A blog by Dan Brooks
Here’s how the scale of human intelligence works: anyone dumber than me is an idiot. From your/you’re to minor driving mistakes to this guy, I can’t believe how stupid people are. Conversely, everyone even a little bit smarter than me must be some kind of genius. Can you imagine the sort of mind that knows something you don’t? Of course not. That’s the whole problem. Today is Friday, and the scope of ingenuity is less a spectrum than a binary. Won’t you fill in the ones and zeros with me?
Missoula County Attorney Fred Van Valkenburg, seen here outside his watery lair
Every time I start emitting opinions re: Fred Van Valkenburg around people who work with sexual assault victims, they say he’s doing a good job. It’s weird, because the Department of Justice is investigating his office, and our county attorney is acting for all the world like a man with something to hide. The MCPD and the University of Montana cooperated with DOJ and concluded their investigations months ago, but Justice versus Van Valkenburg drags on. This week in the Missoula Independent, I consider whether he might have a PR problem of his own making, like the reactive but basically gentle octopus. All he wants to do is eat crustaceans and small fish. All we want to do is understand his ways, but somehow we both wind up covered in ink. It’s a conundrum, is what it is, and you can read all about it instead of reading a proper blog post. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links.
Humorist PJ O’Rourke, who used to be funny, I swear
The Cato Institute and PJ O’Rourke have filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court case Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus, arguing that “truthiness” is an essential part of political discourse. Props to Jacek for the link. Susan B Anthony List is an anti-abortion group that purchased a billboard claiming Ohio congressman Steven Driehaus supported taxpayer-funded abortion because he voted for the Affordable Care Act, which does not provide taxpayer funding for abortions. The claim potentially ran afoul of Ohio’s False Statements Law, which prohibits making false statements about political candidates. There are several reasons why the case is likely to be decided on procedural grounds—not least that Driehaus lost and withdrew his complaint—but Cato and O’Rourke make an interesting point.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QxXg3iuHvw
I should warn you that the footage of a cat looking into the My Spy Birdhouse at 1:20 of this video is, as the disclaimer plainly indicates, a dramatization. That cat did not actually become fascinated by a birdhouse with no back wall suction-cupped to the window. That cat isn’t even alive. He was rendered from a composite of several other successful advertising cats, now dead, and added during post-pro. We never figured out how to keep a real cat alive for more than a few days, because we had no idea what they were doing when we couldn’t see them. It’s too late for cats, but birds—oh, birds. Their secret life is fucking over.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddrQ5BPCcOk
Before you read this New York Times article about a communal house in Brooklyn that is also a new media company, you should know that the first person you encounter will be named Dickerman Cade Sadler III. Keep reading. It is important that you complete the article, in the same way it was important that the first Marines who entered Saddam Hussein’s palace search every room. Someday, history will need to understand this decadence. Welcome to the Clubhouse, a three-story house in Ditmas Park where “eight roommates, most of them musicians and artists, share meals and expenses, use a Google doc to keep track of their chores, and pitch in to shop for groceries and stock the bathrooms.” That probably sounds like a normal house to you, but it’s actually a brand/new media startup/final step in the substitution of lifestyle for art.