In Tenure Veritas: Libations From The Ivory Tower

For whatever reason, this feels right for the evening.  Miles Davis, "Freddie Freeloader," from the greatest album ever made (maybe), Kind of Blue .

You can tell when I am annoyed with my "real" work by whether or not I post mid-week. Writing is hard.  Which... makes it ironic that I am previewing some future posts about what to do when your favorite writer steps in it.  I gave a quick teaser about this in Sunday's Part IV of the Virtue and virtue-signaling in science fiction & fantasy series.  Next up in that series:  the Isabel Fall fiasco. Yes, I tell everyone who will either listen or read that they should read everything N.K. Jemisin has written.  She is a genius, and the preeminent science fiction author of the day.  The passage of time is a harsh mistress (see what I did there?), but I have a high degree of confidence that The Broken Earth trilogy will take its place alongside the Foundation novels, the Dune series, and the other books that anyone with a passing familiarity with the genre will know.  It will be canon.  Jemisin is that good. However, one of the issues I semi-fr...

So... this is the post that I have been long-meaning to write, and long-dreading.  I truly did like The Traitor Baru Cormorant , and more than that, as I wrote in Part III of this series, I found it to be an expertly-handled job of addressing complex and often controversial social issues from a clear ideological perspective without  falling into the "virtue-signaling" pit.  Instead, Seth Dickinson took a set of tropes and inverted them.  It was a brave book, because a bad -faith reader could accuse him of such things as "fridging," or "burying his gays," but only in bad faith, because what Dickinson actually did was use those tropes against themselves.  Nevertheless, the fact that he did run that risk was noteworthy, because bad-faith readers, by definition, aren't going to care if the trope is inverted.  Just that it's there.  In the case of The Traitor Baru Cormorant , it worked out for Seth Dickinson.  It didn't have to.  He could have gon...

Something African today.  Here's a live performance from one of my favorite Malian guitarists, Boubacar Traore.

There is so much one could say about the Senate impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump, but if you're here, you want something completely different. Rest in peace, Terry Jones.  You will be missed. Anyway, as the Senate began to debate whether the President is the messiah, or ... ... Jerry Nadler, Pat Cipollone and Jay Sekulow got into an exchange about who is the treacherous liar.  The presiding judge in the trial, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, excoriated them for supposedly breaking decorum for their failure to uphold the rules and traditions that make the Senate, "the world's greatest deliberative body."  Roberts did not merely chastise those who broke decorum-- the thrust of his admonishment was that the rules of decorum in the Senate are the reason that the Senate is, "the world's greatest deliberative body." Roberts is, of course, wrong on all counts.  He is wrong with respect to whether or not the Senate is  the world's g...

Just a quick comment here.  You might have missed this, but the Democrats have tapped Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer to give a State of the Union response.  A while back, I did a very-early Veepstakes prediction post, and my assessment of the smart pick was... Whitmer!  Whoever the nominee is, it is absurdly unlikely that the nominee will pick a white male, especially if the nominee is  a white male (and that probability has gone up with Warren's decline).  A nominee will usually pick a statewide official from an important swing state.  I scanned the field, and came up with Whitmer. What does it mean that Whitmer is giving the SOTU response?  It means that her star is on the rise among Democrats at the national level.*   Betting as of today favors... Harris .  Why?  Biden is back in the game, and he and Harris are patching things up.  Harris gets him nothing, though.  Biden would win California automatically....

For Terry.

A good selection for this week's... whatever.  Rahsaan Roland Kirk, "Search for the Reason Why," from Volunteered Slavery .

And we're back.  I've been putting off the Seth Dickinson critiques because I have so much to say about the Baru Cormorant novels.  I think the way to do this is to split this into two separate posts.  This week, I'll address how the first book, The Traitor Baru Cormorant , avoids the pitfalls of virtue-signaling to work as a fascinating social commentary, and then next week, barring more distractions/procrastination, I'll do the next part, and address how the second novel-- The Monster Baru Cormorant -- missed the mark. In Part II of Virtue and virtue-signaling in science fiction & fantasy , I tried to define my terms in some semi-coherent way, and provide an example of a modern author who avoids the pitfalls of virtue-signaling.  I defined virtue-signaling as writing in such a way as to demonstrate one's personal social, economic or political virtue, or to cater to an audience that requires it.  Thus, to write in such a way that avoids  virtue...

You probably know the song, but not this version.  John Hartford, "No Expectations," from Gum Tree Canoe .

I think it's time to do another "Political myth of the week."  I had intended to make this a regular feature of In Tenure Veritas , but I keep shifting directions.  Meh. Anyway, Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer.  Occasionally, we talk about them, but really, the focus in the Democratic contest lately has been on the tension between Warren and Sanders, along with Biden's stubborn poll numbers, and somehow... Buttigieg.  With respect to Bloomberg and Steyer, the news is about how much money they are spending. And yet, we all pretty much know that neither has a snowball's chance in hell of winning.  Sure, a few weirdos put a few pennies on them in the prediction markets, like PredictIt, but no.  Ain't happenin', and it tells you something about how far Warren has fallen that as of this morning, she's trading a penny below Bloomberg at PredictIt .  OK, I didn't see that coming.  I admit it.  She was the betting favorite not too long ago, with...

