fauxklore

Celebrity Death Watch: Rosamunde Pilcher wrote a lot of romance novels and some family sagas, of which the most famous was The Shell Seekers. .Yechiel Eckstein founded the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. Albert Finney was a film actor, who for some reason I tend to confuse with Alfred Drake and Ron Moody. A few of his more notable movies include Tom Jones, Erin Brockovich, and Big Fish. John Dingell was a Democratic congressman from Michigan who served 59 years in Congress. Patricia Nell Warren wrote The Front Runner, the first gay novel to make the New York Times best seller list. Tomi Ungerer was an illustrator, best known for creating Flat Stanley. Walter Jones was a Republican congressman from North Carolina, best known for inventing the term "freedom fries." Lyndon Larouche was a politician, Presidential candidate, anti-Semite, racist, possibly a Soviet agent. Hmm, reminds me of someone else.

Frank Robinson played baseball for several teams, including the Cincinnati Reds and the Baltimore Orioles. He was the only player to be named MVP for both the National League and American League. He later became the first black manager in major league history (for the Cleveland Indians) and went on to manage several other teams, including the Washington Nationals. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1982.


Don’t Analyze This Dream: I was eating lunch in a conference room. On an airplane.


A Brief Rant About Reporting on Taxes: I am tired of seeing articles about people complaining about their refunds being lower. One’s refund could be lower because they are paying more taxes, but it could also be lower because their withholding was lower. Of course, one should ideally aim for not getting a refund at all, since that means you are lending money to the government at no interest. What actually matters is what one’s overall tax bill is. Many people’s will be higher because of the limits on deductions for state and local taxes, but many people’s will be lower because of reduced tax rates.


One Day University – Lectures: Saturday was One Day University. The morning had two lectures, while the afternoon had a short film festival.


The first lecture was by Andrew Porwancher of the University of Oklahoma on The Constitution: Enduring Myths and Hidden Truths. He was rather more enthusiastic about Alexander Hamilton than I’d have preferred, though he did also credit James Madison, George Washington, and Ben Franklin. But how does anybody talk about the Constitution without mentioning Gouverneur Morris, who wrote most of it? Despite that obvious flaw, Porwancher did have several interesting points. One of his key ones is that the three branches of government were not intended to be equal. The legislative branch was supposed to be the most powerful and the judiciary the weakest, with the executive branch in the middle. He went on to talk bout several amendments, starting with the specific part of the first amendment dealing with freedom of religion. His key point there was that there were interpretations of freedom of religion which did not require separation of church and state, but Jefferson’s views won out over Hamilton’s there, largely because of nativism in the form of a fear of Catholicism. He also noted that Article VI, Section 3, which forbids religious tests for serving in office is more significant in practical terms. He also made an interesting point re: the 2nd Amendment. Namely, that Madison’s original language included a conscientious objector clause, which suggests his intention was the military context, not the individual context, for the right to bear arms. Overall, he was an interesting and enthusiastic speaker, albeit more enthusiastic about Hamilton than I am.

The other lecture was by Wendy Schiller of Brown University on What’s Wrong With Congress? Can an 18th Century Structure Still Work? One of the main things she objected to was the staggering of Senate elections, so that only a third of the Senate is up for reelection each term, though I am skeptical about how much of a difference that makes. Mostly, what she claimed is wrong is: 1) polarization, which used to be only about race and trade now being about everything, and 2) the responsibility of the Senate for confirming judges and cabinet members. She talked a lot about changes in how the Senate was chosen, including the corruption that dominated the process when state legislatures chose Senators and the impact of reform intents that resulted in many states going without one or both Senators. The 17th Amendment in 1913 (direct election of Senators) fixed that. Other things she suggested (most of which I agree with) were proportional representation in the electoral college (which is already done in Montana and Nebraska) and which really has more to do with the President than with Congress, lengthening the House term to 4 years to reduce the amount of time spent electioneering versus legislating, making the House bigger (which would, in my opinion, make it harder to manage and make deals), and requiring independent commissions for redistricting. I am more skeptical about requiring gender, racial, ethnic, and economic diversity in redistricting, because I think that would be likely to dilute the influence of underrepresented groups. She also suggested term limits for the Supreme Court and removing term limits for the President, but did not discuss term limits for Congress. Personally, I think term limits for elective offices are a bad idea, though I would support other ways to reduce the perceived advantage of incumbents. Finally, she supported an increase in on-line and mail voting, which sounds great, until you look at research on voting integrity and realize that it is likely to disenfranchise large segments of the population.


