A Reality Show for the Hall, Maybe?

The History Channel's Forged in Fire is something I just discovered today by accident.

It has a reality-show format and each episode pits 4 blade smiths against each other in a particular competition. Some past competitions have included forging a katana, creating a "Templar Crusader Dagger," and transforming failed blades into functional cutlasses.

It also introduced me to the American Bladesmith Society, which I know nothing about but which looks worth checking out.

Part of me is fascinated by the skills displayed, but part of me is repulsed by the reality-show format. I dunno. See what you think.

"America Will Never Be A Socialist Country"

I am reminded of Fritz Leiber's wizard poem: "Never and forever are neither for men/ you'll be returning again and again."

All the same, consecrate yourselves to it for your lifetimes at least. We were born free, and we can at least swear to die free.

What comes after us is not ours to write, but that far at least we can write for ourselves.

Basing stories on uncorroborated allegations

I lifted this from Ace.

In short, the Lt. Gov. of Virginia is threatening legal action against a major newspaper (The Washington Post) for reporting details of "an allegation of sexual assault against him from 15 years ago".  Yes, he also accuses them of "smearing" him, and various other grandstanding statements about how this has never been done before (*gag*), but none of that is relevant to what I find interesting about this.

I fully support the Lt. Gov. in lambasting the Washington Post, and actively encourage him to sue them and just about every other news organization that repeats the details of an allegation of crime with no factual basis other than one person's story.  Now, I'm not saying he'll win, but I think he absolutely ought to sue.  Because this idea that an accusation is something that we must blindly accept as factual (i.e. "believe victims") and therefore report-able is toxic to responsible reporting.  If literally anyone can say "Person X sexually abused me" and that story makes the newspaper, then we've entered an era of sexual McCarthy-ism wherein an accusation is just about as good as a criminal conviction as far as a person's public reputation is concerned.

Now, I want to be crystal clear.  I'm not saying the Lt. Gov. is innocent, or that his accuser is a liar.  I'm saying a responsible news agency should not publish such an accusation unless there's either a criminal report, or a civil lawsuit filed with the accusation (i.e. a legal filing of some sort).  And yes, I absolutely believe that Brett Kavanaugh ought to have sued anyone repeating Dr. Fords' accusation unless and until some form of legal filing was made (though I will consider the argument that the accusation being read into Congressional Testimony may very well count as a legal filing).  And the reason is simple.  Reporting based upon uncorroborated accusations is nothing more than rumor-mongering.  If the news organization reports on a legal action, then that is responsible and in line with the public's interest.

Now, of course, the surest defense against libel or slander is that the accusation is true, but if Lt. Gov. Fairfax knows he is innocent, then he should have no fear of that defense working (likewise for Justice Kavanaugh).  But if the veracity of the accusation simply cannot be ascertained (i.e. "he said, she said" and no further evidence) then the responsible way to report the story (absent any other form of legal filing) is simply not to report the story.  And I absolutely do want newsrooms to fear a lawsuit when they publish rumors and unsupported accusations.  Because I think in the Trump era far too many news organizations (both major and minor) have become comfortable with posting the most scurrilous of accusations with no more concern for the actual truth of the matter than they have concern for the heat death of the universe.  A little fear of having consequences for reporting those accusations would go a long way to cleaning up that problem.

I'll Keep Looking Until I Find It

The Speaker of the House on her favorite Bible verse:

“I can’t find it in the Bible, but I quote it all the time,” Pelosi said as she introduced the quote. “I keep reading and reading the Bible—I know it’s there someplace. It’s supposed to be in Isaiah. I heard a bishop say, ‘To minister to the needs of God’s creation … ’ ”

In fairness, the bishop may well have said something like that. Some priests sometimes feel very free in their translations from the Latin, especially if they have prayed about it and feel like this is the version of the message that their flock needs to hear right now. Pelosi's version of Catholicism strikes me as very likely to be led by priests of that spirit.

Man Kills Mountain Lion, Apparently With Bare Hands

It's not impossible -- C. Dale Petersen once killed a grizzly bear with his bare hands and teeth (by using his teeth to close off a blood vessel to the brain, rather than by tearing out the thick, tough throat).

