Ormond

Is the jury pool for this trial drawn from all of New York City, or just from Manhattan? If it's the latter, I am sure Manhattan would have a higher percentage of corporate lawyers as residents than almost any other jurisdiction in the United States.

So far I have only read Fevre Dream and a couple of his books of short stories. But in some ways I liked Fevre Dream even more than ASOIAF. I am normally not a fan of vampire tales, but the way Martin describes his vampires and what causes vampirisim in Fevre Dream seemed better to me than any other way I've seen it done. I really think it's an excellent novel.

I don't know where the authors of the above are from themselves, but as someone who's never read Rothfuss, does he really use the word "fannies" to describe female genitalia? That would be remarkable for an American author.

I got so busy yesterday I forgot to post the link to my column: https://omaha.com/life-entertainment/local/cleveland-evans-russell-is-a-surname-that-became-a-common-first-name/article_393d2bd0-f2af-11ee-b562-07d76feb49a8.html One of the interesting differences in naming between the UK and USA is how in the former people called "Rusty" and "Ginger" are normally thought to have the nickname because they have red hair, while until very recently in the USA these were primarily thought of as pet forms for Russell and Virginia, respectively. "Ginger" as a term for "redhead" in particular is a Britishism which has only started being used in the USA in the last few decades. The famous American actress Ginger Rogers was born as a Virginia and did not have red hair.

If you're not into Christian Nationalist Bibles -- my latest Trump email informs that I can get an official Metal Black Trump Card!

I guess whether this is more or less likely with the Electoral College or with direct popular vote isn't my main point. I still think it's a much greater possibility with first-past-the-post rather than with either a runoff system or ranked choice voting. Of course even those don't make it entirely impossible, but at least if a demagogue is elected with one of those systems we could more truly say the electorate has gotten what they deserve.

Back in 2020 Ann Leckie declined a nomination for The Raven Tower. I wonder why she didn't do the same for Translation State.

Yes, that would be one of the other options as an alternative to ranked choice voting.

Personally I think for a bipartisanship or "moderate" movement to really work we need to get every state to adopt something like "ranked choice" voting as now exists in Alaska and Maine, or something similar that would lessen the problems with "first past the post" elections. I would certainly be in favor of moving to a national vote total Presidential election rather than the electoral college. But my worry about that is that it might encourage people to run as third party candidates even more than the present system, and that would make a Trump-like demagogue even more likely to come out with the highest % of votes even if well over 50% of the voters are actually rejecting them. So if we go to a national popular vote system, I want ranked choice or some other system that makes such an outcome less likely as part of it.

And a couple of links to obituaries for John Barth: https://hub.jhu.edu/2024/04/02/john-barth-writing-seminars-obituary/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2024/04/02/john-barth-author-dead-obituary/

Maryse Conde, who won the "alternative Nobel Prize" and has generally been considered one of the authors in the running for the actual Nobel for years, has died at age 90. https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/03/style/mayse-conde-author-nobel-literature-dies-90/index.html https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-68712276 https://www.conchovalleyhomepage.com/entertainment-news/ap-maryse-conde-prolific-grande-dame-of-caribbean-literature-dead-at-age-90/amp/

That we all have images in our dreams from our personal past (and especially from what went on the day before) doesn't mean that every single image is from something that personally happened to you. For modern people, the "personal past" would also include all the images you have from all the movies and TV shows you've seen and books you've read, which might account for a lot of bizarre imagery these days.

Is the "Best Game or Interactive Work" a new category? I don't remember that one from the past, but as I am seriously old and not the best at paying attention to the Hugos, maybe my memory is faulty.

On the "Evangelicals" and politics issue -- more and more people, especially Southern White men, who label themselves "Evangelical" actually never or almost never go to church. They are actually more right-wing and Trumpist on average than Evangelicals who do actually participate in churches. Here's an article from Christianity Today by a historian about this: https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2022/august-web-only/church-attendance-sbc-southern-evangelicals-now-lapsed.html His conclusions (when he says "When people leave church", he's just talking about the White Evangelicals who he gives statistics on earlier in the article):

The idea that most Buddhists are "atheists" seems to be a big misunderstanding to me. Buddhism may not have a "Creator God" concept or an idea that there is a God/Goddess who is omniscient or omnoipotent, but they certainly have a belief in a separate realm of spiritual existence where there are many powerful beings -- often specifically called gods or goddesses -- who can have some influence on humans. Wikipedia has an article on Buddist dieties that explains the variety of such beings that many Buddhists believe in. There are probably some highly educated and sophisticated Buddhists who would accept "atheist" as a self-definition, but they would be a minority among adherents of that religion. For the most part, people who call Buddhists "atheists" are adherents of Western religions who think if you don't believe in an omnipotent Creator you are an "atheist", which would make all sorts of polytheists "atheists", which seems untenable to me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_deities

If you think there should be an RIP thread in General Chatter, start one!! I did exactly that in the Literature section so that discussion of the deaths of authors could be moved out of this thread in Entertainment, and it's worked out well. There is no reason why you or someone else couldn't do the same in General Chatter. As a retired psychology professor I of course think Daniel Kahneman's death does deserve to be mentioned somewhere.

