Where the KNOWN meets the UNKNOWN

22 April 2024

Science Friction

Where the Known Meets the Unknown

Michael Shermer

Times Books: Henry Holt, 2005. 296pp. Introduction . Notes (thoughtfully marked in-text). Index.

I’ve been a Shermer fan for many years, particularly when I subscribed to his magazine, Skeptic, before moving to Saudi. And I already have Why People Believe Weird Things (1997) and The Borderlands of Science (2001) on my bookshelf. So why am I just getting around to this 2005 book? Simple: I just found it at a used book sale and figured I ought to get it.

Here’s one of Shermer’s key points: “There are no ‘facts’ in science, in the sense of something being proven 100 percent. One thing that is certain in science is that nothing is certain in science” (39).

Now the highlights

• 3-D “Impossible Crate” illusion (xv) – optical illusions and the power of beliefs to determine perceptions (“I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it”)
• Therapeutic Touch (xxv) – How the youngster Emily Rosa (left) did a professional debunking experiment (c 1996)
• Psychic for a Day (Ch 1) – How he learned to perform tarot card and palm reading, astrology and mediumship. He learns the “Rainbow Ruse,” “Fine Flattery,” and “Barnum reading.”
• the “Bright” brouhaha (Ch 2) – his group’s attempt to address the “labeling issue” regarding skeptics, free thinkers, humanists, atheists, agnostics et al. In 2003 they introduced the term “brights” and they were immediately (and justifiably) scorned as being “elitist” (among other accusations.) Most popular alternative: “Critical thinkers” and “Freethinkers” (though this was also most divisive)
• Anthropology Wars – Napoleon Chagnon vs Patrick Tierney and the Yanomamö people of Amazonia. (Ch 5)
• Alt med: “The world of complementary and alternative medicine is complex and murky, particularly in the cancer community” (105). “We are typically offered a choice between scientific medicine that doesn’t work and alternative medicine that might work…but alternative medicine is not a matter of everything to gain and nothing to lose. There is much to lose” (106). (See the website What’s the Harm?)
• Mutiny on the Bounty – what really happened? (Ch 8). It seems Capt. Bligh, despite a habit of “bad language” wasn’t really so bad, regarded more as a professional, humanitarian leader (125). Verdict: evolutionarily adaptive emotions (competing desires for status) expressed nonadaptively (129)
• The case of the QWERTY keyboard (138) and the witch craze movement (143) — fascinating but he ties these inexplicably to what he calls LaPlace’s Demon
• What If? (Ch 10) – “counterfactual conditioners” e.g. What if the South had won the Civil War?

The book really gets abstruse at this point and continues throughout with hard-to-understand charts and diagrams despite seemingly clearcut premises. Frankly, I was skimming a lot.

• Star Trek – Gene Roddenberry vs Harlan Ellison and what is arguably the finest program in the series, “The City on the Edge of Forever.” Oddly, Shermer plans to use this show as the centerpiece of an elaborate discussion and says “so it bears brief synopsis” — but then launches into complex diatribes by Ellison about “egocentric Roddenberry” and the history of Ellison’s original script without a word about the episode’s actual plot…until 3 full pages later.

Now, there are problems. In some places the writing and syntax gets a bit confusing.

The big issue, though — at least for the non-professional, non-PhD reader — is that the discussions get unbelievably abstruse and almost impossible to parse in at least half the book. We can’t necessarily blame Shermer for this since he does in fact have good academic credentials but, check this:

“These thematic pairs help illuminate what is really going on in the so-called evolutions wars. When Gould, Lewontin, and Eldredge are pitted against Dawkins, Smith, and Dennet, it is almost always along a spectrum of one of these five themata [cited earlier]. Maynard Smith’s claim that Gould’s ideas are confused and that he is giving non-professionals the wrong ideas about evolution is an indictment of Gouldian theory against others’ data. Wright envisions a cyclical metaphor of time with directionality generating purpose, and thus is critical of Gould’s emphasis on the directionless arrow in a purposeless cosmos…Gould’s theory of punctuated equilibrium, but he prefers phyletic gradualism…”

…and continues on in this vein for another couple hundred words (262).

In sum, what we’d really like in a book like this is what Shermer calls “a literary style that balances professional scholarship with popular exposition.” (263) Maybe we could send Bart Ehrman over to help him out.

