NPR's memory hole

Dr. Google has a remedy

Although we now have more news sources than ever, we don't seem to be getting more information. In their eagerness to contribute to the news glut, media outlets generate increasing amounts of fluffy bits of non-news. It's extremely disappointing to find National Public Radio getting in on the act. On October 15, 2015, NPR's “lead digital reporter” Jessica Taylor posted a shallow item titled New Clinton Spanish Posters: Hillary or Evita? Although Taylor took the trouble to learn that Clinton's staffers disclaimed responsibility for the Spanish-language posters and images appearing in Texas, she used the rest of her short article to muse about resemblances to icons of Eva Peron, Madonna (as Eva Peron), fashion designer Carolina Herrera, and Shepard Fairey's 2008 Hope poster. The mystery of the poster's origin remained unsolved.

Perhaps it was too much trouble to do the minimal amount of research required to uncover something about the poster's origins. The earliest example I found with a quick Google search was in December 2012, when a site called “The Right Perspective” (not exactly friends of Hillary) ran a very similar image (only the background differs) with an article about Clinton's expected presidential campaign. Essentially the same illustration appeared in May of last year on the “Bearing Arms (Guns & Patriots)” site with an opinion piece mocking Clinton's position on gun control.

Who cobbled together the original image? Who switched the background of wavy red and white stripes to a burst of sun rays? These deep questions remain unanswered. The pictures have, of course, spread throughout the Internet, as memes are wont to do. Zazzle has it on posters and other paraphernalia. Politico reports that a copy was posted in Clinton's Brooklyn campaign office, although that falls a bit short of establishing it as officially sanctioned by the campaign, especially given its non-campaign antecedents.

Yes, it's a tiny little non-story. And it's something a “lead” reporter for NPR wastes time on—and not very well.

They can't (don't) count

Fools or liars (or both)?

Panic-struck evangelistic Christians are desperate for solace in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision establishing marriage equality throughout the nation. Some of these narrow-minded people, like Kim Davis of Kentucky, are unsuccessfully asserting their right to “nullify” laws and court rulings with which they disagree. Others are less well-positioned to try to express their distress. They can flock to preachers like Billy Crone, who is well-prepared to speak untrue words to comfort them.

Crone was recently the featured guest on the radio program of Southwest radio church, giving a two-part presentation on A Christian Response to the Supreme Court Decision. It's unclear whether Crone is a fool or a liar, but he's at least thorough, touching on all of the most popular anti-gay tropes. For example, homosexuality is a “choice” and people cannot be “born that way” because not all pairs of identical twins grow up with identical orientations.

Nobody's born that way. It's a choice.... That's one of the lies that they say out there, that there's no way we can turn around and people are born that way. Well, that's another lie that we expose on this study. All right, because they say, ‘Just back off and leave us alone because, you know, we're born this way.’ Well, that's not true. And we know that's not true, folks, because you have the prime example with identical twins, okay? If genetics determine a person's sexual orientation, i.e., you're born this way, then it should manifest itself every single time, one hundred percent of the time, with twins, who by nature share the exact same genetic information. Well, guess what? It doesn't!

Apparently Crone embraces the notion that “genes are destiny” and remains ignorant of epigenetic issues (either because he's never heard of them or finds them inconvenient for his thesis).

Crone continues in this vein, pointing out the “logical” conclusion that gay rights must perforce lead to rights for other criminals. The reasoning is simple (like the reasoner):

A guy goes and he robs a bank—right?—he stands before the judge and says, ‘Hey, I'm sorry, judge, you can't prosecute me. You can't send me to jail. I was born this way! It's my civil right.’

I have to admit it's difficult to argue with statements this stupid, but Crone speaks with great assurance and authority. He keeps averring that his statements are “logical,” speaking to the degree that his sectarian blinders are firmly in place.

A familiar equation pops up in his rhetoric. He hates the word “homophobia” because it is used against his co-religionists.

Oh, and by the way, this term, homophobic. How is disagreeing on an issue automatically get you this label homophobic? There's plenty of people in the world who disagree with all kinds of behavior. People disagree about lying, or coveting, or stealing, or hatred, or mockery, or pedophilia. Does this mean we now label these people as liar-phobes, or covetophobes, or mockophobes, or theftophobes, or pedophilia-phobes?

See how smoothly he mixes in pedophilia with his jeremiad against homosexuality? It's all part of the same problem (in his mind).

Crone skips lightly through statistics on physical and mental illness in gay people, life expectancies, and other warped data. (At least he didn't cite Paul Cameron by name, but the stench of Cameron's fake research hovered over Crone's summary.)

But my favorite moment in Crone's entire presentation came early in the first installment, the moment six minutes into the broadcast when he offered comfort to his afflicted listeners. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Crone insists that opposition to same-sex marriage commands a huge majority in our nation:

When you look at the voting statistics, folks, on those who were against—in the states—that used the voting procedure, not one judge overruling the voice of the people in that state—that's not what our system is set up to be—okay?—and not only a handful of people on the Supreme Court, okay?—but when you look at the voting statistics of the states, the thirty-one states that voted against this, versus only three that did, you play the statistics there, and we are in the majority twelve to one. Twelve to one is the majority of people who are against this, so we are not in the minority; we're in the majority on this issue and so we need to stop listening to the media and thinking that you might as well roll over and play dead.

By what magic did Crone conjure up this cataclysmic landslide against marriage equality? It's simple, provided you ignore enough data! While he gave no citations of sources, it's clear that Crone must be clinging to outdated tallies of anti-gay victories at the voting booth. Various on-line lists identify thirty or thirty-one states with constitutional definitions of marriage that support the “traditional” version (where “tradition” in this instance means “one man and one woman,” and does not includes the various polygamous arrangements of several Biblical patriarchs and kings).  If we accept Crone's count of thirty-one state votes against same-sex marriage versus three votes in favor (or, at least, not against), we still do not get a ratio of twelve to one. It's more like ten to one. (And for all of you math pedants out there, yes, it's actually ten-and-a-third to one.) Crone is prone to exaggeration. But that's not the main point.

Crone's numbers are stale, well past their freshness date. The earliest state ban on same-sex marriage goes back to Alaska in 1998, when 68% of the voters placed the one-man-one-woman definition of marriage in the state constitution. However, Public Policy Polling found in 2014 that Alaska's voters favored same-sex marriage by a 47 to 46 plurality. This is a state that does not belong in Crone's anti-gay tally, especially since the national trend directly contradicts his claim about a massive majority being on his side.

So ... is Crone merely lying ... or is he a fool?

Perspective crash!

