Eric The Blue

Breaking a vow

I promised myself that I wouldn't get sucked into the Chauvin trial, but, after the last two days, it's time to admit the promise has been broken. I have a few impressions. Probably they aren't unique, but they haven't been on the lips of any of the talking heads on the channels I've been watching (MSNBC and the local NBC affiliate), so I'll set them down.

I laughed at one of the things a talking head did say—that the neighborhood around CUP Foods is "gentrified." I lived about a half mile away from 38th & Chicago for more than 20 years. The gas station across the street from CUP is probably to this day the one that I've pumped the most gas at in my life. Starting sometime around 1990, the clerks stood behind a plexiglass barrier and communicated with you through a microphone. I hope they've still got it since the barrier would have a dual purpose these days. As in other cities, as well as in other parts of Minneapolis, things change fast. Ten blocks to the south along Chicago Ave is a different world: veterinarians, craft beer, retirees reading The New York Times in coffeeshops—before last March anyway. 

Another commentator criticized a witness, Genevieve Hansen, the off-duty Minneapolis firefighter who happened on the scene while out on a walk. While testifying yesterday, she got testy with Chauvin's lawyer. For example:

Lawyer: A stressful situation can impact your memory, right?

Hansen: Absolutely. That's why we're lucky it was videotaped.

[Snip]

Lawyer: Some [of the bystanders] were swearing [at the police].  

Hansen: Absolutely.

Lawyer: Would you describe [their] demeanors as upset or angry?

Hansen: I don't know if you've seen anybody be killed but it's upsetting.

Later, before adjourning for the day, the judge, Peter Cahill, dismissed the jury before admonishing Hansen:

Cahill: You will not argue with the Court, you will not argue with counsel. They have the right to ask questions. Your job is to answer them.

Hansen: I was finishing my answer. 

Cahill [after a pause, visibly angry]: I will determine when your answer is done. And so do not argue with the Court, do not argue with  counsel, answer the questions, do not volunteer information that is not requested.

At this point, if I were Hansen, I might have said that evidently then I'll have to talk slow so that you can cut in to indicate when my answer is done. I think the commentator's point was that Hansen might have been an even better witness for the prosecution if she had been calmer and allowed the prosecutor to rebut the defense's points on their redirect examination of her. Either she hadn't followed directions or the prosecutor had not sufficiently prepared her. Maybe talking head legal expert guy had a point, but it's also possible that jurors are attracted to a plucky, passionate witness who isn't cowed by the suits and robes. 

The cable talkers like to talk up the racial angle, which is undeniably present, but everyone on the scene except the police was horrified by what was happening. Hansen is white and she was horrified. "I wanted to do for him [George Floyd] what I would do for any human," she said. "And they [the police] wouldn't let me." There she goes again, volunteering too much information!

Derek Chauvin is quite the assiduous note taker! Always scratching away on his yellow legal pad. I'm guessing he's been advised by counsel that this is a better look for him than the defiant blank stare he directed at the people recording him with their cell phones as he knelt on Floyd's neck. 

It's an ancillary outrage, but what kind of business is CUP Foods? I was in there just once, to pick up a single grocery item at an odd hour, and I remember that the canned goods were dusty. Staying in business without selling a lot of Campbell's chicken noodle. This would have been well before they were able to add a cell phone service to the small grocery/tobacco operation. Nowadays, according to testimony, the "manager" tells the teenaged help to go outside to negotiate with the customer who just passed a bad 20-dollar bill. Also, these low-wage workers have a "store tab" to encourage them to buy the shitty stuff for sale there. If they accept a counterfeit bill, it's added to their store tab, which is then deducted from their wages. Try running the numbers on that. Guy buys a pack of cigarettes for $7, pays with a bad 20. I suppose that's $20 on the kid's "store tab"?—$13 change plus the cigarettes they didn't sell. Assuming you're minimum wage, you could work a 6-hour shift and end up in the hole for the day if you took a bad bill and had a meal from the deli with two pops added to your store tab. 

This reminds me: the crime that set off the international incident was a 20-dollar offense. Putting homicide off to the side, the sheer incompetence of the police who arrived on the scene is staggering. The teenager who took the bad bill stood on the sidewalk with his hands on his head watching Chauvin do his thing. Asked about his posture, he said he was feeling "disbelief and guilt":

Lawyer: Why guilt?

Teenager: Because if I hadn't taken the bill, this all would have been avoided.

That would account for his disbelief, too. If he hadn't taken the bill, his manager would not have gotten involved, and if his manager hadn't gotten involved the police wouldn't have either, and if the police hadn't come then no one would have been killed. That was his line of thought and he was taking it hard. Everyone is taking it hard. Court was interrupted this morning when one of the jurors said she was feeling woozy and hadn't been able to sleep last night. The teenaged girl who made the longest recording with her phone testified she felt guilty she hadn't done more. The firefighter was anguished about not being allowed to help a man plainly in medical distress. 

Is the defense really going to be that Floyd was a threat and that force, while hard to watch, was necessary?  Were Chauvin to take the stand and testify to that effect, won't the prosecution just play the recording, stopping every five seconds to ask whether Floyd was still a threat now? Still a threat now? Still a threat now? His hands were cuffed behind his back. Eventually he was unconscious. There were four cops on the scene. What did Chauvin think Floyd was going to do?

ORU falls to Arkansas

Meyer/Getty Images

During an orgy of basketball watching, I discovered that my distaste for a certain brand of conservative, evangelical Christianity is so strong that I cannot find it within me to pull for Oral Roberts University, a #15 seed playing for a spot in the Elite 8. Then I liked their team so well that I began feeling conflicted. Then at halftime I read up on Oral Roberts to fortify myself. From Wikipedia:

[H]e also pioneered televangelism and laid the foundations of the prosperity gospel and abundant life teachings. . . .

Until 1947 Roberts struggled as a part-time preacher in Oklahoma, but when he was 29 Roberts said he picked up his Bible and it fell open at the Third Epistle of John, where he read verse 2: "I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as your soul prospereth." The next day, he said, he bought a Buick and God appeared, directing him to heal the sick. . . .

In 1977, Roberts claimed to have had a vision from a 900-foot-tall Jesus who told him to build City of Faith Medical and Research Center, and the hospital would be a success. . . .

In 1983 Roberts said Jesus had appeared to him in person and commissioned him to find a cure for cancer. 

Roberts' fundraising was controversial. In January 1987, during a fundraising drive, Roberts announced to a television audience that unless he raised $8 million by that March, God would "call him home." However, the year before on Easter he had told a gathering at the Dallas Convention Center that God had instruced him to "raise the money "by the end of the year" or he would die. Regardless of this new March deadline and the fact that he was still $4.5 million short of his goal, some were fearful that he was referring to suicide, given the impassioned pleas and tears that accompanied his statement. Late in March 1987 while Roberts was fasting and praying in the Prayer Tower [building at the center of the ORU campus], Florida dog track owner Jerry Collins donated $1.3 million. . . .

Roberts maintained his love of finery and one obituary maintained that even when times became economically hard, "he continued to wear his Italian silk suits, diamond rings and gold bracelets—airbrushed out by his staff on publicity photos. . . .

[T]he City of Faith Hospital was forced to close in 1989 after losing money. Roberts was forced to respond with the sale of his holiday homes in Palm Springs and Beverly Hills as well as three of his Mercedes cars.

In my Bible, the portentous verse from the Third Epistle of John appears on page 1490 of a total of 1514. If the book "fell open," or was opened at random, it seems likely to me that it would be to a page closer to the middle. Thin to win! Since mine is off the shelf now, I just opened the Bible at random and read. See if you can pick out the sentence my eye first fell upon:

A. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

B. He set it like a willow twig, and it sprouted and became a low spreading vine, and its branches turned toward him, and its roots remained where it stood.

C. Sell your possessions, and give alms.

D. He who loves money will not be satisfied with money; nor he who loves wealth, with gain: this also is vanity.

It was B. I was hoping for something more personal. The three wrong choices just go to show that the devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. Arkansas held on for a 2-point win when ORU's star player had his 3-pointer skim off the rim at the buzzer. 

Annals of a high functioning alcoholic

Picked up the pictured volume for a song at a used bookstore. Two of the four novels, Sanctuary and Pylon, perhaps qualify as potboilers. The other two are wonderful books. These Library of America Editions all come with an elaborate "Chronology" of the writer's life, year by year. In the case of Faulkner, the Chronology is 24 pages long, and is full of money worries. For example, the sentences following the announcement of the publication of Pylon, in 1935, read:

1. Pressed for money, works intensively at stories meant to sell. Writes his agent in April: "What I really need is $10,000. With that I could pay my debt and insurance for two years and really write."

He spent a fair amount of time in Hollywood working on movie scripts. He'd enter into short term contracts, often quite lucrative—he was earning as much as a grand a week for periods in some of the worst years of the Great Depression. In 1937 he earned about $21,000 from Twentieth Century-Fox. The next year he sold the screen rights to The Unvanquished to MGM for $25,000. According to this document, the average annual income of a lawyer in the year 1936 was about $4300. Seems like maybe his overhead was high, and that he could have arranged things to have fewer complaints about lack of funds. He did support more people than just his immediate family. It's also true that his income from the books on which his reputation as one of America's greatest novelists rests—The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, Absalom, Absalom!—was negligible. 

As a theme in the Faulkner Chronology, I'd have to say that liquor is ahead of money. Here are some excerpts:

1919 [the year he turned 22]: Continues to work on poetry; drinks with friends in Clarksdale and Charleston, Mississippi, Memphis, and New Orleans. . . . Given nickname "Count No 'Count" by fellow students, who consider him aloof and affected.

1920: Withdraws from University [of Mississippi] in November during crackdown on fraternities.

1921: Returns home [from New York City] in December to become postmaster at university post office.

1922: Writes while on duty at the post office, neglects customers, is reluctant to sort mail, does not always forward it, and keeps patrons' magazines and periodicals in the office until he and his friends have read them. 

1923: Becomes scoutmaster.

1924: Removed as scoutmaster for drinking. Complaints of negligence investigated by postal authorities and Faulkner resigns October 31.

1926: Soldiers' Pay published by Boni & Liveright February 25. Mother, shocked by sexual material in the novel, says that the best thing he could do is leave the country; father refuses to read it.

1927: Horace Liveright rejects Flags in the Dust and advises Faulkner not to offer it elsewhere.

1928: Flags in the Dust submitted to more than twelve publishers, all of whom reject it. . . . Rents a small furnished flat and revises and types the manuscript of The Sound and the Fury. Finishes; drinks heavily; found unconscious by friends Eric J. (Jim) Devine and Leon Scales, who take care of him in their apartment.

1929: Starts writing Sanctuary in January and finishes it in May. The Sound and the Fury accepted by new firm of Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith in February, but Smith says Sanctuary too shocking to publish. Marries Estelle (divorced from Cornell Franklin, April 29), in Presbyterian Church in nearby College Hill, June 20. They honeymoon at Pascagoula, where Faulkner reads proofs of The Sound and the Fury (published October 7). Returns to Oxford and takes job on nightshift at the university power plant. Writes As I Lay Dying while at work, beginning October 29 and finishing December 11. . . . Reviews of the The Sound and the Fury are enthusiastic, sales disappointing.

1931: Daughter, born January 11, named for Faulkner's great-aunt Alabama, dies after nine days; Faulkner is grief-stricken. . . . Attends Southern Writers' Conference at University of Virginia in Charlottesville on his way to New York in October. Drinks heavily. . . . Earns enough money during stay in New York to pay bills at home. Drinks heavily; friends contact Estelle. She arrives early in December and they return to Oxford before the middle of the month.

1935: On December 10, goes to Hollywood for five-week, $1,000-per-week assignment with [Howard] Hawks for Twentieth Century-Fox, taking [manuscript of] Absalom, Absalom! with him. Begins intermittent and sometimes intense fifteen-year relationship with Hawks's 28-year-old secretary and later scriptgirl, Mississippi divorcee Meta Doherty Carpenter.

1936: With successful completion of script (The Road to Glory), begins to drink heavily. Goes home on sick leave January 13. Finishes final draft of Absalom, Absalom!. . . . Sees Meta, who has decided to marry pianist Wolfgang Rebner. Estelle and Faulkner both drink heavily. Absalom, Absalom! published October 26 by Random House.

1937: Unhappiness at work and home exacerbates Faulkner's drinking. . . . Goes to New York in mid-October. . . . Stays at Algonquin Hotel. . . . Drinks heavily, collapses, and burns back severely on Algonquin steam pipe. . . . Reads poetry aloud and does crossword puzzles with stepdaughter Victoria after breakup of her first marriage. ("He kept me alive," she later says.) Intense pain from burn makes sleeping difficult.

