July, 2010 archive
Snake-Biting Cold 0
From the BBC:
But hundreds of the snakes did not survive unusually low temperatures last January, a monitoring study reveals.
Though the pythons remain a threat to biodiversity in Florida, it now appears less likely they will spread further.
A New Angle on Forthrightness, Nay, Fifthrightness Even 0
(Link fixed.)
You can’t make this stuff up:
Standing up for her beliefs, except when sitting down on them:
Then, they say, the Angle campaign sent them a cease-and-desist letter, claiming misuse of copyrighted materials in the reposting of the old website . . . .
One wonders why, now that she has the nomination, she doesn’t want voters in the General Election to know what she really stands for.
Fil-Am Day 0
Here are some random photos from Filipino-American Friendship Day, celebrated on Saturday at Redwing Park in Virginia Beach. It was a most pleasant afternoon, so long as one spend most of it in the shade.
The reviewing stand, with the entertainment tent in the background. I got there after the parade:
Seen on the Street 0
Even though I enjoyed my share of cowboy-and-Indian movies when I was a kid, back when a color movie was still a Big Deal, I found this image rather troubling, given that the United States’s treatment of Native Americans was less than honorable.
(I had to fiddle with it quite a bit in the GIMP to make it legible.)
No, It’s Not Blackspot 0
On the deck, which faces south, I have two potted roses. Last night, when the sun was well around to the west and the deck was covered by shade, I glanced out to see that some of the leaves on the roses were glinting gold.
I managed to snap a picture. Five minute later, the glints were gone.
My best guess is that the rays from the setting sun were bouncing off a window across the street and hitting the roses. Here’s a picture followed by a close up.
Full Disclosure: Because these were taken in evening light, I did tinker with the brightness, contrast, anti-aliasing (no, I don’t know what it is other than a menu choice either), and color balance in the GIMP to try to bring out the glints. The golden glints were not as pronounced in the photo as they were to the eye.
iHype iChuckle 0
From the Guardian. Follow the link:
The Jabscreen 4 also functions as an HD video camera, which is ideal for capturing precious moments in your life you’ll want to treasure for ever. You could capture them on your existing Jabscreen, but they wouldn’t be absolutely pin-sharp, and that’s the important thing about memories: being able to make out individual nosehairs. Of course, by the time your HD Jabscreen 4 footage is old enough to qualify as nostalgia, you’ll be viewing it on a Jabscreen 20, so rather than enjoying the memories, you’ll be whining that it’s 2D and odourless and doesn’t let you walk inside the image and rearrange the furniture. Also, it’s full of gross nosehair. Everyone went au naturel back then.
Speaking of nosehair, the new Jabscreen has an additional camera on the front, so you can conduct video calls in which you and a friend stare at each other from an unflattering angle, counting the seconds till this misery ends.
“All Men Are Created Equal . . . .” 0
Jeff Jacoby meditates on the Declaration of Independence and on its glorious phrasing contrasted with the reality of chattel slavery.
He argues that charging the Founders with hypocrisy is simplistic hindsight and points out that the Founders themselves were aware of the contrast between the lofty language and the reality of the subjugation of the chattel slave. A nugget:
But in that confrontation, the lofty ideal of equality enshrined in the Declaration — precisely because it was enshrined in the Declaration — imparted enormous moral authority to the abolitionists’ cause. Those who indict the Founders because their treatment of African slaves didn’t come up to the standard of “all men are created equal’’ should be asked: Would the Declaration of Independence have been improved if those words had been omitted? Would slavery have ended sooner had abolitionists not been able to invoke that “self-evident truth’’?
The men of 1776 did not create chattel slavery in the English-speaking colonies; it was part of the reality into which they were born. Slavery in the New World was long-established in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies when slaves first arrived in Virginia in 1619.* Even as many of the Founders held slaves, most of them knew that it was wrong. Jacoby refers to Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia:
Jefferson’s wish for emancipation with the consent of the masters, of course, was not fulfilled. Only one American society managed to end slavery peacefully: Brazil in 1888. And in all countries racial and ethnic bigotries persist, even until and beyond today.
Without imputing moral equivalence, I make an analogy which I believe is valid from a sociological and economic point of view, if not from a moral one (and, as we consider the death, devastation, and human exploitation which accompanies what is now oh-so-politely referred to as “extraction,” I wonder whether a degree of moral equivalence also appertains):
Disentangling the 18th Century North and South American societies from slavery was, I think, comparable to disentangling modern societies from fossil fuels. Many do not want to do so; fossil fuels are the source of wealth for some and convenience for all. Many deny the dangers of the present course, not because the dangers are not apparent, but because they wish not to see them. And even those who want to change the present course are not sure how, even as they are certain it is necessary.
Ultimately, the United States was unable to end chattel slavery without war. Attempts to recreate slavery and subjugation of former slaves and descendants of former slaves under persisted overtly for a century following that war and covertly much longer, even to this day. The aftermath of chattel slavery greets every American with the dawn and walks with him and her in the street.
I do not wonder that the Founders failed to grapple with it.