This lion was young, too, and not full grown.

The runner, whose name has not been released, fought off the cougar-- killing it in the process-- and hiked out of the area and drove himself to a hospital. The Denver Post reported that the runner suffered serious injuries that included facial bite wounds and lacerations to his body. He is expected to recover.

Wildlife officers searching the trail found the juvenile mountain lion's body near several of the runner's possessions. They estimated that the animal weighed about 80 pounds.

Still, an impressive feat! Colorado's government has confirmed that he did not use a weapon, but suffocated the animal while it was trying to kill him.

Women's Brains Differ From Men's (and Vice Versa)

This science is publishable, according to the "Althouse rule," because it can be portrayed as a way in which women's brains are better. Actually, it shows they are different -- surprisingly, and both pre-puberty and post-menopause, for reasons the scientists don't understand.

Scientists found that healthy women have a “metabolic brain age” that is persistently younger than men’s of the same chronological age. The difference is apparent from early adulthood and remains into old age.

The finding suggests that changes in how the brain uses energy over a person’s lifetime proceed more gradually in women than they do in men. While researchers are unsure of the medical consequences, it may help explain why women tend to stay mentally sharp for longer.

“Brain metabolism changes with age but what we noticed is that a good deal of the variation we see is down to sex differences,” said Marcus Raichle, a neurobiologist at Washington University school of medicine in St Louis.... “The great mystery is why,” said Raichle. The researchers suspect something other than hormonal differences are at work because the difference in metabolism stays the same when women enter the menopause.

“I refer to things like this as the curve balls of Mother Nature,” said Raichle. “Maybe women start off with this difference and it’s perpetuated throughout life.”

It is not clear what the difference means.

The fact of the difference is important enough on its own.

Rich-Soaking Very Popular

...polling suggests that when it comes to soaking the rich, the American public is increasingly on board.

Surveys are showing overwhelming support for raising taxes on top earners, including a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll released Monday that found 76 percent of registered voters believe the wealthiest Americans should pay more in taxes. A recent Fox News survey showed that 70 percent of Americans favor raising taxes on those earning over $10 million — including 54 percent of Republicans.

You'd think that tax cuts followed by the most robust economy in decades would suggest that this is the opposite of wisdom.

A Tea Party of Their Own

This is such a familiar complaint, except that it's normally a complaint by insurgent right-wingers against "Establishment Republicans" rather than "radical conservative" Democrats. The left is having its own moment along those lines.

“I am talking about the radical conservatives in the Democratic Party,” said Saikat Chakrabarti. “That’s who we need to counter. It’s the same across any number of issues—pay-as-you-go, free college, “Medicare for all.” These are all enormously popular in the party, but they don’t pass because of the radical conservatives who are holding the party hostage.”

Not long ago, this would have been an outlier position even among American liberals. Today, it’s the organizing principle of a newly empowered segment of the Democratic Party, one with a foothold in the new Congress.

Chakrabarti is chief of staff to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez... Although it’s Ocasio-Cortez who gets all the headlines, she arguably wouldn’t be in Congress in the first place without the group Chakrabarti founded: Justice Democrats, a new, central player in the ongoing war for the soul of the Democratic Party. It was the Justice Democrats who recruited her in a quixotic campaign early on, providing a neophyte candidate with enough infrastructure to take down a party leader. And it is the Justice Democrats who see Ocasio-Cortez as just the opening act in an astonishingly ambitious plan to do nothing less than re-imagine liberal politics in America—and do it by whatever means necessary.

If that requires knocking out well-known elected officials and replacing them with more radical newcomers, so be it. And if it ends up ripping apart the Democratic Party in the process—well, that might be the idea.

“There is going to be a war within the party. We are going to lean into it,” said Waleed Shahid, the group’s spokesman.

So far their ambitions have mostly failed, even compared to the TEA Party's initial moments. However, in the young Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, they have an extraordinary platform to draw attention to their movement.

Resume Inflation

Gov. Norham turns out to have inflated his service during Desert Storm in order to push his gun control agenda.

