... oh, the things you can see from here.
Wednesday, 1 May 2013
Says James Taranto, "but not a realistic plan. There's no doubt that die-hard Democrats will respond in the way Althouse imagines they are expected to.... The Althouse theory raises another question: If Obama succeeded in electing a Democratic Congress next year, what would he do with it?..."
"One year ago I left the internet.... I thought the internet might be an unnatural state for us humans, or at least for me. Maybe I was too ADD to handle it, or too impulsive to restrain my usage. I'd used the internet constantly since I was twelve, and as my livelihood since I was fourteen. I'd gone from paperboy, to web designer, to technology writer in under a decade. I didn't know myself apart from a sense of ubiquitous connection and endless information. I wondered what else there was to life. 'Real life,' perhaps, was waiting for me on the other side of the web browser."
Paul Miller says he was wrong.
Paul Miller says he was wrong.
"Does that make the show a classic? I don’t know. But I do like the fact that the show made people appreciate the entertainment value of cringing."
I'm one of the people who simply cannot enjoy watching "The Office." I understand why it's good and why people find it funny, and why the "cringe-inducing" quality is considered a sophisticated element of comedy, but it makes me feel bad. Even thinking about watching the show makes me feel bad.
By the way, the word "cringe" literally means (according to the unlinkable OED): "To contract the muscles of the body, usually involuntarily; to shrink into a bent or crooked position; to cower." Basically, you curl up into the fetal position. Figuratively, it means: "To experience an involuntary inward shiver of embarrassment, awkwardness, disgust, etc.; to wince or shrink inwardly; (hence) to feel extremely embarrassed or uncomfortable." The first historical example of the figurative meaning is:
I'm one of the people who simply cannot enjoy watching "The Office." I understand why it's good and why people find it funny, and why the "cringe-inducing" quality is considered a sophisticated element of comedy, but it makes me feel bad. Even thinking about watching the show makes me feel bad.
By the way, the word "cringe" literally means (according to the unlinkable OED): "To contract the muscles of the body, usually involuntarily; to shrink into a bent or crooked position; to cower." Basically, you curl up into the fetal position. Figuratively, it means: "To experience an involuntary inward shiver of embarrassment, awkwardness, disgust, etc.; to wince or shrink inwardly; (hence) to feel extremely embarrassed or uncomfortable." The first historical example of the figurative meaning is:
1868 Harper's Mag. May 793/1 ‘I should like a smoke,’ was her only comment. I may have cringed at the idea of putting my pipe between those broken teeth, but I of course made haste to do what was hospitable.The most recent is:
1993 Time 25 Jan. 18 Privately, Clinton advisers cringed at the wreckage left behind by all the U-turns.Somehow I'm thinking about cigars...
"The basic premise underlying the ATL approach to ranking schools: the economics of the legal job market are so out of balance that it is proper to consider some legal jobs as more equal than others."
In that light, the big red banner in the middle of the page over there says a lot: "44% of 2012 graduates did not secure a job in the law!" Now, there were 46,364 of these graduates, and 56% of them did find long-term employment in jobs that require admittance to the bar, so that's actually a lot of jobs. Any given student is betting on himself, so how bad are those odds? Of course, many of the people who get the jobs end up hating them. So there's that.
You've got to decide for yourself. Don't just bumble into law school because it's an obvious thing to do to get on a career track if you're reasonably smart and can't think of anywhere else to go. That was never a good idea. It's just a worse idea now than it used to be.
In other words, a position as an associate with a large firm is a “better” employment outcome than becoming a temp doc reviewer or even an associate with a small local firm. That might seem crassly elitist, but then again only the Biglaw associate has a plausible prospect of paying off his student loans.Take that for what it's worth. Back when I was in law school, turning away from big law firms was what the best people did. But there are different ways of being elitist, and I certainly agree with the proposition that people who pay law school tuition and put themselves through the grind of law school are doing it with the goal of getting an excellent (or at least a good) career in law.
In addition to placing a higher premium on “quality” (i.e., lucrative) job outcomes, we also acknowledge that “prestige” plays an out-sized role in the legal profession. We can all agree that Supreme Court clerkships and federal judgeships are among the most “prestigious” gigs to be had. Our methodology rewards schools for producing both.
