aware that Nancy had such a large following.
On WaPo’s The Plum Line Gary Sargent believes he sees the public repudiating Trump for his belittling of certain governmental institutions in a recent poll:
It’s tempting to see this polling as little more than a reflection of Trump’s deep unpopularity. But numbers this stark suggest something else may be going on: that the depth of Trump’s contempt for our institutions and the rule of law is becoming clear to the public, and Americans are recoiling at it.
This contempt is everywhere. You see it in Trump’s double standard toward due process, documented by Adam Serwer, in which he rages at the raiding of his lawyer’s office while cheering on law enforcement abuses directed at Muslims, immigrants and African Americans. You see it in his instinct toward firing Rosenstein for the express reason that he is conducting himself by the book, rather than politicizing law enforcement to Trump’s benefit. Trump views law enforcement as primarily an instrument for carrying out his political will. He has told us this in his own words again and again and again.
Trump’s rage-tweets about Comey confirm all of this. And the public repudiation of Trump comes after he and his allies have waged an extraordinary public campaign in the right-wing media and in Congress, both of which have been weaponized to create a fictional narrative designed to shield Trump from accountability, by casting the Russia investigation and the institutional processes undergirding it as hopelessly corrupted to their core. Yet the public is siding with the rule of law and our institutions, and against Trump. As the Trump-Comey feud comes to the fore, this is the larger narrative unfolding in the background.
Personally, I’m not all that impressed with a mere 65% of the surveyed agreeing with the investigation, but it’s better than it might be. I’m also not sure I see how Gary connects that poll, which is mainly concerned with Mueller’s investigation, with the greater question of the public’s general understanding of the importance of these institutions, and how we structure government at the highest levels.
In The New York Times, Paul Krugman excoriates not only Paul Ryan and the barbarian hordes (my loose interpretation of Krugman, anyways) who boost him, but also the journalists who made him look good:
The answer, all too often, has involved what we might call motivated gullibility. Centrists who couldn’t find real examples of serious, honest conservatives lavished praise on politicians who played that role on TV. Paul Ryan wasn’t actually very good at faking it; true fiscal experts ridiculed his “mystery meat” budgets. But never mind: The narrative required that the character Ryan played exist, so everyone pretended that he was the genuine article.
And let me say that the same bothsidesism that turned Ryan into a fiscal hero played a crucial role in the election of Donald Trump. How did the most corrupt presidential candidate in American history eke out an Electoral College victory? There were many factors, any one of which could have turned the tide in a close election. But it wouldn’t have been close if much of the news media hadn’t engaged in an orgy of false equivalence.
I have not studied Speaker Ryan closely, so I can’t speak comprehensively. The few times I’ve paid attention to him, he’s struck me as a buffoon – long-time readers may realize that. Between his mismanagement of the major bills in the current Congress, his incompetent grasp on the basic principles of insurance, and his adoration of Ayn Rand, it’s fairly clear that Ryan, who’s been a member of Congress since age 28, hasn’t had a lot of engagement with the realities of life.
But the facet of Krugman’s column that really caught my attention actually had nothing to do with politics, and everything to do with the journalist’s behavior. Why? Because it’s a familiar plaint in another context, namely that of the skeptical community. Very often, the leading skeptics complain that a journalist’s analysis is, well, too balanced, although I suspect the word they’d use in a undiplomatic moment would be credulous.
Just for a taste, consider serious articles that might compare evidence-based medicine therapy for some medical condition to that recommended by apitherapy enthusiasts. Consider a comparison of evolutionary biology to the latest attempts by creationists to explain dinosaurs, such as hypergolic dinosaurs co-existing with humans. Or an article on the last electromagnetic gizmo for detecting ghosts vs the electrical engineer explaining what they’re really detecting.
Articles like these have been and continue to be published, much to the chagrin of the skeptics.
Look, like everyone else, skeptics have a particular world view, and often have little patience for those folks whose view that clash with it. For them, taking subjects as varied as Uri Geller’s spoon-bending, ghosts, bleeding statues, chiropractic, homeopathy, creationism, and dozens of others are a waste of time, and, worse, will legitimize them in the eyes of their readers. But they do have a bigger point than most in their favor: they have evidence and science on their side.
