Fall Arrives

 Fall has arrived in earnest. We have all the windows and doors open, and the cats are very much enjoying their screened porch.

There might even be frost on Wednesday.

What I'm Reading Now

This doesn't include books I am reading for reviews -- that explains the lack of science fiction here.

Richard Powers, Playground

I don't know how I've gotten this far into my career as an extreme reader without encountering Richard Powers, but I am delighted I have finally stumbled across him. I was about fifty pages into his latest novel, Playground, when I started saying how have a missed this guy? I looked him up on Wikipedia and learned he has won the Pulitzer, the National Book Award, and a McArthur grant. How did I miss all that?

Anyway! Playground is a great book, a near-future about four people whose lives intertwine. There's a lot about oceans, and about AI. The ending left me bemused, and I can't decide if I like it, but the book is very much worth reading. I've put all his other books (or those my library has) on hold.

Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Father Time

I've loved Hrdy's work for literal decades now. She's a biological anthropologist who focuses on what babies do to parents and to their communities. Here, she looks mostly at what babies do to fathers -- that is, what being around babies, taking care of babies, and interacting with babies does to the neurological and hormonal makeup of men. (These don't even have to be the actual fathers of the babies.) 

Conversely, she looks at what not being around babies does to men, in those cultures (like her own "tribe" of 1950s Texas) where men are kept from interacting with or taking care of babies for whatever reason. (In Texas, because that was "women's work.") Spoilers: a lack of contact with babies spells bad news for men, which frankly explains a lot about toxic masculinity.

This is a fascinating book which ranges through world cultures and looks not just at homo sapiens but also at primates, rats, and other animals. It's not just enlightening but, like all of Hrdy's books, extremely readable. Highly recommended.

Liana Moriarty, Here One Moment

Moriarty has written some brilliant books -- my favorite by her is What Alice Forgot. She also has three or four books that left me cold. This one, Here One Moment, is about a woman, Cherry, who suffers a kind of episode on a plane flight, and goes up and down the aisles, telling everyone the age they will die and what they will die of. Most passengers treat it as a joke, though others are freaked out, including one mother of an infant who is told her infant will die at age seven, by drowning.

This happens in the first pages of the book. The rest of the book follows the woman herself and several of the people on the plane, as the predictions begin to come true. It's mostly about the past and currents lives of these characters, and it is really well done. Cherry turns out to be the daughter of a professional psychic who has had some psychic moments herself. She does not remember the episode on the plane, and insists she cannot see the future; that no one should take her predictions serious. The narrative itself plays with the idea of whether the future can be seen, whether the future is fixed, and how we struggled to control our lives. I liked this one a lot. 

My Kid Does Art

This was actually done for a presentation he and his group are doing for a seminar:

But honestly, it's beautiful.

"Of course I've Got Sources!"

So in case you missed it, the latest MAGAt conspiracy theory is that "the government" is creating these huge hurricanes on purpose, so that they can aim them at Red States, and kill all the people who would otherwise be voting for Trump.

On one of the sites I was glancing at, a person made the claim that the government was indeed controlling the weather, that this was a "proven fact."

People asked this person for their sources. Now usually when that happens, your average MAGAt is confused, since they have no idea that people are supposed to support their claims with credible sources. Usually MAGAts will then call anyone who asks for evidence a sheep, brainwashed by liberals, and so on.

This person replied, though, giving their source: When they were a child, a weatherman their family knew got drunk and said it was true, that the government did indeed control the weather.

That, for your MAGAt, constitutes credible evidence.

Which is why they're voting for Trump. He tells them stuff, like that Biden and Harris are giving all the FEMA money to immigrants, or that FEMA is refusing the help Republicans, and they believe it, because Trump said it was true, so it must be.

How can we reason with people who don't know what a credible source is, or how to evaluate evidence? "My uncle's girlfriend's daddy said it, so I know it's true!"

(One) Trouble with Religious Students

Living where I do, I often have Evangelical students in my classes, who have been homeschooled or sent to schools run by Evangelicals. They've been taught to view and understand everything through a single lens, that of Eschatological Christ as they have been taught he is. 

Frequently they have also been taught that anyone trying to get them to use another lens is demonic, or an agent of Satan, or at the very least misguided. Their job is not to learn to see new ways, but to hold fast to this single way.

It can be difficult to get them to understand global literature when this is the case. They want to view, for example, The Bacchai through their specific sort of Christian lens. Since the play is about Dionysus and the foible of refusing to accept Dionysus as a god, and the vengeance visited on mortals who think they understand the gods better than the gods do, this can cause difficulties.

Why are such people in a university, if they don't want to read new things and learn new ideas? Well, they see the degree as a job qualification. That is, like many people in America today, their parents and probably they themselves see the university as a trade school. They are here to get a degree as a qualification for a job, and to avoid being educated while they do it.

Not all Evangelical students, of course. Not all Jehovah's Witnesses either, to name another religion that is popular in this area. I've had some excellent students from religious backgrounds. But those are students with enough imagination and intelligence to learn to see with different lenses despite their religion. (Pretty much never because of their religion, at least in my experience. Christianity in Arkansas does not encourage learning as a virtue, or intelligence or curiosity either.)

FALL, FINALLY

This morning it is actually cold -- 56 degrees when I woke up.

FINALLY.

More Conservatives Lies

The new lies I've seen coming from the Right have to do with the destruction in North Carolina, and the response to it.

From the left, I am hearing about the help flooding into the region from ordinary citizens as well as the National Guard and FEMA. Some of the stories literally bring tears to my eyes.

