Freedom

Wyoming. 

Scenes from Skyrim

Playing by Jenny Lake:

Bull Moose

UPDATE: Deer as well. 

Jackson Hole

Freegrazers

A fair amount of land out here is open range, and even when it’s not the law often protects freegrazers. These cattle on my sister and brother-in-laws acres are elements of two different herds that have wandered onto their land, jumping or pushing down fences as convenient to cattle. The owners know they’re wandering, but it’s apparently not a big deal here. 

I asked if they were allowed to lay claim to one as payment for eating their grass, but apparently that is a big deal. Rustling, I guess. 

UPDATE:

The Church Rocket War

Another religious custom I learned about today is the Easter rocket “war” on Chios. I learned about it because my mother is doing Friday homeschooling of my niece, due to the local school system going to a four-day week. She was going to teach a unit today on Greece because one of the neighborhood families is moving there; but being opposed to all forms of danger or risk, my mother was horrified by the inclusion of this subject in a children’s book. 

I was correspondingly delighted. It looks like a great time. 

The Laws of the Beautiful Captive

Because of the war, I’ve been paying attention to goings on in Israel. Thus I know what I would not normally know, that it is the holy month of the new year there, and that today’s Sabbath reading includes something called “the laws of the beautiful captive.”

I hadn’t heard of this, but it derives from an episode in Deuteronomy. Islam has a similar but much less kindly set of laws for women taken in war. The Greeks of the Homeric period exercised similar conduct, but with no clear restrictions; probably both of the religious standards represented a positive improvement in the treatment of captive women. 

Men, of course, were always killed in the bitter wars; or subjected to unrestricted slavery in the less bitter ones.

The rabbis who formalized the Torah apparently found the laws already uncomfortable, and suggest that they are a concession to the hardness of human nature. Interestingly to me, the Jewish article I cited above ends with a reflection on how the rabbinical commentary compares to the teaching of Jesus on divorce. 

A Rainy Day in Teton Valley

Reportedly there were bears about, but the horses and mule were so relaxed I knew that was old news. I did see a moose yesterday.

UPDATE:

The pot of gold appears to be right in front of the tire shop in Driggs, Idaho. 

More on Fantasy Fiction

The flip side of humanized orca is no real heroes. 

In my childhood, the nihilism that seems to be so common today wasn’t really a thing. We had grand adventures with heroes who might not have been perfect but were still heroes.

Today, we have a lot of fiction where no one is really the good guy. Rings of Power has been trying to humanize the orcs, making all the good races of Middle Earth darker than they were. Game of Thrones saw just about every truly heroic character killed while so many of the despicable characters lasted until the end.

To the West

I will be traveling to visit my family in the Tetons for the next two weeks. Hopefully I will have interesting experiences there. 

DOJ: Don't Be Removing those Fake Voters, Now

People in several states are cleaning up the voter rolls. In Georgia, fake names get added back in almost as soon as they're cleared out the first time.

After engineer and data scientist Kim Brooks worked on cleaning the voter rolls in Georgia for a year, she realized she was on a stationary bicycle. She’d clear a name for various reasons, dead, felon, stolen ID, living at a seasonal campground for twenty years, duplicate, moved out of state, 200 years old, etc., and back it would come within a month. At that juncture she realized that a program within the Georgia voter registration database was methodically adding back fake names.

She looked deeper. For new registrants, the culprit was principally Driver’s Services creating new registrations and in this case, the manufacturer was a person, or persons. Within the government office, someone was stealing names and duplicating, even tripling that person’s vote and then forging their signature.

The DOJ says such states had better be careful, and stop well before the election.

The Justice Department issued a warning to states Monday to tread lightly in trying to clean up their election systems of bogus names and ineligible voters, firing a shot across the bow of GOP-led states that have been trying to erase noncitizens from their rolls.... the department said federal law allows states to clean their rolls, but it must be done within strict guidelines and only for approved reasons such as a voter has moved out of the jurisdiction, has died or has requested removal.

Someone who has been inactive can be removed only after being notified and failing to show up for two more federal elections.

Changes cannot be made too close to an election.