1940: Drinking at annual deer hunt in November causes near-fatal hemorrhage.

1942: Unable to sell enough stories to remain solvent, and deeply in debt, seeks Hollywood work through publishers, agents, and friends. Reports for five-month segment of low-paying ($300 a week) long-term Warner Bros. contract in July. Resumes relationship with Meta Carpenter (now divorced from Rebner). 

1944: Begins work for Hawks on film version of Ernest Hemingway's To Have and Have Not. Estelle and [his daughter] Jill join him in June. Depression, drinking, and periods of hospitalization follow their departure in September. 

1946: Feels trapped and depressed, drinks heavily. . . . The Portable Faulkner published by Viking April 29. Tells class at University of Mississippi in May that the four greatest influences on his work were the Old Testament, Melville, Dostoevski, and Conrad. European reputation, especially in France, grows as works are translated. Random House issues The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying together in Modern Library Edition in October.

1950: Collected Stories of William Faulkner published August 2 by Random House and adopted by Book-of-the-Month Club as alternate fiction selection, receiving generally good reviews. Informed November 10 he will receive 1949 (delayed until 1950) Nobel Prize for Literature. Reluctant to attend [awards ceremony], drinks heavily at annual hunt. . . but finally agrees to go to Stockholm. Afterwards, writes to friend, "I fear that some of my fellow Mississippians will never forgive that 30,000$ that durn foreign country gave me for just sitting on my ass writing stuff that makes my own state ashamed to own me." Taking $5,000 for his own use, establishes "Faulkner Memorial" trust fund with rest of money for scholarships and other educational purposes.

1952: Hospitalized in Memphis in September for convulsive seizure brought on by drinking and back pain, and again in October after fall down stairs. . . . Accepts editor and friend Saxe Commins' invitation to write at his Princeton home. Depression and drinking precipitate collapse and is admitted to private hospital in New York. 

1954: Joins Hawks near Cairo in mid-February. Arrives very ill with back pain and drinking and is taken to Anglo-American hospital. A Fable published by Random House, August 2.

1955: Accepts National Book Award for A Fable, January 25. . . . Becomes increasingly involved in civil rights crisis; writes letters to editors advocating school integration; receives abusive letters and phone calls. . . . A Fable wins Pulitzer Prize in May. . . . Speaks against discrimination to integrated audience at Memphis meeting of Southern Historical Association, November 10; receives more threatening letters and phone calls. 

1956: Increasingly alarmed by rising tensions over court-ordered integration of University of Alabama, agrees to magazine interview; desperate and drinking, says that if South were pushed too hard there would be civil war. Interviewer quotes him as saying that "if it came to fighting I'd fight for Mississippi against the United States even if it meant . . . shooting Negroes." (Later repudiates interview: "They are statements which no sober man would make, nor it seems to me, any sane man believe.")

1960: Divides time between Oxford and Charlottesville. Hospitalized briefly at Byhalia for collapse brought on by bourbon administered for self-diagnosed pleurisy. . . . Establishes William Faulkner Foundation December 28, providing scholarships for Mississippi blacks and prize for first novels. 

1961: Shocked by news of Hemingway's suicide. . . . Hospitalized in Charlottesville, December 18, suffering from acute respiratory infection, back trouble, and drinking. Leaves after several days, but soon has relapse and is treated at Tucker Neurological and Psychiatric Hospital in Richmond until December 29.

1962: Readmitted to Tucker suffering from chest pain, fever, and drinking, January 8. . . . Turns down President John F. Kennedy's invitation to attend White House dinner for American Nobel Prize winners. . . . Pain and drinking increase; taken by Estelle and nephew James Faulkner to Wright's Sanitarium at Byhalia, July 5. Dies of heart attack, 1:30 a.m. on July 6. After service . . . is buried at St. Peter's Cemetery, Oxford, Mississippi.  

I think my favorite tidbit concerns the self-diagnosed pleurisy for which he self-prescribed . . . bourbon. Another day in the life of a Nobel laureate. 

Concerning referees

The NHL has fired a referee who, during a game, was caught on a hot mic saying that he "wanted to get" a penalty on one of the teams, presumably as a make-up call. In the statement announcing the firing, the NHL stated: "Nothing is more important than insuring the integrity of our game."

I'm on the ref's side, sort of. The above graph, from FiveThirtyEight Blog, shows pretty convincingly that he's being fired just for acknowledging what everyone knows is true. I had to stare at it awhile before  I comprehended the significance, so I'll point out that it simply plots what the likelihood is of the next penalty in an NHL game being called on the home team or the visitors, given how many penalties each team has incurred in the game so far. For example, if the home team has been whistled for two more penalties than the visitors, then there is about a 39 percent chance that the next penalty is called on them (and a 61 percent chance that the next penalty is on the visitors). If, however, the visitors have had two more penalties than the home team, then there is about a 58 percent chance that the next penalty is on the home team (and a 42  percent chance that the next penalty is on the visitors).

The referees like to keep the penalties roughly even. I don't think there's an alternative explanation. This is ten years worth of regular season data. According to the article—the graph is worth a lot of words but the accompanying article is also interesting—the tendency is even more pronounced in the playoffs. The explanation for that would be that the refs become more determined not to be the story when more is at stake. But, in trying not to be the story, they now have become the story. It's probably also worth noting that the home team has an advantage insofar as the next penalty is more likely to be called on the visitors if, as is the case at the start of every game, the teams so far have incurred the same number of penalties. 

As for "the integrity of the game," the data suggest there is little or no reward for being disciplined, unthuggish, clean: you're going to get called for about the same number of penalties anyway.  I suppose you could say that the sin of the fired referee was that he made a deliberate, conscious choice. It's different if a referee subconsciously prefers the team that is "owed a penalty." But once one ref has been caught on a hot mic it's harder to believe the stark data is explained wholly by the effect of subconscious preferences on a referee's judgment.

The issue of subconscious preferences, however, reminds us that referees are human. I'm more of a basketball fan and it's interesting to think of how the NHL data might apply to a different game. Suppose one basketball team is small but very quick and plays an aggressive person-to-person, chest-to-chest defense. Their opponents, comparatively huge and leaden-footed, sit back in a zone defense. You'd expect the one team to foul a lot more than the other, but the NHL data predict that the foul disparity will not be as great as the actual game play would warrant. The team that is constantly testing the referee's conception of what is a foul will get away with bumps and nudges that are called fouls against the more passive team. That would be the theory, and my impression, having watched ten jillion basketball games, is that in fact that's just what happens—although, since I'm watching, I probably want one team to win, and in that case I can't think of why you should trust my judgment over that of the referees I'm complaining about.

