Category Archives: Uncategorized

This is the last of my pictures from the St. Paul Winter Carnival snow sculptures. In case the pictures are not entirely clear, it’s a couple of bears fighting over a salmon:

I wish I’d seen them before they started melting. I think it was the cleverest idea presented.

I was inspired to suggest to my Arts Editor that she should enter this display (is it a competition?) next year, to which she hissed and said she loathes cold hands.

Pity.

I was trying to come up with some ideas of my own, such as a sculpture of someone working on a sculpture, or a sculpture of the Gates of Hell. Any other ideas out there?

There is certainly a class of people who, having an excess of wealth, use it to buy themselves positions within government. Oh, not directly, but through generous contributions. Many such contributions earn the contributor a small, unimportant ambassadorship. It’s almost a medal.

The now-fired Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, for example, made a $1 million contribution to the Trump Inauguration – and was sneaky about it:

Prominent Portland hotelier Gordon Sondland donated $1 million to the inauguration of President Donald Trump, records show, but didn’t use his own name. [OregonLive/The Oregonian]

Maybe that sneakiness was a plus in the eyes of Trump, or the Trump-minion that selected Sondland for the job of ambassador.

I think it’s unusual for one of the members of this class of people to get caught up in a governmental scandal, but Sondland, who appears to have little experience beyond founding and running a hotel chain, found himself in a bathtub full of scandal, as President Trump was alleged to pressure the Ukrainian President to announce an investigation of rival Presidential candidate Joe Biden in exchange for releasing military aid assigned by Congress to Ukraine. Perhaps I shouldn’t say alleged, because President Trump’s pet Republican Senators, to a large degree, admitted the facts proved the theory.

Sondland testified, first to say there was nothing there, and then, when other figures, such as Kurt Volker, testified that, no, something irregular and even illegal might have happened, he, uh, “corrected” his testimony, and let loose a flood of incriminating information.

Now that the President has been found to have not done anything so serious as to require his removal, at least according to a bunch of dependent^[1] sheep masquerading as Senators, Trump is now bent on revenge, and Sondland is among his first victims, having been fired. In typical sycophantic fashion, for it seems this is the way of this class of people, he issued a statement, part of the above CNN story, which incidentally is strongly reminiscent of Jeff Sessions’ campaign to regain his old Senatorial seat:

“I was advised today that the President intends to recall me effective immediately as United States Ambassador to the European Union,” Sondland said. “I am grateful to President Trump for having given me the opportunity to serve, to Secretary Pompeo for his consistent support, and to the exceptional and dedicated professionals at the U.S. Mission to the European Union. I am proud of our accomplishments. Our work here has been the highlight of my career.”

It’s not really an aside to observe it would appear it’s another Republican without a lick of self-respect, someone who defines themselves in terms of what their perceived superiors think of them – and here he is, being a lickspittle.

He should have enough pride to kick Trump in the teeth in his statement. It’s not like this hotelier is going to end up under a highway overpass. But this unfortunate mindset may apply to most members of the class of people of which I speak – but I don’t know any of them personally.

Getting back on track, here’s the thing: there are dueling lessons. The obvious one is that if you cross President Trump, if you violate the fealty he believes you owe him for giving you a job, you’ll pay through the nose. In fact, I liked the statement of David Pressman, the lawyer for Lt. Col. Alex Vindman, who also testified in the impeachment trials as a witness to the fateful phone call, also from the CNN story:

“There is no question in the mind of any American why this man’s job is over, why this country now has one less soldier serving it at the White House,” Pressman said. “LTC Vindman was asked to leave for telling the truth. His honor, his commitment to right, frightened the powerful.”

And that lets me transition to the competing lesson, and that’s this: if you’re going to compete for some coveted government position with campaign contributions in this Administration, you should just throw away any respect you have for truth. Fealty comes before truth. Can you handle that? Are you ready to be Trump’s parrot?

And, if so, perhaps you should talk with your faith … oh, wait. Many of them are in the same class as you. Hmmmm. Well, go read some history, it’s full of examples of both those who swear total fealty, and how badly they come out, and those who prefer truth and justice.

Which doesn’t always end well for them, either, if I’m being honest. Consider what happened to that guy named Jesus.

¹ In a few cases, such as Senator Graham (R-SC), either “fearing unemployment” or “bamboozled” may also apply. But, generally, the toxic term of team politics is best.

Source: GeorgiaBeforePeople

I admit, I’m being a little hard on archaeologists in my reaction to a recent article in NewScientist (25 January 2020, paywall), “The epic ocean journey that took Stone Age people to Australia,” by Graham Lawton, concerning questions of how humans migrated 65,000 year ago from East Asia to Sahul, a prehistoric continent composed of Australia, New Guinea, Tasmania, and what is now seabed. A difficult crossing, particularly if there was little reason to think there was anything to find on the other end, …

That goes a long way to explaining why, until recently, the prevailing view was that the sea crossings between Asia and Sahul presented such an obstacle that deliberate migration was unthinkable. People must have arrived on the currents after being washed into the sea by a tsunami or flood, perhaps clinging to a mat of floating vegetation or a raft of pumice.

