Sunday, March 20, 2022

Althouse

Althouse

At the Last Day of Winter Café...

Posted: 19 Mar 2022 04:33 PM PDT

IMG_9524 

... you can write about whatever you want.

Did you realize tomorrow is the first day of spring?

Testing out the camper in the heartland.

Posted: 19 Mar 2022 11:33 AM PDT

"Three Russian cosmonauts arrived at the International Space Station last night in flight suits made in the yellow and blue of the Ukrainian flag, in what appeared to be a daring statement against the war."

Posted: 19 Mar 2022 08:33 AM PDT

"Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov blasted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for a six-month stay aboard the orbiting laboratory yesterday, joining the crew of two Russians, four Americans and one German. In an extraordinary move, the three new arrivals emerged from their Soyuz capsule after docking with the space station wearing bright yellow jumpsuits with blue stripes, instead of the standard-issue blue uniform. " 

The London Times reports.

"We just went out with our friend to walk the dog, and you’re wearing a mask, everyone’s wearing a mask. The dog is the only one who’s completely alive!"

Posted: 19 Mar 2022 07:46 AM PDT

"He's living the dog's life. The rest of us are afraid to die, and afraid to kill, so we're masked up and we're injected, and so forth. It's the most challenging time of this life cycle for us. We didn't have a world war or a depression, the things our ancestors had. This is the hand we got dealt and if you fold, you can't win."

Said Bill Murray, quoted in "Bill Murray: 'We are afraid to die and afraid to kill'/The comedy great sits down with classical cellist Jan Vogler and talks to Kevin EG Perry about the pandemic being this generation's 'most challenging time', his cure for depression and shooting a majestic concert movie at the Acropolis of Athens" (Independent).

Also: 

"I remember my friend Hunter Thompson..."

Ah, the other Hunter. 

"... who was another guy people perceived as sort of a dark force but who really had a wonderful sense of humour, talking about John Prine," says Murray.... "I remember at one of the moodiest… What did he used to call it? Broodingest! …at one of the broodingest moments of our long weekend, he said: 'Well, we'll have to rely on John Prine for the sense of humour.' And he put on some, and it was dark out there in the mountains, and we did listen to John Prine for a while. There was a moment where I was the most miserable of my whole life, so I thought, I'll go see if John Prine will help me here. His song 'Linda Goes to Mars' comes on and I just remember going: 'Heh'... That was it. That was all there was, but it was a change of direction. I thought: 'Goddammit, it worked!' I hadn't even 'Heh'd' in such a while."

Something, somewhere, somehow took my Linda by the hand/And secretly decoded our sacred wedding band/For when the moon shines down upon our happy humble home/Her inner space gets tortured by some outer space unknown....

ADDED: Speaking of "old white dudes" — that's quite a trio of old white dudes: Bill Murray, Hunter S. Thompson, and John Prine. Now, you might say once someone is dead, he's not an "old man" anymore, but in the linked post, from earlier this morning, we talk about 2 men whose names appeared in today's NYT crossword. One of names — spoiler alert — clued as "Silent film star known as the 'Man of a Thousand Faces'" — is Lon Chaney. This is Lon Chaney Sr. — not Jr. — and he died at the age of 47. Surely if a man who died young a long time ago is an "old dude," then dead men who actually died old — at 67 (Thompson) and 73 (Prine) —are "old dudes."

To be fair, Lon Chaney looked damned old in some of his photographs:

"Like, there's two old white dudes... the latter of whom I've *never* heard of...."

Posted: 19 Mar 2022 03:21 PM PDT

I want to quote something written by Christopher Adams, "Court Jester of CrossWorld," guest-blogging this morning at Rex Parker Does the New York Times Crossword Puzzle, but I've got to put it after the jump because it reveals answers — who are these old white dudes? — that you won't want to know if you've not yet completed the Saturday puzzle and you care about it.

