My Hair is on Fire, why isn't Yours?

Vincent J. Curtis

28 Jan 2019

RE:  Climate change as a social justice issue (Hamilton Spectator of this date)

The brainiacs among the McMaster University professoriate announced a conference on the social justice of climate change on the day when a polar vortex is bringing frigid temperatures and heavy snowfall to Hamilton.

Climate change is a social justice issue.  All the solutions proffered by the cossetted brainiacs, like carbon taxes and expensive electricity, screw the working class and the poor.  In France, the peasants are revolting - because they can’t carry the latest burden for saving the world eighty years from now.

The cossetted brainiacs aren’t affected by the consequences of their ideology.  They don’t have to drive to work or drive for work, like the rioting French peasants do.  Social justice is at stake, just not as the brainiacs see it.

I always thought of a university as a place of learning, not of social activism by the professoriate.  Social activism led by professors probably means they are getting too emotionally involved to remain objective and scholarly about the subject.  But, I suppose climate change being a science matter, it’s okay for artsies to jump in head first.

Hosting a conference which ought to be entitled, “My hair’s on fire, why isn’t yours?”, we have a professor of English saying, “We need to approach climate change from a number of different lenses.” And “We need to incorporate that Indigenous knowledge with science.”  How did she get to be a professor of English when she can utter so failed a metaphor as ‘approaching from different lenses’?  How do the science professors feel about being told their knowledge is lacking and requires the incorporation of ‘Indigenous knowledge’?  How would she know?

The professor must have got her Ph.D. in the culture studies part of “English and Culture Studies for I observe no familiarity with Bill Shakescene in her utterances.

The professors unintentionally give cause to wonder at their employment as professors.

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An anti-Rape Culture in Canada?

Vincent J. Curtis

20 Jan 2019

In her Hamilton Spectator column of Saturday, January 19, 2019, Lathan Hunter, Ph.D., declared in the second paragraph that there were 436,000 rapes per year in Canada, with only 3 percent convicted, or 12,780.  On that basis of these numbers, Hunter proceeds to make recommendations to teach boys not to rape girls.  This is the “anti-rape” culture of which she writes.

Hunter’s numbers are nowhere near correct.  Although rape is a kind of sexual assault, not all sexual assaults are rape.  Statistics Canada does report that, for example, there were 646,000 self-reported cases of sexual assault in Canada in 2014.  But of these, more than half (567 per 1,000) were not charged; one fifth (221 per 1,000) were charged but didn’t go to court; a tenth (95 per 1,000) went to court but were not convicted; and a twentieth (52 per 1,000) were convicted, not sentenced to custody, and a final twentieth (65 per 1,000) were convicted, sent to custody.  That last figure would would amount to 4,200, not 12,700; and a conviction rate of 0.66 percent, not 3 percent.

Allowing that same rapes may go unreported and for a perpetrator not to be caught or identified, really only those sent to custody could objectively considered “rape”.  Most sexual assaults seem to be matters of opinion.   It is not the case that men are getting away with rape most of the time in the Canadian justice system, as Hunter seems to indicate.

Repeal of laws against homosexual sodomy  turned on the argument that while homosexuality may not be normal, it is commonplace enough not to be considered heinous.  Hunter faces a similar dilemma:  If rape were as common as Hunter alleged, she would be faced with the problem of explaining why such commonplace behavior should be considered so heinous.  Rather, the argument is that because rape is so heinous that explains why it is not commonplace.

I don't know how Hunter escapes the dilemma she fell into, arguing that all men are potential rapists, rape is commonplace, and that men needed to be trained from boyhood not to rape.  Yet how can something so commonplace not be thought of as natural rather than heinous?  The trap is escapable but it requires something more sophisticated than the rigid, categorical thinking that Hunter usually exhibits.
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Ranked balloting: can't they ever learn?

Vincent J. Curtis

23 Jan 2019

Supporters of rank balloting are either obvious to opposition or must love rejection.  The latest call for ranked balloting offers the usual confection of nonsense to justify this hobby-horse of progressivism. (Hamilton Spectator of this date)

Aside: rank balloting and proportional representation are two progressivist hobby-horses, and are utterly at odds with each other.  No matter.  Both are simply spaghetti against the wall attempts to screw up our electoral system.

