Eric The Blue

New jobs soar. But inflation!

The chart shows job growth under some recent presidents—Biden so far, and the complete record of the four before him. I'm sure many would say it's just a coincidence that there has been so much more job growth during Democratic administrations. Like, probably, all the same people who think the current price of a gallon of gas is Biden's fault. 

Economics isn't my beat, and maybe for that reason I'm curious about all the ordinary Americans who think we're in an economic slump, even a recession. The most recent jobs report was a blockbuster. The unemployment rate is now beneath 4 percent. Incomes are rising. "But inflation!" they shout in unison, as if directed by someone on the "news." Here's my question: isn't inflation a good thing for people who owe money?—the mortgage on your home, for example. The amount you borrowed isn't as much as it used to be (because, inflation), but the value of your house is rising (because, inflation), and the higher wages (because, inflation) that are said to be swallowed up at the pump and the grocery store are also retiring a debt that isn't rising. 

To use numbers: say you earn 60k per year and borrow 240k to buy a house for 275k. Then there is a significant amount of inflation and 240k isn't as much as it used to be. But it's still the amount you have to pay back. Meanwhile, inflation has caused your wages to rise to 75k and your home value is up to 400k. You can piss and moan about how much it costs to gas up but why should I listen? It's your mortgage lender who's actually getting nicked and I'm not inclined to weep for him, either. I'll save my sympathy for people too poor to borrow money. 

Senior citizens get mail

One of the things my dad no longer remembers to do is get the mail, which is fine, because my sister has arranged for it to be sent to her, and dad's "correspondents" who have his address, not hers, are mostly scumbags, like the people behind the above "urgent" plea that I retrieved from his mailbox today. The scam is so thin it's almost funny—this "D. Singleton" guy in the role of Santa Claus, checking his list, seeing who's contributed and who hasn't. I'll include below a picture of the "Inner Office Routing Envelope" referred to a couple of times. Presumably the name of "Matt Davies, Chairman" is crossed out because he's forwarded this important envelope to my dad.

It's just a bad joke until you consider that the intended recipients are elderly and in decline, including most particularly in their cognitive functioning. They're diminished to the point that it gives them pleasure to send D. Singleton a check in an important inter-departmental mailer. It seems my dad has sent them money in the past, which kills me: 48 years ago he wasn't falling for the more plausible line of b.s. I'd feed him about where I'd been and what I'd been doing on Friday night. But now that the beneficiary is a crook, he can't tell excrement from shinola. 

It's fun—not really—to think of the money trail, elders collecting their social security and then donating some of it to a scam that scares them about The End of Social Security. I wonder whether the "National Campaign to Guarantee Social Security, a project of the Federation of Responsible Citizens," does enough "lobbying" to stay on the right side of the law. If you google their name, the first return is not their organization's website—I doubt they have one, it's a mail scam—but rather a forum with the web address www.scampulse.com. 

While getting my dad's mail, I helped one of his neighbors, an old woman with shaking hands, open her box. She was trying to work the key with the teeth down and they had to be up to fit in the lock. Imagine struggling to get your mailbox open and the only thing in it is the day's collection of fraud. It's a crime to mug a senior citizen out on their daily constitutional, but if you can use the mail to get them to send you their money themselves—I guess that's private enterprise. Entrepreneurs!

Bill Belichick fat fingers the Bs

 

Brian Flores' lawsuit against the NFL combines the serious with the farcical in a way that generally agrees with my view of life on earth. Flores, who's Black, was the head coach of the Miami Dolphins until he was recently fired, even though his coaching record appears to have been, like the white children of Lake Woebegone, "above average." Every season, the league's overall winning percentage is .500, same number of wins as losses, but the Dolphins, in the ten seasons before Flores took over in 2019, had posted just one winning record. Then in Flores' first season they were 5-11 before rebounding to 10-6 in 2020 and 9-8 in the year just finished. They narrowly missed making the playoffs in both of the last two seasons and Flores was fired. Tough business! The Vikings just fired Mike Zimmer, who in eight seasons as the team's coach compiled a record of 72-56-1 while qualifying for the playoffs three times. 

The precipitating event for Flores' suit, which claims racial discrimination, was the above text message exchange between him and Patriots' head coach Bill Belichick. It doesn't make a ton of sense without some context. Flores formerly worked for Belichick as an assistant and the two are apparently on good terms. The NFL has, at minimum, a "perception problem" arising from the fact that more than two-thirds of the players are Black but now, after the firing of Flores, only one Black head coach, Mike Tomlinson of the Steelers, remains. There are 32 teams, so about 3 percent of the head coaches, but about 70 percent of the players, are Black. While these numbers have gone up and down, moderately, from season to season, the league has recognized an ongoing problem, and to address it has adopted something called the Rooney Rule, which requires teams with coaching vacancies to interview minority candidates. The New York Giants just hired a new head coach, Brian Daboll, who is white. It seems that Belichick, thinking he was texting Brian Daboll, congratulated him on the (inside) news that Daboll had been selected. But he was actually texting a different Brian, Brian Flores, whose interview for the Giants' coaching position had not yet taken place. Flores was at first confused but then concluded that his upcoming interview was a sham, an exercise meant only to comply with the Rooney Rule. In due time, of course, the Giants announced that they had hired Daboll. Belichick's information was correct. Flores hired a lawyer.

There's been a lot of commentary about the case, because all the details of the complaint are known—the above screen shot of the text messages is from page 7 of 58 in the handiwork of Flores' lawyer, which is filed with the court and a public record. There's a lot more of interest besides Bill Belichick's inattention to detail when consulting his phone's contact list. For example, Flores alleges that during his first season his bosses in the Dolphins' front office offered to pay him extra to lose games on purpose in order to improve the team's position in the draft. When he declined, and the Dolphins won games the brass wanted to lose, he landed permanently on their bad side. Some lawyerly commentators have suggested that his case is incoherent. Is Flores saying he was discriminated against because of his race or that he lost his job because he coached to win? But this is not an argument the NFL is apt to find attractive—it's too much like, "At the time you say I was robbing a bank in Minneapolis I was actually trying to kill a guy in St. Paul." 

There might be a strategy to the "incoherence." The NFL's recent record with Black troublemakers—I'm thinking of Colin Kaepernick—makes it likely that Flores won't work again in the NFL. He at least should consider that possibility, and maybe he doesn't care. He's pissed, he knows things, and he's going to put them out there. It could be the kind of a case that the defendants don't want to defend, even if they think they would prevail, and the result of that calculation could substantially enrich the plaintiff. The NFL has very deep pockets.

Some of the commentary critical of Flores tends to support this view of the case. "That the players are mostly Black and the head coaches almost all white doesn't prove anyone discriminated against Flores—or against anyone else, either." Right. But what would prove it? Most likely they aren't going to put on hoods and attend a KKK rally. They're saying that they don't discriminate, it's just that a Black guy is hardly ever best for the job, and oh, by the way, the purpose of the Rooney Rule is to make it look like good will is oozing from their every pore—actually, it's a complete sham. We know this because Bill Belichick seems to have fat fingered the Bs in his phone contacts.

Legendary Coach as chubby old guy overchallenged by his technology devices—a farce, like when Black guys are interviewed for head coaching jobs in the NFL. 

Academic criticism

One thing that has been so consistent throughout this pandemic is that I've never been able to count on our institutions for much, whereas friends, neighbors, and family have helped me when I needed it the most.

— Jennifer A. Frey (@jennfrey) January 16, 2022

The tweeter is a philosophy professor. Going back to college days, I've had trouble comprehending the members of her profession. I love my friends and neighbors, but none of them developed the vaccines. As for extended family, if I listened to them I'd probably have injected myself with horse dewormer and drunk my piss as a booster. 

Kyle Rittenhouse on trial

I had the TV on yesterday and saw by chance that Kyle Rittenhouse was on the stand in Kenosha. So I  started watching and found myself getting more and more interested—mainly in the judge, Bruce Schroeder, who is 75. As if to prove his age, the judge failed to turn off his cell phone while sitting on the bench in a nationally televised trial. When someone called, like maybe about his car warranty, it was revealed to the world that his ring tone is Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA." This is the song to which Trump typically takes the stage at a MAGA rally. Well, maybe Judge Schroeder loves a cheesy patriotic song, lots of people do, especially septuagenarians. Fine.

But the evidence of his hostility to the prosecution is like an icy gust off Lake Michigan—impossible not to notice. Almost the first thing I saw was him ripping into the prosecutor for how he began his cross examination of Rittenhouse. The direct examination of the defendant by his attorney had been very smooth—obviously rehearsed or, perhaps more accurate, choreographed. He and his AR-15 had gone to Kenosha to protect businesses, put out fires, and administer first aid. Sure, sure. Of course they're free to get their story straight by practicing beforehand and the jurors are free to notice, too. The prosecutor's opening line of questioning seemed intended to highlight the point: Rittenhouse had kept quiet for months and was now tailoring rehearsed answers to fit the evidence assembled by the state. This seemed to me transparently true but apparently—I'm hobbled here by a lack of a legal education—drawing the jury's attention to it runs afoul of the defendant's right to remain silent? Even though the defendant had now chosen to testify? I'm just a Law & Order viewer, but I thought the way it'd  work is the judge could shut down that line of questioning, probably by sustaining the defense's objection. In this case, he excused the jury so he could yell at the  prosecutor for around 15 minutes. As the afternoon wore on, I began to wonder why he had troubled to dismiss the jury. When the prosecution was leading Rittenhouse through the video evidence, asking him what he was thinking now and now and now and now, the judge, without the defense having objected, cut in to question the appropriateness. When the prosecutor said what the witness was thinking was central to the case, Schroeder said something like, Well, ok, but move it along.

Luckily I wasn't the prosecutor as I think I'd have asked Judge Schroeder whether his dinner rez was at 5.

Now I've been reading more about the judge this morning. I guess that before the trial started he ruled that no one could refer to the people Rittenhouse shot and killed as "victims"—too prejudicial. I thought that was interesting because I distinctly remember a defense attorney referring yesterday, with obvious derision, to the "protesters or rioters or whatever you want to call them" who (like his client) were in downtown Kenosha against police order that night. No rebuke from the judge for that! I understand trial began this morning with a Veterans Day observance. The judge wanted to recognize anyone in the courtroom who was a veteran, and by chance there was only one: the defense's first witness for the day. So the judge led a round of applause for him. Day 8 of the trial began with everyone in the courtroom (unless they failed to follow the judge's prompt) applauding the defense's first witness before he began testifying!

Unbelievable. 

The logic to acquitting Rittenhouse, which everyone thinks is assured, depends upon a kind of domino theory. Once he had shot someone, he was in the clear for any subsequent shooting, since people who saw him shoot the first guy were mad about it and he was therefore right to feel "threatened" by them. If the first homicide was justified, they all were: a discount for volume. The first victim was unarmed, but Rittenhouse said the man grabbed the barrel of his gun and was trying to take it from him. Thus he had no choice but to shoot him four times. By his own account, then, a fight over a gun resulted in multiple shootings. If he hadn't had a gun, no one would have been shot or killed. As it is, Rittenhouse shot three people, two are dead, and almost everyone agrees the verdict will be that no laws were broken. God bless the USA!

Say more about your "religious convictions"

 

Something one often hears nowadays is that American society, thanks to Obama or someone, has become antagonistic toward religion. Bigotry aimed at Christians, for example, is regarded as a grave problem requiring redress. What is the evidence for this view? I am not aware of candidates for office touting their atheism. On the contrary, someone like Trump—whose 70-some years on Earth haven't dented his ignorance of everything outside of the con & hustle, the void certainly encompassing Christianity and the Bible—is obliged suddenly to feign reverence when seeking the presidency: see above clip.

During this season of covid, there have been bans on public worship—but for good reason, since hardly  anything is more likely to result in a super-spreader event than people crowding into an indoor space where they then preach, sing, recite aloud a liturgy, share with one another "the peace of the Lord," successively receive communion in a face-to-face manner: all high-risk, from a public health perspective. After a choir practice last spring at a church outside Seattle, 45 of 60 singers became ill with covid; three were hospitalized and two died. Nevertheless, there has been a hue and cry about "closed churches," and the proof of the prejudicial intent was supposed to be the enterprises that remained open, such as big-box retailers. But the kinds of enterprises and activities that most nearly resemble public worship—concert halls, playhouses, movie theaters, comedy clubs, schools of all kinds—were shut, too. I do not perceive the animus toward religion, but there's a lot of evidence that something like the opposite is true.

Billy Ray Stutzmann was an assistant football coach at the US Naval Academy until he was fired this week after refusing to be vaccinated against covid. He put out a statement on Twitter attributing his refusal to unspecified "religious convictions" augmented, naturally, by "much thought and prayer." People say stuff like this all the time and apparently it's considered a breach of etiquette to seek more information about the "religious convictions" requiring adherents to remain unprotected against a highly contagious disease that's killed around 685,000 Americans. What is the theological principle? Is there a Biblical instruction? Something in the writings of Aquinas or Luther or in the sermon of a megachurch preacher who flies around the country in his private jet?

Attributing opinions and actions to your "religious convictions" gives them a status they may not deserve. Once invoked, further inquiry is shut down. It's forbidden to express curiosity, let alone skepticism, about convictions so vague that all one can know about them is that the subscriber deems them "religious." Violators of the code are anti-religious bigots. Generally, the highest card wins the trick, but Coach Stutzmann exercised every American's right to cry "Religion!" while playing one face down. At least in this one instance, the other players told him to leave the table. Progress!

Innumeracy and the vaccine debates

Looks like Coke employs some top-flight MBA grads in its marketing department.

I remember reading somewhere that after McDonald's introduced its quarter pounder, a competitor tried to one-up the industry leader by marketing a new one-third pound burger. (Please no joke about actually trying to 1/12-up the industry leader.) The third-pound burger never caught on and was soon discontinued. In trying to figure out what went wrong, McD's rival supposedly discovered that lots of Americans don't comprehend that 1/3 > 1/4. (I guess because 4 is bigger than 3 and they don't know what it means when the number is on the bottom like that? Or maybe they don't know that "quarter" means "1/4"?) Anyway, I thought the story must be an invention, but maybe Coca-Cola knows it isn't and that therefore it makes sense to mention on the packaging that

15 > 12

and not just by 1 or 2.

Perhaps pervasive innumeracy has something to do with our inability to beat back Covid. A self-styled internet contrarian (and regular Fox News contributor) recently cited the following data,

from the state of Oklahoma, as proof that the Covid vaccines are essentially worthless. He highlights the fact that, over the past 30 days, "almost half" (actually, 114 out of 263, which is 43 percent) of those 65 and up admitted to hospital for Covid had been fully vaccinated. Sounds like a poor vaccine, right? But a crucial piece of information is left out: the percentage of people who have been vaccinated. Let's say that figure is 80 percent—I think the percentage of seniors who have been vaccinated, nationally, is higher than that, but Oklahoma has its full allotment of swaggering fools and 80 percent is convenient for calculation. Out of 1000 Oklahoma seniors, then, 800 will have been vaccinated and 200 will be unvaccinated. If 40 end up hospitalized with Covid, 17 will have been fully vaccinated and 23 will be unvaccinated. You can see that, when the issue at hand is vaccine efficacy, it's extremely misleading to say that "almost half" of hospitalizations for seniors are for vaccinated seniors. Here are the ratios that matter: out of 800 who were vaccinated, 17 end up in hospital, and, of 200 who were not vaccinated, 23 end up in hospital. That's 2.1 percent versus 11.5 percent. The unvaccinated are more than 5 times more likely to be hospitalized. 

