It's a Sad, Sad, Sad, Sad World

Years ago I watched a program in which they showed how the use of selective camerawork can create sympathy for the protesters or for the police. First, the cameras showed footage  of police cracking heads, striking protesters with clubs during a riot. You saw people being hurt by the clubs and being sprayed with mace. The voiceover of a newscaster was describing the scene with clear empathy for the wounded.

Next, they showed an alternate camera angle, police being hit by rocks thrown by protesters, police being taunted and threatened, an officer struck in the head by a brick and going down. The voiceover by this talking head tells a story of mayhem and lawlessness, and how the mob is out of control.

NEXT, they show the same scenes, but filmed from another angle further back, and all the action you saw in the first and second accounts was visible from the longer shot. In this manner we saw how easy it was to tell different stories of the same event and thereby manipulate viewers. (Hence, one of the seeds for my essay He Who Controls the Narrative Controls the People.)

I saw that film 40 years ago and have never forgotten it. I also saw these kinds of scenes during the MayDay protest of 1971, which I experienced first hand. (The police brutality was extensive and of a far greater in scale, but I also saw protesters jumping on officers' backs, ripping tear gas masks off, and over isolated violence directed toward cops.) It should be apparent that the reality of these events is being mediated to us. And it's relatively easy to manipulate viewers. By selective focus, we're coerced into drawing conclusions without hearing or seeing all the facts. 

The George Floyd riots/protests produced a whole gamut of feelings that many people were unaccustomed to, from being angry to sad to afraid, sometimes all simultaneously. Here are some of the headlines and stories I observed at that time.

7-Sigma, manufacturer burned in riots, will leave Minneapolis
by Mark Reilly, Mnpls/St. Paul Business Journal
(EdNote: This was probably a story being played out in many bigger cities across the country.)

Column: Will anyone take a knee for retired police Capt. David Dorn?
by John Kass for the Chicago Tribune

New York Times Journalists Scared To Have an Op-Ed Page
by Matt Welch for Reason

From Twitter user eswalker
But the many people not on twitter, they have no idea! Multiple people I've talked to who only occasionally watch MSM had almost NO IDEA about the extensive, widespread looting and property damage. They truly thought just about the George Floyd peaceful protest...

Minneapolis City Council members consider disbanding the police
by Hannah Jones for City Pages

4 St. Louis police officers shot during violent protests downtown
Local CBS News story

Why Target Stores Were "Targeted"
by Missy Crane

Missouri attorney general says Soros-backed St. Louis prosecutor released all George Floyd protesters from jail
by Andrew Mark Miller

Black Firefighter Spent His Life Savings To Open A Bar. Then Minneapolis Looters Burned It Down
by Andrew Kerr for The Daily Caller

According to Larry Elder:
"How many unarmed blacks were killed by cops last year? 9. How many unarmed whites were killed by cops last year? 19. More officers are killed every year than are unarmed blacks. When do the #BlueLivesMatter protests begin?"

* * * *

Lawyer throws Molotov Cocktail into a police car. Blames mayor for not holding back the police. The mayor should have known that the police would get hurt if they tried to stop rioters. Definitely not  a Perry Mason. "Violence against cops was understandable."

Looters In New York City Get Released as Soon as Arrested. Return to streets to loot again.

NYTimes: Shattered Glass in SoHo as Looters Ransack Lower Manhattan

NYPD: 1 Officer Stabbed In Neck, 2 Others Shot In Brooklyn; All Expected To Survive

* * * *

Why Do So Many Young People Like the Idea of Having Big Brother Inside Their Homes?

Detail from a piece by Tara Austin.

This is a scary trend. 

In recent years, there has been a growing trend of younger Americans becoming more accepting of government surveillance. This is in contrast to older generations, who are more likely to be concerned about the erosion of privacy, and threats to our freedom.

This is the article that caught my eye: "Why Are So Many Younger Americans OK With Big Brother Monitoring Their Homes?" (J.D. Tuccille, Reason, 7 June 2023) The subhead reads, "Children raised in an atmosphere of fear become adults who prioritize security over liberty."

Tuccille specializes in government overreach, so he's especially attuned to these kinds of threats. What he strives to get across is that that this is becoming a growing trend among young people. I see it as an extension of the ideas put forth in Coddling of the American Mind, which Tuccille references later in his piece. (See: Are Children Being Raised Too Safe To Succeed?"

There are a number of reasons why younger Americans may be more accepting of Big Brother. One reason is that they have grown up in a world where surveillance is more commonplace. They are used to having their online activity tracked and their movements monitored. As a result, they are less likely to see surveillance as a threat to their privacy.

