Monthly Archives: March 2021

Mariculture:

Mariculture is the farming of marine organisms for food and other products such as pharmaceuticals, food additives, jewelry (e.g., cultured pearls), nutraceuticals, and cosmetics, either in the natural marine environment, or in land- or sea-based enclosures, such as cages, ponds, or raceways. [ScienceDirect quoting Encyclopedia of Ocean Sciences]

Noted in “Is there any type of fish you can actually eat sustainably?” Graham Lawton, NewScientist (13 February 2021, paywall):

Aquaculture is also considered in the Aichi targets, which say that by 2020 it should be “managed sustainably, ensuring conservation of biodiversity”. Unsurprisingly, the target wasn’t met. Although most artisanal freshwater aquaculture is sustainable, sea-based aquaculture – called mariculture – isn’t. According to the latest assessment of these targets, it is responsible for “large-scale loss and destruction of coastal wetlands (especially mangroves), and pollution of soil and water”.

This guy is mentally tallying the number of MedEvac helicopters he’ll be needing today.

If you’re a marathoner and haven’t heard of the Barkley Marathons, then shame on you and here’s the documentary for you: The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young (2014). This fascinating look at people who think even preparation for a race should be difficult, these charmers torturing themselves for nothing more than bragging rights, and the chance to push one’s self right over the brink into the chasm of hell, held a peculiar fascination for us. My Arts Editor, having been previously married to a marathoner, was able to lend some useful knowledge as we watched, but this is primarily about the stories of the people who venture into briar patches and under a prison while looking for books from which to tear pages.

Sounds odd? Well, if you like odd, you’ll like this.

They can call it ‘cancel culture’ all they want, but to me this is consequences for bad behavior:

Freshman Rep. Jake Auchincloss, a Democrat, has begun turning to an unusual source when trying to decide whether he wants to work with a Republican he thinks makes a good point during committee hearings: Google.

The Massachusetts lawmaker says he knows his constituents want him to work across the aisle, but he’s drawing “a sharp red line” at working with Republicans who voted not to certify the Electoral College results as part of then-President Donald Trump’s failed bid to overturn his election defeat.

If a quick search produces evidence that one of his Republican colleagues refused to acknowledge President Joe Biden’s win, he said, “I kind of throw cold water on the whole thing,” adding that while he doesn’t like political litmus tests, “insurrection against the United States government qualifies.”

Auchincloss is not alone. [NBC News]

It’s absolutely the right thing to do. Their behavior, in the absence of judicially accepted evidence of mass wrong-doing, was beyond the pale. Shun them.

Hell, the next step should be to punish their districts as well. They were elected to represent their districts or States, which, by that act, they did so very poorly. If the constituents become unhappy, so much the better. Gohmert, Gosar, Jordan, Gaetz: no one will miss them. They’ve contributed little to nothing; they’re grandstanders and trouble-makers.

Dump them.

A reader writes regarding the ARP:

This was a horrifically bad bill. Amounts to approximately $24,000 for _every_ household in the US, and that money will need to be sucked (in every sense of that word) out of the US economy which is likely to cripple it for years.

My inclination is not to argue whether it’s expensive – it is – but whether or not it will accomplish its putative purposes, plural as there are several, and whether those purposes are beneficial to the USA. That is, one of my favorite drums, which is metrics. I say this because we’re not talking about allocation of funds in a private company scenario, but a public scenario in which the government is trying to fulfill its responsibilities.

If it does not, then indeed the price could turn out to be crippling, although there’s been a growing intellectual movement to consider public debt as an asset rather than a burden. I don’t know that I agree with that idea, but I also haven’t sat down and studied it. My doubts start with interest rates and inflation, though.

But if it works, if we hit full recovery mode, it may helpfully pay for itself.

I can’t help but point out that parsing the price across households is misleading, as corporations will also be paying taxes, substantially reducing the per-household number. But I do not intend to get dragged into a discussion about how taxes will parse out.

All that said, my reader is in good company, such as Andrew Sullivan last week:

The nearly $2 trillion now being printed and borrowed and delivered directly to Americans is not about “rescuing” the economy. Pent-up demand, a big transfer of resources to ordinary people under the CARES Act, and an end to lockdowns will do that anyway. This package is about artificially super-charging the economy in the short term, while maximizing its redistributive effect. It’s a demonstration of the Democrats’ historically strongest argument: vote for us and we’ll take care of you.

It “slashes” poverty the easy way: by giving everyone who earns less than $75,000 a check for $1400, and by creating a new, no-strings subsidy for every child, in a direct repudiation of the welfare reform of the Clinton era. The goal is to make the subsidy permanent (and it sure will be hard to repeal). The ARP bails out union pensions; it expands access to Obamacare significantly; it creates generous spending programs for Native Americans, and even offers reparations to Latino, Asian and black farmers. …

But wait, there’s more. The Biden administration sees this $2 trillion as a mere hors d’oeuvre for a possible $4 trillion more in infrastructure and green investment. A few trillion over the last year; and a few trillion in the ARP; even more trillions for infrastructure. After a while, we’re talking serious money.

Yes, we are talking serious money. But I do worry that Sullivan is glossing details that do matter. For example, “pent-up demand” only holds for those with a substantial income. Think of those who’ve lost their jobs during the pandemic, companies destroyed, paycheck-to-paycheck workers, gig economy: If pent-up demand is localized, income-wise speaking, then that much pent-up demand takes time to generate and satisfy.

