The Cremation of Robert Service

Posted on 16 Jan 2014 by Frank Moraes

Robert Service I am sorry to report that two icons of my youth have died today. The first is a man we all know as simply, “The Professor.” Of course, that’s just the character that he played on Gilligan’s Island. He was, of course, an actual human being named Russell Johnson. And you know what? He was actually a hunka hunka burning love. He was a good looking guy, which I define as, “I’d definitely have rather looked like him!” He could have been a movie star and as it turns out he had a really good career. I’m always seeing old films that he’s in, like This Island Earth. But of course, he will always be “The Professor.” Even to this day, people in my family often refer to me as Gilligan because I have roughly his coloring and have long been painfully skinny. (No more!) But “The Professor” is more my kind of guy. (By the way, his actual name was Roy Hinkley.) He fixes problems, he doesn’t make them. He was a botanist and I am a physicist (although he sure was good at electronics). We both had BS and PhD degrees, but I have an MS and he, for some strange reason, had an MA. So he’s cool with me and I’m sad that he has died, but he was 89. Here is a great bit from a speech he gave in his later years at MIT, “The Professor has all sorts of degrees, including one from this very institution! And that’s why I can make a radio out of a coconut, and not fix a hole in a boat!” We will miss Russell Johnson but we will always have The Professor.

Dave Madden The other icon is a man who is less well know, but still an icon of my young, a man I know of simply as, “Reuben Kincaid.” Now if you are old enough to remember The Partridge Family–Brady Bunch wars, you probably know him as that guy who was on The Partridge Family who you never really understood the purpose of. If you were a little older, or if you still think about the show like some losers I am, you know that he was their agent. Reuben Kincaid was played by Dave Madden. He didn’t have the kind of career that Johnson had. I believe he started as a stand-up comedian and have limited success with that. But eventually he made it to Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In which led to The Partridge Family and eventually Alice. He was 82.

On this day in 1908, the musical comedy legend Ethel Merman was born. When I was younger, I thought she was kind of a joke. That’s the problem with being so successful, you can become a cliche. But over time, I came to see that she’s absolutely great. Here she is with another Broadway legend, Mary Martin, doing a medley of many of their hits. It will make you feel better about life, I’m almost certain. (Extra musical geek points for every show you can name, except for Annie Get Your Gun and South Pacific—you are expected to know those!)

The great writer Susan Sontag was born in 1933. I mostly know her for her excellent essays. But she wrote and did so much more than that. That’s not to say that I completely agree with her. She was controversial—explicitly so. But if a public intellectual does not piss off a lot of people, she isn’t doing her job. And if Susan Sontag hadn’t driven Camille Paglia to fits of apoplexy, I don’t know what the point of life would be. One of my great desires in life is just to make Paglia angry by telling her something like, “You’ve spent the second half of your career in one big apologia for very clearly blaming rape victims for the crimes committed against them. Do you miss the days when you were still relevant?” Sontag, now dead over 9 years is still relevant. And just tell me, who ever wrote a better sentence than, “Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Balanchine ballets, et al don’t redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world.” I don’t necessarily agree with that, but it raises the kinds of questions that we should always be asking ourselves so that we can become better than we are.

Other birthdays: composer Niccolo Piccinni (1728); screenwriter Ruth Rose (1896); one of the greatest film editors of all time, Margaret Booth (1898); inventor Frank Zamboni (1901); hamburger tycoon Carl Karcher (1917); singer-songwriter Jim Stafford (70); country music star Ronnie Milsap (68); and the great film director John Carpenter (66).

The day however, belongs to the great Robert Service who was born on this day in 1874. He is known for his poems about the Yukon. But the truth is that he was something of a fraud. He wasn’t a prospector. He worked at a bank before moving to Whitehorse. There he hung out and listened to stories. I’m not saying this invalidates him. I think he always wanted to be a performer and writer. And his work is good. He wrote the kind of poetry that people still enjoy reading to this day. The best example of this is “The Cremation of Sam McGee.” This came about because Service was talking to a prospector who told him about a partner who he had to cremate on the trail. So he turned that story into a really compelling and funny poem. Service had a good sense of humor that he showed on many occasions. This is my favorite. You could just read it, but here is Service himself reciting. Note the very old style of reading it:

Happy birthday Robert Service!

Hollande Fucks Julie Gayet and French Economy

Posted on 16 Jan 2014 by Frank Moraes

Francois Hollande As many in America get excited about the French sex reports that are only scandalous in America, there is actual very bad news out of France. But first up, the sex scandal.

French President Francois Hollande was caught having an affair with actor Julie Gayet. And it may indeed be the case as Joshua Keating says that, The French Merely Pretend to be Blase About Sex Scandals. But while he may be right that they are as interested in the sex lives of famous people as anyone else, they are not puritanical about it the way we are here in the United States. Here it is not news that a politician cut food stamps for millions of poor children, but it is news that he had a one-night stand during some conference. What’s more, the French media don’t treat Hollande’s sexual affairs as political matters.