Looking too closely

The front page of the San Francisco Chronicle on Tuesday, August 25, 2015, made it perfectly clear: The stock market had crashed. The headline “Plunging markets” was accompanied by an illustration that made the disaster graphically clear—provided you didn't read the fine print along the margin. The understated labeling of the vertical axis was, fortunately, reinforced by the actual numbers. The Dow Jones was merely down 588.40 from 16,459.75, a drop of 3.5748% (which the Chronicle over-rounded to 3.58%). Yes, that's a significant market correction in a market widely viewed to be overvalued. Not exactly an apocalyptic result. Nicely eye-catching headline, though.

A better perspective on the issue shows why the market chart would have been quite underwhelming if drawn to a scale that including the zero point. The grid lines representing 1000 points on a hard copy of the Chronicle were separated by 6 centimeters and ended at 15,500 along the bottom edge of the graph. To extend the chart down to its zero-line would have required an additional 93 centimeters (36.6 inches). That's right: It would have extended an additional yard below the printed chart and (since the newspaper isn't that long) more than two feet below the paper's bottom margin.

A fold-out extension would have attracted more attention to the front page, but ruined the message.

By way of comparison, a real economic disaster on the order of the notorious crash that ushered in the Great Depression involved a 13% drop on “Black Monday” (October 28, 1929) and another 12% drop on the immediately following “Black Tuesday.” The losses continued to accumulate and full recovery, as we know, took decades.

What about this week's “plunge”? The Business Insider published a report with an appropriate title: “After all that, the stock market finished the week higher.”

All in this together

Denying individuality

We live in an age when everyone, whether enthusiastically or grudgingly, gives at least lip service to diversity. Most people acknowledge diversity as a strength, others may claim they find it excessively politically correct, but a surprisingly large number of people seem to forget all about it in certain venues. I notice it all the time, like when it happened multiple times at a series of seminars earlier this year. How often have you heard speakers address groups with remarks like these?

Sometimes you just need a beer, right?

No. Never. I belong to the approximately 13 percent of the U.S. population that eschews alcohol. The man extolling the virtues of beer had about one hundred people in his audience, so about a dozen people were left out of his all-encompassing declaration. He probably never considered saying, “You know, I really need a beer sometimes.” Even the handful of nondrinkers could have chuckled in sympathy with that remark.

Last night, of course, we were all watching the game!

No, I wasn't. I'm not even sure what game you're talking about. It's even worse when the speaker wants us to cheer for a particular team. Not everyone is fascinated by sports teams.

Just think back to your senior prom!

I didn't bother to go. I didn't bother with the junior prom, either. Not my thing.

Then there's funerals. Nothing beats the last rites for unleashing mandatory group-think, whether you're inclined to go along or not.

We can all take comfort in the thought that she's in a better place now. She and her late husband are together again.

People try to coerce you into prayer. They inflict inane pieties on you and prate about an afterlife. It is, of course, the maximally inappropriate venue to insist on dissent. No individuals are allowed.

Confederate pseudohistory

The flag game

The most vigorous defenders of the flag always bring up “heritage” and “Southern pride.” They cite the bravery of fallen ancestors, whom they imagine fighting till their last breath and last drop of blood for states' rights beneath the waving Confederate flag. Ah, but which flag? Ironically, many of those revered rebels probably never even saw the flag that their descendants regard as sacred to their memory. Unless they were part of General Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, which used the infamous banner as its battle flag, Confederate soldiers went to war under other colors—including even Lee's troops.

The official flag of the Confederate States of America was the Stars and Bars, first adopted and flown in the CSA's provisional capital city of Montgomery, Alabama. Its resemblance to the USA's Old Glory made its use in battle problematic, insufficiently distinguishing the two sides. The Stars and Bars acquired additional stars as the CSA incorporated (or pretended to incorporate) more renegade states and remained the Confederacy's official banner till it was set aside in 1863 in favor of a new design.

The so-called “Stainless Banner” was characterized by a now-familiar image embedded in a field of white. The white was described by the flag's designer as representing “the cause of a superior race.” Now a different problem arose. The generous use of white made the Stainless Banner appear in some circumstances to be a white flag of surrender. It was back to the drawing boards one more time, resulting in the third and final iteration of the CSA's national banner in 1865.

The “Blood-Stained Banner” never had a chance. Although the addition of a broad red stripe mitigated the problem of confusion with a flag of surrender, surrender was, in fact, at hand. The final CSA flag was adopted in March 1865 and General Lee conceded to General Grant in April. Most Confederate soldiers never saw the new national flag, which was defunct with the defeat and dissolution of the CSA.

Both the Stainless and Blood-Stained CSA banners featured a canton displaying the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, which had adopted the starred saltire cross in late 1861 in preference to the confusing Stars and Bars. Despite the battle flag's role as the banner under which General Lee surrendered, it had a vigorous post-war life. Decades after the war was over, the battle flag (often in rectangular rather than square form) was favored as the official emblem of various associations of Civil War veterans in the South. It outlasted the official flags in its identification with the Confederacy and its Lost Cause.

Later the battle flag found favor with the Ku Klux Klan and other organizations that promoted “white power” and suppression of the civil rights of black citizens. It can hardly be mere coincidence that Georgia chose to revive the battle flag and incorporate it in its state banner in resistance to the desegregation mandate of 1954's Brown v. Board of Education.  (The illustration depicts the change enacted in Georgia's flag in 1956.)

The racist component of Southern heritage was there at the outset, as detailed in the constitution of the seceding states and the declarations of the Confederacy's officers, but it was compounded and exacerbated by the era of Jim Crow and the South's segregationist state governments. The Confederate battle flag can no more be purged of that association than the swastika of Germany's National Socialist Party can be restored to its pre-Nazi status.

It's time for the battle flag to fade away, the sooner the better.

The buzzing B

And nonplussed

The end of each semester is a time for reflection and renewal. The school term is over, the new term has yet to begin, and the days are free for contemplation, consideration, and ... complaining students. You can always count on the student who learned the “squeaky wheel” adage better than he learned the subject matter. He imagines that his grade is negotiable and fails to note that no negotiating is actually occurring. It can take weeks for the spate of wheedling communiqués to peter out.

If ever there was a time to consider a grading scheme where if the majority of your exams are A's including the final you get an A. My dad said he got a math teacher to bump him up a grade by doing a card trick.  Are you game?

Family legends and Rudyard Kipling notwithstanding (“If you can make one heap of all your winnings and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss”), skill at sleight of hand does not translate into grade points in my class. Sorry about that. He moved on to plan B:

My grandmother would give an A if you got an A on the final but maybe she gave harder finals or something.  

Not to criticize the young man's sainted grandmother, with whom I should never be confused, the old girl was offering her students the ancient “sucker bet” routine. I've seen it often enough before. It's deadly.

