RIP Alan Rickman

I seem to be on a culture kick this week.  Alan Rickman died at age 69.  The obits talk about Harry Potter and Die Hard, and the stage.  I'd like to mention the Barsetshire Chronicles, a BBC series based on the Trollope novels in 1982.  Rickman played Obadiah Slope in a memorable performance.  Slope is an ambitious young clergyman, a villain, but whose love for the girl almost redeems him.  The books were great, but Rickman's performance is greater.

El Chapo's Escape Is Not a Crime

I was looking back to see when I first started blogging.  It was January 2005 and my first post linked to a Post article on an escape from Mexican prisons. According to the article, merely escaping from prison was not a crime in itself.

On "Whippersnapper"

As a geezer, I often use the word "whippersnapper".  To me it means someone younger than I who is less serious and more assertive than I.  It's definitely ageist,  (Ageism is perhaps the one dichotomy which will last the longest.  We've seen race and sex and gender being dissolved away, distinctions fading, epithets being outlawed.)  But everyone is young and everyone will be old. Only if we finally conquer death will the distinctions between the generations fade away.)

 Today I wonder about its origin.  Google shows that the origin is fuzzy, perhaps from "whip snapper".   However a British site says it's a combination in the 17th century of "whip snapper" and "snipper snapper".   From meaning a street boy who had no ambition but lazily snapping a whip for recreation it came to mean "A diminutive or insignificant person, especially a sprightly or impertinent youngster" in the sites definition.

Another Cultural Disconnect--Star Wars

We just saw the new Star Wars movie today.  While I saw and enjoyed the original Star Wars movie, I have to admit I never saw any of the others.  I suppose that impaired my enjoyment of the new one.  While I enjoyed parts of the movie, particularly the Harrison Ford bits (he's about a year younger than I) it didn't turn me on.  Using the Netflix 5 star rating system, I'd give it a 3, while apparently most critics are giving it a 4, even a 5.

Cultural Disconnect--Bowie

I've never been up on popular culture, but the reaction to the death of David Bowie shows how far off I've been.  For me, the name was familiar but I never followed his music or his movies or whatever else he did.  From the reaction today it seems he was a much more significant figure than I would have guessed. 

The Impact of History and Chance on Discrimination

Somewhere in the last few days there was a report of a study on discrimination against women scholars.  As I remember it, in economics, if a paper has multiple authors, their names are listed alphabetically.  In physics (?), the convention is to list the primary author first.

I wonder why those different conventions arose in the first place: chance, some difference in the way papers are developed between the two disciplines, something else?  Anyhow, the bottom line is: in economics a woman who is part of a team of authors gets no credit for her work.   (Credit was determined by counting the publications according to sole-authorship versus team, then seeing the correlation between no. of pubs and the academic position achieved.)  Only sole author pubs helped a woman economist.  In physics there was no such impact.

It Was My Mother's Fault

Specifically:

"Although mostly I suspect it was because my mother raised me badly, so I didn't have the good manners to show proper gratitude in a normal way. Definitely my mother's fault, one way or another."

That's from an InsideHigherEd  post, interviewing Prof. Pietsch, the guy whose acknowledgments in his book have gone viral, thanks to John Fea's spotting them at the AHA convention.

Republican Split--What's New?

NYTimes has a piece today on a split in the Republican party, between the Trump-Cruz faction and the "establishment".  I think it's overdone.  I remember the Republicans were split:

• between the Taftites and Eisenhower Republicans in the 1950's.
• between Rockefeller and Nixon in 1960 (the Treaty of Fifth Avenue)
• Goldwater and establishment in 1964
• Ford and Reagan in 1976
• Reagan and John Anderson in 1980
• Bush and Buchanan in 1992
• etc. etc.

While usually the ticket could and would bridge the difference (i.e., Nixon and Agnew; Reagan and Bush), there might be problems this year.  Trump and Rubio are doable, perhaps Cruz and Christie, or Cruz and Kasich.  Christie and Cruz might be also.

Economy a Reason for Primary Anger?

I noticed a title on a post somewhere saying that farmers' income would be down by 28 percent this year. Commodity prices are down across the board with no relief in sight.   I wonder if the changes in the outlook for agriculture fuel a little bit of the anger which seems to be showing up in the primaries, particularly on the Republican side?

Shame on Tom Davis: the Cost of Being Wrong

I sometimes contact my representative and senators, but not often.  Never did before I retired.  I think the first time I did was to write Tom Davis, the Republican who was then my representative, supporting the idea of authorizing needle exchanges, perhaps in DC, perhaps nationally.  This was in the late 90's, when AIDS was still a terror. Congress had banned funding for needle exchanges and for research on needle exchanges.

Davis was a moderate Republican, who'd work across party lines, though shortly after I think he became chair of the Republican Congressional Campaign committee.  He later retired at a relatively early age.  He's well respected for his knowledge of politics and has often been interviewed on TV on various issues.   All in all, he was the sort of Republican who might have supported needle exchange.

But he didn't. He wrote back with an explanation of why he couldn't support the proposal.

It's now close to 20 years after my letter.  Congress, controlled by Republicans, has just removed the ban on funding needle exchange programs (see this fivethirtyeight post).  There's no telling how many lives were cost by the decision not to research exchanges.