Meanwhile, Hollande has moved over to the dark side politically speaking. The supposed socialist has decided that the best way to get France’s economy going is to do what the conservatives want: cut social spending and cut taxes! Sound familiar? Sound like exactly what the Republican Party in our own county always wants to do? Sound like what every person who ever passed Econ 101 would tell you is exactly the opposite thing to do?

Francesco Saraceno quotes Hollande saying Tuesday, “L’offre cree meme la demande.” This means more or less, “Supply creates its own demand.” That is, the old conservative canard that by making more stuff there will suddenly be people there to buy it. In economics, this is Say’s law. (Actually Say’s law is a bit more complex than this but it is basically the idea that all economic downturns are the result of businesses not producing the right stuff.) I call it the “Field of Dreams” fallacy: if you build it they will buy. It’s pretty simple to disprove. Assume you have an economy like ours: there are 100 people, 99 of them have no money and one has a huge amount of money. If some great low cost innovation comes along, only the one person will be able to afford it. Of course, the real economy is more complex than that but the principle is the same. Here is a great graph from Saraceno’s article:

The graph shows year by year what French businesses claim to be their biggest problems. The graph is kind of hard to read (go over to Saraceno’s article for a better copy), but the blue line is “demand” and the yellow line is “supply.” So roughly 50% of firms are suffering from lack of demand and 15% are suffering from supply problems. Roughly 10% (purple) are suffering from both. But as Saraceno points out, “Firms move from demand difficulties to no difficulties and back, but in the past six years they did not substantially change opinion on red tape, regulation, labor costs.” Do you see any evidence there for cutting the taxes of the rich?

This morning, Paul Krugman wrote a great response to Hollande’s new claim, France by the Numbers. He shows that while France is not doing great, they are actually doing fairly well. And much more important, the nonsense that Hollande is now pushing will only make things worse, not better. Currently, France’s GDP is going up. It’s budget deficit is going down. It’s debt-to-GDP ratio is on its way down. And France can borrow money at reasonable rates. So why the sudden turn to the right? Is it just another case of Lord Acton’s observation that power corrupts and that, “Great men are almost always bad men.”

I am especially upset, because I’ve been a big Hollande booster. He was the “moderate socialist” who would do the right things, but incrementally and not upset the nation. Well, I guess this is just more evidence moderates of all stripes are useless because when it comes right down to it, they all come running back to the power elite like a lonely dog desperate for a pleasant pet.

Of course, when Hollande’s new found conservative economics turns out to only make things worse, I doubt very seriously that the people of France will blame it on the fuck-the-poor and give-to-the-rich policies he now favors. They will understandably think that getting fucked for the benefit of the rich is just the socialist way. I think Hollande needs to spend more time hitting the economics books and less time hitting the lovely Ms Gayet.

Economic Inequality and Chemical Spills

Posted on 16 Jan 2014 by Frank Moraes

4-methylcyclohexylmethanol I haven’t written much if anything about the West Virginia chemical spill. That isn’t because I’m not interested in it. I haven’t been covering much politics for the last couple of weeks. Or much of anything else. But Reed Richardson wrote a great article on the coverage of the spill, or lack thereof, Let Them Drink Coke: The Mainstream Media’s Casual Incuriosity of the West Virginia Chemical Spill. In it, he explains the main reasons that the story hasn’t gotten more attention is the laziness of the national media.

Rather than report the story, they just report the political reactions to the story. But in West Virginia, even the Democrats are afraid of saying anything that might upset the coal industry. If the Democrats and Republicans agree on this spill, it must just be an unfortunate accident like a tornado. Sure, you cover it, but there’s no long term story there. The problem is that there is a story here. And as bad as this is for the people (And environment!) of West Virginia, the story is much bigger than even that.

John Boehner claims that we have enough regulations on the books and then has a temerity to ask, “Why wasn’t this plant inspected since 1991?” Well, I’ve got one reason for you: the government doesn’t spend enough money to pay people to do the necessary inspections. And this is because of people like John Boehner who know it is hard to repeal regulations, but it is easy to deprive agencies of the money they need to perform their mandated duties. In fact, most Republicans would eliminate the entire EPA if they could. And they’ve been gunning for the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act. (Note: the Clean Water Act was passed under a Republican; the Clean Air Act was greatly expanded under two different Republican presidents.)

But I can hear the conservative cry foul, “But the government just doesn’t have the money to properly regulate!” And, “The private sector can’t afford to clean up their act when the economy is weak!” Both of these statements are exactly the opposite of the truth. The government can now borrow money at no cost. Thus, it should be borrowing money to clean up the nation and repair and expand infrastructure. And do you know what? That would stimulate the economy. As for the second claim, the economy is bad for workers. Business is doing better than ever. Now is the time they can afford to clean up their acts. And do you know what? That would stimulate the economy, because it would force the rich who are just sitting on piles of cash to actually spend some of it. This is not rocket science, folks; this is Econ 101.

Boehner’s question is an excellent example of conservative double speak. On the one hand, he wants to claim that this wasn’t the fault of Freedom Industries; it was the government’s fault for not doing its job. (You know, the job John Boehner actually thinks the government shouldn’t be doing?) On the other hand, conservatives (not John Boehner specifically) usually think that if left alone, businesses will do the right thing. They say things like, “Why would they pollute half a state? That just costs them money!” (The answer is that not doing any maintenance for 23 years saved them far more than any clean-up or punitive costs this spill will cost.) Well, my conservative friends, you can’t have it both ways. Either Freedom Industries is totally to blame here or we need to properly fund our government’s regulatory systems.

