Unsightly Mental Blemishes

LinkedIn has a short article on vacations, which I’ll quote in full:

Unlimited vacation? We could be wrong

More companies including Netflix and Twitter have started offering unlimited vacation — but is it a good thing? To employers, the policy minimizes burnout while potentially allowing them to save on costs by avoiding unused vacation payouts. For employees, however, unlimited vacation can cause even more stress. They may feel guilty taking off too much time — and when they do finally take the plunge, they may feel anxiety over the work they’re missing. Last year, the average American used 16.8 days of vacation — even though they earned 22.6 days, according to a 2017 survey by US Travel Association’s Project: Time Off. • How do you manage your vacations? Join the conversation

Perhaps rather than assuming the companies are in the wrong, we should consider whether this is a maturity test for the employees. Those who have come to an understanding that either they take care of themselves or they fail both themselves and their employers may be considered mature; those who sweat their vacations because they’re not working, well, they need to reconsider how they’re living their lives.

Or is that on the judgmental side?

Too bad. It strikes me as daft that one of the richest countries in the world can be just full of folks who are neurotic about actually taking care of themselves. If the system doesn’t take care of you, why should you be part of the system? But the system offers a chance to take care of yourself, and now you can’t?

/faceslap

Spaceweather.com reports on sprites – an upper atmosphere lightning phenomenon – and what may be a new variant.

A NEW KIND OF SPRITE? Barely 30 years ago, many researchers did not believe that upper atmospheric lightning existed—until 1989 when researchers from the University of Minnesota captured them on video tape. Now there is a menagerie of accepted forms: sprites, elves, gigantic jets, gnomes. These “transient luminous events” (TLEs) appear above thunderclouds, reaching toward space rather than lancing down to the ground like regular lightning.

On Aug.14th, Thomas Ashcraft may have spotted a new kind of sprite. “I was photographing a cluster of sprites over a thunderstorm in western Oklahoma when something curved snaked up behind the main cluster.”

Here’s the video.

Courtesy Greg Fallis:

Got distracted by this:

READ THIS FIRST: Feathers and the Law.

Feathers and the Law — four words I’d never expect to see together. Totally clicked on the link, which opens a window with a few other links and begins with this alarming warning.

Feathers are beautiful and remarkable objects.  If you find feathers in nature, appreciate, study, and photograph them, but leave them where you found them.  It is illegal to take them home.

No fucking way is that illegal. Is it? Yes, it is. Sorta kinda. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 makes it illegal to hunt, take, capture, kill, or sell migratory birds or any part of a bird, including feathers, eggs, and nests. Of the 900+ bird species in North America, more than 800 are considered migratory. We’re talking birds like crows and mourning doves and chickadees — and it’s actually illegal to take their feathers.

Hope my Arts Editor is reading this.

WCWatch on The Daily Kos relays a recording of climate change denier Mark Levin’s idea of an argument against climate change:

On his August 30th broadcast, first he gravely listed scientists from history: “Aristotle, Archimedes, Galileo, Tesla, Faraday, Newton, Pasteur, Einstein and Edison,” while managing to mispronounce “Archimedes” as if his first name were “Archie,” which is pretty funny in itself.

Then Levin popped his serious question: “What do they all have in common?”

If that sounds more like the wind up to a joke (nine scientists walk into a bar, and the bartender says…), well, yeah. Because here’s Levin’s actual answer:

“Not a single one of them ever wrote about man-made climate change.” Levin repeats this several times, as if he’s fathoming a major revelation.

Here’s the recording:

It’s like the most wretched elaborate joke ever. A demonstration of how not to assemble an argument. It’s the worst appeal to authority I think I’ve ever heard.

And yet, it could be extremely useful. Here’s my idea. Someone should hire Gallup to do a survey in which this recording is played for each person polled, and then they’re asked to rate how effective of a counter-argument this is, without considering their own views on the matter.

The higher the rating, the more this country needs to work on teaching thinking skills.

I’ve run across a couple of pieces written from within the antifa movement, roughly speaking. First, Kyle Chapman’s experience in Berkley, California, via Medium:

A friend of mine is constantly reminding me that 2017, rather than being a relief from horror-saturated 2016, has spiraled down some rabbit hole of political absurdity and surrealism. My mother, a long-naturalized immigrant from Zimbabwe, responded to the election of Donald Trump with a panic and fear that I had never seen from her before. She was born in Zimbabwe while it was still under colonial administration: growing up in Rhodesia meant subjugation by white settlers, fear and humiliation as second class non-white people (even as native people), suppressive violence by the state. Trump reminded her of Ian Smith, she confessed to me, the Rhodesian prime minister and terroristic white nationalist (a redundancy) of her formative years. Her fear should have been a foreshadowing of the absurdities that would follow, but while I comforted her, I still dismissed her. Nine months later, I am on the street protesting against neo-Nazis.