When an instructor tells a class at the beginning of the semester that grades will be based on either an overall average or the final exam score, whichever is best, a significant minority of the students immediately falls into the trap: I just need to do well on the final. That'll be enough! Of course it never is. Most such students begin slacking off in that class in order to concentrate on other courses or activities. More immediate concerns take over because I just need to do well on the final. They dig the hole deep, taking comfort in the thought that a single Olympian jump at the end will permit them to escape their subterranean situation, even as they neglect the exercises that would make the feat feasible (and, more to the point, unnecessary, because they would be earning the points that would put them into a position to pass without a miraculously redemptive performance on the final exam).

I never offer my students the sucker bet. My student was undeterred.

Just curious now; did anyone else get two A's on exams and an A on the final and still not get an A?  Is there anyone I can commiserate with or is this an anomaly?

Although misery may love company, privacy considerations intervened. I answered him:

Yes, there were two other students, so it wasn’t exactly an anomaly. It was a matter of getting relatively low A’s that were counterbalanced by lower grades, preventing the composite score from being in the A range. You’d be welcome to commiserate with them, but privacy concerns forbid me from sharing their names. —Z

My student kept harping on his “majority” argument and insisted on ignoring the relative strength of his scores. The semester grade was a weighted average of six scores: one for homework and quizzes, four chapter tests, and one final exam. The composite score was computed thus:

Comp = 0.15*HQ + 0.70*E_average + 0.15*Final

My diligent correspondent had a low A for HQ, a high C for E_average, and a low A for Final. His Comp result was 83.4. That's not A territory. Interestingly, he kept his focus on the exams and ignored the HQ result. Thus his argument was, in effect, three A's on five exams should work out to an A in the class. But here are the exam scores:

Exam 1: 90, Exam 2: 80, Exam 3: 95, Exam 4: 54, Final: 92

That's right: He outright flunked Exam 4. It's really tough to be an A student when you flunk an exam, especially that severely. This never figured into his arguments, for obvious reasons. He fussed over the weights. The final wasn't worth enough! Sorry, but short of going the “sucker bet” route it could hardly ever be worth enough to suit his purposes. Besides, I had already sweetened the pot by building some bonus points into the final exam's grading scheme, giving a perfect paper a value of 105 instead of a mere 100. In reality, his 92 on the final was 87.6%. I had already cut everyone as much slack as I intended to.

He had one more card up his sleeve:

Is there nothing that can be done... a test I can take to challenge?

Lord have mercy! Can you imagine? I tried to be nice:

No, there isn’t anything. If you think about it a little bit, you’ll realize for yourself there couldn’t be any after-the-fact exam that students could take to tweak their grades. Otherwise the college would spend the first several weeks of summer vacation giving the special exams to students who were unsatisfied with the outcome of the semester. Six of your classmates who earned B’s did better than you; ten did more poorly. You earned an unambiguous mid-range B in the class, a good solid grade. —Z

It did not satisfy him. I received one more lengthy message in which he noted his regular attendance, active participation, his “majority” of A's, and his work ethic. “It seems that for one reason or another, I end up coming up short somehow.”

The main reason, as best as I can tell, is that you're a B student whose grades range across the spectrum from A to F. It's not mysterious.

I'm sure you're tired of this by now.

Quite.

A balmy in Gilead

My modest proposal

When it comes to irrational right-wing extremism, Joseph Farah lives in a surreal bubble of his own special brand of derangement. He is the founder of WorldNetDaily, a Web-based journal almost impossible not to cite as WorldNutDaily. WND serves up regular heaping helpings of paranoia, propaganda, and crackpottery.

Farah has been wringing his hands over the fate of traditional biblical marriage. (Please note: “Traditional” marriage means the one-man/one-woman definition from the Bible exemplified by Adam and Eve—and not the one-man/two-women example of Jacob with Leah and Rachel nor the one-man/seven-hundred-wives/three-hundred-concubines example of good old King Solomon.) In his WND column of June 3, 2015, Farah proposes secession from the United States if the Supreme Court allows same-sex marriage throughout the nation.

Is there one state in 50 that would not only defy the coming abomination, but secede in response? The rewards could be great. I would certainly consider relocating. How about you?

The founders of this country found a place of refuge in America and shaped it into the greatest self-governing nation in the history of world. Just think what one state could do if it simply stuck to the principles that made this country great? Americans wouldn’t have to cross an ocean to rediscover what brought most of our ancestors here. We could simply drive.

Are any states so inclined?

I haven’t heard this question raised by anyone else. So I’m raising it now. We don’t have much time before the nine high priests in black robes decide to follow Baal instead of the One True God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Okay, that mention of Jacob is a trifle unfortunate, but at least his wives were of the opposite sex.

Farah calls his proposal an “Exodus strategy.” Commenters on sites like Crooks & Liars have been quick to suggest that Texas is the state that should secede (or be thrown out) to serve as a haven for Farah and his followers. I think this is much too generous. Abandon Austin? Dump Dallas? Leave Houston high and dry? (Actually, I guess they might appreciate that right about now.)

I have a counter-proposal. Let Farah and his crazies colonize the Texas panhandle. Let's carve out a nice rectangular space for an independent nation named Gilead. (There's a nice literary reference for you.) Amarillo and Lubbock would probably fit in just fine. While saner people might flee to the greater portion that remains as Texas, there should be plenty of opportunities to obtain good deals on the residences left behind by the flight of Farah's adherents (especially in Plano). A plebiscite could determine whether Oklahoma's panhandle should be included for good measure. (Those who think Panhandler would make a good name for this new nation should take into account that the imbalance between taxes paid and federal dollars received would no longer be an issue—unless the new nation demands a lot of foreign aid from the US, in which case Panhandler might be exactly right.)

There are other aspects to this win-win situation: (1) Texas goes blue more quickly. (2) Jobs are created in the border patrol and border-crossing stations will have to be constructed. (This would be true in New Mexico and Oklahoma, as well as in the new Texas. Possibly in Colorado and Kansas, too.) (3) Other parts of the United States would improve as their nutcases emigrated to Gilead. (4) Ted Cruz would lose his political base (unless he moves to the new country to become its Priest-King).

I'm not certain what would support the economy of Gilead, though it's likely that Lubbock's cotton industry and Amarillo's meat-packing would remain mainstays. However, opportunities to promote tourism might be sketchy. Would Americans be eager to visit a nation based on a Christian version of sharia law?

How the crazy works

Capitalism in Bizarro world

Last month I briefly indulged my nasty habit of scanning the AM radio dial. As usual, the cesspit that is KSFO served up a memorable dollop of right-wing nonsense. The old stalwarts are gone now—Lee Rodgers to eternal silence and Melanie Morgan to the scandal-tainted Move America Forward—but Brian Sussman and Katie Green are doing their best to maintain the morning program's standard of irrational extremism.