Richardson makes another great point about the spill:

For instance, it’s no accident that Wall Street Journal reporters started poking around the Christie Bridgegate scandal not long after a few Journal editors got stuck in the Fort Lee traffic on their way into work. One wonders what kind of wall-to-wall coverage that same size chemical spill might have enjoyed if it had shut down the water in a tony neighborhood like Georgetown or the Upper East Side.

The only state that has poorer people on average than West Virginia is Mississippi. Richardson complains when the Washington Post compared life in West Virginia to “camping,” writing, “What is happening in West Virginia is not at all like camping, it’s more like a taste of the Third World, where the powerful behave recklessly and leave the poor to suffer the consequences.” And that, in the end, is what it is all about. In the coverage of Hurricane Sandy, there were lots of stories of middle class people (none of truly poor people that I remember), because they were close by to the rich who really matter. West Virginia is not exactly a Mecca for the beau monde.

To me, the West Virginia chemical spill story is yet another story about income inequality. It’s all about economics. As I always point out, although I am a liberal on pretty much all issues, I don’t especially care about anything but the economic issues. If we lived in a reasonably equitable country, we would be doing something about global warming. We wouldn’t be treating coal with 4-Methylcyclohexanemethanol to make it “clean.” We would be revitalizing West Virginia so that it’s people could be doing something that is not destroying the planet. Of course, Freedom Industries itself is a fairly small company with about 40 employees and roughly $5 million in profits each year. But it only exists because of far bigger and more profitable coal companies. The huge profits provide great incentives to create externalities. And the huge profits provide great political power to make sure that when tens of thousands of people are harmed by those externalities, nothing costly is ever done to these power elites.

And as Reed Richardson notes: that includes even having the stories properly covered by the national media.

Afterword

The local press continues to provide good coverage. This morning’s news, Pregnant? Bottled Water Recommended. As of Friday, the concentration of the chemical was at 2 ppm. As of today, it seems to be below 1 ppm, which the CDC claims is safe. But they say if a woman is pregnant, it is best that they wait until the concentration is below detectable levels. Regardless, many people question this 1 ppm level, being as it is based on very little study. The US Navy laboratory at Norfolk Naval Air Station, Norfolk, VA says the only safe level is less than 0.057 ppm.

Martin Luther King the Man

Posted on 15 Jan 2014 by Frank Moraes

Martin Luther King Jr It’s kind of shocking, really. Today is, in a concrete way, Martin Luther King day, yet there is almost no mention of it. I’ll come back to it, but it seems very strange to me. And offensive.

On this day in 1622, Moliere was born. He was such a great French playwright that I actually know who he was and have read about him. I have to admit, I know him mostly as a counter-example to people who claim that Shakespeare was the greatest playwright ever because he was both a playwright and an actor. Well, first: who cares? Second, Shakespeare was a minor actor—certainly no star. But Moliere was a star and perhaps the the greatest comedic playwright in western literature. And remember: Shakespeare wrote terrible comedies. (Of course, it doesn’t matter to the Shakespeare apologists; they will just argue that tragedies are what really matter; you see: I don’t hate Shakespeare at all—as anyone who reads me knows, I’m actually very fond of him; it’s a Shakespeare apologists that I just can’t take.)

But there are a couple of other great playwrights who were born today that I have never heard of. For example, there is the great German playwright Franz Grillparzer who was born in 1791. He was exactly the kind of sullen and bitter man you would think romanticism would produce in a German. Also, the Russian playwright Aleksander Griboyedov who was born in 1795 and died just 34 years later.

The great Russian mathematician Sofia Kovalevskaya was born in 1850. She is known for her work in differential equations and mechanics. It was only when I read that, that it occurred to me that the reason that I’ve always loved classical mechanics more than any other kind of physics: it is basically pure math. And it doesn’t matter how much you add “realism” to it. For example, the simplest mechanics assumes no resisting forces. But you can add resisting forces. For example, you could add a constant resistance or one dependent upon velocity. That, as I recall, is solvable with pure mathematics. It is indicative of an object moving slowly in a viscous fluid. An object moving through air is generally dependent upon the square of the velocity. That, in general, is not solvable. Anyway, if I totally confused you, you should have some idea of how much more brilliant Kovalevskaya is than you are. (Or I am; I make no claims for myself!) As always for women even today: they have to be better than a man does to reach the same level in the profession. It’s sad, but it doesn’t help to pretend it isn’t true.

