Rereading 1984

In preparation for the upcoming election, I decided to give George Orwell's 1984 a reread; it's probably been 50 years since I last read it.  If anything it is even more ominous and foreboding than it was back then.  I'll probably post a few excerpts later, but for now I'll just offer this excerpt from the Emmanuel Goldstein's antiestablishment book Ignorance is Strength:

Throughout recorded time, and probably since the end of the Neolithic Age, there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle, and the Low. They have been subdivided in many ways, they have borne countless different names, and their relative numbers, as well as their attitude towards one another, have varied from age to age: but the essential structure of society has never altered. Even after enormous upheavals and seemingly irrevocable changes, the same pattern has always reasserted itself, just as a gyroscope will always return to equilibrium, however far it is pushed one way or the other.

The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim - for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives - is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal. Thus throughout history a struggle which is the same in its main outlines recurs over and over again. For long periods the High seem to be securely in power, but sooner or later there always comes a moment when they lose either their belief in themselves or their capacity to govern efficiently, or both. They are then overthrown by the Middle, who enlist the Low on their side by pretending to them that they are fighting for liberty and justice. As soon as they have reached their objective, the Middle thrust the Low back into their old position of servitude, and themselves become the High. Presently a new Middle group splits off from one of the other groups, or from both of them, and the struggle begins over again. Of the three groups, only the Low are never even temporarily successful in achieving their aims. It would be an exaggeration to say that throughout history there has been no progress of a material kind. Even today, in a period of decline, the average human being is physically better off than he was a few centuries ago. But no advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimetre nearer. From the point of view of the Low, no historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name of their masters.

The text continues online at Panarchy (or better yet get 1984 from your local library).

Lakatoi

For many years I've been intrigued by the images on the stamps of Papua New Guinea featuring an unusual sailing vessel, but I've never taken the time to look up what they are.  Until today.

The local term is "lakatoi" (literally "three dugouts"); the dugouts are harnessed together with booms, creating craft that are stable for oceanic travel.  The sails are "crab-claws."

Crab-claw sails were invented by the Austronesians somewhere in Island Southeast Asia by at least 2000 BCE. It spread with the Austronesian migration to Micronesia, Island Melanesia, Madagascar, and Polynesia. It may have also caused the unique development of outrigger boat technology due to the necessity for stability once crab claw sails were attached to small watercraft. Crab claw sails can be used for double-canoe (catamaran), single-outrigger (on the windward side), or double-outrigger boat configurations, in addition to monohulls.

Crab claw sails are rigged fore-and-aft and can be tilted and rotated relative to the wind. They evolved from "V"-shaped perpendicular square sails (a "double sprit") in which the two spars converge at the base of the hull. The simplest form of the crab claw sail (also with the widest distribution) is composed of a triangular sail supported by two light spars (sometimes erroneously called "sprits") on each side. They were originally mastless, and the entire assembly was taken down when the sails were lowered...

Another evolution of the basic crab claw sail is the conversion of the upper spar into a fixed mast. In Polynesia, this gave the sail more height while also making it narrower, giving it a shape reminiscent of crab pincers (hence "crab claw" sail). This was also usually accompanied by the lower spar becoming more curved.

Austronesians traditionally made their sails from woven mats of the resilient and salt-resistant pandanus leaves. These sails allowed Austronesians to embark on long-distance voyaging. In some cases, however, they were one-way voyages. The failure of pandanus to establish populations in Easter Island and New Zealand is believed to have isolated their settlements from the rest of Polynesia.

Is there any way for me to rescue this thumb drive?

This message appears whenever I insert an old thumb drive into my iMac.   It is a THKAILAR  64GB USB C flash drive loaded with memorabilia photos.  I don't know how it was damaged - most likely I removed it before formally "ejecting" it.  

Not a major tragedy, but hoping for a workaround.  

This is what Photoshop is for

The image above was posted to the PhotoshopRequest subreddit with this message:

As our family's "photoshopper" I have been asked to edit this picture to make it look like she isn't in the hospital. But I am too emotional to even start it. Their one request was that I make it look like she isn't in the hospital, but they have no other ideas or suggestions. I told them I don't think I'd be able to get the tubes covering her face removed. But if that's something you would like to attempt, please go for it. I am from South Africa, and so $10 is all I can offer. I hope this amount is acceptable, as I know how much effort and skill this will take. This picture was taken using their phone, so I don't have a better quality image, I'm afraid. Thank you all in advance.

The discussion thread includes several cleaned-up images, including this one:

Hats off to the Redditors who provide these services.