Ranked balloting is only interesting when the second or third place finisher vaults over the highest vote-getter on election night and is declared the actual winner.  Such an event actually happened in the Second Congressional District of Maine in the 2016 election.  There were four candidates: one Republican, one Democrat, and two independents.  On election night, the Republican won by a plurality of 2,000 votes, but was short of an overall majority.  The second preferences of the ballots were then used to readjust the “vote count” and lo and behold if the second place Democrat wasn’t declared the actual winner by 50.5 % to 49.5 %.

So unpersuaded of the validity of those results was the governor of Maine, Paul LePage, that he wrote “stolen election” on the certificate he had to sign certifying the election.  LePage tweeted that ranked balloting “didn’t result in a true majority as promised – simply a plurality measured differently.”

And therein lies the fatal flaw of ranked balloting.  It only produces a plurality measured differently, not a majority as it promises.  Ranked balloting is inferior to the practice of holding run-off elections - and if valid majorities are the highest goal, then cost is no object.  Don’t argue the economy of ranked balloting over run-off elections.

The system we have of plurality election has an 800 years long  history of producing legitimate and accepted outcomes.  Progresses can’t stand that and so come up with ranked balloting and proportional representation just to mess things up.

If we’re smart and aware, we’ll reject this latest call to screw up an electoral system that works.

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Blame Trump for Canada-China woes.

Vincent J. Curtis

23 Jan 2019

If the Covington High School incident proves anything, it is how many people are ready to damn Donald Trump and his supporters.  Even erstwhile conservatives abandoned the basic journalistic standard of ascertaining the facts before making a fool of yourself.

The article by Ethan Lou, (Hamilton Spectator of this date) blaming Trump’s retreats for China’s aggressiveness with Canada, is of that ilk of ignorance before commentary.  Lou’s argument is a failure of logic and facts.   As for logic, Lou admits that China’s “hardline president” Xi predates Trump, and that China has been uncharacteristically aggressive in its neighborhood for years before Trump.  Yet, “It’s Donald Trump’s fault.”  That the effect is observed before the alleged cause existed is Lou’s failure of logic.

This is an example of ignorance.  China began its “Anti-Access and Area Denial” strategy in 2011, when Obama was president.  It follows from China’ uncharacteristic imperialism, which itself arose due to domestic political needs.  Only about half of China’s population has been lifted out of abject poverty, and any slowdown in economic growth could set off a rebellion.  Because of China’s “one-child” policy, it created a generational cohort of something like 131 males for 100 females, leaving a lot of youngish men without families to raise and time on their hands.  That is another cause of discontent and rebellion.

To tamp down social tensions that could cause the outbreak of revolt against the communist regime, China has stoked nationalism, racial chauvinism, and military aggressiveness.  Military aggressiveness justifies a heavy-handed clampdown on domestic dissent.

Trump’s aggressive trade policies and tariffs actually have the Chinese afraid of him.  Trump the businessman can see the weaknesses of China’s communist regime, and is exploiting them for American benefit.  But Lou doesn’t know any of this, or admitting it would destroy the reason for his blaming of Trump for Canada’s woes with China.

Lou is obviously the kind of person who would have condemned America ten years ago for being the world’s policeman, and carrying the big stick; and now he condemns America for pulling in its horns under Trump.

Facts, logic, and knowledge of history are of no concern when it comes to attacking Trump and those who support him.

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Davos and populism.

Vincent J. Curtis

22 Jan 2019

The Spectator editorial has got the story half right, so far as it went.  The political outlook of the editorial, however, forced the thinking into categories that do not exist.

The problem with political discourse in western democracies nowadays is that over the last twenty or so years it has been more and more regulated by political correctness and speech codes.  Progressivism became in the media and then in political circles the only respectable political outlook.  Progressivism came not even to argue the merits of its positions and advocacy, it simply dismissed opposition as immoral in some way.  One had to be immoral to oppose the sanctity of progressivist causes.

What is called populism is the inevitable reaction to the excesses of progressivism.

When one is rich and powerful, one can cope with disadvantageous situations.  America is rich and powerful and so it should sustain NATO even though it is being taken advantage of by European states that shirk their own burdens.