Basketballus Interruptus

2 April 2024

[Individuals’ and team names have been removed to protect identities]

There was a high school basketball game between two not-so-evenly matched teams. One team is strong and, frankly, full of bullies. The other team seems to be somewhat physically disadvantaged but for a neutral observer it’s not clear if they’re just sort of smaller overall or less-skilled. They do have one or two reasonably tall players but they’re not particularly aggressive. As a result the “bully team,” as I’m calling them, gets away with a lot of on-court misbehavior, all outside the officials’ apparent visual range. What they’re doing is giving players an unnecessary bump or shove where the refs can’t easily see them since the refs are concentrating on the immediate area of play. They also seem to be whispering nasty remarks in opposing players’ ears…though of course there’s no way to know exactly what’s being said, but from the expressions it doesn’t look like they’re sayin’ “I really admire your sportsmanship.”

Now, the fans can see some of this, especially since they’re mostly parents or close friends who are sometimes just watching kids who may not be in the thick of action. However, they can’t hear the murmured remarks.

The game itself is not exactly a blowout but the bully team is ahead by a comfortable margin. Yet they keep up their clandestine antics.

Finally, in the 4^th quarter the bully team gathers in what seems to be a players’ rally circle without the coach or student-trainer. They rustle about for a moment and then emerge to get their 4^th-period remarks from the head coach—and now we see that they’re each wearing a hand-made name tag with a derogatory name of an opposing player. The names are like “Sad Seth” and “Babyface Bradley” and “Jello Jake.” The coach sees this but seems to just smirk and send them back out.

The game continues for 5 or 10 minutes with many of the fans enjoying the game, maybe thinking it’s just a fun, inter-team prank, and most of the names can’t be readily made out from the stands. Many fans appear to be annoyed or even outraged, but there’s really nothing they can do except take pictures.

At this point, we notice that the the bullied team’s assistant has been on his cell phone at a side area of the gym. This is not something you ordinarily see at a basketball game. A minute later he hands the phone to his head coach. The coach talks for maybe 30 seconds then calmly walks over to the scorer’s table and seems to be interrupting him. This is highly unusual, to disrupt an official without calling a time-out. The coach has handed over the phone and the scoring official sounds a buzzer, stopping play. This is astounding to the fans. They’ve never seen a game at any level stopped in mid-play without there being an injury.

The scorer calls the two on-court refs over for a private conference and the bullied team’s coach is waved over, as the opposing coach looks confused and comes over also.

Now we find out what’s going on.

The head ref makes a public address announcement as the scorer hits some buttons on his console and resets the scoreboard to read “0 – 0.” The official calls out as both coaches look on and the two teams (and their benches) wander around the court, all wondering.

“The game has been suspended on the instruction of the league commissioner’s office due to extreme unsportsmanlike conduct by the _____________ team players [he pauses]…and staff.”

The crowd goes crazy, as we can well imagine, but to a neutral observer it’s not clear if they’re for, against, or just amazed. The official continues:

“A final determination as to the status of the game and any penalties will be made when the commission members meet in person this week. Thank you please drive carefully.”

This last phrase is uttered calmly, with no hint of irony though it does, to at least one observer, have certain droll dryness in its very calmness, much as a Southern lady might say “Bless your heart.”

The bully team players proceed to stomp off in disgust, but first they tear off their name stickers and make a show of tossing them on the floor, as though to say “Now go clean that up!” That is, all except one player who, it turns out, did not use a sticker. He was one of the starting five but sat out the last half due to an injury. As we later discover, he actually had a sticker made up for him and put it on momentarily during the player huddle, but only so as not to cause a rift with his teammates. It later comes out that he had quietly pulled it off as the players met with the coach and tucked it into his waistband.

The bully team players’ act of tossing down their stickers turns out to be a big mistake—but not because of littering. Fans of the bullied team have rushed onto the court to snatch the stickers as evidence. And as we’ll learn in due course, a lot of the fans had been taking cell cam photos throughout the last part of the game, so now there’s little question of who was wearing what.

Post mortem

We find that several bullied team’s fans had been making distress calls to friends about the antics going on during the first three quarters…and one of the calls was to the wife of the league commissioner. So the commissioner himself had been overhearing bits and pieces, perhaps somewhat annoyingly as he was trying to watch a college game on TV. And really, a bit of hearsay about pushing and shoving isn’t normally enough to get his dander up. But so many calls had come into the commish’s wife and older son in the course of five minutes that he was now just waiting to hear if this would turn into an actual blowup at the auditorium.

This seems to be when he got a text from the bullied team’s assistant, along with photos of the stickers. Much as he hates to send an alarm to his fellow commission members—and in fact, has never had to do so—he has an emergency hot line, never to be used except…

…Was this really an emergency? He got his members on the phone within minutes and they came to a quick conclusion: This was too much. Clearly not a friendly-rival prank. The names were too…Trumpish. But was it worth stopping the game, even suspending it? Calls continued flooding his wife’s and son’s phones. The commission members made the decision: suspend the game and sort it out later. After all, openly mocking the other team was a flash point. And no one wanted to hear late-night news reports about a high school gym fan riot.

