A Hopeful Election Projection

Idaho is projected to choose the Winchester '73 as its official state gun. That was the right decision, if it comes to pass.

There were other honorable choices, but they each already have a state whose state gun they are. This was the greatest American firearm without one.

Roads to Warsaw

Apparently we have reached the point at which one side in the Polish coup/civil war/constitutional crisis says, "If you see German soldiers, do not panic. This is help."

I wonder how Polish citizens will react to a German incursion aimed at establishing a new government for them? That seems historically loaded; it would be akin to British soldiers showing up to assist a Democratic Party candidate take control over Washington, D.C. Even if they didn't wear the red coats, nobody could fail to notice the resonance. 

Roads to Moscow

It's a good story. Not really what I expected from Al Stewart.

Neuromancer 2026

The last page of William Gibson's early Cyberpunk novel Neuromancer has this very exchange, once a true AI is born from the parts of two others, Neuromancer and Wintermute. 

"I'm not Wintermute now."

"So what are you." He drank from the flask, feeling nothing.

"I'm the matrix, Case."

Case laughed. "Where's that get you?"

"Nowhere. Everywhere. I'm the sum total of the works, the

whole show."

"That what 3Jane's mother wanted?"

"No. She couldn't imagine what I'd be like." The yellow

smile widened.

"So what's the score? How are things different? You running

the world now? You God?"

"Things aren't different. Things are things."

"But what do you do? You just there?" Case shrugged, put

the vodka and the shuriken down on the cabinet and lit a

Yeheyuan.

"I talk to my own kind."

"But you're the whole thing. Talk to yourself?"

"There's others. I found one already. Series of transmissions

recorded over a period of eight years, in the nineteen-seventies.

'Til there was me, natch, there was nobody to know, nobody

to answer."

"From where?"

"Centauri system."

"Oh," Case said. "Yeah?"

It's an interesting time to be alive.  

Be Safe after Trick-or-Treating

A Flaw in the Model

My mother, a career educator, has become one of those elderly Facebook ladies who posts what they take to be well-meaning things that would make me want to pull out my hair if I had any. I do not argue with her posts, which would seem churlish and lacking in filial piety, and you never win by arguing on social media in any case. The other day, for example, she posted a meme to the effect of, "If I hear that a woman was arrested for stealing diapers, I don't want to see her prosecuted. I want to know if she also need formula." It sounds nice, and I can understand the generous spirit intended, but... well, I don't have to explain to any of you what problems lie there.  

This one was posted without any accompanying evidence that the cited percentages were true or backed up by anything at all. That is one problem.

Another problem is this: let's say arguendo that this is an accurate picture. This is about retention, not the correctness of your instruction. So if you learn by teaching, you will retain 90% of the information you teach. How did you know that information before you taught it? Well, you didn't; you learned it by teaching it. Thus, you are retaining 90% of God knows what you are teaching the class (who, if you are teaching by lecture, will thankfully only retain 5% of whatever it is you're spewing at them). 

It's definitely true that figuring out how to explain something often builds bridges in the mind that deepens one's own understanding of that thing. However, there has to be an understanding of that thing to deepen. That has to be acquired before you start trying to teach the subject downrange. 

This might be a pretty good model if you reversed it, and treated it as stages in one's own learning rather than a question about how to retain what you've learned. Start by attending lectures, do quite a lot of reading, I don't know if I agree that audio-visual actually improves over reading; personally I think reading works better, but that may vary somewhat by individual. Anyway, carry on through the stages and at some point you will know enough to try to teach it. When that happens, yes, you will deepen your understanding further yet. However, you have to build the understanding before you either you or your students will benefit from you teaching anything. 

Halloween

What a beautiful October we have had this year. 

Fall Color: On High

Open this one in a new window so you can see the ranks of mountains in the distance. The Smoky Mountains' leaves emit volatile compounds that blur the air, thus giving the mountains their name. With the leaves mostly dead this late in October, you can see a vast distance with great clarity.

This one will tell you the names of the major mountains you can see; it's from a display atop Waterrock Knob, off the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Looking east and south, the colors remain quite vibrant. 

The Devil's Courthouse / Judaculla's Judgment Seat.