Another reason why younger Americans are more accepting of Big Brother is that they believe it can make them safer. They see surveillance as a way to deter crime and protect them from harm. They are also more likely to trust the government to use surveillance responsibly. 

These rationales don't hold water for a large swath my generation.

Although some younger Americans are concerned about the potential for government surveillance to be abused, it seems they are in the minority. For the most part, it's a trade-off.  I give up my privacy for the perceived security of knowing that I am being watched.

Tuccille cites research from the Cato Institute: "Americans under the age of 30 stand out when it comes to 1984‐​style in‐​home government surveillance cameras. 3 in 10 (29 percent) Americans under 30 favor 'the government installing surveillance cameras in every household' in order to 'reduce domestic violence, abuse, and other illegal activity,'" the Cato Institute's Emily Ekins and Jordan Gygi wrote last week. "Support declines with age, dropping to 20 percent among 30–44 year olds and dropping considerably to 6 percent among those over the age of 45."

When I was young, Orwell's 1984 was required reading. I'm curious if he's been left behind. This book (and its companion, Animal Farm) is very much worth reading again because of the warnings it provides.   

Implications

There are a number of implications of this trend. One implication is that it could lead to a more authoritarian society. If younger Americans are more accepting of government surveillance, then it is more likely that the government will use surveillance to crack down on dissent and control its citizens.

Another implication is that it could lead to a more unequal society. If the government is able to track and monitor the activities of its citizens, then it will be able to target those who are seen as a threat to the status quo. This could lead to a society where the government is able to suppress dissent and maintain its power.

Privacy matters. Freedom of speech matters, but even more important is freedom of thought. It is important to be aware of the implications of this disconcerting trend. 

If younger Americans are more accepting of Big Brother, then it is more likely that the government will use surveillance to erode our privacy and control our lives. There's no such thing as a benevolent Big Brother. 

Much has already been written about the rise of "smart homes."  ("Alexa, go to sleep.") It is easy to become paranoid about how much data they gather from our movements, our conversations and our email. Yet a growing percentage of young people are comfortable with this. 

Likewise the increased use of facial recognition technology. On my recent flight to Italy the airline used a facial recognition system to identify me as I boarded. They had me hold my unopened passport in my hand just to show that I had one but they never opened it or looked at it. The Delta staff seemed apologetic about the use of this system which made some people squeamish.

Scenes from a couple Hollywood films come to mind. I'm thinking especially of Tom Cruise striving to navigate the maze of cameras and sensors in the film Minority Report. The degree to which our phones track us might surprise you, especially if you're on the wrong side of the law.  

For most of us, there's hopefully little reason to lose sleep over this. I like the title of Banksy's book in this regard: You Are An Acceptable Level of Threat and if You Were Not You Would Know About it. 

What do you think?

Robert Bryce Discusses Current Events with Doomberg

Nope, we're not in Kansas anymore.

This weekend Meredith Angwin (Shorting the Grid) sent me a Robert Bryce podcast addressing many of the energy concerns that I worry about. Bryce is an American author and journalist who writes about energy, politics and other related topics. In this particular episode he interviewed a green chicken named Doomberg.

Doomberg is the nom de plume of one of the most successful new publications on Substack. In this episode, Doomberg’s famed green chicken icon explains the power of anonymity in a time of cancel culture, why politicians prefer platitudes over physics on energy, China, supply chains, the many problems with cryptocurrency, the “profound wave of onshoring” about to occur, and why “there’s going to be a lot of suffering” around the world in the coming months.

Doomberg self-identifies as a small team of consultants that come from industry. "We collectively have decades of experience in the heavy industry, commodity energy sectors. Doomberg is the anonymous publishing arm of that bespoke consulting firm."

The podcast was so insightful I wanted to share some excerpts in the hope that it might stimulate some thinking. Near the beginning Robert Bryce asks what it is about how being Anonymous that helps Doomberg get their message out.

Doomberg: When you write about provocative things, one of our objectives is to be provocative without being polarizing. That’s becoming harder and harder to do in our culture. It’s just a fact of life. And to the extent that being anonymous allows people to or forces people to attack your ideas, as opposed to attacking the person, right? That’s another huge benefit of being anonymous."

Bryce: Let me jump into this piece you wrote February 25. It’s time to get serious about energy. And this is the day after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, trying to get serious about U.S. energy policy and preserve our place in the geopolitical order or be forced to stop play acting as a superpower. 

