12 December 12020

301,260   people have died in America from the current pandemic, the equivalent of one hundred nine-elevens. A moment of silence, please. A long moment, preferably.

12 December 12020 is the International Day of Neutrality and International Universal Health Coverage Day. It is also Our Lady of Guadalupe Day (Christian), Air Force Day (Croatia), Extra Work Day (Hungary), Kanji Day (Japan), the second day of Hanukkah (Jewish), Customs Day (Kazakhstan), Jamhuri Day (Kenya), National Literature Day (Kyrgyzstan), Constitution Day (Russia), Helicopter Industry Day (Russia), Neutrality Day (Turkmenistan), Ground Forces Day (Ukraine), and Ambrosia Day (salad enthusiasts). Today’s saint is Corentin of Quimper (died 10453), known for living off the same fish for decades. (Every day he would cut another piece off the fish, and every day the fish would be miraculously restored. What the fish thought of this daily torture is not recorded.) And it is poet Erasmus Darwin’s (The Loves of the Plants) birthday. On this day in history (11941) Adolf Hitler decided to make good on his promise to “exterminate the Jewish race in Europe.” Goebbels, who attended the meeting where he made the announcement, described the proposed genocide as the necessary consequence of world war: “Bezüglich der Judenfrage ist der Führer entschlossen, reinen Tisch zu machen. Er hat den Juden prophezeit, daß, wenn sie noch einmal einen Weltkrieg herbeiführen würden, sie dabei ihre Vernichtung erleben würden. Das ist keine Phrase gewesen. Der Weltkrieg ist da, die Vernichtung des Judentums muß die notwendige Folge sein.” (“With regard to the Jewish question, the Führer is determined to wipe the slate clean. He has prophesied to the Jews that if they were to bring about another world war, they would see their annihilation in the process. This was not just a platitude. The world war is here, the destruction of Jewry must be the necessary consequence.”)

As anyone would suppose the Supreme Court declined to take up the case of Texas v. the American People because Texas lacks standing. Or in Crip Dyke’s memorable summary: “Go home, Texas. You’re drunk.” Crip Dyke also saved me the trouble of looking up Thomas’s odd citation of his own dissent (“It is, frankly, worse than citing yourself from one of your previous scientific papers and pretending that you therefore have independent support for the conclusions in your current paper”) by tracing it back to an obscure 11821 decision, the only point being that Alito and Thomas feel that the court is required to grant a hearing to any case between states brought before it no matter how baseless rather than dismissing it forthwith as is the practice (and has been since the beginning). Fuck your feelings is my response to Thomas and Alito. Anyway, read Crip Dyke’s take. It’s worth it.

The Pundit (12014 repost)

[This is the piece aboutt Daniel the Stylite that I mentioned in an earlier post. It was originally posted at Rational Rant on 11 December 12014.]

Odd things qualify an otherwise unremarkable person to become a pundit—a failed vice-presidential run based on having held a largely ceremonial job as village mayor, for example. A few speeches written for an actual vice-president. Claimed predictions of dire events. A thirty-year sojourn on top of a pillar.

That last one was what qualified Daniel the Stylite, an otherwise-unremarkable small-town monk, to advise an emperor in the warped world that was the Fifth Century of the Common Era, that liminal moment between Antiquity and the Dark Ages when the western Roman Empire tottered on the brink and finally gave up the ghost. That ghost—we know it as the Great Church—animated its twitching corpse and held the living Eastern Empire in its grip.

And that’s the clue to Daniel’s career. He probably never stood a chance of anything resembling a normal life. It’s not only that the times were out of joint—when were they not?—but that his mother promised him to God before he was born. By the time he was twelve he was hanging out at the local monastery full-time.

Present-day Christianity is strange enough to the uninitiated, but ancient Christianity was something else again. Today we think of snake-handlers and tongue-speakers as bizarre fringe-figures in Christianity. Even faith-healers are out there. These were mainstream in Christianity back then. To be noticed you had to do something really dramatic. Vows of silence, self-flagelation, never washing—these were the sorts of things you had to do to get noticed. A guy named Simeon came up with a new gimmick; he climbed up to the top of a pillar and stayed there, supplied with food by acolytes and curiosity-seekers.

On a trip to Antioch with his superior Daniel heard of this guy and wanted to see him. Hoisted up to the top of the pillar, Daniel conversed with him and received his blessing. Apparently it made an impression on him.

His first attempt at notoriety wasn’t pillar-sitting, however. After the superior died Daniel briefly took over his position, but soon abandoned it to live among the jackals and owls—and reputedly evil spirits—in an abandoned temple. Despite the annoyance this caused the neighbors, Daniel acquired a reputation as a saint and miracle-worker.

He’d been at this for some time when he ran into Sergius, Simeon’s acolyte. The pillar-sitter had died, it seemed, leaving Sergius his religious garb. Sergius had tried to pass the relics on to the Emperor Leo, but had been unsuccessful. Daniel seized on the opportunity. Why not take over Simeon’s gig? Sitting on a pillar was no doubt an improvement on living with jackals, and possession of the saint’s castoffs was authority enough, it seems, especially with Sergius willing to sign on as Daniel’s acolyte, assuming that Daniel wanted the position. Daniel immediately started looking for a likely pillar.