The political conversation during the latter years of the Obama administration was about transgendered rights and the weather that might occur eighty-five years in the future.  Meanwhile, the white, middle-class of America was being hollowed out by lack of jobs, and drug use, brought on by unemployment, was becoming rampant.   Life expectancies were falling, and white people were being condemned for their privilege and for being the root cause of all the evils in the world.  Clearly, the established political class were not paying attention to a large segment of the electorate – the segment Hillary Clinton called “the deplorables.”  Well, deplorables also vote, and have feelings too.  They could sense the contempt of the progressives towards them and their plight.

With Davos, we see all the hypocrisy of the progressive elite on display.  Being rich and powerful, they are not subject to the ramifications of their own ideology.  They believe in carbon taxes because they can afford to pay them, and fly in private jets to Europe for the conference.  They live in gated communities, but declare a border wall to be immoral, a wall that by keeping out illegal immigrants will boost the wages of the unskilled domestic laborer.

In France, the rioting in Paris began over carbon taxes intended to save the world – in the year 2100.  You can live in Paris and get around quite nicely without owning a car.  It doesn’t matter to you that the price of petrol is $4.00 per liter and is going up to fight climate change – that collection of weather events eighty-five years in the future.  But outside of Paris, a car is essential for modern life, and for employment.  Another thoughtless turn of the screw affects few Parisians and enables President Macron to strike a moral pose for the politically correct.  But for those who need cars and who use cars to make a living, the cost of fuel reached the point where they could no longer absorb the hit.  And so the riots began.  Presently, they continue because other examples of elites not being subject to the consequences of their own ideology are being grieved.  They are being grieved in the streets because addressing these grievances became impossible by normal means.  These matters simply weren’t discusses in polite society.

Populism as a category is being employed by progressives as a put-down, as yet another reason to dismiss opposition as beneath contempt and unworthy of talking to.  In Europe, they are held up as proto-Nazis.

If the middle class of America were as rich and strong as they used to be, they wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about Davos.  Now, Davos has become a symbol of the excesses and hypocrisy of the elite whose ideas and policies afflict the middle class with real problems.

Because the American middle class is largely white, and progressives have persuaded themselves that whiteness is the root cause of all the evils in the world, progressives may not be able to come to terms with the revolt against the excesses of progressivism, which they call and dismiss as populism – a revolt of the unwashed and uneducated.

Davos will continue, and globalization will continue to develop, though perhaps not in a straight line.  But Trump and those like him around the world are the consequence of the insufferable speech and thought codes that came to encrust public debate in the western democracies, codes that prevented addressing real issues of the majority of voters in America, and the same elsewhere in the world.  Even now, reactionary and rear-guar actions are being fought by progressives against Trump’s border wall.

It wasn’t just the elites of Davos that stoked so-called populist rage, it is the excesses of progressivism itself that neglected and ignored, when not insulting, middle class voters.

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Junk Science: We waste 57 percenty of our food.

Vincent J. Curtis

21 Jan 2017

It made me groan to read of the study and of the editorial that followed, suggesting that we are wasting 57 percent of our food.  The short answer is that we aren’t, and that we should wait for the next study to overthrow the results of this one.

It is obvious that this is another cock-and-bull sociological study, with invalid and insignificant data.   In the first place, by what right does one extrapolate from the study group to society as a whole?  What would the results be if you had a different study group, or a different set of observers, or both?  And who, exactly, constitutes the “we”?  Is Somali society more economical than slovenly westerners?  What about conservative Christians, or Vegans?  And how exact is that number of 57 percent?  The study made gross and unjustifiable generalizations, obviously for the publicity.

By the way, how’s that “global warming” theory working out for you today?

Far too many people glom onto science to gain respectability for their work, unjustifiably.  The food study is another case in point.

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Uniwat study accuses homeowners of failing to prepare for climate catastrophe

Vincent J. Curtis

14 Jan 2019

It is disappointing for me to read of a report from my alma mater, the University of Waterloo, that could be do dumb.  According to the report, the study links climate change with a failure on the part of Ontarians to take precautions against flooding.

In the first place, weather is not the same thing as climate, and flooding is not a kind of weather, as indicated in the report.  Second, satellite measurements indicate no increase in average global temperatures since 1998, and so a four-fold increase in flood damage since 2007 cannot be co-related with climate change.   Correlating dramatic increases in insurance claims since 2007 with climate change is fallacious.

