Sunday/Offending eye

The gospel this Sunday was Mark's "If thy right hand offends thee..." selection, always a fascinating tract on so many levels. How is a body part an actor without the brain? With motive so important in Christian thought, how does attacking the directed organ and sparing the motivator make sense? If it is advice on how symbolically to become more spiritual, where does one stop the operation? And what in heaven's name does the fundamentalist do with this passage?
Indeed the positioning of the miracle worker "who is not one of us" with this passage is crucial here. Christ makes it clear that the message, the idea of Christianity, is the important point. Keep your offending eye on the point; the circumstances are distractions. He is much more forgiving than the apostles about the way the message is given. (Imagine the god of Muhammad saying that.) The god of Muhammad would speak of mutilation as a sacred act; Christ offers it as symbolic of a way where subtraction enlarges the whole. But what is being shed is the limiting physical circumstance of the spirit; no New Testament surgery is implied.
Houseman had a poem with the line, "If it chance your eye offend you, cut it off, lad, and be whole.." Ralston, the mountain climber who amputated his own arm after four days of being trapped by it on a rock face, said: "My self-amputation was a beautiful experience because it gave me my life back."
Harming oneself is not an issue here.

An Early Kavanaugh Retrospective

Some summaries of the Kavanaugh fiasco:

First, Charen:

"It began as farce. Protesters dressed in "The Handmaid's Tale" red capes lined the halls of senate office buildings. Senator Kamala Harris behaved like a heckler at her own committee's hearing. Senator Cory Booker invited martyrdom by claiming to break a rule that he didn't actually violate. The Democratic senators demanded documents that might have passed over Kavanaugh's desk in the Bush administration despite the fact that they had already announced their intention to vote against him. (Senators Amy Klobuchar and Chris Coons clearly didn't get the memo and conducted themselves as if they were actually seeking insight into Kavanaugh's views of the judiciary.) 
Then it descended into tragedy. Senator Dianne Feinstein, at the 11th hour, announced that she had referred an anonymous accusation to the FBI. She had been in possession of the information since July but held it. As Gregg Nunziata, former chief nominations counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee outlined in The Weekly Standard, such accusations are common. Procedures are in place to investigate them confidentially, sometimes involving the FBI, sometimes not. But this one was treated as an ace in the hole. Its existence was strategically leaked when it could do the maximum damage.
After someone on the committee leaked Christine Blasey Ford's identity, the real show trial — the one conducted in the media — got rolling. Story after story appeared about women and girls who'd been attacked or abused and kept silent. The Atlantic ran a piece by Caitlin Flanagan subtitled, "When I was in high school, I faced my own Brett Kavanaugh." Prejudicial, you think?

The New Yorker account of an incident at Yale seemed not so much reported as extracted with forceps. Deborah Ramirez's memory of the alleged event was so hazy that she consulted classmates about whether they recalled it, and took six days to think over whether it was Kavanaugh or someone else. The Julie Swetnick story of rape trains seems literally incredible.

Dozens of retrospectives of the Anita Hill hearings have been lovingly presented, with agonized commentary suggesting that if Kavanaugh is confirmed it will be a verdict on whether our nation has changed since the 1990s. Left-leaning outlets basically decreed Kavanaugh guilty due to his skin color and background. USA Today said "prep school elites take care of their own." Salon fumed about "class, social capital, and endless privilege," and Vox filled us in on how elite schools "enable toxic masculinity.""

 

Next, on Bork:
On July 1, 1987, just 45 minutes after Ronald Reagan announced his nomination of Robert H. Bork to the Supreme Court, Ted Kennedy said in the Senate that Bork’s confirmation would mean that “women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, and schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government.”

He is talking here about Robert Bork, one of the most respected jurist in the land, just 288 days after he and 97 other senators voted 98-0 to confirm Antonin Scalia, Bork’s intellectual soulmate. As if Teddy could sit in judgment of anybody.

