In Tenure Veritas: Libations From The Ivory Tower

 Yes, I like to bash conspiracy theories.  Conspiracy theories annoy me.  Let's get a few things out of the way, right now.  People are too incompetent to pull off a real conspiracy.  All it takes is one  person, blowing the whistle, or even just accidentally flapping his lips at the wrong time to the wrong person, and the whole thing falls apart.  Conspiracies don't work.  That's not to say people wouldn't  try to pull off some conspiratorial vileness.  It's that they can't .  They don't have the intelligence to organize a conspiracy, nor the capacity to keep everyone quiet.  So conspiracy theories are bullshit.  Politically, we read about the failed attempts!  Trump attempted  loads of 'em.  The Eastman Memo probably doesn't count, since it was all in the open, but the pressure Trump was applying to state election officials?  Oh, and the Ukraine phone call, with all of the associated pressure on Zelensky?  If I start talking about all of the shady

 There were many posts I had in my head as I approached my computer this morning, heaping mug of coffee in hand.  Yet when a political science grumble sings its siren song, who am I to resist?  That's right.  I am no one.  Or rather, I am just a schlub, shouting into the void.  So I shall shout some political science into the void, to vent a little frustration at an irritating line of bullshit currently floating around the political commentariat. The Democrats currently have two bills that may or may not pass.  They have their infrastructure bill, which has some bipartisan support, and they have their catch-all bill, which is more like a grab back of social spending items, being moved under budget reconciliation rules so that it can pass on a straight party line vote, as long as literally every Democrat stays in line, and I detest misuse of the word, "literally," but the Senate is 50-50, so even a single Democratic defection in the Senate kills the bill, even though budge

 I got nothin'.  Here's Wes Montgomery doing "Impressions."

 I have expressed opinions ranging from annoyance to irritation at the recurrent suggestions that the Democrats invoke "the nuclear option" in the Senate to do X.  It won't work, and it isn't worth it, at least not for what the Democrats and their base propose. Some review.  Senate rules, as written, omit the "previous question" motion, which is the motion that the House uses to end debate and bring a bill to a vote.  Consequently, the Senate has unlimited time for debate unless there is a "unanimous consent agreement" to limit debate, which allows a minority to block floor consideration through a filibuster.  In 1917, the Senate introduced the cloture motion to end debate, first at a 2/3 threshold, then reducing the threshold to 3/5 in 1975.  That still means a minority can block nearly anything, if committed.  The only real restriction is that which can be passed under budget reconciliation rules. However. The filibuster only exists as long as th

 Let's take a break from the crushing doom that continues to press down upon us with most of the daily news.  Hmmm... how shall we do this?  I need some Pratchett... and a Pratchett connection.  This'll be a stretch.  Well, there's that infrastructure bill that keeps stalling out.  Ah!  Let's do Raising Steam !  Sure, why not? OK, so here's the deal, for those who either don't know, or have forgotten.  Most of Terry Pratchett's books take place on Discworld, which is a flat world that rests on the backs of four really, really big elephants, who are standing on the back of an even bigger turtle.  What's beneath the turtle?  Don't ask.  Discworld is a conglomeration of whatever the hell Pratchett wanted to throw onto it, but the best stories usually took place in the city of Ankh-Morpork.  Raising Steam  gives you a lot of the best characters, but alas, it is not really among the best books.  Still, we're doing Pratchett today so that I can mess ar

 Today, something crazy will happen.  It is a day ending in "-y."  A group of indeterminate size will hold the "Justice for J6" rally, based on the premise that those charged with criminal offenses for the January 6 insurrection are actually innocent political prisoners, or some such.  In other news, Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (R-OH) has announced that he will not seek reelection.  Gonzalez was one of the ten Republicans to vote to impeach Trump for his role in that insurrection.  Gonzalez correctly observed that he cannot win a primary in the modern Republican Party, which remains nothing more than a Trump personality cult and autocratic conspiracy theory mill. What will happen today?  Will there be more violence and death?  I would put the odds at less than 50%, but not zero.  Alas, not zero.  Nevertheless, we are not seeing the same level of preparation, organization, or most importantly, incitement by Trump and top-level leaders with a specific goal.  On January 6, T

 Herbie Hancock, "Riot," from Speak Like A Child .

