A Cloak for Cowardice

As I read "Three Against Hitler," by Rudi Wobbe and Jerry Borrowman - a telling of the story of Helmuth Hubener who, with his friends, including Wobbe, published and distributed anti-Nazi information in their native Hamburg as teenagers, I can't but help to look for parallels to our own day.

This story is an exceptionally good lens for me to look through, as with Wobbe and Hubener, I also am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Before you sneer, consider this: This isn't necessarily a churchy book or a "Mormon" book either; though the protagonists remain true to their faith, the goal of this book isn't to preach.

And, as with my own observations, it doesn't put all member of the church in a good light; some of them supported the Nazis either through enthusiasm or through simply trying to get along without making waves -- something Hubener and his friends didn't shy away from.

An aside: I don't know how true to the story this movie is. I haven't seen it. I've just read Wobbe's book.

The parallels: Though support of Donald Trump today certainly doesn't rise to the level of supporting the Nazis, there are troubling similarities in members of the church choosing to support, either wholeheartedly, or through a desire not to make waves, what's going on right now. We're on the cusp of something that could turn pretty sinister, and I think it's up to us to decide what side of the fence to be on. I know what side my Dad would have me be on, waves or not. so that's where I lie.

Wobbe's book isn't shy discussing this either. Even after immigrating to Utah, he finds some resistance to the idea of resisting tyranny. We have to be very, very careful in electing whom to support outside of God.

I see members of the church cling to some messages by past prophets as justifications for serving God and mammon. I can't do that. It's Jesus or nothing. If our government chooses to do the wrong thing, we can't go along with it just because one of the tenets of our faith is that we support government. Government does wrong, and we can't support wrong.

As I read this book, I see how easy it is to twist messages. Wobbe shares this from the White Rose Movement, an anti-Nazi organization active during the war:

There is a point at which the law becomes immoral and unethical. That point is reached when it becomes a cloak for the cowardice that dares not stand up against blatant violations of justice. A state that suppresses all freedom of speech and which, by imposing the most terrible punishment, treats each and every attempt at criticism, however morally justified, and every suggestion for improvement as "plotting to high treason," is a state that breaks an unwritten law.

Wobbe concludes that unwritten law is God's law of agency, where it lies in the conscience and heart of each person to decide how to act.

Some look at these words as treasonous. Some look at these words as an excuse to commit treason. It's the contradiction of all contracictions. Wobbe can't explain it, but he saw the result: Many, many people justified their actions out of righteous desires: Patriotism, freedom, loyalty, love.

Part of that unwritten law is do unto others as you would have other do unto you. It cannot be an eye for an eye, or a tooth for a tooth, as that leaves us all blind and toothless.

Wrong should be dealt with and punished. But wrong should be agreed upon, not made whim to whatever political winds blow. I've seen both major US political parties justify wrong in the name of doing something right, or wrong in the name of "The other side is doing it; we have to do so as well or we'll fall behind."

So I'm not a Republican. I'm not a Democrat. Nor am I a libertarian or whatever other political alliances are out there. They're all corrupt and try to justify their wrongness with a cloak of righteousness.

I'd rather go to prison like Wobbe than fall in league with that kind of fiction.

Just. Stop.

The AI slop continues to hurt.

I have not interacted with this one as I don't want to feed the algorithm.

That is the goal, of course. AI offers a refined way to produce ragebait for engagement.

Burn in hell, Dr. Marvin. (She never says that.)

Way too Late at the Movies: Project Hail Mary

I guess I'm not *too* late for this one, as it came out this year.

And wow, this is good old-fashioned hard science fiction with something Elon Musk would absolutely hate: Empathy.

I won't dwell on Musk's incredulous thoughts and focus rather on the movie, which displays self-sacrifice and empathy in spades.

Sure, part of the self-sacrifice is forced: Protagonist Grace is sent on a species-saving mission against his will **spoilers** literally drugged into a coma and winkled aboard the spaceship.

But he grows into empathy as he awakens and finds his other two crew members have died on the way to Tau Ceti where they hope to find the answer to a mystery that is threatening Earth's sun.

Back against the wall, Grace could have done nothing. But he finds Rocky, another sentient being sent to Tau Ceti, also alone, trying to find the answer to the same question.

They figure out how to talk to each other. They figure out how to help each other work on the mystery. And they figure out that the best way to help "save the world" is to get along and focus on the problem.

That is, of course, not all. Once the problem is solved, Grace runs into another problem that could threaten them both. But they're separated by a month of travel. Does he go back to help Rocky, and risk is own future?

Damn right he does. He sends his discoveries on to Earth in probes, as Earth's suicide mission originally intended, and goes back to help Rocky survive and live to help his own planet.

Absolutely loved this film.

Mortgage Going Down

We're to the point in our lives where we owe less than $40,000 on our home mortgage.

The number shown here is even a bit old.

Not bragging. Well, maybe a little about that interest rate. I still can't believe we got that -- this was from a refinance when we rolled $14,000 in debt for solar panels into the mortgage as well. (Sure, if we hadn't done that, we'd owe even less on the house, but doing so cut the interest rate on the panels by five full points, so it was worth it.)

I'd love to be able to do some kind of lump sum payment to get it all done at once, but we're not to that point yet.

One Last Log

Today, and thanks in part to a random Amazon driver who had some advice on log-splitting, I got down to just one more massive log to split. And at this point, I'm not sure I'm going to cut it up. Oh, I probably will, but I'm feeling pretty tired at the moment.

I still have a lot of work to do to make this area more presentable, clearly. But getting the firewood out of the way is a big step and should make the rest of the work easier to accomplish.

Copyright Strike Incoming

Spotted in the wild today:

United States Department of Education 'bout to get a copyright strike from Disney.

