Civil Service - Who Are These People ET Are Firing? - Part II

INTRO:  Part I is here.  

If you find this topic dry and hard to get your head around, then you are half way there.  Because some of the most important things to know about government are dry and hard to get one's head around.  And that makes it easy for politicians to bamboozle voters with falsehoods and misinformation.  

So if you want to understand why ET's firing of civil servants (most of government employees) is a violation of law and various regulations, you'll have to buck up and read carefully.  Even take notes.  

This content is based on testimony I gave in a local discrimination case.  So I had to pare it down to as simple an explanation as possible so that I didn't lose the jury.  The attorney was nervous that his expert would talk over their heads, but when I was done he was relieved that I'd made it very easy to understand.  And the jury said the local government was guilty.

So good luck.   [I explained ET in the Intro to Part I, but it's not critical.]

From a February 19, 2018 post: 

Graham v MOA #9: Exams 2 - Can You Explain These Terms: Merit Principles, Validity, And Reliability?

The Municipality of Anchorage (MOA) Charter [the city's constitution] at Section 5.06(c) mandates the Anchorage Assembly to adopt

“Personnel policy and rules preserving the merit principle of employment.”   AMC 3.30.041 and 3.30.044 explain examination types, content, and procedures consistent with these merit principles.  

Âs defined in the Anchorage Municipal Code Personnel Policies and Rules,

“Examination means objective evaluation of skills, experience, education and other characteristics demonstrating the ability of a person to perform the duties required of a class or position.” (AMC 3.30.005)

[OK, before I lose most of my readers, let me just say, this is important stuff to know to understand why the next posts will look so closely at the engineer test that Jeff Graham did not pass.  But it's also important to understand one of the fundamental principles underlying government in the United States (and other nations.)  And I'd add that the concepts behind merit principles are applied in most large private organizations to some extent, though they may have different names. 

Jeff Graham's attorney made me boil this down to the most basic points to increase the likelihood I wouldn't put the jury to sleep.  So bear with me and keep reading. 

And, you can see an annotated index of all the posts at the Graham v MOA tab above or just link here.]  

Basic Parts of Government In The United States

Governments can be broken down into several parts.

• The elected politicians who pass the laws and set the broad policy directions (legislature)
• The elected executive who carries out the laws.
• The administration is led by the elected executive - the president, the governor at the state level, and the mayor at the city level.
• Civil Service refers to the career government workers who actually carry out the policies.  There are also appointed officials at the highest levels who are exempt from some or all of the civil service rules.

Merit principles are the guidelines for how the career civil servants are governed.  

So What Are Merit Principles?

Probably the most basic, as related to this case, are:

• Employees are chosen solely based on their skills, knowledge, and abilities (SKAs) that are directly related to their performance of the job. 
• The purpose of this is to make government as as effective and efficient as possible by hiring people based on their job related qualities and nothing else.  
• That also means other factors - political affiliation, race, color, nationality, marital status, age, and disability should not be considered in hiring or promotion.  It also means that arbitrary actions and personal favoritism should not be involved. 
• Selection and promotion criteria should be as objective as possible.   

So Steve, what you're saying, this sounds obvious.  What else could there be?

Before the merit system was the Spoils System.  Before merit principles were imposed on government organizations, jobs (the spoils) were given to the victors (winning politicians and their supporters)   The intent of the Merit System is to hire the most qualified candidates.

In 1881, President Garfield was assassinated by a disgruntled job seeker, which spurred Congress to set up the first version of the federal civil service system - The Pendleton Act.

Only a small number of federal positions were covered by this new civil service act, but over the years more and more positions were covered and the procedures improved with improvements in the technology of testing.  The merit system, like any system can be abused, but it's far better than the spoils system.  Objective testing is a big part of applying merit principles.

What does 'objective criteria' mean? 

Objectivity has a couple common and overlapping meanings:

• Grounded on facts.  Grounding your understanding or belief on something concrete, tangible.  Something measurable that different people could 'see' and agree on.
• Unbiased.  A second, implied meaning from the first, is that you make decisions neutrally, as free as you can be from bias, preconceived ideas.  That’s not easy for most people to do, but there are ways to do it better. 

What Ways Can Make  Tests More Objective And Free Of Bias?

I think of objectivity as being on one end of a continuum and subjectivity being on the other end.  No decision is completely objective or subjective, nor should it be.  But generally, the more towards the objective side, the harder it is to introduce personal biases.* 

objective ...............................................................................................subjective

First Let's Define "Test"

In selection and promotion, we have tests. Test is defined as any thing used to weed out candidates, or rank candidates from poor to good.  So even an application form can be a test if it would lead to someone being cut out of the candidate pool.  Say candidates are required to have a college degree and someone doesn’t list one on an application.  They would be eliminated already.  

Again,  how do you make tests more objective?

There are two key terms we need to know:  validity and reliability.

