Saturday, September 25, 2021
23,000 year old human footprints found in New Mexico.
And that's a big deal.
It's a big deal, as it pushes the human presence in North America way back beyond what had been previously suspected in a spectacular example of Holscher's First Law of History.
And if humans were in New Mexico 23,000 years ago, so far back that the Ice Age land bridge isn't a very good explanation for how humans got here from Asia, it means they arrived at least some time prior to that. After all, you can't walk from Point Barrow to New Mexico in a day.
Friday, September 24, 2021
Wednesday September 24, 1941. Agreeing on the Atlantic Charter.
A photographer took photos of the Bronx's well known Cardinal Hayes High School on this day in 1941.
The well known school is the alma mater of quite a few notable people.
An Inter-Allied Council met at St. James Palace and agreed unanimously on the policies expressed in the Atlantic Charter. As noted previously, those principles were:
The Big Speech: The North Atlantic Treaty
The Parties to this Treaty reaffirm their faith in the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and their desire to live in peace with all peoples and all governments.
They are determined to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law. They seek to promote stability and well-being in the North Atlantic area.
They are resolved to unite their efforts for collective defence and for the preservation of peace and security. They therefore agree to this North Atlantic Treaty :
They are determined to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law. They seek to promote stability and well-being in the North Atlantic area.
They are resolved to unite their efforts for collective defence and for the preservation of peace and security. They therefore agree to this North Atlantic Treaty :
Article 1
The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered, and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.Article 2
The Parties will contribute toward the further development of peaceful and friendly international relations by strengthening their free institutions, by bringing about a better understanding of the principles upon which these institutions are founded, and by promoting conditions of stability and well-being. They will seek to eliminate conflict in their international economic policies and will encourage economic collaboration between any or all of them.Article 3
In order more effectively to achieve the objectives of this Treaty, the Parties, separately and jointly, by means of continuous and effective self-help and mutual aid, will maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack.Article 4
The Parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened.Article 5
The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security .
Article 6 (1)
For the purpose of Article 5, an armed attack on one or more of the Parties is deemed to include an armed attack:- on the territory of any of the Parties in Europe or North America, on the Algerian Departments of France (2), on the territory of or on the Islands under the jurisdiction of any of the Parties in the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer;
- on the forces, vessels, or aircraft of any of the Parties, when in or over these territories or any other area in Europe in which occupation forces of any of the Parties were stationed on the date when the Treaty entered into force or the Mediterranean Sea or the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer.
Article 7
This Treaty does not affect, and shall not be interpreted as affecting in any way the rights and obligations under the Charter of the Parties which are members of the United Nations, or the primary responsibility of the Security Council for the maintenance of international peace and security.Article 8
Each Party declares that none of the international engagements now in force between it and any other of the Parties or any third State is in conflict with the provisions of this Treaty, and undertakes not to enter into any international engagement in conflict with this Treaty.Article 9
The Parties hereby establish a Council, on which each of them shall be represented, to consider matters concerning the implementation of this Treaty. The Council shall be so organised as to be able to meet promptly at any time. The Council shall set up such subsidiary bodies as may be necessary; in particular it shall establish immediately a defence committee which shall recommend measures for the implementation of Articles 3 and 5.Article 10
The Parties may, by unanimous agreement, invite any other European State in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area to accede to this Treaty. Any State so invited may become a Party to the Treaty by depositing its instrument of accession with the Government of the United States of America. The Government of the United States of America will inform each of the Parties of the deposit of each such instrument of accession.Article 11
This Treaty shall be ratified and its provisions carried out by the Parties in accordance with their respective constitutional processes. The instruments of ratification shall be deposited as soon as possible with the Government of the United States of America, which will notify all the other signatories of each deposit. The Treaty shall enter into force between the States which have ratified it as soon as the ratifications of the majority of the signatories, including the ratifications of Belgium, Canada, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States, have been deposited and shall come into effect with respect to other States on the date of the deposit of their ratifications. (3)Article 12
After the Treaty has been in force for ten years, or at any time thereafter, the Parties shall, if any of them so requests, consult together for the purpose of reviewing the Treaty, having regard for the factors then affecting peace and security in the North Atlantic area, including the development of universal as well as regional arrangements under the Charter of the United Nations for the maintenance of international peace and security.Article 13
After the Treaty has been in force for twenty years, any Party may cease to be a Party one year after its notice of denunciation has been given to the Government of the United States of America, which will inform the Governments of the other Parties of the deposit of each notice of denunciation.Article 14
This Treaty, of which the English and French texts are equally authentic, shall be deposited in the archives of the Government of the United States of America. Duly certified copies will be transmitted by that Government to the Governments of other signatories.In Yugoslavia partisans seized Užice and made it the capital of a short-lived republic.