I do not expect the economy to take off like a rocket, and the 8% predicted by Goldman Sachs isn’t a rocket.

Or his worries about infrastructure. First, that’s not $4 trillion in a year, but spread out over a number of years, simply because infrastructure takes time. Again. And the drums have been beating concerning infrastructure for at least a decade, if not more.

It’s not a bad investment, properly managed. Hell, even former President Trump at least mouthed the word Infrastructure from time to time, even if he had not the wit to do anything about it. Or maybe his was merely the sleight of hand.

If I had time to study the ARP thoroughly, I might have advocated for implementing permanent Universal Basic Income (UBI) rather than sending checks. Maybe I would have suggested this or that.

And then there’s the question of veiled purposes. In a bill this size, there must be. In twenty years, what will historians find to talk about in this category? I look forward to finding that out.

But in the meantime, we should lament the failure of the Republican Party. Wise leadership would have made them, at the very least, a credible counterweight to a Democratic Party that tends to scare people, even if some of that scaring is from smooth Republican marketing.

But one thing that I had not picked up on is pointed out by Sullivan:

But don’t worry. No new taxes will pay for it. Cakes will be eaten and had too. The government will either borrow these trillions, or just print them, and the Federal Reserve itself assures us that there will be no consequences to this, and that a bigger debt than any since the Second World War for the foreseeable future is no problem. Interest rates will not rise, they assure us. Inflation will, at worst, nudge above 2 percent. Just as Trump pumped a trillion into an established recovery, so Biden will up the ante and pump trillions and trillions more into an already surging economy.

I tired of the No new taxes! mantra back when we were fighting two wars at once and the Republicans refused to raise taxes to pay for it. In my view, the 2017 tax reform bill should, at the very least, be voided; no doubt taxes should be raised even further in order to pay for this.

Otherwise, as Sullivan clearly also worries, interest and inflation will go up. Perhaps those are the two most important metrics, after accomplishing putative purposes, that should be kept in mind. I’ll try to remember to do that.

In an item I didn’t get around to covering over the weekend due to the need to recover from the Covid-19 jab, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) takes a different tact in his quest for the title Clown of the Senate – frantic fantasies concerning the Insurrection of January 6th:

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., described the pro-Trump rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 as people who “truly respect law enforcement” and “loved this country” in a radio interview Friday and expressed worry if the mob had been Black Lives Matter protesters or Antifa members.

Johnson said he “never felt threatened” as thousands of rioters broke through barricades, forcing Congress to evacuate parts of the building and abruptly pause a ceremonial event affirming that President-elect Joe Biden won the November election. In one dramatic moment, police officers drew guns as rioters tried to break into the House chamber. The day left several dead, including a police officer, and more than 100 other officers injured. [NBC News]

While Johnson may have been honest in suggesting he was not alarmed at the sacking of the Capitol – more fool him – the suggestion that the mob was respectful in the face of video evidence of the murder of one officer and the desecration of the Capitol in the form of defecation simply renders Johnson’s comments ludicrous. Shitting in someone’s office cannot be twisted into the belief that the mob greatly loves their country.

Good luck, Senator, on your quest for the title.

Incidentally, the Senator will be up for reelection in 2022, and his intentions are not yet known. With five GOP Senators planning to retire in 2022, no doubt there’ll be pressure on him from the RNC and quite probably former President Trump to run for reelection.

Don’t do it, Senator! You don’t want to reach the depths of notoriety currently inhabited by the late Senator McCarthy (R-WI)!

Theosophy:

Theosophy is a religion established in the United States during the late 19th century. It was founded primarily by the Russian immigrant Helena Blavatsky and draws its teachings predominantly from Blavatsky’s writings. Categorized by scholars of religion as both a new religious movement and as part of the occultist stream of Western esotericism, it draws upon both older European philosophies such as Neoplatonism and Asian religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism.

As presented by Blavatsky, Theosophy teaches that there is an ancient and secretive brotherhood of spiritual adepts known as the Masters, who—although found across the world—are centered in Tibet. These Masters are alleged by Blavatsky to have cultivated great wisdom and supernatural powers, and Theosophists believe that it was they who initiated the modern Theosophical movement through disseminating their teachings via Blavatsky. They believe that these Masters are attempting to revive knowledge of an ancient religion once found across the world and which will again come to eclipse the existing world religions. Theosophical groups nevertheless do not refer to their system as a “religion”. Theosophy preaches the existence of a single, divine Absolute. It promotes an emanationist cosmology in which the universe is perceived as outward reflections from this Absolute. Theosophy teaches that the purpose of human life is spiritual emancipation and claims that the human soul undergoes reincarnation upon bodily death according to a process of karma. It promotes values of universal brotherhood and social improvement, although it does not stipulate particular ethical codes. [Wikipedia]

My Arts Editor:

A bunch of crackpots!

Noted in this episode of Ask A Mortician, which we’ve been binge-watching while I recover from the jab and my Arts Editor from surgery.

Linking Evangelical Subculture and Phallically Insecure Masculinity Using Google Searches for Male Enhancement

Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion

And from the abstract:

… the preponderance of evangelicals in a state consistently predicts more Google searches for terms and phrases like “male enhancement,” “ExtenZe,” “penis pump,” “penis enlargement,” and others. We theorize that the largely patriarchal―and increasingly embattled and radicalized―evangelical subculture explicitly or implicitly promotes equating masculinity with physical strength and size, leaving men influenced by that subculture (whether evangelical or not) to seek solutions for their privately felt failure to measure up.

