Science as a detective mystery
I've just finished a spectacularly dull county commissioners conference in Corpus Christi, something's that's required for continuing education hours. The only bright spot was the daily commute, about an hour each way, during which I turned to an audiobook I ordered more than six months ago. I'd started it, I think, and got bogged down in the first chapter or so. When I picked it back up this week it really took off. The book is "The Writing of the Gods," by Edward Dolnick, about the race to decode the Rosetta Stone. What a romp! And what a pleasure to read a well-put-together scientific discovery thriller written by an imaginative author with a graceful style, along with a gift for narrative and for developing broad techological themes.
I can't remember how I stumbled on this book last year, whether I was browsing on Audible or responding to a hint here or perhaps at Maggie's Farm.
When I was a kid my father did me the great favor of recommending Oscar Ogg's "The 26 Letters" and the World Books Encyclopedia entry on the alphabet. I never knew him to be interested in cryptology per se, though he loved puzzles. He did have a strong interest in the history of languages and often talked about the trends in sounds such as those identified by the collector of Grimm's Fairy Tales. He was also, even in adulthood, as fascinated as any young boy by the language and culture of ancient Egypt. We spent an enjoyable month once building a model pyramid for one of my school projects, complete with hieroglyphics on the tomb wall.
I've now ordered two more Dolnick audiobooks, one about the theft and recovery of "The Scream" (the Munch painting) and the other about Isaac Newton.
Swiftwater Technician
Usually it takes weeks to get exam results, but I guess they got excited. I am informed that all of us who survived to take the final have passed. We are now Swiftwater technicians, as certified by the state of North Carolina.
Punishment Regardless of Fact
The Border Patrol agents involved in the so-called 'whipping' incident will be punished, in spite of the fact that they do not carry whips, the so-called whips proved to be reins, and they did not whip anyone in any case. The Biden administration will issue some sort of 'administrative' punishment -- loss of rank or pay, I imagine -- since there are no facts that would ground a criminal or even a civil one.
The Biden administration is also moving to 'take legal action' of some sort against an independent coin vendor who decided to mint a commemorative coin of the incident. However offensive such a coin may be, it's hard for me to see how there isn't a First Amendment right to mint one if you really wanted to do so. It's artistic expression, which doesn't have to be in good taste to be protected; and it could even be political expression (e.g. of support for harsh measures against illegal immigration), which is especially protected by the First Amendment regardless of whether the views are appropriate or offensive.
Shared Reality?
An analyst at CNN suggests that the January 6th hearings are 'testing whether Americans can agree on a shared reality," or if -- instead -- tribalism will reign. The problem is that those hearings are a show trial with only establishment voices being allowed to describe the 'shared reality.' What is really being tested is whether America will once again submit itself to elite preferences about how we should view the reality we live in. (I'm not entirely sure they believe it themselves -- at this point they must know the whole Trump/Russia thing was a mock-up -- but it is important that we do.)
Americans can probably all agree that it has been raining in Yellowstone, and hot in Texas and the Deep South. It's too much to ask that they should all believe the same people who have staged one such hearing after another, from Mueller to the two impeachments to this. It's a drama, not a reality.
In this drama, the heroes are the Democratic leadership acting in support of intelligence and Federal law enforcement communities in their tireless efforts to stop Donald Trump; the villain, of course, is Donald Trump. Now Trump is a buffoon, as I've always maintained, and regularly says and does careless or stupid things (though he also managed to do some surprisingly solid things as President, chiefly by ignoring the establishment view; when he acceded to it, it inevitably hurt both him and the country). This 'criminal referral' they are promising at the hearing is just another bite at the apple.
Yes, some crimes were committed on January 6th. Almost all of them were misdemeanors. The only procedural outcome that was changed by the riot was that the objection to the certification of the election was dropped and no evidence heard before the vote. The vote was delayed a few hours. The world did not end.
Yes, it probably wouldn't have happened if Trump had been smart enough to hold his protest somewhere besides right by Congress. However, the people who started the riot never went to his protest -- they were already at Congress.