The American First Committee denied it was anti-Semitic and joined Jews to join its ranks, something that recent statements by Charles Lindbergh made rather unlikely to occur.
Gottfried Feder a German economist and early member of the Nazi Party, who had been instrumental in brining Hitler into the party due to a speech Hitler had heard him deliver, died at age 58.
Saturday September 24, 1921. Bears, bands and disturbing theories.
A baby bear escaping a porcupine graced the cover of the Country Gentleman on this day in 1921.
On the Saturday Evening Post a man with a drum in a marching band, portrayed by Leyendecker was featured. Perhaps because of football season having arrived? Indeed, the University of Tennessee played its first game on this day in its current stadium.
In London, Major Charles Darwin, the son of the famous definer of evolution, closed the International Eugenics Conference with a call for "better class" families to propagate as their genes were superior, he claimed, and they were being out bread by inferior classes. Concepts such as this were very widely spread at the time and, of course, took root in the rising German political party, the National Socialists, who are better known to history as the Nazis.
Thursday, September 23, 2021
The cola's of bygone days.
The area I was in was once sheep country, and sheepherders left some notoriously dirty camps. Ironically, these messy camps are now real treasures for scavengers of bottles and the like, as they're a lot of bottles and cans in them. They packed stuff in, but they had no incentive to pack it back out. This big bottle, and it is big, 32 oz or more, could be theirs.
Or it could have been a hunter's, or just somebody who packed it in for a picnic or something.
I don't know much about Royal Family other than that they apparently bottled cola in Denver and in Sheridan, Wyoming. Before we found this bottle, I'd never heard of them. It can't be any newer than the 50s, and maybe somewhat older than that.
When we buy cola here, it's Pepsi or Coca-Cola. But when I was a kid, if my parents bought cola, it was probably Craigmont, the Safeway brand. We'd drink it, but it wasn't like real Coke. Indeed, in retrospect, it was awful. But it was cheap. Only my father and I drank it, as my mother wasn't a soda fan. Later, if I was lucky, my father might buy Royal Crown, which I still like but rarely see.
Off brands of soda seem to have disappeared. Perhaps one more sign that, in spite of what we might think, we've become more affluent as a society and we don't look for discount sodas anymore. Or maybe we bought Craigmont due to the Great Inflation of the 70s, and we might be sucking discount soda down again soon. Or maybe it still exists, and I just don't notice it, not being much of a soda drinking myself anymore as it is.
Tuesday September 23, 1941. Dive bombers sink the Murat
On this day in 1941 the Germans achieved a first that we'd no doubt normally suspect some other nation had.
The Luftwaffe sank the Soviet battleship Murat with dive bombers. Ju87s, i.e., Stukas, to be more precise.
The Murat was a dreadnought that had entered Imperial Russian service in 1915 as the Petropavlovsk. After sinking, she was partially raised and used as gun battery in the siege of Leningrad.
For what it is worth, the Murat tends to be credited as a victory to Hans-Ulrich Rudel, Germany's most decorated World War Two serviceman. Rudel, interesting, was a ground attack pilot during the war, not a fighter pilot or something that would be generally regarded as being more glamorous. His career was spectacular, but he was only one of two German pilots to hit the Murat, which went down after being hit by just two bombs.
Rudel survived the war, ending up an American POW, but in 1946 fled to Argentina. He was a Nazi and may have feared what remaining in post-war Germany meant at the time. He returned to Germany in 1953 where he was involved in neo Nazi politics, so he never reformed or excused his views.
On the same day, the US Navy launched the USS Massachusetts.
Friday September 21, 1921. The USS Alabama and Billy Mitchell
Near Miami, September 23, 1921.
Stony Lake, New York. September 23, 1921.
Lake Bratingham, New York. September 23, 1921.
On this day in 1921, the Army Air Corp began bombing experiments on the USS Alabama, BB-8, a decommissioned Illinois Class, pre dreadnought battleship.
USS Alabama.
The tests used a variety of scenarios before direct bombing of the ship which would ultimately cause her to sink. The sinking itself was used by Billy Mitchell as evidence that aircraft could sink large ships, but in reality, as pointed out by the Navy, the Alabama's example was less than convincing. The ship was an old one, was undefended, and took two days to sink even after the fatal hits were made.
Wednesday, September 22, 2021
Seriously?
Why, or why, do we still have the Space Force?
The absurdly goofball separation of the extra atmospheric duties of the Air Force were being done must fine by the Air Force. President Trump didn't need to yield to whatever goofball Looney Tunes suggestion that a new branch of the military was needed. Heck, we have more military branches already than most nations.