The pillars of the old temple were in too bad a shape to serve, but one of his fans set him up with a new pillar, and early one morning Daniel climbed on top of it, “where he soon became an object of curiosity and devotion to the sight-seers and pious of Byzanium,” according to Sabine Baring-Gould. “Crowds came to see him, and brought lunatics and sick people to be healed by him. Those who were afflicted were hoisted up to the top of the pillar, and then Daniel applies his hands to them, and was so successful as to cure many.”

As a pillar-dweller he was a hit. The Emperor Leo not only built him a more sumptuous pillar with a roof and a small room to protect him from the elements, but also came to consult him on matters of state. The Emperor Zeno, in his turn, consulted Daniel on matters both great and small. At one point Daniel predicted that Constantinople would suffer from a great fire, which it did—a connection that apparently raised no eyebrows in those simpler times.

In the end the celebrated pillar-sitter passed on at the age of eighty. His hagiographer tells it as follows:

Just about the time of his holy departure from this life a man vexed with an unclean spirit suddenly cried aloud in the midst of the people, announcing the presence of the saints with the holy man, naming each one of them; and he said, “There is great joy in heaven at this hour, for the holy angels have come to take the holy man with them, besides there are come, too, the honourable and glorious companies of prophets and apostles and martyrs and saints; they are tormenting me now, and to-morrow at the third hour they will drive me out of this tabernacle; when the holy man is going to his home in the heavens and his saintly corpse is being brought down, I shall come out.” And this did indeed happen. Our glorious father Daniel died at the third hour on the following day, a Saturday, December 11th in the second indiction (A.D. 493), and at the time of his death he worked a miracle in that the man with an unclean spirit was healed.

The people wanted a last look at the revered pundit. To accommodate them the local authorities had the body fastened to a board and raised upright so all could see and admire. When the body was taken down there was such a stampede that the men carrying it were knocked down along with the body. “By the grace of the Lord the carriers did not suffer any injury” according to his hagiographer.

It was a grotesque coda to a grotesque life. Daniel’s reward (I suppose) was to have influence in the halls of the incompetents holding the actual reins of power. It was probably worth living with jackals or standing for three decades atop a pillar, if that’s the price you have to pay for the cloak of authority.

11 December 12020

299,502   deaths in America from the current pandemic, and there are still dumbasses in the country insisting that it is all a hoax—inspired by the fake media and George Soros I suppose. It’s like another World Trade Center attack every goddamn day. The right-wingers (AINOs) are all fucking hypocrites in my book—throwing a fit about nine eleven and shrugging off pandemic deaths. Why should I believe anything they have to say in the future about their feelings? Fuck them, I say.

11 December 12020 is International Mountain Day. Celebrated, or at least observed, since 12003, the day reminds us of the importance—geological, biological, cultural, and economic—of mountains. The UN website observes about this year’s commemoration, “Mountain biodiversity is the theme of this year’s International Mountain Day, so let’s celebrate their rich biodiversity, as well as address the threats they face.” There are also a number of national, religious, and cultural observances today. In Argentina it is National Tango Day, the date being the birthday of two men (Carlos Gardel and Julio de Caro) associated with the development of the tango in Argentina. For Burkina Faso it is Republic Day—the anniversary of the day (in 11958) when Upper Volta became an autonomous republic in the French Community. In Canada it is the Anniversary of the Statute of Westminster, the 11931 act giving Canada autonomy (but not full independence from the United Kingdom). Today Crimea remembers the victims of the Holocaust in that region with Krymchaks and Crimean Jews Remembrance Day. In Indiana (US) it is Indiana Day, commemorating the date Indiana was admitted to the Union in 11816. It is the first day of Hanukkah on the old Babylonian calendar still used by the Jews, recalling the rededication of the temple (9837) after an interruption caused by a cultural war between traditionalists and Hellenizers. In Kiribati it is Human Rights and Peace Day (and I don’t have anything further on it). For Kurdistan (at least the Iraq portion of it) it is Establishment of Kurdish Women’s Union, commemorating the establishment in 11952 of a women’s rights organization there. It is Republic Day in Madagascar, reflecting the promulgation of the 2010 constitution of the present republic there. It’s the Sultan of Selangor’s Birthday in Malaysia for some reason or other. And it’s Pampanga Day in Pampanga province (Philippines), St. Andrew’s Flag Day for the Russian navy, Father’s Day in Thailand, and Noodle Ring Day for those who like that sort of thing.

The saint of the day is Daniel the Stylite, the guy who lived on top of a pillar for three decades and was revered for it. (I’m pretty sure I’ve written about him before—no, I know I’ve written about him; I’m pretty sure I posted what I wrote some time or other.) Things were messed up in the 10400s. It’s Hector Berlioz’s (Symphonie fantistique) birthday; he was born in 11803. On this day in history Germany and Italy declared war on the United States in what I think (hindsight is golden) was one of the worst blunders of the war. Had Hitler and Mussolini held off—something they could easily have done given their indifference to treaties and the fact that the treaty they were invoking had an obvious escape hatch—they could have bought time to solidify their European victories while the US focused on Japan. As it was they enabled Roosevelt to easily concentrate on the European front and reserve forces to attack Japan later. I’m not saying it would have changed the outcome; but it might have made US involvement in Europe much less tenable.

