The Viaduct

 By Belgian artist Paul Delvaux (1897-1994).  The train makes it.  Via Marysia.

Fanny

I was vaguely aware of this group in the early 70s but had no recollection of hearing them.  A few years ago clips from an appearance they made on German TV showed up on YouTube and I, and many others, saw them for the first time and learned they were a really rocking band.  That's the Millington sisters on guitar and bass.

This is a cover of Hey, Bulldog, one of my favorite Beatles tunes.  You can also listen to them perform a cover of Marvin Gaye's Ain't That Peculiar (featuring June Millington's slide guitar) and Place In the Country. 

Anniversary

Today is the 50th anniversary of a personal event that is significant for two reasons.

The first is that on the evening of July 18, 1975 the future Mrs THC and I attended a Red Sox game at Fenway Park.  It was the first Red Sox game we attended together.  We'd met a few weeks prior and attending this game is the first event in our relationship that we can place a firm date upon.  And, in two weeks, we celebrate our 45th wedding anniversary.

It was also the occasion of the longest home run I've seen hit in person, courtesy of Jim Rice.  

This led to the post from 2017 which follows. 

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This is prompted by a conversation at the recently concluded Analytics Conference of the Society for American Baseball Research held in Phoenix.  At lunch I was talking with a fellow attendee who mentioned that at his first game at Fenway he'd seen Mark Fidrych pitch against Luis Tiant.  It turned out I had been at the same game on May 25, 1976 (see The Bird).

I'd been able to figure out the date of the game with the invaluable help of Baseball-Reference.  I've also used BR to reconstruct the first time I saw Willie Mays play and the day I met him (see Meeting Willie Mays), as well as narrowing down the possible dates on which I'd seen my first major league game (My First Ballgame?), and even figuring out what New York Giants game my dad had attended in 1939 based on a blank scorecard he left me (Baseball Scorecard 1939).  After the lunch conversation, I decided to use BR to track down another event I remembered vividly and to see how my recollection matched up with the facts.

What I remembered for certain

The longest HR I ever saw in person was hit by Jim Rice in a game at Fenway in 1975 against the Kansas City Royals.  I remember being stunned at how hard it was hit, how fast it got out of the park, and how far it went.

What I thought I remembered

The homer was hit off Jim Busby, the hard throwing KC pitcher.
Bill Lee was pitching for the Sox.
The Red Sox won the game easily.
The HR was a rising line drive that went over the left center field wall, to the right of the Green Monster and to the left of the flagpole (this was before the centerfield scoreboard was built).
The ball was still rising as it disappeared into the night.
We were sitting in the grandstands underneath the overhang between home and third base.  "We" refers to the future Mrs THC and I.

(Fenway in 1975.  This photo of Fred Lynn shows the outfield as it existed then.  You can see the flagpole.)

What I found out

The game was on July 18, 1975.  Busby and Lee were the pitchers and the Sox won 9-3.  Rice's homer was off Busby, who lasted only 3 1/3 innings, giving up seven runs, but striking out six.

Bill Lee tossed a vintage Bill Lee-style complete game, giving up six hits, walking one and not striking out anyone.  Lee got 16 outs on grounders (including seven in a row at one point) plus two more on  pop ups.  The only Royals to cause Lee trouble were Hal McRae (single, double and triple) and Harmon Killebrew (double and two-run homer in the 9th).  It was also great fun to see Lee tie John Mayberry up in knots with an eephus pitch.  George Brett went 0-4, with three grounders.

I found several articles referencing Rice's titanic blast leading off the third inning for Boston.

Mercy! A Celebration of Fenway Park's Centennial by Curt Smith, describes Rice's homer as one of only six to clear the centerfield wall before the 1976 park alterations.  The others were by Hank Greenberg (1937), Jimmie Foxx (1937), Bill Skowron (1957), Carl Yastrzemski (1970), and Bobby Mitchell (1973).

On July 23, 2015 the Boston Herald, as part of a series about the 1975 Red Sox, carried an article entitled "Jim Rice's Mammoth Home Run off Steve Busby":

The righthander mis-spotted a fast ball and Rice, the Boston rookie slugger, sent the ball out of the park just a little to the left field side of dead center. Rice's home run, making the score 6-0, didn't clear the famed Green Monster, but rather the back wall of the park behind the rows of bleacher seats.

And it did not just slip over that back wall – which in itself constituted a feat reportedly accomplished only five times previous – it exited Fenway somewhere near the top of the flagpole reaching far above the wall.

Then Boston Globe sports writer Peter Gammons famously wrote the "ball was stopped by Canadian customs".  In a 2009 Boston Globe story, reporter John Powers wrote that Yawkey said it was ""unquestionably the longest ever'' hit at Fenway.

The winning pitcher that night, Bill Lee got a good look at Rice's clout.

"Once it leaves the ballpark, it goes over Landsdowne Street, it usually lands in the flatbed of a truck, a train, a truck that's heading west, so it ended up in Buffalo, for all we know," Lee said during a recent visit to Axis Bat Technology in Fall River. "It was an amazing line drive type shot. It wasn't one of those towering high fly balls that (Dave) Kingman hit.

I also learned from the article the game was not televised

At the Sons of Sam Horn website, I found this recollection from someone in the bleachers that night:

I was sitting in the Fenway CF bleachers in July 1975 when I saw Jim Rice teed off on Steve Busby and hit the longest home-run I've ever seen at Fenway. This was before the "600 Club" so there was probably the jet-stream effect, and before the centerfield scoreboard, so there was just a moderately high wall behind the seats in CF. Rice hit a bomb to straight-away CF, that cleared the CF back-wall (behind the batters eye) and from my vantage point some 430-450 ft from home that ball still had an upward trajectory as it left Fenway. It was probably a 500 footer.

At the Baseball Think Factory, Rice answered a question about a homer he'd hit in Comiskey Park this way:

I don’t remember that home run.  Comiskey was a very small ball park.  It was shorter than Fenway to centerfield, short to leftfield, and shorter than that in right.  I had two long home runs in my career that stand out in my mind:

I hit one into the 3rd or 4th deck (however many they have, it was the top one) in Yankee stadium off Matt Keough.  I think Keough hit me with a pitch twice in that game, but third time I got him.

