Month: January 2017

Moscow??


This showed up in my Facebook feed with the words, “Powerful photo. We are fortunate to have a man of God back in the Oval Office.”

I regularly check the logs for this blog. It’s gratifying that many of the blog’s regular readers are outside the U.S., particularly in Europe. In addition to regular readers, there are lots of one-time visits from people who are Googling for some subject or another. For example, my post on the expiration of copyrights for Peter Rabbit is very popular internationally, as are my posts on the Nikon Model S microscope and the repair of classic Peerless speakers.

Though the blog’s firewall log shows that the majority of hacker attacks come from Russia (surprise, surprise), I don’t get many actual readers from Russia. When, a few days ago, the logs showed a reader in Moscow, I naturally checked to see which post the Moscow reader came here for. Interestingly, the post was one of my more prescient political posts, “The ability (and inability) to judge character.”

It happens that I’m about halfway through the 2015 book How Propaganda Works, by Jason Stanley. I’ll have a post on that book later. But one point that stands out from How Propaganda Works is that a key factor that makes people susceptible to propaganda is flawed ideology. I’ll save Stanley’s arguments on flawed ideology for another day. For now, I’d only like to point out what an incredibly dangerous combination this is:

Flawed ideology
The inability to judge character

If we put racism, primitive religion and Republican politics into the category of flawed ideology, and if we combine that with the right-wing propaganda of the last few years and the candidate the propagandists were pushing, then we’ve got a strong framework for understanding this country’s downward spiral into fascism. One of the things I hear constantly from those who don’t subscribe to flawed right-wing ideology and who do have the ability to judge character is (talking about Trump and those who voted for him), “How can they not see through him?” It’s no mystery that they can’t see through him if you keep in mind the deadly combination of flawed ideology and the inability to judge character.

There is an interesting piece by Eliot A. Cohen in this month’s Atlantic, “A Clarifying Moment in American History.” One of the things that Cohen says is, “[Trump] will fail most of all because at the end of the day most Americans, including most of those who voted for him, are decent people who have no desire to live in an American version of Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, or Viktor Orban’s Hungary, or Vladimir Putin’s Russia.”

I beg to differ. I am increasingly irked at being told that we should reach out to Trump voters and try to understand them. What is it that we need to understand about their flawed ideology? We already understand their flawed ideology quite well. What is it that we need to understand about their incomprehensible inability to judge character? Even their most famous preachers tell them that Trump is a man of God whom God has sent to save America. I’m afraid my ideology doesn’t provide a way to square that godliness with all that hatred and the finger photos.

Anyone who has sunk that low, I am increasingly convinced, has forfeited the right to be called decent. Not only did they vote for Trump, but many of them did it with a kind of spiteful glee and vindictiveness (as is communicated by the finger photos). I will never forget that. Unless someone with a more tolerant ideology than mine can convince me that my view is flawed, then my view is that anyone who voted for Trump is not a decent person. In aggregate, they are dangerous. They will get nothing from me in the future other than as much distance as I can muster, a bare minimum of civility, and only the most basic support for their human rights and justice. That is far more than they themselves accord to the people they don’t like. Also, justice cuts both ways. Trump voters have to be held responsible for what they’ve done, once we’ve emerged from the ashes of the coming calamity. Certainly, I would cut some slack for those who ultimately do see through Trump and who ask for some forgiveness for what they’ve done. I doubt that many will be in that category, though.

Of course I have no idea why someone in Moscow would want to read my post on the inability to judge character. However, I can think of two basic reasons: 1. Someone in Moscow is wondering what the hell is wrong with Americans. Or, 2. Someone in Moscow is working on a better understanding of how to deceive Americans with propaganda.

Which do you suppose is more likely?

Below, the log showing the reader from Moscow

Democracy for Sale


Zack Galifianakis in a scene from the documentary, with one of our locals who lives near a coal-ash impoundment

Readers of this blog know that I love to shoot photos at grassroots political events here in the rural South. It’s a chance to do some casual portraiture — which I love. I also see the photos as essays on progressive and First Amendment activism here in Trump country.