10 December 12020

296,909   American pandemic deaths so far, and our information-gatherers are agog over one of the lamest lawsuits yet. The state of Texas is suing four other states over the way they conducted their elections, arguing that massive vote fraud is the cure for a problem that (a) doesn’t concern it and (b) only exists in its imagination. Texas is asking the Supreme Court to be the arbiter of the case. Speaking here as a relatively disinterested outsider I would note that (1) Texas has a lot of damn gall to presume to tell four other sovereign states how they should manage their elections, which is none of Texas’ business in the first place, and in the second involves gall piled upon gall in that Texas has done the same sorts of things in managing its own election; (2) Texas has no standing to bring suit, in that the state was not materially injured (indeed, not injured at all in point of fact) by the actions of the other states; (3) the proposed remedy (throwing tens of millions of votes into the metaphorical river—classic vote fraud) is infinitely worse than the alleged malady (a novel untested reinterpretation of Article 2 Section 1 of the US Constitution may have meant that certain procedural changes were wrongly adopted); (4) the time to have brought this up was before the election, not after; and (5) this whole steaming pile of crap is a perfect example of a frivolous lawsuit. I personally suspect that the Supreme Court won’t touch the stinking mess with a ten-foot pole carried by a remote-controlled robot in a hazmat suit.

10 December 12020 is Human Rights Day. It is also Victory Day (Iraq), Nobeldagen (Sweden), and Constitution Day (Thailand). The saint of the day is Eulalia of Mérida, a child who was tortured to death in the early 10300s to try to encourage her to pay homage to the gods of the empire (a ritual comparable to pledging allegiance to the flag in the United States today). Her martyrdom is comparatively well-attested, in that there are records showing her to have been celebrated within a half-century or so the time of her alleged death. On the other hand certain details of the account—the bird that flew out of her mouth as she died, for example, or the miraculous fall of snow that covered her body—may give rise to legitimate skepticism. People of note who were born on this day include George MacDonald (The Princess and the Goblins), Emily Dickinson (“Because I could not stop for Death”), and Olivier Messiaen (Quatuor pour la fin du temps). On this day in history (11864) Mark Twain’s masterpiece Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was first published—but not in the United States. In the American edition an engraver had made an addition to one of the plates that made it look as if one of the characters was exposing himself, necessitating the recall and correction of the entire printing. It wasn’t until February of the next year that the novel became legally available in America, though copies of the Canadian printing seem to have been widely available in the States before then.

My shoulder is still giving me a good deal of pain, but a cautious visit to a medical facility has slightly reassured me; I likely have a couple of unpleasant weeks ahead of me, but my shoulder should heal all other things being equal. In the meantime I need to be careful not to demand too much of my right arm—which is annoying, since I am right-handed.

9 December 12020

294,400   American pandemic deaths so far, with new records being set practically daily. Is this what Making America Great Again is all about? At any rate 9 December 12020 is International Anti-Corruption Day. (“Corruption is criminal, immoral and the ultimate betrayal of public trust. It is even more damaging in times of crisis – as the world is experiencing now with the COVID-19 pandemic. The response to the virus is creating new opportunities to exploit weak oversight and inadequate transparency, diverting funds away from people in their hour of greatest need.” — UN Secretary-General, António Guterres) It is also National Heroes Day (Antigua and Barbuda), Armed Forces Day (Peru), Fatherland's Heroes Day (Russia), Day of Saint Leocadia (Spain), Navy Day (Sri Lanka), Anna’s Day (Sweden), and Independence Day (Tanzania). The saint of the day is the Spanish Leocadia, a woman who is supposed to have died around 10304, but about whom all we really know is that her cult shows up in the historic record 10600s. During her incarceration she outlined the cross on the stone wall of her cell so often that the impress of her action was still visible centuries later—or so it is said. People of note who were born today include Dalton Trumbo and Buck Henry. On this day in history (11979) smallpox was officially declared eradicated, one of the few diseases for which that can be said. If the likes of Trump and his gang had been running the show it never would have happened, and smallpox would still be with us.

8 December 12020

290,868   deaths from the pandemic in the United States and so far Congress has still failed to get any further assistance to the American people. Actions speak louder than words; the House has had a realistic bill ready for months, but the Senate still refuses to do jack about it. The Senate instead proposes a bill aimed at helping the rich get richer at the expense of people who are actually suffering. Unbelievable.

8 December 12020 is National Youth Day (Albania), the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (Christian), Battle Day (Falkland Islands), the Day of Finnish Music (Finland), Santa Marian Kamalen Day (Guam), Bodhi Day (Japan), Hari-Kuyō (Kansai region, Japan), Saint Kliment Ohridski’s Day (North Macedonia), Constitution Day (Northern Mariana Islands), Mother’s Day (Panama), Virgin of Caacupé Day (Paraguay), Constitution Day (Romania), the Day of Our Lady of Immaculate Conception (East Timor), and Constitution Day (Uzbekistan). The saint of the day is Eucharius, first bishop of Treves, who was commissioned by Peter, who died about 10065, but he himself did not die until 10250 or so, suggesting that either he had a very long life or the records are confused. Famous people born on this date include Roman satirist Horace (9936) and American satirist James Thurber (11894). On this day in history composer, satirist, and artist John Lennon (11940–11980) was murdered by a born-again Christian missionary with a grudge of some sort in front of the building in which he lived. And there you have it. Today I’m just going through the motions; my shoulder hurts like hell for unknown reasons and I’m not enjoying things enough to linger.

7 December 12020

288,072   deaths here in the United States from the pandemic, and the American president is obsessing over an election he lost a month back. Pitiful.