What’s behind the door? A new car? Bob Barker? An empty box?

The Man Who Cheated Himself (1950) is easily characterizable as film noir and that … would be wrong.

Why so?

Young, pretty, and terribly rich Lois Frazer is more or less done with husband Howard, who in turn is more or less done with her. But when Lois discovers he’s bought a gun, she notifies current boyfriend, police Lieutenant and homicide detective Ed Cullen, who scurries right over to make sure she’s OK.

And, while he’s there, Howard breaks in, only to be shot to death by Lois with that gun, which she conveniently found.

For Lois, is there shame? Guilt? Oh, there’s some minor hysterics, but that’s about it. And in Cullen’s professional opinion, Lois is at significant risk of being found guilty of murder if the police are called to investigate, here in Lois’ extravagant apartment.

And we can’t have that. Cullen’s decision is fast & fool proof: Finding a plane ticket on Howard, the plan is to dump his body at Seattle airport and palm it off as some obscure murder.

It’s too bad that a rural couple, in town to pick up a relative, happen to spot the late night dump, but Cullen can brush it off. After all, he just tossed the gun from a bridge into the deepest part of the river. No connection.

But while Cullen and his kid brother, Andy, whom he’s mentoring on this, his first homicide case, are pursuing the murderer without having much luck finding him, somehow that same gun is used during a botched liquor store holdup.

And that rural couple is turning out to be far too helpful.

And Lois … Lois Lois Lois … has the temperament of a cucumber. Holes in the wall from the gun? She can cover them up. A bullet in plain view? Andy hasn’t a chance of finding it.

Late husband Howard really wasn’t much to her, was he?

Eventually, it’s Andy chasing brother Ed and Lois, and, after the necessary perambulations, is it, as film noir demands, Andy dead, Ed dying, and Lois in tearful regrets?

No.

Andy has a bruise on the head. Ed’s in deep regrets. And Lois? Why, she hardly even notices Ed as she saunters by in the courthouse, because she’s too busy promising her defense attorney big, big things – probably involving her body – if only he can have her found innocent.

Film noir requires acknowledgment by the characters of the poor choices they made, either by being dead, or at least recognizing and, optionally, weeping over one’s bad decisions. Think of The Maltese Falcon (1941) or, somewhat edgier, In Bruges (2008).

Lois won’t fill the bill, and, in fact, this is an example of the genre that I call the American class movie, a term I’ve made up on the spur of the moment. The greatest example of this story type is Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, documenting the violation of the great American tenet that all are equal before the law. Cullen has heart-wrenching regret, and we know he’s going down.

But Lois? She exudes confidence that she’ll get off, one way or another. Just as the incredibly rich Tom Buchanan in Gatsby saves his wife from paying the legal consequences for running over his mistress, Lois is striving to skip the consequences part of life.

And she’ll do it. We know it. After all, it’s going to be a his word / her word trial, and, while he’s a police lieutenant, he’s obviously not in good shape, while Lois? She’s a high flyer, caught in his slipstream but not responsible.

Obviously.

It’s a clever little story, and I enjoyed it, but the two biggest questions is why is a socialite like Lois spending her time with Cullen, and why does Cullen immediately decide to cover up the incident? After all, Howard was menacing his wife – she didn’t shoot him in the back, and there was evidence that he planned to kill her. Surely just laying out the scenario would have been enough to lower the crime to being a misdemeanor.

But despite those shortcomings, it’s a worthwhile story, and more effort has been put into it than many other examples from the era.

And its obscured references to the advantages of the rich are unsettling.

A couple of years ago I ran across an intriguing notion to combine the blockchain with art, and now it appears someone has gone, done it – and financial magic is happening:

On Thursday, a digital collage of hundreds of weird, brightly colored images made by a South Carolina artist known as Beeple sold at the prestigious Christie’s auction for $69.3 million. The staggering price is the third highest ever for a work by a living artist, second only to pieces sold by art-world giants Jeff Koons and David Hockney.

But unlike Koons’s balloon dog sculptures and Hockney’s acrylic paintings, the collage, known as “Everydays: The First 5000 Days,” is entirely digital. In effect, the buyer — a blockchain investor who goes only by the name of MetaKovan — bought a file that is not very different from the photo posted at the top of this article.

What sets it apart, though, is that this specific file is an NFT, or non-fungible token. Using the same principles behind cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, NFTs allow people to claim ownership over specific digital files, be they songs, videos or static images. Beeple, whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, is the latest beneficiary of a rush into NFTs that’s a side effect of the fast-growing interest in digital currencies and the technology behind them. [WaPo]

But it’s a bit of a fudge:

An NFT is a type of digital crypto asset. They represent a specific version of any digital file — whether it’s a song, a video game or a simple image. Using the same technology that bitcoin uses, people can “mint” NFTs, creating a record of ownership that’s spread across thousands of computers around the world that cannot be changed by anyone except the owner. It’s a way of turning a digital file into something that can be bought and sold like a physical object.

NFTs are not tangible — you can’t hold them or touch them (unless, of course, you decided to print a copy of one, like you might print out an art image). The knowledge in the owner’s mind that they own the original or “real” version of the digital file is what makes them valuable.

