If people were better at keeping dark secrets, she wouldn't have had this kind of problem. What's the point of burying the past only to dig it up later?
She is very poised and well-spoken
Racist.
1: The past is never buried. It's not even past.
His plan to divorce his wife and marry Kalder [the woman's biological mother-JPS] was dashed when he was arrested and executed.
Yeah, being arrested and executed for being a Nazi war criminal can really mess up your plans.
5: Srsly wtf. Why not go with "cruelly dashed"?
Yeah, being arrested and executed for being a Nazi war criminal can really mess up your plans.
It was a beautiful wedding, right up until the groom was executed for being a Nazi war criminal...
I'm not saying all family secrets should be kept, but I really don't see how "You share 25% of the genes of one of history's greatest monsters" is really something you need to tell a woman who grew up not knowing anything about it and without any real connection to that family.
Actually in 5 that would be her biological grandmother.
9: They didn't. Someone didn't do the reading ...
She opens her book by describing the 2008 visit [she was 38 -- JPS] to a library in Hamburg to look for material on coping with depression. While there, she happened to notice a book with a cover photograph of a familiar figure: her biological mother, Monika Hertwig (née Goeth). She immediately withdrew the book, titled "I Have to Love My Father, Right?," and which was based on an interview with her mother.
Libraries. Can no one stop the troubles they cause.
I wonder whether being half-Nigerian makes this easier or harder, psychologically, than if she'd been 100% non-Jewish German. On the one hand, your grandfather would have shot you from his porch. On the other hand, you're already a living breathing fuck you to the Nazis so less chance of crippling guilt.
I was expecting one of the hands to be the source of guilt, and neither read that way to me at first.
What is the sound of one hand clapping for Nazis?
The answer is probably somewhere in these 22,827 words: "A Zen Nazi in Wartime Japan: Count Dürckheim and his Sources--D.T. Suzuki, Yasutani Haku'un and Eugen Herrigel"
Oh wait, that's only part III of III. Readers who have not yet done so are urged to read at least Part II of this series that provides crucial background information for understanding Part III.
I didn't read the whole thing. Just enough to convince me that teaching children to play the violin is inherently pro-Nazi.
Whereas singing in harmony about goatherds is anti-Nazi. The politics of music is subtle.
Nothing is as innocent as children who have never even seen a violin.
The Nazis made the right call about that and the running of the trains.
You can't spell Feminazi without Nazi!
Biological statistically speaking, how long will it be before Amon Goeth is the most recent common ancestor of all living humans? This would be useful information to know because it tells us how much longer we can expect to see stories about the Holocaust.
Just followed the link to the Haaretz story.
I'm shocked to learn that Ralph Fiennes is better looking than the real Amon Goeth.
24: the running of the trains.
Now, I want to see a Bruce McCall illustration of brave young Nazis in the '30s matching their speed and wits against trains running through some historic German town.
12: Did I ever tell you all that I found out that my mother wasn't the mother of my sister and brothers by researching my father in a library? I don't think it was intended to be a secret, but no one ever explained it to me.
Just enough to convince me that teaching children to play the violin is inherently pro-Nazi.
[Glances nervously over shoulder.]
Yes, I can see that.
Speaking of fascism, I just finished the NYRB review of The Pope and Mussolini and it has a rather shocking turn at the end - Pius XI's antiracist Humani generis unitas, written just before his death when he had been souring on Mussolini (after earlier making an effective alliance), not only was never published, but was actively suppressed by elements of the Curia.
AIMHMHB I know a man who stopped conversation at breakfast once (we were staying in his castle) by saying "Lemburg, ah yes. Lemburg. My father was governor general of Lemburg during the war."
Later that day, in the course of a spirited domestic disagreement, his wife shouted "YOur godfather was hanged at Nuremberg". That, also was true. The father died in the Vatican, disguised as a priest, in 1949, waiting to be smuggled to South America.
'She immediately withdrew the book, titled "I Have to Love My Father, Right?,"'
To be honest, warning sign right there really.
Actually when you think about it, a book about your family in a library is not a good sign, and a book you've never heard of is a very bad sign. The title's just the icing on the cake.
I think his kids' lawyers wrote the wikipedia page linked in 34.
Example:
For example, while he wore his SS uniform almost permanently as a public demonstration of his loyalty to the Nazi regime, by so doing it served to conceal his personal agenda.
I wear my SS uniform at night, so I can, so I can....
Seriously, who wrote this? Putin with the help of Otto's grandkid?
With his contacts he would have been of value for the Western Allies already in 1949, when the Cold War between the world powers was in its infancy, however, he was too proud to ingratiate himself to his former enemies. Nevertheless, his activities have led to his name being respected in today's Western Ukraine.
38:The fate of Otto Wächter has also played a decisive role in the life of his second son Horst, (born 1939), who for the last years has been actively engaged in researching his late father's life and activities.
Perhaps Horst himself is the primary author.
That would explain how he has the nerve to argue that a guy who joined the Nazi party in 1930 (in Austria) was somehow not committed to it.
I feel like adding "citation needed" to the last three paragraphs.
Last three sections, not paragraphs.
I'd imagine the editor was Horst, who is the one I know and who was strikingly ambivalent about it all. His mother seems to have been the real monster. Horst had spent a lot of his life working for a total shitbucket of an artist, who happened also to be Jewish, which he felt was some kind of expiation.
I can't say I looked at the wiki page more than to link to it - but I am glad to have learned "respected in the Western Ukraine" as the new euphemism for Nazi.
Mind you, AIMAHMHB, I was once on a boat full of Baltic exiles (before 1989) who were happily watching old wartime propaganda films about the "Crusade against Bolshevism" with footage of happy SS men marching off to war.
That is until the younger generation, who had been born in exile, found out and shut them up.
It must be really unpleasant to be a librarian or whatever and have the kids of Nazi leaders coming around in order to be actively engaged in researching their fathers' lives and activities
46: Yes, they didn't cover that at my library school.
