Calling It for Ether

Ether has long been used for explaining the propagation of light. Aristotle discussed Ether. Given electromagnetic waves, the implication that light has to propagate through something seemed reasonable.  Ether went the way of phlogiston and caloric when Michelson and Morley split a light beam, then bounced the two perpendicular rays back to each other and found no difference in diffraction. If it can’t be measured then forget about it.

The Dark Matter theory accounts for the difference between observed mass and the behavior of galaxies by positing an entity that exists in a vacuum yet has mass. Dark Matter seems a misnomer as it allows for the transmission of light. Exists in a vacuum, has mass and propagates light, sounds like Ether to me.

Abandoning Ether leads to the wave particle duality and quantum theories.  Why is it that a child without any apparent ability of concentration or interest can intently spend their entire playground time pouring sand through a sieve?  The very purposeless futility of it provides its own satisfaction.  This tremendous sense of stasis is the most terrifying human quality.  When one examines failed theories it is tempting to think that there should be some intuitive way to determine correctness. This thinking, argument by metaphor, drives scientists’ nuts. There are people who are always wrong and love senseless activity. I have sympathy for the other child who walks over and hits the first one with a toy shovel. If you must talk Alternate Universe, you should not disparage Ether.

Mass without volume seems nonsense, mini black holes? Until you examine the other theories.

Another bizarre theory is explaining the red shift with expanding universe. 

Occasionally we look up and see the sun and the moon together in the sky. We can see that the two bodies are round and that the sun reflects off the moon. Why did this seem mysterious?  Until we observe that the sun’s reflection on the moon does not correspond to the sun’s position in the sky. How did we figure out anything?  Nature is duplicitous.

Ether or no, gravity bends light. The light of our observations has been through innumerable gravity events, culminating with being drawn in by our own sun. Such observations deserve skepticism. Or Ether causes the red shift.

Recently the Michelson/Morley experiment has been extended to discover gravity waves. An extremely large and sensitive instrument, it chattered.  Two of them were built to compare the results. Eventually the expected badumbump of the gravity wave occurred on both instruments. But when the results were examined it was found that the chatter matched as well. Perhaps the chatter is a consequence of distant dissipated gravity waves, or Ether.

Gas Operated

I recently attempted to drive clutch again. For those who can, it is perfectly easy to depress the clutch while pressing the gas. For the rest of us, it is difficult. Without automatic transmission the roads would be far safer, bicycles and public transportation far more popular and spouses more faithful.  Whether or not you do so, if you can’t drive stick you are not a competent human being and shouldn’t have a car.

Guns today are different than they were. That is why all the quick draw McGraw’s and shootemup  Joes are out there. I don’t mind the people who have been raised with guns and understand the culture and behavior that requires. But those people are a very small group, and you probably won’t hear from them.

All guns are artillery in the sense that their projectiles have a parabolic trajectory. In order to have any range bullets have to go up and come down. It is horrifying to see the Drill kids, called that because they are proud that they don’t know how to hold a gun and hold it like a power drill. All guns have to have an upward inclination in order to achieve any range, so they kick up. In the past guns were heavy, in part to counter this recoil.

Now if you purchase a 22 caliber rifle for your twelve year old. It doesn’t have much recoil and if she shoots it outside she probably won’t need ear protection. But once she starts shooting 22 long rifle rounds, with greater acceleration, she will notice it. Larger than that, either the round or the acceleration is less fun. To circumvent this all military rifles, from the M1 on, have a hole in the top of the barrel near the muzzle.  The point of this is to counteract and lessen the recoil. This means that the guns no longer have sufficient recoil to reliably drive the reloading mechanism. The solution is to take the escaping gas from the hole at the top of the gun and use that to push the mechanism loading the next round. That is what gas operated means.

This is why all these morons and kids can shoot these heavy rounds without grabbing sky. The problem is that legislating gas operated is telling them they have to drive clutch and they are big pussies. But at least if you want to shut down the mansplainers, just say “gas operated”.

Taxes

Milton Friedman made his living arguing that the Federal Reserve caused the 1929 stock market crash and thus the Great Depression by jacking around discount rates.  Economic argument is difficult. We cannot even prove that the stock market crash caused the Great Depression. But his point that the Fed should be considerate, respectful and measured is well taken. As any driver can tell you, when you don’t know what you are doing, it is better to do it slowly.

Fiscal policy should be deliberate as well.  When there is uncertainty it is difficult to plan or invest. The new tax law dumps everything into the chipper. People keep talking about individual effect or ethic. The real problem is that we have no idea what the cumulative impact will be. That is bad. What will be the systemic impact on America? This law assumes instability. It was passed in the belief that many issues will be addressed in subsequent legislation. What a wonderful fetcher, how can Congress not shake that money tree? We have no idea as to impact or what the law will be a year from now. Previous tax law represented all the various interests that lead to it. Those interests remain. They will demand satisfaction.

There is a recent example. Ronald Reagan, a Hollywood actor, was incensed that he paid taxes at 90%. Obviously there were ways for him to reduce that burden. He invested in real estate and took advantage of depreciation and all the rest. What upset him was that his employers, the studio owners, had the capital gains deduction. When they bought and sold the studios to each other they then started from 50% times 90% or 45%. It wasn’t fair that he had to start higher because he did the work. When he was elected he got the maximum down to 28% from 70% and eliminated the capital gains deduction.

Since everyone started from 28% a lot less tax was collected. This combined with the savings and loan fiasco left George HW Bush with a hot steaming mess. Fortunately class tells and Bush, the statesman, lied and saved our country. He wasn’t reelected, but Clinton was smart enough to keep things as Bush left them. The Clinton recovery began under Bush. Bush really had a 12 year term. Of course once Bill Gates wanted to sell his stock, the capital gains deduction was restored in 1997. The new maximum tax rate is at 37% down from 39%.

I despise tax deductions. Just as we shouldn’t tell people how to invest, we shouldn’t tell them how to live either. The state real estate tax deduction is the worst. It is wrong to subsidize social segregation. But this reform has already led to a state tax windfall soon to be followed by a state tax drought.

It appears that Republicans want to end everything Obama, including the recovery. I hesitate to ascribe motive to anything so mindless, but everyone wants to sell out.  What opportunity is driving this smash and grab? It must be China.