In that light, the big red banner in the middle of the page over there says a lot: "44% of 2012 graduates did not secure a job in the law!" Now, there were 46,364 of these graduates, and 56% of them did find long-term employment in jobs that require admittance to the bar, so that's actually a lot of jobs. Any given student is betting on himself, so how bad are those odds? Of course, many of the people who get the jobs end up hating them. So there's that.
You've got to decide for yourself. Don't just bumble into law school because it's an obvious thing to do to get on a career track if you're reasonably smart and can't think of anywhere else to go. That was never a good idea. It's just a worse idea now than it used to be.
The latest food article in the NYT stimulate, in me, a hunger for an understanding of "real" — not like some what-is-reality? philosophy/stoner college student, but as a connoisseur of language and humor. In 2 different articles, the modifier "real" is appended to a noun, first "milk" and then "vegetables."
1. "Pots and Pans, but Little Pain/Making Lunch With Michael Pollan and Michael Moss," written by Emily Weinstein, has the Pollan (author of books like "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto") and Moss (author of "Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us") wandering judgmentally through the kind of crowded grocery store that people in NYC call a "supermarket."
There's no right and wrong here. Myself, I'd use "real" both ways. I'm just interested in the word "real," which has been big in the Baby Boomer era (and Bittman, Pollan, and Moss are all, like me, Boomers). Be real. Get real. It's been real. He's a real nowhere man. I got to laugh halfways off my heels/I got to know, babe, will you surround me?/So I can know if I’m really real.
According to the (unlinkable) Oxford English Dictionary, the oldest meaning of "real" — now obsolete — connects to the words "regal" and "royal." In reference to a thing, it means: "befitting a monarch; sumptuous, fine, beautiful, noble, excellent." If we're hearing elitism in those NYT quotes, it resonates with the history of the language. That makes me want to quote Bob Dylan again:
The OED has separate entries for a few familiar phrases, notably, "it's been real," which it defines as: "'it's been memorable,' 'it's been an experience'; used as a farewell, with varying degrees of sincerity or irony, and sometimes simply as a formulaic phrase." See! With varying degrees of sincerity or irony. The phrase was first encountered (by the OED) in Wright Morris's 1954 novel "Huge Season": "He stepped forward and bowed to Lou Baker, took her hand, kissed it. 'Doll, it's been real.'"
There's no food-related entry for "real" in the OED, but there is a drink one: "real coffee n. coffee made from ground coffee beans, as opposed either to a substitute or (now esp.) to instant coffee." That goes back to the 19th century:
1. "Pots and Pans, but Little Pain/Making Lunch With Michael Pollan and Michael Moss," written by Emily Weinstein, has the Pollan (author of books like "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto") and Moss (author of "Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us") wandering judgmentally through the kind of crowded grocery store that people in NYC call a "supermarket."
Mr. Moss and Mr. Pollan considered the mozzarella choices, skipping the pre-shredded kind in favor of a cheese that advertised itself as a product of Amish country and that cost the same as the more generic ball beside it.2. "The Frankfurter Diaries," by Mark Bittman was about Bittman eating a hot dog. (Somehow, when I clicked on the link, I was hoping for something about Felix Frankfurter, even though I know Bittman is a food writer. I love his cookbook, "How to Cook Everything."). Bittman — like Pollan and Moss in the grocery store — comes across as an elitist out of his normal environment. He's on "a drive to the Jersey Shore" and looking for something to eat at a parkway restaurant.
“Real milk, no hormones, no antibiotics,” Mr. Pollan said, reading aloud from the label. “I love the term ‘real milk.’ I wonder if we can get fake milk anywhere here.”
My first inclination was Burger King; [a friend who largely shares my weaknesses and prejudices] pronounced it “poison.”#1 is the distanced, humorous way to use "real" to express lofty/prissy/elitist attitudes about food. #2 is the colloquial, earnest way to use "real" to express longing for a better world. I wonder if Bittman really thinks rest-stop falafel would be any good. Even in decent ethnic restaurants with nicely deep-fried falafel, I've only encountered shredded iceberg lettuce, there for the crunch, not for any wholesome goodness. But Bittman's vision of great falafel at the rest stop goes perfectly — like lettuce on deep-fried bean-mush — with his non-humorous deployment of the adjective "real."
O.K., but what wasn’t? Where was the real food? It didn’t exist....
I’m well aware that we’re light-years away from a rest area without any junk food. It might be nice, however, if there were one offering a vegetable wrap or a big fat falafel sandwich with real vegetables. Would you not think there’s a market for that?
