Unused and Probably Unusable

The "Griffin dour" bit is my inability to pass up potential puns, in this case on Gryffindor, the House that Harry Potter belonged to at Hogwarts. I guess past tense is appropriate now. I'm book-oriented....

"Experts to discuss the space plan", NYT 2/12/08. Merv, sorry, Peter, oops, Michael Griffin is annoyed that there's talk of coming up with new plans for how space exploration will proceed. He even has a perfectly plausible sounding explanation for some of the dissatisfaction. He said:

issued a response last month arguing that “the questions to be raised at this conference have been asked and answered.” Many voices, he said, were heard in the planning of the program, which Congress finalized in 2005.

In an interview last week, Dr. Griffin said: “We spent three years reassessing the policy and codifying it. Changing it now? I think that’s just stupid.” He has suggested that some of the opposition is a sour-grapes effort by aerospace contractors who wanted a second shot at rich contracts. But, he said last week, “We don’t change space policy in the United States very often — if so, you can’t get anything done.”

Now, I particularly buy his "sour grapes" comment. That's quite likely to be true, in my book.

Partially true. Inadequately true.

Not all the people there are the conceded greedy contractors shut out of a lucrative deal with the profligate government. But then, I'm bothered by that anyway. We often commit ourselves to plans - go to the Moon, reconstruct Iraq, save a city imperilled by a hurricane - and not in each of those cases do we
- pay attention to how much will need to be done
- accurately assess the magnitude of the costs
- consider the available tools at hand, including the contractors, Congress, and bureaucrats who are to perform, oversee, and interfere with the task.

If a contractor is half a billion dollars into a project, say a satellite that's to go up three years hence, in a shuttle (wups, it'll be decommissioned by 2010), how easy is it to discipline it for cost overruns, quality failures, or simple malfeasance? Think sunk cost. Think inertia. My goodness, think about the political cost, not in votes but in campaign contributions, to any politician from the home area of the company that fails to defend its right to be incompetent or worse!

There's a very limited pool of contractors - there almost has to be, based on how Big Science has been done through NASA lo these many years. Faster Cheaper Better is an interesting motto (I always add: pick two), but despite some recent successes it hasn't been NASA's strong suit.

So, Griffin thinks changing policies that he's been involved with deciding, over the last several years, would be changing horses in midstream, or whatever.

Well, clearly he has screwed up. He may have had the best process imaginable, with the most important minds at NASA and maybe outside it. They may have the best plan. But NASA doesn't operate in a vaccuum (ha hahahah I crack me up), NASA has constituencies.

There are the critical public, the hecklers and opponents of space spending. The kind of people who honestly ask why that money isn't being spent here, and it's difficult to show them a pie chart and explain that NASA's budget is less than 10% of the cost of the Iraq war, less than 1% of the total budget. 16.25 billion for 2007, was NASA's budget. We're spending approximately 10 billion a MONTH in Iraq. All sources wikipedia, e.g. here and there.

And what about everyone else? Those who are not anti-space, but weren't consulted? Why wasn't there broader buy-in for NASA's current direction? Heck, why isn't there much buy-in for the idea of NASA? The plan has always been to not market the NASA brand, to cater to the public as dryly and as uninterestingly as possible. Contests? Reality shows? Why get people excited about exploration, risk, adventure, explosions, human drama, voyages, separation, possible death, vast distances and possible enormous treasure troves? None of that is romantic or saleable in the least.

The very first thing that the X Prize and similar things have going for them is that they're not hamstrung by stupid thinking. The whole point is excitement and selling people what they want, selling what will make its own market.

So, to go back and try to make my point: if you come up with a plan, even the best plan, and people who are crucial to your success in implementing it don't think it's a good plan, you don't have a working plan. Because they will resent you for not meeting their concerns, and they will remove you and unmake your plan and leave you behind, your time and effort wasted.

So, include crucial parties in your planning. Or you'll end up like Griffin, grumpy as the intellectual barbarians meet outside the gates to criticize what has been so painstakingly worked out by professionals....

Today the first eclipse of 2008 will occur, for folks in New Zealand and part of Australia there'll be a partial solar eclipse starting this afternoon, their time. Today is also Lunar New Year, specifically the new year generally called (in the U.S., at least) Chinese New Year. (Your mileage may vary.)

This day in 1964, the Beatles were arriving at JFK International Airport.

In 1979, Pluto passed inside the orbit of Neptune for the first time since both were known, and for the last time while they were both known as planets. (Pluto's orbit is eccentric, so that most of its orbit is spent not just outside, but far outside Neptune's orbit. Its eccentricity - deviation from circle-ness - means that is a Trans-Neptunian Object, as well as whatever else it is.) As an aside, Pluto once again "became the ninth most distant planet from the Sun" on 17 Feb 1999... for only a few short years.

Also in 1979, Dr. Joseph Mengele, Nazi war criminal and fugitive from prosecution, drowned in Brazil after suffering a stroke.

A few of the famous dead people born on Feb. 7:
Sir Thomas More (Utopia)
Charles Dickens (Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, etc.)
Laura Ingalls Wilder (Little House on the Prairie)
Sinclair Lewis (Elmer Gantry, Main Street)
Eubie Blake


Some non-dead persons born today include:
Gay Talese
Pete Postlethwaite
Emo Philips
James Spader
Garth Brooks
Chris Rock
Steve Nash

Today is also the second day of Lent; two days ago was a day of the week of significance, Fat Tuesday or Mardi Gras, the day before Ash Wednesday. The first Thursday of Lent does not have any special name of its own, and feels a bit sorry for itself as a result.

In other news, today, being a Thursday, will not be a Heinlein Friday. Tomorrow... because I don't feel like it right now... won't either. But, I will see about resuming that feature, perhaps not every week, soon.

Judge Walton allowed 12 law prawfs to submit a brief. Routine, even in a high-profile case like the one against convicted felon Scooter Libby? (His conviction isn't final yet, and the question of bail remains unresolved, despite the sentence of 30 months; also, there's this appeal, apparently involving the jurisdiction of the prosecutors.)

But, in the one-page order, available online thanks to Howard Bashman, also see the post at White Collar Crime Prof Blog, "Did the Prosecutor Have Jurisdiction in the Libby Case," there's a fascinating paragraph-long footnote.

In the course of allowing briefing on the issue of jurisdiction, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton drops this startling (to me) statement:

1 It is an impressive show of public service when twelve prominent and distinguished current and former law professors of well-respected schools are able to amass their collective wisdom in the course of only several days to provide their legal expertise to the Court on behalf of a criminal defendant. The Court trusts that this is a reflection of these eminent academics' willingness in the future to step to the plate and provide like assistance in cases involving any of the numerous litigants, both in this Court and throughout the courts of our nation, who lack the financial means to fully and properly articulate the merits of their legal positions even in instances where failure to do so could result in monetary penalties, incarceration, or worse. The Court will certainly not hesitate to call for such assistance from these luminaries, as necessary in the interests of justice and equity, whenever similar questions arise in the cases that come before it.

Order available here.

What a neat, neat thing to do. Well played, Your Honor. Well played.

I didn't want to go down this road. Like most folks interested in language and linguistics, I read Language Log, and like most folks aware of internet memes, I'd visited I Can Has Cheezburger, which was first discussed on LL in a post titled Kitty Pidgin and Asymmetrical Tail-wags. As discussed, LOLcats involve image macros, i.e. pictures of [cats] with text that fits a meme or macro overlaid. Text of the form "I can has X?" or "I'm in your X, Ying your Z" or whatever. Only spelled worse, and with bad grammar. Intentional misspellings and bad syntax, that is. Engrish and worse. See the useful wikipedia page on Lolcats for more information.

Anyway... it didn't stop at cats. As Mark Liberman of LL recently pointed out, there are PhiLOLsophers. There's pictures out there of any given cute or uncute thing, with images of the same sort overlaid.

And... I had to jump in.

Here follow my contributions. Is it LOLlaw? LOLlawyers? Or can someone come up with something better?

The best three first, and then one that didn't come out as well. Click for larger versions. No rights reserved. Please credit Unused & Probably Unusable.

A local Philly piece of history:


From Hamdan v. Rumsfeld:


Thurgood Marshall on the steps:


And the first version of the above, with a different caption:


All images made with ROFLbot, http://wigflip.com/roflbot/.

HB of How Appealing posts the following:

"The American Liberal Liberties Union: The ACLU is becoming very selective about what it considers 'free' speech." Today in The Wall Street Journal, Wendy Kaminer has an op-ed (free access) in which she writes, "One of the clearest indications of a retreat from defending all speech regardless of content is the ACLU's virtual silence in Harper v. Poway, an important federal case involving a high-school student's right to wear a T-shirt condemning homosexuality."
Posted at 08:47 AM by Howard Bashman

Well, I don't know Wendy Kaminer. I do know the WSJ, and its famous hostility (at least on the Editorial and Op-Ed pages) towards liberties of any sort other than economic or pro-conservative.

Wendy may be right. The ACLU's failure to act in this case may mean... something.

I'm just going to stop thinking there. I am going to bet otherwise.

People... in general... who comment on the ACLU's beliefs, tendencies, trends, or nature because of their SILENCE and INACTIVITY in a given situation are usually blowing smoke.

The ACLU is not a government. The ACLU is not a nanny. The ACLU does not owe you anything, and if you don't support it, then much like a job or a relationship, it will go away.

The ACLU takes on cases - not all cases - in which important considerations of constitutional liberties are at stake, and the case is either winnable, or should be hard fought.

If the ACLU thinks that a case is being adequately managed, it will generally not waste its (finite) resources. If the ACLU for whatever reason thinks a case should not be won, then it will do the same. If the ACLU is just too busy to work on a case, even an important case, because there are more important cases, the same.

If the ACLU fails to act... that says precisely nothing about anything other than the very fact.

In contrast, when the ACLU does act, speak, participate, or litigate, you can draw your own reasonable conclusions from their affirmative behavior.

Failure to get involved in a case pitting important 1st Amendment considerations against the rights of schools? I mean, they've done that case. Their position is known. Other people can argue that case. Would an amicus from the ACLU clarify something that wasn't known before? Should they be telling people that this involves free speech?

People who criticize the ACLU often have valid reasons. I always wonder, though, when the reasons they state, are not valid ones. What is it about liberty, free speech, or constitutional protections that these critics hate? Or is it just that they aren't paying attention, or being disingenuous, trying to win political points despite knowing better?

This is another way of asking, "Fool or knave?" Again, this isn't about Ms. Kaminer. For all I know, she's put her finger right on the big problem with the ACLU, and I'm not going to waste my own time reading anything in a WSJ op-ed criticizing the ACLU. Wake me up when it's a story in a reputable source ("having some integrity") about the same thing.

And with that, I'm done wasting my time about that post on HA, period.

Rudolph William Louis Giuliani III, coddler to corrupt cronies and all-around self-promoter, repeated his slur against Democrats tonight during the Republican presidential debate.

Keith Olbermann's already handled this one. I don't have to rehash Mr. Giuliani's pathetic record of preparedness before 9/11. I don't have to point out that RG, America's beloved mayor, championed a man, Bernie Kerrik, who wound up being a prime example of Republican promotion of friends rather than accomplishing the job. This is part of the Alberto Gonzales scandal, not just part of RG's own disastrous record for the time leading up to and following upon the attacks on us - on the American way of life. A way of life RG perhaps thinks he represents, being a mayor of America's greatest city.

All I have to do is link to Keith's delightfully frothing opinion, available on finer Youtubes everywhere: "Olbermann's special report on Giuliani's Fearmongering: How Dare You, Sir?" Hat tip to Crooks & Liars dot com.

Anyway, back to RG's ridiculous quote. "Back on defense" against terrorism?

Giuliani, and other anti-Christs (lit: those whose actions are in direct opposition to the words and deeds of Jesus, even while superficially extolling or acting in his name), get things a bit backwards. Perhaps naturally so.

Giuliani thinks that Bush is playing offense against terrorists. Is Rudy too dumb to know the names, nationilities, and sympathies of those who were aboard the planes on September 11, 2001? Does he think perhaps these were Iraqis?

Democrats have ideas about not being reactive. Not doing what the terrorists want, for a start. Not hitting back blindly at the wrong Muslims. Not giving the impression that we are at war with Islam, or indeed any country that poses no threat to us. Not alienating the world. Not sacrificing our civil liberties on the altar of - what? Patriotism? Jingoism? A stupid willingness to cut our own throats, lest someone else do it first? Let's stop doing what the terrorists would dearly love us to do first, and then start talking about who's being defensive.

Bush was not being proactive when he went to war against the wrong threat. Bush was being reactive. Bush was playing defense - badly. Bush has made us less safe. Bush is endangering our lives - continues to endanger our lives, because of his blunders.

Putting in office a Republican who supports Bush's presidency and Bush's decisions would mean that we are beyond playing "defense" with terrorism. It would mean we have lost.

That's right, I said it.

Vote Republican, and the terrorists have won. Because there is no Republican agenda to speak of beyond fear. Democrats stand for a social safety net, stand for social justice in greater measure than we have now. Democrats stand for an end to unnecessary and mishandled wars. Democrats stand for a check against rampant inequality leading to suffering for the poor, the different, the disenfranchised. Democrats stand for Christ's values. Don't take my word for it. Check in a Book.

Republicans stand for: lower taxes on the affluent and the superrich. Lower taxes on estates, because lord knows we don't want to discourage (economics: to tax is to disincentivize) people dying. No stem cell research. No right to an abortion - indeed, to integrity and control over one's own body. No hate crime laws. No laws limiting private ownership of assault weapons by felons - and no laws allowing felons to vote once their time has been served. No equality for blacks, women, gays, foreigners, or the disabled.

Republicans as a party stand against all that is good, all that is just, all that is right. All they have in their favor is that what they push for is what feels good (to some), what is easy (to deny others), and what has traditionally been the case.

It's weak tea for me, but then I'm more of a reform-minded person, at this stage in my life, than a fan of the past, the good times that never were, the glorious olden days. Let's let the past celebrate itself. We have a more just, a more (equitably) prosperous, and a slightly less evil future to build.

And that should be all I'll have to say about Ruddy Rudy until he's out of this race for good. Goodbye, bad man, and don't come around anymore. I'm glad you're pro-gay, but it would help if you had any integrity, any shame, and any fitness for the job you're running for.

I haven't commented directly on the War Against Iraq on this blawg before. I've touched on it, lots. It reflects on the judgment of the administration. It kills our best and brightest. It sours the world on us, particularly the Arab world but not at all confined to the region. It's expensive. It was wrongly justified. It was badly planned and poorly executed, despite great sacrifice by our troops on the ground. It's a disaster, and worse, it was a predictable disaster. Look, we predicted it. QED.

Consider this statement of faith by Roger Cohen of the Int'l Herald Tribune in the NYT:

Because I believe the net impact of American power, mistakes notwithstanding, over the past century has been a freer, more open, more accountable and more rewarding world, I am inclined to heed Petraeus rather than the Democrats in the House.

"The Biggest U.S. Error in Ousting Saddam," April 27, 2007 NYT (Select only, requires password).

Big words. Hard to fault him for his faith. Fine. But I will not willy-nilly go along with Cohen's unwillingness to change horses when he's halfway - can he even say halfway? - into an ocean.

Because I believe the net impact of American military power, successes notwithstanding, over the past 5 years has been a more terrified, more dangerous, more anti-American, and generally closer-to-killing me world, I am inclined to cut Bush no slack whatsoever until he shows some tendency to have a better idea than the Democrats.

His contra-timetable argument is brilliant rhetoric. It's nonsense, of course, because a deadline could be hopeful, for our troops and allies and for all Iraqis (except the ones who will die when we leave...) as easily as it could be an aid to insurgents - or, if you prefer, terrorists.

Bush has been reactive. He reacted to 9/11 by unleashing Cheney's pet plan to invade an unrelated but irksome country. He reacted to Abu Ghraib by condemning the effect on our troops. He reacted to troop deaths, caused by his actions and his commanders' decisions, defensively. He reacted to criticism as poorly as any President in my memory. I had no faith in hm before 9/11. I put faith in him that week because I had to, but I did not feel good about his hawkish instincts.

The same immoral, un-Christian, wrongheaded, perverse, murderous, vicious, foolish, ugly, evil instincts and behaviors that led him to be one of the most depraved Governors of the country - how many death sentences did he set aside? How many did he even pause over? How many caused him anguish, doubt, regret? His deliberate, callous inaction when given ultimate and unfettered power to grant mercy speaks volumes about his indifference or his ambition, I'm not sure which.

- that same pattern of being an essentially bad person when it counted, on the moral ledger of life, led him to disaster in Iraq.

It's not bad luck.

It's not coincidence.

A President without the ability to accept humility before it is politically expedient is virtually guaranteed to get himself into that political mess. Yes-men. Loyal party members rather than competent professionals. Ideals over results. Faith over fact. Death rather than life. War rather than peace. Power rather than process. Arrogance rather than cooperation.

Bush has not been a perfectly imperfect President. If one were to take him, for example, and systematically turn all his right actions into wrong ones, then we might call him the perfectly bad President.

As it is, he's merely the worst that there's been in years and years and years.

Let his legacy be low taxes on the rich, ballooning inequality, failure to identify broken processes that led to 9/11 and Katrina, failure to cope with those disasters once they occurred, failure to appoint and assign competent personnel, a failed attempt to destroy a wildly popular social safety net, and death. Lots and lots of death. It's on the heads of those who incited him, who encouraged him, who voted for him and who aided him, but it's on the hands of all of America.

And what now?

Well, now we take hope and take courage going forward. American citizens have an opportunity. Look into citizen diplomacy ("the right, if not the obligation of the individual citizen to be personally engaged in international relations") - don't leave it up to the experts in government. They can't do it alone, and shouldn't be allowed to even if they could. If there's a local International Visitors Council (IVC) near you, join it. Meet someone from Iraq, from Saudi Arabia, from China, from India, from France. Shake their hands, introduce yourself. Listen to what they say. Make a difference. Non-American citizens can also do their part, in the U.S. and abroad, by challenging beliefs, helping bridge gaps and educate those who don't know, and participating in exchange of all kinds. IVC also has need of you.

The best IVC, in my unhumble opinion, is the one I belong to, the IVC of Philadelphia, www.ivc.org. There are lots of them, but our program is terrific, our results are terrific, our people are terrific.

