Month: March 2024

Why does Easter move around? The short answer is that the Bible suggests Jesus was resurrected on the third day after Passover, and since Passover moves around, so does Easter.

Slightly longer answer: In 325 AD, the Council of Nicaea decided that the leap months in the Hebrew calendar made it unreliable, so they decreed a new calculation that placed Easter at the same general time but without any reference to Passover: the first full moon of spring. Christians had already decided Easter should be on Sunday, which gives us the modern dating: Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.

Fine. But still: why? Wouldn't it make more sense to calculate the date of Passover in the year of the crucifixion, add two days, and then use that going forward? This date is a matter of disputation, but surely some ancient council could have ordered a scholarly investigation and then just decreed something? April 5th seems most likely, and if you insist on Sunday it would be the first Sunday on or after April 5. Easter would still move around a bit, but no more than a holiday affected by the Monday Holiday Bill.

I'm unable to find an explanation for this historical oddity. And odd it is, since calculating the date of Easter and proclaiming it throughout the Roman Empire every year was a real problem for the early church. A fixed date would have saved everyone a lot of trouble.

The origins of the Easter Bunny and Easter eggs are similarly fuzzy. Eggs are part of the Seder plate in Jewish tradition, and the early Christian church may have adopted them thanks to the link between Passover and the resurrection. Alternatively, they originated for unknown reasons in the Middle East and then migrated to Europe. Then again, it might be only that eggs are a sign of spring and fertility and became associated with Easter that way. There's also a theory that they became associated with Easter because they were forbidden during Lent. Take your pick.

The bunny came later. Back in the Dark Ages the Saxons worshipped a fertility goddess named Eostre and called April Eosturmonath. Linguistically, this is where the English word Easter originates. Eoster may have been symbolized by a hare, which then became associated with Easter itself. Or maybe not. In any case, by the Renaissance German Lutherans had adopted a story told to children that the hare laid the eggs, and a nest was needed for them. Thus was born the Easter basket filled with nesting material and colorful eggs. Over time the hare became a rabbit and that's where we are today.

Behold Donald Trump's Easter morning message of redemption and grace to the American people:

There's an ancient online controversy about how best to respond to manufactured outrage like this. One camp says we should ignore it. The folks who produce this stuff just want attention, so by responding we're taking the bait. The other camp says that it's not enough for only political junkies to see this stuff. The broad public needs to see it in its raw form, and by burying it we let the lunatic right off the hook.

I've gone back and forth about this, but these days I lean toward engaging with it. An awful lot of non-MAGA voters seem to believe that Trump has moderated over the past few years, which just isn't true. Not in policy and not in rhetoric. It's hard to get people excited about policy, but what if Trump's tirades were read every day on the evening news? Would swing voters start to get the message?

More generally, lefty Twitter has lately been discussing the state of conservative opinion chatterers. The current shape of things is that mainstream TV and print outlets feature plenty of "Never Trump" Republicans but not many MAGA Republicans. But MAGA Republicans represent a big chunk of the country. Shouldn't they be represented?

The problem with this is obvious: mainstream outlets don't want people who are going to yell and scream and spout endless lies. They want sober, intelligent analysts. But it's hard to find MAGA partisans who fit this description.

Is it time to give up on this? Maybe middle America needs to be exposed to raw, violent, dimwitted MAGA sewage, if that represents the real world. Or would this just give the lunatics the attention they crave?

It's an endless debate and there's still no good answer.

The incarceration rate of the Black male community has dropped in half since 2001, from 3.3% to 1.6%. That's substantial, but even the 2022 number is largely the result of a lot of inertia: men who were imprisoned years ago with long sentences remain in prison today.

But as Rick Nevin reports, the story is far better among young Black men, who are mostly incarcerated because they were admitted recently. Among the youngest Black men, the incarceration rate has plummeted by nearly 90%, from 2.9% to 0.3%:

Incarceration rates are higher for men in their 20s, but the decline in their incarceration rate has been nearly has impressive: about 70% since 2001.

As older men age out of their sentences and are released, we should expect the incarceration rate of Black men overall to continue dropping, probably to well under 1%.

The reason for the steep drop in incarceration is twofold. First, crime rates have fallen dramatically since their peak in 1991, leading to lower arrest and incarceration rates. Second, less punitive treatment of nonviolent drug offenses has produced a lower overall incarceration rate. In 2001, about 21% of all prisoners were being held on drug convictions. By 2022 that had dropped to 12%.

POSTSCRIPT: The total prison population in the US has dropped by nearly a quarter in just the past decade:

This decrease comes in the face of a still rising overall population. The incarceration rate in the US has dropped by more than a quarter.