Oh, nothing.
cough, University of Phoenix, cough
45.2 RITWUs! I hate these guys!
Boring story that's only funny to me: I was reading a comment thread elsewhere on the Internet about the Parks and Recreation final. The episode had a joke about how much Leslie hates libraries, and a librarian showed up and complained how awful it was that Leslie hated libraries. (It was a long running joke on the show.) I don't know why I find it so funny that he was offended, but I do.
50: I got my master's degree in library and information science at a branch campus of one of the most famous universities in the world. Or at least one of the universities most famous for a single historical incident.
I knew a guy who taught there. Despite living in the state for several years by that point, until then it hadn't really sank in that it was an actual (very large) university as opposed to a Neil Young lyric.
It's kind of disappointing that the Moby/peep slash is stuck in the early-romcom stage.
I'm trying and failing to make myself read the draft I'm supposed to read.
55, 56: Editing is the key to high-quality slash fiction.
55: Am I distracting you?
(is that better, Thorn?)
58: Aaaack, I messed up.
Corrected --
56: Am I distracting you?
(is that better, Thorn?)
I'm thinking of getting back into writing dinosaur poor. I couldn't see the point when Brontosaurus was the same as Apatosaurus, but science now says they are different.
Giving Brontosaurus/Apatosaurus porn that transgressive thrill. It's like the Montagues and Capulets, with thirty-foot necks.
45,46: On a related note, I read Goeth's wikipedia entry as a result of this thread and this stuck out:
Hertwig described the subsequent life of her mother, Ruth Kalder Goeth, who unconditionally glorified her fiancé until confronted with his role in the Holocaust. Ruth committed suicide in 1983, shortly after giving an interview in Jon Blair's documentary Schindler.
I guess the cold war might have made it easier to stay in denial until 1983.
I'm not sure what she felt so guilty about since she never actually married him. That was Braun's mistake, at the end.
60: I was very happy to hear that. I've been a Brontosaurus aficionado since I was a kid and I never bought into this Apatosaurus bullshit. Also I would like to take this opportunity to not that Brontosaurus is not a bird. No feathers. That would be fucking weird as hell.
I'm very happy that now we can stick it to those insufferable Apatosaurus boosters.
Also, it makes me very happy that the word "Apatosaurus" is not in Chrome's spell checker, and the suggestion it provides is "Brontosaurus." Well played, Chrome.
34 -- I met a few old drunk guys in the bar of the Estonian Club in Toronto in 1995 who were extremely happy after a few drinks to tell you that the SS wasn't that bad in Estonia (n.b. -- not true) and they were proud to work with them.
The name change is bullshit because I pedantically banned "brontosaurus" in the house for years and now have to walk it back, losing credibility. F you paleontologists.
Of all people here, I think you have the least grounds to complain about name change bullshit.
69 - There's a Steve Peregrin Took joke to be made here that I can't figure out, so I'm outsourcing it to you.
My stepdaughter will be happy to hear that the historical authenticity of The Land Before Time has been vindicated.
If you're thinking of the same Neil Young lyric I am, the place itself is never mentioned, although the state, an irrelevant reference to Nixon, the impression made by photographs and much else was.
This give me hope that maybe we will get Pluto back.
Pluto is where the Apatosauruses can be found, sporting in the luminiferous ether.
Spike, goddamnit, I was just about to make almost that same joke, but with the opposite sentiment. Disqualifying Pluto is one of Neil deGrasse Tyson's greatest contributions to astronomy.
Pluto is still there, but now scientists say it's part of Neptune.
With Pluto followed by Apatosaurus, I'm starting to sympathize with:
Nobody Fucking Cares About Your Nostalgia For Ontologies You Learned In Elementary School That Have Since Been Revised
— Christine Love (@christinelove) April 7, 2015
54 -- Honest to God first thought: Peep went to college in North Ontario?
Were all his changes there?
Does he sometimes still need a place to go?
81: No, I did not go to college in North Ontario.
But I still do sometimes need a place to go.
72 is referencing the correct Neil Young song.
I only know one Neil Young song, thankfully.
Peep went to college in a horse with no name.
83: Seriously?
82.2: Maybe that's oversharing.
84: Are you competing with Moby for the "knows least about Neil Young" prize?
Maybe two songs. I didn't know he wrote the one in 84.
Also, "Keep on Rocking in the Free World."
87: That may be because he didn't.
Or maybe we should all head over to Standpipe's blog.
"Heart of Gold"? "Southern Man"? These songs were (are?) played on mainstream/classic rock radio a lot.
On the positive side, this is also a step forward for race-relations in Germany because now Germans black and white can unite in personal feelings of war guilt. Next we can find some Turkish-Germans with ugly wartime family pasts. Oh wait...*
*Yeah yeah not THAT war
91: I do know those. I just wasn't connecting them to him. I guess I should have, because his voice is on the distinctive side.
Huh, I didn't realize 89. In my defense, as the all-knowing source of information says, "Due to the song's resemblance to the work of Neil Young from the same time period, it is occasionally mistaken as having been written and sung by Young."
So I'm not the only one. All those guys must have been smoking the same dope.
Guys Apotasaurus is still around. It's just that the big North American version is back to being Brontosaurus. I think.
Ah yes:
Penn Jillette asked the band about their lyric, "there were plants, and birds, and rocks, and things" after a show in Atlantic City, where America opened for Penn & Teller. According to Jillette, their explanation for the lyric was that they were intoxicated with cannabis while writing it.
Apotasaurus still exists, just not in a way we can understand.
Right. And that's fine for reasons related in 61.
At any rate, my favorite Niel Young album is "Nebraska." You can really hear the authenticity in that one.
They just decided that apatosauruses and brontosauruses are distinct species. Hence, the forbidden love described in 61.
99: Right, I love the "from Tucson to Tucumcari
Tehachapi to Tonapah" song.
I don't think Niel Young was ever the same though, after that weird incident where his hair caught fire in the '80s.