And yes, the FBI's behavior here as in Michigan invites investigation into whether they were here as there engaged in entrapment and/or incitement. Also in the Trump/Russia business, no? Also in the Flynn affair.
Share that reality. Donald Trump is just an old reality TV show and former president, not the chief enemy of the United States of America. He probably won't be president again, but making a martyr out of him turns him from Old News into Headline News. Perversely, his best chance lies with these idiots staging their show.
That Makes Sense
A California pet shelter has banned anyone who supports gun rights from adopting dogs. They also pledge to sue you for fraud if you lie about it.
Well, at least they're up front about it. Thanks for not wasting my time.
Army Veteran Held in Pre-Trial Solitary, Acquitted at Trial
In only two hours, a US Army veteran who defended himself was set free on all charges by a jury of his peers. The Washington Post thinks the problem was that he was black, though it sounds like everyone in that jail was being mistreated.
...a nighttime encounter with two strangers in San Jose led to his arrest for attempted murder. Johnson insisted he was defending himself and had done nothing wrong. But at 26, he was sent to solitary immediately after he was booked into the jail to await trial....While Johnson was being held, he witnessed fellow inmates being beaten by guards and was beaten himself, according to a lawsuit he filed in 2018 alleging his civil rights were violated. From his tiny, barren cell, he listened to the cries of a mentally ill inmate as he was pummeled by three sheriff’s deputies, who were later tried and convicted in the man’s death.Prosecutors offered Johnson a lesser sentence in exchange for a guilty plea, but he refused to accept a deal.“My frustration with my case will not allow me to consent to a lie,” Johnson wrote his mother in a Nov. 15, 2016, letter. “I am a warrior until my death and I must stand [up] to injustice no matter how dismal the odds.”It would take three years — almost half of it in solitary — before Johnson got the chance to testify in his own defense. It would take just two hours for a jury to acquit him.
This story is almost a litany of everything wrong with our criminal justice system. The author focuses especially on the brutality of solitary confinement as a practice -- pre-trial, even, while one is 'presumed innocent' -- but many other bad things are illuminated as well. The practice of using threats of severe prosecution coupled with pre-trial confinement to force a plea bargain on an innocent man is unethical. It might even be unethical aimed at a guilty man.
Swiftwater Finals
Turns out we started with 18; eight survived to take the written final. We won't know for weeks who passed that.
I actually can’t be 100% sure if I passed the written exam in spite of significant study because the course covers so much stuff. (What is the nighttime landing zone minimum for a UH-60 Blackhawk? Which of these is not one of the types of injuries you should be trying to prevent during rescue operations? What type of PFD is used in deep water shipping where long rescue times are expected? What parts should be lubricated on a boat trailer? Now for ethics…)
I never took a class in pursuing an academic degree that was a fifth this challenging. Not even our filter advanced logic course, Deductive Systems, because it didn’t require passing 26 practical exams showing that you could tie knots, swim against strong water, rig a high line to a boat and then successfully rescue people from it. You just had to do logic, and you had a semester instead of three weeks.
Should you ever meet these people in the course of your lives, show them some respect. They've earned it even if you haven't seen it.
COVID hospitalizations down
As always, discount the last week's data, but the couple of weeks before that should be solid. This wave barely affected anyone under 75, and is waning even in that particularly exposed demographic.
Color
We got a wild hair and painted the living room a deep orange with green trim.
This is the view from our upstairs bedroom, across the stair landing and into the upper part of the living room:
An Interview with Robert Duvall
The whole time I was in Iraq, 2007-9, I wore a Stetson hat that looked like his. Not outside the wire, of course: I wore a helmet for that. Inside, though, that's what I wore.
"To the sunny slopes of Long Ago." 2007 is only fifteen years; but not everybody made it, and that makes it seem longer.
Seen on FB
Do they really think this kind of penny-ante censorship applied even to jokes on small FB accounts is going to make people trust them more?
On Assassination in General
Assassination is on everyone's mind thanks to the arrest of an armed felon apparently attempting murder at Kavanaugh's house. Assassinating a Supreme Court Justice is an obvious step in certain respects: they have a lifetime term, impeachment requires an unattainable supermajority, and you get to appoint a replacement right away if you happen to control the White House and Congress. Partisan power games are such right now that there's no doubt the party in power would be willing to effectively endorse the assassination by using it to seize control of the Supreme Court. That this would also effectively endorse assassinating political figures in general, themselves included, might be worth the price to them. Such is the lust for power among our political elite.