7 December 12020 is International Civil Aviation Day. In addition it is a Bridge Public Holiday (Argentina), Spitak Remembrance Day (Armenia), Eve of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (Colombia), Armed Forces Flag Day (India), The Feast of St. Ambrose (Milan), Flag Base Day (Scientology), Western Province Day (Solomon Islands), Constitution Day holiday (Spain), National Heroes Day (East Timor), a day off for the Anniversary of the Coronation of King Tupou I (Tonga), and National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day (United States). (In case you’re wondering—I was—a bridge public holiday is an extra day off between two others—say a holiday and a weekend—used to create four day holidays and the like. Argentina plans to phase them out soon.)

The day’s saint is Ambrose of Milan, famous in the western church for his opposition to Arianism, his advocacy of synagogue-burning, and his never reading aloud. Notable people born on this date include novelist Willa Cather, astronomer Gerard Kuiper, sf writer Leigh Brackett and musician Tom Waits. On this day in history (in 11995) the space probe Galileo reached the planet Jupiter (or rather its vicinity) and began its mission of investigating its atmosphere, magnetosphere, rings, and other bodies orbiting it. I thought I had more to say, but I’m running out of time if I want to get anything posted before the day ends.

6 December 12020

286,074   pandemic deaths here in the United States, and our fragile for-profit medical industry can’t handle it. Nothing can be done in this emergency, apparently, because our political class has tied its own hands and forced itself to sit idly by. Every one of them who has enabled Mitch McConnell’s DC follies is complicit in the carnage; the party label is irrelevant. It’s like that old song says: “Nothing is as it should be; | If this keeps on I’m sure I won’t get by. | But then I close my eyes and try to smile; | I know things are bad and getting worse…”

6 December 12020 is Saint Nicholas Day, the day when the ancient bishop drops by in his flying sled to fill children’s shoes with small bribes for good behavior. It is also Day of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies (Azerbaijan), National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women (Canada), the Foundation of Quito anniversary (Ecuador), Independence Day (Finland), Constitution Day (Spain), and Armed Forces Day (Ukraine). It’s also the second Sunday of Advent, celebrated as a holiday in Germany and elsewhere.

The saint of the day is (obviously) Nicholas of Myra, the legendary bishop known for secret gift-giving and keeping flying reindeer as pets. In point of fact, as far as I can tell, we know nothing of the historical Nicholas of Myra, unless his name on some lists of participants in the council of Nicaea counts for something. (I am not impressed.) That doesn’t mean he never existed—something inspired the cult celebrating his life, and the simplest explanation is that that something was the life of a real bishop whose fame survived not only his death, but all historical knowledge about him. That’s not the only explanation however. Nicholas could originally have been a supernatural being, a fictional character, a hoax, that somehow became flesh and (at least retroactively) dwelt among us. But absent evidence for one of these possibilities, I’ll stick with a historical figure—like Billy the Kid, or William the Bard—who got buried under an avalanche of legend.

Famous people born today include Agnes Moorhead, Dave Brubeck, and David Ossman. Agnes Moorhead was a versatile actress apparently best remembered today for playing the pedestrian rôle of Endora—the mother-in-law from hell who is literally a witch—in Bewitched. I mean, she appeared in movies ranging from Citizen Kane (11941) to How the West Was Won (11962), was equally capable of playing voice-only and voiceless parts, and was at home in comedy, melodrama, and even tragedy. When I was a teenager she was my choice to play the Red Queen in a hypothetical movie version of Through the Looking-Glass (with music by Halim El-Dabh and sets by M. C. Escher), but NBC really dropped the ball on this one when they wasted her (as well as Jimmy Durante as Humpty Dumpty and the Smothers Brothers as Tweedledum and Tweedledee) in a witless charm-free made-for-tv movie (11966). Jazz pianist Dave Brubeck, on the other hand, is justly remembered for such albums as Time Out, which employed time signatures other than the customary 3/4, 4/4, or 6/8. And David Ossman of course is remembered for playing George Leroy Tirebiter in Don’t Crush that Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers, though I think my favorite performance is as the hapless astronaut Mark Time (in How Time Flys) who returns to Earth after a decades-long mission to Planet X to find that the space program has been shut down and nobody cares (“It’s all entertainment”).

On this day in history Meredith Hunter, a black teenager out to enjoy himself at a free concert hosted by the Rolling Stones and featuring legendary performers like Jefferson Airplane, The Flying Burrito Brothers, and Santana, was killed by one of the men employed to provide security at the venue. The ill-conceived venture was at least partly the brainchild of Eugene Leo “Emmett” Grogan, one of the founders of the Diggers, who seems to have envisioned a freeform event where multiple stages would be erected in Golden Gate Park and various musicians could drop in whenever the felt like and perform. Members of Jefferson Airplane and Grateful Dead were likewise floating ideas for some sort of Woodstock West. But Golden Gate Park turned out not to be available, and Sears Point Raceway was selected instead. That too fell through, so at the very last moment the affair was moved to Altamont Speedway, and a stage (rising only four feet from the ground) was erected as a growing audience watched. Somebody had the bright idea of employing Hells’ Angels as security, paying them in beer. The inevitable catastrophe followed, as rowdy members of the audience ran afoul of drunken motorcycle club members, and fights broke out. Marty Balin (Jefferson Airplane) by a roadkill-wearing Hells’ Angel who took offense at something the musician said. (I believe those words were “Fuck you.”) When a black teenager—Meredith Hunter—took out a gun to defend himself from one of the rampaging security officials the latter responded by killing him. (Believe it or not, the killer was later found not guilty by reason of self defense.) Eugene Leo Grogan, Jr., later penned a lame mea culpa in which he ironically apologized for his part in the mess by blaming everybody else. He was especially severe on the young black fan: “And Meredith Hunter dying like a sniveling maniac instead of like a determined man—that was his fault.” It looks to me like Grogan was reaching a bit there. A little too close to home, was it?

