Scrooge’s continuing Christmas gift: Appropriate words for seeing 2023 out, for bracing for 2024

December 24, 2023

I wish it were not so. These words of Dickens’s through Scrooge, remain salient, damning and depressing, since well before election day 2016. Now Trump’s was impeached, but left in place. Trump was defeated by American voters, but he still sits on his throne, messing up America in every way he can think to do it. Trump’s been sued and found liable, indicted on 91 criminal counts, but people still threaten to let him wreak vengeance on Americans.

And so our annual post on the lessons we take from “A Christmas Carol.”

Roberto Innocenti, Scrooge on a dark staircase

Ebenezer Scrooge, up a dark staircase; “Darkness was cheap, and Scrooge liked it.” Illustration by Roberto Innocenti, via Pinterest.

It’s a Quote of the Moment (an encore post for the season, with a bit of context thrown in later), a bitter but too-popular political platform, and life, edited down to just three words, in green:

Darkness is cheap,
and Scrooge liked it.

– Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Stave 1

Isn’t that the entire GOP platform in three words? “Darkness is cheap.” Substitute “Trump” for “Scrooge,” you’ve got the picture. Three more words than the actual Republican National Platform of 2020, but more accurate.

I think of that line of Dickens’s often when  I read of the celebrations of calumny that pass as discourse in Republican politics these days. Although, with the 2008 renewing of Limbaugh’s contract, with the 2020 coming of COVID-19, it may no longer be true that his particular brand of darkness is cheap. With the advent of Donald Trump’s insult politics, offending America’s allies and all American ethnic groups possible, with un-ironic calls to drop nuclear weapons, GOP politics is even darker than ever.

Since then, we’ve discovered scheming to cheat voters in six states from their decisions, plans to create violence and perhaps assassinations to disrupt the Constitutional peaceful transfer of power from one party to another. We’ve learned the plot against Americans and America included elected Members of Congress, and perhaps Justices of the Supreme Court.

Cheap or not, darkness remains dark.

John Leach, Scrooge meets Ignorance and Want

Scrooge meets Ignorance and Want, the products of his stinginess (drawing by John Leech, 1809-1870)

Here is the sentence Dickens put before the quote, to add a little context; Scrooge was climbing a very large, very dark staircase.

Half-a-dozen gas-lamps out of the street wouldn’t have lighted the entry too well, so you may suppose that it was pretty dark with Scrooge’s dip.

Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for that. Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it.

Speaking of darkness, a longer excerpt from a bit later in Dickens’s story, when the Ghost of Christmas Present ushers Scrooge to glimpse what is in the present, but what will be the future if Scrooge does not repent:

‘Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,’ said Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit’s robe, ‘but I see something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?’

‘It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it,’ was the Spirit’s sorrowful reply. ‘Look here.’

From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.

‘Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!’ exclaimed the Ghost.

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.

‘Spirit! are they yours?’ Scrooge could say no more.

‘They are Man’s,’ said the Spirit, looking down upon them. ‘And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!’ cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. ‘Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!’

‘Have they no refuge or resource?’ cried Scrooge.

‘Are there no prisons?’ said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. ‘Are there no workhouses?’ The bell struck twelve.

Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not. As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the prediction of old Jacob Marley, and lifting up his eyes, beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming, like a mist along the ground, towards him.

– A Christmas Carol, Stave 3

Think of 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020, and since, children abused in Central America and in the Middle East, fleeing as best they can, only to die, off the shores of Greece, on the southern deserts of the U.S., or be cast into incarceration after having achieved a nation whose very name promised them refuge, the United States. “Two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable,” Dickens described. Whose children? “Man’s.” Yours, and mine.

Christmas is a festival to celebrate light, what many Christians call “the light of the world?” If so, let us work to stamp out the darkness which the unrepentant Scrooge so dearly loved.

Darkness may be cheap, but it is not good.  Light a candle, and run into the darkness, spreading light. We need more light.

Hope you have a merry Christmas in the making for 2023. Let us remember, as Tom and the late Ray Magliozzi always reminded us, the cheapskate pays more in the end, and usually along the way. Is Darkness cheap? Let us then eschew it as too costly for a moral nation, too costly for a moral people.

Are we as smart as Ebenezer Scrooge? Are our hearts as good as Scrooge’s heart?

When we die, who will mourn our passing? Which spirit moves us to action?

God bless us, every one. Or gods, or family and friends bless us, as the case may be.

More:

Yes, this is an encore post, mostly. Fighting ignorance is taking a lot longer than anyone thought.

Yes, this is an encore post, mostly. Fighting ignorance is taking a lot longer than anyone thought.

Save

3 Comments | Christmas, Economics, Education, Ethics, History, Literature, Politics, Poverty | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Scrooge’s continuing Christmas gift: Appropriate words for seeing 2020 out

December 11, 2020

I wish it were not so. These words of Dickens’s through Scrooge, remain salient, damning and depressing, every day Donald Trump holds the Oval Office. Now Trump’s been impeached, but left in place, and defeated by American voters, but he still sits on his throne, messing up America in every way he can think to do it.

And so our annual post on the lessons we take from “A Christmas Carol.”

Roberto Innocenti, Scrooge on a dark staircase

Ebenezer Scrooge, up a dark staircase; “Darkness was cheap, and Scrooge liked it.” Illustration by Roberto Innocenti, via Pinterest.

It’s a Quote of the Moment (an encore post for the season, with a bit of context thrown in later), Trump’s platform, and life, edited down to just three words, in green:

Darkness is cheap,
and Scrooge liked it.

– Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Stave 1

Isn’t that the entire GOP platform in three words? “Darkness is cheap.” Substitute “Trump” for “Scrooge,” you’ve got the picture. Three more words than the actual Republican National Platform of 2020, but more accurate.