The striking part for me is the tendency of the scientists to assume either random chance, as above, or peaceful, cooperative ventures:

The other new line of evidence supporting a planned migration comes from Corey Bradshaw of Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, and his colleagues. They modelled the demographics of colonisation, taking account of typical hunter-gatherer fertility rates and longevity and the ecological conditions they would have encountered after landing in Sahul. The calculations revealed that the minimum founding population was 1300 people, perhaps all at once or in smaller groups over many years, which all but rules out accidental colonisation.

The peopling of Sahul was “probably planned”, Bradshaw concludes. Bird agrees. “It is not feasible that people randomly got there,” he says. “They had to think about it and they came in large numbers.” Why they came is a different question. But the chances are they were driven by dwindling resources, or simply the lure of the unknown, says Bird.

But what is so difficult about imagining a falling out? To me, while I do not have access to the knowledge of the scientists, it’s a little hard to believe the resources of a continent were being exhausted by a comparatively light sprinkling of human bands, unless the climate, being in an ice age at the time, had put the squeeze on both meat and non-meat resources.

But conflict, aye, that’s immune to resource depletion, isn’t it? One group, a fracturing of the group over some slight that swiftly grows to existential proportions; an arbitrary and capricious religious tenet or ruling, forcing one group to submit and even face death, or escape; a disgust with the current ruling class, and rather than eliminate them, leave.

Or even an oversupply of testosterone. The explorer who finds an unknown land may have attracted mates that were scarce.

Without a written history, much less artifacts, proving these sorts of hypotheses is, of course, nearly impossible. But the things that drive humanity are not limited to resources or even mates; the madness of religion has motivated various sects of humanity to do amazing, wonderful, grotesque, and even impenetrable things.

And, reading the above article, I felt that such a possibility was being completely ignored.

Former Representative Joe Walsh (R-IL), the Republican candidate for President who opened his campaign by apologizing to the former President Obama for some of his comments during his time in the House, has closed up his campaign.

This is unsurprising, of course. Rarely does a sitting incumbent lose the primary, although some outstanding examples, such as that of Representative Eric Cantor (R-VA) do come to mind – or, for that matter, Representative Joe Crowley (D-NY), upset by current Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).

But Walsh’s comments are interesting in that they help confirm the pathology of the Republican Party. This comes from Walsh’s Op-Ed in WaPo, so, for my conservative readers ready to pull the liberal media lever at a moment’s notice, I’m afraid that Walsh, himself known as a far-right conservative, will not permit that interpretation.

It’s a fascinating – if morbidly so – guided tour by a conservative into what the conservative movement has become, and because of Walsh’s conservatism – naive it may be – his report has an air of authority that a journalist may not achieve, at least in the eyes of the suspicious reader.

Benjamin Wittes produces an analysis of the reasoning capabilities of the Republicans which is hardly complimentary, starting with Senator Murkowski (R-AK):

The answer is quite nonsensical. Here’s how Sen. Lisa Murkowski put it in her statement explaining her opposition to witnesses:

The House chose to send articles of impeachment that are rushed and flawed. I carefully considered the need for additional witnesses and documents, to cure the shortcomings of its process, but ultimately decided that I will vote against considering motions to subpoena.

Given the partisan nature of this impeachment from the very beginning and throughout, I have come to the conclusion that there will be no fair trial in the Senate. I don’t believe the continuation of this process will change anything. It is sad for me to admit that, as an institution, the Congress has failed.

Pause a moment over the senator’s logic. She seems to be saying that because the House’s product was hasty and deficient and partisan, the Senate should punish the body by proceeding in a fashion that is hastier, more deficient, and every bit as partisan. She will vote to prevent the Senate from hearing evidence, to blind herself to information relevant to her own obligation to decide the president’s case, she says, because “I don’t believe the continuation of this process will change anything.” It won’t change anything, that is, except whether she and her colleagues have access to more, rather than less, probative evidence on the question before them. If the House decision was hasty and partisan and left a record that is incomplete, that would seem to argue for the Senate proceeding in a fashion that was careful and deliberative, and it would seem to argue for senators to behave in a nonpartisan fashion. [Lawfare]

Or Senator Portman (R-OR):

Sen. Rob Portman was a trifle more coherent in his explanation of this point. He offered that “it sets a dangerous precedent—all but guaranteeing a proliferation of highly partisan, poorly investigated impeachments in the future—if we allow the House of Representatives to force the Senate to compel witness testimony that they never secured for themselves.”

Portman did not, unfortunately, reflect on what precedent it sets for the Senate to impose a no-new-evidence rule on the House, disabling the House from presenting at trial any evidence it did not acquire itself before impeachment. This will of course incentivize presidents (and judges) to withhold material as long as possible during impeachment investigations, thus either delaying impeachment or creating an argument for the evidence’s inadmissibility if impeachment proceeds without it.

Since the Senate did not hear testimony from any of the witnesses who did testify before the House investigation, the rule Portman endorses is really a no-witnesses-at-all rule. If a witness has testified before the House, after all, her testimony is not needed in the Senate. If not, Portman would preclude it because the House did not secure it earlier. Portman’s rule would turn the Senate into an appellate body. The Constitution, by contrast, gives the Senate the role of trying impeachments.

The icing on this ridiculous cake is the notion that hearing witnesses would take too long.

