Morning Ed: Society {2016.06.01.W}
Well, this sort of explains some of the people who have shown up on my Twitter feed.
I am not at all surprised by this. Girls be mean.
Noah Berlatsky argues that superheroes are less modern myths and more melodramas. I think this is true in the case of classic comics, though the medium has transformed into something else (or, more accurately, many things).
I kind of shrugged off the latest Captain America twist (I mean, obviously, it’s going to be some sort of hypnosis where Steve was really being Steve up until now), but Jessica Plummer argues pretty convincingly that even accounting for the fact it’s going to be a gimmick, it matters.
This is no surprise: There’s a peer effect when it comes to teenage pregnancy. Of course, that’s a double-edged sword. Lower teenage pregnancies is a good thing, but too much stigma and abortion (for wronger-than-usual reasons, even) starts to look really attractive.
Calaveras High School (CA) are the Redskins no more! Now they are… well… nothing. That’s dumb. Otters would work for a California school!
Peak Sonny Bunch: He makes the case for the White Walkers.
Taylor Swift: Yeah, Nazi fanbois be CRAZY. She is cute though.
Mean girls: Hah, that’s women’s status positioning for ya. Rather just get a knife to the back.Report
Gov’t loses on Clean Water Act. Supreme Court ruling means more Clean Water Act lawsuits are likely. How arrogant of the fed gov’t to think that their decisions taking property can’t be reviewed by a court
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/clean-water-act-supreme-court-223740Report
This one always seemed open-and-shut to me. The 8-0 ruling pretty much confirms that. This is small potatoes, though. The real fun starts when the new “Waters of the United States” rule reaches the SCOTUS. I take a small personal interest in that one. As I read the new rule, it is conceivable — unlikely that they would get around to me, but conceivable — that I need a federal permit to apply chemicals to my landscaping because there are periods of sufficiently heavy rainfall when runoff from my yard is connected to navigable portions of the Missouri River. The chain is like 650 miles long, but it’s there.Report
Unless you’ live on wetlands, nothing about that is true. There’s no way your lawn would be considered having a significant nexus with the Missouri River.Report
My lawn drains into wetlands, I’m pretty sure.
Of course, it goes under several streets (and down 200 feet) to do so…Report
Indeed, but YOU don’t define “wetlands”. The COE does, and they can unilaterally change their mind. They’ve classified screwing non wetlands as wetlands in the past.Report
I note you don’t say whether this was “we fucked the map up, sorry” or “our rules were ridiculous and stupid”Report
Actually, in the instance I recall, it was neither. There was no way a reasonable interpretation of the law would suggest such a body of water was a wetland, but someone in the COE decided it was and lawsuits were a plenty.Report
You mean except for the thinking of some enviro nut federal bureaucrat.Report
As a matter of fact, the runoff does go into wetlands — an old irrigation pond at the bottom of the neighborhood, with a resident population of all the usual wetlands flora and fauna. We already know that it counts as wetlands. The “dam” that creates the pond is a railroad embankment. The only meaningful water supply for the pond is a diversion from an irrigation canal. When the embankment was put on the list of dangerous dams in the state, the railroad and the city proposed simply shutting off the diversion, letting the pond dry up, and turning it into a park. The EPA filed suit. The city ended up spending a few million dollars to build a new spillway and a six-block long buried flood channel for overflow in the event of a 500-year rainfall event because that was cheaper than taking the EPA to court.
Front Range cities used to encourage builders to create ponds/lakes as part of new development. Water came from part of the ditch shares that the cities acquired when they annexed the land and built improvements (water, sewer). Once the courts backed the claim that such were EPA-regulated wetlands, the practice has stopped.Report
No. Just no.
The section 404 program regulates dredging and filling of waters of the US. The application of ordinary chemicals to your landscape shouldn’t be causing any fill flowing into wetlands.
The ACOE has issued 50 General Permits under section 404 and some of those permits do directly address, and exempt, agricultural activities.
Stormwater discharges are regulated under the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) program. If you’re applying pesticides to land that can flow off your land in a storm, your state likely regulates that activity. Other stormwater discharges are discussed here.
The Clean Water Act is one of those laws that have enormous but diffuse benefits and narrowly borne burdens. As the worst of point-source (mouth of pipe) discharges have been cleaned up, the ACOE and EPA are now facing the far more difficult challenge of regulating and managing those much smaller individual impacts to federal waters that collectively have an enormous impact.
See, for example, the dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico.
By the way, the Supreme Court case was largely about standing, a rarefied topic mostly of interest to other lawyer, and about challenges to agency rule-making, an even-more arcane topic. Most discussions in the press about this case are not on point.Report
So, your position is that the EPA was wrong when they claimed the old irrigation ponds are federally-protected wetlands? And that the new WOTUS rule won’t extend federal control to the irrigation ditch that keeps both of those wet (so long as the flood gates are opened periodically), and the quality of the water in that ditch? There are many states, and now multiple federal courts, who aren’t sure but what that’s exactly what the EPA is about to do.
Even though it doesn’t sound like it here, I’m generally a big fan of the CWA and all of the good things it’s accomplished.Report
You’ve misread me. Any Clean Water Act analysis has two parts: (a) is there an impact to a federal water, and (b) is the impact subject to regulation.