Bribery of federal officials is now legal

Bribery of officials in power in government has always occurred, but until now it has always been illegal.  The Supreme Court has now changed that.  Herewith some excerpts from an incisive commentary in an op-ed piece in The Guardian:

"Did you know you could give your local government officials tips when they do things you like? Brett Kavanaugh thinks you can. In fact, if you’re rich enough, says the US supreme court, you can now pay off state and local officials for government acts that fit your policy preferences or advance your interests. You can give them lavish gifts, send them on vacations, or simply cut them checks. You can do all of this so long as the cash, gifts or other “gratuities” are provided after the service, and not before it – and so long as a plausible deniability of the meaning and intent of these “gratuities” is maintained.

That was the ruling authored by Kavanaugh in Snyder v United States, a 6-3 opinion issued on Wednesday, in which the supreme court dealt the latest blow to federal anti-corruption law. In the case, which was divided along ideological lines, the court held that “gratuities” – that is, post-facto gifts and payments – are not technically “bribes”, and therefore not illegal. Bribes are only issued before the desired official act, you see, and their meaning is explicit; a more vague, less vulgarly transactional culture of “gratitude” for official acts, expressed in gifts and payments of great value, is supposed to be something very different. The court has thereby continued its long effort to legalize official corruption, using the flimsiest of pretexts to rob federal anti-corruption statutes of all meaning.

The case concerns James Snyder, who in 2013 was serving as the mayor of small-town Portage, Indiana. Late that year, the city of Portage awarded a contract to Great Lakes Peterbilt, a trucking company, and bought five tow trucks from them; a few weeks later, Snyder asked for and accepted a check for $13,000 from the company. Snyder was found guilty of corruption and sentenced to 21 months in federal prison. He argued that the kickback was not illegal because it came after he awarded a contract to the company that ultimately paid him off, not before.

Absurdly the US supreme court agreed, classifying such payments as mere tokens of appreciation and claiming they are not illegal when they are not the product of an explicit agreement meant to influence official acts in exchange for money...

For an example, we need look no further than the conservative justices of the supreme court itself, who have become notorious, in recent years, for accepting lavish gifts and chummy intimacy from rightwing billionaires. According to investigative reporting by ProPublica, Clarence Thomas has accepted vacations, real estate purchases, tuition for his young relatives, and seemingly innumerable private jet trips from the billionaire Harlan Crow, as well as financing for an RV from another wealthy patron, Anthony Welters. Thomas has argued that these gifts and favors are merely the “personal hospitality” of “close personal friends”...

Adding money – or, in the court’s parlance, “gratuities” – to these arrangements only makes this more obvious. It is not a coincidence that the court has chosen to legalize for state and local officials exactly the sort of corruption that they partake of so conspicuously themselves."

Related: Kleptocracy and kakistocracy explained. 

Proof that butterflies crossed an ocean

Excerpts from a story in The New York Times:

Early one morning in late October 2013, Gerard Talavera, an entomologist, saw something highly unusual — a flock of painted lady butterflies stranded on a beach in French Guiana.

The painted lady, or the species Vanessa cardui, is one of the world’s most widespread butterflies, but it isn’t found in South America. Yet there they were, lying in the sand of the continent’s eastern shores, their wings tattered and riddled with holes.

The insect is a champion of long-distance travel, routinely crisscrossing the Sahara on a trek from Europe to sub-Saharan Africa, covering up to 9,000 miles. Could they also have made the 2,600-mile journey across the Atlantic Ocean without any place to stop and refuel?..

Dr. Talavera and his team describe a crucial clue to cracking the mystery of the stranded butterflies: Pollen clinging to the butterflies in French Guiana matched flowering shrubs in West African countries. These shrubs bloom from August to November, which matches the timeline of the butterflies’ arrival...

In addition to studying the pollen, the researchers sequenced the butterflies’ genomes to trace their lineage and found they had European-African roots. This ruled out the possibility that they had flown over land from North America. Then, they used an insect-tracking tool called isotope tracing to confirm that the butterflies’ natal origins were in Western Europe, North Africa and West Africa.

It's amazing what science is capable of nowadays.  The full scientific report is available online at Nature Communications.  The painted lady resting on my finger is one I raised some years ago from a caterpillar found on local nettles.

Daan's shrine-topped bookcase

"I moved to my current house 2,5 years ago and because its a smaller place i had to throw away alot of books. This is what's left. The most important ones are still here. At the top is a little shrine with stuff thats important to me from my parents and grandparents who all are no longer here. 

At the bottom shelf left are 8 Don Quichotte books bound by my grandfather during WW2 while he was hiding from the Nazis because he was Jewish. He survived. The rest of his family was murdered in Auschwitz."

Bob the Scientist's collection of green Penguins

"In tribute to your complete set of Agatha Christie, I'll share my Green Penguin = Crime bookshelves. I'm working on the assumption that there may be less interest in the Orange Penguin = General Fiction shelves and the Blue Pelican = Non-fiction ditto. 

