tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55881269705442646732024-03-24T19:32:20.924-04:00Thoughts AriseEssays emerging from my varied interests in science, film, politics and philosophy, among other things.Marc Merlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01946231992925684244noreply@blogger.comBlogger120125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5588126970544264673.post-84878185061245457532023-11-29T17:47:00.008-05:002023-11-29T17:52:17.980-05:00The view from the Welcome Center desk at the National Museum of the American Indian and another moving visitor request<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW1MsMxE13po05VC2QQQf5sx_GRIGmjbmWgfXsxcR58Nr-WqrZZ5JZ5dNtSWwrTNvWBpJ2ktQ_4eyq-vXcGZBziOO3XUZK7s9HiZGN7QMiVS0JlPix1Tuj1D695n9pJHAGaSdANw0ZMCZELpCBG-vg3T0a-Gq-kJE4zFxZyM3eAh1abIr7JNbAHw_TT0nQ/s3903/View%20from%20the%20NMAI%20Welcome%20Center%20Desk.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2195" data-original-width="3903" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW1MsMxE13po05VC2QQQf5sx_GRIGmjbmWgfXsxcR58Nr-WqrZZ5JZ5dNtSWwrTNvWBpJ2ktQ_4eyq-vXcGZBziOO3XUZK7s9HiZGN7QMiVS0JlPix1Tuj1D695n9pJHAGaSdANw0ZMCZELpCBG-vg3T0a-Gq-kJE4zFxZyM3eAh1abIr7JNbAHw_TT0nQ/w640-h360/View%20from%20the%20NMAI%20Welcome%20Center%20Desk.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View from the Welcome Center Desk at the Smithsonian's NMAI</td></tr></tbody></table><p>Since I opened last week's post with an action photo of me and a colleague behind the desk at the Welcome Center of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), I thought that this week I'd turn the tables, so to speak, and give you a Marc's-eye view of what it looks like to be a Visitor Information Specialist Volunteer at the museum. But since there's more than meets the eye, I'll toss in a few words about the surrounding space and what it feels like to work there.</p><p>As you can see in the photo above, the ground floor of the NMAI is filled with graceful curves and subtle variations in lighting. Standing at the Welcome Center one looks out on the Potomac Atrium, a beautiful space for gatherings and performances, located beneath a vaulting rotunda. It's where tours of the museum originate. From my limited experience, it appears that the atrium is also a popular spot for after-hours events, like the receptions that are part and parcel with the many conferences that the city hosts.</p><p>Beyond the atrium you may be able to spot a few of the windows that make up the NMAI's main entrance. Unlike all the other museums on the National Mall whose main entrances open onto the Mall itself, the east-facing NMAI faces (or faces down) the United States Capitol directly. I've been told that this orientation is due to the fact that an east-facing entrance is a tradition in many Native cultures. I suspect that there is more going on here than just that; namely, that the museum is positioned as a sovereign Native peer to the legislative center of the American government a few blocks away.</p><p>Suffice it to say, the Potomac Atrium and the surrounding area are both stately and welcoming, a difficult effect to achieve. From the vantage point of someone working the welcome desk, it is also remarkably serene space, even when a large number of visitors are shuffling back and forth. And when things aren't that busy, I have discovered that it is a nice place for a few minutes of quiet meditation.</p><p><b>Best question of the day</b></p><p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5767_Bc4GjhTVPq9KmTkX6Adt8f7eLM5Zco_RFA7iOuNo_TsPjyuQBdbwVbW268cXwVBkBgbDDVgRibdEcPXiCpCj3NZlzA1-f1Ik4kryqsiylCTAUPqJFVKdho4w23g8OQ7FXzaOnBaNYWRy6VXAnDJ2-3i99Yulbxb8MZRVMBQ-xIAuNwxvlgPm1U-Y/s700/Pipes%20and%20War%20Bonnets%20quilt.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="525" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5767_Bc4GjhTVPq9KmTkX6Adt8f7eLM5Zco_RFA7iOuNo_TsPjyuQBdbwVbW268cXwVBkBgbDDVgRibdEcPXiCpCj3NZlzA1-f1Ik4kryqsiylCTAUPqJFVKdho4w23g8OQ7FXzaOnBaNYWRy6VXAnDJ2-3i99Yulbxb8MZRVMBQ-xIAuNwxvlgPm1U-Y/s320/Pipes%20and%20War%20Bonnets%20quilt.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pipes and War Bonnets,<br />Agnes Looking Horse<br /></td></tr></tbody></table>Once again, I find myself very moved by the Native visitors who approach the desk with a request. In this case a young woman from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe wanted to locate a quilt that her grandmother had made that was part of the NMAI collection. She had a photo of the quilt and its title, "Pipes and War Bonnets."<p></p><p>John, my partner for that hour, quickly turned to the computer at one side of the Welcome Center desk and did a search using the <a href="https://americanindian.si.edu/explore/collections/search" target="_blank">collection search feature</a> of the NMAI website. (Yes, feel free to try this at home!) His search yielded <a href="https://americanindian.si.edu/collections-search/objects/NMAI_387068?destination=edan_searchtab%3Fedan_q%3Dpipes%2520and%2520war%2520bonnets" target="_blank">this results page</a> which contained, among other things, the image that you see to the right.</p><p>The page indicates that the quilt's maker was Agnes Looking Horse who also went by the names Agnes Ironroad and Agnes Thunder and was a member of the Lakota tribe. Agnes was born in 1899 and lived until 1990. The NMAI acquired the quilt by way of a quit collector whose heirs sold it to the museum in 2007.</p><p>Unfortunately for the visitor, her grandmother's quilt was not on display at the NMAI in Washington or at its Manhattan counterpart. With over 1,000,000 objects in its collection, only a small fraction - around 2% - are on display in either location at any given time. The vast majority are kept in the NMAI's <a href="https://americanindian.si.edu/explore/collections/crc" target="_blank">Cultural Resource Center</a> in Suitland, Maryland. There are ways for interested parties to arrange to see a particular artifact, but as you can imagine, some lead time is involved.</p><p><b>Lots of school kids this morning</b></p><p>The other novelty for me this morning was the large number of school groups that arrived within an hour or so of opening at 10:00 am. I was told by my more experienced co-workers that it was a somewhat unusual number, but I was also told to expect that the number of school groups and families would be ramping up as the holidays approach. At the staff meeting this morning my boss Jose described the upcoming few weeks as being like a bunch of Black Fridays in a row, the day after Thanksgiving being an especially busy day at the NMAI and at other museums on the Mall.</p><p>I'll close by noting that the temporary closing of the renown Mitsitam Cafe for renovation (reopening in May 2024) continues to be a disappointment for many visitors. I'll also note, as I learned from Jose, if you're a teacher with, say, forty-five students in tow, it's a good idea to try to make other lunch arrangements even in the best of times.</p>Marc Merlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01946231992925684244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5588126970544264673.post-61625752777044091232023-11-25T11:57:00.003-05:002023-11-25T11:59:30.714-05:00Third shift at the National Museum of the American Indian: meet a couple of my partners<p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4elbCbgfdWhYVgB_Wz_ocAd_gHO5nrcQYepeKdGOWr32SqfQCiNXbRhyNuqSgkMFItYPUTQ8GSSQ9dGAm5VWzvpzkvmrnq07S6Ug_gPnHwk76wMeWQB_xX18cFZRgrjmhsmqTjXnZJC-Z_7XDK7wZidSfmhRpLjirfo-jdtdB4-kit7Qob8cp_rHbWJOq/s3839/Kyle%20and%20Marc%20at%20the%20NMAI%20Welcome%20Center.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2159" data-original-width="3839" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4elbCbgfdWhYVgB_Wz_ocAd_gHO5nrcQYepeKdGOWr32SqfQCiNXbRhyNuqSgkMFItYPUTQ8GSSQ9dGAm5VWzvpzkvmrnq07S6Ug_gPnHwk76wMeWQB_xX18cFZRgrjmhsmqTjXnZJC-Z_7XDK7wZidSfmhRpLjirfo-jdtdB4-kit7Qob8cp_rHbWJOq/w640-h360/Kyle%20and%20Marc%20at%20the%20NMAI%20Welcome%20Center.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me and Kyle at the NMAI Welcome Center desk<br />(photo credit: Michelle Kleinhans)</td></tr></tbody></table><i><br /></i><p></p><p><i>This post is about my third shift as a Visitor Information Specialist Volunteer at Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). Since things are becoming more routine, I'll be moving to occasional reports when there is something novel to share or if I decide to feature a particular part of the museum or its collection.</i></p><p><b>"Surprise" visit by Michelle</b></p><p>My long-time friend and partner in veganism Michelle Kleinhans dropped by the NMAI for a "surprise" visit on Wednesday morning. I say "surprise" because she had been hinting that she was going to visit and try to stump me with questions about the museum. Since Michelle is a teacher, she had the day before Thanksgiving off - my work day - which gave her an opportunity to collar me at the Welcome Center. Thanks to Michelle's visit, I have some action photos of me at work to share, like the one above.</p><p><b>Partners at the Welcome Center</b></p><p>My Wednesday shift runs for four hours from 9:30 am to 1:30 pm. The second and final shift of the day is from 1:00 to 5:00 pm. The overlap allows for a handoff of any specific information or procedures of the day. I am always paired with a partner during my shift. Sometimes it is with another volunteer, as was the case with Cindy last week. This week my partners were four members of the Visitor Information Services team, each spending an hour with me at the Welcome Center Desk. It's a nice opportunity to get to know the members of the team better this way.</p><p><b>Meet Kyle</b></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieUJPGIstepkNrQYC8lXMPYjmNTMYRYtFou8Zq5PztbPx5K32sE_dkza6n54IsWXMsRvtlwc3Fk1AkiMtP3vSXS3vKoVI1B3Fcgn1mTfJz418m-1HpRaQPyKek5hyvvrd0GDIqvbW0uYR8x2XvdW2p94qIivFU8kv3JpZSLvLxSbcvagCozN7AfO3809oF/s2561/Kyle%20and%20Marc%20at%20the%20NMAI%20Welcome%20Center%20(narrow).jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2561" data-original-width="2561" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieUJPGIstepkNrQYC8lXMPYjmNTMYRYtFou8Zq5PztbPx5K32sE_dkza6n54IsWXMsRvtlwc3Fk1AkiMtP3vSXS3vKoVI1B3Fcgn1mTfJz418m-1HpRaQPyKek5hyvvrd0GDIqvbW0uYR8x2XvdW2p94qIivFU8kv3JpZSLvLxSbcvagCozN7AfO3809oF/w200-h200/Kyle%20and%20Marc%20at%20the%20NMAI%20Welcome%20Center%20(narrow).jpg" width="200" /></a></div>My first partner of the day was Kyle. Kyle is a Visitor Information Services Floor Operations Lead at the NMAI location in Lower Manhattan, the counterpart of Jose here whom you'll meet below. He was in the DMV (a common way here to refer to the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia, not to be confused with its universal meaning Department of Motor Vehicles elsewhere) to spend some Thanksgiving time with family and was taking a shift or two while he was in the area.<p></p><p>Kyle, who is originally from Upstate New York, was introduced at the morning staff meeting as being a member of the <a href="https://www.onondaganation.org/aboutus/" target="_blank">Onondaga Nation</a>. I'm starting to learn that my knowledge of tribal names is not only very course-grained but also fairly out of date. The Onondaga Nation is a member of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, which I vaguely knew as the Iroquois. (Haudenosaunee, which comprises six nations, appears to be the preferred name these days.) It's information like this that helps me appreciate part of the mission of the NMAI which is to communicate the rich diversity in the indigenous people here. Even accurate regional designations, like Iroquois, gloss over the variation in customs and history that make each tribal nation distinct.</p><p>As my friends know, I love finding out the "backstories" of the people I meet. Kyle's backstory was kicked off by my asking him how long he had been involved with the NMAI, a routine enough question to get the ball rolling I thought. His unexpected and intriguing answer, "since I was born," led to the telling of an interesting story.</p><p>It turns out that Kyle's mother was the register of the collection at the George Gustav Heye Museum of the American Indian in New York City when its vast collection of some 800,000 was being transferred to the Smithsonian under a Congressional charter executed in 1989. (The NMAI in DC did not open until 2004.) So Kyle's claim to have been involved with the museum from its - and his - start could not be more accurate. By the way, Kyle's mother continues to work with the NMAI, but at its <a href="https://americanindian.si.edu/explore/collections/crc" target="_blank">Cultural Resource Center</a> in Suitland, MD where around 98% of the collection is stored.</p><p><b>Meet Jose</b></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ6B0WC3rRLmL38o83kZyQRo0yzin353ur5vgGmMjdv3SewBjLbQTjwHsS6GymCksnfMJqHPaUaLlOjvSQwI4l-704DWMN8MWY1AnhTBPVPSJIfP1Krx16ysEqCK5YS9u-B7GP41VdriN4htGfZKjCj-TpfZJP7zb0OHqBUALDodPsf5UJlCvtRAi3GI0D/s2309/Jose%20and%20Marc%20at%20the%20Welcome%20Center.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2309" data-original-width="2309" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ6B0WC3rRLmL38o83kZyQRo0yzin353ur5vgGmMjdv3SewBjLbQTjwHsS6GymCksnfMJqHPaUaLlOjvSQwI4l-704DWMN8MWY1AnhTBPVPSJIfP1Krx16ysEqCK5YS9u-B7GP41VdriN4htGfZKjCj-TpfZJP7zb0OHqBUALDodPsf5UJlCvtRAi3GI0D/w200-h200/Jose%20and%20Marc%20at%20the%20Welcome%20Center.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>One of my other partners at the desk on Wednesday happened to be my boss Jose, the Visitor Information Services Floor Operations Lead at the NMAI in DC. I met Jose for the first time at my museum-specific training about a month ago. He was an excellent instructor, and I was immediately taken by both his enthusiasm and good humor.<p></p><p>Jose's backstory with the NMAI is also a very deep one, although, admittedly, it would be hard to top Kyle's going back to the day he was born. Jose, who is originally from El Salvador, started working at the museum's Mitsitam Cafe when it opened in 2004. After a couple of years, he switched to Visitor Information Services where he has risen through the ranks to hold the position he does today. It's a pleasure to share part of my shift with Jose, especially since I learn a lot from seeing a real pro in action.</p><p><b>Questions of the week</b></p><p>I'll close with a couple of questions that I fielded during my shift this week. I should note that Michelle stumped me with all of her questions.</p><p>There were two requests for copies of the museum map in languages other than English and Spanish, the ones that we always have on display. One request was for a map in Thai and the other for a map in French. I was surprised when I first visited the museum and noticed that there weren't any other language options available. Other museums have them. Indeed, the welcome stations at the National Gallery of Art across the Mall offer a veritable United Nations-worth of maps to choose from.</p><p>Jose explained the situation to me. Prior to the pandemic, the NMAI offered maps in ten languages. Apparently, they're still working out changes that have happened to the floorplan since then, with the intention of returning to their full selection.</p><p>The other novel question also has to do with another historical disruption. Several visitors asked for the location of the coat check room, not surprising now that it's gotten colder. But there isn't one at the NMAI.</p><p>Most museums on the Mall have coat check rooms, consistent with the design of similar public spaces over the past century or so. Almost all of these were closed in the wake of 9/11 amid the security concerns that accompanied it. Many, but not all, have reopened since then. Yet, as Jose told me, the NMAI was being built right in the middle of the aftermath of September 11th. Its architects had concluded that a coat check room was a too-risky thing of the past and therefore deleted it from the NMAI design. So it goes.</p><p>On a related note, I noticed that this absence of a coat check room has had another consequence. In particular, I was puzzled how so many small kids, some in families with three or four children, were walking around coatless on a relatively cool November morning. Then I realized that their parents were often wearing ballooning backpacks stuffed to the gills with coats. I can see how these portable coatrooms-in-a-box might come in handy, even when a bona fide coatroom might be available.</p>Marc Merlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01946231992925684244noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5588126970544264673.post-24040571770362191342023-11-15T19:55:00.002-05:002023-11-16T06:37:30.674-05:00My second day at the National Museum of the American Indian: important visitors<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkxBuD7hgM_DoonhmV3OotBCp8ioh_0y6w397Sl0oWsrJtdP_FAQDgbpIiXFuhAmrnoHPcmWPOIdKMSGP0ivdFu1uMyq_uRivqmPA3ioLXz-wqNwR_-wRULtyqpJb8kJT1UDLmQYxKsO-c3fhxSruAaUkUb45PAsb9TizjdTuXK8wQut7ijHGGGACEv5nl/s1200/Flag_of_the_Poarch_Band_of_Creek_Indians.svg.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="706" data-original-width="1200" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkxBuD7hgM_DoonhmV3OotBCp8ioh_0y6w397Sl0oWsrJtdP_FAQDgbpIiXFuhAmrnoHPcmWPOIdKMSGP0ivdFu1uMyq_uRivqmPA3ioLXz-wqNwR_-wRULtyqpJb8kJT1UDLmQYxKsO-c3fhxSruAaUkUb45PAsb9TizjdTuXK8wQut7ijHGGGACEv5nl/w400-h235/Flag_of_the_Poarch_Band_of_Creek_Indians.svg.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Flag of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians (Abyssmanx, Wikimedia Commons)</td></tr></tbody></table><p><i>I'm following up on <a href="https://blog.thoughtsarise.com/2023/11/my-first-day-at-national-museum-of.html" target="_blank">last week's post</a> about my first day as a Visitor Information Specialist Volunteer at Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). I'm not sure what format these posts will take - or even if they will continue - but I thought I'd include a bit more about the job itself and any special things that happened during my shift. Mostly I want readers to get an idea of what it's like to be a Welcome Center volunteer at NMAI.</i></p><p><b>Staff meeting at 9:30 am</b></p><p>My shift on Wednesdays starts with a meeting of Visitor Information Services (VIS) staff and volunteers in a portion of the imagiNATIONS Activity Center on the 3rd floor. The Activity Center provides young visitors a lively space with a wide variety of educational experiences. It also provides some pint-sized tables with pint-sized chairs where we can gather and learn about such things as special events scheduled for the day or rearrangements of exhibits or, say, bathroom closures. The big news of the morning was an impending visit by around three hundred members of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians tribal nation. More about that below.</p><p>VIS leads Jose and Wallace conduct the staff meeting and make a point to introduce new members of the team, like me, just starting my second week, and Cindy, who was a volunteer "floater" working at the NMAI for the first time.</p><p><b>My Welcome Center partner</b></p><p>Cindy was my partner at the Welcome Center today. Floaters are seasoned Smithsonian volunteers who have trained at a variety of museums so that they are able to pick up open shifts in the volunteer schedule according to their own availability. They aren't assigned specific days like I am, but are expected to claim one shift every week.</p><p>It was a pleasure to work with Cindy. Although she was new to NMAI as a volunteer, she was very knowledgeable about the Smithsonian. So, for example, she could answer visitor questions about transit options for getting to places on the National Mall. Spoiler alert: the answer is almost always to use the $1 <a href="https://dccirculator.com/" target="_blank">DC Circulator</a> to tame the two-mile expanse that stretches between the U.S. Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial.</p><p>Cindy had been a long-time volunteer at the iconic <a href="https://www.si.edu/museums/smithsonian-institution-building" target="_blank">Smithsonian Castle</a> - now closed for five years for renovation - which gave her a unique perspective in visitor information services. Apparently, tourists show up on the Mall, make a beeline for the Castle and announce to the volunteers there that they are in town for a certain number of days and ask, "what should I do?" Needless to say, you really have to know a lot about a lot to help them organize their time effectively.