Potpourri

Here’s some stuff I’ve been thinking of. Most is from the last couple of days. One or two are of longer gestation.


Pluto

I like the IAU’s decision to reclassify Pluto. Since the issue of designation is essentially arbitrary, I would have been satisfied with any number of outcomes. The one thing that really annoys me is the repeated assertion, and I mean repeated, over and over, in AP service reporting, that Pluto fails to meet the definition of a planet because its orbit overlaps that of Neptune. (I also was annoyed by the recent protest over Pluto’s demotion where signs read, “size doesn’t matter,” the implication being that Pluto was rejected for being too small.)

The new definition of a planet has three criteria. A body is a plant if it 1) orbits a star; 2) is sufficiently massive that gravitational forces have rendered it approximately spherical in shape; and 3) it is sufficiently massive and stable in its orbit that debris in its orbital path has been cleared or captured. Each criterion has some fuzziness. Satellites of planets do orbit stars, and planets orbit the centers of gravity of their planet-moon systems, so that some moons might be regarded as more star-orbiting than planet-orbiting. How spherical is spherical? How clear of debris is clear enough?

Pluto orbits the sun, though it has a big moon, Charon, and their mutual center of gravity is between the two planets. This is not considered a disqualification. The Pluto-Charon-Nix-Hydra system still orbits the sun, and since Charon has been locked into that system, it does not constitute unswept debris in Pluto’s path. Pluto is small, but it’s small planet-sized and basically round. The fact that the orbit is extremely tilted relative to the ecliptic, and highly eccentric, and that its motion is retrograde, are all oddities that do not effect its definition as a planet. Pluto’s orbital is not cleared, however.

But the idea that Neptune is in Pluto’s path is bullshit. If it were, Neptune could not be considered a planet either. Because Pluto’s orbit is tilted, it only intersects the orbital plane of Neptune at two points. If Pluto and Neptune were to cross that plane at the same time, they would be about 1.8 billion miles apart. When you see Pluto’s and Neptune’s orbits drawn in 2-D as they are projected onto the ecliptic, they appear to cross, but at the crossing point, Pluto is maybe 700 million miles above the ecliptic. Moreover, Pluto and Neptune’s orbits are synchronized: they “resonate” at a 2:3 ratio – a pattern that is stable over time. They never get closer than 1.8 billion miles apart, and that’s not at the ecliptic.

By comparison, Pluto will at some point come closer than 1.8 billion miles from both Uranus and Saturn, also considered to still be planets.


Poppy Crop

Well, another measure of US success in Afghanistan – they’ve reported a record harvest of poppies this year. I look forward to a few cents off those yummy poppyseed muffins.


Reading Quiz

Bush has been reading Macbeth and L’Etranger, which I dare say are a step up from The Pet Goat and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. But does he comprehend anything he reads? Here’s a quiz he should take.

Both Macbeth and the Very Hungry Caterpillar have ambitions or appetites. Where do these ambitions or appetites come from? Do they stem from deep within the nature of the individual, or from somewhere else? Do Macbeth and the Very Hungry Caterpillar each have a clear vision of what it is they want?
Mersault and the Pet Goat both face the judgment of society. Would you say that Mersault goes from approval to disapproval, while the Pet Goat undergoes the opposite transformation? Are the motives for their actions clear? Does society judge them on their motives or on the outcomes? Who or what in these stories is existentially “absurd?”
The Pet Goat and the Very Hungry Caterpillar both eat a lot of things. How do their diets differ? How are they the same? Is different food wholesome for different eaters? Should the Pet Goat and Very Hungry Caterpillar have eaten differently? What do these stories tell you about the consequences of bad choices?
Mersault and Macbeth both engage in socially disapproved acts of violence, but for different reasons. Is there anything redeeming for either of these characters in the motives for their acts? How would we think of these characters if they had continued in their tracks and not committed the transformatory acts in their stories?


Castro's Death Date

Just learned that Ho Chi Minh died on the anniversary of the declaration of Vietnamese independence, much like Jefferson and Adams died on July 4. I predict Castro will die on January 1, 2067 (at age 140).