And this almost certainly understates vaccine efficacy, since those who choose to be vaccinated likely self-select for being, on the whole, in more tenuous health, and therefore more cautious, than those who spurn the vaccine. Thus a breakthrough infection, when it occurs, is more likely to require hospitalization. 

The allure of anti-vax arguments often relies on innumeracy, of which there seems to be plenty. I wonder whether the purveyors of these arguments know how bad they are. Maybe in their innocence it just doesn't occur to them that their argument sinks when you take account of all that needs to be considered. The alternative, it seems to me, is that they are actively seeking to increase the amount of misery and suffering in the world. 

Sociologist speaks

Brooke Harrington is on the Sociology Faculty at Dartmouth College. She's researched and written a lot about the odd subculture flourishing at the high end of our wildly top heavy socioeconomic range. This work is of interest to me, I think mainly because it helps explain something I've wondered about while watching the Congress in action: this is the best we got? At the time the Declaration was signed, the population of the country was around 2.5 million, and included George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Paine, John Jay. Now we have a transcontinental nation of well over 300 million and among the 535 in the Congress are Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Matt Gaetz. Were any of the signers such manifest dunderheads? Maybe it's cherry-picking to name these pyrotechnic specimens of narcissism and stupidity, but there are also innumerable low-profile clowns, like Jim Inhofe, of Oklahoma, who a few years ago displayed a snow ball on the floor of the US Senate to "prove" that climate change is a hoax. He's still there, age 86, filling the halls of power with his wit and intelligence. 

I'm sure there are plenty of brilliant Americans, but relatively few of them are in public life. Most work in the world described by Harrington, where they solve the problems of rich people while becoming rich themselves. The leading fields are law and financial services, which tend to converge at certain points—tax avoidance, for example.  American society is a kind of Theater of the Absurd wherein one set of ambitious people figure out what laws we should all live under while another set of ambitious people get paid a king's ransom to help the rich work around those laws.

Well, that would be bad enough: actually, it's worse, since the two sets of ambitious people are in league together to make sure it's not too difficult to reduce the difficulties associated with being rich. All perfectly legal, as is sometimes pointed out by people whom Harrington disapproves of on account of their failure to disapprove. 

I got to thinking about Harrington when I saw this somewhat long Twitter thread she recently posted on another topic, Covid deniers and assorted anti-vaxxers. She seems to be interested in the same things I am but, instead of being merely puzzled, she sheds light. Why do people decline to be vaccinated? It's a case of the public and private interest coinciding, an easy call! Yet journalists track them down, in their hospital beds, on oxygen, ranting about the perfidies of Anthony Fauci. In case you don't want to click on the link, it turns out that there's a famous paper in social psychology relating to the behavior of "marks"—people who have been the victims of a scam, such as a business fraud. The truth eventually comes out, but they are not the kind to then place a call to the Attorney General or the Better Business Bureau. It's embarrassing to admit you've been had, that you fell for the scam. Harrington applies the findings of this paper to this new variety of mark, devotees of Fox News and Tucker Carlson. They've been had but won't admit it. What to do about them? They're plainly a danger to themselves and others. Harrington points out that we tend to consider just two options: love, kindness, and understanding (liberals), or zero tolerance (conservatives).* This, she suggests, ignores a tradition of American pragmatism that has worked with addressing other problems, such as driving under the influence: drunk drivers deserve neither loving kindness nor the death penalty, but we need them off the roads before they kill people.

You should read her, not me trying to indicate the flavor of the argument.

 

*Covid seems to have scrambled the ideological preferences. When an article in the right-wing National Review argued that anti-vaxxers would not be persuaded by ridicule, but needed to be "understood," liberals replied with pictures of right-wingers wearing tees with the message, "Fuck your feelings." 

 

Fourth of July, 2021

It was just 115 degrees in Portland, a condominium tower in south Florida crumbled to the ground (with residents in it), and the fastest woman in the country, Sha'Carri Richardson, can't run in the Olympics because she got high in Oregon.

It's not even against the law to smoke pot in Oregon. Unless your sport is snacking on the couch, it's not a performance enhancer, either. 

Shockingly, the fastest woman in the country is clearly not Scandinavian, but people who might be are doing their best to corroborate Richard Pryor's take on "the way white people talk": 

So, William, how many miles to the gallon do you get with the Cutlass?

And by the way, regarding Sha'Carri Richardson, marijuana is a gateway drug, the rules apply to everyone, and she's a poor role model for the youth of America. We do not need such people representing our country in the Olympics!

I think a lot of white people don't like a black person excelling, especially if she seems to be enjoying herself. A wingnut on Twitter, unintentionally acknowledging that Richardson's known offense is trivial, pointed to her dyed orange hair and her long brightly colored nails before observing that "strong nails & hair can be a side effect of steroid use." She must be guilty of something we can agree is bad! Someone replied:

Olympics where all the athletes are bald and have weak nails. Only way to be sure.

Land of the pilgrims' pride! Happy Fourth!

Court TV

My dad once owned a small apartment building, and after a mentally disturbed tenant tried to burn it down someone from court administration contacted him to solicit a "victim impact statement" for the judge to consider in sentencing. My dad declined, saying he was happy to leave it up to the judge, a presumed expert, before adding he thought it odd that the supposed crime victim should have a say in determining the sentence: not a disinterested, dispassionate party, it would seem. In relating the story, he mentioned that the court employee seemed to think his view on the topic was unusual, even kind of bizarre. The feeling was mutual. 

I'm willing to disagree with my dad, believe me, but nothing in the Chauvin sentencing hearing  on Friday persuaded me he's wrong. What is the point of the statements given by members of the Floyd family and Chauvin's mother? The former ask for the maximum sentence allowed and the latter declares that, contrary to reports, her son "is a good man." Not very enlightening, and the caption for the case is State of Minnesota v Derek Chauvin, not Floyds v Chauvins. When Judge Peter Cahill walked into the courtroom to listen to the dueling family statements, he had already composed a 22-page sentencing memorandum explaining his reasoning for the 22.5 year sentence he knew he was going to impose—and then did impose, soon as the speakers had finished. 

Unless the goal is for court proceedings to resemble trashy day-time TV shows of yesteryear, in this case with cable-TV commentators in the role of the gasping studio audience, I don't see why these statements are allowed. 

MPD's first draft of history, a year later

No one would say the George Floyd case hasn't received a lot of attention, but I think the Minneapolis Police Department's first statement about what happened, issued a year ago tonight, has been largely overlooked:

Man Dies After Medical Incident During Police Interaction

May 25, 2020 (Minneapolis)

On Monday evening, shortly after 8:00 pm, officers from the Minneapolis Police Department responded to the 3700 block of Chicago Avenue South on a report of a forgery in progress. Officers were advised that the suspect was sitting on top of a blue car and appeared to be under the influence.

Two officers arrived and located the suspect, a male believed to be in his 40s, in his car. He was ordered to step from the car. After he got out, he physically resisted officers. Officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress. Officers called for an ambulance. He was transported to Hennepin County Medical Center by ambulance where he died a short time later. 

At no time were weapons of any type used by anyone involved in this incident.

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension has been called in to investigate this incident at the request of the Minneapolis Police Department.

No officers were injured in the incident. 

Body worn cameras were on and activated during this incident.

The GO number associated with this case is 20-140629.

I hope we can agree that significant details have been left out of the above account. Perhaps the police would say those details were unknown when this statement was released. But I'm thinking the most significant detail unknown to the police was that citizens had recorded the "incident" with their cell phones. Were it not for that detail, the above statement, which has been consigned to the Internet Archive, would have been the MPD's last word about what had happened in addition to its first. 

On suicide

Sitting here watching the Twins wail on the Indians and thinking about suicide—not in a personal way, as that would be the end of playing golf, following the Twins, and discussing with my roommates the probable current condition of our puppy's bladder and bowels. But why the hysteria on this topic? In particular, I don't get the fanatical opposition to assisted suicide from political conservatives who in every other instance are opposed to governmental encroachments on individual liberty. Whose life do they think it is? Here is an MPR article regarding a bill before the Minnesota state legislature in 2019. A woman terminally ill with ovarian cancer is quoted:

I'm a social worker so I've been trained to follow certain social work principles and one of them is self-determination. And this to me is the ultimate act of self determination.

For balance, Scott Fischbach, the executive director of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, is quoted as well:

There are a number of ways to deal with the struggles that come to all of us at the end of life. Assisting somebody to kill themselves is not the route to take. Here in Minnesota, we pride ourselves on having a very good health care system. We need to be sure that health care is available to all and assisted suicide is not. We can do better.

His solution for terminal illness is health care. If terminally ill people don't want it—well, he knows best. Is he saying something different from that? The dying woman makes an argument that is countered with word salad. To me, it's unseemly that a healthy person should mount their moral high horse and deliver opinions about what terminally ill people should want for themselves. Also, can't help but note that, while health care should indeed be available to all, Fischbach is the executive director of MCCL, so it's probably safe to say that he hasn't voted for anyone who's carried that ball down the field. 

Perhaps, since the question related to a bill pending in the state legislature, he was shy about making a religious argument, something along the line of "only God gives life and only God can take it away." I think he'd be right to be sheepish. A desperately ill person, in pain and with no hope of recovery, wants to end their life, and the objection is that they'd be "playing God." It seems acceptable in other contexts. Our judicial system may render the verdict that a person be killed and it is done. A doctor may prolong life beyond what nature would allow without being charged with "playing God." 

No one is against palliative care if that's what the patient wants. That's not what every patient wants. My own theory of the case, which of course may be wrong, is that religious conservatives are in denial about how miserable life can get. It violates their "picture preference," which includes a kindly God, enthroned and engaged, even to the point of intervening in ball games and elections. It's embarrassing to them that choosing not to live might be a rational choice. At least this would account for the hysteria. Here is Minn Stat Sec 609.215, Subd 1:

Aiding suicide. Whoever intentionally advises, encourages, or assists another in taking the other's own life may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than 15 years or to a payment of a fine of not more than $30,000, or both.

Note the verbs "advise" and "encourage." These issues are not even to be discussed. This is what I mean by hysteria. Suicide is approved by many philosophers whose works are regarded as part of the Western canon—by Epictetus, for instance, who refers to it as "the open door": you can face life with equanimity in part because you know that, if things get bad enough, you can walk through the open door. The Penguin classic paperback of his Discourses might well be in violation of this statute but for the fact that, when it was challenged by a criminal defendant, the Minnesota Supreme Court held that "advise" and "encourage" violated the First Amendment's guaranty of freedom of expression. Now it's only illegal to assist. Of course it often happens, for example toward the end stage of ALS disease, that the patient would need help if she wanted to commit suicide. The law in Minnesota therefore encourages her to kill herself while she still can, which might be before she wants to. 

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?

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. 

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.

Staggering (updated)

To satisfy myself that this really happened, I'm going to type out what I think I saw. Let me know if I'm missing something.

Packers trailing Buccaneers 31-23 with 2:10, give or take a few seconds, left in the game. Packers have the ball on Bucs 8-yard-line, fourth down and goal to go. They kick a field goal to make the score 31-26. Right? That describes the situation they were in and the decision they made.

In the manner of a scientist, I'm trying to understand what could be said in favor of the view I disagree with. Before, the Packers needed a touchdown and a 2-point conversion to tie. Now, because they kicked a field goal, a touchdown puts them into the lead. Instead of needing a touchdown and 2-point conversion to tie, they need only a touchdown to win. 

But, to get this "deal," Green Bay has to kick the ball off to Tampa Bay with around 125 seconds left, and—the crucial point—they still need to score a touchdown. They had been eight yards away from what could have been a tying touchdown. Now about the best they can hope for is getting the ball back on their own 30 with maybe 100 seconds left, no timeouts, and 70 yards to cover. That's if Tampa Bay doesn't get a first down. A first down clinches it for Tampa (which is what happened).

Or the Packers could have tried to score a touchdown from the 8-yard-line. Even if they fail on fourth down, they're playing defense at the 8-yard-line, with a chance to get the ball back at about midfield. If they get a touchdown but fail on the 2-point conversion, they're kicking off, just as they are after a field goal, but now they're behind by two points instead of five and no longer need a touchdown. The third possibility is best for them: they get a touchdown, add the 2-point conversion, and tie the score. Some in-game decisions are hard but not this one. It's one of those times when I hear in my head the voice of an old colleague, now deceased, who one day around 35 years ago was amused by my surprise at something dumb one of our customers had done. "Oh, Eric," he chided me, "eventually you'll learn that the amount of incompetence in the world is truly staggering." 

UPDATE
An ESPN article taking up this question includes the following paragraphs:

According to ESPN's Win Probability model, the Packers had a 10% chance of winning by going for it on fourth down and a 9.5% chance of winning by kicking a field goal.

The model also suggested the Packers needed a 21% chance of converting to justify going for a touchdown there, with a league-average conversion rate in that spot at 23%. The Packers were the No. 1 scoring offense this season.

It seems, then, that the Win Probability model says I am right about a field goal being a bad call but wrong about it being obviously a bad call—the chance of winning after kicking a field goal is almost the same as the chance of winning after trying for a touchdown on fourth down. I agree with something the article suggests without stating explicitly: what by the model is true generally for all teams is more true for the Packers, since the strength of their team is their offense, especially their play-making quarterback. By kicking a field goal, they raised the chance that they'd lose without Aaron Rodgers taking another snap. 

The Win Probability model intrigues me. I assume it's based on what has in fact happened in past NFL games? In that case, it seems the sample size relating to the situation the Packers faced must be relatively small, and that the model therefore would be relatively unreliable. 

Fouls and penalties

I've been watching sports on TV and apparently there is no solution to the problem of fouling intentionally at the end of basketball games. I'm referring to the situation where the team with the ball is ahead by a few points, a minute or so to play, and the trailing team, in order to "extend the game," fouls on purpose. This way they can get the ball back without any time running off. If the leading team misses a free throw, the trailing team can cut into the lead by scoring a basket before fouling again. The possibility of making a 3-point basket means you can cut into the lead even if the other team makes two free throws. One team tries to make foul shots, the other team tries to make 3-point baskets. Foul shots are easier but only count 1 point.

Games thus descend into the realm of farce. For 39 minutes, the teams compete at "basketball," and then for the last minute the one that's earned a lead has to prove its worthiness by playing some different, chintzier game. It's as if after 71 holes at St. Andrews a golfer trailing the leader by a stroke or two could, by fiat, compel the guy with the lead to play the 72nd hole at a nearby mini course where, to demonstrate he's a worthy British Open champion, he must putt the ball through a tunnel guarded by the blades of a turning windmill.

The very worst situation occasionally arises from the fact that, for example in college games, the first six team fouls in a half don't result in free throws: unless the fouled player was attempting a shot, her (or his) team just keeps the ball. This means that, at the end of the game, a trailing team might very well be punished for not having fouled enough. In order to get the ball back, they have to commit, intentionally and as quickly as possible, their fourth, fifth, sixth, and finally seventh team fouls as the game's remaining seconds dwindle. They'd have had a chance if only they'd fouled more back when they didn't know they were going to be behind by 4 points in the last minute. What kind of arrangement is that?

I'm not sure I have a solution but it annoys me that the rules committees evidently don't, either. Maybe the farcical situation should allow for arguably half farcical solutions. When the trailing team commits a common foul in the last minute of the game, there could be, in addition to free throws, a ten second run off the clock. The NFL does this when the team on offense is penalized for intentional grounding during the last two minutes of either half. Same idea. If you're going to "kill the clock" by "breaking rules," the clock by rule is going to run down. 

Not that football has necessarily figured everything out. In last year's Gopher game at Iowa, we had the ball, around 10 seconds left in the first half, on about Iowa's 10-yard line. We passed into the end zone, incomplete—because of flagrant pass interference on their d-back. Penalty for that is automatic first down on the 2-yard line. But, since there's now only 4 seconds left in the half, that's hardly any penalty at all. By interfering, Iowa kept us from scoring a touchdown on the next-to-last play of the half. Now there was time for one more play, and we either had to try a field goal or risk getting no points at all. We kicked a field goal. Pass interference on Iowa, 4 fewer points for Minnesota. Iowa ended up winning the game, 23-19. 

If an offensive penalty toward the end of a half can result in a 10-second runoff, how about a defensive penalty in their own end zone resulting in 10 seconds added to the clock? Perhaps at the discretion of the offense. If they want 10 more seconds, they can have them, but they can also decline that part of the penalty. 

Next I'm going to devise an apt penalty for Trump and his enablers in the Republican party. Something worse, but more subtle, than the Lake of Fire. 

A note on the Breonna Taylor case

The idea behind a "no-knock warrant," such as the Louisville police executed at the apartment of Breonna Taylor shortly after midnight last March 13, is to keep anyone inside from hiding or destroying evidence while the cops wait for the door to be answered. This must also explain why, as in the Taylor case, the warrant may be executed in the middle of the night, when it's unlikely anyone would see the police approaching. But isn't it obvious that these details, together with the fact that this is America so everyone has a gun, make what happened next entirely predictable? One of the points of contention seems to be whether the cops announced themselves before knocking the door off its hinges with a battering ram. They say they did. Taylor's boyfriend, with whom she was in bed sleeping when the warrant was executed, says they did not, and neighbors in the apartment building concur. But it's the middle of the night. The cops arrive and, let us say for the sake of argument, announce themselves and their intentions. Of course the occupants are sleeping so there is no response. Then the cops start battering the door down. That'll wake you up. From the perspective of Taylor and her boyfriend, a home invasion was in progress. There is a panicked 9-1-1 call to prove that. But the boyfriend has a gun and is licensed to carry. He shoots, the cops return fire, more than twenty rounds, and Taylor dies after being struck eight times. 

She wasn't even the principal target of the investigation. Police thought her former boyfriend was dealing drugs and using her apartment to receive his packages. They told the judge who signed the warrant that the postal inspector had verified that their suspect received packages at Taylor's address. After the tragedy, the postal inspector asserted this was not true. There were no drugs or packages or large sums of cash found in the apartment. The boyfriend who shot at police was arrested but subsequently released after journalists revealed more about what seems to have happened. The cops executing the warrant filed an "incident report" that was mostly blank, although they did check "No" next to "Forced entry?" and stated "None" for "Injuries." Do they distinguish "injuries" from "corpses"? I don't know. When the report was released, the Louisville mayor apologized and said it was the kind of thing that "eroded confidence" in the police. You have to be smart to be elected mayor!

Last week, the Louisville city council adopted a law banning "no-knock" warrants. Wonderful, but I wonder whether they've considered that the details of the Taylor case, so far as they are known, tend to elucidate social science research indicating that carrying a gun for personal protection is hazardous to your health. Breonna Taylor would be alive if her boyfriend had been just "a good guy," but instead he was "a good guy with a gun." 

Oh say can you hear Justice Robert Jackson?

 

 

 

Re-upping from 9/24/2017–because Flag Day is not my favorite holiday, though the Supreme Court decision I described is one of that institution’s finest moments.

When at a ball game that is preceded by the National Anthem, often performed by someone or some group evidently determined to hold the field for as long as possible, a goal abetted by certain musical characteristics of our anthem, the crowd always cheers as the last notes are played or sung.  I've never been sure whether the cheers should be attributed to patriotism or to relief that, the empty ritual having been performed, or over performed, the ball game can now finally begin.  I incline toward the latter view, but maybe that's a case of projection.  

Anyway, my partriotism, what there is of it, is more apt to get a lift from contemplating the history of the Supreme Court than from flag-waving and anthem-singing at sports venues.  For example, in January of 1942, just a month after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the state of West Virginia adopted a resolution requiring school children to salute the flag as "a regular part of the program of activities in the public schools."  Moreover, all teachers and students were compelled by the resolution "to participate in the salute honoring the Nation represented by the flag."  The details of the prescribed salute were described in detail and must have been intended to distinguish it from the Nazi salute of der Fuhrer.  The penalty for nonconformance was expulsion.  While expelled, the student was treated as "unlawfully absent" and was to be proceeded against as a delinquent.  Parents and guardians were subject to prosecution and, on conviction, had to pay a fine or be jailed for a term not to exceed thirty days.  To be readmitted after expulsion, a student had to participate in the salute.

A family of Jehovah's Witnesses, last name of Barnette, instructed their children not to salute the flag at the Slip Hill Grade School near Charleston, West Virginia.  When the children were expelled, the Barnettes brought suit, and a three-judge panel of the United States District Court in West Virginia ruled in their favor.  The West Virginia Board of Education appealed to the Supreme Court, which heard the case on March 11, 1943, while American servicemen were being killed daily in both theatres of the war.  Nevertheless the Supreme Court affirmed the decision of the district court.  The majority opinion was written by Associate Justice Robert Jackson, and I'll set down the concluding paragraphs:

National unity, as an end which officials may foster by persuasion and example, is not in question. The problem is whether, under our Constitution, compulsion as here employed is a permissible means for its achievement.

Struggles to coerce uniformity of sentiment in support of some end thought essential to their time and country have been waged by many good, as well as by evil, men. Nationalism is a relatively recent phenomenon, but, at other times and places, the ends have been racial or territorial security, support of a dynasty or regime, and particular plans for saving souls. As first and moderate methods to attain unity have failed, those bent on its accomplishment must resort to an ever-increasing severity.  As governmental pressure toward unity becomes greater, so strife becomes more bitter as to whose unity it shall be. Probably no deeper division of our people could proceed from any provocation than from finding it necessary to choose what doctrine and whose program public educational officials shall compel youth to unite in embracing. Ultimate futility of such attempts to compel coherence is the lesson of every such effort from the Roman drive to stamp out Christianity as a disturber of its pagan unity, the Inquisition, as a means to religious and dynastic unity, the Siberian exiles as a means to Russian unity, down to the fast failing efforts of our present totalitarian enemies. Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.

It seems trite but necessary to say that the First Amendment to our Constitution was designed to avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings. There is no mysticism in the American concept of the State or of the nature or origin of its authority. We set up government by consent of the governed, and the Bill of Rights denies those in power any legal opportunity to coerce that consent. Authority here is to be controlled by public opinion, not public opinion by authority.

The case is made difficult not because the principles of its decision are obscure, but because the flag involved is our own. Nevertheless, we apply the limitations of the Constitution with no fear that freedom to be intellectually and spiritually diverse or even contrary will disintegrate the social organization. To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous, instead of a compulsory routine, is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds. We can have intellectual individualism and the rich cultural diversities that we owe to exceptional minds only at the price of occasional eccentricity and abnormal attitudes. When they are so harmless to others or to the State as those we deal with here, the price is not too great. But freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.

We think the action of the local authorities in compelling the flag salute and pledge transcends constitutional limitations on their power, and invades the sphere of intellect and spirit which it is the purpose of the First Amendment to our Constitution to reserve from all official control.

The decision of this Court in Minersville School District v. Gobitis, and the holdings of those few per curiam decisions which preceded and foreshadowed it, are overruled, and the judgment enjoining enforcement of the West Virginia Regulation is

Affirmed 

What some of us find so striking about this, and even thrilling, is that the Barnettes were likely hoping to carve out for themselves an exclusion from the state regulation on narrow religious grounds. Justice Jackson had no time for that.  He and the other five justices in the majority--it was a 6-3 decision--held that the regulation violated the rights of all citizens.  That is, West Virginia was "enjoined" from compelling the Barnette children to salute the flag, not because they were Jehovah's Witnesses, but because they were Americans.

 

 

 

Kids say

Agnes Callard, whose wardrobe I mentioned here, is like me these days spending more time around her kids than she otherwise would, and noting the things her 7-year-old says. It can't be wrong to spread the word about the amusing utterances of other people's kids! When making coffee in the morning, she always lets him "help" by depressing the plunger that pushes the grounds to the bottom of the tube, leaving the elixir ready to be poured into a cup. He did this every day for awhile, very serious and proficient. Then today, or maybe it was yesterday, having performed his duty he said over his shoulder while padding out of the kitchen, "You should learn to do that yourself. I'm going to grow up, you know."

Same kid is doing the distance learning thing at home. Today (or maybe yesterday) the math lesson concerned the number 7, and he was supposed to write down something that there's 7 of. His mom suggested days of the week, which he immediately rejected. After thinking about it for a couple seconds, he says, "How about the number of fingers you have if three get shot off in a war?"

I see that his mom, who's on the philosophy faculty at the University of Chicago, suggests I give up the chief pleasure of my life. A real wet blanket with, however, a fun kid.

Alex Wellerstein on the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, 9 August 1945

On this day in 1945 the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki, Japan. Three days earlier, on the 6th of August, we had dropped one on Hiroshima. It seems that the bombing of Hiroshima has achieved a kind of priority in the popular imagination, perhaps for the same reason that Babe Ruth's 60-homer season in 1927 has: it would be done again, but not often, and that was the first time.

Efforts to defend the morality of these attacks have probably benefited from the primacy afforded the bombing of Hiroshima. If the preeminent attack was justified, then it may seem that the subordinate one must be granted the same certificate. When the two events are considered equally and separately, however, isn't the second attack, three days after the first, impossible to defend? The Hiroshima bomb instantly killed about 80,000 civilians when it exploded just above the city center during the morning rush hour. The destruction and horror were unimaginable. Japan's formal surrender occurred less than four weeks later, on September 2. I don't think anyone seriously believes that, but for the destruction of Nagasaki three days later, Japan would have fought on. It's high command had not yet been able to evaluate what had happened at Hiroshima when Nagasaki was incinerated. Japan's surrender was a foregone conclusion on August 6 if not before. Nevertheless around 40,000 civilians were killed in the moments after the US bombed Nagasaki on August 9.

It's natural to blame someone and the obvious candidate is Truman. "The buck stops here," the sign on his desk famously stated, and it did not hurt him politically to take responsibility for the atomic bombings. Since he accepted the credit from American voters, he took the arrows of the moral philosophers. When, for example, he was to receive an honorary degree from the University of Oxford, one of its faculty, philosopher G.E.M. Anscombe, strenuously objected to honoring someone she regarded as a war criminal and mass murderer:

I have long been puzzled by the common cant about President Truman's courage. . . . Light has come to me lately: the term is an acknowledgment of the truth. Mr Truman was brave because, and only because, what he did was so bad. But I think the judgment unsound. Given the right circumstances (for example that no one whose opinion matters will disapprove), a quite mediocre person can do spectacularly wicked things without thereby becoming impressive.

To speak of Truman having done "spectacularly wicked things" is to make of him a bloodthirsty fiend, which seems somewhat at odds with the designation "quite mediocre person" in the same sentence. But having read today this article, augmented by this Twitter thread, both from the hand of Alex Wellerstein, I think the evident contradiction is apt. There was to the "decision" to use nuclear weapons against Japan a certain shocking casualness. Take the obscenely brief interval between the two attacks. The determining factor here seems to have been weather forecasts. The plan had been for there to be a week between the attacks, so that Japan could assess its hopeless situation. But the likelihood of overcast skies above the targeted cities caused the date of the first attack to be pushed back in time, and the date of the second attack to be moved forward, with the result that the interval was almost extinguished. It seems no one had the moral energy to point out that the strategy relating to the interval was far more important than the one pertaining to the weather forecast. In the event, it was cloudy on August 9. The targeted city was Kokura, but, arriving there midmorning, the crew could not visually see the city, a requirement  stipulated in their order. They proceeded to Nagasaki, where it was also cloudy, but, on what was to have been the final pass before aborting the mission, the bombardier claimed to find a seam in the clouds through which he could see the intended target, the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works. The bomb was dropped but detonated about three-quarters of a mile from the munitions plant—close enough to destroy it, but also directly over what Wellerstein calls "a mostly civilian district." The US military compiled a list of buildings within 3000 feet of the detonation point. It included: Nagasaki prison, Mitsubishi Hospital, Nagasaki Medical College, Chinzei High School, Shiroyama School, Urakami Cathedral, Blind and Dumb School, Yamazato School, Nagasaki University Hospital, Mitsubishi Boys' School, Nagasaki Tuberculosis Clinic, and Keiho Boys' High School. "Ugh," comments Wellerstein.

Perhaps the most startling aspect of the facts surrounding "the decision to drop" concerns Truman's position outside the chain of command and control. His policy was one of nonintervention with existing military plans. He was, however, shocked by the damage report from Hiroshima and seems also to have been taken by surprise when told that Nagasaki had been struck on August 9. It's not as if he had nothing else to worry about. The Potsdam Conference, for example, had concluded on August 2. When on August 10 he was informed by General Leslie Groves that another atomic bomb would be ready in about a week, Truman immediately ordered there would be no more nuclear attacks on Japanese targets without his "express authority." The picture that emerges is of the gravest "decisions" being accomplished only by a kind of bureaucratic momentum that no one, including the President, could or would stop until, as we say, "mistakes had been made." It wasn't very much different from what people who work for any large organization will recognize as a fact of life within a bureaucracy: if you have enough meetings about something, eventually it will happen, though it won't be clear who really decided and when. Truman took responsibility for decisions he didn't make—this was hardly "courageous," as he allowed it to be portrayed, since anything perceived as hastening victory was politically popular, and it would have been startling then, as it is now, to discover how little authority he exercised over the gravest of matters.

The article and Twitter thread hyperlinked above aren't very long, make for gripping reading, and are interesting for other reasons besides those discussed here.  For example, why Nagasaki? No one really seems to understand why it was so high up the list of targets. After the war, the city's military and strategic importance was exaggerated by our military, perhaps out of embarrassment over how haphazard was the selection of targets. It was cloudy in Kokura. 

Dr Johnson and the 4th of July

The Declaration of Independence is most famous for the section commencing "We hold these truths to be self-evident," but the bulk of the document is a list of offenses introduced by 

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

And there then follows what would be, but for the lack of a decent word-processing application, 27 bullet points, including complaints both high and low, abstract and concrete, some that appear to admit of no defense and others that have about them the whiff of having been included mainly to elongate the list.  A sampling:

• He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good
• He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures
• He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people
• He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries
• [He has imposed] Taxes on us without our Consent
• He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people [Editorial comment: if true, why the need for 26 other complaints?]

