In Tenure Veritas: Libations From The Ivory Tower

 It has been a while since I have read Victor LaValle, and that is a shame.  This man can write.  This morning, we turn to his novel, The Changeling .  There are noises about adapting it for some sort of production, and insert rant here.  Read the book instead.  This one is a sort of creepy, modern fairy tale although the most interesting observations I draw from it come from what seemed to be a throwaway line by one character, making a deeper point that I do not know if LaValle, himself, fully appreciated.  Let us consider the relationship between information, Occam's razor, and morality. LaValle's tale centers on Apollo Kagwa, who is the son of Lillian, a Ugandan immigrant who settled in New York, and Brian West, a parole officer who was following up on matters at Lillian's workplace, which was how they met.  After some time, they got together, and had Apollo.  Brian, however, was a little nuts, and left the picture.  Apollo grew up to...

 As a gimmick of a legal maneuver, Trump has requested that a "special master" review the seized documents to ensure that the FBI is not... mishandling documents.  After recovering documents whose very presence at Mar-a-Lago is pretty much legal proof that Trump was mishandling national defense and classified documents.  Personal privacy, but not national security secrecy.  No one should expect logical or ideological consistency, but this one strikes me as at least kind of funny.

 There is an old aphorism about injecting sunlight into yourself whenever there's a pandemic because generally speaking, enough UV radiation will kill damn-near anything.  Also, remember to stare directly at the eclipse.  Trust me.  It'll be fine.  Anyway, a functioning democracy requires information.  Secrecy is one end of the spectrum, and the other end is a din from which no one can sort truth from fiction amid so many lies and bullshit that the truth is a mere breath amid a symphonic crescendo. Without Christopher Walken demanding more cowbell, democracy dies amid the din. That is not to say that secrecy is always wrong.  National secrets exist for a reason.  Do I want to know what the government has on "UFOs?"  Yeah.  I am highly, highly, highly  skeptical that there are actual, fuckin' aliens, but dude.  Science!  I want to know.  Then, there's the matter of spies, clandestine operations and such.  Things t...

 Pat Metheny, "So May It Secretly Begin."  I am particularly fond of this version, from Trio Live .

 Debt and obligation.  Who owes what to whom?  Consider.  Without any particular elaboration, let us consider the nature of a student loan contract, and yes, it is a contract.  It is a contract with some very generous terms, for important reasons.  I, the taxpayer, loan you money for the purpose of a college education (and hence, for my own salary, which is a little odd in my case, but let's let that pass for the moment).  The interest that I charge you on that loan is very  low.  Why am I willing to give you such a low interest rate?  There are several reasons.  The primary reason is that an educated populace creates a "positive externality" in econo-jargon.  That is, when people pay for college, they not only benefit themselves, they create an educated workforce which benefits the country as a whole.  I benefit from that, even not being part of the purchasing of said education... even though I sometimes am a part of that...

 When the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Dobbs , I decided I needed to go back and re-read this old classic by Philip K. Dick, which is one of his actual novels.  Dick was better known for his short stories, and if we're honest, his short stories and novellas tended to be better because what was most compelling about his writing was that he would have an idea, and with a short story or novella, he had just enough room for the idea, in and out.  With a novel, you need characters, plot development, and all that.  Those were never his specialties, and if we continue to be honest, the quality of prose in science fiction improved in the 1980s and 1990s.  Still, Dick had some fascinating ideas, and the Dobbs  ruling had me thinking back to The Crack In Space . Here's the deal.  It is 2080, and the Earth is overpopulated because Malthus will never go out of style as a plot point.  What are people doing when they cannot get jobs, support themselves, a...

 While the most evil among us seem to live beyond their allotted times, even Donald J. Trump will die.  Ideally in prison, but I am no idealist, and the legal system is filled with Trump-sized loopholes that are less "loopholes" than cartoon-silhouettes created by a caricature running through a wall rather than using a door because doors are for the little people.  But even Trump  will bite the big one.  Eventually.  For as long as he draws breath, he will remain the cult leader and godhead of the Republican Party, yet for all of the Biden age jokes, shall we remember that Trump, too, is old?  He'll die.  What then?  Specifically, what happens to the GOP? I am prompted this morning by one of the more dramatic examples of the Eastasia/Eurasia phenomenon that America has seen.  Prior to the Trump era,  1984  read as far-fetched in the American context.  We are at war with Eastasia.  We have always  been at war with...

 Charlie Hunter & Leon Parker, "The Spin Seekers," from Duo .