Later, during the hearings, we learn that the refs had actually been somewhat aware of the on-court, out-of-view antics but they weren’t obvious enough to take their attention from what they needed to be watching: the ball in play. And, as with the fans, they had no way of knowing what the ear murmurs were about.

The local news got hold of the story, courtesy of a couple school newspaper reporter/fans from both sides. To their credit, they both ran similarly neutral stories—though one a little more neutral than the other—and their reports to the local TV news station were in-synch.

The big story though was whether the bully team’s coach and staff were part of the instigation. We’ll never know if the head coach knew about the “sticker strategy” ahead of time. He claimed he knew nothing about it till he saw the stickers. He said, “by then it too late to do anything.” But his history of allowing or even encouraging his players to “play rough as needed” as he was known to say, was enough to undermine his credibility, even among some of his school’s parents.

And then there was his final undoing: the newspaper headline (found also on TV news chyrons):

COACH: “Too Late to Do Anything to Stop It”

As one TV commentator offered: “Has Coach ________never heard of something called a time-out?”

 

© J Veihdeffer 2 April 2024

SNL fails again – rapper “21 Spamage”

27 Feb 2024

Two weeks ago I posted a critique of Saturday Night Live’s two J.Lo musical performances, calling them over-performed, fire-and-smoke Super Bowl/Mardi Gras/Vegas-Elvis-style silliness. (And we really don’t care for the Super Bowl halftime extravaganzas either, except that stuff’s kinda expected…and soon forgotten.)

As I mentioned then, I’ve been watching SNL devotedly for many years, even during its so-called declining period. But who do they think the audience is? It seems like the show itself is multi-generational with edgy topical skits that are rebellious and subversive along with the satirical “Weekend News Update” that would appeal to anyone of all age demographics. (And we hear that the Trump era has actually fueled a resurgence in comedy.)

But the musical guests bookings are dominated by rappers and hip-hoppers doing, well, fire-and-smoke booty twerking and non-musical essentially talking performances.

Take last night: the British-American criminal rapper known as 21 Savage.

In addition to the obligatory smoke and fog on the stage, there’s the obligatory sunglasses, obligatory crotch-pointing moves, obligatory full-facial tattoos and obligatory “gang hand” gestures, all dating from 40 years ago…so why is he considered one of the most sought-after rappers of this generation? Accompanying him for no apparent reason were several ballet dancers doing fancy high kicks and a woman apparently playing the violin — though it sounded more like an orchestra of violins with no others in sight. (Maybe they were hiding backstage). And, as with J.Lo, two other guest artists showed up for brief vocal assists.

The melody-less “song” seemed to be about breadcrumbs and endless repeating of The Shining term ‘redrum.’

Here’s a sample of lyrics (courtesy my TV’s captions) from one endless monologue-like rap:

All I want for you/Is running like a faucet

I’m pourin’ up a wocky in Greece/I came a long way from the East

Ain’t none of it’s shallow/It’s deep

I really wanna get reeky/You actin’ shy/But you freaky

Now, one of the noteworthy elements about rap music when it’s well done is how the lyrics aim to capture life on, let’s call it the “mean streets.” Except, rap lyrics really only have meaning for those street peeps. There’s also a value in creative introduction of street slang to the rest of the world. But for the most part, the SNL audience–let’s say 18-49 and evenly distributed among females and males–has little real interest in rap slang and gettin’ reeky.

Fortunately, the very accomplished country singer/songwriter Kacey Musgraves is scheduled for next week, March 2. I had never heard of her the last time but this is exactly what SNL should be doing: introducing lesser-known non-gimmicky listenable talent. Check out Slow Burn

In the meantime, last Saturday’s show itself hosted by Shane Gillis, was about as flat as I’ve ever seen. I had never heard of Gillis (other than being fired by SNL a few years ago, which he made a point of)…and now I can see why. Throughout his whole opening monologue I’m not sure I found anything even remotely funny. And worse yet, not even controversially un-funny. Mostly just sort of cringey and dull. It’s great to be non-PC…just don’t be dull about it.

As the NPR critic noted, Saturday Night Live made its reputation as a group of comedy rebels–Not Ready for Prime Time–making not-so-careful fun of political and social establishments.

There were a couple of edgy news-relevant bits: a frozen embryo guest on the Weekend Update and a brilliant skit about Trump’s “magical gold sneakers” (sorry, you’ll need to sit through a 10-second ad but it’s worth it).