Go here for more on this:

Disaster compassion is real. Here are some things I've seen today and yesterday in Western North Carolina:

— Margaret Killjoy 🏴 (@magpiekilljoy) October 2, 2024

Meanwhile, the Right is busy spewing their usual hate and lies:

• FEMA is broke because they gave all their money to immigrants 
• People who try to volunteer in NC are being arrested by FEMA/federal agents
• FEMA will only give victims of the hurricane $750 dollars 
• Biden's government is controlling the path of the hurricane, they sent it to NC on purpose, because NC is a red state
• FEMA won't give you help if you're white -- their new DEI initiatives mean they have to give all their money to immigrants and brown people
• FEMA is confiscating any money or aid sent to NC
• There's no money for disaster response because Biden sent all the money to Ukraine

See this meme, being shared by Trump supporters, for a sample of these lies:

It's gotten so bad that FEMA has set up a site to deal with rumors. But from what I've seen, any attempt to counter rumors is useless. When people try to talk sense to Rightwing weirdos, what they get is a response like, "You're just brainwashed by the Fake News Media," or "Do your own research, stop trusting federal lies."

Evidence and facts and good sources do not matter in the least to Trump supporters. That's why they're Trump supporters.

ETA: Even Republicans have had enough (though Trump supporters keep on ticking, as you can see in the comments):

local republican representatives in north carolina setting the record straight. pic.twitter.com/lgzXLSmBUV

— emily may (@emilykmay) October 4, 2024

Grading Papers

I have papers coming in. They're mostly good, but when they're bad, they're really bad. I have to bribe myself to keep working with chocolate and popcorn.

I also have to keep reminding myself: This is the second to last time I will have to do this.

Retirement can't come soon enough.

The VP Debate was Depressing

Partly this was because Vance lied nonstop and was only fact-checked once (about the immigrants in Springfield being legal immigrants); partly it was because Vance is just better at debates than Walz, who was visibly nervous, and misspoke or garbled his answers. 

It's also depressing when we consider the possibility that if Trump is elected, we could end up with Vance as president. 

Over on the cesspool that is Twitter, Rod Dreher was gloating over how well Vance did (despite Vance bearing false witness against immigrants, a thing that you think would bother Dreher, since his schtick is that he's such a Christian) because, says Dreher, at least Trump will get rid of trans people.

(1) Wow

(2) That's the religious right for you, folks. Forget anything Christ actually said or told them to do. Instead, they're going to obsess about trans people and abortion, even though Christ said nothing about either of them.

I've learned better than to argue with these moral monsters, though. They could not care less about facts, evidence, or anything Christ said. What they want is power, and they will do and say anything to get and hold onto that power.

My Kid in Graduate School

The kid is loving graduate school. From his newsletter on Patreon:

Grad school is going great! I'm working on an application for the Biological Anthropologist meetings in the spring! I'm having the time of my life! By that I mean like in the Left Hand of Darkness when they are traveling through the icy wastes and having an extremely hard time but there's joy there! I love it! I feel like that one summer in high school when the AC broke and it was 104 outside and my mom, the cats, and I were all dying, but the family dog was thriving! He loved it! I'm the dog! Also god I finally met people IRL I actually want to talk to and be friends with! Yay grad school!!!!!

You can support his Patreon here, btw.

Ruminations

I started watching The Shining last night, because it was there, and I had to nope out after an hour (horror that depends on claustrophobia is not my jam), but before I reached the nope-out point I had time to notice was an absolute asshole the Jack Torrance character is. 

I guess that's toxic masculinity, and I'm glad the movie notices what a monster he is even before they go to the hotel, but what hit me the most this time is how miserable the father in this little family is, and how his hatred for his family and his misery at his life affects his family. Both the wife, Wendy, and the kid, Danny, have learned to lie to the father -- and to some degree to themselves -- in order to escape his emotional and physical attacks. The scene where Jack holds Danny on his lap and makes him say he loves his father and he loves the hotel and he's having a good time is just so horrible. 

Danny has to invent an imaginary friend just so he can speak the truth (Tony lives in his mouth, but he swallows him down whenever anyone tries to see him). Wendy desperately tries to keep Jack happy, hopelessly trying to predict the storms of his temper. Both of them, when they can escape Jack, are more or less competent, healthy people; but when he's around they cease to be able to function.

There's a saying that families are only as sane as their sickest member. What this movie does is take a family that is desperately trying to survive their sickest member and lock them in a bottle episode. That's what's terrifying. The ghosts and blood and all are just images of that terror.

Stolen from PZ Myers

 This is how it happened, I was there:

But to be fair, he stole it from Tom the Dancing Bug

Mitt Romney Won't Endorse Kamala Harris

Which I guess is no surprise. He says he wants to remain politically viable in Utah, which apparently he could not do if he admitted out loud that Harris is a better candidate than Trump. Is this just because she's a Democrat? Or is it because she's brown and a woman? 

Being brown and a democrat would be enough to kill you here in Arkansas, as we saw in the last election when our voters put Sarah Huckster Sanders in the office rather than vote for a black physicist with a D beside his name.

And it's not that they thought Sanders was more competent. They knew she was a joke, a bootlicker, and a thief. But at least she wasn't a black man who supported progressive causes.

I think the woman part also matters in Utah, which like Idaho adheres to rigid gender roles; but the brown and democrat parts probably matter just as much.

Harris is ahead in the polls right now, but as we know from 2016, that's not a guarantee of anything. These next six weeks are going to be painful.

Weather in Arkansas

 Now that's better:

Highs in the 70s for the next ten days, and the lows are getting lower.

Kamala Harris Answers Questions

 Found this on YouTube: