Heavy-Duty Cotton Twill

      A commenter asked, "What's a dungaree, anyway?"

     It turns out that's quite a question.  The easy answer is that it's a heavy, hard-wearing, twill-woven cotton fabric, typically yarn-dyed -- a sibling to denim.

     The harder answer branches and twines.  About as soon as people figured out some things -- wool, cotton, flax, hemp (and so on) -- can be spun into threads and the threads woven into cloth, they started working out various ways to weave it.

     Canvas -- from an Anglo-French or Old French root -- is heavy-duty cloth in a plain over one, under one weave, and it was first made from hemp: cannabis in Greek, or cannapaceus in Vulgar Latin.  The Dutch turned out a really tight-woven version suitable for, oh, sails, and called it "canvas cloth," except the Dutch word is "doek," and there's your canvas duck.  "Cotton duck" is canvas without the hemp.  Canvas is heavy stuff, great for tents, bags, maybe capes.  But it's stiff.  It doesn't drape nicely, and it'll sandpaper your skin.

     There are flexible weaves that are still tight, like twill.  It's an old pattern, and there's no telling it if was invented to make a pretty design, move better, wear less -- or someone just lost count.  Humans like to fiddle, and as soon as we had looms and some free time, we started trying things.  Twill weave was probably invented more than once, and there are multiple patterns that count as "twill."  But it's ideal for clothes.  By the Middle Ages, the French were making a good twill, "sergé de Nîmes," which you and I know as denim.  In the 19th Century, Levi Strauss started using it for workwear after Gold Rush miners -- miners! -- complained the canvas he made jeans from was too rough on their hides.

     (Wait, what's "serge?"  It's a specific two up, two down twill weave that flows nicely and the word meant "silken."  And "jeans?"  Weavers in Genoa, Italy copied the French weavers of Nimes, right down to the blue dye: blue Genoa cloth became "blue jean" material.  The name went from the cloth to clothing -- and "denim jeans" is either redundant or a well-hedged bet.)

     The thing is, another people had beaten French (and Italian) weavers and San Francisco tailors to the idea: in India, they'd been spinning and weaving cotton* for centuries if not millennia (when Alexander the Great invaded India in 327 BC, his troops soon swapped their woolen clothes for comfortable local cotton), and their wardrobes tended more to folding than cutting and sewing.  Twill had long been woven in and around the city of Dongri, giving rise to the Marathi word dongrī for the cloth, Urdu dungrī and Hindi dũgrī  -- and, by the 1600s, the English word dungaree.  It was a short step from the name of the cloth to the workwear, and thus we get dungarees.  The Indian original was yarn-dyed, and so is the thread for the modern cloth.  Yes, it's likely that hard-wearing farm (etc.) clothes of radically different cut and design were made from essentially the same fabric; when the human race comes up with a good idea, it tends to spread, getting reimagined as it goes.
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* Of some note, when you see pictures of Gandhi quietly sitting on the floor, running a spinning wheel?  He's not engaging in a gentle pastime, he's being defiant.  The Raj was happy to use Indian cotton -- in their own mills, mostly in England, and to sell the cloth back to Indians at a nice profit.  Just like marching to the sea to boil out salt, they didn't want the Indians doing for themselves.  This policy...engendered resentment.  You'll notice the Raj isn't around any more -- and the Indians have a spinning wheel on their flag.

The Great Crash, 1929

      I finished John Kenneth Galbreath's book about the stock market crash and, almost in passing, its connection to the Great Depression that followed.

     He closes with some interesting observations, listing major contributing factors.  At the top of the list, extreme income inequality.  The problem as he sees it is that the whims of a few major players can make an impression that the chaotic urges of thousands of lesser lights cannot -- unless they're following the lead of the big guys.  There'd been booms and busts during the era of the "robber barons" a few decades earlier and the phenomenon of extreme wealth for a very few came back even harder in the 1920s.  Look around: we've got that again.

     He follows that with "bad corporate structure," the kind of trusts and holding companies that concatenated during the boom years before the Crash, companies that existed only to own the stock of companies that also existed only to own stock and so on: while they amplified gains, they also amplified losses, so that when things went bad, they kept getting worse.  While that kind of thing is a lot less likely today -- and you can thank New Deal reforms and regulations for the reduced risk -- any novel financial instrument carries similar risk, as the sub-prime mortgage crisis awhile back revealed.