He-he-he—he's done this, he's done that—is a rhetorical ploy determined to establish a bully, a tyrant, and a villain.  An amusing sidelight concerns how NPR, after tweeting out the Declaration's text in 113 consecutive installments on the morning of July 4, 2017, received complaints from MAGA types who, scanning the string, imagined the "liberal media" to be spreading anti-Trump propaganda. Yes, the king is a villain!

There is some cognitive dissonance associated with the task of imagining today's self-styled conservatives being champions of the Revolution of 1776.  I can just see George Will loosening his bow tie, the task of tossing tea into the harbor being so physically demanding.  Does anyone seriously think that Donald Trump, had he been living in NYC 250 years ago, would have supported the revolution? At best, he would have been neutral, keeping his head down while calculating his own self-interest in the event that this side or that one should in the end prevail.  As might be imagined, conservative intellectuals across the pond had no sympathy for the complaining colonists in America.  I've been reading Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, and it happened by chance that on Independence Day I came to the section, from the year 1767, that Boswell introduces:

In February there happened one of the most remarkable incidents of Johnson's life, which gratified his monarchical enthusiasm, and which he loved to relate with all its circumstances, when requested by his friends. This was his being honoured by a private conversation with his Majesty, in the library at the Queen's house.

Boswell devotes the next six pages—approximately a half of one percent of the book's immense bulk—to a transcript of their conversation that February afternoon.  The length and detail convey the importance Boswell assigns to the event, and he was likely correct in assuming Johnson would approve the reverential treatment, but, for those not afflicted with "monarchical enthusiasm," it's possible to detect a countervailing effect.  For George III, despite Boswell's intent, comes off as a cipher.  As the long interview unwinds, the charitable explanations for the king's woodenness recede, and it's evident that Johnson has to bear the whole conversational burden.  Of course he's able to do that, even if his more usual interlocuters—which included Edmund Burke, Joshua Reynolds, Oliver Goldsmith, Boswell himself—did not have to be carried along, and could, by testing him, elicit gems of Johnson's intelligence and wit.  No chance of that with George III.  "I found his Majesty wished I should talk and I made it my business to talk," Boswell records Johnson as commenting, so I guess the charitable interpretation had not receded beyond the reach of one determined to venerate his king.

Though it seems odd, considering his indolence and usual literary bailiwick, Johnson in 1775 undertook the composition of a pamphlet, "Taxation No Tyranny," in which he gave free reign to his contempt for the revolting colonists.  "Why is it," he asks, in the pamphlet's most quoted line, "that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of Negro slaves?" 

Criminal sentences

Mohamed Noor, the Minneapolis cop who last summer shot and killed a woman in an alley after she had called the police about a possible alley-way assault, was  sentenced yesterday to 12.5 years in prison.  He had been convicted last April of third-degree murder and manslaughter.

Being a meek abider of the laws, I don't think a lot about criminal penalties, but, when I do, they seem to me impossibly capricious.  Presumably there is such a thing as a "just" sentence.  If for the sake of argument we stipulate that Noor's sentence is just, then it seems to follow that 20 years would be unjustly harsh, and 6 years unjustly light.  But why?  I think I'd have an easier time giving a rational account of why positions a, b, and c in Bureaucracy B pay, respectively, salaries of x, y, and z.  In both cases you have panels of supposed experts arriving at conclusions that seem to me to be described by the coarse phrase, "pulling numbers out of your ass."  A question nerdy science types like to debate is: Supposing while you were asleep everything in the universe got twice as big, would you on waking be able to tell?  Supposing, similarly, that all criminal penalties were doubled, or halved, and our memory of the former guidelines obliterated. Wouldn't the new "rates" be justified by the same empty phrases used to explain why the current ones are "just"?  Yes, I think so.  I say the words are "empty" because they don't refer to anything real.  Being persuaded that the new sentences are just depends wholly upon our memory of the old just sentences being obliterated.  The justifying words function only to obscure the fact that old and new are both arbitrary.

It doesn't make more sense as you continue to ponder.  Obviously the severity of a sentence depends a lot on the conditions of incarceration, but those are arbitrary, too.  Some people think the purpose of incarceration is to rehabilitate, others that it's to punish, and still others, ignoring that these two goals are largely incompatible, say that it's both, and then, when questions arise, indicate by their solution which one they really believe.  For example, educational opportunities for prisoners is consistent with rehabilitation, but not punishment, especially when it's pointed out, as it inevitably is, that people who haven't been convicted of any crimes have to pay to go to school.  It all seems to me very careless and sloppy.  There is no evidence that prison has a rehabilitating effect on anyone, a lot of evidence that it has the opposite effect of creating hardened criminals, and no one worries too much, because the tale about rehabilitation is usually just more empty words.  We really believe in punishment for people we believe to be bad.  

So is Noor a bad person?  He was bad at his job, and should never have been hired.  Anyone who's ever been responsible for hiring and supervision will hardly be surprised.  More bad, arbitrary decisions!  The conclusion I come toward is that society has a right to protect itself by incarcerating people who are dangerous.  Who is dangerous?  I don't know, but probably not Noor.  I said he was bad at his job but all I really meant by that is that one night in a flash he made a terrible decision, and part of the job description for "cop" is making good decisions in a flash.  That it is good and just that he's going to prison for 12.5 years seems to me pretty dubious.  He won't be "rehabilitated"--he's not really bad to begin with.  Society doesn't need to be protected--in a position where he's not entrusted with decisions about the use of lethal force, he's likely about as dangerous as me and my regular golfing partners.  

There is the victim and her family to consider.  She and they suffered a wrong, not just bad luck, according to the jury.  But it seems fantastical to think punishing Noor compensates them.  It's analogous to having been treated shabbily by someone in your private life, and then taking pleasure when the person who's wronged you suffers some misfortune: a cheap thrill that wears poorly and anyway does nothing to cancel the wrong.  All that's really accomplished is another deposit in the bank of human misery.  Probably there's something very primitive, a vestigial evolutionary command, that  accounts for our irrational urges on this point.  Suppose someone offered to give you a million dollars, on the condition that if you accept they will give $2 million to someone you hate.  Rationality advises you to take the money, but it's harder than it ought to be to accept, so torturous is it to contemplate the enemy's greater good fortune.    

This must account too for the pleasure I felt, somewhere in the vicinity of the base of my brain stem, when reading in the Times that Paul Manafort was being transferred to the notorious prison on Rikers Island, where he'll be held in isolation while awaiting his next criminal trial.  So I'm afflicted with the same impulses I criticize in others!  It must be a weakness of democracy that the most common human failings become a ground of public policy.  Our shortcomings are codified in law.

Diogenes of Sinope

In "Philosophy Twitter," I wrote about how an online philosopher had solicited candidates for the single greatest sentence in the history of philosophy.  This one, from Kant,

Desire is the capacity to be, by means of a representation, the cause of the object of that representation

and this one, by a "philosopher" unnamed by the submitter,

What I like to drink most is wine that belongs to others

I thought represented the range, among the submissions, of what is often called these days "relatability."  By putting "philosopher" in quotes I mean to confess that I thought the submitter was just having fun with the earnest practitioners of Philosophy Twitter.  But . . . you can see where this is going.  I discovered last night that I was wrong when, reading the Enchiridion of Epictetus, I came to the paragraph wherein the author praises Diogenes and Heraclitus.  I knew enough of Heraclitus not to be curious, but I decided to look up Diogenes, whom I'd never heard of, and soon found myself reading his maxims, here--one of which, concerning his favorite beverage, had been nominated as the greatest philosophy sentence, ever.  Scanning the article I see that he might have earned several nominations.  

Asked at what age a man should marry, he replied that an older man must never marry, and that a young one should wait.

Once, criticized for drinking at a tavern, he replied that he also got his haircuts at the barbershop.

When asked about his hometown, he said only that he was cosmopolitan, a citizen of the world.

Charged with public indecency, he defended himself by saying he wished he could allay his hunger by rubbing his belly.

Diogenes was a contemporary and fierce critic of Plato, whose abstractions repelled him.  He is said to have eaten, loudly and with relish, while attending lectures at the Academy, which recalls another of his famous retorts: asked about the best time to eat, he said for a rich man whenever he wants, and for a poor man whenever he can.  After Plato, tongue in cheek, defined man as "a featherless biped," Diogenes set loose in the Academy a plucked chicken, thereby causing the definition to be emended to "a featherless biped with broad flat nails."

For his part Plato, evaluating the character of Diogenes, said it was "as if Socrates had gone mad."  Diogenes does seem to have pushed the envelope on the gadfly thing.  He recommended poverty and his asceticism was such that, having seen a boy drinking out of cupped hands, he gave away his only bowl.

Notes on fops

So-called business casual dress has changed the face of the main shopping street in downtown Minneapolis--no Dayton's or Donaldson's or Justers or Powers or Macy's or Saks (except an "outlet store")--but, judging by the tastes of conservative white men operating in Republican politics, the very most elegant garments are still for sale, somewhere--mainly, it seems, where you wouldn't expect them to shop, like in midtown Manhattan and Beverly Hills.   Back when Paul Manafort's legal troubles were first in the news, it came to light that, over a two or three year period, he spent well over a million dollars on clothes.  I noted at the time that he would enter an upscale Manhattan haberdashery and say things like, "Give me fifty thousand dollars worth of neckties" as casually as I remember my dad saying to filling station attendants, "Three dollars of regular, please."  Then he'd pay with a wire transfer from an offshore bank--Manafort, not my dad.  Buzz Feed has an inventory of Manafort closet items here.  He's wearing an orange jumper today.  Whom the gods would destroy they first dress up for a MAGA rally.

If it weren't for Manafort I'd hardly credit the latest news about Wayne LaPierre, head of the National Rifle Association.  According to a report in the Wall Street Journal (it's behind a paywall so you can if you want read this summary), the advertising agency with the lucrative NRA account paid $200,000 for suits for LaPierre, all or most of them "from a Beverly Hills vendor of menswear from Italian luxury brand Ermenegildo Zegna."  Thanks to Manafort, I've been disabused of the notion that $200,000 worth of suits wouldn't fit in a MAGA guy's walk-in closet--it's probably only a couple dozen at most.  Presumably these are the suits LaPierre wears while denouncing the "elitists" who are alarmed by the epidemic of gun violence in America.   Since the payments for his European and Caribbean travels were likewise funneled through the ad agency, it appears he's been bankrolling his personal extravagances with the dues of NRA members.  

One thing I'll say in Trump's favor: he doesn't appear to care overmuch for clothes.  He devotes his energy instead to his hair and his tan (if that is what you want to call it).   

Socrates at the bar (of justice)

In college, reading the Platonic dialogues about the last days of Socrates--his trial (Apology), death-row imprisonment (Crito), and death (Phaedo)--I remember feeling irritated with the main character's interlocuters, who seemed to me too pliant and worshipful, like they were only in the game to make Socrates look good, the philosophical version of the Washington Generals standing around as the Harlem Globetrotters perform their tricks.  Now I've reread them, and I sometimes feel the same way, but I have to say that I like the Apology a lot.

There isn't very much philosophy in the Apology.  It's more like a defense of a lifestyle alternative to getting and spending, and then there is also the literary interest afforded by one of the first and best courtroom dramas.  Despite the passage of 2400 years, neither aspect seems out of date.  The former provides the context for the most famous Socratic doctrine, that "the unexamined life is not worth living," and the latter seems fresh and original inasmuch as it eschews most of the easy pickings of the genre.  The author doesn't develop any cliffhanger interest around the question of how it's going to turn out for Socrates.  Nor is there any, or very much, melodrama.  The qualification is to acknowledge that there is a whiff of melodrama perhaps in the figure of the lone hero standing before his accusers and facing them down--a satisfyingly great performance by a doomed underdog.  

But you have to say that the melodrama, what there is of it, gets tamped down considerably by being the target for some of Socrates's arrows.  He points out that by groveling before the court, and producing sobbing family members, he might succeed at escaping the death penalty, or maybe even conviction.  After all, everyone else in his position does it, and frequently the desired result is achieved.  Socrates, however, considers such tactics unworthy.  His view is that reason should dictate his fate, as it has his life heretofore, and the opposite of reason, in this instance, is not pathos but a repugnant flavoring of flattery.  Notwithstanding his politeness, Socrates considers himself the superior of his judges, who of course have all the power, and he will not escape by flattering his inferiors, even if they have become so accustomed to it that its absence is apt to tilt them against him.  He says this to them directly, which has the effect of a challenge, a dare.  His effrontery reaches soaring heights when he takes up the subject of an alternative penalty to death.  Customary options would be fines or exile.  These he rejects.  His penalty should be "what he is due," and, as his argument is that he's not only not guilty but actually a benefactor of the state, an under appreciated instructor in virtue, what he's "due" is something like a sinecure, or stipend: his philosophizing should be honored and even bankrolled by the Athenian government.   

For me, the appeal of the Apology is in some measure that Socrates, again notwithstanding the span of 2400 intervening years, appears hostile to widely accepted contemporary customs, including the manner in which something like melodrama infects legal procedures.  In reporting of contemporary criminal trials in America, it seems the judge is always rebuking the convicted defendant for exhibiting insufficient remorse.  Well, since there was a trial, he (or she) must have entered a plea of not guilty.  Might that account for the lack of remorse?--stipulating, for the moment, that the judge is able to discern the true state of affairs regarding the presence or absence of remorse in the convicted person.  I also don't understand the practice of allowing, during the sentencing phase, the crime victim and her or his family and friends to make statements to the court about how their lives have been affected--impacted, they say.  In assigning a sentence, is the judge supposed to consider at all what they say?  The answer must be yes, or they wouldn't be admitted in the first place, but then it seems that the sentence depends to some degree not on the criminal act but on the status of the person who suffered it.  Socrates would not approve, though in truth almost all his precepts are in the category of "more honored in the breach."

Schopenhauer's seamstress

I've been reading the essays collected in Arthur Schopenhauer's Counsels and Maxims, which are extracted from his last major work, Parerga and Paralipomena (1851).  The title, Greek for "Appendices and Omissions," is explained, I believe, by Schopenhauer's view that he had published in 1818, when he was 30, a complete exposition of his philosophy, The World as Will and Idea.  He seems to have thought it did not receive the attention, perhaps the word is adulation, it deserved, and subsequent works function like advertisements for an overlooked masterpiece.  Most of his fame came posthumously, a circumstance he would have regarded as confirmation of his generally bleak outlook.  Here he is in "Our Relation to Ourselves" from Counsels and Maxims:

We often try to banish the gloom and despondency of the present by speculating upon our chances for success in the future; a process which leads us to invent a great many chimerical hopes.  Every one of them contains the germ of illusion, and disappointment is inevitable when our hopes are shattered by the hard facts of life.

