Category Archives: Uncategorized

Remember this speech that I highlighted back in 2016, as reported by Steve Benen?

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) delivered a speech last week at the Ethics and Public Policy Center’s anniversary gala, and the Wisconsin Republican highlighted an interesting excerpt from the remarks on social media over the weekend:

“That is the key difference between ourselves and the progressives: We do not believe we should be governed by elites. We do not believe that there are experts or elites who should steer us in their preferred direction. We see that sense of organization as condescending, paternalistic, and downright arrogant. We know it’s wrong. […]

“Because we believe that all of us are equal, we believe there is no problem that all of us – working together – cannot solve. We believe every person has a piece of this puzzle, and only when we work together do we get the whole picture.”

I have come to the conclusion that the proper plain English translation is …

I hate and loathe the opinions of some experts, so I’m anointing all of you experts so you can tell me what I want to hear.

I just thought my readers should know.

Look, there is certainly a tension between experts and non-experts when it comes to topics that impact everyone, such as public health. Finding a way to live with and conform to those opinions, with the alternative being potential disaster, is important.

But former Speaker Ryan’s approach is rank and callow extremism, and I’m afraid that’s what has invaded the Republican Party organism. It screams dreadfully at the thought of being told what to do, and its members die and die and die.

Have you heard that 5G, or the fifth-generation of cellular networks – how your phone talks to the data network – will cause vaccinated people’s heads to explode? Yes, yes, quite silly – and Mashable’s Matt Binder is on the case:

The videos are real and quite disturbing. However, no one is spontaneously combusting. These videos are from 2019 and depict protesters in Iraq being shot at close range with “non-lethal” tear gas rounds. Unsurprisingly, when police shoot these at close range, they do become quite lethal and can actually become embedded into someone’s head, creating that disturbing image caught on camera.

But there’s a more subtle point here. If you had heard about this, and took it seriously enough to do your own research on this, then there’s a key point to consider:

Did you discover the same resolution, that some depraved monster – I exaggerate only slightly, I think – has appropriated videos of a tragic and terrible incident, and relabeled them for, at the very least, their own disgusting amusement, and more likely so they can materially benefit from their lie?

If you did not, if your research left you thinking that you’ll be covered by blood and gore on January 5th – or January 19th, the revised rollout date – then you should be questioning your research methods. Are you trusting sites that, just maybe, have been setup to mislead you? Did they ask for money?

Did you even ask yourself how such a terrible scenario benefits companies such as Verizon? Have any of these supposed conspiracies to inflict blatant disaster and suffering on mankind, in the guise of a new product, come true, especially in the face of experts denying the possibility?

No, you cannot cite the notorious Jimmy Bakker. Yes, his promotion of colloidal silver is a disaster for anyone who takes him seriously, but his ‘expert’ was a naturopath, which is basically just a fake doctor.

My point is: if your ‘research’ didn’t find Binder’s end point, if you’re not covered in the blood and gore of your vaccinated friends and family now or on January 19th, perhaps you’d be better served by not doing your own research, and instead do surveys of real experts. Always remember, there can be fakes even in the ranks of the trained experts, so that’s why you do surveys and keep an eye on politics.

Pope Francis, leader of the Catholic Church for those living under rocks, in caves, or in schismatic Catholic cults, recently expressed, in our over-populated world, his horror at the idea of not having children, of care for, instead, house pets:

That’s one hell of a ‘tell’ when you’ve been dealt a royal flush.

Man with the Screaming Brain (2005) is an attempted send up of the B-class monster movies of old, but having seen a few of those – finally! – over the last several years, I must say I’ve been impressed by the quality of the acting and scripts in many of them – and that’s where Man with the Screaming Brain falls down. It has a lack of timing for much of the humor; gags are executed for the sake of the gag, rather than advancing the story, and this is the fault of the script. Two or three more drafts of the script were really necessary before filming should have begun.

That said, if you’re a Bruce Campbell fan, it won’t hurt you much to see this. However, his memorable Bubba Ho-Tep (2002) was a far, far better effort, and is actually worth your time. This one, despite the efforts of the actors, just doesn’t come off as much more than an amateur effort in the story.

A fun little map of the lands of the Baltic Sea:

Stories about supernatural beings seem to be something that is common to all cultures, handed down from generation to generation, perhaps most often as a way of explaining mysterious natural phenomena. Even in an age when belief in these kinds of traditional stories have declined, they are regular features of the fairy tales told to children, and are still rich sources of inspiration for creators of literature and film. First published in 2012 by Vilnius University Press, the map “Mythical Creatures in Europe” includes 213 creatures from the length and breadth of the continent. Categorising the creatures into a number of general groups by their form, nature and attitude towards humans, the map reveals both enormous variety across Europe and broad areas of similarity even between very distant cultures. In addition to universally recognisable figures such as giants and vampires, there are others that will be unknown to most outside the region where they are found, such as the sleipnir, saratan and barbegazi.