I think of that line of Dickens’s often when  I read of the celebrations of calumny that pass as discourse in Republican politics these days. Although, with the 2008 renewing of Limbaugh’s contract, with the 2020 coming of COVID-19, it may no longer be true that his particular brand of darkness is cheap. With the advent of Donald Trump’s insult politics, offending America’s allies and all American ethnic groups possible, with un-ironic calls to drop nuclear weapons, GOP politics is even darker than ever.

Cheap or not, darkness remains dark.

John Leach, Scrooge meets Ignorance and Want

Scrooge meets Ignorance and Want, the products of his stinginess (drawing by John Leech, 1809-1870)

Here is the sentence Dickens put before the quote, to add a little context; Scrooge was climbing a very large, very dark staircase.

Half-a-dozen gas-lamps out of the street wouldn’t have lighted the entry too well, so you may suppose that it was pretty dark with Scrooge’s dip.

Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for that. Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it.

Speaking of darkness, a longer excerpt from a bit later in Dickens’s story, when the Ghost of Christmas Present ushers Scrooge to glimpse what is in the present, but what will be the future if Scrooge does not repent:

‘Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,’ said Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit’s robe, ‘but I see something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?’

‘It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it,’ was the Spirit’s sorrowful reply. ‘Look here.’

From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.

‘Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!’ exclaimed the Ghost.

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.

‘Spirit! are they yours?’ Scrooge could say no more.

‘They are Man’s,’ said the Spirit, looking down upon them. ‘And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!’ cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. ‘Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!’

‘Have they no refuge or resource?’ cried Scrooge.

‘Are there no prisons?’ said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. ‘Are there no workhouses?’ The bell struck twelve.

Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not. As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the prediction of old Jacob Marley, and lifting up his eyes, beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming, like a mist along the ground, towards him.

– A Christmas Carol, Stave 3

Think of 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020, children abused in Central America and in the Middle East, fleeing as best they can, only to die, off the shores of Greece, on the southern deserts of the U.S., or be cast into incarceration after having achieved a nation whose very name promised them refuge, the United States. “Two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable,” Dickens described. Whose children? “Man’s.” Yours, and mine.

Christmas is a festival to celebrate light, what many Christians call “the light of the world?” If so, let us work to stamp out the darkness which the unrepentant Scrooge so dearly loved.

Darkness may be cheap, but it is not good.  Light a candle, and run into the darkness, spreading light. We need more light.

Hope you have a merry Christmas in the making for 2020. Let us remember, as Tom and the late Ray Magliozzi always reminded us, the cheapskate pays more in the end, and usually along the way. Is Darkness cheap? Let us then eschew it as too costly for a moral nation, too costly for a moral people.

Is Donald Trump as smart as Ebenezer Scrooge? Is his heart as good as Scrooge’s heart?

If Trump died, who would attend his funeral?

When we die, who will mourn our passing? Which spirit moves us to action?

God bless us, every one. Or gods, or family and friends bless us, as the case may be.

More:

Yes, this is an encore post, mostly. Fighting ignorance is taking a lot longer than anyone thought.

Yes, this is an encore post, mostly. Fighting ignorance is taking a lot longer than anyone thought.

Save

1 Comment | Christmas, Economics, Education, Ethics, History, Literature, Politics, Poverty | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Again: Motivation 101 – How NOT to

October 18, 2013

This is an encore post, mostly.

“A Swift Kick in the Butt $1.00,” A daily strip of the cartoon series “Calvin and Hobbes,” by Bill Watterson. Watterson appears to have an instinctual understanding of what motivation is not. It’s a topic he returned to with some frequency.

Educators don’t know beans about motivation I think. I still see courses offered on “how to motivate” students to do X, or Y, or Z — or how to motivate faculty members to motivate students to do X.

This view of motivation is all wrong, the industrial psychologists and experience say. A student must motivate herself.

A teacher can remove barriers to motivation, or help a student find motivation. But motivation cannot be external to the person acting.

Frederick Herzberg wrote a classic article for The Harvard Business Review several years back: “One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?” Herzberg would get a group of managers together and ask them, “If I have six week-old puppy, and I want it to move, how do I get it to move?” Inevitably, one of the wizened managers of people would say, “Kick him in the ass!” Is that motivation? Herzberg would ask? Managers would nod “yes.”

Frederick Herzberg, 1923-2000

Frederick Herzberg, 1923-2000

Then, Herzberg would ask what about dealing with the pup six months later. To get the older pup to move, he’d offer a doggie yum, and the dog would come. “Is that motivation?” Herzberg would ask. Again, the managers would agree that it was motivation. (At AMR’s Committing to Leadership sessions, we tried this exercise several hundred times, with roughly the same results. PETA has changed sensitivities a bit, and managers are fearful of saying they want to kick puppies, but they’ll say it in different words.)

Herzberg called this “Kick In The Ass” theory, or KITA, to avoid profanity and shorten the phrase.

Herzberg would then chastise the managers. Neither case was motivation, he’d say. One was violence, a mugging; the other was a bribe. In neither case did the dog want to move, in neither case was the dog motivated. In both cases, it was the manager who was motivated to make the dog move.

Motivation is the desire to do something, the desire and drive to get something done.

Motivating employees is getting them to share the urgency a manager feels to do a task, to go out and do it on their own without being told how to do each and every step along the way.

Motivation is not simply coercing someone else to do what you want, on threat of pain, virtual or real.

Herzberg verified his theories with research involving several thousands of employees over a couple of decades. His pamphlet for HBR sold over a million copies.

Education is wholly ignorant of Herzberg’s work, so far as I can tell. How do I know?