Wittes’ conclusion is their fear to tread on their “leader”:

Yes, inside the herd, life is abusive. But outside, it is very very cold and one is very exposed.

Especially when the wolves howling at the edges of the herd are under the control of the herd leader, isn’t it?

It’s hard to call just about anyone outside of Trump himself a leader in the Republican Party, and he’s so erratic and mendacious that it’s difficult to have any respect for him; consequently, the only reason the Republican Party hasn’t burned to the ground is the support of the Evangelicals, Trump’s hard core base of cultists (more in another post), and the understandable distaste of many voters to examine the political scene these days; it’s easier, and oh-so-convenient for a number of parties, foreign and domestic, for the voters, especially the independents, to just not vote.

That’s why there was some dismay within the Democratic Party at the failure of the Iowa Caucuses to attract a high turnout. A disengaged voter is more likely to vote Republican, at least in the current calculus. And what we need today is a competent Republican Party – not one that turns itself inside out trying to justify voting in accordance with Trump’s wishes.

The remains of a snow sculpture of a mouse outwitting a mouse trap at the Winter Carnival:

Rectitude:

honesty and correct moral behaviour:
An austere man of unquestioned moral rectitude, Nava inspired deep devotion in those who worked for him. [Cambridge Dictionary]

I used it in this post here. Cheeky, I know.

These are very silly, yet there’s something authentic in their movements.

Another important retort comes to mind. If you are accosted by a Trump supporter who points at their sudden economic prosperity as the reason they support President Trump, the proper response is this:

I’m sorry, but you’re using the wrong metric.

Eh? What?

The President, the head of the Executive Branch, does not bear sole responsibility for the economic prosperity of this country. In fact, the President, through the various agencies of the Executive Branch, bears the responsibility of properly implementing the laws passed by Congress, and, by his own behavior, modeling proper behavior for the citizenry: ethical, moral, compassionate, war-leader, as the need may arise.

Oh, bullshit!

No, please read the Constitution, that’s what it says. I’d say, in fact, that you, sir, are a victim of sleight-of-hand. He’s distracted you with the shiny lights of a happy bank account, taking your attention away from the long-term, but far more important, questions of whether we’re a nation of Laws, or a nation of dictators. If the latter, your bank account will not matter, unless you’re willing to snuffle up to his posterior every time he presents it, along with all his minions’ posteriors, who are quite the grisly and mendacious lot.

But, but, but ..

Which metric should be used? Sir, I think we can derive that from the office of the Executive Branch, as described in the Constitution. Are laws enforced as dictated by the Constitution? Is the military deployed and managed wisely? Are regulations chosen or discarded based on how well they serve to protect the interests of the citizenry, not the bottom lines of corporations? Is the government properly and promptly staffed? Does the President, conscious of his role, conduct himself with rectitude, displaying at all times a respect for the law, a consequently courteous engagement with Congress, and a concern for future threats to the security of the Nation, displaying leadership at all times in assessing and selecting strategies for dealing with those threats? I’m sure there are other factors, but these are substantially the core; it should be clear that the state of one’s prosperity is, at best, a minor factor in the evaluation, as the prosperity of one member of the Republic has little relation to the implementation of Justice, which is the heart of the President’s duty, so has history taught us.

Liberal!

As liberal as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and other beloved figures out of history. If you believe in this Country, sir, you’ll read the Constitution, concentrating on how your bank account’s contents are the responsibility of the President, and when you realize his responsibilities are far afield from your local prosperity, then we can concentrate on evaluating how well he fulfills his true responsibilities. Thank you for clarifying my thinking on this matter, sir.

Yeah, perhaps rectitude is a bit old-fashioned.

If you’re confronted by someone yammering about how the people should be allowed to vote Trump out of office, or that impeachment is electoral theft, here’s how I hope to use my wits at that time:

Sir, let me introduce you to Ted Bundy. Are you aware of who he is? [If not, a simple explanation that he is one of the most damaging and notorious serial killers to have ever lived.]

Now, sir, it is my contention that the United States committed a grievous offense against God and Country when it executed Mr. Bundy on January 24, 1989. [The response may be variable: outrage at the implied comparison with President Trump through cool contempt at your perceived softness on crime; I think it best to dismiss their response with a simple You are wrong, sir, in your assumptions!]

For it is God’s decision, and His decision alone, when to take a human life, is it not, for he created us, and has the exclusive right when to take us from this life! [At this point, there may be sputtering, or perhaps a cool disagreement. This is good. And, yes, an agnostic, I’m mildly amused at the thought of myself in this role.]

You disagree, sir? Then explain to me, sir, in societal terms, why you believe it was right to imprison and even execute Mr. Bundy?

[At this juncture, some response along the lines of killing is bad will come out; it’ll be your duty to steer and generalize it into terms of societal damage.]

The game is up for your interlocutor.