Has SNL jumped the shark? I don’t think so, but maybe it’s just impossible to keep being cutting edge after 49 years. (Other than me…heh heh)

The Terrier Who Couldn’t Bark

CHAPTER 1:

The new arrival

So me and Herman, a doxie, are patrolling the living room of his caretaker’s house with the help of his junior caretakers, Katiekin and Hannabanana, when we get wind of a new arrival at the door.

Oh…sorry, I guess you don’t know who I am yet do you? We Jacks are like that so I have to be reminded sometimes.

I’ll back up up a bit.

All right then, my human-type name is ‘Chili’…that’s the name my caretakers gave me, but my real name, my ‘dog name’ is…well, you probably wouldn’t understand it unless you speak “Dog” so I’ll just say that it means “Dog-that’s-always-alert-and-never-lets-anything-go-on-unless-I’m-there-to-supervise.”

Whew!

As you probably guessed, I’m a Jack Russell dog. That’s a kind of terrier. I don’t know exactly what the humans mean by that but I think it means we’re supposed to bark a lot.

Right now, Herman—a dachsund whose name in dog language means “Dog-that-barks-at-the-door-and-runs-around-the-room-like-mad-for-5-minutes-for-no-obvious-reason”—is barking at me to get on with the story. Herman gets a bit impatient with me sometimes and doesn’t understand why I never shut down. So he’s good for keeping me on track.

Anyway, we pick up on a new arrival to the house—smells like two Big Ones and a dog. But there’s something wrong.

What do you think is wrong? Well, I’ll bark you…I mean, tell you.

Herman and I smell this dog…but we don’t hear it.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here.  So the two Big Ones (that’s our name for what you call grown-ups) come in with their dog-friend and we start with our usual routine. Seems that this new one is a puppy and is friendly but a little shy what with all our barking. We all go around sniffing each others’ rears — which really doesn’t tell us as much as you humans think—but it’s very important. What it does is give us a sort of “key” to the other dogs — a special way of recognizing them.

I mean, it also tells some other stuff that you probably don’t want to know about, but mainly it gives us an exact, one-of-a-kind match…what you might call a fingerprint, if we had fingers.

CHAPTER 2:

How the new dog got his dog name

So there we are, Herman, me and the new kid who wasn’t old enough to have a true dog name but his human-type name was “Ziggy.” I could see how he got that name from his caretakers. This dog could not keep a straight line even if there were a tasty liver chunk at the end of it! He was here and there and everywhere. And everywhere he went he did some licking.

But not a sound. This was the quietest dog I have ever smelled. And here’s the strange part:

He is a terrier!

Now I don’t know about you, but back in the day, a terrier that doesn’t bark would be hounded out of the terrier pack faster than you could say “arf arf arf ARFARF arf ARF.” Oops, sorry again. Herman reminds me that you don’t speak Dog, so I should translate. What that last bit of arfing meant was: time for a nap or a cool drink or a bit of shoe-chewing.

OK, so dog talk doesn’t translate very well into human talk.

We got along pretty well with this Ziggy though. Turns out he’s a lot of fun even if he is a bit new to the dog thing. Awfully quiet though. Makes us nervous when a dog won’t bark what he’s thinking. Makes us think he’s hiding something. Boy did he lick though. This dog was a champion licker. I thought I was a good licker, but I’m strictly chump change compared to this Ziggy.

He licked all the Big Ones. He licked the chair legs.

He licked the humans some more…on their feet, on their hands, on their faces. Even their hair! He licked the floor of course…I mean, who wouldn’t? And then he went back to the Big Ones for more licks.

That’s when we realized what his name is: “Dog-that-leaves-no-face-or-foot-unlicked!”

Chapter 3

Being a very short chapter about the Big Ones

You know me…just jabbering along with whatever comes to my scattered Jack Russell brain.

But Herman there…he’s a thinker. He’s not much for story-telling but he can think up a storm. And ol’ Herman tells me that you might like to know why we call you “caretakers.” Some Big Ones call themselves “owners.” And I guess you paid some human money and that’s how you got us in your door. But see…human money doesn’t mean anything to a dog. What we care about is attention…that and food. And smelling other dogs. Not always in that order. But that’s about it. Attention. Food. Smelling Other Dogs. Oh, and napping. That’s big for us.

Right…so it’s Attention, Food, Smelling Other Dogs and Napping.

Herman says: get on with it, doggone it!

The point is, everybody’s got a job here: Our job as dogs is to be loyal and cute and to eat your food and chew your leather shoes. Your job is to take care of us dogs.

Sometimes a Big One will say they “own” such and such a dog. Sometimes a Big One will say they’re our “master”…whatever the heck that is. Sometimes you even call yourself our mother. Some times you even give us your last name. Ha ha. A dog with a last name is like a ArfarfARF ARF ARF arf arf ARF arf. I keep forgetting you don’t speak Dog. Nevermind. It doesn’t translate very well.