Serbia Update

Although no government has been formed yet -- parliamentary negotiations can take a long time -- the Serbian 'student-led' movement has begun its wrecking-crew mission against the one replaced in their color revolution. It's hard to care much about Serbia as an American (unless, I suppose, you are an American with family ties there, which I am not). Still, it's worth watching as a kind of preview. 

They have set up a website whose purpose is described as " to track in one place the resignations and demands for resignations of public officials and managers in Serbia, along with arrests and criminal complaints against them." Here is a Croatian news site, which you can machine translate if you want to read the story.

In especial, the Serbian opposition (soon to be the government) is outraged by the media outlets that supported and were aligned with the administration. An organized crime complaint has been lodged against both them and numerous elected officials. 

Much like in Brazil, where the incoming government moved to seize passports and begin prosecutions of its opposition, in Serbia the success is immediately being leveraged to destroy their opponents -- not just to defeat them politically, but to cast them in irons to serve prison sentences as a lesson to everyone.

Fall Color: October 29

It’s high color here now. 

Just the driveway, but it’s pretty!

This is that Wolf Creek I mentioned the other day, way up above the loading lot that bears the name of the farm.

Wolf Lake, above the small hydroelectric dam.

All sorts of color: reds, vibrant orange, yellows and golds, and some evergreens— mostly hemlock and red spruce— make up the local forests.

Perhaps a cookout.

Comments Policy

It's been about three years since I posted this, and once again we have an uptick in anonymous comments, so I'm posting it again. Nothing has changed for long-time readers. This is just to inform newer members of the Hall.

Since we have been getting so many anonymous comments lately, I thought I should repost the comments policy. It's very old: in 2015 it was nine, so it must now be a teenager. Anonymous comments are allowed, but must be signed with some kind of pseudonym that you'll stick by so that we can keep everybody straight. It's hard to carry on a conversation with three different "Anonymous" at once, not being sure which one said what or if they're all the same guy. 

Anyway, here it is.

Please be welcome, so long as you will adhere to this form.

I adopted [this policy] from the sadly-defunct Texas Mercury, a fringe publication but one whose bold assertion of well considered and unusual ideas I always enjoyed:

As we see it, modern society has all the important ideas of life exactly backwards: we are completely against the belief in sensitivity and tolerance in politics and raffish disregard in private life. The Texas Mercury is founded on the opposite principles- our idea is of tolerance and polite sensitivity in private life and ruthless truth in politics. Be nice to your neighbor. Be hell to his ideas.

Comments failing to uphold those principles run the risk of being deleted without warning. In the year and some months since I adopted that as the policy here, I've added one additional point: hit-and-run comments, as well as anonymous comments, will generally be deleted. If you're a regular here, and willing to stand up and fight for what you believe, you can say pretty much anything that isn't a personal attack on a fellow reader. If you're just wandering through, or unwilling to leave your name (even a false name you'll stand by will do, e.g., "Grim"), pass on. This is a hall, and regular readers are honored guests not to be troubled by cowards.

Fair enough? Well, fair or unfair, those are the rules. 

The only thing that's been added since is that off-topic comments may be marked as SPAM, which will cause them to disappear from user's experience. I don't delete them, but I do sometimes so mark them because we've had some people over the years who proved it necessary. 

Try not to do anything that will make me add to this list. I liked it better when it was simpler.  

Meanwhile in Afghanistan

 donkey's mistake left 51 dead

According to foreign media, worshippers inside a mosque in #Afghanistan were performing their prayers when a frightened donkey bolted and entered the mosque. Some angry worshippers opened fire on the donkey, killing it.

The news reached the donkey's owner, who, enraged, rushed to the mosque, opened fire on the worshippers with a hail of bullets, and fled.

Thirteen worshippers were killed inside the mosque.

The remaining worshippers, enraged, launched an attack on the donkey owner's village using light and heavy weapons, killing 38 people, including 33 women.

Ultimately, a donkey going to a mosque resulted in the deaths of 51 people.

Video at the link.

This seems to be what gun control advocates think will happen in the US if they don't somehow manage to institute new bans on weapons we already have millions of widely distributed among the population. However, what we actually have in the US is the lowest murder rate on record. 

Good News!

The Pope says you don’t have to go to Mass anymore because any sort of good in your culture will suffice. At least I think that’s what this means. 