That is, the analogy between digital and tangible art breaks down when it comes to copies. The last paragraph suggests the art isn’t encrypted, which means it can still be copied and manipulated by anyone who can get a copy of it in an agreeable format in the first place.

Not that an original Pollock, say, cannot be copied – but the permission of the owner is required, not optional, in order to make, distribute, and even manipulate a copy. This real-world requirement, sloppy and possibly ill-defined as it is, makes the Pollock materially different from the Beeple, at least until the real-world copy is perfect.

On computers, it’s almost more difficult to do a bad copy than a good copy, at least of a static artwork. (A non-static artwork might be a visual representation of a neural network implementing some sort of machine learning task.)

It’s also worth noting that since this was sold using bitcoin as the exchange currency, the exact price fluctuates in relation to dollars and other tangible currencies – which, given recent movements, could means it’s worth twice as much a month from now – or half. And while inflation caused by printing more money bitcoin won’t be happening, fluctuations caused by investors trying to cash in on bitcoin movements does make it a little harder to assign a real value to Beeple’s work.

But assigning value to art is always a chancy business.

Perhaps most interesting is a quote I grabbed from two years ago from Oliver Roeder of FiveThirtyEight, which I’ll repeat here:

A new order is emerging in the art world. But will it be any different than the old one? People like [John] Zettler make me think not. He and Rare Art Labs may be handling a new type of art, but what they’re doing with it is nothing new; in fact, it’s exactly what the critic Hughes warned us against: the fetishization of art’s prices and the emptying of its higher virtues. As a result, the relationship between art and the blockchain, which seems symbiotic for the moment, could soon become parasitic. Artists can only avoid the art establishment’s capitalistic maw for so long.

Is that what’s happening here? Last year, Beatriz Helena Ramos addressed the issue of crypto art’s economics for SuperRare:

The crypto art ecosystem defines success by sales, the assumption being that the more money that goes to artists, the better. Milestones are measured by how much collectors spend. Every time an artwork gets a high price or sells immediately, everybody celebrates it. I understand the initial need to attract collectors and prove the market. In this sense, SuperRare’s million-dollar milestone is indeed a remarkable achievement. One million dollars went to artists and that is a wonderful thing. SuperRare’s well-deserved success brings validation to the entire ecosystem.

By understanding the system we can tweak its design to make it more equitable. It has become clear to me that as long as we reproduce traditional economic models, no amount of technical innovation (NFTs or DAOs) will yield any new results.

At its core, blockchain is about economics, but excepting experiments by Simon De La Rouviere, DADA, and a few others, there has been little experimentation in terms of new economic incentives. Instead, there has been an intentional effort to attract traders and speculative collectors.

Ramos is a revolutionary, but whether her revolution will succeed is an open question. But it appears she’d agree with Roeder – blockchain is not yet being used to create revolutionary new systems, only to implement the old system on computers.

But whether that’s acceptable to Ramos isn’t really the issue – that’s up to the crypto art community as a collective.

Regarding the Bryant Lake Bowl video a reader writes:

I have a high-end camera drone and can only imagine the flight skills it took to pull that one-shot off. Impressed.

And it appeared they crashed the drone at the end as well.

Manaakitanga (Māori):

While New Zealand hasn’t always been great at recognizing or celebrating our indigenous Māori culture, campaigning by Māori advocates has helped to ensure that Māori culture is now well-incorporated into society. Manaakitanga is one of many customs of the Māori people that are now taught in New Zealand schools. It holds that others have importance equal to, and even greater than, one’s own.

Manaakitanga is about understanding the power of the collective. It derives from the Māori term “mana,” which is the spiritual life force and energy that every living thing possesses. When you honor the mana of others, your own mana will increase through the respect you have earned. When you acknowledge these connections, you understand that your freedom as an individual is only as strong as your place in the community. [“The indigenous custom behind New Zealand’s strong covid-19 response,” Matthew Milner and Richard Ngata, WaPo]

Which is a lovely way of expressing my thought, Responsibilities Before Rights. Much better, really.

The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARP) is big. $1.9 trillion big. Think too hard about it and it’s scary. And that’s what the Republicans are banking on:

This time, Republicans were gambling that voters would become disillusioned with the scope and price of the plan, as well as the partisan process that yielded it, and punish Democrats accordingly.

“This isn’t a rescue bill. It isn’t a relief bill,” said Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader. “It’s a laundry list of left-wing priorities that predate the pandemic and do not meet the needs of American families.” [I thought Senate Minority leader Senator McConnell (KY-R) said this, not McCarthy.]

They were also pointing to an increase in the deficit — which the Treasury Department reported on Wednesday had soared by 68 percent to $1 trillion in just the past five months — arguing that the package would add to an already crushing debt burden.

Top Republicans also sought preemptively to deny Democrats credit for any economic improvement that might follow the measure’s enactment.

“The American people are going to see an American comeback this year,” Mr. McCarthy said, “but it won’t be because of this liberal bill.” [The New York Times]

The Republicans are prognosticating, so let’s ask the obvious question: what’s their history in the field of prognostication on financial bills?

How about, say, that 2017 Tax Reform bill? Advertised by the Republicans then in charge of the Federal government to be a prime example of the Laffer Curve in action, it reduced corporate taxation levels, banking on the companies using the money suddenly not sent to the government to expand their operations and ignite a quickly growing economy, replenishing lost government revenues from the fizz of a quickly expanding economy.

Critics pointed out that the Laffer Curve history is one long failure, predicting that most of the money would be sent to shareholders in the form of dividends.