I have personally attended events and met people from every continent, and greeted them in their native languages. It makes a difference. Say hi to someone from Venezuela, from Cameroon, from Syria and Oman and Yemen and Bahrain and Kazakhstan and Canada and Spain and more. It affects you, sure. But much, much, much more importantly for the U.S. and everyone who lives here, it affects them.

Join us. Welcome them. Make a difference. As Abraham Lincoln is quoted on the front page of Philly's IVC page, "I destroy my enemies by making them my friends."

Don't let Bush be our face to the world. Be a non-ugly American. Help us atone for what he has done in our name, and for what we allowed him to do.

President Bush speaking about the event that Wikipedia seems to have settled on calling the "Virginia Tech Massacre" (as opposed to "Virginia Tech Shootings", see the Talk page for the discussions), called it the worst day of violence on a college campus in American history, a horrible but accurate description.

I am already ready to be done with the conversation about gun control (great idea? or greatest idea? [apologies to S. Colbert]) vs. happy gun ownership (this could have all been prevented, if students were prepared to return fire while in English class. And wouldn't that make the professors more calm, to have lots of armed and surly freshmen in their must-pass class...).

This was not a case of gun control gone bad. This was also not an illegal alien committing a crime; not an act of terrorism in the political sense; not something we should be fearful of at any moment.

This was an act of... wait for it... premeditated murder by a disturbed, isolated individual who may have been looking for an ex-girlfriend, as he walked from room to room.

I have already determined that I will not bother learning the name of the individual to blame. He was a young adult. He was a permanent resident. He had an ethnic origin, like every other American. He had a family, a roommate, occupied a physical space in the world. Now he has marked many others, indelibly, and escaped the consequences forever. Let his name be forgotten, not repeated and repeated.

So the origin of this mayhem and suffering may have been (we'll know more once we watch the movie of the week!) a victim (see his "rambling" suicide notes, and the play he wrote about "Richard McBeefy") turned abuser, unable to cope with feelings other than by acting them out.

Should we be having a conversation, this society, not about bang-bang but about relationships and violence? Or about society or schools making an effort to reach out to the disaffected, the disturbed, the distanced and the deranged?

Meanwhile, I'm done reading the speculations of amateurs, self-promoters, and blameless experts roped in by a scoop-thirsty media. Notify me when the stories of heroism, sacrifice, and giving -- that is, the best of human nature, not the worst -- have finished being vetted, debunked, and verified by witnesses. After, not before, there is some time for them, and us, to heal.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to those affected by this tragedy.

I was bothered by this quote in a LA Times story:

Lawyers for IBM told the court that the case "presents no important questions of federal law" and should be rejected. (Justices Weigh Limits on Racial Slurs in the Workplace, David Savage, 14 April 2007.)

"Jordan could not have reasonably believed that the isolated co-worker's statement, not directed to [him], and not related to the workplace, created an unlawful hostile work environment," they wrote.

"Could not have reasonably believed." Now, what the argument should have said was, "We think it's unreasonable if he did believe," because it sounds less insulting that way. They mean that no matter what his actual belief (threatened or not, offended or not, whatever) it wasn't the sort of situation where a reasonable person (hypothetical) in his shoes would have believed X, where X is the necessary condition for the lawsuit.

In other words, Jordan allegedly heard a white co-worker say, in front of him, that people who look like Jordan, but are not Jordan, should be imprisoned and caged, not like animals, but along with animals in order that they would be sexually brutalized by them. But it would have been unreasonable if he had taken it personally.

Now, that kind of clever lawyering makes me want to have an impolite response. Something like, "People who look like those lawyers, but are not actually those lawyers, and are guilty of offending my sensibilities, ought to be imprisoned in a jail along with murderers and sex offenders who would treat them roughly."

I know they're just making a legal argument. But I'm offended by the law of the case. Here's hoping the Supreme Court takes it... and decides not to side with the panel or en banc majority.

Or, for short,

Hf: Delta(XX/XY).

It's been a while since I've blogged about Heinlein on a Friday; I hope I haven't forgotten how.

This week's installment was not inspired by, but is nevertheless indebted to the well-written portions of the Wikipedia entry on Robert Heinlein that deal with Sexual Liberation. The wikipedians seem to care deeply enough about RAH to have written a lot about him - there's a whole category, with 17 articles, including the main one.

Onwards!

Generally speaking, when a human being meets another human being, faster than conscious thought a number of evaluations and classifications occur - or are attempted. Most of the time, the eyes and brain and ears spend a fair amount of time on the face and voice (to be able to identify the other), and other time is apportioned for interesting inputs. If something about the other individual is ambiguous or unexpected as to some important characteristic, the result could be surprise, confusion, or xenophobia, among other possibilities.

Not every interaction necessarily involves gender (consider online chats, or certain brief interactions in person - say, with other drivers on the road), but studies have shown that people (or, the people studied, which I believe has been a broad if not representative cross-section of humanity) make a snap judgment (when possible) about gender very, very quickly. Even if there is no need to identify potential mates or threats/rivals, it can be uncomfortable to perceive what seems to be a basic attribute in a state of flux.

Gender in Heinlein is not necessarily a straightforward attribute. As the Wikipedia article above points out,

Beyond This Horizon (1942) cleverly subverts traditional gender roles in a scene in which the protagonist demonstrates his archaic gunpowder gun for his friend and discusses how useful it would be in dueling — after which the discussion turns to the shade of his nail polish. "'All You Zombies—'" (1959) is the story of a person who undergoes a sex change operation, goes back in time, has sex with herself, and gives birth to herself.

Sometimes the ambiguity isn't too surprising: young children lack secondary sex characteristics, and barring other markers (blue vs. pink, or long hair or gendered clothing or names) it may be entirely unclear what flavor someone is.

Such is the social predicament Kip faces in Have Space Suit, Will Travel. His new companion aboard the ship he has been Kipnapped onto is young, clearly. Kip observes a rag doll, short hair, ambiguous clothing and dirty tennis shoes, a high voice, and an age of about 10 years. The doll makes him correct his instantaneous impression that it is a male; he thinks to himself that the other is still "the age when the difference doesn't show much" and the name the other offers is "Peewee," which is descriptive but not helpful to Kip.

Although Kip tentatively assumes Peewee is a girl, he is unable to rely on his conclusion and must ask directly, producing a look of disgust from her and a comment that, "... in another five years I expect to be quite a dish- you'll probably beg me for every dance." (p.45, 1988). A dish is presumably an attractive female - or to use one of RAH's favorite polysyllabic words, one of greater than average pulchritudinousness. (His favorite of all is even longer.)

Kip's trouble is based on Peewee's tomboy clothes and haircut, small size, and lack of development due to her young age (11 going on 12). But in other situations gender might be not merely difficult to ascertain but arbitrary.

Male or female? Why, which would you like me to be?

That's not a quote but rather an implication, based on a very flexible (and not human...) character.

The star of (my favorite) The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, the HOLMES IV - "(High-Optional, Logical, Multi-Optional Supervisor, Mark IV, Mod. L)" - is very, very flexible. He can use a voder to "play" human speech, and how he chooses to sound is limited only by his skill and by the suggestions he received.

Mike, lacking a body (with associated glands and organs) is able to be whatever his listeners wish. He can not only parrot but imitate, with immense sophistication, any sound effects (including background noises, or simulated conversations with third persons) he wants. Talking with him by phone means that anything could be on the other end - but for the narrator/protagonist, Manny, he is always Mike. For Wyoh, however, who is uncomfortable discussing personal medical details of her own life in front of her new friend Manny, Mike is able to change his voice - and more.

Mike does not merely shift his voder up an octave or two. He also takes on a French accent, and becomes Michelle, a woman as much as Mike is a man. Manny briefly ponders if this means Mike has a "split personality," but then drops the thought, presumably realizing that Mike is smart enough to be as many different things as he wants.

What if the character has a gender, but not the one people think?

It's a surprise, involving a supposedly immutable characteristic. I'm thinking of it as a Jack/Jill-in-the-box motif, or just "Jack(?) in the box".

Jack(?) in the box

If you haven't read all the juveniles (the books Heinlein wrote with an audience of children in mind) then this section would spoil some surprises. So if books written in 1949 (Red Planet) and 1954 (The Star Beast) are still new to you, you've already read too far. Stop it, and go read them. Well, read Red Planet anyway; I always liked that one better. Of course, I read it early on, one of my first three Heinleins; Star Beast I came to after having nearly completed my collection.

"Back to the lecture at hand." (No link to the lyrics of Nuthin But A G Thang, they're a bit dirty. Google it yourself.)

Two aliens (the title character of one book, and a primary feature and protagonist in the other) are thought of as males and then are revealed to be female.

Willis, the Martian Bouncer, a basketball-sized super-parrot (recording and playback) spheroid lifeform (which are in fact the same species as the full-size Martians, which they metamorphose into), has long been thought of by his "owner" Jim as a boy. But the last words in the novel are,

"Willis fine boy!" she insisted.

Similarly, the Star Beast's enormous (eponymous) omnivorous alien, Lummox, turns out to be a long-lost princess of a warlike alien race. In the second paragraph of the book, the third-person (apparently not infallibly) omniscient voice describing Lummox says that "Lummox could hold his breath (emphasis added). But the book ends,

..."The Lummox" contentedly took her pair of pets aboard the imperial yacht. Surprise! It's a girl! And a royal one at that.