I don't know how old Adams is, but it's the usual stance over there, guest-blogger or no, to disparage the puzzle for skewing to the knowledge base of the old. Anyway, here's a (long!) sentence that focuses on the long answers in the middle of the puzzle:

Like, there's two old white dudes (LON CHANEY and DAVE CLARK, the latter of whom I've *never* heard of, and doubt most solvers my age or younger will know) anchoring those downs, along with PUNISHERS, which...eh, it's not the worst as far as roll-your-own -ER(S) forms go, and by definition *something* has to be the worst entry here, and it's perfectly serviceable in terms of holding the rest together (especially the across entries, which were much more fun comparatively speaking), but nobody's writing home about PUNISHERS.

The clue for "punishers" was "Disciplinarians, at times." The problem with that is that it's not much of a word, just one of those concocted words you can make with the power of the suffix "-er." And when you do that, you're a concocter! See how easy — and dumb — it is?

Now, let's get to the old white dude that Christopher Adams has never heard of. The clue was: "British pop star with more 'Ed Sullivan Show' appearances than the Beatles." Now, the clue tips you off that this performer is going to be at least mildly surprising. The Beatles are supremely famous, and their going on "The Ed Sullivan Show" is the most famous thing about "The Ed Sullivan Show." But Ed had his favorites, his repeat performers, and they were a lot more available than The Beatles.

If you were to ask me to name a performer who was on Ed's show more than The Beatles, I'd be the exclaimer of the name of a mouse: Topo Gigio. I looked it up and see that Topo Giogio comes in second only to a comedy duo I barely remember, Wayne & Schuster. W&S were on the show 58 times. The cute little mouse puppet was on 50 times. The musical performer who was on the most was an opera singer, Roberta Peters (41 times).

But the crossword clue narrows it down to British pop stars. It wouldn't really take that much to beat the Beatles, who were very conspicuous but only did the show 9 times. The answer was tricky for me because, even though I loved the British invasion and watched Ed Sullivan every week in those days, the clue suggests a solo performer, and the act was called The Dave Clark Five. Consequently, even when I had "CLARK" filled in and 4 blanks in front, I was racking my brain trying to think of a British pop star with the last name "Clark." (Petula Clark has too many letters, and Gene Clark was not British.)

So the clue was misleading. When it comes to groups, of course, I know The Dave Clark Five. There was a time when people discussed the question whether The Dave Clark Five were better than The Beatles — kind of a warm-up to the decades-long question whether The Rolling Stones were better than The Beatles. Anyway, The Dave Clark Five were on "The Ed Sullivan Show" 18 times, and NPR informs us that this was "more than any other rock, pop or R&B artist."

I question that assertion. Was Connie Francis not a pop star? She was on 26 times. Here she is doing "You Make Me Feel So Young" (in a way that might make you feel so old).

And here are The Dave Clark Five in one of their "Ed Sullivan Show" appearances. That's Dave on the drums, the only one of The Five who didn't have to do that ridiculous wide-stance bounce for the entire song:

"I'm getting so tired of this woke world."

Posted: 19 Mar 2022 07:31 AM PDT

I got there via the link in this Fox News tweet (which I saw because Caitlin Jenner is trending on Twitter):

ADDED:

"The Limestone mine operates day and night, growing louder at night and on weekends when bitcoin’s electricity-hungry computers can take advantage of down time and lower prices on the electricity grid and ramp up their algorithmic-solving power...."