See this, at TexasEd Spectator:

Death threat as a motivation technique

May 23rd, 2008
Education | MySanAntonio.com

The sad part about this is that I bet if a mere, ordinary teacher were to have made some similar statement, he or she would be treated more like the student rather than the principle.

Now imagine if some student at the school had said something along the same lines in a writing assignment. We would be hearing about zero tolerance all over the place. The student would be out of the regular classroom so fast it would make your head spin.

No charges will be brought against New Braunfels Middle School Principal John Burks for allegedly threatening to kill a group of science teachers if their students’ standardized test scores failed to improve, although all four teachers at the meeting told police investigators Burks made the statement.

Kick in the ass, knife in the back, knife in the heart — that ain’t motivation.

As God is my witness, you can’t make this stuff up.

I’m not sure who deserves more disgust, the principal who made the threat and probably didn’t know anything else to do, or the teachers who didn’t see it as a joke, or treat it that way to save the principal’s dignity — or a system where such things are regarded as normal.

Bill Watterson returned to the

Bill Watterson returned to the “Swift Kick in the Butt, $1.00” strip, but this time with the more lively Hobbes Calvin interacted with most often. What would motivate a cartoonist to do that? Watterson is said to have observed, “People will pay for what they want, but not what they need.” Can school administrators even figure out what teachers and students need?  Which version do you prefer? Which one motivates you?

More:

1 Comment | Business, Business Ethics, Education, Education reform, Ethics, Motivation, Organizational leadership, psychology | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Leaking of GOP ignorance threatens to turn into a flood

August 28, 2012

My GOP friends tried to say that Todd Akin’s odd views on  pregnancy and rape are a brand of stupid unique to him.  ‘Don’t think all Republicans are that ignorant,’ they said.

Hey, I worked with Republicans and in the Republican Party for years.  I know a lot of bright, intelligent Republicans.

Most of them couldn’t get through the door of the  party these days, if they didn’t already have elected or appointed posts.  Many Republidans come well-acquainted with libraries, books, critical thinking  and an appreciation of art and literature, and at least a rudimentary understanding of science — but alas, they and their views are being smothered by the chuckleheads in the party.

When the Akin flap broke, we were all saddened to learn that he had carried some of those odd views for several years, and that Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and the entire Texas Republican delegation in the House of Representatives joined with Akin last February to try to change the legal definition of rape to match Akin’s views.  How embarrassing, not just to be caught, but to have done that stuff in the first place.

“Aberration,” the Republicans said.

Pennsylvania GOP candidate for U.S. Senate Tom Smith

Pennsylvania GOP candidate for U.S. Senate Tom Smith told reporters pregnancy from rape is about the same as pregnancy from an out-of-wedlock affair. Photo from Tom Smith campaign

Don’t look now, but that trickle from the dam holding back the stupid swelled to a stream, and it’s threatening to erode the dam and unleash all the stupid behind it.

I refer you to the odd and disgusting case of Pennsylvania Republican Tom Smith, the GOP hope to defeat Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, reported in the New York Daily News:

Pennsylvania Senate hopeful Tom Smith sparked controversy Monday after he compared a pregnancy resulting from rape to “having a baby out-of-wedlock” – days after Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) shocked many by claiming that “legitimate rape” doesn’t lead to pregnancy.

Smith tried to distance himself from Akin’s comments at the Pennsylvania Press Club in Harrisburg, saying that the congressman “should have never said anything like that,” the Harrisburg Patriot-News reported.

But when a reporter asked him what he would do if one of his daughters or granddaughters became pregnant as a result of rape, he said that he had “lived something similar to that with [his] own family,” referring to his daughter’s “out-of-wedlock” pregnancy from consensual sex.

“She chose life, and I commend her for that,” Smith said. “She knew my views but fortunately for me … she chose the way I thought. Now don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t rape.”

When pressed by another reporter, the 66-year-old reiterated the comparison of his daughter’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy to becoming pregnant from rape.

“Put yourself in a father’s position. Yes, it is similar,” he said.

Smith, who is running against incumbent Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) in November, later clarified his statements at the same event.

“No … I said I went through a situation [with a daughter]. It’s very, very difficult,” Smith said. “But do I condone rape? Absolutely not. But do I propose life, yes I do. I’m pro-life, period.”

Steve Forbes endorses the odd Tom Smith

Steve Forbes endorses Tom Smith? The scary question is whether Forbes bothered to learn Smith’s views, or did he perhaps endorse Smith knowing about Smith’s odd views, and hoping Smith would push them in Washngton? Smith campaign image.

One might wonder if the real reason the GOP cut their convention short was to prevent more leaks of the truth about their candidates views and odd positions on issues.  Cutbacks in news departments and the shrinking news holes in most newspapers could be partly to blame for these late-breaking stories of stupid.  Generally news stories expose gross ignorance and patent stupidity in primary campaigns, and voters of the parties vote away candidates who hold extreme, bizarre, dangerous or silly views.  News organizations don’t have the staff to expose these things early, and they get exposed late only on a catch-as-catch-can basis.

But there is a very real danger that some people with money are pushing these candidates because of their odd views.  In Texas, Tea Party courtesan Ted Cruz defeated a well-known candidate for the U.S. Senate nomination, and part of his appeal may be his odd views that the United Nations is trying to seize U.S. golf courses.  Democrat Paul Sadler faces an uphill battle even in Texas where Cruz’s friends in oil pipelines are seizing private farm and ranch land.  Cruz claims to fight against an imaginary problem, but he lets the real problems roll right over Texans.

A wise voter without a lot of time to study in depth the views of candidates might be compelled to vote Democratic straight tickets as the safest thing to do, even with a few odd views among Democrats.