After some description of the event, Kyle continues:

Media commentary has forced me to understand our collective [mis]definition of violence as we constantly grapple with “well-reasoned” responses to far-right politics and urgently reinscribe the state’s monopoly on legitimate forms of force to undermine the legitimacy of self-defense. Community members were implored to stay away from the spaces where fascistic forces assemble, while the media actively normalizes their politics by positioning functionally genocidal politics as “controversial” albeit legitimate opinions within a robust marketplace of ideas. Violence is the state’s white supremacist militarization, like Urban Shield, in the name of “community safety”; it is my constant articulation that, as a black anarchist and member of the left more broadly, my defense of self and community (and other communities) in the face of existential threats, is not “violence.” Antifa (anti-fascism), a coalescence of left politics in resistance to fascist creepings, is not violence because this kind of community self-defense cannot be violent.

For a community that has striven and suffered for two centuries in the American nation, these are richly understandable and reasonable attitudes. But that last phrase caught my eye – good writing so often contains apparent contradictions which lead to better understanding – so I followed the link to an article on Truthout, by William C. Anderson, where I ran across some factual inaccuracies which troubled me, although I’m not sure they really affect Anderson’s final conclusion. Here’s the first three paragraphs:

“Of the many inhuman outrages of this present year, the only case where the proposed lynching did not occur, was where the men armed themselves in Jacksonville, Fla., and Paducah, Ky., and prevented it. The only times an Afro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun and used it in self-defense.” — Ida B. Wells

“The stranglehold of oppression cannot be loosened by a plea to the oppressor’s conscience.” — Robert F. Williams

In order to self-defend, groups targeted for violence by white supremacists have to first acknowledge in ourselves that we are worthy of defending. Those of us who experience the daily damages of white supremacy and desire its end deserve a world without it.

In response to the Williams quote, I believe we should have an interview with Mr. Gandhi, who led a non-violent war against the colonialist England, and won by using the English conscience against the English – or so I understand. But, as a colleague from 35 years ago once asked, What if, instead of the British, Gandhi had gone up against the Nazis? He wouldn’t have succeeded, now would he? Thus, my own niggling concern about Mr. Williams’ ignorance (or deliberate omission), is, perhaps, not of great concern. After all, what of the conscience of today’s right-wing fringe? Do the white supremacists have consciences? Well, probably – but sharply demarcated in racial terms. Thus, the damage, and the loss of instruction through the omission of the Indian example, are compartmentalized.

Similarly, some might categorize my second objection in much the same way. Anderson writes “… Those of us who experience the daily damages of white supremacy and desire its end deserve a world without it.” I’ve developed a strong mistrust of the word deserve and its insistent use in an individualistic context wherein the Universe, it seems, owes a debt of gratitude and concern to the inhabitants of this small world we call Earth, merely because we exist. Sadly, such claims on the Universe are generally rejected in a violent manner, and while some will claim this is merely a rhetorical device, I will soundly disagree, for the spirit of entitlement often continues in the same vein throughout such pieces of communication without regard to the effects on the greater societal context – as I’ve noted before.

Not that I think this is a reason to condemn this piece, but I should like to see a better line of reasoning than merely assuming that some group, because of abuse, has some claim on societal assistance. Through careful use of detail, I could make the noxious, yet plausible, case that white nationalist groups also have some claim simply because they’ve been forced to the edges of society. It’s a ridiculous claim which makes me ill, but given the rhetorical setting of Anderson’s writing, it’s certainly a possibility.

And then this:

Our beings and our bodies are not empty things intended to labor in service to a nation that refuses to protect us. A rejection of liberal mythology — the untruth that those who have fallen victim to the atrocities of this nation’s past and present were simply necessary fodder — is an act of preservation and protection for anyone who chooses to strive for liberation. It’s an act that has been increasingly necessary for some time in an increasingly hostile United States. Our future depends on our understanding of self-defense and how it’s applied to the constant crises unfolding around us.

Wait, excuse me for a moment. As a white male of liberal leanings, I can’t say I’ve ever run across this necessary fodder thing. Am I isolated enough – which I wouldn’t doubt – that I’ve missed out on this meme? If true, it’s certainly execrable – but if I haven’t heard of it, I have to wonder if this is something Mr. Anderson invented.