Well, he was indeed a doctor during Desert Storm, according to the NPRC... He was a child neurologist working at the Army’s Landstuhl Hospital in Germany. The way I understand neurologists, they treat brain diseases not gunshot wounds. It looks like he specialized in child neurology before, during and after the time he was at Landstuhl.... Now, he didn’t exactly lie about his service, he was a Major, he was a doctor, he served during Desert Storm, but I’m pretty sure a child neurologist wouldn’t be treating wounded soldiers, except in emergency circumstances – extreme emergencies.

"Take Care Of" Like a Hitman

Rather than say anything about this image, I'm just going to let it sit there a while for quiet reflection.

Is anyone home?

Again from Maggie's Farm, this rather wonderful Jordan Petersen clip that speaks to the thing that's been occupying me lately:  when we speak to someone, are we getting through to a person?

I'll repeat here a comment I just left there: Someone recently quoted a similar passage from Dietrich Bonhoeffer--was it here? I forget--about how essentially stupid we become when we surrender our judgment to an ideology. He was talking, of course, about how Nazis got ordinary people to behave so horribly. The ideology no longer is a way to order our thoughts but instead something that makes us unthinking tools, one-note Charlies spouting empty superficial trash. And there tends to be someone standing nearby who's more than happy to use us as tools for a horrible purpose, while our brains are turned off and our souls numbed. Not by accident will it be a horrible purpose, because people with good purposes aren't as drawn to using other people as tools, rather than fighting with them as free brothers. And that's the difference between God and the Devil. Well, obviously, a difference.

Jordan Peterson is a rare exponent of moral heroism.

 

Salt of the earth

My little town is losing an excellent police chief to retirement, just as I was getting to know what a rare find he is.  If you're familiar with the true story on which the 1991 movie "Rush" was loosely based, he's the straight arrow cop who was brought in to clean up the mess after the two undercover cops flamed out and went to prison. Their original police chief was acquitted of evidence-rigging upon testifying he had no idea what they'd been up to, but after acquittal he was quietly chased off.  So my currently outgoing police chief stepped in to straighten things out under more than usually fraught circumstances.  Not too long after that he came down to my neck of the woods and ran our police department for several decades.

Last night's retirement party was in minor part a study in local politics, as revealed by the presence of a certain contingent and the absence of another.  All that political tension largely faded into the background, though, as a group of very old loyal friends and family enjoyed each other's company and honored the chief.  He has three grown sons who I imagine to be much like Cassandra's boys.  Something about the chief and his wife also put me in mind of Cassandra and her husband--what was it she used to call him?  The Unit?  The young men gave some extremely touching tributes to their parents.  At first I thought, "What a fine father he must have been to raise those sons." Then I met his wife and realized she was equally extraordinary, so I found myself thinking, "You don't get sons like that by accident, even if your husband is a superb father."  Many of those present were the solid core of the local Baptist Church.  I knew it must be an amazing congregation from the central role it has played in coordinating volunteer storm relief over the last 18 months.  Now I can see more clearly what they have going for them.  These people's love of God goes right down into their bones.

I have spent too much time lately in the "mean-girls" atmosphere of small-town political intrigue.  I meet people who sound like they'll be reliable comrades in arms and others who obviously can't be bothered or relied on.  This party made me realize there's a big society out there to be met and cherished.  These are people who will know what's right and stand up for it.  They don't give off the signals that are so familiar to me from my law firm days, or even from some of the more unpleasant local political gatherings, that everyone is faintly drunk and wondering, upon meeting me, whether it's to their advantage to be nice to me.  They're just good people, exhibiting warmth, and ready to get to know anyone they sense will behave well and stick up for what's right.  It will be an honor to serve them and be their voice.

Welcome to Februrary

I've been enjoying old Waylon tunes for a little while now. He was inventive. I haven't ever been to Spain either, although I'd like to go; a Spanish girl once bought me a bottle of Spanish wine, to share a little of what her country was like, and I've never forgotten that.

Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings rented a place together, once. You can hear about it here, when he was young and clean-shaven.



Here he is a little bit later, in the late 1970s I'd guess. It was a different world.