And now, with their new dress uniform, they're expanding the spacey nature of the entire idea. These are the stupidest looking uniforms since Nixon's brief palace guard uniforms for the White House Marines.
Anyone else noting the homage to Star Trek in the globe and orbit device.
Well, here's a news flash. Star Trek was bad television. Seriously, the original 1960s television series was just junk. Enough already on the Star Trek crap.
If an increasingly troubled Biden Administration wants to pick any low hanging fruit for an accomplishment, this one is still available.
Eliminate the Space Force and fold it back into the Air Force.
Take any officer who voluntarily transferred into the Space Force and reduce them to Private E-1s in the Army and send them to Cook & Baker's School.
Take any officer who was transferred into the Space Force by assignment involuntarily, but who didn't protest, and transfer them back into the Air Force reduced two grades and assigned to Diego Garcia.
Discharge the enlisted men with an apology.
Tuesday, September 21, 2021
The Voice of Generation Jones
There are times when perhaps we should retitle our blog just that.
Members of Generation Jones, including myself, in about 1965.
I hadn't realized that what I've been calling "the Gap Generation" has actually been defined as "Generation Jones" and that it's actually pretty well-defined. Indeed, according to Wikipedia:
Generation Jones is the social cohort[ of the latter half of the Baby Boomer Generation to the first years of Generation X. The term Generation Jones was first coined by the cultural commentator Jonathan Pontell, who identified the cohort as those born from 1954 to 1965 in the U.S. who were children during Watergate, the oil crisis, and stagflation rather than during the 1960s, but slightly before Gen X.
Yup, that's about right.
And so is this:
* * *
Key characteristics assigned to members are pessimism, distrust of government, and general cynicism.
Yup, again.
And of potential interest:
If I were to quibble, and indeed I'm inclined to do so, I'd not put the floor in 54, as those folks came of age in 72, when the Vietnam War was still on. Indeed, I'd put the floor in 56.
Having said that, it's interesting to read this short synopsis, and frankly it has a lot of merit to it. Taking a look deeper, I'd add a few things, and then I'll expand on that. Indeed, I think it explains a lot why those of us in this generational cohort bristle at the thought that we're part of the Boomers.
Let's look again.
While charismatic leaders like John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. inspired millions of older Boomers to work for — and witness — positive social change, younger Boomers were in preschool or not yet born. Woodstock was a defining moment for older Boomers; younger Boomers have no memories before the Watergate scandal and the cultural cynicism it begat.
John F. Kennedy was assassinated when I was a few months old. I have no personal memory, rather obviously, of him at all, and the phrase "everyone remembers where they were when Kennedy was shot" might as well be stated about James A. Garfield in so far as my personal memory goes. And, while it might surprise people who are old enough to remember him, for those of us in my generation he supplies no sort of inspiration at all.
My mother, I'll note, really admired Kennedy, and continued to admire Jacqueline Kennedy, whom she followed. My father, however, was never particularly impressed with Kennedy, although a Mass card was among the collection of things in his dresser drawer. If I heard about a President that my parents both admired at home, it was most likely to be Truman. What I was left with, regarding Kennedy, is that he was Catholic like us (which my mother would bring up), that he came from a family that my father regarded as a bit dicey in some ways, that he had questionable personal morals, and that he was responsible for the Bay of Pigs invasion, which was stupid. Lyndon Johnson got better overall marks.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was another matter. Everyone admired him, but he seemed like a character from the distant past. Even with King, however, I'm pretty sure all my memories about King came from learning about him in the 1970s, probably starting with junior high or high school, and from the cultural background after he'd been killed. When he was living, I didn't know of his existence. Dr. King was assassinated in 1968, at which time I was five, and I have no recollection of it whatsoever, other than that I can remember riots being on television from 67 or 68, and these may have been the 68 riots that followed the assassination of Dr. King.
Indeed, the Civil Right Era, which was in full swing when I was born, seemed like something that had happened within recent American history, but far enough back it was very removed from our modern lives. That I recall that shows my very early recollections of the times, times that "Baby Boomers" were supposedly living. The civil rights movement wasn't something I participated in, in any fashion. Nor was the "Camelot" atmosphere of the Kennedy Administration.
The same thing could be said about the Vietnam War, sort of, modified by the fact that it was really long. I have some very early recollections of the war, including that a son of the couple who lived across the street was a paratrooper who was serving in Vietnam. I mostly recall that as he had been dating, literally, the girl next door, and when he went on leave during the war he went to Hawaii, and she flew out to visit him, which was a topic of conversation in my parents home. I also recall a sign on a door that stated "War is harmful to children and other living things", which I recall as it was such an odd thing to see in a place where nobody outwardly opposed the war. I was in school at the time, so that may have been actually observed in the 1970s, however. By the early 70s, and maybe even the late 60s, the background of the war was constant and so even the young were fully aware it was going on. But it was the defeat of South Vietnam in 1975 that I really recall, although POWs returning in 1973 or so is pretty vivid as well.