The tax bill will fail in the courts. As venal as Republicans are they have left an out. Double taxation on earnings and income is forbidden. This is fundamental tax law and is used to justify foreign tax credits.  Including state income tax in the tax cap will be changed. It would be reasonable for the courts to simply specify that state income tax is a separate deduction and is not capped. Perhaps the adults will create the tax form that way. Then the states will move taxes from real estate and sales to income. The change in state policy could be beneficent, one might expect state legislatures to more fairly apportion services. More likely we will become southern, charter schemes and vouchers. The Supreme Court has two principle values: expediency and privilege. Faced with a difficult law that threatens privilege the court will remove the cap. Then they will throw out the whole law to give themselves cover. It will be a close decision but judges own houses.

This is a cruel charade to shake down investors who want to own Chinese assembly plants. Can Senators look investors in the eye and claim that they don’t understand double taxation of income?

If you wind up paying 37% in taxes, you should throw a party. You have more money than you know what to do with. Most people know what to do with their money. The current idea is that you should have about 120,000 in walking around money. If you need more than that you should check in and make use of the medical deduction. The rest of your money should be in a corporation, profit or nonprofit, stock or pass through. Just as every poor person needs a church every rich person should have a business. There’s a lot of ways these things are structured but the point of the tax law is to limit your spending money and keep you invested.

Vegas Conspiracy

Danley, Paddock’s girlfriend, appears to be receiving undue attention. Perhaps because she and Campos are the only ones involved who aren’t white. Vegas police haven’t presented well. I’m thinking that Reno 911 is more real than satire. Paddock seems to have given Danley the opportunity for a fat lawsuit. Maybe it’s just that all parties are concerned with liability but there is smoke. Did Paddock belong to somebody?

Odd that Paddocks tax returns have not yet been released. I doubt that he was operational, those guys been there, done that. He could have been in a support function.  The only operational goofs I can think of are Oswald and McVeigh.

Some of the smoke is Paddock as “professional gambler”. Supposedly, with comps, if you play big slots you can profit. This is why Vegas has so many rich gamblers and the casinos are broke. When gamblers play for comps they identify themselves to the casino. Everyone knows the machines are throttled. There is nothing illegal about this. When the house has volume it makes sense to throttle forward the machines, more big payouts and dings, to generate excitement. Likewise low volume is an opportunity to tighten the throttle and improve margins. Once a player is identified it is possible to tailor the throttle strategy to that player, keep them playing, and milk them for maximum return. It is a natural AI application. This would be legal as long as the percentage payout would be over the required amount. So Paddock was a chump. Did Paddock change his life style and investments only to realize he had been suckered?

It is likely that Paddock was a victim of child abuse. His dad was caught when Paddock was seven. Bad people, such as his father, often do bad things.

However Paddock got his stake and whatever his gullibility, he entered the real estate market at an auspicious time. In a boom market a persistent fool may do far better than a cautious investor.

The Korean War was voted down because of casualties and supply scandals. In Vietnam the military kept casualties down and when stories of the ArmaLite rifles jamming came out the military reacted with hysteria. To this day soldiers regard a rifle jam as a personal failure. Now that these rifles are widely available, you can see shooters clearing their jams while insisting that their guns are reliable.

-Look how easy it is to clear the jam.

Once a gun starts jamming it is best to clean it. It is now obvious that the guns jam because they are designed to minimize recoil. Why did the shooter have so many rifles? Because he knew that they would get hot and jam. Why did he stop shooting? Initially I thought maybe all his guns had jammed. But mass killers often become disgusted with the reality and are frightened of capture.

If you must have conspiracy, Campos, the hotel security responder, might have shot Paddock. Given Vegas he would have deemed it better to avoid attention.

Why is there so much violence? Violence is endemic. Constant immigration takes its toll. Our violence is quantitatively less than other places but it doesn’t have the same level of institutional acceptance. Why so much shooting? Shooting has gotten easier; the equipment is improved. The lone shooter reminds me of domestic violence. They are attacking people because they feel isolated, abandoned and betrayed.

Stump Treatment

The slush piles are brimming with Trump stories. If I were a reader I would filter out anything with Trump in it, just as I do click bait. The premise for this one is that the Russians are disgusted with the lack of return on their investment. Envision Putin ranting. Not sure who to cast for Putin. Perhaps a computer generated image. He could sue but the argument is that his persona is in the public domain. Do the same thing with Trump. The lawsuit would be good publicity. If we can’t say Trump, say Stump, Putin; Putting. The joke is that Putin is speaking extremely vulgar Russian, or even breaking into heavily accented English but the sub titles are very proper. Maybe this will keep a PG rating. The title is rolling while Putin screams obscenities. 

-We can’t even get his fucking briefing books.

-There’s no actionable intelligence.

-We have the briefing books.

-You ugly ass wipe, that’s not the point. That fat shit can’t read.

-What use is he, if he can’t read?

I’m on it.

-You know what you’re on? I’ll tell you what you’re on…

Next scene is the Jefferson Memorial. Spies always meet at the memorial, typical Russian agent speaking to his American asset. The Russian sounds Russian; the American has a strong regional accent.

RA-We need a school teacher.

AA-What?

RA-Reading, they have to be able to teach anyone to read.

AA-I’ll ask around.

Scene of school teacher in second grade, things are going poorly. I see her as black. Get some teacher focus groups, opportunity for school teacher jokes, reading jokes, ADHD jokes, dyslexia jokes, spy jokes, Russian jokes, and harassment jokes.

School teacher walks into a bar:

ST-I’ll have a martini. I’ll have a martini with an olive in it. I’ll have a martini with gin and vermouth.

The American Asset hands her an envelope.

AA - Ten thousand, cash.

She puts the envelope in her bra.

ST - Just you?

AA-I work for the Russian government, we need a school teacher. Trump has to read.

ST - This all I get?

AA - One hundred thousand when you are done.

ST-You can get me in the White House?

AA - No problem. When do you start?

ST-I’ll get to Washington tomorrow, I don’t usually educate adults.

AA-Issue?

ST-No.

School teacher walks into principal’s office.

ST - Taking three weeks’ vacation starting tomorrow.

P- You can’t.

ST – Four weeks.

P-Who will sub?

ST - You?

P-I’ll get you. You won’t have a job when you get back.

ST - Fuck the job.

P-What about the kids?

ST - Fuck the kids.

School teacher talking to her class:

-I am going to miss all of you beautiful children, but it’s only for a short time, while I learn to be a better teacher for you. Meanwhile you will have the principal teaching you. He knows so much. I know you will be just as considerate of him as you are of me. It has been a few years since he has had the joy of actually teaching a class so you will have to help him in the beginning. This will be so much fun for you.

