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July 26, 2024

Religious Right shooting itself in the foot on no-fault divorce

First, divorce is in general a state-by-state issue. So is marriage, other than the federal constitutional bar on discriminating against gay marriage. Different states have different minimum age limits for marriage with and without parental consent. Etc., etc.

So, Congresscritters have no standing to try to eliminate no-fault divorce nationally. 

But, that's a minor point.

Let's assume wingnut state legiscritters get the ball rolling.

You know what will happen?

The marriage rate will start declining further. It's safer that way.

July 25, 2024

Blogger is being an image-posting shit with newer versions of Firefox

I have two Mac desktops at home.

The older one is a way old eMac maxed out on OS at 10.11 El Capitan.

The newer one, recently purchased but still used, is a 2013 iMac on 10.15 Santa Catalina. I don't think it will upgrade and Mac's not prompted me. I got it cheap off eBay and it works well enough and will continue to do so for five years.

At work, I have a like-new Mac Mini running Mac 13 Sonoma.

Earlier this month, on both Santa Catalina and Sonoma, hit a problem.

I usually post pictures to go with stories in Blogger by the "URL" version, rather than uploading. (If they're my photos, of course, I go to Google Photos.)

OK, on both? I post the URL and no image preview showed up, and nothing loaded.

At home, I then did a screengrab of the photo I wanted for one piece and uploaded it to the appropriate Google Photos album. Tried that. Google said something about having to allow essential cookies. OK'ed that, even though I don't totally trust Google's snooping. It then said I had to sign into my account. Excuse me, am I not already signed in because I'm on a post in Blogger, editing it? But, OK'ed that. Then, the Google Photos upload popped up in a separate window, which has never happened before. And then? I hit the "insert" button and nothing happened.

And, it's not just Macs, either. I have a brand new Windoze 11 laptop. Blogger's doing the same shit in Firefox with it, too. Won't post photos off URLs and asks me the same bullshit if I try to post off Google Photos.

Update, Aug. 20: As often as I sign into Blogger on Chrome at work, Google continues to send me a security alert. So, its AI, machine learning or whatever is HUGELY fucking stupid, if it hasn't "learned" (these programs don't actually learn, hence the scare quotes) that that's me.

July 24, 2024

Science news: Brain plumbing, nekkid Lucy the Australopithecus, more

I've read recently that the amyloid plaque idea of Alzheimer's is not on the most solid ground, but it's verboten to question it, let alone offer alternatives, in serious research journals.

Well, what if it's partially right but not fully so?

This idea, that the brain's glymphatic system flushes brain waste during non-REM sleep, including but not limited to, amyloid plaque, would be one idea. In this case, then, two people with similar daytime levels might differ on Alzheimer's symptom degrees, or even whether they have it or not period, depending on whether their brain plumbing is working well or not.

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An interesting piece here, ostensibly about Lucy the Australopithecus afarensis, but in reality about body-draped reconstructions off fossil bones of ancient hominins in general. Per the story, to use the old Texas word deliberately, Lucy, and her ilk, actually might have been more nekkid than they've been portrayed. Linked in the piece, the author, a philosopher, notes that the coevolutionary history of humanoids and humanoid-targeting body lice says that not only was Lucy nearly nekkid, her ancestors may have been nearly hairless as much as 1 million years earlier.

Stacy Keltner speculates that shame over nudity arose to reinforce pair-bonding by trying to shame actual or would-be cheaters. The idea sounds interesting, but it also sounds like it involves some backward-reading Ev Psych. Indeed, Keltner cites an evolutionary anthropologist. Nudity and nakedness, if you will, are indeed not the same. But, the speculation as to why nakedness became, essentially, shamed into nudity still seems like awfully thin ice. To put it another way, it looks like a somewhat self-referential take, unable to escape our 20,000? 50,000? years of post-nudity framing.

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Related somewhat to Lucy, though not on the development of nudity and shame?

Carl Zimmer has reporting on human fossils in Tibet confirmed to be Denisovan. The age range is the biggie. It's from 160,000 years before present, confirming how early Denisovans split off the Homo family tree, to just over 30,000 years bp, including evidence of their interaction with Homo sapiens.

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Another Zimmer story notes that new research indicates language evolved primarily for communication, and NOT for thinking. Fun sidebar? This is another overturning of Chomsky's claims about language. (I can't say "research," since Chomsky did basically none.)

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It sure would be nice if NASA could work with the Chinese Space Agency and see some of those far side of the moon rocks that the Chang'e 6 spacecraft brought back to earth. But, because of US Congressional tribalism on China that predates COVID by nearly a decade, US law says it can't.

Meanwhile, bringing back 2 kilos of rocks by unmanned voyage? The American Cold War-based rationale for manned lunar missions (and a manned Martian mission beyond that) continues to lose more and more steam.

July 23, 2024

I didn't know Orwell was this bad

This is an extended review of an overall bad Orwell biography, focusing mainly on one issue. It's an issue that I didn't know about before, until a Goodreads friend asked me if I had read another book about Orwell.

I had long known that many leftists had some degree of discomfort with Orwell. I had bits, but not that much, and didn't know why these others had that high degree of discomfort. Well, the editorial blurb for that other book, "George Orwell and Russia," mentions "Orwell's List." And, I quickly found out why, indeed, and joined their ranks.

Orwell: The New LifeOrwell: The New Life by D.J. Taylor
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Probably 3.5 if I'm generous, but I just can't do that.

UPDATE: Dropped to two stars; see below.

