Author Archives: Hue White

Particoloured:

1. Made up of sections having different, often bright, colours. [Wiktionary]

And there wasn’t much out there for definitions of particoloured, I was surprised to say, although there was a blog called Particolour. Noted in “Flying squirrels carve nuts to store them securely in tree branches,” Michael Le Page, NewScientist (10 December 2022, paywall):

They then set up 32 infrared cameras to monitor some of the stored nuts. They found two species of squirrels came to check the nuts or retrieve them: a subspecies of the Hainan flying squirrel called Hylopetes phayrei electilis and the particoloured flying squirrel (Hylopetes alboniger).

A fascinating article on these two species of flying squirrels chewing grooves in their food nuts in order to securely store them in tree forks.

The diligent student is interrupted by the janitor, who is about to shoo him out of the parlor and into the study hall. There, he finds fifteen potential victims, and, as part of his final exam, he’ll need to ascertain the most likely reason each victim will be heedlessly slaughtered before midnight. The time is 11:30pm. Ready? Set! <bang!> Uhh … uhhhhh….

If you value plausibility, even logic, in your murder mysteries, then you may want to give Murder at Midnight (1931) a pass, although I think a really inquisitive mind could make it all seem to work. But this many unsympathetic, in some cases “oh, please kill them, too!” characters, made it hard to take the story seriously. It quickly devolved into the morbid game of How many will be dead at the end of this?, followed by And will they kill off that damn cop who spreads peanut shells everywhere?

Sadly, the answer is No.

However, while it may have been common in the era the movie was made, I’ve never seen a game of Charades in which it actually looked like the players were putting on a little drama. It was charming.

But that’s not nearly enough to save this story from the trashcan of the mundane.

Plebiscite:

A plebiscite is a vote by the whole people and is often used synonymously with a referendum. In the most recent literature a plebiscite has been defined as “an instrument, which allow[s] a government to appeal to people to express themselves with a yes or a no”[i].’ [sic] The two terms do not always overlap in the legal, political and diplomatic literature as will be shown below. [Encyclopedia Princetoniensis]

Noted in “Thursday’s Mini-Report, 12.15.22,” Steve Benen, Maddowblog:

* Puerto Rico’s future: “The House voted Thursday in favor of the Puerto Rico Status Act, which seeks to resolve the U.S. territory’s status and its relationship to the United States through a binding plebiscite. In a 232-191 vote, the bill was passed by 216 Democrats and 16 Republicans. All votes against the bill came from Republicans.”

As the Republicans were supporting statehood for the Puerto Ricans about a decade ago, it’s a puzzling vote. And while the Democrats may not find the Puerto Ricans to be as liberal as they might like, the current flavor of Republicans may be equally disappointed.

Damn heavy snow makes for nice tableaus.

Now if the shoulder would stop hurting.

In the Dobbs decision, Justice Thomas exhibited some remarkable reasoning regarding history and the law when he suggested that, without evidence of abortion being legal in the days of the Founders, it could not be a Constitutional right today; Erick Erickson tried to take it further and fell on his face.

But now we’re getting the first ripples of this Dobbs reasoning from the inferior judges, as this article summary makes clear:

Federal judge in Texas rules that disarming those under protective orders violates their Second Amendment rights

U.S. District Judge David Counts signed another opinion Thursday that cited a lack of historical record on laws relating to domestic violence to justify disarming abusers. Advocates fear the ruling will put more victims in harm’s way. [The Texas Tribune]

The idea that someone already considered to be violent and irrational should continue to be armed is painfully silly.

But the real point here for me is an almost reverence for a supposed position of the Founding Fathers, a reverence that is directly and fatally repelled by a simple reading of the Constitution. Remember the part where it specifies that the Constitution may be amended by 2/3 of each House of Congress, followed by approval by the States?

In that very statement lies the information that should result in the dissolution of his order.

It is the acknowledgment of doubt, of the possibility of error, the recognition that, as society changes, so should the law of the land, in small particulars and great generalities.