The great zydeco musician Queen Ida is 85 today. Here she is doing “Jambalya.” It is music that makes continuing to live seem like a rational decision:

Other birthdays: probable celebrity murderer Marie Lafarge (1816); Freud’s teacher Josef Breuer (1842); writer Mazo de la Roche (1879); the father of the hydrogen bomb, Edward Teller (1908); actor Lloyd Bridges (1913); musician Captain Beefheart (1941); the man Hillary Rodham Clinton murdered, Vince Foster (1945) [Note: it is an outrage that this man’s tragic suicide was used by conservatives for years to make political points. If you really think that the Republican Party is worse now than it was 20 years ago, all you have to do is look at what the conservative movement said about his death. None of those people should be allowed in polite society without a profound apology. But of course, nothing has happened them. They are evil people. They are destroying my culture. And they are thriving.]; comedian Andrea Martin (67); actor who I only bring up because I missed his father’s birthday, Mario Van Peebles (57); and actor Regina King (43).

The day, however, belongs to the great civil rights leader Martin Luther King who was born on this day in 1929. Now, there are two MLKs: the man and the symbol. Mostly, we cherish the symbol. Even conservatives who are absolutely against the continuing civil rights struggle say nice things about King the symbol. According to them, he would even be in favor of their “free” market, kill the poor economic policies, even though he died during a trip to support a labor strike. But none of that especially matters right now. A man was born on this day—a man who transcended this mortal coil. And on this day, at the very least, we celebrate that man who would be 85 today.

Happy birthday Martin Luther King!

Afterword

Jerry Brown’s Indictment of the US

Posted on 15 Jan 2014 by Frank Moraes

Jerry Brown The two news organizations that I turn to now are Al Jazeera America and the Los Angeles Times. Why? Because the former is really good. And the latter is good and has not yet started charging me to read it. (Although I feel certain that this is coming.) But even more, over the last six months, I’ve found myself feeling more and more estranged from the dominance of “national” politics, which is defined as whatever is going on in Washington and New York. Don’t get me wrong. I really like both New York and Washington. I have very fond memories of them both. But they are not nor would they ever be home. It isn’t quite right to say that I’m a California boy, though. I’m a left coaster as defined by American Nations. And that means that I’m not really at home down in Los Angeles. But the Times covers my section of the world. (The San Francisco Chronicle still kind of sucks online, unless you’re really into sports.)

One of my heroes is Jerry Brown. This doesn’t mean that I agree with him about everything. But as far as politics goes, there is no one better and I tend to think there is one one who is even equal. We had a great experiment here in California. You see, one of my most hated canards is that politics is easy and if we just got rid of the professional politicians, we could solve all our problems. We here in California got a chance to try that. We elected (and I am not proud of this) Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of the truly great state of California. (Really, what is with all this “great state of…”? Is Wyoming really a “great state”? I don’t think so. If it were part of California, we might call it the “great congressional district” but that’s about it!)

Arnold Schwarzenegger Look: I have lots of problems with Schwarzenegger, but I fully admit that he is a very smart and capable man. But he was a political amateur. You could see this when he spoke at the 2004 RNC. He spoke in glowing terms about Nixon. Well, as you know, I’m a big fan of Nixon. But Schwarzenegger made two mistakes. First, he mistook political rhetoric for political policy. Hey: listen to what Paul Ryan talks about! It’s all about leveling the playing field and getting rid of crony capitalism. Then look at his budget. It’s all about unleveling the playing field and taking money from the poor and giving it to the rich. This is the most elementary political error one can make, and it is primarily a mistake made by conservatives—especially immigrants. His second mistake was to believe that the Republican Party of George Bush the Younger was the same as the Republican Party of Richard Nixon the Only. Hell, at that time, the Republican Party was mostly pro-choice! Now the only choice that the Republican Party believes in is the choice of the rich to do whatever they want and the choice of the poor to try to make ends meet with the crumbs that the rich leave on the table.

So it was no surprise that Mr I’m Gonna Take Charge was a complete failure as governor. But who knew? Maybe no one could fix California. And then, the 73-year-old former governor Jerry Brown came into office and showed what a professional can do in the job. He did many things that I was none too happy about. But hell, what was he going to do? I’m none too happy that I can’t afford season tickets to the San Francisco Opera. Life sucks some times and when a state is billions of dollars in the red, there is going to be pain. (NOTE: this is not true of the federal government!) And he managed the situation in the best way that any man reasonably could.

Now that California’s budget problem is solved, the question is what are we going to do with the money. Brown has some very good ideas, including $1.6-billion addition to the state’s “rainy day fund.” Of course, not everyone is happy. The courts think they ought to get more money. The court system thinks it’s getting the shaft (defined as $105 million more per year), but the Brown administration has said that other parts of the government—most especially education—have suffered more and thus deserve more. Again, I don’t agree with him completely, but he does his job well—probably better than any other politician.

Bearing this in mind, consider the news from yesterday, Brown Rules Out Presidential Bid. There has been a lot of talk about him running. After all, you could cite the “California Miracle.” But he said no. What’s important is how he said it. According to the article:

“No, that’s not in the cards. Unfortunately,” he told reporters at a news conference before brightening about his current job: “Actually, California is a lot more governable.

That should make us all pause. Legislatively, California is a mess. It is almost impossible to raise taxes. Every two years there is up to a score of really bad ballot initiatives that the corporatocracy has gotten the people to ignorantly put there. Statue of Liberty And then we have all the other problems of Washington including a Republican Party committed to destroying the government. So if Brown thinks that California is more governable and he is the best executive of the last two generations, what does that say about the state of governance in the United States?