 

And this is Dana Bash of CNN asking Harry Reid about the calumny he uttered on the Senate floor during the Obama-Romney election about Romney not paying his taxes:

Dana Bash: So, no regrets, about Mitt Romney, about the Koch brothers? Because some people have even called it McCarthy-ite.

Harry Reid: Well, they can call it whatever they want. Romney didn't win, did he?

This is the face we Americans now present to the world, the America of the Constitution, the Civil War, the first and second great wars. The America of Jefferson, Adams and Lincoln.
The Court debate is wrapped in a sort of righteousness, as if the people involved were interested in quality. They are not. They are interested solely in influence and the first, second and tertiary ways of achieving it. Their interest in your opinions is only an entre to how they can attract your support. So women demonstrating in red outfits mimicking the style of a sci-fi novel unifies some peripheral group. Haranguing the candidate for the subtle meanings of  the notations in a high school yearbook galvanizes some equally poorly thinking subset. It is the nadir of influencing, worthy of Crazy Eddie and eleven p.m. infomercials. And these are our leaders, and they want that Justice seat. Both sides are willing to burn down the building to control the space.
 

Bees, Mites and the Commons

Bees, Mites and the Commons

Beekeeping is becoming popular. While experts graciously welcome the rising national interest in beekeeping as a hobby, they warn that novices may be inadvertently putting their hives — and other hives for miles around — in danger by not keeping the bee mite population in check.

Experts. Novices. Garage startups. The Commons and who would order it.

Many hobbyists avoid mite treatments, preferring a natural approach, says Marla Spivak, a bee expert at the University of Minnesota. But that is often a deadly decision for the bees, she says.

National surveys by the Bee Informed Partnership show backyard beekeepers are taking the greatest losses nationally, and those losses are often the result of an out-of-control infestation of the varroa mite, says Spivak.

Varroa mites arrived in the United States nearly 30 years ago, and they've become a big problem in recent years.

But untreated hives can spread mites and viruses to other hives within several miles. Healthy bees will invade a dying hive to steal its honey. When they do, they carry the mites with them back to their hives.

There is a project underway to favor genetically bees that "groom," the grooming finds and kills the mites. the more aggressive African bees are more resistant to the mites, as well.

African killer bees. Great.

Trump

I got this note from Sandra:

"You always seem to ignore Trumps brags about how good he is and how America has done better than anyone else..you say other leaders do the same! I don’t think so..I have never heard any other leader brag about themselves like trump. And personally I think we all
should be embarrassed that he represents the USA and that the whole  audience laughed at his remark."

I wrote this back:

"I have no interest in or regard for Trump. He embarrasses me. (Although I like his wife.) But they all embarrass me, they just do it in their own ways. Elizabeth Warren, Teddy Kennedy, Maxine Waters, the guy who thought Guam would tip over if we sent too many marines--all of these people are well dressed, arrogant, power hungry people who would find getting work in any other field very difficult. And they actively hold me in disregard and want to impair my life.

The problem I have with the Trump opposition is that they see their own candidates as somehow different, they take them seriously when they are only better actors and less transparent--hardly an endorsement. They just string us all along until there is a crisis, likely of their making--a war or an economic event --and then they look at us like Harry Reid with basset eyes and say, "No one knows what to do." Then we have another crisis of their making.

Look at what these people have done in Vietnam, in Cuba, in Iraq, in Libya, to the debt, to heavy industry, to computer security, to privacy. Look at what has happened to the process of picking the Supreme Court, a total bipartisan pretentious fiasco. 

Trump is going to leave the U.S.--and maybe the West--with a real hangover. He is a caricature of a politician: Vain, arrogant, blustering, shallow, ill-informed and devoted to whatever small belief he has. And his legacy is not going to be his arrogance or his silliness, it is going to be the taint he will have given every politician before and after. He will have given the public the disquieting understanding as to how limited and shallow these people who would lead us truly are. 