The other home run, which is probably the biggest shot of my career, was off of Kansas City pitcher Steve Busby in 1975.  Mr. Yawkey said it was probably the longest home run he had ever seen.

I'm a little surprised at how close my memory was to the actual event.  Nice to have my recollections confirmed.  It doesn't always happen that way.

The entire game took only 2:07 to play!

And, by the way, it was the very first game that the future Mrs THC attended with THC.  Not a bad night at all.

Day Of Glory

 

On this date in 1863 occurred the Union assault on Fort Wagner near Charleston, SC, an event depicted in the movie Glory.  If you saw the film you'll certainly remember the scene when the character portrayed by Denzel Washington grabs the Union colors from the color guard of the 54th Massachusetts to prevent them from falling to the ground and is then shot as he rallies his fellow soldiers.

Meet William Carney.  Born in 1840 into slavery in Virginia.  His family was eventually freed and moved to Massachusetts.  When the 54th Massachusetts was organized as the first official black unit (designated as United States Colored Troops) in the Union army, Carney enlisted.  Promoted to sergeant, on July 18 he found himself among the leaders of the assault on the Confederate held fort.  Reaching the ramparts he saw the unit's color guard mortally wounded and grabbed the colors to prevent them from falling to the ground.

Wounded several times, Carney kept the flag flying as he rallied his men until finally collapsing from loss of blood.  Unlike Denzel Washington's character, Carney recovered from his serious wounds, and received the Medal of Honor on May 23, 1900.  His citation reads:

When the color sergeant was shot down, this soldier grasped the flag, led the way to the parapet, and planted the colors thereon. When the troops fell back he brought off the flag, under a fierce fire in which he was twice severely wounded. 

Some accounts call him the first black recipient of the Medal, but other black soldiers received the Medal before Carney.  However, the events for which Carney received the Medal preceded all of the others.

Carney returned to Massachusetts after being discharged, married, and became a mail carrier.  He died in 1908.  

For an account of a battle a month prior to Fort Wanger in which black soldiers, who had been slaves just weeks previously, resisted an Confederate assault read Milliken's Bend.

 

Cool

On this date in 1902, Willis Carrier completed the drawings for what became the world's first modern air conditioning system.  Carrier, born in 1876 in upstate New York and a graduate of Cornell, was working at the Buffalo Forge Company as a research engineer.

The Sackett-Wilhelms Lithographic & Publishing Company in Brooklyn, a Buffalo Forge customer, was having paper quality problems due to high summer humidity.  Carrier's device was designed to address this problem, though it was not until January 1906 that he was granted a U.S. patent for an Apparatus for Treating Air.

In 1915, Carrier and six other engineers formed the Carrier Engineering Corporation.  Today the Carrier business is part of United Technologies.

Having been a resident of south Florida for eight years and residing in Arizona since 2017, I give my heartfelt thanks to Mr Carrier for making these places habitable.

For a more culturally oriented discussion of cool, read Cool And Uncool. 

Gee Baby, Ain't I Good To You

A lot of us are most familiar with this song from The Mask (1994), where it's "sung" by Tina (Cameron Diaz in her movie debut) at the Coco Bongo Room.  Diaz is lip synching, it's Susan Boyd doing the singing.

Gee Baby, Ain't I Good To You was composed in 1929 by Andy Razaf and Don Redman but didn't become a hit until recorded by the Nat King Cole Trio in 1943.  Redman was a well-known arranger who contributed to the development of swing music.

Razaf is a fascinating character.  His birth name was Andriamanantena Paul Razafinkarefo. Andy was was the son of Henri Razafinkarefo, nephew of Queen Ranavalona III of Madagascar, and Jennie Razafinkarefo (née Waller), daughter of John L Waller, the first African American consul to Madagascar.  When Henri was killed in the French invasion of the kingdom, the pregnant Jennie fled to the U.S. where Andy was born in Washington DC in 1895 and raised in Harlem.  Razaf collaborated extensively with Fats Waller and wrote the lyrics for many songs, including Ain't Misbehavin', Honeysuckle Rose, and (What Did I Do To Be So) Black and Blue (all of which have been featured on THC). 

I Remember

Ah, those halycon days of our holiday from history.  Wandering the aisles on a Thursday or Friday to find just the right movie for the weekend. 

IYKYK… pic.twitter.com/tiGfp9wy4T

— Abandoned Places (@abandonedspaces) May 25, 2025

Berenike

Last year Smithsonian Magazine carried an article on the recent excavations at the Ptolemaic port of Berenike on the Red Sea, the Egyptian end of the sea trade with India, which have revealed more about the depth of the connections between the two regions.

Though the port was founded by the Greek Ptolemaic dynasty (320-30 BC), the trade was greatly expanded after Rome annexed Egypt in 30 BC.  THC wrote about this trade and the farthest reaches of the Roman Empire in The Farthest Outpost.  It's not just the extent of the trade and the navigation skills and knowledge needed for it, but the logistics of building an isolated port on the Red Sea, separated from the rest of Egypt by a vast desert requiring the establishment and maintenance of a safe and secure land-based transport system.

From the Smithsonian article:

In antiquity, this site, known as Berenike, was described by chroniclers such as Strabo and Pliny the Elder as the Roman Empire’s maritime gateway to the East: a crucial entry point for mind-boggling riches brought across the sea from eastern Africa, southern Arabia, India and beyond. It is hard to imagine how such vast and complex trade could have been supported here, miles from any natural source of drinking water and many days’ arduous trek across mountainous desert from the Nile. Yet excavations are revealing that the stories are true.

Archaeologists led by Steven Sidebotham, of the University of Delaware, have revealed two harbors and scores of houses, shops and shrines. They have uncovered mounds of administrative detritus, including letters, receipts and customs passes, and imported treasures such as ivory, incense, textiles, gems and foodstuffs such as pots of Indian peppercorns, coconuts and rice. The finds are not only painting a uniquely detailed picture of life at a lesser-known but critical crossroads between East and West. They are also focusing scholarly attention on a vast ancient ocean trade that may have dwarfed the terrestrial Silk Road in economic importance and helped sustain the Roman Empire for centuries.

