Category: Uncategorized

“Eric Schneiderman, Accused by 4 Women, Quits as New York Attorney General” (nytimes):

Eric T. Schneiderman, the New York State attorney general who rose to prominence as an antagonist of the Trump administration, abruptly resigned on Monday night hours after The New Yorker reported that four women had accused him of physically assaulting them.

Two of the women who spoke to the magazine, Michelle Manning Barish and Tanya Selvaratnam, said they had been choked and hit repeatedly by Mr. Schneiderman. Both said they had sought medical treatment. Another woman, a lawyer, said she was slapped violently across the face. A fourth woman said she had similar experiences.

Mr. Schneiderman has long been regarded as one of the state’s most progressive politicians, even before his 2013 lawsuit against Trump University and his subsequent suits against the Trump administration made him the darling of the political left.

One of the women, Tanya Selvaratnam, has “served on the board of The Third Wave Foundation, which is dedicated to youth activism and the feminist movement” and produced videos for the Women’s March. It does not seem unreasonable to describe her as a “feminist”. This New York Post article describes her relationship with the “progressive politician”:

Harvard-educated activist writer Tanya Selvaratnam told the New Yorker magazine that her yearlong affair with Schneiderman “was a fairytale that became a nightmare” — and quickly escalated into violence in the bedroom, even as he begged for threesomes.

“Sometimes, he’d tell me to call him Master, and he’d slap me until I did,” Selvaratnam said. … Soon, “we could rarely have sex without him beating me.”

I hope that we can all agree that this is a description of a below-average heterosexual relationship. The question then arises as to why an expert on feminism wouldn’t simply walk away from it. Can it be that years of studying feminism, marching, advocating, etc. have no practical value in this realm? If so, in what realm does being a feminist lead to a personal advantage?

[Separately, I know of a well-educated medium-income woman in her 20s. She was sufficiently passionate about feminism to go to the Women’s March in the off-the-charts-expensive city where she lives. She met a man in his mid-50s who owns a modest (i.e., $3+ million) house. She is now protesting the patriarchy by living in this man’s house.]

Related:

• the Rationale chapter of Real World Divorce, which contains an interview with an academic regarding how feminism can be squared with the goals of women in family court
• the Domestic Violence chapter of Real World Divorce, whose applicability isn’t obvious here because the parties were not married and had no children together

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Friends run an annual blind wine tasting with $12(ish) bottles of red and one $40 “ringer” bottle.

In a field of about 15, the top-rated wine was Ava Grace Merlot 2015 from California, closely followed by a Moncaro organic Rosso blend from Italy and the $40 Gary Ferrell 2014 Pinot Noir (equalled by a Robert Mondavi 2016 cabernet; maybe the “private selection” that is about $11?).

People truly hated a popular Rioja and modestly priced Cotes-Du-Rhone and Bordeaux wines.

If you prefer wines crafted in Virginia you’ll be pleased to know that the Trump Winery’s 2014 Sparkling Rose earned 96 points in a competition in California (press release). From a recent Trump Winery email: “At the largest international wine competition in the world, our 2016 Sauvignon Blanc received a Double Gold medal with a 96 point rating. Of the nearly 200 Sauvignon Blancs entered from around the world, only 12 double gold medals were awarded: 10 from New Zealand, 1 from California, and ours!”

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A new and wonderful turn of phrase in “Neighbors say it’s no surprise Lincoln County man crashed helicopter” (Fox 46):

An Iron Station man is lucky to be alive after his helicopter crashed and caught fire right on his front lawn.

Back in October, Timothy Kniess’ wife won the lottery a hundred thousand dollars on a scratch off ticket.

Luck was definitely on their side again today when he was able to escape the crash with just a few scratches.

Neighbors weren’t surprised by the crash. They say they watched Kniess attempt to fly his Mosquito XE helicopter for weeks, just waiting for it all to go wrong.

“Man bought a helicopter, he woke up one day and said ‘today’s the day, I identify as a pilot, bought a helicopter.’ Hell I can’t tell a man what to do in his own property,” [neighbor John Aubery] said.

 

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Friends who are connected to the classical music world kept telling me to watch Mozart in the Jungle on Amazon Prime. So I did…

The show is interesting because the actors are portraying highly technical activities, e.g., conducting a symphony orchestra or playing a violin. They have to do this in time to actual music and the result is remarkably convincing.

The show starts when the president of the “New York Symphony”, played by Bernadette Peters (70!), brings in a young Mexican conductor modeled after Gustavo Dudamel. (We later get the backstory on the character played by Peters: she is a billionaire who made her fortune by marrying and divorcing four different men, not an entirely realistic outcome based on current New York family law, especially given New York’s vague cap on child support profits in the single-digit $millions.)

The highlights of the show include cameo appearances by real-world classical music stars, such as Joshua Bell, Emanuel Ax, and Lang Lang. If you’re a fan of Broadway-for-4-year-olds, you’ll also enjoy seeing Melody Yang.

One interesting aspect of the show is that its production straddles the point at which female victimhood began to dominate American public discourse.

