Misapplying the protocol for the death of private figures to public ones

Larry Sabato is a political analyst who is frequently quoted in the media, usually in the role of prognosticator about who is likely to win seats in Congress. Following the death of John McCain, Glenn Greenwald highlighted a tweet of Sabato’s that has become a routine sentiment following the death of well-known establishment politicians.

Put me down as one of the ‘bitter and vicious’. It is extraordinary how it is mainly with politicians that we are expected to suspend criticisms upon their death and let a wave of praises go by unchallenged. You are far more likely to get an honest and balanced appraisal of the life of a dead writer or actor or musician than you are of a politician. This may be because the media establishment feels more subservient to politicians than to those other public figures. But those who claim that we should ‘keep politics out’ in the immediate wake of the death are in fact committing a deeply political act. By focusing only on the good and ignoring all the bad, they are enabling a form of historical cleansing that normalizes awful actions.
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Today is National Dog Day

In honor of the day, here is a little video of a dog ‘rescuing’ a child from the ocean. The dog either thought that her shrieks of delight were actually signals of distress or maybe he was acting on the general principle that children should not be in the ocean without wearing a lifejacket. He was also probably annoyed at the grownups present for not aiding in the ‘rescue’ and instead simply filming it.

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John McCain’s main legacy

The death of John McCain has resulted in the usual gushing tributes that are given to almost any long-serving American politician. I never bought into his self-promoted image of being a principled maverick, bucking party orthodoxy and forging his own path. McCain was in reality a faithful follower of the party line, voting with it on almost every issue and in addition being one of the worst warmongera. I wrote about what McCain was really like back in 2008. To his credit, he did discourage the crude race baiting of the Republican voters when in the 2008 election campaign they recklessly brought up the Marxist-Kenyan-Muslim tropes about Barack Obama, the kind of thing that has now become routine in the Republican party. It is because Donald Trump is so extremely awful that ordinary awful Republicans like McCain look better in comparison.
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Myths about human sperm

I suppose I am like most people who have a model of conception as a great race, involving a male emitting a vast number of sperm that then race towards the egg waiting for them in the female and one of the sperm, the victor, gets to fertilize the egg. Robert D. Martin, emeritus curator of biological anthropology at the Field Museum in Chicago and a member of the Committee on Evolutionary Biology at the University of Chicago, writes about the history of studies into sperm and that this idea of ‘macho sperm’ is one of the many myths that surround conception.
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The environmental impact of animal farming

Two arguments are advanced in favor of veganism and vegetarianism. One is the moral one, that the animals we eat are sentient beings that are similar to humans and that it is wrong for us to kill and eat them, even if we eliminate the cruelty of factory farming. The second is an economic and environmental argument, that animals are a highly inefficient source of protein, requiring the expenditure of a vast amount of resources. The rough rule of thumb is that as we go up the food chain, we lose 90% of the energy at each stage. In other words, by feeding grain to animals for the meat, we get only 10% of the energy that was initially stored in the grain. If the animals are fed a diet of animal protein, then we lose another 90%, leaving us with only 1% of the initial energy. This is highly wasteful.
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How money buys immunization from prosecution

The influence of money in politics lies largely in the fact that if you are a big donor to politicians, you can get immediate access to them. Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. is perhaps the best example of this process in action. It turns out that the Manhattan district attorney’s office is currently considering bringing criminal charges against the Trump organization in the wake of the information released in the recent convictions and plea deals of close associates of Donald Trump.
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More mass murders of Yemeni children by the Saudi-US-UAE coalition

Just weeks after an attack that killed 40 children, the Saudi-US-UAE coalition forces have killed another 26 children and four women in two attacks.

A senior UN official has condemned another deadly Saudi-led coalition air strike in Yemen, which has killed at least 22 children and four women.

The victims were fleeing fighting in the al-Durayhimi district, south of the port city of Hudaydah, when their vehicle was hit on Thursday.

A separate air strike the same day killed four children, according to the UN’s humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock.
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Mr Lowcock’s statement on Friday confirmed that the victims had been fleeing violence around the rebel-held port city Hudaydah.

He renewed calls for an impartial and independent investigation into air strikes. A report by Human Rights Watch the same day accused the Saudi-led coalition of failing to hold “credible” investigations into such incidents.

The reported attack was condemned by Unicef, Save the Children and other international organisations.

Hidden jokes

I have written before about my enjoyment of the excellent TV comedy The Good Place and gave it a rave review. One of the things I noticed is that there are many hidden jokes that either fly by very fast or that are on the periphery of your vision. Some of those involve the complicated points system for every single action and whose final total at death is used to determine whether you are a good person, deserving to go to the Good Place or a bad person who needs to go to the Bad Place. Samples of the point system flash by on a screen too fast to see more than one or two. You have to freeze the frame to read them all and this website has grabbed a couple of them.
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If you thought US politics was a den of intrigue …

… check out what is happening in Australia which now has its fifth prime minister in five years, most of the changes coming not from general elections but from intra-party leadership struggles within both major parties. The most recent one yesterday resulted in prime minister Malcolm Turnbull being replaced by Scott Morrison as leader of the governing Liberal party. The Liberals have a slim one-seat majority in parliament and is thus already in a precarious position.
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