“All the ancient sources talk about this place,” he says. One Greco-Roman text, known as the Periplus Maris Erythraei, or “Voyage around the Erythraean Sea”—which Bhandare, of Oxford, described as “a kind of Lonely Planet guide for the first century A.D.”—lists the port as a hub for maritime trade routes stretching south as far as modern-day Tanzania, and east, past Arabia, to India and beyond. But Berenike’s location was lost for centuries, until the Italian explorer Giovanni Belzoni, after nearly perishing from thirst in the search, rediscovered it in 1818 and hired a Bedouin youth to dig in the Isis temple with a giant seashell. A handful of European and American travelers followed, but the entire area fell back out of reach for decades, designated off-limits by an Egyptian army keen to control the coastline close to Sudan.

And as archaeologists are busy analyzing the growing material finds, other scholars are reassessing literary sources to better evaluate the economic impacts of these intercontinental networks. They already knew that trade was robust. In the early first century A.D., before trade reached its peak, the Greek geographer Strabo described eastbound fleets of more than 100 merchant ships. Another key source, a contract known as the Muziris papyrus dating from the second century, is more specific, describing a loan between an Alexandria-based businessman and a merchant for a return voyage to Muziris. On the reverse side, the text details the cargo of a ship called the Hermapollon, which included 140 tons of pepper, 80 boxes of nard (an aromatic oil used for perfumes, medicines and rituals), and around four tons of ivory. Its value, after payment of the Roman Empire’s 25 percent import tax, was nearly seven million sesterces, which scholars have calculated was easily enough to buy a luxury estate in central Italy, or, if you prefer, to pay 40,000 stonecutters for a year. That translates into some vast fortunes.

The island of Socotra, mentioned in the article, is also the subject of a THC post. 

Berenike today: 

 

 

 

 

Scopes At 100

On this date a century ago, the trial of John Scopes began in Clarksville, Tennessee.  The Scopes Monkey Trial, as it became known, was a national sensation at the time, given fodder for many books, and was the source material for the play, and later film, Inherit The Wind.  How the case is now remembered in many ways erases the nuances and complexity of the issues and people involved.

I first wrote about the case in 2015, with an update in 2022.  At the time of the 2015 post there were still some efforts to insert creationism into public school curriculum.  Those efforts seems to have ceased, but evolutionary biology now appears under assault from different quarters, it seems an appropriate date on which to post again.

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Rather than the often repeated adage that the victors write the history of an event, the story of anything is actually determined by the unswerving adoption of one version of it, and the telling of that version by a determined cadre of writers. In time, the version with the most persistent adherents becomes the “truth.” – David & Jeanne Heidler in Henry Clay: The Essential American (2010)

I still recall the family getting in the car for the drive to Hartford, Connecticut. It was the late 1950s, and my father was taking us to pick up a monkey. He had a small role as an Italian organ-grinder in a play put on by a local community theater group. The director wanted to use a prop monkey, but dad insisted on the real thing. We housed that monkey for the next week; I remember it as nasty and mean-tempered, but the audience loved it, as well as dad in his bit part (he always had a knack for showmanship). The play was Inherit The Wind, based on a 1925 event in Tennessee that became popularly known as the Scopes Monkey Trial.

Seeing the play and, later, the movie, I accepted its narrative of the forces of enlightenment, reason, heroism, and tolerance (represented by Spencer Tracey in the movie, playing a character based on Clarence Darrow) against the forces of narrow-mindedness, mean-spiritedness, repression, and unthinking old-fashioned religion (represented by Frederic March playing a character based on William Jennings Bryan); a morality play of liberal versus conservative written during the McCarthy years. The play is still staged frequently by regional theaters (here’s a recent Wisconsin production), has gone through several Broadway revivals, most recently in 2007, with Christopher Plummer and Brian Dennehy. There was even a London production, in 2009, with Kevin Spacey. In most cases, it is widely accepted by audiences as historically accurate.

It was only years later, prompted by reading Edward Larson’s Summer For The Gods and doing related research that I appreciated how much more complex and interesting the real story was. American history is much more fascinating and instructive when you don’t try to neatly shoehorn it into boxes labeled “liberal,” “conservative,” “progressive,” and “reactionary” as Inherit The Wind did, aided by influential mid-20th century historians and literary critics such as Richard Hofstadter. Throughout our history, you’ll see prominent people with constellations of political views that are unrecognizable in today’s categories (see Sam Houston as an example).  I support the teaching of evolutionary theory but the full story behind the Scopes Trial is more interesting than the caricature of Inherit The Wind and, as I learned, the main character in this drama, William Jennings Bryan, would not neatly fit into any political classification in modern-day America.

The Background

Dayton in 1925

The early 20th century saw an explosion in the growth of public high schools. In 1890, there were fewer than 200,000 public high-school students nationwide; by 1920, more than two million. In Tennessee, fewer than 10,000 in 1910, but more than 50,000 by 1920. What were they to be taught?

At the same time, battles were heating up between Darwinists and some religious denominations over the teaching of evolution. State legislative fights over its inclusion in educational curriculum became common.

Legislative efforts barring the teaching of evolutionary theory were successful in a small number of states, including Tennessee, which passed its law in early 1925. It was part of a larger package of laws in a massive education reform bill that laid the foundation for state-supported public schools. It was signed into law by progressive Governor Peay. Violation of the ban on teaching evolution carried a $100 fine, but no jail. Bryan supported the bill, but unsuccessfully lobbied against having any fine attached to violating the evolution provision, though no one at the time expected any prosecutions under the statute.

John Scopes

Looking for a test case, the American Civil Liberties Union placed advertisements in Tennessee papers offering to defend anyone prosecuted under the Act. Leading citizens of the town of Dayton decided to take them up on it. While some were interested in challenging the law, many others just saw it as a good opportunity to create publicity and generate business for the town. Rather than showcasing a contentious, divided populace, as portrayed in the play, the actual trial took place in a festive atmosphere, according to reporters like H.L. Mencken. The key players in Dayton recruited John Scopes, a young, part-time schoolteacher, to be the defendant and agreed to pay any penalty imposed on him.

Dayton was a small town in East Tennessee, and part of the only Republican enclave in the state. Bryan won every southern state in each of his three presidential runs, but never carried Rhea County where Dayton was located. The town was also heavily Methodist in a state dominated by Baptists (the Baptist Convention, meeting in Memphis just before the trial, refused to add an anti-evolution plank to the denomination’s statement of faith).