The event was the showing of a new documentary narrated by Zack Galifianakis, “Democracy for Sale.” The documentary is about the right-wing takeover of North Carolina after a flood of outside money bought our state legislature. The 2010 redistricting then gerrymandered these right-wing radicals into their seats. They will be hard to dislodge. But drawing attention to what right-wingers are doing and have done in North Carolina is part of the process. The infamous “bathroom bill,” which almost certainly is what caused the odious Republican governor Pat McCrory to lose his seat, is only a small part of the damage being done to North Carolina by right-wing radicals.

In this documentary, narrator Zack Galifianakis visits our county, which has gotten itself on the map for its fight for environmental justice. “Democracy for Sale” is available for streaming at Hulu, Amazon, and other streaming services.

One thing I always notice among progressives is the kindness and concern in their faces — very different from the pinched, angry, spiteful looks of authoritarian types.

Making things while the sun shines

It’s January, right? The high temperature today was about 67 F. So far this month, almost 5.5 inches of rain have fallen. Some nearby folks report that the snakes have been up — in January! It has been a beautiful month. I’m all for it as long as we don’t have an early spring that subsequently gets frozen back.

Ken is building a second chicken house. This is not so much to expand the flock (eight chickens probably is all we need or would care to accommodate). Rather, it’s about giving us more options in where we pasture the chickens. The chickens have three areas, separately fenced — the garden, the orchard, and the woods. As for the garden, they can go there only at certain times of year. As for the orchard, if the chickens spend too much time in the orchard, they damage the turf. The woods are the best place for the chickens in the summer, because it’s cool there with plenty of leaf cover to scratch under. So the new chicken house, which is in the woods, will be largely a summer dwelling for the chickens. Nothing is too good for the abbey chickens. Ken spoils chickens the way other people spoil dogs and cats. They’re partly girlfriends and partly pets, he says.

The new chicken house is not yet complete, so I’ll have more photos soon. We’ll be getting baby chickens as soon as the local mill gets them in stock — probably about six weeks from now.


Cover crop in the garden, doing well


Daffodils coming up, too soon

Get a grip, HBO

In times like these, we need stories more than ever. About 46 percent of the people around us have proven themselves morally insane. Powerful forces (I wouldn’t hesitate to use the world evil) are doing everything possible to push the country deeper and deeper into a state of hatred and delusion. A madman has been installed in the White House, and he has surrounded himself with a cast of some of the most dangerous and character-deformed people to be found in the world today.

We look to HBO — which gave us Game of Thrones — to anchor us in some kind of meaningful culture, to distract us, and to help us find some direction in terrifying times. But what has HBO given us now? An absurd series called “The Young Pope.” All Jude Law lacks is orange hair and a little more gold in the decor.

There is no story in “The Young Pope,” as far as I can tell. There are no likable or interesting characters. There is only cruelty, irony, a meaningless sequence of meaningless scenes, and one quirky device after another that is supposed to deceive us into thinking that it’s edgy and good. I haven’t — and won’t — watch the second episode, but I understand it has a kangaroo in it. Need I say more?

One more insulting miscalculation like this, HBO, and I’m canceling the $16 a month I pay you for streaming. “The Young Pope” isn’t just bad. It makes me worry that somebody is putting something in the water.

2016: Record temperature for 3rd straight year


Wikipedia Commons: Polar bear starving on Svalbard because of ice melting early

Reports are out today that 2016 set a record for global temperature for the third year in a row.

A lot of people don’t quite grasp an important part of the science of global warming. A few degrees doesn’t seem like much. But it’s all about thermodynamics.

Heat is a measure of energy. At the particle level, heat energy is the jostling of electrons, atoms, and molecules. With global warming, it’s not just that the earth is warmer. Even a tiny increase in global temperature means that there is a tremendous increase of the total energy in the atmosphere and oceans.