Posted: 19 Mar 2022 05:21 AM PDT

"Appalachia, with its cheap electricity from coal, natural gas and hydro, was already attractive to bitcoin miners when China, which dominated world production, cracked down on such operations last summer, worried about the volatility of digital currencies.... [R]esidents in areas that initially welcomed crypto mining are now experiencing buyer's remorse.... Craig Ponder, pastor at the New Salem Baptist Church... compared the noise to the jet engines he heard while serving in the military. He said that the noise can make it difficult for congregants to chat with each other in the parking lot after services.... 'In a rural environment, you have a very low ambient noise level anyway, so you walk outside and a creek is gurgling, birds are chirping, but there is not a lot of man-made noise. Once you take some of these bitcoin mining facilities, the noise carries, there is nothing to hide it or mask it,' [said a sound mitigation expert].... 'This is an industry that is on fire now, and a lot of people may not have known the noise the machines make; there are a lot of inexperienced people coming into the industry, and they are causing issues,' said [John Warren, the chief executive of GEM Mining, which owns 32,000 bitcoin miners]."

From "An Appalachian town was told a bitcoin mine would bring an economic boom. It got noise pollution and an eyesore. Supporters of the crypto plant promised an expanded tax base and job creation. What residents say they got was the constant din from massive computers and equally massive cooling fans" (WaPo).

This article is mainly about how noisy the "mine" is. There's a bit about how bad it looks — "like a German POW camp," according to a commissioner who regrets voting for it. I don't know why an article that's so negative about a business doesn't mention climate change. I mean, I can easily find other articles on this subject, but isn't global warming routinely shoehorned into news articles? It's strange to see it bypassed here. Did I miss a reference? 

Anyway, the noise problem is very sad, and the climate change issue is well represented in the comments section over there. Example: "And the environmental costs are astounding. I can't believe we're getting into this kind of thing when we're trying to cut back our environmental footprint. Crypto is a climate change villain, without offering anything back."

It looks as though Elon Musk responded — almost instantly — to a plea for help from Ukraine.

Posted: 19 Mar 2022 04:40 AM PDT

"When war broke out in Ukraine, the country faced threats of Russian cyberattacks and shelling that had the potential to take down the Internet, making it necessary to develop a backup plan. So the country's minister of digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, tweeted a direct plea to Musk urging him to send help. Musk replied just hours later: 'Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route.' Ukraine has already received thousands of antennas from Musk's companies and European allies, which has proved 'very effective,' Fedorov said in an interview with The Washington Post Friday. 'The quality of the link is excellent,' Fedorov said through a translator, using a Starlink connection from an undisclosed location. 'We are using thousands, in the area of thousands, of terminals with new shipments arriving every other day."

From "Ukraine has already received thousands of antennas from Musk's companies and European allies, which has proved 'very effective,' Fedorov said in an interview with The Washington Post Friday.... " (WaPo). 

Here's that Musk signal Federov sent out:

Federov tweeted at 6:06 AM — my time, in the Central Zone. I had to open a separate page for Musk to find out the precise time when he responded that he had made Starlink active in Ukraine. You can see, below, that it was 4:33 PM. I've chosen to display it along with the first response Twitter shows after that, something by one Emily Schooley that went up a few minutes later:

I'm keeping her in this post because I mean to celebrate Musk, and I think his superhero status is heightened by his encounter with a comic-book-style antagonist:

But let me add one more thing and knock this story down to earth. From the WaPo article:

Even before Fedorov tweeted at Musk for help, SpaceX was working on a way to get Starlink to Ukraine. President and COO Gwynne Shotwell said... that the company had been working for several weeks to get regulatory approval to allow the satellites to communicate in Ukraine. "But then they tweeted," she said, according to SpaceNews. "There's our permission." 

It's not as though Fedorov cried out from his war zone, and Elon Musk suddenly paid attention and then delivered results the same day. The company had been working on this for weeks and the problem was getting regulatory approval. Somebody got the idea that a tweet from Federov could work as the needed approval, and, after that, Federov produced the red-tape-cutting tweet. That's how it looks to me.

At the Rainy Day Café...

Posted: 18 Mar 2022 04:19 PM PDT

 ... you can talk about whatever you want.

No sunrise run this morning. Too rainy! But, here, I'll give you this oddball extra from yesterday:

IMG_9574

"Russian forces are static when night falls... with their fear of Ukrainian shelling forcing them to hide their tanks in villages between houses..."