5 December 12020

284,571   pandemic deaths here in the land of the free and the home of the brave. So far I’m not one of them, but I credit that to dumb luck and my habitual disinclination to interact with anybody unless I absolutely have to. I suppose it could be divine providence; I’ve noticed whenever there is a significant disaster anywhere on the planet I am somewhere else. What other explanation could there be, except that Allah favors me and keeps me from harm? Okay, maybe not, but I sleep better at night knowing that whatever happens, it is the will of an all-knowing all-seeing all-powerful divine being that favors me above all others.

5 December 12020 is Saint Nicholas’ Eve. It’s also World Soil Day. After that it’s probably unnecessary to mention that it’s Discovery Day (Haiti and Dominican Republic), Day of Military Honor (Russia), Children’s Day (Suriname), and King Bhumibol’s Birthday (Thailand). The day’s saint is Crispina, who declined to sacrifice to beings she considered demons; when informed that it was a requirement of the law, she observed “True worship does not require compulsion.” (Many twenty-first century American Christians seem to think the opposite—that they cannot honor their god without using compulsion.) Notable people born today include poet Christina Rossetti, pilot Clyde Vernon Cessna, director Fritz Lang, historian Gershom Scholem, animator Walt Disney, physicist Werner Heisenberg, and pianist Little Richard. On this day in history Flight 19 disappeared off the coast of Florida, presumably due to the disorientation of the commander, in 11945. This event arguably gave rise to the story of the “Bermuda Triangle,” a supposed area of the world prone to mysterious disappearances.

In the news we see no sign of Iran’s return to negotiations for a new deal (as President Trump predicted it would), nor any of the regime’s collapse (as his administrations seems to have hoped for). It appears that the American policy under Trump has been a total failure. Nor is it all likely that Iran will be willing to return to the accord Trump trashed without considerable concessions on America’s part—I mean, the hardliners opposed the accord from the beginning, and the moderates who supported it got severely burned by Trump’s shenanigans. I don’t see what future president Biden can offer the Iranians to bring them back into compliance with the accord—which means, I suppose, that we can look forward to an Iran with nuclear weapons as the best-case scenario, or maybe another major Mideast war. And this is entirely on the Trump administration. Unlike the North Korean mess, where we can absolve Trump in some measure for his failures by observing that his predecessors didn’t do all that much better, this disaster is of Trump’s own making. He inherited a situation that was under control. His hubris led America to the current debacle.

4 December 12020

282,392   deaths in America from the current pandemic. Thanks, Gutless Mitch, you who like to call yourself the grim reaper in honor of the part you’ve played in the catastrophe. It’s Friday, 4 December 12020, which means it’s Farmer’s Day (Ghana), Navy Day (India), Gospel Day (Marshall Islands), Thai Environment Day (Thailand), Tupou I Day (Tonga), and National Cookie Day (United States). Today’s saint is, as always, Clement of Alexandria, the philosophically-inclined church father who believed that matter was eternal and could neither be created nor destroyed, thus challenging the power of God according to the western branch of the church, who demoted him for it a thousand years after his death. (This is from memory, so don’t quote me on it.) It’s Fred Armisen’s birthday. On this day in history the Dei Gratia came across the soon-to-be-infamous ghost ship Mary Celeste off the Azores, adrift and deserted in 11872. It was apparent that the captain and crew must have abandoned the ship and taken to the lifeboat for some reason—but that reason was never determined. As the story was told and retold over the years various sensational details were added to heighten the mystery. In the end, however, it all comes down to one thing—somebody, presumably the captain, made the wrong decision in an emergency. In hindsight we can say that they all probably should have stayed aboard the ship, in that the ship survived and the lifeboat apparently perished. But we aren’t privy to whatever information they had at the time. The captain must have believed that the ship was in imminent danger or else he would not have ordered everyone to take to the lifeboat. We don’t know what the emergency was, but that fact doesn’t allow us to second-guess the captain, or whoever made the decision. Still, had they not abandoned ship, the odds are that I would be writing about something else this 4th of December.

3 December 12020

280,723   American pandemic deaths so far, and the beat goes on. Today (3 December 12020) is the International Day of Persons With Disabilities. According to various sources it is also Doctors’ Day (Cuba), Day of Navarre (Spain), and National Day Holiday (UAE). The saint of the day is Cassian of Tangier, the patron saint of stenographers. (As a court recorder he declared his faith during a trial of another Christian, and so ended up losing his head in 10298.) It’s the birthday of atonal composer Anton Webern, whose opus 10 (Five pieces for orchestra) you may recall from the soundtrack of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s final film, La Prisonnière. On this day in history Agatha Christie disappeared (11926), leading to a nation-wide search for the missing mystery writer. Arthur Conan Doyle put a psychic to work on the case, but without success. She turned up eleven days later, safe and sound at a Harrogate hotel where she had been staying under an assumed name, but sans memory of the events that had brought her there. It sounds like the kind of case that would have been right up Miss Marple’s alley, but alas, her debut was yet to come.