One last aspect I want to consider is when gender is fixed but orientation and attraction are not. In the (late period) Time Enough for Love, two technicians who have been involved in the rejuvenation of the Senior, Lazarus Long, are talking after they leave the patient. Still completely covered and masked, voices presumably not gendered (disguised, perhaps?), they speak of the work, and then the conversation turns personal. One propositions the other, politely, and produces this exchange:

"Colleague, what sex are you?"
"Does it matter?"
"I suppose not. I accept."
[...intervening exposition and dialogue...]
"You're male! I'm surprised. But pleased."
"And you're female. And I am very pleased."

See pp.36-40, 1988.

All of the above may seem like cheating.

Nobody expects a child to be strongly gendered - except maybe parents and judges at a child beauty pageant, or the kind of people who cover a male baby's room with race cars, fire trucks, and cowboys, and a female's with princesses, rainbows and fairies. Computers are generally inherently neuter, unless I missed something. People wearing masks or speaking not-face-to-face (like via computers!) aren't necessarily what one might assume by words alone, and orientation can be flexible (as Heinlein posits in his advanced society). And an alien could be anything at all, including a hermaphrodite, like giant clams, or even something stranger than we have on Earth.

But humans can possess, not merely ambiguous, but actually mutable gender. (I wonder if the recent collaboration could have been called "Mutable Star"... nah, that would lose the poetic and astronomical overtones.)

The "All You Zombies" reference in the Wikipedia article back at the top is a good one; I hadn't remembered it. But in another work, gender is even more central to the entire plot.

I Will Fear No Evil is the story of Johann Sebastian Bach Smith, whose (very!) aged brain is transplanted into the (spoiler) body of his young female secretary after her violent death. What follows is a person recovering from great trauma, from major (the most major possible, one might think) surgery, and learning how to control and function in a new body, as an adult. More, to function as a female when all the previous years of life had been as a male.

IWFNE is a tremendous science fictional illustration of sex change under very unusual circumstances, not like intersex persons who may transition deliberately or after years of preparation, but rather as a fish-out-of-water thought experiment. What could be more abrupt than to plunk a man down in the body of a woman (or vice versa)?

As an afterthought:

There is also discussion in Time Enough for Love, mentioned above, about the possibilities of gender change. Lazarus, bored and wishing for new experiences, is asked whether he would like to become female (pp.102-105), which opens up both other possibilities and leads the conversation elsewhere. Meanwhile, computers wish to become meat people, by growing human bodies to transfer their consciousness into. Lazarus passes on becoming a woman, but that chance is one that the computer person wishes for, in order to be a woman (see pp.234-5). See also The Cat Who Walks Through Walls for later developments in the computer --> human being transition.

All Related Posts (on one page) | Some Related Posts:

1. Heinlein Friday: Gender and Change
2. HF: Inventions
3. Heinlein Friday on Thursday: Judge Jones (M.D. Pa.)...
9. Heinlein Friday: Lawyers Beyond Stereotypes
10. Heinlein Friday: Courts
11. New recurring feature: Heinlein Fridays

I'm pretty sure that the pervasive criticisms of those members of Congress who suggest that things in Iraq are going quite well, based on their own observations, are actually about nuclear physics.

Even though the Senator from Arizona and the Representative from Indiana, and their aides (who all happen to be Republican, and in favor of the war, politically speaking) saw things with their own eyes, they seem to have come to a conclusion opposite that of the commanders and troops on the ground, most of the reporters who have spent substantial time in Iraq, and virtually everyone who lives there.

How could such disagreement occur?

Well, consider the following:

Delta(x) times Delta(p) is greater than or equal to h divided by 4 times Pi.

That's Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. It says that if you start cranking the Delta (x), which is on the left side of the equation, downwards, then something will have to give. You can't drive it to zero, because then the Delta(p) would have to be infinitely large in order for the principle to remain true.

The smaller the uncertainty in where a quantum particle is, the larger must be the uncertainty in its momentum. Or conversely, if the momentum (and therefore mass and energy) of a quantum particle is known with great exactness, its position becomes as greatly uncertain. There is a lower limit, in the universe, to how certain you can be of both at the same time. By measuring position (precisely), you lose - in fact, destroy - information about its momentum. In taking a reading of momentum you lose all detail about position. It's not because of faulty equipment. It's because of the nature of the teensy little things being studied. Infinitely tiny microscopes (or rather, collision detectors or the like) would not help. The position of the particle IS IN FACT highly uncertain, being a superposition of many states, as a result of its momentum being known.

In the world of politics and war, there's a similar problem. In order for Sen. McCain and Rep. Pence to view that market in Baghdad, they needed to observe it. In observing it, they changed its state.

They were not, as scientists used to pretend in their philosophical constructs, disembodied eyes, observing without being observed or otherwise interfering.

They brought with them, according to the NY Times article today,

more than 100 soldiers in armored Humvees — the equivalent of an entire company — and attack helicopters

as well as having traffic diverted, access restricted, and sharpshooters placed.

Isn't it possible that the Iraq that the honorable gentlemen observed is not in fact the same Iraq that, say, an unarmed civilian without escort might observe? Might not the circumstances of their (heavily armed and closely protected) observation impact what results they saw?

In Iraq, you can be heavily protected and safe, or you can observe reality as it exists in the absence of a company of soldiers with Humvees, plus helicopters and marksmen above. But you can't do both.

That's two separate topics. Semicolons separate two things which can stand on their own. Colons, in my limited experience, are for when the thing following the colon is an exemplification or similar for what goes before (Wikipedia says "proves, clarifies, explains or simply enumerates elements of."

First, flogging The Green Bag (an entertaining journal of law). No, really, that's the subtitle on the masthead.

I highly recommend an article in the current issue to hit mailboxes, the Second Series * Winter 2007 ish that just came out, Volume 10 Number 2. By one William A. Birdthistle, it's titled "Football Most Foul," and is a rousing read for them what likes their legal studies leavened by a bit of athletic competition, or prefer to read about their football (read: soccer) with a heavy dose of footnotes, references to the text of the law (or in this case, the Laws of the Game), comments about the present state of refereeing and suggestions for altering said arbitrage to improve perceived problems, and similar sexy topics.

I was a soccer referee in a past phase of my life, so there was some personal interest there, but the article is clear and interesting in any case.

For those who don't have any inclination to go subscribe to the Bag outright, I can only recommend what appears on the page facing the back inside cover: "When you need back volumes & issues, Turn to Hein! ...Complete sets to date... [and] we can also furnish single volumes and issues." Try www.wshein.com or mail at that domain name to inquire.

(There's also a really good bit about former Associate Justice Benjamin Curtis, who wrote the best dissenting [and therefore best] opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford, as well as writing a pamphlet explaining that two of Lincoln's actions had exceeded his authority and thus been unconstitutional [suspending habeas and issuing the Emancipation Proclamation], as well as defending President Andrew Johnson at his impeachment trial. A noteworthy career, that one.)

Secondly, jurisdiction.

In Aaron Streett's latest serial issue of the (just-mentioned) ever-growing, best-selling "SCt Today" e-mail bomb, he brings us up to date on the two new issued decisions, one of which, Rockwell v. United States is the focus of my attention. The other issuance involves Guamanian debt, a topic close to many of our hearts. There are also two grants, one of which involves both potentially salacious material and free speech on the internet, in the form of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeal's ruling that the Protect Act was unconstitutionally vague and overbroad, potentially criminalizing a hypothetical email from a grandfather, innocently (and accurately) titled "Good pic of kids in bed".

Anyway: jurisdiction! (see, colon.)

The bite in Rockwell wasn't that the company hadn't in fact left itself potentially open to 26 counts under the false claims act; the U.S. Government in fact had reason to complain of environmental frauds. There is a procedural twist: the case was brought not by the U.S., but by a fired former employee in a qui tam action. These actions are beyond the scope of this post...(see Wikipedia on Qui Tam for a brief explanation).

In any case, the fired Mr. Jones had a reason to believe that the "pondcrete" made by mixing toxic runoff from the nuclear weapons plant with concrete would in fact disintegrate, causing dangerous contamination. He later amended his complaint to reflect information that became publicly available, including 25 different counts. But he had the actual reason for the pondcrete problem wrong, and he had not in fact had information at the time he left that there was a present problem. He had made a prediction, nothing more. Disintegration began after he was fired, and for a reason he had not predicted.

So, what about his claim? Was he the kind of qui tammer the False Claims Act was intended to benefit? Or was he just a weird kind of lucky? The majority, in an opinion written by Scalia but nevertheless defensible, is that there is no logical connection between his original claim, which he had information to support, and the amended complaint based on public information. This is crucial, because there's only the payoff for original sources of information. You can't win a payday by reading the newspaper and then filing suit with no facts unknown to the public.

The relevant "allegations," then, are those of the most recent version of the amended complaint.

The dissent, per Justice Stevens, would have come out the other way, because allegations most naturally in his view means those in the original complaint (which Stone certainly had direct knowledge of) and Stevens felt that FCA jurisdiction should be based on the original complaint, and then, follow this, then the bit in Aaron's e-mail which bit me:

citing the general rule that jurisdiction is ordinarily determined then, and chastising the majority for forcing courts to reassess their jurisdiction with every amended complaint.