So he was not a forerunner of today's "motivational speakers," those hustlers your company probably hires to come in and tell you how anything is possible if you only have a "positive attitude," etc., etc., etc.  Maybe I shouldn't suggest that they are charlatans as they probably believe their own bullshit.  Anyway, my (very) short biography of Schopenhauer is here.  I described a peculiar incident from his life that I thought of yesterday while reading his "counsels."  In 1821, he got in an altercation with a seamstress who was a co-tenant in the Berlin rooming house where he lived.  It seems she was in the habit of talking loudly on trivial matters outside his door, disrupting his concentration.  One day the philosopher could no longer abide her chatter, but when he told her to "keep it down," or whatever, she talked back, the confrontation escalated, and it ended when he pushed her down some stairs.  She sued him, alleging that injuries incurred made it difficult for her to continue working as a seamstress.  Though Schopenhauer vigorously defended against her suit, he was eventually ordered to pay her 60 talers--from what I can tell perhaps a couple months' pay for a seamstress--per year for the rest of her life.  When she died in 1852, Schopenhauer had to present to the court a copy of her death certificate, on which he'd written Obit anus, abit onus, Latin for "the old woman dies, the debt departs."

So I'm reading along yesterday, it's all quite earnest and serious, on a high plane notwithstanding Schopenhauer's plain, vigorous style, completely free of jargon, which is partly why he's a favorite among nonprofessional philosophers, and he's making the case that human sociability is best explained by people being basically empty husks, unable to sustain themselves with their own thoughts and pastimes, so they have to fill the emptiness with, for example, card playing.  It's better, for those people who can, to withdraw from social life and tend to their own interior lives.  And then, suddenly:

But there is nothing in life which has not some drawback--nihil est ab omni parte beatum, as Horace says; or, in the words of an Indian proverb, no lotus without a stalk.  Seclusion, which has so many advantages, has also its little annoyances and drawbacks, which are small, however, in comparison with those of society; hence anyone who is worth much in himself will get on better without other people than with them.  But amongst the disadvantages of seclusion there is one which is not so easy to see as the rest.  It is this: when people remain indoors all day, they become physically very sensitive to atmospheric changes, so that every little draught is enough to make them ill; so with our temper; a long course of seclusion makes it so sensitive that the most trivial incidents, words, or even looks, are sufficient to disturb or to vex and offend us--little things which are unnoticed by those who live in the turmoil of life.

I just got a kick out of this, because it feels like Schopenhauer descends into autobiography, and that the seamstress is lurking behind the paragraph's concluding clauses.

Michael Avenatti and happiness hunting

A possibly overlooked detail in the latest installment to the sad saga of Michael Avenatti concerns the likelihood that his attempt to shake down Nike, for a payment to him of a sum north of $20 million, was based on his knowledge of genuine perfidy on the part of the company.  For his criminal scheme was a suicide mission if Nike was pure.  He had to calculate that the company, facing a choice between

(a) paying him more than $20 million and persisting with its profitable cheating; or

(b) inviting scrutiny of itself by calling the FBI

would choose (a).  But it seems he miscalculated.  Nike placed a call to Johnny Law, because possibly $20-some million was too much?  The company employs squads of lawyers who, like Avenatti, graduated at the top of their class, and it plausibly can defend itself for less while at the same time closing a "business line" that was proving to be more trouble than it was worth.  I feel more sure about how Avenatti calculated than how Nike calculated, but what I'm most sure about is that there is no one to cheer for.  

Since, however, Avenatti is Avenatti, an individual who isn't hiding out within a corporation, he's a more inviting target for us moralists.  Why'd he do it?  To me, demanding more than $20 million seems, as a criminal strategy, excessive and rash--desperate, actually.  For just a single million, Nike might well have knuckled under, and it still would have been a helluva payday.  Suppose you earn $500,000 per year, on average, over a 40-year career.  From here down below, that sounds like a pretty good living, but, over your whole working life, you still wouldn't make as much as Avenatti was telling Nike to transfer to him if it didn't want him talking about its business practices in press conferences.

I suppose Avenatti might have asked for the amount he needed, considering his habits and "lifestyle."  In that case, however, the problem is still to account for excess.  My question, I guess, is the one from Wall Street, "How much is enough?"  What does Michael Avenatti need?  What would make him happy?  His chosen line of work is celebrity lawyer, a group that no doubt self-selects for being motivated by wealth and fame.  But he had attained these things and was still shouting at Nike's top officers, f-you this, f-you that, pay me $22 million or else--something like that.  One forms the idea that if they had paid he would have taken a day off to celebrate and then continued with the same desperate life until he either died or, as appears to have happened earlier this week, suffered a ruinous event.

Nothing would have satisfied Avenatti.  He started out wanting to be rich and famous and, having attained it, discovered he wanted more.  Psychologists have developed a vocabulary to account for this kind of behavior, the key concepts being what they call "hedonic adaptation" and "the hedonic treadmill": instead of enjoying the weather on the mountaintop, people become immediately acclimated, and adjust their expectations ever upward.  The result is all this feverish activity, a desperate chase after contented bliss, which, notwithstanding many repeated successes, keeps retreating beyond their grasp.  Though they lacked the lingo of modern psychology, the stoic philosophers, whom I described briefly here, had the same idea.  They urged their auditors to withdraw from the mad chase.  Happiness can be attained only by indirection. It might settle on you if you could only stop striving to attain it.  One recognizes an affinity with much religious teaching, especially those of the East. 

On the other hand, it's not as if Socrates or Jesus or Spinoza or Henry David Thoreau disagree with the Buddha about the undesirability of a life devoted to cupidity and the acquisition of fame.  That their supposedly revered teachings are, as we say, "more honored in the breach" must be attributed to some fairly potent force, like maybe our biological selves: going back in time, discontent and unhappiness correlate with promiscuity, so those are the genes we're stuck with.  Have to tamp them down with philosophy!

Four for Sunday

1. No doubt I'm touchy, but those signs displayed prominently on grocery store shelves announcing, for example, "3 for $10!" annoy the shit out of me.  You can regard this as a very modest public service announcement if you don't know that by the unpromulgated terms of this "deal" the first item costs $3.33, as does the second, and that the third, if you choose to buy it, costs $3.34.  Let me say, in order to justify being upset over a penny, that people generally agree that it's bad "deliberately to mislead others," occasionally called "lying" by the unmannered, but for some reason you get a pass if you lie in order to advance the business interests of your employer.  Call me a bad word, "socialist" or "Marxist" or whatever, but it seems the purpose of the corporation is largely to dissipate responsibility of the moral-legal variety, as evidenced by the fact that no Wells Fargo executives are in prison, since "technically speaking" they probably didn't break any laws, just as, I suppose, 3-for-$10 isn't "technically speaking" a lie, since if you buy three it really does cost ten dollars.  But these kinds of evasions and equivocations don't work if you're getting high in north Minneapolis.

2. I don't think Instagram users get enough credit for being attractive, affluent, and kind to cute animals.  Kudos!

3. I see that Rush Limbaugh thinks the massacre in New Zealand might be a false flag operation.  Is he too far gone himself to realize that's nuts?  Or does he just know the mind of his audience of millions?  In a similar vein, our president is this morning by tweet urging Fox to reinstate Jeanine Pirro, their house nut-job who thinks hijabs (pronounced heeeeeee-JOB) are antithetical to our Constitution. You know you're "out there" when Fox bumps your Saturday night show in order to rerun "Scandalous: The Trial of William Kennedy Smith"--an evergreen of the documentary genus, admittedly.  "Bring her back!" tweets President Trump, the day after his vanilla tweet expressing sorrow &c over the massacre of Muslims in New Zealand.  He should go to church if only to inhibit his tweeting for an hour or so.  

4. I think at this point I support the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, for president. I won't learn to spell his last name till he wins a primary, but his first name is Pete, and I believe his last name is pronounced "Buddha-judge."  My enthusiasm was kindled when I read that he had taught himself Norwegian--because he'd been impressed by the only work of a certain Norwegian author that's been translated into English and wanted to read more of his stuff.  I'm Norwegian, and it's my dad's first language, so maybe my regard is explained by "identity politics," but seriously, if you're looking for the-opposite-of-Trump isn't an interest in books and ideas and languages a more compelling credential even than being a sentient, sane woman with some melanin in her skin?  Pete B is moreover a gay former Rhodes Scholar who served a tour of duty in Afghanistan.  There might not be a white guy in America more unlike Trump.

Downtown

When I was working, I spoke almost every day with clients who talked as if traveling to downtown Minneapolis was an odyssey that they'd ruminated over for hours, if not days, before bravely setting out to execute their meticulous plan, navigating the most propitious roadways, parking their car some place  they'd settled on in advance, and prosecuting a second errand before its time in order to delay their next parlous journey into the city.   I suspected they might have made inquiries about whether a resident of Wayzata, or wherever, needed to present a valid passport somewhere along the downtown exit ramp from I-394. 

I'm laughing at myself now, because this morning I had to meet with a guy in his downtown office, and I wasn't too pleased about it.  What a hassle!  I took the bus--I knew not to drive--and was in the flow of the latter part of rush hour.  Nothing impresses on you that superannuated sensation like a bus load of people who are plainly on their way to work.  I imagined them thinking to themselves that they're paying into the social security trust fund for the likes of me.  Once disembarked, I wandered aimlessly like the rube I now am, marveling to myself at how "downtown has sure changed!"  Of course I'd expected transportation complications, and, since there hadn't been any, I had time to kill.  The weather was too wretched to keep walking around in so I entered the public library.

I've been a nerdy bookworm for about 55 years and the downtown public library is very familiar to me.  It's always been a hang out for people who have no particular place to be, and that's still so.  I rode the elevator with an older man who had one of those wheeled walkers, quite an elaborate one with wire shelves in the vertical space between the grips and wheels.  These shelves were loaded with what appeared to be his worldly possessions.  A duffel bag, half unzipped because overstuffed, revealed articles of clothing.  When I asked what floor he wanted, he answered with more volume and force than I'd been expecting: Two!  I don't know what the attractions of level two are but the overall attraction is clearly the long rows of computer stations in the big open areas in the middle of all the floors.  Internet access!  A half hour after the library had opened, there were so few unoccupied stations that I guessed the computers at the empty ones might be broken.  

I went to the philosophy section on level four.  I've gotten interested in the Roman Stoic philosophers--Seneca, Epictetus, Musonius, and Marcus Aurelius--and I thought I'd see whether any of their works were checked in.  Nope.  The Stoics held that people would be happier, more content, if they could learn to want only things they already had.  They would have approved of your mom if, like mine, she told you that your own troubles might not seem like much if you once in awhile bothered to consider what other people have to endure.  Killing time at the public library before meeting with your financial guy is an invitation to take mom's advice.  It occurs to me now that maybe that's why I thought to look on the open shelves for The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius or a selection of Seneca's letters.

The financial guy--I bet he doesn't go to the public library.  Lots of graphs and smooth chit-chat.  After three minutes I could hardly hear him over the AM radio of my youth playing in my head.

Money, get away.
Get a good job with more pay and you're okay.
Money, it's a gas.
Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash.
New car, caviar, four-star daydream:
Think I'll buy me a football team.

Money, get back.
I'm all right, Jack, keep your hands off of my stack.
Money, it's a hit.
Don't give me that do-goody good bullshit.
I'm in the high-fidelity, first-class traveling set,
And I think I need a Learjet.

I made it home, turned on the TV, and listened from the kitchen as Katy Tur and her guests discussed the college admissions cheating scandal.  I guess it's about fifty grand to have someone else take the test for your kid?  Seems like a lot, but there are a lot of people to pay off, and the "businessman" needs to turn a profit, too.  The customers have about twenty million more dollars than the guy on the elevator at the library, and their profit on it is that they can buy alternative facts for their offspring.  Well, what did we expect?  They're in the top 1%, but not the top 0.1%, so buying a résumé with a new wing for the university library isn't an option.

Is it worse to foul out than to lose?

I've written here and here about how I think major league baseball managers pretty routinely follow bad in-game strategies with respect to bunting and relief pitching, and I've written here about how in my view NFL coaches punt way too much.  I might as well go for the trifecta by describing how college basketball coaches screw up.  After all, it's their season!

The substitution pattern followed by almost all college coaches when fouls begin to mount suggests to me that protecting players from fouling out is for them a higher priority than winning the game.  Sounds ridiculous, I know, but has it not occurred to them that when you take a good player out of the game, not because he's winded or playing poorly but because he just picked up his second foul eight minutes before halftime, he's not playing and contributing for the next eight minutes in just the same way that he can't play or contribute after fouling out?  You are in effect fouling him out of the game yourself in order to diminish the possibility that the rules will disqualify him later.  It's as if a healthy person should commit suicide in order never to get a bad diagnosis.  

The illogic seems to me the cousin of major league baseball managers determining never to use their best relief pitcher except to get the last three outs of the game, a practice so common that this best relief pitcher is always referred to as "the closer."  But it's a mistake to suppose that the outcome of the last at-bats of the game will have the greatest impact on who wins.  Bottom of the seventh, visitors ahead 4 to 2, bases loaded, one out, home team's three-hole hitter at the bat.  Bring in your best relief pitcher, now.  It doesn't make sense to save him for the ninth inning, because it's much more likely that who wins the game will be determined by what happens in the rest of the seventh inning than by what happens in the bottom of the ninth.  If the three-hole hitter drives one into the gap, or over the fence, there likely won't even be a bottom of the ninth.

In a similar way, it doesn't make sense to deprive yourself of the services of a good basketball player for long stretches of the game in order to preserve his eligibility for "crunch time."  It's not "crunch time" if the score is 62 to 50.  Everything that happens from the start of the game onward contributes to the final tally.  Consequently, your substitution pattern shouldn't be dictated by considerations about fouls.  No need to go overboard.  Like, if you're playing defense at the end of the first half, and one of your guys kicks a loose ball with twenty seconds left, make use of the dead clock to take out of the game your star point guard who has two fouls (or one foul, or zero fouls, or three fouls).  I think it's crazy, however, if you don't have to do this because he's been sitting next to you since he got his second foul six minutes ago.  The goal isn't to preserve anyone's eligibility.  The goal is to win the game.

For some reason, there's a mythology about the end of games.  It's fans in addition to coaches.  For example, if a player who makes 80% of his foul shots misses one in the middle of the first half, it's just one of the 20% that he misses, though his team has one less point than if he'd made it.  But supposing he goes to the line for a one-and-one with 30 seconds left in a tie game.  Now if he misses it's because he "choked."  Suddenly, it's a moral thing: he missed because he's a bad, unreliable person.  It goes the other direction, too--if he makes the free throw he's a hero with "ice water in his veins."  This reminds me that I also think it's a waste to burn timeouts in order to "ice the shooter."  Almost all coaches do it but is there any evidence it works?  I have a modest example about this one, from a game I was in--didn't happen to be in the Final Four but still.  I can't remember the exact details, but the score was close, there wasn't much time  left, and a guy on our team, Steve Strand by name, had just been fouled.  The other team called time out.  In the huddle, Coach Margo says, "Steve, they're just trying to make you nervous."  Steve replies, "Well, it's working."  Everyone laughs, and a minute later Steve makes two foul shots and we win the big jayvee game by a point or two.  Maybe this doesn't prove my point, but if Steve had missed, it wouldn't prove that innumerable college coaches with 7-digit incomes are right.  Some you make, some you miss, and sometimes, with five seconds left, you better not have burned all your timeouts.