I think it's fine for atheists to declare themselves as such. But I do not think saying you "have no religious affiliation" in an exit poll means that one is an atheist. I think it simply means that one does not identify as being a member of a particular religious group or congregation. Not only would the "no religious affiliation" people include most who identify as "agnostic" rather than "atheist", but depending on exactly how the question was worded and what alternatives were given, it could include people who have strong religious beliefs but who do not belong to or attend a church or other religious organization. And there are now millions of such people in the USA -- many people who will claim to be "evangelical Christians" never attend church -- and those people are even more likely to hold "Christian nationalist" views than self-identifed "Evangelicals" who do attend church. And there of course would also be many Americans who have vague "New Agey" or "cafeteria" religious beliefs who would say they have "no religious affilication" while still saying they "believe in God."

Did you read what you linked to? Though this is good news, it is NOT a "deep red" district: I would think an Alabama district which Trump only won by a single % point in 2020 must actually be one of the more liberal areas within that state.

Sorry, I did not see what you were responding to. I disagree that there is "very little" research indicating causal linkage. Researchers can't do "causual" research on violence which would involve people really harming others, but there certainly is research examining things through cross-lagged correlations and the like that seems to show that more of the causation is from watching violent media to being violent, rather than being violent getting one to consume more violent media. No, there are no easy fixes. And it is ridiculous that many right-wing politicians try to blame recent violence just on video games -- as I understand it there being no evidence that video games are more likely to be associated with real violence in their users than simply watching violent TV or movies -- and more importantly, gun control would be a way more effective way to reduce violence in the USA than doing any censorship of media. I personally think parents should be encouraged to limit the amount of violent media of any type their children consume -- and that depictions of violence in the media should be encouraged to show more realistic consequences for the victims -- but I think that should be voluntary and not mandated by government.

No one with any sense has ever claimed that violent media was the ONLY factor in violent behavior. Within Japan, as in other countries, those who consume more violent media are more likely to be violent themselves. That the overall rate of violence is lower in Japan is due to all the other cultural differences they have.

I know some of you are skeptical of the Lincoln Project, but as a fan of musicals I love how this video uses The Phantom of the Opera to laugh at Trump:

I really don't think that's exclusively an "American" fantasy. And very often the "hero" in such a fantasy is precisely a wealthy and/or aristocratic person who has made themselves an outsider in order to fight for the "common people." Robin Hood, anyone? I really think many of Trump's admirers have the misperception that he is some sort of combination of Robin Hood, John Wayne, Zorro, and Daddy Warbucks. P.S. Here are links for those of you who may be too young to know who Zorro and Daddy Warbucks are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zorro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daddy_Warbucks

I do not think your assumption is correct, at least not if you are defining "attractive" as "attractive in terms of immediate physical attraction." Trump is going to be attractive as a potential sexual partner to lots of women just because he is rich and powerful, regardless of what they think of his physical looks. And many others who have been "womanizers" in history have been successful at it because of their wealth, power, or forceful personalities, not because they are particularly handsome.

Here is the link to today's column: https://omaha.com/life-entertainment/local/cleveland-evans-shakespeare-is-the-author-of-the-name-jessica/article_a4c40d54-e712-11ee-bad4-1b98c7a4e7e5.html There wasn't enough space to give Grant Smith's full argument about his belief that Jessica was created from the falconry term "jess". He believes that in the play Shylock refers in a punning way to his servant Launcelot (who also runs away) as a "haggard", which was a term for a wild or unmanageable hawk. Smith notes that hunting falcons or hawks were ususually female, and says the -ica ending of Jessica is the same Latin suffix found in words like Judaic and erotica, indicating "collective information about a subject", so that Jessica's name would mean "information about jesses" to someone who knew Latin grammar -- as Shakespeare probably did, as part of normal schooling in England in his day was learning Latin and having drills in its grammar.Personally I am not convinced Shakespeare was ONLY thinking about jesses when he created the name. However, it is certainly true that his audience would have been much more familiar with falconry and with the word "jess" than modern audiences are, and surely he would have known many of the viewers of the play in his day would make an association between the name Jessica and the word "jesses". I think it is part of Shakespeare's brilliance that he was able to come up with a name for the character with combines Jewish, Italian, and falconry associations to make a completely appropriate name for her. And I was certainly surprised that the first Jessicas who were born in the USA in the early 19th century were Jewish. I suppose the fact that Shylock and Jessica were some of the very few Jewish characters educated people would have know at the time overcame the fact that Shakespeare's Jessica converts to Christianity to run off with her lover.

Here is a link to Vernor Vinge's obituary in Locus: https://locusmag.com/2024/03/vernor-vinge-1944-2024/ I haven't read any of the books in his "Zones of Thought"series yet, but I did read Rainbows End a few years ago and really enjoyed it.