Rest in Peace

For this post I would quote two people. One is Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who passed today: "Fight for the things you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you."

The other is from her longtime friend and ideological opposite on the Court, Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, who passed on February 3, 2016. Upon someone inquiring as to how many times Justice Ginsberg had voted with him in light of his practice of sending her two dozen roses on her birthday, Scalia said, "Some things are more important than votes." Scalia's son Christopher, in a Tweet expressing his family's sadness on Ginsburg's passing, recalled the story.

Judging by my Facebook newsfeed and what I have heard people are saying on Twitter, those who will emulate these two people whom so many profess to admire number in the thousands. Really? Thousands? Yes. Remember, we live in a nation of 330 million and somewhere just under 50 million are said to use Twitter, and I am nothing if not an optimist.

Gratitude

On this day in 1787, the United States Constitution was signed by delegates to its creating convention and sent out to the states to be ratified. Among its many features is a very very steep hill that has to be climbed to amend it, meaning that public will for change is sometimes thwarted because the majority that wants the change still isn't large enough to meet the voting and procedural thresholds for altering it.

Given the results of a new survey outlining how little younger Americans know about the Holocaust, I'm currently quite pleased that the Constitution is hard to change. However smart the generations usually called "Millennials" and "Generation Z" may actually be, their ignorance of history that happened within memory of people still living means you want them to bone up on a few things before you hand them the wheel, and you'd like to make it tough for them to drive the country in the direction they want it to go in the meantime.

Radio Federal

Your humble correspondent was a little hesitant about offering an opinion on a podcast called The Federalist Radio Hour, because of its connection with the website and news organization that produces it, Federalist Media. For one, even though I have the website in the links section and I've highlighted a story from it now and again, a lot of tendentious material goes out under that banner -- material I'm not overly fond of or believe to be worth the reading time. For another, some of the site's writers and contributors cause a distinctly allergic reaction among many who view them as the no better than Neanderthal Nazi bikers. And on the gripping hand, some of the other people who like the website aren't anyone I'd want to hang around with -- or read or listen to -- either.

Be all that as it may, Radio Hour is frequently host to some interesting writers, political and cultural figures from across the political spectrum. Yes, publisher Ben Domenech is considered a conservative (he describes himself as an anarcho-libertarian, which is a political system that I think works when there's about one person per continent) and many of the guests are as well. But not all of them are, and Radio Hour also has interviews with people who've written about education, sports, theater, movies, music, art, architecture and so on. Whatever he does as an opinion writer, as an interviewer Domenech generally likes to let the guest get going and explain whatever topic of interest they bring to a conversation. Every now and again he seems prompted to squabble with the subject more than listen, but everyone has off days. Sometimes the interviewee is another staff writer, going into more detail about a particular story. Sometimes it's a new book, sometimes it's a current event, sometimes it's a political issue, sometimes it's the start of a sports season...you get the picture. With several new episodes per week, there always seems to be something or someone who can be asked if he or she has anything interesting to say.

Although Domenech is the primary -- and best -- interviewer/host, other Federalist staffers sometimes take a spot behind the mike as well. This is where the quality can waver. Radio Hour misses the presence of former contributor Mary Katharine Ham, herself a skilled writer and interviewer who had a very good handle on how to conduct a broadcast-style conversation. Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky has improved greatly since she first joined the staff and although still with some room to grow, consistently puts on a program worth listening to. She's clearly politically conservative but usually does a good job of letting guests with whom she disagrees speak their minds. Some of the other contributors do well enough in their own fields or areas of interest, but unfamiliarity with the format of a broadcast interview shows through more often than not.

Seekers after a rigidly down-the-middle objective-style news show shouldn't stop at the Radio Hour, but others, if they find a topic listed that interests them, will find a show with a staff that does't always succeed but at least tries to let different sides speak their respective pieces in peace. And they could conceivably find themselves learning a thing or two as they listen.

Stuff and Nonsense

 -- Warner Bros. has a movie version of Frank Herbert's 1965 classic Dune scheduled for release later this year, and over at Comic Book Resources, writer Anthony Gramuglia suggests the proper reading order for the now 19 books in the "Duneverse" series. Herbert himself wrote four subsequent Dune novels and his son Brian, working with Kevin Anderson, has added another 14 that span thousands of years on either side of the original novel. In the interests of full disclosure, here is my suggested proper reading order for the series: 1. Dune.

-- Over at Bored Panda, we can see some photos that show how much places change over the years -- in some cases several decades and in some cases just a few. Several of the changes improve the site while at others "improvement" may be open to interpretation.