Once the ACLU came into the case, Bryan — the country’s leading opponent of the teaching of evolution — agreed to become part of the prosecution’s team. And through some very complicated machinations, Clarence Darrow, the most famous criminal defense lawyer in America, joined the defense team. When this happened, the trial became the biggest story in the country, and was also followed heavily in Europe. A deluge of reporters descended on Dayton.

Why Evolution? Why Bryan?

 
In 1925, 65-year-old William Jennings Bryan was well known to every American, having run unsuccessfully three times as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate (1896, 1900, and 1908). A remarkable orator — his “Cross of Gold” speech at the 1896 convention secured him the nomination — he is considered to be the first populist to run for President. In 1913, Woodrow Wilson appointed him Secretary of State, a post he resigned in 1915 when the pacifist Bryan became convinced Wilson was maneuvering the country into entering the First World War.

Bryan campaigned successfully in support of four constitutional amendments: direct election of senators, the Federal income tax, women’s suffrage, and Prohibition.  So why, in the 1920s, did he undertake leadership of the crusade against the teaching of Darwinism, and why did he think it was consistent with his other views?  From today's perspective, it doesn't seem to make sense.

Bryan believed in “popular sovereignty", always campaigning against big business and the banks and on behalf of the common people. When the Supreme Court overturned some of the early progressive labor laws, Bryan supported (unsuccessful) legislation to limit judicial review, and backed the Progressive use of popular referendums. He believed the people were entitled to what they wanted, and saw the evolution issue in the same way. According to Bryan:

It is no infringement on their freedom of conscience or freedom of speech to say that, while as individuals they are at liberty to think as they please and say what they like, they have no right to demand pay for teaching that which parents and the taxpayer do not want taught.

The deeper reason was Bryan’s concerns about the implications of Darwinism. Bryan was a committed Christian and pacifist. He rejected evolutionary theory as a matter of religious faith, but also believed Darwinism and its doctrine of “survival of the fittest” threatened the dignity and perhaps even the very existence of the weakest of the human flock. Bryan saw a direct connection between the excesses of capitalism and militarism — which he had denounced throughout his career — and Darwinism, which, as early as 1904, he had called “the merciless law by which the strong crowd out and kill off the weak.”

The concerns Bryan raised in 1904 were reinforced by recent events. The slaughter of WWI appalled Bryan. He saw German militarism as Darwinian selection in action; this was a common view at the time, as reflected in the words of Vernon Kellogg in his book Headquarters Nights: “Natural selection based on violent and fatal competitive struggle is the gospel of the German intellectuals.”

Bryan saw the modernist wing of the Progressives, led by Woodrow Wilson, willing to go down the same road. It is striking to see how much Darwinism was in the air of politics at the time. Wilson’s key 1912 campaign speech, “What is Progress?” espoused a Darwinian approach to American government:

Now, it came to me, as this interesting man talked, that the Constitution of the United States had been made under the dominion of the Newtonian Theory. You have only to read the papers of the The Federalist to see that fact written on every page. They speak of the “checks and balances” of the Constitution, and use to express their idea the simile of the organization of the universe, and particularly of the solar system — how by the attraction of gravitation the various parts are held in their orbits; and then they proceed to represent Congress, the Judiciary, and the President as a sort of imitation of the solar system. …

Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice. Society is a living organism and must obey the laws of life, not of mechanics; it must develop. All that progressives ask or desire is permission — in an era when “development” “evolution,” is the scientific word — to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle; all they ask is recognition of the fact that a nation is a living thing and not a machine. [emphasis added]

The new science of eugenics greatly troubled Bryan. The high school textbook used by John Scopes was A Civic Biology by George William Hunter, which defined eugenics as “the science of improving the human race by better heredity.” Hunter wrote,

If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading … Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibility of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race.

The prior edition of Hunter’s textbook had contained language specifically citing biological deficiencies of African races.

Eugenics had many scientist adherents in the United States and England who believed that the human race could be made better via selective breeding to create a better and more progressive world. One of those scientists, A.E. Wiggam, expressed the connection between the teaching of evolution and eugenics:

“until we can convince the common man of the fact of evolution … I fear we cannot convince him of the profound ethical and religious significance of the thing we call eugenics.”

Holmes

During the 1920s and 30s, the eugenics movement gained momentum. By 1935, more than 30 states had laws mandating sexual segregation and sterilization of persons regarded as eugenically unfit. The most notorious expression of support for eugenics came in 1927 from the leading Social Darwinist on the Supreme Court, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who, in his opinion for the Court upholding Oklahoma’s sterilization law, exclaimed “three generations of imbeciles is enough.” The only dissenting vote was cast by Pierce Butler, the lone Catholic on the Court.

Within a few years, WWII and the revulsion against Nazi law and experimentation would put an end to the eugenics movement (though a revival of eugenics under another name seems to be arising based upon  modern advances in biology and genetics). The heyday of the eugenics movement and the rise of anti-evolutionary forces led to the Dayton trial in 1925. Bryan expressed his pithy view of the whole matter when commenting on the latest discovery of purported early human remains: “Men who would not cross the street to save a soul have traveled across the world in search of skeletons.”  In his closing argument at trial, Bryan explained that evolutionary theory:

". . . if taken seriously and made the basis of a philosophy of life, it would eliminate love and carry man back to a struggle of tooth and claw."

The Trial and its Aftermath
The ACLU and Darrow differed on trial strategy. The ACLU considered it a free speech case, but that was not Darrow’s interest.  As a militant atheist who did not believe in free will, he wanted to use the trial as an opportunity to directly assault Christianity and its beliefs about the creation of the universe and the human race. This discomfited many ACLU supporters, but — through a complicated series of maneuvers — Darrow seized control of the defense strategy and was cleverly able to lure Bryan to the stand, where he cross-examined him viciously on Biblical inconsistencies. (Darrow might have been a terrible person, but you’d want him defending you if you were on trial). This prompted a Congregational Church official who supported the legal challenge to send a note to the ACLU: 

“May I express the earnest opinion that not five percent of the ministers in this liberal denomination have any sympathy with Mr Darrow’s conduct of the case.”