The laws of physics make our cards transparent to our political enemies. And it’s all too easy for them to call our bluff when they know in advance what we’re holding. So my question here is, why is it so easy or so facile for Pelosi or Joe Biden or John Kerry, who just about two weeks ago said, "Oh, we’re going to decarbonize our entire electric grid, and we’re going to do it in 13 years." Why is it so easy for them to demagogue about energy? Or why do they have such a predilection about it?

Doomberg: Honestly, I chalk it up to shocking ignorance on the part of the people who end up in positions of power. And we have a phrase that we’ve coined, which has kind of gotten popular, which is in the battle between platitudes and physics, physics is undefeated. And this actually dovetails on something that you said about your career and that I think makes Doomberg unique. You have reporting background, we have decades of experience in heavy industry. But we are freed from heavy industry and freed from the confines of corporate public affairs teams that far too often shackle the the executives who who know enough and articulate enough to make the case for energy policy. 

So if you’re working at an Exxon Mobil or you’re working downstream in chemicals at a Dupont or pick your favorite major and you’re an executive, the last thing you’re going to do is go on social media and engage in the tug of war. They’re more interested in stock options, you know, RSU units, not getting cancelled, toeing the company line, letting the professional PR people within their company handle that aspect of the dirty part of the business. Because we’re freed of all of that, we occupy a pretty unique, you know, overlap in the Venn diagram between detailed industry experience, deep background and finance, and an ability to jump into the arena of content creation and effectively compete. And very few teams have all three of those. 

There’s a lot of content creators who come from academia or who come just from finance. We have all three, we have finance, we have industry expertise... I’m a PhD scientist, and I lead many hundreds of PhDs on research programs in renewable energy, on traditional energy, pick your favorite material science development. Very few people who are creating content today for the world of consumers have that kind of background and are willing to share it. And so our political class unfortunately lacks that background. 

What does John Kerry know about the physics of life? Nothing. John Kerry is the product of elite school systems, who, you know, I’m sure he’s a frequent attender of very well fed cocktail parties, and gets all kinds of applause for spouting platitudes. Why wouldn’t he keep spouting platitudes, it’s worked for him for the first, you know, six or seven decades of his life. Eventually, if you speed headlong into the wall of physics at 60 miles an hour, are you going to crash? And we’re going to do that. It’s unfortunate. We are optimistic about what happens after that. But the path function needn't be this terrible. It just seems like we are on an irreversible course to make all the wrong decisions and let physics teaches what’s what the true constraints are.

* * * 

:57 Food crisis

After explaining why the impact of food shortages in the U.S. will not be devastating here in the U.S., Doomberg expresses extreme concern about other parts of the world:

Doomberg: The farmers who are on the brink are the people in South America, and Sri Lanka. India is having crop failures... there’s going to be a lot of suffering in Africa. So the price spike in fertilizer for the subset of farmers who are sort of cash based accounting, and that’s, you know, the majority of them, they’re gonna use less fertilizer. They’re gonna use more manure, they’re gonna have lower yields. They’re gonna have more crop failures. There’s gonna be less food. We believe the behavior in the US that will avert a food crisis here will only make it worse over there.

...And here’s the scary part, Robert, We have outsourced a lot of the heavy industry, mining and things like that to countries that are going to be on the brink. And we’re seeing it already in the copper mines in Peru and Chile. They’re critical inputs into the electric revolution, that are dependent upon these societies being fed and we’re seeing food riots early on. What are we going to see in the fall?

...Their currencies are hyper inflating. Yeah, that’s what happens. Because they can’t afford to pay for the imports needed to run their societies. And it’s tragic. People are going to starve in vast numbers. And we wish this wasn’t true, as we as you quoted in that piece. Never have we been more convinced we're right and more disappointed that we’re right. It’s not a happy prediction. 

* * * 

From here Doomberg explains how much fertilizer we use to grow corn for ethanol or soybean oil for renewable diesel. But once again, there are limitations. The more fertilizer we use for running our cars, the less that is available for the rest of the world. Bottom line: "These are all just trade offs. We could pay a little bit more at the pump and feed the world. Or we could pay a little bit less at the pump and starve the world." 

THERE IS A LOT MORE. If you want to listen to the podcast or skim the transcript, Check it out HERE.

Of Hedgehogs and Foxes, with Applications to Current Events

An op-ed by Lance Morrow in today's Wall Street Journal used an Aesop's fable-style metaphor as a means of illuminating the problem with Critical Race Theory. He begins by citing an observation by political philosopher Isaiah Berlin regarding a statement by the Greek poet Archilochus: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing."

Berlin's essay, published in 1953, suggests that the world is divided between hedgehogs and foxes. Hedgehogs like to explain things by fitting it all into one big, comprehensive super-explanation. Foxes take the approach that things don't work that way and that in fact many things are contradictory or have no explanation at all, or are at best incoherent. 