Posted: 18 Mar 2022 08:22 AM PDT

"... knowing that conventional artillery cannot risk hitting civilians. But immobile convoys are the prime targets of Aerorozvidka, which has 50 squads of expert drone pilots.... 'In the night it's impossible to see our drones.... We look specifically for the most valuable truck in the convoy and then we hit it precisely and we can do it really well with very low collateral damage — even in the villages it's possible. You can get much closer at night.'...Because of power cuts and internet connection problems in parts of Ukraine as a result of Russian attacks, Aerorozvidka has turned to... Starlink, a system donated by Elon Musk that uses satellites in a low orbit...."

From "Specialist Ukrainian drone unit picks off invading Russian forces as they sleep" (London Times).

"It’s not until the 24th paragraph that the story mentions e-mails involving Hunter Biden and his associates in those deals..."

Posted: 18 Mar 2022 06:34 AM PDT

"... followed by these two sentences: 'Those emails were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.' Heart be still. It took the Gray Lady nearly 17 months to grudgingly concede even a fraction of what New York Post readers learned in October 2020. Of course, Times readers would have learned all that too if their paper was still in the news business instead of being a running dog for Democrats...."

Writes Michael Goodwin in "The New York Times hates to say The Post told you so" (NY Post).

MEANWHILE: "It's sad, because the baby looks like him, with blond hair," said the lawyer for Lunden Roberts, quoted in "Lawyer for mother of Hunter Biden's child says he expects president's son to be indicted" (NY Post).

"Many on the left refuse to acknowledge that cancel culture exists at all, believing that those who complain about it are offering cover for bigots to peddle hate speech."

Posted: 18 Mar 2022 06:27 AM PDT

"Many on the right, for all their braying about cancel culture, have embraced an even more extreme version of censoriousness as a bulwark against a rapidly changing society, with laws that would ban books, stifle teachers and discourage open discussion in classrooms.... However you define cancel culture, Americans know it exists, and feel its burden. In a new national poll commissioned by Times Opinion and Siena College, only 34 percent of Americans said they believed that all Americans enjoyed freedom of speech completely. The poll found that 84 percent of adults said it is a 'very serious' or 'somewhat serious' problem that some Americans do not speak freely in everyday situations because of fear of retaliation or harsh criticism.... 'There's a crisis around the freedom of speech now because many people don't understand it, they weren't taught what it means and why it matters,' said Suzanne Nossel, the chief executive of PEN America, a free speech organization.... This editorial board plans to identify a wide range of threats to freedom of speech in the coming months, and to offer possible solutions... Free speech demands a greater willingness to engage with ideas we dislike and a greater self-restraint in the face of words that challenge and even unsettle us...."

From "America Has a Free Speech Problem" by the New York Times Editorial Board.

Okay, good start. I will continue to keep track of what the NYT is doing in relation to freedom of speech. I'll just note here that if Americans haven't been "taught what it means and why it matters," the NYT bears some responsibility. It's not a neutral observer of the culture, but a very active participant.

"[Lia] Thomas and her rise... forced the typically plodding N.C.A.A. to grapple more quickly with a subject that scientists are still examining and its consequences for sports competitions."

Posted: 18 Mar 2022 06:19 AM PDT

"Comprehensive research in athletes is still lacking, but early studies suggest that suppressing testosterone in transgender women decreases muscle mass and hemoglobin levels, reducing how much oxygen can be carried through the bloodstream. Most of the changes occur within the first year of hormone suppression, but transgender women may still have more muscle mass than their cisgender peers even after three years. As some insist that no amount of testosterone suppression can undo the physiological changes linked to male puberty, like taller height and larger hands and feet, others dispute that transgender women have a built-in advantage and have argued that inclusion should outweigh competition."