Elgin Baylor, 1934-2021

Elgin Baylor, who died yesterday at age 86, played his first two NBA seasons for the Minneapolis Lakers. He was a rookie during the 1958-59 season, which I believe is the first year the Lakers played their home games at the Armory in downtown Minneapolis. Before that, most of their games were at the Minneapolis Auditorium. During my days as a contributing member of society, the Armory was used as a parking garage, and I was in there a lot as it was across the street from the building I worked in.  Just about impossible to imagine it as a venue for NBA games but Baylor had a pretty good  season there in 58-59: Rookie of the Year, although, by the numbers, he could as well have been the league MVP—he averaged 24.9 points per game (second best in the league), 15 rebounds (third best), and 4.1 assists (eighth best). Baylor would never win the MVP award. Starting in his second season, it went to either Russell or Chamberlain almost every year for a decade. Once in that span it was Oscar Robertson. His team, the Cincinnati Royals, wasn't much but in the year he won it he practically averaged a triple double: more than 31 points per game, 11 rebounds, and 9.9 assists. 

Scanning Baylor's career numbers, what stands out to me is his rebounding. Over 14 NBA seasons, he averaged 13.5 rebounds per game. He was 6-5. No mislick on the keyboard: he was 77 inches tall. Michael Jordan's career rebounds per game average was 6.2; Larry Bird, 10.0; Magic Johnson, 7.2; LeBron James, 7.9 (so far). Baylor was always a rebounding machine. In his junior year of college, at Seattle U, he averaged 20 rebounds a game—and 30 points. Seattle U didn't have a lot besides him, but in his senior season that was enough to advance to the NCAA championship game, which they lost to Kentucky. Baylor was named the tournament's Most Outstanding Player, which I'm sure he was—probably by a lot, since the award usually goes to a member of the championship team.

It seems odd to me that I have almost no memory of him as a player, even though contemporaries like Chamberlain, Russell, Robertson, and his teammate Jerry West are vivid. I can picture Hal Greer shooting free throws but regarding Baylor, one of the greats, I'm essentially blank. I guess West played a couple of seasons after Baylor was done, and in the 60s the Game of the Week usually featured Chamberlain or Russell (or both), which would explain too why I can picture the 76er's Greer. Not being able to call to mind an image of Baylor playing basketball seems fitting only in the respect that in the first NBA season of my life he starred for my hometown team, winning the Rookie of the Year Award while playing in a building that would later be known to me as a parking garage. 

 

In the news: sex addiction

Harboring a degree of skepticism about "sex addiction," I googled it. The first return was a national hotline for horny people to call. I clicked on the second return, which looked like a reliable medical site, and read:

What is sex addiction? Considerable controversy surrounds the diagnosis of "sex addiction." It's been excluded from the fifth edition of the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (DSM-5), but it's still written about and studied in psychology and counseling circles.

Apparently, then, the experts behind the DSM-5 share my skepticism, but if you present at a counselor's office, complaining of sex addiction, you'll receive therapy and a bill. Perhaps good insurance covers treatment for a condition not recognized by DSM-5, or maybe there's a workaround related to how the therapy is coded.

As a cause of mass murder, such as recently occurred in Atlanta, sex addiction must lag behind lax gun laws by a wide margin. Georgia does not permit same-day voter registration, but at least the self-diagnosed sex addict was able to use his gun on the same day that he bought it—no waiting period required before exercising that right. He went to the gun store for the express purpose of buying a weapon and ammunition so that he could then drive from the gun store to some massage parlors and shoot people dead. As we all know, this is the price that must be paid for freedom as enshrined in the Second Amendment.

But this argument continues to perplex me. By the school of constitutional interpretation favored by the people most in love with the Second Amendment, the words can mean only what they meant to the men who wrote them toward the end of the 18th century. It seems to me that the Constitution, understood this way, cannot give anyone a right to keep and bear a weapon of a kind that had not yet been invented when the Second Amendment was adopted. The sex addict did not buy a muzzle-loading musket before embarking on a killing spree. Moreover, the Second Amendment reads:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.

The Founders could have written:

The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.

But they didn't.  It's not as if they were poor authors who needlessly spread their straightforward meaning across a lot of extra words about a militia. I won't say it's useless to argue that the two sentences mean the same thing, because that is the view that has prevailed, but to think the two sentences are equivalent requires . . . determination. 

Bracketology

If you filled out your bracket thinking that the Big Ten Conference was The College Basketball Powerhouse, you're sunk. But you're probably sunk no matter what you were thinking. I'm trying to invent a Rule that, in retrospect, would have proven golden. About the best I can do is: never pick a Big Ten team to win a game unless the opponent is a #16 seed or a member of the allegedly powerful Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC). Corollary: never choose an ACC team to win. I think there have been 39 games played so far, and these two rules would have dictated a choice in 16 of them, yielding 13 correct calls. The exceptions would have been the first round wins of Iowa, Maryland, and Florida State. But the 13 correct choices would have included several notable upsets: Oral Roberts over Ohio State, North Texas over Purdue, Loyola over Illinois, and Ohio over Virginia.

You can mock me in the comments if Maryland, Michigan, Iowa, and Florida State all win tomorrow. 

My Sunday walk suggests that patio drinking & dining is up and running across south Minneapolis. Twins first regular season game is a week from Thursday, in Milwaukee.

Kid talk

Shooting baskets in the driveway with my older daughter when we are joined by the neighbor boy down the street. He's in third grade and plainly views himself as an interloper—just stands off to the side and only shoots when one of us passes him the ball. But it would be wrong to say he stands to the side shyly as he keeps up a steady stream of rather learned commentary, such as:

"I assume you realize that basketball would not be possible if it weren't for gravity, because you'd shoot and the ball would just float off into space."

This is not the kind of conversation we're used to and I try to rise to the occasion by pointing out that, while true, it's complicated by the fact that everything else, like the hoop and we ourselves, would also be floating off into space. It'd be a crazy game! After a brief but perceptible pause, he replies: "I know that." But I think he hadn't thought of it. Thus the pause, as he considered it for the first time, and I attribute "I know that" to his wounded intellectual pride. According to my own theory, I bested a third grader!