More on the mythical creatures of the Baltic Sea area at Deep Baltic.

Near the end of last year, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) suggested that he all but had the 2024 Presidential wrapped up, assuming former President Trump did not run:

My Arts Editor thought this was too long, but enjoyed its sophistication.

It’s clear that Senator Johnson (R-WI) is experiencing cognitive decline, or is trying a little too hard to manipulate his base:

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) drew some stunned reactions with his latest bafflingly flawed anti-vaccine take.

During a familiar rant Monday on a conservative radio show about the merits of relying on the body’s “natural immunity” to COVID-19 after being infected with the virus, the senator asked, “Why do we assume that the body’s natural immune system isn’t the marvel that it is?”

“Why do we think that we can create something better than God in terms of combating disease?” he added.

“There are certain things we have to do, but we have just made so many assumptions, and it’s all pointed toward everybody getting a vaccine.” [HuffPost]

The discrediting comebacks are easily thought up, and have spewed from many of those who listened or read about it already; my immediate reaction is 800,000+ dead leaves his argument looking like roadkill.

But it’s worth noting that he’s speaking to a conservative audience, and is clearly hoping that, by appealing to a vague religious dimension, that he can raise the audience’s hackles against the pro-vaccine supporters^[1], thus strengthening the conservative movement.

But I have to wonder how many Wisconsinites, even within the target demographic, looked around, not surrounded by their now-dead family and friends, all victims of Covid-19 and its variants, and decided the Senator is nothing more than a cold-blooded manipulator – or a demented candidate for a rest home.

And have decided to walk away from him.

It’s one thing to infuriate your opponents. It’s quite another to baldly manipulate and insult your own base. I wonder many of that base have figured that out, and now have to decide if their dislike of the Democrats is enough to force them to the dishonorable choice of voting for Johnson next time around, or whoever wins the Republican nomination, should he choose to retire.

¹ To any sane mind, the pro-vaccine movement is the conservative position, while anti-vaxx goes against the accumulated wisdom of decades, even more than a century.

I’m a few days behind in my xkcd reading, which explains why I haven’t mentioned this before.

It’s the tool tip that caught my attention, though:

A solid red area with two white lines means that you have been infected with the anti-coronavirus, COVID+19. which will cure anyone you have close contact with.

Conspiracy theorists love those hidden messages, don’t they? After all, only those folks smart enough to find the messages will then learn “the truth.” It’s confirmation bias in action, isn’t it? And what’s better than a tool tip that requires the cursor to be hovering over a cartoon and goes away when you move your cursor? Add in the context of COVID, which has a rich environment of conspiracy theories, all quite ridiculous – a redundant remark, I’m sure – and this tool tip just seems to scream MISINTERPRET ME! QUICK!

Maybe it’s already happened. I refuse to go look. I haven’t seen it mentioned, yet, in The Morning Heresy, which is a good source for pointers to conspiracy theory madness.

The dangers of an improperly selected metric! What are you looking at?!

Scandal Sheet (1952) is a tightly plotted and wound crime drama that depends intimately on the inferior position of women in the time period in which it is set. Mark Chapman has been climbing the ladder at the local big newspaper, and is now the editor who has been saving the paper’s financial bacon by pushing it into trash journalism and sensationalism.

The latest story is about a Lonely Hearts Club jonesing to marry at least one new couple, formed that night, by bribing them with various consumer items. Chapman’s the host, so he brings along a photographer, out to photograph everyone, and a reporter, Steve McCleary, to write up the new, happy couple. They look more desperate and befuddled than anything, but what they hey. Right?

And then chaos springs forth. Mark Chapman, hard-driving bachelor, isn’t actually Mark Chapman, he’s actually George Grant, who abandoned his wife, Charlotte, twenty years earlier, after she refused to grant him a divorce. He changed his name, left her penniless, and exited the state. And here she is at the event!

Oh, and she’s bitter. Oh so bitter.

Later, at Charlotte’s hotel room, following mutual threats, she loses the scuffle and ends up dead. Chapman makes it look like an accidental drowning, but it’s reporter McCleary and sidekick photographer who get to the crime scene before it’s cleared. McCleary has help in the form of Julie Allison, feature writer, who is frustrated with the drift of the paper into sensationalism, with the way she’s treated by everyone male, and how her insights into just about everything are considered worthless. Even about the boss.