How many more?   How many other odd, divorced-from-reality views have residence in the penthouses of the Republican mansion?  Waiting for one more shoe to drop would be bad enough — ignorance in the GOP seems to be a centipede with dozens of shoes.

More:

24 Comments | 2010 Elections, 2012 Campaigns, Campaigns, Elections, Ethics, Rampant stupidity, Republican Party | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Wegman Report plagiarism doesn’t bother George Mason University officials

March 18, 2012

Over at Desmogblog, John Mashey details problems with George Mason University’s conclusions that plagiarism did not really occur in  a report written for Congress that plagiarized several different sources.

If true, not only did GMU violate its own policies on duration, but on process, because they have ignored numerous well-documented complaints, including about 4 papers with Federal funding.  This process involved VP Research Roger Stough, Provost Peter Stearns and President Alan Merten, so it was certainly visible inside GMU.

See No Evil,

Hear No Evil

Speak No Evil … except about Ray Bradley [the fellow who filed the plagiarism complaint], who has yet to receive any report.

The attached report enumerates the problems that GMU managed not to see, shows the chronology of a simple complaint that took almost 2X longer than specified by policy and finally produced an obvious contradiction. People may find GMU’s funding and connections interesting, including similarities and relationships with Heartland Institute.  Finally, readers might recall the WR was alleged to be an attempt to mislead Congress, so this is not just an academic issue.

No e-mails stolen to expose the problem, but still no action against those who deny climate change occurs and will plagiarize papers to make their point.  It’s a not-pretty pass.

I suspect reporters get MEGO syndrome reading the stuff, but Desmogblog points to real problems, real difficulties in science, that deserve to be covered better than they have been.

Go read Mashey’s report and follow the links.

More:

1 Comment | Climate change, climate_change, College, Education, Ethics, Politics, Research, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Scalia and Thomas: Neither is Caesar’s wife

November 18, 2011

It sure looks like a breach of ethics, but James Oliphant writes in the Los Angeles Times that there is no formal rule prohibiting a sitting Supreme Court justice from hobnobbing with a law firm set to argue a gargantuan case in a few months.

The day the Supreme Court gathered behind closed doors to consider the politically divisive question of whether it would hear a challenge to President Obama’s healthcare law, two of its justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, were feted at a dinner sponsored by the law firm that will argue the case before the high court.

The occasion was last Thursday, when all nine justices met for a conference to pore over the petitions for review. One of the cases at issue was a suit brought by 26 states challenging the sweeping healthcare overhaul passed by Congress last year, a law that has been a rallying cry for conservative activists nationwide.

The justices agreed to hear the suit; indeed, a landmark 5 1/2-hour argument is expected in March, and the outcome is likely to further roil the 2012 presidential race, which will be in full swing by the time the court’s decision is released.

The lawyer who will stand before the court and argue that the law should be thrown out is likely to be Paul Clement, who served as U.S. solicitor general during the George W. Bush administration.

Clement’s law firm, Bancroft PLLC, was one of almost two dozen firms that helped sponsor the annual dinner of the Federalist Society, a longstanding group dedicated to advocating conservative legal principles. Another firm that sponsored the dinner, Jones Day, represents one of the trade associations that challenged the law, the National Federation of Independent Business.

Another sponsor was pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc, which has an enormous financial stake in the outcome of the litigation. The dinner was held at a Washington hotel hours after the court’s conference over the case. In attendance was, among others, Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s top Republican and an avowed opponent of the healthcare law.

The featured guests at the dinner? Scalia and Thomas.

One wishes for some of the usual journalistic “balancing,” with someone to note who among the crowd represents the opposite side in the case, and someone else to note that the dinner had a lot of other sponsors.  But one might get uneasy thinking that the usual journalistic balancing can’t be mustered here, and that Scalia and Thomas just don’t care about appearances of ethical violations, if they can get away with it.

Lower court judges have clear ethical guidance on the issue, counseling against such appearances:

It’s nothing new: The two justices have been attending Federalist Society events for years. And it’s nothing that runs afoul of ethics rules. In fact, justices are exempt from the Code of Conduct that governs the actions of lower federal judges.

If they were, they arguably fell under code’s Canon 4C, which states, “A judge may attend fund-raising events of law-related and other organizations although the judge may not be a speaker, a guest of honor, or featured on the program of such an event.“

Those rules do not apply to the nine people who sit on the nation’s highest court.

In those few times I lunched with Thomas and worked with him, when he staffed environmental issues for Indiana’s Missouri’s Sen. John Danforth, I found him an agreeable lunch companion and smart, but a great idealogue.  Had I known then what we all know now, I would have paid closer attention, asked different and sharper  questions, and kept notes.  And I might have dropped a few hints about history, and Caesar’s wife.  Supreme Court justices should consider themselves wedded to the American republic, and act accordingly.

What do you think, Dear Reader?  Was this a violation of ethics, even if not required by the rules that apply to Supreme Court justices?

6 Comments | Ethics, Health care, Law, Politics, U.S. Supreme Court | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

The library of non-pornography spam

November 18, 2011

Spam evolves.

Recent crackdowns on the mega-scale spammers cut spam intercepted by filters at a site like this one from several thousand per day to a few hundred, or even less.  Until recently, most of that spam came from pornography sites.  That meant that, with a few keyword searches of the mountains of spam, a weblog owner could separate out most of the bad stuff, and rescue the few legitimate messages that somehow ran afoul of the filters.

But, spam evolves.  In the past month Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub fell victim to one or several bot programs that insert non-pornographic comments into messages from hijacked or legitimate, but commercial, e-mail messages.  Our spam totals have crept upwards once again.  We get a thousand spam messages one more than one day a week now.  Because I hate to lose any legitimate comments, I try to sift through that stuff to find errors.  It’s frustrating.