The Perils of Research (2012 repost)

[“The Perils of Research” was originally posted at Rational Rant on 2 December 2012]

So, it seems that Chris Rodda has got her copy of the new edition of David Barton’s The Jefferson Lies only to find that not only was it not published by a bigger outfit than Thomas Nelson, not only did it not contain the promised pages of new documentation for his outlandish claims, but it wasn’t even a new edition. Yes, the new edition of Barton’s work announced at Amazon was nothing but leftover copies of the Thomas Nelson edition. Chris Rodda went over it page by page and literally nothing had been changed.

God, what a disappointment. I feel quite confident that those couple dozen pages of documentation would have cleared everything up, made it all plain, and revealed to us that what he was writing was actually reasonable, rather than a dish of moldy cabbage that somehow got pushed to the back of the refrigerator. Research is like that sometimes; you expect a diamond and you get cubic zirconium; you expect enlightenment and you get Carlos Castaneda’s dissertation.

Think of the feelings of those Beatle enthusiasts when the long-lost first recording of “Please Please Me” turned up (in the back of somebody’s closet as I recall. No, that was the newspaper I kept of the first landing on the moon …) It should have been a slower, blusier, Roy Orbisonesque arrangement—but instead it was essentially identical to the version found on their second single. (The drummer was different—the moody magnificent Pete Best had been replaced by some interloper—but the same essential feel.) That must have been a real disappointment—it was for me, anyway. And so the slow version recedes into the mists of prehistory, an artefact like Jane Austen’s First Impressions, intriguing to think about, but perpetually out of reach.

Am I making sense this first Sunday of Advent in the year twelve thousand twelve of the Holocene era? I doubt it very much. We live in senseless times. Uganda fires a blow in the War on Xmas with a promise of new anti-gay laws in time for the holidays—as if the old ones weren’t severe enough. Republicans in the US Congress unveil more plans to increase the wealth of the idle bloodsucking class (or “job-creators” as they like to ironically call themselves) by robbing the nation pension fund that employees have paid into all their lives. We live in senseless times; why should I be immune to the zeitgeist?

And speaking of senseless, ever tried to follow a David Barton footnote? Footnotes are supposed to be helpful guides pointing to sources, not joke roadsigns that point you to nowhere, or useless decorations put in to give the appearance of research in the absence of evidence. Of course real research takes you off those convenient well-lit roads into the shadowy hinterland of unexamined sources. You read that such-and-such paper had a reporter at the front, you open the crumbling pages with excitement—and it turns out that the so-called reporter was only sending out political diatribes from a point some fifty miles away from the scene of action. Can’t be helped; research is like that.

Many years ago I spent considerable time and money running down a copy of the first (unrevised) edition Alfred Meacham’s Wigwam and War Path only to find that there really was no such thing. The so-called first edition is nothing but early copies of the supposedly revised edition with an errata sheet and no signature on the author’s picture in the front of the volume. There are numerous minor corrections throughout, some of which are identical to those on the errata sheet, and some of which are not, but it is manifestly the same edition, and the editorial confusion that is manifest in the volume is the same no matter which printing you use. That was a disappointment—but, as I say, research is all too often like that.

So, to recap on the David Barton saga: first, when Thomas Nelson pulled The Jefferson Lies for its inaccuracies, Barton announced that he had a bigger publisher for the book, and that it would be new and improved. Second, when a new edition was announced, the new publisher is (apparently) Barton himself, through his own Wallbuilders press. Third, when the book is actually delivered, it turns out to be published by Thomas Nelson, not by a new and bigger publisher, and it is the same old book, not new and improved. Pretty much a clean miss all the way around.

2 December 12020

276,634   Americans dead from the current pandemic. And there are dumbasses out there bragging about how they ignored the restrictions to get together with friends for dinner and patting themselves on the back for being so brave as to endanger others with their risky behavior. Herd mentality indeed. Criminal folly in my book.

Today is the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery. It is perhaps anticlimactic to note that it is also Armed Forces Day (Cuba), Lao National Day (Laos), and National Day (United Arab Emirates). The saint of the day is Bibiana, a Roman girl who was scourged to death during a crackdown on magicians in 10363—so legend has it, anyway. It’s the birthday of Maria Callas. On this day in history John Brown was executed (11859), after writing a brief note: “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think vainly, flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done.” “It,” of course, was the abolition of slavery. We’re still working on it, John.

1 December 2020

274,932   deaths from Covid-19 so far in the United States alone. And death is far from the only side-effect of the disease. Those lucky enough to survive can face pulmonary complications, delirium, seizures, aphasia, tremor, delirium, and cognition disturbances. Patients who have been cured of the disease may still not be able to function in daily life at the time of their discharge. And yet there are idiots on the loose who advocate spreading the disease in the hopes that ordinary people will get used to it, and accept the deaths and disabilities as a cost of doing business.