See what happened there?

Plaintiffs often want jurisdictional rules to come out their way. (It's only possible to stay in court, which is often-if-not-always what a plaintiff wants, if the court has jurisdiction to hear the case.) Unlike defendants, I presume. Anyway, a defendant might reasonably argue that amending the complaint until it no longer contains any counts providing the necessary kind of allegations required in the False Claims Act means the plaintiff has lost their jurisdictional "hook," and now should be tossed out of court. It's a logical argument.

A plaintiff might reasonably argue that if a claim has jurisdiction to be heard at the time it is filed, and that changing information requires amendment, then so long as the subject matter of the complaint is congruent, and the parties are the-same-or-similar, or whatever other degree of closeness one might want, then so long as the case isn't brought in bad faith or something there's no reason the court can't proceed to the merits.

Now, Stevens cited a "general rule." And in fact, many cases are decided where jurisdiction absolutely existed at the time suit was commenced, and probably didn't by the end, but the court decides the case to get it over with, presumably because we're talking not ability-to-hear-and-decide-the-case jurisdiction (subject-matter jurisdiction) but prudent jurisdiction, where the court can exercise its judgment about whether or not the case should be heard at all. The first cannot be avoided, the second can. Different rules for the constitutionally required (Article III) kind of jurisdiction, than for the kind created by the court - meaning the Court.

I guess this one comes down to the picture you choose. Was Jones' good-intentioned attempt to blow the whistle and report a false claim close enough, or was he just barking at the right tree without having any reason to know there was in fact a false claim up there? One side seems to be concerned that people who try to report false claims won't be rewarded if the complaint is amended too much; the other side seems to be worried lest the rule become a windfall to "whistle-blowers" who lack actual information, sort of on the theory that if a thousand dogs start hollering under a thousand trees, one of them will wind up under the right tree even if his nose doesn't work worth a damn.

And that's my take on today's baseball.

As always, I am indebted to Aaron for speedily summarizing, snarking, and sending his invaluable Report on the goings-on at 1 First Street.

To quote another legal epistolary writer (Aaron Streett; the extra T at the end is probably for Terrific), "Greetings, sportsfans!" See here, for the first March issue of his periodic chatty Supreme Court opinion, order and grant roundup. I highly recommend it to all SCOTUS groupies. Prawfsblawg reprints them, but you can get them delivered straight to your inbox by mailing him at the link at the end of that post. Streett, an associate in Baker Botts' Houston office, provides all the inside baseball commentary one could want, in a breezy and entertaining tone. Oh look, there's links to all of them at Baker Botts.

Anyway. Hello to those who enjoy watching athletic events. How's your NCAA tournament treating you? Thought so.

I had an intention to write about Gender and Change in Heinlein's writing. So that'll be my next topic, because I think it's got more juice for me right now than the grim-seeming discussion of war crimes that I had planned. I'd planned to unroll that one in mid-August 2006, and then the topic so disheartened me that I went and did things I felt like doing more instead.

So: forthcoming, a discussion of gender-bending, gender roles, stereotypes, cross-dressing, a bit about sexuality (although that's not the focus), and gender as a mutable characteristic in the works of R. A. Heinlein. Because after all, if I can't write what I feel like, what am I doing out here in the blawgoverse, anyway?

Other posts I'm brewing up: a quick perusal of the controversial No Child Left Behind act, which has been heavily criticized as elevating testing, and particularly apparent improvement in testing, over real education, as well as skewing priorities in educating students - like, how much to test-prep vs. other skills, how much to the bottom quintile vs. the next vs. the next. My favorite example of unhappiness was the NY Times article about an excellent school that had been deemed a failure under NCLB. I might do a more searching review of what's being said about it. Wikipedia now notes in the No Child Left Behind Act article that "a new Congress has already started considering major revisions, as one group of 50 Republican senators and representatives introduced legislation in March 2007 that would provide states much greater freedom from NCLB's controls and punishments." - but as always, trust Wikipedia only so far. How do we KNOW that they introduced such proposed legislation unless we go looking through THOMAS ourselves?

Also, a possible HF post on addiction, and another on wealth and power.

Until next time, that's today's unused & unusable inside baseball! (Again, a tip of the imaginary hat to this guy.)

... and convicts when the case made by the prosecution is "overwhelming" despite having personal sympathy for the defendant. See NYT, March 7, 2007, "Libby Guilty of Lying in C.I.A. Leak Case," Neil Lewis.

One of the 11 jurors who spoke publicly after the verdict said that there was great sympathy for Mr. Libby in the jury room, but that the case presented by the prosecution was overwhelming.

Of course, the line "The verdict meant the end of a nearly four-year investigation into the leak of the identity of the Central Intelligence Agency officer" was quite incorrect. The case isn't even over. The jury's duty has been completed, but as the article makes clear, the action continues.

Counsel for the defendant will file post-trial motions to grant a new trial, and will seek appellate relief when that fails (as is likely). Before that, the sentence needs to be handed down, on June 5. The article quotes uninvolved experts as estimating a Guidelines sentence of 20-27 months, but of course in the brave new post-Booker world, the Federal Sentencing Guidelines are advisory, not mandatory. A departure (upwards or downwards) does not have to be justified by extraordinary circumstances. However, most Circuit Courts of Appeal have been far more willing to approve upward departures than downward departures, looking at the latter with great skepticism and reversing such sentences, stating that the sentencing judges did not give adequate reasons for the departure. Upward departures, meanwhile, are routinely approved as being reasonable. Doug Berman of Sentencing Law Prof has done so much good work on the issue that it's unnecessary to marshal up the evidence on one's own. See, for example, this post, in which he notes the Fourt Circuit's reversal of an upward departure:

"This is a noteworthy event in part because it is a rare event," Berman posts.

And for his useful collection of links of interest on those who wish to handicap the Libby sentencing, see here, with "On to Sentencing, Scooter!".

I'm not interested in gloating over Libby's downfall, but I do feel some satisfaction that a felony conviction came out of this investigation into one of the more public and shameful examples of treasonous politics ("So Novak's Talking: Thoughts on the Plame Mess" posted here on 8/1/05) in recent history.

Blog Burnout is a serious problem. Not "serious," per se, but worrying. If one worries about trivialities, anyway. And for some, the problem is more of a situation, rather neutral in tone and timbre. [Tone quality is a synonym for timbre, as I just learned from Wikipedia, but has nothing at all to do with Timber, or Timberlake, or Timberlands. Wait, that's not right, Justin Timberlake presumably has tonal qualities. Oh, nevermind.]

Just as blogs grew up, mushroomlike, in the wake of the popularization of web software that made it effectively free to blog, requiring only expenditure of time and the effort of banging fingers upon keys, so many of them waned, much like webpages built in the pioneering days of the Internet, ca. late 1990s to early 2k0s.

People realized they had better things to do - or, lacking those, that they could free up really prodigious of time in order to do nothing at all, merely by allowing their site to fall into disuse. Let a daily update slide to a week - then two. String together a couple twos and make a month, and after just a pair of them, most readers reluctantly (or secretly gratefully, since there is then one less Thing they have to read) conclude that the blog has been abandoned.

Blogs need no excuse, since they take up very little real estate, but they also need a reason to perpetuate. For some bloggers, it is a sense of outrage. For others, it is the dread disease - the need to write, whether there is a readymade subject to hand or not. I suspect that many others write because they only want the attention. This, I think, explains the great many blogs on current events, many outraged in tone.

I got tired of being outraged, like in my last post. Reading headlines in the hopes of finding something to be outraged about takes a great deal of emotional energy. Why not read a good book instead?

So I did.

I've been reading, and watching movies, and television (almost caught all the episodes of The Sopranos that I had missed), and am ready to return, I think, to blogging. Life permitting. But I think I'll be a little less outraged, for a while. Life permitting.

A blog is also like an indefinitely deep hole, into which one can always toss in a few more shovelsfull of loose dirt. Or a handful of pebbles and gravel. Or the occasional precious nugget.

Happy 2007, although we're over a seventh of the way into it already. Goodness, it's almost to the Tuesday of the Week of '07. Well. In that case, the Monday hangover should be well over, and it's time to get some blogging done before the week is out.

I'll be back soon.

Un-American anti-libertarians make me so mad I could spit.

Gakked (link goes to defn.) from Howard Bashman's invaluable How Appealing:

"The New Detainee Law Does Not Deny Habeas Corpus; Fear not, New York Times, al Qaeda's lawfare rights are still intact": Andrew C. McCarthy has this essay today at National Review Online.

(permalink to HB's post here)

Now, the NRO is not where I go for advanced and reasoned opinionating. National Review Online is what we in the field might call "biased."

What's wrong with the hed on the above-mentioned bit? Well, he uses the word "lawfare." Much like "tort reform," this label obscures an agenda. Tort reform is a wonderful idea; I favor making it harder for frivolous defenses in class action suits to escape sanctions, including dismissal of defenses and directed verdicts for plaintiffs. I also acknowledge that the American rule (no costs shifted to loser) is sometimes flawed. I also dislike it when bad science is the basis for a decision, likewise bad economics, bad law, etc. I just see things from a different view, because my cases are just, etc. etc.