I absolutely do not believe in revolution. I am committed to pacifism. I think that violence always makes things worse for the people (Like me!) who just want to live their lives. But today, at least, I am very pessimistic. The only possibility for a more just society may be to destroy it and start over. Because day by day, the United States is becoming a less perfect union. And the fact that a great man like Jerry Brown would rather stay in California than deal with the country as a whole is a perfect example of this.

Where Exactly in Hell I’m Going

Posted on 14 Jan 2014 by Frank Moraes

Inferno You all know how much I love tests. Well, Andrea—as Nice Atheist Girl—sent me to the Dante’s Inferno Test. Now, being one of the few people I know who has actually read The Divine Comedy, I feel I should point out that it is not what we in the Jesus biz call canonical. Dante was just having a bit of fun with the Catholic ideas of hell, purgatory and heaven.

What’s more, the writers of this test don’t seem to have read The Inferno themselves. I say this because the results of the test include the category, “Virtuous Non-Believers.” This was the ultimate Christian apologist’s get-out-of-jail-free card. Christians at the time loved the Greek Philosophers, most especially Aristotle. These were noble men. But they couldn’t go to heaven, now could they? Can you say “Original Sin”? I knew you could! Jesus wasn’t around to cleanse their sins. So the “Virtuous Non-Believers” circle is for virtuous people who were around before Christ. Or, I suppose, people who have never heard the word about Jesus. But for a person like me who has heard that Jesus washes away all my sins and still says “What a crock of voodoo!” will not make it into the “Virtuous Non-Believers” circle.

Here’s a little aside. Don’t you think that it at least kind of sucks that God waited all that time to send Jesus down to save us? And don’t you also think that it would have made a lot more sense to send Jesus down somewhere really populated and well-documented like China, perhaps? Even if you are a Bible literalist, God waited 4,000 years to let people just rot without the saving grace of Christ’s blood. And if you aren’t a biblical literalist, he waited at least 100,000 years before it occurred to him that he ought to do something to save men’s souls. There are only two possible conclusions. Either, God is an idiot, who certainly doesn’t deserve to be worshiped. Or God is evil, in which case he, I don’t know, doesn’t deserve to be worshiped.

I know what my good Christian friends will say about this. “I’ve given up trying to understand him; I just accept his love.” But I don’t think I want to accept that kind of love. As Richard Carrier said in The God Who Wasn’t There, he couldn’t be happy in heaven, knowing that his non-believing friends and family members were being tortured forever in hell. So my take on the Christian God, should he exist, is that he’s like Santa Claus: he talks tough, but in the end, all the kids have been good enough. Or, he’s an evil mother fucker who is going to torture us all for eternity, so why even try?

But these are minor issues! What could be more fun than to find out which level of Dante’s Inferno one will end up in! So I took the test. Of course I took the test! I believe in tests! I believe that if you understand a test, it will tell you something about yourself. For example, I think the IQ test might tell us something about ourselves, if only we understood the tests. And we do not understand the tests! And whether we understand the Dante’s Inferno Test, is an issue that I will come back to. But first, here’s how I came out on the test:

The Dante’s Inferno Test has sent you to the First Level of Hell – Limbo!

Level	Who Are Sent There?	Score
Purgatory	Repending Believers	Very Low
Level 1 – Limbo	Virtuous Non-Believers	Very High
Level 2	Lustful	Moderate
Level 3	Gluttonous	Low
Level 4	Prodigal and Avaricious	Very Low
Level 5	Wrathful and Gloomy	Low
Level 6 – The City of Dis	Heretics	Moderate
Level 7	Violent	High
Level 8 – The Malebolge	Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers	Moderate
Level 9 – Cocytus	Treacherous	Low

Take the Dante’s Inferno Hell Test

Let’s be clear here. God is not going to look at my list and say, “Well, he scored highest on ‘Virtuous Non-Believers’ so let’s send him there!” He’s going to say, “This man has some real violence issues!” If he’s at all reflective, God will then wonder if that doesn’t sound like someone he knows really well. And then he will say, “To the 7th level of hell to you!”

But I’ll take the first level of hell! Frankly, I’d much rather be there than in heaven! It would be interesting to hang out with Aristotle. I’ll admit, Socrates might be a bit hard to take. And the fact that Dante put Julius Caesar in this level does not speak well of middle-age thinking on spiritual matters. But whatever. Dante talks about how wonderful the first level of hell is and the only thing that makes him want to leave is how grand it will be in heaven. Having read the Paradiso, I can tell you: he was wrong. Hanging out with Socrates sounds much better.

As for the test itself: I really couldn’t figure it out. I spent a lot of time putting in answers that I thought modern Christians wanted to hear. And I did indeed get an “extreme” score on “Purgatory,” a “very high” on “Virtuous Non-Believers,” and a “very low” on everything else. Except: “Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers.” On that, I only got a “low.” And try as I may, I could not come up with a combination that would give me a “very low” score. Now it is possible that the coding for the test is just screwed up and there is no way to get a “very low” score on that. But it is just as likely, that I don’t understand the modern Christian mind. And that means that I don’t really understand this test.