 As of today, we still do not know what documents Trump stole and concealed, but the Department of Justice is arguing that nothing in the affidavit for the search warrant can be revealed, given the seriousness of the investigation and the documents involved.  Here is the issue.  The DoJ is raising expectations.  At some point, we will find out what Trump stole, and if this isn't "yuge," then Houston, we have a problem.  As I have said-- and I do not appear to be alone in this assessment-- this is the most serious legal risk Trump has ever faced, and the current DoJ position almost locks them into an indictment because if they don't, then the question will be, how dare they assert that matters are this serious, and then do nothing? What happens?  I still don't know.  It would be unusual to unseal an affidavit, yet the government's argument here is not merely, "that's not standard procedure."  The DoJ's argument is raising expectations, and it ...

 As fond as I am of Liz Cheney, anyone who bet on her surviving that primary was what Trump's Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson (and many others) called Donald Trump:  a "fucking moron."  Of course, there was something a bit troubling about that statement.  Not the "fucking" part.  The "surviving" part.  Cheney had to stay off the campaign trail because Trump's terrorists have been threatening Cheney's life, which was also sadly predictable.  This is the Republican Party. What will or can Cheney do?  For all the speculation, she has literally zero chance of defeating Trump in the Republican contest in 2024, and I detest misuse of the word, "literally."  Can she even run as an independent, and try to play the role of spoiler?  The question is, could she draw more votes from Trump than from Biden/Harris/Whomever?  That's uncertain.  She is more conservative than Trump, but conservatism doesn't even exist anymore.  In princip...

 Gather 'round, whilst I tell the tale of a mathematician-turned-indeterminate hat academic hacker-turned-wackadoo conspiracy theorist.  'Tis a cautionary tale, and an important one!  For we should all walk that line between credulity and wackadoodle-do, lest we turn imbecilic, or wrap our heads in tin foil, and if a scholar and mathematician like Lindsay can fall to the forces of foil, beware! Our tale begins in the far off land of, oh who the fuck cares, and I can't keep up this crap.  It seemed like a fun gimmick for, like, two sentences.  Anyway, who the fuck is James Lindsay?  For those who don't remember, he was one of the co-authors of the " Grievance Studies " hoax, along with Helen Pluckrose and Peter Boghossian.  They were inspired by Alan Sokal, who was a mathematician fed up with postmodernist bullshit.  Sokal decided to prank a postmodernist journal by writing a bunch of nonsensical blather, mixed with leftist tropes, just to see if t...

 I spy with my little eye, a guy who should be in federal super-max!  Of course, he should have been in Club Fed long ago, but learning that the warrant listed the Espionage Act as one of the laws Trump potentially violated when he stole highly classified documents?  How perfect was that?  That said, don't expect Trump to get locked up for an Espionage Act violation.  That is not going to happen.  I still think that the document issue is the only real legal danger Trump faces, but even on this matter, if there were to be a prosecution, it would only be on the easiest charge for the DoJ to get a conviction.  Yet this one is real.  Nothing else is a real legal threat to Trump, but this one is real. But the clock is ticking, because in just over two years... Let's walk through the mechanics of Trump's return to power.  First, the GOP nomination.  Donald Trump has retained his grip on his party, and while there have been occasional indicatio...

 If someone doesn't want you to read a book, read that book.  If the author gets death threats for writing a book, read that book .  In the case of The Satanic Verses , it actually is an amazing novel.  Last semester, I taught a class on banned books, which had a bunch of heterodox nonfiction, and Salman Rushdie's modern classic. I asked the students to guess what was so "offensive" that the Ayatollah declared a fatwa.  Nobody ever gets it, but the novel begins with the two main characters falling from a plane that just blew up, having been blown up mid-air by islamic terrorists.  It is actually a bit jarring for younger, modern audiences who are unaccustomed to seeing that in fiction.  Why?  "Islamophobia!"  It is actually quite rare, now, to see any portrayal of islamic terrorism in fiction, regardless of media.  Yet that was not what bothered the Ayatollah, who supported terrorism.  Rather, there were some weird things that happe...

 Well, hey!  An excuse for some Mingus, as though one needs an excuse for Charles Mingus.  "Oh Lord Don't Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb On Me," from Oh Yeah .  This album has the distinction of being the only collaboration between Mingus and Roland Kirk.

 This time, the head of the crime family is "Big Pussy," and someone ratted on him  to the FBI!  What?  It's a Sopranos  reference.  When you write a blog, they let you grab onto passing references.  What'd you expect, a cannoli?