This is the kind of ruling that is a regression, after the progress, the changes in which the 2nd Amendment, itself not an unlimited right in a country of limited rights, which brought us through the 1950s, a regression of dubious worth that could easily result in the deaths of estranged spouses and responding police officers. It ascribes a holiness to the alleged beliefs of the Founding Fathers that is uncalled for, and, in fact, a barrier to the necessary critiques and adjustments to our laws that are necessary to improve our country.

And it’s sad, really. Whether Judge Counts thinks this is a necessary ruling in the wake of Thomas’ ruling, or it was his own idea, there’s a good chance people will die because of it.

On Lawfare Martijn Rasser is discussing increasing pressure put on China by the USA when it comes to semiconductors:

The Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) published a rule with five main parts. One part banned any entity or individual from supplying leading-edge graphics processing units (GPUs)—a type of integrated circuit that accelerates the creation of images—and electronics containing them to any other entity or individual in China. These controls were imposed because GPU chips play an important role in the development and use of artificial intelligence applications, particularly the deep learning methods that are the main driver of the current AI boom. This ban applies to all foreign-made GPUs as a result of a modified extraterritorial jurisdictional rule called the foreign direct product rule, or FDPR for short. The new FDPR subjects any such chip made directly from American technology or software, or produced, even in part, from U.S.-made semiconductor production equipment to U.S. jurisdiction.

Because all semiconductor fabrication facilities use at least some U.S.-made equipment, every such GPU on the planet is now subject to U.S. controls. The Biden administration needed to apply this part of the rule extraterritorially because these GPUs are not made in the United States and no other country subjects them to any form of export control given their widespread commercial applications. No supply of these chips to a Chinese entity can take place without a U.S. government license. Unlike the Trump administration’s policy of granting licenses to Huawei and the Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) for certain types of older-generation consumer applications, the Biden team’s announced licensing policy is to presumptively deny all such licenses.

This was imposed October 7th, so it was before the China-wide protests over the zero tolerance Covid policy, but it certainly contributes to the pressure on the Chinese government. It says, Enough copying! Figure it out on your own! And the Chinese government is not known for encouraging widespread creativity; down that path lies forbidden thoughts.

But given their sudden change of policy when it comes to Covid, from zero tolerance to a dropping of many restrictions, which according to NPR has confused and discouraged Chinese citizens, one has to wonder how close they are to a tipping point when it comes to the government.

They’re probably a ways away. The Communist Party retains control of the armed forces, and I have yet to see any evidence, credible or otherwise, of the Chinese military be willing to turn against the Party.

On the other hand, I’d be surprised to see any such evidence. It seems very likely that senior military leaders are well aware of what would happen to the leaders of a failed coup. A whisper cannot released until the deed is done; don’t expect to hear rampant rumors that the Chinese military is restive.

Talking Points Memo (TPM) took advantage of access to the texts and messages of then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows (R), the former Congressman from North Carolina, that he sent and received during and after the January 6th insurrection, to analyze and publish some of them. Of particular interest to just about every one was this:

One message identified as coming from Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) to Meadows on January 17, 2021, three days before Joe Biden was set to take office, is a raw distillation of the various themes in the congressional correspondence. In the text, despite a typo, Norman seemed to be proposing a dramatic last ditch plan: having Trump impose martial law during his final hours in office.

Mark, in seeing what’s happening so quickly, and reading about the Dominion law suits attempting to stop any meaningful investigation we are at a point of � no return � in saving our Republic !! Our LAST HOPE is invoking Marshall Law!! PLEASE URGE TO PRESIDENT TO DO SO!!

For me, there’s insight in the phrasing. This is not a malevolent entity looking to take control of the government despite the election going against him.

No, this Rep really does think the election has been stolen. The mindset is not clear, but it’s clearly congruent with the worries of Senator Goldwater (R-AZ) of the 1960s: a man convinced that God has promised them the election would, of course, worry that cheating by the corporation providing the ballot counting systems might steal away an election. It’s more than a little shallow-minded, but it makes a lot of sense.