On the other hand, it’s simple to agree with this:

Those who oppose white supremacy and the violences it distributes out in the world should begin arming themselves if they are not already. Kind words, liberal idealism and the state are not guaranteed to protect you. In an escalating bigoted environment where the president refuses to denounce white supremacists, because he is one of them and encourages their violence, many of us are prepared to protect our lives with the same weapons that aggressors would use to attack us. Those who seek to do us harm (regularly including the police) will do so whether we’re unarmed or armed, even with gun permits.

And I do. If our society is going to encourage gun ownership for the citizenry, then that ought to apply to everyone. And then we have to be willing to pay the inevitable price in gun accidents, domestic violence increase, and a decrease in rational discourse. It’s a fine line to balance on, but a later, compelling quote provides a good rationalization:

Ida B. Wells once wrote:

A Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give. When the white man who is always the aggressor knows he runs as great a risk of biting the dust every time his Afro-American victim does, he will have greater respect for Afro-American life. The more the Afro-American yields and cringes and begs, the more he has to do so, the more he is insulted, outraged and lynched.

I am not familiar with Ms Wells, but I’ve known enough bullies and bigots to understand her line of reasoning.

While I’d like to end this post on a positive note, I cannot, as Anderson appears to disapprove of one of the most valuable long-term tools of civilization – rational discourse.

Many liberal nonprofits, academic institutions and politicians tell us to engage in civil debate with extremists who want us dead. But for a process like this to work, our opponents would have to see us as humans worth debating in the first place, which they do not. Therefore, pleas for us to depend on the courts and the logics of white society, like prisons, police and prosecutors — institutions that oppress us — means more dying. Yet again, we’re supposed to continue being human sacrifices for the sake of “progress.” However, many of us know that we are more than readymade martyrs who should be willingly brutalized and murdered so that, in the future, self-satisfied people in power can look back and feel all right about taking their time to possibly implement change. We are not logs to be thrown on the fire whenever the US needs to soul search.

No idea may rest of its laurels; our intellectual foundations should always be questioned, just as Newton and, later, Einstein’s ideas in science were and are subjected to constant questioning and testing; eventually, some of Newton’s seminal contributions were overturned in favor of Einstein’s explanations, and now Einstein’s ideas are tested and verified over and over and over, looking for a chink here or there in order to explain one of the great ongoing mysteries of physics, such as the connection between gravity and quantum physics.

Similarly, civil debate over all of our ideas of what makes for a just, prosperous, and civil society is a necessity. This practice serves a number of purposes.

1. It inculcates those ideas in the participants. You can’t defend or attack an idea without really knowing it.
2. The energy of the presenters will impress the less accomplished members of society.
3. We may find flaws or ways to improve these ideas.
4. The extremists have friends and family who will see these debates – and be persuaded.
5. Sometimes even extremists change their spots, oddly enough.

Without civil debate, you can be armed and then be part of a partitioned, armed society, constantly on the edge of civil war. Without those civil exchanges in which superior ideas are advanced and the inferior ideas of the right-wing extremists are shown to be nothing more than the belchings of the inferior power-hungry narcissists, our society will become far more unstable.

But self-defense as this pus-filled wound on our hide is lanced and cleaned out is a sensible idea.

Taken several weeks ago, this is what happens to ornamental onions once they pass out of their ‘cute’ phase:

Yeah, basically their heads rot and then fall off. Not unlike a piked corpse.

Sumptuary laws:

The sumptuary laws (from Latin sumptuāriae lēgēs) are laws that attempted to regulate consumption; Black’s Law Dictionary defines them as “Laws made for the purpose of restraining luxury or extravagance, particularly against inordinate expenditures in the matter of apparel, food, furniture, etc.”^[1] Historically, they were laws that were intended to regulate and reinforce social hierarchies and morals through restrictions, often depending upon a person’s social rank, on their permitted clothing, food, and luxury expenditures. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “On Whose Head?” Janet L. Factor, Freethought In Action (currently offline):

Another is that modesty codes serve the same function as the old secular sumptuary laws: they make certain it remains clear to all who belongs to a superior class and who belongs to an inferior one. Don’t own land? No silk for you! Suffer that scratchy homespun like a proper peasant. Attire becomes a label designating rank.

Tomorrow the 3-day novel contest will start up, and once again I will not be part of it. I’ve been trying to understand my reluctance to once again compete, seeing as I enjoyed my first outing. I finally figured it out.

Labor Day Holiday is a chance to take care of chores that have been neglected of late.