When they talk about journalistic shortcomings, they admit that it’s a rare journalist at your local newspaper who happens to have a science degree on the side. Such folks exist, but they tend to write for science magazines for the common citizen, publications that very rarely take ludicrous views seriously. Your general journalist rarely has applicable expertise when it comes to appraising mumbo-jumbo dressed up in science’s stolen clothes, or in the priestly robes of religion. And there doesn’t yet seem to be a set of rules available to journalists for making such determinations. After all, they do have to consider the source of those rules, don’t they?
The same problem applies to politics. Long time readers will know that I agree with Krugman’s sentiments in that NYT article: the GOP leadership (by which I mostly mean their elected members of legislatures at the state and federal levels) consists of second- and third-raters, the power-hungry and the power-mongers, the ideologues who find it easier to shout out their ideologies than to consider how reality really doesn’t support what they want. It’s not as if the Democrats are angels: every political party of any weight inevitably attracts cockroaches, and we get to see them every year when they suddenly resign from their positions over sexual or financial “improprieties,” which is a very clean word for what are generally rather dirty and shameful acts.
But, speaking as an independent, by and large the Democrats currently seem to bring a better class of person to the table, smart people with ideals and looking forward to the future, rather than ideologies and a yearning for a past that never was. Paul Ryan, for example, advocates amateurism, a doomed philosophy in a world where specialization yields better results – as does high level forms of crowd-sourcing. This is not uncommon among a GOP which denies realities that clash with its ideologies.
But the problem for the journalist is this: the GOP remains one of the top two political parties in a country whose elective system downplays the #3 party. When faced with a candidate from the GOP who appears to be a third-rater, such as Saccone in PA-18, what is our journalist to do? Tell them to take a leap because they’re inferior?
That’d be media bias.
Fact-checking is one approach, I’m sure. Perhaps demanding coherency might be another. We have occasionally seen candidates getting coverage despite doing nothing more than repeating talking points designed to stimulate the conservative viewer’s fight or flight reaction. Telling them that it’s either full sentences addressing the subject at hand, or the only coverage they’ll receive on this occasion is an announcement that the candidate, or elected official, was incapable of coherent speech or thought.
But I’d love to hear how a real journalist thinks the media should cover these third-raters in order to avoid reasonable media bias charges.
Remember this place from last year? An unwanted office space in Arden Hills, MN, is pushed over for some whippersnapper of a replacement, no doubt. Recently we happened to drive by, and took some pictures of that replacement:
Senior condominiums, partway done!
Source: Military & Aerospace
I noticed on the broadcast national news tonight that we, the United States, are supposedly prepping to strike Syria in retaliation for, allegedly, performing a chemical attack on its own citizens in Douma.
My first reaction was to wonder about the reactions of leaders around the world. It’s certainly true that American political leaders have a long history of using military strikes and related activities to distract attention from unsavory political incidents, as was once noted on Lawfare (I blogged about it but am not going to bother to dig it out) in a statistical study.
But the level of cynicism attending such incidents are inversely proportional to the general level of respect for the President in office at the time. For instance, when President Obama struck at Libya, his world-wide prestige was fairly high, and I believe that, to the extent that it applies and matters, he received a fair hearing in the various world capitals, and it accrued to the United States’ advantage.
President Trump, despite any of his Twitter-bound assertions to the contrary, has garnered very little respect world-wide. Unless the United States releases the evidence that shows the Syrian government is responsible for the attack, which seems unlikely as it might reveal top-secret data sources, my belief is that most world leaders will view this military strike, if in fact it takes place, with the greatest skepticism and cynicism.
This doesn’t just debit President Trump’s prestige and influence, but everyone in the United States, because our system selected Trump to be President. It suggests that our system is vulnerable to electing people who are deceitful, untruthful, and motivated by base urges unworthy of being part of the leadership of the last remaining superpower.
That leaves us diminished, our influence no longer evaluated for its moral dimension, but only for its military and commercial facets. Thus have the Evangelicals cursed the United States.
It doesn’t help that we don’t seem to be remorseful for this mistake. The Gallup Presidential Approval poll shows Trump with 41% approval, which is ridiculously low, yet is actually a rise from earlier catastrophic depths.
So if & when those strikes occur, not only will American prestige risk sinking even further, that drop may be permanent. I’m at a loss as to how successors to Trump can hope to recover the lost prestige and influence we can have on a world that often needs moral leadership.
