This is a reason why I go to memeorandum less and less: I wind up with things like this — the Weekly Standard intimating that the Associated Press is trying to make Benjamin Netanyahu look like Hitler. They’re shocked and appalled at this. Were they equally shocked and appalled at someone trying to make the exact same cheap shot on Jennifer Granholm? (Of course, in neither case is the gesture thus photographed an actual Nazi salute.) I mean, get real, people.
Sigh. Forty more days of this crap.
As we pass the 36th week, the greatest thing thus far is how relatively smoothly the pregnancy has gone. There was some morning sickness early on and some fatigue, but Clancy’s health has remained solid. As of a couple weeks ago, and the situation with her weight (that she has been struggling with since the move – so this was of particular concern) has been far better than we had expected.
A little while back, Rose had a post on comparative disabilities and her struggle to find sympathy for those that have kids with minor disabilities given her own child’s considerably more severe disabilities. I was reminded about an episode of Nip/Tuck involving two of the protagonists, Sean and Julia, and the later-in-life pregnancy of the latter. At first they were relatively enthusiastic, and then they found out the little guy was going to have Ectrodactyly (“claw hands”) and completely melted down.
Now, the show at this point was reaching down into excessive melodrama (I’d recommend the first season to just about anyone, though, without hesitation), so I’m not sure what the writer’s intent was. The result, though, was to make me detest the characters. Immediately advocating for an abortion on the basis of hands? I can vaguely understand on the basis of “We’ll try again, and maybe the next one won’t have this problem” but not so much in a late-in-life and unintended pregnancy.
With my wife being of “advanced maternal age”, as well as other things I won’t get into, there were a list of concerns about potential problems. We got the probability-determination for the Trisomies at the earliest opportunity. The results were good enough that we decided not to get an amnio. There was one thing, though. The doctor and technician couldn’t quite agree, but one of them thought that they saw… a cleft palate.
Cleft palates can actually be a big deal for non-cosmetic reasons (I have to confess that I didn’t know that). However, in this case, if it was there it was small. If it was small, it can be be removed on the tiniest of infants. Further, there was a doctor in town that was so good he would fly a grandchild out from the northeast to have it done out here. This would have zero impact on Jumping Bean’s life.
Reaction to this among the few people that we told varied, though of course nobody responded in the Sean/Julia vein. I had sort of been waiting for a shoe to drop and as far as this one went, we’d approach it as we got to it. I’d be lying if I said that I was unphased. It was, in a sense, the first indication that Jumping Bean might be… less than perfect. It gave me at least a little bit of insight into the Sean/Julia reaction. If not the all-out-freak-out, then the big of disconcerting even a small thing can bring. Their issue was bigger than ours.
There was no cleft palate. That was the good news of the second visit. The third visit gave us warning of something else: Jumping Bean is breech. Now, babies start out that way most of the time or always and then flip at some point. In this case, though, 90% of babies have flipped and JB has not. There would still be a 67% chance JB wold flip late, but for a variety of reasons Clancy’s considered judgment is that it will not happen in this case without a version.
In the event of a breech, Clancy will go to c-section. Which, for a obstetrics doctor who favors letting nature run its course, is a bit of a bitter pill to swallow. She would have been interested in midwifery or homebirth if we lived in a place that it was possible and circumstance permitted. This was really not on the agenda.
Clancy has commented before that pregnancy is your body’s way of letting you know that you are not in control anymore. Preparing you for the next phase, wherein your control over your own life is greatly diminished. She typically means this in the sense of sickness, exhaustion, body changes, and so on. I suppose, in a sense, it may apply to this to. And as with the cleft palate, in the greater scheme of things, this isn’t Ectrodactyly, much less something serious.
So in that sense, a solid thank you to Sean and Julia for teaching by way of their negative example.
Bad calls are part of the game, right?