Inside, I cut cake and my girls argue loudly over which piece is bigger. I have to cut a third piece, a sliver, to add to one of the plates. Thankfully, I do not overcompensate and this settles it—evidently doesn't occur to them that by keeping up the argument they could get more and more cake, theoretically. I know, I know, I should let the younger one choose but only after the older one cuts. While eating, they discuss whether "hell" is a swear word. This is more like it! Younger girl argues that it can't be since it's contained within "hello" and: "They wouldn't make it so that you have to swear to say a regular word." Older girl rolls eyes. Immature, smart ass dad tries to think of a regular word with consecutive letters s-h-i-t and briefly wonders whether "base hit" qualifies since the "e" is silent. However,

• it's two words, not one; and
• to count against younger girl's theory, it would have to be pronounced "bās-shit."

So maybe she's onto something!

Hamlet and Hamnet

I was planning on watching basketball games this afternoon as I had no idea that today was reserved for the so-called play-in games, the marquee one being Michigan State v. UCLA late tonight. It took me awhile to adjust to the existence of these play-in games. Now I think there's more of them, and the NCAA and the TV networks are evidently trying to elevate their status by scheduling them on what used to be the first day of the actual 64-team tournament. Ka-ching! Maybe just a matter of time till the field expands to 128. Any team that doesn't make it must fire the coach. He'll then be hired by one of the other universities that had to fire its coach. The unsuccessful coaches will just circulate among the unsuccessful programs. The salaries are all into 7 figures so it's not a bad gig, even if you have to move a lot. 

Anyway, since the afternoon is open, more about Shakespeare, whose Hamlet I recently reread after reading this review of Hamnet, one of the New York Times's ten best books of 2020. Shakespeare's only son, Hamnet, died at age 11. We know that the boy was buried at Stratford-on-Avon, where he lived with his mother, on August 11, 1596. By that time his father, 32, had been working in London's theater biz as an actor and playwright for five or more years. Stratford-on-Avon is about 100 miles northwest of London, and 100 miles in 1600 was a lot farther than it is today. The theatre guy, then, lived apart from his family. Hamnet, by Maggie O'Farrell, is a novel based at least loosely on what is known, or surmised, about Shakespeare's family, his likely problematic marriage, grief, and its possible impact on the playwright's work.

A source for Hamlet is a previously existing work with a boy hero named Hamlet, a circumstance that tends to refute the notion that Shakespeare, thinking of his son, chose a name that differed by a consonant. Nor is it the case that after his son's death Shakespeare, in his grief, immediately turned to the composition of Hamlet, for the play was almost certainly composed in the year 1600, about three years after the boy died. But, as there is little known about Shakespeare's emotional life, it is a kind of pastime to try to infer one from his work, and Hamlet seems the most personal work. There is, for example, the title character's obvious interest in the theatrical arts. He'd been moping around the castle, soliloquizing about suicide, but when the traveling theater troupe arrives he's suddenly animated and alive—full of questions, advice, and suggestions for the players, who it seems might have had reason to be put off by the presumption: they're the professionals, right? But Hamlet will not shut up. The scene goes on and on—too long, some may think, all the details not really necessary in order to advance the plot. It's said that Shakespeare's self-education had left him so well versed in the tricks of so many trades that carpenters think he must have been at least a carpenter's apprentice, sailors that he must have shipped out to sea, etc., etc., but the title character in Hamlet is like his creator sunk in the fine points of the theatre professions. 

It's also intriguing that Hamlet appears to represent a break with Shakespeare's artistic past, which, some have felt, is suggestive of a rupture in his private life. Hamlet is about half again as long as any of the 20 or so plays that preceded it. Scholars have determined that Shakespeare deployed in Hamlet more than 600 words that don't occur in any of the plays or poems he'd already written.  The technique is different, too. To praise Hamlet, you would not say that it's "tightly plotted" or "well paced." Elements of the plot don't make a ton of sense. The hero’s first despondent ruminations—

O that this too too sullied flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew,
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon against self-slaughter. O God, God,
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't, ah, fie, 'tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed. Things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely.

—occur before his interview with the Ghost causes him to suspect foul play. Once he knows his father was murdered, the audience wonders whether he'll take revenge, but he wonders whether he should commit suicide:

To be, or not to be, &c

The tight plot and paced action are gone and replaced by this brooding figure, dissatisfied with life and disgusted with the corruption around him. The length of the thing, and the new vocabulary, are like a piling on—an analog of the famous "double plot" in King Lear, about which someone observed it's apparently not enough that one old man should roam the earth in despair: there must be two. Between Hamlet (1600) and Lear (1605) Shakespeare created Iago, and Macbeth belongs to 1606. Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet is fiction, her surmises just surmises, but it's hard to dispute that Shakespeare discovered something new within himself in 1599 or 1600. 

Who dies in Hamlet? And how?

If we don't count Hamlet's father, who is murdered before the action begins, the first to go is Polonius, in Act III. He's eavesdropping from behind an arras when, thinking that Hamlet is about to kill the Queen, he cries out, and Hamlet stabs him through the tapestry. Then:

[Lifts up the arras and sees Polonius.]
Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!
I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune.

His "better" is the king, so an apparent case of mistaken identity. Next up is Ophelia, daughter to Polonius and Hamlet's supposed love interest: her suicide occurs off stage and is reported by the Queen in Act IV. The courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern suffer the next deaths. They are accompanying Hamlet to England and do not know that the sealed instructions they carry to the British throne direct that Hamlet be immediately killed. While they sleep, Hamlet opens the order, reads it, and replaces it with his own composition—the clueless pair now bear orders directing their own executions while Hamlet returns to Denmark. 

The last four deaths, of the King and Queen, Hamlet and Laertes, occur in the last scene. The plan is for Hamlet to be lured into a fencing match with Laertes, who will then kill him with an unbated rapier that has in addition been laced with poison at the tip. The backup, in case Hamlet defends too well, is a chalice holding a poisoned refreshment. In the event, the unknowing Queen, celebrating a point scored by Hamlet in the fencing match, helps herself to the poisoned drink prepared for her son. Before she falls, the match heats up and the reader of the play comes to the stage direction:

[In scuffling they exchange rapiers, and both are wounded with the poisoned weapon.]