Has Trump condemned this world to a final era of rancorous international relations, unrelieved by American resources and leadership that we formerly have provided? Thinking back, we have made many mistakes in the last 70 years: Vietnam, Richard Nixon, Bush II, the Iraq War, climate change denial, evolutionary theory denial … the beat goes on. Balancing those are the positives, such as scientific progress, exemplars of political fairness from time to time, and the great resources we can provide when disaster strikes.
But I fear the world may stop looking to the United States for political leadership.
In a post on the sudden pardon of Scooter Libby, Steve Benen remarks:
Postscript: Trump lashed out at former FBI Director James Comey this morning as a “proven leaker and liar.” In reality, Scooter Libby actually is a convicted leaker and liar – who’s apparently poised to receive a pardon from Trump.
I so hope a reporter asks Press Secretary Sanders, or even President Trump, that If former FBI Directory James Comey is a proven leaker and liar, then will he also be issued a proactive pardon, much like proven leaker and liar Scooter Libby?
Pellucid:
- allowing the maximum passage of light, as glass; translucent.
- clear or limpid:
pellucid waters.- clear in meaning, expression, or style:
a pellucid way of writing.
Noted in “What on earth is Trump saying?” Max Boot, WaPo:
Trump’s ramblings about Vladimir Putin were positively pellucid in their clarity compared with his March 29 comments on the U.S.-South Korea trade deal: “So we’ve redone it, and that’s going to level the playing field on steel and cars and trucks coming into this country. And I may hold it up till after a deal is made with North Korea. Does everybody understand that? You know why, right? You know why? Because it’s a very strong card.”
Yep, this falls into the Lookie what we accomplished! category, followed by the slap upside the head. Fred Pearce of NewScientist (31 March 2018, paywall) has a review of how corporations are trying to take advantage of green-washing, the movement to make what they do sustainable and socially positive. I loved this observation:
Pepsi proudly outlined how 27 per cent of its turnover is now in “nutritious” food and beverages that are helping meet the SDGs [Sustainable Development Goals]. “In sub-Saharan Africa, we provide nutritious food to undernourished people,” said a spokesperson. That left the rather uncomfortable impression that 73 per cent of its products, sold in Africa and elsewhere, are not nutritious.
I’m sure Pepsi can argue that far more than 27% of their output is nutritious, but given that this is Pepsi, it has that piquant flavor of someone falling face first into the pig-sty in their Sunday best.
The Guardian notes that our effluvia is choking our support systems:
River systems around the world are coursing with over-the-counter and prescription drugs waste which harms the environment, researchers have found.
If trends persist, the amount of pharmaceutical effluence leaching into waterways could increase by two-thirds before 2050, scientists told the European Geosciences Union conference in Vienna on Tuesday.
“A large part of the freshwater ecosystems is potentially endangered by the high concentration of pharmaceuticals,” said Francesco Bregoli, a researcher at the IHE Delft Institute for Water Education in the Netherlands, and leader of an international team that developed a method for tracking drug pollution “hotspots”.
For an engineer, this sounded interesting.
Bregoli and his team developed a computer model to predict current and future pharma pollution based on criteria such as population densities, sewage systems and drugs sales.
They compared the results to data gathered from 1,400 spot measurements of diclofenac toxicity taken from around the world. Most of the data points were in Europe and North America.
Pollution levels are likely to be substantially higher in much of Latin America, Africa and Asia where less than a quarter of waste water is treated, and with technology unable to filter out most pharmaceuticals.
Technology alone cannot solve the problem, said Bregoli.
“We need a substantial reduction in consumption,” he said.
Lots of options for reducing consumption, but none are all that attractive.
Neither do they seem all that likely to occur in the short-term, except, sadly, #5.
On 38 North, Jongsoo Lee wonders if North Korea is trading in its old leadership for a newer version:
The recent developments since Kim Jong Un’s New Year’s speech raise the possibility of a generational shift in the leadership and political culture of North Korea at the highest level. Combined with a recent significant increase in the role for market forces in the North Korean economy, this generational change may present an opportunity for the global community to spur North Korea on a more peaceful and prosperous path, especially if Kim emerges as a North Korean Deng Xiaoping or even Mikhail Gorbachev.