But then Charlotte’s suitcase, full of marriage memorabilia, shows up at a hock shop, leading to the murder of a drunken old ex-journalist, and the trot turns into the gallop, and Chapman, who sees riches in his future, keeps dodging the metaphorical bullets, while firing off a few tangible bullets of his own.

Will the noir triumph? Or will the good guys get away with being utterly blind? Something of an ode to the infallibility of the boss, this tight, well plotted and acted drama would have been better without the near-inevitable putdowns of the ladies.

But, in the end, the storytellers acknowledge, ever so grudgingly, that injustice, and how that injustice translates to Oh, shit! moments.

It’s not quite deep enough to be recommended, but there’s not a lot to criticize here. Enjoy!

Steve Benen has a freakout about potential ballot-counting snafus in the near future:

An NPR analysis of 2022 secretary of state races across the country found at least 15 Republican candidates running who question the legitimacy of President Biden’s 2020 win, even though no evidence of widespread fraud has been uncovered about the race over the last 14 months. In fact, claims of any sort of fraud that swung the election have been explicitly refuted in state after state, including those run by Republicans.

As we’ve discussed, it’s likely that for many American voters, secretary of state — at the state level, not the cabinet secretary who leads the U.S. State Department — is a fairly obscure government office. These officials tend to work behind the scenes on unglamorous tasks such as election administration, and few reach the household-name level.

But in the wake of the Republican Party’s Big Lie, and Donald Trump’s ongoing fixation on installing allies in key positions, secretaries of state — and this year’s campaigns to elect secretaries of state — have taken on extraordinary importance.

Franita Tolson, an election law expert at the University of Southern California, told NPR, “The reasons why Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election failed is because there were state officials who refused to substantiate his claims of fraud. These folks really are gatekeepers.”

It any are elected, it wouldn’t hurt to send them a note, citing the relevant statute, noting that a failure to carry out the duties of the office to which they’ve been elected will result in a fine and/or jail time.

It’s one thing to run around in circles when there’s no real cost, and quite another when the road of reality is about to come up and smack you in the face.

It’s a typo, and yet it all seems so right.

Folks who believed in false clams (such as the idea that spraying chlorine on yourself could protect you from getting sick if you’ve already been infected) were more likely to actually get COVID–19. [“The Boiling Pot: secret codes of “Jeopardy!”; B.S. about Betty White; the Post touts alt-med; Canadians and their astrology,” Paul Fidalgo, The Morning Heresy]

Maybe they’re just octopuses in camouflage? Given all the other shit fishes spray about, chlorine just seems quite likely.

Chicanery:

clever, dishonest talk or behaviour that is used to deceive people:
The investigation revealed political chicanery and corruption at the highest levels. [Cambridge Dictionary]

Noted in “Too many Republicans condone violence, and even more exonerate Trump,” Jennifer Rubin, WaPo:

For those readers wondering if we’re going to see more public, conditional endorsements from the former President, the answer, I think, is yes, in view of this capitulation:

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy [(R-AK)] has accepted former President Donald Trump’s conditional endorsement of his 2022 reelection campaign, according to a message sent from Trump’s political action committee.

Trump offered Dunleavy his “Complete and Total Endorsement” earlier this week, but only if Dunleavy refused to endorse fellow Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski for reelection.

“Please tell the President thank you for the endorsement,” Dunleavy’s response stated, according to a message from Trump’s Save America PAC on Thursday evening. “With regard to the other issue, please tell the President he has nothing to worry about. I appreciate all 45 has done for Alaska and this country.” [Anchorage Daily News]

While Dunleavy probably calculates that he’s more likely to win with Trump on his side, rather than on someone else’s side, on a national level this is significant because if Murkowski is significantly weakened from both a split in the local GOP and an independent set of voters who are repulsed by the naked power politics, it’s not impossible that the Democrats could win this seat.

And other seats where Trump wants to run his selfish power play.

An ancillary result is the probability that another fourth or fifth rater will advance to the Senate. While I’ll decline to rate Murkowski, who, like most of the old line Republicans, never seem to comprehend what’s happened to their party, and has failed to exit the party, I will say she seems at least somewhat better than the average run of Republican. Replacement by some incompetent boob who can’t think further than which dance will get him/her the nomination and seat is a discouraging thought for folks who think government should be competent servants to the people, and not to some failed President.

And this may apply to a few other seats in both the House and the Senate. More phone calls for Senator McConnell (R-KY) may be in his future, begging Members of Congress not to switch parties.