Texas and Arizona have 7 of the top 52 in the contiguous United States. Georgia has five. California has four. Colorado, Oklahoma and Virginia have three. Alabama, Kentucky, Montana, and Tennessee have 2. Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, and Ohio have one.
Hints so far:
– If Canada were included, some provinces would have dominated the list.
– North Dakota and South Dakota not only fall short of having any outside the top 52, but their biggest is outside the top 140 or so.
– The top ten, in order, are located in: Florida, Montana, Montana, Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, Tennessee, California, Texas, Virginia.
– There is a reason that Hawaii and Alaska were excluded.
– Alaska has four above the one in Florida. Canada has twelve (four in Quebec, four in Ontario, three in Nova Scotia, and one in Manitoba.)
– Ranking relates to size, top being the largest.
My drive to work this morning looked very strange. Lots of cars parked in the desert, people getting out and standing around. With cameras.
About halfway between my house and my office, I saw it. It looked like a very large airplane taking off from the Air Force Assembly Plant — the runway is actually almost a straight continuation of the road I drive to get to the office, so planes frequently look like they are taking off directly at me while I drive to work.
This plane was different. It looked tall, and heavy. It was the specially fitted 747 carrying the Space Shuttle Endeavour on her final flight. Against a geometer’s cartesian fantasy backdrop of thin white contrails against the brilliant blue desert sky of the end of summer, this awkward looking assembly of a spacecraft mated to an aircraft, accompanied by a spotter jet, slowly climbed into the sky and traced a ten-mile arc to the north, while about a hundred pulled-over spectators on either side of my usually-unremarkable road through the exurban desert frantically clicked all the photographs they could.
This will be Endeavour’s last flight. She first took off in 1992 and last landed in June of 2011, under the command of USN Captain Mark Kelly (a man made more famous, unfortunately, for nearly losing his prominent and equally remarkable wife). Endeavour completed a total of twenty-five missions in her career. Today’s assissted flight will see her fly by many sites of interest to the aviation industry and populated regions so the people can see her in the sky one last time, and then she will land at Los Angeles International Airport. From there, she will be towed to the California Science Center in Los Angeles’ Exposition Park, near the main campus of the University of Southern California.
She will then join her surviving sisters — Columbia and Challenger, of course, did not make it. Still the crews flew, cognizant of the risks. Endeavour’s oldest sister, the prototype and atmospheric test craft Enterprise, is on display at the USS Intrepid in New York City. Discovery, the most-travelled Shuttle, is part of the collection of spacecraft at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. Atlantis stayed at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, from whence she and her sister craft launched and played an integral role in creating the satellite-based communications network taken for granted by cell phone users all over the world. If you’re reading this on a smart phone, that’s partly because of work done by Endeavour and her crew.
The flight I witnessed at takeoff today is the last time any of these craft will be off the ground. I can hope that, while we face difficult fiscal challenges as a nation, we do not forget that the development and deployment of the next generation of spacecraft, to replace these retired vehicles, represents a significant portion of our future prosperity, science, and aspirations as a nation. We ought not to shirk the need to invest in our future simply because there is a delay between the time of spending the money and the realization of the result — or the uncertainty of what that result will look like. Endeavour’s children will carry our own children to the stars.
As for the craft herself, may her retirement serve as an inspiration to the men and women, and especially the girls and boys, who go to visit her in her final home. Let them see and touch this extraordinary vessel that broke away from the Earth and showed the door to the unimaginably greater universe above; let them look from Endeavour’s display to the skies and the stars… and dream of what might be.
A college professor mine once made the case that an early mistake that our country made was giving statehood away so freely. It would have been better, he reasoned, if statehood had been something earned and not given. He said that he went back and forth as to whether we should have stuck with the thirteen colonies, or maybe given statehood to the original thirteen and various states along other waterways. His model was that there would be states and territories within the continental US. He went on to argue that in addition to all of this, access to the states would be restricted to only the best and brightest of those raised in the territories.