Murder is one of those things that is always wrong, but murder is properly defined as "the intentional killing of the innocent." The intentional killing of the guilty is not always wrong, can be justifiable or even praiseworthy. The philosophical case for assassination begins with the idea that it can be a form of intentional killing of the guilty. Lots of people philosophically endorse the idea that assassinating Hitler would have been justified, for example.
Likewise, the philosophical case for assassination goes on to point out, the guilt of the political figure is often the actual and relevant guilt. If instead of assassination a dispute devolves into war, soldiers and policemen and outright innocents are likely to be killed who bear little or no guilt relevant to the dispute. Soldiers especially are likely to be honorable and to possess significant virtues of courage and self-discipline; the politicians we are protecting by fighting wars instead of assassination campaigns are usually neither honorable nor virtuous. It would arguably be much better to shoot the politicians one by one as they need it than to have the ordinary people slug it out on their behalf.
Governments and churches -- including the Church -- oppose assassination, but I often wonder if their unity here is more to do with the fact that they all represent a form of institutional power. Archbishops and Cardinals, and certainly Popes, might well worry that they too could fall prey to an assassin's bullet or blade. Keeping the structure of conflict pushed away from the powerful, with actual violence falling on the shoulders of the poorer and ordinary, is definitely in their self-interests as individuals, as members of their class, and as members of their institutions. Legislatures and churches may not be the most reliable source of philosophical insight to be had in this case.
I do not write to endorse the concept, but to raise the matter for consideration. Apparently a fair percentage of our youth, women as men, Republicans as Democrats, have come around to the idea. It's probably a good time to think it through.
A Little Less Talk and a Lot More Action
Among young Democratic men and also young Republican women, a larger percentage approves of assassinating than of threatening "a politician who is harming the country or our democracy."
Thirty-one percent of young Republican women and forty percent of young Democratic men approve of making threats. Forty percent of the women and forty-four percent of the men approve of assassination.
The other demographics work the way you might expect, with harsh words being more acceptable than actually killing people. The only older demographic that breaks single digits on assassination is older Republican women, and just barely at 10%. Opposition among older people is about 90% for all older men, surprisingly less -- 86% -- for older women regardless of party affiliation.
Young blood runs hot I guess, but the inverted response on actual murder surprises me. (Young Republican men underperform their Democratic peers by ten points on killing people, by the way, in case you were worried about the wave of right-wing fascism you have heard so much about lately.)
'We Regret to Inform You...
'...that we are canceling your auto insurance policy because our underwriters have determined that your back seats are too large and comfortable.'
Cracks in the California blue
Chesa Boudin, the "DA" from San Francisco, went down in flames in his recall election. Republican Caruso has a narrow early lead in the race for mayor of Los Angeles.
A Swedish Custom
This is not only weird, it violates what I would have thought a universal law of hospitality.
"Folies Des Policières"
Today the nearby small town of Sylva had a lockdown. It was occasioned by the police chasing a car that had been stolen in Asheville. It had an OnStar system, so it was very easy to find.
The cops assumed -- without evidence -- that the thief was armed, and further assumed -- again without evidence -- that he might have driven the hour from Asheville to Jackson County to shoot up a school. So they locked down all the schools even though they knew exactly where he was at all times because of the OnStar system.
All day long I've been hearing rumors going around that he was a felon, with body armor, and long rifles, who planned to shoot up the school system. Apparently a local news and weather service even pushed out the claim about the body armor. Naturally the major effect of the lockdown was to send a wave of terror through the public (with the minor effect of destroying lunch traffic).
None of it proved to be true. He was unarmed, apparently intended only grand theft auto, and was wearing a tank top.
He is still at large, though, because once he abandoned the vehicle and fled on foot he easily eluded law enforcement.
Perhaps the new sheriff, whomever he ends up being, might get the force started on a jogging program.
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