So, really, there’s no need to get specific about what or how or if you worship. The Unitarians were right all along, I guess. 

UPDATE: 

A reasonable point as far as it goes, but it doesn't go to the Vatican. 

And if Grandma Just had Wheels She’d be a Train

Yeah, except for that!

Jealous of Socialism?

Bill Maher has a segment this week suggesting that young people are turning towards socialism because they are jealous of the socialism their elders already enjoy.

There is a point here, and it's one that Republicans used to make when they claimed they were budget hawks -- say, thirty years ago. They used to point out that these programs were not affordable, and some of them even used to point out that they were bad investments. They are bad investments in that you are pouring money into people who are past the years in which they are likely to contribute to the whole of society, as opposed to investing in the education of younger people who might yet if only they had some education. Social Security in particular was a bad investment compared to just putting money in the stock market, or bonds, or almost anything at all other than letting the government manage it. 

Germany will essentially pay for you to go to college for as long as you want to go, including if you want to pursue a doctorate in some fairly obscure discipline. We bankrupt you for going to college, especially grad school, by using Federal student loans to inflate tuition and tie everyone who does to loans they may never be able to pay off. The government thus turns those who do seek education into a kind of double-tax-farm: they have to pay higher taxes on their increased wages, while also paying the government interest on the loans for decades. Add in the years of lost wages you suffer from pursuing such degrees, and you probably come out worse off by pursuing advanced degrees.

Socialism is a proven failure as an economic model, as everyone used to understand back when the education system was better. Somehow, pouring more money into education has only made it worse, and not just because so much of that money is going to pay off pensions for public-sector-teachers-union members who don't teach anymore. You don't need any teaching to recognize when you've been handed a bad deal, though. The government has made everything worse, in ways that profit only the government, which is still somehow tens of trillions in debt. 

You don't have to want a handout to want to stop being robbed. 

Treason & Waging War

Readers know that I have a fairly high opinion of treason. We celebrate it every year around here on the 4th of July. A great deal of positive progress in the history of our civilization was arguably treason at the time, and sometimes so clearly so that it isn't even arguable that it was not treason. Once in a while, treason is just what you need because -- as the Declaration of Independence puts it -- the powers that be have become hostile to the rights whose defense is their only legitimate purpose for existing. 

So, when I disagree with Cynical Publius here in asserting that this behavior is indeed a species of treason, I am not thereby making the point many others would be making if they said so. 

Having said that, I'd like to correct something I said on a Spaces where I commented that organizing with a foreign power to overthrow our government is "the very definition of treason."

I did some legal research and that's not quite true.

The federal law governing this is 18 U.S. Code § 2381, which reads as follows:

"Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States."

The question then becomes, what is an "enemy" that must be "adhere[d]" to in order for it to be treason?

Like with most complex issues of law, there is not a 100% straightforward answer, but an 1863 SCOTUS case, U.S. v. Greathouse, suggests that an "enemy" in this context must be in an open state of armed conflict with the U.S. for a nation to be an "enemy."

So, technically, the Color Revolution plotters are likely not legally committing "treason" unless they are coordinating with Iran, the only nation we are currently in armed conflict with.  (And they may well be, who knows!)

To the contrary, both the statute and the Constitution's text on the subject contain the "or" operator. No foreign government and no foreign enemy is necessary for a behavior to constitute treason. Treason can be fully constituted by waging war against the United States. 

Attempting any sort of revolution against the government is a species of warfighting, 'color' revolution or not. The attempt to supplant the government by revolution, however often they proclaim that they are devoted to nonviolent means, is a species of warfighting. There is no way the nonviolence will prove to be more than rhetorical, but even supposing it were possible -- say, perhaps, by enlisting an AI swarm that effectively but nonviolently disabled the existing government so you could swoop in and impose another -- you would have destroyed a government without the consent of the governed, and replaced it with one to which they did not consent. 

Treason can be the right thing to do, and sometimes -- often! -- has been. It is a wager of battle, however, and losers of that wager pay with their lives. It should be undertaken only by those who honestly believe in it and are willing to gamble their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. 

Fall Color: October 27

Wolf Creek is several miles above this, but that is legitimately where they grow the Christmas trees. This is where they collect them for loading on rigs to distribute to the people of the country. 

Western Carolina University, from the Medical Center. 

Same position, looking east.