What’s Validity?

Validity means that if a person scores higher on a test, we can expect that person to perform better on the specific job.  

Or saying it another way, the test has to truly test for what is necessary for the job.  So, if candidates without a college degree can do the job as well as candidates with a degree, then using college degree to screen out candidates is NOT valid.  

And what is reliability?

Reliability means that if  a person takes the same test at different times or different places, or with different graders, the person should get a very similar result.  Each test situation needs to have the same conditions, whether you take the test on Monday or on Wednesday, in LA or Anchorage, with Mr. X or Miss Y administering and/or grading the test.  

How Validity and Reliability Relate To Each Other

To be valid, the selection or promotion test must be a good predictor of success on the job. People who score high on the exam, should perform the job better than those who score low.  And people who score low should perform worse on the job than people who score high. 

BUT, even if the test is intrinsically valid, the way it is administered could invalidate it.  If the test is not also reliable (testing and grading is consistent enough that different test takers will get a very similar score regardless of when or where they take the test and regardless of who scores the test) the test will no longer be valid.  This is because the scores will no longer be good predictors of who will do well on the job. 

How do you go about testing for validity and reliability?

This can get complicated, especially for  factors that are not easy to measure.  I didn't go into this during the trial.  I wanted to point out some pages in a national Fire Safety Instructor Training Manual used by the Municipality of Anchorage, but I was not allowed to mention it.  It talks about different levels of validity and how to test for them.  It also says that for 'high stakes' tests, like promotion tests, experts should be hired to validate the test.  The jury didn't get to hear about this. But it's relevant because as I wrote in an earlier post, the people in charge of testing, and specifically in charge of the engineer exam, only had Level I certification, which allows them to administer training and testing designed by someone with Level II certification.  It's at Level II that validity and reliability are covered.  

There really wasn't need to get detailed in the trial, because the oral exam was so egregiously invalid and unreliable that you could just look at it and see the problems.  And we'll do that in the next posts. 

That should be enough but for people who want to know more about this, I'll give a bit more below.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Extra Credit

*"the harder it is to introduce bias"  There are always ways that bias can be introduced, from unconscious bias to intentionally thwarting the system.   When civil service was introduced in the United States, there was 'common understanding' that women were not qualified for most jobs.  That was a form of bias.  Blacks were also assumed to be unqualified for most jobs.  Over the years many of these sorts of cultural barriers have been taken down.  But people have found other ways to surreptitiously obstruct barriers.  

Merit Principles

If you want to know more about merit principles I'd refer you to the Merit System Protection Board that was set up as part of the Merit System Reform Act of 1978.  

A little more about reliability problems (because these are important to understand about the engineer promotion exam)

In the main part of this post I wrote that all the important (could affect the score) conditions of the test need to be the same no matter where or when or with whom a candidate takes the test.  Here are some more details

• Location - If one location is less comfortable - temperature, noise, furniture, lighting, whatever - it could skew the scores of test takers there.
• Time -  could be a problem in different ways.  
• All candidates must have the same amount of time to take the test.  
• Instructions - all instructions have to be identical
• Security of the test questions - if some applicants know the questions in advance and others do not, the test is not reliable.

The scoring, too, has to be consistent from grader to grader for each applicant. 

And there are numerous ways that scoring a test can go wrong.

• Grader bias  - conscious and unconscious.   Raters who know the candidates may rate them differently than people who don’t know them at all. 
• The Halo effect means if you have a positive view of the candidate, you’re likely to give him or her more slack.  You think, 'I know they know this.' 
• The Horn or Devil Effect is the opposite - If you already have a negative opinion about a candidate, you consciously or unconsciously give that a candidate less credit.  These are well documented biases.
• Testing order bias affects graders and candidates.  
• After three poor candidates, a mediocre candidate may look good to graders.  

• Grading Standards - Is the grading scale clear and of a kind that the graders are familiar with?
• Are the expected answers and how to score them clear to the graders?
• Do the graders have enough time to calculate the scores consistently?
• Grader Training -
•  If they aren't well trained, it could take a while to figure out how to use their scoring techniques, so they score different at the end from the beginning. 

How Do You Overcome the Biases In More Subjective Tests Like Essays, Interviews, and Oral Exams?

Despite the popularity of job interviews, experts agree that they are among the most biased and result in the least accurate predictions of candidate job performane.  Or see this link.

You have to construct standardized, objective rubrics and grading scales - this is critical, particularly for essay and oral exams.

On November 9, 2016 when the electoral college vote totals were tallied, everyone saw the same facts, the same results.  But half the country thought the numbers were good and half thought they were bad. When evaluating the facts of a job or promotion candidate, the organization has to agree, before hand, what ‘good’ facts look like and what ‘bad’ facts look like. Good ones are valid ones - they are accurate predictors of who is more likely to be successful in the position.   Good and bad are determined by the test maker, not by the graders.  The graders merely test whether the performance matches the pre-determined standard of a good performance.

