The price of ignorance

Houston is paying it today. Whose city will pay for it next?

The Republican administration is going to make everything worse for everybody. Trump rolled back regulations intended to support better standards for infrastructure projects — he apparently thinks the way to encourage investment in infrastructure is to allow it to be half-assed infrastructure.

An executive order issued by Trump earlier this month revoked an Obama-era directive that had established flood-risk standards for federally funded infrastructure projects built in areas prone to flooding or subject to the effects of sea-level rise – like many of those now sinking in Texas.

Houston already has some of the laxest building regulations for structures in potential flood zones and the president wants to spread that policy across the US.

“It makes no sense,” Steve Ellis, vice-president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, said. “Taxpayers deserve to have the assurance that if they provide assistance to a community to build or rebuild, it’s done in a way that isn’t going to cost taxpayers money in the future.”

Setting better flood-risk standards wouldn’t have helped Houston — Texas has been busy doing things half-assedly for generations, for short term gain — but they would help build for the future. If we have one.

State of the lawsuit hanging over our heads

As you may recall, Richard Carrier is suing Freethoughtblogs, the Orbit, Skepticon, and a woman who objected to his behavior. We got an update from our lawyer over the weekend.

First, we got the schedule of court deadlines, and my heart skipped a few beats. We’ve got stuff scheduled for December and May of next year, and resolution of one point may not happen until August. Of next year. Yeesh. This stuff takes forever. The good news is that most of that time is spent waiting for a judge to make decisions on various concerns we’ve raised, and we’re not going to be shoveling money non-stop into a lawyer’s maw. But there will be some continuing expenses.

Another bit of amusing news is that Carrier’s lawyer discussed settling the case (I will emphasize, this was his lawyer and not Carrier himself) and tentatively suggested some possible terms: that we cover Carrier’s legal expenses so far, estimated at about $50K (heh, no way, we’re not going to fund his future SLAPP suits) and — hang onto your hats, gang, this was unbelievable — that we hand over contact information and communications from all individuals who’d ever said a bad thing about Richard Carrier.

My takeaway from this is that he’s finding us a tougher nut to crack then expected, so he’d like to find some softer targets to pick off. So it’s going to drag on a long time, but I’m heartened by the news that his lawyer is concerned. Ours is pretty damned confident.

It goes without saying that we’re not going to concede any money to him without a hard fight, and there’s no way we’re going to expose anyone else to his predatory behavior. Rather, we’re going to fight harder, and the long drawn out process is an opportunity to bleed him more. His reputation is going to be in tatters if he continues his misguided SLAPP suit.

We will still have legal expenses coming up. Help us out by donating, if you can! You can also help out Skepticon with a tax-deductible donation, although that doesn’t benefit the rest of us.

Ed Brayton is a meanie

There he goes again, picking on the distinguished and august Thought Leaders of Atheism, in this case Sam Harris. It’s easy to do; there are a lot of buzzwords that trigger my rage, and Harris is fond of trotting out indicators of inanity like “identity politics” and “politically correct” and, of course, “divisive”.

…why is “divisive” a bad thing? Can you name a single example of progress in our society or any other that was not “divisive”? The push to end slavery was divisive, so much so that it sparked a civil war in which hundreds of thousands died; does that mean we should not have pushed to end slavery? The fight for women’s suffrage was divisive. The fight to end segregation was divisive. The fight for LGBT equality is divisive. Every single movement that resulted in a more fair, just and equal society was divisive. So why do people make such an accusation, as if it was somehow a strike against movements for social progress rather than a point in their favor? This is just lazy, sloppy thinking, and once again the use of buzzwords in place of serious argument.

That last sentence encapsulates Harris neatly.

You don’t expect vampires to be ethical, do you?

You knew this was coming, the perfect example of raging capitalism: old people buying young people’s blood.

In Monterey, California, a new startup has emerged, offering transfusions of human plasma: 1.5 litres a time, pumped in across two days, harvested uniquely from young adults.

Ambrosia, the vampiric startup concerned, is run by a 32-year-old doctor called Jesse Karmazin, who bills $8,000 (£6,200) a pop for participation in what he has dubbed a “study”. So far, he has 600 clients, with a median age of 60. The blood is collected from local blood banks, then separated and combined – it takes multiple donors to make one package.

Let’s consider all the ways this is sleazy.

  • Karmazin isn’t paying the donors in proportion to the value of their blood; a unit of blood is worth a few hundred dollars, and he’s just buying it up from blood banks and repackaging it with a significant markup.

  • If he were paying what it was worth to him to donors, he’d be enticing donors to contribute to him for a pointless exercise in imaginary rejuvenation, rather than to blood banks/hospitals for saving lives.

  • Right now he’s depleting the local blood supply by a small amount for his venality.

  • He’s lying and calling it a “study”. There are no control groups. Participants have to buy in with large sums of money, so he’s selecting for only the rich.

  • There is no good evidence that this is an effective and significant treatment for aging. There is some work in mice, but it’s so preliminary that there’s no way to justify leaping into human trials.