When the monsters come in multiples.

The Lady From Shanghai (1947) examines how the drives of mankind become curiously perverted once we’re disconnected from our most basic needs. We meet Michael O’Hara, may be a master seaman, but is mastered by his impulses himself, whether they be liquid or hormonal. He knows it, yet he often cannot stop himself.

And Elsa Bannister is an impulse, a living, breathing creature of the upper crust, curvy in all the right places, in subtle distress of one sort or another. And, cooling Michael’s ardor, she’s married. She offers him a working position on her yacht, which is to sail from New York City to San Francisco via the Panama Canal, with other offers perhaps a little more veiled, but O’Hara, despite his impulse problems, turns her down. But when her husband, polio stricken (or perhaps some other malignant problem) defense lawyer Arthur Bannister, best and richest defense lawyer in the business, reinforces the offer, he finds himself setting sail with them.

Along for the ride is George Grisby, Arthur’s partner in their law firm, and despised by Arthur as well. Arthur might as well be the Old Man of the Sea, whom mythical Sinbad carried on his shoulders until he could persuade him to drink too much and, once freed of the now insensible old man/god, killed him. Grisby endures the abuse, a smile creasing his face, while slowly wooing O’Hara through obtuse remarks during the passage.

And Elsa? She slowly lets it be known that she once worked in Shanghai as a dancer, poor and desperate, and now that she’s not poor, she’s still desperate to keep the wealth, if not the provider.

That being the inscrutable Arthur Bannister.

The story really revs up when Grisby finally brings his plan to O’Hara, who shall play the key role: pretending to kill Grisby. While Grisby disappears to an island, evading wife and taxes, O’Hara will be unimpeachable because of the lack of a body. It will have been lost in the California surf.

But there’s a joker in the deck, a private eye, by the name of Broome, in the crew, hired by Arthur to keep an eye on his wife and O’Hara. When Grisby is surprised by Broome as he prepares for the faux-crime, he shoots Broome and leaves him for dead. But Broome manages to warn Elsa, who, in a discussion with O’Hara, reveals a key lie.

Grisby has no wife.

Soon, we do have a body and a body, as it were, and then a trial, and soon Bannister, the lawyer, in defending O’Hara finds this trial is spiraling out of even his legendary control. Indeed, memorably Arthur Bannister gets to cross-examine a surprise witness  – Arthur Bannister. And then … O’Hara disappears.

This tense thriller operates on a number of levels, but perhaps the most interesting is the perverted ways of the ultra-rich, especially in their desires. Elsa may be driven to never be poor again, but Arthur is really a spider at the middle of its web, Grisby in one bundle of silk, Elsa in another, and now O’Hara being wrapped up. Did his polio – presumed – embitter him? Or did it simply move his arena of competition from where it would normally operate to another arena, where people are just chess pieces?

All the characters have interesting backstories, but the most interesting are, wisely, merely hinted at. This brings what could have been an improbable story to life and makes it plausible, as the narcissism of virtually everyone in the upper-crust reveals that their ultra-wealth has transformed them from human beings into …. something else.

And that something else is hideously unstable.

Recommended.

“Animals enrich the lives of people,” and it’s not just the breasts and thighs.

Chicken People (2016) is your introduction to the world of competitive chicken showing, and it’s a good introduction indeed. These are serious people, on a serious task, as we are introduced to, and follow, a race car engine engineer and utter perfectionist; a former alcoholic, mother, farmer; and a Branson, MO entertainer, who is looking constantly for a way to integrate his entertainment career with his love of chickens. Others flit through, but these are the mainstays. If you suspect a shared character trait here, you might not be wrong.

And the stars, of course, are the chickens, from the familiar Leghorn to the Wyandottes, so many varieties. We learn of the standards by which they’re judged, and how they’re taken care of from hatching to passing.

It’s fun. We’ve seen the chickens at the Minnesota State Fair a few times, and, yeah, they really come in beautiful varieties.

So if you want a couple of stories and the chance to stare at some odd looking poultry, go no further than Chicken People. Now, excuse me, I have to go feed my cats … some Chicken Feast. Oh, and do these competitive showers eat their chickens?

What do you think?