It’s also more than congruent with a politician who has foolishly bought into the Republican propaganda concerning the Democrats. One is tempted to ask him if he thinks Democrats are spending evenings in their comfy chairs, smoking jackets holding in their stomachs as they suck on the marrow of dead babies. He’d probably say he hadn’t thought of the smoking jackets, but it seemed likely.

Any way this goes, it’s the sort of mindset of someone who’s given in to the idea that a political adversary is, in fact, an enemy. This is a toxic fraction of our national bloodstream, and Rep Norman should probably simply resign and go back to whatever it was he was doing before he became a politician, because this sort of mindset is simply not appropriate, left or right, in a politician.

At least, without evidence.

… and it’s Obstruction.

Every morning my Arts Editor is muttering about him being in the way.

Girl in camo.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle (2018) is a mystery. Late 1940s, perhaps, small-town America, and who murdered the parents of 18 year old Merricat Blackwood and her older sister and owner of the house, Constance? Why are they loathe to go into town to get supplies, and why do the townspeople, in turn, loathe them? Is this why Merricat is practicing a type of magic to protect her, and does it work? Is Uncle Julian, who lives with them and is confined to a wheelchair, completely sane, or has he caught on to the secret of his brother and sister-in-law’s death, and it’s made him unbalanced? Is this new guy, Charles Blackwood, really a cousin, or is he something else? Or is it bad enough that he’s … a member of the family?

And, while we’re at it, why? Why do I care about this story concerning two mentally challenged women, living in their inheritance as if in a ship lost in a sea of chaos?

Or do I?

In the end, there’s nary a sympathetic character to be found, as it seems that everyone, from townsperson to children to the Blackwood parents, cousin Charles, and even Uncle Julian seem fully capable of enacting violence, incoherent, terrifying violence.

And perhaps that’s the point – understanding that when no one’s perfect, rejection of the imperfect leaves one in a precarious position. And that sometimes, rather than hating in an unforgiving furor, a little forgiveness may make more sense.

Maybe.

Well done, but mystifying rather than uplifting, be in an inquisitive mood when watching this one. Black depression definitely contraindicates this story.

Late last month there came a potential scandal involving SCOTUS:

Long time readers may remember my complaints of 4+ years ago that then-Secretary of State Brian Kemp (R-GA) neither recused himself from management of the 2018 election in Georgia, nor did he resign from his position. Why? Because he was running for the Governor’s seat that year, and thus it was a reasonable argument that Kemp had a conflict of interest when it came to overseeing his own election.

So why bring this up? Just moments ago, I discovered the same situation arose in the 2022 cycle, and I missed it. It involves Democrat, candidate for the Arizona governorship, and current Secretary of State for Arizona Katie Hobbs, who gained a narrow, narrow victory over former newscaster and MAGA Republican candidate Kari Lake. The margin is less than 1 full point, and it took quite a long time to call the race.

Sigh. It appears politics in Arizona is a messy business. Indeed, Wikipedia notes this:

Hobbs faced the Republican nominee, former KSAZ-TV news anchor Kari Lake, in the general election. She limited access to reporters, sometimes going out of her way to avoid them, and held small-scale campaign events. She declined to debate Lake, saying she wanted to deny Lake the opportunity to spread election denialism. Hobbs narrowly defeated Lake with 50.3% of the vote. After the election, Lake refused to concede, and is assembling a legal team to contest the election results.

Refusal to debate leaves voters less informed. While it’s true a website and other resources can inform the persistent voter as to candidate positions, a debate gives the audience an up-front display of performance in the face of confrontation, and may even demonstrate inconsistency, ignorance, or ideological kant infesting the positions of the candidate.

By refusing to recuse or resign for this election, Hobbs has given Lake a leg to stand on, although I don’t know that there was any more than that. Still, the appearance, as well as her behavior, stinks.

The online article title differs, and isn’t as good, as the paper copy from NewScientist:

Death metal singing technique is also used by chatty bats

Chortleable.

