Casablanca

We viewed the perennial favorite over two nights for Bastille Day weekend. The story and its presentation hold up well over the years. There is no doubt that the Germans were the bad guys here, even if this were not a propaganda film, which it was. This time, I stepped back and took a historical perspective that was informed by the “Marseillaise” scene. 

First, we have lost some of the cultural context of 1940. Today, we see a direct line from Pearl Harbor to Normandy. However, “America First” isolationism was a barrier for the Roosevelt Administration. (For alternate histories, there are Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle (1962) and Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America (2004).) Given the partition of France and especially the widespread collaboration within Occupied France, it is important to separate French nationalism from French democracy. In the Marseillaise scene, Yvonne shouts “Vive la France! Vive la démocratie!” But today’s acceptance of democratic principles was not easily found in the world of 1940. 

YouTube: Warner Bros. Classics

In the Minersville School District versus Gobitis 310 US 586, the US Supreme Court ruled that public schools could require the Pledge of Allegiance and the salute to the flag. It is significant that victims of the Nazi holocaust included “Bible students.” As the war developed, the narrative of democracy versus dictatorship crystalized. In 1943, the US Supreme Court reversed itself with West Virginia Board of Education versus Barnette 319 US 624, and supported the right of the individual to refuse to worship the government. 

When the viewer meets Richard Blaine, he is playing chess by himself.  He is an intelligent, thinking man -- and a loner. Louis Renault claims that Rick is a sentimentalist, pointing out that Rick ran guns to the Spanish Loyalists and to the Ethiopians.  "I was paid well both times," Rick insists.  Renault counters, "The winning side would have paid you more."  Rick demurs.  "I'm a poor businessman." In that, we see that Richard Blaine is a practical man whose actions are guided by principles.  He also has a bitter sense of humor.

The "Marseilles" scene says even more.  Victor Laszlo orders the band to play La Marseilles. The band leader, however, looks to Rick.  (As Sasha says in a previous scene, "Yvonne, I love you, but Monsieur Rick, he pays me.")  Rick nods. They play.  It is Rick's Cafe Americain that the police bust up the next day.  Rick takes responsibility for his actions and he literally pays the price for Laszlo's defiance.  It is easy to see Laszlo as the brave idealist. I see Laszlo as an irresponsible idealist. When the bar is closed, Rick keeps everyone on full salary.  It comes out of his pocket, of course. 

The Marseillaise scene (also called “the dual of the anthems”) rested on a lost narrative. The Germans are not singing Deutschland über Alles but Die Wacht am Rhein. That was composed 1840 (poem) and 1854 (music) to solidify Germans across over 20 different polities to defend the Rheinland because in the 200 years between Louis XIV and Napoleon, the river region was politically French though culturally German. In that the city of Strasbourg was iconic. Family names along the Rhein alternated between Brückner and DuPont. The new rallying motto was “Unser Strom nicht unser Grenze.” (Our creek, not our border.) 

Another lost narrative centers in the tiny town of Niederwald, Texas, here in Hays County. They say on their city website that the town was named for the low-lying bushy trees here in the Hill Country: nieder = nether; wald = woods. In fact, Niederwald, Texas, was settled between 1877 and 1890 and was more likely named after the Niederwald Memorial in Hesse, built in 1877 and decorated with a goddess Germania, Iron Crosses, a tally of German victories over Napoleon, and the lyrics to Die Wacht am Rhein. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niederwald,_Texas, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/niederwald-tx, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niederwald_monument 

La Marseillaise has nothing to do with democracy and is all about fertilizing the farms with the blood of impure invaders. It got its name from a regiment which sang the song on their entry to Paris, but the song itself was composed in Strasbourg and was titled “Chant de guerre pour l’armée du Rhin.” The event which inspired its composition was France’s war against an alliance of Austria and Prussia. To take sides between France and Germany over the Rheinland is to choose between Poland and the Ukraine over who rules which banks of the Vistula. Nonetheless, we still hate the Nazis because without a doubt they were opposed to everything that defines America.