     "Bad banking structure" comes in for censure, and that got a post-Crash restructure, too.  Some of it has been rolled back.  Good, bad?  I don't know; ask an economist.  Ask three of 'em, and you'll get four different opinions. 

     Next, "the dubious state of the foreign balance," and Galbreath credits high tariffs with helping to create the problem.  They were not nearly as high then as they have become in the last few months.  Ouch.

     The stock market has "circuit breakers" these days: if prices start plunging, trading is suspended.  While that may sound like a cheat, one of the main reasons for it (past putting brokers in time out to ponder their actions) is to let the record-keeping catch up.  On multiple occasions during the 1929 crash, the decline and subsequent trading, sell-outs, bankruptcies, etc. got so far ahead of the data coming out of the stock market that nobody knew what was going on until hours after the close of trading; some people "lost everything" not once but multiple times.  They ended up in holes too deep to claw their way out of.  These days, the market can still crush you -- but it's a lot less likely to keep trying to wring out more afterward.

     We're certain to see abrupt dips in the stock market -- if not today (seems to be mildly up so far), then eventually; we're unlikely to have another Great Crash.  Unlikely does not mean impossible, and no matter how carefully a thing has been made foolproof, new and more ingenious fools arrive every day.  Have they once again become too clever for their -- and our -- own good?  Time will tell.

Try Harder

     Commenting, it would be nice if some of you'd look up how paying tariffs actually works, and if you want to ring in Marxists in connection with them (for pity's sake, why?), you might want to look up what Marx et al had to say about tariffs (not much; he wasn't even sure if he was for 'em, against them, or neutral.)  Don't take anyone's word for this, and if you slept though the part of History class where they talked about the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, don't try to BS your way through; you can look it up, too, and get the gist in about ten minutes.  (tl;dr: it didn't do what it was intended to do.  Surprise!  But go see.)

     Likewise, if you want to talk about public media, you might want to be sure you know the difference and relationship between CPB, PBS and NPR.  CPB doesn't produce programming or run a network; claiming "their stuff" is "biased" is nonsensical.

     I keep buying ducks and buying ducks, and some people insist on eating the feathers and then complaining about the taste.

It Takes It Out Of Me

     Already flirting with fatigue, chairing the writer's critique group yesterday left me tired and out of sorts.  It's fun nevertheless; the group are interesting people who write interesting stories, and they have good insight into how well a piece of fiction is working.  It's worth the effort.

     The entire club meets after an hour's break and this time, the business portion went down a byway that I find annoying.

     Robert's Rules of Order is a great way* to run group of any size over a few people -- especially if you stay in the well-greased tracks.  Take a little-used siding, and you can hear the wheels screech: despite multiple revisions, RRO uses specialized and somewhat archaic language that often requires an arcane specialist -- a parliamentarian -- to work out how to apply the rules (or sometimes, just to explain what Brigadier General Robert actually meant, a topic on which he published two books himself).  That's fine, except for one little hitch: the parliamentarian ought not be taking part in the particular debate in which such clarifications are needed.

     In practice, it's always the other way around: the participants in the debate address not only the specific and particular issue, but the rules as well.†  This runs headlong into things as (presumably) simple as the difference between "calling into question," an ordinary bit of language inviting debate, and "putting (or calling) the question," the term describing how the chair ends debate and puts a motion up for vote.  If the debaters are trying to wring victory from the rules instead of the merits of their position -- or are perceived by others as trying to -- it starts to feel like cheating.

     One solution is to name one (or better, several) parliamentarians, and hope at least one of them won't have picked a side when matters become contentious.  Another -- and one I have encountered on City Councils -- is for the chairperson themselves to handle the job.  That works well if the chair is strongly motivated and reasonably impartial (and has a loud gavel), and stinks on ice if they favor one side and lack the gift of persuasion.

     It's frustrating, and more so if you -- or in this case me -- happen to be cranky and impatient.  Ten or fifteen minutes later, the matter was resolved, but not before I began to think I could have just as easily stood in bed.  They had an interesting speaker later, so, so I'm glad I didn't.
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* It is not, however, the only way.  Many Quebecois prefer the Morin Code, which among other things has the advantage of not needing to be translated into French from some other language.  I like consensus-based decision-making, but it can be slow, awkward, and lacks -- much as you might expect -- any definitive central reference like, say, a single book.  Versions that insist on unanimity invite schism; versions that allow for small dissenting minorities can create festering resentment.  No system is perfect and RRO has the advantage of taking simple majority rule (for most things) as axiomatic.
 
