It's a hot heat.

You get used to a lot of things in New York, weather-wise -- mounds of snow, slush, huge puddles and potholes, ice, harsh winds, hot summer days of high heat and 100% humidity, gorgeous fall leaves that turn into a wet slippery menace, and so on and so forth. But we seldom worry about temperatures in excess of 100 degrees, and in my experience never in excess of 110.

So I was almost shocked past the stage of pity when friends in Southern California reported 117 degrees yesterday at 3:00 pm Pacific. 

That's just mean. 

They live inland, closer to Joshua Tree than L.A., and I suppose they had what you might call a "dry heat." Or, "the seventh circle of Hell." (Burning rain and sand, blood + fire, etc.) 

And here we were in the Hudson Valley, having the most glorious weather of the year this Labor Day weekend. 

I mean, I don't even know what to say about 117. It's just mean. The mind boggles. 

A few years back I read a book about a guy who decided to live in a cabin in the Alaskan inland, using wood and coal for heat, and one night it hit 70 below zero. Most Alaskans probably have not had to endure those kind of conditions. Extreme temperatures are just stunning.

I remember some summers in New York where we had heat waves you could literally see, and the temperature might get to 104. A bad fever, but probably not fatal. Of course, being New York, it was most decidedly not a dry heat; you could almost stick to the wall like Wacky Wally. Maybe 117 with low humidity is nicer than 104 with high humidity, but I doubt you could call either really nice. 

My main concern for our friends is that California does not have the best track record of keeping the air conditioning on (or for that matter the lights). And indeed they started to have power problems Friday night. 

Even professional-strength A/C struggles when you have this kind of heat. The only time I know I was someplace with comparable temperatures I was changing planes with the Mrs. in Phoenix, and you could feel the baking heat humming into the windows of the airport like a glowing red field of radiation. We were kind of glad to change planes elsewhere on our way home.

Our friends are tough cookies and will survive a little baking. And when we're freezing under a pile of snow in five months I'm sure they'll be enjoying perfect California weather. Although they may still be doing it by candlelight -- them being in about the only state in the union run by bigger morons than our state. 

I am prey.

Last month I was in the backyard, trying to keep Nipper the dog out of trouble, when I saw a telltale sign of invasion. 

A single yellow jacket was hovering near the grass, not close to any clover blossoms or anything else that might attract a member of the hymenoptera order. 

Sure enough, it landed and made its way into a secret hole, a hideout in the lawn itself, where a nest had been built. These were ground-nesting beasts, waiting for a careless moment when I or one of my faithful dogs would stride too near, and then attack! 

Later that day, when I was alone, I took my can of wasp spray and a bucket of dirt down to the backyard. I filled that hole completely with poison. I let it sit for a while. Then I covered it with earth. 

Job done. Except for one yellow jacket. One lone wasp that had been out on the hunt. It returned to the hole to find the entrance sealed. It hovered and bobbed, looking for a way in. 

It was now the warrior with no chief. It was the samurai with no master. It was... RONIN!!!!

!!!!

Later I was sitting on the porch... and I was buzzed by the single remaining yellow jacket. It hovered about until I was obliged to leave. This has happened again. And again. It happened at a train station one town over. It happened in a parking lot.

It will not stop. Not until it has its revenge.

You killed my master. I will kill you.

Because it is... RONIN!!!!

!!!!

There is no escape. It is not a matter of if, just a matter of when,

Because it is... RONIN!!!!

!!!!

Things are hoppin'!

As with last week, I reached a point this week where everything cascaded on me at once. That was Thursday. It started at 1:36 a.m., when large economy-size dog Tralfaz decided he had to go to the bathroom. We discourage this kind of thing, but what can you do? He really had to go.

The broken sleep was worse than usual, because the break was wide. I had trouble getting back to dreamland. So not only was it one of those days that are often called One Of Those Days, but I also faced it semi-exhausted, tired enough to feel sick. Fortunately, I was not actually sick and tired; just tired.

To make this lame blog post up to you, I want to introduce you to my newest pet. His name is Galileo Hammersmith Holyoke Snord. G. Hammersmith for short.

He is a frog, about the size of a quarter. I saw him Wednesday night on the walkway while leading smaller family-size dog Nipper out to use the lawn. G. Hammersmith was minding his own business, but since he was on my property, I declared him to be mine. He is a clever chap, whose interests include snowboarding, electric trains, and the history of avocado farming. He used to sell for Amway but switched to Tupperware. He thinks The Big Sleep is good but not as good as The Maltese Falcon. He feels that pale yellow is a good color on him. He prefers Mary Ann to Ginger, Bailey to Jennifer, and Miriam to Nancy. He can't golf, but he likes to watch it on TV. Also, he leaped into the grass and vanished a second after I took this photo.

