Althouse

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• Sunrise — 5:30, 5:34, 5:34.
• "When he was making those hearts, he was making New York into a storybook that we might all want to live in. To him, New York seemed to be losing its soul, and he was trying to put back its soul, and in the end I think it wore him out."
• "The Swartzentruber Amish do not have running water in their homes, at least as most would understand it."
• Are you one of the thousands of Americans who are thinking "Ningbo?!! Never heard of it!" this morning?
• "'Moorish sovereign groups adhere to 'the notion that African Americans had special rights because of a 1780s treaty with Morocco, as well as the belief that African Americans were descended from African "Moors"...'"
• "Women could never, for example, have made High Noon. Instead, we would have made High Noon-ish..."
• I read another book by the new Nobelist Kazuo Ishiguro, and was surprised to find a "Reader's Guide" with 11 questions at the end of the text.

Sunrise — 5:30, 5:34, 5:34. Posted: 04 Jul 2021 09:10 AM PDT

"When he was making those hearts, he was making New York into a storybook that we might all want to live in. To him, New York seemed to be losing its soul, and he was trying to put back its soul, and in the end I think it wore him out." Posted: 04 Jul 2021 08:09 AM PDT Said Lily Koppel, a close friend of Hash Halper, quoted in "Hash Halper, Street Artist Who Adorned New York With Hearts, Dies at 41/He was something of a downtown folk hero, bringing positivity to a harsh city with his humble shards of chalk. But he harbored his own struggles" (NYT). View this post on Instagram A post shared by Hash Halper RIP 1980-2021 🤍 (@newyorkromantic)

"The Swartzentruber Amish do not have running water in their homes, at least as most would understand it." Posted: 04 Jul 2021 11:52 AM PDT "Water arrives through a single line and is either pumped by hand or delivered by gravity from an external cistern. In 2013, Fillmore County adopted an ordinance requiring most homes to have a modern septic system for the disposal of gray water. Responding to this development, the Swartzentruber Amish submitted a letter explaining that their religion forbids the use of such technology and " 'asking in the name of our Lord to be exempt' " from the new rule.  Instead of accommodating this request or devising a solution that respected the Amish's faith, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency filed an administrative enforcement action against 23 Amish families in Fillmore County demanding the installation of modern septic systems under pain of criminal penalties and civil fines. Faced with this action, the Amish filed their own declaratory judgment suit... But the Amish also offered an alternative. They offered to install systems that clean gray water in large earthen basins filled with wood chips that filter water as it drains...." Wrote Justice Gorsuch, concurring in Amos Mast v. Fillmore County, where the Supreme Court granted cert., vacated the judgment, and remanded the case for consideration in light of Fulton v. Philadelphia. At Reason, Josh Blackman, in "Justice Gorsuch Sketches The Post-Fulton Roadmap in Amish Septic System GVR," says: "I think Justice Gorsuch has sketched a three-part roadmap for Free Exercise Clause claims after Fulton. Lower courts, take notice."  First, Justice Gorsuch explains that the government must establish its interest with specificity. This analysis must be "precise," rather than "broadly formulated."... Second, Justice Gorsuch considers the sorts of exemptions the state gives to other groups.... The Court must consider other jurisdictions that have exempted people of faith.... I don't think this principle follows from Fulton. But it could potentially be a game-changer for Free Exercise cases. States that are overly protective of religious liberty will now set the floor for states hostile to free exercise claims.... Third, the state must demonstrate that its policy is narrowly tailored "with evidence." Not "supposition."... The County must prove with evidence that its rules are narrowly tailored to advance a compelling state interest with respect to the specific persons it seeks to regulate. Here, that means proving that mulch basins will not work on these particular farms with these particular claimants."

Are you one of the thousands of Americans who are thinking "Ningbo?!! Never heard of it!" this morning? Posted: 04 Jul 2021 06:25 AM PDT It's a city of almost 10 million people. Don't you think it's odd that there are cities on this earth that large that you have never heard of, whose names sound like sheer nonsense?  The first character in the city's name ning (宁 or 寧) means "serene", while its second character bo (波) translates to "wave"... It was once named Mingzhou (明州; Míngzhōu). The first character (明) is composed of two parts, representing two lakes inside the city wall: the Sun Lake (日湖) and the Moon Lake (月湖) dating back to Tang Dynasty 636 AD. Today, only the Moon Lake remains, and the old Sun Lake dried up in 19 century... Ningbo is one of China's oldest cities, with a history dating to the Jingtou Mountain Culture in 6300 BC and Hemudu culture in 4800 BC. Ningbo was known as a trade city on the silk road at least two thousand years ago, and then as a major port for foreign trade along with Yangzhou and Guangzhou in the Tang Dynasty, and Quanzhou and Guangzhou in the Sung dynasty. If you don't know why Ningbo is nagging at us this morning.... Now, hop away on your Biden bunny, you nerd. ADDED: "The Hemudu culture (5500 BC to 3300 BC) was a Neolithic culture...." I think this is where they put the bacon fat:

