A posting every day; an interesting idea every three months…
… but they apparently hate the Trump Winery. A promotional email from info@trumpwinery.com was flagged by the Gmail system as spam.
(If you want to start a conversation at a New Year’s party in Massachusetts, bring sparkling wine from this vendor!)
Full post, including comments“Officials Say Trump Has Ordered Full Withdrawal of U.S. Troops From Syria” (nytimes) is welcome news for me. One of my hopes in voting for Obama was that he would be able to say “These foreign wars haven’t worked out as planned so I’m ordering everyone home from Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Maybe Trump will get a Nobel Peace Prize too? Even more shocking than that would be some of my Facebook friends giving King Donald some credit for this peace action!
Along the same lines: “Donald Trump Is a Good President” (Harpers) says Michel Houellebecq, the French guy who remains a sourpuss despite having spent years in tax-free (for authors) Ireland. Some excerpts:
The United States of America is no longer the world’s leading power. It was for a long time, for almost the entire course of the twentieth century. It isn’t anymore. It remains a major power, one among several. This isn’t necessarily bad news for Americans. It’s very good news for the rest of the world.
The United States is still the world’s leading military power and unfortunately has yet to break its habit of mounting interventions beyond its borders. I’m not a historian, and I don’t know much about ancient history—for example, I couldn’t say whether Kennedy or Johnson was more to blame for the dismal Vietnam affair—but I have the impression that it’s been a good long time since the United States last won a war, and that for at least fifty years its foreign military interventions, whether acknowledged or clandestine, have been nothing but a succession of disgraces culminating in failures.
Trump is pursuing and amplifying the policy of disengagement initiated by Obama; this is very good news for the rest of the world. The Americans are getting off our backs. The Americans are letting us exist.
The Americans have stopped trying to spread democracy to the four corners of the globe. Besides, what democracy? Voting every four years to elect a head of state—is that democracy? In my view, there’s one country in the world (one country, not two) that enjoys partially democratic institutions, and that country isn’t the United States of America; it’s Switzerland. A country otherwise notable for its laudable policy of neutrality.
The Americans are no longer prepared to die for the freedom of the press. Besides, what freedom of the press? Ever since I was twelve years old, I’ve watched the range of opinions permissible in the press steadily shrinking (I write this shortly after a new hunting expedition has been launched in France against the notoriously anti-liberal writer Éric Zemmour).
The Americans are relying more and more on drones, which—if they knew how to use these weapons—could have allowed them to reduce the number of civilian casualties (but the fact is that Americans have always been incapable, practically since aviation began, of carrying out a proper bombing).
President Trump was elected to safeguard the interests of American workers; he’s safeguarding the interests of American workers. During the past fifty years in France, one would have wished to come upon this sort of attitude more often.
In short, Europe is just a dumb idea that has gradually turned into a bad dream, from which we shall eventually wake up.
Related regarding Houellebecq:
“Women May Earn Just 49 Cents on the Dollar: A new study suggests that the gender wage gap is much wider than previously thought” (Atlantic) is kind of interesting.
Note that it is a “gender wage gap” when someone who identifies as Gender A chooses not to go to work at all and then earns less than a person who identifies as Gender B who does go to work.
The article betrays cisgender-normative prejudice:
According to Rose, these facts suggest that the most accurate way to compare women’s and men’s earnings is to take the career-long view. “When you look at all women versus all men over time, the gap is 51 cents,” he said, referring to the 15-year figure.
If gender is normally fluid, why is it reasonable to assume that a typical person identifies with the same gender for 15 years?
As I noted in “Gender equity should be measured by consumption, not income?” it seems a little odd to say that someone who can get a satisfactory spending power without working is disadvantaged compared to someone who needs to work 80 hours per week in order to obtain sufficient spending power. By this standard, some of the most disadvantaged people on Planet Earth are in royal families, are the children of billionaires, etc.
Related:
Full post, including commentsOne thing that I’ve learned from trying to keep in touch with my parents via Skype and FaceTime is that multi-purpose devices, such as smartphones and computers, don’t work well for octogenarians.
I’m intrigued by the Facebook Portal+ and Amazon’s echo show.
Readers: Have you tried these? Can they legitimately serve to as a convenient portal between non-tech grandparents and grandchildren? Which device is better?
Full post, including commentsIt is time for the family winter trip to Florida. Due to the fact that it is too cold to swim in the ocean even in Miami, we’re going to Jacksonville Beach and St. Augustine (kids can enjoy playgrounds, at least, without a down jacket). We should be there from Christmas through January 5. The plan is to ferry the Cirrus SR20 down from Hanscom Field to KCRG so that we can use it for day trips around northern Florida, e.g., to Crystal River to see the manatees.
Email philg@mit.edu if you’d like to get together in northern Florida at some point between Dec 25 and Jan 5.
Full post, including commentsOne thing that I have learned from being an expert witness in the U.S. court system is that there are seldom any surprises at trial. Everyone who will testify has already been deposed for 7 hours (Federal rules).
I have recently done some work on a U.S. case in which a bunch of folks in Brazil were involved. I asked the lawyers “Are you going down to Brazil to take depositions?” They responded with “We would be arrested. It is illegal to take a deposition in Brazil.” The legal system down there runs on documents, apparently. If human witnesses are going to add anything, they testify at trial and lawyers have to think on their feet for cross-examination.
It turns out that Germany is organized along similar lines (1985 article that explains the system there), though I don’t think they go so far as to imprison folks who agree to hang out and depose one another, e.g., for a U.S. case.
If we want to see Perry Mason-style drama, maybe we need to visit a courtroom in Brazil!