Adventurism:

improvisation or experimentation (as in politics or military or foreign affairs) in the absence or in defiance of accepted plans or principles [Merriam-Webster]

I would add that these actions are taken in prioritization of personal advantage, whether it be power or wealth. Noted in the Wikipedia article on Trofim Lysenko, the former head of Soviet science, who has become symbolic of the folly of placing ideology ahead of science:

In 1964, physicist Andrei Sakharov spoke out against Lysenko in the General Assembly of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR:

He is responsible for the shameful backwardness of Soviet biology and of genetics in particular, for the dissemination of pseudo-scientific views, for adventurism, for the degradation of learning, and for the defamation, firing, arrest, even death, of many genuine scientists.^[30]

The Soviet press was soon filled with anti-Lysenkoite articles and appeals for the restoration of scientific methods to all fields of biology and agricultural science.

And what brings this up?

Doctors asking the Alaska State Medical Board to crack down on colleagues spreading COVID-19 misinformation say they’re receiving holiday packages, some at their homes, from a group pushing for alternative treatments like ivermectin.

The delivery of the packages from the Alaska Covid Alliance came off as threatening and invasive, several doctors said. Each package — at least some of which arrived in holiday-themed gift bags — included chocolates, a letter acknowledging the recipients’ signatures on a recent letter to the medical board and a 28-page pamphlet advocating for mostly unproven COVID-19 treatments.

The “gift drops” idea came about as the result of brainstorming by Alaska Covid Alliance members on “how can we get a dialogue started,” said David Boyle, a member of the group and former executive director of the Alaska Policy Forum, a conservative nonprofit that advocates for small government and less regulation. [Anchorage Daily News]

The members of this Alaska Covid Alliance strike me as adventurers, advocating for using therapies for which no positive evidence has emerged. They want the prestige of advocating for an “approved” medicine before it was approved, and the hell with the discovery that they are useless and even dangerous meds.

Their opportunity at gaining social position disappears if they acknowledge that, so let’s pretend that they don’t exist.

It’s really quite shameful.

This report in WaPo seems, in some ways, depressingly familiar and repetitive, at least in what it says about segments of the Democratic Party:

From the moment Sen. Joe Manchin III started raising concerns about President Biden’s social spending bill, the outrage hurled at him from some fellow Democrats was pointed and personal.

Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri said Manchin’s position was “anti-Black, anti-child, anti-woman and anti-immigrant.” Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota dismissed his reasoning as “bulls–t,” and Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York called Manchin “Exhibit A” of the Democratic Party’s “true problems.”

Manchin, for his part, has publicly questioned whether there is still room for his “fiscally responsible and socially compassionate” views in today’s Democratic Party, where the far-left Congressional Progressive Caucus has emerged as a dominant force in the House and the senator from West Virginia is often the party’s lone conservative voice on Capitol Hill.

The striking part is the Bush response accusing Manchin of, well, bigotry, while Omar and Bowman find ways to echo it from the posture of moral superiority.

The “you fuckin’ bigot” response continues to raise larger and larger red flags for me, if you’ll forgive my decades-old interest in semantic analysis of communications. We see it in response to any opposition to proposals from the Left, don’t we? Accept my position or you’re a racist and a bigot! But it’s interesting to delve into the intellectual & emotional mechanisms behind this approach to communications.

By using the words and phrases of bigotry, racists, etc, and then reinforcing these moral judgments through morally superior dismissals of objections, the Left is attempting to meld its proposals to a moral position which cannot be successfully disputed. We’ve seen this strategy before in the transgenderism issue, haven’t we? To recap and update the link, rather than subject the issue to debate, as was done with gay marriage, the advocates for transgenderism managed to get it into federal regulations, and then defended it afterwards not through some sort of belated debate, but by screaming BIGOT! at the top of their lungs at anyone who dared to question their position, even to the extent of offers of debate^[1].

This strategy of assuming moral superiority, and then proving it by using that assumption, is nothing more than the classic intellectual failure of circular reasoning. While much of the unease I feel when reading about these incidents no doubt relate to the raw emotions invoked by the use of racism, bigot, etc, especially when the people & positions to which they are applied seem unoffending, I think a substantial portion of that unease is also an semi-conscious awareness that there’s a disconnect: a lack of appropriate debate, which makes the grasping after moral superiority deeply questionable and even inappropriate.

Or, in other words, running around screaming bigot whenever someone asks a pointed question, legitimate or not, marks the screamer as the BIGOT, not the target, at least for me.

