Manifest 1.2: Arthur C. Clarke's Magic

Precious little offered in Manifest 1.2 about what happened to those passengers on that fateful flight - or who or what caused it to happen - with the government team going over the usual suspects including aliens, etc.

God and magic also came into some other conversations, with Ben observing that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Great line - but I would've liked it better had Ben (meaning the writers, producers, or director of this episode), added that Arthur C. Clarke wrote that years ago.  (I don't like plagiarism in any form.)

Otherwise, the compelling, if obvious, family and romantic dilemmas continued to develop in this episode.  Ben and Michaela are both apparently forgiving.  Michaela seems to forgive Lourdes - her best friend - for marrying her almost fiancee, and Ben is understanding if not accepting of his wife Grace's relationship with the other guy.   As a romantic drama, Manifest is firing on all cylinders, and there will no doubt be more ahead.  The course of true love never did run smooth (Shakespeare), especially when time travel is involved (me).

And time travel is why I'll keep watching Manifest.  I'd like to know what caused the plane to jump more than five years in time, and what connection that has to the voices our time-traveling passengers are hearing.   And I'm hoping, to get back to Arthur C. Clarke, that the explanation is technological not magical.

We'll see.

See also Manifest 1.1: Canterbury Voices

Melania Trump's Plagiarism in Academic and Historical Perspective

Putting Melania Trump's plagiarism and the Trump campaign's response to it in perspective - as a professor, who, like most professors, has on occasion dealt with plagiarism, and who also has studied what happens when dictators get caught up in lies -

- What Melania did was actually worse than a student who plagiarizes. Students usually are taking more than one course, get caught up in final exams, are just becoming adults, etc. Under that kind of pressure, plagiarism is wrong and must be called out, but it happens. Trump's campaign had months to prepare for yesterday's speech by Melania - the fact that she so blatantly plagiarized shows Trump's continuing disdain for both truth and democracy.

 - The denial by Chris Christie and Paul Manafort of plagiarism is the same as Trump denying a tweet contained an anti-semitic Jewish star.  Trump's approach is just double down and deny the truth when caught in a wrongdoing. This is right out of the Goebbels-Hitler propaganda playbook. Why does this work?  As Erich Fromm pointed out in Escape from Freedom, some people don't want the responsibility of thinking for themselves - they want their leaders to do it for them, and are happy to accept as truth whatever their leaders say.   This, alas, is one of the foundations of fascism.

 -Trump has already gone after the press. We'll soon see him go after academics, because professors are the in-the-trench experts on plagiarism. Attacks on the press and academics are another hallmark of leaders who don't like democracy (Erdogan in Turkey has arrested both journalists and professors).

The Trump campaign has thus far shown an astonishing resilience, often picking up rather than losing support after getting caught up in an outrageous lie.  Plagiarism, and then denying it, is part of the same pattern.   Will it have a similar effect on Trump's success?  The very future of our democracy may reside in the answer to that question.

Two Pieces of Nonsense Yesterday about Bill Clinton and Barack Obama

As primary voting is underway today in Wisconsin and Hawaii, I wanted to comment briefly on two campaign issues which received considerable media coverage yesterday.

1. Bill Clinton's heated lecture to a person at a Hillary Clinton rally waving a big anti-abortion sign has been cited - by Fox News and others - as a return to his self-centered aggressive campaigning, which may be hurting more than helping Hillary.


My take on this: Nonsense - it's good and helpful for a former President to take a strong stand on this issue, whenever possible, whether or not he's campaigning for his wife. More specifically, it was not Clinton's aggressive style, or his insertion of himself into Hillary Clinton's campaign, that caused problems for Hillary a few weeks ago, and received criticism from lots of people, including me. It was the nature of Bill Clinton's attacks on Obama.

And, clearly, a verbal exchange with an anti-abortion protester is not at all the same as an attack on Hillary Clinton's rival. This is an issue upon which most Democrats, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, agree. Bill Clinton deserves our praise not criticism for standing up on this.

2. The Clinton campaign accused Obama of "plagiarism" because Obama used a passage in a speech about the power of words first used, almost word for word, by Obama's friend and campaign ally Deval Patrick (from a speech Patrick made in 2006, in his successful run for Massachusetts governor).


My take on this: Pretty close to nonsense. The slim part that's legitimate is, ideally, Obama should have said in his speech, "as my friend Deval Patrick aptly says..." and then gone ahead with the passage. But calling this "plagiarism" is ridiculous. (The very word comes from the Latin: to kidnap.) You cannot steal something which is voluntarily given to you. Clinton's campaign must know this. They only make themselves look petty by grossly mislabeling this minor misstep.

And I'll be back tonight after the returns are in.