Farewell, G. Hammersmith! Thank you for the many seconds of joy you brought us. We shall miss you. May the lawn mowers of life never darken your lily pad.

The blindness of the intelligentsia.

Today we address the latest fad from publishing, courtesy of a major journal known for its deep dives into thorny intellectual problems. I am of course referring to Esquire magazine.

"Fact Checking Is the Core of Nonfiction Writing," notes the title of the article in question. "Why Do So Many Publishers Refuse to Do It?"

Well, as someone who has done fact-checking work for more than twenty years, I can tell you one reason right off the top of my head: Publishers are cheap. Even in the heady days of 2000, when publishers had money, and the Internet hadn't started to pick off newspapers and magazines like tin monkeys in a shooting gallery, publishers were tightfisted about copyediting and fact-checking. Why? Because the production budget margins were slim, and anything that wasn't sales (advertising, special direct sales, subscriptions), fat paychecks for talent, editorial bonuses, or loaded expense accounts was overhead. We were overhead. We were speed bumps that the editors and writers hit on their way to the sunny uplands of publishing glory. We were the damp sock in the face that said "This author writes like a fourth-grader with narcolepsy" or "Everything in this piece is a lie." It was never phrased that way, but that's how it feels on the other end of the sock. Who'd want to pay for that?

But that's not what the author is driving at here. Best-selling true-crime-story peddler Emma Copley Eisenberg is asking why book publishers don't pay for fact-checking staff to make sure the books they publish are accurate.

Fact checking is a comprehensive process in which, according to the definitive book on the subject, a trained checker does the following: “Read for accuracy”; “Research the facts”; “Assess sources: people, newspapers and magazines, books, the Internet, etc”; “Check quotations”; and “Look out for and avoid plagiarism.” Though I had worked as a fact checker in two small newsrooms, did I trust myself to do the exhaustive and detailed work of checking my own nonfiction book? I did not.
      From reading up on the subject and talking to friends who had published books of nonfiction, I knew that I would be responsible for hiring and paying a freelance fact checker myself. This is the norm, not the exception; in almost all book contracts, it is the writer’s legal responsibility, not the publisher’s, to deliver a factually accurate text.
      As a result, most nonfiction books are not fact checked; if they are, it is at the author’s expense. Publishers have said for years that it would be cost-prohibitive for them to provide fact checking for every nonfiction book; they tend to speak publicly about a book’s facts only if a book includes errors that lead to a public scandal and threaten their bottom line. Recent controversies over books containing factual errors by Jill Abramson, Naomi Wolf, and, further back, James Frey, come to mind.

I'm willing to take her question at face value here. The main reason that publishers don't want to fact-check -- and neither do authors -- is it means less money for everybody else. She says that for one her books she had thousands of pages of documents and hours of transcripts. I am not questioning her work ethic at all. I am saying that it would take the fact-checker about the same amount of time to go over all this information, even if it were well organized (which most writers are not), so what does she expect them to be paid? The starvation wage for such work is $20 an hour, so you're looking at possibly $20,000 at least if you want such research checked. That's all going to come out of sales, and thus out of the writer's pay. How many of them would sign on for that, especially writers who are more confident about their research?

Unbelievably, Eisenberg was able to get someone to do one of her books for just twelve grand, for which she paid herself out of pocket. I credit her for the willingness to do that rather than face fire or possibly lawsuits for getting the facts wrong. And she was lucky to get a good fact-checker; elsewhere the article cites the story of a writer who hired a freelance fact-checker that was not so good, and introduced more errors into the work. Not many people really have experience in the field, you know, and those that claim to often have worked for biased publications or celebrity outfits that just want a rubber stamp on what they publish.

Then there's this thought:

But the reason why the publishing industry has been slow to implement such guidelines for fact checking may lie further down in the foundation of the whole system. Without widespread consumer awareness that most books are not fact checked, or about which imprints publish which books, there’s no real reason for publishers to care about fact checking. If it comes to light that a book contains major errors, it’s the author, not the publisher, whose reputation takes the hit.

She's right about that, but doesn't make the case why the publisher should care. I've done a lot of work for a publisher that will put almost anything labeled nonfiction in print, all kinds of stuff, and they really and honestly don't care if it's truthful. Why should they? No one's going to say, "This book on the Reptilian Conspiracy leaves out crucial data! I'll never buy a book from Knucklehead Press again!" No, they'll say, "Joe Bloe's book on the Reptilian Conspiracy is a waste of time! Don't buy it!" And if the sales are lousy, the editors at Knucklehead won't bother to contract Mr. Bloe for more books. It's still cheaper than having a big fund for fact-checking and lawyers that doesn't come out of author's royalties. But Eisenberg, who I suppose as a reporter is studious about facts, seems to think publishers can pay for this out of the unicorn golden fart fund, because the Internet has demolished the book publishing industry pretty well, and most books lose money.