All the way at the end of the article, you get an appreciation of the scale.

Voting rights groups argue that noncitizen voting is rare.

Republican state officials, though, say they’re finding plenty of evidence noncitizens have signed up.

Virginia said it removed 6,303 names of noncitizens from its rolls.

Texas, meanwhile, says it has culled 6,500 “potential noncitizens” from its rolls since 2021. That’s part of a broader purge of 1.1 million names, including 457,000 dead people, 463,000 inactive people, 65,000 who didn’t respond to notices and 134,000 who said they had moved.

Of the noncitizens, Texas said 1,930 had voted in elections before.

Two thousand in an election of millions is not a big deal, probably; but half a million dead people and half a million inactive names is a big deal when it's now standard practice to send out tons of mail-in ballots, and accept them without signature matching when they return. 

Requiescat in Pace Thulsa Doom

The great actor James Earl Jones, whose most famous role was probably not Thulsa Doom, has died at 93 years of age. The role, though not the character's name, did make the obituary. 

Jones married the actor Celia Hart in 1982, the same year he starred opposite budding action star Arnold Schwarzenegger as an evil sorcerer in “Conan the Barbarian.”

Thank you for everything. 

UPDATE: 

What Job Do You Think You Are Training For?

The nearby city of Waynesville's police chief is appealing the suspension of his police training and certification program.

Waynesville Police Chief David Adams had all of his law enforcement instructor certifications suspended by the North Carolina Criminal Justice Education and Training Standards Commission.... Adams was an instructor at Blue Ridge Community College’s Basic Law Enforcement program in Henderson County, where he’s originally from and where he cut his teeth as a young police officer. That program came under fire earlier this year when an investigation that began last year determined that “physical and verbal abuse” was inflicted on trainees by instructors, and some trainees even suffered injuries.

Abuse, you say?

A video obtained by the television news station WLOS depicts a session where trainees are learning how to apprehend a combative suspect using a variety of blocks and strikes, including with a simulation baton. The video shows instructors who are role playing as belligerent suspects striking trainees. When one trainee’s helmet is knocked off, an instructor hits the trainee as he turns around with what is described in the corresponding article as “basically a sucker punch.”

Fortunately, even the most roguish of our local citizens would certainly never take advantage of a police officer whose personal protection equipment became disabled in such a manner. Even during a spirited exchange of ideas, their robust commitment to fair play is well known by all. No wonder this sort of training seemed unacceptable to the commissioners! 

I can't guarantee that the same spirit of sportsmanship will hold for the cartels who have moved into some of the local areas with the mass immigration of late, however. There's just a chance that, if your helmet were to be knocked off in a clash, you might benefit from being trained to watch out for a 'sucker punch.' 

Surely as the great American melting pot takes hold of these newcomers, they too will come to understand that a friendly neighborhood brawl is no place for such things! In the meantime, however, would-be policemen might benefit from the instruction.

On the Importance of Orcs

Orcs are evil and twisted to the core, aren't they?

Modern entertainment is creatively bankrupted, uninspired, or even just plain morally skewed. What that says about the minds behind these shows, movies, and books, I’ll leave for you to decide. What I want to speak on is a simple topic: orcs.

Yes, you read that right, I want to talk about orcs. Specifically, orcs who are just trying to provide for their families. Recently, The Rings of Power has once again been making headlines, this time for testing the waters with sympathetic orcs. To any hardcore and/or longtime Tolkien fans, this notion sounds ludicrous, but it is about what we can expect from modern Hollywood. 

It's not just Amazon's troubled billion-dollar rethinking of Tolkien. Dungeons & Dragons also has decided that it's just problematic if there are "evil races," so they've gotten rid of both the evil and the 'race' (now "species").

“Throughout the 50-year history of D&D, some of the peoples in the game — orcs and drow (dark elves) being two of the prime examples — have been characterized as monstrous and evil, using descriptions that are painfully reminiscent of how real-world ethnic groups have been and continue to be denigrated,” Wizards said in a statement. “That’s just not right, and it’s not something we believe in.”

