Wandering

      Started out to write an opinion piece on the shortsighted foolishness of claiming "we have no enemy in the far direction of our own leanings," said by conservatives of the far Right, liberals of the far Left, religious types of their own religious extremists and so on.  So, they're just like you but too idealistic, misguided, not as bad as they look or you have got to have 'em to stop The Other Side?  History argues otherwise, and those funhouse-mirror reflections all too often go on to cause immense damage.

      Looking that up let me to Jefferson, and his oath of having "...sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."*  The letter in which he writes that phrase led me to the XYZ Affair, which led me to, among other things, the conclusion that John Adams was a much better man and President than the majority of his party's office-holders were as men, Representatives and Senators.

      It also (of course, and if you don't know why, search engines are your friend) led me to the Directorate and the French Revolution, which pretty much always leaves me wondering if the species wasn't better off as small, semi-isolated bands of hunter-gatherers, flirting with extinction.  I'm still wondering.
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* For the curious, he's being ironic, since he is writing of his opposition to religious groups hoping to get the Establishment of a government-sanctioned church.

Why Is It....

      Why do so many of the "Hard men* making hard decisions" on the Internet turn out to be soft and bulgy in the middle, like a jelly doughnut?  Doesn't matter which way their politics incline, either. 

      Look around.  The reality is that human beings are soft-skinned, hairless creatures, most of whom would die in days if dropped naked in any kind of wildness.  The reason we are top dogs on this planet and flourish in parts of it where we cannot survive without a lot of serious technology† and know-how is not nearly so much about brute bloody-mindedness as it is the ability to figure things out, work cooperatively, and try new stuff without being forced to by others (even if it kills some of us).  It's not even near some modern definition of being "tough" -- in actual practice, genuine toughness is a whole lot more about endurance and perseverance than being a rude horse's ass.

      But the price of being very clever creatures without much in the way of natural weapons is that fantasy can be more appealing than reality -- and fantasy unchecked will take you down some very stupid corridors of thought.  Tolkiens and Teslas are rare; street-corner political theorists and preachers are a dime a dozen.
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* And women.  It is a mark of the times that not every last little never-tried-it collectivist and rugged individualist who's never ventured past the last bus stop in suburbia insists on relegating women to church, child-bearing and the kitchen.  It's only most of 'em now.  Heck, one in five can even tell you what a "suffragette" was and sometimes they're even right.

† Technology isn't just your iPhone.  Knowing how to set snares or find and prepare wild vegetables is a technology.  Tanning leather is a technology.  Fire and human-made shelter?  Technology!  Democracy is a technology, too -- just ask Henry Martyn Robert.  The only instinct human beings are born with is sucking.  A good many never get much past that. 

Locally Grown Gardens Is Closing

      It's a sad day.  By the end of this week, Broad Ripple's Locally Grown Gardens will be gone.  They've been my go-to source for genuine Indiana sugar cream pie since they started baking and there was always something interesting there, from imported French tableware to spices and oils no one else sold.

      The business -- a combined vegetable stand, pie bakery, restaurant, and so on (and on -- morels, free-range eggs, wonderful and obscure soft drinks) -- was a labor of love for chef Ron Harris and a shining gem of the neighborhood.  We even had a Blogmeet there in 2009.

      Ron's been coping with Parkinson's Disease (there's still no cure and it just keep progressing), the lease on his wonderful location next to the Monon Trail is up, and he has decided that it's time to turn to smaller ventures.  Locally Grown Gardens will be greatly missed; I hope Ron will stay in touch.

It's An Optimistic Morning

      Or at least a cautiously optimistic morning.  We may have storms tomorrow and the next day, but today should be the first day for temperatures that pass 80 degrees.

      It looks like the CDC's recommendation for wearing masks outdoors will be modified, too.  Just how much and if the guidelines are any different for vaccinated and unvaccinated people is unknown.  Indiana's rule became a recommendation earlier this month -- and applied outside only if you couldn't stay six feet away from strangers.  Outdoors interaction has been recognized as lower risk since early in the pandemic, so this move is no surprise.  It may even seems a little late in coming -- but Americans are a cross-grained lot, and many people have balked at mask rules.  About the only way a free society has to address that is to encourage the people inclined to caution to be even more so, and thus the rules and recommendations have tended to linger.  If J. Random Guy is going to go shop for mangoes unmasked, state and city governments are going to hang onto the rules that ensure the rest of us wear a mask at the supermarket and minimize the odds of swapping bugs with him.

      Emotions have run high and partisan politics have gotten deeply entangled, but the various state and city public health officials are, in fact, not budding Mussolinis and Stalins; most of them are swamped enough by the more routine aspects of the office and were just about bowled over by the pandemic.  That's been true all along, even in offices with more power: there was no prize in this for Governors and Mayors other than fewer dead and hospitalized citizens (bad for tourism and the economy, y'know) and a significant risk of voter ill-will.  Indiana's Governor Holcomb came in for his own share of opprobrium, no small proportion of it from GOP voters who I would have expected to know better.  But there it is: Americans tend to rankle at being told what to do.  The human race has a tendency to dance on the rim of volcanoes; Americans have a habit of making it work out when we do.

