Posted by Gary McGath

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Every year, advocates of an all-powerful federal government claim that June 21 is New Hampshire’s “birthday” because it ratified the Constitution on that day in 1788. Representative Chris Pappas made that absurd claim on Bluesky:

I suppose similar claims are made that the other states weren’t “born” till the Constitution gave them permission. The idea seems to be that in 1788 the federal government brought the states into existence in exchange for ratification. Don’t ask who did the ratifying.

In New Hampshire, we’d been around for a century before that. The first town, Dover, was founded in 1623. It’s older than Boston. New Hampshire was considered part of Massachusetts for a while, but in 1679 King Charles II recognized New Hampshire as a distinct colony. It was briefly assumed into the Dominion of New England but became a separate colony again in 1692. In January 1776 New Hampshire became the first colony to adopt a constitution as an independent state.

The federal government did not give birth to New Hampshire on June 21, 1788. It was the reverse. The new Constitution required the ratification of nine states to go into effect. New Hampshire was the ninth. That day was the birth not of New Hampshire from a parent USA, but rather then birth of the United States under its present Constitution. New Hampshire could be considered the midwife. So I could have called this post “Birth of a Nation,” but you know…

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Posted by Gary McGath

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A San Francisco bookstore called the Booksmith (I think it’s unrelated to the old Paperback Booksmith chain) has stopped selling J. K. Rowling’s books because of the causes she supports. It’s unclear whether they’ll decline orders for the books or have just stopped stocking them. It won’t surprise anyone that the controversy has gotten ugly.

Booksmith has a perfect right to make this choice. In response to accusations of “banning,” co-owner Camden Avery has said, “It’s false pearl-clutching and a misapprehension of what censorship is. We’re exercising our First Amendment right to operate a private business in line with our values.” That’s 100% right, and it’s how capitalism works. Booksmith is not a government-owned library.

However, a more difficult question is whether their action is in line with liberal values. When I go to a bookstore, I generally expect I can buy any book that’s on the market, regardless of the owners’ opinion of it. The main exception is specialty bookstores. If I go to a science-fiction bookstore, I don’t necessarily expect I can order a cookbook there, unless its title is To Serve Man. The site describes the owners as “a group of queer booklovers,” so maybe they fall under that category. However, it’s not the content of Rowling’s books they object to, but what she may do with the income from them.

The store has also stopped carrying books by Neil Gaiman, who has been accused of rape and human trafficking, though as far as I know there have been no criminal charges or court judgments against him. Again, the issue isn’t the content but the author.

If the practice became widespread, it could make it hard for people to be fully informed. It’s very likely some stores won’t sell books by Richard Dawkins or Thomas Paine. If large sellers followed these stores’ example, it would be especially troublesome. A few years ago, some Amazon employees demanded the company stop selling some books. That, too, would be their First Amendment right to operate a private business in line with their values. It would, at the same time, go against the principle of openly exchanging ideas.

Freedom from governmental interference is an important part of the liberal ideal, but it isn’t the whole of it. Private entities, too, should prefer open dialogue to keeping the opposition from being heard. Making decisions based on the author’s other activities is a dangerous path. If I want to buy a book by Donald Trump, Mao Zedong, or Charlie Chaplin, I don’t want the store questioning my choice.

Stores have options short of refusing to sell a book. They can put their favorite books on conspicuous display and bury others on the shelves or not keep them in stock. They have to do this, since their space is finite. But deciding which authors are fit to sell is a dangerous path.

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Posted by Gary McGath

https://garymcgath.com/wp/code-of-conduct-issue/

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One more post on convention codes of conduct. The information here is based on an entry in File 770 (scroll down to item 7). The writers’ organization Codex has permanently revoked Savil Lavingia’s membership. Codex’s notice, according to the entry, consisted of the following:

The Codex Board has reviewed your case and permanently revoked your membership due to concerns raised by members about your activities at DOGE that violate our Code of Conduct and make our members feel unsafe. We strive to maintain a space where diversity is celebrated and all members feel safe and included around each other.

The entry contains a link to Lavingia’s article “DOGE Days”. That piece links to a Wired article that discusses what he did there.

Codex doesn’t have its code of conduct on its website, though it has the usual provision for volunteer organizations that it can kick anyone out for any reason.

When I started writing this post, it sounded like another case of Code of Conduct overreach to write about. It’s messy, though, and Codex may have had legitimate concerns, bad as it looks.

Let’s get that part out of the way first. Expelling members is a strange way to celebrate “diversity” or make members “feel safe and included.” It’s generally the language of a conformist group policing its members’ thoughts.

However, neither Lavingia’s own piece nor the Wired article makes him look very good. His very status with DOGE is confusing. He writes, “While filling out forms, I left the ’employee/contractor/volunteer’ field blank because I didn’t know the answer.” How can you not know that when you’re working for someone? A little later he says, “There, I learned my title, Senior Advisor to the Chief of Staff Christopher Syrek, and my salary, $0.”

Normally it’s clear in advance whether you’re going to get paid and how much. Working without pay for a charitable organization is one thing. Working without pay for a government agency, especially with a fancy title like “Senior Adviser to the Chief of Staff,” sounds suspicious. What’s he getting out of it, if not pay?

His presence, going by the Wired piece, was one more case of DOGE inserting itself into a government agency in disregard of established security and confidentiality standards.