Sussman, a weather man who thinks himself competent to pretend to be a climatologist, has apparently fixated on Hillary Clinton the way Cato was obsessed with Carthage. Although I suspect he will be disappointed with the eventual outcome, his overreach inspires a kind of head-shaking awe. Making money is usually honored by the KSFO tribe, but Sussman was willing to make an exception for Clinton's success. When Hillary makes money, it's evil and corrupt (two words you'll never hear Sussman use while discussing the excesses of the banking industry).

In this particular instance, Sussman was offended that Clinton commands top dollar for her speaking engagements:

Sussman: Hillary Clinton. Remember when she addressed the eBay summit? And we had asked this question: what did she make for this 20-minute talk? We literally asked the question. And now we find out: 315,000 dollars from eBay! Katie, that's your money and my money—because we use eBay.

Katie Green: Yeah, it is.

Welcome to the new KSFO theory of capitalism. Since Sussman is a customer of eBay, he shares ownership of the company's money. Sorry, Brian. When you patronize a company, your dollars become theirs, to do with as they please. Even if that means bringing in a nationally-known speaker to amp up attendance at one of their conferences. Your permission is not required.

I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for a correction or clarification. That would be fatal.

Pick a number

The art of data denial

The United States economy has climbed out of the hole created by the Great Recession and the Obama Administration has presided over an unbroken string of increasing job numbers lasting more than five years. I commented on this accomplishment and posted an illustration summarizing the data.

This did not sit well with one of my Facebook “friends,” who promptly took me to task:

Really, you are smarter than this BS!

It's a puzzlement how many people assure me I'm smart while insisting I'm also stupid. I asked my accuser how I had gone astray when my evidence-based conclusion was supported by the published numbers. She didn't hesitate:

Evidence that can be changed or tampered with. Too easy to make things look good for the moment!

Ah, yes. We must question authority and doubt the data. No doubt she took comfort in 2012 from the “poll correcters” who disdained the conclusions of the professional pollsters that President Obama was heading toward reelection. Remember them? (I'm sure folks in the Romney campaign do.)

I shared a story with my data doubter, explaining to her that data tampering in this context is a myth. It doesn't happen. Perhaps that sounds like simple-minded credulity, but I actually know what I'm talking about.

Once upon a time I worked for a state agency that was responsible for the annual computation and publication of the California Necessities Index. The CNI had been adopted by the legislature as the standard for indexing public assistance benefits (mostly because, at the time, it was lower than the Consumer Price Index). I was the person within the agency who was assigned to perform the actual computation, since I was the closest thing to a staff mathematician.

My father was amused by this situation and jokingly suggested it would be nice if I shaved off a fraction of a percentage point, thus denying full benefits to welfare cheats (most of the people on public assistance, in Dad's proto-tea-party view of the world). Contrariwise, I could have been a benefactor to California's destitute and downtrodden by judiciously rounding up the factors of the CNI, giving them an unexpected windfall. We could tamper with the numbers!

No. The very notion was ridiculous, as well as impossible. The components of the CNI were public information, factors selected from the published data for the CPI. Anyone could look up the factors that went into the CPI, apply the weights stipulated for the CNI, and derive the number. My role was simply a formality, providing the number that appeared in our agency's publications to make it official, pursuant to state law. Well before we published the number, the governor's Department of Finance had done its own independent calculation, as had the Legislative Analyst's Office and anyone else who needed the index number or was just curious about it.

The same thing is largely true of the numbers published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The worker bees of the federal government compile the monthly data each month, analyze the figures, and publish the summary information. The monthly unemployment rate, for example, is not vetted, suggested, or even approved by the White House. The faceless bureaucrats who crunch the numbers for the Obama Administration did the same exact thing when Bush was president (and, for some of these civil servants, they did it under both Bushes). They have no more control over the conclusions or final numbers than I did when I was a California civil servant. (It's popular within the right wing these days to decry unemployment data as unrepresentative of the “truth” because the usual unemployment number is deemed to have fallen when people just give up and stop seeking jobs. If they think the U3 measure published by the BLS is insufficiently informative, they are welcome to cite U6, which the BLS also publishes. You want numbers? Go to the BLS. They publish practically everything and the numbers aren't fudged.)

Data denial is a fundamental component of the refusal to recognize global-warming induced climate change. Data denial is also currently hard at work in California, giving aid and comfort to people paranoid about vaccinations, who pick and choose among an Internet stew of “research” and anecdotes to bolster their arguments that vaccines are more dangerous than now-rare childhood diseases (rare because of vaccines!).

If you want your conclusions to be rational and evidence-based, you have to avoid the denial of well-established data. We have seen, however, that even the most robust numbers are rejected when they get in the way of political ideologies.

Catholic denialism

Faith in anti-science

Jorge Mario Bergoglio has been Pope Francis of the Roman Catholic Church for less than two years, but that's been plenty of time to establish that he has a talent for sparking over-reaction. One expects this is in part due to the contrast between Francis and his immediate predecessor, Benedict XVI, the Panzer pope still living in retirement in Vatican City. Pope Francis has raised exaggerated expectations simply because he comes across as milder and less doctrinaire than popes of recent memory, but no one should believe that he is likely to do anything significant with respect to women in the clergy, the ban on contraception, or the Church's medieval attitudes toward homosexuality. He merely avoids the condemnatory language that others in the hierarchy prefer to use.

In most respects, therefore, I expect little more from Pope Francis than a kinder and friendlier tone. His one potentially significant departure from past practice is not ensnared in hoary Church dogma, which perhaps gives him more freedom of movement. That is the pope's inclination to address humanity's responsibility toward the environment. Francis appears to be ready to go beyond God's exhortation in Genesis 1:28: “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.” He is reportedly working on an encyclical on global warming and climate change. It doesn't take much to outrage the Church's lunatic fringe, and this was more than enough.

Church Militant TV was quick off the mark to condemn the pontiff. In its news report for February 2, 2015, Church Militant spokeswoman Christine Niles snidely commented on the pope's environmentalism:

In light of the pope's upcoming encyclical on climate change, the Environmental Protection Agency made a recent trip to the Vatican. Gina McCarthy, head of the agency, told papal aides that Obama wants to work with the pope to promote the president's “green” agenda. According to McCarthy, Catholic Relief Services and the U.S. Bishops Conference have also offered their help, but many Catholics remain confused, wondering why the Supreme Pontiff would choose to base his next encyclical on a dubious, unproven theory, when the greatest threats to the faith today are attacks on marriage and the family.

Her comments occur at 1:32 in the video. What's next? Is vaccination a tool of Satan?