As the lone on-topic commenter, I'll keep bravely commenting into the wind. My godfather's parents met in Hitler Youth Camp, and despite having radically different politics, he ended up marrying a Finnish woman and having blond children who would make his parents proud. Now however, one of them converted to Judaism after marrying her husband and the other has schizophrenia, and it warms the cockles of my heart to think about how even the best-laid plans fail when you're relying on offspring who pretty much actively hate you and/or your politics to carry out your eugenics program.
92: Yes - they can all get together for a rousing chorus of 'Who now remembers the Armenians?'
104: That's not fair. I've been reasonably on topic, for me.
You know who else insisted that discussion threads stay on topic?
Also, I didn't think that Finns were Aryan like the rest of the Nordic people.
The Finns are basically Hungarian, aren't they?
I don't know. Give them some paprika and see what they do with it.
They'd put in on their herring, I assume.
104: and it warms the cockles of my heart to think about how even the best-laid plans fail when you're relying on offspring who pretty much actively hate you and/or your politics to carry out your eugenics program.
Led me to look up Shockley and the "Nobel Sperm Bank" (actually the Repository for Germinal Choice). Shockley became estranged from his children (I do recall him throwing them under the bus as "disappointments" when someone challenged him on his own genetic record to that point). The sperm bank no longer operates (Shockley was just a one-time donor) but apparently Slate attempted to do a followup (the original plan for the sperm bank was tot rack but it seems that recipients did not cooperate). This cracked me up: Two women who claimed to have been the recipients of Repository sperm and to have raised children born of that sperm responded anonymously to a series of articles in Slate in 2001. Both stated that their children were extremely intelligent and healthy.
On topic (the topic was always Finland, right?): I saw this article which illustrates what I was thinking but didn't want to get into on my own in the thread about diet and health. That is, showing that changing diet on an individual level don't improve health isn't the same as showing changing diet can't improve health. Just that you need to work at the level of a society.
The Finns aren't Aryans (i.e. speakers of an Indo-European language), but the Germans didn't really care. Actually, when you think about it, the Germans were allied with 2 of the 3 non-Aryan Euro populations (Finns & Hungarians) and actively disliked the Roma and Slavs, who are Aryan.* Their rationale for liking the Finns was that Finns are super blond and were basically Swedes anyways.** It's pretty impossible to come up with any logical racial/language categories to hate the people the Nazis hated and not hate the people the Nazis liked.
*just put scare quotes around Aryan everytime I write, because bullshit racial category. Roma is actually in the Indo-Aryan language family, which makes it extra hard to argue they weren't Aryan.
**Of course Polish people are also blond, but that didn't seem to matter.
I just hope one of Neil Young's kids or grandkds doesn't have an alert going.
114: Not to actually defend the Nazis or anything ,but if you're really interested in preserving peoples of a certain lineage, doesn't it make more sense to go by hair color than by language? Anyone can learn a language.
You'd think that, wouldn't you.
116: Linguistics played a big role in the emergence of deranged ethnic hyper-chauvinism in much of Europe during that late 19th century, so it would sort of make sense for the 20th century products of said chauvinism to focus on language.
The Haaretz article in the OP had several things that did come close to triggering my "I literally do not believe this" instinct. Was more comfortable that the basic outlines were true when I saw it had been out there for several years, and then even more so when I watched the video.
However, I would not be at all surprised if some parts were over-dramatized. But the story related in the article that most raised my skeptical radar really was not about the woman but a surivor she met wh had been at the camp.
She was born in Krakow and sent to the city's ghetto with her family as a girl. She relates that she took the family's dog with her to the ghetto. The dog gave birth to two puppies, and when the ghetto was liquidated, in March 1943, and the residents were summoned for a "selection" process - to decide who would be deported to Auschwitz and Belzec, and who would do forced labor in the Plaszow camp - Birnhack had to abandon the older dog but took the two puppies, wrapped in a small coat.
"It was the first time I saw Amon, a huge, frightening person," Birnhack recalls. "In the selection he indicated with a finger movement who should go to which side. When he saw me holding the coat, he shouted, 'What do you have there?' But when he saw the two puppies, a drop of humanity came into his eyes for a few seconds. He asked me what I intended to do with them, and I offered them to him as a present. He ordered one of the soldiers to take the puppies, and sent me to the side with those who would remain alive."
From reading Teege's book, Birnhack learned that Goeth gave the puppies to Irene, who raised them in the villa.So yeah, I'm the guy doubting Holocaust survivor stories... but in my experience stories that seem too pat, are in fact usually too pat to be wholly true. And there are several Holcaust era tale* in my wife's family that strike me that way as well. But I think we all do that to some extent with our personal narratives and it would not surprise me that people with actual horrific, emotionally-fraught experiences would be prone to it. See also war stories, of course.
*A family story from even earlier is that my wife's grandfather was intentionally injured (eye I think) to keep him out of the Russian Army pre-WWI. A common enough tale in Jewish families from those times, but in the course of doing some genealogical research I came across some work that did had some fairly convincing debunking**.
**My daughter and seem to be the only family members (and in some cases my mother) who can have constructive conversations on things like this that come up in our family history research. Every one else seems to think we're being overly judgmental, or are just defensive in general around the topic. I find it odd and rather off-putting.
I guess this is a tangent I should have launched much earlier in the thread.
Also Anti-Semitic.
So it should be in the new antisemitism thread.
Interestingly, Caucasian the racial category included speakers of IE, Semitic, and "Hamitic" languages,* so included most people in the Middle East, N Africa, S. Asia, and Europe, but not the Finns, Hungarians, or Basques.** This is why my Swedish great-grandmother was ok marrying an (assimilated Protestant) German Jew but not ok with her daughter marrying a Finn.
*And the Caucasian languages, which are also linguistic isolates.
**The inner pedant in me doesn't like it when people use 'Caucasian' as a synonym for white because Caucasian has always been a more inclusive term than white in terms of lived experience of racism. That is, most European immigrants who experienced racial discrimination in early 20th century US were racially considered Caucasian, even if they weren't "white."
I thought the problem with marrying a Finn was that they never talked? This may not be a problem Swedish people can relate to.
