There and here

One other difference between the US and here; they have a statute of limitations for crimes and we don't.  I vaguely thought we did, till I looked it up.  They exclude homicide and a few others. I would rather prefer to have one; it's really impossible to defend yourself against an allegation that's fiftyyears old.

Duelling doctorates

What with the new Dr. Who coming on line I was musing about doctorates; specifically, why Dr. Doom is a doctor and Reed Richards isn't.
They were at university together, after all though if I remember correctly one of Victor's experiments blew up on him and disfigured him and he was expelled.... So where did he get his doctorate from, actually?
You'd think that at some time in their long relationship Reed wouldn't have been able to resist at least putting air quotes around "Doctor" Doom.
Doctor Strange is a doctor, but is he a Doctor? Does he have a higher degree?

going online, yes, people have thought of this;

Why isn't Mr. Fantastic known as Dr. Fantastic?

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Why isn't Mr. Fantastic known as Dr. Fantastic? This just struck me as a little strange. I am sure he has a doctorate. Dr. Doom, and Dr. strange are happy to advertise theirs. Yet Mr Fantastic is plain old 'Mr'. Is there an in universe explanation or reason for this? marvel names fantastic-four shareimprove this question edited Mar 25 '13 at 13:14 coleopterist 4,84223483 asked Mar 25 '13 at 11:49 Jeremy French 10.2k55389

3   Marvel.com says "Multiple scientific doctorates in fields such as engineering, math and physics from California State Institute of Technology, Columbia University, Harvard and State University, and others" – Izkata Mar 25 '13 at 13:06  2   As a PhD, he doesn't feel the need to have people call him "Doctor", and has said on many occasions that it seems pretentious for anyone other than medical doctors to do so. – John O Mar 25 '13 at 13:15 3   @John O - If you can cite some of those occasions, sounds that would be a valid answer to the question. – Stan Mar 25 '13 at 13:18 9   He doesn't hold a doctorate in being Fantastic. – Kevin Howell Mar 25 '13 at 14:29 11   Dr Doom's name is Victor Von Doom, Dr Strange's name is Stephen Strange, hence Dr Doom and Dr Strange. Mr Fantastic's name is Reed Richards not Reed Fantastic, so he would be Dr Richards. Mr Fantastic is merely his alias. – Ally Morgan Mar 25 '13 at 17:30 show 2 more comments

1 Answer

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The reason he does not have Dr. Fantastic in his name has to do with his origins at the hands of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. According to Stan Lee, “I was utterly determined to have a superhero series without any secret identities. I knew for a fact that if I possessed a super power I’d never keep it secret. I'm too much of a show off. So why should our fictional friends be any different? Accepting this premise, it was also natural to forego the use of costumes. If our heroes were to live in the real world, let them dress like real people.” -- Secret Origins of the Fantastic Four When creating the Fantastic Four, their original premise was they would be Everyman heroes, no secret identities, only codenames. So the day they acquired their powers after the accident, their identities chosen immediately were: Mr. Fantastic, the Invisible Girl, The Human Torch, and the hideous Thing. Stan Lee would only be able to keep his word against costumes because the fans demanded they wear them! By issue three, they were issued their non-uniform uniforms and their codenames were firmly entrenched into history. There was one other reason he remained Mr. Fantastic. The name of his hated arch-enemy, one Dr. Victor Von Doom. Kirby and Lee wanted to be sure to distinguish between the two mentalities of their creations. Richards was allied with the common man, using science to further the opportunities of mankind. Doom only had one ambition, to rule mankind and thus did everything he could to separate him from mankind, making him hideous in appearance, a member of royalty, indeed the ruler of his kingdom of Latveria and a firm belief in his superiority over everyone but especially Reed Richards. NOTE: Dr. Reed Richards (Mr Fantastic) indeed has multiple degrees in a number of sciences and that number grows every decade. It is safe to say if he needs to know it, he does, and if he doesn't he maintains company with the worlds most famous and capable scientists and inventors including Tony Stark, Dr. Henry Pym, Dr. Henry McCoy, Dr. Charles Xavier (deceased), Dr. Stephen Strange, and even Victor von Doom, (who left school before he could get his doctorate) if the stakes are high enough. It does sound rather as if those extra degrees Reed has may be honorary, though.   I suppose Dr. Doom could quite easily get any qualification he wanted from Latveria U, of course.  And as for "Mr Fantastic's name is Reed Richards not Reed Fantastic, so he would be Dr Richards", I just have to mention Dr. Manhattan.  Another site says "Anyone who'd call themselves Fantastic would probably take every opportunity to mention their doctorate(s), too. Hell, he'd probably correct strangers who called him "Mister" Richards. Definitely a dick."  He has a point. In fact, now I come to think of it, surgeons don't call themselves doctor, they have quite a thing about being called Mister.  And Stephen Strange was of course a surgeon.  Not in America. A surgeon is a Doctor of Surgery (DS) as opposed to a Medical Doctor (MD). And in Australia a doctor isn't a Doctor at all: Historically, Australian medical schools have followed the British tradition by conferring the degrees of Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) to its graduates whilst reserving the title of Doctor of Medicine (MD) for their researchtraining degree, analogous to the PhD, or for their honorary doctorates. Really, saying Kirby and Lee wanted to be sure to distinguish between the two mentalities of their creations. Richards was allied with the common man, using science to further the opportunities of mankind. Doom only had one ambition, to rule mankind and thus did everything he could to separate him from mankind... does make it rather seem as if using your doctorate is equivalent to declaring war on mankind. Which isn't always the case.