What about municipalities issuing building permits on known flood plains for the revenue? Was that thought of?  What about aging, inadequate and failing municipal sewer systems?   In 1984, West 18^th Street experience flooding because the combined sewer system installed in the early 1950s was inadequate to cope with the run-off from new construction south of Limeridge Road.

Flooding occurred in the east end as a result of the construction of the Red Hill Expressway, not climate change.

The last major flood to occur in the Waterloo region was in 1974, when the Grand River flooded parts of Cambridge.

It is altogether too easy to invoke climate change to justify anything, and in this case probably lets poor municipal planning off the hook.  It also misses the point that homeowners do have a strategy for coping with flooding – taking out insurance against it.

Dumb!

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Sentimentality and the Sixties Scoop.

Vincent J. Curtis

7 Jan 2018

RE: Sixties Scoop survivor awaits apology from Sask Premier

The handling of the Sixties Scoop survivors is an example of the ethic of sentimentality in action.

In the sixties, it was deemed in the interest of the children for them to be removed from abusive homes, and drunken and incompetent parents.  Aboriginal children were placed in foster homes and raised by decent, loving families.

Now that aboriginal is cool and it’s fashionable (and profitable) to be a victim, “survivors” of the program are coming out of the woodwork with their hands out.  Surviving in a middle-class suburban home in the sixties and seventies was no mean thing, for only ten or twenty million other Canadians managed it.

The wrong here seems to be that the racial aboriginal was deprived of his race’s culture as a consequence of the program.  Disregarding the condition of the culture in question when the child was removed from it, how is it that race endows one with the entitlement to a certain culture?  I thought we were past that in a post-racial society.  The adoptive parents only loved their charges and thoughtlessly prepared them for the real world, not the dream world of idealized indigenous language and culture and primitive happiness.  And now the ethic of sentimentality deems that the society that thoughtlessly protected the survivors – or beneficiaries, depending on your point of view – of the program should be punished and humiliated for its foolish generosity, and the “victims” rewarded and coddled.

Sentimentality is irrational and capricious, yet it forms today’s basis for public ethics.

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A further discussion of the Ethic if Sentimentality lies in the posting of 6 Jan 2019.

Sentimentality and Sex-Ed

Vincent J. Curtis

6 Jan 2018

A nugget from Winston Churchill is that all wisdom is not new wisdom, and this insight ought to be applied to the discussion over the sex education issue in Ontario

What makes the new (2015) program superior to the old program?  The alleged superiority lies in the new program including sexting, online stalking, abuse, and other new issues in the curriculum.  In short, issues that have nothing to do with biology, you know - actual education about sex.

I have seen enough of social statistics gathering and augments put forward in support of some social theory or other not to believe any of it.  The real reason the new curriculum is endorsed in the quarters that it is, is because the new curriculum teaches an ethic of sentimentality, with its associated hierarchy of victimhood.

Reliant ultimately on the relativity of truth, sentimentality provides no rational basis for itself and its choices; and it presents ethical rights and wrongs in a dogmatic, arbitrary, and chop-logic fashion.  Being judgmental is one of the worst things one can be – except that the rule itself is judgmental to the extreme.  Making ethical choices on the basis of a rational rule if fine so long as that rule is esteemed as entirely subjective and is not applied objectively to the choices of others.  (Except for applying the rule against being judgement – which is the only objective moral rule.) Hence, the ethics of Christianity are condemned as judgmental, and immoral because of that.  The Nichomachean Ethics of Aristotle are rejected as the “subjective truth” of a dead white man, though fine for you if you are into that stuff.

An ethic of sentimentality is a form of Hedonism, which philosophy is self-contradictory.  It supports, for example, transgenderism and homosexuality as totally acceptable life choices though objectively and scientifically they are wrong.  Scientifically? What?

Evolutionary biology teaches that the purpose of sex is reproduction, and reproduction is impossible if the sex is homosexual.  Transgenderism involves the denial of some pretty obvious physical reality.  That’s why they are wrong scientifically – and wrong ethically.

The social conservatives have the better of the argument in this case, and Premier Ford is absolutely justified in siding with his supporters in this matter.

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How responsible is Macdonald?

