Obsidian Wings

Tossing two foxes in the henhouse

by liberal japonicus

Don't really have a lot, so two things that crossed my desktop.
Kevin Drum offers a commonsensical view on dealing with the deaths of public figures.

(Doing the above was) considered common courtesy, and does not mean that (a) nobody is ever allowed to say anything bad about the establishment, or (b) everyone has forgotten what a bad person this was. It just means that out of respect for a grieving family, we lower the howitzers for a few days.

Seems sensible.

The second thing, which I got from other places, but will link again to Drum (because Mother Jones is trying to raise money to keep going) about Rex Tillerson's recent remarks about Trump.

Unsurprisingly, he described Trump as:

pretty undisciplined, doesn’t like to read, doesn’t read briefing reports, doesn’t like to get into the details of a lot of things, but rather just says this is what I believe, and you can try to convince me otherwise, but most of the time you’re not going to do that. (emphasis Drum)

There are some other remarks floating around that I leave to the commentariat to highlight. What have y'all come across recently?

Just in time for the holidays!

by liberal japonicus

Laura mentioned that she had a new book, proceeds of which would go to fund animal rescue, so I asked her to give us some more details. I'm sure that other folks have interesting things that are hopefully coming to fruition for this holiday season, either for themselves or for others, so put them in the comments or send them to me and I'll append them to the post. Don't hide your light under a bushel!

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“Odd, gentle, beautiful, weird… enchanting, light tale of discovery, change, and dubious redemption; all wrapped into the tale of a block party like no other.”

Alyse died and she isn’t happy about it. She finds herself stuck in a ghost town occupied by dead souls with whom she has nothing in common. Lonely and depressed, she decides to throw a neighborhood block party for her little outpost in the afterlife. In the course of her party-planning, Alyse experiences a series of revelations about herself and other people—lessons she had failed to learn while alive—which leave her happier and wiser at the end of the story.

From Booklife (Publisher's Weekly):
"Koerber weaves a slow, captivating exploration of life, death, and the place of kindness and forgiveness in the salvation of the spirit."

From a reader:
“The story is simply an odd and gentle book. I loved the characters. This is a book to read when you want to get away from the noise and anger of current events and politics. Somehow I felt lighter at the end of the book even though I would have liked it to continue on.”

From Diane Donovan of Midwest Review:

"Readers seeking an uplifting afterlife saga that offers a winning brush against life's ironies and inconsistencies, and an attention to building characters who face Limbo in different ways, will enjoy this enchanting, light tale of discovery, change, and dubious redemption; all wrapped into the tale of a block party like no other.”

Purchase of this book will help support
https://www.safehavenkennel.com/about-us.html A rescue that rehabs fearful and feral dogs
https://www.myaarf.org/ A rescue that sued a hoarder to rescue a pitbull
http://lionelslegacy.org/ A rescue that focuses on old dogs.

Darkness

by JanieM

When I was a kid I went through a phase when I wanted to be an astronomer, using the word loosely. What I probably really meant was cosmologist. Odd, then, that I went to a college without an astronomy department. But I thought I could solve the deficiency by majoring in physics and eventually concentrating on astrophysics in grad school. I took what was essentially a half-credit course in planetary astronomy freshman year and found that I had almost no interest in it at all. It was black holes and baby universes this kid wanted to understand.

Heh. I hit the wall fairly quickly, though in hindsight I think I was defeated partly by the fact that I didn’t know how to work hard when things didn’t come easy.

But really, this isn’t a memoir, it’s about how long it took me to notice that the earliest sunset and the latest sunrise don’t come at the time of the winter solstice. I have once or twice given myself a literal headache trying to picture all the motions that underlie that fact (this is related to why I didn’t enjoy the planetary astronomy class….). My daughter took an astronomy class in college and gave me a handout that explained the whole thing – but from the vantage point of looking at the sky from the surface of the earth. I kept – and keep, now and then – trying to visualize it from a vantage point outside the solar system, looking in. (Maybe this is a commentary on the impossibility of my life in general, but again…no more true confessions, at least for tonight.)