† Complicating this, the most competent parliamentarians are liable to be people who have read for the law; and while there must be attorneys somewhere who do not enjoy spirited debate, I have yet to meet one.

Shaghala Baghala

     "Shaghala baghala" was making the rounds on social media the other day; it is claimed to be a Swahili term that means "chaos," or perhaps, "the usual chaos," in the sense of "SNAFU" or "Same stuff, different day."

     A quick web search supports the "chaos" meaning, and adds a few other words that also translate to "chaos."  And I had to follow up on that.

     It turns out there's a reason beyond simple widespread use that makes Swahili or Kiswahili one of the better-known African languages: it's a trading language, and one that, like English, is only too happy to borrow words and concepts from other languages.  There's a lot of Arabic, German and English in the language, mapping successive waves of trading partners and colonizers.*  And like English, you can speak Swahili quite badly and still make yourself understood.  While the language has a complicated (but fairly regular) grammar, "Settla," or "settler Swahili," simplifies person, tense and type down to an approximation of English or Romance-language grammar and adds personal pronouns that are normally indicated by prefixes; the result isn't elegant but it's adequate for grocery-shopping or sharing directions.

     Swahili is a dynamic language.  It's going to be around.  From Star Trek to The Expanse, you'll find bits of it all through SF, tumbling through the shaghala baghala of a hopeful future.  It takes a flexible language to surf chaos and not fall.
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* Some colonizers are worse than others; the quaint notion of "uplifting the savages" is thoroughly and rightfully discredited, but if you're stuck with 'em, the story of the Askari Monument in Dar es Salaam is illustrative of the difference between bad and worse: the Imperial Germans put up a statue of their colonial Governor, one hand on his hip and the other on his sword, while at his feet, a kneeling African soldier covered a dead lion with the German flag.  After WW I, the Brits took over, took down the statue and replaced it with one of an askari in action, bayonetted rifle thrusting forward, in honor of the local troops who served the UK during the war.  A mere symbol?  Sure; but symbols carry meaning.

This Is Fine

     After working today, I'm off all this week.  Tamara K has been sick since Friday, a rattling cough that got worse and worse.  It appears to be a cold, not RSV or covid, but it's been miserable for her and we have been avoiding one another in the house as much as possible.  Which is not very, but I'm not in the shared office or her attic, and we're not having meals together.  As of this morning, she is feeling better.  Still sounds pretty awful, but on the mend.

     I have to work today thanks to short-staffing and schedule conflicts.  This coming Saturday, I have been invited to appear as part of a panel of "authors" at a local event.  So I don't want to get sick.  

     Author?  Don't look at me -- I'm a writer.  I don't even own a tweed jacket with patches on the elbows.  But I'll go along.  Still, I consider writing as I practice it to be more of a skilled trade than a profession.  I'm happy to cede "author" to the people with MFA degrees, no few of whom are excellent writers, but I'm an amateur carpenter among sculptors, content if I can build tables that don't wobble and simply aspiring to a mastery of the craft.  If the result is Art, great -- but my aim is competence.  The event organizers gave the invited authors a list of questions and I'm putting together notes about the answers on 3x5 cards so I don't have to wing it.

"Don't Know Much About History..."

     The United States Senate is supposed to be the "senior body," the place where wise legislators serving long terms weigh new laws and debate their decisions carefully, with due attention to history, science and culture.

     When a Senator votes, it's a well-considered choice -- or so a dozen years of Social Studies, U. S. History and U. S. Government classes led me to believe.  When the Senate voted to confirm General Charles Q. Brown, a former fighter pilot, as the new Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, Senator Thomas H. "Tommy" Tuberville of Alabama voted Nay.

     Ah, but he's a U.S. Senator; surely his reasoning is sound even if one might disagree with his conclusion, right?

     Judge for yourself.  The senior Senator was concerned the USAF fighter pilot might be too "woke," telling an interviewer, "Our military is not an equal opportunity employer, it is a military that is here to protect American citizens."  You can look up the video for yourself, but the quote is not out of context.