When it comes to Senator Manchin, I do understand some of the frustration. The deadly, toxic charms of team politics have destroyed the old Republican Party, transforming it into a group of leering fourth raters who live on single-issue voters, ignoramuses, and fringers, while desperately avoiding questions of competency, or even legitimacy, issuing lies and half-truths whenever that advantages them. Now this ghoulish Siren beckons to a Democratic Party frustrated that it cannot lure a single Republican Senator, not even Senator Murkowski (R-AK), into voting for most of its important bills; the House GOP members are similarly recalcitrant, outside of a couple of heroic members in the persons of Kinzinger of Illinois and Cheney of Wyoming. Manchin, by refusing to automatically cast his ballot for the Democratic version of reality, is ruining their swig of team politics, a topic on which I’ve written far too much over the years. This policy, originating with the sinister former Speaker of the House Gingrich (R-GA) and carried on by Senator and Minority Leader Mitch “Dr. No” McConnell has exacerbated the pain.

And Manchin and Senator Sinema’s (D-AZ) refusal to reform or abolish the filibuster, an artifact of another age, is infuriating to one and all.

But I fear the lack of tolerance appearing on the left in the form of pronouncements of an assumed, but undebated, moral superiority will drive away independent voters. There’s a streak of moral arrogance on the Left that’s being noted by independents like me, moderate conservatives like Andrew Sullivan, and flying nutcases like Erick Erickson. There is a danger when even the nutcases are getting a cultural issue such as the hubris of the Left correct for a change. It doesn’t make him right about anything else, but it attracts independent voters who see him getting that right, and wonder what else he may be getting right.

But the upshot? I’ve often wondered, and written once or twice, about the potential breakup of the Republican Party. I know party faithful would poo-poo the notion, without realizing that, in a sense, it’s already happened. Every former member who has left, or been driven out by some power-hungry new member wielding the RINO spear, contains the potential to start a new party, and the former members are beginning to form quite a group, full of Bush Administration members disenchanted Trump Administration members and perfectly conventional and acceptable Americans who want their voices heard – and find that impossible in the Party devoted to Trump.

Now I’m wondering if the Democrats are in somewhat similar straits, if officials such as Bush and Omar, rather than dragging the Party to the left, find themselves more and more alone as they take positions and postures unsupported by the traditions of liberal democracies – that is, they expect immediate shame and supplication by their opponents, rather than the healthy debate which improves the body politic. Could they find themselves expelled from the Party? Would the Democrats dare such a maneuver?

Or are they too committed to team politics?

I refuse to predict the results of the next election, 10 months and some weeks from now, though. Will the Left continue to screw up? (Yes.) Will the Republicans continue to act like fourth raters? (Yes.) Will the economy continue its unexpectedly strong recovery and will the Democrats figure out how to message properly about it? (Yes, No.) What about Covid?  (Shit, I don’t know.)

Yeah, too many questions.

Notable victims of this childish approach to the issue include famed author J. K. Rowling (of the Harry Potter fantasy series) and famed atheist icon Richard Dawkins, whose award from the American Humanist Association was retracted after he said something that, in my opinion, was the sort of honest question really smart people ask. That is, it referenced an apparent inconsistency in the transgenderism position, and asked for clarification in an intellectually rigorous manner. Other victims include Dave Chapelle, who is apparently no longer funny, and Andrew Sullivan, a leader of the debate on gay marriage, who has been critical of the entire transgender issue, but hasn’t managed to connect it strongly to violations of the liberal democracy model of government, which is a bit shocking as he holds a PhD in PoliSci.

When Superman met Tang Lun, Superman lost. Tang Lun declared him to be most tasty.

Beyond White Space (2018), for all of its apparent renewal of the Moby Dick theme, is really a story about betrayals – a confusing tale of both conscious and unconscious betrayal, of one’s friends and family.

And, ultimately, self.

The Essex is a fishing boat, a spacegoing vessel that hunts clickers, a form of outer space wildlife that is small, valuable, and dangerous. The Essex’s captain is one Richard Bentley, whose father was also a fishing boat captain who went after Tang Lun. Tang Lun is the largest of what appear to be space dragons, visually similar to Chinese dragons, but are considered space whales, rare, immensely valuable, difficult to catch and/or kill, and horrifically dangerous.

And that’s not all the dangers of space. There are space pirates, who track the fishing vessels and relieve them of their valuable cargoes. They are known as boomers, one of a small collection of jabs at current culture. Just as the boomer generation of today are often regarded with distaste by younger generations for their self-absorption, their pollution, and other dubious characteristics, so are these pirates distasteful – violent, grasping, and definitely takers, not makers.

The interactions of at least half the crew of the Essex are filled with deceit, even if mistaken, from the Chinese gang who, in the midst of a deal predicated upon the honor of the captain’s dead father, attempt to kill the captain when they detect a government agent nearby, to said government agent, whose very act of sending a message attracts pirates, from the engineer whose infection, much like toxoplasmosis, drives him to madness and murder in the midst of the whale hunt, to the crewman who seems to use betrayal as a way of life, whether it’s sleeping with other women or quietly planning to escape from the Essex with pregnant girlfriend and ship’s cook Batali as it plunges along in the wake of Tang Lun.