So why isn’t the 3-day novel contest scheduled for, say, the first weekend in January? For at least those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, and of sufficiently high latitude, we’re stuck indoors all the time anyways – might as well sit in front of the computer for three days straight and type, because otherwise it’s go out and endure bad weather.

My apologies to skiers and snow-shoers, but you’re just contrary anyways.

The other problem is that, as a software engineer & occasional blogger, I spend too much time in front of the computer already. Maybe when I quit programming I’ll be ready to throw myself into 3 days of mad typing.

3-day novel contest registration closes in just an hour or two, I think. Sorry I forgot to warn you folks sooner.

Yeah, he lost his appetite.

It’s a queer mix of the traditional and the American sensibility of making fun of darn near anything, but it’s a key constituent of An American Werewolf in London (1981). Two randy young American tourists are in the Moors of Yorkshire where they meet a group of standoffish villagers in a pub. Feeling unwelcome, they leave, only to be hunted down by an animal of marvelous ferocity. Jack dies, messily eviscerated, while an injured David survives; the werewolf is shot up by the local constabulary.

He awakens in a hospital weeks later, but despite being bothered by nightmares, he charms his nurse, Alex, into inviting him to her flat for a bit of feeling up, but while there a nightmare becomes sort of real: it’s his friend, Jack, now walking the streets of London as an invisible corpse because he was killed by a werewolf, rather than dying in some more natural way.

Yeah, figure out what that means and let me know.

Jack wants David dead, because he believes David is now a werewolf, carrying the curse of the one who killed him. But he cannot kill David himself, so David is out of danger – but the moon is coming full again, and between bouts of lustiness and a visit by the hospital doc to the little village, David wanders about until the change is upon him. I hope you like the graphic detail of the change. It reminded me of when I have acid reflux.

Then people die, quickly and slowly, slashed out of their everyday lives of lust and tippiness, and then David awakens.

And the lion doesn’t like him.

David displays the cleverness of the legendary American tourist and manages to return to the flat, where his nurse and partner in lust tries to take him to the hospital, but when he learns people have died, he disappears into, yes, a porno theater. His friend Jack, as well as his recent victims, once again suggest that everyone might best be served by his death. Unfortunately, either the movie becomes disjointed or this TV version cut too much out, as it all gets a bit ragged, and suddenly David once again does the Ovid thing, right there in the theatre. Perhaps it was just a long porno.

In any case, Londoners prove their kinship with cats (as in, curiosity…) and to Benny Hill, but eventually, despite Alex’s best efforts, David is shot by the police.

The charm in this movie comes, first, from the chemistry and charisma of the three leads (David, Jack, and Nurse Alex), who bring a sensibility that belongs to the period of the time the film was made (1970s) to a subject traditionally treated in a much more solemnly horrific manner.

Second, bringing the practical consequences of being a werewolf into a sardonic arena is akin to adding a dash of salt to an otherwise sweet dish: it serves to sharpen and refine the sweetness. The humor lets the audience relax, consider the sharp contrasts between Americans and the English, wonder at how such a movie dare make them laugh, but then show how a young man just entering into the prime of life is suddenly faced with that hardest of questions: when does one sacrifice one’s life for the safety of the group? It is a question which, unfortunately, David either fails to answer or refuses to answer properly. Or it ended up on the cutting room floor of the TV channel.

And perhaps that’s one of the failings of the movie, because David never does quite come to grips with the question. He’s faced with the almost certain knowledge that he’s a werewolf and cannot control himself. We see him try, once, to take his life, but he loses his nerve. Assuming I am not so ill-served by the television, consider what might have been possible if he had managed to nerve himself to commit suicide – and then discovered that he could recover from that?

The resultant madness might have constituted some true horror.

All speculation aside, I enjoyed what we did see. It kept me guessing, a little, and the humor was quite unexpected, if not quite as spiky as it might have been. But I think I’d recommend finding an uncut version. The TV version seems to have lost a lot, judging from searching for an appropriate image for this review.

Despite President Trump’s wishes, it appears the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will not be helping him destroy the JCPOA (aka the Iran nuclear deal), according to Laura Rozen of AL Monitor:

Iran is honoring the terms of the landmark 2015 nuclear accord, the UN atomic watchdog said in its latest quarterly assessment today, according to news agencies that obtained the confidential six-page report. The latest International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) assessment puts the agency charged with overseeing compliance with the nuclear accord at odds with members of the Donald Trump administration who have signaled that they want to declare Iran in breach of the deal.