First, riffing on another reviewer, this is less a new bio than a revision of the author's previous. I'll take that person's word for it.

Now, my thought.

A prediliction for physiognomy present in older English (sic, not “British”) historians still seems to abound with Taylor. What ARE stereotypically Gallic features? Fortunately, unlike them, the author doesn’t seem to venture into physiognomic essentialism.

But, he does flirt with presentism. He notes that Orwell called Spender a “pansy,” and then says, OK, that’s bookmarked, move on. Ditto on talking about a feminist author in modern times attack Orwell for misogyny and compare it to shooting an elephant with a pea-shooter. Seeing all this predisposed me to be less than enthusiastic.

That said, he insinuates that the “How I Shot an Elephant,” as well as “A Hanging in Burma,” may not be factual. Says the latter has clear ties to a similar Thackaray piece. But, while insinuating, takes no stand.

As for big issues? Taylor doesn't fully tackle the issue, beyond the above, as to how good of a non-communist leftist Orwell was, or was not.

The bio itself is in a vignette style. It’s interesting, but doesn’t always flow well.

Also, misses chances at psychological takes. Was the adoption of Orwell as literary pseudonym also that of a literary persona? Why the one foot back in Edwardian times? What was up with the one foot in the Church of England from the early 1930s to the end of his life? Per one bit of cynicism, did he have jealousy as well that he had not gone from Eton to Oxford himself? Regret?

Add in that I hit my library's timewall, and that I've long thought Brave New World was more prescient than 1984 (and a better read, as is Darkness at Noon) and, the book just petered out on me.

Orwell's List a VERY controversial, it seems, and totally new to me, compilation of names of writers and other creatives for the British government's Foreign Office by Orwell (see a quote from the Wiki page below), basically a list of people who in the US in the McCarthyist 1950s would have been called "Comms and Comm symps," is "addressed" in less than two full pages by Taylor.

Nut graf:
"(W)hat came to be known as 'Orwell's List' has occasionally been used as a stick with which to beat his supposed [emphasis added by me] intolerance.
From Wiki:
Typical comments were: Stephen Spender – "Sentimental sympathiser... Tendency towards homosexuality"; Richard Crossman – "Too dishonest to be outright F. T."; Kingsley Martin –"Decayed liberal. Very dishonest";[9] and Paul Robeson – "very anti-white. [Henry] Wallace supporter"
From Wiki, comment by Alex Cockburn:
Cockburn attacked Orwell's description of Paul Robeson as "anti-white", pointing out Robeson had campaigned to help Welsh coal miners. Cockburn also said the list revealed Orwell as a bigot: "There seems to be general agreement by Orwell's fans, left and right, to skate gently over Orwell's suspicions of Jews, homosexuals and blacks".

Taylor doesn't even mention Robeson being on the list, let alone why.

Folks, this confirms my sneaking suspicion that this book was hagiography.

And, I disagree with people at that Wiki link claiming that this was not McCarthyist. He gave it to the Information Research Department at the Foreign Office, at least his "finalized" list. And, had he lived longer, he might have submitted more names from his personal list. (Robeson was on there; so were George Bernard Shaw, Katharine Hepburn, Orson Welles, and John Steinbeck, among others; aside from Orwell being an informant, this leads to questions of his general judgment.) I also disagree that he would have broken with the IRD had he realized, with living longer, what it was up to. Claims that he would have are an argument from silence.)

In that case, these defenders are saying that, either due to late-life health problems, or general causes, Orwell had a high naivete level. You want to stand on that ground? Even a writer for Socialist Review makes that claim. Note: Now that I know why Orwell "wrote up" some of these people, Alan Turing was lucky not to be "outed" until 3 years later, I guess. And, the idea that tuberculosis can make you "ga-ga" in late stages is painting with a humongously broad brush. 

And, resorting to such a brush is a clear sign of being a member of a cult of Orwell.

And, that is also "Orwellian."

View all my reviews

July 22, 2024

Top posts, second quarter of 2024

I forgot to do a top posts for the month of June, so, this instead.

As usual, these may not have been posted within the past three months. Posts outside that time frame, but with renewed popularity, will be noted.

No. 10 is old baseball, and Part 2 of my series about the Black Sox at 100. I posted it to Reddit's r/MLB sub, hence the new readership.

No. 9 is my take on a Moab developer trying to pay cheesy but heartfelt homage to Cactus Ed Abbey and being cut off at the pass by his legacy-guarding widow, Clarke, and some backstory hypocrisy.

No. 8? My detailed, skeptical leftist take on the release of Julian Assange.

No. 7? Tied to No. 9. RIP Jim Stiles.

No. 6? A state-of-the-campaign roundup of where third party and independent U.S. presidential candidates stood.

No. 5? My take on ProPublica exposing school lies of Farris Wilks and Tim Dunn, although neither of them are personally mentioned by name.

No. 4? Related to No. 3, and originally started late last year and based on 2016 issues. It's a detailed look, complete with federal filings, at Green Party presidential nominee to be Jill Stein, investments hypocrite.

No. 3? The tribalism and more behind the rush to write encomiums to Noam Chomsky, who turned out to not be dead.

No. 2? Just inside the quarterly cutoff, an early April Texas Progressives roundup that featured thoughts on Gaza. New thought? ConservaDem Charles Kuffner of Off the Kuff continues to dodge both this, ie, Genocide Joe, and Dementia Joe.

No. 1? Also from the start of the quarter, thoughts about why dental care isn't considered health care and why that needs to change.