• Early seasons: Old man conducts and is replaced by young man. Attractive female cellist has sex with old male conductor. There is no discussion of the gender ID of any composer, but all pieces played are by male composers (including a modern commission).
• Final shows, aired 4.5 months after Hollywood producer shower habits made the New York Times: Young woman conducts. Attractive female cellist has sex with other women. All pieces played are by female composers (and works by male composers are specifically excluded from a new orchestra’s mission). Characters speak statistics to each other regarding the percentage of conductors who are female.

I’m wondering if this could be used as an example of men becoming “woke”. The producers of the show are all described on Wikipedia with male pronouns. They could easily have picked a young female Latin American conductor to start off the show (e.g., modeled after Alondra de la Parra). There was no need for them to portray young female orchestra members as seeking to have sex with old male conductors. The show thus gratuitously reinforced gender stereotypes in classical music. No lesbian relationships were depicted, thus reinforcing heteronormative stereotypes for women.

By the last season, however, they were devoting about 30 percent of the dialog to decrying the lack of social justice for women conductors, women composers, etc. That shows an “unwoke” to “woke” transition?

Readers: If you’ve seen this show, what did you think?

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The standard method for improving the messages inside fortune cookies is to add “in bed”. Examples:

• “A friend asks only for your time not your money in bed.”
• “A dream you have will come true in bed.“

The movie Teenage Cocktail bubbled to the top of the Rotten Tomatoes “what’s streaming now” list with a 100 percent rating (our of only 5 professional reviews so perhaps that makes it easier to hit the top of the chart?).

The plot: two teenage girls want to earn money so they (a) sell their appearance on a webcam to a male audience, and (b) have sex with a man in exchange for cash. Unless we think that this is a new idea, why would critics like the movie so much? One theory: the writers added “and they’re gay”.

Would this work for recycling almost any other standard plot? Simply make the characters gay and the critics will be positive?

Readers: The movie is free on Netflix. If you’ve watched it, what do you think accounts for the 100% rating with critics?

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Here’s one of the delights of Facebook membership:

Happy Cinco de Mayo to all of my readers!

(I refrained from responding “If a very pale-skinned person gets hungry for Taco Bell on May 5, would it be less (micro-)aggressive to put on brown face makeup prior to departing for the drive-through?”)

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From a friend…

• [Anna, age 8]: “Dad, what does ‘retard’ mean?”
• Me: “Anna – you can’t say that word.”
• Anna: “But what does it mean?”
• Me: “You can’t say it, but it means stupid.”
• Anna: “Dad, you’re a retard!”

(I love this girl. When she was younger and in a stroller she pointed back to her mother and said “My GPS.”)

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I noticed a Mitsubishi MU-2 on the ramp at our local airport the other day. The twin turboprop airplane is famous for having unforgiving stall characteristics. The designers put in a stick shaker, as on many jets of the day, but not the stick pusher that is now common. Considering their near-jet level of performance, these airplanes have been considerably devalued by the accident history and perceived lack of safety (see Controller for what is currently available on the market; it looks as though a decent Solitaire can be purchased for $500,000. That’s for an airplane that can cruise at 310 knots, handle some ice (legally anyway; the practical ice capability is an open question), take 6 people more than 1000 nautical miles in pressurized comfort, fly over most weather at 33,500′, etc.).

More than 700 of these airplanes were built and a lot of them are still flying.

What if the latest retrofit autopilots could make the MU-2 a lot safer? Consider the Garmin GFC 600 and similar. These retrofit autopilots, even when not engaged, can provide “envelope protection” and nudge the flight controls in a safe direction if they sense that the plane is approaching a stall. It isn’t quite the level of idiot-proofing of an Airbus A320, but maybe if set to “max” could turn what has been “kind of unsafe” into “reasonably safe”?

Pilot readers: What do you think?

[More radical idea, but perhaps not for an airframe worth as little as $200,000 in airworthy condition: retrofit fly-by-wire controls. Put a big “don’t touch this” sign on the yoke of a legacy jet or turbopop and install a sidestick that, as in an Airbus or F-22, gives suggestions to the computer. Through extra-beefy servo motors, the computer becomes the sole manipulator of the flight controls. If the computer fails, the pilot can grab the yoke and look for a runway at least 10,000′ long (let’s presume he or she will be rusty!).]

Related:

• MITSUBISHI MU-2: ADDICTIVE PERFORMANCE BEST BANG-FOR-THE-BUCK TURBOPROP (AOPA, 2011)
• Air1st specializes in refurbishing MU-2s; they sell some pretty nice ones for around $650,000
• MU-2 Pilot’s Operating Manual (675 pages explaining the systems and how to fly it)
• Why you shouldn’t sell any product to an American (MU-2 crash in Oklahoma)

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An Excess Male is an interesting novel by Maggie Shen King. She posits a Chinese society in which “plural marriage” is the adaptation to the fact that there are more men than women. Except this is not plural marriage quite as Brigham Young might have envisioned.