So begins Morrow's "The Hedgehogs of Critical Race Theory." The subtitle is, "They start with important truths--slavery was wicked--and get carried away into monomania."

MY PURPOSE HERE is not to discuss the pros and cons of CRT, but rather to note that this hedgehog approach to many issues has generally done more harm than good. Here are just a few examples off the top of my head.

McCarthyism
I think it's safe to say that the overzealous excesses of Senator McCarthy were driven by a monomaniacal Hedgehog worldview.

Cold War
By the end of the 20th century's two world wars, most of Western Europe had relinquished control of its colonies. On one level this was a victory for freedom as many parts of the world experienced self-rule for the first time in ages. On the other hand, this resulted in power struggles in many parts of the world. U.S. leaders took a Hedgehog view and interpreted all of these conflicts as a fight against the tentacles of Global Communism.

Marxism
Morrow points to Karl Marx as another example of Hedgehog thinking as Marx attempted to fit every problem in the world into a worker's struggle. (Saul Alinsky, in his Rules for Radicals, extended this same viewpoint into a Haves vs. Have Nots or Have Nots vs. the Status Quo.)

In fact, whether it be Global Warming/Climate Change, Critical Race Theory, Democracy, Environmentalism, Public Education or even Housing (e.g. The Housing Theory of Everything), there are hedgehogs who have distilled that issue into being the backdrop or foundation of all other problems in the world.

The WSJ editorial ends with this summation: "The hedgehog’s most profound character defects are moral vanity and self-righteousness—his fatal, paradoxical intolerance." Beware of dogmatists.

The biggest problem that I see with hedgehog thinking is what it does to dialogue. When hedgehog thinking makes everything else a threat, it kills communication, the primary way we develop solutions to complicated issues. What's needed is the Miracle of Dialogue.

* * *  

I believe the WSJ charges a small fee to read its content. If you're able, the full story can be found here:
The Hedgehogs of Critical Race Theory.

Fox photo by Linnea Sandbakk on Unsplash

Florida Condo Collapse Has Lessons for Us All: Don't Ignore the Signs

When the 136-unit  Champlain Towers South collapses on June 24, the news media announced the incident as a death with an unknown, but large, number of people unaccounted for. A few days later the Washington Post and other media reported that there were now 4 dead and 159 unaccounted for. Today that confirmed death toll is 12 with 149 missing, and most people are already fearing the worst.

A major part of this unfolding story has revolved around the question, "How did this happen?" along with the corollary, "How many other seaside properties are at risk?"

Many news outlets have been noting that there were all kinds of warning signals being flashed these past few years. The condo owners, when informed, were not made to feel endangered. As we often do, we put things off and distract ourselves with "more urgent" concerns.

Today's Wall Street Journal has a story titled, "Miami-Area Condo Failure: Years of Warnings, but Mixed Signals." It notes how that an engineer's report states that "the building's design was flawed from the start." This is probably something not readily observable from a layperson's perspective.

The title of the piece notes that the signals were there but unclear. When leads me to the thought I had after reading about this tragic event during the past week. 

My first thought had to do with a publisher who suddenly found himself in the hospital for nine days and recovering for weeks from a health issue. I saw him at a writer's workshop shortly after he was recovered and asked what he learned from his experience. He said, "Don't ignore the signs."

Those words have rattled through my head for two years now. The applications are many. In my case, I think of my health. And most interestingly, the WSJ article compared this building collapse exactly to that. Or rather, someone they interviewed did. 

Jiann-Wen Ju, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles who specializes in construction defects, likened it to someone who has a slow-moving, underlying chronic condition, that then suddenly manifests as something serious, such as a heart attack.

“That person at some point just collapses,” he said.*

I believe the event has still broader applications. Marriages, cars, businesses and even nations flash signals for years before the singular moment that makes the doom permanent. Collapse doesn't happen overnight.

How's your health? Have you been ignoring signs that you might need to look into? 

How about the health of our nation? Solzhenitsyn's massive multi-volume series The Red Wheel details the decline and fall of the Russian empire from which the Soviet Union emerged. The two decades preceding WWI revealed a foundation with plenty of cracks. 

Events in recent years have been flashing warning signs about the health of our own nation today. How alarmed ought we to be? 

Such were my thoughts this past week. And so it goes. 

* Miami-Area Condo Failure: Years of Warnings, but Mixed Signals, Jon Kamp, Scott Calvert and Deborah Acosta, Wall Street Journal, June 30, 2021.