WH scene:

The WH aide is describing the atmosphere of harassment.

ST-I’ve taught eighth grade.

Oval Office:

ST - Give me your alphabet.

Trump: This is bullshit, look how far I’ve gotten without it.

ST-alphabet.

T-singsong alphabet.

ST-vowels.

T-AEIOU

ST-and?

T?

ST-sometimes Y.

T-I before e except after c.

ST-That’s right. What’s this? Here read this speech.

T-I just put it in Word and it reads it to me.

ST-You have a good memory. Read it for me.

T-The words fall apart.

ST - Look out the window.

T-What?

ST – Look out the window, tell me what you see.

T- Bushes, somebodies head, the fence, columns.

Trump loses interest starts looking around the room.

ST-What do you see in the room?

T-My desk, what’s the point?

ST - Look at the window again.

T- Still bushes.

ST-Don’t look out the window.

Trump looks out the window.

ST-Don’t look at your speech.

T- The purpose of this speech is to…

ST- That’s good. Look away when you lose it; then look back.

T - Explain our position in Iran. This is a stupid speech.

ST – It is stupid.  Keep at it.

Trump looks away at every word.

T- The…United…States…Must…Show… a…firm…resolve…I can’t keep doing this.

ST-This is how you start. It isn’t easy, keep at it.

T- To ensure that Iran does not return to the nuclear option. Together…This is our policy? The whole thing is just a shakedown of Saudi Arabia.

ST-Isn’t this easier than remembering?

T-I’m not going to say this shit.

ST - well no. You’ve made some progress. I’m leaving this book here. I got it from your library, it belonged to Kennedy.

T-What is it?

ST-What does it say?

T- Hornblower? Ship of the line.

ST-I don’t want you reading this until tomorrow. You might hurt your eyes. Wait for me and we will look at it together. OK?

Or maybe do product placement on dyslexia software, or the Russians can bring in an optometrist.

Melania talking to a man with his feet up on a desk:

MT-He’s reading a book.

Man-He’s not tweeting.

MT yells-He’s reading a book.

Man-I’ll get on it.

Develop Melania Trump, show her running White House, deciding policy.

School Teacher walks into Oval Office holding another book.

ST-Let’s start on Hornblower.

T- Read it.

ST-Did not. How did it end?

T-He got captured.

ST-You read the end.

T-He isn’t much of a hero.

ST- Whoa, comprehension? No he isn’t.

T-They give this to kids?

ST-More in the library, it’s a series.

T on the computer-It wants a password, I already logged on.

ST looks over his shoulder- Try your logon password. Washington?

T-What’s this?

ST-A PDF, must’ve scanned something.

T-What is this?

ST- Handwriting.

T- How do you read it?

ST- Write something for me.

Trump prints Fuck You.

ST- Do it again, but don’t raise your pencil.

Trump does it; then reads the screen – I had no idea it would come to this. I just wanted to save my plantation. Before you judge, you are now in the same predicament.

Trump has trouble with predicament - I’m reading out loud.

ST-That’s how you memorize. When you want to remember, read it aloud.

T-I don’t want to memorize all of it.

T keeps reading – Washington is an asshole.

ST- Got another book from the library. Jefferson owned this.

T-What is it?

ST-What does it say?

T-Wealth of Nations, what’s it about?

ST- about 700 pages, economics.

T- I’m reading this first.

ST-OK

School teacher at Jefferson memorial with white house aide:

WHA-He’s tweeting about presidents, Washington asshole, Adams stooge, Jefferson back stabbing SOB.

ST-He’s reading something they each left for the next presidents, in handwriting.

WHA- Here’s your 100,000 check.

ST putting it in her bra-Should be a million.

WHA-Stick around, I’ll ask.

ST- Maybe I’ll give him Black Like Me.

WHA - Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

ST- Not Malcolm X.

WHA- Mockingbird.

Two suits, one is fiddling with an Epipen:

-Why do the Russians want him to read?

-Commies are into that.

-They’re not commies.

-Whatever.

School teacher walks into the Oval Office:

T-Eisenhower was smart.

ST-No progress with Smith?

T-They had corn in England?

ST-Corn means cheapest grain, horse feed, like gasoline today.

T-He’s talking about inflation?

ST-Yes

T- 300 years ago.

ST-Yes

T-Isn’t this just the market place is great?

ST-You haven’t read it. He wasn’t stupid.

T-Briefing books suck. Eisenhower said they were stupid. What’s after Smith?

ST-Marx

T- Commie?

ST- Yes, you already kind of know his stuff.

T- After that?

ST- Keynes. Then Samuelson’s textbook.

T- Problems?

ST - Well yeah.

T-That’s it?

ST- Mandelbrot, I guess. He wrote a short one about finance. Graham and Dodd

T-Why should I know economics?

ST-So they don’t game you.

T-Everybody’s bluffing.

ST-Yes

T-I thought you’d bring in Mockingbird.

ST-Couldn’t find it in your library. I don’t think knowledge cures racism.

T-Thank you

ST-You’re welcome. Are we done?

T-I think I need to see you for a while.  This network doesn’t have much.

ST - Really?

T-They want me to install something.

ST-You have to trust them.

T-Why wasn’t it installed already?

ST-Don’t know.

T-You didn’t start me with the first Hornblower.

ST- No

T-I got it from the library.

ST-good

Include bits where the teacher tries to give socialization training. Anne Frank’s Diary, Huckleberry Finn, University of Pennsylvania joke

Have a late night host do a bit on Trumps tweets about the presidents. Give them script credit.

There is a big argument in a White House corridor. People are gathering to watch. The school teacher is rubber necking on the edge of the crowd. A suit swings at the school teacher with the Epipen.  The teacher sees it, grabs his hand before he hits her, stamps on his instep with her high heel, switches hands on her grip, and hits him in the elbow twisting his arm as she kicks out his knee. The teacher grabs the Epipen and stabs the suit with it, walking off holding the pen. People start to notice the man collapsed behind them.

School Teacher talking to White House Aide at the aides’ desk:

WHA- Colyer had a heart attack.

ST drops the Epipen in the aides’ trash-I was supposed to have one.

WHA-You took Colyer? He’s NSA.

ST - Playground duty. Trump wants me to hang out. Million?

WHA-It’s approved. Up to you when you leave

Bit about Trump telling secrets and no one believes him.