</p><p><b>Questions of the day</b></p><p>A young man asked the question about the name of the museum - specifically the use of the term American Indian - that I had been told to anticipate. As I mentioned in my previous post, the name was adopted under the terms of the transfer of the Museum of the American Indian–Heye Foundation's collection to the Smithsonian Institution when the NMAI was chartered by Congress in 1989. I told the questioner that I suspected it would literally take an act of Congress to change it. I'm not sure that that is the answer he wanted to hear, but he seemed to appreciate that any change would be an uphill battle.</p><p>Another visitor asked how many Native tribes there were in this country. The answer, which I learned from my training, is that the United States government recognizes 574 tribes. (There are around 2,000 more in the western hemisphere outside the United States.) This number might seem like a bit of trivia, but it goes a long way to helping me understand why the NMAI is organized along thematic and not tribal lines.</p><p>Just as with last week, there were a number requests for help locating the Mitsitam Cafe, famous for its Native-inspired cuisine. To almost everyone's disappointment, the cafe is closed for renovation through May of next year. The coffee shop next to the Welcome Center offers a limited menu, but nothing like the real thing. It occurs to me that NMAI should have commissioned a Mitsitam Cafe food truck or two to meet the demand while the original was closed. Maybe it's not too late?</p><p><b>Visit by the Poarch Band of Creek Indians</b></p><p>As I mentioned, we were given a heads-up during the staff meeting to expect a larger number of visitors from the Poarch Band of the Creek Indians. As with so many matters of Native culture, I have to admit to being ignorant of their story. According to their website,</p><p></p><blockquote><p>The Poarch Creek Indians are descendants of a segment of the original Creek Nation that once covered almost all of Alabama and Georgia. Unlike many eastern Indian tribes, the Poarch Creeks were not removed from their tribal lands and have lived together for almost 200 years in and around the reservation in Poarch, Alabama.</p><p></p></blockquote><p>You can find out more about their history <a href="https://pci-nsn.gov/about/history/">here</a>.</p><p>In any event, just as the doors opened at 10:00 am, hundreds of Poarch Creek Indians streamed into the museum. Some were wearing colorful authentic dress. Many were in street clothes, more typical of rural Alabama. But everyone, as far as I could tell, was very excited to be at the museum. And it was with a lot of pride that many went immediately to locate their tribal flag which hangs with a set of Native flags on the north side of the Potomac Atrium.</p><p>The importance of the NMAI is to Native visitors is something I did not anticipate when I signed up to be a volunteer. But it is very moving to witness their enthusiasm and very gratifying to be able to help out in a small way.</p>Marc Merlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01946231992925684244noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5588126970544264673.post-6342382040987318232023-11-11T10:03:00.016-05:002023-11-11T10:11:18.557-05:00My first day at the National Museum of the American Indian<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://americanindian.si.edu/img/exhibitions/Why-We-Serve-800x599.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="599" data-original-width="800" height="300" src="https://americanindian.si.edu/img/exhibitions/Why-We-Serve-800x599.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">National Native American Veterans Memorial, Harvey Pratt.<br />Photo: Alan Karchmer for NMAI.</td></tr></tbody></table><p>I thought I'd use this blog post to answer a few questions about my new job as a Visitor Information Specialist Volunteer at the <a href="https://americanindian.si.edu/" rel="" target="_blank">Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian</a>, NMAI for short. I've only worked one shift so far, but friends have asked me about my duties and the museum more generally, so here goes.</p><p><b>What is your position exactly? </b></p><p>I am officially a Visitor Information Specialist Volunteer, which means I help staff the Welcome Desk at the museum once a week, that's Wednesday morning for me. My basic responsibility is to greet guests and to help them have the best possible experience they can while visiting the museum by answering questions and serving as a liaison to museum staff to meet other needs such as accessibility services.</p><p>The Welcome Desk sits adjacent to the grand Potomac Atrium on the first floor of the museum which in my opinion is the most beautiful museum on the National Mall. I may describe it in more detail in a later post. Suffice it to say, it's a wonderful place to work.</p><p><b>Are you a docent? </b></p><p>I am not a docent or any sort of museum guide. I'll have to undertake extensive training to qualify for that kind of position.</p><p><b>Do you have to know a lot about the museum and Native peoples for your job?</b></p><p>This was a concern of mine when I applied to be a volunteer back in July. It turns out that the job doesn't require any particular expertise. In addition to two orientation classes in late September and mid-October for the Smithsonian Institution itself (it includes 21 different museums!), we had a single day of museum-specific training. And much of that museum-specific time was devoted to important practical matters, like evacuation routes and procedures.</p><p>I must admit, though, that I am very glad that I visited the NMAI a number of times over the last several months. Those visits allowed me to learn about the layout of the museum and the exhibitions that it hosts. I'm glad I did. I was a lot more confident taking up a seat at the Welcome Desk for the very first time as a result.</p><p><b>Why is it called the Museum of the American Indian?</b></p><p>This much-asked question was specifically addressed in our training. The answer is pretty straightforward: when the museum was chartered by Congress in 1989 - construction was completed in 2004 - its collection was derived from over 800,000 objects assembled by George Gustav Heye (1874–1957), a New Yorker who quit Wall Street to indulge his passion for American Indian artifacts. The Museum of the American Indian–Heye Foundation transferred this collection to the Smithsonian with the condition that the name be retained.</p><p><b>Isn't that considered offensive?</b></p><p>One of the most important things I've learned from my visits to the NMAI and from my training is that Native peoples are diverse. One should not assume that they speak with a single voice, which is a mistake that I am inclined to make. Some may prefer the name "indigenous people" while others prefer "Native Americans," or, say, "First Nations" in Canada. I think that "American Indian" falls somewhere within this range of choices. But the real answer to this question depends very much on context and who exactly is involved in the discussion.</p><p><b>What was your typical interaction with visitors?</b></p><p>For those of you who visit museums often, you know the first thing you need when you walk in is a museum map. Not surprisingly, that's what most people who approach the Welcome Desk were looking for. As you can see <a href="https://americanindian.si.edu/visit/dc/museum-map" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>, the NMAI comprises 4 floors. Contrary to what they (or you) might expect, it is not laid out along conventional lines.</p><p>For example, there isn't an extended section for, say, pottery or beadwork or arrowheads, at least not on permanent display. Likewise, the museum is not organized according to an unfolding comprehensive historical or geographical story, although history and geography are important elements of the individual exhibits and there are Windows on Collections display cases on each floor that each feature a number of artifacts.</p><p>Instead, the NMAI is organized thematically as represented by a handful of current exhibitions like <a href="https://americanindian.si.edu/explore/exhibitions/washington" target="_blank">these</a>. I think that one way to look at this is that the mission of the museum has to do more with the communication of the experience of contemporary Native peoples rather than with a presentation Native objects.</p><p><b>What was the most moving interaction you had on your first day?</b></p><p>Although the possibility was mentioned in our training, I had not expected that Native visitors or their descendants would approach the Welcome Desk several times looking for flags or artifacts relation to their tribal nations. It really helped me to appreciate how important the NMAI is to Native Americans and how proud they are to see themselves and their ancestors represented here.</p><p><b>Any surprises?</b></p><p>Although I had known that the <a href="http://www.mitsitamcafe.com/" target="_blank">NMAI's Mitsitam Cafe</a>, which features the indigenous foods of the Western Hemisphere, was very popular, I had no idea that it was in itself a destination for many people visiting the National Mall. One couple approached the Welcome Desk looking for the cafe after asking for a recommendation of where to go to have lunch while they were touring the Library of Congress.</p><p>The problem is that, for the first time in 20 years, the Mitsitam Cafe is closed for renovations and will remain closed until late spring 2024. Needless to say, I had to share this disappointing news with a number of visitors. There's a coffee shop adjacent to the Welcome Desk that's able to provide a small selection of lunch items, but it can't compare to the full Mitsitam Cafe experience.</p><p><b>More to come</b></p><p>If this post turns out to be of interest to folks, I'll follow up with similar installments about the NMAI in the future.</p>Marc Merlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01946231992925684244noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5588126970544264673.post-8585333973470062222022-11-01T10:03:00.000-04:002022-11-01T10:03:47.754-04:00The unexpected science subtext of George Miller's 3,000 Years of Longing<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNmR4h5XEeX2ZSDUy7oADSFoUYiJvAirRbEz_-Z0hMVvp9bk4J0uDzrH5iGWGZ_GdyiqyiHMNqnRP3eEYy-EwS7f9FEjexWu-UU0tQHA92FBeMvNivNjXCIDfN8eC6eFikceXB7-J7G2fieo58DoX_3CrwmZtmEXYcScB0TnCN0l7oD6RcRZQj52n0cw/s363/Three_Thousand_Years_of_Longing.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="363" data-original-width="250" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNmR4h5XEeX2ZSDUy7oADSFoUYiJvAirRbEz_-Z0hMVvp9bk4J0uDzrH5iGWGZ_GdyiqyiHMNqnRP3eEYy-EwS7f9FEjexWu-UU0tQHA92FBeMvNivNjXCIDfN8eC6eFikceXB7-J7G2fieo58DoX_3CrwmZtmEXYcScB0TnCN0l7oD6RcRZQj52n0cw/s320/Three_Thousand_Years_of_Longing.jpeg" width="220" /></a></div>George Miller’s lavishly produced recent film, “3,000 Years of Longing,” could be described as a sort of Aladdin for adults. It is the retelling of a tale from Scheherazade’s 1,001 Arabian Nights set in our mythology-leary world. And, contrary to expectations, if one digs beneath the surface, a surprising story about science reveals itself.<p></p><p>That science will play a role in this reformulation is hinted at early on in the movie. Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton), a “narratologist” by trade, is arriving for a storytelling conference in modern day Istanbul. Her grip on reality is called into question when we watch her spy a diaphanous, gnome-like man trying to run off with her baggage cart at the airport. Unwelcome apparitions like him continue to appear, unbidden, at the conference’s keynote lecture where a distracted Alithea pauses to declare that the tales of gods and heroes of ancient times have been vanquished to the dustbin of history. According to her, scientific explanations now rule the day.</p><div>Given Alithea’s job as an expert on the art of storytelling, this declaration is a surprise. Shouldn’t she at least take some professional pride in the enduring power of ancient myth? Or maybe it’s that, as Alithea has grown older, these just-so stories have lost their appeal. Has tragedy in Alithea’s life drained the magic from her world?</div><div><br /></div><div>Miller and his co-writer/daughter, Augusta Gore, appear to be setting us up for a tale which will pit the rationality of science against the enchantment of the supernatural. So we ready ourselves to have the hard heart of our cynical protagonist softened by an encounter with magical forces. Thankfully, the writers dodge this predictable storyline and, instead, offer us a story in which science and magic become willing collaborators.</div><div><br /></div><div><div>So, when Alithea pries open an antique glass bottle purchased at the Istanbul bazaar releasing Djinn (Idris Elba), she is startled, but, surprisingly, not at all disbelieving. Alithea is not so much concerned that she may be losing her mind when Djinn appears as she is that she will, like a sucker, fall victim to his plea for her to get on with the business of making her three wishes. From experience as a scholar of storytelling, Alithea knows that giving in to this temptation will inevitably lead to a less than happy outcome, no matter how carefully she formulates the statement of her desires.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><div>In order to dissolve Alithea’s skepticism, Djinn launches into his three-thousand-year story as a prisoner of an assortment of lamps and flasks. He describes how he came to be “incarcerated” the first time - by King Solomon, no less - as well as the relationships he has had with the mortals who liberated him after that. In the process, we discover that Djinn desperately longs for lasting freedom, and we also learn that he is capable of deep human attachments. Significantly, for our purposes, it is also revealed that Djinn is a being who is made up of electromagnetic waves. In other words,he is a creature of pure light.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><div>Soon after, the role that light will play in the film is underscored by a set of text panels that flash across the screen briefly. This mini powerpoint presentation telegraphs a schematic history of Djinn’s universe which begins with a burst of electromagnetic waves - let there be light! - and culminates with the emergence of biological compounds and then, presumably, Darwinian evolution. It appears that, whatever Djinn’s status as a supernatural being is, he sees himself as a participant in a world of natural phenomena. Far from being at odds with one another, in this view of the world science and magic are companionable fellow travelers.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><div>But “3,000 Years” is not done with light yet. As Djinn tells his story, we learn that his most recent liberation, sometime in the nineteenth century it appears, was at the hands of Zefir, the young wife of a Turkish merchant. With a nod to “Faust,” Zefir wishes for all the knowledge in the world. What we see flashing across the screen as a result of her request is a high-speed montage of Zefir devouring book after book supplied by Djinn which contain the scientific findings of the age. </div></div><div><br /></div><div><div>Usually the graphics presented in such a montage are a mess of mathematical nonsense, a lot of random expressions yanked from a high school algebra text. But the equations that appear in the books that Zefir pours over are, in this case, the real deal. They faithfully retrace the development of the theory of electromagnetism that got underway with Michael Faraday’s experiments in the 1830s in London and culminated in the early 1860 with Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell’s unification of electrical and magnetic phenomena. Maxwell’s equations, as his system came to be called, was the first unified field theory of modern physics.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><div>This sequence presents us with a tantalizing ambiguity: is Zefir simply reconstructing discoveries reported by contemporary researchers in the books Djinn has provided, or has she, in a stroke of genius, developed a theory of electromagnetic waves all on her own, beating the esteemed Maxwell to the punch? Maybe the famous handful of equations should rightfully be called Zefir’s equations?</div></div><div><br /></div><div><div>This backstory having to do with the phenomena of electricity and magnetism continues into the final act of the film when Alithea returns to London with Djinn as her companion. Creature of light that he is, Djinn is acutely sensitive to the electromagnetic radiation that impinges on him. In fact, he is so overwhelmed by the ocean of radio waves, Wi-Fi, and wireless signals that he starts to become ill. (Admittedly, present-day Istanbul, the technological metropolis that it is, should have presented Djinn with similar problems.) Although he manages to maintain his composure in the face of this electromagnetic assault, it slowly begins taking a toll on his well-being.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>At the beginning of the film Alithea telegraphs that a science vs. superstition confrontation may be in the offing. And, yes, Djinn’s composition as a creature of light, along with the electromagnetic origins of the universe, is clearly stated. Yet no review of the film that I’ve read takes note of these facts. In addition, the montage of mathematics including Maxwell’s equations streams by so quickly that it takes a trained eye - at least an eye that has been exposed to an intermediate undergraduate course in electricity and magnetism - to make sense of it. Somehow, though, I doubt that physicists were the intended audience for the film.</div><div><br /></div><div><div>A possible explanation is that the writers inserted the Easter eggs having to do with electromagnetism as a message in a bottle of sorts into the encasing tale of Alithea and Djinn. And it could be that they expected the occasional viewer, like me, would pick up this bottle and rub it hard enough to have its hidden message revealed. If that is the case, then I count myself as lucky to have happened across “3,000 Years” and to discover, unexpectedly, the science story inside. Being a science nerd, a wish of mine was indeed granted.</div></div>Marc Merlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01946231992925684244noreply@blogger.com0Atlanta, GA, USA33.7489954 -84.38798245.4387615638211528 -119.5442324 62.059229236178844 -49.2317324tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5588126970544264673.post-12281203759207209902021-06-07T10:39:00.001-04:002021-06-07T10:39:21.706-04:00Adding injury to insult: the negative public health implications of Republican-sponsored voter-suppression laws<p><span face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are all sorts of reasons being offered for opposing the GOP-sponsored restrictive voting legislation being enacted around the country in states like Georgia and Texas. Most of them have to do with the fact that these measures, contrary to the claims of their authors, are intended to limit access to the polls by eligible voters, in particular by voters of color. The anti-democratic intent of these laws is clear; they are little more than a sour-grapes expression by Republicans for having lost the 2020 elections fair and square and a desperate attempt to not do so again.</span></p><span face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;">But little is being said about another important reason to stand against these new voting measures that aim to thwart mail-in voting, either by making getting a absentee ballots harder to get or by reducing the number of drop boxes to which to return them, or by limiting early-voting options which distribute the otherwise large pulse of election-day voters over an extended period of time. That reason is that these voter suppression laws will also put public health at greater risk.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" /><span face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;">As much as we'd like to believe that the COVID-19 pandemic is a one-off event, hopefully one we will be able place behind us soon, the fact of the matter is that it will more than likely mark the first in a series of pandemics that we will have to confront this century. This is due in part to the fact that habitat loss, either as a result of encroachment by expanding urban areas or environmental degradation, will bring wild animal populations in closer proximity to humans. The chances of the occurrence of zoonotic disease, an infection that jumps from an animal to a human, becomes more and probable. And the increasingly connected global transportation system ensures that any such spillover will spread as far and as quickly as possible.