Because the earth heats unevenly, ocean currents and weather systems are constantly working to stabilize and equalize the temperature gradients from the hot equator to the cold polar areas. Much of what’s scary about global warming is that the winds, ocean currents, evaporation, and precipitation systems that are driven by heat energy are disrupted.

Inevitably, a severe cold snap in midwinter causes some people (not to mention the right-wing media) to doubt and deny global warming. What they don’t realize is that, if it’s abnormally cold in the United States, then it’s because normal weather systems have been disrupted. Arctic air has moved too far south, displaced by warm air over the arctic that has moved too far north. As they say in thermodynamics, nature abhors a gradient. So this abnormal reversal of hot and cold air is the earth’s weather systems working extra hard to reduce temperature gradients and stabilize the atmosphere. It’s also the additional energy in the atmosphere that drives larger and larger tropical storms, more tornadoes, wetter monsoons, drier droughts, and so on. Normal weather patterns break down.

So it’s important to think not only of earth being warmer, but also to think about the increasing heat energy making the atmosphere increasingly turbulent, wreaking havoc with ocean currents, and screwing up ecosystems that have depended on a stable climate for centuries or millenia.

Four years to go

Very little about Americans is amusing these days, but I did have a good laugh this week about right-wing “preppers.” The companies that sell them guns, storage food, and survival items flourished during the Obama years. After all, right-wingers were told that President Obama was going to take their guns away, that the dollar and the economy would crash, that there would be runaway inflation, that FEMA concentration camps were being prepared for them, that Obama would wage a war on religion, etc. If President Obama is going to get all that done, he has two days left in which to do it.

But after the election of Trump, the Economic Collapse blog’s Michael Snyder reported that “it is like a nuclear bomb went off in the prepping community.” The bottom fell out of the market for survival food and survival gear, it seems. The Deplorables feel safe, now that that black family is out of the White House.

But for those of us who live in the real world, we are going to have to pay close attention to events as they unfold. With the Fed starting to raise interest rates, we appear to be approaching the unhappy part of the economic cycle. Trump’s deck is full of wild cards that he is playing into the global geopolitical situation as well as into the domestic situation. When crisis hits — and it will — Trump’s ship of fools and the right-wing radicals in Congress will pull all the wrong levers. It’s time to seriously consider buying survival food while that stuff is on sale.

I have never been terribly deluded about just how awful people can be, but I am still in a state of shock at the display of hatred and delusion that we saw last year. One of the things I’ve been thinking about is how to maintain the highest wall possible between myself and the people who bought a ticket on the Trump train. I’m tired of being told that we should reach out to them with our usual liberal compassion. Did we fail to notice the “Fuck Your Feelings” bumper stickers and T-shirts? They are simply not reachable by anything other than the right-wing media and their ugly religion. Maybe four years from now (probably sooner, actually), when their hopes are dashed and their hero billionaire has betrayed them and reminded them just how small they are, they might be in a better mood for some liberal compassion. But not now.

One resolution I’ve made is to do everything possible not to do business with people who don’t like me. Even here in a Republican county, it has been no trouble to locate a liberal hardware store, a liberal plumber, a liberal roofer, a liberal local drug store, liberal landscaping supplies, and so on. I will spend as much of my money locally as possible. We all have to do business with corporations, though, so I’ll pay close attention to the politics and track records of the corporations that I spend money with.

I also will do my best to stay away from people who don’t like me.

Simple Friday

The weather Friday was perfect (67 degrees F, quite a change from the polar vortex a week ago), so we had Simple Friday rather than Simple Saturday this week.

Why is cooking and eating outdoors so much fun? In any case, I’m starting to get the hang of cooking on the firebox. I’d kill for a brick-made outdoor range, with an oven for baking bread. Ken spent most of the day working on a second chicken house. There will be photos of that soon.

Port

When I lived in San Francisco, it was easy to buy good port, with lots of options. Much of it came from California. But, here in the provinces, the city liquor stores don’t carry port. If the grocery stores have it, it is almost always cheap brands that are not safe for septic tanks, let alone for drinking.