The company says the current version of the RPG, known as 5th Edition, was designed to include a wide range of ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations and beliefs.

Oh, it does do that. Rather than looking like the Fellowship of the Ring, already diverse with a maia, humans, an elf, a dwarf, and several hobbits, a modern D&D party is going to be a collection of sea monsters, vampires, half-devils, half-dragons, half-gods, genies, hobgoblins, minotaurs, and yes, orcs. And many more! 

None of them are evil, though. Not by nature. Not even the ones born of devils in Hell itself, nor the vampires that subsist on blood alone.

Defenders would doubtless say that this is a more morally sophisticated universe, and perhaps note that even Darth Vader proved redeemable. So many shades of grey, so few Gandalfs. 

All Things Beowulf

Speaking of poetics, AVI has reposted a playful version of Beowulf (or at least Scyld Scefing) going to the coffee shop.

Ode to the BLT

A poem.

The sentiment reminds me of a clip I saw about a family whose tomatoes have typically come from a regular grocery store getting some real ones.

UPDATE:

The sentiment of the poem caused me to make BLTs for my wife's lunch.

Voters More Socially Liberal

Reason offers evidence that Trump voters were less racist than Romney voters, even though they were mostly the same people.

Ohio State political scientist Thomas Wood tried in 2017 to measure the relationship between Americans' presidential votes and how they scored on the "symbolic racism" or "racial resentment" scale, which Wood described as a way to uncover "racial attitudes among respondents who know that it's socially unacceptable to say things perceived as racially prejudiced."

This scale is controversial, because some of the statements it asks people to evaluate—such as "Over the past few years blacks have gotten less than they deserve"—could elicit the "wrong" answer for reasons unrelated to prejudice or resentment. The underlying problem was highlighted when surveys found substantial numbers of African Americans endorsing the purportedly racist positions, leading some social scientists to call for giving the measurement a less loaded label. At best, the scale measures whether people attribute racial disparities to structural barriers or individual failings.

But whether or not the people who score higher on the scale are racists, it seems fair to say that the people who score lower on the scale are racial liberals. So what did Wood find?

For Wood, the big takeaway was that "we've never seen such a clear correspondence between vote choice and racial perceptions" in three decades of these surveys: The higher you landed in the scale, the more likely you were to vote Republican. But as Musa al-Gharbi pointed out in a critique of Wood's work for The American Sociologist, this ignored the direction those Republicans were moving in. According to Wood's own data, al-Gharbi noted, whites who backed Trump over Hillary Clinton were "less racist than those who voted for [Mitt] Romney. The same holds among whites who voted for Clinton as compared to those who voted for [Barack] Obama." Again, voters in both parties were getting more racially liberal; it's just that Democrats went further.

Trump voters were also more tolerant than earlier Republican voters of gays, lesbians, and pretty much all the social liberal things. America has just been moving in that direction, they suggest. Reason writers and editors are libertarian, of course, so for them that's an almost unmitigated good thing. "Time and again, once-vivid fights have receded, as with same-sex unions, or disappeared almost entirely, as with interracial marriage."

Interesting debate question: ‘Are you less racist than you were four years ago?’ 

A Fine Manly Day

Today I rose and cooked some of our eggs up for me and my wife, then I went and wrestled tree trunks and a chainsaw to cut up a bunch of firewood for the coming winter. Afterwards, I rode over to the Thunder in the Smokies motorcycle rally.

Held three times a year, this was the 'fall' version that is the final such event for the riding season. It drew quite a large and varied crowd. I rode across Soco Gap into Maggie Valley behind a pack of East Coast Pagans MC members. I was surprised to see them up here, but curious how a coastal MC would handle the mountains. I have to say they merited my respect, as they rode the mountains' curves as well as anyone who does so regularly, using their gearing masterfully to keep the bikes under control. I only saw one of them touch his brakes one time, and the rest of them rode both up and down the gap without any need to refer to them. That's as good a job as I can do myself, and I ride these mountains every day.

Then we got to the rally.   

The beer tent is in the foreground.