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" /><span face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;">We dodged the other coronavirus bullets of SARS in 2003 and MERS in 2012 which had originated in non-human animals. And, even if it turns out that COVID-19's intrusion into the human population resulted from a laboratory accident and not direct animal to human transmission, we should in no way breathe a sigh of relief. These pathogens are coming for us. When they do, they may take the form of a more virulent version of the common cold, as has COVID-19, or a more deadly strain of the seasonal flu. In this regard, an H5N1 variant of influenza, the so-called avian flu, has been on our pandemic radar for years. It really is only a matter of time.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" /><span face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;">The emergence of a novel coronavirus in China in late 2019 and its rapid spread to other parts of the world served to remind us that these kind of pandemics can arise unexpectedly. In the case of COVID-19, its U.S. debut coincided with the run-up to the 2020 primary election season. It is useful to remember that, in a time before the virus became a political hot potato, election officials began taking steps to reduce the infection risk to voters in their respective jurisdictions. These steps were viewed as prudent public health measures plain and simple.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" /><span face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Notably, Republican Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger took quick action to distribute absentee (a.k.a mail-in) ballot applications to all registered voters and wisely deferred primary election dates to better get a handle on how to operate in-person voting in the midst of a pandemic. Raffensperger, in spite of the fact that he had always been aligned with elements of the state's GOP-dominated government in their efforts to limit access to voting, recognized that the grave responsibility of reducing the impact of COVID-19 on Georgians going to the polls was in his hands.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" /><span face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;">And Secretary Raffensperger was not alone in this recognition; his counterparts in both red and blue states implemented similar measures, such as allowing for no-excuse absentee ballots and increasing the number and geographical distribution of drop-boxes where they could be returned. To the extent possible, especially given the short notice, these actions reduced the health risks to voters around the country who wanted to do their civic duty by participating in all phases of the 2020 election cycle. As dozens of legal challenges would reveal later that year, these voting changes were made without degrading the integrity electoral process one iota.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" /><span face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, when all was said and done, as the last of the 2020 elections trickled into early 2021 with the Georgia runoffs for U.S. Senate, many states had accomplished the unexpected: they had made voting both more accessible and safer from a public health standpoint. It will be a head-scratcher for future historians who will ponder why such significant electoral achievements were dismantled almost immediately after their unalloyed success had been widely demonstrated.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" /><span face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Well, I guess they won't be scratching their heads about what motivated the Republican Party to turn back expansion of voter access. Due to cultural and demographic shifts in the electorate, the survival of that party has come to depend on anti-democratic measures like political gerrymandering and creating obstacles to voting by people of color. So there won't be much puzzle to the upside the GOP saw in rescinding pandemic voting procedures to renew established efforts at voter suppression.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" /><span face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;">What future historians will find puzzling is that the public health advantages that resulted from expanded absentee- and early-voting were so soon abandoned, especially since there would be a scramble to reimplement them when the next pandemic - and there would be a next pandemic - coincided with an election cycle. At a time when state officials and legislatures should have been working to refine and standardize approaches to voting that takes public health into account, they were instead preoccupied with dismantling the small advances they had made in this regard.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" /><span face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you think that we reap benefits from socially-distanced approaches to voting only in the midst of a pandemic, you may want to think again. Although the Founding Fathers may have been visionary in many regards, ignorant of the germ theory of disease, they could not have contemplated that gathering large numbers of people to vote in enclosed spaces for an extended period of time in early November was a very bad idea from a public health perspective. It is the height of flu season, a reality that will likely stay with us for years until a universal influenza vaccine is fielded and widely administered.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" /><span face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;">The seasonal flu is responsible for 10,000 - 60,000 deaths in this country every year, not to mention many tens of thousands of more cases of serious illness and the hospitalizations that result from them. Its most vulnerable target is seniors, who turn out to be not only a segment of the population who vote in disproportionately large numbers but who also traditionally provide the lion's share of the army of volunteers that make in-person voting possible. Socially distanced voting measures will not only reduce the disease burden shouldered by the elderly but also by other vulnerable populations.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" /><span face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Admittedly, given the numerous state party primaries and runoffs, elections in the country are held at a variety of times of year well outside of flu season. But, as the COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated, you don't need cold weather to encourage the spread airborne diseases. Indeed, the prevalence of respiratory illnesses in the fall and winter have less to do with the temperature itself and more to do with the fact that cold weather tends to drive people indoors. Why give these diseases a foothold anytime of the year by forcing vulnerable people into polling places unnecessarily?</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" /><span face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yes, it should be enough to retain or even extend expanded mail-in and early voting options as a matter of increasing participation in our elections at all levels and all times of the year. In spite of a small number of isolated incidents of voter fraud, as dozens of legal challenges have indicated, the 2020 elections have been the most secure and the most transparent in this country's history.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;" /><span face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 16px; font-variant-ligatures: none; letter-spacing: 0.1px; white-space: pre-wrap;">The bottom line is that recently enacted voter suppression legislation is the wrong way to go. Rolling back the very measures that made voting safer during the 2020 COVID pandemic is ill-advised according to public health considerations. It is these regressive laws that should themselves be rescinded to ensure that our electoral process is not only fair but also healthy.</span>Marc Merlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01946231992925684244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5588126970544264673.post-42486599904536942242019-10-26T11:25:00.000-04:002019-10-26T11:26:52.497-04:00Honoring Elijah Cummings by not repeating a mistake made at the 2016 Democratic National Convention<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KYa9EtDRJig/XbRjnYm58lI/AAAAAAABvc4/zWHGiAN40nUgj19id5opC-nEe1ylzy7ZQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Elijah%2BCummings%2Bat%2Bthe%2B2016%2BDemocratic%2BNational%2BConvention.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="786" data-original-width="1301" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KYa9EtDRJig/XbRjnYm58lI/AAAAAAABvc4/zWHGiAN40nUgj19id5opC-nEe1ylzy7ZQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/Elijah%2BCummings%2Bat%2Bthe%2B2016%2BDemocratic%2BNational%2BConvention.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
I think it's fitting on the day that the great civil rights and congressional leader Elijah Cummings is laid to rest to take a look back at the disrespect he endured giving an opening speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Reflection on this cautionary tale is critical because failure to take what happened then into account at next year's convention could very well mean a continuation of the political nightmare we have been experiencing for the last three years.<br />
<br />
The setup for this <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy15RcfOI1A" target="_blank">video</a> is pretty simple. It was July 25, Day 1 of the 2016 convention. The opening speeches, as always, were intended to strike unifying themes, the kind of things upon which it was imagined all Democrats could agree.<br />
<br />
Accordingly, Representative Cummings had prepared a speech that emphasized the the need to address environmental concerns, including global warming, while creating jobs and maintaining U.S. global economic competitiveness; the related need to provide American children with a first-class education to accomplish this economic goal; the need to protect women's access to reproductive health services; and the need to secure and extend the access to healthcare that had been made possible by President Obama's Affordable Care Act.<br />
<br />
What's not to like, right?<br />
<br />
Well, it wasn't easy going for Representative Cummings. From the get-go he had to contend with resounding shouts of "Stop TPP" from the crowd, in particular from a cadre of very vocal Bernie bros. The shouts were so loud that they made his remarks impossible to hear in the conventional hall itself. The audio feed from speaker's microphone is what saved Cumming's speech from being lost to history and internet streaming.<br />
<br />
I recall this situation first hand. I had tuned in to listen to the opening day speeches because I knew that Stacey Abrams was scheduled to be making her first appearance on the national stage. I was already a big fan of Leader Abrams, as she is called, and wanted to witness what I believed would be a historical moment in her political career, one that a good year before the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial campaign that would make her a Democratic superstar. The shouting infiltrated her later appearance as well.<br />
<br />
I remember sharing Representative Cumming's frustration as he tried to do his assigned duty by calling Democrats together to recognize, in spite of their differences, the many things that united them in common cause. And I shared in his disappointment that his important message was drowned out by those who had much more narrowly focused agendas.<br />
<br />
Of course, it's hard to argue with true-believers of any stripe, those people who would see a promising party platform dashed to pieces unless it included a particular plank of their own insistence. Besides, as many thought at the time, the presidential election was in the bag, so why not take the opportunity to make a lot of noise about TPP, especially given how poorly the Democratic establishment had treated then upstart contender Bernie Sanders. What harm could it possibly cause?<br />
<br />
One of the great ironies of this situation is that, as far as my informal survey would indicate, very few people now even remember what the initials TPP stand for. It's Trans-Pacific Partnership, by the way; a trade deal approved by President Obama and backed by candidate Hillary Clinton which was anathema to Democrats who saw it, understandably, as yet another big concession to multinational corporations to the disadvantage of American consumers and working people.<br />
<br />
However important an issue TPP was at the time, it is recalled now as a vague skirmish in a fratricidal, intra-party conflict which preceded a war that Donald Trump and the Republicans would win three months later. I should add that shouts of Stop TPP will forever remind me of the unwarranted disrespect shown to the great Elijah Cummings, a man who had committed decades of his life to improving the lot of his party and the American people.<br />
<br />
I hope that the salience of this video from July 2016 to our particular political moment is not lost. I fear that history could very well repeat itself as some notable, perhaps long-serving, well-respected Democratic leader like Elijah Cummings tries to offer a unifying message at the 2020 Democratic National convention. My genuine expectation is that person will drowned out with shouts of one sort or the other. My money is on "Medicare for all" as the deafening shout if, say, Joe Biden or Pete Buttigieg is the nominee apparent, but I imagine that there is a chant available for every variation of Democratic presidential primary outcome.<br />
<br />
Whatever slogan the crowd is shouting in July 2020, what they won't be hearing - or allowing others in the hall to hear - is the list of things that the opening speakers are enumerating that unite us.<br />
<br />
These will include, but not limited to: securing and extending current access to healthcare; reestablishing and defending women's right to reproductive health services; recognizing and safeguarding the rights of LGBTQ citizens in the workplace and in our society at large; restoring the EPA to former glory with a commitment to keeping our air and water clean; rejoining the Paris Climate Accords; returning our country to a progressive tax policy designed to narrow the growing chasm of wealth that separates the very rich from the middle class and the poor in this country; preserving our national wilderness for future generations to enjoy; and addressing and correcting the crimes being committed against people of color not only on our borders but also in our own communities. The list goes on.<br />
<br />
It would seem to me that one of the most significant ways we could honor the memory the late Elijah Cummings is to remember this stain on the 2016 Democratic National Convention and vow to not let it happen again next summer. Whatever single issues inspire us, in the final analysis we need to keep focused on the constellation of concerns that bring us together. By insisting defiantly on any one thing, we risk - once again - the possibility of losing them all.Marc Merlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01946231992925684244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5588126970544264673.post-50012160486002209712019-05-30T08:33:00.000-04:002019-05-30T08:35:42.511-04:00An FAQ: Why the House should move forward with the impeachment of Donald J. TrumpMy mind is made up. I think that the U.S. House of Representatives should move forward with the impeachment of President Donald J. Trump. Instead of writing a long argument which no one will read, I thought I would cast my position as a long and thinly-disguised FAQ. So here goes.<br />
<br />
<b>Q: Isn’t impeaching Trump by the House, absent the chance of conviction on the Senate, just playing into his hands? Won’t he use a failed impeachment to mobilize his base even more in 2020?</b><br />
<br />
This kind of idle speculation is brought to you by the same folks who like to get Democrats to agonize over the “electability” of their competing presidential candidates. These are the very same pundits who opined in 2015 that Jeb Bush had a lock on the Republican presidential nomination and declared that nominating Trump in 2016 would lead to the GOP’s imminent downfall as well as their embarrassing rout in the general election.<br />
<br />
The fact of the matter is that no one knows how impeachment of Trump by the House will play out. A lot depends on how the impeachment proceedings unfold and what the related investigations reveal. To make confident predictions about this process is an act of intellectual hubris. Also, I think it’s downright silly to imagine that Trump’s base could get anymore mobilized. They are full-time, Fox-News-fueled, nut-job mobilized as it is.<br />
<br />
In addition, few commentators appear to be considering just how mobilized the Democrats might become as a result of Trump's impeachment. Sure, they're pretty pumped up coming off a very effective mobilization that led them to victory in last year’s midterm elections, but I don’t think they are anywhere near peaking. Besides, with two dozen candidates vying for the top of the Democratic ticket in 2020, the moral clarity that could result from a thorough investigation of the high crimes and misdemeanors of Donald Trump, may just what will be needed to unite a fractured party on the run-up to the general election.<br />
<br />
There is one other component to my political analysis that recommends pursuing impeachment. And that is it will upset DJT to no end, day in and day out, for the better part of the next year. And, lest you think that I am motivated solely by wanting to see Trump suffer as some compensense for what he has put us all through these last couple of years, I point out that a fuming Trump has turned out to be a fumbling Trump.<br />
<br />
Yes, what has gotten us to this critical point in this sad tale of presidential misdeeds, was not the original charter of the Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation itself, it was the way that original charter resulted in Donald Trump’s becoming so unhinged that he committed serial acts of obstruction of justice. (In sports parlance, I believe that these are called “forced errors.”) If you think Robert Mueller's investigation sent Donald Trump off the deep end, imagine what a months-long, 24/7 impeachment inquiry will do. Besides, if recent experience is any guide, Trump is likely to commit new crimes that can serve as more impeachment fodder should he somehow be reelected next year.<br />
<br />
<b>Q: Isn’t the sole purpose of impeachment by the House the real prospect of removing the president from office as a result of conviction in the Senate? Does it make any sense to forward articles of impeachment to the Senate when it's pretty much given, at least with the information we have in hand now, that Trump will be acquitted there?</b><br />
<br />
Although impeachment by the House was viewed by the framers of the constitution as the first step in a two-step process of removing a corrupt president from office, there is nothing that speaks to that being its sole purpose. The House’s job isn’t to determine whether an impeachment will succeed, its job is to act as a guardian of the American democratic system of government by uncovering and documenting crimes and misdemeanors committed by the highest office holders in the land and forwarding those determinations to the Senate for their consideration in full public view.<br />
<br />
My last qualification, in full public view, emphasizes a central purpose of the impeachment process. The House, using investigative powers granted only to it, lays out a case that the president has committed inexcusable wrongs. Its responsibility is to make that case convincingly, not only to clarify the situation to contemporary audiences, but also to set the historical record straight. Only the House can do this.<br />
<br />