Lavingia’s presence in the VA’s GitHub instance—a publicly viewable platform that houses projects and code for VA.gov—set off immediate alarm bells. It bore all the hallmarks of DOGE’s incursion into the federal government: Lavingia, a startup CEO and engineer with no government experience, all of a sudden had power—and was in their systems. …
 
One person with knowledge says that Lavingia had been given what’s known as a “zero account,” which would allow him to be granted privileged access to VA systems.

21 days into his position, Lavingia “returned home to New York to work remotely out of the basement of the Manhattan VA Medical Center.” It isn’t clear whether he handled sensitive data from there. There have been other reports of DOGE people handling sensitive data offsite, where its safety couldn’t be guaranteed, but there’s no specific indication here.

After reading the available information, I can’t reach a conclusion about whether Codex was justified in booting Lavingia. I don’t know what rule he’s supposed to have violated, or even what the rules are. Codex’s statement makes it look bad. The language looks like standard left-wing sarcasm; expulsions for mysterious reasons make members “feel safe” and increase “diversity.” Lavingia’s role in DOGE doesn’t include anything that’s obviously relevant to his membership in Codex, at least so long as he doesn’t have a position of responsibility. On the other hand, what he’s said about his DOGE participation doesn’t make sense. The whole situation is weird, and there isn’t enough information for me to tell exactly what’s going on. A code of conduct shouldn’t be a set of secret rules. All I can say is that Codex didn’t make itself look good, but neither does Lavingia.

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Posted by Gary McGath

https://garymcgath.com/wp/fritz-lang-woman-in-the-moon/

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The 1929 film, Frau im Mond or Woman in the Moon, was the first feature film to present space travel realistically. I’m amazed at how much it got right, considering Fritz Lang released it 40 years before the first human stepped on the Moon. Of course, it has some errors that are obvious today, but a lot of modern space movies don’t do as well.

The best part is the trip to the Moon, which occupies about 40 minutes of a film which is 2 3/4 hours long. Once the hatch opens and the travelers step out onto the Moon, the science goes bonkers. So I’ve created a video with my accompaniment of that sequence. It starts with the call to stations 50 minutes before launch and ends when the hatch is opened on the lunar surface. The video contains German intertitles with English translations below them.

Usually I accompany silent films on my Roland EX-50, which has hundreds of voices to choose and mix. For this one, I used my 88-key Yamaha electronic piano. It has only a handful of sounds, but it has a much better touch and lets me play better music. Let me know what you think.

Here’s a blow-by-blow analysis of the sequence from the launch preparations to the landing, discussing the science and the translations.

The launch happens on a precise schedule. The movie doesn’t mention aligning the launch with the Moon’s position, but coordinating so many actions requires exact timing anyway.

The rocket is moved to the launch site and immersed in a water basin because it can’t stand upright without support. A gantry is used today for that reason. Immersion in water would put a drag on the launch, but it’s not a totally crazy idea.

The capsule which will land on the Moon is extremely spacious and would require a huge amount of extra fuel.

The problem of G-force on launch is recognized, and the astronauts lie in couches to prevent injury. We’re told that the ship will reach “11 200” meters per second, which the English translation renders as 11,200 kilometers per second. That’s too fast by a factor of 1000 and would reach the Moon in less than a minute, with passengers compressed into pancakes. 11,200 meters per second is a good approximation of escape velocity.

It’s explained that the dangerous level of G-force comes at 40 meters per second. G-force is measured by acceleration, not velocity. 40 meters per second squared is about 4 G, which is a plausible threshold to be concerned about. Probably the scientific advisors got it right, but the intertitle writers were confused. A dial correctly shows m/sec².

There’s widespread radio coverage (TV wasn’t around yet) and an excited live audience.

There is The Countdown. All the sources I’ve seen agree this was the first time a countdown was used in portraying a space launch. It’s both dramatic and logical. I love the gigantic word “JETZT” (now) in the intertitle when it reaches zero.

The controls are very badly positioned. Having to crawl toward them to stop the thrust while under heavy G-force is bad design.

It’s a multistage rocket, and we see stage separation. That’s really impressive for 1929, and it’s likely a big reason the Nazis banned the film for being too accurate a presentation of how long-range rockets work.

A nerdy kid stows away, bringing his collection of pulp magazines. Of course.

The wonder which the travelers feel seeing Earth as a globe from their spaceship is delightful. Looking at the Sun peering over its edge wouldn’t be such a smart idea.

The creators recognized that the astronauts would experience zero-G during the trip once the rockets were cut off. Portraying it with 1929 film technology was difficult, and the results are unconvincing after seeing videos of the real thing, but that was no one’s fault. Having straps on the floor in which to place one’s feet was a clever way to deal with it. A mouse cage is shown floating, but the mouse and its bowls are firmly on the cage floor. Globules of liquid emerge from a bottle and float in the air.

When the Moon eclipses the Earth from their view, Friede reassures Hans by saying “Wir sehen sie wieder!” This gets translated as “We’re seeing it again,” which is grammatically possible but makes no sense. The German present tense can be used to signify the future, and “We’ll see it again” is obviously what was intended. There are a few other places where the English translation is awkward.

On approaching the Moon, the ship fires retro-rockets to slow its descent. Very nice. The Moon’s surface whizzes by as it approaches. The landing is very disorganized, as the travelers fail to secure themselves and roll around. But that shows adjustments are being made in the landing thrust, causing unexpected jostling.

The landing sends up a big cloud of dust, which is the first clue that the Moon in this movie has a significant atmosphere.

Tranquility Base here. Friede has landed.

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