Edwin Mims of Vanderbilt University, another supporter of the ACLU, wrote:

 “When Clarence Darrow is put forth as the champion of the forces of enlightenment to fight the battle for scientific knowledge, one feels almost persuaded to become a Fundamentalist.”

The jury quickly returned a verdict finding Scopes guilty. Bryan offered to pay the $100 fine, and the local school board offered to renew his contract for another year, but Scopes decided to go to graduate school, attending the University of Chicago and becoming a petroleum engineer.  The fine was ultimately rescinded and the Butler Act was repealed in 1967.

Five days after the end of the trial, William Jennings Bryan passed away while taking his afternoon nap.

 

In today's Wall St Journal, playwright David Mamet has a piece with observations on Inherit The Wind, noting that: 

The play and film were intended as ripostes to the House Un-American Activities Committee’s persecution of those accused of communist sympathies.

As such, the play had to tailor the story from 1925 into a narrative usable for a 1950s audience. It also reflects intellectual currents of the mid-century: 

"Inherit the Wind” paints the contest between reason and religion as zero-sum. Religion is a metaphysical concept. It can’t be observed as part of the physical world. But a little reflection must suggest that reason is equally metaphysical. Where does it exist save for in the human mind, which can be inaccurate, uninformed, depraved or plain wrong, and in which “the reasonable” changes through maturity and over time. 

The truth is both are necessary.  

The factors potentially mitigating the horrors wrought by our corruptible human feelings, and our equally defective reason are two. One is religion, which is to say our avowal of our imperfection. The other is the law, the attempt to codify religious intuition mechanically. There will always be an unresolved remainder in an arbitration between justice and fairness, reason and folly. This dissatisfaction is the human condition, the subject of the actual drama, and that which differentiates it from pageant, propaganda or mere entertainment. The hero of “Inherit the Wind” is Darrow but at the play’s end, he has learned nothing. And, so, neither have we.  

As Mamet points out, reason and faith operate in different ways.  I've read articles in which it is said that Saint Aquinas should be read to understand how faith and reason can be reconciled.  I don't think they need to be as each stand on their own.  They may overlap at times but they also exist parallel to each other.  One can understand a reasoned analysis and nonetheless have faith in a certain outcome.  I don't feel any need to reconcile those aspects.  They just exist. 

Wicked Messenger

The soles of my feet, I swear they're burning 

For the first track on their first album, released in 1969, The Faces decided to cover Bob Dylan's Wicked Messenger.  The Small Faces were reconstituting themselves after lead singer Steve Marriott left to form Humble Pie, so the three remaining members joined with two refugees from the Jeff Beck Group, Rod Steward and Ronnie Woods, and christened themselves The Faces.

Wicked Messenger, from Dylan's 1967 album, John Wesley Harding, was a dramatic change from his previous albums, Blonde On Blonde and Highway 61 Revisited.  Harding, recorded in Nashville, was a sedate and reflective record, with Biblical references strewn throughout, including I Dreamed I Saw St Augustine, All Along The Watchtower, and Dear Landlord, along with Wicked Messenger. The Faces version is a lot more raucous.  Wicked Messenger is one of three memorable rock covers from the Harding album, the others being Watchtower (Jimi Hendrix) and Dear Landlord (Joe Cocker).

And remember:

If you cannot bring good news, then don't bring any 

Vanity

What you got ain't nothing new. This country's hard on people. Can't stop what's coming. Ain't all waiting on you. That's vanity. 

- Cousin Ellis to Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, No Country For Old Men 

When I saw No Country For Old Men during its 2006 theatrical run, I came away believing it was a great film but one I never wanted to see again.  Over the years I've come to change my mind and even read the Cormac McCarthy novel on which it is based.  Maybe it's because I'm now an old man.

I've written about the novel and Sheriff Ed Tom Bell's musing on the times in "What Is To Come" and "Carryin' Fire",  the terrifying and tense coin flip scene, "Friendo", and Anton Chigurh's probing inquiry about the use of following rules in Au Contraire.  In the scene below, Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) goes to see his Cousin Ellis (Barry Corbin), also a lawman and one crippled by a criminal, at his isolated mobile home in West Texas.

Sheriff Bell is struggling with the evil he sees growing around him, feeling unable to contain it, and has decided to retire.  He's come to his cousin seeking answers though he is not sure what the questions are. The sheriff feels overwhelmed and overmatched by what he is witnessing in the world.  Bell expresses his disappointment with God while acknowledging God's disappointment with him, causing Ellis to wave his hand dismissively, saying "you don't know what he thinks".

Everything about this scene is superb and reinforces the nature of the conversation.  The casting and cinematography are outstanding and Jones and Corbin convey so much with their faces, looks, and pauses.  They start with casual banter and only slowly get down to the matter at hand.  Watch Jones' eyes at 1:00 and at 3:00.  

There is no music in this movie.  Other than the actor's voices the only thing you hear are the ambient sounds of West Texas.  

Maybe He's Not His Bro . . . Today

But who knows what tomorrow may bring?  For reference see He's Not Your Bro. 

 

President Trump: "We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth. He's very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless." pic.twitter.com/VMnXSTuCiK

— CSPAN (@cspan) July 8, 2025

The Diagonal Of Emptiness

No, this post is not about existentialism, although I've recently learned the term was invented by French geographers (for the essence of the true French existential experience read Henri Ennui).

The geographical diagonal of emptiness refers to a large zone running from the northeast to the southwest of France in which the population is significantly less dense than on either side of the zone.  We've traveled through much of this zone and greatly enjoy it.  The zone includes our favorite area, the Dordogne.  Full of small towns, villages, hamlets, and twisty roads which are fun to drive.  Maybe more fun if you are the driver than the passenger. 

French geographers, however, generally identify an area called "la diagonale du vide" (the diagonal of emptiness), running from the northeast to the southwest of France, which is less populated than on either side. pic.twitter.com/8kfshGClXO

— Yann Robichon (@YannRobichon) December 18, 2024

The "emptiness" from the Dordogne town we stayed at in 2022.

