In Tenure Veritas: Libations From The Ivory Tower

 I do intend to get back to science fiction Sunday posts.  I'm reading China Mieville's The City & The City  right now, and it is amazing .  I also have some thoughts on revisiting Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, and a few other things, but right now, this strikes me as semi-timely, and a break from Washington politics, so I'm-a-gonna write it. You may or many not know the name, Nikole Hannah-Jones, but you have probably heard of the "1619 Project."  Hannah-Jones is the person behind that project.  The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill is currently involved in an imbroglio with Hannah-Jones.  The faculty voted to give her a tenured position in Journalism.  The Board of Trustees overrode the faculty and said, basically, maybe in a few years.  That is the very brief summary of what originally happened.  Here's Inside Higher Ed 's original story .  Backlash ensues, and right now, there is a pressure campaign, with the Boar...

 In order to motivate this morning's post, I have two interview links for you.  One, you can read in short order.  The other is a youtube link, which is about an hour.  First, from Vox , Sean Illing interviews David Faris  about the state of democracy in America.  Next, John Wood Jr. interviews Steven Pinker about a lot of things, including the quality of human life today, the scope of history, perspective, and he even touches on cancel culture.  The Pinker interview is worth your time, but of course, an hour is a long time, so I'll give you the basic points relevant to this post. Anyway, Faris makes the basic claim that American democracy is kind of fucked.  As our latest demonstration, consider the failure of the January 6 Commission.  Why did it fail?  Republicans don't want an investigation of any kind, they don't want to talk about it, they don't want to talk about their complicity, and... they're gonna do it again.  You know ...

 Busy.  Here's somethin'.  Watch the drummer.  That's Leon Parker.  He's a genius.

 A simple observation.  What is the origin of COVID-19?  I do not know.  In the absence of any evidence, my default is to place a high "Bayesian prior" probability on the claim that any given virus (or, in principle, bacterium) evolved naturally.  Could any given infectious disease have originated in a lab?  In principle, I cannot put a probability of zero on that claim, but the null hypothesis, or Bayesian prior depending on your framework, must always be that nightmare petrie dish, evolution.  If you claim that any critter, large, small or microscopic, originated in a lab, the burden is on you, and since you are posing what is fundamentally a conspiracy theory, the evidence required for me to update my Bayesian prior is significant.  That doesn't mean such claims should not be investigated, but me and my shadow  priors, we stick together. There have, of course, been those overly willing to reject the null in this case, for a variety of reas...

 Maybe I'll have something more coherent to say at some point, but I don't today.  For now, I'll simply recommend the first two books of the Hyperion  series, by Dan Simmons.  There are four books in the series, and they are all very highly regarded in the science fiction canon, but I only actually like the first two.  Read Hyperion , and The Fall of Hyperion .  Anyway, here are some quick comments on the set-up, and where I thought I might go.  Perhaps I'll get a post together at some point. The novels take place in the distant future, when Earth has been "oopsed," and humanity mostly lives scattered around a set of planets in a grand empire called the "Hegemony," connected through a set of "farcaster" portals.  Step through a door on one planet, exit somewhere else!  There are AIs controlling it, and the "Ousters," who won't join, and there's time travel, and all sorts of wacky stuff.  It is intricate, and high-minded, a...

 Congress will not authorize a bipartisan January 6 Commission.  That much is now clear.  There are two joint reasons for this.  First, the Republican Party is still a Donald Trump personality cult.  Trump's grip on the party's base is as strong as it ever was.  Since any such Commission would inevitably place blame on Trump, Republicans must protect him and his co-conspirators by blocking the Commission.  Second, Donald Trump has set a new direction for the Party, and we are seeing that not only with January 6, but with the Arizona audit, and similar moves around the country.  Never accept a loss.  That is why Donald Trump incited January 6, that is why we are seeing attempts to undermine confidence in the democratic process, and that is one of the greatest dangers America now faces.  Others have written far more eloquently and elaborately than I about this.  So instead, I have a simple observation, or perhaps question, about wheth...

 The other day, I was listening to John Coltrane's Blue Train .  It is one of Coltrane's earlier albums, before he started experimenting.  Before Giant Steps , before A Love Supreme , before his full embrace of the avant-garde.  Yet, Blue Train  may be the greatest hard bop album ever recorded, standing alongside anything in the discography of Art Blakey, Horace Silver or the other giants of the style.  I was admiring the trombone work of Curtis Fuller, specifically.  The next day, I learned of the recent death of Curtis Fuller.  Today, we honor Curtis Fuller. Let's just marvel at the title track.  First, consider the opening riff.  You need that horn section, of which Curtis is a part.  Is this the hardest thing in the world to play?  No, but that riff is genius.  Then we go into the main piece, and of course, St. John takes his solo.  Yes, there is a Church of John Coltrane in San Francisco, because where else?...

 The CDC's new guidelines on masks and restrictions bring to mind one of the pressing issues of COVID-- artistic life.  Yes, I regularly argue that we should think in terms of numbers of lives and prioritize our moral concerns based on Vulcan logic, but if that is all we are doing, then as I think Mr. Spock would say, who the fuck cares?  One of my concerns throughout the pandemic has been what it is doing to music.  Without performance, without performance venues , music suffers.  In particular, the less-than-famous but more-than-brilliant musicians about whom I  care cannot ply their trade, they cannot hone their craft, and not only is the world denied the fruits of their labors, but many are forced out of music entirely.  Badness.  Yeah, it has been kind of fun being able to relive Couch By Couchwest as musicians turn on their cameras and livestream, but music cannot continue this way.  I have written about it a few times before, but music...