Even Captain Bentley’s guilty of betrayal – of his crew and of himself, in his reckless pursuit of Tang Lun in his little ship. This is brought into sharp relief when his brother Owen, a crew member who is the rare exception to the rule that everyone betrays someone, dies trying to accomplish the task of his brother.

The portrayal of this story is in the gritty-grimy tradition of science fiction, it’ll make you wish you could take a shower afterwards. This contributes to the realism of the tale, but there’s a fundamental problem that no amount of grime is going to fix, and that’s the overly complex nature of the story. At its climax, I count at least three different betrayals going on, along with a space whale taking the diminutive, and fast diminishing, Essex apart.

Despite the efforts of a talented cast and crew, it’s just too much.

The script needs to be redrafted with an eye towards theme clarification and either reduction of the number of moving parts, or a stronger thematic connection between those moving parts. The story of Moby Dick was strongly about vengeance on the white whale, and how that sank the putative venture of harvesting whales and wasted lives; vengeance on Tang Lun may be the motivating factor in this story, but why, for instance, the engineer goes mad from an infection is not in the least clear, and it appears to be little more than a random occurrence. Was it because he was pushed beyond endurance? Was the infection a result of the pursuit? Maybe I missed something?

And it’s too bad, as there are a lot of quality parts to this production. I liked the special effects, the acting, the characters, some of the theme, even the veiled shots at today’s culture. But the script, the element that ties together all of the parts, failed. It all became a nebulaic fog that the Essex sails into.

And never sails out of.

A reader writes concerning Professor Richardson’s observations of elite internecine warfare now that the Soviet Union is gone:

Yes, exactly. And also, you may have noted a rather large degree of coziness between those young-punk Republicans and Russia (as well as the old corrupt Republicans) — something that’d be unheard of 50 years ago. Those old Republicans invented McCarthyism after all. Today they kiss up to the reds, the communist Russians.

And in response to a query:

Any Republican politician under the age of say 35 who has said anything positive about Russian policies or oligarchs will fill the bill, in my book. For example, Ashley-Madison Cawthorn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asJTYp-rgao

I do have a vague memory of Representative Cawthorn (R-NC) having some Russian connection, and here’s a recent story by Susie Madrak on Crooks and Liars about the matter:

Madison Cawthorn recently announced his divorce from Cristina Bayardelle, an Instagram fitness instructor.

But now he’s sharing the strange story of how they met — set up with a fake story by an American stranger he just happened to meet in Russia! I suspect there will be much, much more about this story, because this sounds like a national security problem:

Grant Stern on Twitter said, “Madison Cawthorn’s divorce just went from boring information to national security concern in about 77 seconds of interview time with the Daily Caller.

“This does not sound a normal meet-cute story whatsoever. Very few of these stories involving Russia are.”

“All I got from this video is that Madison Cawthorn married a honeypot,” tweeted Angry Staffer, a former White House staffer.

Make of it what you will. Sourcing someone calling themselves Angry Staffer is a bit of a red flag for me, I must admit.

But this also reminds me of a tempest in a teapot from a few years ago, when Senator Cruz (R-TX) endorsed the idea of McCarthyism. McCarthyism was putatively about stamping out Communism in the United States in the 1950s, a position from which being anti-Russian is a very small stretch. Those who study the era will know that McCarthyism was really about Senator Joe McCarthy’s (R-WI) frantic clutching after power & influence; once a few politicians stood up to him and he was revealed for what he was, his influence waned and he eventually died, in office, an alcoholic.

The tempest was a brief return – maybe a week long – to endorsement of the tenets of McCarthyism. How that is incompatible with the concept of Young Republicans becoming intertwined with the successors of the Soviets is the motivation for me to laugh. The intellectual incoherence of the Republicans is certainly a topic worthy of pursuit.

Another reader remarks:

“Great Power” by Molly McCew on Substack has a lot of this information.

https://www.chathamhouse.org/…/02-supply-and-demand…

Thank you.