There's no right and wrong here. Myself, I'd use "real" both ways. I'm just interested in the word "real," which has been big in the Baby Boomer era (and Bittman, Pollan, and Moss are all, like me, Boomers). Be real. Get real. It's been real. He's a real nowhere man. I got to laugh halfways off my heels/I got to know, babe, will you surround me?/So I can know if I’m really real.
According to the (unlinkable) Oxford English Dictionary, the oldest meaning of "real" — now obsolete — connects to the words "regal" and "royal." In reference to a thing, it means: "befitting a monarch; sumptuous, fine, beautiful, noble, excellent." If we're hearing elitism in those NYT quotes, it resonates with the history of the language. That makes me want to quote Bob Dylan again:
The kingdoms of ExperienceBut the familiar meaning of "real" — actually existing — is also old. "Free from nonsense, affectation, or pretence; genuine" — a meaning that Pollan's sarcasm presumes not to exist — goes back at least to 1747. And look at this quote from "House of Seven Gables" (1851): "Phoebe's presence made a home about her... She was real!" It's like Nathaniel Hawthorne was a Boomer.
In the precious wind they rot
While paupers change possessions
Each one wishing for what the other has got
And the princess and the prince
Discuss what’s real and what is not
It doesn’t matter inside the Gates of Eden
The OED has separate entries for a few familiar phrases, notably, "it's been real," which it defines as: "'it's been memorable,' 'it's been an experience'; used as a farewell, with varying degrees of sincerity or irony, and sometimes simply as a formulaic phrase." See! With varying degrees of sincerity or irony. The phrase was first encountered (by the OED) in Wright Morris's 1954 novel "Huge Season": "He stepped forward and bowed to Lou Baker, took her hand, kissed it. 'Doll, it's been real.'"
There's no food-related entry for "real" in the OED, but there is a drink one: "real coffee n. coffee made from ground coffee beans, as opposed either to a substitute or (now esp.) to instant coffee." That goes back to the 19th century:
1877 H. Ruede Jrnl. 13 June in Sod-house Days (1937) 99 Most people out here don't drink real coffee, because it is too expensive... So rye coffee is used a great deal—parched brown or black according to whether the users like a strong or mild drink.Finally — and say what you will about Pollan, Moss, and Bittman — there's a separate OED entry from "real man" — "a man who fulfils traditional expectations of masculinity in his behaviour, attitudes, or appearance; a virile or masculine man." That goes back to 1872:
1872 Titusville (Pennsylvania) Morning Herald 23 Sept., But society is full of shams shoddy and tinsel. The real man puts on no airs at all....That was some earnest "real," back then. Pop forward to the 80s, for some classic Boomer "real" sarcasm:
1926 Times-Signal (Zanesville, Ohio) (Electronic text) 17 Oct., It's out here in the lonely places that you get the real-man type. There's nothing sissy about it.
1982 B. Feirstein Real Men don't eat Quiche ii. 13 In the past, it was easy to be a Real Man. All you had to do was abuse women, steal land from Indians, and find some place to dump the toxic waste.That's enough for now. Kisses. It's been real.
It's not "my job... to somehow get [Congress] to behave," said Obama at yesterday's news conference, quoted by Maureen Dowd, who says:
2. Why would this Hollywood-in-Washington adoration make him deferential to some other historical figure, one who had to accomplish great things to achieve his high place in history? Quite the opposite! It should make Obama feel that it's always been enough for him simply to be Obama, the screen onto which a nation projects its hopes and dreams. Why should Obama "absorb lessons" from the movie about "Lincoln"? Obama created his own mode of arriving at greatness, and it's not much like Lincoln's at all.
3. A "community organizer" doesn't really "organize" a community, but even if one does, Congress isn't like the communities Obama supposedly organized. The idea that Obama could "organize" Congress is silly. Congress has its own organization, and it's full of powerful individuals who are currently actively pursuing political goals, not a bunch of citizens going about their private lives who might be induced to back some political project run by somebody else.