One page at a time

The importance of packaging

He seemed smart enough, but he was an extremely unreliable student. He confided to me that he was under treatment for an anxiety condition, but his therapy had clearly not resolved his problem. Still, he started off the semester by powering through the lessons and it looked like he would be all right in the long run.

But looks can be deceiving. His scores on the exams eroded steadily throughout the term, and the erosion was eating away at his chances of passing the class. We met during office hours. We conferred after class. He e-mailed me questions, which I tried to answer promptly. Nothing worked. On top of all that, anxiety feeds on itself, so his emotional condition was not improving.

Of course, we tried that old stand-by of extending his time and letting him linger over the exams, but there was no significant pay-off. The situation was desperate—and so was he.

Despite decades of teaching, I was slow to recognize the significance of an anomaly in my student's performance. Although his exams were increasingly disastrous, his quiz scores remained persistently decent, hovering between B's and C's. It was nearly too late when inspiration finally struck me.

“We're going to do something different on the last chapter test,” I told him.

My announcement did not please him. He mistrusted change. However, he was docile enough and desperate enough to cooperate with whatever I wanted to try.

“I will dole out this exam to you one page at a time,” I continued. “You won't get page two until you return page one to me. If there's time at the end of your extended period, you can ask for individual pages back, but only one page will be on your desk at a time.”

His eyes widened. “It'll be like quizzes!” he said. “A series of quizzes! I can do quizzes!”

“Yes, you can,” I agreed.

On exam day, we followed the one-page-at-a-time protocol rigorously. He never had multiple sheets of paper simultaneously on his desk. When I graded his exam, his score soared into the nineties. I was both astonished and gratified. It had worked ever so much better than I had dared hope.

We did it again on the final exam. He broke discipline this time and filched old pages from my desk when he came up for new pages. I noticed that he sometimes had two or three pages on his desk. He did a lot of flipping between them, making clear to me for the first time what he had been doing on the exams when he had crashed and burned. The one-page approach permitted him to stay focused. Under its restrictions he couldn't compulsively jump back and forth between problems, aborting each solution before he finished. I began to monitor him more closely when he came up to swap pages.

Although he never had the entire final exam on his desk at one time, his occasionally divided attention cost him and his final exam result was not superior. Nevertheless, it was good enough to secure him a passing grade for the course, much to his (and my) relief. He learned a new way to manage his difficulty in expressing his knowledge.

And, obviously, I learned something, too.

Econ 101

Teabaggers are experts

A special interest group called the California Drivers Alliance is sounding the alarm. We in the Golden State are in imminent danger of assault:

On January 1, 2015, a new hidden gasoline tax will go into effect. ... There is still time to stop it, but we must act now. Contact state officials today and urge them to put the brakes on this new hidden gas tax!

A “hidden” tax? Scandalous! I did some research.

First of all, the California Drivers Alliance is one of those industry-funded “astroturf” organizations. The faux grassroots movement is bankrolled by the California Independent Oil Marketers Association. Second, the so-called hidden tax is nothing more than the state's cap and trade program, administered by the California Air Resources Board. I could not resist posting a snide comment on the California Drivers Alliance's Facebook page:

How can a gas tax be “hidden” if was enacted by Assembly Bill 32, a 2006 measure that is public record and was defended by the voters' overwhelming rejection of Proposition 23? Besides, oil companies who are eager to compete in the free market could choose to trim their profits a bit to maintain the attractiveness to consumers of their product.

People hastened to educate me. Here are some paraphrases, edited to correct misspellings and delete expletives:

Why can't stupid libtards understand that corporations don't pay taxes? They pass them on to us and we pay them!

Tax, tax, tax! That's socialism for you.

The tax is hidden because people don't know about it!!!!!

Take an econ class, you idiot! Higher taxes kill jobs!

Taxes on gas producers are taxes on drivers!

The immediate lesson I learned is that we should do away with the personal income tax and stick it to the corporations. It shouldn't matter, since we're going to pick up the tab anyway when we purchase goods and services from those corporations. Right?

I also learned that the free market doesn't function very well. The members of the California Independent Oil Marketers Association have no choice but to pass along the entire 10 cents per gallon (usually misstated by the California Drivers Alliance as 16 cents to 76[!] cents per gallon). If anyone dared attract more customers and more revenue by eating part of the AB 32 surcharge, evidently it would not be enough to restore their profits, which can never be high enough.

That's econ for you.

Waste water

Drought denialism?

The Porterville Recorder is a local newspaper down in my home turf of Tulare County. You may have heard of Porterville. The New York Times featured it prominently in a story about the great California drought and its impact on the Central Valley. The situation is grim, with wells running dry and people limited to bottled water for the necessities of life. Farmers with crops had already been told that irrigation water would not be available from the state's interconnected water projects. Hundreds of thousands of acres lie fallow, waiting for the uncertain return of water in this third year of intense drought.

Last month the Recorder published a guest editorial by pistachio grower Lee Cohen that fingered a popular culprit: radical environmentalism.

Water issues seem to have been hi-jacked, ransacked, and co-opted in California by the environmentalist radicals. There is a cavernous, endless void of common sense.

Let me explain. Two hundred percent of the entire Central Valley’s annual agricultural water needs are being flush[ed] straight to sea for a variety of different esoteric environmental reasons. The Central Valley is reeling from the devastation this policy hath wrought.

Anyone who drives down U.S. 99 or Interstate 5 will have seen the signs demanding an end to the “Congress-Created” drought. It's an article of faith among many down in the valley that the water shortage is all some kind of extremist environmentalist plot to coddle a tiny fish.

This water is being diverted to save nonindigenous smelt in the San Francisco Bay. Hundreds of millions of gallons went to this cause. Zero gallons to the Central Valley’s people and farms.
There are pumps at the top of the Central Valley water canal infrastructure which are restricted from running due to an old Endangered Species Act ruling, an outcome crafted, championed, and orchestrated over decades by the environmental movement to protect these minnows.

If only the pumps could be turned on, the Central Valley drought would be over! Those stupid little fish would die, but farms would live!  But “diverted”? No, it's the natural flow through the Delta. Diversion occurs when it's pumped elsewhere. Nevertheless, Cohen reiterates his key point:

The immediate water crisis has been fomented by the environmentalists since there is plenty of water in the north (Remember the 200 percent outflows to the Pacific ongoing today?). The current crisis in the Central Valley could be mitigated immediately if the pumps were turned on and the canals filled.

Apparently Cohen believes that half the water currently being “flushed” into the sea could be diverted from Northern California's abundant supply and shipped south to thirsty farmland. What would happen to the San Joaquin Delta and the San Francisco Bay Area if the water flow were cut in half from its currently drought-depressed levels?