 As the political world continues to grapple with the excommunication and fascinating status of Rep. Liz Cheney (Facts-WY), I think we need to understand how Cheney got here.  It has to do with neoconservatism.  Once upon a time, that was a curse word to the left, but like many political curse words, it has an actual meaning.  It is simply that few know the meaning.  So, let's have ourselves a little (one-way) discussion of neoconservatism, its tenets, and how it put Liz Cheney on the side of right, and against the entire Republican Party  Church of Donald Trump. Neoconservatism.  Think about the word for a moment.  It is actually a rather stupid work.  Neo -.  New.  Conserve .  To preserve.  Defense of the old .  So, um... what the fuck ?!  Like much of our political language, it is stupid terminology, and I would fight against it if I could, but at this point, it is little more than a label for a set of beliefs...

 The CDC's new guidelines state that those who are fully vaccinated have no need to wear masks, except in rare circumstances.  Even indoors, you do not need to wear a mask if you are fully vaccinated.  To quote John Maynard Keynes, "when the facts change, I change my mind.  What do you do, sir?"  To be precise, facts  don't change, but new data become available, and as new data become available, I update my assessments.  What do you do, sir? Masks were never intended to be social signaling devices.  They became so because of Donald Trump, a few others, and the unfortunate decision to turn mask-wearing into a marker of social group identification.  According to the CDC's current assessment, only those not fully vaccinated have a need to wear masks. Before yesterday, a mask was an imperfect signal of membership in Tribe Science.  There was plenty of noise in that signal, of course.  Membership in Tribe Science was imperfectly associat...

 I started blogging in 2016, with a gone-now blog called The Unmutual Political Blog .  The inaugural series was called "Trump To Political Science: Drop Dead," in which I argued, contrary to what my fellow political scientists were arguing at the time, that Donald Trump's rise in the 2016 Republican nomination contest was debunking our models of party politics.  And now, Rep. Liz Cheney (R?-WY) has been ousted from her leadership position in the Republican Party  Church of Donald Trump for acknowledging the fact that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, that Donald Trump is a liar, and trying to tear down democracy itself, and Democrats, who used to call for Dick Cheney's prosecution as a war criminal are cheering for Liz. I have no political science model for this.  Authoritarian demagogs, democratic backsliding... there are elements of what is happening that have appeared in various political science writings, but the saga of Liz Cheney?  The internal leader...

 Let's have ourselves a little (one-way) chat (read: me shouting into the void at a non-existent "you," not because I'm a solipsist, but because nobody reads this blog) about heroes, cults and all that.  I have no intention of mentioning... him .  At least, as I begin to type.  He has a way of insinuating himself, but as of now, despite the fact that the phrase, "cult of personality" is in the title of the post, and I'm a political scientist who writes these long-winded bloviations about the relationship between science fiction novels and modern politics, I do not intend to address... him .  Begone, douchebag.  (Does that work?  Wouldn't it be awesome if it did?) No, I have other people on my mind.  After all, the messianic impulse, by which I mean, the desire to anoint someone as "the one"-- that wretched cliche of he who will bring peace and order and balance and sugar and "spice" and everything nice-- that impulse is a common o...

 Liz Cheney For President. Will it happen?  No.  Do I agree with her on everything?  No.  I disagree with her on rather a lot, including some of the most important issues of our time.  However, Liz Cheney has more courage and integrity than any other political figure in the country today.  Put her on the ballot against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and it's no contest.  I'm voting for Liz.  Yes, really, and if you pay any attention to what I have to say about the woman to whom I refuse to refer by initials-- endearing or deprecating-- you know I mean that. It has become fashionable for a wide range of political observers to sing the praises of Liz Cheney, and while I may have been slightly ahead of the curve in my Cheney-crush, I think it would behoove us to think about what courage means in the political context, and what it means to admire it.  In short, you probably don't admire courage.  You probably just enjoy having an unexpected ...

 In many of these whatever-the-hell-these-are posts, I have provided snippets of jazz in a "here, you can handle this" manner.  Not feelin' it today.  Embrace the chaos.  Sun Ra.  Sun Ra was a madman, probably literally.  He claimed to be an alien, dressed in Egyptian garb, and led a jazz orchestra (the Arkestra) through wild music that challenged even those with open minds.  He was actually a skilled piano player, capable of straight jazz, blues, and anything else, but he was a restless artist, and this  was the result. "Space Is The Place."  This is among his more famous works.  Wild horns, singing and chanting, music spinning out into... well, outer space.  Dizzy Gillespie was famously booted from Cab Calloway's swing band because his deviations from the narrow confines of swing soloing and stage shenanigans were too much for Calloway.  Today, Calloway is mostly remembered for his cameo in The Blues Brothers , and Diz is... ...

 Let's take a break from the heavy stuff to point out what should be obvious, but apparently is not.  If you have been following economic news (the Coinbase IPO, more volatility in bitcoin's price, etc.), we are inundated with more and more stories about cryptocurrency, and bitcoin in particular.  It's still bullshit.  I have managed to dig up my original files from the "Bitcoin is bullshit" series, which I wrote when I was doing The Unmutual Political Blog , so at some point, I'll probably repost that somehow, but for now, I'll just issue a few reminders. -  Regardless of any news you read now, the basic logical problems of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have not been solved. -  The first problem is that any  volatility in the price of an asset, including upward  movement, makes that asset useless as currency because a currency needs to be a stable store of value. - Downward movement means inflation .  The value of the asset is going dow...