4. Yesterday's performance at the press conference was — I would presume — theater. It was the Theater of the Ineffectual President. It was not the Theater of the Lame Duck. (Dowd's piece is titled "Bottoms Up, Lame Duck." The "Bottoms Up" refers to her suggestion that Obama "have a drink with Mitch McConnell.") Obama likes to say he'll never face another election, but he's facing the 2014 elections. His performance yesterday was — I presume — a scene in the script for winning the midterms. I can't accomplish anything without Congress. Congress is the problem. He needs his Congress. Will we not give this beautiful man — upon whom we've projected our hopes and dreams — the Congress that will bring his presidency to a successful end? He is the central character in this movie "Obama" that we've all got to sit through. If we stay in character as members of the audience — passively taking in whatever we see on the screen — we'll merge our desires with the main character in the big spectacle. Identification with the protagonist. In the scene that ran yesterday, we saw our protagonist suffering his doubts and his weaknesses. He is beset with adversaries. Oh, no!
5. So, now we can see that Obama is doing his "job," as described by Maureen Dowd: "to somehow get this dunderheaded Congress, which is mind-bendingly awful, to do the stuff he wants them to do." Somehow. I'm telling you how I think he's going about getting Congress — Congress 2015 — to do the stuff he wants them to do. Keep sitting on your bottom as he leads from behind. Or: Bottoms up! And I don't mean drinking. I mean, get your ass out of your theater seat and stop watching the "Obama" movie. The lameness is not in our President but in ourselves.
Actually, it is his job to get them to behave. The job of the former community organizer and self-styled uniter is to somehow get this dunderheaded Congress, which is mind-bendingly awful, to do the stuff he wants them to do. It’s called leadership.1. It's silly to think that because Obama played the role of himself (playing Day-Lewis playing himself) that Obama is all about Lincoln. It made Obama look like he's about Obama, and putting Obama on the same level as Lincoln, with the mock-historical grandeur and the direction by Steven Spielberg, seems likely only to inflate Obama's egocentrism.
He still thinks he’ll do his thing from the balcony and everyone else will follow along below. That’s not how it works.
How can the president star in a White House Correspondents’ Association dinner satirical film pretending to be Daniel Day-Lewis playing Barack Obama in Steven Spielberg’s movie “Obama,” and not have absorbed the lessons of “Lincoln”?
2. Why would this Hollywood-in-Washington adoration make him deferential to some other historical figure, one who had to accomplish great things to achieve his high place in history? Quite the opposite! It should make Obama feel that it's always been enough for him simply to be Obama, the screen onto which a nation projects its hopes and dreams. Why should Obama "absorb lessons" from the movie about "Lincoln"? Obama created his own mode of arriving at greatness, and it's not much like Lincoln's at all.
3. A "community organizer" doesn't really "organize" a community, but even if one does, Congress isn't like the communities Obama supposedly organized. The idea that Obama could "organize" Congress is silly. Congress has its own organization, and it's full of powerful individuals who are currently actively pursuing political goals, not a bunch of citizens going about their private lives who might be induced to back some political project run by somebody else.
4. Yesterday's performance at the press conference was — I would presume — theater. It was the Theater of the Ineffectual President. It was not the Theater of the Lame Duck. (Dowd's piece is titled "Bottoms Up, Lame Duck." The "Bottoms Up" refers to her suggestion that Obama "have a drink with Mitch McConnell.") Obama likes to say he'll never face another election, but he's facing the 2014 elections. His performance yesterday was — I presume — a scene in the script for winning the midterms. I can't accomplish anything without Congress. Congress is the problem. He needs his Congress. Will we not give this beautiful man — upon whom we've projected our hopes and dreams — the Congress that will bring his presidency to a successful end? He is the central character in this movie "Obama" that we've all got to sit through. If we stay in character as members of the audience — passively taking in whatever we see on the screen — we'll merge our desires with the main character in the big spectacle. Identification with the protagonist. In the scene that ran yesterday, we saw our protagonist suffering his doubts and his weaknesses. He is beset with adversaries. Oh, no!
5. So, now we can see that Obama is doing his "job," as described by Maureen Dowd: "to somehow get this dunderheaded Congress, which is mind-bendingly awful, to do the stuff he wants them to do." Somehow. I'm telling you how I think he's going about getting Congress — Congress 2015 — to do the stuff he wants them to do. Keep sitting on your bottom as he leads from behind. Or: Bottoms up! And I don't mean drinking. I mean, get your ass out of your theater seat and stop watching the "Obama" movie. The lameness is not in our President but in ourselves.
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Tuesday, 30 April 2013
"It felt as though something newsworthy must be happening. But as it turned out, not so much."