Your response to me addresses the first point — what is a Water Of The US. But my comment was addressed to the second — whether or not you are discharging to waters of the US, the application of ordinary garden chemicals by a landowner to his landscaping is not subject to any permit regime that I’m aware of. Section 404 regulates the “filling” of wetlands. That means putting soil in regulated waters. The NPDES program is so complex that I can’t do justice in a short comment, but the ultra-short version is that it regulates municipalities and a very short list of private properties, primarily industrial properties and properties under development.Report
How arrogant of the fed gov’t to think that their decisions taking property can’t be reviewed by a court
To be fair, historically that strategy has worked out all right for them.Report
Re Calaveras High School: I could discourse at excruciating length about the history of team nicknames and mascots. I will spare you. The extremely short version is that neither is necessary. I find this decision charmingly transgressive: so old school that people think it is new.
Oh, and if they were going to take a new one, it obviously should be the Jumping Frogs.Report
To the contrary, I think a standalone post about mascots would be delightful.Report
So do I!Report
Thirded!Report
I will cogitate on this. Doing it right will require some research, which is to say actual work, which in turn is to say that I won’t happen immediately.Report
The Fighting Twains. The sideline mascot could be someone in a white suit and a giant paper-mache Samuel Clemons head.Report
The best part would be that Bret Harte high school is just down the road, think of the rivalries!Report
There’s a town near Yosemite called Twain Harte, full of self-hating writers.Report
The best there is.
The best there was.
The best there ever will be.Report
I guess somebody had to post it.
I am just disappointed that it was not me.Report
The mascots would have to appear as a twin pair. In case anybody doesn’t know, “By the Mark Twain” means that the water underneath the Mississippi paddleboat is two fathoms deep.Report
There seems to be an obvious mascot for any team from “Calaveras High School”, in that
– ‘calavera’ is a word with a meaning
– a mascot uniform of a giant skull would be all kinds of badass
– it could easily be executed without being specifically an appropriation of dia de los muertos imagery.
– sport uniforms with accurately located human skeletons would be fantasticReport
https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/covens-versus-coders-how-witchcraft-apps-are-pissing-off-real-witches
Complaints from the professionals about divination aps. From a “tarot reader, psychic, and practicing witch” we get “In occult and metaphysical fields, many people like to call themselves experts without any credentials or qualifications, so unfortunately it can be difficult to sort out what is bullshit”Report
I wasn’t aware there was a regulatory agency for that sort of thing.Report
Give the gov’t enough time and it will come up with a regulatory agency that has a large budget.Report
I remain tickled by some of the court cases involving Ramtha.
Specifically, the lady who channeled Ramtha (or claimed to) sued another lady who channeled Ramtha (or claimed to) and the court awarded the first lady sole rights to channel Ramtha.
Which, if you ask me, wouldn’t fall under the court’s jurisdiction.Report
The writer of Holy Blood, Holy Grail accused Dan Brown of plagiarism: not in the sense of copying paragraphs, but of using the background world without permission. This was hysterical, given the claim that HBHG is non-fiction.Report
Brian Williams: U.S. ‘Preachy’ About Nuclear Weapons, WWII Japan Bombings Out of ‘Anger’
Last time I checked the US bombed Japan during wartime after they attacked us, not just b/c we were angry with them and decided to pick on them. It’s amusing how the MSNBC types do their best to present this nation in the worst light possible.
http://www.mrctv.org/blog/brian-williams-us-preachy-about-nuclear-weapons-wwii-japan-bombings-out-angerReport
The US refused “conditional” Japanese surrender offers at least once. They wanted to preserve their emperor. When the Japanese refused unconditional surrender, we nuked them-twice.
it wasn’t necessary, but the US had to have unconditional surrender.Report
This is false. Preserving the emperor and not putting him up for war crime trials was obviously not a deal killer because that was part of the final surrender. So we did accept a conditional surrender. What Japan wanted was a full maintenance of the existing government, keeping their army intact and no post-war occupation. In addition, no surrender offer was made to the US. All of the conditional surrenders were of feelers floated by diplomats to Switzerland or other countries that OSS picked up.Report
It’s also important to remember the Kyujo Incident (summary: the Japanese military attempted a coup to prevent the surrender). It’s not like they were desperately attempting to surrender and the US kept bombing them because Fucking Racist Americans.Report
Indeed.
It’s not certain that the nuclear bombings made up the Japanese government’s mind any more than the Tokyo firebombings did.
By sheer coincidence, the day of the Nagasaki bombing, Stalin resumed the Sino-Japanese War, with the addition of troops that had been freed from Europe. Equipped with more tanks and planes than Japan had had at their zenith, years earlier.
At that point, with the potential for more bombs on the way, and an opponent in the lists who, unlike the USA, would not blanch at the idea of losing a million troops to invade the Home Islands, it made sense to surrender soon, while it would still be MacArthur signing the documents and not Zhukov.
And still major factions in the military wanted to fight on…Report
My tinfoil hat Captain America Theory.
Captain America was originally created to be a weapon.