Then, sir, if you insist I accept your reasoning for the extreme punishment of Mr. Bundy, then I shall employ it to point out that those who voted for the impeachment, conviction, and permanent removal of President Trump from all public offices have the exact same concerns – damage to our society, to our country, and, beyond Bundy, to our country’s reputation, and, in fact, to democracy itself. Law is not a game, as you have taught me here; it is, at its best, a tool for furthering our prosperity, by removing those elements who work against our stability and prosperity. The Constitution gives Congress the explicit right to make their case; to rail against them for trying to ‘steal’ an election is to deny that they have very real concerns about the country in which they live, which is to say, to deny their very Americanism. The Republicans who failed their duty, in my opinion, have openly admitted President Trump’s guilt; their fear guided them, whether of personal retribution, or failure of reelection. I thank you for teaching me this lesson.

The snark may be a bit much. Customize to fit.

Zack Beauchamp expresses understandable alarm at the failure to convict President Trump on Vox:

Donald Trump’s impeachment acquittal is a warning sign that something has gone deeply wrong in our political system. It shows a kind of subtle corruption of the law that has, in other countries, led to the decline and fall of their democratic systems in their entirety.

Senate Republicans didn’t violate the Constitution’s rules for holding an impeachment trial. They adhered fairly reasonably to the letter of the law and can credibly claim they did all that was legally required of them. But this was a sham trial, one whose outcome was never seriously in doubt. By following the formal rules, Senate Republicans gave this fiction a veneer of formal legitimacy. All of them, with the brave exception of Mitt Romney, weaponized the letter of the law against its spirit.

This kind of corrupt legalism is a common practice among ruling parties in democracies that have fallen into autocracy. That these regimes contain the most direct parallels to what’s just happened in America makes clear the precise way in which our democracy is under attack. We should not fear a coup or seizure of authoritarian emergency powers, but a slow hollowing-out of our legal system to the point where the people no longer have meaningful control over their leaders.

First, let’s acknowledge that Zack and Vox are over on the left side of political spectrum; I doubt that any publications over on the right side, unless they of the NeverTrumper variety, would express similar sentiments.

But after that, let’s talk about political systems and what makes them likely to succeed or fail. It’s popular to talk about the structure of political systems, especially the American system, how the various parts balance and monitor each other, etc etc. Designing a stable political system is a fascinating theoretical exercise for a certain class of people. I’ve never really indulged, but I can feel the pull.

But often omitted from this discussion is people, the meat of the system, if you’ll permit a slightly disturbing expression. In my experience, a political system functions best when the vast majority of the citizenry believes both the letter and the spirit of the political system is best for them and gives them the best opportunity for prosperity.

But just as importantly, the deviance of those on the political ladder correlates with the malfunctioning of the political system in direct correlation with their height up that ladder. That is, the more important the political leader – say, Senator Majority Leader McConnell (R-KY) – who views the current political system with little or no reverence, to borrow a term, the more that political system is likely to malfunction.

So I think Beauchamp is guilty of a slight error when he faults the political system. Honestly, and much to the dismay of a number of observers, theoreticians, and not a few software engineers, the system doesn’t matter if the people, up and down the ladder of power, are not behind it^[1].

And the evidence that an important class of political leaders, namely nearly the entire Republican Senate, as well as the Republican House membership, has lost their reverence for the political system, as set forth in the Constitution, is clear and apparent to the observer willing to put aside their prejudices. Only Representative Amash, who resigned from the GOP, and Senator Romney of Utah voted for impeachment and conviction, respectively, and made clear statements of how the actions of President Trump were wrong on a tremendous scale.

Their Party colleagues, when push came to shove, even admitted Trump’s activities were criminal, but with little to no explanation claimed they didn’t meet the bar of high crimes. They’ve lost their reverence for the political system they are sworn to uphold.

There is no legal punishment for this sort of mass failure of a political party; they can only be voted out of power by an outraged citizenry. We can only hope the Democrats are capable of ably communicating this meltdown in the Republicans to a citizenry that is very busy and highly distractable. We’ll find out in November. And if they’re not, then the citizenry will be getting what it deserves. Maybe a little more prosperity, but at the cost of their political freedom and a future of leading the world. The United States will become another failed experiment in the difficult art of governance.

¹ Which, not incidentally, is why nation-building doesn’t depend on the competency of the first nation in the process of “gifting” the second nation with democracy, but on the willingness of the populace of the second nation to espouse democracy.

I see that Mitt Romney is the only Republican Senator to vote for conviction today in the finale of President Trump’s impeachment trial. I heard part of his statement on the radio on the way home from work, and I thought it was honest and accurate – and should put the balance of the Republican Senators to shame.

And, yes, I’m disappointed that a few more of those Republican Senators, particularly Collins and Murkowski, didn’t join Romney in seeing the case and the evidence as being strong enough to vote for conviction. After all, the defensive wall of the Republicans has now become, Yes, he did bad things, but they’re not bad enough. From No he didn’t to I don’t care! is a long way to fall, isn’t it?

Yes, I know that I’ve said I think this is part of Pelosi’s November strategy, and that she will encourage the Democrats to wield this as a club against every Republican incumbent up for reelection next November – and every Republican challenger who clings to Trump like a lamprey to a fish. But it’s not as if Pelosi tricked the Republicans into this dishonorable position. Trump was neither forced nor enticed, but instead took positive steps into the land of political corruption. Pelosi, after due consideration, brought the inquiry, had her committees conduct them, and then had the articles passed.

The evidence was clear, even without the witnesses. The Republican Senators, as did the Republican Representatives before them, had every opportunity to behave with honor, to take governance seriously. They didn’t.