We trust you to take care of us. In return we give you a never-ending stream of devotion. Maybe a couple rugs or shoes get lost in the shuffle.

Deal with it.

CHAPTER 4

What Happened to Annie

The next part is a little harder to explain. Problem is, I wasn’t there and neither was Herman. And we dogs are very careful only to bark about things we know of our own personal experience.

It’s very hard to lie about a dog’s doodoo, for example. It is what it is. That’s why we spend so much time sniffing around.

So what I’m going to tell you …you’ll have to take it with an ARF arf ARF arf ARF ARF arf arf arf arf. I think “grain of salt” is the closest way of saying it in Big One talk. I have no idea what that means, but trusty Herman here barks me that it will mean something to you.

Would you like to take a moment and ask someone now?

Ok, now that we’ve got that settled let me just bark you that I got this story from a white Lab who got it from a rose bush visited by a Collie who heard it at a nice muddy puddle visited by a Pug who smelled it at an Oak tree.

CHAPTER 5

Being the rest of the chapter that wouldn’t fit into chapter 4

The way the story came down to me and Herman is that Annie, the caretaker of this Ziggy The Non-Barker, was out in her back yard fussing with the big-tall-black-thing-that-makes-meat-sizzle. Funny how such a funny-looking thing can make meat smell so good … Oops. Herman’s on my tail to get on with the story.

So Annie is inspecting the meat-sizzling-thinger and Ziggy is minding his business…checking leaves, smelling the wall and keeping an eye out for cockroaches. Next thing Ziggy knows, Annie is napping. But she doesn’t look like she normally does when she’s napping.

For one thing she’s napping on the brick ground. While we dogs know that there’s nothing more pleasant than a nice cool brick floor for napping, Big Ones usually don’t care for that sort of thing.

The other odd thing was the smell.

Ziggy didn’t recognize the smell. It certainly wasn’t the wonderful smell of meat on fire. It wasn’t the smell of meat gone bad. It was a sort of dark-puddle-gone-bad smell. Ziggy didn’t like the smell at all.

What to do, what to do!

Ziggy tried his emergency first aid trick, which happened to be his every-moment-of-the-day trick: licking her face. As much fun as this was, it didn’t seem to get the usual reaction from Annie. She liked to scrunch up her face and push her lips onto his fur when he licked her. But now…nothing.

So Ziggy did the next thing he could think of: he wandered around the yard smelling stuff. Then he went back to Annie and licked her some more. Then he went to the glass door and stared at it for a moment. Then he went around the yard and smelled some more stuff.

And then he did the next thing…which he was sort of afraid to do because he always got stern voice noises from the Big Ones when he did this: He scampered around the side of the house to the front yard.

And who should come along but a nice neighbor Big One. The neighbor Big One knew Ziggy very well from walks around the block… and so there was a lot of scampering and licking and dancing around — from Ziggy too! Just kidding. Ziggy did most of the scampering and licking and dancing around! And the Big One was very happy to see Ziggy but eventually she had to go because that’s what Big Ones do. They have to go somewhere else. But Ziggy didn’t want the Big One to go. Because Ziggy didn’t like the new smell in the back yard. And Ziggy didn’t like the idea of Annie taking a nap around that bad smell. So Ziggy scampered and licked and danced around some more. But the Big One wanted to go. The Big One had Other Important Places to Go.

Now here’s where something very interesting happened.

Something very astounding.

Can you guess what happened? I’ll give you a couple moments (which, believe me is a lot when you figure it in dog-moments!)

Did you guess? Yes…

Ziggy started barking. That’s how the Big One knew something was wrong. That’s how the Big One knew that she had to follow Ziggy to the backyard.

The next part is pretty confusing. It seems to involve a lot of Big Ones in very big trucks with blinking lights and loud noises showing up. The Big Ones in the big trucks all started inspecting Annie and doing all kinds of things. The first thing they did was make the bad smell go away. Eventually Annie woke up from her nap and the whole bunch of Big Ones went away.

And Annie was her happy self again.

See…just because a dog doesn’t bark doesn’t mean he can’t.

And…sometimes even the caretakers need to be taken care of.

 

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(c) 2003 James Veihdeffer. Revised for blog 20 Feb. 2024

J.Lo on SNL

10 Feb 2024

First off, let me preface by saying I’m a die-hard Saturday Night Live fan…watched it literally from their first show. I’ve enjoyed many of their musical acts — even for genres I’m not that keen on. But for the past couple years about all I see is booty-banging and less-than-musical performances.

I waited a few days to bring this up, just to give myself a moment of reflection. But the latest — I don’t want to say “atrocity” — let’s just say “mis-conducted” performance is the otherwise very talented singer/actress Jennifer Lopez. (Though her 40+ movies are mostly run-of-the-mill romcoms.)