Shel Silverstein gets mentioned here. He was a bigger force in Outlaw Country than you'd think, if you know him from books like "Where the Sidewalk Ends"; he wrote the lyrics to "A Boy Named Sue," and some other hits. He was one of my mother's favorite poets, he was. She used to read me his stuff when I was a boy. Not that one, though. That one had to wait until I became a man.

Comfort

Some kind of tipping point has been reached, evidently.  Virginia Governor's bizarre chat about keeping newborn infants comfortable while we arrange to snuff them was a bridge too far, especially in the same week someone dug up yearbook photos in which he was either in blackface or wearing a KKK hood. As "the greatest chyron ever" points out, the Governor's heartfelt apology doesn't make it clear which.

Instapundit bounces the rubble with this:

UPDATE [GRIM]:

Some more rubble gets bounced.

UPDATE [GRIM]:

California here I go

From Maggie's Farm, a link to a thoughtful treatment of what extreme success in one area does to the population mix of a hot town like San Francisco, since the area of hot success is suitable for a completely different demographic from what used to succeed there.  Rents stay in the stratosphere, so obviously it's not that the town is literally emptying out.  Still, the whole county sees the phenomenon of the California boat people.   Some are emptying out just as others are pouring in. It's happening fast enough to be unusually disruptive.

A Man Speaking Plainly

A gay man -- and drag performer -- has some things he'd like to get off his chest about this whole transgender movement. His opening isn't that interesting to me, but his closing argument is pretty good.

The old paradigm presented effeminate men as homosexuals who could be cured of their sexual desires. The new paradigm presents effeminate boys as children who can be cured by declaring them girls. And since we have (falsely) decided that their sexuality is irrelevant because they are children and because gender has no relationship to sexuality, proponents can make their case without discussing the off-putting issue of sexual urges. Each child must be raised according to what the child perceives to be their “true gender.”

In some cases, the phenomenon described as gender dysphoria is real and permanent, of course. But giving children the power to decide their true gender—or allowing them to decide that they have no gender whatsoever—makes little sense to me. Children who haven’t gone through puberty lack perspective on the ultimate consequences—both psychological and physical—of their choices. ... [W]hat if, as a child, I had decided to take hormones in order to stave off puberty? What if my penis shrank into my body? Imagine how that would affect me as an adult, when my sexual pleasure—an unknown impulse at the time I was knitting those Barbie-doll clothes—became connected with that penis. It turned out my erotic stimulus came in the form of being a man with other men, something I could never have completely understood as a child. As with legions of other gay men and women, the whole arc of my life only makes sense if one acknowledges the connection between gender and sexual attraction.

If I had self-declared as trans, hormones would have stopped the development of my penis, and there would not be enough sensitive phallic flesh to create a sensitive vagina. This would have been problematic even if I turned out not to be gay, or trans, but simply a straight man whose body now was marked by surgeries and powerful drugs. What if, as an adult, I were only turned on by being a man when I was having sex with a woman—but I now had a female body? How would I feel then?...

When I was 12 years old, I was terrified of being gay. I knew the sexual implications of my gendered behaviour. I also knew—even at a time before I experienced real sexual desire—that it was “bad” to be gay, and that being gay meant ending up alone and lonely. My mother took me aside, and quietly reassured me: “You might be gay, you might not be, but I think you’ll have to wait until you are older to think about it, because you’re just too young to think about it now.” I’m wondering if, had all this happened in 2019, she would have instead been persuaded to raise me as a girl.

I have issues with my mother. Don’t we all? I have called her names—to her face and in print. I will not repeat them here. But I want to publicly forgive her, now, for whatever I have accused her of, because she had the kindness and grace to respect my budding sexuality as I then perceived it. And she had enough respect for me to say, “You’re just too young” when I wondered what lay in store for my future. If only we all had the courage to say these same words to our own children.

I would say this focuses too much on the pleasure aspect of sexuality, and ignores the greater question of fertility: what if a child takes drugs that render him or her sterile, and then learns as an adult of a longing for children? What if the child were a girl, who destroys her body's ability to create life and then comes to regret it? The therapist who talked her into that will have murdered her children, all of them, and a part of her soul that she cannot get back.