The president had no announcement to make — not even an opening statement. Instead, he plunged right into the queries, nearly all of them posed in a challenging tone....
Again and again, the president seemed to be saying: "OK, that didn't work out so well, but I tried to do what needed to be done and the Republicans wouldn't let me."...
But no matter how frustrating a president finds this dilemma at the heart of our shared-power system, it does not advance his cause to wear his frustration in public....
"... were being systematically removed from the category American novelists and assigned to the category American women novelists."
I remember going to bookstores, circa 1990, where "Fiction by Women" was a separate section from "Fiction." These were places that were pro-woman, I'm quite sure, because I remember seeing Camille Paglia's "Sexual Personae" displayed with a warning label that it might not be what you were expecting and that you should bring it back for a refund if you bought it under the mistaken impression that it was good feminism and then found yourself offended.
ADDED: The biggest problem is leaving the male category plain rather than calling it "American men novelists." (Is the parallelism jarring? It should be "Female American novelists" and "Male American novelists.")
I remember going to bookstores, circa 1990, where "Fiction by Women" was a separate section from "Fiction." These were places that were pro-woman, I'm quite sure, because I remember seeing Camille Paglia's "Sexual Personae" displayed with a warning label that it might not be what you were expecting and that you should bring it back for a refund if you bought it under the mistaken impression that it was good feminism and then found yourself offended.
ADDED: The biggest problem is leaving the male category plain rather than calling it "American men novelists." (Is the parallelism jarring? It should be "Female American novelists" and "Male American novelists.")
"But to protect the best qualities of the Internet, they need to summon the First Amendment principle that the only speech that can be banned is that which threatens to provoke imminent violence, an ideal articulated by Justice Louis Brandeis in 1927. It’s time, in other words, for some American free-speech imperialism if the Web is to remain open and free in twenty-first century."
This is a big subject for me, something I've argued with Bob Wright about, notably in this March 2011 post: "The Bob Wright/Ann Althouse email exchange about what free speech means in the context of saying Roger Ailes needs to kick Glenn Beck off Fox News."
ADDED: Here's a clip from March 2011:
This is a big subject for me, something I've argued with Bob Wright about, notably in this March 2011 post: "The Bob Wright/Ann Althouse email exchange about what free speech means in the context of saying Roger Ailes needs to kick Glenn Beck off Fox News."
ADDED: Here's a clip from March 2011:
"How did they not know these factories were illegally made, with three extra floors shoddily added?... Did they not know about the fire in Tazreen in November, where 117 people died, mostly women? Nobody going into Bangladesh is naive. The only reason they’re there is so they can pay almost nothing. It was a death trap."
"These workers were mostly young women, and they were ordered into that factory... They didn’t want to go into work as there were already deep cracks in the walls the day before... They were driven into that building by people with clubs waiting to beat them up — gangsters and goons. They went in at 8:00am and the building collapsed at 9:00am."Meanwhile, the retailer Joe Fresh has a branding problem. $19 jeans suddenly seem evil.
At the press conference today:
"It' is not a surprise to me that we are having problems at Guantanamo." He calls Guantanamo unsafe, expensive, and lessens cooperation with our allies. "It needs to be closed," Obama said. He notes that Congress has legislatively blocked him from closing Guantanamo.I am going to go back at this ≈ Nothing will change.
"I am going to go back at this," said Obama, "I am going to reengage with Congress that this is not in the best interest of the American people."...
"This is a lingering problem that is not going to get better," Obama says. "It's going to get worse."
When you're on the left, you need to be left all the way, from your first bite of tofu 'til your last dying day.
"Officials say Sailendra Nath Roy, 49, was halfway across the Teesta River in West Bengal when he suffered a massive heart attack and died. His body, held to the wire by his ponytail 70 feet above the river, hung for nearly 45 minutes as horrified spectators, who had come to cheer him on, watched from a nearby bridge.
"He was desperately trying to move forward. He was trying to scream out some instruction,” Balai Sutradhar, a photographer who was covering the stunt, told BBC News. “But no one could follow what he was saying. After struggling for 30 minutes he became still.”
"The agents removed art from the walls, broke the frames and tore the artwork. Mr. Curtis offered his keys but agents chose to break the lock. Mr. Curtis’ garbage was scheduled to be picked up Thursday, the day after he was snatched from his life. A week later, the garbage remains in his home, along with millions of insects it attracted."