The Queen falls to the ground and dies. The repentant Laertes, in his dying speech, brings Hamlet up to speed on the murderous plan gone awry. Hamlet then uses the rapier with the "envenomed point" to stab the king, who dies. Then Hamlet dies. The stage therefore is strewn with the corpses of the King, Queen, Laertes, and Hamlet when a contingent of foreign representatives arrives on the scene. An English ambassador, having delivered himself of the observation that "[t]he sight is dismal," says he had hoped to deliver to Hamlet the news that, in accordance with his directive, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead." 

Adding them up, eight die, which maybe doesn't seem like a big number but it's pretty much everyone excepting Horatio and the extras who here and there are hustled on and off the stage to move things along. Though two of these extras are sacrificed as well.  It's as if the slaughter of all the principals isn't brutal enough: "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead." So:

Polonius—stabbed through the arras because Hamlet thought he was the King. Ophelia—dead by her own hand. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—dutiful courtiers who, ignorant of the large events they are occasionally summoned to participate in, deliver their own death warrants to a foreign court. In the final scene—the two plotters die when the weapon they've poisoned is turned against them, in one case by an oblivious assailant, and in yet another unforeseen accident the Queen drinks poison intended to kill someone else. Before this shit show can commence, the following exchange occurs:

HAMLET
There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will—

HORATIO
That is most certain.

Hamlet's exalted sentiment is frequently quoted without acknowledgment that the play functions to undercut it. Of the characters who are on stage any considerable amount, Horatio is the only one who survives, and his final speeches are like an amendment:

And let me speak to th' yet unknowing world
How these things came about. So shall you hear
Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,
Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause

. . . . let this same be presently performed,
Even while men's minds are wild, lest more mischance
On plots and errors happen.

 

Hopper's America

Spent some time today scrolling through an internet collection of Edward Hopper paintings. He lived from 1882 to 1967. Judging by the pictures that have people in them, a pandemic was raging through his entire career. It's always 2020 in Hopper's America. The women like to read; the men are more apt to get dressed.

Utility

The philosopher Peter Singer (pictured above), writing in Project Syndicate, describes the strange case of Dr. Hasan Gokol, the physician overseeing COVID response, including vaccination protocols, in Harris County, Texas, a big job as that's the home county to Houston. The local DA has charged Gokol with theft and violating the very protocols he was charged with enforcing. Here is what, in Singer's account, happened (the second above link is to his article):

The Moderna vaccine is delivered in vials holding 11 doses. Once a vial is opened, the vaccine remains good for six hours. After that, any remaining doses have to be discarded. Last December, at a site vaccinating medical workers, the last dose from an open vial was administered shortly before closing time. Then one more patient showed up for a shot. That left 10 unused doses in a freshly opened vial. Gokol began looking for people to vaccinate—a handful of medical workers and a couple of cops still on site, all of whom had either already been vaccinated or turned down the opportunity. He spread the net wider by calling phone contacts and asking if they knew anyone who qualified for a vaccination. He went so far as driving to the homes of people he knew qualified and, with their consent, vaccinated them himself. Back at his own house, he continued making calls, and three people agreed to come to his home for a shot. They would have received his three remaining doses, but one cancelled about a half hour before the six hours were up. Fifteen minutes after that, Gokol administered the last dose to his wife, who, on account of a medical condition, qualified for a vaccine. Next day, he reported what had happened and supplied the names of the ten people who had been vaccinated with doses that would otherwise have been wasted. Soon thereafter, he was fired and charged with theft by the Harris County DA. Singer is a little vague about the specifics of the charge, although an article he links to indicates the DA thinks Gokol used his authority to help acquaintances of his "jump the line." A judge dismissed the case when no written document stating the protocol that had been violated could be produced, but, according to Singer, the DA hasn't given up on prosecuting Gokol.

I feel almost everyone thinks something's wrong here, but what they choose to say about it varies. In this respect, the incident resembles a Rorschach test. I read Singer's article after the novelist Joyce Carol Oates tweeted about it, and her take is that the case illustrates the problem of "prosecutorial discretion." There are of course homicides and other serious crimes, but also every day in a county of several million inhabitants some merely sketchy things occur that the authorities decide whether or not to prosecute. They have wide latitude and, though I may be amplifying Oates's complaint, the calculus might involve the likelihood of winning a conviction, an aspect of which could be the status of the alleged offender and their capacity to defend against a charge. Everyone loves to compile a winning record! It's not clear what the prosecutor's motive would be in the case of Dr. Gokol, but Oates would probably say that's just her point. The DA decides. The DA's latitude is wide and rarely is subjected to scrutiny. If this case is prosecuted, and not that one, the public whose interest the DA purports to serve remains in the dark about the reasons, which may be bad, stupid, benighted, personal, corrupt—no one can judge. The justice system recognizes that this is a problem, which explains why, for the most serious crimes, the prosecutor cannot go forward with a case before securing a grand jury indictment. But no one thinks it's much of a protection—thus the saying about how any half-assed prosecutor can "indict a ham sandwich." But it isn't even a theoretical protection for lower level crimes to which the grand jury system does not apply. 

Singer is an ethicist who is generally sympathetic to—perhaps it would be accurate to say he subscribes to—the utilitarian theories of philosophers such as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, both of whom he refers to in his article. According to a shorthand description of utilitarianism, the moral status of actions is determined by whether they result in "the greatest good for the greatest number." If the question involves, say, the allocation of scarce resources, one calculates, for each possible course of action, the benefits to these people and the costs to those people and then selects the option with the highest benefit surplus. According to this school, the case of Dr Gokol is an easy one, since it's easy to detect the benefits (these 10 people got vaccinated) and impossible to detect any cost (because it's not the case that those 10 people didn't get vaccinated—the alternative was that 10 doses are wasted).

Perhaps Singer is attracted to this case because it tends to make a persuasive advertisement for his favored moral theory. He proceeds to criticize the Catholic church for condemning a certain medical procedure that, in past obstetric emergencies, rescued the mother from grave peril by crushing the skull of an infant that couldn't be born. By the lights of a utilitarian, you are allowed, even required, to take measures resulting in one death rather than two. My impulses are all with Singer on these questions. Suppose, however, that by killing me and mining my corpse for organs the lives of four people, all desperately ill, all younger than I am, could be saved. I assume Singer and I agree this would be wrong, and I understand my reasons, but what are his? Utilitarianism seems inadequate for any number of moral questions. Slavery wasn't wrong in America because the misery of the slaves filled a bigger bucket than the one holding the ease, pleasure, and prosperity of their owners. The morality CPAs can perform their calculations but it doesn't matter what the results are. 