Oval Office, Trump alone. Obama’s voice comes on background. Maybe Obama would do it, now that the letter is public. It would be fun to have Bush senior give advice to Clinton; maybe he would do his own.  Doubt you could get Carter. Bush junior started doing this publicly, my guess is that it goes all the way back.

O-reads his letter.

T tweets- What a prig.

School Teacher walks in.

T-Obama is a prig.

ST-He’s a good student

T-What I said. I found a cool directory.

ST-They want you to know something.

T- Not sure.

ST-What will you write to your successors?

T- Something short.

ST-I think you have a lot to say.

T- Tell them to read Eisenhower, FDR; Hoover. Teach you’re fired. I’m very grateful to you. My time is valuable. You have a nice figure.

The school teacher leaves.

School Teacher at White House Aides’ desk:

T- Fired.

WHA hands ST envelope, ST looks at it and puts it in her bra.

ST walking down White House hall. Secret Service agent takes out pistol and shoots her in the head. Checks her pulse, puts down the gun as people come out of their offices.

SSA- Ohmigod, it just went off. I was just checking my gun.

News show, talking heads:

-A school teacher was killed by accident today at the White House.

-Was she working there?

-Advisory position.

-Conspiracy?

-Conspiracy to kill a school teacher?

In the television series the school teacher would live, giving a different lesson each episode. In the musical this would be a crescendo. Merchandising includes flashcards.

Jefferson Memorial, White House Aide is sobbing, comforted by Russian Agent.

RA-It’s not our first school teacher.

Trump is talking at a rally:

T-Kennedy Killing? Everybody knows that…

<fade>

Mullet Architecture

I thought of this term while visiting Indianapolis and seeing their library and a nearby church converted to residential. Mullet refers to a hairstyle that is:

-business in the front and party in back.

A mullet is a type of catfish. Mullet head is a derogatory word implying poor and therefore stupid. This word became associated with the hairstyle a few decades ago. While I claim credit for Chicago Facade, peeling the facade off an old building then pasting it on a new one to satisfy nostalgia, the Mullet Architecture term already exists.

Examples given are Frank Lloyd Wright’s Winslow house in River Forest and modernist houses built in Nazi Germany which maintained a severe front. I am extending the term to Mullet houses that meet the requirements of historic districts while allowing large family rooms and kitchens.

This type of restoration arises from envy of the Ranch styles with their dramatic living/dining and open kitchen areas. People living in Craftsman, Victorian, Four Square, Elizabethan, Georgian, Italianate, etc. homes want to have the suburban open pit television aesthetic. Since they can’t capture the spaciousness of those cheap unincorporated lots, they compensate with fancy kitchens.

The kitchens are remarkable. Consider a restaurant line chef’s work station. It is quite snug, in part because space for guests represents revenue but also because chefs are on their feet. Some pastry chefs may maintain a piece of marble, but I have yet to see any of the popular counter tops in a restaurant kitchen. These home kitchen Hestia shrines are an atavism representing a lost mythical past. One giveaway is the lack of a smoke hood above a ridiculous industrial stove. I have seen paintings hung in a kitchen.

The Indianapolis Library anchors a large park designed in the image of the National Mall. Centering of the Sales Force tower at the opposite end of the park has already subverted the nationalist image.

Losing the original pleasant library building at the end of the park would be wrong. I fail to see why keeping that building required that they add on to it. A separate new library building, even at a different site doesn’t seem to be more expensive.

I am not a fan of repurposing churches. I understand nostalgia for the buildings. But the cheery appropriation of the sacred for the profane is annoying. Indianapolis wanted to maintain the look of their park while building condominiums. The mullet is easier than attempting an architecturally appropriate modern building on the site.

  

I Want To Go

It seems feasible that we could have a spacecraft that hurtles toward the sun becoming a comet. The idea would be to apply acceleration at various orbital points that maximize speed with minimum expenditure. If we can go fast enough the relativistic effect would compensate for our lack of resources. After sufficient orbits we could then rejoin the Earth. To us it would seem that we had been gone a few months or even years, but we would have moved forward in time by hundreds of years.

It should be possible to do some science at the outer boundary of our orbit. Measure the cosmic radiation, red shift, various observations of deep space. Maybe our UFO’s are other primates who are moving forward in time in order to avoid us.

The reason of course is that once we had rejoined humanity, assuming that we are still here, we could then ask them, after we figured out how they spoke:

-What do you think of Donald Trump?

They would answer:

-Who?

Likely and So/Sandra Bland

I don’t know what happened. Dope means they toyed with her and that is why she broke.

I hate the word surreal. We all have some commitment to Bayesian analysis. Recognize that it is a probability and all probabilities include frustration as an outcome. Calvinism, the widely held belief enshrining Bayesian outcomes that things are as they are, frequently fails. This may be explained as fractal dynamic or failures of framing, but may simply be the consequence of chance. Confusing improbable with surreal simply means that your smug world view has been challenged by experience. Likely is not always so.

Explication still requires likely. We are indisposed to accept the miraculous, even when it is so. In the case of Sandra Bland the difficult anomaly is that she died stoned. If you believe that she somehow smuggled the dope in herself, I suggest you attempt it. If all the various formality and process of incarceration guarantee anything, they ensure that you will not have marijuana in prison. The explanation requires that Ms. Bland, in anticipation of her incarceration, secreted marijuana on her presence in some way unnoticed by her guards who deal with exactly that scenario every single day of their careers. If Waller County cannot explain the marijuana, they have no legitimacy.

Some believe that Sandra Bland was murdered. This is an excellent example of the difficulty of framing. It is likely that you have been inside. If you have, then you are well aware that prison is a very serious time out. We like to think we have internal resources. But as you read this you can select an entertainment source, order a pizza, or step out for some air. You can’t do those things in jail. Most of us are not good company and would resent being the sole source of someone’s divertissement, even or especially our own. It is likely that Sandra Bland obtained the marijuana from the guards. It is unreasonable that they would give her dope and then murder her. I hope that Sandra Bland was murdered. I think it was far worse.

Sandra Bland is depicted as fragile. I see her as self-reliant and adaptable. I doubt most of us would have lasted as long.   Why would the guards give her dope? What could she do for them? As you have come this far, I will be explicit. Harassment of prisoners, particularly women prisoners is common. One may say likely.

Air Superiority Drones

Warfare has countless examples of ignoring the obvious, cavalry before World War I, fortified emplacements before World War II, techno-war before Vietnam; generals begin fighting each war with the lessons learned from the past. Now we have fighter planes.