No Spam sign from stock.xchng

Please, no spam comments here!

Today some poor bastard spammer’s machine broke down, and I got a comment in the spam filters that features many of the lines used by the bots — and you can see why spam filters might have difficulty with them.  Below is the bulk of that comment, featuring dozens of spam lines.  Instead of just one line that my spam filter would probably catch, I got — how many? — more than I bothered to count.  It all came in one comment.

One might be struck by the inanity of the work displayed here.  Some person, a thinking, breathing human being who probably hopes his or her children won’t hate him or her, bothered to write up all these bland, colorless lines, in hopes they would evade spam filters.  What a waste of human effort.  Oh, the humanity — or lack of it!

Can someone automate the process of purging these things from comments altogether?  I can only hope.  Here are the lines, for the record, more than 4,000 words intended solely to clog up the tubes of the internet and frustrate blog owners and blog readers.

The library of non-pornography spam

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Hi, I just wanted to mention, you’re wrong. Your post doesn’t make any sense.

Hi, how’s it going? Just shared this post with a colleague, we had a good laugh.

Great delivery. Great arguments. Keep up the amazing effort.

This post is priceless. Where can I find out more?

Highly energetic blog, I enjoyed that a lot. Will there be a part 2?

Incredible quest there. What occurred after? Good luck!

Can you tell us more about this? I’d care to find out more details.

Great article, exactly what I needed.

Hi, I log on to your new stuff regularly. Your story-telling style is awesome, keep doing what you’re doing!

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Friends, Romans, and Jackson whoever you may be, please quit sending me all of those messages.  Quit sending them to anyone.  Stop abusing this device we call the internet, eh?

Leave a Comment » | Ethics, Internet, Weblogs | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Naomi Oreskes on the political need for truth-telling in climate change

November 11, 2011

The too-often odious Huffington Post features an interview with Naomi Oreskes, one of the authors of Merchants of Doubt.

You should read the interview (and the book, if you haven’t yet):

[Kerry Trueman]:The real mystery, then, is how to persuade American skeptics that we face profound disruptions in our own lifetime and that of our children. Can you describe, in a lay-person friendly way, some of the scenarios we might anticipate?

[Naomi Oreskes]: Well, the best example is the “monster storm” that just hit Alaska, described by one media outlet as a storm of “epic proportions.” Climate change is underway, it is affecting American citizens, and it is going to become increasingly costly and disruptive.

We are no longer talking about the future, about people far away in time and space. We are talking about us, now. I think this is what Americans do not yet understand. But if current trends continue, they will soon. Climate change is all around us, and most of it is not good.

More, there.

More at the Bathtub:

40 Comments | Accuracy, Clean Air Act, Climate change, climate_change, DDT, Ethics | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Ethics in climate science: How do we know what we know?

August 12, 2011

It’s almost an arcane fight, but it’s an important one — if you’re going to discuss climate science and the policies required to clean up pollution that causes destruction of our planet, can we at least agree to stick to the facts, the real facts?

John Mashey is a computer smart guy who jumped into the fray to point out that most opponents to doing anything to stop the destruction have a social or economic interest in stopping the action and continuing the destruction, something Mashey determined from looking at the networks linking the people involved.  There’s a lot of howling about Mashey’s pointing out that the emperor is a crook.  So far he’s been proved correct.

An academic group you probably never heard of, the National Association of Scholars, has an elected leader who decided to take after Mashey, rather than clean up the house.  Peter Wood writes a column for the  Chronicle of Higher Education, and sadly, their editorial mavens appear not to have fact checked it.  To their credit, they allowed Mashey’s response.

Comments are brutal.

Here’s how Tim Lambert described it at Deltoid:

John Mashey and Rob Coleman have a guest post at The Chronicle of Higher Education‘s blog replying to Peter Wood’s hit piece.

Wood’s article misused the platform of CHE. Its relevance to the concerns of CHE was minimal. It had little purpose but to damage the reputation of one of us, John Mashey, and the climate scientist Michael Mann, whom Wood has often denigrated elsewhere. The political false-association tactics were obvious. Climate scientists are under incessant attack, a fact strongly decried the day before Wood’s article by the AAAS Board. The muddy battlefield of blogs and media has now arrived on the CHE premises, easily seen in the comments.

If one tells the truth in climate science, one needs thick skin.  Go read Mashey’s piece before you read the comments.  More background from Lambert, here.

And the context you need:  Only one study on climate change has actually been retracted over the past couple of years — no, not any of those noting that warming occurs, not any of those that use the graph famously described as “a hockey stick,” but the piece that pulled together all the criticism of the science, at the behest of Republicans on the environment committees in the U.S. Congress, called the Wegman Report.  And it was John Mashey who assembled the extensive and sometimes elegant case that the Wegman Report was plagiarized and wrong.

This is, indeed, a case of trying to kill the messenger’s reputation.

Am I the only one suspicious that the National Association of Scholars may have been named to foster confusion about the authority of reports, say from the National Academy of Sciences, the long-time science advisory group to presidents whose reports urge action to stop climate change?  Notice their acronyms are the same.

5 Comments | Accuracy, Climate change, climate_change, Ethics, Global warming, Green Politics, How do we know what we know, Plagiarism, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Only in small towns, where leaders have time to think . . .

April 7, 2011

Years ago when I staffed a U.S. senator’s office, one of my tasks was to look through all the weekly newspapers in the state.    Back then subscriptions were cheap, and most senators would take out a subscription to these weeklies more to flatter the editors and publishers than to read.  We put them to use, first checking to see whether the clipping services were getting all the clips (mostly), and then on a hunch, to see what issues were raging in the state, well below the radar of the big city daily newspapers and broadcast outlets.