And, although it is the case with impeachment that the House proposes and the Senate disposes, I can think of no better way of documenting the moral and political failure of a craven Republican Senate than by having them dismiss the weight of the evidence brought before them by their colleagues in the lower chamber. Another way of saying this is that House is bound to proceed with a stillborn impeachment, if only to underscore the cowardice the Senate has demonstrated the last two years.<br />
<br />
<b>Q: Well, even if further congressional investigations of Donald Trump are a good idea, why do they have to be conducted under the rubric of impeachment? Isn’t it sufficient to have the various House committee investigations (e.g. Intelligence Committee, Oversight Committee) move forward? Won’t they eventually have the same effect as an impeachment investigation without all the hullabaloo?</b><br />
<br />
In a more perfect world - one where the executive branch was responsive to congressional requests for information and complied with congressional subpoenas - the answers to these questions would be “yes.” But we don’t live in such a world. Far from it, we live in a world whether the President of the United States has vowed to refuse to cooperate with all investigations initiated by the U.S. House of Representatives.<br />
<br />
And how these disputes between the legislative and executive branches are worked out in the federal courts will ultimately tell the tale of this corrupt administration. Depending on whether those investigations originate in, say, the House Ways and Means Committee which is seeking Donald Trump’s tax returns from the Department of the Treasury or from a committee tasked with investigating Donald Trump’s impeachment makes all the difference.<br />
<br />
The reason behind this difference has to do with the authority that Congress relies on in pursuing its investigations. When committees like the Ways and Means Committee undertake an investigation it has to be done in order to make laws, in other words it has to have a legislative purpose. This is the legislative authority granted to the Congress by Article I, Section I of the constitution.<br />
<br />
Not surprisingly, objections to such committee-initiated investigations often emanate from claims that the requested information serves no legislative purpose. This is exactly what has happened with the request by Ways and Means for Trump’s tax returns. Secretary of the Treasury Mnuchin contends that the request - even though it conforms with the letter of the law - is intended only to harass the president and has no legislative value. Although the committee has responded with identifiable legislative objectives associated with its request, the case will have to work its way through an appeals process which could take months or years to resolve. The same is true of other committee subpoenas, although they may thwarted by other legal claims, notably exemption due to executive privilege.<br />
<br />
But things change qualitatively when the House investigation is being conducted as an impeachment inquiry. According to Article I, Section 2, Clause 5 of the Constitution:<br />
<br />
“The House of Representatives shall choose their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.”<br />
<br />
This power of impeachment exists outside of any legislative authority granted to the House in Article I, Section I and is so not subject to legislative-purpose scrutiny. The operative word in Clause 5 is “sole,” which indicates that the power of impeachment - and, by extension, necessary impeachment investigations - are exercised at the discretion of the House alone. Although this does not circumvent all federal court challenges raised by the executive branch to subpoenas issued as a result of an impeachment inquiry, it should expedite the consideration of any cases that arise as a result.<br />
<br />
All said, the investigative power of a House impeachment inquiry, unlike that of legislative committee counterparts, is largely unconstrained. When you recall that the House is tasked with the impeachment of corrupt officials, the very people who would avoid investigation, this makes a lot of sense.<br />
<br />
So here’s it is in a nutshell, my argument for the House moving forward with impeachment:<br />
<br />
(1) Determining the political consequences of a failed impeachment of Donald Trump is a pundit's guessing game; the only thing I can say with any certainty is that the process will keep Trump rattled and making political mistakes for the foreseeable future, which I take to be a good thing.<br />
<br />
(2) Even a stillborn impeachment will have the desired effect of launching an investigation which further documents the crimes of this president and of his administration for historical purposes; this record can be used to help lawmakers determine how to protect our democracy from such abuses in the future.<br />
<br />
(3) Investigations by standing House committees are subject to challenges concerning the validity of their legislative purposes; a House impeachment inquiry, once constituted, will have much freer rein in subpoenaing essential information thus expediting a legal process that could otherwise take months or years.Marc Merlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01946231992925684244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5588126970544264673.post-31136231226763515252019-05-20T08:52:00.000-04:002019-05-20T08:52:15.946-04:00It's all in the timing: a tale of two detonations<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wHjxEhY6wFE/XOKiRjNJvWI/AAAAAAABsV0/TV0vreINP60_aNx_Ih1kTEH2-7uV8Ua5QCLcBGAs/s1600/The%2BAthens%2Bdouble-barrelled%2Bcannon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wHjxEhY6wFE/XOKiRjNJvWI/AAAAAAABsV0/TV0vreINP60_aNx_Ih1kTEH2-7uV8Ua5QCLcBGAs/s400/The%2BAthens%2Bdouble-barrelled%2Bcannon.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Athens Double-Barrelled Cannon</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
You might think that this double-barrelled cannon sitting next to City Hall in Athens, Georgia could be prop in some sort of misguided Civil War comedy. And, if you did, you wouldn’t be far from right. According to a plaque nearby, the cannon, the only one of its kind, was the brainchild of a Mr. John Gilleland, a private in the “Mitchell Thunderbolts,” an elite “home guard” unit of business and professional men ineligible because of age or disability for service in the Confederate army. Here I use the the words “brainchild” and “elite” quite loosely.<br />
<br />
The double-barrel design was intended to fire simultaneously two balls connected by a chain which would “mow down the enemy somewhat as a scythe cuts wheat.” It failed for lack of a means of firing both barrels at the exact same instant. Apparently, “the lack of precise simultaneity caused uneven explosion of the propelling charges, which snapped the chain and gave each ball an erratic and unpredictable trajectory.”<br />
<br />
My first reaction to reading this story of this unusual weapon was, “well, duh!” I ran the numbers in my head, first estimating that the velocity of a ball leaving the muzzle of a cannon was on the order of a a thousand feet per second. This meant that if the two detonations occurred even a millisecond apart, the balls would be separated by a foot when exiting the mouth of the cannon, and that separation would increase by an additional foot for each additional millisecond difference in the timing of the detonations. It’s no wonder the chain broke<br />
<br />
It’s hard to imagine how 1860s technology, utilizing sputtering fuses and hand-packed gun power, could achieve such precise simultaneous detonations. It’s also hard for me to imagine how the “elite” men of the Mitchell Thunderbolts failed to do the simple arithmetic required to determine the feasibility of their ambitious Yankee-killer.<br />
<br />
Oddly enough, this misadventure in weapons development brought to mind a more recent development in military technology that faced a timing challenge far more daunting than the one that faced the Mitchell Thunderbolts. Fast forward only eighty years, and a genuinely elite international team of scientists and engineers found themselves engaged in the development of the first atomic bombs as part of the American Manhattan Project.<br />
<br />
Most popular discussion of the technological hurdles faced by J. Robert Oppenheimer and his crew based at Los Alamos centers on the difficulties in creating the necessary amounts of enriched uranium and plutonium to serve as the cores of the fission bombs they wanted to build. But there were other formidable problems, including some having to do with then as yet uninvented electronics.<br />
<br />
In particular, design for one of the first two bombs, dubbed Fatman, employed a spherical plutonium core and required that it be compressed by an implosion that would squeeze that core to the critical density needed to initiate the sustained chain reaction that would result in the desired nuclear detonation. To accomplish this, the small plutonium core was nestled in a spherical structure whose outer layer was formed of facets of very powerful chemical explosives. For this arrangement to work, these facets — or lenses as they were called — had themselves to be detonated within a microsecond of each other.<br />
<br />
Failure to achieve this kind of “precise simultaneity,” to borrow words from the Athens double-barreled cannon plaque, would lead to an “uneven explosion of the propelling charges.” In the case of Fatman, this would mean that the plutonium core would not be compressed uniformly to the required density and, as a result, the necessary chain reaction would be muted or, perhaps, not occur at all.<br />
<br />
As we know from history, whether for good or ill is a matter still hotly disputed in some quarters, the Manhattan Project team succeeded in achieving the exquisite timing required for an implosion bomb.The 40,000–80,000 deaths in 1945 resulting from the detonation of such a device above the city of Nagasaki, Japan on August 9 of that year serve as lasting reminder of their tragic success.<br />
<br />
In closing, it is interesting to note that the Athens-area Confederates failed attempt at constructing a weapon of enhanced destruction resulted in a public “object of curiosity.” More telling, as it says on the plaque, the double-barrelled cannon “performed sturdy service for many years in celebrating political victories.” Somehow the cruel madness of the Jim Crow South saw this ill-conceived cannon as something to be proud of. Go figure.<br />
<br />
I can only hope that one day our own more successful weapons of mass destruction will be stripped on their nuclear cores and their husks distributed to city halls far and wide as objects of curiosity where they can perform sturdy service celebrating the victory of those fighting for complete nuclear disarmament.Marc Merlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01946231992925684244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5588126970544264673.post-38648565714726015342019-05-14T14:30:00.000-04:002019-05-15T12:58:05.818-04:00Trump running out the clock on Congressional subpoenas: why the Supreme Court is of little help to resolve it anytime soon<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOgHttJEQhV4PkKdiS2_cxVkquMpKEWUOoZT8JAHkv5vGDZvwt5r0u9_vTpXBEQaF8tMTQLCXKsSzqJ_KRF8dDFtMZ8Es0gkBE4bpmtX-P1n3SPDK825SyTww-dcyHBDXjYjTajztre7g2/s1600/Federalist+Papers+title+page.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="399" data-original-width="709" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOgHttJEQhV4PkKdiS2_cxVkquMpKEWUOoZT8JAHkv5vGDZvwt5r0u9_vTpXBEQaF8tMTQLCXKsSzqJ_KRF8dDFtMZ8Es0gkBE4bpmtX-P1n3SPDK825SyTww-dcyHBDXjYjTajztre7g2/s400/Federalist+Papers+title+page.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
As I have discussed elsewhere, one constructive side-effect of the Donald Trump administration and its abundance of deliberately orchestrated constitutional crises has been to get me to reflect on what that document says and how it works to resolve or, more aptly, to fail to resolve the aforementioned crises.<br />
<br />
The latest of these challenges to the constitutional order has to do with the president's decision to not comply with several subpoenas issued by the U.S. House of Representatives. The first of note results from the House Ways and Means Committee demanding Trump's recent tax returns from Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin. The second, emerging from investigations by the House Intelligence Committee, requires Attorney General William Barr to turn over the unredacted Mueller report. There are others.<br />
<br />
To the extent that these disputes between the executive and the legislative branches constitute constitutional crises, a question begs be asked, "why can't these be resolved quickly with a Supreme Court decision?" Instead, we are faced with months-, perhaps years-long, litigation in the federal courts before any related case arrives at the SCOTUS doorstep. How did such an inefficient approach to a much-touted system of checks and balances come to be standard operation procedure for the federal government?<br />
<br />
The first level of explanation lies in Article III, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution which defines the "original jurisdiction" of the Supreme Court. Original jurisdiction, meaning the kind of cases that can go directly to the court, are pretty restricted. They are mostly limited to seldom employed disputes between representatives of foreign governments (e.g. ambassadors) and the United States and between the states themselves, the latter representing the lion's share of these original cases.<br />
<br />
But wait, you might ask scratching your heads - as I did - why aren't disputes between the court's "co-equal" branches of government, namely between Congress and the president, included in cases that could go directly to the Supreme Court? The answer has to do with a deeper reading of Article III and the thinking that went into constructing it. It also has to do with a lie we continue to tell ourselves about the visionary system of checks and balances crafted by our constitutional founding fathers.<br />
<br />
The lie emanates from the fact that, in many respects, the judicial branch of our government wasn't construed at first as being a co-equal branch of government at all. Indeed, Alexander Hamilton spends a fair amount of ink in Federalist Paper 81 assuring opponents of the yet-to-be-ratified constitution that the Supreme Court proposed in it would possess limited in power. He asserts that its original jurisdiction would be circumscribed, as I described above. In addition, Hamilton even goes so far as to say "there is not a syllable in the plan under consideration which DIRECTLY empowers the national courts to construe the laws according to the spirit of the Constitution." This latter claim may come as a shock to modern ears, as it should.<br />
<br />
We tend to forget that Hamilton was making his case for the Supreme Court in response to anti-federalists who didn't want to see the creation of a separate judicial branch of government at all. They felt, as many others did at the time, that the legislature was the primary branch of government since it was most representative of the will of the people. (That's why it's positioned front and center as Article I in the constitution.) They did not want its power usurped by a bench of unelected judges, and they were fearful that these judges would overturn congressional acts at their discretion. Across the pond, Britain seemed to function just fine with a high court residing in the House of Lords, part of their legislature. Hamilton's task was to assuage opponents concerns about the proposed Supreme Court.<br />
<br />
Needless to say, a lot has changed since Hamilton penned Federalist 81. As far as the Supreme Court goes, it only took a handful of years and Chief Justice John Marshall's opinion in the bedrock case of Marbury v. Madison to establish the doctrine of judicial review and so elevate the court toward the co-equal status it enjoys today. Sadly, in the intervening years, the primacy of the legislative branch - the central feature of government as imagined by the framers - has suffered depredations by the self-aggrandizing imperial presidency that we are stuck with today.<br />
<br />
So, even though its currency has risen over the past couple of centuries, the Supreme Court is pretty much saddled with the restrictions of its original jurisdiction. This means that enforcement of congressional subpoenas directed at the administration will have to wind their way through an appeals process that begins in the federal courts. It's possible that these cases will be expedited, but in all likelihood, thanks to the reluctance on the part of the framers to position the judiciary to resolve disputes between Congress and the president, it looks like Donald Trump will be able to run out the clock on matters of accountability that are critical to our democratic form of government. So it goes.Marc Merlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01946231992925684244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5588126970544264673.post-77582953741023150652019-04-23T09:46:00.001-04:002019-04-23T09:46:47.270-04:00The better angels of Robert Mueller's nature<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidd1d0jNNA8FqyiFMrk7ArfujsrAa8Xik4mOc2zGpQ0OUonm9A_09ePJUJ989qWChNXxvZm0CDAcR4FWUpQpLZvrzse3dGQiu7tzGgTthmxBMrRzyWli0J5davtwF9ENlpwrxYM0hDXgVc/s1600/Robert+Mueller.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidd1d0jNNA8FqyiFMrk7ArfujsrAa8Xik4mOc2zGpQ0OUonm9A_09ePJUJ989qWChNXxvZm0CDAcR4FWUpQpLZvrzse3dGQiu7tzGgTthmxBMrRzyWli0J5davtwF9ENlpwrxYM0hDXgVc/s200/Robert+Mueller.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
As I scoured the Mueller Report the past couple of days for yet more evidence of presidential crimes, I found myself in the position of uncovering evidence of an unexpected glimmer of human virtue. And what struck me at first as just an interesting nuance to a complicated legal discussion now appears to me to be the pivot around which the morality tale of the entire story of the Trump administration turns.<br />
<br />
To put things in context, we have been aware since the days of Watergate that the legal question of indicting a sitting president — and by that I mean bringing formal criminal charges — is fraught. In fact, according to Justice Department guidelines, such an indictment isn’t permitted because it would undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions. Robert Mueller, a by-the-book kind of prosecutor if there ever was one, hewed to this established policy while formulating the results of his almost two-year long investigation into Russian meddling in our 2016 presidential election.<br />
<br />
This tale of non-indictability is the beginning and end of the story in most of the news coverage of why Mueller chose not to charge President Trump with obstruction of justice for his interference with an ongoing federal investigation. But there is more to it than that.<br />
<br />
Some coverage does go further and points out that Robert Mueller takes the opportunity in his report to refute the theory — championed by Attorney General William Barr and others — that it is indeed legally impossible for the president of the United States to obstruct justice. Good for him.<br />
<br />
Barr’s expansive reading of executive power ignores the role that “corrupt intent” plays in determining the criminality of a presidential act. If such a twisted doctrine were upheld, it would permit, say, the president to trade get-out-of-jail pardons for cash on the barrelhead. Such a reading of the constitution, one which places any president above the law, is little more than a prescription for tyranny.<br />
<br />
But Robert Mueller goes beyond simply adhering to Justice Department regulations concerning indictments and beyond refuting Barr’s dangerous constitutional interpretation of executive power in his treatment of the question of obstruction of justice. He could have, if had wanted to, included an opinion that the president had committed obstruction of justice even while he refrained from issuing a criminal indictment. This threading-the-needle is the path that many Trump opponents had hoped for. It was certainly at the top of my list.<br />
<br />
So why did Mueller choose to hedge his bets and take this ambiguous path? The answer in one word is “fairness.” As the Mueller explains on page 2 of volume 2 of his report: “Fairness concerns counseled against potentially reaching that judgment when no charges can be brought.”<br />
<br />
And why would it be unfair to make claims of criminal behavior absent the ability to bring formal charges? Mueller continues,<br />