Well, the Harris County DA should leave Dr Gokol alone, like Peter Singer says, even if the reasons Singer supplies seem a little suspect. 

Miscellany

In their game against Northwestern tonight, the Gophers made 18 baskets and had 17 turnovers while missing 14 out of 24 foul shots—and won. I agree with the Northwestern fan who tweeted he was relieved he wouldn't have to watch his team play again till next year—before adding, with clever snark, "My condolences to Gopher fans." We play Ohio State tomorrow afternoon about 2. 

It's a little awkward that the COVID relief bill passed right when a lot of people are working on their tax returns. In case you're wondering, the size of your check, or whether you get one at all, is determined by the most recent information the IRS has about you—this year's return if they have it, the one for tax year 2019 if they don't. This means that if your income changed significantly, or is very near the threshold amounts for your filing status, you might want to file your return tonight or in a few weeks, depending upon the direction of the change. If you're single, you'll get the full $1400 if your adjusted gross income was below $75,000; for head of household it has to be below $112,500; and, if you're married filing a joint return, an adjusted gross income below $150,000 will result in you and yours receiving $1400 each. So, for example, if you're single and you earned $70,000 in 2019, then $80,000 in 2020, don't file your return until after you've received your check. If you went from $80,000 in 2019 to $70,000 in 2020, file your return yesterday. 

Seeing the building I worked in for 35 years—the one Derek Chauvin is being tried in—on the national news every night feels a little weird. There was a different vibe in the building when a big trial was in progress, especially while the jury was deliberating, but there's no ordinary business going on alongside the current Trial of the Century. There's been a lot of commentary, and my only comment would be that much of it doesn't seem very sensible. For those who think Chauvin can't get a fair shake from a jury that will be worried about setting off a riot with a not guilty verdict, here for consideration are some of the provisions of Rule 26 regarding criminal procedure in Minnesota:

A defendant has a right to a jury trial for any offense punishable by incarceration. All trials must be in the district court. . . .

The defendant, with the approval of the court, may waive a jury trial on the issue of guilt provided the defendant does so personally, in writing or on the record in open court, after being advised by the court of the right to a trial by jury, and after having had an opportunity to consult with counsel. . . .

In a case tried without a jury, the court, within seven days after the completion of the trial, must make a general finding of guilty [or] not guilty.

Since Chauvin did not waive the right to trial by jury, he and his lawyer must believe they have a better chance with twelve wild cards than they would with one judge. I think they're right. The case against Chauvin is strong and a clear-headed judge is going to see through the defense they plan to offer. A jury, on the other hand, might do anything. A biased jury isn't a problem for Chauvin. It's his best hope. 

Brits watching Oprah

I'm among those who tend to regard with scorn all the interest bestowed upon Britain's Royal Family. Why they don't just do away with it is beyond me. Seems like it'd be better for everyone, including the Royals. I've sometimes imagined one of them as a young person, just old enough to have thoughts that keep them awake nights, so one is lying there in his perfect little palace bed thinking, "One life to live, and I have to be the freakin' Prince of Wales!"  No one else his age has to wear a necktie. I guess my scorn is polluted by a measure of sympathy. Not too much. We all have burdens to bear but usually Oprah isn't interested. 

There is, however, one aspect of the Blockbuster Interview that has captured my attention. That would be the reaction of Brits who tuned in to find out about the royal soap opera and were then swept away, not by the revelation that Meghan had contemplated suicide, but by the "adverts" on American TV. They have the NHS (National Health Service), what some of us call "socialized medicine," and as a result are not accustomed to meds being hawked during the commercial interludes. Their shocked social media commentary places us suddenly in the position of seeing ourselves as others see us: what we don't think twice about strikes them as sketch comedy of a particularly dark variety, the effect of course heightened by the fact that the human intelligence behind the ad is oblivious to its own joke. Here is a fairly representative specimen of British perplexity on this point; you can go here for more:

i’m watching the meghan interview recording and yet again i can’t understand why american tv ads are like “ask your doctor for…” or “tell your doctor…” why the fuck would you be the one to tell a DOCTOR what medicine to give you????? maybe i’m too european to get it but wtf

— agvta♑️ (@siIverskyy) March 8, 2021

Not sure I'd want to live without March Madness and Opening Day, but, on the other hand, during soccer matches she does not find herself fielding questions on ED from the young sports fans of the household.

Listening to Springsteen in spring time

Walked to the grocery store this afternoon, an excuse to enjoy the weather. I took a picture of the backyard, where sodden toys the kids had left out before the first big snowfall have now reappeared. Here's Minnehaha Creek at Lyndale Avenue, the snowy south bank and the bare brown north one that faces the sun:

The olfactory sense is said to have the strongest hold on memory, which seems dubious until you think of burning leaves and baking bread. I think in a similar way this time of year, this kind of weather, has the strongest claim on my memory: it's associated with basketball tournaments, the start of baseball season, filling out tax forms, and, farther back, in the morning before school walking on those puddles glazed over with ice strong enough to hold you even though you can feel in your feet the water sloshing beneath. There's always that first really warm day—I think this year it's today—when, on college campuses, the windows of dormitories open and the music blares so loud you can feel the sound waves. I've been listening today to Springsteen because in my memory the song blaring across campus starts:

In the day we sweat it out on the streets of a runaway American dream
At night we ride through mansions of glory in suicide machines
Sprung from cages on Highway 9, chrome-wheeled, fuel-injected, steppin' out over the line
Baby, this town rips the bones from your back, it's a death-trap, it's a suicide rap
We gotta get out while we're young, cuz tramps like us, baby we were born to run.

Back in the 70s, he really had a thing about cars. The girl could be Mary, or Wendy, or some other name, Rosalita, but she's always invited into the car for a ride that's more than just a ride:

Well, I'm no hero, that's understood
All the redemption I can offer girl is beneath this dirty hood
With a chance to make it good somehow, hey, what else can we do now
Except roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair
The night's busting open, these two lanes will take us anywhere. . . .

This kind of stuff carries forward onto at least the next couple of records.

I got a '69 Chevy with a 396 Fuelie heads
And a Hurst on the floor
She's waiting tonight down in the parking lot
Outside the 7-11 store.