We'd been collecting second-hand paper-backs since we were students in Dublin the the 70s. But things took off I went to Grad School in Boston in the early 80s and we'd often spend Saturdays cruisin' the Western 'burbs in an enormous Ford Galaxy with my boss and his wife. I was then collecting foreign language dictionaries and atlases in case any future children need to prep for their Grand Tour but it was hard to resist rescuing too many books [25c for hard-cover, 10c for p-backs] from the dumpster. When we returned to Europe, 10 USPS sacks of second-hand treasure followed us by book-post. 

The matching paper-back bookshelves are old wooden fish-boxes salvaged from the tide-line of many sandy beaches. Those boxes have all been replaced by plastic, which is better for firewood than books. 

As it happens the younger of those future children is even at this moment reading Peril at End House [Ag.Christie 1932] beside me on the sofa. She has, what with DuoLingo and Larousse Online, no interest in the several French dictionaries I picked up in the last century. Time to declutter. Salut!"

Blogger's note: for the other colors of Penguins, see Karyn Reeves' bookshelves.

John Farrier's bookcase

"I built this bookcase with my sadly now-estranged father. So it has a poisoned sentimental value. But so much of life is asking and answering, "Now what?" when bad things happen. My answer here is to keep the bookcase.

I have several bookcases that I share with my wife, but this one is all mine. The works of Richard Adams (of Watership Down fame) are prominent, as is the obscure comic book series Ninja High School.

I maintain what I call my "personal canon" -- a list of stories that are meaningful to me. To re-read one, such as Adams's Shardik or Diane Carey's Battlestations is to center my soul."

Lars' bookshelves

"I live in the house my grandparents bought in July 1929.  It was already over 100 at the time of their purchase.  If there is any common thread to my bookshelves, it is this: built-in. 

The panels that form the room facing side walls of the bookcases were from a massive pocket door.  I recut it to keep as much of the original stain/varnish as possible, then stain-matched modern hardwood plywood and vintage oak to complete the shelving.  It now houses board games and a collection of comic collections and coffee table size books; the other end holds photo albums and some items still in boxes that we hope to home properly in the coming year.  Beneath is a leather seating area with 2 side cushions atop a twin mattress to accommodate 2 readers sitting feet toward each other with a view of the squirrels romping on the grape arbor out the window.

Nearby is the smallest bookcase - a little space formed between a recently installed  faux raised panel alcove sized for a 1916 upright piano and a pocket door to the stairwell/front entry.   Currently only holding a Finnish English dictionary, collection of DVDs, and a plaster sculpture my grandfather made and my mom modeled for.  Intent is to use the incomplete bottom space for housing some forward-facing children's books in reach for our granddaughter to discover when she visits.  The organic shaped shelves were cut from salvaged maple shelving units discarded from my work -  academic building - in a lab remodel.

Upstairs.  At the head of the stairs, a narrow floor to ceiling shelving unit that rests on a wall within the very solid structure of one of the main bents of the timber frame. this is inboard of the earlier bookcases my grandfather installed.   These shelves are very early IKEA units purchased from the first IKEA store located beyond the Nordic countries (Germany) and shipped to USA in the 1970s.  

This shelving system  holds many of my pop reading pleasures and a portion my brother aptly named "The Incendiary Bookshelf." Here I house some of the oddities that were among my grandparents' many books.  L Ron Hubbard's Dianetics, pamphlets on surviving nuclear attack, socialist & communist tracts, Anne Frank's Diary, U.S. constitution, my copy of Local Literary Hero Nabokov’s Lolita  and... trigger warning... texts of Adolf Hitler. Neither of those were from my grandparents collection, but rather turned up in boxes my mother received in her role as library book sale coordinator.  I culled these from that event to see what was inside.  Only made it 90 pages in before I was so repulsed I could no longer tolerate turning a page to read what was printed.  I did not want these to end up in locations/hands where they could be held in high regard. As such, I have them flank Anne Franks diary and sit adjacent to the Socialist texts in a “dead letter bin" of sorts.  

Lastly, the bookcase that faces into our bedroom and is similarly housed in one of the main timber frame bents of the house.  These shelves were built from a vintage cabinet that once was used for the faculty mail slots in the Cornell physics department near my offices.  The cabinet inner partition dividers were made of stained tulipwood with grooves to hold thin tulipwood dividers for each slot. Cut down, those now support glass shelves for display and solid wood ones for books.  Housed here edge of left side upper shelf is a book I found on my parents shelves.  Had never seen it until my 30s.  It was inscribed to me at my birth by my grandfather as the first of many books I might someday own.  Glad we opened that cover when going through their collection."