The person who brought this story to my attention -- you probably guessed I'm not an Esquire reader -- was fuming because publishers ought to pay! for fact-checking, to stop the spread of fake news! I'd like to know whose fake news was intended by that statement. The healthcare pros who said we couldn't visit Grandpa's deathbed but it was okay to mob the streets for a protest? The fact-checkers at Rolling Stone who gave a thumbs-up to the Duke Lacrosse story? The sharp-eyed researchers at CNN who approved the "fiery but mostly peaceful" reportage?

NB: This is fake but accurate.

For some reason, the same people who ask "Who watches the watchmen?" about the police are completely willing to trust reporters and fact-checkers, as if they don't have their own biases and prejudices. Or, more likely, they know they have biases and prejudices, but they're the "right kind." Which is how I've gotten in trouble over the years for my fact-checking work.

One last point, and this may be the most important point: Insane or not, con artist or not, the book author will almost certainly know more about his subject than the fact-checker will, but the fact-checker can only go by accepted wisdom. So in cases where the book goes against conventional wisdom, the fact-checker would red-pencil everything until the publisher has no choice but to pay a kill fee and cancel the project. What does this mean? Surely half the diet and nutrition books peddled to the lay audience would never see the light of day. And no book questioning orthodoxy on global warming, sexual identity, or the sanctity of certain politicians would ever get to galley stage. What would be next? Books arguing against Keynesian economics, the 1619 Project, abortion and euthanasia, and whatever else is a "protected subject" would never be published. Many people in the business, almost left-wingers all, might say "So what?" Here's what: Other books under the don't-question-orthodoxy rule would include Darwin's On the Origin of Species, Copernicus's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri vi, Pasteur's The Germ Theory and Its Applications to Medicine and Surgery, and Newton's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. In other words, if I de-platform (as the kiddies say) the cranks and the crooks because they disagree with mainstream opinion, I'm likely to kill the truth as collateral damage. Better to publish them all and let the truth work its way forward. 

Fred's Book Club: House of Mystery.

Hello, friends! Welcome back to the Humpback Writers feature as it begins its second year under that awful name. We call it that because it falls on Wednesdays, not because humps are involved. Had we chosen a different work by this week's author, though, we could have called it Heffalumpback Writers, but we did not, so there you are.

And today we indeed have a book by Winnie-the-Pooh creator A. A. Milne, a puzzling tale for adults called The Red House Mystery.

While remembered most for his children's works, Milne was originally a writer for adult audiences, which in his day just meant grown-up in themes and language, not in sex and violence. The Red House Mystery (published 1922) was an unusual departure for him nonetheless, being a detective story. He was known for light verse and plays, despite being a World War I veteran and thus in line to have spent his career in mournful, angry screeds.

Milne dedicates the book to his father, John Vine Milne: "Like all really nice people, you have a weakness for detective stories, and feel that there are not enough of them. So, after all that you have done for me, the least that I can do for you is write you one."

The book begins like so many English manor house stories -- in fact, indistinguishable from a Wodehouse novel except for the lack of laugh lines. Here's how it starts:

In the drowsy heat of the summer afternoon the Red House was taking its siesta. There was a lazy murmur of bees in the flower-borders, a gentle cooing of pigeons in the tops of the elms. From distant lawns came the whir of a mowing-machine, that most restful of all country sounds; making ease the sweeter in that it is taken while others are working.
     It was the hour when even those whose business it is to attend to the wants of others have a moment or two for themselves. In the housekeeper’s room Audrey Stevens, the pretty parlour-maid, re-trimmed her best hat, and talked idly to her aunt, the cook-housekeeper of Mr. Mark Ablett’s bachelor home.

Obviously they didn't have leaf blowers in Milne's day.

One of Mark Ablett's guests is Bill Beverley, whose friend Antony Gillingham decides to drop in. So does Robert, the black sheep of the family, newly returned from Australia. Robert, sad to say, doesn't last long.

They turned the body on to its back, nerving themselves to look at it. Robert Ablett had been shot between the eyes. It was not a pleasant sight, and with his horror Antony felt a sudden pity for the man beside him, and a sudden remorse for the careless, easy way in which he had treated the affair. But then one always went about imagining that these things didn’t happen—except to other people. It was difficult to believe in them just at first, when they happened to yourself.