Full post, including commentsOne interaction from Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland (fortunately my mom has escaped):
Brenda the nurse: “I’m from Kenya.”
Mom: “I was there in 1988.”
Brenda: “It was a lot nicer then.”
Me: “How come?”
Brenda: “Because of population growth.”
Separately, my mother went through a period of delirium and the nurses would go through their standard list of questions: What’s your name? When were you born? What year is it? Who is the President?
Having lived through the golden years of U.S. economic expansion, my mom can’t see any limits to tax revenue or government capability and thus is a 100 percent loyal Democrat. Even when only 2 percent of her brain was functioning and got her birthyear wrong, for example, she would answer that last question with “Donald Trump and I don’t like him.”
(Except at FBOs (fueling points for small planes), the trips to D.C. were mostly about encounters with immigrants. The Burger King/Mobil that is walking distance from Business Aircraft Center at Danbury (KDXR) was 100-percent staffed with Spanish speakers. Every Uber driver in the Maryland/DC area was an immigrant. The physicians who cared for my mother were immigrants, one from India and one from Colombia (second residency in the U.S., though). Roughly 85 percent of the nurses and techs were immigrants. The only health care job that seems to be dominated by native-born Americans is social worker.)
Full post, including commentsIn their divorce proceedings, the mother has charged the father with child abuse for not affirming James as transgender, has sought restraining orders against him, and is seeking to terminate his parental rights. She is also seeking to require him to pay for the child’s visits to a transgender-affirming therapist and transgender medical alterations, which may include hormonal sterilization starting at age eight.
(Sidenote: In a jurisdiction that offers no-fault or “unilateral” divorce (see this chapter on Texas family law), there is nothing mutual about a divorce lawsuit. One parent sues the other. So “their divorce proceedings” is misleading.)
In addition to the lawyers, the psychology industry is getting revenue:
When his mother, a pediatrician, took James for counseling, she chose a gender transition therapist who diagnosed him with gender dysphoria, a mental conflict between physical sex and perceived gender. James’ precious young life hinges purely on the diagnosis of gender dysphoria by a therapist who wraps herself in rainbow colors,
In the world’s most litigious and expensive venue for custody litigation (compare to Germany, for example), transgenderism adds a new twist. In addition to arguing over where children spend their time and how much cash children will yield for a plaintiff parent, now everyone in the industry can get paid to argue about whether an 8-year-old gets gender reassignment hormones and surgery.
Full post, including comments“My 15-Year-Old Daughter Told Me She’s Pansexual and Dating a Transgender Boy. I’m Struggling.” (nytimes):
She came out to us as pansexual when she was 11. I was concerned about her labeling herself at such a young age and being bullied. She met a transgender child in summer camp, then a few others, and helped them through some tough times. I was proud of her for her compassion and did not restrict her friendships, though she wasn’t allowed to sleep over at anyone’s house.
This reminds me of The Jean-Paul Sartre Cookbook:
Today I made a Black Forest cake out of five pounds of cherries and a live beaver, challenging the very definition of the word “cake.” I was very pleased. Malraux said he admired it greatly, but could not stay for dessert.
The virtuous Steve Almond, a name that seems to be associated with images of a white-appearing cisgender male, and whom Wikipedia says “lives in Arlington, Massachusetts with his wife and three children”:
it sounds like your underlying anxiety is that your daughter has a sexual identity and desires that aren’t heteronormative. It’s hard enough to move through a world fraught with bigotry as a young Latino woman. It becomes that much harder when you identify as pansexual and have a transgender partner.
Unless he himself is bigoted, how does the white cisgender man know what is difficult or easy for a “young Latino woman”?
Mr. Almond says the important questions to ask are not about sexuality, but rather “Is she happy? Is she doing well in school? Is she kind to those around her?” But why is doing well in school plainly more important than what kind of sex the daughter is having and with whom? Suppose that a high school Student A gets 1600 on the SATs and straight As and has (safe) sex with a different partner every night, in a full assortment of genders and sexual preferences. Student B gets 1000 on the SATs and has a B average and has no sex partners. The parents of Student B should be envious that the parents of Student A have a superior offspring?
The other writer responding to the mom is Cheryl Strayed, who is a “feminist” and has been married to two different men (“Brian” and “Marco”). Ms. Strayed does not seem to have any experience changing her gender, having sex with other women, etc., yet speak confidently about transgender and pansexual issues:
I encourage you to examine the ways that negative assumptions you’ve made about L.G.B.T.Q. people have needlessly stoked your fears. … Why do you put her current romantic interest in a special category because he’s trans? Because our transphobic society has told most of us that trans people are in a special category, that’s why. But they aren’t. They’re just people.
If trans people are “just people”, why hasn’t Ms. Strayed even once chosen one as a partner for long enough to write about?
Full post, including commentsA friend’s daughter said that people have to pay in order to have a good experience in today’s virtual (game) worlds. “It’s just like the real world in that respect,” she added. As this half-Chinese gal is currently polishing up her resume for college applications and refused my suggestion to “pull an Elizabeth Warren,” I worked her observation into a backup suggestion: start a non-profit organization devoted to reducing inequality in the virtual world(s). There are already a lot of non-profits attacking the challenge of inequality in the physical world (by paying their own executives above-market and above-median salaries?). She could carve out a niche by taking care of those who are disadvantaged in the virtual/online world.
Readers: What do you think? If people are spending more and more time online, shouldn’t we be just as concerned about inequality there as in the physical world? Or it isn’t worth worrying about because once we make everyone equal financially in the real world that will automatically take care of inequality in the virtual world?
Full post, including comments