Not a Potted Plant

When a big case is released, I want to read it right away. But unfortunately, courts release big cases at precisely the time lawyers are working. So it’s taken me a day to digest this latest and possibly penultimate round of litigation in Perry v. Brown, the Brown v. Board of Education of our generation. Now that I have, I can offer that digest here.

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Gods die. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered. Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end.

– Neil Gaiman

At 9:53 a.m., I received electronic notice of the posting of the opinion in Perry v. Brown, and noticed that the Ninth Circuit’s website with links to the opinion crashed every time I tried to get at the opinion. Some high demand for this case. The result was obvious enough: the entry reads “(2/7/12) Perry v. Brown, Nos. 10-16696, 11-16577 (opinion regarding the constitutionality of Proposition 8 and the denial of a motion to vacate the lower court judgment in the case) – 128 pages,” which means that the result is affirmation of the lower court opinion — Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriages, has been held to violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (again).

I must disagree with an earlier commenter, though; this fight is not over yet and won’t be over until there has been some action by the U.S. Supreme Court. So while it’s frustrating not being able to read the opinion, or its 3-page summary, at least there’s no suspense as to the outcome. I know I’m not helping by posting the links. So I’ll try to get at the opinion again later today; I’ve too much work to do now to dig in to the opinion anyway and I can content myself that the good guys have won again.

EDIT: The Fish Wrapper has the whole opinion available on a more robust server than the Court.

…[W]hy is it that when one man builds a wall, the next man immediately needs to know what’s on the other side?

– George R.R. Martin

Like a blogbuddy, or two, I’m returning to my regularly scheduled life after an emotionally-straining hiatus, one which was sprung on me suddenly and unpleasantly. I’m reticent to disclose a great many details as they inherently involve a medical condition of a close relative, someone who has not given consent to publication of the same.  But as followers of the blog may well have inferred anyway, events were very precarious for a time. Nor are we out of the woods yet — we’re in a clearing, so to speak, with much more distance yet to trek.

One thing that I will share about the experience was that the patient wound up incommunicado — in need of a ventilator tube which precluded speaking, and in need of hand restraints to prevent the instinctual response of taking the tube out. This would have resulted in death. So although it seems a little bit cruel, I can’t disagree with the decision to restrain my relative’s hands. But the result was that where the patient could not communicate with the medical caregivers — no speech, little room to nod or shake the head, no ability to write or use hand gestures.

Bizarrely, though, the patient’s inability to communicate with caregivers produced a mirrored result — for several days; the patient functionally no medical caregiver attempted to communicate with the patient. I don’t think I was just expressing anxiety about my relative’s precarious medical condition when I say that finding this state of affairs upon my arrival was unacceptable.

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Driving along the west, you see a fair number of windfarms. You can see them from rather far off. I am not a “green” enthusiasts, but I think they’re neat. Local residents disagree:

Throughout the UK — indeed, all over the world — fights against large-scale wind-energy projects are raging. The European Platform against Windfarms lists 518 signatory organizations from 23 countries. The UK alone now has about 285 anti-wind groups. Last May, some 1,500 protesters descended on the Welsh assembly, the Senedd, demanding that a massive wind project planned for central Wales be stopped.

Although environmental groups like Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace claim that wind energy is the answer when it comes to slowing the rate of growth in carbon dioxide emissions, policymakers from Ontario to Australia are responding to angry landowners who don’t want 100-meter-high wind turbines built near their homes.

On seeing the headline, I figured that the opposition was Kennedy-esque: aesthetically unpleasing and such. I am relatively unsympathetic to that argument because, well, I think they look awesome. The picture of the wind turbines visible from that guy’s backyard? Awesome.

My views on this matter are atypical, I suppose. Near my house, they built a condo skyscraper several years ago. It’s conspicuously visible from our backyard. The neighborhood hates it. They were opposing the building of more before the real estate collapse killed all future projects (the builders of the condo in question are taking a bath – I wouldn’t be surprised if they just cut their losses and tore it down soon).

Anyhow, whether you like the sight of a skyscraper or wind turbine is a matter of taste and – in my view – a relatively superificial concern. Their complaints about the noise and lights, on the other hand, are a bigger deal. This is especially true in areas where the lack of light pollution and noise pollution are one of the few things that they have going for them. There are a lot of downsides to living in ruralia, but even someone like myself who puts Works of Men in front of Works of God, I can appreciate seeing the stars and night. And everybody appreciates some peace and quiet.

Whether they should take it in the chin for The Greater Good is for people in greater positions of authority than me to decide. People have a high tolerance for unpleasantness when it is perceived to be good for the economy. Louisiana objected vociferously when offshore drilling was quashed. Wyoming’s air quality may be worse than Los Angeles’s, and fracking may be contaminating their water supply, but it’s the outsiders who are raising the alarm bells and Wyomingans (except the Dairy Towners from California) who want to keep moving forward.

So why not with Windfarms? Maybe it’s not profitable enough for them to get their cut? If you paid them off, would it still be economically feasible?

PS No Monday Trivia today.

The Ninth Circuit will issue its panel decision in the same sex marriage case tomorrow. It will, of course, be appealed almost immediately. But we’ll have fodder for discussion for quite some time thereafter.

Contemporaries were well aware of the absurdity of the ostensible reason for the protest. ‘Will not posterity be amazed’, wrote one sceptic, ‘when they are told that the present distraction took its rise from the parliament’s taking off a shilling duty on a pound of tea, and imposing three pence, and call it a more unaccountable phrenzy, and more disgraceful to the annals of America, than that of the witchcraft?’

– Niall Ferguson

Here are the probabilities, based on past performance. Our shot sheet has twenty entries, to split between four players.

All percentages calculated based on the number of times the events in question have happened when the players in question took the field during the regular season and the playoffs. SWAG as to the halftime show.

Using these probabilities, you can apportion event slates so everyone playing at your party has a roughly equal chance of having to do a shot during the game.

And yes, it’s a relief to be able to consider such frivolities today. Have fun, everyone!

More than the divides of race, class, or gender, more than rural or urban, believer or nonbeliever, red state or blue state, our culture has been carved up into radically distinct, unbridgeable, and antagonistic entities that no longer speak the same language and cannot communicate.

— Chris Hedges