San Francisco's School Renaming Spree Would Be Funny If They Weren't Serious

TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION DEPT.

A lot of people were probably surprised when mobs began tearing down statues in several cities around the country. What surprised people wasn't that statues were being torn down, but the kinds of statues being destroyed or defaced. It was no longer just Confederate generals, but presidents and people considered heroes in many quarters. 

Against this backdrop I was not surprised to learn that the San Francisco school board was renaming as many as a third of their schools because they were determined to be no longer acceptable. 

Yesterday I came across this disturbing article from The Atlantic titled The Holier-Than-Thou Crusade in San Francisco by Gary Kamiya. Here is the story lead: 

San Francisco has issued its latest grand moral decree, and bad ex-presidents would be quaking in their coffins—if they could stop laughing.

On January 26, the San Francisco school board announced that dozens of public schools must be renamed. The figures that do not meet the board’s standards include Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, John Muir, Robert Louis Stevenson, Paul Revere, and Dianne Feinstein. A panel had determined that the 44 schools—more than one-third of the city’s total—were named after figures guilty of being, variously, colonizers; slave owners; exploiters of workers; oppressors of women, children, or queer and transgender people; people connected to human rights or environmental abuses; and espousers of racist beliefs.

The lively writing is filled with zingers like this one:

The more than 70 million Trump supporters whose most extreme caricatures of liberals have now been confirmed...

and this one:

The city’s move to rename schools will provide invaluable ammunition to Fox News.

* * * 

Evidently the School Names Advisory Committee was assembled in 2018 to address the issue of inappropriate names for the schools in their district. Once they realized the power they had been given, they threw caution to the wind. Kamiya writes:

In keeping with the incorruptible, Robespierre-like spirit of our revolutionary times, the committee decreed that one sin (being a colonizer or slave owner, using an “inappropriate” word, and so on) was all that was required to send a figure to the guillotine. Once that decision was made, the severed heads rolled into the gutter of history.

I encourage you to read the article to see what got Robert Louis Stevenson cancelled. It's so absurd that it defies comprehension? Then again, this has been my biggest concern about PC and Cancel Culture: No Mercy. And the corollary: Facts don't matter.

You should also check out the misinformation that passed as fact which expelled Paul Revere from another school.

As Kamiya puts it, "This debacle is just the latest example of 'progressive' cultural censorship in a city once renowned as a bastion of free speech."

READ THE FULL STORY HERE:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/02/san-francisco-renaming-spree/617894/

* * * 

THE ACRONYM ISSUE

As if the above story weren't disappointing enough, the following is the one I was looking for when I stumbled upon the Atlantic article. This story, by Andrew Chamings, apeared in the SFGate. It is titled:

After renaming debacle, SFUSD says

acronyms are a sign of 'white supremacy culture'

Now I'm not afraid to tell you that acronyms can be a problem. For years I taught a class on writing in which one section was devoted to Acronyms. In that class I showed how every industry has its own set of acronyms. Since the goal of communication is to communicate, we should not use acronyms without explaining them. API means American Petroleum Institute in the auto industry, for example. 

I do know how demeaning it can sometimes feel when people use unfamiliar acronyms and you don't know what they mean but are afraid to show your ignorance. I get it. But to call it white supremacy seems a bit of a stretch. Is LGBTQ a white supremacist power play? I don't think so. 

The SFGate article begins with the re-naming of schools that has been taking place. Then it slides over to the issue of acronyms. 

Some in the district have now taken the confounding stance that acronyms are a symptom of "white supremacy culture" and are working to remove them from buildings.

Evidently the arts department, which has formerly been VAPA (Visual And Performing Arts) is now going to be the SFUSD Arts Department. Go figure.

In a Newsweek story about the acronym issue, Dem congressman Ted Lieu took to Twitter to say "This is stupid. Acronyms are not a symptom of white supremacy culture. They are shorthand to make communicating more efficient. For example, CAPAC stands for Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus. Much easier to say CAPAC. Or ACLU. Or NAACP. Or NASA."

Exactly. 

You can read the full SFGate story here:
https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/school-renaming-SFUSD-acronyms-racist-15919053.php

I was going to do a Wordless Wednesday of Art, but got sidetracked by Dave Barry. Sorry.

One of the best things about our local library (besides all the people who work there) is that it has such a wide array of audio books. I mean, would you rather have what you listen to in your car dictated by Radio Station Program Managers or by you? 