Today is World AIDS Day, dedicated to combatting the pandemic and remembering the dead. (The dead include a member of my extended family, a guy named David, a television engineer who was active in the Portland-area arts and theatre community, among other things.) It is also Republic Day (Central African Republic), Freedom and Democracy Day (Chad), Military Abolition Day (Costa Rica), Fullveldisdagurinn (Iceland), First President Day (Kazakhstan), National Day (Myanmar), Rosa Parks Day (Ohio and Oregon), Teachers’ Day (Panama), Restoration of Independence Day (Portugal), Great Union Day (Romania), Battle of the Sinop Day (Russia), and Damrong Rajanubhab Day (Thailand). Famous people born today include Rex Stout (creator of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin) and Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky (creator of a non-Euclidean geometry).

International Murder

272,525   deaths in the United States from Covid-19 and the Federal Government still refuses to do its job in countering the disaster. How long will this travesty continue? The world wonders.

Today appears to be (and I am relying on Wikipedia for this information, so be warned) Independence Day (Barbados), National Day (Benin), Day to Mark the Departure and Expulsion of Jews from the Arab Countries and Iran (Israel), Regina Mundi Day (South Africa), Bonifacio Day (Philippines), Commemoration Day (United Arab Emirates), and Independence Day (South Yemen). The saint of the day is Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, a fisherman by trade, who was one of the first followers of Jesus, if you believe the late and discursive Gospel according to John. Saint Andrew’s Day appears to be a recognized state holiday in Scotland and Rumania. It is also Mark Twain’s birthday.

With the current occupant of the White House forgotten but not gone the news has been swamped with stories of the assassination of an Iranian physicist who may or may not have been the head of a program intended to supply the nation with energy from atomic reactors. The details of his murder are chilling, if rather confusing. Possibly twelve mysterious assassins popped up out of nowhere and blew him away before vanishing without a trace. Or maybe a robot machine-gunner took him out before self-destructing. The exact details are, shall we say, obscure. The purpose of this clandestine (and thoroughly illegal) action seems to be to make things difficult for the United States under Future President Biden to restore normal relations with Iran. Iranian officials are babbling wildly about murdering Israelis in response. Let’ s hope cooler heads prevail—though I don’t expect that. As always, I expect the worst.

The BottleDrop Scam

261,683   people in the United States have now died from Covid-19. It’s not what I want to talk about, but everything else is trivial compared to the ongoing disaster. Well, not the other ongoing disasters, I suppose—global warming, the great extinction event, the coming nuclear apocalypse, and so on and so forth—but, you know, the inanities of the economy, business, politics, entertainment, sports—even the sciences and the arts when you get right down to it. If you can’t bop to it, don’t buy the record, as the man said.

But the triviality I want to rant about today is the great BottleDrop scam right here in Oregon, something that is irritating me right now because of something that happened to me today. When I went down to the Burlingame Fred Meyer I walked past the bottle return center (as it is part of my regular route from the bus) and glanced over at it to see large signs posted there to the effect that it was closed. Permanently. It looked like they would still do hand counts for small amounts of cans or bottles, but otherwise, unless you were a BottleDrop customer, you were shit out of luck on getting your money back.

The store employee I talked to—who is a really nice guy who has been very helpful in the past—candidly admitted that the object was to get people to use the “green bags.” I admitted (with equal candor) that I hate the “green bags” program and have no intention of using it. Ever.

Let me explain. Under the old system when I paid a deposit on a returnable bottle I could get my money back by returning it to the place I bought it. It was a simple, straightforward transaction. Take the bottles in and leave with the money. Typically I would begin a shopping trip by returning my bottles, collecting the money (or taking the equivalent off my purchase), and buying whatever it was I’d come for. It was relatively easy to manage.

But no more. Under the “green bags” system I have to set up a special account, put my bottles in special “green bags”, and deposit them at a “convenient” BottleDrop return center. My bottles will be processed in three to five business days and the money added to my account. I can have the money in my account given to the charity of my choice, or if I absolutely insist on getting my money back, can obtain it from certain special locations.

Okay—let’s see how this works in practice. A 13-gallon garbage bag will hold ten, maybe twelve two-liter bottles. I can carry maybe two of these without too much inconvenience on the bus, so say, twenty to twenty-four bottles. Under the old system I’d take them in to the store, run them through a machine, receive a voucher for say $2.00 to $2.40, and present it as I buy my groceries on the way out. But under the new system I have to put the bottles in special “green bags”—each holding thirteen gallons. So let’s say I manage to cram twelve bottles apiece into two “green bags”, tie them and label them with the correct stickers, take the bus to a “convenient” location to leave them off—well, isn’t that essentially the same thing, except that I have to wait for my money those three to five business days?

Well … no. Those “green bags” aren’t free, for one thing—they cost $2.00 for ten bags. That’s twenty cents apiece. So I’m already out forty cents before I ever receive any credit towards that $2.40 I might have coming. But still—a two-dollar return on a forty-cent investment? That’s not too bad, right? Except that the money in question is my money already, a deposit that I put down and should be able to get back. And to cap things off, I’m not going to get $2.00 back—because there’s a forty-cent additional fee attached to processing each bag. In fact I am going to get $1.20 back on my $2.40 investment—not enough to even pay the bus fare to run the bottles to that “convenient” location. It’s a losing proposition all round.

Now obviously if you have a car, or happen to live right by one of these “convenient” locations, or habitually drink 8 oz. returnable cans and can stuff a couple hundred of them in a “green bag,” you may find the whole concept a more attractive proposition. For people like me, however, it’s purely inane. I’m probably better off just tossing the bottles and losing my deposit. It’s better than lending support to this pointless scam, at the very least.

