Best escape from the furor: music to lighten the soul
The last two news weeks have been saddening, maddening, frightening,sobering, and frustrating for those of a politically liberal or civil rights bent, or those simply with an inclination toward common decency.
After hearing of the Anthony Kennedy resignation from the Supreme Court, and hearing the reliably hypocritical Mitch McConnell promise to get Kennedy’s replacement installed before the November elections, I found myself bristling—all the more so to hear Democrats speaking at odds with each other.
I really needed an escape. You too?
It then occurred to me how to calm the bristling mid-brain: music of a light, sunny, or soothing sort. But I wanted to add a twist to my customary Pandora stations, and found two in particular, the first thanks to NPR and the second thanks to my recollection of the most sunny of Beethoven’s sonatas. . . .
What do you get when you add 5 to 4 to 5 to 4 to 5 to 4?
(a) 27
(b) 5/9 + 5/9 + 5/9 = 15/9 = 1.6666666 . . .
(c) Ruling Class Infinity, the rest of us Zero
The answer is all of the above, but (c) is the most important, if . . .
You take a look at three Supreme Court decisions made in May and June by the notorious 5 to 4 margin, it all adds up.
Foremost, in Janus v. AFSCME, decided in June, the Court eviscerated public sector unions by gifting nonmembers within a unionized workplace an exemption from paying “fair share” fees. Those are the fees charged to nonmembers who refuse to pay dues while still getting the workplace benefits obtained by the union. That is, a means by which to make free-riding by nonmembers a little less free. Now the Supreme Court says free-riding is A-OK in the disingenuous name of “right to work.”
[Preface: since I wrote the comments below, Trump has, by executive order, changed the zero-tolerance anti-immigration policy to end—supposedly—the separation of parents from children. Done not on humanitarian grounds, but because of bad optics. But the optics won’t improve much any time soon, since the administration has no answer to the question of how to reunite the families already separated—records of who belongs with whom, and where they are, have evidently not been systematically kept. The prospect exists of some children never being reunited with their parents. There is also no answer as to how they are going to house the thousands of families who are not being separated. Callousness and inattention to human rights have become hallmarks of the Trump government, and now we can add incompetence to that list.]
Fear here, there, and everywhere
Donald Trump has fear working for him on both sides of the Mexican border: he galvanizes his base with fear of immigrant hoodlums, and scares refugees with the prospect of separating children from parents, and sending asylum-seekers back to the horrors from which they fled
The U.S. “will not be a migrant camp,” asserted the President in defense of the zero-tolerance policy that has resulted in more than 2,400 children, many of them toddlers and some infants, being separated from their parents, beginning in April. He added he would not let migrants “infest” America.
I suppose that in an increasingly fact-averse, science-denying world, I should not have been surprised to hear that the ranks of flat-earth believers are swelling rapidly (not to worry, they are still a teensy-beentsy minority). I admit I was, for an instant, a bit surprised, until I had this epiphany: oh yeah, the internet.
The internet has made possible the instantaneous widespread propagation of any—I emphasize ANY—crackpot idea that happens to resonate in certain susceptible minds.
What makes for a susceptible mind? There are a number of hypotheses (and mixtures thereof), but my favorite is sheer lack of imagination, as evinced by basketball great Shaquille O’Neal, who opined: “I drive from Florida to California all the time, and it’s flat to me,” he declared. “I do not go up and down at a 360-degree angle, and all that stuff about gravity.”
The O’Neal quote made me wonder if this Flat Earth resurgence might be part of an enormous prank. The Shack has demonstrated a pretty good sense of humor in the past.
PREFACE: Since I began this post in April, there have been some signs indicating the situation with local amphibians is not quite as bad as I originally portrayed – see the Addendum at the bottom. (But it’s still bad.)
It can happen here – is happening
A typical reader of this blog will know that, worldwide, amphibians—principally frogs and toads—are being ravaged by lethal fungal diseases and diminished habitat. Some species have already gone extinct, and many are sure to follow. The foremost villain in these fungal epidemics is world trade in animals. When one thinks of trade in exotics, one usually thinks of highly visible animals—colorful birds (or uniquely gifted birds such as the African Gray parrot), big cats, rare dog breeds, snakes, lizards, and such. But amphibians, despite small size, are valued by collectors for their calls and colors. And any one of them, usually from the tropics, may carry a disease that will lay waste to the toads and frogs in your neighborhood, should it escape. Even in an absence of local release, local populations are vulnerable to the plague creeping across all populations at a rate comparable to the spread of Dutch Elm Disease 50 years ago.
Something like that may have happened in or near our neighborhood in semi-rural Virginia. For whatever reason, this year our spring nights have gone silent in the absence of calls by amphibians—primarily the Gray Treefrog and the Cope’s Gray Treefrog, whose calls you may be familiar with. You can listen to their overlapping calls in the last 15 seconds of this sweet little clip:
Of course, on YouTube you can listen to a host of frog and toad calls as varied as their physical sizes and colors. Probably more varied—the diversity is astonishing!
Elon Musk: “Humans are underrated.” Future of human workers looking up for now
In Quartz (May 1st), Helen and Dave Edwards report on the downside of automation on the production ramp of Tesla’s Model 3. “Over-automation” is the culprit in weekly production approximating 2,000 vehicles per week in contrast with the target of 5,000 per week. Such was the conclusion of a report written by Toni Sacconaghi and Max Warburton. Telsa’s robotic underperformance echoes results from automation at Fiat, Volkswagen, and GM.
Tesla owner, founder, and prime mover Elon Musk tweeted that “humans are underrated.” Musk is taking time off from planning an invasion of Mars to get the factory back on track (presumably with the help of humans).
How robots screw up . . . but won’t continue to do so
Sacconaghi and Warburton observed that “In final assembly, robots can apply torque consistently—but they don’t detect and account for threads that aren’t straight, bolts that don’t quite fit. . . .” (See more in the block quote in the Quartz article, where the authors get in a jibe at Tesla’s quality deficiencies.)
Vladimir Putin must be rubbing his hands with glee* over any and all of the events precipitated by, or connected with, the United States, since January 2017.
For starters, his man in the White House continues to keep the U.S. domestic political scene in turmoil, with each day’s opening tweets sowing discord and confusion among lawmakers, media, foreign governments, entertainers, and the public. Trump has done much to thwart the effort by intelligence services and the Department of Justice to investigate and counter Russian influence on our elections, by portraying it as a Deep State plot to undermine his presidency.
For seconds, Trump has refused to implement the strict sanctions on Russia passed by Congress in summer 2017. (Regardless, he continues to claim that “no one has been tougher on Russia than I have.”)
For thirds, Trump continues to dismay foreign allieson four fronts: (1) pulling out of the Paris Climate Accords; (2) pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal; (3) imposing trade sanctions such as tariffs on aluminum and steel imported from Canada, Mexico, and Europe as well as such traditional trade foes as China. (4) leaving it to other nations to deal with massive refugee crises in the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central America, while the Trump administration strengthens barriers against refugees from anywhere trying to find asylum in the U.S.