I prefer to be in control. At least when I'm here in my car. That is why for the past three decades I have relied on the local public library for audio books. In the old days it used to be books on cassette. I remember listening to all 48 cassettes on the biography of Elvis. I must have listened to two dozen Elmore Leonard books, though I can't recall how many were cassettes and how many were CDs. I've listened to all three volumes of Mark Twain's autobiography. History, biography, Agatha Christie, animosity, philosophy, Dark Money... it's all there.

Many of those years I worked in Superior, Wisconsin and for a small fee was able to raid both the Superior Library and the Duluth Public Library for their audio content. 

Over the years I've listened to thousands of discs and cassettes, and even if you don't call this "reading" it's a great way to get acquainted with literature of all kinds, whether serious or purely entertainment. In point of fact, Graham Greene classified his own writings as serious and entertainment. Yes, I've listened to all the Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn books available in our libraries, and I've similarly enjoyed all the Dave Barry audiobooks as well. 

I have a brother who used to stop reading my blog posts as soon as I mentioned Dylan, but how can I not quote Dylan now and then. He has lyrics for every moment in time, and this one has been especially been relevant for the past year:

"People are crazy, times are strange."

It is what it is.

When a social media platform can delete tweets by the President of the United States for violating its terms of service (ToS), then we come to realize precisely how much power a U.S. president doesn't have.

* * * *

For this reason, on this January 6 evening, I'm sharing some quotes from Dave Barry's I'll Mature When I'm Dead, which I was listening to as I drove to the local recycle center after supper.

*

If Man A asks Man B for directions, Man B, realizing that Man A is a weak, direction-asking type of male who probably also reads owner's manuals, could decide to attack Man A's village and plunder his women. Man A is not about to run that type of risk.

*

There was a time when the human race did not have technology. This time was called "the 1950s." I was a child then, and it was horrible. There were only three TV channels, and at any given moment at least two of them were showing men playing the accordion in black and white. There was no remote control, so if you wanted to change the channel, you had to yell at your little brother, "Phil! Change the channel!" (In those days people named their children "Phil.") Your household had one telephone, which weighed eleven pounds and could be used as a murder weapon. It was permanently tethered to the living-room wall, and you had to dial it by manually turning a little wheel, and if you got a long-distance call, you'd yell, "It's long distance!" in the same urgent tone you would use to yell "Fire!" Everybody would come sprinting into the living room, because in the 1950s long distance was more exciting than sex. In fact there was no sex in the 1950s, that I know of.

EdNote: This last sentence is evidently hyperbole. Otherwise I'm at a loss at how to explain how my three brothers and I were conceived during that decade. The first test tube babies (in vitrio) were conceived in 1978.

* 
Two invasive species in particular have caused serious concern: Burmese pythons, and New Yorkers. The New Yorkers have been coming for years, which is weird because pretty much all they do once they get to Florida is bitch about how everything here sucks compared to the earthly paradise that is New York. They continue to root, loudly, for the Jets, the Knicks, the Mets, and the Yankees; they never stop declaring, loudly, that in New York the restaurants are better, the stores are nicer, the people are smarter, the public transportation is free of sharks, etc. The Burmese pythons are less obnoxious, but just as alarming in their own way. These are snakes that started out as pets of Miami residents, until one day these residents stopped smoking crack and said, "Jesus H. Christ! We're living with a giant snake!"

*

The American newspaper industry is in serious trouble. How serious? Consider: In 1971, when I was hired for my first newspaper job, there were 62 million newspaper subscribers in the United States; today, there are twelve, an estimated five of whom are dead and therefore unlikely to renew.

*

I think that parents- not all of them, but a lot of them- are sucking the fun out of kids' sports. They're making it clear to their kids that they think sports is about winning, and only winning. This is a reasonable value to instill if you honestly believe your child is going to become a professional athlete. But you need to remember two things: 1. Your child is not, in fact, going to become a professional athlete. 2. There are more important things in life than winning. Such as not being a jerk.

* 

ALAS... Dave Barry has more to say than just booger jokes. 

Related Links
More Dave Barry Quotes
Dave Barry Does Japan

Hitchcock's Rope a Prescient Foreshadowing of Our Current Crisis

"We agreed that there was was only one crime either of us could commit, the crime of making a mistake. Being weak is a mistake."--Brandon

It's a relatively short film by Hollywood standards, but Hitchcock's Rope has all the elements you want in a good suspense story.

In the very first minute of the film two friends--Brandon and Philip--strangle a third friend David Kentley with a rope and hide his body in a chest. This takes place just minutes before the first guests are slated to arrive for a party that will take place in this very room, with David's body right there in their New York City apartment. The guests include David's father, his fiancee Janet and, most significantly, their former college housemaster Rupert Cadell, played by Jimmy Stewart.