Previously on Necessary Facts

The Second World Wars 

2LT Frances Y. Slanger American Nightingale 

Liza Mundy Breaks the Code and Misses the Message 

Building a Team in Fact and Fiction 

Aphorisms

I am the point-of-contact for a support group here in Austin. I joined as a member and inherited the work when the person before me had to move forward. This kind of work is something that I do by the numbers: I do not have a talent for it. Discussing the agenda (which is to say, "gossiping") with one of the regulars, they said about another member that the other person seems to be "worshipping the problem instead of finding a solution." I asked if that was a quote and they did not know. 

I do not have a solution but I admire your problem.
https://www.ashleighbrilliant.com/

Googling brought evermore many hits from after 2018 and fewer before. I eventually found Ashleigh Brilliant, creator of Pot Shots. He has thousands of them, all copyrighted and aggressively protected. Oddly enough, I found nothing by Ashleigh Brilliant in the libraries of the University of Texas, the City of Austin, or the City of Kyle. So, I went to Abe Books and bought five from two sellers. 

https://schaffnerpress.com/books/short-flights/

The Austin Public Library did have Short Flights, a book of aphorisms from an array of modern writers. Ashleigh Brilliant is one of them, so this came up in a wider search. I am reading through that now as I wait for the books.

Right now, I have two original aphorisms:

You can only be as open with others as you are with yourself.

Not much happens in a society that punishes ambition.

In republican Rome, ambition, literally ambling about glad handing strangers to make friends among the voters, was a crime. 

The best one that I learned somewhere else is a post title here: "How do you make God laugh? Tell Him your plans."

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Longevity 

Aaron Feldman: Buy the Book Before You Buy the Coin 

Dealers Make the Show: ArmadilloCon 41 Day 3 Part 2 

Contradictions in the Patentability of Numbers 

EUREKA

The plain truth is that over the years we have preferred cozy murder mysteries from Quincy ME and Columbo to NUMB3RS, Bones, and Foyle’s War, and a little science fiction. Comparing everything to ST:NG  we did not like the new Picard. We found ST:Discovery compelling in Season 1 and disappointing thereafter. After 20 minutes of Game of Thrones, we were sure that we had seen it or read it many times before. That all being as it may, we are happy to have found Eureka. 

When one portal closes, another opens. Always something happening here.

It is true that being only as far as Season 2, we are pretty sure that each episode runs about two or three hours. However, this is our time together and we don’t mind the fact that this show is like a Marvel\DC comic with someone else turning the pages for us. 

Sometimes science and religion collide.

Fascinating details flash by quickly.

The theme music reminded us of The Good Place, but the composers are not the same: Mark Mothersbaugh and John Enroth for Eureka versus David Schwartz for The Good Place.

Former space shuttle mechanic Henry Deacon and Sheriff Jack Carter
Even best friends have secrets from each other.

When I brought The Big Bang Theory Season 1 home from the Ann Arbor public library in 2008, Laurel could not watch it because it was too embarrassingly like her real colleagues at the university. But she got used to it and we have all 12 seasons on disc. In fact, TV shows such as that and this are like “breaking the fourth wall of the stage.” In a 1950s sitcom, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Burns escaped the kitchen chaos by retreating to his study to watch Gracie on TV. 

Deputy Sheriff Josefina Lupo is one of the putatively normal viewpoint characters.

And now I work at a university, albeit as a blue collar non-exempt. I still meet the 3,000 teaching professors, 15,000 support staff, and our 55,000 very, very special charges. Some of them do neurological research and others have an atomic reactor. Then, I come home and watch them up close. 

We like the quirky yet predictable plots.

• “I knew it was her.”
• “You didn’t say anything.”
• “But I knew it was her.”

On Wikipedia here:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_(2006_TV_series)

Fan Wiki on Fandom here: https://eureka.fandom.com/wiki/Eureka

Previously on Necessary Facts

Nerd Nation 2.5 

JAG: 10 Seasons of Military Bearing 

FanFic by ChatGPT (Part 2) [NCIS meets NUMB3RS]

FanFic by ChatGPT (Part 3) (Bones meets Sherlock)

Nerd Nation: Natalie Portman, Danica McKellar, and Felicia Day 

SEVEN DAYS IN MAY

In my early teens, growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, I was a regular reader of Fletcher Knebel’s political humor column, Potomac Fever, which ran in The Plain Dealer. So, when the film version of Seven Days in May was recommended to me recently, I knew the reference although I had neither read the book nor viewed the movie. My interlocutor had just watched the film, and on the eve of President Trump’s Flag Day 2025 birthday parade found it disturbing. “What if those 60,000 troops don’t go home?” I have since read the book and watched the movie.