Missing Flag

The flag first erected on the 9/11 WTC rubble is lost. The story would be funny if it weren’t so sad. Well, it is funny. The firefighters came to a commemorative event and when the flag was brought out, which has been toured and worshipped like a religious icon, it turned out to be the wrong flag. Three times too big. Comment: what an incompetent country we’ve become. File under Katrina.


Can the First Responders Talk to Each Other Yet?

When Katrina came, one of the problems that was highlighted at the time was that emergency first responders could not talk to each other. Incompatible communications equipment. That was a problem on 9/11. It was going to be fixed. Katrina hits, it’s still not fixed, so everyone said again, now we’ll fix it.

I haven’t been able to find any news: on the anniversary of Katrina, when nothing else seems to have been fixed, have the communications problems at least been resolved? No one seems to say.


Survivor

Survivor is having the battle of the races. Ordinarily I might agree that this was a stupid, sensationalist, racially inflammatory tactic. But, as one local civil libertarian and fan of the show has pointed out, the normal course of the show when teams are integrated by force and left without any race-sensitive rules for the remainder of play is that the black people get kicked off the teams right way, and by mid-season it’s an all-white game. That was a telling social experiment. The battle of the races at least offers all races the opportunity to succeed, and it may be an interesting social experiment now that the lessons of the old formula have been absorbed.


Birth Pangs

It should be widely agreed that there was something callous in U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s stating that she viewed the systematic destruction in Lebanon, with its accompanying loss of life, as hopefully representing "the birth pangs of a new Middle East."

Of course, what was so appalling about Rice’s statement was not the mere notion in itself that some good can arise out of bad things. One can find millions of examples of the "silver lining" motif – whole cosmologies are built upon the analogy of slash and burn agriculture – the fire that destroys the last generation fertilizes the ground for the new.

What really makes the comment crass is the seeming failure to recognize that in this case, the metaphor suffers from Pollyanna optimism and a gross disproportionality. On one side, the hell of war, the wailing of men, women and children over the loss of loved ones to Israeli bombs, a society shattered, and jackboots approaching. On the other, what? Another showpiece of U.S.-certified Middle East Democracy a la Iraq?

For precedents, compare the following quotes, one from World War I, the other from World War II:

"The old world order died with the setting of that day’s sun and a new world order is being born while I speak, with birth-pangs so terrible that it seems almost incredible that life could come out of such fearful suffering and such overwhelming sorrow."

That was Nicholas Murray Butler, Columbia University President and leading figure in the Republican Party, looking back in 1915 to the start of World War I. It’s the same metaphor, but Butler at least does not sound cheerful. The pain of loss begins and ends the quote. Butler later received the Nobel Peace Prize for helping to "outlaw war."

Now here’s another quote, much closer in tone to Condi:

"There are rare moments in the middle of the pressures of daily life when we suddenly are struck by the feeling that everything before us is history, and that a new world is now being born. We experience the birth pangs of all that is young and new, and realize that this new world is replacing the old and sinking one, with all its peculiarities, tenseness and prejudice."

Here we have the model for Condoleeza’s optimism. Peculiarities and prejudice will be abolished in the glorious new age to be ushered in by worthy bloodshed. How fortunate we are to be witness to it!

The speaker is Josef Goebbels, giving his annual speech praising Hitler on the event of his birthday. When "Our Hitler" was delivered, it was 1941, and German casualties alone stood at perhaps a quarter million, with 40 times that yet to come. That Rice would come speaking the same words as Hitler’s propagandist, as a defender of Israel, strikes an additional, though not unfamiliar, chord of distaste.

For Goebbels, the war was a good thing, and Hitler deserved the credit: "We are experiencing the greatest miracle that history offers: a genius is building a new world." The Nazis absorbed and believed this lesson. Even after the war, Rudolf Hess wrote from Spandau prison that the rise and fall of Hitler were the "birth pangs of a new age" of Naziism. That theme is not alien to this administration. Bush’s defenders, confounded by the horrible disasters of Iraq and the Bush Presidency itself, have turned like Hess for comfort in a redemptive future: If Bush succeeds in remaking the Middle East, he will be remembered as a great president.