You can learn a lot.

Many of those old weekly newspapers are gone, now, victims to local populations that turn over in every recession, and to electronic news gathering services — and to general alienation:  People are not so sure they want to know what their neighbors are up to, these days.  Heck, many people aren’t sure they want to know their neighbors.

My own electronic news gatherers occasionally pull out something to think about from a minor news outlet.  For example, below is an opinion piece out of the Carrboro Citizen from Dan Coleman, a member of the town council in Carrboro, North Carolina.  I gather from the paper it is rather close to Chapel Hill, the home of the University of North Carolina (I haven’t checked a map).

But look at what this guy says.  He questions the wisdom of Adam Smith.  Adam Smith! It appears Coleman wasn’t led astray by all those Adam Smith neckties that were so popular in the Reagan administration.  He questions the true need for profits from corporations, and he wonders if there isn’t a higher duty for a corporation.

How many others like Dan Coleman are there, out there in America, relatively sane on all other accounts, and thinking?

How many bottom lines do we really need?

April 7, 2011 | Posted in: Opinion | 0 Responses

By Dan Coleman

Did you know that Carrboro’s Town Code incorporates a principle devised by Shell Oil? That’s right, the same Shell Oil that has been accused of human rights violations in Nigeria, including summary execution, crimes against humanity, torture, inhumane treatment and ­collaborating in the execution of Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa. The same Shell Oil that has despoiled the Niger delta and was responsible for the largest freshwater oil spill ever.

With a record like this, it is little wonder that Shell came up with one of the corporate world’s more effective public relations concepts of recent years: the Triple Bottom Line (TBL), also known as People, Planet, Profit. It’s as if Shell was saying, sure you can criticize our environmental and humanitarian record but don’t forget, we have to make a profit.

Efforts to value people have dogged profiteering for over a century. The late 19th and early-to-mid-20th centuries were marked by many thousands of strikes by workers, more than 1,400 in the year 1886 alone. Many of these were met by violent strikebreakers backed up at times by military force. This is a struggle that continues in 2011 in Wisconsin and other states.

William Blake, Biography Online

William Blake

Through the efforts of these men and women, much of value was created: the weekend, workplace-safety standards, health care for workers, vacation and sick leave, etc. And each of these was wrested from the one bottom line that corporate America really cares about.

Despite William Blake offering the image of “dark satanic mills” as far back as 1804, the environmental impacts of industrial capitalism began to be understood with Rachel Carson’s 1962 publication of The Silent Spring. Within a decade, there was Earth Day, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Clean Water Act and much more, each a challenge to the profit-focused priorities of capital.

Given the pre-eminent importance of profit-maximization, it is not surprising that corporations touting the Triple Bottom Line often oppose measures to combat global warming, oppose workers’ rights and oppose regulatory mechanisms to protect the health of people and planet.

History has taught us that Adam Smith was wrong when he offered the justification for prioritizing profit that “by pursuing his own interest [the businessman] frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.” If Smith were correct, companies like Shell would not have such a devastating impact on society and nature. In part, this impact results from profit being measured in a short timeframe, a year or even a quarter of a year, while sustainability requires a vision spanning, as the Iroquois put it, as much as seven generations.

But Smith was right that profit ought to serve human well-being. Therefore, it must be understood within an ethical system that places people and planet first. This holds true for the vague term “stakeholder value” that some, including Carrboro, use instead of profit. Who are the stakeholders if not people and planet?
The TBL offers nothing to help us navigate the inevitable contradictions between profit on the one hand and people/planet on the other. But, really, why should we have any social or political bottom lines at all?

It was social ecologist Murray Bookchin who bemoaned the cultural turn to the “grubby language” of the market economy, which has “replaced our most hallowed moral and spiritual expressions. We now ‘invest’ in our children, marriages, and relationships. … We live in a world of ‘trade-offs’ and we ask for the ‘bottom line’ of any emotional ‘transaction.’”

There are a variety of frameworks that speak to a more fundamental commitment to the well-being of all life. In an 1854 speech, Chief Seattle offered the notion of a web of life: “Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.”

Aldo Leopold, in Arizona

Aldo Leopold, in Arizona, Arizona State Parks image

A century after Chief Seattle, Aldo Leopold articulated his land ethic in Sand County Almanac, “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” The biotic community, of course, includes humans.

We need the ability to truly place people and planet first and to reject the false, self-serving homilies offered by those who spread pavement and poverty in pursuit of the almighty dollar. Rather than seek simplistic nostrums, we may have to take the time to look hard at each decision, and bring a clear ethical sensibility, like that of Seattle or Leopold, to bear.

Dan Coleman is a member of the Carrboro Board of Aldermen.

Coleman may want to check the provenance of the Chief Seattle quote — but the thought is solid.

What do you think?

4 Comments | Business, Business Ethics, Climate change, climate_change, Economics, Ethics, Global warming, History, Newspapers | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Science ethics: Ten biggest science paper retractions of 2010

January 18, 2011

Science uses a tough system to correct errors and prevent frauds.  Peer-review makes it difficult to get a paper into a journal, period, let alone one with hoaxed-up data or conclusions.  Still, out of the tens of thousands of serious science papers published each year, a few sneak through that shouldn’t, sometimes due to researcher error, sometimes due mix-ups in peer review, sometimes — rarely — due to outright fraud.

In the past 15 months political action to fight global warming took huge hits around December 2009 when a few thousand e-mails were hacked from computers at the Hadley Climate Research Unit in England, one of the leading groups in climate research that indicates a warming Earth.   Critics of Hadley made great hay about how the alleged wrong-doing in the e-mails meant that all climate research was wrong, or at least questionable.