Paul Kevin Curtis is the Elvis impersonator who was falsely accused of sending ricin in letters to the President and others.
Paul Kevin Curtis is the Elvis impersonator who was falsely accused of sending ricin in letters to the President and others.
The Mifflin Street block party is a big spring festivity, an annual event going back to 1969, when Soglin was himself a student, partying. The heavy drinking entails law enforcement problems. ("[T]he 2011 party was marred by two stabbings and three sexual assaults.")
A government official should not use public money (or sentimentality about the children!) to pressure citizens out of exercising their freedom. The fact that some people cross the line into committing crimes is not a reason to go after everyone. Government should target its law enforcement on criminals. It's obviously easier to manipulate the good people into giving up their liberties. Imagine feeling guilty, when you're having a beer at a block party, that you're causing some child to miss out on day camp! Ironically, it's the very people who would be sensitive to that guilt trip who'd be most likely to bring good behavior to the party, diluting the proportion of louts who don't care about anything — not the laws, not common decency, not the mayor's creepy bribes, and not the damned kids playing games in the park in July.
Soglin said he wants to put any unused portion of the $190,000 designated for policing the unauthorized block party toward funding summer day camp or employment programs for youths. The budget amendment would require City Council approval.
“Is he trying to make us feel bad?” asked Lauren Cochlin, 23, who lives in the 500 block of Mifflin Street....
Soglin called it a “real-world decision” for attendees who in recent years have gone beyond “the right to party and the tradition” associated with the event with “some very serious situations that have been life-threatening.”What if back during the Wisconsin protests, Governor Walker had pointed at the extra money that the state would be paying for law enforcement and said that he'd put that money into some program for children if the protesters would knock it off?
A government official should not use public money (or sentimentality about the children!) to pressure citizens out of exercising their freedom. The fact that some people cross the line into committing crimes is not a reason to go after everyone. Government should target its law enforcement on criminals. It's obviously easier to manipulate the good people into giving up their liberties. Imagine feeling guilty, when you're having a beer at a block party, that you're causing some child to miss out on day camp! Ironically, it's the very people who would be sensitive to that guilt trip who'd be most likely to bring good behavior to the party, diluting the proportion of louts who don't care about anything — not the laws, not common decency, not the mayor's creepy bribes, and not the damned kids playing games in the park in July.
Jennifer Rubin is "sorry to say."
There is being principled, and then there is being a jerk. Putting down your colleagues to boost your own street cred with the base falls into the latter category....It's the old Mutt and Jeff routine! I like it.
For starters, it’s just not smart to annoy colleagues whose cooperation and support you’ll need in the future. Second, as a conservative he should understand humility and grace are not incompatible with “standing on principle”; the absence of these qualities doesn’t make him more principled or more effective. Third, for a guy who lacks manners (see his condescending questioning of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) he comes across as whiny. They yelled at me! Boo hoo, senator.
There is a deeper problem, I think, with Cruz’s approach to the Senate, which has nothing to do with ideology. The contrast between him and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is telling. Paul is no less conservative than Cruz, but he is polite to a fault, soft spoken and gracious....
"Bloodroot, red maple, toothwort, we haven’t recorded any blooms yet for any of them yet this year."
Last week’s bloom count lacked forsythia, long past its historical average of April 10 in [Aldo] Leopold’s study and March 9 in the [University of Wisconsin] Arboretum’s recent work and a latest date of April 20 for Leopold and April 15 at the Arboretum. The pale purple of hepatica held out past its April 17 record. Dutchman’s breeches, bloodroot, toothwort, white violets and Pennsylvania sedge were all reaching the record late dates for production of pollen of flowers....Very late spring. Somewhere, Al Gore is fuming.
“The same thing is happening up at the Leopold shack” near Baraboo, said Stan Temple, who has kept up his research on phenology as an emeritus professor of conservation. “It has been one of the latest dates for most of the things that we keep track of.”
March and April ran close to five degrees colder than average, but, as Temple notes, a late spring is no strange thing in Wisconsin....
“It seems even later because our recent comparisons have been so, so early,” Carpenter said. It was just last year we set so many of the earliest dates we’ve seen.”
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"Some of us know and accept our sexuality right away and some need more time to cook. I should know — I baked for 33 years."