____________________
*When I was wee bairn studying Virginia history in fourth grade in a Virginia public school, the text book called 1619 the “Red Letter Year,” for it saw
- the arrival of the first English women to the Virginia colony for marriage to the colonists,
- the first meeting of the Virginia House of Burgesses, the first elected legislature in the English speaking colonies, and the
- the arrival of the first Negro (probably indentured, not chattel) servants.
I wonder whether it’s taught the same way these days.
Aside: As a Virginian, I am obligated to point out that, in 1619, the Pilgrims had not yet set sail for the New World.
Driving While Brown, Historical Precedents Dept. 0
Grant Calder, writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer, looks back to a 1813, when Pennsylvania considered a law requiring free blacks to carry their papers with them at all times. If found without their papers, they would be subject to jail and, eventually, being sold into slavery.
Does this sound familiar? It should. A new Arizona law makes the failure to carry immigration documents a crime and provides police officers with broad powers to question and detain any person they suspect might be an illegal alien. If the backers of the so-called Support our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act hold the truths enumerated in the Declaration of Independence to be self-evident, it’s hard to tell.
(The law was defeated, thanks in large part to the efforts of James Forten, a free black who had fought in the Revolutionary War, who is mentioned in the beginning of the column.)
The ease with which bigotry reinvents and rationalizes itself is most impressive.
Obsessions 0
A couple of weeks ago, I asked rhetorically why the right wing is so obsessed with sex.
I may have found an answer in a column in the Guardian by Jennifer Abel. A nugget:
Today’s economy is the worst in three generations, so why now of all times do we focus on moral crusades we can’t afford? Because of a nasty aspect of human nature: faced with problems beyond their personal control, people often respond by kicking scapegoats instead.
On the Origins of “Constitutional Originalism” 1
“Originalism” is the doctrine of Constitutional interpretation that asserts that the Constitution must be interpreted as originally written world has not changed since 1789.
Note that the writers of the Constitution were not originalists. They changed the damned thing as soon as it was passed, by adding 12–count ’em, 12–amendments.
Originalism did not originate from the pure logic of philosophical thinkers reaching the conclusion that the Constitution must be interpreted as originally written, so that therefore social security, environmental protections, FDA drug testing, and other such stuff which prevents them what has from reducing them what has not to serfdom must be done away with.
Rather, the folks who came up with originalism sat around in a great vaulted room and asked themselves,
Selves, how can we do away with social security, environmental protections, FDA drug testing, and other such stuff which prevents them what has from whatever we want to do, regardless of consequence, to amass as much money as possible?
After great thought in great think tanks funded by them what has, lo! great sophistry burst forth. They spake:
Aha! We’ll come up with something that sounds scholarly, pedantic, and oh so historical, while feigning reverence for democracy, and we shall give it a name of awkward sound and many syllables.
We shall call it originalism.
Originalism is not scholarship. It is not even strategy. It is tactic.
The Constitution of the United States of America 0
If you haven’t read it, now would be a good day to do so. It’s not that long, fewer than 10,000 words. (From the Government Printing Office.)
Reading it will put you ahead of Republicans and Teabaggers. Reading and understanding it will put you ahead of gLibertarians, who tend to carry copies of it around but do not understand the meaning of “as amended”).
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the
common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings
of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this
Constitution for the United States of America.
The President’s Weekly Address 0
It is time to pour wind on oily waters.
Spill Here, Spill Now, Flack Always 0
Alex Beam in the Boston Globe pens a note to Buccaneer Petroleum. A nugget:
The next best thing to caring is advertising that you care.
Thank heavens no one remembers that you were once the British Persian Oil Company, a colonial oligopoly probably more responsible for the ongoing bloodbath in Central Asia than any other business or government in history. But why dwell on the negative, especially now?
Your critics temporarily hold the upper hand — the “little people,’’ the media sermonizers, the pusillanimous politicians who were hectoring you for handouts just a few months ago. This, too, shall pass. Like Americans everywhere, they need their overpowered cars, their grandiose, climate-controlled McMansions, and their scalding hot showers every day. A year from now, they’ll be begging you to drill more, deeper, farther from shore.
Windmills? How charming. Good for grinding flour, less useful for powering the most wasteful economy in the history of mankind.
Gallows humor keeps us from tears.
Why the News Industry Is Failing, One More Example Dept. 0
Most of the headlines I’ve seen are describing this as a “flub” or something similar.
It should more accurately be labeled a “realization,” as the writer at the link points out.
The Cat’s Whispers 0
I once asked my vet why my cat did something (she would eat the front half of a mouse and leave me the back half as a present; I wanted know why the front half).
Dr. Epstein looked at me for a long moment and said, “Don’t ask me to explain anything cats do.”
Frankly, I doubt (un)reality television can do better, but they’ll probably make a damn sight more money providing far less of a service than my vet.
Virginia Attorney General Explained 0
Ben Goldacre considers research into the interplay between preconceived notions and science at the Guardian (there’s a lengthy description of the study at the link):
This casts light on Cuccinelli .
Light Bloggery 0
Redwing Park