The most visible manifestation of this generational shift was Kim’s decision to dispatch his younger sister Kim Yo Jong to meet with South Korean President Moon Jae-in during the recent Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. That Kim entrusted a relatively inexperienced young woman, barely 30 years old, with this critically important mission came as a surprise because it was largely unprecedented in North Korean history. There have been a few prominent women in the top North Korean leadership—Kim Kyong Hui, Kim Jong Un’s aunt, being the most recent example. However, Kim Yo Jong is the first woman to not only play such a high-profile public role, but also to do so at such a young age in such a strict patriarchal culture. Kim Yo Jong, who was educated along with Kim Jong Un in Switzerland and is likely her brother’s most trusted political confidant, is now among the most powerful figures in North Korea after Kim himself and possibly his young wife, Ri Sol Ju. It is reported that Kim Yo Jong has been the choreographer of the Kim regime’s public image. It was apparently Kim Yo Jong who encouraged her brother to cultivate a friendship with Dennis Rodman in an effort to “humanize” his image. On her visit to South Korea, she captured the world’s attention and won the hearts of many South Koreans with her winning smiles, youthful charm and western-style dress.
Sounds like there’s a firm hand on the wheel in North Korea, so President Trump is unlikely to overawe or manipulate Kim. If Jongsoo is right, then what does this portend for the future of North Korea? A bloody-minded culture, as indicated by the assassination of Jong-Un’s half brother a couple of years ago, mixed with a confident leadership and an economy moving towards a market approach could be a pathological business. Just think of the Mob taking care of rivals.
Or at least I hope it is. From the CNN front page:
GOP wages bipartisan attack on James Comey
What, the GOP is bifurcating itself?
Jeff Rosen has been guest-blogging on The Volokh Conspiracy, presenting parts of his new book, William Howard Taft, a biography of the late President. From what I’ve read so far, WHT was a Constitutional scholar who, as President, used that knowledge to guide himself with regards to what actions he could and could not take as President. I found this bit on a potential dustup between the United States and Mexico in 1911 both interesting and revealing:
But although [Mexican] President Diaz expected an invasion, Taft carefully instructed his commanders not to cross the Mexican border, believing that the President lacked the constitutional authority to declare war without Congressional approval. In the end, Congress refused to authorize an invasion and Taft kept the troops waiting at the border as a deterrent, resisting populist cries for war.
In acting with constitutional restraint at the Mexican border, Taft was putting the national interest above his partisan interests. When he read that four Americans had been killed in Mexico, his wife asked if there would be war. Taft replied, “I only know that I am going to do everything in my power to prevent one. Already there is a movement in the Grand Old Party” — he intoned the words sarcastically — “to utilize this trouble for party ends…. I am afraid I am a constant disappointment to my party. The fact of the matter is, the longer I am President the less of a party man I seem to become…. [I]t seems to me to be impossible to be a strict party man and serve the whole country impartially.”
Taft’s legalistic precision at the border evoked our greatest constitutionally minded president, Abraham Lincoln. In 1846, President James K. Polk sent troops to the Mexican border, in response to what he claimed was a Mexican invasion. Lincoln — elected later year as a young Whig Congressman — would introduce his famous “spot resolutions,” demanding that Polk identify the precise spot where blood had been shed, to establish it was on U.S. soil. (This earned him the nickname “Spotty Lincoln.”)
It’s a reminder that both party and citizens pay scant attention to the restrictions placed on us by the Constitution and Laws, no matter what the era. That’s why it’s important that we elect law-respecting citizens to all such positions, as they are the first and most important gate-keepers for such matters; laws are only as good as the people who are in charge of enforcing them.
I think Taft’s election to the office of the President forced him to look beyond his Party’s interests, because it became apparent the disasters which awaited the United States if he followed the self-centered interests of the Party. Would that Trump could learn such a lesson, eh?
Following up on the Nevada State Senator recall effort, plural, The Nevada Independent reports that the Nevada GOP has failed in its attempt to qualify for a special election to recall two Democratic State Senators:
Nevada election officials say that signatures for the two recall campaigns targeting Democratic state senators have failed to trigger a special election, though an appeal is possible.