People face death

I've always been attracted, I don't know why, to stories of people facing their own end with a calm demeanor and in accordance with their life-long habits and values.  I suppose philosophers are the leading source, and Socrates the great original, but I have a possibly carping complaint about the Platonic dialogues describing his death.  Didn't Socrates say that "a wisdom full of pranks" describes "the best state of man"?  Yet at his end all is grave and somber and "philosophical," at least in Plato's telling.  I prefer the example of David Hume, the British philosopher known in his day as "The Great Infidel," who while dying of cancer in 1776 received a social call from the pious James Boswell.  It seems to have been Boswell's plan to discover Hume's views altered by the prospect of death, in which case he (Boswell) would then produce a work of journalism describing the "conversion" of a notorious heretic, a popular genre.  But instead he discovered Hume composed, sanguine, witty as ever, and merrily unrepentant of his skeptical views.  You can if you want read of the interview here.  As George Sherburn observed, "the calm cheerfulness of [Hume's] demise . . . greatly annoyed the orthodox."

But there are also the examples of people who will never make it into Wikipedia.  Back in my working days, there once came across my desk the "probate package" of a recent decedent.  His Last Will & Testament was handwritten on lined paper that had been torn out of a spiral notebook, and I could see from his death certificate that it had been drafted and notarized about a week before he died.  One of the provisions read, "I leave to my ex-wife, Karen, the sum of $5 (five dollars) in recognition of how much love and assistance she gave me over the years."  If memory serves, his estate was not negligible--he owned a paid-for house in northeast Minneapolis and had a total of about a half million cash on deposit in different banks.  Another provision set aside the sum of $400 "for booze at my wake."  Maybe Karen has a different story but I like him.

I've also enjoyed the recent steady trickle of reports from palliative care centers, emergency rooms, etc., describing scenes like the one in this tweet from Benjamin Wittes.  For those not inclined to click on the link, a World War II vet, well into his 90s, is rushed to the hospital, where, after being examined, he's told there is nothing that can be done for him and his demise is imminent. "Shit," he replies, "I'm not gonna see the Mueller report, am I?"

Huck Finn and the culture wars

Being interested in Mark Twain, I've been reading up on the Huck Finn wars.  In the American Library Association's list of the hundred books most often challenged or banned from school libraries or curricula in the 2000-2009 decade, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn comes in at #14.  I think it's the best book in the top 20--sorry Harry Potter fans--and for sure it's the oldest. On the local front, about a year ago the school board in Duluth, Minnesota, made national and world news when it booted Huck Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird from district classrooms, which should help Twain's masterpiece maintain it's ranking for 2010-2019, maybe even boost it into the top ten.  Here is the Washington Post article on the Duluth school board's decision, Minneapolis Star Tribune here, Duluth News Tribune here, and the UK's Telegraph here.

As far as I can tell, the dispute is pretty much between those who are offended by the book's language, especially the frequent use of the n-word, and, on the other side, those who think the language might be hurtful to some though the novel has compensating merits and anyway that's just the way people talked back then.  The head of the local branch of the NAACP in Duluth said the ban was "long overdue," since the book contains so much "oppressive language."  Conservatives generally regard the ban as an instance of liberal snowflakery.  Man up and read the book!--they're pro-Huck Finn to own the libs.

No one seems interested in the book as a work of literature.  It seems clear, too, that the people who decide what books may be read for school must be unfamiliar with everything about Huck Finn except that it frequently deploys the n-word.  If you read the book, only extreme obtuseness could prevent you from noticing that the author must be an ardent foe of slavery and the prevailing racist ethos of his day.  It's as if the n-word has achieved totemic status so that when pronounced, including by characters in novels, it blots out all context as well as the last traces of human intelligence.  School board members have to have an opinion about the book but can't spare the time to read it.

Here's something that happens toward the end of Huck Finn.  I guess the passage is "objectionable" and "hurtful"--anyway the n-word appears.  Jim has been sold back into slavery.  Huck learns that he's being held at a certain "one-horse plantation" that turns out to belong to some relatives of Tom Sawyer.  Tom is on his way to visit, but hasn't shown up on the steamboat yet, and the relatives have begun to worry.  Now Huck turns up on the property for the purpose of stealing Jim back out of slavery.  When Tom's Aunt Sally sees Huck, she thinks he's Tom Sawyer--she hasn't seen her nephew in years, maybe ever, so perceives only a white boy of about the right age.  Huck, conscious of his guilty purpose--stealing a slave and freeing him!--is not expecting such kindness.  He knows he's been mistaken for someone else and also that, considering his intentions, it's not in his interest to enlighten her.  They talk.

"Now I can have a good look at you: and laws-a-me, I've been hungry for it a many and many a time, all these long years, and it's come at last!  We been expecting you a couple of days and more.  What's kep' you?--boat get aground?"

"Yes'm--she--"

"Don't say yes'm--say Aunt Sally.  Where'd she get aground?"

I didn't rightly know what to say, because I didn't know whether the boat would be coming up the river or down.  But I go a good deal on instinct; and my instinct said she would be coming up--from down towards Orleans.  That didn't help me much, though; for I didn't know the names of bars down that way.  I see I'd got to invent a bar, or forget the name of the one we got aground on--or-- Now I struck an idea, and fetched it out.

"It warn't the grounding--that didn't keep us back but a little.  We blowed out a cylinder-head."

"Good gracious! anybody hurt?"

"No'm. Killed a nigger."

"Well, it's lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt. . . ."

And she goes on a long jag that's apparently intended to persuade the boy that he shouldn't think a person can't get hurt in accidents of this kind, for she was once acquainted with someone who was injured in a similar mishap, and, now that she thinks about it, he had died when mortification set in.  She uses the word mortification more than once to indicate a medical condition.  If you were in eleventh grade, and the question was what does the author here reveal about the character of Aunt Sally, and how would you characterize said author's attitude toward her, wouldn't the answer be that he's shown her to be a fool and a bigot, and that he's more bitter about the second count than the first, although he likely thinks that the two are steady companions?  Regarding Huck's answer to the question about injuries, is there another instance in the world's literature of an author having loaded into fewer words a similar volume of satiric indignation?  And Aunt Sally just hurdles on by.  

It helps if you've read up to this point with intermittent attention.  For example, a few pages earlier Huck had debated with himself whether he should try to steal Jim off the plantation. His instinct is to do it, but he "knows" that would be "wrong"--stealing! against the law!--and he attributes his wicked inclinations to his poor upbringing and shoddy attendance record at Sunday school.  He almost decides against it, on moral and religious grounds, but finally determines to rescue Jim anyway and risk hell fire in the event he actually pulls it off.  Sunday School administrators, not the NAACP, should complain.

Christmas Day, sick day

 

Merry Christmas!  I am home alone in order to spare my loved ones the sound of me hacking and wheezing and making like a fog horn while using up boxes of Kleenex.  But it's not as sorry a holiday as you probably think.  Someone else can help the kids set up their techie gifts while in peace and quiet I watch tales of murder on Dateline Extra, refilling my coffee cup during the commercials.  If it works out that Theraflu turns to poison when mixed with caffeine in the alimentary canal, my last day will at least have been a pleasant one.

[Later]

I've moved on to new Christmas diversions: reading Twitter while blaring the Ramones.  If it's true about heaven, and Lutherans can go there, generations of my ancestors are looking down with disapproval as I listen to Joey.

We're a happy family....
Sitting here in Queens
Eating refried beans
We're in all the magazines
Gulping down Thorazines
We ain't got no friends
Our troubles never end
No Christmas cards to send
Daddy likes men.

I learn from Twitter that, while the distances from New York City to Chicago and Shanghai to Beijing are similar, the former is served by one Amtrak train per day with a travel time of 19 hours, the latter by 35 "bullet trains" per day with a travel time of 4.5 hours.  It's common to hear one of our earnest public officials complain blandly about "America's crumbling infrastructure," and I share the sentiment, but a bigger problem is the infrastructure that's not crumbling on account of never having existed here.  Could claims of "American exceptionalism" be just a lazy boast sparing us the trouble of keeping up with the competition?  Rail service in our country is embarrassingly poor, as is our transportation system in general--but then, our infant mortality rate is, or should be, a source of national shame.  Here, according to the CIA's World Factbook, is a partial list of countries with a lower infant mortality rate than the USA:

Japan
Iceland
Singapore
Norway
Finland
Sweden
Hong Kong
South Korea
France
Spain
Italy
Austria
Belgium
Germany
Israel
Switzerland
Netherlands
Belarus
Ireland
Lithuania
Slovenia
Estonia
Denmark
Portugal
Taiwan
United Kingdom
Australia
New Zealand
Poland
Cuba
Canada
Greece
Hungary
Slovakia
Latvia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Serbia

You're edging toward countries we patronize with the term "third world" before "USA" appears on this list, below Serbia but ahead of Chile and Lebanon.  I don't think repealing the ACA is going to move us up, unless there were to arise from the resulting wreckage a system of guaranteed national insurance administered by the federal government such as exists in virtually all the big industrialized democracies that outperform us in benchmark measures of public health.  A modest proposal might be to postpone our debate over abortion rights until a child born in America has a better chance to celebrate a birthday than a child born in Cuba--modest, because we could do better than Cuba without breaking into the top 25 worldwide.  If we were really ambitious, we could extend the truce until our infant mortality rate is only twice, instead of three times, Japan's.  

Some advertisers

By always holding forth on Literature and Politics and such, I somewhat misrepresent what I spend my time thinking about.  For example, I'm obsessed with TV advertising, especially the drug ads, though never till now have I come down from the mountain to talk about them.  The virile-appearing, 50ish actors pushing the pharmacological remedies for erectile dysfunction are a staple of standup acts, but I think the comics should branch out into, say, UC, or ulcerative colitis, an inflammatory bowel disease for which symptoms may include bloody, pussy diarrhea, rectal pain, urgency to defecate, and an inability to defecate notwithstanding the urgency--another of the Almighty's little jests!  I got the list of symptoms from Mayoclinic.org, which is somewhat less oblique than the ads for Entyvio featuring poised, relaxed people in the first half of life headed for the jazz concert on the pier. You can't tell which one is the UC sufferer, but it's not surprising they're dating each other, so attractive are they and evidently unconcerned about the location of the nearest toilet.  That's how good Entyvio is.

My favorite character from TV ads is probably Mike Lindell, inventor of MyPillow.  For one thing, I love the way his cross necklace unnaturally spills out of the V in his dress shirt while he's enthusing about how sleep scientists have confirmed the stirring testimonials of regular Joes who suffered from terminal insomnia before purchasing one of his pillows.  Did you know he's a Minnesotan?  Yes, from Mankato, and before he started making pillows he "operated a number of small businesses including carpet cleaning, lunch wagons, and a few bars and restaurants in Carver County, Minnesota."  That's from his Wikipedia article, which also details Mike's trials with alcoholism and crack cocaine addiction, how he almost lost MyPillow but then found Jesus, &c, &c, &c.  The article sounds as if it might have been dictated by Mike even though the writing is only moderately bad.  Would you believe that he and our president see eye-to-eye?  Here's a complete paragraph from Wikipedia:

At the request of then-Republican candidate Donald Trump, Lindell met with Trump in August 2016 in the Trump Tower in New York City.  They talked about the benefits of products being made in America, bringing jobs back to the USA, and helping the inner cities.  From that time on, Lindell was an avid and very open supporter of Trump, even calling Trump, "the most amazing president this country has ever seen in history."  On October 19, 2016, Lindell attended the final presidential debate in Las Vegas, Lindell spoke at a Trump campaign rally in Minneapolis on November 6, 2016 and attended the Official Donald Watch Party on November 8.  He attended Trump's inauguration, receiving an inauguration lapel pin as a personal gift from Trump.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, and would like to see one of Mike's ads for his miraculous pillows, tune into Tucker Carlson's show on Fox, because MyPillow is one of the few businesses that did not pull its advertising after Tucker gave up on the dog whistles and just went in for full-on xenophobic ranting.  He's a prince, too, but it's Mike who's figured out how to make a pillow you can sleep on.

I won't let it go

 

The electoral college, my bete noire until the ineluctable progress of humankind deposits it atop a pile of charred Ford Pintos on history's scrapheap, has one little known but ghastly provision that I almost hope forces itself onto center stage some day, since, being a ruddy optimist, I have to believe the nation's attention would be its doom.  On the other hand, the 2016 result didn't do it, nor the ascendancy of George Shrub in 2000, so I'm probably fooling myself.  

The provision relates to the question of what happens if no candidate for president receives a majority of electoral votes.  This could happen if more than two candidates won some electoral votes, or if, in the current arrangement, which allots 538 electoral votes, two candidates divide them evenly and finish in a 269-269 tie.  Neither scenario is particularly farfetched.  In 1968, for example, George Wallace carried five states, with 45 electoral votes, and Nixon and Humphrey finished in a virtual popular vote tie--Nixon got 43.4% of the vote to Humphrey's 42.7%.  Nixon's winning electoral vote tally of 302 was fueled by a series of very narrow wins, including in his native California, which back then had "just" 40 electoral votes.  Had Humphrey prevailed in California, the electoral vote score would have been: Nixon, 262; Humphrey, 231; Wallace, 45.  No winner.  Nor is a 269-269 tie unimaginable.  In the last election, Trump won 306 electoral votes, including those of Pennsylvania (20) and Michigan (16) by less than 1% of the statewide balloting.  Had Clinton carried those states, and also Maine's second congressional district (which this year flipped from Republican to Democratic control), both candidates would have won 269 electoral votes.

What happens then?  You get points for civic virtue if you know that "the House of Representatives decides"--assuming no "faithless elector" precipitates a crisis by voting for the candidate who lost within her (or his) state's borders.  But the details of "the House deciding" may not be what you think. From the 12th Amendment:

The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President.  But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by state, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary for a choice.

So, in the event that the electoral college does not render a verdict, "the House decides," but the delegation from Wyoming (a single representative) has as much pull as the delegation from California (53 representatives).  After a 269-269 tie in 2016, the score in the House, after California and Wyoming had voted, would have been 1 to 1, and the task would have been to get to 26.  In this regard, it is worth noting that in the next Congress, the one just elected this November, the Democrats will have a 235 to 200 majority, even though there will be more than 25 states with a majority of Republicans in their delegation.  Therefore it's possible that a candidate for president could win the national popular vote by a few million but finish in an electoral college tie, then lose the election in the House even though a strong majority of its individual members preferred him (or her).  What would be the justification?  I mean, I know what the 12th Amendment says, but why is it good, desirable, just, and wise?

National Popular Vote.

 

News of the world

 

There's so much going on in the world that I would not know about but for TV--and I don't mean the news or other standard programming.  For example, there's this Coravin outfit that relentlessly advertises the tiny drill they make that you use on a wine cork before pouring through the pinprick you've bored.  The point is that "wine just isn't as good" after the bottle has been opened, but there is no deterioration if you drill this little opening instead of just removing the cork.  The wine will be just as refined and full-bodied, or whatever, when you enjoy another glass tomorrow night!

So I guess it's a thing to open a bottle of wine and not drink it all down in a single episode.  I don't think the ads mention the price, which I see now is about $300. Hope they aren't counting on expanding their market into Italy and France, because in those cultures people are willing to save a buck, even if it means having another drink.