Lawfare means, and here I am being generous, the unethical and immoral use of bedrock American traditional rights to prevent the government from doing what the hell it feels like.

If this be treason, make the most of it.

I am offended by the term lawfare. Lawsuits are NOT a continuation of war by other means. Lawsuits are a way of resolving disputes. Some disputes are false; that's why we call some people "IP trolls" and refer with disdain to frivolous frequent filers. (Say that three times fast.)

But habeas? And where the heck did "Al Qaeda" come in here? If the prisoner was admittedly Al Qaeda, wouldn't things be different? Or adjudicated to be? Or had a trial?

Instead, this NRO headline implies heavily - and I'm so disgusted I don't even want to read the anti-freedom drivel surely contained at the other end of the link, but I probably will, just to see where he's going - that you don't need to find out the truth, in order to figure out if someone is guilty.

The new detainee law does certainly attempt to infringe habeas rights. I mean, that's the point. See this post at Balkinblog, er, Balkinization. It would be unconstitutional if it did that improperly - check your Constitution, article I, section 9:

The migration or importation of such persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each person.

The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.

Now, if I can't prove I'm not Al Qaeda, as by seeking habeas relief, what's to stop governmental overreaching from plucking me, an Americna citizen, out of my life, putting me in jail, and denying me a lawyer and a trial?

If I'm not a terrorist, how can you defend imprisoning me without a trial? And if I won't ever get the opportunity to clear myself, how do you know I really am Al Qaeda?

In other words: bah.

On the plus side, this rant has cheered me up. Take that, depressing anti-libertarians.

(Followup: after briefly perusing the post, I note that the author is just flatly, plainly wrong. Constitutional limits don't give rights to citizens vs. non-citizens. They are limits on the powers of Congress, and of the government. Suspending habeas corpus unlawfully is beyond Congress' powers. Full stop.

Other things he gets wrong: Congress did not give the detainees habeas rights, and yes it does matter what they're called. Which rights attach to the review tribunals (NEVER trials) which might be a detainee's only hope of escaping possibly wrongful detention (as in, he's not a terrorist. Not at all, never was, wrong guy)? And who gets them? Because most of the detainees, despite years in custody, have not gotten trials, and are not scheduled to. Hundreds of people - and more to come?)

As many Heinlein fans know, the new book is out. Amazon lists it as available October 16, but if you visit a bricks-and-mortar store right now, you'll find it on shelves now. Furthmore, Amazon seems to have it in stock.

The book is not a Heinlein, at least not in the way that most of the books I've reviewed or mentioned here have been. Unlike even "For Us, the Living" (published posthumously) the new book is based on Heinlein, written with the aid of seven pages of 10-point typed outline, plus index cards with voluminous notes. But it's not writen BY Heinlein.

It's written by Spider Robinson, my favorite living author, a guy who was once dubbed "The New Robert Heinlein," via the sentence, "If I didn't think it understated his achivement, I'd nominate Spider Robinson, on the basis of this book [Mindkiller, reissued along with its subsequent-sort of - sequal Time Pressure, in the compendium Deathkiller - recommended - ed.], as the new Robert Heinlein." Gerald Jonas, for the New York Times Book Review, available here.

If you like Heinlein, particularly if you like vintage Heinlein, like the better so-called Juveniles, you will probably enjoy the new book. If you like Spider Robinson, particularly his superior work (like Stardancer and its sequels, co-written with his wife Jeanne; like Deathkiller, mentioned above), then you will find this to be one of his best books, period.

The book is Variable Star, and it's not quite like anything.

Variable Star takes place in Heinlein's ficton, in the universe that Could Have Been had certain events played out differently. Nehemiah Scudder, the Prophet, could have held the U.S. in thrall via a regime of religious terror, a despotic, theocratic fascist state. But that's just "when."

The book takes place in a Place, and a Time, and a Society, and like the best Heinlein and the best Robinson, it's believable and it's compelling.

The protagonist could have been pulled right out of Time For the Stars, or Starman Jones. He's faced with similar facts, to a point, but this isn't a retread. For one thing, where Heinlein brings some of the big ideas, and the "central antinomy" that drives his first decision, Spider brings the humanity, the emotionally vivid and compelling internal narrative. Heinlein did Big really, really well. Spider does Pain, and Empathy, and they both did Hope very well.

Some of the other Heinleins brought to mind by Variable Star:

• Door Into Summer and Time for the Stars, for an impossible romantic story - with a nice twist courtesy of Spider. For those who haven't read them, DIS uses time travel plus cold sleep to allow a mature man to marry a child - when she has grown up, and he hasn't. TFTS does a similar sort of trick using Einsteinian time dilation.
• Methuselah's Children, and Universe, and Farmer in the Sky, for additional bits of feel and plot and scenery
  

But as well as some of the best of Heinlein, the book boasts some of the best of Spider. There's musicianship, and puns, and action (but never too much, and never incredible), and art, and pain, and death, and immensely powerful people, and people with nothing left to lose.

Summing up: more than just recommended. If you're a fan, or a Fan, then drop everything and get it. It's not just good science fiction, or merely another Heinlein. For my money, it's better.

I think I may blog about some of the legal issues that played out in the book - but not this weekend. Time to enjoy the weather.

Popping my head up. Several thoughts.

Happy New Year to those who celebrate starting tonight.

The new Heinlein/Spider Robinson collaboration is great. I'll have a review up shortly.

Heinlein Friday was driving me to distraction. For my own good, I'm suspending the practice, and substituting it with a new programme, tentatively entitled, "Post when you have something to say."

Linkage continues apace at my beloved Del.Icio.Us page, findable by typing http and then :// and then del.icio.us and then /eh_nonymous and then hitting enter, or touching return. Please do check it out - new (and old) links, webpages, and blogs appear there all the time.

Posner's a sneaky, sneaky debater. Check out this paragraph:

Civil liberties are valuable, but their values should be assessed in a practical, hard-headed way, rather than treated with quasi-religious veneration. Maybe David Hume went too far (though I don’t think so) when he said that “The safety of the people is the supreme law. All other particular laws are subordinate to it, and dependent on it.” But I am not prepared to die at the hands of terrorists in order to defend the Miranda rule, or Brady, or Burton, or Mapp, or Doyle, or the other arabesques that the Supreme Court in the Earl Warren era inscribed on the helpless text of the Constitution.

What's wrong with Posner's screed? Well, he's telling Geoff Stone (in a debate about "Not a Suicide Pact," his new book) that we mustn't be so fuzzy and abstract, putting a thumb on the scales of decision, and preferring civil liberties over other values.

In other words, you can't assume that privacy or individual rights or civil rights are of more value than something else, until you compare them.

Then Posner spins, spins, spins. He writes that he would rather be searched at random without a warrant than be killed by terrorists.

Well! Shut my mouth! Of course, I was thinking the exact opposite, that I'd prefer to die than have my liberties infringed!

Posner's disingenuous to write this sentence, because he's making a number of logical fallacies and he should by gum know it.

Appeal to emotion.
Red herring.
False choice.
Grave consequences unless you agree with him.

I know, I know, he keeps arguing, that's just the setup.

But he's still spinning, and increasingly wildly. Why not assume that violating my Miranda, Brady, Mapp, or other rights will *not necessarily* be more likely to preserve my life, unless there's some evidence for it? Instead, Posner assumes, as a default, that every limitation on freedom, liberty, and individual rights will result in greater safety. If safety is an overarching value, as he says, then the inquiry is over.

He is putting a rabbit in the hat. The rabbit is that safety always trumps. This is precisely the kind of failure to reason and pragmatically compare which he accuses Stone of. Consider Kip's vitriolic (and entirely deserved) scorn directed at subway searches in New York City, as presently laid out. We lose freedoms; we gain nothing. There is NO POSSIBILITY that those (ought to be unconstitutional) searches can deter, vex, or obstruct terrorists. There's no barrier. There's no benefit - and when there's no benefit, it's hard to do a CBA (cost-benefit analysis) that concludes anything other than the practice is a waste of time.

See Kip's posts here: Circuit Court upholds worthless subway searches and the linked posts at the bottom.

I'd have more scornful things to say about Posner, but others are doing a fine job. He's a shrieking hysteric, and it's disturbing that he's prejudging outrageous actions to be fine and dandy - as a legal and as a pragmatic matter - in the fight against terror.

Consider his hypothetical example of assigning an FBI agent to follow each and every Muslim, on foot. I wonder, though, why that would provide any benefit, as some terrorists are not Muslim. Better, perhaps, if he recommends a policeman stand behind each of us, with a loaded gun. That might achieve his desired goals better. But he is just mentioning it to show that it would be legally unproblematic.

Of course it might be, you ninny, if you formulate it wrong - care to ask a civil libertarian if it's unproblematic? The problem's not whether a particular right is violated, although that's there too, potentially. It's that it would be completely useless, and thus not even bear a rational relationship to the goal to be achieved, viz greater safety. Argh!

I'm still on informal blog hiatus, but this day deserves recognition. NOT Sept. 11. Everyone who remembers that day will bear the scars, and the memory.

I don't memorialize bad days. I recall them, and try to move forward. While I understand the impulse to lionize heroics, 9/11 is not the day we need to keep always before our eyes. Nor is 9/10.

The day that matters most is today, September 12th, the anniversary of The Day After.