Just catching up on the metaphors in the Jason Collins "coming out" piece in Sports Illustrated that everyone was talking about yesterday. I found this story boring, but somehow the comments on my post on the subject heated up — like you were in the oven, baking — and they're up to 788 comments. What's going on in there? In my book, a 34-year-old gay guy that has gone to a lot of trouble to stay in the closet — or the oven — in this day and age is hardly a courageous hero. Yes, he's in a major American team sport, but he's at the very end of his career, and who'd heard of him before? I see nothing but a career boost for this guy. What is the big deal? Someone left the cake in the oven for 33 years, and I don't think that I can take it, 'cause it took so long to bake it, and you were about to retire from basketball anyway, oh noooooo! O-oh nooooooo!
That cake metaphor came at the end of a paragraph that began:
Just catching up on the metaphors in the Jason Collins "coming out" piece in Sports Illustrated that everyone was talking about yesterday. I found this story boring, but somehow the comments on my post on the subject heated up — like you were in the oven, baking — and they're up to 788 comments. What's going on in there? In my book, a 34-year-old gay guy that has gone to a lot of trouble to stay in the closet — or the oven — in this day and age is hardly a courageous hero. Yes, he's in a major American team sport, but he's at the very end of his career, and who'd heard of him before? I see nothing but a career boost for this guy. What is the big deal? Someone left the cake in the oven for 33 years, and I don't think that I can take it, 'cause it took so long to bake it, and you were about to retire from basketball anyway, oh noooooo! O-oh nooooooo!
That cake metaphor came at the end of a paragraph that began:
The first relative I came out to was my aunt Teri, a superior court judge in San Francisco. Her reaction surprised me. "I've known you were gay for years," she said. From that moment on I was comfortable in my own skin. In her presence I ignored my censor button for the first time. She gave me support. The relief I felt was a sweet release.Sweet release with your aunt? Having ignored your censor button — for the first time? really? — you might want to find your editor button. I love that the aunt was all "I've known you were gay for years." The first person he came out to found his announcement boring. I'm with Aunt Teri. It's boring. This cake was baked long ago. I recall the yellow polyester shorts/Foaming like a wave/On the ground around your knees/The birds like tender babies in your hands/And the old men playing checkers, by the trees....
Monday, 29 April 2013
... we're getting someplace.
That line makes me remember something from the comments on today's "golden age of blogging" post. I'd said:
A blog should feel like a place. The commenters are in the place, having a conversation.And rhhardin said:
Twitter is more like a concourse, with everyone running through trying to get somewhere else, and no one is there to be with anyone else. That's what's so off-putting. But if you yourself have to run to make your connection, the concourse will seem like the right way to [go].
Twitter is a concourse. A blog is intercourse.
Derrida's observation was that women don't have a place, they create places.
Feminism went wrong in copying men.
"If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution."
(Choreographies)
"... but in reality the job of the government is to protect our liberties. Once the government decides that its role is to keep us safe, whether economically or physically, they can only do so by taking away our liberties. That is what happened in Boston."
Three people were killed in Boston and that is tragic. But what of the fact that over 40 persons are killed in the United States each day, and sometimes ten persons can be killed in one city on any given weekend? These cities are not locked-down by paramilitary police riding in tanks and pointing automatic weapons at innocent citizens.
"... they’re really pushing to have a constitutional right blocked by your placement on a secret list put together by unaccountable bureaucrats with no due process. Just to be clear what they’re really talking about."
"... or the choice to stand against the power of that tsunami," said Jack McMahon, delivering the closing argument for Kermit Gosnell.
He also called the case "the most extraordinary hype and exaggeration in the history of the justice system," which is itself an extraordinary exaggeration.
It's hard to find a good account of what McMahon's argument really was. The NYT article gives a better hint at the legal substance of it:
He also called the case "the most extraordinary hype and exaggeration in the history of the justice system," which is itself an extraordinary exaggeration.
It's hard to find a good account of what McMahon's argument really was. The NYT article gives a better hint at the legal substance of it:
The doctor’s defense lawyer, Jack J. McMahon, argued Monday that none of the remaining four cases had resulted in live births. Because the women were given injections of the drug digoxin, which causes “fetal demise,” Mr. McMahon argued, any postdelivery movements were involuntary spasms.
“Every single piece of scientific evidence in this case has shown stillbirth,” he said.