I'd seen the film several times over the course of my life, but current events stirred me to want to see it again.

The set itself had moving walls that could be adjusted as the camera rolled.
The body of David was placed inside the chest where the feast was spread
there in the foreground.

One of the interesting features of several Hitchcock films in this period of his career was the attempt to create a confined space where all the action takes place. Lifeboat was such an endeavor as was Rear Window, with Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly, his most successful. The former takes place in a lifeboat, the latter in an apartment overlooking the open courtyard of an apartment complex. The characters in the lifeboat are stuck in the ocean, the main character in Rear Window is bedridden after badly breaking his femur.

What I find interesting in the Wikipedia account regarding Rope is how much of the discussion has to do with the manner in which it was produced and the critical reception (lukewarm) with little real investigation into what I consider the most significant aspect of this film: the philosophical issue that generated this situation.

When the young men were in college there had been philosophical discussions about Nietzsche's Übermensch and De Quincey's Art of Murder, which they interpreted like this. In Nietzsche's argument, the rules that apply to the "common herd" do not apply to the superior men. Combine that with De Quincey's notion that murder can be a work of art and you've got the setup for the murder of David Kentley.

For Brandon, the killing was exhilarating, and indeed an artistically executed masterpiece of design. Philip, on the hand, immediately begins inwardly crumbling, cognizant that this idea in theory was absurd to carry out.

Brandon has the time of his life bringing candles, plates, food and silverware to the living room and placing them directly on the chest with the body in it. The irony here is that the conversation keeps returning to the corpse, or rather, to why David is late to his own party. (Inside joke: he is not absent.)

Though the other guests seem to be oblivious to the clues, Rupert can see that Brandon and Philip are behaving oddly, each in their own way. Philip is drinking heavily and stressing out, Brandon is exhibiting a certain bravado as if he just conquered San Juan Hill.

Brandon even dares to start a discussion on this topic. "I've always wished for more artistic talent. Well, murder can be an art, too. The power to kill can be just as satisfying as the power to create."

David's mother laughs it off, and a little verbal tussle passes between a few of the guests but it's just another passing moment.

As the guests depart, Rupert Cadell takes a fedora out of the closet thinking it his, but then sees the initials D.K. inside the hat. His suspicions are confirmed that something fishy had been going on, but he leaves without saying anything so that he can return to confront the young men with no one else around.

When he returns, Brandon doesn't want to take any chances and pockets a pistol, just in case. As Chekhov famously instructed, you don't put a pistol into the story unless you're going to use it.

The dialogue here is instructive, I believe.

Brandon: Ideas of right and wrong are for the intellectually inferior and don't apply to the intellectually superior.

Rupert: You've given my words a meaning I never dreamed of. Tonight you've made me ashamed of every concept I've ever had of superior or inferior beings. By what right did you feel you deserve to be superior. You've murdered, you've strangled the life out of someone who loved.

Rupert is stunned, horrified and deeply ashamed, realizing that Brandon and Phillip used his own rhetoric to rationalize this senseless act.

* * * *

The gig is up. (L to R) John Dall, Jimmy Stewart, Farley Granger

Rupert disavows all his previous talk of superiority and inferiority, and after a struggle he acquires the gun and shoots the two young men. No, just kidding. He does manage to secure the gun though and uses it to fire three shots out the window to attract attention. As the police arrive--we hear sirens approaching outside--Rupert sits on a chair next to the chest, Phillip begins to play the piano and Brandon continues to drink.

APPLICATION
I have been thinking a lot about the riots and violence taking place these past two months. I've tried to understand what's going on, why so many people are calling for revolution. I'm fully cognizant that so many of our systems are broken, and understand the criticisms. It is the notion of total revolution that concerns me. I don't believe it is rhetoric. When I read what many of the protesters are writing on Twitter and Reddit, they seem quite serious that their intent is nothing less than overthrowing the whole kit and caboodle. And I believe I understand why (to some extent).

When I was in high school, the team teachers in our U.S. History class did something quite intriguing. They taught U.S. history from the point of view of those who were disenfranchised (the indigenous peoples), and how we acquired lands from Mexico, France, Spain through various wars and ventures. We learned about manipulations and machinations, how Southern wealth was created by the utilization of slave labor, all justified with platitudes.

Turning everything around may have been useful and important, but the 50 years reiteration of this pattern of talk, when overindulged, leaves citizens more ashamed of their country than proud and fails to produce any vestige of patriotic feeling if taken too much to heart.

The net result is a generation that can feel like this: "There's nothing worth defending here. Let the Revolution begin. Let them overthrow this heap of dung."