You might think that it can’t happen here or maybe you think that it already has. Fascism’s militaristic vestments notwithstanding, like Communism, it is a civilian republican theory of government. While military rule survives in some nations today, the rise of republicanism after the Enlightenment made it exceptional for the head of state to be the active commander of the armed forces. (The powers and duties of the President are defined in Article II Section 2 of the Constitution.)  

The last significant example of a head of state commanding an army in the field was Louis Napoleon III of France who was captured by the Prussians at Sedan in 1870. Previously, Napoleon III had successfully commanded the French at the Battle of Solferino; the army of their ally, Piedmont-Sardinia, was commanded by Vittorio Emanuele II, later king of the newly unified Italy. Significantly, no emperors were in the field for World War I.

George Washington defined the paradigmatic corollary of a general (or admiral) becoming the head of state through civilian electoral process. Of the 45 US Presidents only 14 had no prior military service. The two short lists of exceptions  run: Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, and Roosevelt; and then: Clinton, Obama, Biden, and Trump. 

When I read the book, the characters seemed unreal to me until I removed myself and accepted that the authors were accomplished journalists and therefore, these portrayals were derived from their own experiences, being composites or sketches of actual people. My personal experience had been that in public you call a colonel “Colonel” rather than “Jiggs” no matter how well you know them. Clearly, the previous age was a different time. 

As to whether a military coup d’etat could happen here, this story may have been influenced by the events in France in 1961, with over thirty attempts on the life of Charles de Gaulle, a military putsch in Algeria, and the threat of civil war within metropolitan France. 

“How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?” 

— Charles de Gaulle.

As for the storyline of the conspiracy itself, it seemed to me that the refusal of the Chief of Naval Operations to go along would have required his removal and replacement by the conspirators. They could not have moved forward while lacking one of the other Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

The President’s summary speeches in front of the White House reporters for the major news media also encapsulated another problem with the tale, in effect asking rhetorically, “What was their plan for the day after tomorrow?” Once you have captured and isolated the President and Vice President, then what? The Constitution has no provision for that. The order of succession was fixed by law, but in this story, the generals did not intend to install the Speaker of the House. They intended to rule directly by martial law. How and when they intended to stop ruling was never clear in the story. 

That  raises the deeper question of whether and to what extent the People would accept military rule. The movie version did show Gen. James M. Scott being wildly popular among some factions, especially at a mass rally of  the American Veterans Organization. The cinema version opened with a scuffle between pro-Gen. Scott and pro-Pres. Lyman supporters picketing the White House. It is easy to transpose that to January 6, 2021. Following the dreamland fantasy in which the rioters succeeded in hanging Vice President Mike Pence, certifying their own election results, declaring Donald Trump the President, following which he rides down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol and assumes office—then what? How long could that situation have remained stable? 

If Seven Days in May echoed the crisis in France, that model depended specifically on the personality of Charles de Gaulle, who had been a public literary figure and a charismatic politician within the military even before World War I. Of Gen. James M. Scott, we had only a sketchy portrait of a decorated air ace. In the book, more context was developed to set the story a few years in its future, from 1963 to 1972, following a military failure in Iran and its partitioning. To me, that was not enough to sell Gen. Scott to the reader as the Man of the Hour, though in the book, the line is offered that every twenty years, we seek a man on a white horse.

It Can’t Happen Here

It Has Happened Here

In our world of 1968, Gov. George Wallace received 46 electoral votes. That was perhaps the only modern challenge to mainstream politics until the ascendency of Donald Trump. Wallace’s choice of Gen. Curtis LeMay as his running mate was problematic on several grounds and did little to help the campaign. (See Wikipedia on the 1968 Wallace campaign.) Furthermore, it is salient that Donald Trump’s vice president was, indeed, the very person who refused to certify his 2020 election and thereby became a target for the January 6 rioters, perhaps personifying the distinction between traditionalist and populist conservatism in America. 