What's really going on with aid deliveries into Gaza? Let's start with two numbers that everyone seems to agree on:

• Before the war, about 500 trucks entered Gaza daily. Those weren't all food and medicine, of course, but that much capacity existed.
• After the war started, the number of aid trucks started very low and has increased gradually but erratically since then. In March, about 150 aid trucks entered daily.
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So about 150 trucks get in each day, but here's the question that prompted me to look into this: How many trucks try to enter Gaza? From NBC News:

“They limit the number of trucks that can pass,” Mohamed Nossair, head of operations at the Egyptian Red Crescent, said of Israeli officials.... Unclear restrictions imposed by Israel have resulted in an average of 20 to 25 trucks turned away every day, about a fifth of the number that end up crossing into Gaza, he said.

This suggests that only 170 trucks are available for Gaza even if Israel lets everything through. But then there's this from Reuters:

In mid-March, a line of trucks stretched for 3 kilometers along a desert road near a crossing point from Israel into the Gaza Strip.... About 50 kilometers from Gaza, more aid trucks — some 2,400 in total — were sitting idle this month in the Egyptian city of Al Arish, according to an Egyptian Red Crescent official.

Three kilometers is not as much as it sounds like. Maybe 400 trucks? Still, it suggests that more than 170 trucks are ready and waiting if Israel would let them in. Maybe.

Now consider this from the very start of the war:

We need to start with a serious number of trucks going in and we need to build up to 100 trucks a day," the UN's Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths told CNN Europe.

We've been over 100 trucks per day for months, but apparently that's nowhere near enough. Recent estimates put Gaza's needs at about 300 trucks per day. Why? Did the UN simply miscalculate? Or, as Israel alleges, is it because Hamas steals huge amounts of food and medical aid?

In any case, are 300 truckfuls of aid even available? This is what I'm most curious about but I can't find anything reliable about it. Transit capacity is a little easier: On a few occasions as many as 240 trucks have entered Gaza in a single day, which means that Israel is capable of inspecting and approving that many. This is pretty close to what's needed.

In southern Gaza, at least, this means that if the aid is available and Hamas doesn't steal it and Israel bestirs itself to perform at a level it's proven it can maintain, there should be roughly enough aid to go around. Certainly enough to stay far away from famine.

It's a different story in the north. Southern Gaza is dangerous, but if aid is available and Israel lets it through, it can reach refugees in Rafah and elsewhere. The route into northern Gaza, by contrast, is so dangerous that very few aid agencies are willing to risk making deliveries. This is a far more difficult problem, and probably requires Israeli military escorts to solve it. This might be in the works, but time will tell.

Some food for thought:

Wait. ChatGPT overuses the word "delve"? Apparently so. According to a dataset of 50,000 ChatGPT responses, its ten most overused words are:

1. Explore
2. Captivate
3. Tapestry
4. Leverage
5. Embrace
6. Resonate
7. Dynamic
8. Testament
9. Delve
10. Elevate

I guess if these words start showing up on my blog you'll know that I've died and been replaced by a robot. Sort of like all those books that Tom Clancy keeps writing.

I guess all's fair in love and politics, but the Trump campaign blasted Joe Biden today for his "years-long assault on the Christian faith." Why? Because he "formally proclaimed Easter Sunday as 'Trans Day of Visibility.'" The page with the proclamation even has an Easter bunny logo at the top, proving that they're deliberately targeting Easter.

FFS:

• Every page on the White House site has an Easter bunny logo right now.
• Trans Day of Visibility, whatever you think of it, is an international celebration created 15 years ago. It's always on March 31, and it's just a coincidence that Easter happens to be on the same day this year. It happened last in 2013 and will happen again in 2086.¹
• Tomorrow also happens to be César Chávez Day, Freedom Day (Malta), King Nangklao Memorial Day (Thailand), Thomas Mundy Peterson Day (New Jersey), Transfer Day (US Virgin Islands), and World Backup Day.²

Naturally Fox News is all over this. Brian Stelter has the whole nauseating story here.

¹Oddly, my source for this is the US Census Bureau. I don't know why the Census Bureau was given the job of keeping track of Easter.

²Seriously: "World Backup Day is a commemorative date celebrated annually by the backup industry and tech industry all over the world.... Every year on March 31, companies tweet and have podcasts about the importance of backing up data to prevent data loss. On the website WorldBackupDay.com people can make a pledge in ten languages on various social media channels about the importance of backing up their data."

Last year the Fed issued some new banking rules. Big banks didn't like them, so they teamed up a few weeks ago with the US Chamber of Commerce to sue. They chose to file their suit in Amarillo, Texas, where it was guaranteed to be heard by Matthew Kacsmaryk, a reliable Republican judge.

The Chamber of Commerce did the same thing in February when it sued the CFPB over late fees, but it got a shock: the reliable Texas judge in the case ruled that since the Chamber, the CFPB, and nearly all the lawyers in the case resided in Washington DC, it was ridiculous to hear the case in Forth Worth. He transferred the case to the DC district court.