 

Cause We've Ended As Lovers

In the mid-70s Stevie Wonder composed this song for Jeff Beck, allowing the guitarist a showcase to demonstrate his instrumental mastery.  Beck employs a variety of tones and techniques, giving a lyrical feel to this wordless tune.  At times it's as if he is caressing the guitar.  This is a concert version from 2006.  The phenomenal bass solo is by 19 year old Australian Tal Wilkenfeld, invited to join Beck on tour after he heard her audition tape.  Since then Wilkenfeld has had a solo career and played with Eric Clapton, Prince, Mick Jagger, and Herbie Hancock among others.

Zaamurets

 

On July 6, 1918 the Czechoslovak Legion declared Vladivostok, Russia's port on the Pacific Ocean, an Allied Protectorate.  What was a Czechoslovak Legion doing there in the first place?

It's tied up with the story of an armored train, Zaamurets, pictured above in Vladivostok with soldiers of the Czech Legion.  That story is part of the tale told in "A Remarkable Armored Train Fought Its Way Across Eurasia" by David Axe.

Zaamurets was built during 1916 in Odessa, as one of 75 armored platforms constructed by Russian railyards during the First World War.  According to Axe:

Zaamurets was the king of the mechanical beasts. It had two fully-traversible 57-millimeter Nordenfelt gun turrets—and eight machine guns for close-in protection.

Three to four inches of armor protected the vessel’s carriage and crew from incoming fire. Underneath the armor, two Italian Fiat 60 horsepower petrol motors could push the railcar to a top speed of 28 miles per hour.

In September 1917, Zaamurets returned to Odessa for a refit. Workers mounted square fire-control pillars to both turrets, and raised the turrets for better clearance when firing.

Before the second revolution of 1917, in which the Bolsheviks overthrew the first democratic government in Russian history, the Zaamurets served on the Galician Front supporting the Russian army against the forces of Austria-Hungary.

After the Bolsheviks seized power they also seized Zaamurets and used the train in support of efforts to gain control over Ukraine amidst Germany's efforts to assert control of the region and with a local independence movement also in the mix. 

At the start of WW1, the lands of the Czechs and Slovaks were part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, but there were strong movements for more autonomy and even independence in both areas.  Within Russia, Czech and Slovak emigres were allowed to form their own military unit to support Russia and, after the February 1917 revolution, this unit was allowed to recruit from Czech and Slovak POWs held in Russian camps.  By the end of 1917 the Czech Legion was 50,000 strong.

As the new Soviet leaders and Germany neared completion of peace negotiations in February 1918, the Czech Legion was given permission by the Bolsheviks to leave and go to France where they could fight the Central Powers on the Western Front.  The route chosen for the evacuation was the 6,000 mile Trans-Siberian railroad, bringing the Legion to Vladivostok from where they could take ship to France.

To learn how it all went wrong, and how the Czech Legion became involved in the Russian Civil War, seizing most of Siberia and Russia's gold reserve, and how the Zaamurets ended up in Manchuria as a Japanese operated train, read Axe's article. 

Death Of The Dialectic

 Jacob Shell, Professor of Geography at Temple University about why he writes on X:

Some people are wondering why I write my thoughts about academia here (and sometimes on Substack or Compact), and not in the publishing organs of my discipline. That's because during the late 2010s when I tried to voice any objections or critiques to anything I saw happening in Geography, the only response I received from Geog's professional outlets and orgs was stone-cold silence. Not disagreement. Just silence. The death of dialectic. That's why I'm here. 

I don't know how Shell would categorize himself, but as a reader of his over the past three years, I believe he is an anti-woke liberal and definitely not a conservative, who like many in that category, now found themselves intellectually homeless.  He wants to restore sanity and liberal values to academia.

By death of the dialectic he is referring to the suppression of dissent.  What those who have seized control of the institutions recognize is that they can use their power to simply ignore dissent by refusing to platform opposing views.  There is no need to engage directly, instead they can construct strawman arguments to destroy at their leisure.

Thanks, America

On July 4, 1905, 120 years ago today, my paternal grandfather Louis landed in Boston, having escaped from Russia.  Six weeks later he enlisted in the United States Army, joining the 23rd Infantry Regiment.  Louis served two 3 year enlistments, being discharged with the rank of sergeant and gaining his U.S. citizenship about which he was very proud.

Happy birthday, America. 

The photo below is the only one we have from his military days.  Louis is on the far left.  You can read more about Louis here.

 

Reassessing The Assessment

The CIA has publicly released, with some small redactions, a report, dated June 26, 2025, Tradecraft Review of the 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian Election Interference.  

I first wrote about the ICA report, released publicly on January 6, 2017, on February 10 of that year in Finding Real News.  In that post I summarized the findings of the ICA as:

The election vote was not hacked (though based on at least one poll, more than half of Democrats believe, based on media coverage, that Russia actually did hack into the vote counting).

Moscow was trying to influence the election, as Russia and its Soviet predecessor have done in the past.

In doing so, Russian cyber operations were directed against both parties.

Moscow's goal varied from undermining Clinton's credibility in light of her expected election to helping Trump win the election. 

I then posed six questions based upon my reading of the report, none of which seemed to be of interest to the press and largely remain unanswered to this day.  One of those relates to the final point in my summary:

2.  Regarding the Kremlin's goals in 2016, the phrasing of the report is puzzling.  The report states that Russia "aspired to help President-elect Trump's election chances when possible" but also that when it appeared Clinton would win the election, "the Russian influence campaign began to focus more on undermining her future presidency".  The language seems to imply that there was an early period when Russia was trying to help Trump win, followed by a switch when the Kremlin thought Clinton would win.  Is this a correct reading?  Can the agencies tell us when this switch occurred and why?  Did it occur before or after Wikileaks released the DNC and Podesta emails (disclosures which the report concludes "did not contain any evident forgeries")?  Since Trump trailed consistently in all polls from the time he clinched the Republican nomination through election day, on what basis did the Kremlin make a different assessment at some point?  When did the Kremlin not think Clinton was likely to win the election? In other words, during which periods was the Kremlin trying to help Trump win, as opposed to damaging a future Clinton presidency?

Last year I added a note to the 2017 post regarding the process by which the ICA was generated:

UPDATE (October 1, 2024) - I am adding this note regarding information I came across back in 2020 because it is directly related to the odd circumstances around the Intelligence Community Assessment released publicly in January 2017.  