So what happened?

Here’s the GDP, in percentage terms, since 2000 for context, from the St. Louis Fed:

It’s hard to see any fizz there; those last two data points are reflective of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, but between 2017 and 2020 there’s no evidence of Republican-forecast gains, while Democratic and independent economists noted their forecasts were coming true.

And the deficit? Again, as a percentage gain or loss.

Unsurprising, isn’t it? The deficit was taking off before 2020, just as forecast by non-Republicans.

So let’s apply this lesson to our evaluation of the claims of such Republican leaders as McCarthy, Senate GOP Leader McConnell, opportunist Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS), head-shaker Senator Rick Scott (R-FL), and all future Republican claims that the ARP is either a disaster or irrelevant.

Because they have a vested, even existential interest, in its failure. But their history of financial prognostications are not only bad, they have been disastrously bad.

Let’s keep an eye out for third-party evaluations, instead.

And not pay any attention to this crew.

Erick Erickson is frantic to keep the conservatives on, or above, the moral level of the left, because that’s what keeps the chins of the conservatives up.

Secularism is, in fact, a religion. It has sacraments like support for abortion rights. It has tithing in which secular adherents give money to various political and social causes. It has liturgies in the new speak of wokeness. It has theological tracts and church services as rally and protest and Episcopal mass. It has even spurred the rise of terrorist zealots and the new censorious social justice warriors I have taken to calling Woke-O Haram.

Secularism has various denominations. Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton, both purported religious pastors who have embraced secular causes, were famous in the 1980s and 1990s for pressuring corporate America to pay indulgences to their various social justice causes, most often aligned with race issues. If a corporation did not pay, it could expect calls for boycotts and protest from the secular religious adherents.

In secularism there is no concept of grace, which remains a uniquely Christian concept of giving people that which they do not deserve. Likewise, secularism’s eschatology, or study of the end times, tends to be bleak. You die, the worms eat your body, and Simba sings about the Circle of Life until the sun explodes, everything incinerates, and the universe goes dark.

And there’s more, but that’s enough. It’s easy enough to note that …

• “Woke” remains an intensely controversial ideology which appears to be incompatible, and in my opinion inferior, to the liberalism which has carried Western Civ to arguably advanced heights of civilization, and “woke” has been clutched at prematurely by many out of guilt, lack of thought, or desire for power by many.
• “theological tracts and church services as rally and protest …” ignores the fact that the former is invocations of a Divinity unproven, while the latter are a tactic addressing specific societal problems.
• The corporate “indulgences,” a loaded theological term used to indulge^[1] in ad hominem attacks, are hardly that; any donations that occurred were often carefully calculated by the approving C-Suite executives to enhance the corporation’s concrete future.
• And, of course, in Erickson’s own right wing ideology, the equivalent to grace, by his definition, is welfare.

And the rest of his argument is equally dubious. But it really comes down to this:

On the one side, all of the institutions are based on an unknown Divinity which is only thought to exist. The writings attributed to it come from the hands of men & women; that they are thought to be the mere instruments of that Divinity, or inspired by it, is private knowledge, knowledge only known to the happy recipient – or invented by them. One can build up all the logical structures one wants, but if the foundation, the assumptions, upon which structures are built are unstable, then so is the logic.

On the other hand, secularism, the lack of religious influence over public affairs^[2], can be conducted rationally. Long-time readers know that I believe that humans can be rational, but are not by nature rational. This means, yes, mass murderers can be religious or not. But a properly rational polity, which has a clear understanding of its goals, and why those goals contribute to both short-term and long-term survival, is in my view not the equivalent of a religious sect because its adherents, properly thoughtful, should also be lacking in that arrogance that comes naturally to the cult adherent.

And that means, very importantly, that course corrections can be enacted bloodlessly.

In Erickson’s post, he references Luther, the Catholic monk outraged by the practice of selling indulgences, who arguably is the progenitor of multiple long and bloody wars between his Protestants and their predecessor Catholics. It’s appalling how often change in religious institutions involves a large amount of blood; and, worse, it’s over inarguable points of religious tenets. Why inarguable? Because it’s based on private knowedge: God told me, I must be right and you can’t challenge me. It’s based on inscrutable writings: It’s God’s finger writing that, you have to believe. Implicit in such confrontations is power, wherein those holding it invoke the status quo, those wanting it claiming those who have it are blasphemers, apostates, or worse.

And it’s never based on rationality.

And, of course, irreligious violence is also famous. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot: their names are legion for their mass murders. Of course, if you don’t hold human life sacred, then they’re not so bad. Perhaps that applies to the Crusaders out to massacre the Muslims who held the sacred lands, too.

I, personally, care not to live in lands ruled by the like of either group.

But I see little rationality in the theocrats. Excuses found in religious literature for crimes large and small are found all over, such as Erickson’s own claim that Christian theology made Trump into God’s tool; all such claims inarguable but with your favorite of weapon of whatever period we’re talking.

But secular rationality grounded in the study of reality, the clear eyed understanding of history and how humanity works (and I fear I’ll part ways with a large party of atheists at this point), and societal goals grounded in justice … put these three together, along with a big dose of humility, and it’s clear that secularism can not be the equivalent of a religious sect. I don’t doubt that a secularism driven by unhinged passions and a dearth of historical sense – or just simple lust for power – will be driven down to the level of a sect, such as that which Erickson inhabits so joyfully.