So, I was greatly interested to stumble across this article in The Scientist, which lists what that magazine calls the “Top Retractions of 2010” — papers retracted for errors and ethical reasons.

None of the top retractions had anything to do with climate research.  One of the most under-reported stories of 2010 was that the claims of error and fraud by climate scientists were, themselves, hoaxes.  Looking at the list of top retractions, unless you were really looking for the climate papers, you might never notice.

Most of the retractions were in medicine and health.  Several were in cancer research.  False science in climate studies does not appear to be a major problem, measured by retractions.

Those who accuse climate scientists falsely don’t really have anything to retract in a formal sense.  They did no science work that was published.

When do people wake up and realize that global warming is a real problem, and we shouldn’t be fooled by political smears of the scientists who discover the data?

1 Comment | Accuracy, Climate change, climate_change, Ethics, Global warming, Green Politics, Hoaxes, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Making Boy Scouting a political football — shame on those outlets

July 27, 2010

When President Barack Obama met with a group of outstanding Boy Scouts in the Oval Office a few weeks ago to discuss policies affecting Scouting, and especially policies affecting children, teen agers and young adults in the U.S., very few conservative sites thought it important to cover.  Let’s be more precise:  No conservative Obama critics, nor much of anyone else, bothered to cover it.  I’d love to see links even of local media in the Scouts’ hometowns that printed a story or photo.

To the credit of the White House, neither did the press promote the meeting as a political point.  Scouting prefers not to be a political football, and Scouting policy asks that Scouts avoid even looking like politicking while in uniform. (Scouts are encouraged to participate in the political process, including through the three citizenship merit badges, which encourage Scouts to communicate their concerns about policy to elected representatives, while working for the merit badge and in the future as participating citizens.)

2010 is a grand year for Scouting.  It’s the centennial of Scouting’s coming to the United States.  There’s a special Scout Jamboree, being held at Fort A. P. Hill in Virginia (the last time the Jamboree will be held on federal property — that’s another story for another time).   It’s always fun when presidents come to the Jamboree and speak, but it’s not always possible.

But today, news comes that President Obama will send a video speech to the Scouts at the Jamboree, as has been done sometimes in the past.  Many of us are disappointed that President Obama will not appear in person; but some of us who have experience scheduling such things know that elected officials cannot make every appearance they would like to.  Presidential schedules in the modern world are particularly difficult; for an appearance at Fort A. P. Hill security must be imposed (even on a Scouting event), aircraft landing sites need to be arranged and secured . . . dealing with more than 30,000 Scouts becomes an onerous task.

Still, we’re disappointed.

Adding to that disappointment, comes now a group of harpy Obama critics, no friends of Scouting that I can determine, but anxious to claim this scheduling decision as some sort of snub to Scouting, and to the American flag.

Media Matters has the facts, and puts the scheduling stuff into perspective, “Overhyped conservative nonsense of the Day:  Obama hates the Boy Scouts.”  Update:  Blue Wave News has it in perspective.  Wonkette’s satire, unfortunately, goes awry, but her heart and brain are in the right places.

The snub is by those critics who attempt to turn Scouting into a political football.  The insults are all from them.

Shame on them, collectively and individually:

Update: We’re going to have to add on a wing to accommodate the Wall of Shame:

Hmmmm.

I’ll wager none of those authors bothers to volunteer for Scouting.  I’d be surprised (and disappointed) to discover any were Scouts.  Scouting wouldn’t revoke their citizenship merit badges, but they’ve forgotten them, if they ever earned them.

Scouting faces severe hurdles these days, some of them I would say were placed by poobahs at the top of Scouting; these guys listed above are not helping.

Here are some tests to see which of these blogs and pundit outlets is friendly to Scouting:  Which of them covered the award, this morning of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award to Tuskegee Airman Charles McGee?  Which of them covered the dedication of the U.S. Postal Service’s stamp honoring the Scouting Centennial, today?  As of this moment, I can find no media coverage of these things at all, even by local media.

Why do these pundits cover Scouting only when it gives them a chance to make an unfair shot at a politician they don’t like?  Seriously, who is doing disservice to Scouting, and the nation?

Good news about Scouting’s 100th Year, and the Jamboree:

102 Comments | Accuracy, Barack Obama, Boy Scouts of America, Ethics, History, Journalism, Patriotism, Political Smear, Politics, President Obama, Presidents | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Stolen e-mails report: Scientists in the clear, science solid

July 7, 2010

So far it’s a shut out against the “skeptics” of global warming.*

From Science Insider (the AAAS breaking news blog):

The fifth and, so far, most thorough major investigation into the published mails from the University of East Angia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) has given the CRU a relatively clean bill of health. (See the full report.) The independent inquiry into so-called “Climategate”, instigated by UEA and headed by former civil servant Muir Russell, examined the conduct of the CRU scientists following allegations sparked by the so-called “Climategate” e-mails. It looked at selective use of data, subverting of peer review, and failure to respond fully to requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

The report was unequivocal in its backing of the scientists in terms of research integrity, though it did criticize their openness. “Their rigour and honesty as scientists are not in doubt,” it said. In response to the assertion that CRU had withheld data, the report found that it was mostly not theirs to withhold but was easily accessible in public databases. One of the report’s authors, physicist Peter Clarke of the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom, told a press briefing today that they were able to download the relevant data “in a few minutes” and then process it in the same way as CRU had done, producing similar final results. “It took a couple of days of code writing,” he said. The authors found no evidence of bias by CRU in its selection of data. Allegations of misuse of tree ring data were also put aside.