Even when the car isn't moving, it's associated with escape and paradise:

I met Wanda when she was employed
Behind the counter at the Route 60 Bob's Big Boy
Fried chicken on the front seat, she's sitting in my lap
We're wiping our fingers on a Texaco road map.

I've gotten used to thinking of Atlantic City, the stark 1982 record that features brooding crime ballads, one after the other, as representing a wholly new direction for Springsteen, musically and thematically, but that's not really true. The song on Born to Run called "Meeting Across the River," which I hadn't listened to for years before today, would not be out of place on Atlantic City. From "Meeting Across the River":

Hey, Eddie, this guy's the real thing
So if you want to come along
You gotta promise you won't say anything
Cuz this guy don't dance
And the word's been passed, this is our last chance....
And tonight's gonna be everything that I said
And when I walk through that door
I'm just gonna throw that money on the bed
She'll see this time I wasn't just talking
Then I'm gonna go out walking.

From "Atlantic City":

I been lookin' for a job, but it's hard to find
Down here it's just winners and losers and
Don't get caught on the wrong side of that line
Well, I'm tired of coming out on the losing end
So, honey, last night, I met this guy, and I'm gonna do a little favor for him. . . .
Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty
Meet me tonight in Atlantic City.

I guess I've landed quite a distance from the spring theme!

 

 

Google it

I recently mentioned, regarding Charles Dickens, that I'd like to know the ratio of published words to days of adult life lived. Being not fully adjusted to the modern world, I sometimes forget that you don't have to wonder about these things. According to normblog, by way of the Twitter account @DickensDaily, Dickens's fifteen novels (including Mystery of Edwin Drood, left unfinished at his death) have a total of 3,859,231 words. Since this  leaves out A Christmas Carol and Sketches by Boz, let's put the word count at the nice round figure of 4 million. Dickens died at age 57, so, keeping numbers round, let's say his career as an author of fiction lasted 35 years. I'm just trying to get an idea here.

Thirty-five years times 365 days per year makes 12,775 days. Four million words divided by 12,775 days makes 313 words per day. I'm surprised it's that low! About a page a day, every day, for 35 years. Of course, the work of composing a novel involves more than just producing words—there is the architecture of the thing to work out, assuming you don't just write down the first sentence and then "feel your way forward" for a few hundred pages. And writing novels isn't all Dickens did. He had ten children. He went to the theatre. He toured the world, including America twice, giving lectures and setting down his reactions in documents that don't count toward the 4 million word count. Ditto for the journalism he churned out as a very young man. Still, the calculations suggest that the cumulative effect of steady application may exceed expectations.

Let's see, if I watch sports on TV, an average of an hour per day every day for fifty years. . . .

Unexceptional

I think I've noticed that conservative commentators are happy to shelve their odes to American exceptionalism when the topic at hand is the coronavirus pandemic. Here, for example, is Paul Mirengoff, at the Power Line blog, in a post from Nov. 17:

In the US, deaths per capita from the virus now stand at 763 (per one million people). That number is considerably lower than Spain's (891). It's comparable to the UK's (787) and Italy's (760). France has fared somewhat better so far (690). However, with almost as many people dying from the virus per day lately as in the US (with its vastly greater population) there's a good chance that France will soon reach or surpass the level of US deaths per capita.

Among nations that it's reasonable to compare the US to, only Germany (157 deaths per one million) can boast about its performance.

Chants of "USA! USA!" are dialed down to, "Well, we're not doing much worse than some of these other countries." Which other countries? The ones "that it's reasonable to compare the US to." I may be violating Mirengoff's invisible criteria for determining which national comparisons are "reasonable," but, right now, deaths per million population in Canada stand at 583, Japan is at 64, Norway at 116, Israel 633, Australia 35, Germany 857—and the US, 1,602. More people have died of COVID in South Dakota (1,896) than in South Korea (1,619). (The population of South Korea is more than 50 times that of South Dakota.) Mirengoff's prediction regarding France, which now has 1,344 deaths per million, has not come to pass—we've padded our lead considerably. The US, with less than five per cent of the world's population, has a quarter of all the COVID cases and a fifth of the deaths. I'm relying on Worldometer, the same source to which Mirengoff links.

The view that our performance has been satisfactory, not up to the level of the Germans but on the whole quite typical, isn't what you'd expect from a champion of American exceptionalism. It's also delusional. The data prove it's false. We've done horribly—worse than almost everywhere else and clearly better than nowhere. Yet in a post from a few days ago Mirengoff, referring approvingly to a fellow traveler who makes the same bogus argument, boasts of having advanced this view repeatedly and, to prove it, links to the post I've quoted from above. "I was wrong before he was!"

I wish COVID was an exception to the general rule of US excellence, but we perform badly in all the staying-alive categories. In life expectancy, we are 49th among nations, just behind Lebanon and just ahead of Cuba. At least we're in the top 50. For infant mortality, we're not—we rank 55th in the world, which means that in 54 countries a newborn has a better chance of surviving to celebrate a first birthday. We say we're the greatest nation, a shining city upon a hill. If only we could keep our people alive!

Bananas

Posting this graph of opinions, by demographic group, about the COVID vaccines because I, too, think it's bananas. Not sure of the explanation. Presumably white Republicans aren't skeptical on account of history, the federal government's "Tuskegee experiment" and other shameful events. Note how with every group the only thing like a spike occurs just at the moment that vaccinations began so that the question was no longer theoretical. With every group but white Republicans, the spike is downward, as if people reasoned: okay, it's really happening, I have to decide, my health could be on the line, I'll do it. At the same moment, white Republicans became more determined not to be vaccinated, and their spike was in the other direction—i.e., the reality of it appears to have made them more insistently stupid. "I won't back down!"

Since the group "white Republicans" heavily overrepresents older Caucasian males, maybe the phenomenon is one and the same with the one captured by the familiar joke about men's reluctance to ask for directions—or ever to appear, in any way, perplexed, vulnerable, indecisive, unsure, "unmanly." That's all I got for theories. Before dismissing it, consider that, except for the Republican part, the theory cuts against my own interest. I enjoy it when my daughters express amazement at how I know how to get places, where to turn, etc., etc. I tell them I imagine myself hovering above the Earth with an idea of what direction I have to go and then "feeling my way." Actually, I consulted maps before we left.

If you don't exclude the Republican part, maybe the theory has broad explanatory power, like enough to account for around four-fifths of the yawning gender gap in voting patterns, not to mention the idiotic swaggering of many conservative politicians and their media fanboys.