"'Moorish sovereign groups adhere to 'the notion that African Americans had special rights because of a 1780s treaty with Morocco, as well as the belief that African Americans were descended from African "Moors"...'" Posted: 04 Jul 2021 05:07 AM PDT "'... and often as well the belief that African Americans were also a people indigenous to the Americas.' On its website, the group says that 'sovereignty and nationality can be considered synonymous,' and that it considers Moorish Americans to be the 'aboriginal people of the land.' In a video Saturday morning, an unidentified member of the group disputed the sovereign-citizen moniker, saying, 'We are not anti-government. We are not anti-police, we are not sovereign citizens, we're not Black identity extremists.'." From "What to know about Rise of the Moors, an armed group that says it's not subject to U.S. law" (WaPo). Here's the previous post about the 9-hour stand-off with the police. The WaPo article quotes Freddy Cruz of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC): "Especially with these sovereign Moorish groups, there is this idea that is rooted in ancient civilizations like the Aztecs, the Olmecs, Incas... They have this belief that the U.S. government has no right to be enforcing or creating laws in territories that don't belong to them, so they see themselves as forming their own sovereign nation....What we are seeing as well as the uptick in activity is the idea that these sovereign-citizen groups like Rise of the Moors, they try to prey on Black and Brown individuals... Typically with this idea that society is unfair and it preys on individuals who are maybe down on their luck, they have a place to turn where these groups promise a more fair and equitable society."

"Women could never, for example, have made High Noon. Instead, we would have made High Noon-ish..." Posted: 04 Jul 2021 04:54 AM PDT "... with the added rider: 'Just get here when you can, love, and if we don't get round to vengeance today maybe we can do it tomorrow, at High Ten-ish. Does this work for you?' So, for this reason, I opted for the adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Never Let Me Go, and...? My dears, how one longed for some tumbleweed to roll by. It would have seemed quite thrilling. Never Let Me Go is, first and foremost, as well as second and secondmost, a spectacularly inert film; so inert that even I, who favours inertness, wanted to go at it with a stick in the hope of beating it into some kind of life. Perhaps such passive solemnity is true to the book, but on screen, along with the sad tinkling piano and the sad violins that just won't quit, the overall effect is so enervating that you simply don't feel a damned thing. It was the same with, for example, Jane Campion's Bright Star. It did all the right things in all the right places, but was so painterly and restrained and in such good taste it could not draw you in emotionally. Indeed, when Keats began to cough, instead of feeling moved or distressed, you simply thought, 'Oh, good. Not long to go now.' And that is just what this is like." From a 2011 review by Deborah Ross (in The Spectator) of the movie "Never Let Me Go," which I watched yesterday after finishing the book. Interesting how, one decade ago, it was so acceptable to trade in such blatant gender stereotypes. Here's the trailer for the movie (chock full of spoilers, basically, the entire story):

I read another book by the new Nobelist Kazuo Ishiguro, and was surprised to find a "Reader's Guide" with 11 questions at the end of the text. Posted: 04 Jul 2021 04:15 AM PDT Here's the book, "Never Let Me Go." I've never seen this in a book before. I wonder when that was added and why. I suspect it's because there's at least one really obvious question that they wanted to get out there to say, yeah, we know, the author knows, and he meant to do that. It's your job to figure out why the book doesn't contain pages answering that question for you. Spoilers after the page break: The issue I'm talking about is raised in the 8th of the 11 questions in the Reader's Guide: 8. Some reviewers have expressed surprise that Kathy, Tommy, and their friends never try to escape their ultimate fate. They cling to the possibility of deferral, but never attempt to vanish into the world of freedom that they view from a distance. Why might Ishiguro have chosen to present them as fully resigned to their early deaths? Funnily enough, I only noticed the Reader's Guide because I search the text for the word "death." The word "death" never appears in the book. The characters are clones, brought into the world for medical purposes, to donate organs, so the first-person character speaks of donations and "completion." Anyway, here's video of Ishiguro answering the question that the Reader's Guide presents as question #8: He doesn't really care about the special problem of the organ-donation clones. He's using their especially compressed lives as a way to create strangeness that opens up our thinking about our own life, which also unfolds and has meaning though we are certain to die.  "I just concertina-ed the time span through this device. A normal life span is between 60 to 85 years; these people artificially have that period shortened. But basically they face the same questions we all face."

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