Mistress Harley's bookshelves

"So obviously I'm an adult content producer, not that you'll find anything having to do with my business in my bookshelves. I'm an avid reader of everything from comedic fiction, to comic books, to sociology, history, and religion to name a few.

What I love about my shelves is that they combine everything I love- antique volumes sit next to signed copies of the funniest things I've read, the Histories of Studs Terkel nuzzle up to the Tin Tin comic books of the late 80s.

What most people would never assume about me is that I have a Masters in Library Science, I think my shelves say "Librarian" way more than they say anything else..."

Mistress Harley's blog is here.

Ruth Beaty's bookshelves

"Here is mine. You can't see the roughly ten boxes in the closet behind it, lol. The boxes of books next to them are the books I'm going through to see if I want to get rid of or keep. I've done this twice before, once after we moved to Oklahoma from Washington state three years ago, and once after my husband died a year later. Went from a three bed house to one bedroom and a kitchen (my son's house). Life shrinks as we age, just not our figures. I'm getting ready to weed again as there are still some duplicates and I only keep ones I might read again, a few sewing and craft books, and many graphic novels, a genre I've come to enjoy."

Peter Meitzler's bookcase

"It was almost 2 ½ years ago that our 2-unit apartment building was sold and the new owners immediately gave us a 30-day eviction notice so they could proceed with their plans for turning the building into a single-family dwelling. The upshot is we quickly threw everything we owned into a storage unit and embarked on what is now a series of year long temporary arrangements that amount to renting/caretaking furnished houses while their owners are away on adventures.

This has meant being mostly cut off from my considerable collection of books (and much else). I visit them on occasion at the storage unit and have kept a selection with me, mostly books that are on my “want to read” list or books that I like to have available for reference (primarily gardening and native flora and fauna books). Consequently, I am trying to squeeze as much into one small bookcase as possible, which is fine, but I also notice piles of books growing in various corners of the cottage in which we are currently living. It has been interesting to discover which books I want with me while also learning to appreciate the many books that are packed in boxes in that cold, dark storage unit located in another town. It is not out of sight, out of mind. It is more a comfort knowing that they are there waiting for a reunion, with the hopeful realization of my dream of one day having a room lined with bookshelves filled with all those books."

Dan's bookcase

"This a photo of one of my bookcases which also serves as sort of a cabinet of curiosities. This one is filled with books about mountaineering, exploration, and adventure. I also have three bookcases of engineering books and one that is fiction plus military. I've been thinking about the bookcase in the photo because I need to get rid of all these books.

In the image going clockwise around the bookcase you see on the left some boxes of seldom used engineering books. On top is a tortoise shell dad picked up in the Mojave Desert in the 1950's (He was a field topographer for the USGS). A 1956 California license plate that my brother gave me (I was born in Idaho in 1956) and various family photos. There is a globe and on the far right a bookcase of engineering books.

At the top of the left glass door is a couple of pictures from climbing trips with my son and below that a photo of dad with a transit in Antarctica. In the bottom you can see the flag from dad's service (WW2 USAAF) and a model of the Tiwanaku Gate of the Sun that my daughter and I made - also a pink elephant she made.

The center door has a photo of dad in Antarctica, a death Ride sticker (did that with my son), an old photo of my son, an old photo of my daughter, and a photo of the Sno-Cat dad lived in in Antarctica. The skull is a racoon.

The right door has two photos of some kids I met in Bolivia. Regina Mamane, her little brother Masianseno and their baby sister.

The little dog is Sadie and she has a Lamb Chop toy.

The bookcase came from San Jose State University were I studied and taught engineering from 1975 until 2013. They were throwing the case away so I took it. It was likely built in the woodshop at San Quentin. There were a lot of oak desks and chairs made at San Quinton but they weren't popular with the faculty and staff who seemed to prefer cheap new furniture."

Addendum: An update: I had a mountaineering book dealer come by and he took all the books in the case and left me a check for $3500. The case is still there and is now full of engineering books. My health is good besides the dissected aorta and I still go rock climbing. I have made many lifestyle changes including quitting the stressful parts of work like testifying in court as an expert. I am still working and making money evaluating the seismic safety of buildings. I will probably retire within the next few years and the engineering books will go to younger working engineers. Sadie the dog is still a very happy little dog.

Lois' bookshelves

"Here's a picture of my “bookcase” in my basement office, which is a little unusual. The shelves are on wall brackets and many books are in boxes, because I had a flood in my basement 10 years ago and vowed never to put a book on the floor again. The boxes are because in an emergency they can be easily carried. The shelves were a little long, so I arranged them this way to make them fit. Note that nothing touches the floor!

As far as content, I am a Christian author who writes about the Jewish context of Jesus and the Bible. Some books on that wall are commentaries, some are on Judaism in general, some are Christian authors."