But I think that Erickson’s not making a reasoned argument, but instead trying to stir the passions of his fellow cult members, because in passion comes a cessation of thinking. Right now, the conservative movement, powered by the evangelicals, is demonstrating a profound contempt for democracy: the insurrection, the refusal of the Senate GOP to convict Trump, the mass GOP refusal to vote for legislation to help the American voter, Democrat and Republican, and now the attempts to disenfranchise voters under the guise of suppressing voter fraud that does not appear to have existed in the first place.

It’s quite a jerky line Erickson has to balance on. It appears he’s still on the part where he has to convince his fellow conservative that they’re morally superior to those bad lefties. The “woke” are an easy target, but if the left, after appropriate discussion and debate, dump them by the side of the road, he’ll have a helluva harder time of it.

Can Erickson drag his democracy haters back into the fold of democracy? He’s got a couple of years to try.

¹ –Ahem!- Forgive the word play, if you will.

² Roughly speaking, of course.

For those readers who remember my mention of prominent Southern Baptist Beth Moore, it’s no longer Southern, just Baptist:

For conservative evangelical critics of former president Donald Trump, the past few years have been painful and isolating. But this week things got personal in a new way, with a dramatic announcement by celebrity Bible teacher Beth Moore that she no longer considers herself a Southern Baptist.

Moore, a joke-cracking Texan, runs a $15 million ministry that is wildly popular among conservative Christian women. She has for several years been raising concerns about what she sees as hypocrisy in evangelicalism. On Tuesday, she went further, ending her affiliation with the Southern Baptists and parting ways with the denomination’s publishing arm that distributed her Bible teaching.

While the Southern Baptist Convention has been losing members for years, it remains the country’s largest Protestant group, and Moore’s exit has fueled chaos for the denomination which has debated women’s roles in recent years. [WaPo]

It’s one thing when a few nondescript members of a religious organization leave it. It’s quite another when a celebrity for whom that membership led to celebrity and influence leaves the organization.

And in disgust, too.

Whether this will have a long term impact on the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is something we’ll see, or not see, in the near future. The moral repugnance inherent in her move is certainly important, but whether or not that will move people out of the SBC is not yet apparent. No doubt the SBC pastors will be throwing mud to cover up the failings of the SBC, like this guy:

Tom Buck, a Southern Baptist pastor from Texas who is part of a much more conservative wing of the denomination, in a blog post Wednesday suggested Moore’s departure should have been prompted by the denomination or by [her long-time publisher] Lifeway for what he called her “theologically unsound” teachings.

Notice that his plaint is about her purity. We’ll be seeing a lot of that if SBC begins to fragment.

Conspirituality:

Conspirituality, …, was coined by researcher Charlotte Ward. She describes conspirituality as “a rapidly growing web movement expressing an ideology fueled by political disillusionment and the popularity of alternative worldviews.” There is no official indoctrination video, no book to read; the hundreds of thousands of people who embrace these New Age-like beliefs find them on YouTube vlogs like [Lorie] Ladd’s, as well as Instagram and Facebook. Recently, conspiritualists have begun to overlap with the far-right conspiracy theory QAnon. [“Why some New Age influencers believe Trump is a ‘lightworker‘,” Nicole Karlis, Salon]

Yes, properly vague. The article inspires no confidence in members of the movement, either.

What else could it be? Minneapolis’ Bryant Lake Bow drone shot:

Back to this thread, Universal Basic Income had another small, limited but real-world experiment recently completed, with positive results:

Residents of Stockton, Calif., who received $500 a month from a first-of-its-kind guaranteed-income program were more likely to find full-time jobs, be happy and stay healthy, according to a year-long study published Wednesday.

Supporters of universal income programs — which provide regular, unconditional payments from the government to people — say the findings should dispel common criticisms of the idea, such as that money with no strings attached will become a disincentive for people to work or will encourage them to spend it on drugs and alcohol.

Recipients of the monthly payments were twice as likely to gain full-time employment than others, according to data analysis by a pair of independent researchers, Stacia West of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and Amy Castro Baker of the University of Pennsylvania. Most of the money distributed was spent on food or other essentials. Tobacco or alcohol made up less than 1 percent of tracked purchases. [WaPo]

Limited, yes – but encouraging, at least for the left. For conservatives, it’s a small, but potentially important, strike against the ideological pillar that people will waste what’s given to them.

This piece by Tim Miller is just the latest bit of evidence of the importance of experience:

But as he is poised to sign into law a massive, legacy-defining COVID relief package that will, among other things, fund the vaccine surge that will ensure every desiring adult will be jabbed by May, well ahead of the pace he inherited. I feel compelled to point out that we got here thanks to luck that Joe Biden made for himself, and for all of us.

In November of 2017 Joe Biden did an interview with Peter Hamby of Snapchat and Vanity Fairduring which he laid out what a campaign that he didn’t exactly want to run would be premised on. Hamby summed up the Biden message as one about how “a certain set of ideals tether us together as Americans, and that above all else, character counts.”

This was…not the prevailing view about the state of the country or the path to victory among the other Democratic candidates, strategists, or left wing pundits. Biden was derided for his obliviousness and naivete when he would bang on about bipartisanship. He was underestimated and in every interview I gave about the Democratic Primary his campaign was compared to my former boss, Jeb!