Vincent J. Curtis

16 Nov 2018

Sir John A. Macdonald was Canada’s founding Prime Minister, serving in office from 1867 to 1873 and from 1878 to 1891.  It has become fashionable to morally condemn him for his association with Residential Schools.  Statues to Macdonald are being pulled down all over Canada, and Residential Schools are offered up as akin to concentration camps for cultural genocide.

Macdonald was Prime Minster, not a school inspector.  He had a country to build, and to protect from American encroachment.  With the purchase of Rupert’s Land from the Hudson Bay Company in 1869, Canada acquired the vast Northwest Territory that connected Ontario with the colony of British Columbia on the Pacific coast.  The Canadian Pacific Railway enabled transport across this wide open space, but to protect that space the land needed to be filled up with Europeans loyal to Canada - before America created enough facts on the ground to challenge “British” (as the Americans conceived of Canada at the time.) sovereignty over it.

The life of the Plains Indian, as it had been practiced since the end of the last Ice Age, was rapidly coming to a close.  The plains buffalo was nearly extinct by 1881.  The Dakota Sioux under Sitting Bull sought refuge in Canada from the United States Cavalry seeking revenge for the Little Big Horn, and the Sioux relied on food supplies from the government of Canada to keep from starving.  American whisky traders at Fort Whoop-up, in what is now southern Alberta, were making money by corrupting traditional Indian civilization.  In these conditions, Canada set about to establish peaceful and regular relations with the plains Indians of the Great North West.

The politicians of eastern Canada decided that it would be wrong simply to neglect the Indians and leave them to their fate in the face of the coming European settlement.  They decided that education in the manner of the white man would give the Indian a better chance of survival.  The intent of the government of Canada in establishing residential schools wasn’t to inflict pain on Indian children, but to give them a western education in the hopes that something of the Indian would survive European settlement.

The government of Canada was not in the education business, and so it contracted with entities whose mission was education – the Christian Churches.  The style of residential schools was similar in principle though smaller in scale to residential schools like Eton, Harrow, Upper Canada College, Ridley College, and Hillfield and Strathallen Colleges.   The government of Canada lacked the resources and the expertise to evaluate the quality of the educational experience of the Indian children.

Attendance at residential schools was made compulsory in 1884 by an amendment to the Indian Act of 1876.  Residential schools were funded by the Department of Indian Affairs and run by Christian Churches.  The system started with 69 schools and 1,100 students, peaking in 1931 with 80 schools, and about 9,000 students, before the closure the last one in 1996.  When provincial authorities were established, Indians and their education remained the responsibility of the Federal government.  Ten to one hundred students per school doesn’t draw close public or political supervision, and it wasn’t until 1990 that abuses became public knowledge.

The road to hell may be paved with good intentions, but the fact is that the Indians of Canada did not die out though their traditional way of life did.  The aim of Sir John A. Macdonald and Hector Langevin, the survival of the Indian in the face of European settlement, was achieved, however imperfectly.

Macdonald’s great legacy is not summed up by Residential Schools.  He saw their establishment; he did not oversee any abuses.  Schooling was his immediate aim.  It seems extreme to conclude that Macdonald should be held to blame for the evils that occurred after his death in 1891, and after the agencies directly responsible for them have themselves been made accountable.  Is the “cultural genocide” really worse than actual extinction that would have occurred otherwise?

Why Macdonald and Langevin should be sacrificed as acts of atonement for the bad treatment some received at residential schools is an odd case of selective outrage and amnesia.  

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Offend Islam, Get Beheaded

Vincent J. Curtis

4 Jan 2019

RE:  'Hateful' online post spurs complaint to City of Hamilton.  (Hamilton Spectator of this date.)

The thought police are hard at it again.  The question is whether or not the latest white boy to put his foot in his mouth is going to get politically beheaded – as an act of sacrifice and virtue signaling by other white boys.

The offender in question, James Kaspersetz, made an abasing apology even though the alleged opinion expressed was based on facts.  That 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudi is true.  That they were motivated by Saudi’s Wahhabism ideology is true.  That we have some 15,000 Saudis present in Canada on student visas is true.  That Sharia law is gaining a foothold in Canadian jurisprudence in true.

Apparently, observing those facts is politically offensive to one person among the one million people who live in the Niagara area.

Is the complainant Mr. Mo Al Jumaily a Saudi?  Is he a mind-reader?   In short, does he have standing to complain about what is in the mind of Mr. Kaspersetz?  What relevance have these opinions to the job of overseeing the mismanagement of the NPCA?