123
This is the problem my Italian boyfriend has with my Finnish common-law stepfather. BF: "He's so unfriendly!" Me: "He's not unfriendly! He's Finnish!"
According to my grandmother, her Protestant/Jewish father was excited my grandmother was marrying a Finn, because he was blond, unlike anyone else in my grandmother's family. For him, blond Finn > dark-haired Swede.
Their rationale for liking the Finns was that Finns are super blond and were basically Swedes anyways. were also shooting at the Russians.
To my surprise, CA has at least two public schools named after Robert E. Lee - one in Long Beach, one in San Diego. I just wrote my Assemblymember deploring this and suggesting it would be an easy and meaningful fix, considering they already banned Confederate tchotchkes from the Capitol gift shop last year.
They sold Confederate tchotchkes from the California state capitol gift shop until 2014?
I'm not sure if it would be more alarming if they were doing so because it was making them money or in spite of it not making them money.
Now now, California has a glorious civil war heritage:
The only capture of a Confederate flag in California during the Civil War took place on July 4, 1861, in Sacramento. During Independence Day celebrations, secessionist Major J. P. Gillis celebrated the independence of the United States from Britain as well as the southern states from the Union. He unfurled a Confederate flag of his own design and proceeded to march down the street to both the applause and jeers of onlookers. Jack Biderman and Curtis Clark, enraged by Gillis' actions, accosted him and "captured" the flag.[16] The flag itself is based on the first Confederate flag, the Stars and Bars. However, the canton contains seventeen stars rather than the Confederate's seven.[17] Because the flag was captured by Jack Biderman, it is often also referred to as the "Biderman Flag".
We have a park named after Robert E. Lee, including a big statue of him. Some people want to change the name of the park and remove the statue (because, you know, traitor), but I think the city should just leave it there and put up a big sign explaining that it's super racist.
"You must be this racist to live here comfortably."
||
Grr.
So my friend likes Rand Paul because "He's the only who is a foreign policy non-interventionist and is on the right side of the government surveillance issue."
Unfortunately, that's actually a good point. And I don't think harping on the evils of libertarian lunacy is going to turn my friend around on this one.
|>
132 - so, basically those same things from that company that produces the hokey "Lewis and Clark Maps" on parchment or authentic looking replicas of the US Constitution, available in every historically-themed gift shop across the country?
Banning that shit is week. I might have to side with the racist rebels on this one.
I don't like how the Lewis and Clark Maps never indicate the good restaurants in Omaha.
So it should be in the new antisemitism thread.
I just treat every thread as an antisemitic thread.
133: You could point out that his anti-interventionism is already evaporating, because he's running to lead a hyper-interventionist party.
He can be anti-interventionist all he wants as long as he want to bomb Iran.
133: You could also point out that he supports, and indeed has introduced into the Senate, a "personhood amendment" to the constitution, in keeping with which abortion would become illegal.
Apologies -- it's actually not a constitutional amendment that he proposes, just a law.
You could also point out that he supports, and indeed has introduced into the Senate, a "personhood amendment" to the constitution, in keeping with which abortion would become illegal.
My friend is also more pro-life than I approve of. I don't really understand why, because he also hates religion.
Have you considered the possibility that your friend is a shithead?
He is a bit of a shithead, but not entirely so. He hated George W. Bush early on, so that counts for something.
I think his problem is poor critical thinking skills - he is entirely too credulous of things that terrible people tell him. I had to explain to him in depth how "voter fraud" wasn't actually a thing, and I think he eventually got there, but it took a while.
You know, it would be nice if the Democrats had some prominent anti-interventionist, anti-surveillance state voices. That would be awesome.
My soul dies a little every time I construct an argument for why people should support neoliberals.
130: I thought Virginians were incapable of being ashamed of Robert E. Lee.
146: He was a foe without hate; a friend without treachery; a soldier without cruelty; a victor without oppression, and a victim without murmuring. He was a public officer without vices; a private citizen without wrong; a neighbor without reproach; a Christian without hypocrisy, and a man without guile. He was a Caesar, without his ambition; Frederick, without his tyranny; Napoleon, without his selfishness, and Washington, without his reward.
An angel's heart, an angel's mouth,
Not Homer's, could alone for me
Hymn forth the great Confederate South,
Virginia first, then Lee.
Oh, realm of tears! But let her bear
This blazon to the end of time:
No nation rose so white and fair,
None fell so pure of crime.
You know, it would be nice if the Democrats had some prominent anti-interventionist, anti-surveillance state voices. That would be awesome.
Yeah, this was my broader point. But, as far as I can tell, Democrats are fine with all that.
Plus, Lee had a neater uniform than Grant.
As far as I can tell, that kind of thinking is part of why Mark Udall is no longer in the Senate.
Asfar as I can tell, Sen Paul and his groopies aren't fit to shine Sen Wyden's shoes.
No time these days for all you lovely people BUT stopping by briefly to pass on this for ogged in case he doesn't have it already - https://medium.com/matter/let-it-rain-ac793178d51c
"First of all, Mother Nature didn't intend for 2 million people to live on Manhattan Island either. Mother Nature would also be baffled by skyscrapers, the Delaware Aqueduct, and the Lincoln Tunnel. Anyone living anywhere in the United States -- apart from the most radical of the off-the-gridders, most of whom are probably in northern California anyway -- is dependent on a vast web of human engineering designed specifically to mess with Mother Nature's intentions.
The question is whether that engineering is sustainable. What the Times piece explicitly suggests is that California has been living beyond its means environmentally. That's the point of those extraordinary overhead photographs of lush estates, teeming with greenery, bordering arid desert. You see those images and it's impossible not to feel that something shameful is happening here. And yet, picture a comparable view of Manhattan sometime in the depths of January, with a thermal imaging filter applied. The boundary between Man and Mother Nature would be just as stark: frigid air surrounding artificial islands of heat. It's true that New York City distributes that artificial heat much more efficiently than the rest of the country, thanks largely to its density, but it's still artificially engineering your environment, whether you want to make a dry place wet, or a cold place warm. And while the Northeast has an advantage over California in terms of rainwater, California has a decided advantage in terms of temperature and sunlight, particularly the coastal regions where almost all the people live. Coastal California enjoys one of the most temperate climates anywhere in the world, which allows its residents to consume far less energy heating or cooling their homes. California is dead last in the country in terms of per capita electricity use. Thanks to the state's abundant sunshine (and pioneering environmentalism) there are more home solar panels installed in California than in all the other states combined. If you're trying to find a sustainable place for 40 million people to live, there are plenty of environmental reasons to put them in California."