One Day University – Short Film Festival: After a lunch break, during which I walked over to Poppa Box for some Korean-ish food, it was time for the Short Film Festival. For this purpose, short films were defined as being under 20 minutes. There were 10 films, with a short intermission after the sixth. There was only one movie I really disliked (Bob, which had what I thought was a cheap ending), I had seen one (The Gunfighter) before, though I can’t remember where, and thought it was funny, but could have been tighter if it were a bit shorter. My favorites were Super Powers, The Tailor, Bridget, and Tanghi Argentini. Overall, it was a fun way to spend a cold afternoon.

Caution: Virginia politics ahead.

Before I say anything about the Ralph Northan and Justin Fairfax kerfuffles, I have to start on the subject of abortion and, specifically, third trimester abortion, because that is really the issue that started the right wingers looking for things to attack Northam over. And it is, in my opinion, an entirely illegitimate issue. It’s hard to find reliable statistics, but all of what is out there shows late term abortions as under 2% of the total. The problem with statistics is that different places define late term in different ways, anywhere from after 18 to 24 weeks. The key thing is that nobody is advocating performing abortions at the moment of birth, despite what the anti-choice elements want you to believe. The laws that remove restrictions on third-term abortions are intended to prevent criminalizing abortions done for the sake of women’s lives or because of severe fetal abnormalities, e.g. anencephaly (lack of a brain).

The specific law that was being proposed in the Virginia legislature was introduced by Kathy Tran and would have loosened some restrictions on late term abortions. Current Virginia law allows terminating a third-trimester pregnancy if three physicians certify that the procedure is necessary to prevent a woman's death or to stave off substantial and irremediable health impacts. The proposed change – which: 1) has been proposed in the legislature in previous sessions, and 2) never made it to the House of Delegates floor for a vote – would change that to requiring only one physician’s certification and would remove the "substantial and irremediable" language, though still require confirmation of risk to the woman’s health.

So wat does this have to do with the governor? Well, he is a physician (specifically, a pediatric neurosurgeon), supported the bill, and gave a less than articulate response in a radio interview on the subject. He said that a hypothetical infant who was delivered in those circumstances would be kept comfortable and resuscitated if the parents wished. What this was intended to mean is that the parents would decide whether or not to put the baby on life support. Failure to provide extreme and unlikely to succeed life support is hardly infanticide. But certain right wing pundits portrayed this as if he said he supported infanticide and started digging for dirt on Dr. Northam.

And, oy, did they find something. Namely, a picture on his page in his medical school yearbook showing a guy in blackface and a guy in a KKK outfit. Both of them are holding cans and there is a quote about beer underneath, so a benign interpretation would be a dumb attempt at showing how beer brings even extremes together. Northam gave an apologetic speech that evening. Which might have worked if he hadn’t given a textbook example of how not to handle a press conference the next day. In that one, he contradicted his earlier speech, denied he was in the picture (and nobody knows who was in it) and says there must have been a mix-up in assembling the yearbook. But he had sort of done blackface by putting shoe polish on his face during a dance contest that year, when he was imitating Michael Jackson. He was on the verge of moonwalking to demonstrate, but his wife stopped him from that. Someone also dug up a yearbook from VMI (his undergraduate alma mater) in which there was a reference to his nickname being "coonman," which he said he couldn’t explain. I can think of possible benign explanations for that, but will concede his wimpiness on the subject looks suspect.

Despite increasing calls for him to resign, he’s been standing pat. For those who are going on about how this was 1984, not 1954, sorry, but on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, 1984 was pretty much like 1884. There’s no evidence that Northam has treated African-Americans badly and there is some evidence he has learned from those he knows. We know he’s evolved since he worked for Dubya before switching to the Democratic party. (Note that Virginia does not have party registration, so there is no evidence of party membership prior to his election to the state senate in 2007.) And I think he’s been a good governor, particularly in getting Medicaid expansion through the legislature and pushing (not quite so successfully) for gun control measures.

Note that Virginia governors are term-limited to a single term (a law that goes back to 1830, by the way). And nobody thought that he would run for President, because he's not exactly charismatic and (as demonstrated in this instance) has an even worse case of hoof in mouth disease than Joe Biden.

I don’t know about his initial political foray, since his senate seat was not in my district. But it’s pretty weird that none of this came out during his run for Lieutenant Governor in 2013 or the primary for the 2017 gubernatorial race. It’s less weird that Ed Gillespie didn’t raise it, given that Gillespie’s own campaign was highly racist and he could well have figured a hint of racism on Northam’s part would cut into his base.

Which brings me to the Justin Fairfax story. That amounts to a "he said, she said" about whether an incident in a hotel room in 2004 was or was not consensual. Fairfax hasn’t handled that well, either, making stronger claims about why the Washington Post didn’t publish the story when it first surfaced months ago than the newspaper itself has been claiming. I’ll also note that Fox News put out a story claiming Fairfax was blaming Northam for the increased attention on this story, which isn’t justified by anything in what he said. It is clear that the timing is related to the Northam story, but more likely that it comes from the right wing.