From "Lia Thomas Wins an N.C.A.A. Swimming Title/With her victory in Atlanta, Thomas, who competes for the University of Pennsylvania, became the first openly transgender woman to win an N.C.A.A. swimming championship" (NYT).

Here's the ESPN coverage: "Amid protests, Penn swimmer Lia Thomas becomes first known transgender athlete to win Division I national championship." 

The race began with the crowd cheering for each of the swimmers, but fans were noticeably quiet for Thomas' introduction.... As she stood on the podium with her trophy, she flashed a peace sign, just as she did for her four Ivy League championships. And once again, the crowd was noticeably quiet as she was announced as the champion....

Outside of the McAuley Center, dueling protests dominated the morning. More than 20 protesters from Save Women's Sports and Young Women for America (the college branch of Concerned Women for America) chanted outside...

"We're not going to stand by and let women be displaced," said Annabelle Rutledge, the national director for Young Women for America. "We must fight for their rights."

Concerned Women for America announced Thursday that the organization filed a Title IX complaint against the University of Pennsylvania....

And at Swimming World, from John Lohn, the editor-in-chief, there's "NCAA Title For Lia Thomas Is Joke With Biological Women As Punchline; Hardly a Laughing Matter":

Because the NCAA only required one year of hormone-suppressant therapy for a transgender female to compete in women's sports, Thomas was eligible to race for the Quakers. And, to be clear, Thomas has followed all rules.

The problem is that the NCAA's guidelines were based on outdated science and didn't account for the advantages of Thomas undergoing male puberty and significant testosterone production. A 6-3 frame. Greater natural strength. Larger hands and feet. Enhanced lung capacity. None of these edges, for the record, can be fully mitigated....

When the Ivy League and Penn told swimmers to accept the situation, it was clear that one person's rights were valued over hundreds of others. And when the NCAA made it clear it would not protect women's rights, it was obvious the NCAA Championships would become a circus – a combination of protestors appearing and Thomas swimming with her male-puberty-supplied jet pack.

Swimming World... called for her to not race at the NCAA Championships, but to be given an alternative opportunity to display her talent in the pool. Because we took that approach, the transgender community and its supporters fired off accusations of transphobia....

"Girls and women shouldn't give up their hard-won sports opportunities, no matter how real the harms suffered by transgender athletes," Hogshead-Makar wrote in a December editorial. "Allowing transgender women to change the meaning of the women's category makes as much sense as allowing 180-pound athletes into the 120-pound weight category, because larger athletes were subject to awful bullying and harassment. Or allowing adults to compete against children, or only permitting impoverished nations compete in the Olympics. Sport has been set up as binary with males and females, and sport needs to adapt by adding new events and classifications, rather than throwing out the meaning of the 'girls' and 'women's' categories. Rather than trying to squeeze transgender athletes into one-of-two categories, male or female, sport needs to adapt."

"[J.D.] Vance went on Steve Bannon’s War Room and said 'I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another' during a clumsy attempt..."

Posted: 18 Mar 2022 07:55 AM PDT

"... to show that his real priority is the U.S.-Mexico border and stopping shipments of fentanyl. He then kind of, sort of, walked back his statements a few days later. But then he cashed in one of infinite invitations to go on Tucker Carlson's show to un-walk back the walk-back. The banner on his campaign webpage features the following fundraising appeal: 'Secure our Southern Border and NOT Ukraine's Border! Stand with Tucker Carlson and JD Vance.' In other words: J.D. Vance is gonna J.D. Vance. It's what he does."

From "J.D. Vance Gets Canceled/Can't a Republican Senate candidate make one little crack about not caring about Ukraine?" (The Bulwark).