So what happened last Saturday, Feb. 3?

J.Lo’s first appearance was simply fire effects, smoke, more fire, more smoke, some leg kicking, booty-twerking, a couple guest rappers, and a very crowded stage with 10 very oddly dressed bare-chested crazy-boys in long jackets jumping around her, along with what sounded like pre-recorded J.Lo background vocals. The “song,” if it can be called that, appeared to be simply repeating “Can’t Get Enough (Of You)” — but apparently not enough fire and and smoke effects.

In fact, the only way I could discern the lyric was due to the TV’s captions.

So, SNL folks, who I’m sure are keeping track of this stuff: How about some actual music with less fire and smoke? (And less twerking).

Oh, and the 2^nd appearance (“This Is Me Now”) did showcase excellent singing, but J.Lo was all zuited up in an unnecessarily lavish pink gardenia costume—not even an outfit, just a show-offy bunch of Oscar-ready red carpet adornments.

OK, maybe it was her salute to Valentine’s Day, but for a soulful ballad we could’ve used something a bit more…soulful.

 

Witch Answer Guy #12

11 Jan 2024

And so, the Witch Hunt Chronicles continue. Oddly, the civil servants querying us lately seem to be pretty insistent on remaining anonymous. Not sure why they’re so persnickety, but we honor all such requests. That’s just how we roll when we’re wearin’ the hat. It’s been a while (#11) since we’ve been called on for witchy info and advice. But now…

A concerned former public servant who desires to remain anonymous wishes to ask a question and state several grievances:

Former Public Servant (FPS): What do you do when a trial judge doesn’t allow you to rant and rave?

Witch-Answer Guy (WAG): You shut up and let your lawyer talk?

FPS: This fraud trial is a disgrace and a terrible witch hunt!

WAG: Agreed.

FPS: So you agree it’s terrible!

WAG: Yes, the person on trial for fraud has long ago been determined to be a bad witch. So it’s a terrible hunt. Like seeing a fox jump into a bush with all the dogs pointing at it and wondering where he went. Not much of a fox hunt, in fact, a terrible fox hunt.

Side note:

Witch-Answer Guy: Seems like this being January (getting near election-stealing time!), it would be great to get those witches out of the closet, or wherever they go. Alas, we thought the days of witch-hunting would hold off until after the 2024 primaries. But, frankly…and sadly…he’s baaaaack!

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Trump goes grocery shopping

Enough already!

21 Nov 2023

Enough

(but should have been titled ‘Enough!’)

Cassidy Hutchinson

Simon & Schuster, 2023. 359pp. No index. 8p photo insert.

Cassidy became practically an overnight political sensation in the spring of 2021 when she was a key witness in the hearings by “The U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the Capitol.” (Not even the full name!) Of course, depending on your political side, she was either a super-hero or lying traitor. Having watched her televised depositions, I’m firmly on the former side. This amazing and actually heart-rending book gives the full back story on how she went from being a Trump loyalist as special assistant to chief of staff Mark Meadows to a fervent truth-teller who blows the lid on the White House insiders shenanigans, esp. her boss.

(21 Dec.: In retrospect, I see that I’ve mentioned several negatives about this book, but that’s just because it’s an important book and needs careful analysis.)

There are some publishing quibbles (below) but for now I’ll stick to the positive highlights.

