Friday 5 October 2018

Follow the River


The USGS's Streamer map allows you to trace rivers or streams upstream to their source or downstream to their final destinations. The interactive map can create very dramatic visualizations of river watersheds, particularly when you trace a river upstream to show all of its tributaries.

Streamer is incredibly easy to use. Just click on a river on the map and select either the 'upstream' or '
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"As a veteran defender of pornography and staunch admirer of strip clubs, I have to say that an overwhelming number of today's female-authored Instagrams seem stilted, forced and strangely unsexy."

"Visual illiteracy is spreading: It is sadly obvious that few young people have seen classic romantic films or studied the spectacular corpus of Hollywood publicity stills, with their gorgeous sensual allure.... [T]he bright and shiny surface of too many of today's female-generated Instagrams conceals a bleak and regressive reality, with men in the driver's seat for careless, hit-and-run hookups.... [M]any of today's young professionals sporting stiletto heels, miniskirts and plunging bodices might not realize that to wear that fabulous drag, you need a killer mind and manner to go with it... Given our rising concern about sexual harassment, it's time for a major rethink and recalibration of women's self-presentation on social media as well as in the workplace. The line between the public and private realms must be redrawn. Be yourself on your own time. The workplace should be a gender-neutral zone. It is neither a playground for male predators nor a fashion runway for women.... The current surplus of exposed flesh in the public realm has led to a devaluation of women and, paradoxically, to sexual ennui.... That there is growing discontent with overexposure in Western women's dress is suggested by the elegant flowing drapery of Muslim-influenced designs by Dolce & Gabbana and Oscar de la Renta, among others, in recent years....."

Could you tell that's Camille Paglia?

Women are supposed to cover up now because men might be moved to sexually harass them and because they don't have the "killer mind and manner" you need to be sexually attractive in the workplace?! She's rhapsodizing about "Muslim-influenced" "flowing drapery"?!!
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Acting!


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Right now: the Senate is voting on cloture for the Kavanaugh confirmation.

Only about 30% of the Democrats seem to be there.

UPDATE: Manchin voted aye. Murkowski no. Collins and Flake voted yes. Stragglers coming in and voting.

UPDATE 2: 51-49. Ayes have it.
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Slate: "The Kavanaugh Hearings Have Women Fired Up… to Vote Republican."

The article, here, is by Ruth Graham.
The titanic anger of progressive women has been a dominant theme in the media since President Trump’s surprise victory over Hillary Clinton two years ago. Two major books about female rage have been published this fall, including Good and Mad by writer and reporter Rebecca Traister. “This political moment has provoked a period in which more and more women have been in no mood to dress their fury up as anything other than raw and burning rage,” Traister wrote in the New York Times on Saturday. “Many women are yelling, shouting, using Sharpies to etch sharply worded slogans onto protest signs, making furious phone calls to representatives.”

But women’s rage is not a chorus performed in unison. Atlantic reporter Emma Green talked with about a dozen female conservative leaders across the country for a story this week that puts flesh on the Marist poll’s finding: that the Kavanaugh hearings have electrified conservative women too. “I’ve got women in my church who were not politically active at all who were incensed with this,” the chairwoman of the West Virginia Republican Party told Green. The Indiana state director for the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List, Jodi Smith, told Green that “people in Indiana are angry.” In her view, the hearings are “one of the best things that could happen to us” as she looks forward to a hotly contested Senate election in the state in November.
Here's the Emma Green article, "Conservative Women Are Angry About Kavanaugh—And They Think Other Voters Are, Too/Local- and state-level leaders across the country say they’re ready to lash out against Democrats in the midterm elections."

ADDED: Also in Slate, "Christine Blasey Ford Changed Everything/#MeToo was just the beginning. For these women, the Kavanaugh hearings have incited both hotter rage and a deeper personal reckoning." You know, some of us women are put off by hot rage — especially, for me, if you're simultaneously trying to disqualify Kavanaugh for expressing anger and if all the rage is in service to Democratic Party politics.
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"My hearing testimony was forceful and passionate. That is because I forcefully and passionately denied the allegation against me."

Writes Brett Kavanaugh in The Wall Street Journal (not blocked by a paywall):
At times, my testimony—both in my opening statement and in response to questions—reflected my overwhelming frustration at being wrongly accused, without corroboration, of horrible conduct completely contrary to my record and character. My statement and answers also reflected my deep distress at the unfairness of how this allegation has been handled.

I was very emotional last Thursday, more so than I have ever been. I might have been too emotional at times. I know that my tone was sharp, and I said a few things I should not have said. I hope everyone can understand that I was there as a son, husband and dad. I testified with five people foremost in my mind: my mom, my dad, my wife, and most of all my daughters.

Going forward, you can count on me to be the same kind of judge and person I have been for my entire 28-year legal career: hardworking, even-keeled, open-minded, independent and dedicated to the Constitution and the public good....
A good effort at striking the right note. Not too conciliatory.  I'd like to know exactly what were the "few things I should not have said." I'm sure one was to Senator Klobuchar: "You're asking about blackout, I don't know, have you [ever had an alcohol-induced blackout]?" And — after she suggested that he's not had a blackout and "Is that your answer?" — he said "Yeah, and I'm curious if you have." He already apologized for that at the hearing: "Sorry I did that. This is a tough process. I'm sorry about that."
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Unboxing the Shetlands


Yesterday the Scottish government passed a law which makes it illegal to place the Shetlands Islands in an inset box on a map of Scotland.