What’s a rubric?

It’s where you describe in as much detail as possible what a good answer looks like.  If you’re looking at content, you identify the key ideas in the answer, and possibly how many points a candidate should get if they mention each of those ideas.  It has to be as objective as possible. The Fire Safety Instructor Training Manual has some examples, but even those aren't as strong as they could be. 

Good rubrics take a lot of thought - but it's thought that helps you clarify and communicate what a good answer means so that different graders give the same answer the same score.

Here are some examples: 
UC Berkeley Graduate Student Instructors Training
Society For Human Resource Management - This example doesn't explicitly tell graders what the scores (1,2, 3, 4, 5) look like, as the previous one does.
BARS - Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales - This is an article on using BARS to grade Structured Interviews.  Look particularly at Appendices A & B. 
How Olympic Ice Skating is Scored - I couldn't find an actual scoring sheet, but this gives an overall explanation of the process.

My experience is that good rubrics force graders to ground their scores on something concrete, but they can also miss interesting and unexpected things.  It's useful for graders to score each candidate independently, and then discuss why they gave the scores they did - particularly those whose scores vary from most of the scores.  Individual graders may know more about the topic which gives their scores more value.  Or may not have paid close attention.   Ultimately, it comes down to an individual making a judgment.  Otherwise we could just let machines grade.  But the more precise the scoring rubric, the easier it is to detect bias in the graders. 


Accountability

Q:  What if a candidate thinks she got the answer right on a question, but it was scored wrong?

Everything in the test has to be documented.  Candidates should be able to see what questions they missed and how they were scored.  If the test key had an error, they should be able to challenge it. 

Q:  Are you saying everything needs to be documented?

If there is going to be any accountability each candidate’s test and each grader’s score sheets must be maintained so that if there are questions about whether a test was graded correctly and consistently from candidate to candidate, it can be checked. 

In the case of an oral exam or interview, at least an audio (if not video) record should be kept so that reviewers can see what was actually said at the time by the candidate and the graders. 

Q:  Have you strayed a bit from the Merit Principles?

Not at all. This all goes back to the key Merit Principle - selecting and promoting the most qualified candidates for the job.  There won’t be 100% accuracy. But in general, if the test is valid,  a high score will correlate with a high job performance.  But unless the test is also reliable, it won’t be valid. The more reliable the test, the more consistent the scores will be under different conditions and graders.  The best way to make tests more reliable is to make them as objective as possible.

Farrago Follow Up - What Will Trump Do?

The previous post, Farrago, meandered into the power struggles in the US and the assault on science in favor of fantastic explanations of things.  [I prefer 'fantastic explanations' to 'conspiracy theories' because there are in fact conspiracies and people who pursue real conspiracies - like the Federalist Societies 40 year plan to pack the Supreme Court with justices who would rule their way - aren't always 'crackpots.'] 

Reader Jacob left a lengthy comment which you can see there.    Rather than answer it there, I've decided to answer it in a new post.  

Well, since I know many of you won't go back to see what he wrote, I've decided to put it here again.

"Jakob in IrelandSunday, October 6, 2024 at 5:07:00 AM AKDT

Hi Steve. Just a thought from across the pond...

When you started your enquiry last year asking HOW we got to this point (of finding more & more people believing the unproven in so many things around us) you more often than not explained the difference boiling down to university education levels. 

I felt, and still do, that you do have the view of someone from the world of questions, of successfully negotiating the discipline of the academic reasoning & rewards. I also acknowledge that you (graciously) agreed that talent isn't limited to intellectual gifts, but also those of the 'multiple intelligences' view of human ability & talents.

So with all that, we plunged (as so many did then) into just HOW we could be at this political junction of PRO and CON re what we thought to be ‘dictator-in-waiting’ Donald Trump. We didn't succeed in pinning the tail-on-that-donkey, did we?

So today, I’m wiping my slate clean: I’m with many, if not most here, asking this question: Does Mr Trump plan to win regardless his methods to achieve it?

Given these past years of many quick checks and deep dives with so-many streams of thought & analysis, I have honed my own little thought for this presidential election in America, if anyone wishes to consider it. Mr Trump’s preparation is laid, his goal easy to know. He only awaits the day in which his blow will be struck.

Mr. Trump’s seizure of the presidency (at precious cost to a Republic) can be affirmed by his Supreme Court and a Congress with too-narrow mandate to intervene in a politically effective way. But most importantly, far too many Americans have ‘drunk the Kool-Aid’.

I am nearly 18 years from living in the USA now; I am also a person born to its promise & culture, to its history & dreams. I moved countries to know other histories, other ways of seeing law, culture & dreams. I can admit my shock to see so many Americans willing to surrender rule-of-law to a man of autocratic instincts, hoping his constitutional betrayal will deliver their aspirations. I have told European friends (here) that Americans have bedrock faith in their Constitution and its rule-of-law standards. It will win out.