• Trump hates fundraisers—he expects people to flatter him, not the other way around (139)
• “Will be wild” (86-7)
• COVID: one of Trump’s lowest moments in retrospect…not the political handling but his personal disregard for others. Consider that he knows he’s got COVID but goes ahead with a crowded schedule of a campaign rally, TV debate, Supreme Court announcement, airplane trips, etc and probably infects dozens or even hundreds — all maskless. Oddly though, Cassidy feels empathy for him when the public sends him negative remarks (144). Thankfully, she later takes on the opposite attitude a few pages later (146); however, this suggests that her editor wasn’t paying attention.
• Bizarre Rudy Giuliani story: “Rudy slips his hand under my blazer, then my skirt” and she feels his cold fingertips on her thighs (210). Yikes. Who’d a thunk Rudy could do such a thing!
• Oddity: She is a 23-25-year-old woman in a technically un-named position (her boss never seems to get around to defining it) as assistant to “Mark.” He makes it clear on her first day that he wants her with him wherever he goes—his “shadow,” his “eyes and ears” (82) Yet a few weeks (?) into the job he asks her to attend the Office of Legislative Affairs (OLA) meetings with him and she “declines” (89). (She used to work in the OLA and suddenly quit to work for Mark, leaving her old job completely unfilled…but maybe that’s just how things work in D.C. politics.) At times she seems to be the real “power”—e.g., telling chief of staff Meadows (“Mark” as she refers to him throughout the book) to “go visit the president” or advising guest list names against her boss’s wishes, among other things (95-97). It seems that everything must go through her.
• She often talks about strained finances— esp. when it comes time to testify and she needs a lawyer—but she is clearly one of the most influential “minor figures” in the entire WH. She doesn’t take vacations (until one time, late in the story), buy expensive dinners and she spends 18 hours a day in the office. Presumably most of her day-to-day expenses are covered by the government. Seems that life in D.C. must be pretty dang expensive for someone making only $72K (later, $90K still working for Trump after Jan. 20)
• Interesting use of “they” in the Jan. 7 section about a deputy press secretary—clearly meant to disguise the gender identity since the neutral pronoun is not used anywhere else (225)
• Jan 19: “The president and I never said goodbye. Some goodbyes are better left unspoken” (233)
• On leaving the WH: “I had burned my candle at both ends and had no wick left” (233)
• She seems to do a fair amount of drinking, e.g., “bourbon night” date with a friend wearing sweatpants and sweatshirt (239) and an all-niter in “Kevin’s cabin” at Camp David: “as the sun began to rise I decided to head back to my cabin for a power nap and to sleep off the wine” (106). Not that I’m accusing of anything but it does seem that most or many episodes involve multiple glasses of wine.

𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺𝘀
There’s way too much “first-naming” throughout. This certainly does reflect the presumed intention to show her first-name basis with dozens of close colleagues and friends, but for those of us not part of the scene, it gets tiresome to try to figure out who Amy, Kevin, Elise, Alyssa, Debbie, Eric, Dan, Ben, Jack, Hope, Sam, Ron and others are. “Mark” — Ok since that’s her boss and William (an ex?-boyfriend). But with no index, the others simply get lost.

And speaking of no index…every political/history book needs one.

𝑪𝒐𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝒑𝒉𝒐𝒕𝒐: No idea who’s idea it was to show a Mona Lisa-type overly mascara’d shot that would be perfectly appropriate for a family dining room side table, but it does nothing at all to convey the angst, indecision, trauma and drama of this great woman’s role in the WH leading up to and following Jan. 6. Instead, one of the shots of her testifying, esp. the shot of her looking up seriously at the committee at the dais would have been perfect. (at right) What the cover pic needs is some indication of grit, or at least determination. We understand that a playful or grinning pic wouldn’t be appropriate, but how about something that calls out “Enough!” (And by the way, this is one of the few instances where an exclamation mark in the title would be perfect.)
• The first 35 pages are basically her childhood bio (grade school, high school, choice of college), suitable for a personal memoir of a famous historical figure. But all we really care about as readers is to find out how her decision-line evolved from A to Z in the course of year. In fairness, her bizarre and totally dysfunctional relation with her father as an abused (not physically) child—even up to adulthood—plays a role in her life as a Committee witness, but that could have been dealt with in a 2-3pp summary, possibly even an Intro section after the Prologue.
• Minor quibble: Cassidy refers throughout to “the boss” and “the chief” and apparently this is abundantly clear to those in the WH circle but for those on the outside it’s not always clear which one is Trump and which is Meadows. (eg, 162: “The boss asked him to meet up with Tony Bobulinski”).

𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐋𝐋:

This is an important and fascinating account of how a young woman managed to transform her thinking—𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠—based on personal experiences. One of the big questions skeptics (and others) have is: How do you get someone to change their mind based on facts? Is it even possible?
However, there are signs that this book may have been rushed into publication. Ch. 12, for example has several typos (‘gravely’ for ‘gravelly’; “hold room/hotel room”?) and what my students call “gobbledygook” writing (e.g., the OTR explanation; “there was not a microphone and speaker set up”; placing documents on reporters’ seats “after they disembarked”; “jumping in to redirect Mark’s displeasure”) — seemingly concentrated in pp 149-155.

That said, please do get this book!

See the latest (rightfully) banned word!

8 Nov 2023

The Grammar Police are now adding a new phrase to the Officially Banned List:

<insert drum roll>

“a hundred percent”

It’s still OK when you’re giving a mathematical response to a question: “Did you get all your projects completed today?” “How’d you score on your chemistry exam?”

But as a metaphor for “really good” or “I totally agree” (or “I’m totes down with that”) it’s getting a bit tiresome and, we dare  say, clichéd.

Thus it should be shelved along with:

• “I mean . . .” (when starting a response to a question, rather than giving a clarification)
• “like” (like sooo annoying when it’s like used like over and like over)

• “woke” (and don’t get us started on “anti-woke”)
• “That’s a good question!” (We’ve even seen this used as a response to a self-delivered question).