      It's starting to look like we may have muddled through.  The next step may be even harder to sell: we -- and our allies -- need to vaccinate the world.  Yeah, yeah, we don't owe anything to some bunch of foreigners, but here's the deal: the longer a new virus circulates among a great many people, the more mutations show up.  Some of 'em are bound to be worse.  We need to stomp this bug flatter than polio* or smallpox.  We need to kill it dead -- because if we don't, it will come right back, even uglier.  Viruses don't recognize borders.  I don't know about you, but I would just as soon never have to repeat the past twelve months.

      So I'm cautiously optimistic.
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* Polio is still a major problem in some parts of the world. It'd be pretty cheap to vaccinate for that, too -- except some of the worst hit places are also war zones.

Could'a, Should'a, Would'a

      After mentioning it early on, I didn't belabor the recent mass shooting here in Indianapolis.   These horrible things dominate press coverage for a week or more and everyone with an opinion retreats to long-held positions, most of which don't make a lick of sense to people with different notions.  Meanwhile, the people directly affected are hurting and grieving; whatever else you might believe, it's poor taste to hold a debate at a funeral.

      One thing irks me.  Indiana has a "Red Flag" law and the murderer had tangled with police about a year earlier, when he bought a shotgun and began talking to his family about getting the police to shoot him.  At the time, the police took away his gun and he spent some time under mental health observation -- but the Marion County Prosecutor's office didn't pursue a "Red Flag" case against him.

      Prosecutor Ryan Mears has offered explanations that boil down to "it's too difficult."  They've got to file within 48 hours, then his office would have had two weeks to build a case showing the eventual killer was a danger.  And had they lost, the government would have been obliged to return the shotgun.

      As opposed to what actually happened.

      Mr. Mears complains about "loopholes" in the law.  It would seem that an even bigger loophole was in not making any effort to invoke it, since the worst-case outcome (person with ill intent gets gun) would have been only trivially different from the result of not trying: person with ill intent had to get a different gun.

      Various of The Usual Media Go-To Gun-Control Sources have, surprise, criticized Indiana's "Red Flag" law in familiar ways; but when no one involved even bothered to try using that law, it's a thin claim at best.

      Depriving a citizen of a Constitutionally-protected right is a grave thing.  Sometimes, it may be necessary, and the correct and Constitutional way to do so is by due process of law.  That doesn't happen all by itself; someone has to start the ball rolling.  That's a Prosecutor's job.  Ryan Mears didn't do it.

      Would it have worked?  Would the case have been successful?  We can't know.

      But we know the result of his inaction.

Vaccinated Astronauts

      If you had been wondering, everyone aboard the two most recent personnel flights to ISS -- a Russian Soyuz and an American Dragon -- has been fully vaccinated for COVID-19.  The four astronauts who will be returning next week went up before vaccines were available, and after they leave, the human complement in space will be one hundred percent vaccinated.  NASA takes it seriously, and so do their ISS partners.  The surviving Apollo astronauts were vaccinated early on.

      Unless Boeing's Starliner spacecraft get unexpectedly ahead of schedule, it looks like the next flight up will be another Soyuz, carrying one one cosmonaut, one actor/director and one actress: the Russians are going to be filming a feature movie aboard ISS.

      A movie filmed in space?  Arthur C. Clarke predicted this in 1952, though a bit later in the progress of manned space exploration.  Islands In The Sky holds up pretty well even now -- we didn't get the manned geosynchronous television relay stations he describes and his microgravity space station in low Earth orbit has a larger (and very much more British!) staff than the real-world version, but Clarke's depictions of the challenges of living and working in orbit are spot-on.  Similar to the Heinlein juveniles -- and originally published as one of the Winston SF books that were aimed squarely at the same market -- I think it's among his best early work.  If you have ever watched the Change of Command Ceremony on ISS, you'll find Clarke's "Inner Station" a familiar place.

Disconcerting

      Yesterday, I learned I'm going to need cataract surgery this year, "sooner rather than later."  I'm not comfortable with the idea.

      It explains a lot; I have been missing things that are there and occasionally thinking I see motion that's not there.  (Was that a cat?  Nope.)  The other day, Tam walked up while I was cooking and startled me badly when I caught sight of someone in my peripheral vision that looked like a stranger.

      Reading is important to me.  I'm not comfortable with the idea of surgery, especially not on my eyes.  Supposedly, they can do great things now.  While my nearsightedness is not entirely correctable, I am given to understand most of my astigmatism should be.

      That doesn't make it any less frightening.

It Didn't Seem So Bad At The Time

      Yesterday's test -- a lot of controlled breathing into a measurement device, before and after inhaling various mystical medicinal mists -- didn't seem like much physical effort.  Neither did the walk between the parking garage and the hospital.  And while the effort of being semi-charming to a stranger for a couple of hours take quite a bit out of a confirmed introvert, it's not as if I haven't had to before.