And that’s why I’m feeling down. It’s not that the conviction effort failed; I’ve known it would. It’s the failure of virtually all Republicans to clear the high bar of behavior that was thrown up to challenge them. Indeed, just about all of them seem to have stooped to make sure they didn’t touch the bar as they slipped under. That sad commentary on a once legitimate political party – which still enjoys an unwarranted amount of support in the citizenry – is what depresses me.

Romney, today, joins Amash as men who, while I may disagree with them on governmental matters, have my esteem for evaluating the President and his actions, finding them desperately wanting, and taking the strongest possible action to stem it. My hat is off to those two men.

Sheesh. This is just plain silly, and an indictment of the Republicans all on its lonesome:

GOP Rep. Thomas Massie is running for reelection in Kentucky. So why is he running TV ads in Florida?

Like most everything in Republican politics, the answer has to do with one person: President Donald Trump.

With Trump planning to go to his Mar-a-Lago club for Super Bowl weekend, Massie, a four-term Kentucky congressman, is purchasing TV advertising time in South Florida on the president’s favorite channel, Fox News. Massie’s goal: Communicate to the president that his Republican primary challenger, attorney Todd McMurtry, is a “Trump hater.”

The libertarian-minded Massie has broken with Trump on an array of key issues, which McMurtry has highlighted repeatedly since launching his campaign earlier this month. But Massie’s new commercial aims to turn the tables on McMurtry, who is branding himself as a staunch Trump ally in lockstep with the president ahead of the May 19 primary. [Politico]

Well, how bad is it?

Telling the truth is dangerous to one’s career, apparently. If you’re Republican.

But it really goes further. An elided point is that we’re now substituting fealty to Trump, as Politico puts it, for positions and competency. Just about any voter knows that candidates have positions, while long-time readers know that, in my view, competency in office is an important part of any candidate’s resume, a facet that is in danger of extinction within the toxic team politics of the Republican Party.

In other words, it hardly matters how much you’ve fouled up your life prior to your run for office. Swear fealty to Trump in sufficiently towering terms and that’s apparently good enough to get you into office, at least for the Republican Party base, just so long as you haven’t spat on Trump – or are really willing to, uh, abase yourself. Even if you’ve advocated for abortion rights, don’t despair: Trump was once in favor of abortion rights, and probably still is, if truth were to be told.

But truth hardly ever passes his lips, does it?

Over the last few days, the rate at which deaths are occurring as the Wuhan coronavirus spreads has increased, but not by a great deal, with 426 dead as of this writing, but an infection count of 20,500+ – the vast majority in China. We’re also not seeing reports of young, fundamentally healthy people dying, so that’s another red flag that remains conspicuous by its absence.

However, this WaPo report is interesting:

The new cornovirus outbreak appears to be growing exponentially at its epicenter in Wuhan, China, according to scientists, who cautioned that only limited modeling is possible with current data.

This doesn’t mean an increase in deaths and death rates is in our future, though, as the article points out. It’s possible that it’ll only kill the vulnerable, and just be another infection for the rest of us.

I wonder how this decision will go over with the Pakistanis:

Pakistan announced Sunday that it will not evacuate hundreds of Pakistani students from Wuhan, China, despite desperate appeals to bring them home.

Pakistan’s ambassador to China, Naghmana Hashmi, told local television outlet Geo News that the decision was made because Pakistan lacks the medical facilities needed to treat anyone who contracts the virus and, ultimately, to contain its spread.

About 800 Pakistani students in Wuhan are registered with the embassy, and four are confirmed to have the virus, Hashmi said.

Hannah Ritchie of Our World In Data has published a chart illustrating where carbon costs of food production are highest, based on food type:

As it says in small print on the right side, just above the Beef line, “Transport emissions are very small for most food products.” In fact, once the food is off the farm, carbon costs drop:

I see the GOP is gnashing its teeth for revenge:

Iowa Senator Joni Ernst warned Sunday that Republicans could immediately push to impeach Joe Biden over his work in Ukraine as vice president if he wins the White House.

“I think this door of impeachable whatever has been opened,” Ernst said in an interview with Bloomberg News. “Joe Biden should be very careful what he’s asking for because, you know, we can have a situation where if it should ever be President Biden, that immediately, people, right the day after he would be elected would be saying, ‘Well, we’re going to impeach him.’” [Bloomberg]

Skipping over all the GOP arguments about impeachment being weaponized, hypocrisy, etc., if the scenario comes up, I suggest that Speaker Pelosi, assuming the Democrats retain the House, grant them their request – give them their impeachment inquiry.

See, the Republicans have clearly lost their way. They’re desperate to be seen as legit, and that’s by making the Democrats seem just as dirty and incompetent as themselves.

And if the Democrats stomp them without an inquiry on the question of whether or not Biden should be impeached, then they can squeal about how they never got a chance to prove their case.

If the Democrats sweetly smile and give them an impeachment inquiry, then we can all be sure that Biden was not acting on his son’s behalf, but rather on the behalf of the Western nations and their drive to rid Ukraine of corruption.

An inquiry stains nothing. Secretary of State Clinton has been investigated enough times that we can feel fairly confident she’s free of any scandals, no matter how much Trump howls about her. She beat him and he knows it – he won by a quirk of electoral politics.