Not only is Robert dead, but his body is found in a room locked from the inside. In other words, Milne has jumped right in and written a locked-room mystery, one of the most difficult to construct, because everyone will be looking up the chimney and knocking around for secret passages and you have to avoid those. It would be a few years before John Dickson Carr became a master of the form, but it's always a tough go.

Meanwhile, back at the house, Antony and Bill become amateur Holmes and Watson to try to solve the mystery.

“Now then,” said Bill, “We are alone. Fire ahead.”
    Antony smoked thoughtfully for a little. Then he took his pipe out of his mouth and turned to his friend.
    “Are you prepared to be the complete Watson?” he asked.
    “Watson?”
   “Do-you-follow-me-Watson; that one. Are you prepared to have quite obvious things explained to you, to ask futile questions, to give me chances of scoring off you, to make brilliant discoveries of your own two or three days after I have made them myself—all that kind of thing? Because it all helps.”
    “My dear Tony,” said Bill delightedly, “need you ask?” Antony said nothing, and Bill went on happily to himself, “I perceive from the strawberry-mark on your shirt-front that you had strawberries for dessert. Holmes, you astonish me. Tut, tut, you know my methods. Where is the tobacco? The tobacco is in the Persian slipper. Can I leave my practice for a week? I can.”

Anthony and Bill are good fun, and Milne observes all the form needed to give us a good mystery with a healthy dose of suspension of disbelief. Raymond Chandler knocked the book for being unrealistic and contrived, but that's what you expect from this kind of story. See also Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, the aforementioned John Dickson Carr, and on and on. We can't all write like slumming angels the way Chandler could, or get away with not accounting for all the bodies.

The worst thing I can say about The Red House Mystery is that I found it forgettable. I think I read it about seven years ago, and when I thought about profiling it for the book club I realized I'd forgotten the whole thing. Took some skimming to refresh my memory, and I usually remember at least a few crucial bits of plot, style, or character from every book I've read without prompting. All I remembered was, it was fun, and it was a mystery.

The novel is available free, thanks to Mongo and our other good friends at Gutenberg. If you'd like a light late-summer read with good cheer and a murder, I think this will fit your needs like Winnie stuck in Rabbit's hole.

E for Effort. And Elephants.

The attempt to revive the public's interest in circuses with Parker & Pestoff's Parachuting Instant Circus was doing
all right until Hurricane Isaias scattered the squad over three Louisiana parishes.

Chinese Death Virus again.

I think the thing I hate most about this terrible virus from Wuhan, besides what it does to people who contract it, is how it makes us all look at our friends and families as harbingers of doom, monsters crawling with death. It makes the simplest in-person human transaction into a threat.

Of course here in the southern stretch of the Empire State, where a combination of a large and close population and corrupt morons for leaders has led to the worst outbreak in the nation, we have more reason than other Americans to feel this way. I mentioned we had dinner guests on Saturday; they showed up wearing masks, not presuming to go maskless until we assured them we didn't mind. It hadn't occurred to me to make the same offer to them, but that's where we are. On Sunday I was at a church group meeting in person for the first time since late winter, and we sat around, spaced apart, masks on and hand sanitizer near the door. I can't get used to this and I hope I never do. 

I told my wife I'd just as soon get the damned disease and get immune to it, but she pointed out that that was A) stupid and B) possibly no help since there was a reinfection case in the news and C) definitely no help because things were not going back to normal just because I got sick and recovered. 

I'm trying not to look at this in any political way, but of course it's hard not to, because since the Baby Boomers preached that the personal is political in the sixties, every goddamn thing has to be political. People lash out with political messages about this and hide behind science, unaware that the science about this disease is far from settled and changing frequently (a blind spot I see even in the medical press). The most common memes I've seen of this variety are stoopid Trump supporters who refuse to mask up. Well, you can't attack political opponents and then pretend it's not political. 

On the other hand, many people think the whole mask up / quarantine / damn the economy / close everything movement will end the day after Joe Biden's election to the presidency. I suspect not, but who knows. Public health professionals certainly did not inspire trust by claiming that bigotry was more dangerous than the virus; not only did they veer out of their lane by making a public health statement outside their area of expertise, they ran right into the guardrail. Why the hell should anyone trust them now? The personal is political, because people like that made it so.

"Trust me. I wear glasses."

I guess what bothers me the most is that everything, every single stupid thing, that comes down the pike has to be a means for Americans to attack one another. This is not confined to the Left. But I have noted before that the only historical Americans that the Left likes are Americans who fight other Americans, not the enemies of America. It's one reason we don't get many war pictures anymore, but there always seems to be another freaking Joe McCarthy movie in the works.