And look at the results anyway. I don’t think this is a good representation of me. I don’t think a low score for gluttony is right for me. I like food a lot and when I did drugs, I like them a lot and in large quantities. I’m certainly not wrathful but I’m very gloomy—on many days anyway. But how the hell did I get a high score on “violent”? I am absolutely not violent. Similarly, I don’t think that I’m malicious and I am certainly not a panderer. But I am a fraud. So there’s that.

If anyone else wants to take the test, please let me know. I realize that my readership is made up of a bunch of people who this test will think belong in hell. But if you are very lucky (and I think that’s about all it is), you may get to hang out with Socrates and me. And if that’s the case, you can hold him down. And I’ll put the muzzle on him!

The Love of Albert Schweitzer

Posted on 14 Jan 2014 by Frank Moraes

Albert Schweitzer Lots of birthdays today. And I was so tempted to just leave the whole article at that last sentence. But there are some really great people who were born today. But I’m going to have to get through this in pieces. Are you ready? I’m not. Hang on a second… Okay. Here we go.

On this day in 1841, the great impressionist Berthe Morisot was born. I don’t think she gets enough credit as an important member of that movement. Her style is quite distinct from the others of the movement. I think people tend to dismiss her because of her close association with Manet. But as far as I can tell, she influenced him at least as much as he influenced her. Regardless, her work is incredible. I remember when I was very young going to the impressionist show that was touring the country (and probably the world), The New Painting. And it was Morisot that most impressed me—especially in the early years. Since that time, I’ve come to appreciate other people more, but there is no doubt of the quality of her work and her importance.

The great singer-songwriter Maury Muehleisen was born in 1949. He is best know as Jim Croce’s side man. But before he was, Croce was his sideman. And Croce learned a great deal from Muehleisen. Basically, he allowed Croce to move from the pure 3-chord folk songs he was writing to more classical and jazz based chord progressions. Anyway, to give you just a small taste of Muehleisen, here is the first song of his I ever heard sung by him (really, it’s a nice song; listen to it):

Other birthdays: the great French painter Jean-Baptiste van Loo (1684); polymath Matthew Fontaine Maury (1806); French painter Henri Fantin-Latour (1836); creator of Dr Dolittle, Hugh Lofting (1886); anti-Nazi theologian Martin Niemoller (1892); great film producer Hal Roach (1892); feminist writer Tillie Olsen (1912); “humorist” Andy Rooney (1919); musician Allen Toussaint (76); actor Faye Dunaway (73); musician T-Bone Burnett (66); actor Carl Weathers (66); film director Lawrence Kasdan (65); generally over-rated film director Steven Soderbergh (51); actor Mark Addy (50); probably liberal, probably gay Fox News host Shepard Smith (50); actor Emily Watson (47); musician LL Cool J (46); and actor Jason Bateman (45).

The day, however, belongs to the great Albert Schweitzer who was born on this day in 1875. There is so much to say about Schweitzer. What I like about him is his theological writings. But the truth is, I just don’t have the energy to look the stuff up. But the main thing I remember about him was his belief that if you were being good so you could get into heaven, then you weren’t really being a Christian. That wasn’t what it was about. If you have Jesus in your heart, then you simply want to do what is right. And this whole modern idea of being “born again” would have repelled him. As did the idea that all you had to do was “believe” in Jesus as though he were the Great Pumpkin. (It is of note that Schweitzer also believed that Jesus and St Paul thought the second coming was coming real soon—like in Paul’s lifetime. I’m not sure quite how you believe that and still continue being a Christian. Humans are amazing animals.)

Schweitzer is probably most remarkable for doing what imperialists always say they are doing: going to help the people. He was a doctor and he did what he thought was best for the people of Gabon. I know that like all of us, he was a man of his time and place. He no doubt was paternalist toward the natives. On the other hand, he was against imperialism. He worked to help the people, not exploit the people. He was a great and a good man.

Happy birthday Albert Schweitzer!

It’s Credit One Not Capital One

Posted on 14 Jan 2014 by William Brown

Well, the world of banking and credit is indeed a scary place.

Somewhere I stumbled across a credit offer—think it came to my business email—for a new credit card. Since I have been cleaning house lately, credit wise, I thought it might be a good opportunity to consolidate some small debt under a new account. Usually new accounts offer a short period to opt for fee-free or reduced fees on balance transfers with a reduced percentage or 0% introductory interest rates.

In this case, I was especially feeling good about my option since I already had credit with Capital One and was understanding this to be an offer to consolidate my two smaller cards into a single account, with room to grow. (Yikes… With better terms and perhaps a second shrubbery, to create a two-level effect.)[1]

Wrong!

This was not my old friends at Capital One. No. This offer, as it turns out, came from Credit One, which is not only a sound alike company, but also a look-a-like company, since their logo (which is what I really had noticed) is damn close to that of my current creditor. Check it out:

Well, the new cards arrived (one for me, one for the espousa). I was shocked to find the offer was only for a $1,000 line of credit and carried a truckload of fees. The paperwork enclosed stated that if I did not activate the cards, the account would be terminated. So, I let things rest as-is.