And we can watch the Republican third-raters twist in the wind some more if they want to start digging around on Biden.

He still had a pipe, so he wasn’t at the bottom.

When the mighty have fallen right into the city dump, at least those searching for a new butler, and having the luck to search the city dump, are likely to find someone who knows the position from their side, which is to say: what to expect. So goes My Man Godfrey (1936), where a dryly witty Godfrey finds his address is now the city dump, where he’s known as ‘Duke’ to his fellows, and pokes around the piles of debris in hopes of finding something to sell.

We open on the night of a scavenger hunt, a high society competition to find things, and this night one of the goals is a ‘forgotten man.’ Cornelia and her younger sitter, Irene, arrive at the dump and Cornelia sets upon Godfrey, who takes offense at this rather cold use of a man down on his luck. Cornelia huffs off, giving Irene the opportunity to express remorse, upon which Godfrey relents.

When they arrive at the headquarters of the competition, Irene wins with her ‘forgotten man,’ and ends up offering him a job as butler. Godfrey shows up the next morning, meeting Molly, the long-time maid, who expresses no surprise at the new butler, stating there’s a new butler everyday. Such is an intimation of what’s to come.

Soon, we know why: the mother’s a nutcase, Cornelia a sadistic witch, Irene’s encased in her own little world where Godfrey has fallen in love with her, Carlos is the mother’s protege, and the father worries how to support his high society family. Godfrey displays unexpected talent in navigating treacherous waters, dealing with Irene’s pouting, Cornelia’s baiting, and the mother’s apparent infatuation, or whatever it is, with Carlos. He even manages to get Irene to become engaged to a startled young man, who, if he hasn’t had too much at the party, will soon have had too much of Irene.

But a spot of trouble emerges when a gentleman shows up and recognizes Godfrey. This is Cornelia’s opportunity, and she takes advantage in trying to pry Godfrey’s big secret out of him. In a fit of pique at his unwillingness to deal, she hides a string of pearls in Godfrey’s room, and when Godfrey drunkenly stumbles home, calls the police to report the missing pearls.

But the police never find them.

Soon, however, the father’s worries prove all too true, as this is the middle of what would later be known as the Great Depression, and one day he comes home, kicks Carlos out, and sits his family for a talk that will include their possible future home: the city dump.

And then Godfrey comes sailing in, resignation letter in one hand and pearls in the other.

Witty, conscious, quick-paced, and fun, it’s a fine example of the misplaced man or woman story, of finding a new role in society and, through it, gaining a new understanding of that society and how it pettily fails those who have fallen on hard times.

While it’s not earth-shattering, it’s fun with a serious undercurrent to it. The actors know how to deliver, and, while I seriously disagreed with the ending and felt that the maid, Molly, was underutilized, it was still good for quite a few laughs.

This book took me about three years to read, and I had to start over. While I didn’t exactly have expectations when I bought it, beyond whatever review I read that convinced me to purchase it, author Deyan Sudjic’s style was unexpected and unsettling. He writes in a passive voice, and he writes in rapid-fire stories. There’s little attempt to formalize a language for describing cities; he’s far more interested in the commonalities of stories across the world pertaining to cities, how they succeed, fail, wax and wane and wax.

As an example of his style, Chapter 1, What is a City, is on page 2 quoting Walt Whitman:

City of the sea! …
City of wharves and stores! city of tall façades of marble and iron!
Proud and passionate city! mettlesome, mad, extravagant city!

Whitman’s first two lines are missing. They reflect an even more important measure of urbanity:

City of the world! (for all races are here;
All the lands of the earth make contributions here)

Clearly, we’re not discussing critical population densities. Sudjic explores historical and contemporary ideas concerning the differentiation of cities and other instances of gathered human habitations; metrics of success; patterns throughout history; etc. He establishes an almost stream-of-consciousness style which can disturb the fussy reader, thus my need to stop, wait, and restart from the beginning.

Chapter 2, How To Make A City, begins with a name: a refugee camp usually has no name, implying its hopefully transient nature; a city has a name, which may mean something, and a history; a slum is somewhere in between, a possibility with no guarantees. Sudjic uses the name as an instrument for exploring the various histories of cities, from St. Petersburg to Istanbul, Ankara to Soweto. The monuments erected in a city are explored, and then on to the resources available to a city, such as  the people, river, sea, or ocean which helps define its commerce; political advantages, such as being a capitol city, are also discussed. Languages and immigrants and mixed people get their due. Streets, the various views of them by architects and inhabitants; Brasilia of Brazil comes in for a particularly vicious swat upside the head for its omission of street corners, salubrious for chance encounters vital to city life. And how streets contribute to successful navigation, or not, is also important.

Chapter 3, How To Change A City, traces how several cities have been changed by chance and by plan, concentrating on several. London comes in for an examination, due to its historical preeminence, followed by its fading in the latter half of the 20th century, and its regeneration as the political elites who sought to preserve the fading glory were undermined and thrown out in favor of commercial concerns.