Nobody is supposed to live somewhere with good weather. Bad for the soul.
Wrong! Everyone knows that the most important thing is to live either next to a lake or a creek, because most people get their water directly from the lake or the creek next to where they live, sometimes with tin cups. Also, residential water use by homeowners and for gardening is wrong, particularly if you live in a desert like California.
|| Big day in the MT lege. The tea drinking House leadership thought they had successfully bottled up Medicaid expansion in committee, but 11 Republicans crossed over to produce a 52-48 vote to bring it to the floor.* (Where it will pass, presumably tomorrow.) The leadership tried a couple of procedural tricks to beat this back, but nothing worked.* Including trying to adjourn the session completely -- they haven't passed the budget, and a whole bunch of other things, but 40 Republicans would rather go home than vote on Obamacare.
* One trick was to refuse to allow a vote yesterday, and the refer the refusal to the leadership-controlled rules committee, which voted 10-6 for the leadership. This was appealed to the full house, which overturned on a separate 52-48 vote today. |>
I'm still not totally convinced that Rand Paul and Pauly Shore are two separate people.
158 I don't think Rand Paul has ever commented here.
I thought brontosaurus came from mistakenly putting a camarasaur head on an apatosaur body? How can they reify a mistake?
I got a new desktop computer in my office at work and told myself I'll avoid ever viewing Unfogged on it. As a result, I'm now serial-commenting as soon as I get home. This may not work so well.
The point is that the "apatosaur body" wasn't actually an apatosaur body after all. The first head they stuck on was still totally wrong. Since the body was a different genus than the slightly earlier apatosaur specimen the brontosaurus name was actually valid.
Are we still lacking an apatosaur head?
Crap. The other one. Brontosaurus head.
Oh man, Brontosaurus Head. That'll blow your mind, son.
53: I heard a story that someone donated records of that incident to a library in another part of the country because they didn't trust any library the state where it happened not to tamper with them.
53 I had no idea that peep is a librarian. How many of us librarian and/or archivists are there here? And, more importantly, are there enough of us to take on the lawyers in a knife fight?
Starting a knife fight isn't really the issue.
Every time I try to stop one, the Republican senators write a letter to the other side.
I love how 154 just fall-equivalencies away the literal drop of 12" a year in ground level due to ground water usage. The urbanized northeast has been operating as it has for twice as long as California without anything resembling the direct, undeniable bad environmental outcomes, but if we cherrypick metrics, they're exactly the same.
Speaking of cherrypicking, should we discuss per capita use of fossil fuels between metro NY and CA metros?
People don't point to CA waterworks as unsustainable due to some Edward Abbey idealism; they do it because those systems are, before our eyes, failing*. If NYC had been operating under 3 straight years of brownouts due to the unsustainability of its "unnatural" infrastructure, people would talk about it. Shit, two blackouts in 10 years gave us pop culture relics like "I Saw the Lights Go Out On Broadway".
*and have been for a long time; things weren't in great shape long before the current drought
Speaking of cherrypicking, should we discuss per capita use of fossil fuels between metro NY and CA metros?
I'm actually not sure how that would net out. Obviously NY has lower use of fossil fuels for transportation per capita (although if you look at metro NY there would be a smaller difference than if you stick to NYC proper), but it's much colder than CA and heavily dependent on fossil fuels for heating.
Which is not to dispute the overall point of 171/172, with which I agree.
173: No, I wouldn't expect metro NY to come ahead, but the selection of electricity only is silly. Combine an awful water situation with a merely OK energy usage, and suddenly CA isn't meaningfully ahead (if at all) of NY on an environmental basis. The linked article is not quite a tu quoque argument, but it's close.
And the whole thing comes down to, "We can't possibly be doing anything wrong, so pay no attention to the drought behind the curtain," which is, frankly, Heartland Institute level bullshit at this point.
I admit that I haven't actually read the link in 154, or the NYT article it's responding to. The excerpt's focus on urban California is very misleading if we're talking about water use, of course.
In carbon emissions Los Angeles is substantially lower than almost everywhere in the US and was lower than NYC (and is still lower than metro NY) until very recently -- carbon and oil for heating go along way. Nice job bullshitting though! In terms of actual water use in CA, sure you could use some reductions everywhere but 80% goes to agriculture -- which would be fine if they would pay appropriately for it, but they don't. As for the remainder, sure we should pay more but the basic structure of providing water to major prosperous cities is more than sound and will be for the foreseeable future. The scenes of landscaping in Palm Springs or whatever is a drop in the bucket, but it doesn't seem to be much cause concern for team relentless I am a moron on this issue, which seems to be most of Unfogged.
Maybe that was unfair. JRoth and Ogged are certainly full-bore morons on this issue, almost at climate change denialist level. It just feels wrong to have water in (what I mistakenly believe to be) a desert!
I'm trying to figure out how "We mindlessly assign 80% of our water" is a defense of Cali water usage, but you go, hyper-defensive Californian! Your awesomeness knows no bounds.
PS Being Team Cheney on the topic of conservation must be extra metal.
Yes, that is what I am saying. Why bother learning anything when you can keep fucking that chicken.
I'm trying to think of a forum where saying that only an anti-California ignoramus would object to California water policy would be more moronic than at Unfogged, but I'm coming up blank. I guess the parochial Californian's water professional's personal water blog, but I think that's the complete list.