Today I got a statement from Credit One Bank with a balance of $100.95 and $25 minimum due. Yikes again. The fees included an account initiation fee, a second card fee and a fee for choosing the card design I wanted. Now, I don’t have a totally cuddly relationship with Capital One Both my accounts have relatively small yearly fees, but I do know they will allow me to pick a damn card design and a second card for no extra charge.

Anyway, the good news is they actually did allow me to cancel the account prior to activation, and owe nothing. I called Capital One and gave them a heads up on my mistake. They said they are well aware of the common error but its clearly deceptive name and logo are considered different enough to be legal.

[1] In case you don’t get the reference:

GOP Charges $11 for Process “Survey”

Posted on 14 Jan 2014 by Frank Moraes

John Boehner A friend of mine sent me the “2014 Speaker’s Priorities Survey.” It is typical of such things. It isn’t a real survey. To begin with, the questions are all leading. It contains things like, “Do you believe that Obama is the Antichrist or just an evil communist?” Really! Here is the actual first question, “Do you want Republicans in the House of Represenatives to continue doing everything in our power to protect families and small businesses from the ObamaCare disaster?” And, “Do you believe House Republicans have a duty to expose the truth about why the IRS spent years targeting conservative and religious groups for harassment?”

Now, I really like those questions and the six others because they are themselves lies. What ObamaCare disaster could Mr Boehner be talking about? The IRS did not target conservative and religious groups for harassment. They were just doing their jobs and it has been well documented that it wasn’t partisan. In fact, if anything, it was the liberal groups who got the worst treatment.

Of course, the Speaker’s little survey is nothing of the kind. As we know from political science research, pretty much the only people that politicians of either party (but especially the Republican Party) care about are the concerns of their big money donors. And it isn’t about pandering to the prejudices of people on Republican mailing lists nor is it about contributing to the Fox News and hate radio mission to misinform all conservatives. The survey’s real purpose is presented on the second page.

That is where we find that Speaker Boehner wants the survey participant to contribute anywhere from $35 to to $1,000. But I can go along with that. The Republican Party is flattering their supporters by asking their opinions and then they hit them up for contributions. It’s like those free online tests that you take. After they give you the score, they try to sell you stuff. I have no problem with that. But that isn’t all that this “survey” is.

Underneath the “Sure I’ll give you a thousand bucks” section, there is a single check box. Next to it reads, “I cannot send a campaign gift today, but I would still like to include my views in this survey project. To pay for the printing, mailing, and tabulation costs of my SURVERY DOCUMENT, I am enclosing $11.” Get that? “We are only interested in your opinions if you pay us $11.” Assuming they even tabulate the results, the form can be scanned by a computer, with a total cost of about 1¢ to pay for the electricity and the person to dump the thousand surveys into the feeder tray. The survey does come with a postage paid envelope, but printed on it is, “Your first-class stamp will save us much needed funds.” Assuming the idiot who sends in $11 doesn’t put a stamp on, that would cost the NRCC perhaps half the cost of a first class stamp, so maybe we are looking at another 25¢. The tabulation costs are basically nothing.

I’ve seen a lot of amazing conservative scams before—I’m on a number of conservative mailing lists. But I’ve never seen this. I’m sure if you send in the $11, it does go to a different account to pay for office expenses, thus meaning that regular contributions don’t need to pay for such things so that that money can go to television ads that spread the misinformation that is found in their survey. So regardless of how you look at it, paying to have the survey “processed” is the same as sending in a contribution.

The amount is interesting too. Why $11? That’s certainly not what it costs. But it is so exact, implying that they worked out how much money it really does cost to process their fake survey. “Do you think the Republicans should try to maintain control of the House of Representatives rather than allowing the Hitler-loving Democrats to take over control?” I am aware, of course, that Democrats (and all groups for that matter), send out these kinds of highly leading surveys as a way to raise money. But the processing fee strikes me as over the top. But I’m sure if it isn’t in widespread use, it will be. The Republican Party has been leading this country in the worst way possible for decades. Why would they stop now?

Now My Phone Can Say “Fuck”!

Posted on 13 Jan 2014 by Frank Moraes

Expletive Deleted This is literally the best fucking news I’ve heard all day. As you know, I recently got my very first smart phone. And it has been nice. There are a number of things I can do on the phone that I just couldn’t before. And now I can browse the web with a reasonable amount of ease. But by far, the biggest change has been that I can use the Android Voice-to-Text feature, which allows me to speak my text messages. It’s very nice.

There was just one problem. You all know what a foul mouthed motherfucker I am. And the Voice-to-Text features censors my language. It isn’t bad if it is a simple “fuck,” because every can figure out what “f***” means. But what about “m***********”? Any ideas? If you do have an idea, it’s because I used the word earlier in his paragraph: motherfucker. But okay, I suppose that I could deal with that kind of thing. But recently, I said to my phone, “I know you don’t like to be sexualized.” It was in reference to a tweet a friend of mine had received that I figured she would not appreciate. And the phone spit back, “I know you don’t like to be s*********.” Since when is “sexualized” a naughty word?