Now I suspect I held a child’s faith: Too many Americans are faith-weary. So many flock to a ‘strong man’ promising his so-sweet nothing, “I’ll take back control for you.”

I am sorry to say that I am relieved to live where I do, where so very many here are asking, “What is happening to the USA?”"

Here's my response.  

Jacob,  

Lots of questions rolled up into the reply.  And lots of answers too.  

First, your comment “you more often than not explained the difference boiling down to university education levels.”  I suspect that reflects more what you hear than what I’ve said over the years.  I have indeed argued that good education does train students to think logically and critically (among other things.)  That could start happening in elementary school and be honed further in middle and high school in a good school with good teachers.  At good schools the attentive students graduate with varying levels of those skills.  And I've acknowledged that a rigorous logical, left brain, education is the best way to start all kids.  But I would add that all kids should be given the space to work on something that interests them, and a good school would then use their areas of interest, to cultivate logical reasoning in a context that makes sense to each kid.  

As students go deeper into those topics at the university level, they can improve on those skills.  Statistics that show college educated voters tend (note ‘tend’) to lean more Democratic than people with fewer years of education.  

“The last few election cycles have been marked by an increasing divergence in outcomes based on education levels, with Democrats making serious gains with college-educated voters while Republicans win far greater shares of non-college educated white voters.” from Politico  

But you don’t have to get those skills only in school.  People who are different in some significant way from the ‘average’ - different religion, ethnicity, sexual identity, etc. - often grow up in at least two different worlds: 1) their family and group world and 2) the larger white world that has traditionally ruled the US.  And for those with non-conforming gender identity, they can be in a different reality from their family.  

The dissonance between how these citizens who experience one reality at home and a different reality at school often gives them a leg up on seeing the big picture, on seeing there isn't just one reality.  

And there are lots of others who get the dissonance even if they don’t go to college.  And there are many college graduates who got by without learning how to think critically.  Or who can, but have blind spots where they can’t apply those skills.  Or they apply them in a twisted way.  Like logically justifying white nationalism or misogyny based on odd facts and premises.    

Getting back on track

Hoping people would come to their political senses when they were given the facts was not something I held out much hope for, though it’s my natural flex.  I used to tell students writing reports for actual administrators that emotions always trump reason if there’s a conflict between the two.  So they needed to know their clients’ values so they could write their reports not so it made sense only to the student, but also to the client.  

I did hold out hope that enough US voters would choose the Democratic candidate over Trump.  That isn’t unreasonable since that happened in 2016 and 2020.  Though the way the electoral college works, that’s not enough.  Harris has to win big so the GOP can’t fight with any credibility over crumbs in swing states.  And can’t plausibly argue that Trump won.  Of course there will always be those who deny reality as the 2020 election has shown.

Now to your first question, which you essentially answered yourself affirmatively.  

"Does Mr Trump plan to win regardless his methods to achieve it?"

I agree that he does plan to challenge the election no matter what.  All the talk of rigging elections is meant to get people ready for such a challenge. The bigger the margin of victory the harder that will be.  The many lawyers and others who have been fighting Trump’s original challenges in 2020 are well versed in his strategy and paying close attention to new ones.  

And this time round, Biden is in charge of the military and national guard and other levers of power that will be much better prepared than in 2021 post election.  

And the people he has working for him are skilled administrators - as we can see in the preparations for Helene and the coordinated efforts after the storm hit, getting inflation down, implementing the Infrastructure bill, etc.  

Will Trump supporters, those who believe all his lies, come out with weapons and raise hell?  Possible.  Even likely in some places.  

One other point I’d like to make concerning reason and non-reason.  It’s clearer and clearer that Putin and Iran and North Korea have all been using the internet to stir up conflict in the US (not to mention in UK and France and other parts of the world.).  We know about it explicitly in 2016.  It's been noted in every election since.  It’s likely they were at it earlier during the time they were grooming Trump as an asset.  They played a role in Brexit.   They’re at it over Gaza and Israel.  Taking down democracies strengthens their message to their own people that democracy is inherently unstable and bad.  It also makes their aggression much easier.  

Playing on people’s fears - of immigrants, of crime, of economic disaster - is always going to capture a certain number of people.  Trump’s non-stop lies, amplified by Fox, and main stream media,  is a well planned strategy to make it impossible to tell truth from fiction.  Everything Trump says is projection of his own actions onto his opponents.  With AI and hard to spot fake video, the ability to tell truth from lies gets harder.  All traditional authorities are challenged - scientists, universities, doctors, teachers, anyone who ‘can prove’ something with more than sweeping declarations of how things are, are targets.  The Right’s attack on public education is part of that package.  They want to get public money funneled to private schools that they can control.  