So what do I think? I’ve said before that I discount anything people did up to age 25, which is how old Northam was when the yearbook came out. I also deplore the quick rush to judgement – for example, I think Al Franken should not have resigned. However, I am concerned about the impact on his ability to govern and what that means for the future of the Democratic party in Virginia. And that matters ia lot this year, because we have legislative elections in odd years and the winner will control redistricting. If both Northam and Fairfax stepped down, Mark Herring, our Attorney General, would become governor. And I have a lot of respect for him. If Fairfax doesn’t step down, there could be an internal power fight between him and Herring in the 2021 gubernatorial race, which won’t do anybody any favors. (I would favor Herring in such a contest, entirely on the grounds of experience.)

I am also concerned about any impact this whole mess could have on Mark Warner’s reelection campaign in 2020. Admittedly, I am just assuming he will run for reelection to the U.S. Senate, but I don’t see why he wouldn’t. Though I wouldn’t be upset if he ran for President, I don’t think he is charismatic enough to win. And moderates are out of style, alas.

Don’t Analyze This Dream: I was on a game show of some sort. The question I got had to do with identifying the show Who Do You Think You Are? But the host wanted me to answer it in German.

Humanitarian Crisis at the Border: There actually is a humanitarian crisis at the border. It’s caused by Trump’s ridiculous policy of ignoring international law re: refugees and asylum seekers and his family separation policies.

As for a security crisis, I think that expecting TSA, Border Patrol, the Coast Guard, etc. to work without pay is a more significant security crisis than the handful of potential criminals who enter via our southern border.

2020 Presidential Candidates: I miss the days when candidates started emerging somewhere around January of election years, not a full year earlier. But, as a general rule of thumb, I’d really prefer to see candidates who have some executive experience – i.e. as governors or as mayors of major cities. Ideally, a combination of executive experience and experience in either the House or Senate would provide the right mix of skills. Gender, race, etc. are entirely irrelevant. There are white men I’d be happy to support. There are people of color I'd be happy to support. There are women of various ethnicities I'd support. I do have some feelings re: age of candidates, but there’s more flexibility there.

Tax Rates: I am not a big fan of Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez for reasons I don’t want to go into right now. But I agree with her re: marginal tax rates. We had marginal tax rates well over 70% for the highest brackets for a lot of years and we were far more prosperous.

The Congressional Committee System: What I was waiting for AOC (and other new Congresscritters) to learn and react to is the system of Congressional dues for committee assignments. In the Senate, assignments primary follow seniority. But, in the House, committee assignments – and, particularly, chairmanships – are paid for. The “dues” go to one’s party’s campaign committee and are in the hundreds of thousands dollars for significant committees. Ultimately, of course, the money comes from lobbying organizations.

I consider myself fairly savvy politically and I only learned about this maybe a month ago. But it’s been reasonably widely reported in reliable sources since at least the middle of 2017.

I spent yesterday and today at a work-related conference. One thing I find myself doing is counting the number of women at meetings and it was particularly low at this event. It’s hard to tell because not everyone was at all sessions, but it was definitely under 10%. Sigh.

Also, this was the sort of thing which has a token talk by a congresscritter. I won’t give specifics since it was a non-attribution event, but he offended me by giving a very partisan talk and by not using the correct name for the other party. In addition, aside from one slide his staff had prepared, almost none of his talk was relevant to the subject of the conference.

Work is busy but frustrating.

I have been in sort of a swirl of trying to get caught up on the chaos that is my condo, but getting distracted by other things (mostly reading things on-line and catching up on crosswords) instead. I had particularly good intentions for Saturday, but spent much of the day in suspended animation, i.e. alternating between reading and napping.

Sunday, on the other hand, was a swirl of activity. The morning was One-Day University, with three presentations focused on the theme of Genius. I will write more about those below. I was supposed to rush from there to rehearsal for an upcoming storytelling show, but realized I had misremembered when One Day University ended, so opted to run my story (which is not a new one) over the phone on Monday instead. That gave me roughly an hour at home to get some housework done before heading to Arlington for dinner and trivia at Heavy Seas Alehouse with some Losers, i.e. devotees of the Style Invitational. I was clearly tired as I badly misinterpreted a cocktail I ordered. Any Port in the Storm turned out to have ginger syrup and golden ale, not ginger ale. I was thinking it would be sort of like a Dark and Stormy, but it was too sweet. We did, however, win at trivia, even though we were completely hopeless at a fill-in-the-blank lyrics component, which involved a rap song none of us had even heard of.