IAEA officials said they would not help the Trump administration make a false case for abandoning the agreement.

Not that this is likely to stop Trump from doing what he wants – it’ll simply discredit the United States even more.

The United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, may be suffering a problem similar to President Trump’s in that the professionals in the ranks are finding it necessary to correct her statements from the sidelines:

“We don’t typically discuss details of the report before it is made public,” a State Department official told Al-Monitor. “We greatly appreciate the continued exemplary efforts of the IAEA to verify and monitor Iran’s implementation of the JCPOA.”

The State Department’s praise for the IAEA was at odds with a statement from US envoy to the UN Nikki Haley, who bashed Iran for its support of the Palestinian group Hamas and seemed to question whether the agency was being aggressive enough in seeking out sensitive sites in Iran to inspect. The agency has declined to inspect military sites without a good reason, while Iran has dismissed such demands as “merely a dream.”

“We’re not going to visit a military site like Parchin just to send a political signal,” the IAEA official told Reuters, referring to an Iranian military base.

“If inspections of Iranian military sites are ‘merely a dream,’ as Iran says, then Iranian compliance with the JCPOA is also a dream,” Haley said in a press statement.

But a US official, speaking not for attribution, said that Haley, on her Aug. 23 visit to the IAEA in Vienna, had not in fact asked the IAEA to visit any specific Iranian military sites, nor provided any intelligence to the agency that would reflect concerns meriting a request for such a visit.

So the highly aggressive message from Haley may be more show than is generally noted. Is this on purpose, or just more GOP incompetence?

The plan for redistricting North Carolina has been presented and, as WaPo reports, is quite peculiar – with bipartisan support, no less:

A North Carolina state senate district recently sprouted a mysterious new appendage that just happens to encompass a lawmaker’s second home. The extension, and the bipartisan approval it won in the GOP-led state legislature, is a classic example of the backroom dealing that happens when lawmakers are allowed to draw their own legislative boundaries. …

But allowing legislatures to draw their own boundaries invites and encourages self-interested behavior among legislators: Republicans and Democrats get together to divvy up a state’s voters with a primary aim of protecting incumbents across the board

The North Carolina district with the brand new appendage vividly illustrates the point. At issue is the border, in the Fayetteville area, between Senate District 21, held by Democrat Ben Clark, and Senate District 19, home to Republican Wesley Meredith. The old map, drawn in 2011, was a sprawling, aggressively gerrymandered beast, with multiple tentacles extending from Hoke County into neighboring Fayetteville.

After courts ordered the districts to be redrawn, Clark initially supported a Democratic plan that would have drawn a fairly straightforward line between the two districts. But the Republican supermajority on the committee voted down that plan in favor of their own map with a more convoluted border.

And, to my mind, it’s not so much self-interest as much as conflict of interest. Of course, when these sorts of things occur, we expect the judiciary to reprimand the Legislature and, in extreme cases, do the redrawing themselves. But is this going to work out so well in an era when the judiciary itself is becoming politicized? I particularly worry about a judge that is subject to elections; while an appointed judge, as we’ve discussed before, can certainly have been selected on partisan grounds, once beyond the bounds of legitimate pressure, they may become distinctly un-partisan.

And while history has a number of examples of appointed judges losing their partisan characters, these days I’m not so sure. The ideologies have become extreme on the right that I wonder if an extremist can become a responsible judge. The brain-washing that everyone outside of their little clique is wrong makes me quite nervous.

From a WaPo op-ed by Senator John McCain (R-AZ):

But we have to respect each other or at least respect the fact that we need each other.

That has never been truer than today, when Congress must govern with a president who has no experience of public office, is often poorly informed and can be impulsive in his speech and conduct.

We must respect his authority and constitutional responsibilities. We must, where we can, cooperate with him. But we are not his subordinates. We don’t answer to him. We answer to the American people. We must be diligent in discharging our responsibility to serve as a check on his power. And we should value our identity as members of Congress more than our partisan affiliation.

My bold, and truer words never said. I hope Speaker Ryan and, indeed, the entire GOP Congressional contingent is listening.

I typically just photograph what I run across in situ, but this one I spent at least ten seconds setting this one up.

Haptics:

Haptics (pronounced HAP-tiks) is the science of applying touch (tactile) sensation and control to interaction with computer applications. The word derives from the Greek haptein meaning “to fasten.” Haptics offers an additional dimension to a virtual reality or 3-D environment and is essential to the immersiveness of those environments. [WhatIs.com]

I used it in a recent post here:

This letter from Protect Democracy and Free Speech For People, via Steve Benen, caught me completely off-guard. It urges the prosecutors in the Arpaio case not to abandon the conviction of Joe Arpaio just because of his Presidential pardon. Why?