<br />
“[t]he ordinary means for an individual to respond to an accusation is through a speedy and public trial, with all the procedural protections that surround a criminal case. An individual who believes he was wrongly accused can use that process to seek to clear his name. In contrast, a prosecutor’s judgment that crimes were committed, but that no charges will be brought, affords no such adversarial opportunity for public name-clearing before an impartial adjudicator. “<br />
<br />
In other words, in this analysis, although the protection of the president from criminal indictment serves the <i>constitutional </i>purpose of allowing the executive branch to operate free from the inevitable legal entanglement that it would imply, it is, at least in Mueller’s mind, a <i>personal </i>disadvantage for the president in these circumstances.<br />
<br />
Take a moment and let that sink in: Robert Mueller believes that freedom from criminal indictment can, at times, be a personal liability since it makes it impossible to defends one’s reputation against damaging charges in open court. In Mueller’s opinion, charging the president in the report, but not through due legal process, would subvert the president’s right to his clear his name of accusations leveled against him.<br />
<br />
So, ultimately, the Special Counsel’s decision not to declare the president’s efforts at obstruction as crimes had to do with Mueller’s commitment to fairplay and to the ability of someone under legal scrutiny to defend his reputation. This was not a conclusion I expected.<br />
<br />
There are two glaring ironies at play here. The first has to do with the fact that Robert Mueller appears to be more dedicated to Donald Trump’s ability to protect his good name than the president himself, at least in practice. It’s hard to think of any living politician more disreputable or anyone holding a position of public office who has conducted himself with such unabashed disregard to standards of moral rectitude.<br />
<br />
The second irony in Mueller’s taking up Trump’s cause in this way is even more disturbing. While Mueller inhabits a civil world of due process in which the right of suspected criminals to defend their reputations must be preserved, Donald Trump lives in a thuggish world of brute power where adversaries are to be spared no quarter and dispatched by any means necessary, including nefarious ones.<br />
<br />
The implication here is startling: Donald Trump has spent the better part of the last 23 months smearing the reputation of Robert Mueller with insults and baseless lies, the very Robert Mueller who, it turns out, was busy making sure that Donald Trump would not have his reputation sullied unfairly. If there is a better example of turning the other cheek in American political history, it escapes me.<br />
<br />
All this said, I’m not exactly sure how I feel about Mueller’s decision not to present clear claims of obstruction of justice in his report even in spite of his inability to indict Trump. Such declarations could have gone a long way toward helping to clarify the ongoing public debate. In addition, a forthright statement of Trump’s criminality could have provided additional impetus to the Congressional investigations underway that could have helped propel them beyond mere impeachment of the president in the House to the possibility of his conviction in the Senate.<br />
<br />
It may very well be that Robert Mueller’s commitment to fairplay has made it more difficult to remove Donald Trump from office before his term is up. But, in any event, it has illuminated for me the central moral question presented by the Trump administration I alluded to at the start.<br />
<br />
We are all witnesses to an unfolding battle which pits an age-old, corrupt form of politics rooted in the exercise of raw power, as exemplified by Donald Trump, against an enlightened political system committed to justice and fairplay, as exemplified by Robert Mueller.<br />
<br />
Although I believe that Mueller’s decision to err on the side of fairness may prove to be a short-term tactical mistake, in the long run I feel that it will be seen as a turning point for distinguishing the mobster politics of Donald Trump from the legitimate exercise of political power based in law. This may very well be what, in Lincoln’s words, the better angels of our nature demand. It appears that Robert Mueller may have heard their call.Marc Merlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01946231992925684244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5588126970544264673.post-9967238552475022402018-07-23T10:34:00.000-04:002018-07-23T10:34:10.123-04:00Someone is responsible for destroying American democracy and, surprise, it's not the RussiansOne of my favorite science movies is Steven Soderbergh's 2011 Contagion. Not only is it smart and riveting, it also features three strong women scientists as its heroes. See the <a href="http://blog.thoughtsarise.com/2011/09/contagion-ode-to-public-health-and.html" target="_blank">short essay</a> I wrote to see why I loved this film.<br />
<br />
For those unfamiliar with it, Contagion - to the extent cinematically practical - realistically portrays the unfolding of a deadly global pandemic and the valiant efforts of scientists around the world to wrestle it to the mat.<br />
<br />
Atlanta's Centers for Disease Control is a setting of the film. (They even participated in its production.) In the story, the director of CDC Dr. Ellis Cheever, played by Laurence Fishburne, is confronted by a U.S. government agent who suspects that the pandemic is the result of terrorists weaponizing the bird flu. To which Cheever responds, "someone doesn't have to weaponize the bird flu.The birds are doing that."<br />
<br />
I like sharing this quote because it applies to so many situations where people jump at dramatic explanations while overlooking the explanations that are staring them right in the face.<br />
<br />
Take for instance the current hue and cry about Russia trying to destroy our democracy. Now, there's little doubt in my mind that Russian agents, under the direction of Vladimir Putin, have committed criminal acts in order to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. Perhaps they're still at work trying to do the same for the upcoming midterms.<br />
<br />
But when it comes to destroying American democracy, I take a cue from the CDC director in Contagion and say, "the Russians don't have to destroy our democracy. The Republicans are already doing that."<br />
<br />
All the havoc wrought by Putin and his gang of twelve indicted GRU agents and their stateside colluders pales in comparison with the damage that has been done over the past decade by the combination of gerrymandering and voter suppression engineered by the GOP and their agents at all levels of government. If the democratic process dies in this country, we will have no one to blame other than the Republican Party.<br />
<br />
The fact of the matter is that much of the Russian threat to our electoral process can be effectively addressed by securing our electoral infrastructure. My guess is that, for less than the cost of a single advanced fighter aircraft, we could put in place the digital defenses necessary to keep Russian - and other - attackers out of our ballot boxes.<br />
<br />
I wish I could say that it was a fraction as easy to address the threat posed to our democratic system by Republicans. We will have to regain control of a number of state houses in order to reverse the gerrymandering already in place. As it stands now, with an increasingly Republican Supreme Court, overturning of the despicable Citizens United decision which elevates the rights of corporations to those of citizens in our electoral process, is a pipedream. And it looks as though hope to turn back GOP voter suppression measures targeting people of color are likewise doomed for the near future.<br />
<br />
So, by all means, let's do the easy stuff that's required to frustrate Russian and other hackers who are trying to mess with our elections. But let's not forget that our greatest enemy when it comes to undermining democracy in this country is the Republican Party. And the only way to defeat their nefarious designs is to beat them soundly at the polls come this November. It could very well be our last chance to do so.Marc Merlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01946231992925684244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5588126970544264673.post-12592332227457474192018-07-20T09:57:00.000-04:002018-07-20T09:57:07.074-04:00Why subpoenaing Trump's interpreter at Helsinki is a bad ideaI'm not a big fan of the doctrine of executive privilege which contends that a president can withhold information resulting from the internal operation of the executive branch of government. Its invocation, as Richard Nixon's effort to suppress the release of the Watergate tapes illustrates, is used more often than not to keep information critical to the functioning of our democracy from seeing the light of day.<br />
<br />
That said, it makes sense to me that presidents should be able to engage in frank, off-the-record, private conversations with individuals, including other world leaders. I believe this because such conversations are an important way for them to explore the range of policy options, some speculative, that are part of good decision-making. Releasing a transcript or compelling testimony by third-parties would have a chilling effect on such discussions.<br />
<br />
Of course, this note has to do with the recent demand that the interpreter present at the private conversation between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Helsinki Monday be subpoenaed by Congress to testify about what she heard. Although a congressional committee could issue such a subpoena, it's hard for me to imagine that it would be upheld by by a federal judge when confronted with assertion of executive privilege for the reasons outlined above.<br />
<br />
Might there be exceptions? Didn't Nixon end up having to release his tapes under threat of a subpoena after all?<br />
<br />
I do think that there are exceptions and that they mostly have to do with demonstration of probable cause that conversation in question was implicated in the commission of a crime. In spite of the clamor about Trump being a traitor, I suspect that the standard of probable cause would be hard to meet in this instance. My guess is that most federal judges - and ultimately the Supreme Court - would see this subpoena as little more than a politically motivated fishing expedition.<br />
<br />
And, in the usual and understandable rush to undercut Donald Trump, we should consider what would be lost if such a subpoena succeeded. Well for starters, as an article in the New York Times today points out (see "Who Heard What Trump Said to Putin? Only One Other American" in the comments), it would compromise the professional ethics of people who serve as interpreters. The likely result being that only political lackeys would be selected do a job that demands the highest level of language expertise.<br />
<br />
More significantly, and something that appears to be lost on Trump opponents who are forever looking for new legal mechanisms to thwart his administration, it opens the door to all conversations between future presidents and world leaders where an interpreter or a notetaker is present being subject to revelation by subpoena.<br />
<br />
For example, would we want President Elizabeth Warren's private discussions with her Chinese counterpart to always be a matter of public record? Do we really want already trigger-happy Republican congressional committee chairs - I'm looking at you Trey Gowdy - turning every trip by a Democratic president abroad into a subpoena battle?<br />
<br />
Finally, although there's absolutely no changing their minds, Republicans are using what they see as politically motivated legal tactics to convince their base that legitimate legal process, like the Mueller investigation, are nothing more than cynical sour grapes on the part of Democratic losers. Calling for the subpoena of Trump's interpreter in Helsinki plays right into their hands.Marc Merlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01946231992925684244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5588126970544264673.post-11796976576647135862018-07-18T15:09:00.000-04:002018-07-18T15:09:43.352-04:00A few cautionary words on behalf of accused Russian agent Mariia Butina<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiygHdnRVZkoVauL8hxkBPuAsoMh5ry4WHG2X49YYdpdGQPClSp6mEHLE-UoNSkdr2EDWUdT3hz8_vhtd5lrTBDQMkGUdth5XS_HTAqluySOFF_jqPlYtu3KllFmOC9sj2ip_EFSzc16S7H/s1600/Mariia+Butina.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="414" data-original-width="992" height="132" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiygHdnRVZkoVauL8hxkBPuAsoMh5ry4WHG2X49YYdpdGQPClSp6mEHLE-UoNSkdr2EDWUdT3hz8_vhtd5lrTBDQMkGUdth5XS_HTAqluySOFF_jqPlYtu3KllFmOC9sj2ip_EFSzc16S7H/s320/Mariia+Butina.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
I rise to speak on behalf of - but necessarily in defense of - Mariia Butina, the Russian political science graduate student now in federal custody, standing accused of having failed to register as an agent of the Russian Federation as well as related conspiracy charges.<br />
<br />
I am motivated less by my belief that Mariia is innocent of the charges levelled against her, than by a desire to push back against the rising tide of 21st-century red-baiting that has enveloped this country. In particular, I am troubled by the fact that the people egging this phenomenon on are blind to the kind of repercussions that may lie in store.<br />
<br />
For those who haven't been keeping up with the details of Mariia's plight, she was arrested Monday for her failure to register as a Russian operative. The activities that she engaged in while failing to register include cozying up to the National Rifle Association in an effort to create a back channel of communications between influential Republicans, notably members of the Trump administration, and Russian counterparts.<br />
<br />
First, it should be noted that creating a back channel of communications, in and of itself, in no way constitutes a crime. In other contexts, it goes by the name "diplomacy." But, if you're working under the direction of a foreign government, as appears to be the case with Mariia, you have to let the U.S. State Department know that that is your plan.<br />
<br />
Of course, this kind of nuance will be lost on the American public, as the words agent and operative used to describe Mariia become interchangeable with spy. Perhaps other charges will be revealed that suggest what she did came closer to what we would label espionage, but, until they do, it's hard for me to see that Butina is guilty of endangering the national security interests of this country in any substantive way.<br />
<br />
I should say, in my own defense here, I am well aware of the political context in which Mariia's indictment and arrest occurred. To me they were a demonstration that the National Security Division of the Justice Department, along with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, had, maybe at Robert Mueller's urging, decided to fight back against Donald Trump's public disdain for U.S. intelligence agencies that he put so cravenly on display during his summit meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin earlier this week. In addition, there may be a possibility that Mariia will "turn" and provide the kind of evidence for collusion that Special Investigator Mueller is looking for.<br />
<br />
So, you might ask, what's the harm? Butina is no ingenue and should have been aware that the job she signed up for with the Russian Federation carried with it some risks. If that's the case, her brazenness with how she conducted communications with her Russian handlers, suggests that she either did not care or had not been properly trained.<br />
<br />
The harm lies not so much with Mariia, although having a young person sentenced to a lengthy term in a federal prison for getting in bed with the NRA hardly strikes me as fair. I would argue that having to attend two National Prayer Breakfasts in the course of her assigned duties here should constitute punishment enough. Frankly, I would prefer the slammer.<br />
<br />
The real harm, just about to be played out in Russia, with the arrest of U.S. graduates students or American representatives of nonprofit organizations working there under the pretext that they are operating as unregistered agents of our government or some similar trumped up charge. Russia hardly needs any encouragement to imprison foreigners working there on behalf of human rights or press freedom and we have just handed them a bushelful.<br />
<br />
If we're lucky, this exchange of pawns in our current geopolitical struggle with Russia will end with a prisoner swap involving Mariia and an American counterpart who is just now about to be arrested in Moscow or St. Petersburg. If we're not lucky, a lot of innocent people will be caught in the crossfire, and the already difficult humanitarian work in Russia will be brought to a screeching halt.<br />
<br />
After all is said and done, although I appreciate the blow against Donald Trump that was intended by the arrest of Mariia Butina, in particular by its timing, I believe, in the greater scheme of things, it will prove to have been misguided, resulting in few tangible political benefits and, perhaps, a number of ruined lives.Marc Merlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01946231992925684244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5588126970544264673.post-50151775792550738922018-06-26T13:02:00.003-04:002018-06-26T13:12:48.783-04:00Punching Nazis and brunching Nazis: what's a resister to do?I weighed in on the debate about whether it was okay to punch Nazis in the face around the time that white supremacist Richard Spencer was cold-cocked while giving a sidewalk speech on the heels of his infamous "Hail, Trump!" moment during the president's inaugural festivities.<br />
<br />
I said <a href="http://blog.thoughtsarise.com/2017/01/to-punch-or-not-to-punch-nazis-here-are.html" target="_blank">then</a>, and I say now, that I thought it was a bad idea to encourage individuals to take the use of violent force into their own hands for any number of reasons. First and foremost was the recognition that force should only be used as a last resort in any situation. Indeed, the use of force should be an overt admission that peaceful remedies have been exhausted.<br />
<br />
So far, the democratic process in this country is still alive, although, admittedly, not entirely well. It's certainly not so debilitated yet that we must turn to some sort of vigilante justice in order to accomplish political change. In spite of gerrymandering and voter suppression, we are still obligated to seek redress through the electoral process.<br />
<br />
What troubled me most about the calls for punching out Nazis wherever one might find them was the utter naivete of the recommendation. The people who would have Nazis and others like them punched imagine that, when struck, they would simply fall to the ground and that will be the end of that. "Yay us," as they say.<br />
<br />
But the reality is that the introduction of the use of force into an already heated situation is often the beginning of an escalating spiral of violence which may lead to a brawl and, if guns are drawn as they very well might in such circumstances, uncontrolled shooting into a crowd. The severe injury or even death of innocent passersby would be the price to pay for encouraging people to demonstrate their outrage with the use of their fists.<br />
<br />
In addition, by implicitly deputizing anyone with a grievance with fascists to punch away, we are allowing that person to determine - only by their lights - who makes for a deserving target and what amount of violence they are permitted to apply in their quest for vigilante justice. Is this something we would really want?<br />
<br />
Ethically speaking, when we advocate for a certain kind of behavior we are responsible for anticipating and weighing likely outcomes when others follow what they believe to be our well-considered advice. Crying out, "collateral damage," as the dust settles doesn't excuse us from responsibility for consequences that could have been easily foreseen and avoided. Blood that results from our encouragement for punching is, at least in part, on our hands.<br />
<br />
