Minnesota politics gets Byzantine
Good evening,
More than 80 of you have already voted in our contest to determine the best orator in the Minnesota Legislature. That's awesome, but I think you'll agree that's not nearly enough! (Also, we currently have a tie for the top vote-getter.) Vote here through noon Friday!
State Rep. John Thompson has been in the news for questions about his legal residency, but that's not why he's in Hennepin County District Court this week. Instead, by coincidence, Thompson is currently in the middle of a jury trial relating to a 2019 arrest during a confrontation at a hospital. Thompson is facing misdemeanor charges, which typically end up with either a plea bargain or dropped charges before a trial. [ Read more from Deanna Weniger in the Pioneer Press]
Families are starting to get child credits in their bank account today of up to $300 per child, part of the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package passed this year. The program is temporary, but Democrats hope it will prove popular and be extended as a poverty-reduction program, while some Republicans have criticized it as an "anti-work welfare check." [Read more from The Associated Press]
Should the last 20 years be seen as an organizational triumph for the American Left? [Read more from Mark Schmitt in Democracy]
The Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol has drawn lots of heated arguments about the degree to which it can be compared to Hitler or Mussolini. But author John Ganz argues that a better comparison may be a largely forgotten incident in February 1934, when French right-wing crowds tried to storm the French Chamber of Deputies. And you know I'm a sucker for any comparisons to French history... [Read more from Unpopular Front]
Today Gov. Tim Walz signed an executive order restricting minors from undergoing "conversion therapy," the controversial technique where counselors attempt to change patients' sexual orientation. Walz's order isn't actually a ban — governors can't do that by fiat, and legislative Republicans rejected DFL efforts to ban the practice by law. Instead, Walz ordered state agencies to block insurers from paying for the treatment for minors. [Read more from The Associated Press]
The socially conservative Minnesota Family Council called Walz's order "executive overreach" and an attack on the rights of patients, families and therapists. Walz called conversion therapy a "byzantine, torturous process."
And if you didn't think that quote would send me off on a tangent about the Eastern Roman Empire, you're badly mistaken! I'm a longtime listener of Robin Pierson's "The History of Byzantium" podcast, which has tracked the story of the Romans from the 5th Century up through the 12th in nearly 300 well-researched episodes over many years. One of many striking takeaways from the show is guest academic David Gyllenhaal's explanation about how in the years after Constantinople lost much of its territory to the Arabs, Bulgars and other, the Eastern Romans increasingly embraced an Old Testament-flavored ideology of purity , in which "the way that they're going to regain the empire and have victory over the Arabs is to become as pure internally as possible" — in rejection of the old imperial ideas of universality, and the compromises and tolerance necessary to run a heterodox empire. [Listen]
A note on terminology: The term "Byzantine Empire" is actually anachronous, emerging in the modern period. (The meaning of "byzantine" as "complex, devious and intriguing" actually dates from the 20th Century!) The inhabitants of the Byzantine Empire referred to themselves as "Romans," and their state as the "Roman Empire" or "Romania"; contemporary critics trying to denigrate the empire referred to them as the "Empire of the Greeks." [ Read more]
One of the most important sources for information about politics today is the free, user-edited encyclopedia Wikipedia. That's why this article about how Wikipedia's entries have largely blacklisted the British tabloid the Daily Mail so fascinating. [Read more from Slate's Stephen Harrison]
Something completely different: Below is a depiction of key elements from the universe on a log scale — where Earth is on the far left, and each step to the right is an order of magnitude further away. Space, as we know, is huge — but like many massive scales, these scales condense very nicely on a log scale. In this chart, the edge of our solar system — the theorized Oort Cloud — is about halfway between Earth and things near the edge of the universe like Pandora's Cluster . In reality, Pandora's Cluster is 1.2 million times further away from us than the Oort Cloud is. But on a log10 scale, the Oort Cloud is 5 orders of magnitude away from Earth, and Pandora's Cluster is about 11 orders of magnitude from Earth. Hence, the Oort Cloud at the halfway point on this log scale! In summary, both space and log scales are cool! [View larger] | |
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| Listen: I was struck today how the messages in Pink Floyd's 1979 hit "Another Brick in the Wall" have arguably completely shifted political valence over the past 40 years. It was originally associated with left-wing messages against uncreative, disciplinarian educators — the music video features a teacher embarrassing a student for the effrontery of writing poetry; conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher reportedly hated the song. But today, the message of "We don't need no education | We don't need no thought control" is arguably more associated with the right wing, with the educational establishment popularly seen as a left-wing institution. [ Watch] | |
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