The earliest thing of the "60s" I really directly participated in was the July 20, 1969, moon landing, which we watched on television. Kids were fascinated with space at the time, and we all participated in that. For me, personally, the next thing I really recall was the televised scenes of Jimi Hendrix playing at Woodstock. But you really have to get into the 1970s, with the US invasion of Cambodia, that I was old enough to be aware of what was going on in the world and the culture.
That in turn means that it was really all the way into the 1970s before people like me were aware of what was up, and had a feeling about it, and that came with the backdrop of the 1970s. Indeed, the experience is depicted really well in the television series The Wonder Years, which is specifically set from 1968 to 1973. That means that it involved children who were older than I was, but the setting was pretty accurate. And keep in mind, that I'd place the high school graduating class of Generation Jones as starting at 1976, whereas The Wonder Years is dealing with the class of 1974. I debated where to put that line, but 74, the year after the active participation in the Vietnam War for the US ended, would be another good place to put it. All in all, it has the feeling right, and the characters would have a little more of the late stages of the Vietnam War whereas folks in my line would have a little more of the rampant inflation of the 70s.
In any event, The Wonder Years does a really good job of showing how the "60s Generation", the real Boomers, were observed from Generation Jones from the outside. We didn't participate in the events of the 60s, but they were background. I've touched on this in a way, in a long thread regarding my early years, Growing up in the 1960s. Indeed, in that I noted:
In really real ways, the central events for the Baby Boom Generation, that defined that generation and its view of the world, were like a hand grenade thrown by that generation and its events into a room we were in. It blew up on us.
We didn't fight in Vietnam, but might have known somebody who had a family member who did. The impact of the war on us wasn't the lost cause in Vietnam, but an ineptitude and uncertainty about the American place in the world that followed it. If it was more direct, it was the Laotian kids at school who showed up and kept to themselves, strangers in a very strange land, guest of the nation that had helped wreck their nation. Experimentation with drugs wasn't something cool and enlightening, but a cancer that had crept into society and was wiping out the minds of the young, including kids who were hauled out of junior high and high school as they were them. The revolution of the 60s had torn things down, but it didn't build up anything in its place. We hadn't participated in the counter culture, but by our early teens we were aware of it, and it had its remnants in the girls who still wore elephant bells after their time had passed.
And we didn't participate in an American economy that was the strongest in the world as the world was still recovering from World War Two. By the time we were young enough to be aware of the economy, it was suffering from inflation
And all of that gets back to something noted above. General skepticism.
Like the entry noted, we have memories of Watergate, the Nixon resignation, the failed Carter Administration, the fall of Vietnam, the withdrawal from Saigon, boat people, the Iranian hostage crisis, and rampant inflation.
We're not looking back on that with nostalgia.
We also have memories of lives wrecked with drugs and a drug culture that never went away. We watched the 60s promise of a "counter culture" kill its members and then continue on to the present day and keep on killing. We heard of the "sexual revolution" and then grew up to watch it continue to corrode society and carry on to the modern era in which all that some think about is their glands.
And we graduated into an economy with no jobs. Unlike our older Baby Boomer predecessors, we never enjoyed an economy in which simply holding a college degree meant that a "good job". We had to scramble to find work, and going to college, in our era, involved none of the revelry that the college experience supposedly had come to mean in the 1960s and 1970s, but a landing approach on an economic carrier in stormy seas . . . maybe you were going to make it, or maybe you were going to wreck.
Indeed, we ended up resembling The Silent Generation more than any other. That generation came after the "Greatest" Generation that fought World War Two, and experienced that horror, and the Great Depression, as background to their childhood, like we experienced Vietnam, the Counterculture, and the like. And we were focused, like they were, on getting by.
Also, like the Silent Generation, we didn't have a sense of rebellion against anything. We'd seen that, and it didn't work out, and we bore the brunt of its failures. The Silent Generation hadn't rebelled against the Greatest Generation or the Lost Generation, the two generations that its parents were drawn from. Generation Jones didn't rebel against the Silent Generation or the Greatest Generation, which its parents were drawn from. We mostly hoped just to get by, and were very much aware of what had been lost.
We still are.
Prior Threads:
Growing up in the 1960s
La Ancien Régime
It's not like this column has the readership of one by George F. Will or something where I need to worry, really, about its presentation, but I'll note that this is one of a couple of posts I've brought in and out of the Zeitgeist thread and have ended up posting it as a single thread, because of its nature, I guess.