  • Imagine that there are solid, measurable improvements in the recipients’ health. I don’t believe in getting something for nothing; then I would have to ask what are the detriments to the donor’s health of giving blood. Are there long term losses? Short term effects? This ‘study’ is ignoring that side of the issue.

Bad science, weak justifications, and wealthy exploiters literally feeding on the blood of the young, like a swarm of geeky overpaid ticks. They are actual vampires. They should think about that, because there is a universally known literary precedent for how one deals with vampires.

I do think that research into, for instance, stem cell replenishment is a good idea — but let’s not pretend that what this guy is doing is serious research. And if these transfusions do have some beneficial effects, it’s time to have some serious consideration of the ethics of such treatments, and their wider effect on society — two things that venture capitalists and vampires don’t know much about, and don’t care about.

I’m all for removing that statue, too

There is a monument to Christopher Columbus at the Minnesota capitol in St Paul? I had no idea. He was an evil old monster, I’m all for removing anything like that — and there is a petition to remove it and replace it with two statues, one of Prince and another of someone chosen by the Indian community. I like that idea.

But then, I think we should regularly change art anyway. The Columbus statue isn’t exactly equivalent to Michelangelo’s David. It was bought and paid for by an association of Italian-Americans about a century ago, and so what it really represents is a wave of self-promotion by an ethnic community that had been discriminated against (which is a fine thing to do; it’s just too bad they picked such a terrible hero), and isn’t necessarily high art. Of course, Michelangelo’s David was also commissioned as propaganda by Florentines to cock a snook at Rome, so motives don’t necessarily mar great art, but does anyone believe this particular statue will stand the test of time? Does anyone think the Confederate statues that dot the landscape are actually significant works of art? Many of them were mass-produced!

I have no problem with old, pedestrian art being taken down and replaced with new stuff — that’s the kind of change that also brings more money to artists, too. And then, a century from now, Minnesotans can look at the statue of Prince and think about whether to swap it out with something new, too.*

We often revise and modify memorial art. That statue of Columbus originally described him as ‘discovering’ America; that did not go over well in a state with a substantial native population and an even larger Scandinavian population (and, I fear, the sensibilities of the Lake Wobegone set were more influential than the Indians) and it was replaced with a plaque that credited him with initiated the merging of the cultures between the old and new worlds (warning: autoplay video at link!), which is the niftiest euphemism for rape, looting, and genocide I’ve ever seen.

There’s also a Spanish-American War memorial there that had the most revealing change:

The original memorial honored Minnesota soldiers who “battled to free the oppressed peoples of the Philippine Islands, who suffered under the despotic rule of Spain.”

The corrected language reads: “The United States entered that war to defeat Spain, not to free the Filipinos. Most of the battles listed above were fought against Filipinos.”

Yeah, that’s a kinda different interpretation all right.

So sure, let’s not pretend old statues become sacred with the passage of time.

*I know, the music of Prince is timeless, and he didn’t go around maiming and murdering people, but still…we don’t get to dictate the will of our descendants.

Atomic blondes have more fury

My wife and I went on a date last night and saw Atomic Blonde. She enjoyed it — it was the late showing, and she has a tendency to nod off in the theater if there’s any slack in the pacing, but she was bolt upright and wide awake the whole time — and I liked the twisty spy novel plot and shady characters with underhanded schemes. But two major questions were unresolved.

  1. If Lorraine Broughton and John Wick got in a fight, how high would the body count be? Note that I’m not asking who would win, because we all know they would both emerge bloody and battered but victorious, but how much havoc would be wreaked upon assorted minions, passers-by, and crime/spy chiefs? I give the edge to John right now, but only because he’s had two movies and more practice. Lorraine needs a sequel to even it up.

  2. How much did German rent-a-thugs get paid? It can’t have been more than the equivalent of $50K/year, right? Maybe bump it up a bit if they get some kind of hazard bonus, and maybe they’re better off than that with fantastic free healthcare (they need it), but whatever it was, it couldn’t account for the knock-down-drag-out fights they were getting into. Fierce woman charges into a guy, punches him so hard he flies up against a wall; he draws a knife and launches himself into her, she disarms him, stabs him hard in the back, stabs him a few more times in the chest, and he staggers back; he lurches forward again, wham-bam-wham, she pounds him in the face; he reaches for a gun, she throws him down the stairs. What’s his motivation? I mean, if it were me, at the first punch I’d be thinking to myself I’m going to be laid up for a week, it’s going to take more than a couple of ibuprofens to get over this, I’m not getting paid enough for this crap, I think I’ll just take a little nap right here. Heck, just the look on Charlize Theron’s determined angry face would have me backing up and saying “Lady, you win.” But they kept coming!

It’s a very angry movie, and I needed that. It’s also stylish and has a great soundtrack, if you like 80s music. For some reason, Theron reminded me of Iris — I recommend that no one or no thing pick a fight with her.