Drones are currently successful because they are used for ground support. This is a mission that has long been neglected. It is difficult to justify expenditure on fixed wing propeller aircraft even though they are the best means of assisting ground troops. Drones have stepped into this vacuum. 

The next obvious step in Drone evolution is to give them jet capability. This is a disruptive technology. Defense companies are disinterested because it will end their expensive all-purpose fighter jets. Air forces don’t want to lose their fighter pilot culture. What a tremendous profit opportunity and with such a low entry level cost.

Just as electric cars have made power engineers sexy again, stealth given opportunity to radio engineers, drones do it for aerospace engineering. Don’t be distracted by scramjets. Think cheap. It may even be possible to fly high and drop nets. If your targets are subsonic you might use sound instead of radar. Perhaps you are just an AMRAAM delivery platform.  Say you have a relatively slow moving drone carrying 10 air to air missiles flying in support of a mission. Now say you have 25 such drones.

Kickstart its’ funding. I’m sure every war nerd in the world will kick in to shoot down top gun.

Trumpageddon

Proposed Congressional legislation:

1. The National Security Agency is only authorized to intercept communications. Any other such authorization it may require must be obtained from the Defense Department.
2. Nuclear weapons can only be launched with the initiative of the president and the four senior military commanders. There is no individual initiative to launch and any attempt to supersede this initiative nullifies it.
3. The President has no authority to initiate military action. All such action must be initiated by Congress. Congress must annually explicitly approve all military missions. Loss of approval ends the mission. Military violation of a nation’s sovereignty without explicit consent of congress receives minimum sentence of five years. 

It has become obvious that our nation’s electorate does not respect the executive. For the safety of the country and the world, Congress must act. National Security Authority has been abused on several occasions, most notably with Watergate. Both Kennedy and Reagan nearly brought nuclear disaster. The third provision would not have prevented our most egregious military losses. Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan would still have occurred. But it may have restrained Eisenhower’s adventures, our Caribbean escapades, ruination of South and Central America, the slaughter in Indonesia and perhaps even Cambodia, Libya, and our current SOCOM fantasies.
  
While I’m at it:

4. Whenever the Central Intelligence Agency is apprehended either domestically or internationally it must submit to rule of law without equivocation or exception. Attempts to suppress investigation are felonies punishable by a minimum of five years imprisonment. 
5. Only Congress can issue pardons. The President cannot be pardoned.
Call this the Nixon Act.

6. Service as Director of the FBI is limited to ten years.
This would be the Hoover Act.

7. Attorney General is no longer a cabinet official but an independent office appointed for a ten year term. 

If Congress could get up on its hind legs, the end of the imperial presidency would be Trump’s greatest contribution.

Cryspus Attucks Was a Chump

In the south, the British were freeing slaves. They were the side of freedom. Admittedly not enough to make a difference, else the British would have won. Up north, Attucks, who was a seaman and used to being treated even was just cutting up. John Adams, defending the British soldiers who fired on the crowd at, their trial, described Attucks as one of a “a motley rabble of saucy boys, negroes and mullatoes, Irish teagues and outlandish jack tarrs". Attucks was upset about impressment and competition for jobs, ignoring slavery. One of the reasons for the revolution that Attucks started was to maintain slavery.

A chump is someone who ignores the big picture: The legendary black sniper who fought for the confederacy or all the slaves who returned with Lee from Gettysburg. The 442^nd infantry regiment of Japanese Americans who fought while their families were interred. All pales in the face of 2.5 million Indians fighting for Britain after repetitive starvation holocausts continuing during World War II.

What is the nature of a chump? How can they ignore the obvious? It is a common human failing to be confused by figure/ground, to view the immediate as the general case. But these are not merely the oblivious. There is a deep vein of hateful cynicism.  These were not circumstances that could be ignored. Rationalization is always possible, but at some level they had to renounce their common humanity and hope for progress. The humor is that they see themselves as opportunists and think that they are the exception.

History seems to praise the chumps. The thinking is that since we are here things must have turned out well. Many of the chumps didn’t make it.

First thing I noticed about the recent so called Baltimore riots was the lack of rifles. Then we all remarked at the rather pitiful attempts at looting. The only people really hurt were the Pakistani store keepers and the elderly. Sorry, that is not a riot. It is a pogrom.

I am leading up to the Republican primary, the party of chumps and Trumps. They don’t seem to realize that cliques are an exclusionary process eventually containing only the null set.

Everyone is upset that we, the American people, took the hit while the banks got away with it. Any candidate who promises to put Goldman Sachs in jail will take the election. Sanders is code talking about:

-equal protection under the law.

Which we all hear as:

-put Goldman Sachs in jail.

Clinton is doing a shimmy.  Trump shimmies a little. Except for fundamentalist Carson, no one else is getting any play.  That is because they are ignoring the major issue of the election:  jail the banks. There was a debate cattle call where the moderator essentially asked:

-Who wants to be president?

And they all took a pass. What he actually asked was how to address the banking scandal.

Chumps are created by privilege, defense of the local maxima while ignoring much larger inequities nearby.

-Why should I pay more taxes for college that my kids aren’t smart enough to get into?

-Why should I pay more in taxes for some dumb old farts colonoscopy?

While completely ignoring the 200 million F35 weapon systems that will eventually be brought down by a $10,000 drone.

Poor Sanders is talking about what could have been done with the money that we used to support the reinsurance industry.  He doesn’t realize that America just wants to see some bankers do the perp walk. We don’t want to actually change anything.

Lennon Conspiracy Revisited

Mayor Rahm Emanuel recently excoriated a reporter who revealed Emanuel’s travel plan to Cuba. It is generally thought that he was taking umbrage after a difficult interview. But most reporters are respectful of itinerary and family information, and Emanuel may well have had reasonable expectations that were violated.

This brings me to the legendary example of the danger of this sort of privacy violation. One of the good things about People Magazine is that it provides an archive. So I will give you the offending article directly. This was in the Chatter column 11/10/1980:

“Hanging 5
Reportedly worth more than $150 million, John Lennon stands to augment that considerably when his new album, Double Fantasy, which he made with wife Yoko Ono, comes out this month. Where does all that money go? Well, the ex-Beatle has been investing heavily of late in the works of a young artist. Patrons of a gallery on Manhattan's Upper West Side saw one of the canvases when an employee of the Lennons brought it in to be framed. The artist turns out to be son Sean, 5, who painted a green-and-brown cottage for Dad's 40th birthday in October. A white wood frame was added for $44. According to a salesman, the Lennons have had nearly 100 of Sean's paintings framed there. This is not merely a case of indulgent parents. With five giant apartments in New York's Dakota, four dairy farms, a Palm Beach mansion and assorted country homes, the Lennons clearly have a lot of wall space. “

People Magazine prints itinerary articles, so this one is not unusual. The information given is also available in a book, John Lennon, One Day at a Time, 1976, which People explicitly references in their description of Lennon’s killer, Mark Chapman. The difference between the article and the book, of course, is that the article is current, while the book may have been out of date. Wikipedia cites Lennon’s wealth as being an explicit betrayal of Chapman’s Lennon idealization:

According to Chapman’s wife Gloria, "He was angry that Lennon would preach love and peace but yet have millions [of dollars]." Chapman later said that "He told us to imagine no possessions, and there he was, with millions of dollars and yachts and farms and country estates, laughing at people like me who had believed the lies and bought the records and built a big part of their lives around his music."^[15]

There is a difference between common local knowledge and publication for a much larger audience. I remember bumping into Harold Washington at a local breakfast stop after his usual was outed by People. He may have also been avoiding a waitress who tried to force oatmeal on him.

Shortly after Chapman killed Lennon, People published an article on Jackie Onassis with where she often shopped and lunched. The Time Inc. corporate brass was visiting Chicago and I along with the rest of the employees was invited next door to Holiday Inn to meet them. I happened to be talking to the CEO and I said:

-I know you don’t involve yourself in editorial decisions.

He smiled.

-But isn’t it a bit much giving Jackie O’s itinerary? Wasn’t Lennon enough?

This isn’t as foolhardy as it might sound. In those days a programmer could always find work. I fully expected him to laugh and ask for my badge. Instead the CEO turned and ran.

I noticed that People seemed to be concentrating on celebrities living around Central Park. As well as the Lennon mention and Onassis article, there was an article on Woody Allen and Mia Farrow. At the time there was a furor about Trump tearing down the Bonwit Teller department store and building his first tower. There was a lot of outrage on the Upper East Side about Trump’s disproportionate skyscraper looming over the park and the celebrities were out in front in opposition. Trump totally played them. Unlike the following successful campaigns against development this one didn’t get much press. The failure to stop Trump tower solidified the opposition to future projects. New York plays rough. 

Watergate

Conspiracy theory is in disrepute because it has become a religion.  People want to believe that there is someone in charge who knows what they are doing.  Just because there isn’t someone in charge who knows what they are doing doesn’t mean that people don’t conspire.  Watergate is where conspiracy theory becomes pop art criticism. I have a possibility.

Everyone imagines a conversation where Nixon is told that he has to take the fall and he says in that Nixon voice:

-I’m not going without a pardon.

My question is when that conversation takes place and with whom. People naturally put that conversation at the end of his service.  This doesn’t make logistical sense unless it occurred at least as far back as the second election. Nixon has to be complicit in his own impeachment. Why would Nixon want to be impeached?  Because he required a pardon. Tricky Dicky, the evil monster with the world on his enemies list, knew that he would spend the rest of his life in court. I can’t know if it was an explicit plan but the pardon saved him from the damnation of eternal litigation.

Nixon is misrepresented as being out of touch and misunderstanding his context, a cold war warrior caught by progress. This is false. Nixon had few illusions and perfectly grasped his constituency and his opposition. He knew his opposition hated him and it was personal. As he waited at San Clemente for Ford’s decision he carefully totted up everyone he would drag down with him, from the Joint Chiefs, Taiwan, ITT, CIA, Standard Oil…

Ford was left with the choice of killing Nixon or pardoning him.

President Trump

No one believes Trump will be President. They fail to realize that he will, of course, change all his positions after he is nominated:

-Of course I was lying, how else would I get the nomination?

 Usually politicians shade their position rather than flat out contradict it. But we are talking Trump:

-Abortion is necessary. You think I’m stupid? Hey, I’ll kill the kids myself. If Carson can be president, I can be a doctor.

-Open borders, everybody gets in. Why check? They can’t be worse than what we’ve got.

-When I’m president, I’ll turn the Pentagon into a combination mall, condos and offices.

-If Warren won’t be Vice President then I want her in treasury.

 -No more Obamacare. We will have traditional Republican single payer.

-Legalize it, all of it.

-Get the Police off the streets, safer for everyone.

-My first act as president will be to line Goldman Sachs against the wall and shoot them. Citibank? What Citibank? HSBC goes to Guantanamo, after we send those poor Muslims home.

Sanders would have to say:

-We shouldn’t shoot anyone without a trial.

Sanders will probably vote for Trump. So will you.

See? Trump really is a politician.

Jonah and Global Warming

At first I was sort of pleased with the increase in declared atheism. I told my son:

-I just don’t want to hear about flying saucers.

I suspected that most atheists had some sort of belief; we just hadn’t added the conspiracy or UFO check boxes yet.  But now I’m getting irked. I had blamed Benjamin Franklin. Once lightning was explained, God didn’t seem as necessary. But there seems to be a general failure to declare, not just religion, but anything else. Is other going to become its own gang? Caucasian is a racist term, predicated on the belief that we all came from some group in the Caucasus that was considered attractive.  Colors seem to be acceptable for black and white, but the brown, yellow and red people don’t approve. Now we need ten check boxes for sex:

-Sex?

-Yes

I can see why people resist classification. I’m worried that we will lose culture.

Christine recently dragged me to church and they had a reading from Jonah. I don’t know of any other story where the prophets get into it and kvetch about their lot:

-God chooses you. You, quite sensibly, try to get out of it. After he slaps you around, you do what you are told.  You tell the people of Nineveh that they must repent or be destroyed. They repent. God changes up and you look a fool.

 This may be the most terrifying bible story:

-I hope you don’t listen to me. I wish that you keep your sinful ways. I want to see that.

Scientists are our modern day prophets. How sorely they are tempted. If they will only depart from the path of truth all worldly riches are open to them. Just think of the grants, the Fox interviews, the approbation and acclaim. Admittedly they will lose the respect of other scientists. Will that respect pay their flood insurance? I can see why sometimes they mumble, fail to state the obvious unequivocally, and leaven their jeremiads. What if we listen? What if we come to our senses and stop poisoning ourselves? There the true prophets will be, high and dry, simmering in bitterness, with no earthly reward.  These are supposed to be materialists.  Their only possible satisfaction is to at least be able to say, if only one last time:

-I told you so.

Be very scared when the scientists turn over. When they realize that we are lost and they may as well grab the money.

You will notice that several towns and peoples are destroyed in the Bible. This reminds me of the Midwestern effect.  In the Midwest it is possible to walk out to the crossroads. There are no mountains, trees or buildings.  It is flat. You stand as a nub in the cosmos, totally alone.

Previous Comments

Critical Error: Start menu and Cortana aren't working. We'll try to fix this for you the next time you sign in. /avast

Sorry don't know where else to post. Lot of bloviating. There are probably a lot of reasons for this dumb message and the messages are similar. Good argument for better messaging. What seems to be happening in my case is that Avast, what do you want, it's free, is pushing out a software upgrade for windows 10 using its windows 7 program. This breaks everything better than a virus could.  If you can bring up Avast there will be a message that a program upgrade is waiting in the software updates section, pushing that through, restarting each time it asked, fixed it for me.

Then it broke again. Guessing Avast is trying to tell me something, perhaps pay them. Uninstalled Avast then things worked again. Avast sent me a very nice email explaining how to uninstall. If you don't want their web service then troubleshoot program(right click) gets you to control panel. Hello defender.

American Presidents as Agents of a Foreign Power

George Washington – France

John Adams – Dutch pirates

Thomas Jefferson – France

James Madison – France

James Monroe – England

John Quincy Adams –England

Andrew Jackson – Dutch pirates

Martin Van Buren – Dutch pirates

William Henry Harrison –Dutch pirates

John Tyler -Dutch pirates

James K Polk – Dutch pirates

Zachary Taylor – England

Millard Fillmore – Spain

Franklin Pierce - no

James Buchanan - no

Abraham Lincoln – no

Andrew Johnson – no

Ulysses S. Grant – England

Rutherford B. Hayes – England

James A. Garfield – no

Chester A. Arthur – England

Grover Cleveland – England

Benjamin Harrison – no

William McKinley – no

Theodore Roosevelt – England

William Howard Taft – no

Woodrow Wilson – dupe of England

Warren G. Harding – no

Calvin Coolidge – no

Herbert Hoover – Germany

Franklin D. Roosevelt – England

Harry S. Truman – Taiwan

Dwight D. Eisenhower – Taiwan

John F. Kennedy – no

Lyndon B. Johnson – Taiwan

Richard Nixon – China

Gerald Ford – Saudi Arabia

Jimmy Carter – God

Ronald Reagan – Russia

George H. W. Bush – Saudi Arabia

Bill Clinton – pirates

George W. Bush – Iran

Barack Obama – pirates

Rates

Any time someone gives you a rate for anything, it’s been jiggered.  The unemployment rate is a well-known example. In 2012 the reported unemployment rate was around 8%. If I take the total reported employment of around 134,000,000 then apply it to the total population between 20 and 64 of about 162,000,000 I get around 17%. That seems a little high for 2012 but it gives you an idea of the variance. At this point economists start throwing smoke.  Most economics seems to be disputes about rates.  Disability, yadda yadda, looking for work, employability, underemployment, I’ve known a lot of deranged people who have jobs.  A good rule of thumb seems to be double the reported rate. Google real unemployment and double the rate seems the general conclusion.

Given the tremendous amount of data available and studied we should have immediate, accurate and complete information segmented across any desired index of our unemployment.  Given that we don’t it is obvious that we don’t want this information. We have national job search sites, Monster, LinkedIn, Dice, which should be able to show employment rates and active job searchers by profession. Why aren't these numbers publicly available?

Earnings are another notorious quagmire. Security Analysis, the legendary book by Graham and Dodd, is essentially a diatribe on the difficulty of reading company reports. Investors want to see a smooth earnings curve, so management spends most of its time trying to fit its real revenue into that form.  Inevitably there is a disaster, the company takes a bath, reveals all its bad news and then goes back to building its earnings curve.  Knowing this, are you more likely to trust a company reporting gyrating earnings-or would you regard it as management not being smart enough to play the game?

Inflation is also difficult. Adam Smith proposed animal feed as the benchmark for determining the value of your paycheck. Nowadays this would correspond to gasoline. Recently, the price of gas dropped but the value of the dollar as measured against gold has not yet responded.  This is probably because we have hollowed out so much of our industry. Galbraith argued that inflation was the consequence of business requiring a rate of return for investment.  I think we all intuitively recognize that there is always a real, constant and underlying rate of inflation despite particular market events. Underneath all the various currency gyrations and trade imbalances currency value has an intrinsic depreciation.

What got me started on this article were college acceptance rates.  I was startled at how selective colleges had become. Then it was explained that students are sending out far more applications than they had in the past.  What the schools are not reporting is student acceptance rates, how many students turn down the school after they have been accepted.

Everyone recognizes a drop in crime statistics. Credit has been taken by the police. Contraception and abortion have been recognized.  Cell phones help with reporting and solving crimes. The prevalence of video cameras is significant. 1984 is real. Videophilia, the prevalence of video games, is linked with drops in pregnancy, recreational activity and crime. Improvements in medical care reduce the number of successful homicides. Some of the decrease is municipalities’ jiggering the reporting. These causes explain the drop in reported crime. But the nature of criminal activity has changed. Banks and businesses have supplanted organized crime.

In the past murder rates were in inverse ratio to construction. As Sam Destafano said:

-You will never catch me; you’ll never dig up the Dan Ryan.

I have noticed a number of articles mentioning bodies found in dumpsters.  At first this method of disposal seemed foolish to me. The bodies were being discovered.  Then it occurred to me that maybe a lot of other bodies were not being discovered.  The garbage disposal process is so automated. Now that it is easy to dispose of bodies, the true murder rate is hiding in missing persons.  How can anyone stay missing nowadays? It is more difficult to hide your identity than it is to dispose of a body.

Lincoln Conspiracy

The hardest part about managing anyone, including spies, is initiative. When someone is acting as your employee, whether as a spy or in any other capacity, you are responsible for their actions. They don’t know the big picture. They can’t know the big picture. You can’t have them running around knocking things over and messing everything up. Spies, like any other employee have to take direction.  James Bond better not kill anyone unless it is authorized.

 That is what is so wrong with the Booth conspiracy. The idea that any spy ring would act without authorization makes as much sense as you going to work and deciding what your job assignment is.  Even if Booth himself decided to kill Lincoln, it is difficult to believe that the rest of the ring would go along without authorization.