-- ProPublica once again shows how real journalism -- investigation, explanation and the willingness to confront and discard biases when they don't fit what's found -- matters when it's done. Elizabeth Weil interviewed California firefighters and fire management officials to find out why the current West Coast fires are so bad. Climate change -- whether anthropogenic or otherwise -- plays a role, but an even bigger one has been played by policy decisions to prevent every possible fire ever in an area that has no better way to clean out highly flammable undergrowth. Both President Trump and his phalanx of detractors and blamers will hate the story for many different reasons, but one they will share: It never mentions him.

-- Also in the arena of photography, the finalists for the 2020 Wildlife Comedy Photo Awards have been announced. Prizes will be awarded in October. My favorite -- a bear who has yet to perfect his ambush predator game -- is below:

Although the photo-bombing giraffe in the row above this one at the link is pretty good, too.

Setting the Stage

With Like a Mighty Army, David Weber brought the war between the Charisian Empire and the forces loyal to the Church of God Awaiting to an end -- more or less. The Charisians didn't crush the Church as they will probably need to do at some point because cooler heads took charge and sued for peace. Since the Church's mission is to perpetuate a system that keeps technology on the world of Safehold at a minimum to escape the notice of the genocidal Gbaba, it's bound to find itself at odds with the Charisians again. Because the Charisians are led by a synthetic human from the days of Safehold's founding, and that being's goal is to re-equip and rearm for round 2 with the Gbaba and teach them why humanity's a species best left alone.

Weber has said in interviews that a second arc of Safehold's story will deal with that part of the story, which makes 2019's Through Fiery Trials a kind of hinge between the two arcs. He re-sets the board and readies new pieces for their play and their own moves. Guided by Merlin Athrawes -- an android with the memories of Nimue Alban from the time of the founding, as well as a second android of Nimue herself -- Charisian inventors gradually build up the technological base of their world while not advancing so far that the orbiting satellites left by the Church's designers rain destruction down on them all. But Merlin and Nimue may be running out of time: A "prophecy" from the founders says they will return after a thousand years and even though they don't necessarily know when that clock started, they know they're in their world's tenth century.

Trials is a maddening book of the kind Weber is so good at producing -- some fine scenes and tidbits mired in acres of world-building minutiae and repetitive dialogue. The second arc of the Safehold series will require new minds, ones born into the world being remade by Merlin, Nimue and the Charisians. That implies new characters following in the footsteps of old ones, some of whom are faithful to the cause of their parents and some of whom have other goals and designs. And in Trials, we're introduced to every last one of them ad tedium.

Trials is 700 pages of table-setting, an egregious faux pas in any series but even more so when it's the tenth volume of a series of 500-plus-pagers bursting with opportunities for editing. In more than one interview Weber said it began as a prologue to the first book of the second arc that grew into its own book, which erases any guilt I may feel about slapping one star onto a series and an author I regularly enjoy. Pure unadulterated gems of mood and character like the betrothal and marriage of Princess Alahnah and Lywys Whytmyn drown in speechifying blather and accounts of old people passing away and new people taking their place. An excellently-designed cliffhanger ending might never be seen as readers throw up their hands and set this book on the pile to go to the second-hand store.

Weber is, in addition to being an author, a licensed local pastor in the United Methodist Church. As your humble reviewer can attest, preachers can all too often be tempted by love of their own words to wander high and low before coming to a point. The same tendency is evident in the world of creative universe-building authors, and the double whammy makes too many of his books patience-testing exercises in judicious page-skipping. Through Fiery Trials is very much one of those.

Trouble

A Disney executive admitted at a conference that its credit thanking the Xinjiang local government for its permission to film in the area -- perhaps granted when said local government was on its coffee break from its attempts to wipe out the Uyghur minority in the region -- "has created issues."

The exec then demonstrated herself a member of the mustelidae family by saying that most of the movie was filmed in New Zealand and just a few shots were filmed in the same region as the many concentration camps in which the Chinese government is holding citizens of its nation who committed the crime of being born of Uyghur heritage. Try transposing that sentence into one that says "only a few of our movie's scenes were actually filmed at Dachau" or "we just used some scenery from Ukraine and we had no idea Stalin's government was starving everyone around us" and you'll see how exonerating it tends not to be.

Still, acknowledgement that the Xinjiang thank-you and the lead actress's support of Hong Kong police actions during anti-democracy crackdowns created "issues" for the movie is a welcome step forward. May their tribe increase.

Head-Scratcher

I could be mistaken and I haven't dug into this as deeply as have some others, I am sure, but if I read the new Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences diversity initiatives right, a curious little quirk pops up. A previous Best Picture Oscar winner that would meet the minimum standards as described in this Variety article is 1939's unenlightened Gone With the Wind. A previous best-picture winner that would not meet those standards is 2019's Parasite.

It's a shame the Academy backslid so much in those 80 years.