I am not broadly supportive of "California water policy" assuming that's a thing, which it isn't. There are a lot of problems! What I am saying is that you and Ogged and a few others here seem to love to spout off on this issue based on vague impressions and without the foggiest idea of what you're talking about in terms of how major water projects actually work as infrastructure, and with a focus on what isn't and almost certainly won't be a problem, which is providing major cities and prosperous areas with water, as opposed to what is and certainly will be a problem, which is the mix of crops grown in (many of) California's agricultural areas. I'm fucking sick of it and you should either read a decent book or shut the fuck up.
The important thing is that we carry out policy discussions based nearly exclusively on the perceived moral worth of individuals.
Okay, so, there are a lot of different issues that seem to get conflated whenever we talk about this sort of thing. In brief:
1. "California" isn't really a meaningful unit when you're talking about water issues. It's a large, diverse area physiographically and hydrologically, not to mention demographically, and different parts of it have different relationships to water on both the supply and demand sides. (The same goes for "The West" in general, but this discussion seems to be mainly focused on California.)
2. The part of California that most people are familiar with is the coastal strip where the vast majority of the population lives. This area could certainly use some more restrictive rules on water use, such as those that the governor has recently imposed, but it's not going to run out of water for domestic use on any practical timescale. It is also not a "desert" in any technical sense, and has been densely populated relative to the rest of the state basically forever (extending back into prehistory).
3. The part of California that is a desert in a technical sense is suffering a lot from the recent drought, but it's a relatively small part of the state in both area and population. There are certainly excesses in water use in this area in places like Palm Springs, but in general its experience with water policy is of people from the more populous coastal areas coming in and taking water out of the desert to meet their much larger demand. Owens Valley is the most famous example.
4. The part of California that currently uses the vast majority of water in the state is the Central Valley with its huge farms. This is neither the coast nor the desert, but it's the area where the current drought is likely to have the most important long-term effects. It's also the area where the drought and any water-use restrictions that result from it are most likely to impact the rest of the country given how much of our produce is produced there. I'll defer to experts like Megan on the specifics, but if you're talking about the failures of California water policy this is the area you need to focus on. Lawns in LA and Palm Springs are neither here nor there when it comes to the big picture.
(Disclaimer: I'm far from an expert on any of this, and again, I'll defer to the real experts on the details and to correct any mistakes in this admittedly very schematic outline.)
carbon and oil for heating go along way
They do if your housing stock was built back before electricity. New buildings in the non-tundra parts of the north don't take that much to heat.
Those places are obviously worse, at least as far as places to put a city. I'm informed that Tuscon isn't as bad as Phoenix, but the people saying that wanted me to move to Tuscon. Anyway, I just found out that a few years ago, when prices cratered, my cousin bought a house in Mesa. He figured he'd be retiring to Arizona at some point and that he could rent it out in the mean time. I find this a bit alarming on grounds of water usage, but mostly because it's somebody I think of as "my generation" buying a retirement home.
Ha, missed the thread, but I was thinking of linking to that Medium piece, which is partly moronic and partly worthwhile. Guess there's no need now. I will note, in response to 156, that we do actually get our drinking water directly from the lake next to which we live. Crazy, I know.
I'm fucking sick of it
We talk about our feelings on our LiveJournals, bro.
Sniping aside (though I'm happy to snipe), if there's a book I should read that will clarify all this, I'd like a recommendation.
Anyway, I don't see why it's obvious that water shouldn't be used for cheap produce and almonds. I've only ever been to California twice, but I eat stuff from there every day.
The incremental coder is being asked to not water his lawn so much, not killed or anything.
To merge subthreads, I need the help of an archivist/librarian for a water case. Corporate records from the first half of the twentieth century for a company bought in the second half by a multi-national, where do they live? If anywhere.
I'm no expert on California water law, but the groundwater regulatory situation, if various articles in the popular press are to be believed, is simply boggling.
Agree fully with 185, 197, 201. To 186, we of course have an actual expert here but I'd say Fiorina has about 1/2 a point. Though not caused by evil environmentalists, there has been serious underinvestment in the system. And there are certainly for-real cases of infrastructure being rendered more costly to protect eg endangered species of fish. But the major problem is regulatory and as you say the core failing is failing appropriate pricing for ag use in the Central Valley (which isn't a simple problem to regulate or remedy, but anyhow).
But if you let the short-term economic case decide where the water goes, water won't go to agriculture until food prices rise very sharply. Never, ever actually reaching the point where a farmer can outbid a techie for water would be a very good thing given what that would mean for the price of food relative to the average American income.
You want plenty of slack in the system for growing food, is what I'm saying. Especially as global warming is changing things very rapidly.
The impression I've got is that the real problem with almonds in California is that they're not at all drought-tolerant. A field of alfalfa, in a bad year you can not plant it, and start fresh when you've got a rainy year. Almond trees only make sense economically if they're going to be around for (whatever the full productive life of an almond tree is -- a couple of decades?), but they die if there's any year where they don't get watered. And the current level of groundwater depletion means that it's about to get much harder to cushion perennial crops like almonds through dry years.
That doesn't necessarily make almond trees the devil, but it means that expanding almond growing in the current water-precarious state is likely to lead to some really difficult politics in the pretty near future.
Almonds aren't essential the way pistachios are.
Let me be the first to suggest soylent green-ing bay area coders as a partial solution to our agricultural problems.
What I don't get about the Bay Area isn't the water. It's the commuting times, or at least the commuting time given a reasonable housing cost. I have similar thoughts about other large cities, especially the ones where most commuting is by car. Objectively, I understand that many people in large cities (or even my own city) spend an hour or more getting to work each day and have adjusted to this, but subjectively I just don't understand how that is bearable.
The impression I've got is that the real problem with almonds in California is that they're not at all drought-tolerant.
Seems like the answer here is genetic engineering. How difficult would it be to splice up some DNA so you could get almonds growing on alfalfa plants? Problem solved!
209: My brother. I barely stand my 10 minute walk to the subway + ~25 minute ride to work. And I don't have to drive.
I don't mind the walking part. Most mornings and about half of the evenings, I intentionally add a mile walk to my commute.