     And it's a hundred percent wrong.  Ever since 1948, when President Truman signed Executive Order 9981, it has been explicit U. S. policy "...that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin."

     The military is, in plain fact, an equal opportunity employer.  They don't promise equality of outcome; not everyone makes it through Basic Training and of the ones who do, some will never qualify for anything especially challenging.  But if you've got the ability, Uncle Sam doesn't care about your hue, what (if any) deities you worship or where you came from.  These days, he doesn't even care who you sleep with or if you're a boy, a girl or a mystery.  The military cares about what you can do.  That's not "wokeism;" it's kind of harsh -- service in the toughest, most elite units is based on reality-tested individual accomplishment, both alone and as part of a team.  Them as can't, wash out, period.  That's not going to change.

     The Senator, I'm not so sure what he cares about.  Looking stuff up doesn't appear to be on his list.

6400 Words Into A 5000-Word Story

     Working on a story of a themed anthology and came up with one I really liked.  But by the time the protagonist had been confronted by the baddies, triumphed thanks to a little lateral thinking and was on a bus out of town, it was 6400 words long.

     The anthology has a hard limit: 5000 words, no more.  Run that thing back through the typewriter!

     The first pass tightened up the language, removed a few mistakes and got it down to just under 5900 words  Now I've got to start looking at trimming whole scenes.

     Gonna hold on to the solid-bronze Harpies until the very last second, though.

On Writing

     Over on what used to be Twitter, I had a guy who kept asking me about the software I use to write.

     It's a stranger question than it might appear to be.  The software anyone uses to write is between their ears.

     Past that, the pencil, pen, typewriter, word-processing appliance, app or computer software you use to get words down is freakin' irrelevant.  There is no magic software that will make you a better writer.  None of it will organize your thoughts for you.  Some of it will check your spelling and grammar, but so will your grandmother.

     The most important thing about being a writer is to write.  If you don't do that, you aren't one.  And you'll have to do a lot of bad writing before you'll be any good at it -- just like any other skill.

     This comes up with firearms: people try with hardware to acquire skills that can only be gained through practice and good instruction.  If you want to be a good shot, you have to pay attention to instructors who know how it is done, and then you need to go to the range and shoot.  Will a fancy target pistol or laser or red dot sights make you a better shot?  Not if you haven't learned and applied the basics of grip, trigger control, lining up the sights and not flinching.  You're going to be lousy at it for a long time before you'll be any good.  Until you have the basic skills, that red dot sight won't help.  Once you have them, yes, better hardware helps -- but it can't carry you.  Start with a .22 pistol with iron sights, get training and shoot often.  Graduate to a .22 double-action revolver.  Master that, and you'll have a good start toward being able to keep shots in the 10-ring with anything.

     A dedicated text-entry appliance, like an old AlphaSmart or "the Writer," or any new Freewrite model or similar is a great tool for getting words into a file -- but it's just a glorified notepad.  A good word processor, like Pages, LibreOffice or Word, is wonderful for cutting and pasting text, but it can't help you with story structure.  It won't tell you what to cut and what to keep.  Scrivener is amazingly powerful for assembling a novel or other long-form work -- but it won't create narrative arcs for you or lead your story to a satisfying resolution.  And the more complex the tool, the longer the learning curve. 

     Start simple.  Learn the basics.  Practice, practice, practice.

     And remember: "Steal a person's wallet and they'll be poor until the next payday.  Encourage them to write for a living and they'll be poor all their life."  For every Stephen King, there are a few thousand would-be H. P. Lovecrafts, living in a garret and eating cold beans.

Linguistic Patrol Returns!

      Yes, with a groan of the starter and fingers crossed that there won't be too much old-gasoline varnish in the carburetor, the Linguistic Patrol coughs, backfires and roars into action for an emergency mission!

      But why, you ask?  It's The Case Of The Hidden Reputation!

     One of the major news sites, in an opinion piece about the rise of an extremist loudmouth (pick your own example; it doesn't matter), referred to the individual's having "...established a certain cache" in their particular segment of the political spectrum.

      Cache?  Wrong!  Cache can be a noun or a verb, and both versions address the notion of stashing things away for possible future use.  It's pronounced "cash."