Pollsters outperform my new ISP

Oh boy, I have switched internet service providers and no wonder I'm saving money with the new guys: so far, all they've done is zinged my credit card for the first month's payment and expressed puzzlement about why I can't connect.  The upside is I am discovering how pleasant it is to sit inside this neighborhood café with a plate full of pancakes, a cup of coffee, complimentary WiFi, and the sun streaming in the tall windows.  Hope I don't spill syrup on my keyboard.  

This being south Minneapolis, the young woman in front of me, way more chic than I (honest!), also has her laptop open, and is either remotely prosecuting her employer's business or maybe working on her screen play, the Diablo Cody of 2018.  The young man over my right shoulder is running down Trump, and his female companion, during a brief interlude, finally has a chance to mention that her relative once worked for Walter Mondale.  I have enough snark to cover my fellow travelers with the left-overs.

I've been a little worried about committing a 21st century social gaffe, appearing standoffish when it's really just my bumbling new ISP.  Sue, I do follow Andy Borowitz--or did, until this past weekend, when I started saving a few dollars a month on home internet.  I just got up for a coffee refill and noticed that the Trump-hater is wearing a t-shirt that says "Shakespeare Downtown."  I don't know what that means but for some reason am reminded of all the times I've thought to myself that what the MAGA crowd calls "virtue signaling" is almost always just plain virtuous.  What can you say about people who try to make a virtue of their sneering contempt for people doing good things?  You volunteer at the shelter?  Weak!

The result of the midterm elections is moving me toward the conclusion that pollsters get an undeserved bad reputation in just the same way that weathermen do: only their failures are remembered.  It's cold today, just as the guy on the radio said it would be yesterday, and the Democrats will take control of the House, with a net gain of 35-40 seats, though the Republicans might gain a couple of Senate seats, also all as predicted.  Moreover, supposed errors are exaggerated.  For example, at the end of the 2016 presidential campaign, an average of the polls indicated Clinton had about a 3-point lead, and she won the national popular vote by just over 2 percent.  Were the polls off by 0.9%?  Horrors!  (It's more likely that there was a bit of movement toward Trump in the final hours.)  On Election Eve 2016, Nate Silver, a card-carrying member of the despised media elite, gave Trump a 30 percent chance of prevailing in the electoral college.  A couple days later, Trumpists gleefully noted his "error" but all that happened is that Jose Altuve's grounder made it through the infield. The pollsters did a lot better than Trump has.

Judge Kavanaugh back in the news

I will always be at least two steps behind the Brett Kavanaugh story.  Maybe, as I'm typing this, some reporter is talking to another girl who partied with him before he went off to Yale, or wherever--I know he went to law school at Yale.  I want to say, though, that, while he's not my kind of guy, I think I part ways with people who are tweeting things along the line of "I too keep at the ready a list of 65 girls from my high school whom I did not try to rape."  The idea is that Kavanaugh's consciousness of guilt accounts for the extremely short lag time between the allegation of an attempted sexual assault leaking into the public domain and the release of a letter signed by 65 women who claim to have known him well enough back in the day to conclude that he was and therefore is a fleshy specimen of that hard working cliché, "a perfect gentleman."  Possibly it doesn't occur to hipsters, but a lot of people around Kavanaugh's age (53) are on Facebook, and it doesn't seem impossible to me that 65 of them could be rounded up on very short order.  

There are other problems, however.  I'm trying to imagine what, had I had gone to Yale Law School and subsequently been nominated by President Marx for the Supreme Court, girls from my high school would say about my character.  I don't think they'd say I was a perfect gentleman.  I think they'd say, "Who?"  Since Kavanaugh attended an all-boys high school, I wonder a little about all these girls who knew him well enough to provide a glowing reference.  They didn't get to know him in civics class.  Maybe at house parties?

Moreover, you don't need legal training to detect a weakness in the evident logic behind this reference letter with 65 co-authors.  The question isn't whether Kavanaugh tried to rape any of them.  The question is whether he tried to rape this woman who says he tried to rape her.  What do these 65 women know about that?  Nothing.  If someone is charged with robbing the corner grocery at Elm & Oak, no one cares that all the other grocers in town say the defendant looks like a nice young man to them.  I'd expect graduates of Yale Law to concur.      

Assassinations and selection bias

 

As a kid, I remember receiving for a gift a commemorative coin set--a Kennedy half dollar and some kind of Lincoln coin set in a colorful piece of cardboard above a list of supposed eerie congruences between the assassinations of the two presidents.  I guess it never goes out of style because today I saw a social media post on it, so I can list the congruences, many of which I'd forgotten:

• Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846, Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946
• Lincoln was elected President in 1860, Kennedy was elected President in 1960
• Both were particularly concerned with civil rights
• Both wives lost a child while living in the White House
• Both presidents were shot on a Friday
• Both presidents were shot in the head
• Lincoln's Secretary was named Kennedy, Kennedy's Secretary was named Lincoln
• Both were assassinated by southerners
• Both were succeeded by southerners named Johnson
• Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808; Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908
• John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln, was born in 1839; Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated Kennedy, was born in 1939
• Both assassins were known by their three names
• The three names of both assassins have a total of fifteen letters
• Lincoln was shot at the theater named "Ford"; Kennedy was shot in a car called "Lincoln" made by "Ford"
• Booth and Oswald were both killed before their trials
• A week before Lincoln was shot, he was in Monroe, Maryland; a week before Kennedy was shot, he was with Marilyn Monroe [Don't remember this one being on the list of my commemorative coin set.]
• Kennedy was shot in a theater and the killer ran to a warehouse; Kennedy was shot from a warehouse and the killer ran to a theater

Have a history teacher explain this, if they can, says the header above the list.

I was quite impressed with the list when I was 8 or 10 years old, but I suppose I've grown jaded, because I feel like making fun of it now.  Ford and Johnson are common names, and if you mean to kill someone, shooting them in the head is a common enough strategy.  Both assassins hit what they were aiming for!  And who are these "secretaries" anyway?

The real problem with this list relates to what people with secondary education call selection bias--"the bias introduced by the selection of individuals, groups, or data for analysis in such a way that proper randomization is not achieved, thereby assuring that the sample obtained is not representative of the population to be analyzed."  So, here's another list:

• Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809; Kennedy on May 29, 1917
• Lincoln died on April 15, 1865, a Saturday; Kennedy on November 22, 1963, a Friday
• Lincoln married Mary Todd; Kennedy, Jacqueline Bouvier
• Lincoln's assassin was born in Maryland; Kennedy's, in Louisiana
• Kennedy served in the US Senate, representing Massachusetts; Lincoln was from Illinois and never served in the Senate
• Lincoln's vice president, first name Andrew, supported slavery; Kennedy's vice president, first name Lyndon, was a champion of civil rights
• While in office, Lincoln and his wife lost an 11-year-old son named Willie; when Kennedy was in office, he and his wife lost a son, Patrick, who was born prematurely and lived for less than two days
• John Kennedy was known as "Jack"; Abraham Lincoln was often called "Abe"
• Lincoln's assassin was shot in a tobacco shed eleven days after he killed the president; Kennedy's assassin was killed in the basement of Dallas police headquarters two days after he killed the president

It's fun, and, by the way, Marilyn Monroe died, of a drug overdose, on August 5, 1962, more than a year before Kennedy was assassinated.

Words for limericks

My thoughts returned to the diction of the "Full Frontal" hostess when actress Minnie Driver tweeted: "That was the wrong word for Samantha Bee to have used.  But mostly because (to paraphrase the French) Ivanka has neither the warmth nor the depth."

My own meager appendix to yesterday's news concerns the way in which the word in question has something like a poetic effect that is, I think, a cousin to what English teachers call onomatopoeia.  You know about this if you somehow managed to stay awake while the teacher was boring the crap out of everyone by woodenly, slavishly making check points next to bulleted items in the printout of the day's "learning objectives."  There are words for sounds, and of course words make sounds too, and when the sound the word makes imitates the sound the word is for, that's onomatopoeia.  I was bored myself, but I believe that's right, and, if it is, examples include: sizzle, whisper, and plop.  It's a favorite device of kiddie literature, as seen, for example, in the opening to The Little Engine that Could:

Chug, chug, chug. Puff, puff, puff.  Ding-dong, ding-dong.  The little train rumbled over the tracks....

Little kids love that. I wonder whether it plays a role in language acquisition.  Once you know how to read, the shine is gone, but before that there is magic in the way the words make the same sound as the train.

Then there are other words, not for sounds, where there is a correspondence between the thing the word stands for and the sound it makes.  I think an example might be "prim."  Doesn't this seem right in an almost inexplicable way?  Something about the single syllable, the short-i sound, and the way in which you close your mouth--purse your lips--to make the opening and closing sounds.  All that speaks of constriction, and constriction is close to what is signified by the word and its associations--stiffly proper, over-proper, an arguable excess of propriety, narrow, cold, uptight, emotionless but efficient.  Prim.

Ivanka Trump is prim.  Samantha Bee is not, which is why she had it in her to apply to Ivanka that bad word whose very sound suggests blunt, ugly force and contempt.  You barely open your mouth to say "prim" and you never shut it to say what Samantha said.  Your tongue gets involved, and the closing t is like spitting, the opposite of constriction.  Reading over what I just wrote, it seems apt that I settled unconsciously on the rhyming adjective "blunt."  Maybe I should get to work on a limerick.  

Index

The Harper's Index is a popular feature of the magazine.  It could as well be called "By the Numbers," since usually it is a surprising data point, or collection of data points, presented as a line or lines in a statistical abstract.  For example (actual entries in the Index):

Percentage of registered U.S. voters who say that Donald Trump is a good role model for young people: 29

Of Americans who said the same of Bill Clinton in 1998: 18

Average number of additional assaults in a city when it hosted a Trump campaign rally: 2.3

When it hosted a Hillary Clinton campaign rally: 0

Here's my offering for a new installment:

Number of Americans killed by Hurricane Katrina: 1,836

Number of people, including terrorists, killed in the 9/11 attacks: 2,996

Number of Americans killed in Iraq war (including killed in action and non-hostile): 4,424

Number of Americans killed in Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria: 4,645

 

 

Joyce Carol Oates tweets

Joyce Carol Oates's Twitter autobiography is a word long: "Author."  True statement, dat.  Wikipedia notes that she has "published over 40 novels, as well as a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction."  Her Twitter activity, likewise prolific, features a lot of pretty standard social media fare, including pictures of beautiful gardens, herself on vacation or dining with friends, her husband, cute animals, mostly her own cats with funny captions appended, the recommended allowance of aggressive Trump-bashing, &c.  There are also, predictably, many literary tweets, and pretty regularly something truly arresting, such as:

Only the newly bereaved see life clearly--what is profound, what is petty; what is permanent in our lives, & what is fleeting.  But they/we must heal--that's to say, lose this tragic clarity & return to the normal state of trivia-besotted contentment.

Whoa!  I hope she isn't meaning to criticize someone who watches the Twins every night, including into and through a highly disappointing fourteenth inning in which they abruptly suffered yet another walk-off loss after two were out and no one on base.  I think I shall persist with my arguably trivial pastimes until such time as my demise stuns my loving daughters into tragic clarity about what matters.  That will be my contribution.

Also, it may have been from Oates's Twitter feed--though I can't locate it now, maybe because her feed is so crowded, maybe because it was someone else's contribution--that I was recently made aware of my new favorite concluding line (there wasn't an incumbent) to a commencement address:  Never forget, it's not who you know, but whom you know.

Do your best, you probably can't do otherwise

 

 

A hearty perennial of philosophy class concerns the question of free will.  Part of what's interesting is the conflict between the evidence supplied by our sensations and the conclusions yielded by reflection.  On the one hand, I could right now, if I wanted, stand up, walk to the fridge, and, even though it's not yet noon, crack open a Miller High Life before settling into the recliner to enjoy some daytime television.  At least, it sure feels like I could do that.  On the other hand, you don't have to persuade me that things happen for a reason, that the "choices" that are made by me and other people have causes, which are themselves the effects of prior causes, and that you don't have to go back very far in this causation tree before you get to places I've never been and had no power to affect.  Think, for example, about what science says about the reason we are the way we are--partly our genes, supplied by our parents, and partly our environment, especially the environment we grew up in, which is also supplied by our parents.  And no one picked their parents.

I was stewing about this the other day because I felt so bad for one of my daughters, the 10-year-old, who confided to me that she was very nervous about having to take a standardized math test in school the next morning.  "What does dad always say?" I asked, and we answered simultaneously, "Do your best!"  But instead of laughing, she only smiled at me, sort of weakly, and my advice does seem pretty thin.  She hadn't been planning on trying to do less than her best and was nervous anyway, so it's not like I had transported her to a new and better place.

I suppose the "deep meaning" behind my lame "Do your best!" is just that doing her best is all she can do.  The truth is that her score on a standardized math test given to fourth graders had settled into a fairly narrow range around eleven years ago, when that sperm fertilized that egg, and, of the settling that's occurred since then, her industry as a student (her choice) is likely a pale influence compared to conditions in the uterus (not her choice), the attention she got as an infant (not her choice), and the quality of the instruction she receives in the school she attends (not her choice). Such a model seems like it might be a plausible resolution of the higher-level free will question.  We feel like we are free either to work the problems in the Chapter Review or watch tv.  The sensation of having this choice tends to obscure the fundamental facts of the case.  You have to admit that other things are apparently like that.  Based on the sensations we receive from living in the world, who would ever imagine that everything in the universe is made of just over 100 different kinds of atoms, and that these atoms are perpetually buzzing around, attracting each other when apart but then repelling upon being drawn together?  No way!

I understand that the above view of things is an insult to the ethos of striving American achiever-types and will seem to some pretty dismal.  There's a happier way to view it, however.  I wouldn't say this to my daughter, because she should do her homework, but there isn't a good reason to be nervous about the math test: show up, take it, "do your best," attain the score that's been aimed at you since before you made choices; also, have fun at recess and be modest and kind to everyone, because the very best have only been the luckiest, and the very worst have had no good luck at all.

 

Sermon

Tony Perkins is the evangelical Christian leader and head of the nutty Family Research Council who has given President Trump a "mulligan" for his dalliance with porn star Stormy Daniels while Melania was home with baby Barron.  Perkins has been widely ridiculed but give him credit for drawing his metaphors from territory familiar to Trump--golf, specifically, cheating at golf.  

Meanwhile, Pat Robertson, host of The 700 Club, said the other day he's being "dominated" by homosexuals.  Imagine all my gay followers clicking on the link, expecting to find a new aid for a recreational pastime, and discovering only that their dreaded agenda is drowning out Pat's requests to send him money.  AlterNet has been inspired to compile a list of "the ten craziest things Pat Robertson has said," one of which is--no kidding--Beware of scamsters in religious garb. I think my favorite, however, is You should cast demons out of secondhand clothes you buy, lest their previous owner's evil infect you. Something about the confluence of triviality and earnest stupidity, together with a nontrivial reminder that the people sending him their money have questions about the secondhand clothes they buy.

I bet Robertson enjoys a private belly laugh when he hears politicians bragging about the small donations they're raking in from heartland Americans. 

Heartland America: is it just a home for the mentally infirm?  Christianity was once a world religion but today, at least in our country, its only vital parts function as a wing of the Republican party, which has clearly lost its way.  Trump finished second in the 2016 Iowa Republican presidential caucuses.  So did Pat Robertson, in 1988.   