1. We just six months ago voted for more water infrastructure, incidentally.
2. ISTM federally-subsidized crop insurance also deserves some of the blame for the overplanting of cash crops like almonds going on. Overcheaply mitigates the risk if drought wipes out your crop.
Bay Area commuting times are miserable even by urban standards, and it seems like you can't even make the conventional time/home cost tradeoff ("drive until you qualify") - the area is so diffuse that once you get away from your own employer's center of gravity, you're in someone else's area and suddenly competing with their employees for housing.
I don't mind walking either, it is just that I hate commuting that much
Are there a sufficient number of bars on your route home?
the real problem with almonds in California is that they're not at all drought-tolerant
Well, and that 70 percent of the damn things get sold overseas. India and China can fuck off and grow their own.
I'm guessing "almond milk" is one of those things that makes no economic sense without subsidies, like corn ethanol fuel, because otherwise who would have ever come up with the concept of "almond milk"? But I am probably wrong.
Yes, taking a bit of the edge off our trade deficit with China is a terrible idea.
because otherwise who would have ever come up with the concept of "almond milk"?
Isn't coming up with not-milk types of milk a pretty common thing for vegans?
None at all. A residential area of the suburb
209, 214: I recently attended a sort of workshop in the bay area where participants were required to schedule large numbers of short meetings around the bay area within a limited time window -- five fifteen minute meetings between 3pm and 6pm, say, anywhere from the valley to downtown SF to berkeley. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, a fucking joke.
Wait, what? Was this a scavenger hunt?
Calling in from the car on the commute to the office is a thing here.
I assume 221 is to 216. But, who the fuck builds a residential area without bars? There's no point to a bar you can't talk to.
223: not exactly. More of a (shitty) cameraless reality show.
I suppose Mormons and DUI lawyers.
225: guy walks into a bar, bar says "hey, buddy, watch it!" guy says "ow, pointy!"
227: Californians drive to bars, man. I lived there and I don't understand it either.
I used to drive to bars, but I got old enough to feel bad about it even after I realized my odds of getting caught were very small.
About the same age as I started to feel bad about throwing cigarette butts on the ground.
who would have ever come up with the concept of "almond milk"
Isn't it basically just soy milk only with almonds? Once you know about soy milk it seems like a natural transition, especially given how similar they taste to soy beans. I mean, they're not identical but it's not exactly almonds-to-fava-beans either.
That makes me wonder if anyone out there is making almond tofu, though. If so it hasn't caught on.
226 was more vague than I suppose it needed to be. It was government entrepreneurship training for scientists, and it was exactly as unfortunate as that sounds like it would be.
199: Unfortunately, the answer to most library/archives questions is "it depends". I believe the purchaser would take legal authority to take over the records of the purchased company but they wouldn't necessarily move the older records. They might have destroyed them if they got rid of the earlier company as a distinct entity.
I think there is almond based vegan cheese, and tofu is basically soy mozzarella. So, kind of the same thing?
Who builds bedroom-communities at all? They're stupid.
There's a Chinese dessert often called "almond jello" whose Chinese name includes the word tofu. As far as I know, it includes neither almonds nor tofu.
Don't get my started what's not at all in the "Happy Family" entree.
It would be basically the same process, so yeah I guess so. It sounds like it would have to be pretty distinct in flavor and texture, but that might just be that curdling almond milk gets you something closer to mozzarella than tofu. It could also depend on what they use to curdle it (but rennet would obviously be off the table so that couldn't make that big of a difference.)
234,199 I would just add that it might be worth checking the local historical society where the original company was located, especially if that company was a major employer there. I'm familiar with a number of historical societies that have become repositories for some 19th century and early 20th century records. And if they don't have anything for you the archivist there might have some leads for you.
233: Entrepreneurship training involves solving the Traveling Salesman Problem? Do they know that it's NP-complete?
240 I'm familiar with a number of historical societies that have become repositories for some 19th century and early 20th century records
By which I mean corporate records, of course.
As far as I can tell the trouble now is that agricultural water use has become harder to assail from the outside because it's so complex and opaque. Some farmers pay through the nose for some water, and they can be trotted out with their sob stories, but others get water very cheap, and it's hard to say how things work on net. The whole groundwater-usage thing is indefensible, though.
It was a combined entrepreneurship training/road rally.
240: That's a good point. I know the records of some late 19th and earlier 20th century companies bought by railroads are with other records of those railroads held in academic and special collections libraries.
232: I think nut and grain milks and "cheeses" have been around for a while (and not just among hippies and vegans). There's a new weird cheese that uses some kind of Vietnamese fermented coconut curd.
If I'm anything to go by, and I'm probably not, almond milk wasn't widely known until Whole Foods came around and started flaunting it.
Our trade deficit with China is of no intrinsic importance. We have a big trade deficit with China because a) the Chinese government wants a weak yuan and b) rich people in China want to protect their wealth by buying US assets. If the trade deficit is bad, then it's bad because either a or b is bad, and either being bad is not appreciably fixed by exporting almonds.
It's bad because it increases unemployment of unskilled labor in the United States, which may possibly be fixed by exporting almonds.
It's almost impossible to get a job writing proverbs. Too much free competition.
250: True, and yet notice the words "trade deficit" appear nowhere your sentence.
jobs that Americans don't want at the prevailing wage.
253: You don't buy the Dean Baker thesis?
The trade deficit is bad because in our current situation it can only result from a series of events associated with increased unemployment of less skilled labor in the United States. The increased export of goods (including goods that could be used to make marzipan) to China from the United States would both reduce the trade deficient and almost certainly be associated with a series of events which would counteract this to at least some extent.
Better?
jobs that Americans don't want at the prevailing wage.
You know I've heard that statement before. Now, my friends, I'll offer anybody here fifty dollars an hour if you'll go pick lettuce in Yuma this season and pick for the whole season. So, ok, sign up! Ok, when you sign up, you sign up, and you'll be there for the whole season, the whole season, ok, not just one day. Because you can't do it, my friend.