I have a recent thread on our Monday At The Bar series about a bill that would raise judicial retirement ages. I'm against that. I'm pretty convinced, by this point in time, that such thoughts are a byproduct of two or three things operating in American society, one being the weird American belief that everyone is going to grow old with their body's and minds fully intact. Americans want to believe that everyone is 20 years old, right up to the moment they die at age 120.
The other is the Baby Boom generation's refusal to let go. The same generation that didn't want to trust anyone over 30, when they weren't 30, now doesn't want to trust anyone under 60.
Which brings me to this.
During the last election, there was a Republican undercurrent that Joe Biden was either senile or approaching senility, a highly ironic position given that there were many who suspected that nearly as old Donald Trump wasn't right mentally himself. Indeed, both men have been highly studied, although on the back burner, by their opposing camps and both of those camps have the ability to argue that the opposing figure just isn't who he used to be.
Whether or not that's correct we are at a point where the evidence is now really in. The nation really has to turn the leadership of. . . everything over to younger people.
Joe Biden's Presidency so far has been a complete mess. Starting off with real hope in some quarters, things are now off the rails in all sorts of ways. Trump and Biden combined, and it was both of them, operated to make the withdrawal from Afghanistan a complete route, wasting decades of American effort in a retreat that will forever be remembered for how badly it was done. Trump's meandering in the early part of the Coronavirus Pandemic, which was somewhat understandable at first but which turned into a bizarre "look at me not wearing a mask" series of photo ops has left Biden with a gigantic public health mess which he now needs to address, but the messaging has been very bad on it. Biden needs to win the inevitable court challenges on his new OSHA mask policy, and get it enforced, or he will look hopelessly weak and that will fuel the left/right divide that's wrecking the country.
Trump took a lot of criticism for his very aggressive border policy but Biden's reaction, started when he was still a candidate, was a muddled open the border policy, no matter what he might claim about that now, which is swamping the border and leading to a giant humanitarian crisis. If Biden didn't want to be as rigid and aggressive as Trump, he didn't have to be, but his counter policy was going to create a disaster, and it did.
Legislatively, the Administration has taken a strong economy, which was damaged by the pandemic, and inserted inflation into it but will not yield in a way that will address that, leaving trying to get some order into things in the hands of a single Senator Much of this is in order to attempt to bring in a set of policy goals which are his right to back, as he's the President, but it's all happened too slow to really effectuate them.
So the point?
Well, this. This administration is really close to dissolving into complete ineffectiveness. Biden may turn out to be a gift to Republicans the way that Jimmy Carter was. But only if the GOP gets over their own old man.
Which brings us to the second point. We're now on year five of administration by really old men, one a populist who had no prior government experience and who was scary from time to time, and one a neo left-winger who is ineffectual.
Theodore Roosevelt was 42 years old when he became President. Franklin Roosevelt was 51. Ronald Reagan, who seemed ancient at the time, was 69. Most Presidents have been in their 50s when they took office.
There's a reason for that.
It's only in the last decade, as baby boomers reached their 70s, that a cult of antiquity took over the nation's politics at the highest level. Since then, it's extended into everything, and the legislature is about to ask the people of Wyoming to amend the constitution to extend it to the bench.
The opposite should be occurring.
Funny thing is, Americans are now acclimated to this. I mentioned this to a colleague the other day, and specifically referenced Sanna Marin, the 35-year-old Prime Minister of Finland. The colleague was shocked, demeaned Finland as an irrelevant country, and then went on to say that a President needed "some experience".
Experience relevant to the times, yes.
To another time. . . well not so much.
And to be mentally agile and capable as well.
The 2021 Canadian Election. . .
was held yesterday, returning Justin Trudeau to office for some reason, with pretty much the same parliamentary results as last time, meaning he continues to run a coalition government.
Monday, September 20, 2021
Monday at the Bar. Two judiciary bills, one good, and one bad.
Two bills went through a Wyoming legislative committee last week and received unanimous support.
One would add three judges to Wyoming's judicial stable. That's an excellent idea. The bill would bring a fourth judge to the 7th Judicial District, which is a great idea. This would help reduce judicial work load, or rather overload, which is a good thing for everyone, even people who don't have any connections with the courts, or don't think they do.
The other bill would raise the judicial retirement age from 70 to 75 years of age.
That's an absolutely horrible idea.
To set the background, consider this.
Right now, people of 75 years of age are those people born in 1946. They entered school, if they entered it at the typical American age of five years old, in 1951, the second year of the Korean War. They graduated from high school in 1964, prior to the United States' major troop commitment in Vietnam. Those attending university at the time had a deferment, so if they went right on to university, and not all did, they would have graduated from that in 1968, if they progressed at the regular pace. The draft had changed in the meantime and some would have accordingly gone on to service in the military, but if not, and they had the regular course of progress for lawyers, which many lawyers do not, they would have become lawyers in 1971.