Abraham Lincoln is the only president known to have been killed by a conspiracy. There have been suspicions about others. The fact of eight convicted and four executed confirms conspiracy. Did Booth have orders?  Would his spy ring have followed him if they thought he was operating independently? Does a spy ring continue to operate once its side has lost? Would losing the war give you greater confidence and initiative? 

It is easy to believe that the South would want revenge on Lincoln. Targeting Seward and Johnson leads to the supposition of some tactical objective.  The conspirators are not simply targeting a foe; they are removing Lincoln’s successors. Obviously, winning the war was not the objective.  Why three targets?  I think the other two targets were window dressing or distraction. In the official version, the original plan was to kidnap the three in some mad Southern plan and thereby somehow gain a bargaining advantage. Then this bizarre plot degenerated into murder.

It is perfectly reasonable to doubt the sanity of Southern strategy, but this seems a bit much. Who else would want Lincoln dead?

This leads me to the Pinkerton’s.  The Pinkerton Detective Agency was hired by Northern industrialists to protect Lincoln’s life.  This reminds me of my mother’s crack when someone pointed out one of Trotsky’s bodyguard:

-Didn’t do a very good job.

But the Pinkerton’s thought they had done an excellent job. According to the Pinkerton’s glowing reports to General McClellan they frustrated several attempts on Lincoln’s life, without Lincoln’s knowledge. Once McClellan was dismissed these same industrialists saw no point in continuing the protection.

Could Northerners have an interest in Lincoln’s demise? One of my favorite themes in history is common knowledge lost to posterity. The Democratic Party platform of 1864 is an abject treasonous document.  The Democrats are depicted as war weary.  But they are obviously acting on principle. There is disagreement as to whether they should surrender to the South, but they support slavery without equivocation. It is said that General McClellan would have had greater success against Lincoln if he had not repudiated the Democratic platform. In any case he received 45% of the vote.

When Lincoln is criticized for being ponderous, recognize that 45% of the Northern voters opposed the Civil War.

How would these Northerners have reached into the South and somehow provocateur or finagle the assassination?  It wouldn’t have been the South.  Southern intelligence was run out of Canada and Booth’s courier, John H. Surratt, worked out of New York.

   

Just as Northern sympathy and support for the South has been lost to account, imagine how reluctant investigators may have been to uncover Northern encouragement or participation in Lincoln’s assassination.

Strabismus and Fetal Alcohol

I am a big fan of the unsaid obvious.  Perhaps the best example was the fact that AIDS is passed by anal intercourse.  Sorry Magic. This deference of reality to propriety demonstrates the dangers of hypocrisy.  I remember the idiot virgin clubs where they proudly refrained from sex, because of all the dangers, then got that goofy sly look and mumbled about other things you could do. 

Lazy eye is a good current example. If you look up strabismus, they will tell you that the cause is unknown. This is a lie. If you look up fetal alcohol syndrome, one of the symptoms is strabismus. It may be that there are other causes. But fetal alcohol causes strabismus. If you have a cast to your eye, perhaps your arms and your temper are a little short; chances are Mom was hitting it. Some people might consider this a lapse in good taste, but I think it is preferable to recognize a developmental disorder rather than a hereditary one.

If they were truthful rather than pusillanimous they would say that fetal alcohol is the only known cause of strabismus. 

Writers Workshop

One of the first things you notice is how autobiographical most of the material is. I guess people write about the things that matter to them. One time this guy brought a fairly long manuscript, we are only supposed to read a few pages; he started at the beginning and read all the way to the end. It was about child molestation. At first I was surprised by his imagination, and then it occurred to me that he might actually know his subject. My stomach turned. No one interrupted him or asked him to cut it short. Perhaps the material was gripping or perhaps like me they had all shut down. I don’t remember what he said. At the end he shoved his manuscript back into its manila envelope and awaited our comments. A woman across from me took out a small pistol and shot the man through his forehead. The man next to me said:
-Mine is really short.

Meat and Milk

For thousands of years Jews have had a prohibition against mixing meat with milk. This is a lot of work. It involves separate sets of dishes, and by separate I mean compulsively separate. In the last hundred years some of our rules have found scientific justification. One might suppose that correlations were noticed between behaviors and consequences, but given the short life spans it is puzzling. A lot of this stuff didn’t make sense until we saw germs under the microscope. I can imagine some saying:
-I defecated near the well and nothing happened.
Torah sometimes cloaks common sense rules in mysticism. If they told men that sex after childbirth is bad for the mother it might not have made an impression. I knew an obstetrician whose children were born nine months apart. Telling him:
-She’s unclean, dammit,
might have been more effective. Sorry to go mystical but there is the possibility that the prohibition on mixing meat and milk may one day find hygienic justification. Perhaps we will one day learn that meat and milk affects the bacterial balance in our gut or something. Before dismissing our laws as ridiculous, you should bear in mind that some of the rules made sense, even or especially if we didn’t know why.
I ran across an interesting article:
http://thetorah.com/meat-and-milk-origins-in-the-text/
In summary, the original directive was to hold the spring festival promptly and deliver what you have on hand. This injunction seems a little harsh:
-I don’t care if it’s nursing, kill that baby goat now!
They wanted to emphasize immediate harvest for both Purim and Passover so they repeated it. Then another goof misread the injunction and threw it in with the dietary restrictions, early cut and paste. Out of context it reads:
-Don’t boil the baby goat in the milk of its mother.
I like this explanation; it fits with my view of how things work. To this day we take Bible out of context. It is comforting that this isn’t just recent. Because of this and since we are such neurotics, housewives have been wasting untold eons of labor:
-But it reinforced your identity.
Talmud isn’t much help, a lot of blather about parts per thousand. This indicates to me that most people thought this silly.
Still these passages survived interminable manual transcription and edit. I think most people reading the text have an image of shepherds feeling a mammalian kinship with their flock. That seems awfully sweet. Which does make it suspect. But we are not talking about the shepherds any more but the scribes doing the transcription.
This would make the neurotic response of dietary prohibition a reaction against recognizing our kinship with our livestock. The proper generalization of the normative interpretation would be to quit tormenting our food: catch and release, veal, factory farms, and farcie.
I’ve always thought ice cream would go well at Passover.
This reminds me of a story: There was a woman who was a concentration camp guard. After the war she came to Los Angeles and married a Jew. After many years he died and it somehow came out that she had been a war criminal and she was deported. At which point the women said:
-Hasn’t she suffered enough?