Ultimately there is much to be said for patience in these matters.

In Capitalist America, Your Groceries Shop for You!

Walgreens is testing out cameras to watch shoppers, analyze them for demographic information, and refine their marketing systems. And they aren't the only ones.

Impossible!

One of many, many affectionate tributes to the late Richard Feynman, whose delight in a surprising phenomenon knew no bounds.  He was well guarded against the danger of refusing to acknowledge inconvenient truth, because his joy came from grappling with it.  His "Impossible!" really meant "What a wonderful toy you've given me to play with!"

This is a Penrose tile, I think, and below is a supposedly forbidden pentagonal natural array from a quasi-periodic crystal.

Eat the Rich, Eat Your Zoo Animals

Rep. Omar calls for considering a 90% top marginal tax (apparently 70% wasn't enough).

Also, cuts in Defense:

“I’m also one that really looks at the defense budget that we have, Rep. Omar said. “That has increased nearly 50% since 9/11. And so, most of the money that we have in there is much more than with we spend on education, on healthcare.”

That's not remotely true. Medicare alone consumes more money than the DOD. Medicare spending was north of $750B in 2017; the DOD's budget for this year is $686B.

People on the Left get confused about that because their professors put up charts on the wall with the "discretionary budget," which DOD dominates. That gives you the impression that we spend more on DOD than anything else. But most of the Federal budget isn't defined as discretionary, but as entitlements. Social Security and Medicare are each larger than DOD's budget. Military spending is only 16% of the total.

Now you might want to get that down to 2%, and spend the rest on Green New Deals or Free College or Universal Health Care.

By the way, even with a 70% marginal tax you'll still need a lot more money. Even should you zero out defense, you'd save around seven trillion dollars in a decade, and Medicare for All is expected to cost $32 trillion in that time. Add that to the $720 Billion you'd get from the 70% tax, over that decade, and you'd still be over twenty-four trillion short.

Elizabeth Warren, who is smarter than these two younger Congressfolk, has a "wealth tax" that gets you closer. Total wealth in the United States is estimated at $54 Trillion, so you'd only need to take about half of everything.

To cover the first decade of Medicare for All, I mean. The Green New Deal and Free College are another story. And presumably there will be a second decade -- will you have regenerated that $24 Trillion, while operating under such a punishing set of taxes?

There's just not enough money, no matter the tax scheme.

No problem: just print it. The author thinks it could be done without sparking Zimbabwe-style inflation, but really? You're going to dump $2.4 Trillion a year in new money into the market, and it's not going to cause runaway inflation?

This is how you kill an economy. Even the greatest economy in the world.

Whited Sepulchers

A moving condemnation of New York's new infanticide law.

I have been hearing defenders say that the only women who would seek an abortion at nine months are those whose child poses a mortal threat to them. The argument is that the child must be removed for the mother's health, and is probably dying itself anyway. If so, you could see an argument that some sort of abortion is necessary to save the life of the mother, and the child cannot be saved; and in that case, at least utilitarians would think it unethical not to abort. (Catholics, of course, are taught that it is never right to do an evil action, even to prevent another evil.)

However, this study of later term abortions suggests that medical reasons aren't really the main reason.

Later abortion recipients experienced logistical delays (e.g., difficulty finding a provider and raising funds for the procedure and travel costs), which compounded other delays in receiving care. Most women seeking later abortion fit at least one of five profiles: They were raising children alone, were depressed or using illicit substances, were in conflict with a male partner or experiencing domestic violence, had trouble deciding and then had access problems, or were young and nulliparous.

"Nulliparous," if you don't want to look it up, means that they've never delivered a baby before.

Now this study is for 'after 20 weeks,' rather than 'nine months,' but it's interesting that "experiencing a medical emergency" isn't even one of the five profiles.

As I think of Mike's point, I wonder how this law could be constitutional. The 14th Amendment says "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside" and that no state shall "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Once the birth occurs, the argument that 'it's the woman's body, so it's her choice' clearly does not apply; and the child, having been born, is a citizen due the protection of the laws.

Unless, of course, the child is not a person. That's been the dodge all along.