Some of the 1000 e-mails that appeared on the Internet suggested that CRU Director Phil Jones had tried to influence peer review of papers he disagreed with and prevented them from being cited by reviews of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

On the subject of peer review, Russell said that expressing “robust opinions [about papers] was typical during peer review.” And after consulting with editors of the IPCC report, the panel concluded that the CRU scientists were “parts of teams and not individuals responsible for the wording of the reports,” Russell says.

Where the CRU scientists did fall down was in their openness to requests for data. “There was a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness,” Russell says. And the report criticizes UEA for failing to recognize its statutory requirements under the FOIA and also the risk to the reputation of the university and to the credibility of U.K. climate science. Panel member James Norton said that “now more than ever scientists need to be open. Scientists don’t own their own data and at most have a temporary lease.”

More:

_____________

*  They’ve complained about being called denialists — maybe we should start calling them “gullibles,” especially since they seized on the thin reed of these stolen e-mails to claim that the victimized scientists were the ones who had done something wrong, since they fell for the fourth-grade science project hoax, and since they fell for the Spanish bomb-in-the-mail hoax.

6 Comments | Climate change, climate_change, Ethics, Global warming, Green Politics, Hoaxes, Politics, Research, Scandals, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Michael Mann exhonerated again: E-mail thieves still at large

July 2, 2010

News from Pennsylvania State University.  The second investigation of Michael Mann, to determine whether he did not adhere to the high ethical standards of research scientists in activities revealed by e-mails stolen from East Anglia University late last year, concluded that Mann acted honorably.

Via Deltoid:

Penn State investigation concludes:

The Investigatory Committee, after careful review of all available evidence, determined that there is no substance to the allegation against Dr. Michael E. Mann, Professor, Department of Meteorology, The Pennsylvania State University.

More specifically, the Investigatory Committee determined that Dr. Michael E. Mann did not engage in, nor did he participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research, or other scholarly activities.

The decision of the Investigatory Committee was unanimous.

The person or persons who hacked into the computers at East Anglia University remain at large.

More:

3 Comments | Climate change, climate_change, Ethics, Global warming, Research, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Just in case you thought any climate contrarian remains sane . . .

February 2, 2010

Which of these would be accurate in showing the insanity, but not so sharp as to raise the hackles of the climate contrarians?

  • “Contrarians think Antarctic unworthy of protection”
  • “Denialists criticize efforts to keep Antarctic clean”
  • “Climate change critics’ brains have left the building”

Read these stories, and tell me.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) noted the delicate condition of the Antarctic with regard to its two main industries, fishing and tourism.  IPCC AR4 noted that the tourism industry takes steps to protect Antarctic environments made more vulnerable by melting.  (Footnote here; actual flyer here, assessment document here in Microsoft Word .doc format)

Contrarians come unglued, here at ClimateQuotes.com, and here at Air Vent.

It’s clear that the contrarians don’t have much experience in heavy documentation.  If you follow the links they provide, you quickly get to the paper provided by the tourist industry noting their precautions to prevent contamination, provided to meet a request by scientists from the Australian team, and based on information well vetted to the point that it includes substantial excerpts from what appears to be a peer-reviewed journal on the types of solutions suitable for decontaminating foreign boots in the Antarctic (Polar Record, vol. 41, no. 216, Jan. 2005, p. 39-45; it is actually the official journal of the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge, UK).  There is astounding and commendable attention to detail, much more than the contrarians can grok, it appears.

More troubling to the Boy Scout in me is the contrarians’ contempt for what is, really, Leave No Trace Camping carried to an Antarctic tourist stop.  This is part of the environment protection credo of the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, and it is sound policy that everyone should be teaching their children.

What is wrong with that?  Why do the contrarians mock wise policies?  Why do they make false claims against what amounts to good Scouting?

Leave No Trace logo

Contratians disapprove of the ethics of environmental stewardship?

One implicit complaint is that the footnote does not provide evidence of damage from climate change, in the Antarctic.  It’s clear that the critics have not followed the footnote path to see why the boot cleaning poster and directive were issued, nor to see what is the research or official government action that prompted the tourist companies to implement the procedure.

It appears in a section of the IPCC reports on effects of warming on industries in affected areas.  Only two industries are noted in the Antarctic, fishing and tourism.  After establishing the increased chance of problem organisms, including micro-organisms, showing up in Arctic and Antarctic areas as the areas warm, and after noting two plagues that killed penguins recently, from micro-organisms, the IPCC paper notes that concern to prevent such tragedies have so far required only boot decontamination, and it offers a link to the flyer provided by an Antarctic tour operators group.

Got that?  To show that the tour operators are affected, IPCC cited the flyer put out by the tour operators showing how and why they were changing their operations.  It’s a minor, almost trivial point.

At no point did IPCC’s report claim this procedure as evidence of warming, or the effects of warming.  So the claims of the contrarians and denialists are completely off base, as they’d recognize except for their own shouting for the lynching of science to proceed.

Criticism of IPCC for noting the good stewardship techniques used in the Antarctic comprises more political smear than scientific enlightenment, by a huge factor.  Voodoo science from the contrarians begets voodoo criticism.

Contrarians lack wisdom in posing this complaint of theirs.  This is one more point IPCC got right, factually and ethically.  IPCC should be commended for that.

Wall of Shame (update added on February 7)

Outlets that cite the boot reference, falsely or stupidly, as some sort of flaw in the IPCC report, and thereby demonstrate malevolent intentions, and not scientific (“malice” for you Times v. Sullivan fans):

4 Comments | Boy Scouts of America, Climate change, climate_change, Ethics, Girl Scouts, Global warming, Hoaxes, Natural history, Natural resources, Political Smear, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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