 So that happened.  This is one of those mornings I reference Ben Bradlee, the longtime editor of the Washington Post .  Supposedly, he used to say that he wanted people to wake up every morning, open up the paper and say, "holy shit!"  Journalists would then call up professors and ask us to confirm, "holy shit, right prof, holy shit?"  My grad school advisor, Nelson W. Polsby, used to say that it was our job to say, "no, not holy shit, this is normal and ordinary, and historically precedented, and here's why."  But sometimes, there really is a holy shit moment.  Like when the FBI executes a search warrant on the home of a former president who very obviously wants to be president again  dictator-for-life, and also has committed a fuckload of crimes, lies constantly, and wraps it all up in the most pathetic, blubbering, self-pitying victim narrative I've heard outside of a ___ Studies department. And yet, through it all, I have been telling you th...

 Time for a science fiction diversion.  According to John Scalzi's comments in the Afterwards, he wrote the novel under post-2020 stress as something of a diversion anyway, so I may as well make my comments at least partially escapist.  I cannot help but comment on politics, and gripe a bit, but while some of Scalzi's novels are more pointed than others, he is mostly known for writing witty banter, and he rarely fails to deliver that.  The Kaiju Preservation Society  has its share of witty banter, a few interesting things about which a political science professor can expound, and some obligatory wokeness because this is 2022.  Ironically, Scalzi did it better when he wasn't trying.  I'll explain along the way. So here's the deal.  Way back in the before-times of early 2020, as COVID was just starting to change the world, Jamie Gray gets fired from a Grubhub-type start-up by his megadouche boss, who fired him on a bet.  In need of cash, he tak...

 It is a funny thing about the QWERTY keyboard.  There are many things about the QWERTY keyboard, but one, in particular, strikes me as funny this morning.  The r  and the t  are right next to each other.  So I repeat:  "the dog that caught the ca_."  Fill in the blank. I am not merely musing on the structure of the keyboard designed by Christopher Latham Sholes, and of course, there are alternative designs.  Personally, I like ergonomic keyboards that are split apart strangely, yet still have a resemblance to the Sholes key organization.  No, I am not  getting off track!  R or t?  I am not merely musing on cliches, which I generally detest.  Instead, I have a point, if a small one. Dobbs .  Because of course.  What, precisely, did the dog catch?  R, or t?  The r  metaphor seems to be circulating, as Democrats look to Kansas thinking that it gives them an indication of a chance in 2022 (um... ...

 In case anyone has not actually seen it (really?), here. So obviously, that was brutal.  In technical terms, it was a Dick move, and what, I'm just supposed to let that hang there?  Anyway, moving on, a few comments.  Dude , the look.  He could have taken out al-Zawahiri with the intensity of that look alone, and he's calling Trump  the greatest threat. Donald Trump has supported calls for the murder of his own Vice President.  The previous Republican Vice President has called him the greatest threat in the history of the republic, a liar, the leader of a violent attempt at a coup...  Damn . It is worth noting how many of Trump's former cabinet members and advisors have said that he is unfit for any office. Yet this is all known.  My observation is the distressing fact that none of this can make a dent in Trump's cult. The cult that makes common cause with Viktor Orban and similar authoritarians. Which means that whatever you think of that g...

 On one or three or... a hundred occasions, it is possible  that I might have... referred to Sen. Susan Collins as... the dumbest member of the US Senate.  Recall the technical distinction between "wingnuts" and "moonbats."  A wingnut is a right-wing extremist, and a moonbat is a left-wing extremist.  My contempt for both does not require me to praise "moderates."  Do not fall prey to that fallacy.  Nevertheless, Susan Collins is a strangely stupid creature, whose crown is occasionally stolen.  This week, by frequent contender, Kyrsten Sinema.  Manchin knows what he is doing.  He negotiated, he got something that likely will not hurt him in West Virginia after backing away from a typically terribly named Democratic bill in favor of a bill that has nothing to do with inflation, but so what?  And then there's Sinema. OK, Kyrsten, you are the "pivotal voter," in political science parlance.  The bill passes or fails by your decisio...

 Yes, I stole that title, but if I can no longer remember where I got it, does that diminish the gravity of the crime?  Decide for yourself.  I could, of course, google it.  I am on a computer right now, but I am lazy, and I would rather simply bloviate a bit.  Anywho, once upon a time, before anyone started making fun of the title, a gentleman named Thomas Frank wrote a very bad book called What's The Matter With Kansas?   Quality and fame are rarely related, unless inversely, and so it was with Frank's book.  Here is the precis .  Republicans use "cultural" issues, like abortion, to trick voters into voting against their economic interests, which is why a state like Kansas votes GOP, even though it "should" vote Dem. The book was wrong in oh  so many ways, and in fact, you could use it to teach methodology as "don't do this."  The most flagrant problem was what we call "ecological inference," which is a highfalutin term for a subtle...