Yet, when he launched his campaign he was undeterred, calling the unity doubters out explicitly saying, “I know some of the smart folks say Democrats don’t want to hear about unity. The angrier a candidate can be, the better chance they have to win the nomination. I don’t believe it. I really don’t. I believe Democrats want to unify this nation.”

It turns out Biden was right and almost everyone else was wrong.

Since, well, just about the time Biden won the South Carolina primary, I’ve felt like I’m watching a professional running rings around the amateurs. Biden’s tactics for each goal he attains are not always obvious, but it’s clear that he’s at least two steps, and sometimes more, ahead of everyone else, from conservative critics to old Senate colleagues to possibly even his old friend, President Obama.

And, unlike Miller and his colleagues, I don’t think this is at all up to luck. I think this is experience and faith in the American character at work here. He’s nearly 80 years old, almost 60 years of public service, and that counts for more than something. That’s marinating in how the political struggle goes, whether working in a polite and even friendly manner with the “other side”, or dealing with political neophytes such as Hawley and Cruz – and I do mean they are neophytes, because those two, along with all the other politicos of their generation or younger, grew up in an environment where compromise with the other side, where actual governing, is no longer taught, at least by the Republican Party.

They are, in effect, cripples when it comes to actual governance. They know how to win a seat in Congress in the environment of five years ago, but they know nothing about the important responsibilities of being a Member of Congress. And when their next election comes up with an electorate who saw them associated with an Insurrection, failed as it was, will they even win reelection?

When Biden first threw his hat in the ring, I applauded, but expressed concerns about his age. With age can come experience, but can also come stultification, even petrification. President Biden appears to have managed to escape the latter two, while collecting the former.

The Republicans may be in for a rough, rough four years, as the smilin’, happy warrior, Joe Biden, teaches them what it really means to be American. Because they don’t seem to know about that.

And I think that’s what this guy sees:

Jeremiah Johnson, the self-described prophet who faced backlash from fellow evangelical Christians after publicly apologizing for prophesying former President Donald Trump would be reelected president, is ending Jeremiah Johnson Ministries. …

His new website outlines plans for a ministry called The Altar Global.

Instead of offering what Johnson called “prophetic commentary” on current events, The Altar Global will “help prepare the Bride of Christ for the return of our glorious Bridegroom King Jesus,” according to the website.

That includes a one-year intensive program called The Altar School of Ministry, based in Concord, North Carolina, where Johnson and others will train students “on the lifestyle of an end-time messenger and the return of the Lord.” It also includes local and national conferences, monthly Zoom calls with supporters and books and other resources. [RNS]

And if you think I went all that way just for the punnage, you just might be right.

If you’re not an avid fan of C-SPAN, the non-profit cable network that carries much of the public hearings and business of the Federal government, then you may not know about their potential big new attractions in the Senate.

Real filibusters.

“He made me filibuster this!” shouted a very young Jimmy Stewart.

Once upon a time, the Senate had real filibusters, which Hollywood dramatized in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939). Politicians actually had to take the floor and declaim for hours on end, hoping the legislation they were delaying would lose support, either as a result of their arguments, or from sheer ennui. Meanwhile, if sixty or more Senators responded positively to a cloture motion, then the filibuster was ended and the voting began, no matter how the Senator felt about it.

Then, more than a few years back, the Senate adopted a new rule which stated that any Senator could notify whoever was running the Senate that day that they sufficiently hated a piece of legislation that they refused to let that legislation come to a vote unless, of course, a cloture motion voided their notification.

And all the effort went out of filibustering. It made it into a video game. And not only no effort, but the Senator didn’t even have to open their yap. Sit back, put their feet up on their desk, take a nap, secure in the knowledge that the legislation would never get its vote.

If my reader is unfamiliar with how the Senate has conducted itself in recent years, especially under GOP and sometime-Senate Majority leader Senator Mitch “No!” McConnell (R-KY), but suspects this could bring the Senate to a grinding halt, they’d be right. In the last twenty years, passing legislation in the Senate has required trickery (the “reconciliation process”, which is exempt from the rule and involves budgets and anything else that sneaks past the Parliamentarian) or the invocation of the Ghost of George Washington, and the latter is making less and less impression upon Republicans.

But now one of the Democrats who opposes changing the rules, Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), is showing signs of changing his mind:

Sen. Joe Manchin said Sunday he is open to altering the Senate filibuster to make it more “painful” for the minority party to wield, while reiterating his opposition to ending the procedural hurdle altogether.

“The filibuster should be painful, it really should be painful and we’ve made it more comfortable over the years,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.” “Maybe it has to be more painful.”

Manchin (D-W.Va.) has previously supported efforts to require senators to filibuster by talking on the chamber floor in order to hold up a bill, an idea he raised on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“If you want to make it a little bit more painful, make him stand there and talk,” Manchin said. “I’m willing to look at any way we can, but I’m not willing to take away the involvement of the minority.”  [Politico]

While everyone is excited about what’s right in front of their nose, I’m wondering what sort of effects this will have beyond the obvious.

1. Retirements. Filibustering can take quite a toll on a physical body. A surprising five Republican Senators are already planning to retire in 2022. Will other older members, such as Senators Kennedy, McConnell, and Grassley, finding filibustering to be tougher than putting feet up on the desk and snoozing, decide that they can’t meet the new demand? And how about the older Democrats? Will we see some movement among them?
2. Campaigns. This could provide damaging material to competing candidates, not only in that a filibustering candidate can literally be seen to be dedicated to deep-sixing an important and popular piece of legislation – nothing like a visual to rile people up – but who knows what will come out of their mouth? I know when I get tired I’ll occasionally say something I regret. Is this going to become an important part of campaigning?