Trader Joe’s has come to the rescue with an Evenus port in half bottles, at $9.99. I suspect that this was bottled especially for Trader Joe’s. Evenus usually labels their ports with the type of grape (for example, syrah, or zinfandel) and a year. This port is labeled “Port Dessert Wine,” as though it’s meant for a market in which people don’t really know what port is, or even that it’s a dessert wine. No matter. It’s a superb little bottle of port.

Sometimes when I’m admiring the recipes and food photos at the New York Times web site, I marvel at how many dessert recipes there are. Do people really make, and eat, so many desserts? Here at the abbey, pies and cakes and pastries are rare. One way of cutting down on dessert consumption is to always keep a good stock of dark chocolates for after dinner. Nothing goes better with chocolate than a wee glass of port. Calories saved!

What the cat eats

I’m persnickety about what Lily the cat eats, and Lily is too. Though I know that some cat keepers and cat food authorities say that cats should not be on a diet of only dried food, cats may have their own opinions.

Lily is very opinionated, and her opinion is that nothing will suit other than the Castor & Pollux organic cat foods. Many years ago, I tried cooking for Lily according to the best homemade cat food recipe that I could find. My plan was to freeze the portions and thaw them as needed. Lily wouldn’t touch the stuff (I can’t say that I blame her) and so I put it out back for the possums. When she was still a kitten, I bought her first bag of Castor & Pollux at Whole Foods, and that has been the deal ever since.

Her bowl is kept full all the time. When it needs topping off, she lets me know. She was abandoned and hungry as a kitten, which gave her a neurotic start where food is involved. My strategy was to make sure that she always had food, hoping that that would convince her that she is never in danger of going hungry. It seems to have worked. She’s not piggy. She eats when she wants. And though she is probably a pound or so overweight, she carries it well and shows no tendency to gain beyond her current weight.

I’ve offered her tuna and salmon. She sniffs it but won’t eat it. A few years ago, Castor & Pollux changed the shape of the kibble. That made her suspicious for a day or two, but she decided that it was OK. She drinks an appropriate amount of water. She likes her water cold, filtered water from the refrigerator tap, the same as I drink. At eight years old she has never been sick, and she has a beautiful coat. She’s as rambunctious as a kitten, is rarely naughty, and scratches only where she’s permitted to scratch. She knows a lot of language because she has always been talked to, and she is the most communicative cat I’ve ever known. She’s the first cat that I ever raised from a kitten, and I have to say that I’m proud of how she turned out. I sometimes say that she has a Ph.D. in cuddling, not least because she roots under the covers with me at least a couple of times a night.

Castor & Pollux cat food is pricey stuff. But my view of it is that, if it makes a healthy cat and reduces vet bills, then it’s worth the investment.

This sounds like a Castor & Pollux ad, doesn’t it. But it’s totally unsolicited.

Another snowfall photo

Every snowfall is an excuse to shoot photos of the house. This photo is from the 10 or more inches of snow that fell on January 7.

The landscaping of the abbey is still a work in progress. There are 13 of the arbor vitae trees, most of which are about a third to half grown. The arbor vitae trees were a great choice, because they provide a lot of shelter for the birds. We finally found an old-fashioned mimosa tree. We’re thinking of starting some holly hedges. Ken is planning to start some walnut trees the old-fashioned way — by planting walnuts. We’re also thinking about a pecan tree.

Last year was a terrible growing year. Rainfall was a bit below normal — 40.5 inches for the year. The rain we had fell at the wrong times to optimize growth, and young trees were water-stressed for much of the year. Here’s hoping that the 2017 growing year is an improvement.

Luckily there are no power lines on abbey property. Power lines would subject our trees to the brutal trimming that rural electric companies do. The feed line to the house is buried. If you’re ever buying property, that’s something to keep in mind. You don’t want utility rights-of-way across your property.