He evolves, though. We all evolve. In the 70’s, he was used as a tool to criticize stuff like Vietnam and social policy. In more recent years, we’ve seen him become a Nomad and get assassinated when particular governments got elected (and, of course, we see him return in glory when other ones get elected).
My assumption now is that there are two possible endings to the Captain America story.
If one person gets elected, we’ll find that Captain America was hypnotized or doing some deep cover stuff or cloned or was a Skrull or something and that Captain America was not *REALLY* Hydra.
If the other person gets elected, we’ll find that Captain America has been rotten at the core for decades. Since the beginning, actually.
Captain America was originally created to be a weapon.
He’s still one.Report
Having read the issue, it is not even clear that Cap is actually a part of Hydra. The implication is there, but it could still be explained away. The flashbacks in the issue show his mother being recruited by a Hydra agent, but at the end of the issue, she has even attended any meeting. An ally was thrown out of the plane, but he is superpowered, so he might be capable of surviving (I am not familiar with the specific character, so I do not know for sure). He might be acting as a double agent, but perhaps in the sense of a good guy trying to infiltrate Hydra. At the end of the issue, all we have is the suggestion that he might be an agent of Hydra, but that is not the only interpretation of the facts.
Even if he does turn out to be an agent of Hydra, he was just restored by a living Cosmic Cube. I have not been following the story, but given the typical capabilities of a Cosmic Cube, it is possible that his past or even his memories were rewritten. That would mean he was not truly Hydra all along.
According to the writer:
that rules out some of your ideas.Report
Don’t trust writers! *NEVER* trust writers! My god, we learned that when Peter Parker took his mask off!Report
That is true, but in this case I am assuming he is being specific yet honest about what it is not to leave room for what it is.Report
There are two what ises: We have Schrodinger’s Captain America.
We won’t be able to open the box until after the election.Report
Or more simply, we have Schrodinger’s Cap.Report
Issue 2 of Captain America: Steve Rogers has been released. I totally called itReport
Noah Berlatsky cites Arrow in his post about superheroes, and I must admit, Arrow is totally melodrama. But then, Oliver Queen has no actual superpowers, just a lot of training and some cool gear. Also, he’s tricky when he needs to be.
I would describe that show as heroic realism. It’s not mythology. It stands in definite contrast to the MCU, which is definitely mythology. Noah asks, “But does Captain America punching Iron Man in the helmet really resonate for us today with the same archetypal force as Oedipus stabbing out his eyes because he finds out he has slept with his mother ?”
In what sense wouldn’t Oedipus be melodrama? I mean, I could easily imagine that plotline showing up on daytime TV, right? OMG, he doesn’t know she’s his mom, and she’s totally hot (and really rich), so OHHHH NOOOO!
And yeah, for me, that moment from Civil War was very powerful.
But really, his argument is about failure versus success, that classical heroes always ended up dead and failing, but not so superheroes.
But the thing is, there’s death and failure in each movie. Tony Stark is going to die some day, and he knows it. He thought he was ill in Iron Man 2, and then he nearly died during the first Avengers film. It’s driven him obsessive and that’s why he did the stuff that created Ultron. The heroes don’t always succeed, but their stories are packaged in a way so that we end any particular story on their success. This is different because what we need from our stories is different than what the Greeks need.
In my lifetime we have controlled polio, wiped out smallpox, and turned heart disease from a curse to something that can be controlled by medication and a couple of mesh cylinders which are inserted into coronary arteries. We can travel most anywhere on the globe in less than 24 hours. And so on. We are punching ‘evil’ in the face every day. We still know we are mortal, and things aren’t perfect.
So we need different myths from a time where one generation faced much the same challenges as the last.Report
My favorite part of the gorilla shooting so far is the oppo being done on the kid’s dad.
He was a felon, did you know that? Now you do.Report
You have to be careful in looking at studies that count how many times the word “slut” was used, and from that draw broad conclusions. Certainly “mean girls” exist. I’ve met a few. I’ve met them back in my “boy” days. But worse, I’ve tangled with them in my female life. They are a menace. I can think of one who has basically poisoned an entire social space around me. (And we trans gals don’t have an abundance of good social spaces.) In any case, yeah.
The people threatening to rape and kill Anita Sarkeesian are almost mostly men. There may be a woman or three in the bunch, but not really. This is a “guy” thing, this massive and focused online hate campaign against a woman, and really against a pretty broad class of women.
Like, I don’t care if some random online bitch decides I’m a “slut” or a “cunt” or whatever. Like I fucking care what she thinks? But there is a sustained kind of abuse targeted at notable women. It’s an “angry dude” thing. It’s toxic.
Studies such as this are important. They provide perspective, mitigate simplistic views, give a sense of the contours of life. But don’t lose sight of the big picture. Those who try to terrorize women into silence are angry, ineffectual men.Report
IMO, this is the real peak Sonny BunchReport
I’m sorry that your hard work won’t be recognized b/c it might make other feel bad about themselves.
No National Honor Society honors for Plano Senior High grads
http://www.wfaa.com/news/local/collin-county/no-national-honor-society-honors-for-plano-senior-high-students/225169092Report