FDR: The first was by Jeffrey Engle of SMU on Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He started by pointing out that a lot of politicians – including George H.W. Bush, Osama Bin Laden, and Kim Davis – have claimed to be acting in the name of freedom, but that most never define what they mean by freedom. FDR, however, was very specific in his Four Freedoms speech, which he noted came 10 and a half months before Pearl Harbor. Those four freedoms are, of course, freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

Anyway, his main point was that FDR’s success was due to his skill with rhetoric, his optimism, his pragmatism / flexibility, and his empathy. Regarding the latter, he believed that bad things can happen to people through no fault of their own, probably because of his own experience with polio. (By the way, Professor Engel noted that people actually did know FDR was paralyzed, even if they didn’t see photos of him in a wheelchair.) As for political ideology, FDR stated that he was: 1) a Democrat and 2) a Christian. He thought aerial bombing was immoral, but realized it was a valuable tactic. Similarly, he (and the Democratic party of the time) believed in a balanced budget, but was willing to experiment with government spending to end the Depression.

Overall, this was an entertaining talk, especially because of a lot of trivia Engel threw in. For example, he talked about how disliked William Jennings Bryan was as Secretary of State because he was a teetotaler who banned alcohol from diplomatic parties. And he noted that "Make America Great Again was Warren G. Harding’s campaign slogan.

Marie Curie: The second talk was on Marie Curie by Susan Lindee of the University of Pennsylvania. She started out by pointing out that genius is a social category. That is, just being great at what you do is not enough. You have to work to get the recognition, too.

Anyway, Maria Sklodowski and her sister, Bronislawa (who became a doctor) were encouraged by their father in their studies. Originally, Maria was supposed to work as a nanny to pay for Bronislawa’s education, but their father got a good job, enabling her to enroll in the Sorbonne instead. She got top grades in math and physics. Her need for lab space led to her introduction to Pierre Curie and she married him in 1895, a little over a year after they met. Fun trivia is that they spent their honeymoon on a bicycling trip, complete with fashionable biking outfits.

The Curies shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with Henri Becquerel. Pierre insisted Marie (as she had modified her name from Polish to French) be included. In 1896, Pierre was killed in a cart accident after slipping on a wet road. (By the way, this was the day before the San Francisco earthquake and fire, so was a bit overshadowed in the news.) Marie went on to win the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. She also went on to a scandalous affair with Paul Langevin, who was married. The affair resulted in five duels, only one of which involved Langevin himself. Langevin eventually did go back to his wife, by the way.

Other notable things Marie did included creating x-ray wagons for use on World War I battlefields (and drive one herself, as well as teaching other women how to drive them and read the x-rays), writing a biography of Pierre, and persuaded an American journalist to raise money to buy her radium for her research. And she had two daughters, one of whom, Irene, shared a Nobel prize with her husband, Frederic Joliot-Curie, while the other (Eve) wrote a biography of Marie. Eve’s husband, Henry Richardson Labouisse, Jr., went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1965 on behalf of UNICEF. More fun trivia is that Irene’s daughter, Helene, married Michel Langevin, the grandson of Paul Langevin.

Final point was that Marie Curie never made any statements about the rights of women. However, she did hire a lot of women in her lab, which may be more practical feminism. And she was very good at promoting herself, which is why we know more about her than a lot of other women in science. That goes back to the idea of genius as a social construct. Self-promotion is, alas, an element of genius.

Mozart: The final lecture was on Mozart and was given by Craig Wright of Yale. He started with having us sing, which was a good way to make sure everyone is awake after a couple of lectures. Unlike the other lecturers, Professor Wright gave an actual definition of genius as involving a person whose creative works or insights change society in some significant way (for good or ill) across time and across cultures. He then went on to talk about two types of cognitive processes in music – 1) perceiving and replicating music and 2) creating music. I’m not sure he is completely correct about the first of those. I believe that I perceive music well, but I am not good at replicating it. That is, there are various tests I do well at, e.g. of the ability to perceive intervals But I am no good at the mechanics of reproducing those to sing or play an instrument by ear. Mozart was very good at both aspects of the former, reportedly having perfect pitch, which enabled him to hear a piece once and them play it. And his manuscripts are lacking in corrections.

Wright than discussed aspects of creativity, which he said is facilitated by opportunity, motivation and an active and vivid imagination. Some of the things he talked about as far as creative thinking are associative thinking (which also included verbal, as well as musical, sounds in Mozart’s case), combinative thinking / synthesis, homospatial thinking (which he defined as multiple strands of information superimposed in one temporal space), iconoclastic thinking (including scatological thinking), and dhildlike thinking. The latter two could be combined as a lack of barriers to imagination. He showed various examples of these aspects of Mozart’s work throughout, including clips from the movie Amadeus. One of the most interesting was an animated visualization of the Jupiter Symphony.