Salt-water incursion, of course. The Delta would die. The Pacific Ocean waters that currently mix in the bay would move further into the Delta. Would it reach the pumps and cause them to start shipping saline solution to the south? I don't know. The damage might not extend that far, although the Delta would suffer severe degradation. But quite apart from the fate of the tiny smelt, the Bay Area fisheries could be taken off life-support because they could not survive with the flow cut in half.

No one should understate the suffering of California's farms and farmers under the continuing drought. Livelihoods and family traditions are being destroyed and only the strongest manage to survive. But the debate over remedies for the drought has been poisoned by paranoid fantasies.

The environmentalists are trying to, in their own words, return the Central Valley to the natural condition it was 200 years ago—a vast ecological basin. They are trying to dry the place up, starve it, reverse the development—a form of radical anti-progress, if you will.

Cohen does not share with us “their own words,” the words of the extremists who supposedly have the state legislature and the court system at their beck and call. If he dredged up a quote—and surely one could be found somewhere—espousing a radical return to “unspoiled nature” before the advent of farming in the valley, Cohen would necessarily find himself citing some fringe figure of minimal authority and negligible influence in today's debates over water policy. The real issue is that water is in catastrophically short supply and farmers are in competition with many others who want and need Northern California water. Cohen says “there is plenty of water in the north” even as the north state's reservoirs have fallen to record lows in water storage.This delusion will not advance the state of the debate.

They take our water and say we can’t dig for more. They care not about the people. They care not about the communities. They care not about the jobs. They care not about the farms. And by dumping water to the sea, they care not about the water. Indeed, environmentalists even care not about the trees.

Cohen rings the changes on his talking points to make sure we don't miss them: “our water,” he says; “dumping water to the sea.” Any drop that makes it to the San Francisco Bay is evidently wasted.

And lest we miss Cohen's qualifications to speak on behalf of “small family farms, which represent more than 90 percent of agriculture in California,” he drops this nugget on the table:

I, a true environmentalist, who grows and cares for 1.5 million pistachio trees, say to all, indeed, these radicals, care not about the trees.

Thank you, small farmer, for enlightening us.

Fingers crossed

The Eighth Suggestion

In the Roman Catholic numbering of the Decalogue, No. 8 is the commandant that forbids lying: Thou shalt not bear false witness. However, this unambiguous rule can apparently be overcome by the higher law of “the means justify the ends.” Catholic Vote has sent me a questionnaire that amply demonstrates its zealotry in doing God's work is not impeded by minor considerations like honesty. First of all, the survey's outcome is foreordained: “[T]he purpose of this survey is to send a strong and clear message to every politician running for election or re-election in the 2014 mid-term Congressional Elections, that the overwhelming majority of Catholic voters demand ObamaCare be repealed.” (By contrast with the predestined conclusion, the superfluous comma is merely a venial sin.)

It has been frequently observed—often with gnashing of teeth—that American Catholics differ little from their Protestant brethren when it comes to attitudes relating to abortion and contraception. The laity is scarcely ready to enlist in an anti-abortion jihad at the behest of the clergy. Nevertheless, Catholic Vote is willing to make it look like they are. The survey questionnaire is replete with leading and misleading questions. For example,

ObamaCare regulations now require all Americans—including Catholic and pro-life Americans—to purchase health care insurance plans that include abortion-inducing drugs. In other words, under ObamaCare, pro-life Catholics are required to pay for abortions in violation of Catholic doctrine and moral teachings.

This statement insists on construing as abortifacients many contraceptives that physicians deny induce abortions, but doctors avoid speaking in absolutes, so Catholic Vote seizes upon the loophole to declare, “Aha! They do cause abortions!” (Not that most Catholics agree or even care.)

Other statements are even less defensible. One question seeks to inspire outrage over the president's proclivity for baby-murder:

As a state lawmaker in Illinois, Barack Obama voted twice to deny life-saving medical care to babies born in botched abortions.

An outright lie. It is not legal in Illinois to deny care to a survivor of a mishandled late-term abortion. There was an attempt when Obama was a state senator to enact legislation to amend and strengthen the pertinent provisions of law. Although initially inclined to support the measures, Obama ended up opposing them when concerns were raised that anti-abortion activists were waiting for the opportunity to use the enhanced language to accuse doctors of infanticide when inadvertent live births did not survive. Obama did not vote to deny care to inadvertent survivors because that remained illegal under Illinois law. Despite the legislative record, political opponents have not hesitated to accuse the president of aiding and abetting infanticide (which rather makes the point that motivated his vote in opposition).

Catholic Vote and Priests for Life are two anti-abortion organizations that work the same turf. Priests for Life mailed out a similar questionnaire during the summer. The surveys had several questions in common and all were devised to produce a desired outcome, no less mendacious than any other politically motivated campaign document. Catholic Vote gives its respondents the opportunity to check off such answers as these:

• the pro-abortion movement wants to maximize the number of abortions in America
• ObamaCare is a weapon President Obama and the Left are using to attack America's moral and religious heritage
• [Obama and his allies] are mostly using the government takeover of health care in America as a way to expand government and move America in the direction of Socialism
• I believe President Obama knew about the crushing cost of ObamaCare for families across America, and was just lying about the shocking cost to get ObamaCare passed into law

The “crushing cost”? Catholic Vote declares that health care insurance costs for “the typical American family” has risen by $3,000 per year. Where did they get this number despite Congressional Budget Office reports that ObamaCare costs are falling below original projections? The likely source is a Kaiser report on premium increases from 2008 to 2012 (a period during which the Affordable Care Act was only starting to get off the ground and the soaring health care costs that motivated it were still in full swing). The latest version of the Kaiser report notes that premium increases had moderated significantly in recent years, falling below the double-digit increases that had been typical in the past. Catholic Vote either hasn't caught up with the latest news or prefers to pretend it doesn't exist.

The UFO letter

The truth is way out there

Oh, look what I found in the archives! While rifling through a stack of old print-outs (yes, some of them even had perforated tractor-feed margins), I discovered one of my unpublished letters to the editor. We all know what happens to our unsolicited expressions of concern, outrage, agreement, etcetera: nothing, usually. As a rule, unless you're writing to a small local newspaper, your letter to the editor will vanish without a trace. Despite examples like that of one of my mentors, who actually got a letter published in the New York Times, writing to a newspaper is usually a waste of time (although the process of venting might be salubrious).

In this instance, however, my unpublished letter garnered a surprising response from the editor of the Letters section: “I really LOVE this letter. But I'm still not going to publish it. Sorry. We just don't have space for stuff like this.” I was charmed, of course, and regretfully but stoically set my missive aside.