But is that really what our teachers and academics wanted? Many may well have had quite patriotic feelings, but were seeking to put a perspective on things so we are more humble about our history. Like Rupert, they were discussing ideas, but not really anticipating the consequences. "You're giving my words meanings I never dreamed of," Rupert says to Brandon at one point.

America has helped more people and nations than any nation in history. The whole notion of re-building the economies of countries who fought against you in wars is historically unheard of. How many countries have started a Peace Corps to help impoverished nations in other corners of the world?

Of all the critics, I won't say I have been foremost, but I admit I've been one who's been vocal. I do not believe in "My country right or wrong." The Old Testament prophets were compelled to speak when their leaders were out of alignment with justice and doing what was right. I've never believed in the notion that a revolution would be nothing less than a disaster. I'm old fashioned but "if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow."

I share all this because I believe America, specifically the ideals upon which it was imperfectly founded, is worth defending. Destruction is always easier than building something new. There will never be a perfect world, but we can all try to contribute to make this one better.

EPILOGUE
Whereas this film is just a story, it reflects events that have happened in real life. Progressive intellectuals in the 20s and 30s felt that something needed to be done to purify the human race, to clean up the gene pool. Through aggressive lobbying they managed to get eugenics laws passed in 33 states. This bit of our history was all documented. 66,000 people were sterilized, some for as senseless a thing as being a runaway.

How much of what is going on in the global lockdown is the result of a larger chess game being played by power players? What are the belief systems currently at war in all this multi-layered hotbed of conflicting interpretations of events on all sides? What's really going on?

Related Links
Bad Ideas: The Eugenics Movement In America
Eugenics, Revisited
He Who Controls the Narrative Controls the People

Coronavirus Update: What's the Latest?

What's true?

February 8. Here (above) are two adjacent tweets. 

One tweet states that 725 have died and there are near 35,000 cases.

The next says over 50,000 have died and 1.5 million are stricken.

Videos have been posted showing what are allegedly Chinese government workers 

welding doors shut at apartment buildings where people inside 

have the virus.

* * * *

Gallows Humor (Optional)

On the bright side, if the coronavirus is going to wipe out the human race this year, 

I won't have to worry so much about my diet, cholesterol and triglycerides now.

*

According to The Navy Times, the number of cases 

as of 2 days ago is 34,500, not 1.5 million.

According to Al Jazeera the number of actual instances of the disease 

is smaller, not larger.

So who is spreading the disinformation? What is their vested interest?

Are they simply malicious? Or does fear travel faster than reason?

*

According to New Scientist, developing a new vaccine for a new virus 

takes at least a year. So don't fall for promises that you can get rich by 

investing in a biotech that promises to solve it in three weeks.

On the other hand, this same article states,

"The good news is that a few existing drugs might help to save lives in the meantime.
And new treatments could be developed in as little as six months."

*
The aim here is to help reduce your anxiety
if you're susceptible to thinking the worst.

Five Articles Recently Published On Medium Related to the Past, the Present and the Future

These are all fairly short explorations around various ideas. The first two were stimulated by passages from the book Good Strategy Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt. The third examines a thought I had in response to what is happening in France these past several months. The fourth is a brief presentation of how our preconceived biases influence the way we envision the future. The last is a short story idea that came to me around two decades ago when we took a family vacation in the Black Hills.

Lord Nelson, the Battle of Trafalgar and a Lesson in Strategy
https://medium.com/swlh/lord-nelson-the-battle-of-trafalgar-and-a-lesson-in-strategy-51d76e9c48e5?source=friends_link&sk=ecd75488e77e6ab8a766fa370212f94c

Dark Matter and the Psychologist’s Dilemma
https://medium.com/@ennyman/dark-matter-and-the-psychologists-dilemma-93ef7c60c431?source=friends_link&sk=e2e1a6d8146e7beb608377e5938ce9eb

My Biggest Concern About the Green New Deal
https://medium.com/@ennyman/my-biggest-concern-about-the-green-new-deal-9aeb7f671283?source=friends_link&sk=ea252cca8bd976c09c0c879011291984

Notes from Herman Kahn’s The Next 200 Years
https://medium.com/predict/notes-from-herman-kahns-the-next-200-years-fc9f82de6023?source=friends_link&sk=b0663aa9f3f7d1bad3f72314eb66e2a5

Coyote with Broken Mouth (A Black Hills Story)
https://medium.com/@ennyman/coyote-with-broken-mouth-4280c8beb9e7?source=friends_link&sk=0d470297ec73f8d061026c39cc3418c4

Painting by local artist Shawna Gilmore.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to share.