It’s ironic that until Reagan began attacking government, it was usually the Left that challenged government and the Right that defended it.  

Trump has good reason to fight for power, even after he loses.  If there is a Harris administration he will be on trial still and very likely sentenced to prison. At which point I wouldn’t be surprised if he fled to Cuba or another Russian ally.  Or Saudi Arabia.  

When he’s gone this isn’t over.  Our authoritarian enemies will continue to do what they can to weaken the West.  The Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society will continue to fight for the power of the rich white elite to control the country.  

Fortunately their perfect candidate is also a huge liability.  Republicans’ eagerness to exercise their post Roe power at the state level has alerted and alarmed sensible voters.  And their demands for abject loyalty has resulted in less than stellar candidates in down ballot races - like North Carolina’s Mark Robinson, candidate for Governor.  

We’ll know in a month how the election goes, and then we’ll have to wait and see how the post election goes.  

You may well have made a good decision when you established yourselves in Northern Ireland.  But if the US goes down, no one is safe.   

Farrago

[This was written Sept. 22, but I wrote it under Pages instead of Posts.  Pages are the tabs up above (and below the banner.  So I'm adding it in today.]

I've heard of Fargo, but farrago is a word that wasn't in my vocabulary until I saw this LA Times article on Sean M. Kirkpatrick, who is

"the first director of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO"

or the government's lead investigator of UFOs.

Here's where I encountered the word - I'm giving you more so you can see the context.

"From the start, Kirkpatrick says, he was determined to conduct a rigorously empirical inquiry: “We were looking for any data to substantiate any claims that were being made to Congress or in the social media arena.”

That applied not only to pilots’ reports of objects that seemed to have displayed unusual aeronautical behavior, but a farrago of reports in the press, online and among committed UFO believers about purportedly secret government programs to collect, examine and even attempt to reverse-engineer technology supposedly retrieved from crashed extraterrestrial UAPs."

My initial reaction was that the word was thrown in to sound erudite, as often is the case with such words.  But this is a perfect use of the word as I understand it after reading the definition.  

farrago /fə-rä′gō, -rā′-/

noun

An assortment or a medley; a conglomeration. A mass composed of various materials confusedly mixed; a medley; a mixture.Similar: medley/mixture

A collection containing a confused variety of miscellaneous things.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition

Also noteworthy in the article is the assault of the ignorant against science.

“In my case,” Kirkpatrick told me a few days ago, “I’ve been accused of lying to the American people.”

He further revealed to the Guardian that he had experienced efforts of UFO true believers to “threaten my wife and daughter, and try to break into our online accounts — far more than I ever had as the deputy director of intelligence [of U.S. Strategic Command]. I didn’t have China and Russia trying to get on me as much as these people are.” 

The article compares the folks who refuse to believe the findings that there was no evidence of extra terrestrial visitors to the folks who refuse to believe in the COVID origin stories or that vaccines work.  

That points to “a larger problem with public opinion about scientific inquiry — science by social media versus science by scientific method,” he says. “You’re seeing the degradation of critical thinking skills and rational thought when it comes to analyzing what’s out in the world.”

"When scientific data confound received beliefs, he says, 'people cry ‘conspiracy,’ or ‘the data is wrong,’ or ‘scientists are making it up.’... Well, some of these scientists have been around for 30 or 40 years. If you don’t believe they know what they’re doing, then what are you going to base your decisions on in the future? Just pure belief and speculation?'

Kirkpatrick is working on another article on the topic of misinformation. 'I see what I was doing on UAP and misinformation as a microcosm of many other issues that challenge the U.S. today. That is, the division across belief lines where evidence suggests a contrary opinion that conflicts with one’s own belief system or political system.'” 

 

Time To Try The Granola. Why People Should Stop Buying The Republican Brand

Suppose you're still buying the same brand of cereal your mom bought for you.  

But after years of loyalty, you've noticed that it no longer tastes or crunches the same, the boxes are smaller, they're only 2/3 full, and they cost way more.  The ingredients list lots of chemicals now.  Your stomach feels queasy after eating a bowl.  But at the store, your brain is wired to put  that brand in your cart.  .  

A friend says she's stopped buying that brand and now eats Brand Y granola.  "Granola," you reply, "that's hippie food."  

It's time to review your old prejudices and find out that granola is much better than that old brand you cling to without satisfaction.  

I suspect a lot of Republicans keep voting R because it's how they were raised.  Voting Democratic is like eating granola, even though they know that the R brand isn't what it used to be.  Plus they keep hearing  how evil the D brand is.  

But they've met Democrats, people at work, school, the gym.  They seem like ok people, on the surface anyway.  Some are even married, have kids, work, own homes, pay their bills on time, watch football and baseball, even hunt, and other 'normal' things. They don't appear to be the evil terrible people R politicians and media say they are.  