The Internet, however, has plenty of room for “stuff like this”! Therefore today I share with you not only my previously unpublished letter, but the original letter to the editor to which it was a response. The year is 1998:

UFOs are real

Re “The reality of UFOs,” letters, March 1: It is amazing that we are still discussing whether UFOs exist. It has been more than 50 years since the UFO crash at Roswell, N.M., not to mention sightings over the past several hundred years. My own observations and interest go back to 1953, when, with several other skeptics, I co-founded one of the first “flying saucer” groups in the United States. Our club was called Civilian Saucer Intelligence and was based in New York City.

Whether the letter writers are part of the government disinformation coverup, I do not know. I do know, as do millions of others, that UFOs exist.

I recommend that doubters read “The Day After Roswell” by a former Pentagon official, Col. Philip Corso (Ret.). It contains a foreword by Sen. Strom Thurmond. It is doubtful that a man such as Thurmond would lend his name to any hoax.

G.E.H.F.
Sacramento

Upon first reading this letter, I naturally reacted to the writer's use of “skeptic” in a way I found original and amusing. In his mind, “skeptic” obviously meant someone who refused to accept the debunking of flying saucer stories and was ready to embrace the notion of aliens joy-riding their round spacecraft all over the earth. I sat down at my PC keyboard and banged out the following:

Dear Editor: Little suspecting the dramatic events about to transpire, I was minding my own business while reading the Letters to the Editor in Friday's paper (March 27). I found “UFOs are Real” especially fascinating, particularly his speculation that letter writers who scoff at flying saucers might be “part of the government disinformation coverup.” Naturally I was trying to figure out what government disinformation was being covered up.

Of course, I was somewhat distracted by the irritating noise of a helicopter flying overhead. I could tell from the sound that the chopper had those extra-wide blades that are quieter than most. These are great for stealthy night missions, especially when the helicopters are painted the right color.

It was a relief when the chopper noise stopped, but shortly afterward my doorbell rang. On the front porch I found a tall man wearing a dark suit. I couldn't see his eyes because he was wearing opaque sunglasses.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said, very politely, in a clipped voice that reminded me a bit of that actor Tommy Lee Jones. “I see that you're reading the Letters section of today's paper. Would you mind if I point out some things about the letter about UFOs?”

“Wow!” I exclaimed, “I was just reading it. What an amazing coincidence!”

The man gave me a tight little smile. “How fortunate,” he said. “Did you notice where the writer referred to 'the' UFO crash at Roswell, even though there are presently three alleged crash locations? Doesn't this suggest that the evidence is a little bit questionable?”

“You got me there,” I admitted, “although you know people found metallized fabric unknown to modern science anywhere on this planet except among balloon manufacturers. That's pretty compelling evidence. And the descriptions of alien bodies match pretty closely the appearance of the test dummies that the Air Force was tossing out of planes in parachute experiments in those years. I think this proves the degree to which aliens are willing to disguise themselves to fool us into thinking they don't exist. And don't forget that millions of people believe in UFOs.”

“Interesting point,” said the man. “Of course, millions believe in Islam while millions of others believe in Christianity. At least one of these groups has to be wrong. And millions of people believe that The X-Files is a documentary. Facts aren't really subject to popularity contests.”

“You got me there,” I admitted, “but how about that book that the writer mentioned? It's by a retired colonel and was endorsed by Sen. Strom Thurmond. That's pretty impressive, you know, with an endorsement by an authority like Thurmond.”

“No disrespect intended, sir, but these days 95-year-old Sen. Thurmond isn't even much of an authority on what day of the week it is. Besides which, he has issued a retraction of his book blurb, which was written because of his acquaintance with the colonel, not because he approved the unseen contents of the book manuscript.”

“You got me there,” I admitted, “but I'm sure that your cool and reasoned explanations must have some flaw in them. It's not as if retired colonels or other UFO enthusiasts would make up stories, delude themselves, fake alien autopsies, or observe bogus anniversaries in Roswell just to make money, acquire fame, or spice up their humdrum lives. I'll have to think about it.”

“Please do,” the man said. “And don't forget to write a letter to present these explanations to the public. As a concerned citizen, it's the least you can do, right?”

“Of course,” I agreed, but when I started to say something more, I noticed that he was suddenly gone. Anyway, I've been thinking about what he said and I've concluded that the man in the dark suit must have been wrong. UFOs must be real, because “The truth is out there.” I know, because popular media, tabloid television, the National Enquirer, and David Duchovny tell me so.

Automotive expression

A peculiar perspective on politics

We've all seen those cars that have been plastered with indicators of the drivers' passions and concerns. Many are the unimpressive tributes to offspring who manage to be “scholar of the week” at a local elementary school. Other people “heart” their dogs (or, less often, cats). My attention is caught, however, by political signs, especially time-worn emblems of campaigns past. Why do people retain these stickers on their cars?

I, for one, kept my Al Gore 2000 sticker on my car for the duration of George W. Bush's first term. When my father smirked and asked if I still hadn't gotten over losing yet, I replied that I hadn't gotten over winning and then being cheated of victory. Dad naturally considered me a sore loser (but seems not to recall this as he continues his hand-wringing over the electoral imposition of a black-power, totalitarian communist government in the 2008 election; apparently only Democrats can be sore losers—Republicans are instead in mourning for America). Later the Gore sticker was replaced with a “Worst President” emblem in which the W was fashioned to match the Bush campaign logo. (More sneering from Dad: “Oh, is that a tribute to Carter?”)

I similarly preserved my “No on 8” bumper sticker until the anti-marriage measure met its judicial demise. In fact, I never removed it. The sticker accompanied my car to its final resting place and my new(er) car has yet to acquire political detritus.

My mind was jogged in this direction when I parked next to a vehicle whose driver was evidently a disappointed Republican. The car sported two battle-torn campaign insignia. One was for McCain's 2008 presidential campaign. I noted that it was the original McCain sticker, not the McCain-Palin sticker that arose after the senator's ill-fated choice of running mate. For some reason, the driver had failed to upgrade her sticker.

But here's what struck me as odd: The second sticker was not a memento of the Romney campaign in 2012. Our unknown Republican driver had not found it in herself to announce her support of the Romney-Ryan ticket. Interesting.

What was the second sticker? A 2006 remnant of California's general election. The driver had supported Chuck Poochigian for state attorney general. The average reader is unlikely to have much recollection of that epic campaign. The incumbent attorney general was Jerry Brown, who blew Poochigian away without even breathing hard (which he is now about to do again with Neel Kashkari, the Republican nominee in the current campaign for California governor).