It was a friendly crowd, Pagans and Outlaws and a lot of smaller clubs as well as the Legion Riders, the Leatherheads MC (a Firefighter club), and the Iron Order. Everyone was having a good time, and I have rarely received such a respectful treatment from younger riders as I did today.

After that, I took the Blue Ridge Parkway home.

Near Waterrock Knob.

Above the Cherokee boundary lands.

Licklog Gap.

A funny thing happened on the way in to the rally. I rode across the Cherokee boundary lands (not technically a reservation, in spite of the signs they put up that say, "Welcome to the Cherokee Reservation!", because they purchased the land free and clear rather than having it assigned to them by the government). The Eastern Band of Cherokee has decided to allow for recreational marijuana use and sales, and today was apparently the grand opening of their recreational dispensary. There were lots of cars in line to pull in to the dispensary, which included two drive-through lanes as well as a walk-in facility. I did not myself participate except to sit in the heavy traffic. As a consequence of the grand opening, the Cherokee tribal police were out directing traffic to ease the flow around the new dispensary.

I never thought I'd see the day that the police would be officially deployed to help sell marijuana, but here we are. 

The Last Expected Thing

Speaking of immodest dress, a restaurant here in North Carolina -- nowhere near my part of the state, but down east in Greensboro -- has been getting a lot of attention for adopting a dress code. The restaurant, named Kim's Kafe has adopted a rule that you may not wear "skimpy" clothes, short shorts, and that women may not wear leggings. 

"Is that legal?" asks local radio station WRAL, and is astonished to discover that the answer is 'definitely yes.' 

The local CBS News affiliate  ran a news clip asking the same question, and getting the same answer. USA Today covered it as well.

Who is this 'radical misogynist' who hates skimpy clothes and loves trampling on people's freedom of self-expression? You might guess at the answer from the fact that the name of the business is abbreviated 'KK,' suggesting the hat trick: perhaps these are that most regular villain of our popular culture, conservative white Southern racists. 

You would be completely wrong. 

Kim's Kafe is a soul food restaurant. A visit to their Facebook page makes clear that this is a worshipful, neighborhood cafe in the black community, and they're fed up with immodesty for upright religious reasons. 

The national media is completely blanking that out. Some of the local press makes it clear.

“She’s been a community staple for years,” the source said. “She would pull up to different nightclubs to serve food. She’s given food to the homeless countless times. If you’re someone in her area that patronizes her business, she’s the first one to jump and go overboard.”

When the business was finally able to open a storefront off of Dolley Madison Road after the pandemic, the community was excited to welcome another Black restaurant to the scene.

“There’s not that many Black businesses around here,” said Mutsa Mukahanana, who visited the restaurant last year after it went viral. “There’s not a lot of options for soul food.”

It sounds like she got her start carrying plates of food to sell in nightclubs, eventually earning enough to open the brick-and-mortar store. Many of her base customers are likely 'exotic dancers,' and while she wants them to come around she also wants the community as a whole to feel like it's a decent place where they can bring their family. The motto of the restaurant, "God did it," is also suggestive of motive, as are the worshipful videos she posts on FB.

Apparently she originally became famous because of a TikTok account called Ride with Yusuf, who loved the place. 

"When I had her food last year it was amazing," the TikTok star who goes by the name Ride with Yusuf, and has 140,000 followers, said on Labor Day. "The love and soul she put in that food was amazing."

It's her right and her business, he said before adding that he didn't know anything about her business policies. He said he had nothing but good interactions with her[.] 

So if any of you like soul food, and happen to be in Greensboro, I hear it's pretty good. 

Fear of Democracy

Rhetoric notwithstanding, it's the ruling class that professes love of "our democracy" that most fears true democracy (which they prefer to call 'populism').

They fear it, Ramesh Thakur says, because they know they've lost the confidence of the people.

It's a good article I won't excerpt. I do notice that the discussion of the UK Labor government's desire to ban hate speech veers immediately into a discussion of "extreme misogyny" that notices that somehow physical attacks on women for dressing immodestly are getting mild or suspended sentences. That's the kind of contradiction in practical reason that lets you know you're out of order, assuming you dare to pay attention to such things.