I speculated that one or two Senators might go independent after the recent election, and it appears that I was right.

Except for the who part. From azcentral:

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema said Friday she is leaving the Democratic Party and will formally become an independent in a move that more fully places her at the center of a narrowly divided chamber.

She announced her decision in an opinion piece published Friday in The Arizona Republic.

“I have joined the growing numbers of Arizonans who reject party politics by declaring my independence from the broken partisan system in Washington,” she wrote.

Sinema maintained she doesn’t plan to change her voting habits: often aligning with Democrats but backing Republicans on certain issues. And she won’t dispense with the legislative filibuster that has led many Democrats to call for her to face a primary challenge in 2024.

And so much for a primary challenge. As many have pointed out, her desire to be reelected may be at the center of this strategic move, and if she does choose to run again, it’ll place the Democrats in a quandary: endorse Sinema, which will infuriate progressives, or run a Democrat and risk handing the seat back to the Republicans?

Her term ends January of 2025.

I wonder if she believes she’s working for the forces of moderation and reconciliation. If so, the radicals of the Republican Party hardly seem likely to meet her halfway. No, I see this as a tactical move to improve her reelection chances.

And I don’t really expect her to be joined by Republican Senators Murkowski and Collins.

The People We Hate At The Wedding (2022) chronicles one of the most self-centered and neurotic American families, going to a wedding. Wisdom, heartbreak, laughter in equal, if predictable, parts. See it if you’re a Kristen Bell completist or you love cheekbones.

And that’s all I really have to say for it.

Weening:

archaic
: to hold as an opinion : SUPPOSE, BELIEVE
Little did he ween that these wretched rags he now wore, were but suitable to that long career of destitution before him … Herman Melville
Since primal Man was fashioned / To people ice and stones, / No pair, I ween, had ever been / Such chums as I and JONES. P. G. Wodehouse [Merriam-Webster]

No, no sightings. The word overweening, meaning arrogant, had occurred to me yesterday as a bit of verbiage I hardly ever encounter on the Web, and, as it seemed likely to be a word constructed from others, I then wondered as to the meanings of weening.

I have read Melville, and I have the bloodstains to prove it. While I enjoyed Moby-Dick, at the end of Pierre I seriously considered clawing out my eyes.

No matter how bad they are. Like me.

Erick Erickson is appalled that Senate Minority Leader McConnell (R-KY) is backing a law that, well, it depends on how you interpret social media links to news sites:

Breitbart News says sources credit McConnell with adding the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The NDAA is a must pass appropriations measure for national security. The JCPA is a federal welfare program for the very media that hates Republicans. It is a bailout for dying publications to be funded by Silicon Valley ad dollars generated from you. If McConnell is behind this, he needs to reverse it.

You know how you can go on Facebook or Google, find a news headline, and click through to the news site to read it? The JCPA would make Facebook and Google pay the news outlets for the kindness of displaying their news headlines and generating traffic for those news outlets. It would effectively create a “link tax.” It is nuts.

Nancy Pelosi is a big fan of it. Why any Republican would vote for this is beyond me. It sure as hell is not conservative.

Skipping over the linkage of the JCPA to the NDAA, which sounds to me like two very disparate subjects and thus shouldn’t be in one bill, let’s talk about the definition of buyer/seller, the very heart of capitalism. Sellers come in one of two varieties: an entity that produces a product or service, or an entity that buys, perhaps combines with other product, and then resells it with some sort of added value.

Notice that, in the era of Radio and Television, the tangible product or service, aka the radio or television program, is not the actual product, but was rather the empty space between content scenes or segments, dictated originally by the needs of drama, and this became commercial time, desirable for companies desiring to advertise services and products. In the Internet era, an analogous source of revenue is derived from the sale of commercial space on web sites. And for paper publications, predecessor to the these three, the product for consumers was the paper and its contents, both of which had value, which they bought, while advertisers bought space from the publisher in their publications to place their advertisements; publishers were paid coming and going.