Republicans, your brand is no longer what it once was.  I know it's part of your identity.  But like any brand that has deteriorated over the years, it's time to let go.  

It's no longer the party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower.  Or even Nixon, Reagan, or the Bushes.  

Your brain is telling you it's time, but this is all you've known since you were a kid.  It's so hard to make a change, but it's time to face the reality that the R brand isn't the brand your parents raised you on.  It's now a toxic scam.  Time to try the granola.  

From Stolen Intellectual Policy To Heteropessimism To Climate Catastrophe Greeting Cards

A link to Capacious led me into a rabbit hole that didn't let go for several hours.  As an academic, I found the first story too real and too chilling a possibility. And also quite relevant to one of the presidential candidates. The other two I'll touch on here were much further outside my normal world.  The journal Capacious does have room for many things.

A Tweet sent me to Capaciousjournal to read an article ["How Intellectual Property Theft Feels"  Jordan Alexander Stein] by an English professor who submitted a book proposal on Cotton Mather to Yale University Press.  One reviewer gave it a green light.  The other said no.  Several years later, she gets an email about a new book from Yale University Press - on, you guessed it, Cotton Mather with a blurb that very closely copies her original proposal.  And then she finds out the author is the reviewer who nixed her proposal and the editor is the one she originally sent the proposal.  

She finds that her options are slim but minimally she wants an apology and an acknowledgement of the hurt this has caused her.  She gets neither. 

Her article covers a wide range of topics.  Money wasn't particularly an issue, because, as she says, books on Cotton Mather are aimed at a tiny niche audience. Aside from the deceit, a general despicableness of this sort of crime (I call it a crime, she says the law is fuzzy. The university classifies it under moral lapses) it caused real damage to the writer.  

"Having to look back at the past five years of my career, I suddenly saw that I’d mostly stopped researching and publishing on Puritan writers. Nor in that time had I attended even a single one of the field’s multiple annual conferences. All the Mather books in my office had been pushed into a corner where I now found them hibernating under five winters of dust. The humiliation I had felt years before as a response to the ad hominem nature of George’s reader report had knocked me off my professional course. It had happened by no means necessarily, and perhaps not on anyone’s part deliberately, but, I reluctantly found myself admitting, it had happened absolutely." (p. 103)

Essentially the reviewer/thief/author and the editor got away with it.  Nothing bad came of it for them (at least in the awareness of Jordan Alexander Stein.)  

And this seems emblematic of the age we live in.  Where the norms have broken down and the wheels of justice are too slow to keep up.  Trump perhaps will become the patron saint of sociopaths.  The Supreme Court has even awarded him with immunity that is probably broad and slippery enough for him to escape punishment for anything.  

Stein goes on to say this was not about money, but reputation.

"Universities meanwhile don’t operate at merely human levels; they have more abstract things like brands to protect. From their perspective, this kind of dust-up wouldn’t be about personal relationships, even when financial considerations are not involved. (Never mind that the university whose press Martha works for and which has published George’s edition of Mather is so incomprehensibly wealthy, and again the money at stake would be so little, that even the upper-limit damages from any hypothetical lawsuit of mine would be to them about as negligible as a rounding error). More typically, the issue is about the priceless thing called reputation. Universities do not want to be seen as having done something for which any liability must be assumed. What universities seek to protect is symbolic. And they protect it very well." (p. 106) (emphasis mine)

It's not like any of this is new.  Professors stealing the ideas of others is an age-old practice.  What is new is that there are many more platforms from which to call it out.  

 

While scrolling through the online copy of Capacious, I found several other articles that reminded me that people are thinking about and writing about things I have not given much attention to.  

[I'd note the links here.  The basic Capaciousjournal.com goes to a table of contents for the current edition - Vol. 3 No. 2  (2024).  This page has links to some of the articles in this edition - including the next one on Heteropessimism.  But the other articles can be found by clicking the PDF file for the whole edition.  Which I had to do to find the article above.  So for Stein article, you have to scroll down.  The Heteropessimism link takes you directly to that article.  The Greeting Card article you have to scroll down - it's right below the Stein article.]

"Heteropessimism and the Pleasure of Saying 'No.'”Samantha Pinson Wrisley

I have reactions to this article, but it's a discussion I have not been a party to (the article has 42 or 43 references) so I'll keep my thoughts to myself, just listen, and offer this quote from the author. 

 "I take the heteropessimistic connections between feminism and incel to their logical conclusion, showing that feminist heteropessimism’s inherent essentialism affectively cements the incongruous ideological positions of feminism to incel’s sexual nihilism. I conclude with an argument for the naturalization of negativity as part of a broader move toward accepting the ambiguities of heterosexual desire and the antagonism(s) that drive it."