 To the surprise of nobody who lives in empirical reality, Gavin Newsom remains Governor of California.  To the surprise of nobody who lives in empirical reality, the GOP claimed voter fraud before  election day, which makes no sense to anyone who lives in empirical reality.  So, if the polls show that you are losing, and you lose, that means there's voter fraud.*  Behold... the party of Trump.  The funny thing is, you can go and listen to Larry Elder, and before COVID, and Trumpian election lies, he was an interesting, if provocative person.  If you are a woke college kid, you won't agree with him, but he is  was a smart and interesting guy.  Now... this.  This is our world. Anyway, one of the common claims I keep reading is that Elder was a weaker challenger than Schwarzenegger, which gave Newsom an advantage that Davis did not have in his recall contest.  Well, yes, but there is much more here.  Elder is pretty far to the right, which is far from the median of California, an

 This is merely a brief follow-up observation to my earlier post this morning on Peter Boghossian's resignation and the Grievance Studies hoax.  Boghossian was dinged by Portland State for unauthorized human subjects research, but in a conversation this morning, I was reminded that some of the checks on psychology were conducted with phony submissions.  For example, in one famous study, the scholars took publications in top-tier journals, changed the names, and re-submitted the manuscripts to see what would happen.  Peters & Cici, " Peer Review Practices of Psychology Journals ," from Behavioral & Brain Sciences  June, 1982.  (Yeah, the problems are old.)  The manuscripts were almost uniformly rejected as fundamentally methodologically unsound, and rarely detected as resubmissions.  Were the scholars engaged in this type of endeavor getting human subjects approval for these studies?  I actually doubt it, in which case this would be a real case of selective enforce

 The big news in academia right now is that Peter Boghossian has resigned his position at Portland State.  Boghossian was one of the three co-authors of the "Grievance Studies" hoax, along with Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay.  You can read the original piece here.   There is also a follow-up book called Cynical Theories .  Lindsay, Pluckrose and Boghossian pulled one of the epic pranks in the history of academia, and depending on whom you ask, it was either an example of the intersection of muckraking and scholarship (see what I did there with that word, "intersection?"), or the most evil thing that anyone has ever done, nazi-ism included. It all started, intellectually, with Alan Sokal.  Sokal was a mathematician who got fed up with bullshit.  Hence, he's my hero.  He wrote a total bullshit paper called "Transgressing the Boundaries:  Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity."  If that sounds like nonsense, that's because it is.

 Do I remember where I was and what I was doing when I learned what was happening on 9/11?  Of course.  Am I going to regale you, the reader, with such remembrances?  No.  They don't matter.  At the time, I was a grad student at Berkeley, and I spent the day with some other grad students and faculty.  Among other things, we were uncertain.  We were political scientists and soon-to-be political scientists, uncertain about the future of politics.  What would happen?  What had changed? The conventional claim at the time was that "everything changed," or some such, and as an analyst looks back, one is supposed to claim that the world transformed. I'm going to claim otherwise. The counterfactual.  Counter to fact.  What if the world had been otherwise?  This is how social science addresses the question of causation.  We propose a hypothetical counterfactual world in which something is otherwise, examine our hypothetical, examine what is different, and in doing so, assess c

 I love blasphemy.  It is not merely that I hold freedom of speech sacrosanct, so to speak.  (And how could one blaspheme against that? A fatwa?)  No, I truly love blasphemy.  Why?  It is a meaningful act.  It is an act that says "I will not be constrained by your silly superstitions."  You may live by whatever invented superstitions you choose.  That is your right.  But you may not impose them on me, and if you are offended by my refusal to accept those strictures, then whatever anguish you suffer by my refusal is anguish you impose on yourself.  Blasphemy is awesome. Consider.  People v. Ruggles  (1811).  Fun, little case from the State of New York.  I'm just going to quote from the Case Summary, directly. The defendant was indicted at the general sessions of the peace, held at Kingsbury ... for that he did ... wickedly, maliciously and blasphemously, utter, and with a loud voice publish, in the presence and hearing of divers good and Christian people, &c. of and co