Contrary to the plot of Sinclair Lewis’s warning, the actual attempt at a fascist coup in America came not from a populist groundswell but from a Wall Street cabal, the 1933 "Business Plot." Now, our hillbilly Vice President starred at Yale Law School and worked for a venture capital firm before entering Ohio politics. So, comparisons and contrasts are at once parallel and skew, depending on your perspective. And four dimensions might not be enough for an accurate projection onto our political Flatland. 

The State of Texas just enacted a law to require that the Ten Commandments be posted in every public school classroom. It was quickly challenged in court by self-identified Christian leaders. 

In other news, the State House and Senate passed a new bill to ban marijuana gummies and drinks and the Governor vetoed it, calling them back into session to write a law that can be enforced to the benefit of the State via taxes and regulation.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Book Review: Timothy Snyder’s “On Tyranny” 

I Stopped Listening to NPR 

The GOP as Pushy Beggars 

Morality and the Philosophy of Science 

Against Gulching 

Late to the Game: Moneyball (and Ted Williams)

Growing up in Cleveland, of course I was an Indians fan, reading the box scores and Gordon Cobbledick every morning, collecting Topps cards, listening to games on radio and watching on TV. In college, I got away from it all. Working a contract in Cleveland March 96 to May 97, I picked it up again while the Tribe was hot and I actually attended a game but drifted away after Mike Hargrove was fired for winning division and league titles but never the World Series. Here and now, later this month, The Red-Headed  League is taking a multigenerational tour of Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Detroit, and Chicago just to buy peanuts and crackerjack. To keep up with the news while they tour, I have been reading books.

• Strike Four: The Evolution of Baseball by Richard Hershberger
• Moneyball: The Art of Winning and Unfair Game by Michael Lewis (also watched the movie twice)
• The ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia (2000 pages of statistics)
• The Science of Hitting by Ted Williams

With Strike Four as background, Moneyball was fascinating. Although Billie Beane fought, won, and lost his battle in 2002, the concepts of alternative statistics had deep roots. The book and the movie both nod to Bill James, of course, and of necessity, the book reveals more of the otherwise hidden history. 

So, Ted Williams drew from me a wry smile when I read this:

“Now, if a .250 hitter up forty times gets 10 hits, maybe if he had laid off bad pitches he would have gotten five walks. That’s five fewer at-bats or 10 hits for 35, or .286. And he would have scored more—everybody has been crying for more runs—because he would have been on base more.” (Page 26).

It is just a glimpse of the theories that Beane was pursuing in Moneyball but it indicates that some professionals who thought deeply about the game had ideas that most others never considered. 

Bill James’s Baseball Abstracts is often cited in Moneyball as having been cited by others. James was not alone and it should have been surprising if he had been. Our common culture has been influenced by scientific thinking at the same time that baseball was evolving. The first rule book was published in 1845 and older (partial) publications are known. Also, unlike other games with simple tallies of wins and losses with points scored, baseball is a game of statistics. In Moneyball, Lewis followed James in insisting that followers do not copy but develop new theories and test those with not just new data but new kinds of data. 

According to Hershberger, among those other researchers were Ken Mauriello and Jack Armbruster of AVM Systems. Later, Bill James worked with Dick Cramer to establish Stats, Inc., which was eventually sold to Fox News in 1999 for $45 million. (See, also, When Big Data was Small: My Life in Baseball and Drug Design by Richard D. Cramer; University of Nebraska Press, 2019.) Meanwhile Paul DePodesta met AVM and then was hired away from Cleveland by Billie Beane in 1998. However, as early as 1977, Dan Okrent bought his copy of Baseball Abstracts #1, and took the knowledge to his friends who met to talk baseball at La Rotisserie Française and hence, “Rotisserie Baseball” as the start of fantasy leagues. It must be noted, also, that in Moneyball, James is cited as having played “tabletop baseball” as a youngster. That would have been an expected (if not wildly popular) hobby at time when kids built large scale soapbox racers and miniature slot car racers, flew powered model airplanes and model rockets.

That being as it was, it was not until 1981, that Okrent was able get Sports Illustrated to write about Bill James, Okrent’s first submission having been rejected by “proofreaders” two years earlier by for contradicting “known facts.” Even more to the point, also, in Moneyball: Mike Gimbel was a statistician for the Boston Red Sox; Craig Wright did the  job for the Texas Rangers; Eddie Epstein worked for the Baltimore Orioles; and none was successful in their roles. Today, things are different. Whether Beane was the prime mover or an agency of something else is for historiography to explore. 