No wonder these politicians all hate him.

Reverie

The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power--Daniel Webster

Agreement. The foundation of the latest budget deal, much like the spending planned signed earlier this year, is an agreement to spend more—on everything. The deal spends $11 billion more on the Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services departments than the Trump administration requested. That's what Democrats wanted in exchange for agreeing to a $17 billion year-over-year increase in military spending, according to The Washington Post. The two parties reached a deal by giving both sides what they want: more spending.

Governing is a lot easier when no decisions are made.

Who is ...Strzok?

Einstein's travel diary shows significant racial stereotyping, especially toward Asians.

Should we stop teaching the Theory of Relativity?

It is fascinating that Trump, with his rag-tag coalition of the anti-government and the annoyed, could possibly be in a situation where he, without any true coherent national or international policy, might become the most influential president of my lifetime because of his court appointments.

Pirate rookie third baseman Colin Moran is older than Bryce Harper, who is a free agent at the end of this year..

An American family of three living in the republic of Georgia died during an attack by a disgruntled shepherd.

American Federation of Teachers (AFT) held its biennial convention in Pittsburgh. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and U.S. Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were among the speakers for the event. The AFT, which represents 1.7 million teachers, has 3,000 affiliates throughout the country, making it the nation's largest teacher union. I did not read about any Republican speakers at the event; I wonder why it seems so partisan. And I wonder, if it is so partisan, how it can be non-partisan in the classroom.

Golden oldie:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2011/03/oscars-and-union-of-elites.html

The Oscars and a Union of Elites steeleydock.blogspot.com The Academy Awards, seen as a social test or study, can be fun. First, the interface. Hathaway seemed to be a winning, energetic girl who t...

Scalability is the idea that you can do 100 tasks as easily as 1 task. Facebook, for instance, works the same with one user as it does with two billion users. Amazon is also infinitely scalable, a brick-and-mortar store is not.

Strzok, the FBI guy, was very aggressive and convincing at the House hearings. It was almost as if he didn't send those emails.

A funny little segment of the hearings: Strzok diminished the import of emails generally; he works for an intel agency whose main activity is listening to phone calls and intercepting emails.

Sexism has been a bigger problem than racism at the World Cup in Russia, according to anti-discrimination experts advising FIFA.

Fans harassing female broadcasters while they worked are among about 30 cases of "sexism on the streets" reported to FIFA by the Fare network.

Apparently the World Cup is responding by censoring pictures of good looking women in the stands.

"Anti-discrimination expert" sounds like a pretty good job.

The Great Courses has a Netflix arm.

If we are serious about our interest in other sources of life in the universe, someone better investigate where Melania is really from. She looked otherworldly at the NATO dinner.

Legerdemain:

1. trickery; deception.
2. sleight of hand.
3. any artful trick.

There are about 50 spellings in Middle English for (modern) legerdemain. The English word most likely comes from a Middle French phrase leger de main “light of hand,” which is unfortunately unrecorded. Middle French has two similar idioms meaning “to be dexterous”: estre ligier de sa main, literally “to be light of his hand” and avoir la main legiere, literally “to have the light hand.” In English, legerdemain first meant “skill in conjuring, sleight of hand” and acquired the sense “trickery, artful deception” in the 16th century. Legerdemain entered English in the 15th century.

"Based on decades of research, the resolution says that mother’s milk is healthiest for children and countries should strive to limit the inaccurate or misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes. Then the United States delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, upended the deliberations." (This is from the NYT on some U.N. resolution)

So, if economics is the analysis of the movement of labor and products in scarcity, what happens in times of surplus?

New Jersey State legislators have approved a bill to use taxpayer money to support "grants to strengthen local news coverage," starting with a $5 million. The goal when the bill was first introduced was to have $20 million allocated toward the "civic information" fund every year for five years. "Particularly during these uncertain times, we need a strong and free press, which we know is the best safeguard for truth in our state and the country," State Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg declared.