John Fahey.  I don't exactly have an all-time favorite musician, but if forced to give an answer on that question, many days, my answer might be John Fahey.  Even though I'm a hardcore jazz snob, Fahey is up there with Coltrane and Miles for me.  Here is a live performance of "Wine and Roses."  The original studio recording is from Dance of Death and Other Plantation Favorites .

Sonny Rollins, "I Can't Get Started," from A Night At The Village Vanguard .

Sorry, folks.  I have been working on the next post in the Virtue-signaling in science fiction  series, but it just isn't going to get done today.  The post is running long, and I have real work.  Classes start tomorrow.  Behold, a ramble in its stead. I have some thoughts on bad faith reading, and the problems that bad faith readers create for those of us trying in good  faith to have rigorous intellectual discussion. This morning's post was intended to be a critique of Seth Dickinson's second Baru Cormorant novel, The Monster Baru Cormorant .  The short version is that while Dickinson's first book was a very sharp examination of political, social and economic issues in a fantasy setting that avoided so many of the tropes and pitfalls of virtue-signaling, his second book in the series failed in nearly every way that the first book succeeded.  However, as I found myself writing my critiques, I found myself trying to soften them as I understood...

Tampa Red & Big Maceo, "Can't You Read."  Yeah, I still love the old stuff.

I don't like "the trolley problem."  As a game theorist, I think that it is an example of philosophy going off the rails.  You know the trolley problem, right?  Here goes.  Snidely Whiplash ties some woman-- let's call her, "Nell," to some train tracks.  On a parallel set of train tracks, Snidely binds not one , but oh, say, five  people.  The tracks actually meet at a junction, and your train is headed for that junction.  Right now, the switching mechanism has you set to run right over those five people.  If you do nothing, five people die.  Or, you can pull the lever, switch tracks at the junction, and kill Nell.  Philosophers get themselves all up in knots about whether it is better to let five people die through inaction , or take action when that action results in the death of one, even if the result is a net reduction of four in total loss of life. Philosophers spend entirely too much time thinking about putting their hands ...

Too... many... choices. I'm going with Miroslav Tadic, "The Ways of Trains," from Window Mirror .

Hank Garland, "Move."  Garland was actually known mainly as a country guitarist, but "Sugarfoot" Garland was quite an accomplished jazz guitarist too.

I had intended to do Part III of my Virtue & virtue-signaling in science fiction series today, but as with any blogging endeavor, events intervene.  However, part of the point of the shift to In Tenure Veritas  is to not just do a news of the week commentary, so I'll go about this in an odd way. What will happen with Iran?  I don't know.  There is, though, a well established finding in political science called the "rally 'round the flag effect."  In times of national crisis, especially national security crises, the president's approval rating tends to go up.  Richard Brody wrote most informatively about this, and if you want a book, try Assessing the President .  The rally effect is not an automatic thing, though. Detour to Octavia Butler.  I have actually made a few references to her in what I have been writing on Sundays anyway, so I may as well.  I am currently reading one of her lesser-known sets-- the Earthseed series.  I ju...

Here's a video of Mike Marshall & Chris Thile doing "Shoulda Seen It Comin.'"  You can also get a recording of them playing this one on Live Duets .

I'll be brief here, and link to Roll Call's  write-up . When I post about Bright Line Watch , or otherwise give you an assessment of American democracy, I try to give you not just my professional assessment as a political scientist, but some guidance on how to read that.  Yes, I got's me some o' those fancy letters after my name-- "Ph.D." stands for "piled higher and deeper"-- and I've published some books with Oxford University Press, which only the reviewers have read, because that's how my profession works.  Trees?  Meh.  So, if you were to fall prey to the logical fallacy of "argument by authority," you would believe me cuz' I'm, like, an authority, or somethin'.  However, I am also an "outlier" among my colleagues.  How do I know this?  Every time Bright Line Watch  conducts its "expert survey" on the state of American democracy, I can see where my  rating sits relative to the other professors ...

A few weeks ago, I wrote this little think-piece on power and the importance of checks-and-balances .  Short version:  anyone seeking power is not to be trusted, that's why checks-and-balances are so important, and that's why their disappearance matters so much.  (I also referenced Baru Cormorant, which I'll be bashing soon.) This past week, though, I came across this piece by Emily Todd VanDerWerff at Vox  about power and Game of Thrones .  VanDerWerff's argument is extremely sloppy.  Politics and "genre" over at a "serious" news site!  That's my bat-signal!  (Or, something less cool and less copyrighted.) VanDerWerff claims that the television conclusion of Game of Thrones  built towards the following thesis.  Daenerys Targaryen wanted power.  That desire for power corrupted her.  The people who should  have power are those who don't want  power-- shades of the argument in my post from November 30-- as expresse...

I was indecisive this morning, so here's a twofer.  I thought about throwing in Marcus Miller's "Power" as well, but I posted some jazz yesterday.  Anyway, here's a live performance from Hat Fitz & Cara of "Power," from their Wiley Ways  album, and Chris Whitley doing a live rendition of "Power Down," originally from Terra Incognita .

The Wide Hive Players, "Long Shot," from their self-titled album.