At the end, somebody asked what other composers Wright would consider geniuses. He cited Mahler, Beethoven, and Bach. I’ve been pondering that question all week. I think there’s an inherent difficulty in thinking about it because we can’t really hear a piece of music the way people heard it when it was first written. I value the revolutionary aspect of genius, which is why I’d put Balakirev on my list for his work fusing traditional (Russian) folk music with classical practice, leading to whole idea of nationalistic music. So, while I think Mussorgsky was the most musically talented of The Five (or would have been if he hadn’t fallen to drink), Balakirev is the more historically important.

I am not entirely consistent, however, because I’d list Gershwin above Berlin, even though the latter is the one who really emphasized jazz and ragtime as fundamentally American music. And, yes, Mozart and Bach belong on the list, too, because I am a product of Western culture.

I still haven’t had time to catch up, because I’ve been busy doing things. Here’s what the past several days have looked like.

Storytelling, Part 1: The Grapevine Wednesday night was the season opener for The Grapevine, a very good storytelling series at Busboys and Poets in Takoma. I can’t quite whine about it being in darkest Maryland because it is still just within the D.C. line.

Anyway, this month’s featured tellers were Milbre Burch and Len Cabral. I’ve known Milbre for many years, since we both lived in the Los Angeles area in the 1990’s, and it is always delightful to see her. I was glad to have a chance to catch up with her a bit. And, of course, to hear her tell. Her program was a selection of folk tales from banned lands, i.e. those subject to the immigration restrictions of our current administration. I thought that was a really cool idea for a theme. There was a good mix of stories and she told elegantly and entertainingly, as always. Len’s stories included some from his Cape Verdean heritage. His telling was far more physical, with a lot of voices. Overall, this was a good illustration of the range of traditional storytelling and a very entertaining evening.


Storytelling, Part 2: Voices in the Glen Story Swap: Saturday night was our monthly story swap. It was in darkest Maryland, so I was grateful for carpooling. There was a particularly big turn-out and another wide range of stories. In honor of having just heard Milbre, I told "Be Nice," which I first learned from her.

One Day University: I went to One Day University on Sunday. This is always a good use of a half-day.

The first talk was Is That Really Art? Understanding and Appreciating Modern Painting by Tina Rivers-Ryan. She focused on four artists / styles – Pablo Picasso (cubism), Alexander Rodchenko (constructivism), Jackson Pollack, (abstract expressionism), and Andy Warhol (pop). Her basic point was that one has to understand the language of painting in order to assess its quality. I thought the section on Rodchenko was particularly interesting, largely because he was the one of the four I was least familiar with. I also appreciated her plug for taking advantage of docent tours as a way to learn about art. But I am still completely cold towards Pollack’s work.

The second talk was by Robert Watson from Lynn University on Our Broken Two-Party System: Can American Politics Be Fixed? He was very entertaining, but I found his conclusions depressing. On the other hand, we did survive the 1850’s when Preston Brooks beat Charles Sumner to a pulp on the Senate floor in response to an anti-slavery speech. I also appreciated Watson’s point that after 1901 the parties essentially switched positions, largely in response to Theodore Roosevelt. Another good point was the lack of friendships across parties that results from the ease of air travel allowing congresscritters to spend much of their time in their home districts, so they socialize with one another less. Unfortunately, he didn’t really have any suggestions on what to do about the rise of extremism and fact-free politics. Well - he did have one suggestion. Namely, subscribe to your local newspaper.

The final talk was on How the 1960s Shaped American Politics Today by Leonard Steinhorn of American University. He really started with the 1950’s and the post-war prosperity and suburbanization of the American dream. (Hmm, what about the Korean War?) However, the good times really only worked for straight, white, Christian men. That led to the civil rights movement(s) and, combined with the Vietnam war protests, led to huge societal changes. Which led to the backlash by people who think life is a zero-sum game. On a more positive note, he pointed out that millennials are, in general, inclusive. For example, he claimed that even his Trump-supporting students are accepting of sexuality and gender differences.

Overall, it was a stimulating morning.

Celebrity Death Watch: Oliver Knussen composed an opera based on the book Where the Wild Things Are. Melanie Kantrowitz was a poet and activist, writing a lot about Jewish women. Marion Woodman was a psychologist who wrote The Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter, an excessively Jungian analysis of eating disorders. Peter Carington was the Secretary General of NATO from 1984 to 1988. John A. Stormer was a propagandist, best known for None Dare Call It Treason. Henry Morgenthau III was a television producer. Carlo Benneton co-founded the clothing company that bears his name. Nathaniel Reed co-wrote the Endangered Species Act of 1973.

Puzzle Follow-up: If you are interested in the puzzle I brought to the NPL con, here’s a link to it.
road to bocon puzzle


While I am Linking to Things - a Friendzy: Here is ghost_light’s birthday friendzy. Probably of more interest to the LJ crowd vs. DW but lots of us use both, n’est ce pas? And lots of people could use more friends.

