Arts & Events
SMITHEREENS: Reflection on Bits & Pieces
Democracy Is Only Natural: Ask a Meerkat
On March 3, The New York Times carried a Super Tuesday story headlined: "Sneezing Dogs, Dancing Bees: How Animals Vote." Humans are not the only animals that caucus, the Times revealed: "We’re not even the only primates that primary." Looking beyond the cliché of "mindless sheep," scientists have discovered that many animals make group decisions by popular vote. "[F]rom primates all the way to insects [many animals] have methods for finding agreement that are surprisingly democratic."
A 2010 study by Dr. Marta Manser observed that meerkats in South Africa's Kalahari Desert forage on the basis of "move calls"—a "gentle mew" that signals a consensus regarding which direction the herd will head. It takes a minimum of three meerkat mews to move the herd in a new, common direction.
According to the Times: "Biologists call this phenomenon—when animals change their behavior in response to a critical mass of their peers doing something—a quorum response." The same quorum response is exhibited in human decision-making.
The Times article echoes a September 2017 report in The Independent that celebrated the following examples of animal democracy:
• In Africa, wild dogs gather in groups and vote with a sneeze to determine whether to go out on a hunt or sleep in.
• When deciding on a direction to explore, baboons tend to follow whichever fellow baboon "seems to have the most confidence." (Clearly, when it comes to popular elections, most human voters tend to behave like baboons.)
• White-faced capuchin monkeys in Costa Rica rely on "trill calls" to determine which way the majority of the pack will decide to move.
• In England, rock ants will decide to abandon their nests en masse if a sufficient number of individual ants "vote with their feet" and move out to settle in a new location.
• And, when beehives become too crowded, "scout bees" are sent out to search for new homesteads. On their return, each of the scouts performs an aerial dance to promote its recommended plan for the future. Some bees will drop out of the competition and back another bee's "platform." The swarm won't move until all the votes are in and all the remaining bees are dancing in support of the remaining proposal.
Democracy: It's Nothing to Sneeze At
Tom Steyer: Outlier on Fire
One of the reasons I was enthralled by Tom Steyers' presidential bid was his commercials. Many employed documentary footage that portrayed Steyers' long history of independent activism—on the behalf of farmworkers, gun control advocates, and families who lost their homes to predatory banking. These ads also came with endorsements from actual grassroots agitators—like California author/activist Fran Peavey.
I was especially fond of the ad in which Steyer abandoned political protocol and announced: "My job is to kick Donald Trump's ass on the economy!"
Maybe Tom deserves a cabinet position in the next Democratic administration. Secretary of Labor?
(One slip-up on Steyer's end: His ads continued to air for several days after he abandoned his campaign. Which was a bit embarrassing.)
Put Your Money Where Our Mouths Are?
In December 2019, the Trump administration announced plans to end food-stamp benefits for about 700,000 Americans. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said Trump's cruel new rule would move food-stamp recipients “toward self-sufficiency.” The new rule would cut federal food-stamp spending by about $1.1 billion a year.
That may sound like a lot of money but, for comparison, Mike Bloomberg and Tom Steyer spent a combined $750 million on campaign ads over the span of a few months. That ad-budget windfall could have covered the 68 percent of Trump's planned cuts to the federal Food Stamp program—nearly enough money to buy Happy Meals for everybody in the entire country.
Can You Be Both Pro-Life and Pro-BBQ?
Something to ponder: Shouldn't anti-abortion folks who proclaim that "all life is sacred" also be vegetarians? Well, to the chagrin of activists at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), many pro-life advocates turn out to be prolific consumers of roasted, baked, and grilled animal meat. How can this be?
Rowan Hart offers the following explanation on the Quora website:
The answer is cognitive dissonance. "Cognitive Dissonance: the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes" (Oxford Dictionaries). It is, in a way, hypocrisy, to identify as pro-life and eat meat, just as it is hypocrisy to identify as pro-life and support nuclear bombs, or support wars. It doesn't entirely make sense.
Joe Biden's Mounting Mispronouncements
Ex-Veep-Turned-Presidential-
Biden has perfected one of the favorite "stage postures" of politicians—the gruff, tough-talking authoritarian whose sentences begin with the word "Look!" (uttered as a soft threat designed to seize control of the conversation and discourage interruptions). Biden also likes to enumerate (whether it's needed or not). "Number One!" he will announce. Followed by "Number Two," "Number Three" and, occasionally "Number Three" again.
On March 2, Late Show host Stephen Colbert offered a choice selection of Joe's flubs, beginning with a chat on ABC with George Stephanopoulos. When Biden predicted he would win the Super Tuesday primary in Georgia, Stephanopoulos pointed out that there was no primary in Georgia and Biden quickly admitted that he "misspoke." Then, during a live interview on Fox News, Biden had to apologize again when he referred to host Chris Wallace as "Chuck." Biden attributed the error to the fact that he'd just done a "back to back" with NBC's Chuck Todd.
Biden's train of thought frequently gets derailed. Like Trump, Biden will not only use the wrong word but he often interpolates the opposite of what he means to say. Unlike Trump, Joe follows his misstatements and malaprops with quick, stumbling corrections. At a South Carolina Democratic Party Dinner in South Carolina on February 24, former Senator Biden seemed to forget what office he was running for when he introduced himself to the audience as follows: “My name is Joe Biden. I’m a Democratic candidate for the United States Senate.”