      The word the writer was after would have been cachet, which refers to the prestige of a person or organization.  It's the state of being respected or admired, or it is a distinguishing mark or seal.  It's of French origin and the t, in fine French style, is silent: "kah-shay."

      They're both real words.  Your computer's spellchecker cannot tell that you've grabbed the wrong one.  The reader, however, may find encountering cache for cachet or vice versa to be as grating as getting a piece of eggshell in a fried egg -- and not a small piece, either.

Mentors

     I needed to bore a 7/8" hole in the top of my nightstand, so I could permanently mount the "microphone boom" that holds my Kindle so I can fall asleep reading without breaking my nose.  I've been using the clamp-mount base for years and I keep promising myself I'll make it permanent.

      Okay, down to basement workshop to find tools for the job. H'mm, it's "engineered bamboo," which is like hardwood plywood, so a Forstner bit will be unhappy. I'm not going to risk my century+ old softwood auger bits from Vonnegut Hardware, but here in the "worn-used" collection is an Irwin-type auger bit with a fine-pitch leadscrew for hardwood, and another.... I needed a 7/8" and sure enough, there was one stamped "14." I dug out a small file; couldn't find the special paddle-shaped file for auger bits. A Japanese-type "feather file" was a good substitute, and in a few minutes, I had a nice, sharp bit, ready to go.

      Upstairs, boring with brace and bit, I had to use a small block of wood on the underside of the nightstand top, so the leadscrew could pull the auger bit all the way through, and as it cleared, it struck me what an incredible debt I owe my to Dad and to two men I never met: Eric Sloane and Alfred P. Morgan.

      Mr. Morgan was a prolific writer of "How-To" books, especially for young people. His books were my introduction to electronics and to building things. Mr. Sloane was a tool collector and wrote many books. Both of them illustrated their own work and both were early aviation enthusiasts. And both of them, like my Dad, were very much interested in sharing the whys and hows of doing things. Without them, I would never have learned that old augers are marked by their size in 16ths of an inch or the difference between hardwood and softwood augers; without them, I would never have known how to sharpen a dull auger, or even how to properly bore a hole with a brace and bit.

      Thanks to them, it was a quick, simple task -- and thanks to them, I cleaned up the tools and put them away properly afterward, too.

      None of the three is still around to thank. Two of them have left us plenty of good information. Alfred P. Morgan and Eric Sloane both have extensive Wikipedia entries and many of their books are still in print or available as scans.

Expert Syndrome

      There's a problem that afflicts skilled tradespeople, engineers and those working in the professions (science, medicine, law): Expert Syndrome.

      We know one subject.  We know it well -- really well.  We have spent years learning it and years successfully applying our knowledge and skills.

      And all too often, we assume that transfers to other areas.  After all, we have mastered A Difficult Thing.  Picking up others should be a snap, right?

      Nope.  We have forgotten how to be ignorant, what it's like to have to learn new vocabulary and concepts.  We don't see the limits of our knowledge.  Outside our specialization, we are often worse off than the novice who comes to it understanding they know nothing.

      In dealing with the pandemic and what measures I choose to take (or even urge others to take) in response to it, I have tried not to rely on my skilled-trade* background and instead look to a couple of other areas of experience:  my very limited and hasty training to do hazmat work in a basic "moonsuit" and  full-face filter mask, and -- of all things! -- arguing about gun control.

      Gun control?  Yep.  The data is generally lousy.  The correlation between changes in laws and in behaviors is low to non-existent.  The temptation to cherry-pick stats and substitute anecdote for statistics is enormous.  The noise level from all sides is outrageous.  To make any real headway at all, you have to step way back and even then, one's conclusions are unsatisfyingly general.

      It's a lot like public health, though public health measure are often a bit easier to quantify and some changes do result in positive, traceable outcomes.  But neither subject lends itself to traditional research design; the "research subjects" are real people living real lives and you don't get to set up "control groups" or isolate one experimental group from another.  Conclusions are general, even hazy.  There are things we know that work on a macro scale and yet tragedies continue: there are no perfect answers or methods, nor would compliance with them be perfect even if they were.

      And for me, these are things I'm not an expert in: I know that I don't know much, that I need to look things up, that there are people who know more than I do, including the ones I think are wrong.
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* People who do what I do in my business are generally called "engineers."  Most of us are not Certified Professional Engineers and very few have even a B.A. in Engineering.  We're technicians.  It's a skilled trade.