Weather and Baseball: We had one hell of a storm yesterday afternoon. Fortunately, it was fairly brief, but my power must have gone out at home for a few minutes (based on the kitchen clocks) and there was a lot of flooding. It did stop hours before the All-Star Game, at least. I will admit that I don’t really care about the All-Star Game, but my obsession with Jewish baseball players has me happy that Alex Bregman was the MVP.

Speaking of Treason: I am not quite convinced that Trump’s remarks at the press conference with Putin, disturbing as they were, qualify by the constitutional definition. The question is how one defines an actual enemy. Without a war having been formally declared, I could argue that Russia is not officially an enemy, no matter how much I believe they are in practical terms. Lawyers complicate everything.

Further Proof I am Tired: I saw a reference to a DC superhero show and it took me a minute to realize they were talking about comics, not the District of Columbia.

Ch-ch-changes: I’ve decided to write about only new graze snacks, as I was finding it hard to find things to say about the umptyumpth bag of microwave popcorn.

I need to get better control of my time and space. I am not sure how to do that, but I am thinking I should aim for leaving one unscheduled weekend a month. What I really want to change is the rotation of the earth, but I’ve been advised that is not within my bailiwick.

Celebrity Death Watch: Shammi was a Bollywood actress. Bill Pulte was a real estate developer. Kate Wilhelm was a mystery and science fiction writer. Togo West was the Secretary of the Army under Bill Clinton and later became Secretary of Veterans Affairs (still under Clinton). Ruth Wilensky served up a light lunch in Montreal. Oskar Groening was a war criminal, dubbed the bookkeeper of Auschwitz. Gary Burden designed album covers for rock albums. Hubert de Givenchy was a fashion designer. Ken Dodd was a British comedian. Craig Mack was a rapper. T. Berry Brazelton was a pediatrician and author.

Russell Solomon founded Tower Records. Once, oh best beloved, there was such a thing as a record store, where you could go and listen to records (or, later on, CDs) and find new things to buy that you had never heard of before. I mostly frequented HEAR Music in Santa Monica, which had well-curated listening stations, leading to many somewhat serendipitous purchases. Tower Records was bigger and more mainstream, but I still spent money there.

Stephen Hawking was a physicist. Part of his fame was due to his disability. His book, A Brief History of Time, was probably the least-read non-fiction bestseller of all time. I did actually read it, but I can’t say I remember much about it.

Liam O’Flynn played the Uilleann pipes. He co-founded Planxty, one of the major bands that modernized Irish folk music. He also played for Shaun Davey’s orchestral suite The Brendan Voyage. That piece had a big influence on my life, because it led me to discover Tim Severin’s writing, which has made me choose certain travel destinations (notably The Faroe Islands, but also Georgia.)


Non-celebrity Death Watch: I got a facebook message from my cousin yesterday. He mentioned that his father (my uncle) had died in December. I had gotten a call from Uncle Herb’s friend at the end of October telling me he was ill (leukemia) and I had expected to get another call when he died. I am a bit peeved not to have been notified, since I would have driven up to the funeral. Anyway, Herb was a man who enjoyed life, including traveling and eating and playing poker and doing Sudoku. He had started going to Chabad and joined a tefillin club there in the last few years of his life and I believe that gave him some comfort.

Space Force: It is rare that I agree with President Trump, but the notion of a Space Force is not at all ridiculous. This has been talked about for years for good reasons. One has to do with funding priorities. The Air Force dominates space programs right now, but tends to prioritize airplanes over space systems in the budget process. (This is even worse for the Navy. I have a running joke with some of my colleagues that we should refer to satellites as spaceships to keep their attention.) But the bigger reason is that space programs are, in general, inherently multi-service and the current processes don’t handle that well. To use a fairly simple example, the Air Force buys the GPS satellites and ground control system, but the biggest user of GPS equipment is the Army. This makes it more challenging to develop and deploy user equipment. We have similar synchronization issues with pretty much every program. A Space Force is a reasonable solution to some of these problems. (Trump taking credit for the idea is silly, but that’s another matter.)


Speaking of Space: It always bothers me that people assume extraterrestrials will be smarter than us. It seems to me perfectly plausible that contacting a non-spacefaring culture is really a question of setting that as a priority. Maybe they have spaceships but not, say, flush toilets. Maybe they have a Space Force instead of a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Contrary to popular phraseology, rocket science is actually straightforward. Now, art – that’s what takes brains.


Speaking of Rockets: I just saw that Wreckless Eric is going to be playing at Jammin’ Java in April. I had no idea he was still around.