One final source for Rice’s statement can’t be overlooked. In the King James Bible, Matthew 24: 7-8 reads like this:

"For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows."

Jesus’ disciples have asked for the signs of the end times, and he describes the lead up to Armageddon. The word with which he concludes, "sorrows," is translated in some versions of the Bible as "birth pangs." The posters at end-time-obsessed websites like Rapture Ready all understand that "the birth pangs" are the signs of the last days of the elect on Earth and debate each new event in the Middle East as to its position in the run-up to the rapture. The Armageddon theme is echoed by the right’s hopeful-sounding inclusion of the Israel-Lebanon war as part of World War III.

We know that Bush’s speeches are peppered with Christian Right inside references, whether these are secret messages or comfort words. It hardly seems coincidental that John Bolton insists he is "not the Alpha and Omega" just as Condoleeza is quoted saying that indeed, these are (the?) "birth pangs."

If this is the inspiration for Condoleeza’s quote, then she has much in common with Goebbels, only it is Bush rather than Hitler, who occupies the position of a Messianic figure, so certain in his inspired path to a new order that he wants the credit for war and for everyone to think positively about what it may bring.

Or rather, Rice has much in common with Hess, who clung to the vision, cherry ripe in 1941, long after its rotten core lay exposed.


Suicide March

The Republican phrases of the year are “cut and run” and “overall war on terror.” There is a subtle contradiction in they way they are used. If one wants to withdraw from Iraq, this could only constitute a “surrender” in the war if the Iraq war were a stand-alone adventure. If it is not a mindless filibuster but really just one of myriad fronts in a larger war, then abandoning it would be something akin to, say, retreating from the Phillipines five months into World War II. History has sustained the judgment that tossing forces fruitlessly into the Japanese meat grinder was less important than husbanding resources for the next phase of war, reinforcing lines of resistance further south and east, and allowing forces to be allocated to the European theater, where it was vital to keep Russia from being lost. Lose the Phillipines for a while, keep Europe and Russia and win the war. Good trade.

If Iraq is not the war but a mere front in the war, then “cut and run” does not mean “surrender.” It just means “redeploy.” The idea that you never retreat or never redeploy implies some kind of last stand or suicide march – by an army that only knows how to move forward or die. Is that the policy?

Not that we’ve been told. We train our armies to go forward and to retreat. We send along enough fuel and supplies for a round trip. The troops expect to come back someday. Our generals are taught orderly retreat as a valid military option. Taking away that option limits choices and generally limits the means available to be effective.

Historically, units have sometimes been ordered to never retreat. Some of these armies fought through to victory, motivated by the knowledge that this was their only hope of survival. Most were annihilated.

I think if a poll were taken and people were asked, “Should generals who can no longer obtain their military objectives have the discretion to order tactical retreats when necessary to save their forces from annihilation?” the answer would be yes close to 100% of the time.


Sheriff Bozo

Why David Clarke is even running for re-election for Milwaukee County Sheriff baffles me. He has shown a stunning disregard for the rule of law. He has demonstrated arrogance and incompetence while unethically abusing his apartment to aggrandize himself and his own political ambitions.

I received a campaign flier which: 1) featured a glaring typo in a headline featuring Clarke’s ironic slogan about being above politics (or “politices”); 2) featured laudatory quotes without any attribution; 3) bragged about all the remedial on-the-job training Clarke has received; 4) listed 150 citizen endorsers, all no-names because no one with any reputation is willing to endorse him; and 5) cites his record as a beat cop, a job from which he was fired for incompetence and insubordination. I wonder how many of the listed endorsers have criminal records?

Actually, I’ve run a few of these names. Michael Lutz was the cop who shot Timothy Nabors, a black man, in a controversial episode a couple of years ago. Michel Jurkovich has some jail time on his record. Paul Kopornik is under an injunction in what looks like a domestic violence case.

My brother is a deputy, and boy does he have some tales. Clarke is a laughingstock among his men. He must go.


More Potpourri to come later if I have time:

Cows with Accents
Katie Couric Retouched
Patriot Missles
Mouse Fur
Activism Amendment
Crying Wolf
The Rapture