Of far more relevance to the job are Mr. Kaspersetz’s opinions on anthropogenic global warming.  Only the most strident opinions on that subject is acceptable, and on that we haven’t heard.  Who cares to mind-read the offensiveness of opinions on immigration policy when the fate of the world turns on timely action by the NPCA?

Enough with thought policing!

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Greenhouse Gas

Vincent J. Curtis

1 Jan 2019

The greenhouse gas theory of anthropogenic global warming hangs its hat on some pretty old science – of black-body radiation and atmospheric absorption of infrared light.

The problem of black-body radiation puzzled classical physics until German physicist Max Planck, in 1900, proposed the quantization of energy and then solved the problem exactly.  This marked the dawn of modern quantum physics.  The second part, infrared absorption, is related to the quantization of energy.  After World War II, infrared detection and guidance systems were invented, and the age of guided missile technology began.  The Office of Naval Research of the United States Navy sponsored a lot of fundamental research into infrared spectroscopy during the 1950s.

When we see an object glowing red hot, it means that the black-body radiation of that hot object extends into the range of visible light.  When cooler, the warm object will emit black-body radiation in the infrared region but no longer in the visible region.  The sun acts as a nearly perfect black-body radiator of a temperature of 5,777 K.  Because the earth is not of uniform temperature, it does not act as a perfect black-body radiator, but it acts so piece-wise.

A plot of radiant power versus wavelength produces the curve characteristic of black-body radiation (See curve in Figure 1.).  The shape is characteristic, but the area under the curve and where the curve’s maximum is on the wavelength axis depends upon the temperature of the radiating body.

The theory of “greenhouse” gases turns on the absorption by certain gases in the atmosphere of infrared black-body radiation that is emitted by the earth into space.  Greenhouse gases are supposed to absorb and trap some of that energy in the earth’s atmosphere.  The greenhouse gases are so-called after the heat trapping effect, not because they are used in a greenhouse.  “Greenhouse” gases include ozone, dinitrogen oxide, and natural gas, or, as it is known in New Zealand, “bovine flatulence.”  Nobody is going to fill a greenhouse with bovine flatulence unless the plan is to blow it up.  Carbon dioxide and water vapor are used in greenhouses, not for their heat trapping effect, but because plants convert carbon dioxide and water into plant matter through photosynthesis.  More carbon dioxide and water, the bigger the plant.

The major infrared absorption band of carbon dioxide occurs at a wavelength of 15 micros and is about 1 micron in width (depicted as post in Feg.1)  That absorption occurs in this manner is a consequence of the quantization of energy.  Research funded by the U.S. Navy in the 1950s measured the atmospheric absorption of solar irradiation in the infrared region, and discovered that over a distance of 300 meters at sea level all the radiation at 15 microns wavelength was absorbed.  Transmission was 0.0.  Atmospheric carbon dioxide of the 1950s level was sufficient to absorbing all 15 micron radiation over a distance of less than 300 miters.

What does this mean?  It means that more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not going to absorb any more 15 micron radiation, because all of it already is.  There is no more “greenhouse” effect to be had out of carbon dioxide.  Adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere is not going to result in the absorption of more heat.

So, how can more heat trapping occur?  Water vapor absorbs strongly in some parts of the infrared spectrum, and weaker in others.  Higher absolute humidity would increase marginally the heat trapping effect of water vapor.  Bovine flatulence absorbs in areas of the spectrum not covered by water or carbon dioxide, but there is not enough of the gas in the atmosphere for it to be of serious concern.  Otherwise, new gases of low molecular symmetry and large dipole moment would need to be introduced into the atmosphere to increase atmospheric absorption of the earth’s black-body radiation.

The greenhouse gas theory of anthropogenic global warming falls apart upon consideration of 1950s research.

Figure 1

Curve of Black-Body radiation at T=287 K (14°C)

Figure courtesy of Andre Lofthus.

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Cf. Figures 5-31 h, i, j of The Infrared Handbook  1978   Edited by William L. Wolfe and George J. Zissis.  Prepared by the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan for the Office of Naval Research, Department of the Navy.

Vincent J. Curtis is a research scientist and occasional free-lance writer.