After rereading this quote, I realize it most readers won't catch the drift of the article.  Basically, as I understood it, Wrisley argued that one area of feminism looks at heterosexual relations as difficult because they can't stand the men necessary to have heterol relationships.  She saw a similarity between this attitude and that of incels who are virgins because they can't attract women to have sex with them.  Both, thus being characterized as 'heteropessimistic.'

Finally:  "Greeting Cards For the Anthropocene"  Craig Campbell 

This one starts out with 

"In 1971 it cost only 50¢ for an eight page list of twenty-five Greeting Card companies in the USA and Canada that were buying greetings, captions, and ideas from hopeful writers."

He offers some examples of what the card makers wanted in people's pitches.  Using this idea, he moves closer to the present:

"In 2019, under the auspices of the Bureau for Experimental Ethnography, we launched the Greeting Cards for the Anthropocene project.2 We sought to understand climate feelings first by making cards for an invented category of ‘Climate Catastrophe’ in the greeting card aisle of the local pharmacy."

 The article includes some examples of related letters and such greeting cards. 

In many ways Capacious does what I set out to do in this blog long ago - look at things we often overlook, or look at what we see, but differently.  It rearranges the furniture of the brain.  And reminds me to do more of this sort of posts.  

Brian Taylor Cohen Interviews Heather Cox Richardson - Watch This!

This is an important interview by Brian Taylor Cohen, one of the brightest and most articulate commentators (I want to say on the air, and he does appear on cable news, but he's also a powerful presence on the internet via Twitter, YouTube, and other platforms) and Heather Cox Richardson, an important US historian who uses history to inform current events.  

A couple of points they make that jumped out at me. 

1. Taking Over World Money Supply. She talks about how Trump is 78 years old and not in great health, and could leave Vance in charge.  Vance is Thiel's pawn.  Peter Thiel is a 'tech bro' interested in crypto currency and this could lead to taking control over the world money supply.  

2. Whenever there is a new technology, and she lists mining, cotton, diamonds, copper, oil as examples, there are no regulations at first and a few people get very rich and powerful to the detriment of everyone else.

(#1 and #2 are intertwined starting around 5:45 to about 7:40)

3.  Trump's succeeded because his actions are so outrageous that people can't conceive he's being real.   They want to take away abortion, get rid of medicare, etc. people don't believe it.  They're planning that.  We need to take it seriously. (about 8:30 min)

4.  The Big Lie. If your roommate steals $20 you can get mad at him.  But if he schemes to take over your family's bank account, retirement funds, your family's  house, it's beyond comprehension.  Don't have emotional groundwork to get mad because it's too outrageous to imagine.  That's what Trump has done.  Of course the Supreme Court wouldn't give the President to commit crimes in office, but they did.(about 10:50)

5. History- Turning on a Dime - History taught me that American society can turn on a dime.  I've been waiting and it didn't happen.  But since Biden pulled out of race, the US has turned on a dime.  (about 17 min)

There's a lot in between that links each of the points together worth listening to.  

This video has two very bright people dissecting what's happening and where we seem to be going.  

At the end they push two of their books probably worth reading:

Richardson:  Democracy Awakening coming out in paperback in October

Cohen:  Shameless  How Republicans used long term plans to change the US, which we can see most clearly with the Supreme Court.  

Erkek or Adam?

Bear with me for a bit. (Or don't and just scroll down to JUMP TO HERE below.) I've been learning Turkish on Duolingo for a while.  It's good for vocabulary and some grammar.  There is a listening component that is helpful.  But this is language learning like I had in Jr. high and high school.  It's aimed at teaching through vocabulary and grammar.  For Peace Corps training (and later with the Confucius Institute) we were taught by memorizing dialogues.  

This latter method was much more effective for learning to speak.  We just repeated the dialogues, over and over and over, mimicking native speakers until the sentences were imbedded in our heads. This is how children learn a language.  By mimicking what they hear.  And only later when they instinctively know the grammar, do they learn the rules that explain why they say it the way they do.  There were also substitution drills - where the instructor would say a word and we had to use it to replace a word in the sentence.  For example:

I am going to the store.  

"office"

I am going to the office.  

When I arrived in my town, I had lots of useful sentences that I would roll off my tongue without thinking.  But when I learn the Duolingo way, with grammar and vocabulary memorization, I struggle to remember the rules so I can put a sentence together correctly. 

Today as I was doing my Turkish lesson, I was wondering why they sometimes used the word üzürinde to mean 'on' and sometimes used üstünde.  Googling got me to a Quora page which had several explanations.  Basically they are used interchangeably said one responder.  Another agreed that practically, that is the case, though üstünde means more 'above'.

JUMP TO HERE

Below the explanation of two Turkish words that mean 'on' there was another explanation of two words for 'man' - erkek and adam.  These are also words I've learned and never asked why one or the other. One is longer and uses a story.  One is short and to the point.  