256: The guy who played Buford Pusser?
258: Has anybody told him that it's illegal to not let an employee quit, immigrant or not?
256: I do buy Dean Baker's thesis, which is a. But the bad thing is that China manipulates the yuan down, not anything intrinsic about the trade deficit. Increasing exports of almonds don't do much to help that.
259: Thats him. Dean "The Rock" Baker.
I understand that you can technically parse those two things apart, but I don't understand why it would be of any help at all unless you are teaching freshman econ.
Which, maybe you do teach. I don't remember everything.
256: I do buy Dean Baker's thesis, which is a.
Take that, Ayn.
234, 240 -- It's this outfit, you'll be unsurprised to learn: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaconda_Copper. So, BP, now?
And it looks like maybe that wikipedia entry has the best clue ever: a link to http://nwda.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv60538
266: I was going to try for a "My Anaconda" joke, but then I looked up the Wikipedia page for the geese-slaughtering Berkeley Pit, successor to the Anaconda mine, and got nauseated and depressed. This just boggles:
The pit is currently a tourist attraction, with an adjacent gift shop. A $2 admission fee is charged to go out on the viewing platform.Just two bucks for a glimpse of a vast reservoir of toxic waste? Why, that's a bargain!
263: But the US could have a trade deficit simply because it's attracting a large amount of foreign direct investment. It could have a trade deficit because the population is growing old and is spending down previous savings. The US probably has to run a trade deficit simply because it's the preferred reserve currency and the preferred medium for foreign exchange.
People talk about the trade deficit either because it sounds vaguely sophisticated, or because it's a convenient political tool -- you can say that the US has a trade deficit because it's not competitive, and that the only solution to that competitiveness is to cut pay and brutalize workers, so that we can be more like China.
I still don't get that point. The U.S. doesn't have a trade deficit because of foreign direct investment or spending down previous savings. The U.S. has had trade deficits for those reasons in the past, but people didn't complain about trade deficits then because it wasn't a problem.
And that the U.S. had to run a trade deficit because of its roll as a reserve currency isn't the same thing as saying the trade deficit isn't very bad for a large number of people in the U.S. whether or not it is necessary overall.
Does 266/267 represent the first time a lawyer could properly bill time spent commenting here?
And the usual argument amount people worried about the trade deficit isn't more brutalization of workers. It's to call for protectionism. It's been many years since I was convinced of the basic goodness of the free movement of goods and capital.
Knecht's thoughts here are exactly right.
186: Could you build your way to plentiful water in SoCal with Halfordismo and (ideally) some one else's money?
Yes! But not by tapping a new source in the north. If you can keep the northern sources and some of the Colorado, LA/SD could keep their lifestyles by: boosting recycled water and collecting/cleaning/using their local stormwater. Last I saw, those are still cheaper than desal.
Basically, we are going down (up?) the entropy chain. The nice, low entropy sources (big clean source placed higher than the demand) are all tapped. Looking for more of those is futile. But there's lots of dispersed dirty water around. Lots! For big money, you can collect, clean and pressurize those and you can do it as many times as you can afford.
Big rich cities are turning their attention to those because 1. they can afford it and 2. they don't have to fucking fight anyone for them. If they clean their own toilet water, at least they know how much they're going to have every goddamn year and they don't have to fight off some charismatic other person's claim.
the real problem with almonds in California is that they're not at all drought-tolerant
Well, and that 70 percent of the damn things get sold overseas. India and China can fuck off and grow their own.
Yes! Thank you. I would add that Spain, Turkey and Iran would LOVE to step into that market, if India and China don't have the right climate.
273.last: Hell is charismatic other people
Missing from the OP: "In conclusion, other people having fewer babies is the final solution."
A speaker just used the phrase, "Pulling oneself up by one's penis."
I find that Hell is other people's autonomy, whether they are charismatic or not.
I don't see why the "'s autonomy" is necessary. Even if the other people are completely controlled, but a third party, it doesn't help you a bit.
If they clean their own toilet water, at least they know how much they're going to have every goddamn year and they don't have to fight off some charismatic other person's claim.
And here I thought you knew ranchers better than that--what makes you think they won't try to take it anyway?
Why won't treated water flow out from cities (that want to use it to have green medians in their streets) to ranchers?
If the cities are LA/SD, they are downhill from ag. No one is pumping water back east over the Tehachapis.
Some cities do sell or give their treated water to ag in the San Joaquin Valley because they have perceived it as valueless until now.
But growers have no claim on that water (as, like, traditionally relying on that tailwater flow off an upstream person's field) because it never existed until the plant was built and cleaned it.
tofu is basically soy mozzarella
I think of it as soy paneer because I made paneer one time.
The fight upthread was entertaining but too brief.
Nattō is basically soy...Epoisses?
Yeah, I was mostly joking--certainly the point is well made that you aren't going to pump that water back over the mountains-- but I think it's obvious that some ranchers don't feel so constrained by anything like reason.
If you can keep the northern sources and some of the Colorado
Just to spell it out, though, in a drought (and with other demands on the Col), that means less water for ag, right? The cities keep (virtually) all of their current share of outside sources, then make up for drought through greywater and better stormwater handling. Or did I miss something?
share s/b actual allocation - same absolute number of acre-feet (do you use acre-feet when not discussing ag water?).
284 - This seems like the more obvious candidate for soy epoisses.
286: That's what I foresee. That cities will keep what they've got and we will use ag water as the buffer in droughts or in climate change. It will suck for some current ag users, so I wish we talked more explicitly about transitioning them.
The stuff in the link in 288 looks genuinely disgusting, and I say that as someone who actually rather likes nattō.
267: Oh, that company. You should just start with ArchiveGrid for archival research. For [tedious details omitted] it has duplicate results, and it also doesn't have everything, but it's an attempt to aggregate all listings for all archives in the US.
For some reason I thought you were looking for records held by a still active company, which can be harder to find since active corporations aren't usually keen on sharing.
291 Thanks, that really is perfect. Now I just need to find a needle in that haystack. If there is a needle.