Content commerce in the Internet Era, moreso than Radio and Television, functions to separate consumers from the mostly honest transaction of paying the producer of content for that content, substituting the considerably more questionable commercial model to the transaction.

So, back to the point, your generally capitalist system has consumers paying the original producers for their services and/or product, and resellers paying them as well from their revenue made via reselling.

So, what is Facebook (or Google, or other sites in this category, for which we’ll use the iconic Facebook)?

A producer? No.

Do they pay for the links they provide to other news sites? From context it appears that’s no, as well.

In fact, this exposes a hidden contradiction in Erickson’s screed, although he may not be aware of it himself. Consider the contradiction in these two statements: It is a bailout for dying publications to be funded by Silicon Valley ad dollars generated from you, and The JCPA would make Facebook and Google pay the news outlets for the kindness of displaying their news headlines and generating traffic for those news outlets.

The contradiction is the assertion that Facebook, et al, are keeping those publications alive, and yet they are dying. When a contradiction like this comes popping out of an argument, that usually means there’s a serious problem with the characterization of the situation.

Again, is Facebook producing the news, or is it reselling the news? Well, the fact of the matter is that, in a commercial sense, Facebook is thieving it. Let’s think about Facebook’s motives: they’re not putting those links up out of the kindness of Facebook’s wooden little heart. Their visitor analysis has, without a doubt, revealed they can drive more traffic with links that make them look local than without that characterization. Most, though not all, humans desire a sense of familiarity. Why do many inhabitants of small towns lament the demise of said towns? Because they’re familiar and they know everyone and gives a sense of extended family. So Facebook sprinkles everyone’s feeds with reader-local content. I’m in the Twin Cities of Minnesota, and I see ads from Senator Klobuchar and a number of local businesses, along with an occasional news story from various sources.

Facebook also sprays me and my neighbors with high-revenue links that they hope we’ll click on. (I try not to do so.)

It’s not about the content, per se. It’s about building an ambiance that sharpens the addiction to social media, along with message “likes” and all that well-described social media goal: keep the eyeballs on the screen as long as possible. As a former social media addict of roughly 40 years experience, this is not incredible, but quite credible.

And if you don’t have to pay for the links, it’s another penny in the corporate pocket to invest in the Metaverse. This is irrelevant, but, hca      ey, Facebook’s clever in many ways, but so far their future product, Metaverse, appears to be a smoking crater.

I’m not sure what motivated Erickson’s misguided anti-legacy-media rant. Maybe he simply misinterprets the currents of media commerce, itself a confusing subject because the traditional, if misguided, private sector metric of money money money just doesn’t work so well in the free (liberty sense) press sector of society, because money doesn’t measure excellence in that sector. If you want to know about excellence, ask about Pulitzer’s and ask if Fox News has any (none mentioned on their Wikipedia page). If you want to read my laboriously worked out conclusions on sectors of society and the results of metric confusion, Sectors of Society at the top of the page is the starting point for that.

Or maybe he hates legacy media. He certainly uses a lot of negative adjectives, such as sclerotic, to describe them. He has that contemptuous attitude that makes me suspect that, as a confirmed extreme rightist, he’s appalled that a news service doesn’t support this positions, and therefore they must be condemned. That many of them are not surviving this new era of “free information” must be gratifying, and the easy conclusion that they are incompetent causes him to skip reanalysis that would reveal false characterizations. It’s an insidious form of confirmation bias.

He also doesn’t seem to be aware of the degraded journalism product that is being brought on, in part, by the lack of revenue from Facebook, etc, offered by local news providers. In this case, degraded can mean complete disappearance, such as news of strictly geographical interest like changes to city zoning regulations, the police beat, etc. These are serious degradations as they can function as oversight of police and other governmental institutions.

To Erickson, the old media are just sclerotic because he persists in applying improper metrics to legacy media, without realizing that his preferred media, which offers at least some support to his extremist positions, does not and can not offer the journalism product that the old line media does with excellence.