Celebrity Death Watch: John Mahoney was an actor, best known for his role on Frasier. Alan Baker was a mathematician, who focused on number theory and won the Fields Medal. Craig MacGregor played bass for Foghat. John Gavin was an actor who was in several classic films and later became ambassador to Mexico. Reg E. Cathey was primarily a television actor, who won 3 Emmys for performing in House of Cards.. Jan Maxwell was a musical actress, who I saw perform as Phyllis in the Kennedy Center production of Follies. Vic Damone was a pop singer, who had a number of hits in the late 1940’s and throughout the 1950’s. Marty Allen was a comedian.

John Perry Barlow was a lyricist for the Grateful Dead and an internet activist, particularly notable for co-founding the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I also recommend his List of 25 Principles of Adult Behavior though I will admit to not being entirely convinced of all of them. I don’t think love forgives everything. Nor do I think that mission is necessarily more important than happiness I do think that, however, that "Concern yourself with what is right rather than who is right" is good advice.

Happy Birthday, Neptune: My beloved blue-green Saturn, named Neptune because I am a space geek, officially turned 24 this week. That merited a present, in the form of a radiator flush (along with a slightly overdue oil change).

Joe Biden: Tuesday night, I went to hear Joe Biden talk at The Anthem. This is a newish venue at the District Wharf. (Actually, the whole wharf is newish.) Their directions were somewhat confusing, as the signs they said to follow were invisible so far as I could tell. Anyway, I got there in plenty of time. There was also some confusion over seating as the usher managed not to realize that the seat numbers were repeated in different sections.

Anyway, the format was Biden being interviewed by William S. Cohen, former Senator from Maine (and former Secretary of Defense). The whole thing is somewhat of a book tour, and everybody was given a copy of Biden’s recent book, Promise Me, Dad. But I gathered that there is an ulterior motive of stirring up interest in him making another bid for the presidency. I’d rather he didn’t, largely because of his age, but also because of his long-running tendency towards hoof-in-mouth disease, i.e. frequent gaffes. He didn’t make any particular gaffes that evening, though I was irritated at one of his vocal tics, man. What I did like was his emphasis on collegiality and his examples of being able to have friendships across political lines. Overall, I was glad I went, though the ticket was more expensive than it should have been.

Book Launch:Thursday night involved another book-related event. Down and Across by Arvin Ahmadi is a young adult novel that has been getting a lot of buzz in the puzzle community. It was easy enough for me to go to the launch party at Kramerbooks in Dupont Circle. The place was packed and I believe that they even ran out of copies of the book. Ahmadi was interviewed by political journalist Ema O’Connor and joined by Azaf Nafisi, who wrote Reading Lolita in Tehran. Crosswords, alas, only got discussed at the very end in response to a question. (Cruciverbalist Finn Vigeland was Ahmadi’s college roommate, by the way.) There was a lot more about being a child of immigrants and, specifically, the Iranian community. It was an interesting discussion, and I expect I will have more to say after I’ve finished reading the book.

See Rock City: I saw the Washington Stage Guild production of See Rock City on Friday night. I was a little hesitant about it being the second play in a trilogy since I hadn’t seen Last Train to Nibroc, but it was fairly easy to figure out enough of the background for this one to make sense. The play involves a young couple, back from a belated honeymoon during the latter days of World War II. The play involves the twists in life (starting with their failure to make it to Rock City) amid the pressures first from the war and later from its ending, both of which disrupt their lives in unexpected ways. The most immediate pressure has to do with their mothers. May’s mother, who they live with, is cheerful and supportive, while Raleigh’s mother refuses to accept both his ambitions and his physical limitations. I’m hoping they do the third play next year, as I’d really love to know how everything works out.

4,380 Days: I continued my theatre-going by seeing 4,380 Days at Signature Theatre on Saturday. This is a complex political play by Annalisa Dias, part of the Women’s Voices Theatre Festival. The story is about an Algerian man being held without charges at Guantanamo. It’s mixed in with stories of the fall of the Numidians during the Punic Wars and of an atrocity committed by a French colonel during the conquest of Algeria. The prisoner, Malik, tells his story to his lawyer and the two men strive to understand each other and the horror and tragedy of his imprisonment. The ancient history is told by a character named The Woman and her situation, including her relationship to The Man (who she tells this to) is confusing and somewhat distracting. I thought that part might actually be the hallucinations that Malik has a result of the sleep deprivation he suffers, but none of the reviews I read drew that conclusion.

Anyway, this is a powerful and disturbing piece. There is a particularly brutal scene right before the intermission and I think that scene may have been why about a quarter of the audience didn’t come back from the intermission. For those who did stay, there was a lot of discussion after it was over. I’ll recommend it to people who can handle a provocative piece.

Other Stuff: I am swamped with housework. And work work. I did get various chores done during part of the weekend, as well as going to rehearsal for an upcoming storytelling show. (Bottom line, which I knew already, is that my story needs more story work.) Too bad I need to do things like sleeping, too.