She said this with a straight face, acting as if the state subsidy did not undermine the press' freedom.

An attorney for former FBI lawyer Lisa Page says she would not appear for a private interview with two House committees, despite a subpoena. Ignore subpoenas, take the fifth--I just don't see how these people can do stuff that we average guys would be just destroyed doing.

A very good and important sentence from the WSJ:
One reason the economy struggled under Barack Obama is because he stretched the law to serve his ideology. Businesses never knew when a new regulation might hit next, and on what legal basis. Mr. Trump is making the same mistake on trade, substituting presidential whim for clear and fixed rules.

So we should man the barricades over the minimum wage. Or the trade deficit. Or something. Look at the recent coffee "science." A large observational study used about half a million records from people who donated tissue and samples to the UK BioBank. Researchers found a slightly lower risk of death over 10 years of follow-up among people who self-reported that they drink coffee.
The researchers said their study “should be interpreted with caution.” They didn’t claim a health benefit, but rather said the findings “provide further evidence that coffee drinking can be part of a healthy diet and may provide reassurance to those who drink coffee and enjoy it.”
Sitting down over a cup of coffee in the morning, you could come up with countless explanations for such a finding. Coffee is part of the working culture; workers are healthier than non-workers. Coffee is a gastric irritant; people with gastric disease don't drink coffee. Some with high blood pressure are annoyed by coffee; so hypertensives don't drink coffee. You could make it a parlor game that could go on forever.
Yet, predictably, the news stories not just told readers that “coffee drinkers are more likely to live longer” (NPR’s headline), they often told readers to “go ahead and have another cup” as the AP advised in its opening sentence.
Info is different from understanding.

Since 2001, the percentage of self-employed health care professionals declined and the gap in annual earnings between self-employed and employed health care professionals narrowed.

From the indictment of the 13 Russians: “The ORGANIZATION sought, in part, to conduct what it called, ‘information warfare against the United States of America.'” . . . “By in or around May 2014, the ORGANIZATION’s strategy included interfering with the 2016 U.S. presidential election, with the stated goal of ‘spread[ing] distrust toward the candidates and the political system in general.”
Strangely, the Left is outraged, as least as outraged as they were over the Rosenberg execution or the Alger Hiss case. And remember their ridicule of Romney when he called Russia our most dangerous enemy?
Gun rights activist charged with being a Russian agent?
Washington D.C.'s  liberal City Council plans to repeal their minimum wage?
I'm getting dizzy.

Fruits are seed-bearing structures; so, anything with seeds in it is a fruit. Vegetables are every other part of the plant, from the roots (onions) and stems (celery) to the leaves (spinach) and flowers (cauliflower). So, technically, tomatoes are fruits and rhubarb is a vegetable. Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad. -Miles Kington, journalist, musician, and humorist (1941-2008)

U.S.—While most Americans are hostile to socialism, touching a hot stove, and sticking one’s face in a sack full of badgers, surveys show that millennials are much more open to these dangerous ideas and activities than previous generations. Finding themselves pessimistic about the future and saddled with student debt, millennials often turn to socialism, and also tend to say things like “Hey, maybe it would be fun to touch that hot, glowy thing above the oven.”
(from a satirical mag)

This is the ninth time in this century that the US has had the largest decline in emissions in the world. This also was the third consecutive year that emissions in the US declined, though the fall was the smallest over the last three years.

Carbon emissions from energy use from the US are the lowest since 1992, the year that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) came into existence. The next largest decline was in Ukraine (-10.1% and 28.1 tons).

The largest increase in carbon emissions in 2017 came from China (1.6% and 119 tons)

Together, China and India accounted for nearly half (212.2 million tons) of the increase in global carbon emissions (426.4 million tons).

Aaaaaannnnnddddd......a graph:

Source: Gavekal