According to correspondence sent to District Court Judge Jerry Wiese, the secretary of state and Clark County registrar of voters have determined that signatures submitted to recall state Sens. Joyce Woodhouse and Nicole Cannizzaro do not meet the threshold necessary to trigger a special election.
The full review also indicates that even if a higher court reverses Wiese’s earlier decision to count a batch of signature removal requests turned in after the recall petition was submitted, the number of valid signatures would still be too low to qualify for a special recall election.
I doubt the Nevada GOP has learned anything from the experience. That lesson, if there is one, will come at the next Nevada State Legislature election.
Carolyn Fiddler @ The Daily Kos has more.
The sun, the most massive object in the solar system, the source of the biggest wrinkle in the fabric of space, you’d think it would be easy to approach. Not so, as NewScientist (31 March 2018, paywall) makes clear in this interview with the planners of the Parker Solar Probe:
“When you launch a spacecraft from Earth, it possesses Earth’s orbital velocity, about 30 kilometres a second. To get to the sun, you have to cancel out most of that, slow it down so it can fall in under gravity. That takes a lot of energy. If you want to launch directly from Earth to the sun, you need 55 times more energy than to get to Mars. It’s more than twice even what you need to get to Pluto.
For five decades, we had been studying this problem on and off, and had come to the same conclusion: to get to the sun you need a Jupiter gravity assist. Instead of going directly to the sun, you launch out to Jupiter, and use its gravity to reduce the spacecraft’s speed so it falls inwards.
But at Jupiter’s distance, solar power won’t work: you need nuclear. Everyone said the problem was impossible, but I started looking at whether you might use the gravity of the inner planets instead. Venus is much smaller than Jupiter, so its gravity assist is much less. You can flyby multiple times, each time losing some velocity and falling in closer to the sun, but that means manoeuvring to pass Venus in the right orbit each time, which is tricky and uses up fuel.
Eventually, I found a trajectory with seven Venus assists that passes the sun 26 times, each time closer. The closer the probe falls, the faster it gets. At its fastest, it will be travelling at 200 kilometres a second – the fastest spacecraft ever.”
The spaceflight folks do get to work on some fascinating problems, don’t they? Sure wish I had been smart enough to give it a swing when I was younger. From the NASA introductory page:
Credit: NASA
Parker Solar Probe will use seven Venus flybys over nearly seven years to gradually shrink its orbit around the sun, coming as close as 3.7 million miles (5.9 million kilometers) to the sun, well within the orbit of Mercury and about eight times closer than any spacecraft has come before.
Parker Solar Probe is a true mission of exploration; for example, the spacecraft will go close enough to the sun to watch the solar wind speed up from subsonic to supersonic, and it will fly though the birthplace of the highest-energy solar particles. Still, as with any great mission of discovery, Parker Solar Probe is likely to generate more questions than it answers.
Which is not what this Senator is doing, whoever he is. Erick Erickson, the conservative who founded RedState, relays in The Resurgent an interview he conducted with an unnamed GOP Senator while treading the aisles of a grocery store:
“I say a lot of shit on TV defending him, even over this. But honestly, I wish the motherf*cker would just go away. We’re going to lose the House, lose the Senate, and lose a bunch of states because of him. All his supporters will blame us for what we have or have not done, but he hasn’t led. He wakes up in the morning, sh*ts all over Twitter, sh*ts all over us, sh*ts all over his staff, then hits golf balls. F*ck him. Of course, I can’t say that in public or I’d get run out of town.”
Sigh. Misplaced loyalty, party over country. If this politician really wants to look like a leader, then do what Senator McCain does – criticize the President when he screws up. If the GOP leadership would do that instead of simpering, the GOP would be in a lot better shape for the upcoming midterms.
But they’re caught up in their right-wing psychosis, and don’t really get what it means to lead in a democratic republic.
The rest of the interview is a bit of a hoot, I must say.
The announcement by Speaker of the House Ryan (R-WI) that he’s retiring at the end of this term suggests that the most extreme Speaker we’ve seen in a century has discovered the party is zooming along to the right, and has passed him by.
One of the attributes of a right-wing extremist party is the hunt for a strong-man to lead them in preference to the complex, slow-moving structure of a democracy or republic. After all, the end point of the right-wing, the terminus of the right side of the political spectrum, is fascism, wherein the strongest person who, non-incidentally, happens to be best at ignoring all rules and conventions and laws in their relentless gathering of power, becomes the all-powerful leader who can do things for his followers.