Almost every lawyer who graduated from law school in 71 was male.
I note this not to suggest that there will instantly be a bunch of 75-year-old judges, but to point out what this would mean if we'd adopted this, say, a decade or two ago. There's some enormous societal and psychological pressure for those on the bench to remain there until retirement age. Most would have done it.
I've been practicing law for 31 years. When I started, and even a decade or more ago, almost all the judges were men. In my state they're still 100% white, FWIW, save for the associate judges in Tribal Court. Even in Tribal Court, the Chief Judge has gone from being an enrolled tribal member to a white member of the state bar, which is no doubt as there are so few practicing enrolled tribal members.
Now, I’m not suggesting that this does reflect racism or sexism. What I am saying is that the bench reflects the social reality of the times during which judges are appointed.
Indeed, the last two Governors made a full court press to try to address the gender imbalance on the Court, with one of them being highly open about that. At least for a decade or so the number of women who have been graduating locally from law school has been somewhat higher than men. It's still the case, however, that far more men are lawyers in the state than women. But in the younger demographics, this isn't the truth.
And this points out further than appointments tend to point out the social condition of the era. If appointments were made purely on experience, length of practice, etc., they'd still be mostly male.
Now, I don't want to go too much further into that, as it bring up some touch issues. Is balancing out the gender of judges really serving an overall social need and goal, for example? I'm not going to touch that.
But what I am going to do is touch this. If judges are too old, they're not judging over the society they're from, really.
That's okay, I guess, if we want the bench to be a reservoir of societal memory and tradition, which perhaps we do. It's not okay, however, if we want the court to have a more direct connection with the conditions of those it is judging over, which I think we do. At age 75, for example, the children of the judge will be approaching old age themselves and their grandchildren will be full on adults.\
Indeed, this operates in an odd way on both of the appointment philosophies that involve age.
At one time, quite a few judges were appointed from the end of their careers as lawyers, with the thought being that they were distinguished lawyers by the time they'd hit their early 60s, and that they'd bring that talent to the bench while they were still able to do so. Indeed, given the length of the term of appointment, 8 years for the Supreme Court, 6 years for the district court, and 4 years for the circuit court, quite a few judges would have gone through only one election to judge on their retention, if they were appointed with the noted philosophy. Indeed, not all that long ago I had a mediation in front of a retired judge who had in fact been appointed in that fashion and who may have only served one full term, or at the very most, have served parts of two terms. There's nothing wrong with that at all.
The other appointment philosophy, however, has been to appoint younger judges who will last long beyond the Governor that appointed them. This way, the Governor's judicial philosophy will reflect itself for decades.
Raising the retirement age would skew both of these goals. For a Governor who wanted to appoint jurists in their 50s to reflect their experience, he now will be in a situation of judges simply never retiring and then lasting longer than expected. For a Governor who may be appointing a jurist at age 40 or so, it means that they'll serve seemingly forever. Indeed, on that, if this had been the system, there would undoubtedly be judges on the bench now who had been there before I was admitted to practice law 31 years ago, an astounding thought.
And frankly most people at 75 aren't the people they were, physically, and mentally, at 55, or 45. This is just a simple fact.
The bill to add judges seeks to do so as the work load is so heavy for the current ones. One interviewed noting on weekends and nights, something very common, FWIW, for practicing lawyers. Do we really expect 75-year-old judges to work weekends and nights?
And do we want to guarantee that some judges spend their final session on the bench with dementia, as this would do that.
Indeed, we all well know that dementia, for those who are afflicted with it, can come on as early as the 50s with some unfortunate people, and for others set in during their 60s. But it really starts coming on in the 70s for those who end up with it. Age 75 is an age where we expect those who might come down with it to have come down with some signs. But it's also the case that frankly the public, which has plenty to do otherwise, doesn't pay that close of attention to the bench, so average people are really unlikely to know a judge has dementia and vote him out of office. Lawyers are likely to know, but rarely do they mount a campaign to remove a judge at the polls.
Indeed, there's recently been a case of a Judge in another state sentencing a party in a case and then leaving the bench within days after that, with that example involving a judge who was only 54 years of age. There's no reason to believe that the sentencing was impacted by the judge's early onset dementia, but it's become an issue.
One out of every eight Americans over age 60 has some reduced mental capacity. Once you are up over 70, it's 25%. Over 85, which of course is beyond the age we're speaking of, it's 50%. Things being what they are, and particularly with an influx of Colorado lawyers in Wyoming who have a reduced need to preserve a good relationship with the court if the needs of their case aren't served by it, do we seriously believe that this wouldn't become an issue again and again for aged jurists. And indeed, at some point, it legitimately will be, in at least some cases.