Emre Sermutlu

Knows TurkishAuthor has 613 answers and 1.6M answer views5y

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What is the difference between adam and erkek in the Turkish language?

Let me put it that way, only a small percentage of all “erkek”s are also “adam”s.

Here's a famous story about the concept of “adam”ness. Once there was a boy who was good for nothing. His father, after seeing his attempts for reforming the youth frustrated, said finally “You will never be adam! “

(This is the part that is difficult to translate. The father means “upright man” when he says “adam”, but the boy in his ignorance perceives it as “great man”)

Later, the boy leaves his village and after a lot of adventures, becomes the grand vizier of the Sultan. One day he remembers his father (whom he never visited) and his harsh words. He sends a group of soldiers to fetch him, without ever telling them he is his father. So they bring the old guy in terrible condition, as if he is a criminal.

In the palace, the son proclaims “You said I would never be a man. As you can see, I am the vizier now! “

Which the father responds:

“But I never said you will not be vizier. I said you will not be “adam”. Seeing how you treat your father, I can say you still haven't become an adam!”

Serkan Narin

Bachelor in Language, Marmara University (Graduated 2010)3y

Related

What is the difference between adam and erkek in the Turkish language?

Erkek is how you are called when you are born with a dick while adam is how you are called when you are not a dick. 

The second answer cleverly gets right to the point.  Though I'm sure having read the first explanation, helped me appreciate the second.  

And I immediately thought that this would be a great way to differentiate between Kamala Harris' newly announced vice presidential running mate and Trump's.  

Now I need someone who knows Yiddish and Turkish to tell me whether my guess that adam is akin to mensch. 

This Sure Was A Convenient Assassination Attempt

I started to write first impressions of the shots toward the ex-president Saturday night, but I decided to wait til there was more information.  

As I wait, there really isn't a lot more so far.  Days later.  

It's possible that some lone Republican 20 year old decided to take his AR15 out to where Trump was speaking, climb up on a roof about 150 yards from the ex-president, with a bunch of people seeing him and pointing him out to police and the Secret Service.  It's possible that at the very last minute a local cop saw him and ducked and then the kid shot wildly at the ex-president before a Secret Service sniper shot him.  

It's possible he heard this InfoWars with Ivan Raiklin and Alex Jones discussing how assassinating Trump would absolutely win the election for the Republicans.  Maybe he heard them last February, or more recently, and when Trump came to speak an hour from his home, he decided to act.  

But I think about the Nazis and the Reichstag fire in 1933.  It never was clear that the Nazis arranged for the fire themselves though there are historians who believe they did.  Whether they did or not, they used it to their advantage.  

"[It] induced President Paul von Hindenburg to issue the Reichstag Fire Decree suspending civil liberties, and pursue a "ruthless confrontation" with the Communists.[1] This made the fire pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany." [from Reichstag Fire link above]

A Trump attempted assassination that he survives pretty much unscathed the weekend before the NRC convention.  Two days before Judge Cannon dismisses all charges against Trump in the confidential documents case on what most legal experts are saying are crazy grounds.  

This is not nearly as far-fetched as the pedo pizza parlor.  

Really, how did the Secret Service around Trump know the sniper was shot dead?  How did they know there wasn't another sniper?  They didn't, yet let Trump stay there on the stage long enough for him to do his fist pumps.  He should have been hustled away to cover.  Unless. . .

I'm not saying this is what happened.  But I'm leaving it there until it's looked into more thoroughly.  It is as plausible as the lone 20 year old Republican getting through security long enough to shoot at his party's presidential candidate.  

The reporting has been terrible.  The Anchorage Daily News ran a national story today which still alleged that Crooks had donated $15 to a progressive get-out-the-vote campaign in January 2021.  How many 17 year olds make political contributions?  How many Republican 17 year olds make political contributions to progressive campaigns?  This story was already debunked by Sunday if not sooner, when people found another man named Thomas Crooks, a 60 something Democrat, who lives in Pittsburgh and is credited with the contribution.  But, sure.  I don't know that for certain.  

I don't doubt that the Biden team can get a lot more votes than the Trump team.  I am concerned that the party that tried to overturn the election in 2021, will do everything it can to suppress voting, fiddle with voting machine counts, and everything they can think of to throw the election for Trump.  

A Beto O'Rourke interview laid out the many ways the Republicans in Texas have blocked Democrats from voting - from purging the rolls, to putting one polling place in Black neighborhoods, forcing voters to wait in 8 hour lines to vote.  

How one has to pass a test and get certified to register voters, and you have to do that in every county separately.  They're doing this, he said, because they know whites are no longer the majority in Texas and it's only a matter of time.  And if Trump wins this election, they will be able to put off the inevitable forever.  

There are plenty of ways to get involved.  One of the easiest is postcardstovoters.org  This technique - writing post cards to left leaning citizens who don't regularly vote - has gotten lots of people to vote in recent elections.