No Succe∫s At Typographic Hi∫tory

      "He leapt into his Ford Model T, engaged the starter and floored the accelerator pedal once the engine caught...."

      Would that be okay?  I mean, electric starters were a popular addition to the Model T, and they still are. (Something something avoiding broken hand, wrist and arm something.)

     But while there are three pedals on the floorboards of the Model T, none of them are the throttle.  Any writer who did his or her homework should know this.

      Looking farther back into history, there's something even more ubiquitous than Mr. Ford's Tin Lizzie: the "long s," as in the heading of the original, official-record version of the Bill of Rights, "The Congre∫s of the United States...."

     That funny-looking penultimate letter in "Congre∫s" isn't an "f," it's a "long s" as distinguished from a "short" or "round s" and there were distinct rules for using it.  Using the wrong version in the wrong place would have struck the eye of a literate person of the time as jarringly off.  Unlike an "f," a long s either lacks a crossbar or has only the left half of one.  (Printers in the United States, a forward-looking place, were among the first to drop it and how futuristic that must have seemed, right up there with Mr. Webster's spelling reform.)

      An historian should know this.  Yet I read, just past the title page of a scholarly work about the events and politics of the the early U.S. that produced the Alien and Sedition Act and ultimately tested and strengthened the robust protections for freedom of the press, this notice:

    "To avoid a needless distraction for contemporary readers, I have removed the eighteenth-century convention of using "f" for "s" when quoting from period publications...."

      They did what?  The hell they did!

      Okay, the long s is a di∫traction.  We're not used to it anymore.  Take it out.  But for pity's sake, take it out in the full knowledge of what it is!

      It's not too much to ask.

      Other than that, the book is engrossing reading and the writer appears to have gotten the historical facts right.  It's just typography that trips him up, as far as I can determine.  I'll have a book report about it by and by.

Thumb On The Scales?

      Words mean things.  Sometimes words mean a lot of things.  When you read blogs, opinion pieces and news stories, when you post things on social media, when you quote other people, look very closely at the words and ask yourself:
      - Am I (or was the original writer) weaseling?
      - Were the words slanted to get a result I liked better (or less) than what a plain description would imply?
      - Was there exaggeration to make a point more clearly -- and if so, did it change the meaning of actions or events?

      Case in point: when a bunch of people supporting ideas you favor carry signs and flags on 1x1s and metal poles, they're protesters; when they're supporting ideas of which you disapprove, they're a dangerous mob -- and when they chase you down, wielding those sticks and poles like clubs and pikes, they're an armed rabble.  On the other hand, if they chase after people you don't much like, suddenly "armed" only counts if they're carrying guns.

      Step back and read your words as a stranger would.  Read the words of others with skepticism.  Distrust "terms of art."  Shorthand like "a good shoot" for a shooting found to be lawful self-defense plays very differently to your neighbors than it does to the guys down at the gun range.

      Invidiousness is the order of the day.  We live in fraught times.  We live in a time of very glib tongues on TV and social media, on every side of every issue, and most of them are not after your carefully considered thoughts, they want to hit your emotions -- and if you're not braced for it, they'll bowl you over.

      Don't be a puppet.

Today I Learned....

      Today I Learned that Herr Fahrenheit's initials were "G.D."  I also learned it's 20 degrees G. D. Fahrenheit outside right now.

      All of this learning came about when Tam asked Alexa, "What's the temperature fondly Fahrenheit outside?" and was rewarded with a short biographical sketch of the physicist and scientific instrument maker.

      ...It turns out that Alfred Bester's brilliant short story Fondly Fahrenheit was produced as one episode of the NBC Sunday Showcase anthology series in 1960 (as Murder and the Android.).  It was well received by critics and SF fans at the time -- and no, there doesn't appear to be a surviving videotape (the series was shot on early color tape) or kinescope.  At least the short story is widely anthologized, and you can read it any time you'd like.  Robert Silverberg writes highly of it.

But What About Whataboutism?

      Children called to account for their actions in a group setting, often complain about the unfairness of it all -- what about all those other children who also did bad things?

      As adults, we're expected to own our actions, no matter what others have done.  We have learned that we are answerable for our own actions, others are answerable for theirs -- and justice is not always perfect.