“But why should the territories be places for second-class citizens?” we all asked (or maybe he asked knowing that we wanted to). He suggested a couple things. First, tough luck. It would no more be the responsibility of the states to allow someone from Kansas in than it is for Kansas to allow someone from Mexico in. Alternately, he suggested that it would leave the territories greater latitude to develop themselves. With enough of a push in the rugged and deregulated environment, people would start moving out of the states and into the territories. Which, once that happens, you make it a state in order to stop the bleeding. That would be how statehood would be earned.
As with a lot of things the professor said, this was met with howls at the whole inequality and just UnAmericanness of it. He then put up a map that he’d been keeping hidden throughout this entire discussion, delineating the comparative economic power disparities between regions. His entire plan, he explained, would only be the formalization of America as it currently exists and is headed towards. The best and brightest are pulled towards the coasts. Those that can’t cut the mustard and won’t be servants move to places like Colorado and eventually places like Colorado become “real” states, which he said was imminent. By “real states” he essentially meant blue states (though the term did not exist yet). States that are no longer laughed at in polite company. Colorado was almost there, Nevada would be there within a decade. Texas and Arizona would take a little longer, but eventually they will get enough of the coastal types (and Mexican servants) to push them over. Then they’d be real states, too. The newcomers would pass all sorts of land regulations that would make the cities more expensive. The undesirables would start being priced out. They’d become places of affluent Americans, high-quality immigrants, their servants, and a few legacy admits.
I was reminded of this lecture when I read Virginia Postrel’s post on a growing disconnect:
As I have argued elsewhere, there are two competing models of successful American cities. One encourages a growing population, fosters a middle-class, family-centered lifestyle, and liberally permits new housing. It used to be the norm nationally, and it still predominates in the South and Southwest. The other favors long-term residents, attracts highly productive, work-driven people, focuses on aesthetic amenities, and makes it difficult to build. It prevails on the West Coast, in the Northeast and in picturesque cities such as Boulder, Colorado and Santa Fe, New Mexico. The first model spurs income convergence, the second spurs economic segregation. Both create cities that people find desirable to live in, but they attract different sorts of residents.
This segregation has social and political consequences, as it shapes perceptions — and misperceptions — of one’s fellow citizens and “normal” American life. It also has direct and indirect economic effects. “It’s a definite productivity loss,” Shoag says. “If there weren’t restrictions and you could build everywhere, it would be productive for people to move. You do make more as a waiter in LA than you do in Ohio. Preventing people from having that opportunity to move to these high-income places, making it so expensive to live there, is a loss.” That’s true not only for less-educated workers but for lower earners of all sorts, including the artists and writers who traditionally made places like New York, Los Angeles and Santa Fe cultural centers.
A lot of The Professor’s lectures were rather oblique in nature. I have my doubts that he actually supported the model that he was ostensibly supporting (just like I think he was trying to make a different point when he suggested that immigration policy be dictated by a reality TV show involving paintguns). He also framed the policies as being more deliberate than they are (I think). However, one thing I have noticed is a disconnect on the importance of affordable living. The degree to which red states are sponsored by a lower cost of living, and blue states are sponsored by a higher cost of living, is striking. Cause-effect is muddled, but it’s really one of the less discussed aspects of the red/blue divide. We discuss city versus country, but not what makes Boise different from Portland (Maine), or Phoenix and Santa Fe.
The following nations all have something in common: Antigua and Barbuda, Azerbaijan, Belize, Bolivia, Cambodia, Colombia, Cook Islands, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Georgia, Israel, Ireland, Kiribati, Laos, Liechtenstein, Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Monaco, Nicaragua, People’s Republic of China, Philippines, Republic of China (Taiwan), Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, San Marino, São Tomé and Príncipe, Saint Thomas, Saudi Arabia, Seychelles, Solomon Islands, Tunisia, United States of America. What is it?