This was somewhat triggered by the Law Vegas shooting, but I always like to take a bigger picture approach to what is going on. And, also, I write too slowly for timely responses to news stories. There have been several more mass shootings since, so this is, alas, still timely.

So, first of all, the 2nd Amendment is the Elephant in the Room for a lot of people. I am of the school that believes that the clause "a well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State" actually means what it says. That is, that the right to keep and bear Arms applies exactly in the context of providing the security of a free State, not for private purposes. The counterarguments are ahistorical and ignore the development of a federalized military system within the U.S. I am, frankly, not interested in debating this point, because nobody will ever change another person’s mind. (Note that I tend to be more on the Federalist vs. States’ Rights side of almost any discussion about U.S. politics.)

At any rate, there is no doubting that some level of gun control is permissible under the 2nd Amendment. Nobody is arguing that felons should have easy access to firearms, for example. I used to say that nobody would argue that the mentally ill should have easy access to firearms, but there are politicians who have proven otherwise. Nobody is arguing for individual rights to own, say, sharks with laser beams attached to their heads. The question is where to draw the lines.

I should start by pointing out that mass killings refers to incidents in which at least 4 people, not including the perpetrator, are killed in a single incident, typically in a single location. If there are multiple locations, it becomes a spree killing. And if the incidents are separated by sufficient time for a cooling-off period, we are talking about a serial killer. I am not sure the distinction between mass killings and spree killings is useful, but serial killers seem to be sufficiently separate not to include in this discussion. I am basing that on the idea that serial killers choose their targets, rather than acting indiscriminately. (Spree killers may be in-between, There seems to be less info regarding them.)

Even though mass killers are indiscriminate, there are differences in motivation. I’d say the broad categories are: 1) mental illness,2) targeting of specific people with others caught in the cross-fire, 3) hate crimes towards specific groups, and 4) terrorism. There’s an overlap between terrorism and hate crimes, but there are enough differences in what one would do to prevent those that it seems worth it to me to make a distinction. This is why it annoys me when people claim that all mass killings are terrorism. Terrorism has an actual definition. Actually, several definitions, but they are all based on the idea of trying to cause a political or social effect. None of the differences have anything to do with the race of the killer. The reason that the media and politicians characterized Las Vegas mass shooter Stephen Paddock as a "lone wolf," not a terrorist was not that he was white but that they were quoting the police deputy in charge of the case who had no evidence of a political or social motive.

It is also blatantly untrue that white people don’t get characterized as terrorism. Since 9/11, there have been 620 people convicted of terrorism-related offenses in the U.S. 100 of those were Moslems, 87 of whom were home-grown radicals, with only 13 immigrants. The rest were a mixture of white supremacists, anti-government extremists, animal liberationists, anti-abortion activists, and people protesting various foreign governments (e.g. attacks on foreign diplomats). (My primary sources for this are the Heritage Foundation and the Rand Worldwide Terrorism Database).

The reason this matters is that it affects responses. The way we deal with terrorism (not always appropriately) tends to be by cracking down on the groups perceived to be causing that terrorism. That is a case where there does appear to be some level of bias at work, at least in some states. But it does very little for random mass shootings. Note that not all mass shootings are all that random. The majority of cases seem to involve things like spill-over from domestic violence and/or workplace violence. The way to deal with those is via appropriate gun control. I think there are some common sense measures, starting with allowing research into what does and doesn’t work. We do know, for example, that when the rule in Virginia that limited gun purchases to one a month was overturned, shootings in Virginia increased.

I also see no reason for any private citizen to own systems that can fire large numbers of rounds in a short time.

But the biggest thing is to keep guns out of the hands of people who have proven they are dangerous. We have too many cases of people who are demonstrably mentally ill being able to acquire weapons, largely because of inadequacies in the background check systems. We know lots of warning signs like domestic violence and violence against animals. (The latter is one of the hallmarks of sociopaths and often starts at a young age, by the way.)

Another thing to keep in mind is that the biggest danger we face is not the random shooting. It’s the argument that results in a shooting because a gun was handy. Or the accidental shooting because a gun was handy. So far in 2017, there have been 54,630 gun violence incidents in the U.S., resulting in 13,783 deaths. (This does not include suicides, which run to 22,000 a year.) Only 321 of those involved mass shooting. For those arguing about the utility of guns for defense, there were 1801 incidents involving defensive use of guns. There are nearly as many (1781) unintentional shootings. My source on these figures is Gun Violence Archive.

Let’s be alert to the warning signs among people we know and try to get the right law enforcement and mental health responses. If you have children, don't let them play at houses where there are unsecured guns.

Above all, let's talk about this like adults.