      But I guess it added up; I got home, had coffee, took an online meeting for work, did a little e-mail and planning -- and fell seamlessly asleep, head on the keyboard.  Came groggily to a half-hour later and decide to lay down, "just for a little while."  It became a three and a half hour nap.

      Woke up, made supper, stared at the tube awhile and realized I was barely awake enough to clear things away and get to bed.  It was a struggle to stay awake for that.  After eight hours of sleep, I still don't feel rested or awake.

      I think I'll blame yesterday's chamomile tea, along with being out of shape.  Maybe another cup of coffee will help.

Decaffeinated Morning

      This morning, I have to go do a thing -- "Take the Asthma Challenge," like it was one of those old Reader's Digest quizzes -- and I can't have anything with caffeine in it beforehand.  Actually, there's a long list of things I can't have, but most of them are drugs, I only have one or two of them, and they don't do much for me anyway.

      The no-caffeine things hurts, though.  I have started my mornings with tea or coffee for most of my adult life and I count on it.

      At least there was chamomile tea* on the shelf.  It's warm and flavorful, even if it does absolutely nothing to help keep my eyes open.

      UPDATE: Coffee at last!  No idea how I did on the test; my lung capacity is good.  But I already knew that.  The stuff made me cough several times.  Maybe I'm just suffering occasional fit of pique.  Or I could even be old and out of shape...?  Naaaw!
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* Actually, it's a tisane.  But you might as well be speaking Ancient Minoan and labeling the box for it in Linear A as call it that,  then next they'll want me to take my shirt off and leap over a bull by the horns, and we're not going to be having any of that.

A Winter Wonder-what?

      We got two inches or more of damp, sticky snow yesterday.  The wire for my ham radio antenna,  #12 insulated stuff less than an eighth-inch in diameter, is now fatter than a garden hose with snow; telephone and power wiring is equally burdened.  Trees, fresh with new green shoots, buds, flowers and tiny leaves, sag under the weight of snow.

      Welcome to Spring.  Now hidden under the heavy snow, the violets and little pink and white Spring Beauties in the yard will have start over.

      The power flickered out late last night.  It was back on in seconds, probably a fallen branch getting zapped clear and the power company's circuit-breaker-like recloser opening and (surprise!) reclosing.  (Those things are why they tell you not to touch downed power lines: the recloser opens to protect the line, but then it keeps checking to see if the problem -- tree branch, wet kite string, errant squirrel or the occasional stray crowbar* -- has been burned clear.  Why?  Because people don't like for the lights to go out and stay out, is why, especially if they're reliant on technology to stay alive.  Most problems on a big power line are solved in a quick flash of fire.)

      So here we are, two-thirds of the way through April and sliding on snow in below-freezing temperatures.  March might have "gone out like a lamb," but it left its fluffy white coat behind.

*  *  *
      I'm not going to comment on the Chauvin verdict.  You have your own opinion.  I stand by what I have written before: nobody should need to fear for their life in the course of a routine arrest.  To the extent that any of the participants -- suspect or officers -- does, we've got a problem.  And we do, and we still haven't solved it, and there aren't any neat, simple answers that are not also wrong.
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* I'll takes "felony stupid" for $800, Alex Trebeck stand-in.

In Which There Is A Witch...Or A....

      The Abstruse Goose, being abstruse and not having anything at all to say that applies to current events.  Oh, heck no.

The Problem With Overcharging

      Despite -- or perhaps because of -- seventy-plus years of crime drama on television and even longer in other media, most people still don't quite grasp that the severity of charges in a criminal case stemming from someone being killed do not reflect how outraged the crime makes us feel.

     Nope, sorry; the perpetrator of even the most horrific of deaths resulting from negligence or accident is still probably going be charged with manslaughter.  And the person who mercy-kills their pain-wracked, terminally-ill spouse, having laid careful plans to do so long in advance, will likely be in court on first-degree murder.

     An idealist will tell you the charges are chosen that best fit the alleged crime.  A pragmatist will point out that a careful prosecutor picks the charges most likely to result in conviction.

     Politicians and grandstanding attorneys play on our emotions.  When a police officer shoots a suspect by (apparent) mistake, conviction is hard to come by: between qualified immunity and given the deference courts usually show officers, police are sometimes acquitted in circumstances where an average citizen is more likely to be found guilty.

     Overcharging only makes acquittal more likely.  It may be impressive to go on TV and ask, thunderously, why the policewoman who shot a man she intended to tase hasn't been charged with first-degree murder, but in the real world, doing so means she'll go free if only one juror is to be convinced she acted wrongly but without intent.

     The type or degree of murder charges are not an indication of how seriously the justice system takes the crime: someone is dead; the penalties are real.  The charges don't show community feeling or the horror of the crime.  Manslaughter or murder charges, in all their confusing gradations, are picked to be the most accurate, most convictable legal definition of the actual crime alleged to have been committed.  They're chosen as the charges twelve of our fellow citizens are most likely to agree are supported by the evidence and arguments -- nothing more, and nothing less.