Listening to Radiolab

I was home baking cookies Saturday afternoon and so rediscovered that MPR chooses to air its best shows while productive members of society are grocery shopping or watching young children play ball.  This American Life was pretty good but I liked even more Radiolab, which took as its subject stochasticity, or randomness.  You can listen to the show here, if so inclined.  Here's a little teaser to help you decide whether you're interested.  A statistics professor asks one group of students to flip a coin a hundred times and record the results.  A second group is tasked with setting out a likely result of a hundred coin flips; that is, instead of actually flipping a coin, and recording either an H or a T, they simply set out a 100-string-long sequence of Hs and Ts that in their opinion mimics the random result that will be achieved by the actual coin flippers.  The professor leaves the room while the two groups do their work and then, returning to scan the two completed H-T strings, takes around five seconds to identify the one that is based on actual flips.  Always.  Without fail.    

I'm enough of a contrarian to be attracted to the way in which students of probability are less apt to be taken in by "miracles" and assorted other fond beliefs.  Take the notion that shooters in basketball games get a "hot hand."  Years ago, another statistics professor, this one also a fan of the Philadelphis 76ers, tracked the result of every shot taken by individual 76ers over the course of a season.  He then began looking for evidence of streaks when a shooter was "hot."  Turns out that, while fans have a powerful impression that players "get hot," the notion is refuted by data.  For example, Andrew Toney, who was at the time one of the team's leading scorers, made 46 percent of his field goal attempts over the course of the season.  But supposing you look only at shots taken immediately after three successive "makes."  He made only 32 percent of those attempts.  It seems that the players themselves are victims of the "hot hand" fallacy.  A little bit of success changes their conception of what's a good shot, and so their percentage slides until they recalibrate.

People love good stories and aren't inclined to look into them too closely.  Every lottery winner seems to have a unique story but really they aren't different from the losers, who of course don't get interviewed in the media.  If you determine before the numbers are drawn to do a story on the winner, it's a safe bet that word of a "miracle" is going to be promulgated.  The "hand of God" will be detected in an unbelievable outcome.  Indeed, the discovery of theological significance in necessary facts is pervasive.  Another instance: it's not really a sign of God's great beneficence that he placed human beings here on earth, where conditions are such that we can live and prosper, instead of on some eternally frozen and poisonous orb where no one will ever sit down at a word processor to compose a sermon.

Trump goes to the doctor

I have a little crush on Nicolle Wallace, so I turned on the tv yesterday afternoon around 3, and was disappointed to see that she had been kicked to the curb by the president's physician.  But I got over it soon as the doctor started in on the tale of Trump's tape.  Six-three, 239?  This seemed to me . . . off.  My suspicions were not allayed after playing around a little with an online BMI (body mass index) calculator.  Plugging in the president's numbers yields a BMI of 29.9.  If he weighed a pound more, his BMI would rise to 30.0.   Were he an inch shorter, it would be 30.7.  Interestingly, anything 30 or above is regarded as "obese."  

Just floating the theory here that the numbers were jiggered to bring Trump in just under the wire.  Those of us who are of a conspiratorial bent on this question call ourselves "girthers."

Go for it!

In yesterday's NFC playoff football game, the New Orleans Saints were leading the Carolina Panthers 31-26 with two minutes remaining to play.  The Saints faced 4th-and-two at midfield, and the Panthers had used all their timeouts.  In this situation, I think most coaches would choose to punt: the idea would be that the other team, in this case the Panthers, would then get the ball with less than two minutes to play, no timeouts to stop the clock, and perhaps 90 yards to cover for a game-winning touchdown--a poor prospect.  Considering it from the other side, if you try for the first down--only two yards to go--and succeed, you've won the game, whereas if you fail you've shortened the field for the other team by around 40 yards.  

The Saints spurned the punt and went for it on fourth down.  They called a passing play and their quarterback, under pressure from the Panthers' pass rushers, threw toward a covered receiver about 15 or 20 yards down the field.  The pass was intercepted and then fumbled out of bounds.  It was a poor decision to intercept the pass, since if it had just been knocked to the ground the Panthers would have taken possession at around the fifty instead of at their own 30-something yard line.  But it's hard in the moment not to do something that you practice doing and is almost always the best play.  

The question about spurning the punt remains.  In yesterday's game, the Saints held on for the win when the Panthers, after moving the ball to about the Saints' 20-yard-line, threw a couple of incompletions in the end zone before running out of time and downs.  In the view of the television commentator Troy Aikman, the Saints' defense got their head coach "off the hook" for having tried for the first down on 4th-and-two.  I suppose the opinion people have about this depends mainly upon their intuition about what is likely to happen--and, of course, since something does actually happen the door is always open for Monday morning quarterbacking from fans who did not have to make a decision in real time.

What interests me is the possibility that one need not rely exclusively on "gut instinct" to decide on the best strategy in a situation like the one the Saints faced yesterday with two minutes left in the game.  When following the progress of a game on a website such as espn.com, there is a win percentage figure that constantly calculates the probability that one team or the other will eventually win the game.  As the game goes back and forth, the figure fluctuates with the ebb and flow of events.  I assume the figure is based on computer modelling of what actually happens in NFL  games, and this in turn suggests that there is a "right" answer to the question about whether it was wise for the Saints to go for it on 4th-and-two yesterday.  To illustrate, we can just assign probabilities to certain events.  For the Saints, the salient ones would have been the probability of making a first down on 4th-and-two, the probability of a touchdown being scored in less than two minutes when a team starts at their own 10-yard-line and can't call a timeout, and the probability of a touchdown being scored in all the same circumstances only with the offense starting at midfield.  Data from all NFL games played allow one to approximate these probabilities.  If we set them at 70%, 10%, and 30%, respectively, then determining the best strategy is just a math problem. Go for it, because your chances of winning are slightly better!  If you punt, you have a 90% chance of winning (I'm discounting the possibility of unlikely events such as the punting team winning after yielding a touchdown).  But if you go for it, you have a 91% chance of winning.  You can satisfy yourself this is true by considering what you'd expect to happen in, say, 100 games.  Seventy times you'd win by picking up the first down on 4th-and-two.  In the other 30 games, you'd win 21 times by stopping the other team from scoring a touchdown after they take over on downs at midfield.  I cooked the numbers to make things turn out nice.

I also put the word "right"--"right" decision--in quotes above because of course it's impossible to set these probabilities with precision.  The computer model could tell you what happens, on average, in this or that situation in all NFL games, but decisions are made in particular games with particular players who have their own particular strengths and weaknesses and degrees of tiredness and health, etc., etc.  If I had to guess, I'd say that yesterday the Saints' coach reasoned something like:

If I go for it, the outcome may be determined by my offense playing against their defense.  But if I punt, the outcome is going to be determined by their offense playing against my defense.   I feel better with the former.

The use of "feel better," if apt, indicates that these are indeed decisions based on gut instinct rather than data, which is defensible if, as in my example, data modelling renders a close verdict.  That is, it's six of this or half a dozen of that, so I'm going with what my gut tells me is best for my team in this game.  My last point about this, however, is that from everything I can tell the data does not yield a close verdict.  If in an NFL game a team is in a quandary over whether to punt or go for it on fourth down, the default position should be to go for it.  Putting it another way, NFL teams punt way too much: they always punt when the data says they should, and they almost always punt when the data indicates that going for it is the optimal strategy.  One of the early papers on this subject was written by David Romer, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley.  I'm sure he's a football fan, but, as the abstract to his quite math-y paper from 2005 makes clear, he's really interested in the widely accepted view that people who run firms know how to run the business efficiently so as to maximize results:

This paper examines a single, narrow decision—the choice on fourth down in the National Football League between kicking and trying for a first down—as a case study of the standard view that competition in the goods, capital, and labor markets leads firms to make maximizing choices. Play-by-play data and dynamic programming are used to estimate the average payoffs to kicking and trying for a first down under different circumstances. Examination of teams’ actual decisions shows systematic, clear-cut, and overwhelmingly statistically significant departures from the decisions that would maximize teams’ chances of winning. Possible reasons for the departures are considered.

An entertaining summary for those put off by mathematical symbols and the like is here.  Evidence struggles to overturn the dead weight of conventional wisdom.  A leading reason may be that it takes guts to resist it.  If the Saints had lost the game after punting on 4th-and-two, the coach probably would have been asked in the post-game presser whether he wished he had instead tried to make a first down.  But if they had lost the game after going for it on fourth down, he would have been asked about nothing else, and people would be calling for his scalp. 

 

Happy holidays!

I've had it up to about the fourth of July with our president and Fox News &c for all their phony outrage over "the war on Christmas" and all the rest of their whining about "political correctness." Trump may have bragged more about making it okay to say "Merry Christmas" than he has about his supposed triumph in a cage match against all of ISIS.  On Christmas Eve he tweeted:

People are proud to be saying Merry Christmas again.  I'm proud to have led the charge against the assault of [sic] our cherished and beautiful phrase.

Actually, everyone who has maintained a grip understands that the despised "Happy holidays" is just a kind of shorthand for a good-will greeting of too many syllables, something like: Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and, in the event that you are committed to Yahweh or Mohammed or Christopher Hitchens and the New Atheists, best of wishes to you in the new year, too!  Who could be against that?  Trump and "his base," that's who.  They are captains of industry in the manufacture of artificial grievances and no one can leave their post on the assembly line unless it is to complain about the "snowflakes" on the other side.  

Also, it's not true that the Obama Administration waterboarded people who wished one another "Merry Christmas."  Didn't even mildly rebuke them.  Obama himself said "Merry Christmas" all through the season, as did Americans from Seattle to Key West without consequence.  It's false that in America Christians are an oppressed minority.

This constant din about the horrors of "Happy holidays" and other bogeymen of "political correctness"--it's 97% stagnant ditch water.  When Trump & Co. complain about something or other being "politically correct," it's almost always "just plain correct."  The only problem is that their picture preference has been violated.  They wish something wasn't true but it is.  It's useful to consider roughly parallel cases from a common realm--science, for example, since part of the game is to make everything political.  The atomic theory, concerning how all matter is made of atoms, is correct.  The theory of anthropogenic climate change, however, is politically correct.  Same for Darwin's great theory.  The truth is okay so long as it does not cause trouble for the party line.  For things that are true and offensive to the party line they have invented this pejorative, politically correct.  

And anyway, is this why we have a president--to reverse the (imagined) assault on the cherished phrase "Merry Christmas"?  In the unanimous verdict of our intelligence agencies, the Russians interfered in our last national election, and now we're going to have another one in less than a year.  Have we made any progress in protecting the integrity of this basic democratic process?  No, the Administration barely acknowledges the problem, but Trump has made it safe again to say  "Merry Christmas!"  You can draw a line between Trump's Christmas triumph and his inauguration, which he and his lackeys have persistently insisted broke all the attendance records.  In both, he's wrong on the merits, but why is he even talking about them in the first place?

The Case of Kaepernick

Colin Kaepernick, the free-agent quarterback, was born in November of 1987 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  His birth mother, single, 19, and poor, put him up for adoption, and he took the name of his adoptive parents, Rick and Teresa Kaepernick, who had lost two infant sons to heart defects--two other Kaepernick children survive.  When Colin was 4, the family moved from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin to California's central valley, where their youngest eventually excelled in both school and athletics at John H. Pitman High in the town of Turlock.  Colin played football, basketball, and baseball, had a 4.0 grade point average, was nominated for all-state consideration in all three sports, and was a first-team all-district, all-conference, and all-academic selection.  In his senior year, Pitman's basketball team was eliminated from their district tournament by rival Oak Ridge despite 34 points from Kaepernick; Ryan Anderson, currently of the Houston Rockets in the NBA, scored 50 points in the game for Oak Ridge.  Kaepernick received the most attention for his baseball pitching, but he was determined to play college football despite attracting little interest from D-1 FBS programs--a likely factor was his physical specs, 6-4 and only 170 pounds as a high school senior.  He accepted a football scholarship from the University of Nevada after an assistant coach saw him play in a high school basketball game and was blown away by his athleticism.  This turned out well for Nevada: Kaepernick is the only D-1 quarterback to have passed for more than 10,000 yards and rushed for more than 4,000 yards during his collegiate career.  The San Francisco 49ers chose him in the second round of the 2011 NFL draft, and from then till now the headlines of his biography are comparatively well known.  Before becoming a lightning rod for criticism on account of impiety during the national anthem, his biggest brush with trouble was probably when, in 2014, he incurred a $10,000 fine from the NFL for wearing Beats headphones to a post-game press conference--Bose being at the time the official headphone of the NFL.  He's contributed money by the barrelful to charity.

I'm not Kaepernick's official biographer but, if Wikipedia can be trusted, the above is all true. 

That he has become a persona non grata is somewhat perplexing to me.  I had thought that a bedrock American principle is summarized in the saying, I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend onto death your right to say it. Obviously I was wrong.  That people are, or purport to be, apoplectic over such a mild protest seems to me to qualify them for what I guess they call snowflakery.  Much of what is said about Kaepernick is wildly over-the-top.  The bit about disrespecting dead servicemen is a gambit that, if valid, would in effect rescind the First Amendment: people have died in battle, therefore you must be silent.  Former NFL star Jim Brown says Kaepernick desecrates the flag.  I don't know what he means by "desecrate," but the Supreme Court, in an opinion joined by Justice Scalia, has held that burning the flag, which seems well beyond anything Kaepernick has done, is constitutionally protected speech.  There can't be any question about him being within his rights as an American citizen.

Nevertheless, it's apparent that he's been blackballed by the NFL.  The argument that football considerations account for no team picking him up is laughable.  He'll turn 30 in November and, in the most recently completed season, had a quarterback rating of 91 as an occasional starter for a terrible team.  In a game against the Dolphins last November, he passed for 296 yards and three touchdowns while rushing for 113 yards: the 49ers lost anyway.  Yet no one wants him even as a back-up.  The snowflakes say there are so many of them that he's bad for business, but Kaepernick could help a team win.  And isn't winning good for business?  Isn't that why there's a place on rosters for, say, serial abusers of wives/fiancees/girlfriends/escorts?  

Can you really throw someone out of the league for expressing an opinion?  Moreover, for what it's worth, Kaepernick's protests arise from opinions on police shootings and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement that are surely shared by a significant percentage of the league's fans.  Though he isn't on a team, Kaepernick's jersey is still a top-20 seller.  But, without recourse to any economic aspect of his case, blackballing him is simply un-American.

I say something similar about college protestors who shout down wing-nuts who come to campus--they should instead just stay home and study, or take a date to the movies.  It's a cliché, because it's true, that the remedy for stupidity is more speech, more expression, not less.  Jon Stewart has shown pretty convincingly that if you just let them talk, and then play the tape, the sane part of the population immediately comprehends that they are hilariously full of shit.  Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter have recently proven the general principle with their incisive commentary on the hurricane in Florida.

I don't particularly carry the torch for Kaepernick.  His body is festooned with tattoos of bible verses, which, when asked about, he unfailingly says things you'd think should be too stupid for a 4.0 student to believe.  It's pretty much the same shtick that causes baseball players to blow a kiss heavenward while crossing the plate after hitting a homer.  I guess the poor pitcher is just a tool used by God to give glory to the hitter.  You'd think He might check out of the ball game long enough to direct hurricanes away from population centers, but no, He's a real fan.