While the Constitution’s pardon power is broad, it is not unlimited. Like all provisions of the original Constitution of 1787, it is limited by later-enacted amendments, starting with the Bill of Rights. For example, were a president to announce that he planned to pardon all white defendants convicted of a certain crime but not all black defendants, that would conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

Similarly, issuance of a pardon that violates the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause is also suspect. Under the Due Process Clause, no one in the United States (citizen or otherwise) may “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” But for due process and judicial review to function, courts must be able to restrain government officials. Due process requires that, when a government official is found by a court to be violating individuals’ constitutional rights, the court can issue effective relief (such as an injunction) ordering the official to cease this unconstitutional conduct. And for an injunction to be effective, there must be a penalty for violation of the injunction – principally, contempt of court.

Put another way, one of the most important safeguards for the Due Process Clause is the courts’ power to hold wayward law enforcement officials in criminal contempt.

The president’s unprecedented pardon of Arpaio undermines the rule of law by immunizing unscrupulous law enforcement officials from judicial review. The foundation of the role of courts as protectors of individual rights will be nullified if they cannot execute and protect their own orders. The pardon itself conveys the unmistakable message that similarly-situated local, state, and federal law enforcement officials need not fear the judiciary, because if they run afoul of a court order, the president will pardon them. …

Importantly in this case, President Trump has not issued a pardon after an acknowledgement by Arpaio (or Trump) of his guilt in the matter, as is the case with most pardons.  Rather, President Trump has made clear that he believes Arpaio should never have followed the court’s order to begin with, and was right to ignore it. That factual context raises grave questions about this pardon’s potential to lead to other due process violations.

This issue is not just about Arpaio. Other local, state, and federal government officials will take cues from what happens next, and, if left unchallenged, the pardon will embolden unlawful official action. That is why the pardon power, properly construed with the Due Process Clause, does not allow a president to pardon a government official for contempt of court based on the official’s violation of an injunction ordering him to stop violating individuals’ constitutional rights.

That last paragraph is the fascinating kicker to this letter. While the naked language of pardoning a convict seems unrestricted, past Presidents haven’t used it in quite this manner, and have often been careful to justify their actions, with some exceptions, such as Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich. President Trump’s pardon of Arpaio has been notable on several fronts, but I believe Protect Democracy has really hit the nail on the head (or the President in the nuts, if you’re feeling a trifle vulgar today). They suggest that using the Pardon power to protect corrupt government officials from prosecution and punishment by the court systems is un-Constitutional.

And the prevention of that corruption is really at the very heart of our system of government, if you think about it. When the monarchists of Britain controlled us, there was little to stop wholesale corruption – indeed, it wasn’t so much corruption as a way of life; the careful checks and balances of the Founders was intentionally designed to minimize such corruption.

I dearly hope this argument makes it to SCOTUS, because there are only three rigidly conservative ideological Justices on the Court: Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch. Kennedy is the well-known swing vote, but remember this is the Roberts Court. Chief Justice Roberts has shown a sensitivity to the idea of a legacy. (This also assumes the left leaning side of court found this convincing. If they were to vote together, then charges of ideologically motivated judging would descend.)

I have no idea if the arguments presented by PD and FSFP really have merit. But it seems to me this is an opportunity for SCOTUS to declare itself. Is it ideologically motivated? Or does it consider itself a guardian of the Constitution, in all its complexity, and willing to say that it protects the people first, and the powers of the Presidency second?

Being in my mature years, I’ve more or less lost touch with current musical trends, so I had to check out something called bubblegum trap when I heard about it this morning:

A style of rap where a retro beat is added to trap drums to produce a less hardcore version of trap music

I just love the name. Here’s a sample:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaLPo_4CKdE

I probably won’t be listening to it obsessively, but it’s interesting how the reuse of the structure of music continues.

Spaceweather.com reports an ongoing mystery:

Source: EarthSky.org

AURORAS LIKELY THIS WEEK: For reasons researchers do not fully understand, the weeks around equinoxes have more geomagnetic disturbances than any other time of year. Data prove it: Auroras love equinoxes. We are now just weeks away from the northern autumnal equinox and, right on cue, the auroras have appeared:

And I’ll omit the pic (the one to the left is merely explanatory of equinoxes), as it may be proprietary to Spaceweather – you can follow the link if you wish to be smitten with solemn envy.