By © José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

The Government of Cities is Chapter 4, begins with Walt Disney and his desire to regulate how cities were run, which leads to Robert Moses, unofficial dictator planner of New York for many years, and onwards to Haussmann of Napoleon III’s era. It explores the various options used throughout history, how they impact the health of cities. He mentions even the artist Lorenzetti of Siena, whose mural The Allegory of Good And Bad Government is to the right (partial), symbolizing how government can affect the city for good or bad.

Chapter 5, The Idea of a City, begins with Charles Dickens and the Marxist Friedrich Engels, and their horror at the conditions to be found in London in the mid-1800s. Engels noticed that the wealthy no longer lived in the city, they were now suburbanites, at least in Manchester, while the working class stayed in the city. It marked a new way to imagine cities. Add in the epidemics which poisoned the imagination of architects, and Sudjic is tracing how cities change in response to the critiques of observers, the dangers of living so close together without benefit of effective medicines, and the imaginations of architects seeing, perhaps for the first time, how bad a city can become as its infrastructure is overwhelmed by unforeseen populations. From there he traces the evolution of cities to today’s corporate campuses in cities from Cupertino to Pune.

The final chapter is Crowds and Their Discontents, and covers how crowds can abruptly turn vicious, or be a force for good; how sheer numbers can ruin the monuments and attractions of a city.

Like Pompeii.
Image: True Brick Ovens.

There’s no real conclusion to this book, and none really seems needed. Just like a city, a conclusion is neither wanted nor needed; it just goes on and on, until it suffers catastrophe, with no one left to write about its last days.

Today was the last day of the exhibit of snow sculptures for the St. Paul Winter Carnival, and it was a bit … warm. This was apparently supposed to be a ram’s skull. I’ll bet it was impressive before the warm weather had its way with it.

But I suppose it could have been an impressive moment when it lost its integrity.

The tonsillectomy was hellacious. No sedatives.

It’s amateur hour with The VelociPedal.

VelociPater.

VelociPatter.

VelociPlaster.

No, no, no. VelociPasta.

That ain’t right, either.

The VelociPastor (2017). Oh, yes, that’s it. Ooooooh, was that it. Clawed my eyes out, right? They must have borrowed a costume from this race:

It’s supposed to be funny, but we were watching in a sort of horrified fascination, wondering just how much worse it was going to get.

It did. A clumsy non-velociraptor velociraptor vs a ninja squad. Awwwwwweeeeeeeeeeeawwwwwwweeee.

And that’s all I want to say, or remember, of this one.

In the thread of meaningless logic used in the service of theology (last one here), we may add this proposed law for Indiana, known as HOUSE BILL No. 1089:

Synopsis: Protection of life. Repeals the statutes authorizing and regulating abortion. Finds that human physical life begins when a human ovum is fertilized by a human sperm. Asserts a compelling state interest in protecting human physical life from the moment that human physical life begins. Provides that court decisions to enjoin the law are void. Specifies the duty of Indiana officials to enforce the law. Specifies that federal officials attempting to enforce contrary court orders against Indiana officials enforcing the law shall be subject to arrest by Indiana law enforcement. Redefines “human being” for purposes of the criminal code to conform to the finding that human physical life begins when a human ovum is fertilized by a human sperm. Makes other conforming changes.

It’s quite the bill, isn’t it, rather childishly suggesting that Federal agents and members of the judiciary who find against it will be arrested – this is someone who just can’t tolerate opposing views. The author is Indiana State Legislature Representative Curt Nisly (R-22IN), who, according to Ballotpedia, asserted in his 2014 campaign for office:

Life begins at conception and lasts until one’s natural death. Life is one of the unalienable rights mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. Taking the innocent life of another denies this fundamental right.

It’s convenient – for him – that he registers life as beginning at egg fertilization (while hiding behind some supposed “finding”). He avoids the “Monty Python Conundrum” of what to do with masturbators, eggs that are never fertilized, and gentlemen who inadvertently have what was called in my youth night emissions, through careful choice of a demarcation point.

While he may think he’s being clever, it actually raises the question of why unfertilized eggs and sperm, as the necessary ingredients to life, are not similarly considered sacred and protected. Without them, there would be no life. That certainly puts them in a special category, doesn’t it?

If you accept a merely fertilized egg is, somehow, alive.

Unfortunately for him, human life is characterized by independent motility and intelligence, as well as a primary independence, and while we can use these to characterize an infant as not human life,  the objection is nothing more than wistful: it’s a rare mother who’ll actually discard an infant – we’re not wired for it. The objection would require a vivid imagination.

Quite simply, we have not evolved enough English words to describe the situation. We have death, we have life, then we have that length of time when Mom is pregnant – but that specifies the mother, not the entity inside. It’s not capable of surviving without medical help outside of the womb, so it’s not alive by the above standards, but it has potential to reach it, if its DNA is a good enough interpretation of the two contributions, if nutrition is good, if not to many allergies are developed during the pregnancy, if the mother isn’t killed in some sort of horrid accident – such as violating Indiana theological law. And then we don’t seem to have a term for sperm and eggs which captures its special qualities. Or maybe we do. Lunch sits heavily in me, and my cleverness isn’t what it should be.