Sorry to jump into Xmas prematurely, but might as well get this out early.

• “Give the gift of…” (as we head into “the holiday season” we’ll be seeing merchandisers using this sadly bankrupt phrase to make their service — “a great hair day,” “real estate service,” “holy water” — sound like it could be a present when it’s clearly just an excuse to jump on the giftwagon when they don’t have a nice sweater…or Red Ryder air rifle to offer.

• “Black Friday” – sorry shoppers but this is supposed to be the Friday after Thanksgiving; however, some retailers are announcing it at the start of November!

TV ad – Nov 5

Nov 9 2023

I mean, thus is it, like, ruled, as authorized by the certifying jurisdiction…

Vigil Aunties – Part IV

4 Nov 2023

Note: this is a work in progress. Any film or theater moguls who wish to stage this are welcome to contact me.

Part I

Part II

Part III

PART IV (new)

Home computers

The next thing we hear is that various people are reporting that their home computers have been vandalized. At first it’s not clear what these people have in common. It’s just strange that home office laptops and iPads have been smashed with no other evidence of damage to the residence.

Public notice

Signs now start appearing on streetcorner lamp posts that usually just host notices of lost dogs.

The hand-lettered notices, free of any fingerprints, watermarks or other identifiable markings are starting to show up on lamp posts, public utility boxes, the sides of HOA mailbox structures, and dumpsters. There’s a curiously grandmotherly style to the writing, each posting different from the others. One person said it had the look of her maiden aunt’s writing.

Now, reports of broken-into home laptops start to appear on Next Door message boards and especially Facebook. Oddly, there are not a lot of these reports — possibly most people don’t want to admit to having sent anonymous hate mails.

Is this some kind of aging Batman/Spiderman/Wonder Woman operation? The attacks seem to call for an elite group of athletic, possibly high-tech personnel. The variety of locations indicate more than one individual. Yet the lamp post signs and other symptoms—especially the name—give the impression of elderly grannies on a public service mission.

Or maybe that’s just “gramogynist” thinking—the idea that “grammas” have no skills other than baking pies and bragging about their grandkids.

The big question among what are now known as “Auntie Fans” is: How the heck do they get around without being arrested or otherwise accosted? Unlike Batman, you can’t seem to spot them through special outfits or armament bulges…and god help the person who tries to pat down an auntie or granny in the park!

Some authorities have tried to monitor shooting range customers. But for whatever reason(s), the range owners have been reluctant to divulge demographics about their clienteles and law enforcement agencies don’t seem to have the legal right to force range operators to give out that info.

One theory is that “The Aunties” have managed to secure private, out-in-the-hillsides practice ranges, which could account for their apparent expertise in knee-shooting — though one has to wonder what kind of targets they’d set up for that kind of pinpointing.

Buy a shirt, get 20 emails

27 Oct 2023

I recently bought a shirt online. I was tipped off to the style by a buddy at a happy hour a month or so ago. (Guys do that nowadays: “Hey, that’s a cool shirt, where’d ya get it?”)

After dallying around with other stuff for a week or two I finally looked up the online shopping site: AliExpress. There was a whole screen of great “party shirts” — not full dress-up but more than a plain t-shirt.

First off, let me say that I did get the shirt and it looks great. In fact, I’ve actually received compliments. And it only cost about 14 bucks!

But there were some snags. When I first went to enter my credit card info, a strange name — a woman’s name — popped up on the “Your Name” line. I started over and the same thing happened. I thought maybe the system was simply showing a sample name to indicate where I should put my own. I cancelled out again and was going to just move on to my next task but then I thought…It’s a great shirt, let’s try again.

This time it worked. No fake name and the payment process went smoothly.

A few minutes later I got an email from AliExpress indicating that my order had been cancelled and would I like to try again?

Wait…didn’t I just get a confirmation on the website that my payment was processed?

A while later, I got a separate confirmation that the order had indeed been placed and fulfillment was in process. Yay!

And thus was the start of an incredible series of more than 20 emails from AliExpress—delivery updates, “great deals,” more delivery confirmations and “rave reviews” for other products.

I considered blocking or unsubscribing to the online marketing company but figured I should at least wait until delivery actually happened. The original delivery date was about 3 weeks away but kept creeping forward until, lo and behold, the package arrived—all in good order.

I’m happy with the shirt—both men and woman have commented nicely. So maybe I shouldn’t complain about the email-palooza. But it’s hard enough dealing with all the spam texts, the barrage of social media scam “friend requests”…and now, daily political calls for donations…that I barely have time to finish digitizing my Bahamas anthropological field journal from, well, from a long time ago.