EDIT: Saint Thomas is the name of one of the United States Virgin Islands, a non-self governing territory of the United States of America, and therefore does not qualify for inclusion on the list. Not A Potted Plant regrets the error.
Of the churches within the United States, one of the most gay-friendly is The Episcopal Church, the American branch of the Church of England. Though it varies from region to region, The Episcopal Church allows its priests to perform gay marriages, allows them and their bishops to be gay. So it’s interesting that, across the pond, the Church of England is taking the opposite stand:
Responding to a consultation in England and Wales, the Church of England said government proposals to allow same-sex marriages by 2015 would “alter the intrinsic nature of marriage as the union of a man and a woman, as enshrined in human institutions throughout history”.
It said marriage acknowledged “an underlying biological complementarity which, for many, includes the possibility of procreation”.
Justice Minister Crispin Blunt: “We’re seeking to protect… religious organisations”
The Church claims that plans to exempt religious organisations from performing gay marriages would be unlikely to survive legal challenges in domestic and European courts.
As such, the government’s consultation exercise, which closes on Thursday, was “flawed, conceptually and legally”, it added.
Concerns over forcing churches to participate in ceremonies have been raised over here. If the day ever came where this was seriously proposed, I would stand arm-in-arm with the likes of the Southern Baptist Church, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and Catholic Church in opposition. This, to me, stands at the core of what Freedom of Religion is about. I think such a day is unlikely, though, because I don’t think even a liberal court would allow it, much less force it. Churches have always had great latitude over who they have and have not allowed to marry under their steeples.
The European Union, of course, does not have the same First Amendment history that we do. That creates a whole different set of concerns. I honestly take the Church of England’s concerns in this area a lot more seriously, even though I wish they had the willingness to perform these ceremonies that their American counterparts do (and maybe they do, they just have some hold-outs). Continue Reading
So I get home and Mrs. Likko says she wants a cocktail as a reward for a hard day at work. Who am I to say no? She just wants a G&T. (When it’s Hendrick’s, it’s not “just” a G&T. I love that stuff.) But me, I’m in a more experimental mood, and hey, we do have the Bourbon Club going. So I figure, hey, I’ll try a Manhattan using the Eagle Trace. Before you start objecting, I’m well aware that a Manhattan is made with rye, not Bourbon. It’s not how it worked out anyway.
Because the only vermouth we have is old and sat outside the refrigerator for a while. I’m not sure I trust it. But, in our fridge I did see a bottle of Lillet Blanc. So I think to myself, “Self, you could make something new. Our man Böegiböe does it all the time. So what’s on hand — something like an Old Fashioned, maybe, or like that Manhattan. Well, we ate all our fruit that isn’t watermelon and canteloupe over the weekend. And mixers are at a rather low ebb right now other than cola and tonic water. Then I saw the Grand Mariner and said, “Hey, sailor!” The result:
Served on the rocks in an Old Fashioned glass. It has kind of a beachy or tropical feel to it, and it’s a callback to a variety of French things in the American Southeast. But it needs a name. I’m not good at coming up with fanciful names — I’m like as not to call the cocktail “Javier” or something like that. Suggestions?
Will Wilkinson has a post investigating Chris Hayes’s comment that most Republicans are racist and the various pushback. This part caught my attention:
When I was a Rand-toting libertarian lad, I believed, as I believe now, that racism of any stripe is a disgusting form of collectivism. Where my opinion has changed is that I used to think that if negative rights to non-interference were strictly observed, liberty was guaranteed, but I don’t now. Here’s how I had thought about the matter. One racist acting in a private capacity on his or her racist beliefs can’t violate anyone’s legitimate, negative rights. (No one is entitled to another’s good opinion!) Two racists acting as private citizens on their racist beliefs can’t violate anyone’s rights. Therefore, I inferred, thousands or millions of racists acting non-coercively on their racist beliefs can’t coercively violate anyone’s rights. I now think this is quite wrongheaded.