      Enforcement can be non-linear.  It's got subjective elements.  If a speaker addressing a crowd says, "That guy over there?  Grab him and string him up!" that's clearly a crime.  If he says, "Let's go to John Doe's house and hang him," that's criminal, too.  But what about, "If I was in charge, I'd have John Doe hanged!" or "John Doe ought to be hanged," are those criminal calls to action, or protected, if highly-charged, speech?  And that's why we have courts and trials, judges and juries.  Circumstances can alter cases.

      "Whataboutism" aims to alter perceptions; if little Jimmy got away with throwing pebbles, why should we get in trouble for throwing rocks? But the one does not excuse the other, and thus we arrive at today's Whataboutist Letter To Bobbi, reprinted here exactly as received:

Yet COngresspeople ENCOURAGED folks to riot and occupy at the Hart Senate Office building to change the outcome of a Supreme Court nomination. Where were you then?
Are those folks who publicly encouraged that violence also guilty of Treason? Of "Insurrection"? Of an attempted overthow of Federal Government? 
Or is it only approved groups who get to do that? 
Feel free to censor me, but ask yourself those questions.

      OMG, can this be?  Was there a cop-killing, club-carrying,* riot-cuff-wearing, barricade-breaching, door- and window-breaking assault on the Hart Senate Office Building, people shouting the names of politicians they wanted to seize or put in office, egged on by Federal office-holders and if so, why wasn't it all over the news?

      You'll notice there aren't any links, dates or names in the letter.  My first websearch turned up a group of (mostly) women who showed up in February, 2018 to protest the Trump Administration's policy of separating children and adults who crossed the border with Mexico illegally -- they showed up at the Hart Senate Office building waving signs and banners (neither on poles or sticks), some wrapped in silver "space blankets" and sat down in the atrium, pretty much filling it up.  Others milled around with signs.  Some Senators, including Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), cheered them on.  575 protesters were arrested and the entire group was removed by police, including Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA).  No one was killed.  No windows were broken.  There were no howls from the mob to sieze any Senator or Representative, or even the President.

     So that, while clearly an illegal protest resulting in arrests, surely wasn't it.

     On 4 October, another group was turned away from the steps of the U.S. Capitol and Supreme Court by Capitol Police.  They were protesting Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, then appearing in confirmation hearings before the U.S. Senate.  They, too, got into the lobby of the Hart Senate Office Building†, made noise, filled the place up and may have been cheered on by some elected officials.  Police cleared them out.  Over 300 were arrested.  No police were killed or injured, no windows or doors were broken.  Signs were hand-held, not on sticks.  It was a big, noisy event.  I think that must be the one my correspondent finds "violent."

     Okay, let's sort these three events out.  Who was throwing pebbles and who was throwing rocks?

     First off, what is being protested?  Then let's look at the stakes, the odds and the legality:

       Feb. 2018: the protesters are taking issue with Executive policy.  This can be changed almost at Presidential whim.  It could be changed by legislation, too.  It's an illegal protest: you don't get to swarm into Federal buildings and stage a protest and there were, in fact, hundreds of arrests.

      Oct. 2018: the protesters object to a particular Supreme Court nominee, who was in Senate confirmation hearings at that time.  Those hearings are not a greased chute, as we learned in 1987 (Robert Bork), 2005 (Harriet Miers) and 2016 (Merrick Garland), among others.   Senators can refuse to confirm a nominee.  It's an illegal protest, op. cit.  Once again, there were hundreds of arrests.  I cannot find any evidence of broken doors, windows or heads.  No police or protesters were injured or killed.

     January, 2021: the protesters reject the outcome of a Presidential election the previous November.  Over sixty court challenges have been filed and failed; many states have had recounts and audits confirming the results, including the Democrat win in Republican-led Georgia, a state where surely even the least hint of cheating would have been smoked out and run down. State electors have met and voted, and their results have been certified and sent to Congress for their count.  At this point, the Congressional action is a formality: other than rejecting a state's slate of electors, there is no Constitutional mechanism to change or recount the votes at that point in the process.  The protesters overrun police, remove barricades, break windows and force their way in.  Once inside, they break locked doors and some go in search of specific elected officials, shouting their intentions.  Many are armed with improvised weapons.  A "protest" or "riot" has become insurrection. A few arrests (a bit over fifty) are made but police are unable to control the crowd; several police officers are injured and one dies of his injuries.  Four protesters or insurrectionists are killed as well, only one by police.  The protest was illegal when the participants gathered at the Capitol building and became insurrection when they broke in and fought police.