I must admit, I’m rather hoping that we return to the old form of filibustering, because Senators should be willing to put their political and personal lives on the line if they really dislike some piece of legislation.

And not merely because the legislation was proposed by the opposition.

The passing of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 by the US Senate over the weekend, and the probable passing of it by the House and subsequent signing by President Biden, brings to the fore the actions of Republicans in response to this bill.

In the House, it passed its initial test with no House Republican support; in the Senate, no Republican voted for it. It now returns to the House to approve the changes made by the Senate.

We can call the Republicans’ actions intransigence, provincialism, belief in their own propaganda, even fear, whether it be political or personal.

But, to me, this is a version of purity.

For Republicans, each of their actions are measured against a metric of faithfulness to the Republican creed, and that creed includes assertions of the evils of Democrats, of socialism, expertise; the importance of knowing that God is behind your every move so long as those moves are blessed by God – or, more importantly, its representatives on Earth, namely the leading, attention-hungry clerics. An important corollary of that last is the evil of compromise, as Barry Goldwater noted more than 50 years ago.

So motivations will be various, but I think will fall into the four categories above. And the result?

The base, as it slowly deflates from demographics and defections, may love it.

But everyone else is watching. We’re in the middle of a national crisis, and every single Republican dug in their heels and shrieked No!

So this is the Big Bet: Will the Biden plan work? The Republicans, whether Senator McConnell and Rep McCarthy, the Republican Congressional leaders, understand it or not, have harnessed their Party’s future not to a Republican horse, but to a Democratic horse. Rather than using their positions to try to get a Republican plan to work, they’ll be using their positions to attempt the opposite with the Democratic plan.

And, if they succeed, a lot of American citizens, voting citizens, will get hurt.

So even their big bet, if they win it, will be bitter wine.

But this is what their amateurism, their unseriousness, has led to. They now have to rely on their ability to lie and distract, on Fox News, OANN, and Newsmax to distract and lie for them, and for President Trump to get out and do what he does best – lie for them.

All while Trump hates on them and insists on purifying the Party to his own liking.

Like most theological and ideological purity schemes, there’s little actual substance beyond the dislike for the experts who come up with conclusions inconsistent with their ideology, their frantic need for power, and their mad, mad theology, and that lack of substance, that lack of honesty, in the end results in disaster. Or, as I noted years and years ago, someday the Republican Party will have all of three members – and two of them will be on probation for impurity.

That dagger called a RINO has much more work to do, I suspect. The only question is whether it’ll be Trump, the clerics, or someone else.

Soliton:

1. (physics, mathematics) A self-reinforcing pulse or travelling wave caused by any non-linear effect (found in many physical systems).
   Synonyms: carrier wave (obsolete), solitary wave, wave of translation [Wiktionary]

Noted in “The US Army is building the most powerful laser weapon in the world,” David Hambling, NewScientist (27 February 2021, paywall):

Normal lasers are ineffective over long distances because the beam spreads out, but ultrashort pulses can be shaped into self-focusing light pulses called solitons that turn the air itself into a lens, continually refocusing the pulse.

Such a weapon would produce dramatic effects. The rapid temperature rise from the ultrashort pulse would vaporise the surface of a target rather than melting it, a technique used industrially to drill precise holes through metal. The resulting rapid expansion of gas can also produce a powerful blast wave.

A handy characteristic. I wonder how such systems change over time. There’s no such thing as endless energy.

For long time readers of what was once called the blogosphere, the name Frederik deBoer may be familiar. After a couple years break as a blogger, he’s back, revealing his struggle with mental illness. I found this bit concerning lithium particularly interesting:

Other side effects are drug-dependent. For me, lithium is the basis of everything. It is the foundation of my treatment. A mood stabilizer, it is one of the most reliable and widely-prescribed psychiatric medications in the world. The pills flatten you out, trimming off the emotional highs and lows that can, for many, cause so much wreckage in their lives. An element of the periodic table, lithium cannot be patented and is thus available fairly cheaply at almost any pharmacy. The emotion-moderating effects are apparent after 3-4 weeks and those benefits make it easier to stay on the pill. Not only is the clinical evidence of its efficacy in patients clear, multiple studies have found that places with higher natural levels of lithium in the drinking water have lower rates of violent crime and suicide. This came as little surprise to me. When you have experienced bipolar mania, the shaking delirious heart-racing paranoiac acceleration of everything you are, lithium’s steady and reliable presence is as comforting as a drug can get.

I haven’t examined his links, so I don’t know if the studies he cites attempt to compensate for culture – itself undoubtedly influenced by lithium – in a credible way. But it does remind me of Kevin Drum’s notes on lead in the environment, and how its presence and cessation correlate with falling levels of crime.

Whether there’s anything practical to be drawn from the lithium studies is not immediately obvious to me. If the effects were dramatic, I’d expect evolution to weed out the particularly vulnerable.

But it is a fascinating clue that the old mind-body dualism argument is really not viable.

My Arts Editor, due to an injury, has been watching a great deal of YouTubes involving sewing, but this doesn’t come from her, but rather an old friend who I hardly ever get to see anymore:

I’ve always liked orange. This is the creation of Teuta Matoshi of Bosovo. More here.

[H/T MCI]