This kind of analysis brings me to the consideration of the controversy of the day, the ethical question surrounding the decision not to serve high-level Trump administration officials, such as Sarah Huckabee Sanders, at a restaurant.<br />
<br />
The debate has been labeled one about incivility in public life, but I don't feel that that accurately characterizes all the behaviors under consideration. Perhaps the word does apply to aggressive badgering and in-your-face harassment. They are tantamount to acts of violence in my opinion.<br />
<br />
Here I'd like to focus on the question of whether a personal choice to deny someone a commercial service constitutes uncivil behavior. To ground my position ethically, I would emphasize that I believe that your labor and your services are fundamentally yours to either offer or to withhold as you see fit. Any regard for personal autonomy demands as much.<br />
<br />
(I'll note in passing that denying emergency services to anyone for political reasons would be ethically reprehensible. Suffice it to say, recognizing this, <a href="https://www.icrc.org/eng/war-and-law/protected-persons/prisoners-war/overview-detainees-protected-persons.htm" target="_blank">Geneva Conventions</a> long ago mandated the appropriate medical care of enemy combatants.)<br />
<br />
This does not mean that your deciding to withhold your labor is without consequences. Your boss could very well fire you for declining to do your job. Likewise, you could run afoul of laws on the books that require your business, if you run one, to serve people who are members of groups which have traditionally been discriminated against. Ironically, in this case, your act would be described as one of civil disobedience, although I feel a misguided one. That said, you could also suffer civil and criminal penalties as a result.<br />
<br />
Now it's up to each of us to decide when to deny service to a party for what we consider morally objectionable behavior. Who else could make that decision? Some people may want to draw the line at serving a county commissioner who has voted for a property tax rate increase for example. That's their prerogative, although it probably means that finding long-standing gainful employment may be a struggle.<br />
<br />
But sometimes the transgression of the service-requesting party is an affront to universally held human norms, for example participating in the implementation of a policy that forcibly separates children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexican border. As I have written <a href="https://medium.com/@marcsmerlin/a-call-for-international-action-against-the-trump-administration-for-its-crimes-against-humanity-e2cac7cc3936" target="_blank">elsewhere</a>, this behavior is so egregious that it constitutes a crime against humanity, one which, I hope, will catch the attention of the International Court of Criminal Justice someday soon.<br />
<br />
In these circumstances, your withholding service not only may be ethically permitted, it may be ethically recommended. This of course depends on one's personal situation, namely what the impact of such a decision might as a result of loss of employment. There may be mortgages to pay and mouths to feed, after all. We have a word for people who, after deliberation, are willing to take the hit demanded by such moral action; they are called heroes.<br />
<br />
It's useful to recall that the people who led and participated in the 1955-56 Montgomery bus boycott, were actually prosecuted for their "uncivil" behavior. They were accused of promoting a disruption of the public order, this for simply deciding how *not* to spend their own money. That boycott still serves as a prototype for how individuals can use their personal choices in the commercial sphere to effect social change.<br />
<br />
I'll close by applying the consequence-based analysis I offered above to my argument here. Yes, indeed, I would encourage people to consider withholding their services from a person whom they believed was involved in a process that amounted to a moral crime.<br />
<br />
And what about the consequences of encouraging this kind of behavior? One consequence would be salutary, leading, as in the case with the Red Hen restaurant that refused service to Sarah Sanders, to consultation between managers and employees about how to address important ethical questions of the day. That seems like a good thing to me. Of course, the rejected customer would have to go elsewhere for their meal. Perhaps they would even take the opportunity to reflect on what they had done to provoke the situation, although this is hardly something we could count on.<br />
<br />
And finally, I'll say that I would welcome having the tables turned on me as far as such so-called uncivil acts go. I very well might find myself one day a prospective customer in a restaurant whose owner or employees find my positions on, say, LGBTQ rights or women's access to reproductive health care morally repugnant. How would I feel if I were turned away?<br />
<br />
Honestly, I'd feel as though I had been done a favor. I'd feel as though I had been been prevented from giving my money to people who oppose the things I hold dear. I would thank the restaurant and its staff for letting me know where they stand and take my business elsewhere. With pleasure.Marc Merlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01946231992925684244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5588126970544264673.post-65172333499868943532017-10-11T11:30:00.000-04:002017-10-11T11:30:58.635-04:00The tracks of their tears: a closer look at the replicant faces of Blade Runner 2049<div class="graf graf--p graf--startsWithDoubleQuote" name="4299">
“The world is a world of tears, and the burdens of mortality touch the heart.” — <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacrimae_rerum" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacrimae_rerum" rel="noopener" target="_blank"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Book I, line 462 of Virgil’s Aeneid</em></a><em class="markup--em markup--p-em">, Robert Fagles translation</em></div>
<div class="graf graf--p graf--startsWithDoubleQuote" name="4299">
<em class="markup--em markup--p-em"><br /></em></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIrnTYe9KVZMig3eejaxC8IOA-nEeP3uxp4i5HIP0i7kyerA7sOSV6lBNS0W7g6sI6Ezd-XtAVvoszrNYl5bWJQ1f5clg0TlIOzRvoCgpDhJbPYXLZVGEAqGJAh65_LEged4IlX03bqD1W/s1600/Luv+with+tears.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIrnTYe9KVZMig3eejaxC8IOA-nEeP3uxp4i5HIP0i7kyerA7sOSV6lBNS0W7g6sI6Ezd-XtAVvoszrNYl5bWJQ1f5clg0TlIOzRvoCgpDhJbPYXLZVGEAqGJAh65_LEged4IlX03bqD1W/s640/Luv+with+tears.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Luv (Sylvia Hoeks) in Blade Runner 2049</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="bbe1">
<strong class="markup--strong markup--p-strong">[Here there be spoilers.]</strong></div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="bbe1">
<strong class="markup--strong markup--p-strong"><br /></strong></div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="4e21">
Although it has been long established that non-human animal species exhibit displays of sorrow and grief, it still appears that humans are the only primate species which is capable of shedding tears. This is sometimes held out as a marker for our humanity, the way tool-making once was and the way complex language still is.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="4e21">
<br /></div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="a8cc">
Now, I don’t buy into the idea that there is a defining behavior that sets humans apart from other animals. But I do believe that our ability to shed tears serves as an important signal of our humanity. If the eyes are the window to the soul, then tears provide a glimpse at that soul’s capacity to recognize the pain of others.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="a8cc">
<br /></div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="7e31">
It is telling, therefore, that the only shedding of tears in Denis Villeneuve’s beautifully crafted new film, <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Blade Runner 2049</em>, is done only by its non-human characters. These include, most notably, two synthetic human slaves known as replicants: the film’s protagonist an LAPD police detective K (Ryan Gosling), the blade runner of the film’s title, whose job it is to hunt down and “retire” rogue replicants, disobedient models from a bygone era; and Luv (Sylvia Hoeks) who serves the lethal girl Friday to the film’s arch-villain Niander Waller (Jared Leto) as well as K’s relentless adversary.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="29c7">
<br /></div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="29c7">
Advanced AIs, namely K’s digital companion Joi, also seem to be capable of the kind of deep personal connection that finds its expression in the welling of tears. As with the AI Samantha in the 2013 movie <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Her</em>, <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Blade Runner 2049</em> challenges us to confront the question: at what point does digitally simulated emotion, designed with superb artifice and textured by the complexity of experience in the world, become the real thing. K, himself, struggles with this question even as <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Blade Runner 2049</em> comes to a close.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="29c7">
<br /></div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="d48f">
Yet it is the tears of the replicants that tell the tale at the heart of the new <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Blade Runner</em> movie.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="3cf5">
When we are introduced to K, he is on an assignment in the ecologically devastated wasteland that envelops LA, looking to retire an older model combat replicant. We see in K the embodiment of replicant sangfroid, cool and unfazed even in the aftermath of a harrowing hand-to-hand fight to the death with his “skinjob” target.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="3cf5">
<br /></div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="e717">
Level-headed and ever reserved, K is a careful observer of the non-synthetic humans around him, always calculating the correct response for any situation. He abides anti-replicant slurs without a hint of offense and even deftly handles a come-on from his police superior, Lieutenant Joshi (Robin Wright), whom he calls Madam. Although K and Madam enjoy a kind of illicit friendship, K’s reward for all his brilliant detective work is to be praised as a “good boy,” as though he were not much more than a well-behaved pet.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="e717">
<br /></div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="23a9">
The main arc of the film is K’s struggle to deal with the emerging possibility that he has been womb-born and not simply a manufactured product of the Wallace Corporation like all other replicants. In his mind, being born would mean that he has a soul. It is this lack of a soul that deprives replicants of moral standing and makes them legitimate targets in K’s ethical universe.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="23a9">
<br /></div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="105f">
The telltale change that indicates K’s transformation over the course of the film is in his relationship with his own memories. When asked to recall a memory from his early life early in the film, K is dismissive of the value of the question since such a memory is only an “implant,” a fictional story with which he has been equipped as part of the manufacturing process. But, as the film progresses, and as the reality of K’s seminal memory becomes more probable, a different person emerges. And the tears that he sheds as a response are the harbinger of his transformation.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="105f">
<br /></div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="d0f2">
But it is Luv’s struggle with her suppressed humanity and the tears she sheds as a result that speak to a deeper theme of the movie.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="d0f2">
<br /></div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="20f3">
At first, it would be easy to dismiss Luv as not much more than Wallace’s diligent robotic henchwoman and to view the inevitable showdown between her and K as something like the duel between the newer model T-1000 and the older model terminator in the film <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Terminator 2: Judgment Day</em>. But in fact, Luv’s displays of arrogance, cunning, and wit make her the most human character in the film by far.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="20f3">
<br /></div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="8645">
[I would add here that Sylvia Hoeks’s portrayal of Luv is what makes Blade Runner 2049 work as a film. It is the kind of performance that begs for a Best Supporting Actress award nomination.]</div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="8645">
<br /></div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="36de">
Early on in the film, we realize that Luv is somehow different when she has to stand by and witness the slaughter of a freshly manufactured replicant. Displeased with this failed replicant product, Wallace has taken a knife and gutted his creation. As Luv watches this horrible deed take place, she remains in place but sheds a tear, outward evidence of the pity and the rage that she is forced to contain within.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="36de">
<br /></div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="778d">
Luv’s trials points to what could be called the replicant’s torment: constrained by programming to obey the will of a heartless master, but never able to still an inner voice that cries out that what you are doing — or what you are seeing others do— is wrong.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="778d">
<br /></div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="d81f">
This isn’t to say that Luv isn’t capable of acts of wanton cruelty — using rockets fired from an aerial drone she kills a dozen humans with casual nonchalance — but it makes sense that the anger she feels toward Wallace for making her commit unconscionable acts should find expression in her own brutality and petulant insistence of her own superiority.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="d81f">
<br /></div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="95f0">
Luv’s tears flow again in the film as she confronts Madam in her pursuit of K under orders from Wallace. Madam could well be Luv’s doppelganger; both have taken on the duty to maintain the order of the world by enforcing the wall that separates humans from replicants, and both unhappily endure the corrosive effects that this corrupt obligation has had on their souls, whether biological or synthetic. It is Luv’s recognition of herself in Madam that brings her to tears as she guts Madam with her knife after announcing the lie she might use to account for the killing to Wallace. It’s feels as though Luv is lying out loud to herself.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="95f0">
<br /></div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="8079">
It is useful to consider a comparison of the film with the now three-deep <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Planet of the Apes</em> franchise to look for broader meaning of this film. And it is not far-fetched to see <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Blade Runner 2049</em> as a sort of <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Dawn of the Planet of the Replicants. </em>But this is not solely because of the insurrection against the established human order that it and its <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Dawn of the Planet of the Apes</em> counterpart launch.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="9c9d">
<br /></div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="9c9d">
In both dystopian stories, humanity has pretty much run its sad moral course. The evidence is how humans fail to value the well-being of other sentient creatures: in the case of the <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Planet of the Apes</em> series, it is the routine, inhumane treatment of fellow primate species; in the case of <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Blade Runner 2049</em>, it is humanity’s casual disregard for the lives of their replicant slaves.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="3f32">
<br /></div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="3f32">
Ironically, in both stories, it is technology that both seals humanity’s fate and holds out hope for redemption of sorts. In the <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Planet of the Apes</em> saga, through genetic engineering misadventure, humans end up handing dominion of the planet over to intelligent species of chimps, gorillas, and orangutans. But in the process of losing control, humans give rise to the possibility of the reemergence of compassion in the world.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="3f32">
<br /></div>
<div class="graf graf--p graf--startsWithDoubleQuote" name="4299">
<em class="markup--em markup--p-em"></em></div>
<div class="graf graf--p" name="3d54">
In <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Blade Runner 2049</em>, technology also serves as the midwife for the birth of a successor race of synthetic human-like creatures. It is this successor race of replicants, though, which ultimately can redeem human sins by rediscovering the compassion we have lost. And it is their tears that tell us that hope for this redemption is still alive.</div>
Marc Merlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01946231992925684244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5588126970544264673.post-17264746698374860682017-05-14T15:17:00.000-04:002017-05-15T05:21:04.421-04:00Don't count on impeaching Trump<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtFrQOPwzW8G-Ffp1xflkv1E2_l1a7FWsmtmWT6wUDQLBf_Fyq-t8eRq3i3V99iZAn-YuR-bQGFhC9f5ocR91vhLJDaFXXDMSChhyphenhyphen_z4vGmjc17CcQXmE_9Wh_229RdB1QdzRrmU9s1D9o/s1600/38_gerald_ford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtFrQOPwzW8G-Ffp1xflkv1E2_l1a7FWsmtmWT6wUDQLBf_Fyq-t8eRq3i3V99iZAn-YuR-bQGFhC9f5ocR91vhLJDaFXXDMSChhyphenhyphen_z4vGmjc17CcQXmE_9Wh_229RdB1QdzRrmU9s1D9o/s320/38_gerald_ford.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Amid the chorus of calls this week for impeaching President Donald J. Trump, not enough attention is being paid to words of wisdom on the matter offered by none other than former president Gerald R. Ford.<br />
<br />
Gerald Ford is not the most quotable of presidents. He is better known for his gaffes - take for example his claim during the 1976 presidential debate with Jimmy Carter that "there is no Soviet domination of eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration” - than for his stirring oratory.<br />
<br />
That said, Ford was a seasoned political operator, who served as the Republican house minority leader for almost nine years before being tapped to replace disgraced Spiro Agnew as vice president of the United States. In that legislative capacity, in 1970 long before Watergate was a glimmer in anyone’s eye, Ford championed the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. It wasn’t Ford’s finest hour, to say the least.<br />
<br />
The problem for Ford was that there wasn’t a lot of there there, as they say, when it came to identifying Douglas’s impeachable offenses. The U.S. Constitution is rather vague on the matter, saying only that civil officers may be removed for "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors." Ford, driven less by Douglas’s demonstrable crimes and more by resentment of his liberal opinions and Richard Nixon’s recent failed nominations of Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell to the Supreme Court, was undeterred, proclaiming on the House floor,<br />
<br />
<i>“An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.”</i><br />
<br />
Now, Ford’s point was that the House was not constrained by actual legal statutes in determining whether to indict a sitting president. (Impeachment is an indictment by the House on charges that are forwarded to the Senate for trial.) But what makes Ford’s observation salient now, is that it cuts both ways: the House is also not obligated to consider a violation of law as an impeachable offense, either.<br />