The Return of Vile Kyle

259,231   people in the United States have now died from Covid-19, and the rate is rising. Is this what the whole city on the hill thing is about? Showing the rest of the world how we can rise above the disaster by just giving in to it? Live or die, we don’t care, as the old song has it.

And we can all breathe a little easier knowing that Vile Kyle has made his two million dollar bail, and is now free to (illegally) take up a weapon and go hunting for more victims. Oh, excuse me—people to kill in self-defense. That’s the story, right? Here’s hoping the next time we see this piece of human refuse in the news it will be a report of the discovery of his corpse dead of an overdose in a back alley somewhere. Save the state the expense of trying him, anyway.

We’ll see. The professional sob-brothers are now lined up behind this guy, telling us sad stories about how he was just out to protect property and all, never mind it being at the law’s expense, and the cost of the lives of a guy just out of the hospital and a would-be hero. Fuck that shit. Vile Kyle made his choices. He chose to kill others, and he should be prepared to pay in turn with his worthless life. He could even do some good that way—part him out for the benefit of others as an organ donor, for example.

Allah Have Mercy On Us All

256,164   is the number of people in the United States who have died (so far) from the Trump Pandemic. And things look bleak for the Dopey Don. President-elect Biden appears to have pulled it off, and is now scheduled to assume the mantle of US leadership next January. Allah preserve us all.

I suppose denying reality is always an option. There’s a lot of that going around. Our Fake President is still refusing to meet with his successor, claiming that the election still isn’t over. (It isn’t, but Trump no longer has a legal path to victory.) The contrast with his predecessor could not be more glaring. When Trump legally won an election characterized by massive Republican vote fraud (in the form of vote suppression, mainly) Obama met with the incoming president and started working on the transition. The classless idiot in the White House is still alternating between throwing tantrums and sulking in a corner. A nurse writes about how patients dying from Covid-19 are still denying that it exists as they take their last breaths. And now people are insisting that Al Gore was acclaimed president-elect for a month before the Supreme Court decided not to finish counting the votes in Florida (hint: he wasn’t). That’s as nutty as claiming that Richard Nixon would have been elected president in 1960 if it weren’t for chicanery with the Illinois vote. (Chicanery there may well have been, but switch all twenty Illinois electoral votes from Kennedy to Nixon and Nixon’s still a loser.)

Something has leached away all my enthusiasm and will to live, and I hate to see that morning sun come up. The library has closed again—not that it was ever really open, but at least you could return books and order things through the library system. My laptop is still not working, one of my aunts has just died and an uncle has been diagnosed with Covid-19, so I suppose external reality may be having an effect on me. I thought writing something might make me feel better, but it doesn’t, so I guess I’m going to give up. For the moment. We’ll see about the future.

Clarification

In case anybody is confused by this—yes, I’ve called the election, and so as the Cowardly Liar in the White House—but nobody put either of us in charge of making that determination. Who will be declared the winner will depend on the results of an actual vote count. That’s how it works in this country. People keep counting the votes until all of them have been counted. To do otherwise is vote fraud, plain and simple.

It’s the commonest form of vote fraud, actually—not counting votes. It’s one way Black voters were disenfranchised for years, along with fake literacy tests, grandfather laws, and poll taxes. Boss Tweed and Mayor Daley knew how to lose votes, whether by throwing them in the river or by intimidating voters into not voting in the first place. When Trump says he wants to stop counting the votes now—with Biden ahead in both the popular vote and the electoral college, by the way—he is advocating vote fraud, plain and simple. I never thought I’d see an American President engage in such lowlife thuggery—but I never thought I’d see the American Supreme Court order a vote count stopped lest it result in the wrong man being elected to the job, as it did in the 2000 election.

In point of fact Biden still has multiple paths to victory. (A combination such as Nevada, Wisconsin, and Georgia—none of them out of reach—would do it, for just one example.) It doesn’t mean that any of them are going to pay off—as I think I’ve made clear, I don’t think they will—but they do exist, and will exist until the vote is counted—or Trump stages a successful fascist coup.

Personally, I wish there was some way they could both go down to a crashing defeat. Say, Trump manages to eke out an electoral college victory via massive vote fraud while the Democrats take both the House and Senate—and then bang! the first thing the Democrats do on taking power is impeach both Trump and Pence and kick them out of office. Or Biden wins but Trump shoots him when he attempts to take office, leading to Trump being taken out by the Secret Service. Or—well, you get the idea. Some improbable sequence of events that would eliminate both scumbags and maybe allow the country to finally get on the path to healing again.

Good Job, America

237,245   people dead from covid 19 in the United States, and the nation has just reelected the man most responsible for the carnage. Good job, America! There’s nothing we like more than a fumbling stumblebum with a solid gold racist heart. I just saw somebody saying that nobody would know Trump was a racist if the media didn’t keep reporting on it—which I suppose is true if you never listened to the guy or read his tweets.

And good job, Democrats. That electability thing really paid off for you, didn’t it? Put up an uninspiring stuffed nabob because people will vote for anything to be rid of Trump. Brilliant! How much of the country do you think is going to be left after another damn year of this crazed criminal at the helm?

But if present trends hold, at least you’ve got another moral victory out of it. Biden may have lost the presidency, but at least he won the popular vote. Who are you going to throw under the bus this time? Old people? The ill? The homeless? Not the rich, obviously. You need them.

Well, at least the election is over, Allah be praised.