     All three began as illegal protests.  All three had some scuffling, all three included illegal entry to Federal buildings.  All three resulted in multiple arrests for illegal behavior.  Only one group overran and fought with Capitol Police.  Only one group broke windows and doors.  Only one group killed.  Only one group gave indication of seeking elected officials with the stated intent of doing them harm.

     So, Mr. Correspondent, you tell me: which group did the most harm?  Which group had even a tiny chance of getting their desired end result without overthrowing our Federal government?  Which group killed and injured police officers?

     You tell me.
____________________________
* Few protests these days include signs on poles or sticks; the sticks too often become handy clubs.  Many of the insurrectionists who broke into the Capitol building last week had sticks but no signs.  Perhaps there were signs on them at the beginning of the day.  
† The Hart Senate Office Building has clearly got lousy security, or at least it did in 2018.  If they haven't done something about that by now, they should.

...What Can I Say?

      A lot of people slept through Civics or U.S. Government class in high school; a lot of people slept through every U. S. History class they ever took.

     Elections take time to count.  Elections in the United States have been though a number of major reforms, all of them intended improve voter access and provide for better integrity and accountability in the tabulation of votes.  It is a highly distributed process -- a lot of hands touch a lot of little pieces of the process, watched at every step, and there are no bottlenecks where one or even a few malefactors could tweak the results.

     There's simply no easy way to cheat on a large scale.

    But just for the sake of argument, let's say there was.  Let's say there's some method to put a thumb on the scales, and some way to ensure the eternal silence of the hundreds or thousands of people it would take to accomplish the job.  Given that level of control, if you went to cheat at an election, this election, how would you go about it?  A landslide would be fishy; the country is too divided to make a landslide likely.  But if you set out to cheat, you'd want a clear and quick result, something plausible but definitely ensuring your guy won.

     We certainly don't have that.  The results are still on a knife-edge in multiple states.  The TV drones on and on about fractional percentages and trends and predictability, about lawsuits and recounts.  It's not doing either candidate any favors.  No, what we have is frustrating and messy -- but it's not fraud.

      There isn't anything I can say about it will make a difference in your opinion.  Just remember, Russia and Red China would like nothing more than chaos and unrest in the United States.  Please don't help give them what they want.  Like it or not -- and you probably don't -- we're all in this together.

Writer's Group

     We had one of our gatherings this evening and I think it went well.  Lots of good discussion and much to learn from the manuscript we were critiquing.

     "Critique" isn't the right word -- much too fancy, for one thing.  You go through and look for narrative inconsistency, plot holes, shifting characterization, formatting issues, and so on.

     Some things are stylistic choices, but more are mistakes, overlooked loose ends and so on.  The idea is to learn how to look at writing analytically -- how to edit.  "Editors" at publishing houses, professional websites and magazines aren't going to dig through the basics for you; they don't have time.  You have to turn in finished work.  And that's what we are trying to teach one another to produce.

     These meetings had been difficult for me because I was so tired, just fatigued all the time.  The new medication appears to be working; I was never even close to nodding off.

Critical Thinking

     Here's a handy set of tools for evaluating if something's nonsense or factual, no matter what your political inclinations.

     You might not agree with the writer's political opinions, but the analytical techniques he talks about have no politics, and work for anyone. 

Hoosier Reading

     Our native and imported Indiana writers are a mixed lot but many are markedly cynical.  Few have had as sharp a tongue as (Indiana-raised, for all that he was born a Buckeye) Ambrose Bierce.

      I've been reading Bierce's Write It Right, which is cheap or free for the Kindle. It's a list of misuses and abuses of English in his typical style, acerbic to the point of acidulousness. The book is fun, though it is a creature of its time (very late 19th century through early 20th) and of Bierce's own quirks, so it can hardly be taken as an absolute guide.

     He was capable of weapons-grade snark.  When critic William Dean Howells said, "Mr. Bierce is among our three greatest writers," Bierce wrote, "I am sure Mr. Howells is the other two." Ouch.