They do not play around with their IP.

Book Review: The Town, by Shaun Prescott

There’s a part in Groundhog Day where Bill Murray’s Phil Connors is talking with two Punxatawney derelicts in a bar, who knows how long into his confinement in the town, where one of the derelicts says Phil strikes him as a “glass half empty” kind of person.

Phil, lost in the neverending small-town hell, replies: “What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?”

The other derelict, soppy in his beer, responds “That pretty much sums it up for me.”

Phil, of course, escapes his exile in small-town hell as he gives up the self-pity and self-loathing and loses himself in service to what he discovers are the delightful characters of this small hamlet in western Pennsylvania that make the town pleasant, appealing, and definitely worth living in.

At the end of his film, having won the heart of his long-long-ed-for Rita, he says, “Let’s live here. We’ll rent to start.”

I’ve just finished reading Shaun Prescott’s “The Town,” set mostly in a dusty kinda central Australian town gradually being lost, footpaths, fibro houses, and listless, useless inhabitants and all, to a mysterious shimmer never really explained.

At first I saw Phil and the two derelicts in the town, in the story, and thought, “Well, maybe there’s redemption somewhere along the way.” I had my doubts – Prescott’s story was compared to Kafta, famous for no redemption whatsoever.

And I went with that feeling – but not with allusions to Kafka, but more with allusions to Jean-Paul Sartre, who famously wrote “Hell is other people.”

The concluding idea to Prescott’s story is similar, but perhaps even more gloomy: Apocalypse, it seems, is other people.

Because Prescott’s town suffers a nameless, formless apocalypse wrapped in the metaphor of holes appearing and causing blocks of the town and its inhabitants to disappear, but the story is really an apocalyptic tale without the apocalypse, as the people his characters encounter are a far worse fate than any mysterious shimmer could ever be.

There’s a lot about belonging to this tale, and at the end, well, nobody really finds it. There’s no surcease from the hell of the small town in the city.

Early on in the novel, we get this:

“People might be wiser to cower in towns. Maybe they wouldn’t be so devastated when the sea water rose. Maybe when everything became desperate, a small town would finally live up to the qualities that everyone believed them to have: Namely, that everyone would help one another out. Maybe the town would have tea parties during the apocalypse, while people in the city tore each other to shreds.”

Of course, people in the town tore each other to shreds, whether through a grudge, a fistfight, or general disdain. When the apocalyptic shimmer arrived and claimed victims, no one seemed too bothered, as it wasn’t them being lost forever.

The protagonist and Ciara, another small-town denizen, flee to the city, and quickly discover this:

“[Ciara] told me that everyone in the city speaks about the city in the same way that people in the town spoke about the town. They say the city is not what it used to be. If she asks what it used to be, they simply reply that it used to be more like a city.”

The apocalypse of people find them in the city, though the shimmer is long left behind. And it not needed, as the apocalypse is there all along.

The Red Herring is Ailing

So this isn't good.

Or maybe it's not all *that* bad, but it might be.

Ignore the airbag light. That's a sensor we should replace, but they're hard to find. More worrying are the check engine and VTM-4 lights. Who knows how much that's going to cost to get fixed.

We'll find out. We've got 264,000 miles on this thing so it has fought the good fight, but if we could squeeze another 50,000 or 75,000 miles out of it' I'd be happy. But it's all going to depend on what's wrong with the thing. It's been very reliable up to this point, so I hate to see it go.

It does have a few other problems: Leaking power steering, and maybe a tie rod that's causing some unusual wear on the front passenger tire. We did get it to our mechanic today, so at least that part is over.

Don't want to break the bank. But Isaac says he wants to use this car when he gets back from his mission in 2028. We'll have to see if that happens.

And for this Honda Pilot, 2005, I do mean reliable. Aside from tires and regular maintenance, we've replaced the starter. Everything else has just been hanging on.

 

If this is Good, I'm Cranky

If this book is good, I'm going to be happy.

And really mad.

Peep the author: Hugh Laurie. Yes, the Hugh Laurie of Jeeves and Wooster, of Blackadder, of House. And the Hugh Laurie the pianist and singer:

He really impresses me with the depth and breadth of his talent.

So if this book is good, I'm going to have to say he's a polymath. And that's blatantly unfair.

Which is stupid to say. He's got the talents, it's a shame not to use them. And if I applied myself, I could do better than what I'm doing now that's for sure.

Still, the little green monster pops up. I almost left the book at the store just because of that. But I brought it home anyway because WHAT IF IT'S GOOD? I want to read it, so it's going to climb to the top of the reading pile.

Because it's important to remember that the talents displayed by others does not denigrate or limit the talent we may have, whether displayed or latent. We should strive to develop our talents and celebrate when others, even irritating polymaths like this, display excellent talent for the rest of us to enjoy. Their talent does not diminish us or ours. We should instead be inspired by that talent to better our own. That's where I am to be.

Whence the Electricity?

Interesting stuff here.

Here we are in the West, where hyrdropower abounds -- the city next door generates more than half of the electricity it needs through hydropower -- yet Rocky Mountain Power generates on. 4.8% of its electricity from hydro. That coal number is a bit unnerving.

Interesting that 10.7% of the energy it uses is unspecified. The legend on the other side of the chart says that the unspecified electric generation comes from renewable resources that the company itself doesn't own. I wonder if that's where customers like us, who have solar on the roof, fit in?

I'd be curious as well to see a breakdown on the sources of the market purchased electricity.

They are toying with nuclear at a spot near Brigham City, Utah, but that's only in the talking stages. While next door in Idaho Falls, they're a little bit beyond talk as they've got a memorandum of understanding for a number of small modular reactors to be built near the city's gas-fired peaking plant.