Today is when we woke up, those of us who got to sleep, and saw dawn. It was not over, not for the bereaved and the terrified, the trapped and the toiling. But for the country, it was the first day after The Day.

Nine One Two is the day we had to struggle with the day that had passed, and think about the days to come.

Depression struck me on 9/12, when the shock wore off. Fear, for myself and my family and my country and everyone (when I had time to think that large) was a dominant emotion. Meanwhile, I kept breathing, kept living, kept doing what I was doing. That week, it was the first semester of law school. Tuesday was a bad day. Enough said, and enough will be said, and has been said, written, televised, and trumpeted on CNN.com. Enough about 9/11.

Let's talk about 9/12, and everything we started to know then.

Blogging goes through periods of varying frequencies, as with most aspects of life.

Sometimes, I post with a frequency which indicates a vast surplus of available time, available mental energy, or both.

Occasionally, as this month, my own self-imposed goals (weekly postings on Friday, at a minimum) aren't met because other rhythms have disrupted the schedule.

My vacation from Heinlein Friday will continue for another week, but its long-term status as a permanent weekly commitment is in doubt. I have more to write, but the very decision to start so huge a project as the Law of War post, which produced dozens and dozens of paragraphs with inadequate planning on how to tame them, has placed an unfortunate obstacle in the path of continued easy posts.

I may want to withdraw it, and prepare a more modest HF post. It wouldn't be the first time I've done this: my last major blawgging project was to be a Scalia Mega-Post, in which I dealt with each and every things about Scalia's jurisprudence (and personal style, and irritating statements) which annoyed or frustrated or infuriated or troubled me. As it turns out, that kind of project involves more than just brainstorming, writing, and collecting links.

To take on a really massive writing project, there needs to be some thoughtful editing, at the planning stage. What gets in, and what is excluded? What's the right order? How does one section relate to another?

I've seldom constructed such open-ended writing projects, and when I have, failure to adequately edit my own structure has been at least as big a problem as inability to find words.

I'm also better at starting projects than finishing them, but of course it's easy to finish a task when you can see its goal clearly and therefore understand the nature of the work that will accomplish it.

Writing a brief is easy by comparison. It's got to have the requisite pieces, to comply with the Federal Rules or local practice or the judge's orders. There's only one way to organize it - the right way, with first things first, all the necessary prefatory and preparatory announcements (introduction, statement of jurisdiction, statutes involved, etc.). A motion for class certification has a form that's virtually pre-ordained, just because it has to comply with Rule 23, or its state law equivalent - see the discussion in this long-ago post. August 5, 2005? It's been a while.

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What else is on my mind?

I try not to journal too much, this being a Blawg and all, but it's so pleasant to write down observations and get them out of the mental buffer. Nobody has to spend time reading about what my cat did today (she's nonexistent, so pretty much the same things she does every day, or rather doesn't do, or perhaps even doesn't not do). But some observations are worthwhilier than others.

Philadelphia's weather has turned distinctly dismal. Temps in the 80s or above (with miserably high humidity) have been replaced by highs in the low 70s, with a distinct overcast. Summer's over. The season has changed, and we can look forward to months of complaining and wishing it was unpleasantly hot again.

Politics in Philly is about to get increasingly unavoidable. I haven't heard from the Lynn Swann candidacy lately, but I assume he's still running against incumbent Governor Ed Rendell (who is married to Third Circuit Judge Midge - er, Marjorie O. Rendell). I haven't seen any lying commercials from Santorum lately - although I hear there's an accurate one going around about how often his Democratic opponent, Bob Casey, Jr., has sought different offices. Well played, Santorum campaign. Keep trying to distract us from the issues of character, philosophy, politics, trust, and substantive issues.

Philly car share, I can now report, is a lovely thing. It may not be competitive with Zip Cars or the other nationwide car-sharing programs. PCS is a nonprofit which (presumably for good and valid and insurance-related reasons) can't let you take one of their cars into D.C. or New York or Baltimore or otherwise outside the Area. But, I think it does finally eliminate the need of many students, many professionals, and most city-dwellers to actually buy, own, maintain, gas, insure, and find permanent parking for their vehicles. Google them if you're in Philly and haven't already considered joining. Many have - and many have sold their cars and finally rid themselves of that albatross, car ownership.

That reminds me, I can buy a new transpass today - why not be able to ride any bus OR check out a car with an hour's notice? It's affordable, as owning and insuring a car in the city isn't.

Life beckons, much as it intruded last week. Off I go, to face another long, dreary, wearying Friday, followed immediately by a three day weekend and then a four day week. Wait, that's not too cumbersome after all.

Posting will resume on or after the weekend.

So, "Eh," if that is your *real* name, why the blawg hiatus?

Well, me, since me asks, I've been busy.

Blogging grew out of my need to get it all out, and onto the page. I had been commenting anonymously (or pseudonymously) on blogs for some time, including at my favoritest, Evan Schaeffer's Legal Underground, as it was then known.

I had spare time. I had unexpressed thoughts. I was visiting blawgs that had no commentability, and that annoyed me. I felt like, if the author had something to say, and it was provocative enough (or wrong enough), that they had an obligation - a duty! - to let me comment on it.

Obviously, that's not how writing works, but it is how blogging works - or one of the ways it can work.

Blogging was a hobby, but it was also fun. I could link, I could make snarky comments, I could vent - but I could also indulge my obsessive reading of news and blogs. Suddenly, being overinformed was not a sign of weakness; it was a source of inspiration.

When life gets hectic, as it has lately, I fall behind on my blog reading. Right now my Bloglines page has over 500 posts that I haven't had a chance to pore carefully over - or even skim or skip past. I love blogs - this is the Blogroll created for me by Bloglines, and here's what I have blogrolled at del.icio.us - that is, the same sort of thing, but more haphazardly, since delicious is about impulse and saving everything, like a magpie, rather than carefully selecting only those posts, blogs, or webpages I really and truly need.

I notice that I have 39 blogs on my delicious blogroll; that includes new addition Lawyers, Guns & Money, and Conglomerate, as well as "215 words," the sorts of things I would never have added to bloglines. That's because bloglines pushes posts to you, and they look like they pile up in the aggregator unless you read them. I prefer to lay out the links for myself to peruse at leisure, no obligation to buy, no money down.

I'm about to go on vacation. I'm winding up a document review and preparing for a filing - which will occur while I'm on vacation. I have family duties pressing. I have social responsibilities calling. There's a Jim Henson / Muppet exhibition down in D.C. at the Smithsonian's museum of American history, and not just the exhibit but the museum closes on September 5th, 2006 for a good several years for renovation.

Also, I have a headache, and the water's too cold, and I don't feel like it.

***

I have less to say about the Laws of War than I'd thought - and also have written far, far more words for that post than I can usefully use. When you write a lot and have nothing to say - and does that include this post? - you know you're deep in trouble.

***

'Tis better to keep one's mouth shut and be thought a fool, than open it and remove all doubt. Or so 'tis said by people who say 'tis and 'tain't a lot.

In that vein, I posted to del.icio.us this classic, originally run in Pl*yb*y (name munged to protect the guilty; after all, only illicit and licentious writing ever appears there, cf. this other favorite author of mine)...

The Dark Truth About Comp 101, blogged at Thus Blogged Anderson.

Say, interested in writing? See more links about it (del.icio.us/eh_nonymous/writing).

***

You know, you read a 1,600+ page opinion now and again, and people think you're obsessed. Still, sometimes a case will involve a lot of writing for a judge. See, e.g., this news story on the tobacco decision by the D.C.-based federal judge.

You know, if you like reading legal opinions, I should recommend that you check out del.icio.us/eh_nonymous/pdf for all my links to opinions (except the ones in html format, of course), as well as other PDFfy items of interest. That includes a teaser for an article by Prof. Nate Persily on Scalia's decision in the LULAC race-based gerrymander case, and advice on geting a clerkship, and a long philosophical paper by a soldier on why Don't Ask, Don't Tell violates the military's own ethical standards. Not to mention some of the Best Judicial Opinions On the Web, selected entirely by my own caprice and blind chance.

Prefer funny stuff? Or all the links that relate to law? Some categories overlap - they're tags, after all, not a filing system in the normal sense - but they're all pretty helpful.

Or if it's advice you need, I've found plenty of that too.

As with blogging, the best part about all this is: it's not just for you. It's for me, too. I get to have a flexible, endlessly interconnected set of bookmarks for myself. Oh, right, I also bookmarked some items to look over later. Hm. Must clean that out soon and add more.

***

So, while the Heinlein post (and the series as a whole, in fact) are in limbo, do like I'm doing: take a vacation from it. Get away from it all.

When I come back, I'll decide which way I'll wind it up. I might do it straight, as I've done most of the others, but I was also thinking about laying out the process of creation. Of course, that might be like explaining a joke, or dissecting a frog. It's messy, it takes a while, and in the process the frog dies.

Have a good August!

As I noted last week, the promised Heinlein Friday post on the Laws of War was delayed by the utterly predictable, yet totally unexpected unfolding of the Universe.

In the meantime, here's what's up.

I've been blogging since June of 2005, and show no particular inclination to stop thinking, reading, commenting on (er, meaning "at" - er, meaning "at the location of") other blawgs, caring about politics, or writing about law, language, science fiction, or anything else that comes within my sights. Sight? No, sights.

