In Tenure Veritas: Libations From The Ivory Tower

 OK, I am a bit behind in the gloriously named "Murderbot Diaries" series, by Martha Wells.  The most recent entry actually won the Hugo, which surprised and impressed me, since what I had read up to that point was essentially engagingly fun action-snark, in contrast to the over-the-top self-seriousness and look-at-my-wokeness which typically dominates the Hugos in moderntimes.  So let's catch up, with some frustration, because alas, Murderbot is gunnin' for the awards rather than just the Targets (intentionally capitalized, in reference to the text). So here's the deal.  In the distant future, not only has humanity colonized space, humanity creates robots and "constructs," which are cyborg-terminator things.  Central to the series are "SecUnits," short for Security Units.  Think RoboCop.  Or Terminator, if you prefer.  Anyway, SecUnits are rented out by "the company" to handle security for dangerous jobs, as disposable appliances, an

 Mike Pence.  A riddle wrapped in a slice of Wonder Bread, wrapped in the pages of Leviticus.  In 2016, before Donald Trump consolidated the Republican nomination, I made a prediction on my now-defunct Unmutual Political Blog  that whoever got the nomination, that person would select Pence as a running mate.  Trump, most prominently, would need someone who both reassured cultural conservatives (given his, shall we say, questionable personal life and ideological history) while reassuring the party establishment that there would be someone non-crazy to ensure that the idiot game show host wouldn't blow up the world on a lark.  As a hardline social conservative, former House member and governor, Pence was the guy who checked every box.  The question for Pence was, why hitch his wagon to Trump?  At the time, it looked like Trump was going to lose.  The political science forecasting models said that the times favored a generic Republican, but a) nobody was paying attention to those mode

 So.  Are we, or are we not in a recession?  Let me check my Magic 8-Ball, or perhaps ask a rodent.  I shall work my way around to that.  What is a recession?  Consider three levels of recession declarations, which is a trick I am borrowing from certain click-bait music channels on youtube, in which guitarists do x levels of [insert style here].  I chuckle and cringe. Level 1:  The layperson's definition.  A recession is a bad economy.  There are several problems with a Level 1 recession declaration.  First, it is easy for people to "feel" like the economy is bad.  General cynicism will always work against economic assessments.  Partisanship is a more important factor, though.  If the president is of Party A, then voters of Party B will say "recession" because a president of Party A gave the economy the stink-eye.  Yet the problems do not even end there.  What is a bad economy?  The economy is not only a multifaceted thing, the facets often conflict with each o

 As a general rule, the world would be a better place if people were honest and honorable, but people are neither honest nor honorable.  What does one do in the context of dishonest, dishonorable people?  There are many potential answers.  We can refer back to moral philosophy and debate consequentialism and deontology.  Immanuel Kant, the leading figure in deontological philosophy, would argue that one must act according to generalizable rules.  Remain honest and honorable, even when dealing with those who are dishonest and dishonorable.  Even those who elevate dishonesty and dishonor to their own form of twisted pseudo-morality.  Yet, is that merely unilateral disarmament?  Consequentialist philosophy could, in principle, justify violations of honesty and honor when dealing with... let's call him "Bitch McDonald," for the sake of a name.  Anyway, if one adheres to a consequentialist conception of moral philosophy, one might justify dishonesty and dishonor when dealing w

 Merrick Garland granted an interview to Lester Holt in which he admitted to having fired James Comey for... oh, wait.  Scratch that.  Here's what happened.  If you don't want to use the word, "lie," then fine.  Say, "dissemble."  Garland is not, under any circumstances, going to prosecute Donald Trump.  More news has broken that the Department of Justice has had its hand forced to initiate some formal investigations that in some way relate to Donald Trump, himself, but there will be no indictment or prosecution at the federal level.  Garland simply cannot admit that, but it is July 27, 2022.  If the DoJ is just now, finally, getting around to maybe kinda thinking about thinking about looking at Trump personally, then someone has been stopping them from looking at him.  His name is Merrick Garland. There are two ways such a thing could happen.  The good way and the bad way.  This is happening the bad way. The good way would be as follows.  A good prosecutor

 It has been quite a week for everyone's least favorite political jackass, Steve-O.  He was convicted of criminal contempt, and much of the political world is transfixed by the audio recording in which Bannon admitted, in advance of election day, what Trump would do and why.  Bannon knew that the first votes to be counted would favor Trump because Republicans would vote in person, but the absentee/mail-in ballots would be reported later.  So, the numbers would shift over the course of the night, and an early Trump advantage would not be stable. What would this mean?  Trump would declare victory early as a matter of strategy, and if the numbers shifted to Biden later, Trump would "do some crazy shit," not because of fraud, but because Trump would not, "go out easy."  All with full knowledge that the process of watching the numbers on election night would be one in which the numbers would start with a Trump advantage and shift to Biden as absentee ballots were cou

 Donald Trump is a liar.  Among the many ways I refer to him is as follows:  the lying-est liar who ever lied a lie.  It may be difficult to remember now, but as recently as 2016, there was a taboo against calling a candidate or politician a "liar," unless one is just some worthless rando on the internet (hi!).  Even the ever-so-slightly more modest empirical observation that a statement is a "lie" rather than a "false statement" was akin to saying "damn."  Once a major taboo, and still enough to raise an eyebrow from stuffier types, hence enough to give some a bit of a thrill, and consequently shunned by major media outlets and commentators.  Yes, it took time before Trump told so many lies that we all just said fuck it, if we can say "fuck," we can call a lie "a lie," and a lying-ass piece of shit liar, "a liar." I guess what I'm trying to say is that a) Trump lies a lot , and b) he lies so much  that he is so

 Ted Greene, "Watch What Happens," from Solo Guitar .