The five analysts who compiled the report were personally selected by DNI Clapper, contrary to normal practice which is designed to prevent undue influence towards desired outcomes by those assigning the task.  One of those excluded from involvement with the report was the CIA's National Intelligence Officer (NIO) for Russia!  NIO's are appointed by the Director of the CIA, report directly to the Director, and are responsible for all intelligence matters within their geographical area.

In testimony to the House Intelligence Committee on December 5, 2016, the NIO stated her conclusions regarding the election:

"In terms of favoring one candidate or another, you know, the evidence is a little bit unclear."

"It's unclear to us that the Kremlin had a particular - that they had a particular favorite or they wanted to see a particular outcome.  That is what the reporting shows."

Before discussing the recently released reassessment of the 2016 assessment, some context is needed. 

The question about whether Putin had a preference in the 2016 election and whether, and how, Russia interfered is separate and distinct from whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the campaign (it did not, though there is substantial suggestive evidence that the Russians were able to influence the contents of the Steele Dossier, which was funded by the Clinton campaign, a subject I've written about on several occasions, most recently in He's Not Your Bro).  However, for the reasons discussed below, these issues ended up merged in the public mind due to the collusion of the Intelligence Community, the Democratic Party, and the New York Times(1) and Washington Post.

The fact that Russia, and its predecessor the Soviet Union, had preferences and interfered in past U.S. presidential elections is not unique, and is directly acknowledged in the 2016 ICA.  It's also something I referenced in my February 2017 post:

3.  The report places the Kremlin's 2016 influence campaign in an historical context, citing prior Russian and Soviet efforts to influence American presidential elections, though it also concludes the Kremlin took this to an unprecedented level in 2016.  I would have liked to see some questions about this aspect of the report.  Did the Kremlin seek to influence the 2012 election and, if so, in whose favor?  Did the Kremlin seek to influence the 2008 election and, if so, in whose favor (we know that Kremlin spokespersons denounced John McCain, and Republicans in general, during the course of that election)?  Do the intelligence agencies have information they can release about the reported contacts in 1983 between Senator Edward Kennedy and Communist Party Secretary Andropov regarding coordinating efforts to defeat President Ronald Reagan in his re-election bid? The report contains this disclosure:

In the 1970s, the KGB recruited a Democratic Party activist who reported information about then presidential hopeful Jimmy Carter's campaign and foreign policy plans . . .  

Can the intelligence agencies shed any additional light on this incident?  Is there additional information regarding past Russian and Soviet election influencing that can be publicly shared?

In 2008 and 2012 the Kremlin openly supported Barack Obama over his opponents, John McCain and Mitt Romney.  In 2012, President Obama was caught on an open mic telling then Soviet Premier Medvedev to let "Vladimir" know he'd have more flexibility on policy after the election (a reference to his post-election reneging on commitments to send missile defense systems to Poland and Romania).

In addition, the 2016 ICA directly asserts as firm conclusions that, more recently, the Kremlin supported the 2011 Occupy Wall Street demonstrations as well as the ongoing anti-fracking efforts of U.S. environmental organizations.

This was my own assessment as of February 2017:

I think it probable that the Kremlin favored the election of Donald Trump.  I base that on:

• Trump's favorable personal comments about Putin.

• Trump's history of favorable views of authoritarian strongmen.

• His refusal to condemn Russia for aggression in Crimea and Ukraine or murdering its political opponents.

• Trump's view of Russia as a potential ally in the Middle East and the fight against ISIS. 

• The presence, in the early stages of his campaign, of senior aides known to have favorable views of current Kremlin leadership.

Factors countering that view:

• The Clinton Foundation ties to shady Kremlin associated businessmen and the deal regarding Russian control of uranium reserves important to the United States.

• The widespread assumption in the American intelligence community that the Kremlin is in possession of the Hillary Clinton emails giving them potential leverage if she were elected.

• The controversial dossier about Donald Trump's activities in Russia that was purported to come from Russian intelligence sources and which, though it did not become public until after the election, was in widespread circulation among media hostile to Trump prior to the election. 

A possible factor countering that view:

• How did the Kremlin rate the chances that a Clinton presidency would continue the policies of the Obama presidency which was ineffective in opposing Russia?

Despite these counter factors, if I were betting, I'd bet on the Kremlin favoring Trump, though I don't consider it a certainty.  

I am less certain of that judgement in light of what I've learned reading thousands of pages of source documents since that time, though if I had to make a bet it would still be on favoring Trump at least at some point in the campaign. 

Another factor in tempering my earlier judgement is that in February 2017 I did not know that the Clinton campaign had paid for the production of the Steele Dossier, that the contractor (FusionGPS), Steele himself, and the sources for most of the allegations (none of which were ever corroborated) were either actively employed at the time by Putin-connected oligarchs or had close associations with Russian intelligence, and that an internal FBI review in 2018 "showed that the Russians had access to sensitive U.S. government information years earlier that would have allowed them to identify Steele's subsources . . . Steele's subsources could have been compromised by the Russians at a point in time prior to the date of the first Steele dossier report" (of course the FBI then instructed its analysts to remain silent about this), raising the possibility that Putin was willing to put into the hands of the Clinton campaign wild stories designed to damage Donald Trump.

What I remain confident of is that Putin's overriding strategy has been to disrupt and weaken American institutions and public confidence in those institutions, regardless of who was president.  He has largely achieved that goal with the help of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party, the Intelligence Community, Adam Schiff(1), and the leading prestige legacy media outlets(2).  

The 2025 Reassessment

The eight page reassessment addresses the process by which the ICA was hastily put together.  The document begins by discussing the origin and context of the ICA.  During the 2016 campaign there were "conflicting public and private statements" by IC officials about Russia's activities.  This prompted President Obama on December 6, 2016 to direct DNI James Clapper to conduct an assessment.(3)  The reassessment goes on to state:

However, before work on the assessment even began, media leaks suggesting that the IC had already reached definitive conclusions risked creating an anchoring bias.

On 9 December, both the Washington Post and New York Times reported the IC had concluded with high confidence that Russia had intervened specifically to help Trump win the election. The Post cited an unnamed US official describing this as the IC’s “consensus view". 