Just as Hawaii is often shown in an inset box on maps of the United States the Shetland Islands are often placed in an inset box on maps of Scotland. By making it illegal to place the Shetland Islands inside an inset box the politicians have created a huge
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"I never thought I’d be urging my daughter to attend parties with drinking, drugs and who knows what else, but..."

"... if she doesn’t experiment now, in the safe space of a nurturing high school and a loving home, won’t she be awkwardly out of step with her peers when she starts college next year?," writes Debby Berman in "I worry my homebody teen is too much like me. But she has something I didn’t at her age" (WaPo).
Is she isolating herself to her own detriment? The truth is that although she isn’t the life-of-the-party teenager I expected, she is hauntingly familiar. When I was her age, I hung out mainly with one close friend, color-coded my class notes and never partied or touched trouble...

College was an awkward awakening. The first frat party I was lured to, just a few days into freshman year, turned me off from ever attending another one. Nothing bad happened, I just hated the whole scene....

The hidden, unspoken similarity between mother and child unnerves me. Why does she delay drinking, drugs and romantic encounters when she has opportunities to engage? No one guided her to this slow path, and no one is holding her there, at least not that I’m aware of.....
My thoughts, in order: 1. I'd worry about this too, 2. Is this about Kavanaugh? 3. No, not even mentioned! Weird. 4. Humblebragging.
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Shredded.


Via "A 2-year-old shredded $1,060 of his family’s cash. His mom cried — until she laughed" (WaPo). Strangely, these people are better off. They got their cute-kid story in the press. They got offered free football tickets, and:
The Bureau of Engraving and Printing...  has an entire “Mutilated Currency Division,” which is devoted to “redeeming” burned, waterlogged, chemically altered, rodent-chewed or deteriorated money — a free service to the public. It handles approximately 30,000 claims per year, redeeming more than $30 million in mutilated cash, according to its website....
ADDED: When I was a child, my Uncle Henry gave me and my brother a 5-dollar bill for raking his leaves. I took it to my father and asked if he could split it for us. My father took the bill and tore it in half and gave me the 2 halves. That made a huge impression on me at the time, when I had no idea that the money was not destroyed. You always hear about parents who want to teach their kids about "the value of a dollar." My father taught me something else. Not sure what. But he did it with a smile and thought it was pretty damned funny.

AND: I know what it taught. You just have to focus for a second to get it. It's that money isn't that important and don't take everything so seriously. You can have fun with stuff, impishly. Including money, and including language. I did tell him to split it. Sometimes by taking language seriously (i.e., literally), you end up with something funny.
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"To think, just a few short weeks ago, we were getting lectured about how unfair, sexist, and racist it was to judge a woman for expressing anger during a tennis game."

Wrote Lyssa in the comments to yesterday's post "The intemperance of the law professors' 'judicial temperament' letter."

I had to go back to see what I'd written about Serena Williams back on September 9th:
I felt that Williams was trying — very hard — to intimidate the umpire. She was actively bullying him. Hey! That reminds me of Trump. People say he's lost it and is raging when he's using a style of emotional manipulation.
As I've already written (somewhere in the Kavanaugh posts and comments) that I think Kavanaugh made a decision — after his calm, bland interview on Fox News — to allow his experience of emotion to be visible during the Senate hearing. He's getting criticized and mocked for letting emotion show, but that doesn't mean he'd have been more successful if he had maintained a stoical front.

As I said, above, about Serena Williams and Donald Trump, I think the emotion is displayed as a means to an end. The emotion isn't completely fake, but it's not out of control. There's real emotion, but it is also performed, with an idea of getting something the emoter wants. We need to be careful not to get conned, so we're right to be somewhat skeptical of those who let emotion show. But everyone's trying to get something they want, and people who suppress their emotion aren't inherently trustworthy.

Someone who truly loses control belongs in a different category. But you have to watch out for the accusation that someone has truly lost control. The accusers — like everybody else — are human beings with a will to get something they want. Sometimes their game is so obvious — like the lawprofs' "judicial temperament" gambit — that no one is fooled (though many are fooled into thinking that others will be fooled, because what they want is for those others to be fooled).

IN THE COMMENTS: Noting my statement, “But you have to watch out for the accusation that someone has truly lost control," Kevin writes: "Because those accusations are civility bullshit." Yes. Thanks for reminding me that this is the "civility bullshit" problem I've written about so many times. Calls for civility — don't get angry and emotional, speak only with cool rationality — are always bullshit. In our present-day American political discourse, it's always an effort to get your opponents to unilaterally disarm. When the tables are turned, and expressing emotion is what the people on your side are doing, you'll vaunt their passion and commitment and scorn your opponents for their bloodlessness.

ADDED: Remember when liberals thought this was exactly what was needed:

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