This led me to the extreme measure of picking up a copy of Android Phones for Dummies. In general, I have found the Dummies series to be rather good and at a decent amount of depth. I was pleased the book did deal with the issue, “Uttering f*** words.” But other than saying that the phone does it, there was nothing. Well, there was this:

Your phone knows a lot of blue terms, including the infamous “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” but apparently the terms crap and damn are fine. Don’t ask me how much time I spent researching this topic. [Emphasis very much mine! -FM]

Well, I wasn’t fucking interested in which words I couldn’t say. I was interesting in stopping the fucking phone from saying things that I clearly wanted to say. After all, I could use “mom” curse words or say “stupid” instead of “fucking.” If I say “fucking” it is because I fucking what the fucking phone to fucking text it that fucking way! Also Dan Gookin didn’t explain to me that it wasn’t just naughty words that were off limits but the entire discussion of sex, apparently. This is a book that was published in 2012. So it’s pretty recent. Remember that.

So I threw the book aside and I turned to Google. I searched for, “stop voice input censoring android.” And the first thing that came up was an article from LifeHacker, Stop Android’s Voice-to-Text from Blocking Swear Words. That article was published in 2011, so clearly it was around for Mr Gookin to find, but I suspect that Mr Gookin is just fine with censoring. Computer books are usually written by people whose ethical complexity started and ended with learning not to cheat at four-square.

The procedure is laid out in the article, but it is trivial. Go to your base phone setup. Go to “Voice input and output.” Then go to “Voice regognition settings.” And there you will find “Block offensive words.” Touch it to turn the fucking thing off. And never go back!

Afterword

The book Android Phones for Dummies seems pretty good overall. I don’t want to put down the book generally. But it amazes me that the author would take all that time to learn about the feature but not learn how to shut it off.

Wilhelm Wien and Blackbodies

Posted on 13 Jan 2014 by Frank Moraes

Wilhelm Wien It seems the worse my mood gets, the worse the birthdays I have to choose from get. I’ve heard it said that depression is anger targeted inward. I don’t think that’s true. But I do find I have a curious combination of depression and anger. I think you can see that anger in everything I’ve written today. I don’t expect this article to be especially angry. Just short.

On this day in 1832, Horatio Alger was born. He was a very popular writer in the 19th century. He wrote what is charitably called “crap.” Typical kind of story: poor boy goes to rich man’s house in search of employment; rich man has a dog that immediately takes to the poor boy; rich man hires him because of the dog, and it is up, up, and away for the poor boy’s prospects, who probably ends up marrying the rich man’s daughter. It’s exactly the kind of stories that the people wanted to believe during the Gilded Age and exactly the kind of stories the rich wanted the poor to be reading. Today, “Horatio Alger” is a synonym for any kind of unbelievable rags to riches story. In general, we don’t see such stories in their pure form because we are a much more cynical people. (For good reason!) There have been times when there were jobs for the asking. There were times when what most of the Republican Party now believes was true: if you aren’t working, you aren’t trying hard enough. Sorry folks, that’s now no more true than the statement, “Horatio Alger was a great writer!”

Comedian Bill Bailey is 50 today. I know him from Black Books. But he’s a very good stand-up comedian. This bit is pretty funny:

Other birthdays: Dutch landscape painter Jan van Goyen (1598); Italian poet Metastasio (1698); composer Vasily Kalinnikov (1866); biologist Ross Granville Harrison (1870); inventor of my least favorite game Risk, Albert Lamorisse (1922); actor and dancer Gwen Verdon (1925); comedian Charles Nelson Reilly (1931); writer Edmund White (74); actor Julia Louis-Dreyfus (53); actor Penelope Ann Miller (50); and I’m sure a fine actor but he annoys me, Orlando Bloom (37).

The day, however, belongs to the great physicist Wilhelm Wien who was born on this day in 1864. He is a very important figure in our understanding of blackbody radiation. The idea of this is that you can tell what temperature the surface of an object is by the color that it radiates. The sun is yellow and so that means it is roughly 6,000 K. But don’t get confused here: a yellow piece of paper is not 6,000 K; it is yellow because that is the light it reflects not the light it radiates. The piece of paper is at room temperature, which means it radiates light in the IR spectrum which we humans can’t see. Wien deduced “Wien’s displacement law, which calculates the emission of a blackbody at any temperature from the emission at any one reference temperature.” This, of course, is why it is always difficult to write about scientists. You see, the sun doesn’t just radiate yellow light. After all, where would the blues and the reds come from? What I was talking about was the maximum. The sun radiates its maximum energy at yellow, but there is still a whole lot of blues and reds to have those wonderful sunsets. So Wien was dealing with these distributions. Anyway, blackbody radiation theory is fascinating stuff.

Happy birthday Wilhelm Wien!

Frankly Curious

Everything interesting for everyone interesting…

The Cremation of Robert Service

Hollande Fucks Julie Gayet and French Economy

Economic Inequality and Chemical Spills

Afterword

Martin Luther King the Man

Afterword

Jerry Brown’s Indictment of the US

Where Exactly in Hell I’m Going

The Love of Albert Schweitzer

It’s Credit One Not Capital One

GOP Charges $11 for Process “Survey”

Now My Phone Can Say “Fuck”!

Afterword

Wilhelm Wien and Blackbodies