Eventually I realised that actions that are individually non-coercive can add up to stable patterns of behaviour that are systematically or structurally coercive, depriving some individuals of their rightful liberty. In fact, rights-violating structures or patterns of behaviour are excellent examples of Hayekian spontaneous orders—of phenomena that are the product of human action, but not of human design. This shift has led me to see racism and sexism themselves as threats to liberty. Racism and sexism have come to matter more to me in that I have come to see them in terms of the political value that matters most to me: liberty. And so I have become much more sympathetic to policies that would limit individual liberty in order to suppress patterns or norms of behaviour that might pose an even greater threat to freedom. So I’ve become fairly friendly toward federal anti-discrimination law, affirmative action, Title 9, the works. I have found that this sympathy, together with my belief in the theoretical possibility and historical reality of structural coercion, releases me almost entirely from the liberal suspicion that I’m soft on racism (even if I do wish to voucherise Medicare). Phew!
This jumped out at me because I went through the same line of thinking*. I was never a Randian, though I dabbled in strong libertarianism for a time. This was one of the more perplexing problems that I had to deal with. Contrary to my libertarianism being a good excuse for racism, I was actually deeply troubled by not being able to do anything about overt employment discrimination (for instance). Eventually, though, I sort of came to the conclusion that WW did. Individual acts of freedom, repeated enough, become more a threat to freedom than the government stepping in.
I turned in my libertarian card a long time ago, but my thinking on this has actually persevered to a degree. When confronted with an issue where the government has to step in and make someone do something they don’t want to do, one of the questions is whether that freedom will be repeated enough to constitute a problem.
For example, I am all about vaccinations for youngsters. I think it should be required, I think it should be free. However, I am nonetheless uncomfortable telling people who have a real religious objection to it (for instance) that they absolutely must. My ultimate inclination is to grant waivers for religious/conscience reasons and then see what happens. If too many people are taking advantage of it, then you have to start cracking down.
Similarly, I would never go to a pharmacyt that didn’t fill birth control prescriptions. I don’t mean that I wouldn’t get birth control for my wife there, as that is self-evident. I wouldn’t get my own prescriptions there. Partly to make a point, but mostly because I don’t want to have to deal with more than pharmacy. The same applies to a pharmacy where I would have to show up at a particular time when a particular pharmacist is on duty. Despite all of this, I do cringe at the prospect of forcing them to fill prescriptions that they consider to be immoral. I remain confident that the number of pharmacies that would refuse to do so is small enough we would have other options. If this confidence is misplaced, and access becomes a real problem, then you start looking at either other ways of distributing the medication or doing that thing I would rather not do.
One of the reasons that I was on the fence on PPACA’s contraception requirement for religiously-affiliated employers was the lack of a clear idea of how many actual employees would be affected. Hypotheticals about Christian Scientist employers were quite uninteresting to me without some indication that it would become widespread that finding an employer that covers contraception becomes a problem. I eventually came around on the issue in large part because the “penalties” for declining to offer contraception were comparatively minor.
I think there is often too much of a jump straight to “They shouldn’t be able to do that” (or “they shouldn’t be able to not do that”) because, well, we don’t think they should be able to do that. The sense of injustice that somebody is getting away with doing something we believe they shouldn’t be (or the other way around) and inconveniencing the rest of us in the process. Generally, though, I’d prefer to meet halfway if at all possible. That’s not always possible, though. Given our national history with race, and with humanity, well, being what it is, lack of anti-discrimination law has repercussions that simply aren’t justified by giving employers complete discretion over who to hire and who not to.
* – Not always to the same conclusion. I remain softly opposed to affirmative action, but even there I recognize that need to be conscientious of disparities and support many policies that would seek to remediate. I support restructuring Title IX, but believe it or something like it to have been necessary to address a real problem. In other words, I may have some skepticism of the means involved, but have no problem with the rationale of involvement.