ADDED: Vance went to Yale Law School. He wrote that highly acclaimed memoir. Then why does he come across as so dumb when he's doing politics? I have a theory that I came up with to try to understand some of the really dumb things Laurence Tribe tweets. It's that a person who is too far above the normal range has trouble thinking of how to speak to people of normal intelligence, that is, the people he needs to reach in order to be successful in politics. He knows they're significantly less intelligent than he is, and he adopts a style that he imagines to be at their level. But he's goes too far. He knows other people are — comparatively — dumb, but he overshoots the mark. Those whose intelligence is just modestly above average are shooting from a closer range and can hit the target more accurately. That's very annoying to the truly superior folks. That's why — I think — Trump drove Tribe absolutely stark raving mad. And stark raving madness doesn't improve your aim!

"St. Patrick’s Day turned into St. Peter’s Day."

Posted: 18 Mar 2022 05:51 AM PDT

A nice first line by the NYT sportswriter Adam Zagoria, in "N.C.A.A. Men's Tournament: No. 2 Seed Kentucky Downed By St. Peter's/St. Peter's, a No. 15 seed from Jersey City, N.J., toppled one of the most popular national title picks in the Kentucky Wildcats."

The St. Peter's team is called the Peacocks. I like teams to be named after animals, and it's always fun to imagine the actual animals fighting — in this case, peacocks against wildcats. Ha ha. 

I liked this:

St. Peter's guard Doug Edert hit a floater that rolled around the rim before dropping in to tie the game at 71 and send it to overtime.

[Peacocks Coach Shaheen] Holloway was asked after the game: "Did you ever get nervous?"

"Nah — for what?" he said. "It's basketball."

"Henry Hoeft, a 28-year-old former U.S. Army infantryman and steelworker from a small town outside Columbus, Ohio, was compelled earlier this month to leave his young son to fight in Ukraine..."

Posted: 18 Mar 2022 05:27 AM PDT

"... where his father's family has its roots. After fundraising online and saying his good-byes, Hoeft packed up some of the combat gear he used sporadically in recent years as a member of the boogaloo boys — the extremist, anti-government militia that rose to notoriety in 2020 — and took the route that has become common for the thousands of ex-military types attracted to the newly established Ukrainian foreign legion...."

I'm reading "The Beefing Boogaloo Boys of Ukraine" (Intelligencer). 

Here's Hoeft's beef:

Non-potato the size of a large potato.

Posted: 18 Mar 2022 05:04 AM PDT

I'm reading "It Could've Been the World's Largest Potato, if Only It Were a Potato/A couple in New Zealand found a giant growth in their garden, named it Doug and applied to Guinness World Records. Then the results of a DNA analysis came in" (NYT).

Remember the good old days, when we dreamed that "Doug" was a potato? I blogged it last November, here: "We unearthed this hunk of tuber, and we thought to ourselves, 'what is this? Was it some sort of a strange fungal growth?'" 

From the new article: 

Chris Claridge, a horticulturist and the chief executive of the industry group Potatoes New Zealand, which assisted in the DNA testing, described the growth as a kind of scar tissue on a wound, similar to the lumps sometimes seen on trees after a branch is removed.

"It could have had an infection, it could have had a disease, it could have just formed and grown as an accident of nature," he said. "But it's not even the same family as the potato."

In the words of Doug's gardener: "How could a bloody gourd get in my garden?" 

"The professor, David Berkovitz, who teaches business law... filed a lawsuit against an unnamed group of his students... to force the website, Course Hero, to identify those who uploaded the exams...."

Posted: 18 Mar 2022 04:53 AM PDT

"If successful, Professor Berkovitz plans to turn over the names to Chapman's honor board.... Because Chapman's business school requires grading on a curve, Professor Berkovitz is worried that students who cheated may have unfairly caused their classmates who played by the rules to receive grades lower down on the curve.... Course Hero, which is not named as a defendant in the suit, said it would comply with a subpoena...."

From "Hoping to Identify Cheaters, a Professor Sues His Own Students/David Berkovitz, who teaches business law at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., sued an unnamed group of his students — identified only as 'Does' — after he discovered that his midterm and final exams had been uploaded to a popular website" (NYT).
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