Age bin part the on and on

Wrote a letter saying that I wasn't saying that Australian troops had committed war crimes in Afghanistan, but if they hadn't then it was the first war they'd ever been in where they hadn't, with examples: but wasn't published and Word crashed and I've lost it.

When will we be paid

Nature - well, older art - imitating art.  First, a fragment from an Australian novel - two characters discussing staffing a remote cattle station;

"I managed to get a bloke in Norseman - seems quite a good man."
"Only one?"
"I reckon that with good management, one white hand and the boy and the black stockman, with the black girls working around the house, are all you need to run this station efficient."

Quitters can't win, by Allen Aldous: Cheshire, 1946

to compare with the old apartheid joke -

In London, van der Merwe with another South African is watching some men repairing the road. 'Why do they need so many people to do the job?' asks the friend. `Wragtig,' says van der Merwe in agreement, 'It's amazing. Just give me six boys and I could do it by myself.'

or

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWhcTu5El0c

Conversation post

An article on the Conversation about juries and social media. 

In determining the best way of dealing with the vexing issues relating to social media and juries, our team canvassed the options that have been available to courts in dealing with traditional media’s impact on juries. ....
First of all, let’s assume two things: one, social media cannot be silenced and, two, juries will continue to be used in criminal trials in Australia. These are most certainly issues worthy of further investigation in relation to this topic, however our research took a pragmatic approach to current trends by focusing on immediate and short-term strategies in dealing with current juries.
Given this framework, we need to acknowledge that there are inherent limitations to traditional approaches of managing the balance of publicity and fair trial – namely the capacity for courts to issue suppression (non-publication or “gag”) orders, or by the threat of sub judice contempt charges against those who publish material which may impact on a fair trial.
.......
The most “doable” option lies in dealing with jurors once in the court system - a type of reverse engineering of the problem - so that jurors know exactly what they can and cannot do with social media. Traditional approaches to dealing with media impact on juries have included judicial directions, changing the venue of the trial, judge-only trials, delaying the start of the trial, sequestering the jury, and recently and controversially, polling jurors, as used in the high profile manslaughter case of Jayant Patel in Brisbane earlier this year. 

This does assume, of course, that the "Only take into account what you hear in court" rule for juries is in fact right, in the sense of contributing more to justice than the reverse. I'm not convinced that this has been proven.
If if ever was true, furthermore, it may not be true now. In an era where the average citizen demands to be able to check on anything on their tablet instantly, I'm not sure that it's a reasonable - or achievable - request to give up this godlike power for the period of a trial.
And as google is more and more baked into the brains of newer generations this gets harder and harder every year.
You might, as a possible alternative, ask jurors to share with the court the sites they had accessed, enabling each side's lawyers to introduce rebuttal evidence if necessary.
We should be hesitant to insist on imposing the social institutions of the 1400s in the modern era. At the very least, someone should be required to make the argument.

I always think that the author should respond to comments on a Convo post, but they seldom do. 

Kim Jong Unexceptional

When Kim Jong Un came to the throne we all made fun of his hairstyle, but more and more he seems to be pretty much in the hipstream.  On the train or in the street more and more buzzcut back and sides and one or another form of souffle top.  Was he an actual style guide - people looking at him and thinking "Hey, I could look really cool in that" - or is it just that all parties concerned are dead leaves floating on the zeitgeist?  Answering that question would require more work than I - fuck it, let's google "KJI haircut".

Well, no real data, other than the the peak fuss about the KJI look was back in 2014 when there was a fake news story about all Korean men being required to use it/eschew it. The question remains moot.

I really don't blog terribly often these days, do I?  Perhaps I ought to move to tweeting.

The Clean Earthquake

Watched a bit of San Andreas last night, earthquake movie with the Rock, musing about how unspeakably vile the applauded morality was. The Rock has a wife and a daughter.  He flies into an earthquake with a helicopter, falling buildings all around, hundreds of thousands crushed, rescues his wife and nobody else, crashes helicopter. Steals car, drives off with wife and nobody else at a time when millions are trying to flee city. Finds plane, flies it in to earthquake, crashes it, that's one plane that's not going to join any evacuation.  Takes boat, rides tsunami into city to find and save daughter and, to be sure, her boyfriend. High-fives all round, all is well, the dead millions are npcs, survivor's guilt doesn't get a look in.
To conceal slightly the vicious disregard of the interests of everybody who isn't family the disaster has two modes - one populated, one not.  There are times when you see the streets full of people running, and at those times the family is running too; then the buildings fall, the tsunami hits, and everybody disappears, even as bodies, so there's nobody there to reproach the Rock for letting them die.  It's a sign, I suppose, that Americans won't blame Trump for nepotism; that's the ethos that their entertainment praises as the highest value in life.

Blogger Devin Faraci gets it right -
It is possible that San Andreas is the most morally despicable blockbuster ever made. It is a sickening paean to selfishness, a movie that lionizes a public servant rescue worker who abandons his job in the middle of the greatest natural disaster in the history of America to steal a rescue helicopter to save only his wife and daughter, leaving thousands to die and suffer in his wake. It is, frankly, sickening.

Very few of the other (generally critical) reviews touch on this, though.