But it turns out the Chamber's big mistake in the CFPB case was picking a judge who wasn't quite reliable enough. On Friday Kacsmaryk did what a made man is supposed to do: he kept the banking case and quickly imposed a nationwide injunction against the new rules. This despite the fact that, again, the Chamber, the American Banking Association, the Fed, and nearly all the lawyers in the case reside in Washington DC.

In other words, venue shopping isn't quite over yet, despite new rules and the example of Mark Pittman in the CFPB case. The key is to pick a judge who's enough of a zealot that he doesn't care about appearances. Matthew Kacsmaryk is that man, and not just in abortion cases.

(LONG AND POSSIBLY POINTLESS) POSTSCRIPT: The Fed case is about the Community Reinvestment Act, which is designed to force banks to fairly lend money to everyone in their communities, even poor people. Back when it was passed, "communities" meant the places where the banks had physical branches, since that was where they did business.

But times change, and today banks lend all over the place thanks to mobile and online banking. So the Fed and a few other agencies issued a new rule that, among other things, more broadly defines "communities" to mean wherever banks do lending.

Maybe this makes sense, maybe it doesn't. However, since I'm easily amused, I was amused by Kacsmaryk's effort to own the Fed via his pedantic insistence on quoting the dictionary about what "community" means:

That the word “community” necessarily involves a limited geographic area is indisputable.... “the people with common interests living in a particular area” and a “population of various kinds of individuals . . . in a common location.” Community, MERRIAM-WEBSTER, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/community, 2024).

But just as banks are now online, so are people like me. It's the work of a few seconds to bring up the exact definition that Kacsmaryk relied on. Here it is:

What a judge! Webster's has six separate definitions of community, and four of the six specifically define it as a group of people with common interests but no geographical boundary.

wtf? Did Kacsmaryk seriously think that no one besides him could open a dictionary and look at its definitions? He's not just a hack, he's an idiot. Which, of course, is perfect for the Chamber of Commerce.

I can't say this has never happened before, but I noticed something while reading the LA Times at breakfast this morning: it had no ads. The A section had literally not a single ad, and the B section had a few obituaries and classified ads, but not a single display ad. Not one.

This is not to say there was nothing at all. Saturday is the day for the weekly "Hot Property" supplement, which is a thick—and profitable—collection of high-end real estate for sale. So the Times is not quite without any ad revenue at all.

Still, not a single display ad in the entire regular newspaper. If you want to know why local papers are failing, this is a sign of the times.

What am I?

I don't mean this in some grand philosophical sense. I just mean politically. Back in the day I was fond of calling myself an FDR liberal, but while that had the right vibe it wasn't easily understood.

Then for a while it seemed like everyone was consumed by Europe and I said, screw it, I'm a social democrat. That leaves plenty of scope and describes me pretty well, but again, it's pretty easily misunderstood, especially here in America.

So I'd say, it just means I'm a pragmatic liberal. Which is correct, but not especially descriptive.

Or maybe a center lefty. Also correct, but only for certain things and among certain crowds. And it's both boring and redolent of journalese.

Neoliberal shill? That really only means I'm a free-market capitalist to some extent or another, and anyway, it's just a joke.

Liberal but not progressive? That's only partly true, and even I'm not 100% sure what it means these days.

So what now? I'm tempted to say I'm a normie liberal, which suggests that I'm in favor of universal health care and abortion for all but distinguishes me from the ultra-woke Twitter lunatics. Unfortunately, this term is probably pretty well understood on Twitter but not necessarily anywhere else.

So what am I?

Do I have any doctors in the audience? I have a question for you.

Today I had a prostate biopsy. It was scheduled for 8 am, which meant I had to get up at 6 am in order to take the required antibiotic and then give myself an enema.

Next Friday I get the results. In a 7 am video call.

When I was up at City of Hope last year, I went into the day hospital every morning. This was not a time sensitive thing: it was mainly to give me a couple of hours of IV fluids. But they insisted on booking me to come in at 7 am every single day. (I eventually switched to a 9 am slot, but only after some truly superlative whining and moaning.)

A few years ago Marian had some minor surgery. She was required to present herself at 6 am.

And of course there are the famous 4 am blood draws every morning when you're in the hospital.

I think you can see where this is going. Why the insistence on scheduling procedures in the dead of morning? I know the official excuse: we have to do it in the morning because we have patient consults in the afternoon. But come on. You could do it the other way just as easily. Or you could do procedures early on some days and late on others, which would accommodate patients of all preferences.

Partly this is just the usual gripe of us night owls about how the world is run by early birds who think nothing of brightly saying, "Hey, let's get an early start on the day and have a 7 am staff meeting." (But who would be lynched if they suggested staying late for a 6 pm staff meeting.)

But mainly I just want to know the answer. Why are doctors like this? I realize you were all tortured during your residencies and the senior doctors just laughed if you complained, and believe me, I sympathize. But that's no reason to take it out on your patients for the rest of your lives.

So what's the deal?