You might think that a fellow who's preparing to lead the USA would at least be able to recite the Declaration of Independence. Think again.
During a campaign appearance in Texas, Biden called on the crowd to turn out for "Super Thursday" and then went totally off the rails when he railed: "We hold these truths to be self-ev-evident: 'All men and women created by the go, you know, you know, the thing.'" (There's a word for that kind of meaningless, nonsensical jabber. The word is "malarkey"—Irish-American slang for "bullshit.")
Howie Doin'?
The Dems weren't the only party with a surfeit of presidential candidates. The Green Party went to the polls with five candidates all vying for a White House win. The candidates were: Howie Hawkins (NY), Dario Hunter (Ohio), Dennis Lambert (Ohio), David Rose (Massachusetts), and Sedinam Mozowasifza-Curry (California). (Good thing Sedinam was not a write-in candidate.)
The Green Party Voter Guide promoted Hawkins as the "clear standout in experience, endorsements and fundraising possibilities" and presented this impressive electoral history: Since 2000, Hawkins has undertaken—and lost—"at least eleven" campaigns. He ran for Congress four times, for governor three times, for the Senate once, and for the Mayor of Syracuse. He lost every race.
It's not easy being Green in a Red-vs.-Blue country.
Russian Poll-Trolls Resume US Election Meddling
Investigations by numerous US intelligence agencies confirmed that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential campaign (to promote Trump's election) and that Russian trolls are once again busy trying to influence the 2020 presidential campaign (to promote Trump's reelection).
Donald Trump's response? Our self-styled "stable genius" dismissed all of the credible intelligence as "a hoax," proceeded to fire the Acting Director of National Intelligence, and installed "a partisan puppet" as his new intelligence chief.
According to 314Action ("the largest pro-science advocacy organization committed to electing scientists and STEM professionals to public office"): "The sitting President of the United States refuses to denounce attacks on our country. That’s the horrible truth. What’s more: he thinks this is nothing but a partisan game."
In response, 314Action is calling for people to "stand up and denounce Trump’s refusal to address Russia’s attacks on our election security." (And maybe send a letter to Vladimir Putin asking about his recent decision to rewrite the Russian constitution to enshrine "God" and forbid same-sex marriage? Putin's unprecedented power-grab triggered the mass resignation of every member of his cabinet. Let's hope this doesn't give The Donald any ideas.)
Going Downhill: A World With No Snow
The Chronicle recently ran a front-page story about a 15-minute "mockumentary" celebrating the art "dry-skiing" on the hills of San Francisco. The film features extreme skier Michael Hibbs as the title character, a mentally unstable loner with an incredible ability to remain stable while shredding down the slopes of Mt. Diablo, racing a Ferrari down the vertiginous streets of North Beach and blasting downslope over the concrete steps of Lyon Street.
There's an environmental message at the core of this dystopian urban fantasy: In a water-starved state on a warming world, we are facing a future that will have no snow to ski on. We need to quickly adapt to abandon our polluting habits and address the climate calamity. If not, we're going to have to get used to schussing down sidewalks.
Here are some examples of this New Face of Skiing, courtesy of The Kook:
Bones and Stones: A Precarious Decision
It's not a rumor. There really are fossilized bones tucked away inside UC Berkeley's Campanile bell tower. On a recent ride to the top of the 300-foot-tall tower, the elevator operator confirmed that shelves of precious fossils are still being stored on the tower's seventh floor.
But here's a question that should bring paleontologists, geologists, and architects together: Is a free-standing bell-and-clock tower topped by 61 carillon bells weighing up to 10,500 pounds and located uncomfortably close to an active earthquake fault really the best place to store irreplaceable fossil remains?
A related concern: Has the famous, life-sized T-Rex skeleton in the center of UCB's Life Sciences Building been reinforced to survive a magnitude 6 quake?
America's Longest War? That's Only Half the Story
As it approaches its 18th year, the US military engagement in Afghanistan has been called "America's Longest War." Actually, if you include the US covert military intervention in support of the Taliban during the years following the 1979 Soviet occupation to the country, the US has been militarily involved in Afghanistan for nearly 40 years.
If you missed this great Mike Nichols film when it debuted in 2007, Charlie Wilson's War provides a great tutorial in how modern covert wars are run:
Write a Note; Get Out the Vote
In 2018, the Daily Kos and Vote Forward joined forces to solicit volunteers to write personal letters encouraging Democratic-leaning voters in swing states to make it to the polls. More than a million of these "personal nudges" went forth and are credited, in part, for a "bump in Democratic turnout" that flipped Congress from GOP to Dem. With the stakes even higher in 2020, Vote Forward has once again begun recruiting volunteer letter-writers to create a political "mailstrom" to flood mailboxes on October 27, the week before Election Day.
The campaign claims it already has 457,353 letters ready-to-go, with a goal of dropping more than 10 million letters in the mail by October 27. If you feel like lending a hand — and a hand-written letter or two — more info is available at this link.