And if & when scientists figure out why there’s a statistically greater chance of auroras around the days of the equinox, I’ll look forward to understanding it.

Never go to this guy for a straight-edge shave.

Tower of Evil (1972) features plastic sets, an embarrassed Scottish sailor, some aimlessly vicious chatter about husbands, a bunch of interchangeable characters, a madman, and the God Baal and his acolyte, Teratoma. If you can find the theatrical release, you’ll apparently get some gratuitous nudity, but our TV version had a little blurring and some cuts. Not that it matters.

Mix liberally with bourbon (representing the American detective who wanders about aimlessly brandishing his pistol), and then set aside for a good walk around the lake.

Forget where you’ve put it until it starts stinking, and then you’ll have achieved an aesthetic plateau worthy of that neighbor who never did anything with their life. Don’t bother to watch, unless your bucket list includes something about seeing Baal giving everyone the finger.

Homologation:

Homologation (Greek homologeo, ὁμολογέω, “to agree”) is the granting of approval by an official authority. [Wikipedia]

Noted in a work email I cannot discuss further.

I noticed that David French on National Review has mastered the sepulchral tone of imminent doom to a fine degree as he laments the possibility that his particular sect of Christianity – which he conveniently simply labels Christianity – finds one of its tenets, that concerning the homosexual marriage, along with LGBTQ rights, under attack:

Again, this is basic Christianity. Moreover, it’s a moral statement. It declares no position on matters of constitutional law, civil rights, or civil liberties. It does not in any way urge any individual or the government to mistreat any LGBTQ person. To the contrary, it repeatedly declares God’s love and God’s saving grace.

The backlash was of course immediate, with multiple liberal Evangelicals deriding the statement as cruel or mean. In their theology, God’s word is subject to an overriding cultural and political test. One can reject even His clearest commands if those commands are “mean” or “intolerant.” And what’s “mean” or “intolerant” is — oddly enough — defined almost entirely by secular social revolutionaries. …

Yes, sin does create shame and broken hearts. Its cure isn’t endorsement but rather repentance. But then there was this, from Nashville’s mayor, Megan Barry:

The @CBMWorg‘s so-called “Nashville Statement” is poorly named and does not represent the inclusive values of the city & people of Nashville

This statement is in many ways far more ominous than anything that comes from the liberal Evangelical world. The liberal Evangelical argument is one reason that the Nashville Statement was necessary. The authors and signatories expected pushback. Barry’s statement, however, is different. It’s not separation of church and state, it’s a declaration of state against church.

I must say that part way through, I began wondering how the generation following those who implemented the Salem Witch Trials felt about the abandonment and condemnation of the killing of witches^[1]. Would there have been as an atmosphere of dejection and disappointment because Christianity was changing, that one of the central tenets of the Christian experience had been rejected by a large part of the populace, and thus the country was doomed?

I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the answer is yes. After all, you always need someone or some group to blame for the ills that are otherwise difficult to explain.

So far as I can make out, David is not concerned about accuracy or having an honest argument. If he was, he wouldn’t confuse civil marriage with religious marriage. He wouldn’t confuse the opinions of a politician as a person with an official policy – particularly in a country in which government is not permitted to make laws with respect to religion. He would admit that change comes to all human institutions.

He wouldn’t try to portray the dominant religion of the United States as being under attack.

No, David is trying to rile up the Evangelical base by playing the victimhood card. You may remember Adrian Chen mentioning it being played in the 1960s, when a memo from the labor unions to the Kennedy Administration suggested using the Fairness Doctrine to suppress right wing viewpoints was leaked to the press. Well, this is how it’s played today – ignore the facts on the ground, the context, and stir up the fears of the readers. See, fear is one of the finest bonding agents known today – far better than Gorilla Glue or Superglue, because it deactivates the reasoning facility in favor of the fight or flight reaction^[2], and people in the throes of that reaction are a lot easier to mold.

And this is where my disappointment in Mr. French really comes popping to the fore – because in this missive, dedicated to coaxing his reader into the abandonment of reason, he displays it in himself. He speaks of signing the Nashville Statement:

WE AFFIRM that it is sinful to approve of homosexual immorality or transgenderism and that such approval constitutes an essential departure from Christian faithfulness and witness.

WE DENY that the approval of homosexual immorality or transgenderism is a matter of moral indifference about which otherwise faithful Christians should agree to disagree.

This is the standard Evangelical fundamentalist cant, as I understand it – and it tells the story. It tells us that rather than consider the issues at hand, applying his mental faculties, and coming up with a reasoned judgment, he’s simply gone off and read the Bible. He’s taking a famously contradictory book, extracted some assertions, and decided to sign up for them.