In the end, the longer we remain entangled in the irrationalities of theology, formal or informal, the longer these arguments will continue. It would be far better if we sat down, as members of a secular and rational society, and asked, in practical terms, Why is murder forbidden in our society (I suggest the societal instabilities brought on by the sudden and intentional deaths of its members will lead to society’s termination, or at least stagnation), and then ask how abortion could lead to the same, especially in the face of 25-50% of pregnancies already ending in miscarriages, without apparent damage to society.

Or, we can use my previously suggested solution:

Since we’re currently in the domain of someone who believes their theology should be law, that lets us place God at the scene of the crime.

Yep, that’s right. If you have God, then God must have planned the whole thing, right? So the old saying goes, at least: God has a plan for everything. God Is Responsible, since miscarriages are, by definition, not induced by humans.

I’m a reasonable person, or at least that’s part of my personal set of delusions, and so I realize that imprisoning a divine, all-powerful being could only occur if he, A) permits it, and B) can be found.

Neither condition seems likely to be fulfilled.

Similar arguments apply to the imposition of fines on the divine being.

Therefore, in order to discourage God from committing crimes in the State of Ohio, I recommend finding his or her or its ordained representatives and imposing appropriate penalties on them. Now, I recognize that, because there are multiple sects involved in the worship of said creature, it’s actually difficult to ascertain which one, if any, is the duly authorized and recognized (by it) representative, in the body of the leader of the sect, and which are merely well-meaning but deluded, psychopaths with agendas, or indolent parasites, nor is it the role of a secular state to make that determination.

But I will not throw my hands up in the air at this conundrum! Instead, let me supply a convenient answer which side-steps the intellectually obstinate theological questions raised above, and that is this:

Let the author of this delusionary segment of the bill be identified; from there, their sect & church may be further identified; and let the fines for the involuntary miscarriages be levied against that sect and its adherents, no matter how large or how small. Let’s be generous to God and impose no more nor less than $5000 per miscarriage. Furthermore, if that sect should disband for any reason, then the section on ectopic pregnancy shall be null and void.

Does this sound like madness? I am a practicing software engineer, logic is my everyday business. I’m simply practicing a bit of logic here. So, if this sounds like madness, perhaps we should go back to the assumption that a fertilized egg is somehow a person, and re-think what I consider to be a specious, and even malignant, assumption.

These daft proposed laws should surely signal there’s something wrong with their foundational assumptions, not with a society which sails along merrily without those laws in place.

And that off-the-cuff observation, now that I’ve reread it, may be the best argument against this whole “life starts at conception” brief.

Prescient:

1. divine omniscience
2. human anticipation of the course of events : FORESIGHT [Merriam-Webster]

Noted in the second part of Andrew Sullivan’s tripartite diary entry, “America Needs a Miracle,” New York Intelligencer:

And maybe it’s a good moment to see where we are. A man quotes Shakespeare comparing “man, proud man” with “an angry ape.” Any literate person can see that Shakespeare is not talking about race at all; he’s talking (rather presciently) about human beings’ deeper, more primal natures that can obscure our rational thought. But Shapland instantly thought he was being attacked for being black. The distortion and poisoning of the mind here is quite something to behold. And mourn.

Because this passage in an article on how cause and effect might be subject to superposition doesn’t make sense to me:

In 2019, [Caslav Brukner at the University of Vienna, Austria] published a paper that took this idea a step further. He wanted to build a picture of causality that reflected the full complexity of the world, merging the notions of temporal superposition from quantum mechanics with general relativity’s prediction that time seems to pass more slowly in stronger gravitational fields. His thought experiment imagines a scenario in which two spaceships – operated by sworn enemies we shall call Alice and Bob – synchronise clocks before readying their photon cannons to fire. Then, at precisely 1200, each of them fires a photon at the other’s ship. But there is a plot twist: Bob’s spacecraft is docked near a dense planet. According to general relativity, objects such as this with strong gravitational fields would cause nearby clocks to slow. So, time should run slower for Bob, and he would get Alice’s photon before his clock shows 1200.

So far, so classical. But, Brukner asks, what if you could put that massive planet into a quantum superposition state, so that it is close to both Alice and Bob, and affects both of their clocks? In that scenario, the impossible seems to happen: a superposition state is created where Alice’s photon arrives at Bob’s spaceship before he sends his, but Bob’s photon also reaches Alice before she sends hers. [“In the quantum realm, cause doesn’t necessarily come before effect,” Kelly Oakes, NewScientist (18 January 2020, paywall)]

Or would they? Wouldn’t both photons slow down? They’re traveling the same path, albeit in opposite directions.

Down at the quantum level, things are so bizarre – allegedly – that they feel like a hack, a kludge, not something natural.

Trypophobia:

A psychiatrist said that Amanda (not her real name) had trypophobia. There isn’t much in the medical textbooks about this condition, but you can find lots of information online about how it is a fear of holes. You can follow links to pictures of sponges and the perforated heads of flowers that claim to test and diagnose you. But like much information on the web, descriptions of the condition are misleading. Trypophobia isn’t really down to holes. Or fear. It might not even be a phobia, because new research suggests it is triggered by disgust. Less fear and more loathing. Reliable figures are hard to come by, but some researchers believe we will see an uptick in cases. [“Trypophobia: Why a fear of holes is real – and may be on the rise,” David Adam, NewScientist (18 January 2020, paywall)]