In this case, the extremist base of the GOP has, ironically, selected one of the weakest Presidents in modern history as its flag bearer, and left Speaker Ryan with little power or influence. Since his position as Speaker is being steadily diminished, mostly through is own inadequacies as a leader as shown at the House’s non-contribution to the failed AHCA bill, and its irresponsibly rushed passage of the Tax Change bill, he might as well leave. His inability to bring his caucus together, and the low quality of the legislation which passed through the House, will forever be on his name.
No doubt the polls showing a disastrous upcoming mid-term election for the Republicans is also influencing his decision, as serving in the minority would be a distinct ego-deflator – if, in fact, he achieved re-election at all. He would be facing challenges from both sides, as I’m sure he would have had a serious primary challenge from those who view him as a RINO (!), and then faced the problem of an energetic Democratic candidate and backers who might very well overwhelm him.
So Speaker Ryan has chosen to exit with some shreds of dignity, rather than be ousted in much the same way as former House Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) failed in an upset primary loss 4 years ago. This is a signal to contemplate two thoughts.
First, is this the beginning of the end of the United States as a democratic republic, or is it another marker of the end of the GOP as a valid American political party?
Secondly, this should be a big red flag to the moderate Republicans who belong to the Party and insistently vote for the GOP candidates blindly. Your party is not anything near what it used to be, and it’s walking away from Democracy itself. Is this a path you really want to walk down?
Black Panther (2018) asks the question What do the well-off owe those less well off, and how should they deliver? The country of Wakanda appears to be another backward, poverty-stricken African nation, but hidden behind illusions, both technical and cultural, is a technologically advanced society, careful of its secrecy, monarchical, well-off, and happy. The King is known as Black Panther, not just a title, but a description of his physical prowess, enhanced through a secret botanical concoction, as well as some fun technological aids.
But the plight of African Americans is a troubling issue for the King in the abstract, an attribute soon transformed into the personal when an hitherto unknown American relation, appalled at the condition of the people of Africa in America, and knowledgeable of the true nature of Wakanda, appears with a claim on the throne.
A deadly claim, which he asserts with skill.
The King gone, the usurper gives full vent to his emotional fury at how his fellow Africans have been treated, vowing to arm them and subjugate the descendants of the colonialists and slavers. Orphaned, and then abandoned by his extended family, he has little respect for limitations or morality, only for vengeance over the past abuses which still echo through today’s society. Wakanda’s leadership is torn between loyalty to the throne and horror at this departure from Wakanda’s chosen path of withdrawal from the greater world. Soon families are disputing over the proper path to take.
But at the point of no return, Wakandan society plunging into civil war and advanced weaponry about to be delivered into the hands of the oppressed, a savior appears, and the usurper meets the personification of a mature leader, congnizant of his responsibilities to both Wakanda as well as greater humanity – not just oppressed African descendants, but everyone else as well. The usurper, soaked in his emotional rage, is swallowed by it, and lost.
The victor now must choose whether continued withdrawal is best for Wakanda, or a move designed to ease oppression wherever it exists. What will they choose?
This movie is an embodiment of the real-world questions mentioned above, leading to both intellectual and emotional meditations of great relevance to today’s various societies concerning wealth, poverty, and responsibility. The Wakandan leadership’s various discoveries concerning the world skillfully introduce us to the issues at hand, and more importantly the possible reactions, from vengeance to defense of the status quo to the difficult quest of reducing the oppression without setting off a world wide war, as those who hold the power are usually loathe to let it go.
The acting is excellent, the story well-constructed, and thankfully not interlaced with sex, which would have been distracting. There are some very good special effects, and also some reminders of the world as it is today: African landscapes, a link to our past that reminds us that the past is not necessarily something to be forgotten, but remembered for the lessons it can bring to our world today.
Recommended.
A reader’s remarks concerning corporate behaviors and government which I’ve neglected:
I’ve always agreed that the good of the people is the remit of government. Where I’ve changed my view over the past decades of railing against various kinds of malfeasance and misfeasance by groups is I think the corporate form of business with its near personhood is now antithetical to civilized society and any kind form of democracy. The ultimate end of that kind of lack of personal responsibility is that it will grow and grow to the point of becoming powerful enough to change laws to allow itself more freedom to behave horribly while claiming larger profits in a self-reinforcing cycle.