Besides the fact that it's just gambling with a societally important role. As it is, judges in their last decade of service have something like a 1 and 8 chance, if the statistics can be applied, of suffering to some degree from impairment. That strikes me as an acceptable risk. A one in four chance? Not so much.
And finally, why would we want to do this? It's not the case that all legal talent is somehow vested in the Baby Boom generation, and it would seem we would want to maximize the opportunity to have lawyers enter the judiciary prior to their being ancient. Indeed, a better case, quite frankly, can be made for depressing the retirement age, not lowering it.
Saturday September 20, 1941. The HMS Audacity In Action.
HMS Audacity
A notable event occurred when a Grumman F4F in British service, and deployed from the Royal Navy escort carrier HMS Audacity, shot down a German Fw 200 bomber.
Today in World War II History—September 20, 1941
The Audacity was a converted German merchant ship and had gone into service in July, so she was a new vessel. She was the first of her kind. Escort carriers were a game changer in the Battle of the Atlantic, as carriers with them in their convoy could carry their air umbrella with them.
The United States built the bulk of escort carriers during the war, with the type being numerous enough that eventually they joined battle formations in addition to providing escort duties. Ships built for the British reflected British naval conditions, in that unlike the American ones, they did not feature an ice cream maker or washing machines.
Tuesday, September 20, 1921. The News Desk.
The news desk was born when KDKA radio station and the "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette" newspaper created the first "news room" and "news department".
KDKA's broadcasting room in 1921.
The station still exists and has a talk radio, news format.
Sunday, September 19, 2021
July 1, 1921 Field & Stream. A missed magazine cover and what it tells us about language and cluture.
This was one of the numerous saved threads I hadn't gotten back to, and then July 1 came and went, and I forgot about it. Instead, as that day deal with the Chinese Communist Party, there was a big old hammer and sickle that appeared as the art for that day.
Wish I'd remembered this one.
This does bring up a bit of an interesting topic, or at least two such topics, one linguistic and the other cheesecake oriented.
Depictions of women fishing, and let us be more precise and say depictions of pretty young women fishing, are at least as old as print magazines in popular culture. They're considerably more common than depictions of women hunting, even though fishing is simply fish hunting. We sometimes forget that English has various words for various types of hunting, as fishing is the only one we commonly use to separate it out from hunting in general. But there are others.
Fowling, for example, refers to hunting birds and was once a fairly common term. Offhand, I can't think of another sort of hunting other than fishing which is named for the prey, but there are some types that are named for the method. For example, falconry, that type of hunting done with falcons, is named for the method. Trapping, which is a controversial type of hunting that has been controversial my entire life, also is.
Of interest in this general topic, hunting of various types was so important in the Medieval era, when people started to first acquire family names, that various things associated with it or the practice itself gave us a series of last names that are still with us. This shows the degree to which it was significant, and even elemental. Just as we have the last name "Farmer", for example, we have the last name "Hunter". Noting that English is a Germanic language, and that this evolution occurred at the same time all over Northern Europe, and Europe in general, the same occupations are reflected in the common German last names of Bauer and Jaeger or Jäger. It ought to be noted here that the last name Hunger more accurately reflects its Medieval origins, however, than "Farmer", as farmer actually meant "renter" at the time, reflecting that farmers tended to be tenants, if not actually serfs.
Jäger, interestingly, shows up as an English last name as well, in the form of Yaeger occasionally. A name that sounds related, Jagger, isn't. That name is a Yorkshire name meaning a horse packer.
Fisher, of course, also shows up as a last name, as does the German equivalent Fischer.
Falconer also shows up as a last name, that being for a person who kept and hunted with falcons. Falconry was expensive back in the day and its pretty likely that anyone who was a falconer was in the permanent employment of a noble, so it's different from simply being a hunter or fisher. The same occupation gave us the name Hawker as well.
Another name last name that may have a hunting origin is Bowman. We tend to think of bows as military weapons, in a Medieval context, but in reality they were by far the most common hunting weapon at the time and, moreover, keeping standing armies was extremely rare. While armies did employ bowmen in times of war, those guys were in other occupations the rest of the time, and they were likely using their bows for hunting.
Indeed, the significance of that may be demonstrated the only other weapon of the period which I can think of which reflects itself in a last name is Pike. It would seem obvious that the name must derive from the weapon of that name, but it apparently isn't clear that this is the case. It might be a corruption of "peak" or it might actually refer to the fish. On that, Trout occurs as a last name, and it apparently stems from fishing for trout. I.e., a person named Trout, back in the Middle Ages, was a trout fisherman, showing the importance of the species. On the other hand, maybe Pike refers to the weapon, including its importance in Medieval warfare. No other weapons directly resulted in last names, however, if that's the case, although the knife did give us the German last name of Messer.