 Wait, is that not how the deal is being covered by major news outlets?  Huh.  Weird.  Here, let me spell this out for you.  In 2020, Donald Trump went lawyer shopping, and eventually found himself the kookiest kook who ever did kook.  He made Rudy look sane, even getting humiliated by Sacha Baron Cohen.  Eastman cooked up the looniest legal strategy ever, which relied on pressuring Mike Pence to start singing to-may-to, to-mah-to, let's call the whole thing off, but that would have been  way  too rock 'n roll for our boy, Mikey.  The Vice President does not, in fact, have the legal or constitutional authority to declare which electoral votes count, and you don't actually have to be all that smart to see what would happen if one accepted such a legal premise.  But of course, Trump is a narcissistic moron, so he a) didn't care about the legal soundness of the premise, and b) was happy when a bunch of his brownshirts tried to lynch Pence for following the law, and here we

 By my calendar, this is the morning of July 17, 2022.  This book came out... um... months ago.  I tend to read Neal Stephenson books relatively soon after they come out, but it's not like there was any emergency, or anything, right?  It's not as if we're facing any pressing crisis, or anything, right?  I could put it off.  Sure.  Like, what's the cost of saying, I already had something else in my queue, and Stephenson books are great fun, but they're tomes, so OK, I'll just read this other thing first.  No harm, right?  And there's no subtext here. Anyway, it has been an occasional source of surprise for me that we don't have more good sci-fi books on climate change.  The last one I read was a clunker.  Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry For The Future , which was such a wretchedly bad book that I actually stopped reading it, and I never  put a book down before finishing it.  That book suuuuuuuuuucked .  ( Post here .)  Fortunately, Neal Stephenson

 In some ways, this is not surprising, and since I comment on likely scenarios for 2024, I may be living in a glass house.  Then again, I have blackout curtains and specialty reinforced glass.  Unless I got cheated by my contractor.  Anyway, the stories are piling up, months ahead of the 2022 midterms, and questions are headed my way from journalists, so sure.  Fine.  Let's do this.  I shall return to the topic many times anyway. What will happen in 2024? Who will be the nominees?  I do not have a clue whether or not Biden will make it, and neither do you.  The line of succession would put Harris in the Oval Office if Biden croaks, and there is no way that she gets passed over for renomination if that happens.  If Biden is alive but just in very poor health?  Does he step aside?  If so, does the party pass over Harris?  If so, for whom?  These are questions for which we have no real historical data, save perhaps for Lyndon Johnson.  When he stepped aside in 1968, the party nominate

 No theme.  I got nothin'.  Here's a live Monk performance.

 Yesterday, the January 6 Committee held more hearings.  Nothing was particularly new nor surprising, with the potential exception of Cheney's claim that Trump committed witness-tampering, which is new, but not even close to surprising.  Rather, the Committee is fleshing out details, and even the witness-tampering allegation will go nowhere.  Merrick Garland will not prosecute it, nor any charge against Trump, himself.  All of which means that in 2024, we go down this road again.  Either Trump wins legitimately, or the GOP steals the election for him. Why?  How can this happen?  It can happen because of the belief that it cannot  happen.  I reference the famous novel by Sinclair Lewis, which has probably sold more copies since Trump than at any point in its history, but consider witness-tampering.  The idea of a president blithely engaging in such a crime is so inconsistent with the American psychological schema that even many who are not dyed-in-the-wool Trumpists cannot fully acc

 A few years ago, when identity-focused books were a subcategory of science fiction and fantasy rather than the entirety of the genre(s), I wrote one of my sci-fi posts on what I thought (and still think) was among the better recent books at the forefront of the trend:  Starless , by Jacqueline Carey.  Fascinating book.  The gist of my commentary was that the construction of the world allowed Carey to run a thought experiment that obviously  could never be run in the real world because of ethical concerns.  That is precisely what is best about literature in general, and sci-fi/fantasy in particular.  Contemplate the counterfactual that we cannot observe, just as state of nature theorists (Hobbes, Rousseau and others) did centuries ago.  I mean, obviously  no one could ever do what the assholes in that book do, right?  Right ?  And worse yet, misreport the findings, right?  Right ?  Oy vey.  However cynical I may seem, remember.  I'm actually a pollyanna. The premise of Starless --