This may take some gumption. It may take even a little leadership.

But, really, it doesn’t take intellect. Oh, maybe he agonized over signing the pledge, or was hesitant to become an evangelical Christian, but in the end we’re talking about giving up a reasoned approach to life in favor of just trying to interpret what a sometimes obtuse book, written a long time ago, has to say. And then taking it for God’s word. That’s where the real cessation of reasoning comes in.

In a sense, there’s an aesthetic principle at work here, and David plies it well, whether or not he’s conscious of it. By demonstrating that he’s willing to give up his reasoning capacity, he implicitly encourages his audience to do the same. It creates a bond between him and his audience. And then the manipulation can begin. In this case, Be fearful of non-conservative politicians – they’re out to getcha! The writer demonstrates not-thinking, and so the audience should not-think. This may explain why I’m so impressed by the sepulchral tone.

But do you know what I see as the saddest thing of all? The Bible has a fabulous rule that he could have instead cited^[3]. It’s called the Golden Rule. Simply treat people how you’d want to be treated. It covers so much ground and doesn’t get you involved in other people’s love life, while inviting you to love them so long as they love you. What’s not to like about that?

Even an agnostic like myself can like that.

¹My apologies to any historian who is shaking their head at my shaky grasp of Christian history as to when killing witches was abandoned.

²“Fight or flight” seems to be popping up everywhere for me lately. I wonder how my cortisol levels are doing…

³If the Bible didn’t have some redeeming qualities, it wouldn’t have survived this long. Simply evolutionary theory.

I should have read a little further before posting this, because Rep Spencer has apologized. Politically Georgia reports:

A Georgia Republican lawmaker who warned that his Democratic former colleague could “go missing in the Okefenokee” over supporting the removal of Civil War monuments said he regrets that his comments on Facebook were “misinterpreted as a threat against her.”

State Rep. Jason Spencer added that the nation’s “terrible” racial division would only get worse if he cannot continue to have the type of conversation he had on social media with former Democratic state Rep. LaDawn Jones.

Here’s part of his apology:

“I regret that my choice of words in warning LaDawn about the possibility of violence has been misinterpreted as a threat against her, or anyone else who would like to see historic monuments to the Confederacy removed. I was trying to warn her that there really are people who would harm others over the issue. In light of the recent tragic murder of a woman in Charlottesville, I believe that a certain degree of caution is necessary. I still do.

“I condemn racism, ‘white supremacy’ and any group from the yesterday’s Klan to today’s neo-Nazis, who espouses such vile beliefs. They should not be tolerated. Provoking such hateful people is to deliberately invite violence with them, and that should not happen in America in the 21st century.

Reminds me of the old BBS days, when it was easy to offend someone because body language, inflection, etc, simply didn’t come through the telecommunications channel.

But I suspect the haptics folks are working on that.

Georgia PoliticsPolitically Georgia reports on a social media remark which must have had a touch of bourbon behind it:

A Georgia Republican lawmaker warned a Democratic former colleague who criticized his support for Civil War monuments on Facebook that she won’t be “met with torches but something a lot more definitive” if she continues to call for the removal of statues in south Georgia.

State Rep. Jason Spencer, a Woodbine Republican, also wrote former state Rep. LaDawn Jones that “people in South Georgia are people of action, not drama” and suggested some who don’t understand that “will go missing in the Okefenokee.”

For former Rep. Jones’ part, she’s not too concerned:

Jones said in an interview that Spencer sat next to her for four years in the Georgia House and that they developed a friendly, if sometimes testy, relationship.

“If it were anybody other than Jason Spencer, then I would be alarmed. But we had a unique relationship in the Georgia Legislature,” said Jones, who served from 2012 to 2016. “If that had come from anybody else, I’d take it as a serious threat.”

Still, she added, she was “concerned” by his reaction.

Maybe Rep. Spencer thinks this is just friendly trash talk, but it seems to be in poor taste.

It looks like the second coming of Flash Gordon – the GyroCar. Here’s the official request for funding:

Lloyd Alter on Treehugger.com treats it with some sarcasm:

It’s all very cleverly engineered; it’s round because there is a giant flywheel underneath, giving it stability. It has two generators and a backup generator to keep it spinning.

This is such a wonderful idea. It excites me so, to see yet another solution to the single biggest urban problem of our times: How to keep the roads dedicated to the moving and storing of private cars.

Me? I’m keeping an eye on my leg.

Of Dr. Seuss, that is.