To my mind, it’s the misfeasance of government. The government is responsible for ensuring the health of the marketplace, and part of that is the breakup, or exceptional regulation, of monopolies, which are definitionally a malevolent entity in a system dependent on competition in order to provide choices and progress in products and services. By avoiding partition, monopolies, can utilize their outsized products to produce leverage on the government, usually through undue influence on individuals elected representatives and appointed officials, although the messaging element over the long-term has, I think, also had results unappreciated by most folks.
As we are more productive when working in teams, there’ll always be organizations, and I have no desire to outlaw corporations. I simply want to limit them, as we have done so in the past through anti-monopoly efforts, and move further into the realm of understanding the limits of corporate entities so that we no longer have to puzzle over rulings that seem to indicate that corporations have personhood.
Paul Rosenzweig on Lawfare gives an overview of the crime-fraud exception used in yesterday’s FBI raid on President Trump’s personal attorney’s office. Once he elucidates that for the non-specialist, he gives his opinion:
You can readily imagine other examples of when and how a lawyer’s services might be used to commit a crime. The lawyer helps set up a shell corporation (perfectly legal generally) and the corporation is used to foster a Ponzi scheme. The lawyer is asked about how to secure insurance, but the insurance is then used to collect on an insurance fraud. And so on. In other words, the crime-fraud exception applies when an attorney’s advice is used to futher the crime. Or, as the Supreme Court put it in Clark v. United States, 289 U.S. 1 (1933), “A client who consults an attorney for advice that will serve him in the commission of a fraud will have no help from the law. He must let the truth be told.”
And that, one suspects, is where the rubber meets the road. It may well be that President Trump sought Cohen’s legal advice regarding the Daniels affair for an illegal purpose (e.g. to avoid federal campaign-finance laws or to conceal the true source of the funds with which she was paid or to threaten her). In that circumstance, it seems clear that the crime-fraud exception might apply—and it appears highly likely that the FBI and the lawyers in New York have made that showing to a federal magistrate. Or, as one observer put it: “Michael Cohen is in serious legal trouble.” President Trump may be as well.
I keep trying to imagine seeing President Trump led off in handcuffs, but I’m not reasonably getting there. Still, as Steve Benen notes, President Trump is facing a tidal wave of scandals, so it may happen. You have to wonder how much of his base would take that to heart, and how many would remain convinced that bumbling, ill-advised amateur is being railroaded – and become embittered.
It’s best to keep in mind that the Democrats are forced to sit on the sidelines and merely offer advice and observation; the key people, the sandpaper on Trump’s ass, are all Republicans or ex-Republicans.
Republicans who remember their first allegiance is to the United States, not to the Presidency. In that respect, they are all truly equals before the law.
Derogation (derogate):
- To take away; detract: an error that will derogate from your reputation.
- To deviate from a standard or expectation; go astray: a clause allowing signers of the agreement to derogate from its principles during a state of emergency. [The Free Dictionary]
Noted in “Michael Cohen, the Attorney-Client Privilege, and the Crime-Fraud Exception,” Paul Rosenzweig, Lawfare:
Let’s begin with a seemingly obvious question: Why do we have an attorney-client privilege in the first place? After all, the privilege is nothing more, nor less, than permission for an attorney to withhold truthful information from investigating authorities. There aren’t many other situations in which we say “you know the truth but you don’t have to tell us.” Quite to the contrary, the general rule is that federal grand jury investigations are entitled to “every man’s evidence.” (Apologies for the traditional, gendered phrase.) As the Supreme Court has put it, the exceptions to this general rule are: “not lightly created nor expansively construed, for they are in derogation of the search for truth.”
Over the weekend The Denver Post, the 125 year old newspaper, winner of multiple Pulitzers, basically revolted against its ownership after yet another round of layoffs came down the line. The New York Times reports:
Angry and frustrated journalists at the 125-year-old newspaper took the extraordinary step this weekend of publicly blasting its New York-based hedge-fund owner and making the case for its own survival in several articles that went online Friday and are scheduled to run in The Post’s Sunday opinion section.