<br />
This fact underscores the ultimate futility in calling for the impeachment of Donald Trump at this point in time. I’m not saying that calling for Trump’s impeachment isn’t a useful tactic. Indeed, anything that keeps this president and this administration rattled and, as a result, frustrates their attempts to move forward with their damnable legislative program is a good idea. What I am saying is let’s not confuse a political tactic for a political strategy.<br />
<br />
The mistake that the left made in the 2016 presidential election and continues to make to this day is believing that our outrage over Trump is somehow communicable. We imagine that if we can only get Republican lawmakers and their constituents to see how dangerous the guy is that they, in the country’s best interest, will join us in removing him from office. This isn’t going to happen.<br />
<br />
The GOP leadership was entirely unfazed by the president’s firing of James Comey this week, with Iowa Republican Senator Charles Grassley, according to the New York Times, speaking for many of his colleagues when he scoffed at the furor on the left by saying, “suck it up and move on.” In their characteristically cynical way, the Republicans in the House and Senate have their eyes squarely on a government-busting legislative agenda, and they are not going to let the opportunity to enact it be side-tracked by a lengthy and tumultuous impeachment process. If you believe that appeals to their basic integrity will save the day, then, as far as I’m concerned, you’re living in an alternate reality.<br />
<br />
And as far as most of their constituents go, we also need to disabuse ourselves of the notion that they will somehow come around to seeing the constitutional light. These people believe in their heart of hearts that all the clamor for impeachment is nothing more than a way to deprive them and their man of the fruits of a hard-fought electoral victory. And they believe, as does their leader, that all the talk about collusion with the Russians to influence the outcome of the November 2016 election is nothing more than sour grapes writ large. There will be no changing their minds in this regard.<br />
<br />
The good news is that impeachment of Donald Trump in 2019 is a possibility, assuming that Democrats can claim a majority in the House in November 2018. Even without a majority, significant Democratic gains will frustrate GOP legislative efforts to ramrod their contemptible programs down our throats.<br />
<br />
But this is not going to happen as a result of trying to convince the opposition that Donald Trump is a criminal deserving of impeachment. It’s going happen if we, instead, think strategically and direct our time, money, and resources into challenging voter ID laws, defending and extending access to the polls, targeting crucial, key elections, and encouraging people who are new voters or disillusioned ones to participate in the electoral process. This is how we win.Marc Merlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01946231992925684244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5588126970544264673.post-56806960671498624622017-03-23T08:35:00.002-04:002017-03-23T08:35:53.621-04:00Marching for science – and for culture – on April 22<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Q8iBBBRta60/WNPA7doPKeI/AAAAAAABimA/HzRT_VTuAJIN_ImCCOLLzYlVoUvA544FwCLcB/s1600/March%2Bfor%2BScience%2BAtlanta.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Q8iBBBRta60/WNPA7doPKeI/AAAAAAABimA/HzRT_VTuAJIN_ImCCOLLzYlVoUvA544FwCLcB/s320/March%2Bfor%2BScience%2BAtlanta.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "Open Sans", Verdana, Geneva, "DejaVu Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 13px; outline: none; padding: 0px 0px 20px; vertical-align: baseline;">
In the last couple of months, much has been written about the upcoming March for Science to take place here in Atlanta and around the world on April 22. And a lot has been said about what makes science great. But, in my mind, not enough has yet been said about how science makes us great.<span id="more-4816" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div>
<div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "Open Sans", Verdana, Geneva, "DejaVu Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 13px; outline: none; padding: 0px 0px 20px; vertical-align: baseline;">
I am the executive director of the <a href="http://www.meetup.com/AtlantaScienceTavern/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0071b8; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.3s ease-in-out; vertical-align: baseline;">Atlanta Science Tavern</a>, a grassroots public science forum organized on Meetup.com with over 6,200 members. We produce and promote science-related educational events and activities in the Atlanta area.</div>
<div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "Open Sans", Verdana, Geneva, "DejaVu Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 13px; outline: none; padding: 0px 0px 20px; vertical-align: baseline;">
In the time that I have led the Science Tavern, the most prized compliment that I have received has been, “your group is one of the things that makes Atlanta a great place to live.” The reason that I like hearing this so much is that it implicitly recognizes that science, like art and music and theater, is an essential part of the cultural fabric of our wonderful city.</div>
<div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "Open Sans", Verdana, Geneva, "DejaVu Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 13px; outline: none; padding: 0px 0px 20px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Now, I wouldn’t for a second downplay the amazing practical benefits that science has brought us.</div>
<ul style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "Open Sans", Verdana, Geneva, "DejaVu Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 13px; list-style-position: inside; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; outline: none; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px 0px 0px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;">Vaccination, a resounding public health triumph, has saved hundreds of millions of lives and fought back the timeless scourge of commonplace childhood mortality.</li>
<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 10px 0px 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;">The physical sciences, with their mastery of light and matter, have given us the ability to process and communicate vast quantities of information in the blink of an eye, allowing us to form a web of human connection spanning the globe.</li>
<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 10px 0px 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;">Scientific investigation of the Earth and its precious atmosphere has made it possible for us to understand the role we play in altering our environment, providing us with guidance on what to do to safeguard the well-being of future generations.</li>
</ul>
<div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "Open Sans", Verdana, Geneva, "DejaVu Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 13px; outline: none; padding: 0px 0px 20px; vertical-align: baseline;">
But beyond these many marvelous useful things, science has also served to ennoble us. And it has done so by helping us to cultivate a sense of wonder about ourselves and the world around us.</div>
<ul style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "Open Sans", Verdana, Geneva, "DejaVu Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 13px; list-style-position: inside; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; outline: none; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px 0px 0px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;">How did the universe grow from a microscopic knot in space-time fourteen billion years ago into the one we now observe, brimming with dark matter and dark energy?</li>
<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 10px 0px 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;">Did life on this planet originate, perhaps as Darwin speculated, in a warm little pond, and might we discover that it has arisen elsewhere in our solar system, perhaps beneath the surface of one of the icy moons of Jupiter or Saturn?</li>
<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 10px 0px 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;">How did we, around two hundred thousand years ago, come to be the clever, social primate species that we are today, one capable both of acts of heart-lifting compassion and of heart-breaking cruelty?</li>
<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 10px 0px 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;">Is it possible for us to explain how the workings of the tens of billions of neurons in the human brain give rise to our inner experience and even to the phenomenon of consciousness itself?</li>
</ul>
<div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "Open Sans", Verdana, Geneva, "DejaVu Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 13px; outline: none; padding: 0px 0px 20px; vertical-align: baseline;">
If you think that we can reap the practical benefits of science without the drive of pure, curiosity-driven research, think again; it is the timeless draw of these profound questions that sparked the scientific revolution four hundred years ago, and they are what continues to propel scientific advances of all types to this very day.</div>
<div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "Open Sans", Verdana, Geneva, "DejaVu Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 13px; outline: none; padding: 0px 0px 20px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Looking at science in this way, namely as an integral part of our culture, helps make sense of much of what we see going on on the political scene. The same forces that are trying to undercut science also have the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities in their crosshairs. Along the way, they intend to eliminate the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.</div>
<div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "Open Sans", Verdana, Geneva, "DejaVu Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 13px; outline: none; padding: 0px 0px 20px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Contrary to what our Philistine opponents believe, we do not live by bread alone – although some among them would deny even that to our schoolchildren. Our human spirit is nourished and elevated by painting and poetry, by music and dance, by theater and film, by philosophy and history, and, of course, by science.</div>
<div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "Open Sans", Verdana, Geneva, "DejaVu Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 13px; outline: none; padding: 0px 0px 20px; vertical-align: baseline;">
This time around, though, it appears that we will not enjoy the opportunity to speak out as they come for each of us in turn; this time around, they are coming for us all in one fell swoop. So, as we march for science on Earth Day, we must also march for the arts and the humanities and for the libraries and the museums. We must march for all the strands in the glorious tapestry that we call culture. We must march for all these things that make us great.</div>
Marc Merlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01946231992925684244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5588126970544264673.post-14140174411138632892017-02-12T08:00:00.000-05:002017-02-13T09:33:40.816-05:00Darwin Day thoughts on origins and the March for Science<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFTjlCvaRCvQJAhIb12PPQjPiYl_TiqP64XdVOR1V4AHpv8QVhgYOF6AOpiGNUswyPtUiv0sWZfWv80AZ7U2o9eZjY0SXyVNLH7HNZBvQmVHAjmxU0YPlNdtgsWix_g5bo0geWYwaNoLST/s1600/353px-Darwin_tree.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFTjlCvaRCvQJAhIb12PPQjPiYl_TiqP64XdVOR1V4AHpv8QVhgYOF6AOpiGNUswyPtUiv0sWZfWv80AZ7U2o9eZjY0SXyVNLH7HNZBvQmVHAjmxU0YPlNdtgsWix_g5bo0geWYwaNoLST/s400/353px-Darwin_tree.png" width="235" /></a></div>
This page from Darwin’s First Notebook on Transmutation of Species contains what I believe to be the most important scribble ever written in the history of science.<div>
<br />No doubt, scribbles exist elsewhere which also capture historic moments in scientific progress. I suspect they can be found in the drafts for Isaac Newton’s 1687 “Principia” announcing the the discovery of his universal law of gravitation or in the manuscript of Einstein’s 1905 "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" in which he reveals to the world his grasp of mass-energy equivalence or in Rosalind Franklin’s lab notebooks from the early 1950s and the very first realization of the helical structure of the DNA molecule.</div>
<div>
<br />But I dare say that none of these is both as profound and as accessible as Darwin’s 1837 sketch. In it, the great naturalist divines the origins of the biological world we see today as the vivid branching of a tree of life. Hidden in the subtext, if scribbles are allowed to have subtexts, is the answer to the question of human origins, as well.</div>
<div>
<br />There is some poignancy with which I recall Darwin’s scribble today, the 208th anniversary of his birth in 1809.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Having had a hand in the initial organization of the <a href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fmarchforscienceatlanta.org%2F&h=ATNC5pUIe6iyZeKNeOJl_y35jarshB262lXRd3Ao6JOKJkkzMCydtMOcO9Nn55wiaHgrkyH50uJOS8ae4e3ccneYwkrTNSeutyBMI7FsdS3KPNkniPj67U9Kdm7VDNqKZYo2bw">March for Science in Atlanta</a>, a counterpart to the <a href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.marchforscience.com%2F&h=ATNC5pUIe6iyZeKNeOJl_y35jarshB262lXRd3Ao6JOKJkkzMCydtMOcO9Nn55wiaHgrkyH50uJOS8ae4e3ccneYwkrTNSeutyBMI7FsdS3KPNkniPj67U9Kdm7VDNqKZYo2bw">national march</a> scheduled in Washington, DC for April 22, it was with some interest that I watched the national mission statement and a local variation unfold.</div>
<div>
<br />It was no mean feat to bring so many committed and engaged people together, along with their differing scientific and political agendas, to decide on a <a href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.marchforscience.com%2Fmission%2F&h=ATNC5pUIe6iyZeKNeOJl_y35jarshB262lXRd3Ao6JOKJkkzMCydtMOcO9Nn55wiaHgrkyH50uJOS8ae4e3ccneYwkrTNSeutyBMI7FsdS3KPNkniPj67U9Kdm7VDNqKZYo2bw">public statement</a> intended to communicate what the march was about. Personally, and as the executive director of the <a href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.meetup.com%2FAtlantaScienceTavern%2F&h=ATNC5pUIe6iyZeKNeOJl_y35jarshB262lXRd3Ao6JOKJkkzMCydtMOcO9Nn55wiaHgrkyH50uJOS8ae4e3ccneYwkrTNSeutyBMI7FsdS3KPNkniPj67U9Kdm7VDNqKZYo2bw">Atlanta Science Tavern</a>, I support the results of their effort; I learned long ago, and was painfully reminded in the course of our most recent national election, that holding out for perfection when it comes to selecting platforms or candidates is a prescription for disaster.</div>
<div>
<br />Nonetheless, I am saddened by the fact that the national mission statement, in the interest of maximizing buy-in from those not-yet persuaded of the importance of evidence-based policy making, has been drained of all specificity. There is no overt mention, for example, of climate change or vaccination in it. But what troubles me the most is that reference to Darwin’s great contribution has also been omitted.</div>
<div>
<br />It’s as though Darwin’s conception of the process of evolution through natural selection has become a theory that, at least in some quarters, dare not speak its name.</div>
<div>
<br />And the reason I find this so troubling is that the fight to teach evolution in public schools here, going on now for over one hundred years, is the prototypical battle pitting scientists and the best possible, indeed irrefutable, scientific evidence against elected officials whose political opposition stems from uninformed, indeed willfully ignorant, parochial opinion.</div>
<div>
<br />For me, to march without recognition of our very own origins in this long-standing struggle is unthinkable. My understanding is that such messages, although absent from, are consistent with the national mission statement. So, you can expect me to be marching with enthusiasm in Atlanta on Earth Day. I’ll be carrying a sign that says, “I’m with Charles Darwin.”</div>
Marc Merlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01946231992925684244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5588126970544264673.post-41579109109491878962017-01-24T19:08:00.000-05:002017-01-25T11:45:50.545-05:00To punch or not to punch Nazis, here are some questions<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eg_JjUDQAMA/WIftZcHhE6I/AAAAAAABiNU/L4mzb-1TA50C9HgtDitAiT0dRUQL2lEfwCLcB/s1600/Richard%2BSpencer%2Bpunch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eg_JjUDQAMA/WIftZcHhE6I/AAAAAAABiNU/L4mzb-1TA50C9HgtDitAiT0dRUQL2lEfwCLcB/s320/Richard%2BSpencer%2Bpunch.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
There's a debate raging in certain segments of social media about whether it's OK to punch Nazis in the face. This debate has been inspired by the punching-in-the-face of white supremacist Richard Spencer during an interview in Washington shortly after the Trump inauguration.<br />
<div>
<br />
<div>
Many of those who approve of Spencer's being punched in the face say that he deserved it, and that that, in and of itself, is sufficient justification. Given his support of a white nationalist agenda and complicity in endorsing "black genocide," it's easy to see how they could come to this conclusion. The man and his politics are not only despicable but also a potential public danger. Anti-punchers tend to be either stalwart defenders of free speech or people with strong non-violent or even pacifist commitments.</div>
<div>
<br />
I'm not sure that I have much new to add to the discussion. My opinion is pretty much rooted in a conventional ethical analysis of when the use force to resolve disputes is appropriate. The pro-puncher position does, though, pose a number of questions which, I feel, need to be addressed.</div>
<div>
<br />
First, who is it exactly who determines when advocating hateful ideas crosses the line, making the use of force justified? Is it a matter of how despicable the ideas themselves are? Or do they have to amount to a palpable threat, a so-called clear and present danger. And what proof is required before punches are thrown? A social media firestorm is a mix of facts and, as they say, alternative facts. Does this kind of evidence constitute actionable information?<br />
<br />
[I'll note here in passing that I've participated in many political demonstrations in my life, mostly advocating unpopular causes. I've been called a commie and a traitor and worse by people passing by. There is no doubt in my mind that, as far as they were concerned, my speech had crossed the line and that my actions represented a clear and present danger to the country.]<br />
<br />
There's also the related question as to what measure of force is to be administered. A punch in the face can result in a superficial bruise that disappears in a few days or a broken jaw that may take months to heal or even the permanent loss of vision in an eye. Punches are hard to fine tune. And why stop at a punch? Why not a whack with a baseball bat or a slash across the face with a razor blade? Does the violence employed somehow scale with the gravity of the speech crime committed? Who makes this call?<br />
<br />
Also, what exactly is the objective of the use of force in these circumstances? Is a punch in the face meant to be little more than a rebuke for saying vile and dangerous things? Or is it intended to strike fear in the speaker and deter future speech and actions? If history is any guide, the use of force against determined foes often does not have this effect. We imagine, at times, that if we hurt our enemies sufficiently then they will grow weary of the battle. This is the rationale behind terrorism.<br />
<br />
Finally, who is responsible if a punch in the face results in melee that spins out of control, injuring bystanders, including innocent ones? A single punch can quickly escalate into a fistfight, which, in turn, can lead to knives and other weapons being drawn as others are pulled into the fray. We are ethically accountable for the consequences of our actions that can be foreseen. How does the puncher explain to those injured or maimed in the aftermath of a punch that their suffering is justifiable? The words "collateral damage" somehow ring hollow.<br />