The book opens with a meeting arranged by a matchmaker. At the table are a 22-year-old woman’s two current husbands, the candidate third husband, and the candidate’s two fathers:

I suddenly understand what it’s like to be Dad, my mother’s second husband and my biological father. But then, he has only one husband who outranks him, while I will have two to mind if I marry into this Advanced family. Dad bestows a fatherly smile upon May-ling. “Our Wei-guo has impeccable health habits. He weight trains three times a week and swims and runs as well. He can bench a hundred kilos. You should see his biceps.”

Our matchmaker is trying to help, but mention of The Worldly Bachelor only serves to remind May-ling and company that there are forty million more single men like me out there to choose from, that it has taken me until my forties to save up enough to enter matchmaking talks at this lowest rung.

After my family saved the requisite two million yuan needed for me to enter matchmaking talks as a third husband, it has taken another eight months to get this nibble of interest,

“They don’t assign nights. May-ling decides who gets bedroom time.” A smile takes over my face. I can already see her choosing me over the two grandpas. “That’s outrageous,” Big Dad says. MaMa kept a strict bedroom schedule, as do most Advanced families. She used to spend every other week with each of my dads, but they eventually talked her into alternating nights. My dads argued that too much closeness was lost over seven days.

What about guys who don’t have enough cash to get married, even as a second or third husband?

I do not say that I’ve grown weary of my weekly ten-minute hygiene session with my State-assigned “Helpmate,” but…

Helpmates receive their pension after fifteen years of service.

“Does he tip you?” “Sometimes.” “How much?” “Twenty-five, usually.” Helpmates receive a salary and are only required to provide missionary or doggy-style sex and lower-body nudity during weekly appointments. Services outside of that are extra, and their fees, payable to the State. Most men are saving toward a dowry, and only the most generous tip.

Parents who are steeped in tradition want to have at least one son. Parents who are hungry for cash want to have daughters:

Hann ignores the dig and asks if Hero has dug up Hann’s marital contract. “May-ling’s parents are entitled to twenty-five percent of the third-round dowry.” Hann curses. When he married, two spouses had been the max, the standard for two decades. The government allowing a third spouse did not seem like a remote possibility, let alone May-ling agreeing to it. “I can try to negotiate for you.” Hann sneers at the absurdity of that. May-ling’s parents are gambling addicts who lived off the fruits of their loins and their mahjongg winnings. While everyone was obsessed with producing a male heir to pass on the family name, they placed their bet on girls. Her parents must have paid staggering fines for defying their one-child limit. May-ling avoids the subject, but no one could have had six daughters in eight years without abortions, illegal sex selection drugs, or semen spinning. Rumor had it that the engagement of the four eldest (all by the age of three) helped finance their household. They had no need of a second husband and his income. The last two girls were allowed to come of age and auctioned off. A double contract to brothers, May-ling’s engagement set records. Hann and Xiong-xin supported the household after that, the parents’ life savings all but depleted.

Divorce discouraged by the government. When one character is considering a divorce, his boss calls him in for a chat:

And listen to this: ‘Divorce leads to the disintegration of society, to the depreciation of Confucian values, to lawlessness and violence. Divorce is an antecedent to crime, and all measures must be employed toward its prevention.’ It says here that I am required by law to refer you to marriage counseling.”

Not everyone is part of this Brave New World…

Like most of the superwealthy, Chu lives an hour outside town with a wife he does not share and more children than he’s allowed to have.

As with a lot of books that imagine an alternative reality, the beginning of the book is stronger than the ending, but I enjoyed An Excess Male.

Related:

• The Mandibles: turning sex into money before and after an economic collapse (one of about five posts that I did on this very interesting novel)

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“Women Said to Accuse Times Editor Who Resigned of Inappropriate Behavior” (NYT):

Wendell Jamieson, the metro editor whose resignation was announced by The New York Times on Monday after an internal investigation, was accused of inappropriate behavior by at least three female employees, according to two people familiar with the investigation.

The people said at least two women at The Times had alleged that Mr. Jamieson engaged in inappropriate communication.

After stepping down from his post, which he had held since 2013, he was replaced in an interim capacity by Susan Chira, a senior correspondent and an editor covering gender issues.

Mr. Jamieson, 51, joined The Times in 2000 after working for Newsday, The Daily News and The New York Post.

The short story is that this 51-year-old guy probably won’t be working in an office again. Could he be trained to do a job where nobody will care about his personal characteristics? Why not HVAC technician? After about a year of inexpensive training he can be earning $50,000+ per year. At least in Boston, HVAC technicians are in high demand and nobody who is without heat or A/C is going to ask too many questions about the “wokeness” of the tech who shows up to get things working again. Also, HVAC technicians, like our local cable installers, seem to be all-male so there wouldn’t be a lot of temptation back at the shop.

For the “prime age” males who are being discarded from the cushy office jobs after accusations, what other jobs could they take that would provide a decent income?

Related:

• “New York Times Apologizes For Much-Ridiculed Story About Fathers” (HuffPost), a story approved by the reprobate that “seemed to reinforce three old-fashioned tropes about gender and parenting” (maybe the newly unemployed Mr. Jamieson can now take care of children as a “manny”?)

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