“News matters,” the main headline reads. “Colo. should demand the newspaper it deserves.”
The owners are Alden Global Capital, and you just have to wonder what they’re thinking. My suspicion is not that they don’t understand the business they’re screwing into the ground, although more conservative readers might think so. It’s that they don’t understand the sector with which they’ve foolishly encumbered themselves.
I think the Mayor, probably unconsciously, gets it as well:
“Denver is so proud of our flagship newspaper for speaking out,” Mayor Michael B. Hancock said in a statement. “The Denver Post said it best — they are necessary to this ‘grand democratic experiment,’ especially at a time when the press and facts are under constant attack by the White House. For a New York hedge fund to treat our paper like any old business and not a critical member of our community is offensive. We urge the owners to rethink their business strategy or get out of the news business. Denver stands with our paper and stands ready to be part of the solution that supports local journalism and saves the 125-year-old Voice of the Rocky Mountain Empire.”
Right, “… or get out of the news business.” Alden is not going to revive The Denver Post by downsizing or rightsizing. All they’re doing is throwing away talented members of the reporting staff, and at some point the qualities of the newspaper that made it great will be gone – and they’ll be out their investment.
I’m not a knowledgeable member of the free press sector, so the strongest prescription I can give is that the Post needs more knowledgeable, loyal subscribers who understand that having a talented, dedicated staff requires more than a willingness to look at, or around, ads – but to actually pay up front.
Whether that will actually happen is up in the air for me.
In the third part of Andrew Sullivan’s tri-partite column, he bemoans the tendency of today’s political class to pick sides in foreign disputes and rivalries, between Trump and his autocrats of whom he speaks so highly, and the liberals being sucked in by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince’s charm. Then he mentions, almost in passing, one of the most important principles of foreign relations management:
I have no time for the despicable Iranian regime, although the gamble that it could be forced to abstain from nuclear brinksmanship has been proven right. But the case that it is in America’s interests to take a firm side in the Sunni-Shiite feud in the Middle East — and simply back the Sunnis — makes no sense to me. American power is, in my view, best wielded through playing the two sides off each other, and providing some way for co-existence without devastating conflict. We have no interest whatever in the Shiite-Sunni theological struggles which now go back centuries. Yes, we should cautiously encourage any kind of democratic opening in Saudi Arabia (though count me super-skeptical), just as we should (and have) in Iran. But another war — this time for the Sunnis? Led by the neoconservatives? In defense of an absolute monarchy? In a cynical alliance with the Israeli far right? This is what this Saudi charm offensive is all about. And all of Washington seems to be falling for it.
Right. The danger of backing one side over the other is that we then inherit their sins – and, especially in the Middle East, there’s plenty of sin to go around. I don’t mean this theologically. I mean this in the practical sense that other nations will notice who we back and what we’re willing to tolerate, and our reputation will suffer accordingly.
Let them use themselves up between each other, and provide mediation services when possible. Putting our troops in harm’s way is the option of the man ambitious for legacy – or money.
I was fascinated to see what is generally considered body paint in the archaeological record may have been far more functional, as noted in Discover (April 2018):
Riaan Rifkin, an archaeologist at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, has been one of the leading proponents of a new, functional interpretation of ochre in the story of human evolution. For nearly a decade, his experiments, along with those of colleagues, have pointed to prehistoric use of the material not just as a sunscreen and adhesive but also an insect repellent and leather preservative.
Rifkin believes, in fact, that ochre’s functional applications may have contributed directly to H. sapiens’ greatest early achievement: spreading across the world. “The use of red ochre as a sunscreen must have enabled humans to traverse longer distances without getting excessively sunburnt. This was an amazing adaptive advantage. They could forage longer and explore further,” says Rifkin. He suspects ochre sunscreen evolved about the same time humans began using ostrich eggshells as containers for water and other provisions, about 65,000 years ago. “As soon as we could carry water with us, had a good [ochre-based] sunscreen and mosquito repellent, and warm [ochre-tanned] clothing, we were able to expand from Africa.”
It’s not a generally accepted theory just yet, but it’s most interesting, not only for what it says about ochre, but also what it says about scientists’ interpretations of evidence. It speaks to the quality of the evidence as much as the preconceptions of the interpreters.
And it sort of thrills me, as well.