Arthur Koestler's The Sleepwalkers is about the astronomers (astrologers) between Galileo and Newton who came close to but never touched the relationships between measuring the area under a curve, the slope of a curve at a point, and the motions of bodies falling on Earth and the orbits of planets around the Sun. (See Copernicus on the Revolution of Heavenly Bodies here https://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/2017/11/copernicus-on-revolution-of-heavenly.html

In a science fiction novel (perhaps Neuromancer or Count Zero), a European clucks that Americans think that everything was newly invented in their own generation. In baseball, we now (2023) have a 20-second pitch clock on the field. In fact, baseball always had a 20-second rule. 

“The 1901 season saw the implementation of a predecessor to the modern-day pitch clock. When no runners were on base, a one-ball penalty would be imposed if the pitcher did not deliver a pitch within 20 seconds of the batter taking his stance at the plate.^[11][12] The rules were tightened before the start of the 1955 season, and the 20-second timer now started once the pitcher received the ball. However, these 20-second limits were hardly ever enforced, and were left to the umpire's judgement.^[13][14]”. — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_clock

Major League Baseball does acknowledge the new science of statistics and at the same time grants the importance of the fantasy leagues of fandom. 

• MLB Standard statistics here: https://www.mlb.com/glossary/standard-stats
• MLB Advanced Statistics here: https://www.mlb.com/glossary/advanced-stats

“In the past several decades, the baseball industry has become more enlightened -- thanks to an assist from advanced metrics.

"Although standard statistics remain quite valuable, advanced formulas and figures have played a pivotal role in the creation of championship teams -- both in Major League Baseball and fantasy leagues around the world.

"Today, each big league franchise relies upon advanced stats to some degree, with a growing number of clubs employing complete staffs devoted to their study, development and deployment in decision-making processes.

"Many advanced stats have long been tied to sabermetrics -- a reference to the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) -- a term defined by Bill James as "the search for objective knowledge about baseball." James, widely considered the face and most influential advocate of sabermetric study, has helped shape the lens through which the game of baseball is viewed.” (Ibid)

Does art imitate life or does life imitate art? Along Interstate 35 over downtown Austin is a billboard with a motivational message: William Shatner and “Boldly go.” Everyone knows what that means. So, it would be unusual, perhaps, if over the course of the past 35 years, science had no equal and opposite attraction for baseball.

“As in baseball, the discovery of bacterial diversity has experienced a transition from relying on the subjective judgment of experts to objective and universal statistical methods. Originally, discovery and demarcation of bacterial species required a lot of expertise with a particular group of organisms, involving difficult measures of metabolic and chemical differences. To make the taxonomy more accessible, decades ago the field complemented this arduous approach with a kind of idiot’s guide, where anyone could use widely available molecular techniques to identify species—for example, a certain level of overall DNA sequence similarity.” — “Science Needs More Moneyball” by Frederick M. Cohan, American Scientist, May-June 2012, Vol. 100. No. 3, page 182. https://www.americanscientist.org/article/science-needs-more-moneyball

George Carlin on Baseball vs Football

This was often part of his show and the content changed for different venues and  audiences. The easy narrative was that football is bad and baseball is good.

• Football is a 20th century game of technology. Baseball is a 19th century pastoral game.
• Football is played on a rigidly defined gridiron field. Baseball is played in a park where the foul lines widen out to infinity and every park is different.
• In football you wear a helmet. In baseball, you wear a cap. 
• Baseball is so civilized that the uniforms have pockets. 
• Football proceeds by downs. In baseball you are “up.” 
• Football has penalties. In baseball, it is just an error, (oops).
• Football is a game of land conquest. In that, we are Europe Junior. We advanced on the Native Americans ten yards at a time: Ohio down; Midwest to go. 
• The object in football is to drive through your enemy’s defenses with an aerial assault, a ground assault, a blitz or a shotgun. In baseball, the object is to go home, to be safe at home.
• In every other game, the offense controls the ball. In baseball the defense controls the ball.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Hail to the Spartan Victors? 

Why a Level Playing Field? 

Shrugging the Stigma of Success