The new review "identified multiple procedural anomalies in the preparation of the ICA. These
included a highly compressed production timeline, stringent compartmentation, and excessive
involvement of agency heads" leading to "departures from standard practices in the drafting, coordination, and reviewing of the ICA. These departures impeded efforts to apply rigorous tradecraft, particularly to the assessment's most contentious judgment" [that Putin "aspired" to help Trump win election]. 

You can read the report to get the details of these anomalies, so I will focus on just a few. 

Generating a final ICA usually take months, not two weeks as this one did.  To do so, there were unusual restrictions on the normal process of participation as well as abnormal involvement by agency heads.

While agency heads sometimes review controversial analytic assessments before publication, their direct engagement in the ICA's development was highly unusual in both scope and intensity. This exceptional level of senior involvement likely influenced participants, altered normal review processes, and ultimately compromised analytic rigor.  

From the outset, agency heads chose to marginalize the National Intelligence Council (NIC), departing significantly from standard procedures for formal IC assessments. Typically, the NIC maintains control over drafting assignments, coordination, and review processes.

These departures from standard procedure not only limited opportunities for coordination and thorough tradecraft review, but also resulted in the complete exclusion of key intelligence agencies from the process. While sensitive counterintelligence information in community assessments often requires restricted access, the decision to entirely shut out the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research from any participation in such a high-profile assessment about an adversary’s plans and intentions was a significant deviation from typical IC practices.

The exclusion was not just of other agencies; as noted above, Clapper and CIA Director Brennan shut the CIA's own National Intelligence Officer for Russia out of the process.  Indeed the reassessment notes:

The two senior leaders of the CIA mission center responsible for Russia argued jointly against including the “aspire” judgment. In an email to Brennan on 30 December, they stated the judgment should be removed because it was both weakly supported and unnecessary, given the strength and logic of the paper’s other findings on intent. They warned that including it would only “open up a line of very politicized inquiry.” 

The other important aspect was the decision to include a summary of the Steele Dossier in the appendix of the ICA.  Even by that date, the CIA knew that the dossier allegations were unsubstantiated and initially resisted including it in the ICA.  However, according to the reassessment:

FBI leadership made it clear that their participation in the ICA hinged on the Dossier’s inclusion and, over the next few days, repeatedly pushed to weave references to it throughout the main body of the ICA.

The ICA authors and multiple senior CIA managers—including the two senior leaders of the CIA mission center responsible for Russia— strongly opposed including the Dossier, asserting that it did not meet even the most basic tradecraft standards.  

However, CIA Director Brennan overruled his subordinates:

Brennan showed a preference for narrative consistency over analytical soundness. When confronted with specific flaws in the Dossier by the two mission center leaders—one with extensive operational experience and the other with a strong analytic background—he appeared more swayed by the Dossier's general conformity with existing theories than by legitimate tradecraft concerns. Brennan ultimately formalized his position in writing, stating that “my bottom line is that I believe that the information warrants inclusion in the report.”

The reassessment concludes:

. . . by placing a reference to the annex material in the main body of the ICA as the fourth supporting bullet for the judgment that Putin “aspired” to help Trump win, the ICA implicitly elevated unsubstantiated claims to the status of credible supporting evidence, compromising the analytical integrity of the judgment. 

It was important for Brennan and the IC leadership to have a reference to the Steele Dossier somewhere in the report.  At that point, many publications had the dossier, but while stories based on individual allegations contained therein had been published, the actual dossier was not yet publicly available.  Reference to it helped bolster its credibility with media outlets and because its focus was on the alleged active collaboration between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin it allowed the issue of influence to be merged with collaboration.

Bottom line - the 2016 ICA was intended to be a political, not analytical, document. 

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

(1) The new California senator continues to lie about this, stating on CNN in January 2025 that  "the fact that we didn't find proof beyond reasonable doubt doesn't mean there wasn't evidence of conspiracy."  I've read the same testimony he heard as ranking member of the House Intelligence Community.  He knew then, and knows now, that not only was there not proof beyond a reasonable doubt, but that there was NO evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, though we now know there is evidence of a possible conspiracy between the Clinton campaign and Russia.  Part of the disgrace of the Russia Collusion Hoax was that those who promoted it have never paid any price for the damage they've done to this country.  In fact, Schiff leveraged his role to advance from Representative to Senator.  For more on Schiff and the testimony he heard read Right Move and the 53 Transcripts series.

(2) The New York Times continues its mendacious role in the collusion hoax.  Its headline on the new report reads, 

C.I.A. Says Its Leaders Rushed Report on Russia Interference in 2016 Vote

But the new review of the earlier assessment does not dispute the conclusion that Russia favored the election of Donald J. Trump.

The subheading is not supported by the text of the report.

I've been unable to find any coverage of the CIA report by the Washington Post. 

(3) The language here is directly from the reassessment.  However, my own take is a bit different.  What prompted the 2016 ICA was the unexpected election of Donald Trump and the alarm it raised in the White House and the IC.  The information contained in the IC was already known prior to the election and had been the subject of ongoing discussions between the IC and the White House during the campaign.  I think the White House and IC were genuinely concerned about the prospect of a Trump presidency and the purpose of the ICA was to prepare a document that could be quickly released publicly and be used to undermine the incoming administration.  I believe that is the best explanation for the deficiencies noted by the 2025 reassessment.   

Luka On Steroids

Enjoy Larry Bird touch passes.  Today you hear a lot about how slow Larry Bird was.  Bird was never really fast but in his first 7 seasons, before hurting his back, he was much faster than either Luka or Jokic to whom he is often compared.

Larry Bird was like Luka on steroids

pic.twitter.com/GnkdDrNCjQ

— Hoop Herald (@TheHoopHerald) March 8, 2025

Good Eating

This would actually be on the expensive side compared to what this menu would have looked like when I was 12.  You don't see Turkey Log or Bologna on many lunch menus anymore.  Food quality has certainly improved over my lifetime.

Anytime you see a menu that looks like this you know you’re in for some good goddamn eating. pic.twitter.com/3CXwdYN0fP

— Super 70s Sports (@Super70sSports) March 11, 2025

Thought For The Day

 

Good morning. I have reached an age where I realize time travel is real. I’m a person from a bygone era living in an unfamiliar future. pic.twitter.com/tEhTORrhPj

— Dr. Holly A. Bell ☕️ (@HollyBell8) April 19, 2025