Hypothetical, of course – I do not have access to Senator and Senate Minority Leader McConnell’s (R-KY) social calendar. But in view of this announcement from the former President, I can’t imagine McConnell’s not reaching out to Senator Murkowski (R-AK) in view of this:

Endorsement of Mike Dunleavy

Mike Dunleavy has been a strong and consistent Conservative since his time in the Alaska State Senate. I was proud to endorse his first run for Governor, and I am proud to support his reelection, too. From his handling of the virus, support of the Constitution—including the Second and Tenth Amendments—taking advantage of all the opportunities Alaska has to offer, and his strong pushback against the Liberal Biden Administration’s attempt to hurt our great Country. Alaska needs Mike Dunleavy as Governor now more than ever. He has my Complete and Total Endorsement but, this endorsement is subject to his non-endorsement of Senator Lisa Murkowski who has been very bad for Alaska, including losing ANWAR, perhaps the most important drilling site in the world, and much else. In other words, if Mike endorses her, which is his prerogative, my endorsement of him is null and void, and of no further force or effect!

This is a double-shot from the former President against two Senators who he feels have not been totally and slavishly devoted to him. That is the preferred environment of the former President – adored, constantly told that he’s right and he’s amazing, responsible for all the good things that happen, and never incurring blame for those things that go poorly.

If that sounds like a pathological condition to you, join the club.

While I think Senator Murkowski will simply stick with the Republican Party and run roughshod over all comers up in Alaska during the election season in 2022, there is a distinct possibility, in view of certain remarks she’s made in recent years, of her moving to the (I) column in the Senate, and caucusing with the Democrats.

This would worsen Senator McConnell’s position in the Senate, as his caucus shrinks and his prestige is damaged. Worse, the damage would be inflicted by a former President infamous for his incompetence in many sectors, from politics to business. I might argue that his only real success has been as a B-list actor in The Apprentice.

Quite the embarrassment for a Minority Leader whose own set of accomplishments is sharply limited to confirming judicial picks and frustrating Democrats. The Democrats, incidentally, are happy to assist him in that respect.

Are the Alaskan Republicans going to re-elect a Senator who has respect in the Senate from both sides of the aisle? Or are they so glued to Trump’s knees that Murkowski is out? Time will tell.

And will Murkowski take McConnell’s meeting request?

The most important status page on the Web is that for the James Webb Space Telescope, launched four days ago and on its way to its station at Earth’s L2 position, a place relative to the Earth where the gravitational pull of Earth (Earth/Moon?) is balanced by the pull of the Sun. There’s a lot of money=effort invested, and it has a lot of milestones to pass before it’s commissioned as the successor to Hubble.

Go JWST!

In case you thought North Korea had disappeared, no, it has not. Here’s a video they released of an SRBM (short-range ballistic missile) test launch back in September.

Video of North Korea's TLBM (train-launched ballistic misisle) pic.twitter.com/tbcjBgJFco

— Colin Zwirko (@ColinZwirko) September 16, 2021

More from 38 North:

The unveiling of a rail-mobile SRBM is surprising, given that North Korea has deployed all of its SRBMs on road-mobile launchers since their advent in the mid-1980s, and all of its new SRBMs (including the KN-23 and the “new type” variant) have been displayed on such launchers. Road-mobile deployment of such small missiles is straightforward and well-understood by Pyongyang.

The September 16 statement suggests that going rail-mobile was intended to diversify and add to the mobility and flexibility of the missile force and its ability to “deal a heavy blow at the threatening forces multiconcurrently [sic] with dispersive firing across the country.”[5] Pyongyang may also have seen propaganda value in revealing a hitherto unknown basing mode, and one cannot rule out the possibility of a new pet project of the reputedly train-loving Kim Jong Un.

It’s not the SRBMs that’s an issue so much as their work on ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles), which has been reported before, as Vann H. Van Diepen concludes:

The significance of the September 15 SRBM tests is not the missiles, which are along the lines of existing types, but the use of a rail-mobile launcher, which has little added value for the North’s already road-mobile SRBM force but important implications for its ICBMs. ICBMs, which are harder to make road-mobile than smaller missiles, would benefit from rail mobility much more than smaller systems. While rail-mobility is inferior to road-mobility in terms of promoting survivability, rail-mobile systems are significantly more survivable than fixed-base ones.

Gruit:

The long history of flavouring beer with hops is just froth compared with how long we have been brewing: evidence of alcoholic drinks made from fermented grains dates back some 13,000 years. The first documentation of hop cultivation, by contrast, is from just AD 736 in what is now Germany. Before that, to give their drinks flavour, ale brewers used gruit, a mix of bitter herbs, flowers or roots, including dandelion, burdock, sweet gale, mugwort, ground ivy, yarrow, horehound and sage. [“How climate change is shaking up the hops that give beer its flavour,” sidebar: “Rooted in History,” Chris Simms, NewScientist (18 December 2021, paywall)]