The law must be free for everyone

Nations are, or at least should be, governed by laws and people are expected to follow those laws. That assumes that people have free access to the laws so that they know what is expected of them. But there arose a weird situation in the US where some laws were copyrighted and others who had to follow the laws were expected to pay to find out what the laws were that they were bound by.

How could this happen? It originated in Georgia, a state notorious for its utterly reactionary attitudes. What they did was declare that the annotations to its laws could be copyrighted because they were created by a private party. Cory Doctorow explains what this is all about.
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Great moments in union busting

The compensation for the CEO of Delta airlines is $22 million but for some its employees, such as those who work to load and unload baggage, can be as low as $9 per hour. So naturally employees are considering forming a union. But in an effort to thwart those moves, Delta has put out posters telling workers that they would do better to use their union dues to purchase video games and alcohol.

In its latest offensive to beat back unionization, Delta Air Lines displays total contempt for labor unions and an astonishing ignorance about what unions have accomplished to lift American workers.

Delta has a new anti-union poster that tells employees, “A new video game system with the latest hits sounds like fun. Put your money towards that instead of paying dues to the union.” Another Delta poster estimates that union dues cost $700 a year and says, “Nothing’s more enjoyable than a night out watching football with your buddies. All those union dues you pay every year could buy a few rounds.”
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The narrowness of the US political spectrum

In the US, many people think that the Republican and Democratic parties represent widely different ideologies when in reality, they are very much in agreement except for a few, mainly social, issues. This is not a new development. In the British comedy sketch review Beyond the Fringe from 1961, Dudley Moore tells his friends that he is going to the US and asks them to fill him in on what to expect. You can see that sketch below and the comments about America hold up depressingly well.

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Wealthy people never realize how much luck played in their ‘success’

Jason England, former admissions dean at Carnegie Mellon University, has drawn from his own experiences to add to what the recent college admissions scandal tells us about the attitudes of the elites. He provides the other bookend of the view provided by Caitlin Flanagan, a counselor at an elite prep school, where the process begins. He points out what should be obvious to everyone about the ways in which the system operates to provide an immense advantage to the already privileged. It is an are excellent article that is well worth reading in full because it exposes from the inside how the system is so heavily rigged in favor of wealthy white males from private schools. The true genius of the system is that the levers of privilege operate so smoothly and invisibly that they seem natural and neutral in their application.
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The sex life of nuns

The Catholic church requires celibacy for its priests and nuns. But many find it hard to do so. While some are coerced into it, many of the sexual relations they have are voluntary and with both priests and parishioners.

Celibacy is seen as one of the most important sacrifices a priest or nun makes for the church. Nuns consider themselves married to Christ. Rather than taking a human spouse, they devote themselves to God. But many nuns face a daily challenge trying to keep their vows and their faith.
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According to a study conducted by Margaret Halstead and Lauro Halstead entitled “A Sexual Intimacy Survey of Former Nuns and Priests,” which was first carried out in 1978 and which has consistently confirmed results, including an update in 2018, more than half of all nuns say they knew of sexual activity going on in their convents. Some 44 percent of the most recently surveyed say they knew of sex between sisters, while 54 percent say they knew of sexual relationships between nuns and male members of the clergy. Just over a third say the nuns they knew were fooling around were doing so with lay people, including married men in the congregation.

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Future slack

One of the most valuable things I learned early on from psychologist Robert Boice who studied academic productivity was that a writer must write, every day. But most people find writing to not be appealing and it is easy to find excuses to not write because pretty much anything can seem more urgent and appealing (doing the laundry, cutting the grass, sorting paper clips) when compared to writing. Some also feel that inspiration has to strike for them to write.
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The UK’s EU elections as a second Brexit referendum

Under normal conditions, the elections in the UK for their allocation of 73 seats in the 750-seat European parliament would not command much attention. But these are not normal times in the UK as it struggles to find a way out of the mess following the Brexit referendum, where they cannot seem to find a way to leave but also cannot agree on whether to stay. Calls for a second referendum abound but both major parties have been ambivalent on the issue, reflecting the ambivalence of those parties on whether leaving the EU is a good idea or not.
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The incorrigible Madame Nhu

A few nights ago I watched the 1968 documentary In the Year of the Pig by Emile de Antonio that recounts the story of the Vietnam war up to that year. It uses archival footage and since de Antonio is French, the documentary understandably spends more time on the French antecedents to US involvement than American documentaries usually do. For those of us who remember the history of that brutal war, the key landmarks are the 1954 Geneva accords, the 1956 defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu, the self-immolation of a Buddhist monk in 1963, the 1968 Tet offensive, and the final defeat of the US in 1975.
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