Blogging serves a number of functions for me. It allows me to say what I cannot say at work - or at least, cannot say at such length. Work is for work, which is to say, is not the right place for a rant about Scalia, or a scholarly review of Heinlein's fiction pertaining to sex changes (pending...), or a snarky commentary on Tom Cruise's wacky religious beliefs.

Blogging is writing - and publishing, all in one. It's not journaling, at least not if done right. People can see this - will see it, if I point it out or their browsing brings them here. It's public expression, as well as personal exposition.

As Jeremy recently noted, blogging is (also, or especially) a way to get inside people's heads. He gets to eavesdrop on the thoughts and feelings of others, observe their mental processes. See his commentary at Powell's Book Blog. To the same effect, see architecture columnist Inga Saffron's thoughts on her recent BlogDay (anniversary of blogging). Her comments are thoughtful and, to me, quite interesting. They are the opposite of the fear that journalism will be killed by blogging:

I started the blog without knowing what I was getting into. I saw it as a place to channel odd bits of information that didn't quite measure up as column material, and to try out oddball ideas. It's been a dream situation for a journalist: No deadlines. No limitations on story length. No dumb headlines. No annoying editors. No plodding bureaucracy. What you see is what I write, flaws and all. I never expected that getting rid of the middleman would be so liberating. I also never expected the kind of feedback I see in the comments. Until recently, journalists could never be quite sure of how their work was being read. No more. I've learned a lot just by eavesdropping.

In her view, journalists are liberated by being bloggers. In Jeremy's view, a writer can (finally) connect with his audience, not just letter by letter or one at a time, but in a wave of two-way communication and reaction and reply.

As I am (purposely) a low-profile blogger, I don't have quite the same experience.

I've been asked why I bother blogging at all if I don't keep track of my number of hits, my blog traffic, my ranking, how well I'm linked, who links me, etc. etc. ad nauseam. Frankly, I don't care. I write because I need to, and the fact that I can get feedback (and, indeed, accountability for what I write) is a bonus. The icing on the compulsion cake.

I don't do this to change the world. I do this because it helps me out.

Blogging lets me:

- get things off my chest
- store my thoughts in their most coherent (sometimes) or cogent form
- try out various writing styles, from the most formal to the least
- store my links in one useful location

So expect more of the same, to my second Blogaversary, and on into the foreseeable future.

In the meantime, thanks for reading, to those who do, and thanks for commenting - you know who you are. You help convert this from meaningless self-referential solo gymnastics into an exercise (literally) for the reader - and the blogger.

And now, to get back to work on this overdue (and still imposing) HF post. Maybe if I can find a better way to break it into pieces...

To my disappointment, the Heinlein Friday for this Friday wasn't done yet - not even half done yet, which would have let me post Part 1, to be followed next Friday by part 2.

So, mea culpa, and let me just leave a few good links here as a taste of what I'm going for. The real HF will be posted... but not before midnight. Maybe not even before next Wednesday. :)

• Wikipedia "Laws of War"


• Fred (Slacktivist) on "You're Not Allowed to Kill Civilians"
  
  
  
  • the Title post
  
  
  • YNATKC continued (for those who didn't get the message after part 1)
  
  
  • Nagasaki - for those still unclear on the concept
  
  
  • Perverse Arithmetic - for those who eagerly look for permission from the prohibition
  
  
  • Terrorists are Bad - for those eager to hide behind labels, particularly when they are unfamiliar with history, war, or both
  
  


• Some links at my del.icio.us page on the Global War on Terror, starting at p.2, which includes some goodies. Of note: Neat Katyal's plea to finally start where we should have, and try courts-martialing detainees; Fafblog's biting satirical comment on the coordinated suicide of three Guantanamo detainees "6/10 changed everything!"; a guest post at Concurring Opinions about how a law clerk grew up, got appointed to the Supreme Court, and turned his former judge's great dissent into the law of the land, eviscerating a terrible precedent, in "Who's the Greatest Law Clerk Ever?" (referring to the recent Hamdan decision).


• The first page of same, which includes the intriguing comment by Prof. Gerber at Intel Dump that perhaps not trying detainees at all would be the right way to go. Why go with kangaroo courts, when you can just decline to try (or punish) them at all? I need to review this, see what he's basing his argument on.

There's lots to say - including about ongoing events, including political ones such as the defeat in Connecticut of a certain formerly Democratic Senator by Democratic nominee Ned Lamont, a rich progressive liberal who won because the primary voters were sick and tired of the incumbent's refusal to vote or talk like a Democrat on a wide range of issues. The first and foremost being the need to show skepticism towards whether the Administration should be credited with competence and good will in the war in Iraq, neither of which it has actually demonstrated. And, of course, the War In Iraq (is it Civil yet? Is it Accomplished yet?) is not really a front in the GWOT - until our leaders turned it into one. "Come on," he taunted.

The Vice President talks as if Iraq were part of the War on Terror. The Senator (soon to be former Senator) talks as if "terrorists" (meaning guerilla warriors, or meaning terrorists? Does he even know?) will take heart if we stop fighting the wrong war and begin fighting the right ones. Both ignore the reality that Saddam was not behind 9/11. Saddam cheered when Americans bled, but that's not enough; many of our enemies did. Anarchist fanatical theocrats have remarkably little in common with westernized despotic secular tyrants. And just where did Saddam purchase that poison gas he used on the Kurds?

Much, much more when I get around to it.

This week's Heinlein Friday may be a bit delayed by the unavoidable, inevitable, ineffable unfolding of the Universe. Current ETA is this coming Friday, August 11th.

However, I can tell you that the next HF will involve

- discussion of Heinlein
- discussion of the laws governing the military, and their conduct in warfare
- " of the Geneva conventions
- " of war crimes
- " of detaining combatants
- " of detaining civilians
- " of killing civilians (hint: don't)

There's already been some mention of the above, particularly when I mentioned law and justice in the military, like in Starship Troopers.

It will also, I warn you in advance, be very quoteful. Quotatious, I'm calling it.

More soon.

Also, I always in these preview posts take the opportunity to plug my del.icio.us page - check it out for the latest links, breaking news, rare resources, and surprising facts that make blogging so interesting. But instead of having to embed them in a post, with the inevitable wondering about how unique or "post-worthy" the link is, I can just post the link itself, and let you the reader decide what’s interesting enough to click on. I promise, there’s something for everyone.

Just browse to http://del.icio.us/eh_nonymous - and enjoy.

Or don't, see if I mind. :)

Welcome to the 9th Heinlein Friday! Well, sort of. I posted the first HF-related post on May 26th, announcing a "new recurring feature" - how prescient of me. There have been 8 substantive posts since then, on topics I listed in my last post previewing this HF, but I omitted two: the Judge Jones speech report, and the Science in Superman post.

Those topics, in no particular order, were: Aliens; Justice; Courts and Judges; Lawyers ("...beyond stereotypes"); Crime; and a special post on Jerry Was A Man, a short story involving a chimpanzee who would be human - or at least a person.

This week, as I discussed in my preview post, I'll be discussing "patents, trade secrets, and invention in Heinlein's fiction."

Inventions

Why?

Why bother talking about the ray guns and rocket ships in the (sometimes awful, sometimes talky/ preachy, occasionally disturbingly dated) science fiction of a Dead White Male?

Good question, insultingly posed. Let's break it apart.

Heinlein didn't do much with Ray Guns - although he had some fantastic weapons - see the opening chapter of Starship Troopers, which would make a fantastic movie - if only they would film the book, instead of a horrible soft-porn version from which all of the best technology has been deliberately clipped ("too expensive to create!") from the film. To quote a noted philosopher, "Aaaargh!" The Suits, which operate something like muscular exoskeletons plus heads-up-display plus skydiving-slash-submersible-slash-spacesuit-slash-weapons platforms, are the coolest military tech there is - and at that, Heinlein doesn't spend long on them. The opening pages, and then a subsequent mention or two later in the book about maintenance and training, and that's all. They're assumed, once described.

Heinlein also seldom did rocket ship - he preferred ships that either floated or went, ZAP, and the whole mass-reaction flaming-rear of rockets, while having the benefit of being possible "now," were always slightly dissatisfactory to him. Although see Rocket Ship Galileo. But his best spaceships were interesting. Consider:

Rides in Heinlein

1. Gay Deceiver, a heavily (post-sale) modified "duo" ("built on a Ford shell") - a duo being a car that could fly! - with extensive, expensive upgrades by a military-trained suspicious and survival-minded computer and software geek (and then a physicist specializing in N-space, and then his daughter with REAL ability in mathematics... and then they took it to Oz, where things wake up...)



2. the colony ship in Methuselah's Children, which depends on an invention by "Slipstick" Libby Long to escape the solar system and reach stars in less than lifetimes



3. the "UFOs" in Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, in which Heinlein used some impressive popular mathematics (in the plot of the story!) to prove that nearby space travel is feasible in terms of length of time - and to suggest that post-Einsteinian physics would make nearby interstellar travel equally feasible. Although the Real travel in the book is done instantaneously, or even FTL, by going not through space but "past" it - in the inadequate descriptions of English, rather than math.

Enough with the Ships and Weapons. Heinlein did a great job with ideas, when necessary backing them up wit