Well so much for names. Let's talk about clothing, or the depiction of it.
As noted above, depicting female fishermen was pretty common in the early 20th Century. The depiction above is a little unusual in that the subject is deep sea fishing, but then deep sea fishing depictions in general were a little unusual. Usually fishing subjects were fishing streams, or maybe rivers.
Depictions of women fishing early in the 20th Century weren't very different from those depicting men. If you go all the way about to around 1900, they are different as women didn't usually wear trousers and therefore they're sometimes depicted wearing the bulky clothing of the day, fishing, which would have been extremely difficult, in actual practice. By World War One, however, they were usually depicted just like men, with both tending to have the outdoor clothing, rather than the work clothing, of the day. No doubt there were men, and women, who went out to the streams fully equipped with the period outdoor clothing, which tended to feature breeches and very high boots, but my guess is that most fishermen simply went out with the sort of clothing that they wore when mowing the lawn or working in the shop.
I note this as in the world of Reddit, Twitter, and Istagram, if you have any interest in fishing, you're going to be assaulted at some point with a photograph of a woman fishing wearing a bikini.
I don't know if any women really fish wearing bikini's. They don't fish wearing bikini's in the L.L. Bean or Orvis catalogs, that's for sure, and I've never seen a female bikini clad angler myself. Of course, I don't have a boat, and maybe they're all on boats, rather than on your typical Wyoming stream or river where you'd be eaten alive by insects if you tried that.
Which brings me to this, wearing hardly anything outdoors is stupid in general, very stupid when you are more or less on the water where there's no shade, and who wants to smell all over like a fish?
All of which leads me to believe that such photos are in a certain category of adolescent male driving soft pornography, much like the weird Japanese cartoon depictions of World War Two ships as young women. Maybe some young women on boats wear bikinis, but I bet they do it only once.
I was fishing the other day in a deep Wyoming canyon, the last fishing trip I'll make of the season, probably, as hunting season is now on, and even though I'm license impaired as I didn't draw anything, I'll be doing that on general tags. On my way out, I encountered a young woman hiking in.
You could see she was a serious fisherman. She was carrying her pole in its tube and had on a large brimmed fishing cap of the type that's somewhat unique to fishermen, and wearing dark sunglasses. Even from across the stream, and down in the canyon from where I was, you could also tell that she had on one of those bug and sun resistant pull on shirts that some fishermen now wear.
She looked like a real fisherman of her vintage. I.e, one of the young fishermen in their 20s.
She was looking for a way down the canyon. I pointed to a place up stream. She nodded her head in affirmation.
Friday September 19, 1941. The Germans take Kiev
On this day in 1941 Kiev fell and with it 500,000 soldiers of the Red Army went into captivity.
Only shortly before this, the Germans had put Soviet POWs on a lower ration scale than those provided to POWs of other nations.
A massive geomagnetic storm caused spectacular nighttime light displays and disrupted radio and telegraph communications.
The Best Post of the Week of September 12, 2021.
Friday, September 17, 2021
Wednesday September 17, 1941. Destruction.
Äyräpään kirkko, oikealla maantie. Äyräpää 1941.09.17 (Äyräpää church, road on the right. Äyräpää 9/19/1941). The church was a Lutheran Church, that being the predominant Chritian faith in Finland. This village was ceded to the Soviet Union following World War Two and nothing of it exists today.
On this day in 1941, Werner Heisenberg and Danish scientist Niels Bohr had some sort of conversation about something. According to Heisenberg, it was about atomic weaponry. According to Bohr, it wasn't. Both men, who knew each other well, were attending a conference.
Bohr would flee to the United States, through Sweden, and then the United Kingdom, in 1943, as the Germans tightened their restrictions on Danish Jews. In the US he'd be involved with the Manhattan Project but was not one of the physicists who was stationed with the project.
The U.S. Army dropped paratroopers in maneuvers for the first time, that event coming in the war games in Louisiana.
More on both of these can be found here.
Today in World War II History—September 17, 1941
Also in the item above, on this day the Germans began the deportation of Jews out of the formal Reich.
The USS Hornet was in dry dock.
Hopeless optimism.
Plenty of votes still left to count, but so far James Hanink has 5,100 votes in the California recall. That's a good bit ahead of our last gubernatorial campaign and ahead of a large part of the Republican field. Thanks to all of you in the Golden State for your support.
Ummm. . . so that's good news? 5,100 votes?
Not exactly, well, not exactly even significant.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)