You can't psychoanalyze someone on the basis of two bumper stickers (unless you're a Fox News pundit, of course). Therefore I can't quite decide what the tale of two stickers implies. She rallied to an attorney general candidate whose fate was all but foredoomed. She then gave her support fairly early to a presidential candidate who had a fighting chance (at least until the economy tanked and Sarah Palin was revealed as a joke candidate; or perhaps our unknown driver came to McCain later but refused the McCain-Palin version of the sticker). She didn't bother to enlist in the effort to prevent Jerry Brown's return to the governor's office in 2010 nor the Republican presidential campaign in 2012. Disheartened? One might think so.

She hasn't given up pining for Poochigian and McCain, though.

Happy Nixon Resignation Day!

Pretending to draw lessons

It's the 40th anniversary of the resignation of our much-unloved 37th president, the only one of the nation's chief executives to have departed in this manner. Therefore it's natural to look back on Nixon's shameful example and attempt to draw lessons that we might usefully apply today. Of course, if you're a right-wing pundit you might prefer to distort things beyond all recognition as you declare that Nixon's crimes are ever-so-similar to what Barack Obama is currently doing. Here's how Ben Boychuk does it:

Public opinion all but guaranteed Nixon’s impeachment and ouster 40 years ago. Public opinion all but guarantees Barack Obama won’t be impeached today....

Whether Obama deserves impeachment is another matter. Here Nixon’s case remains instructive.

Cue the imaginary scandals!

Nixon broke his oath of office. He disregarded “his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” He “repeatedly engaged in conduct violating the constitutional rights of citizens.” In particular, Nixon used the IRS, the FBI and the Secret Service to harass and punish his political enemies, alleged the second of three articles of impeachment that the House Judiciary Committee approved in 1974....

Perhaps the same could be said of Obama. His IRS singled out tea party and other conservative groups for excessive scrutiny, although nobody so far has managed to turn up the proverbial “smoking gun” linking the president to those abuses.

That's right. Boychuk is flogging the multiply-discredited “IRS scandal,” neglecting its origins in the cherry-picked factoids disseminated by the deliberately dishonest Darryl Issa. As a result of a deluge of new political groups claiming 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status, the IRS gave a lot of attention to so-called “tea party” groups—and liberal groups, too, though you wouldn't hear that from mission-driven Issa.

Obama has been lax, at best, about taking care that “the laws be faithfully executed.” From waivers to the Affordable Care Act’s mandates for unions and politically connected businesses to invoking “prosecutorial discretion” to exempt 1 million illegal immigrants from deportation, Obama has pushed executive authority to the limit.

Now the president is mulling an executive order that could, in effect, grant amnesty to some 6 million illegal immigrants. Yet the Constitution clearly reserves the power of “naturalization” to Congress, not the president. Does that matter anymore?

Boychuk spins the notion of “waivers” from the ACA as if they are exemptions handed out as political favors, rather than executive decisions based on easing the implementation process (something President Bush also did for Medicare Part D and which the Supreme Court deems within the president's executive authority).

Note also Boychuk's invocation of the N-word: naturalization. Whether or not Obama issues executive orders affecting the status of undocumented residents, he will certainly not be offering them “naturalization,” which entails citizenship and voting rights. That, however, is what Boychuk wants to imply, causing tea-partiers to clutch their pearls and swoon. Given complete inaction by the House of Representatives while a continuing crisis percolates on our southern border, the president will have to act without the assistance of the derelict legislative branch. It is well within his authority to declare that no one will be denied due process and summarily deported.

Although Boychuk claims that the president is pushing his authority “to the limit,” it is an obvious and necessary perquisite of his position to set priorities. Shall we haul the so-called Dreamers into court and prosecute them as illegally residing in the country where they've spent their lives since childhood and deport them back to native lands many of them don't even remember because of their youth when their parents brought them across the border? The Department of Justice has enough to keep it busy without also taking on foolish and unfair prosecutions of life-long residents.

Violating the oath of office? Usurping congressional authority? Using the might of the presidency against political foes? Not trivialities. Or, at least they weren’t 40 years ago.

And they're not trivial today, either. They're merely nonexistent.

Baying at the moon

The “Get a life” edition

On July 24, 2014, Daily Kos observed the forty-fifth anniversary of the conclusion of the Apollo 11 moon mission with a photo taken shortly after the command module's splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. The photo was labeled with some text:

At 12:51 p.m. (EST) on July 24, 1969, the Apollo 11 module landed in the Pacific Ocean, southwest of Hawaii. This completed the first mission humanity ever made to another celestial body.

That statement is straightforward enough, but I thought it gave short shrift to two other missions that preceded the historic first moon landing. On Facebook I offered the following comment:

Clarification: The first manned mission to *land* and return. Both Apollo 8 and Apollo 10 went all the way to the moon and back, but they were lunar orbital missions only (the latter including a jaunt with the lunar module that came within ten miles of the surface).

Another FB user promptly offered a kind of rebuttal:

ABR I think the word humanity speaks to that.

Huh? I casually replied:

Humanity was aboard Apollos 8 and 10 as well.

Soon others got into the act:

BA Bet you are a real fun guy at parties.

DG There is no ambiguity in the graphic. The word "made" means "landed". Get a life.

Unchastened by the dictionary revisionism (and the slight against my party suitability), I replied:

I think the Apollo 8 astronauts felt like they had "made" a mission to the moon, which they orbited ten times before returning home. It takes nothing away from Apollo 11 to acknowledge that.

Finally, someone chimed in to defend my point:

CL Agreed. My outstanding memory of the Apollo missions was, at the age of 14, listening to Anders, Borman and Lovell aboard Apollo 8, orbiting the moon, giving a Christmas (1968) message to the people on earth. That was just awesome - and the furthest that men had ever been from earth. There is a tendency to simplify history to 'spot facts' and glib milestones. Apollo 8 was first to the moon. Apollo 11 was first to land. Equal achievements, I'd say.

Unfortunately, despite this positive reinforcement (although I never claimed that the orbital missions were equivalent to the landing missions), my original simple statement of clarification remained a sticking point for a Facebook user with the initials MN:

MN You can't go TO the Moon If you don't land on It. As defined during the 8 and 10 mission, they ORBITED the Moon, Just like John Glenn ORBITED the Earth. Chris, They are NOT equal achievements, by any stretch.

This remark is a perfect headdesk opportunity, especially in its creative use of the word “defined.” Is MN prepared to tell Borman, Lovell, Anders, Stafford, Young, and Cernan that they did not go “TO” the moon because they neglected to land on it? Lovell was also the commander of the Apollo 13 mission which aborted its moon landing because of an explosion in its service module. Should we tell Lovell that, nope, he did not go to the moon twice because neither of his missions landed? Sure, he never got to set foot on the lunar surface, but Jim Lovell definitely made two missions to the moon.

Let's not forget the epic moon missions that preceded Apollo 11 in the excitement over the anniversary of the first landing. Some of us remember those thrilling days and rue their passing.