This is the time and date dot com page for Augusta, Maine, which isn't too far from where I live. If you play around a bit with the slider in the middle of the page, or scroll down to the chart, you can see that sunset came at 4:00 o’clock today. (Although that didn’t make much difference, the day was so dim and rainy already.) We have 4:00 for four more days, then five days of 3:59, and then back to 4:00. So the earliest sunset is coming right up, presumably on December 9, although with the math of planetary astronomy being what it is, who can say for sure?

Anyhow, the turning point is fast approaching when the days start to get longer at the only end I care about; being a night person, I never see the sun rise unless something very weird is going on. For those of you who care more for morning, the latest sunrise isn’t until after New Year’s Day. The latest sunset and earliest sunrise are offset from the summer solstice as well (though IIRC not in the way you’d predict from knowing what happens in December). Also, the offset is different depending on how far north or south you are, and whether you’re north or south of the Equator.

Okay, I’m giving myself another headache.

Despite the fact that we here in the north country are staring down the barrel of winter – in fact, it came early this year – I’ll be glad when the afternoons start to get longer again, however microscopically.

Holidays are coming. What’s everyone up to?

Open thread.

But Will They Be Named Dolly?

by wj

Buried (at least for me) in the flood of political news these past weeks was something potentially far more important. It appears that a researcher in China has made the first human embryo gene edit.

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2018/12/01/a-maverick-researcher-claims-to-have-created-gm-children

It is perhaps not surprising that the guy who did it is not actually trained in reproductive research. His degree is in biophysics (from Rice University in Texas) with additional work at Stanford University on DNA.

Another surprise: he wasn't trying to correct a genetic defect (say something like sickle cell anemia). Rather he was trying to create an immunity to HIV transmission -- which can already be dealt with via cleansing during IVF.

Still, it's the first step towards a couple of science fiction staples: a) genetic cleaning, or b) genetic enhanced human beings. Depending on your view of how technology is likely to get used. There has, not surprisingly, been an outcry. Some of it because the work wasn't in accord with the law (even in China), some because there is some question whether the parents were clearly informed about what he was proposing to do, some because the technology isn't to the point where you can be sure that you will get the edit you want while not getting changes you didn't intend.

There has not, that I have seen (as noted, I barely caught this at all), been any outcry about "playing God" or about the threat of artificial supermen. But given the reaction, a couple decades back, to cloning (and that was only a sheep, not a human being), not to mention to GMO foods, it seems likely to happen once people actually notice. Perhaps after the kids (there appear to be 2 or 3) are born....

We live in interesting times.

And now for something...

by JanieM

When I go to Cambridge on the bus or train, I make sure to take some light reading. Literally light: paperback, nothing that will add too much weight to my luggables. But most of the time it's figuratively light too: mysteries, mostly.

This past time I decided to wake myself up a bit. I gazed across my shelves the night before and made a little stack of options: Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom, Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, and The Last Chronicle of Barset, by Trollope. Quite varied, none of them short, and two of them extra challenging. I had read all of them before, the first two more than once but not in at least a couple of decades.

The next morning I chose Faulkner to take along, and was as bowled over as ever. If I could write sentences like that I would call myself a writer. (Samwise: "If I could grow apples like that I would call myself a gardener.")

So then I decided, well, there were several Faulkners I loved when I was younger (I've by no means read everything he wrote), especially Go Down, Moses. I had never liked The Sound and the Fury, and I do still wonder why they made us read (part of) it in high school, but I thought well, I'm fifty years older now, maybe it will strike me differently this time.

Nope.

But I'm halfway through a re-re-re-re-reading of Go Down, Moses, and also a good bit of the way into American Nations, which strikes me as a little too...sure of itself, or something, but still fun and fascinating, and a welcome antidote to the current pit of "us and them" that we're lost in. It's not a bad idea to be reminded that underneath the oversimplification, it's more like "us and us and them and us and them and them and those other folks, too."

Oh, and I also read Alexander Chee's collection of essays called How to Write and Autobiographical Novel recently, and liked it a lot. Then I tried Edinburgh, the autobiographical novel in question, and didn't like it as well as the essays, which were also autobiographical.

Otherwise, I'm buried in work and will remain so for at least the next six weeks. Sigh.

Anyone else reading anything interesting?

Open thread.