Here is Perry Bacon, Jr.’s proposal to find a way to preserve legacy media.

Gotta love Zefrank:

Senator Warnock’s (D) margin of victory in his reelection campaign in Georgia is coming in at nearly three points, giving Democrats a majority in the Senate, which is worth noting they lacked before the red wave. While some liberal pundits are celebrating, I find it difficult to get around the fact that his challenger, former NFL star and Trump-endorsee Herschel Walker (R), nearly won.

After decisively beating all of his primary rivals.

Mr. Walker demonstrated such skills as mendacity, fornication, and rhetorical gibberish during the campaign, and still won well more than 40% of Georgians’ votes. It’s embarrassing. That many Georgians thought that Walker somehow was better equipped than Warnock for the Senate. I’m aghast.

The Democrats now have an important question in front of them. Why was this race so close? Some possible answers:

• The American electorate distrusts Democrats.
• The Georgian electorate distrusts Democrats.
• The Georgian electorate thinks a Senate seat is a prize for the mantle and not a serious position of responsibility.

The announcement that Trump Corp and Trump Payroll Corp have been found guilty of tax fraud, involving how they paid CFO Allen Weisselberg and others in order to avoid tax liabilities, and that they’ve been found guilty on all seventeen charges, has a whole lot of schadenfreude going on in lefty and NeverTrumper land.

Along with that ungraceful behavior, a few points come up.

1. That there were no Not Guilty findings may indicate that Trump and his minions were not particularly good at being tax frauds. In fact, it may be that, much like many of those who worked on his campaign and in his Administration, his business associates were also sub-standard, that he, like many bullies, only hired sub-average folks to do what he needed done; this low-quality approach kept initial costs down, and meant that it was very unlikely he’d be outshown by a minion. His pathological narcissism wouldn’t permit that. But the cheapskate, egotist approach is a recipe for disaster. Like this one.
2. Now that he’s been proven vulnerable – yes, yes, I’m sure he’ll appeal, as the corporate attorneys affirm in the article, and in a particularly snarly outraged manner, but the damage is done – a particular segment of his base, weak of faith or maybe stronger of intellect than the average member, will drop away. They’ll look at their own tax returns, devoid of that big old stamp that says TAX FRAUD, and realize that he’s not a buddy of their’s. He’s an alleged billionaire who still avoids paying taxes. How big a segment will peel away? Hard to say.
3. His grifting return will take a hit, at least from the little guys. Whether or not this will impact his millionaire+ donor class is another question, because many of them are resentful of having to pay taxes. It’s an attitude cultivated by their mentors and heroes when the soon-to-be donors are young, and whether they inherit, steal, or earn their riches, they just can’t imagine those government types doing anything worthwhile with their money.
4. The evidence from this trial, if not already in use – I am not a lawyer, so I don’t know if that’s permitted or not – can now be released for use by all the other legal scandals swirling about the former President. This may prove fruitful.
5. The umbrella organization, The Trump Organization, has now suffered the soft impairment of being a corporate entity criminal, meaning business loans are harder to gain, and other corporations may decline to work with the company without tough guarantees, such as full upfront payments. I suspect it’s been running on empty for years; this may put a knife in it as Trump drains it of cash, whether out of sheer greed, or because of prosperity church philosophy.

And, finally, there may be a debate going on in Trump’s head right now. If he’s brought up on criminal charges, such as in Georgia for his illegal attempt to influence Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger, will he attempt to leave the United States for a country lacking extradition? Or will the drama inherent in being a defendant be too much for him? And then would he testify in his own behalf?

Exeunt Trump, stage left, pursued by prosecutors.

Stay tuned for more drama. This is just the beginning.

Erick Erickson isn’t doing well. First, he doesn’t like his leaders, especially when it comes to Hunter Biden and his laptop:

Again, I don’t have a problem if the GOP wants to see what all the fuss is about. But giving it this much attention and making it this much of a priority is more likely than not going to be self-defeating and blow up in their faces.

A better end goal would be not to drag the Bidens but shake up and reform the national security apparatus of the United States, which has been politicized. If the GOP were smart (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA), they’d wind this down and pass it over to a special committee designed to investigate the FBI, Justice Department, and the politicization therein. Then, the Biden laptop story becomes a useful illustration of how all the above collaborated with a social media company to censor a media outlet from telling a true story. And then the entangling details of the laptop provide extra news nuggets.

And then he makes the suggestion that the national security apparatus has been politicized. Sure. Maybe the first topic of the day will be how the FBI assisted Hillary in her run for the Presidency.

Or was it hated her? Quite honestly, you can find both views, although the former seems surprisingly popular. Talk to progressives, though, and it’s all about former FBI Director (and then-Republican) James Comey deliberately screwing Clinton over.

I read Comey’s book and felt he just got caught in the well-known Greek rocks, and then discovered that Trump is just a corrupt mess.

Yeah, have a pack of fourth-rate House GOP members questioning Republican and FBI Director Christopher Wray and his subordinates about how they all secretly supported Hillary. That’ll go down like an iron thistle.

Does Erickson really want the national security apparatus angry at his side? There’s just about no one qualified in the House GOP to conduct such questioning. How about if they put Gaetz, Jordan, and Greene in charge?

Oh, my. Now that’d be a dumpster fire to burn out the metaphor. We’d need something new.

If you happen to be one of those folks who think college – or high school! – students should have influence over how they are taught, consider this lesson from Freddie deBoer on Persuasion concerning the firing of Professor Maitland Jones of NYU:

Whatever the case, I want to suggest that the students who launched the petition were denying themselves a central element of education: figuring out what you’re not good at. Failing. Trying to learn, and failing to do so. This is an element of education as vital as learning what you’re good at, the act of self-discovery of one’s own lack of ability. All of us have limits, natural limits on what we can learn and do in academic fields. Some exceedingly rare individuals appear to be brilliant at everything, but for the rest of us, there’s a whole suite of topics and skills that we will never perform with any facility. And if colleges insist on reducing rigor to the point that learning those limits becomes impossible, something will have been lost.

In my own time as a graduate student in the humanities and as an administrator in the City University of New York, I was dismayed by the ongoing assault on rigor, with arguments against homework, against grading, and against taking attendance. Many in academia default to any position that seems pro-student, due to a desire to be “the cool professor” or through tendentious political definitions of the purpose of higher education. But such people tend to define “pro-student” as meaning whatever students want, when of course part of the point of being an educator is to do what’s best for students that they may not want to do themselves. I believe that rigor is essential to providing students with value for their tuition dollars, as I personally have been brought closer to the level of my potential thanks to professors who made serious demands of me. I have also learned the limits of that potential thanks to those teachers, who helped me to understand what I was and was not good at.

The one point that deBoer should have made, but didn’t, is that by making courses too easy, we run the risk of incompetency leaking into safety-critical fields, fatal accidents occurring – and then, who do you blame? The professor was fired, you can’t blame him. At one time, the pedagogical approach was … a graduate instructor friend of mine in the electrical engineering department explained the idea simply. If early engineering classes were easy, and most students passed them, then some of those students would inevitably run up against their academic limits later in their academic careers, at which point starting over with a new major would be harder and more expensive. [deBoer]

At one time, it was the responsibility of the educational institutions to ensure, as best one can, that only competent graduates get out the door. But if the administrators are now giving the students access to the controls, then who’s responsible?

These self-centered students. For every fatal accident caused by an incompetent graduate hailing their institution.

Those petition writers, those petition signers, have taken on responsibilities for which they lack all competency. The administrators, to be honest, bear some responsibility as well. They should know better. Indeed, deBoer’s friend’s recitation should be part of the curriculum for the would-be administrator.

And this is why you don’t let the students run the joint.

Some thoughts on possible review openings.

“The Mitchells vs the Machines (2021) is all about the critical role our robot overlords will play in healing dysfunctional families everywhere.”

No, no, no.

“The Mitchells vs the Machines (2021) gives us the grim consequences of helicopter parents meeting the issue of a geek who probably had helicopter parents.”

Oh, no, no, no! I mean, yes, but no!

“The Mitchells vs the Machines (2021) chronicles the consequences of letting a child from a home of micromanagers try to pursue her dreams.

Maybe, but it’s a dismal, tired attempt.

“The Mitchells vs the Machines (2021) demonstrates how a modern, happy family is utterly ineffectual in the face of the first bump in the road, said bump being smart-ass robots that think they know better than humanity.”

Sounds like the review for I, Robot (2004), if I had reviewed it.

Oh! Got it! Got it!

“The Mitchells vs the Machines (2021) is the proof we all needed that our Galactic Protectors are, as we’ve suspected all along …. PUGS. There’s no other explanation.”

Strangely reminiscent of the car trips down to Chicago of my own youth. Station wagon, car sickness, panic over the driving. Check. Check. Check.

Otherwise, how is it? Not bad. Hard choices are not always soft-shoed, which is good. Plot holes are covered by breakneck pacing, which pauses just long enough to build empathetic characters and explain just how things will go wrong for us if we’re not careful.

Entertaining, even if the art doesn’t appeal to you.

It may look like lamb’s ear, but don’t assume it’ll vote with all the other lamb’s ears.

One of the terms that conservatives thinkers have for Dr. Kendi’s thoughts on correcting American racism is identitarian politics, which means that identifying a person on the basis of physical, or more rarely other, characteristics as a member of a given group will also give you the most reliable key to their politics.

This tends to get on the nerves of just about everyone else, and post election polling seems to confirm that it’s a broken contention. Democratic assumptions about the Latino vote has been wrong for several years, as many of them think that illegal immigration is a serious problem and illegal immigrants should be deported.

But this report might suggest something quite similar is going on in Oklahoma:

As a group pushes to make abortion a constitutional right in Oklahoma, there’s new attention on the process they’re trying to use.

State Sen. Warren Hamilton said he wants to change how many votes are needed to change laws. Right now, state questions pass by a simple majority, which he argues disenfranchises rural Oklahoma. …

The newest possible state question making headlines is State Question 828, which by a vote of the people would amend the state constitution to protect abortion rights. Hamilton announced via press release that he’s looking to file a joint resolution that would require state questions to be passed via a two-thirds majority.

Hamilton argued the current system disenfranchises rural Oklahoma, giving a voice to only the major cities. The McCurtain lawmaker also alleged it allows for voter fraud, election tampering and out-of-state influence. [KOCO News5]

It appears Hamilton has a sudden suspicion that all those anti-abortionists from the pre-Dobbs era are just not as devoted to the cause as he might have thought back then.

But his thinking is so odd. Rural Oklahomans are pro-life while city inhabitants are pro-choice? Is he so sure of that? And just because rural inhabitants are outnumbered, it’s necessary to come right out and say the votes of city-dwellers are to be discounted?

That’s one way to start a riot, to make voters, even your voters, unhappy with you.

I look forward to hearing how this works out for him.

I’ve long beat the drum for one of the GOP’s central illnesses being their tendency towards toxic team politics, or known to the political world as Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line: party line voting.

And it seems a few of them are inching slowly, with eyes squinted, towards this diagnosis. Well, one, at least. Sort of.

Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a Republican, declared himself unable to vote for either Walker or Warnock.

“When there’s division in the locker room, there’s finger-pointing. It’s usually kind of the hallmark sign of a losing season,” said Duncan, who has been highly critical of Walker. He drew derision from other Republicans this week after he said he stood in line to vote but left without casting a ballot.

“We’ve been asked to be team players as Republicans for too long,” added Duncan, who also has criticized Trump’s grip on the party. [WaPo]

Can’t vote for Walker, that’s a key part of breaking the rule of toxic team politics. Then Duncan veers off.

“We’re done being team players. If we want to win, we need team leaders.”

Maybe someone lusting for power.

But it’s a tiny baby step in the right direction.