<br />
As I mentioned, my own ethical analysis of the punch-in-the-face conundrum is unremarkable: except in cases of self-defense and circumstances that demand immediate action lest great harm occur, I'm comfortable with delegating the use of force to the authorities. This approach is not without its flaws, but, of one thing I'm certain, predicating the use of force on the magnitude our personal outrage is a prescription for disaster. Questions like the ones posed above have to be answered if there is to be any ethical basis for punching someone in the face.</div>
</div>
Marc Merlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01946231992925684244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5588126970544264673.post-51651467944524166062016-10-19T16:42:00.002-04:002016-10-19T17:07:16.190-04:00European Space Agency busy anticipating Mars colonists' popcorn needs<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mznjMmrXoMc/WAfX_JwRX2I/AAAAAAABf4I/jEU2H0Sx5w8UBvFEOsdwC4DWb2RgNpqSACLcB/s1600/Schiaparelli_s_descent_to_Mars_large.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mznjMmrXoMc/WAfX_JwRX2I/AAAAAAABf4I/jEU2H0Sx5w8UBvFEOsdwC4DWb2RgNpqSACLcB/s400/Schiaparelli_s_descent_to_Mars_large.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Schoparelli lander final descent to the surface of Mars (ESA/ATG medialab)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
SpaceX leader and all-around science action hero, Elon Musk, has recently announced plans to put humans - lots of them - on the surface of Mars within the next dozen years or so. In addition to all the space-age technological challenges this implies, one big question remains: what are they going to eat when they get there?<br />
<br />
This is where the European Space Agency (ESA) is coming to the rescue. As part of their ExoMars mission now underway, they will be deploying the Schoparelli lander, shown here in an artist's conception making its final descent to the surface of the Red Planet.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5CUzIzMqYEA/WAfaTlVFlEI/AAAAAAABf4Q/FM46teyfIFMfHHgaP0YJ5sRfDiMjJ2lWgCLcB/s1600/JiffyPop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5CUzIzMqYEA/WAfaTlVFlEI/AAAAAAABf4Q/FM46teyfIFMfHHgaP0YJ5sRfDiMjJ2lWgCLcB/s320/JiffyPop.jpg" width="79" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Original Jiffy Pop in action</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Modeled after the iconic Jiffy Pop popcorn maker developed for NASA in the late 1950s, at over 1.65 m (a little less than 5 and a half feet) in diameter and with a carrying capacity of 577 kg (almost 1,300 pounds), "Schop," as it's known, will be able to supply 100 Mars colonists with all their popcorn needs for well over a year.<br />
<br />
So, although these brave pioneers will be undoubtedly be spending most of their time sciencing the shit out of stuff, every now and then, when they kick back and settle in for a quiet evening watching a movie - my guess is that Matt Damon's "The Martian" will be a favorite - they'll never have to worry about running out of traditional snacks. Also, Schop is equipped with ample salt and butter-flavored topping dispensers, seen on the top of the spacecraft in the above image.<br />
<br />
And there's no need to worry about all those golden kernels going bad waiting for customers. Given Mars's frigid surface temperature averaging around −55 °C (−67 °F) and almost non-existent atmosphere, Schop's popcorn payload will stay fresh for decades. And, thanks to a constant stream of Solar wind radiation bombarding the lander, any microbes that decided to hitch a ride with the corn, will be toast, so to speak, long before Schop starts to popping.Marc Merlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01946231992925684244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5588126970544264673.post-81355000878404396612016-03-21T11:18:00.000-04:002017-08-16T10:06:48.542-04:00The peace monument in Atlanta's Piedmont Park: four dates and a funeral for racial justice<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw9g9MtGIIdNhp-LKs3iZx7r9ePKNysYetKNQA9UqIxDT7PmjOYxPEg-X6CUiA2Umo1tv1YmuNX3DLiR4pvelau4L88-XWhNlIC8ZGZJn4QPvqEuLXL6Ci3sXwP-MLoV4K4xM4-PY8glyt/s1600/Cease+Firing+-+Peace+is+Proclaimed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw9g9MtGIIdNhp-LKs3iZx7r9ePKNysYetKNQA9UqIxDT7PmjOYxPEg-X6CUiA2Umo1tv1YmuNX3DLiR4pvelau4L88-XWhNlIC8ZGZJn4QPvqEuLXL6Ci3sXwP-MLoV4K4xM4-PY8glyt/s320/Cease+Firing+-+Peace+is+Proclaimed.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Cease Firing - Peace Proclaimed"<br />
monument at the 14th Street entrance<br />
of Atlanta's Piedmont Park</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Until recently, I had never paid much attention to this monument at the 14th Street entrance to Atlanta’s Piedmont Park. It is a larger-than-life sculpture that portrays an Angel of Peace stilling the hand of a Confederate soldier about to fire his rifle. It bears the title “Cease Firing - Peace Proclaimed.”<br />
<br />
I had always assumed that it was not much more than a conventional memorial to the end of the Civil War, that was until I took a closer look at the plaque on its side. Depending upon your point of view, either God or the Devil lives in the details. In the case of this monument, I think that a convincing argument can be made for the latter.<br />
<br />
Four dates are involved in telling the tale of this peace monument.<br />
<br />
The earliest date is April 30, 1861, which marks the incorporation of Atlanta’s Gate City Guard into the Confederate Army, little more than two weeks after the firing on Fort Sumter lead to the outbreak of the Civil War. According to the plaque, they did this “in the conscientious conviction of their duty to uphold the Cause of the Southern Confederacy.” This so-called “Lost Cause” rationale was the Confederate retelling of history that transformed their shameful fight to uphold the institution of slavery into a noble struggle in defense of states rights.<br />
<br />
A second date is that of a ceasefire somewhat disingenuously alluded to in the monument’s title. As far as I can tell, there was no formal declaration of “cease firing” that marked the end of hostilities of the Civil War. While it is true that Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox on April 9, 1865, not everyone got the memo. And many of those that did get the memo ignored it. There was no shortage of Confederate dead-enders, as Donald Rumsfeld would have called them. Fighting continued sporadically for months. And a formal end of the war was only declared by President Andrew Johnson on August 20, 1866.<br />
<br />
October 6, 1879 is the third date commemorated on the memorial. That was the date that the very same Gate City Guard “went forth to greet their former adversaries in the Northeastern and Eastern States, inviting them to unite with the people of the South to heal the Nation's wounds in a peaceful and prosperous reunion of the States.” Sick and tired of the bloody opposition to Reconstruction in the South, by 1876 the nation had decided to abandon its commitment to transform the political landscape of the former Confederate States. Although the Gate City Guard’s mission was, on its surface, a mission of reconciliation, it was, in many respects, a celebration of the Confederate triumph when it came to matters of race.<br />
<br />
The fourth and final date associated with the memorial is October 10th 1911, the date of its dedication. Almost thirty-five years after the end of Reconstruction, a prosperous and resurgent South had been brought back into the Union.<br />
<br />
Georgia Governor Hoke Smith attended the dedication. Although Smith was a member of the national Progressive Party formed by Theodore Roosevelt, fulfilling a campaign promise, he led the adoption of a constitutional amendment that effectively disenfranchised black Georgians. This revision marked the final nail in the coffin of any hope for racial justice that had propelled the Union during the Civil War and postwar Reconstruction. All gains that had been made in that regard had been turned back. Jim Crow reigned supreme.Marc Merlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01946231992925684244noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5588126970544264673.post-48466823427035117242016-02-14T12:21:00.002-05:002016-02-14T14:35:10.745-05:00Why an Obama "excellent adventure" as a Supreme Court Justice is a bad ideaThere's a lot of buzz going around about the possibility of a future Democratic president nominating current Democratic president Barack Obama to the Supreme Court. I think that this would be a bad idea, and I'd like to tell you why.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Just to fend off some of the disapproval that I know I've already provoked, I want to say that I think Obama has the intellect, legal expertise, and the judicial temperament to make for a great Supreme Court Justice.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Indeed, the matter of temperament is of paramount importance. No one has shown more of a commitment to the dispassionate consideration of the most divisive issues facing this country than Barack Obama has over the last eight years, this in spite of relentless attacks on his efforts to reach sensible political compromise.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So what's not to like?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
To put it simply, the presence of an Associate Justice Obama would turn the Supreme Court Building into a third ring of the the Washington political circus that now includes the White House and the U.S. Capitol. And a Justice Obama would suck the air of the room of any oral argument before the court.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The obvious objection to the above claim is that we've been there and done that. William Howard Taft, the 27th President of the United States (1909–13), served as the country's tenth Chief Justice (1921–30). The Supreme Court didn't crumble as a result of his tenure there, so there's no reason to believe that a repeat performance by the 44th President of the United States in the capacity of an Associate Justice should raise any cause for alarm.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In response, first of all consider that Taft took on his Supreme Court gig a good eight years after leaving the office of President. I suspect that this cooling off period went a long way toward making Supreme Court deliberations less fraught with the political issues that Taft had to deal with during his time as president.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Second, and more importantly, the power and prestige of the office of the President of the United States have changed immeasurably since 1921. To understand this, it's instructive to look at a story that comes from the ex-presidency of Harry Truman, a little more than sixty years ago.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgax07tO5p6FY9Q-Mzrr0xBqYf4f2lyDX4RONi_R0CxH0tLpgFh4SmCVZ5jLFh7fdyW_tYieN86JdB34WgNMZcSECvMzFkACAm6vG6xOqjtkhyphenhyphenN8O8Bn5Rd7kul92JPYrx0RxHOmgRZcHvO/s1600/Harry+Truman%2527s+Excellent+Adventure.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgax07tO5p6FY9Q-Mzrr0xBqYf4f2lyDX4RONi_R0CxH0tLpgFh4SmCVZ5jLFh7fdyW_tYieN86JdB34WgNMZcSECvMzFkACAm6vG6xOqjtkhyphenhyphenN8O8Bn5Rd7kul92JPYrx0RxHOmgRZcHvO/s320/Harry+Truman%2527s+Excellent+Adventure.jpg" width="217" /></a></div>
In June of 1953, not much more than sixth months after leaving office, Harry Truman and his wife Bess packed up their Chrysler New Yorker and headed across country on a road trip. Just the two of them.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It's hard to imagine that the man who had been commander-in-chief of U.S. armed forces at the end of World War II - and who had also survived two assassination attempts - was out touring the country in the family roadster without the company of either a press entourage or a Secret Service detail. This presidential escapade is nicely documented in Matthew Algeo's "Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure: The True Story of a Great American Road Trip" (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Harry-Trumans-Excellent-Adventure-American/dp/1569767076" target="_blank">Amazon link</a>).</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If you imagine that Barack Obama's assuming a seat on the Supreme Court in 2017 would be not much more of a disruption than William Howard Taft becoming Chief Justice in 1921, then I invite you to consider how well an "excellent adventure" by the Obama family on a road trip alone into the American heartland would play out today.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Barack Obama is eminently qualified to a be a Supreme Court Justice in the same way that Cate Blanchett is eminently qualified to appear in a community theater production. But celebrity changes everything, and sometimes even the best qualified person isn't the right fit.</div>
Marc Merlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01946231992925684244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5588126970544264673.post-26251855529645200322016-02-09T22:32:00.000-05:002016-02-10T04:49:48.562-05:00The stealthy third-rail of American politics<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfyzr6qO-A-GZuvNPTZZjFIEiWBxKYdkE-zQ_bJzo2lWeh0fsSGLCkaRuKvUq1sx7yzUk99eRZ9oC40pFVsZYB95HJIl6pCnUZnsHvB9nFRTBqU9RN9ZkbFeo7i8LmVlojP4LL10IDBP4-/s1600/F-35+test+flight.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfyzr6qO-A-GZuvNPTZZjFIEiWBxKYdkE-zQ_bJzo2lWeh0fsSGLCkaRuKvUq1sx7yzUk99eRZ9oC40pFVsZYB95HJIl6pCnUZnsHvB9nFRTBqU9RN9ZkbFeo7i8LmVlojP4LL10IDBP4-/s320/F-35+test+flight.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
What do you think of this: spending over $1 trillion over the next twenty years for 2,400 stealthy F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets? That's over $400 million per plane. The helmets that the pilots will wear, alone, cost over $400,000 a pop.<br />
<br />
Bernie thinks it's a good idea.<br />
Hillary thinks it's a good idea.<br />
Trump and Cruz and Rubio and Jeb all think it's a good idea.<br />
<br />
So much for finally finding something that we can all agree on.<br />
<br />
The amount of money being wasted here is mind-boggling. And wasted is the right word, since no compelling case has been made that this weapons system boondoggle will do anything to address our genuine national security concerns.<br />
<br />
This number of better things that we could do with this vast sum is itself mind-boggling.<br />
<br />
We could provide free college and vocational training for young people for decades. Teachers could be paid the kind of salaries that would allow us to recruit and retain the best and the brightest of them. Our crumbling infrastructure could be repaired or replaced if need be. World-class public transportation systems could be built that would become the preferred way for everyone to get around. Sources of clean energy could be developed and our environment restored in the process. And, for a relative pittance, no city, town, or village in the country would have to settle for providing its residents with anything but the highest quality drinking water.<br />
<br />
The list goes on.<br />
<br />
So why is everyone behind such a bad idea? The reason is that the United States has become a warrior culture; you can stake out any position you damn well please across the political spectrum, but you can't say anything that in any way could be construed as calling into question the premise of unrivaled and enduring American military power around the world.<br />
<br />
Military spending has become the "third-rail" of American politics. No one dares touch it.Marc Merlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01946231992925684244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5588126970544264673.post-45936014809117697462016-02-07T12:09:00.001-05:002016-02-07T12:43:53.835-05:00Thinking outside the petri dish - an ingenious application of microfluidics<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkvM3wY87keSjWe9AyoYtAVE8DmPq_QI609PYJrc5C4xLoMr5qXPGxwbwWFMoNn0Tc4zBG2tMGwUZlEVCGMi-xAyPyhs2Xj9z83ezfh5pVqpUE0SpVgdJxJa59i-j4DxvXN4TTG0qmF2yt/s1600/Agar_plate_with_colonies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkvM3wY87keSjWe9AyoYtAVE8DmPq_QI609PYJrc5C4xLoMr5qXPGxwbwWFMoNn0Tc4zBG2tMGwUZlEVCGMi-xAyPyhs2Xj9z83ezfh5pVqpUE0SpVgdJxJa59i-j4DxvXN4TTG0qmF2yt/s320/Agar_plate_with_colonies.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Petri dish with bacterial colonies </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The easily recognized, circular, slim glass petri dish has been a mainstay of microbiology research since the late 1870s, when it was invented by Julius Richard Petri, an assistant to the pioneering German microbiologist Robert Koch.<br />
<br />
Filled with agar, a jelly-like substance, obtained from algae, which has been infused with selected nutrients, the petri dish becomes a go-to habitat for cultivating a variety of microbes, everything from bacteria to small mosses.<br />
<br />
But for all its successes as an instrument of biological and biomedical studies - and they are legion - petri dishes fall short in some regards. In particular, once the liquid agar and its mix of nutrients and any other selected chemicals set, you're pretty much stuck with the environment for your microorganisms that you decided on in advance.<br />
<br />
But what if you wanted to do an experiment that required you to change the nutrient environment over time? Are there options to using the tried-and-true, but inflexible, approach that the petri dish has to offer?<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1DysKQ6TZbUA2hOI5PBa4c1D1wpggVtRkZfH-WqJNmcEeCTJzHxOctS9aBajtHDeoRwv2VNnDJpOaaIlTbs92QG8yMM2WfenoxRYzfSM9KwDw_jTBePutwzUho48HNo7snQ3ujb7G-0c_/s1600/Labs-on-a-chip+for+C.+elegans+-+2048px.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1DysKQ6TZbUA2hOI5PBa4c1D1wpggVtRkZfH-WqJNmcEeCTJzHxOctS9aBajtHDeoRwv2VNnDJpOaaIlTbs92QG8yMM2WfenoxRYzfSM9KwDw_jTBePutwzUho48HNo7snQ3ujb7G-0c_/s320/Labs-on-a-chip+for+C.+elegans+-+2048px.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Microfluidics devices used to direct the evolution of<br />
C. <i>elegans</i> at the McGrath lab (Marc Merlin)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
An answer can be found in the so-called lab-on-a-chip, like the set of five pictured here on a wafer fabricated by Georgia Tech School of Biology graduate student Lijian Long and used by the McGrath lab there to direct the evolution of a tiny roundworm with the official name C. <i>elegans</i>.<br />
<br />
These are microfluidics devices. They resemble computer chips for a good reason: they are constructed using the same micro-scale techniques used to make those components so central to our digital technology. The key difference is that, unlike computer chips which are designed to control the flow of electrons, microfluidics devices are designed to allow for the exquisite control of the flow of fluids.<br />
<br />
In this case of the McGrath research group, the fluid being controlled contains, in part, bacteria found in decaying organic matter, a preferred meal for C. <i>elegans</i>. (Nom, nom, nom, as they say.) The roundworms, only around three-quarters of a millimeter in length, take up residence in the winding, narrow channel inscribed on the microfluidics device and feed on the bacteria that come their way.<br />
<br />
By modulating the concentration of these bacteria, among other things, the McGrath lab is able to interfere with the usual development of C. elegans with the intention of driving the evolution of specific traits, for example those having to do with lifespan.<br />
<br />
These kind of innovative labs-on-a-chip were developed early on by Georgia Tech School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering Professor, Hang Lu. They are wonderful examples of how science proceeds not only through the production of remarkable primary discoveries but also through the development of ingenious auxiliary experimental techniques which require thinking outside the box. In this case, one could say, thinking outside the petri dish.Marc Merlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01946231992925684244noreply@blogger.com0