But Edward Cameron, an assistant district attorney, countered that testimony showed Dr. Gosnell did not always use digoxin and that it did not always work as intended. He quoted a former clinic worker with medical school training but no doctor’s license who testified that the drug “wasn’t giving the desired effect, the heart was always beating.” The prosecutor cited Pennsylvania law stating that if a baby delivered during an abortion “shows any sign of life, it’s considered alive — a heartbeat, breathing, a cry, movement.”
"It makes me feel like I have more responsibility. I think I exude more energy than without it. It's magical."
Lawyers in Hong Kong, and the traditional wigs they love.
Lawyers in Hong Kong, and the traditional wigs they love.
"It's a tradition that really dignifies our profession, especially in the context of our commitment to uphold the city's justice," says [Kevin] Tang....Solicitors would like to be allowed to wear the wigs.
The barristers' prestige emanates not only from the wig, but because they number in the hundreds, compared with the city's thousands of solicitors. Though solicitors have more training, top barristers are typically better paid and because they appear in court, have higher profiles as well. Even the Cantonese translation for barrister is "big lawyer," while the term for solicitor is simply "lawyer."
"But since I am, I’m happy to start the conversation."
Jason Collins has strong political connections. Bill Clinton said: “I have known Jason Collins since he was Chelsea’s classmate and friend at Stanford."
And Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) was Collins's roommate at Stanford: "For as long as I’ve known Jason Collins he has been defined by three things: his passion for the sport he loves, his unwavering integrity, and the biggest heart you will ever find. Without question or hesitation, he gives everything he’s got to those of us lucky enough to be in his life. I’m proud to stand with him today and proud to call him a friend."
Collins has been in the NBA for 12 years and will be a free agent at the end of the season. Does he face abuse within sports? He says he's led a "double life has kept me from getting close to any of my teammates." There's always politics. The man has some powerful friends there.
Jason Collins has strong political connections. Bill Clinton said: “I have known Jason Collins since he was Chelsea’s classmate and friend at Stanford."
And Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) was Collins's roommate at Stanford: "For as long as I’ve known Jason Collins he has been defined by three things: his passion for the sport he loves, his unwavering integrity, and the biggest heart you will ever find. Without question or hesitation, he gives everything he’s got to those of us lucky enough to be in his life. I’m proud to stand with him today and proud to call him a friend."
Collins has been in the NBA for 12 years and will be a free agent at the end of the season. Does he face abuse within sports? He says he's led a "double life has kept me from getting close to any of my teammates." There's always politics. The man has some powerful friends there.
What's more disgusting than late-term abortion? This scheme to exploit it by hiring actors & secretly taping doctors. wapo.st/11wBHIW
— Will Saletan (@saletan) April 29, 2013
Via Twitchy, which calls Saletan "soulless."
Says Marc Tracy in The New Republic, which is a news opinion magazine, once edited by Andrew Sullivan, who went on to be one of the giants of the Golden Age of Blogging. If this is post-golden age for blogging, is it the golden age for anything else? There are these blogging-y things like Twitter and Buzzfeed (and I was going to add Facebook, but Facebook's golden age is past, right?).
Tracy is writing a "eulogy" for blogging on the occasion of the NYT shutting down a bunch of its blogs. But the NYT only had blogs in response to the blogging trend, and were those blogs really blogs? The real bloggers were people like Andrew Sullivan. Circa 2001:
Old media survived the onset of blogging, and blogging will survive Twitter, and Twitter will survive ???
Whatever comes along next will change what lives on from the old days. And the old folks will always tend to think that there was, not too long ago, a Golden Age.
ADDED: I think this is very relevant: "...the rise of the internet media and social media and all that stuff. He hates it. Okay. He hates this part of the media. He really thinks that the sort of the buzzification, this isn’t just about BuzzFeed or Politico, and all the stuff, but he thinks that sort of coverage of political media has hurt political discourse. He hates it." (That's Chuck Todd on "Meet the Press" yesterday, talking about Obama.)
Tracy is writing a "eulogy" for blogging on the occasion of the NYT shutting down a bunch of its blogs. But the NYT only had blogs in response to the blogging trend, and were those blogs really blogs? The real bloggers were people like Andrew Sullivan. Circa 2001:
The Internet had empowered a few strong writers to create their own brand (if you were idiosyncratic—say, if you were gay, English, Catholic, and heretically conservative—then all the better) and a few strong big brands to create their own small brands....How impatient can we get? I'm getting impatient with Tracy right now. I want to interrupt and say that blogs are a great format if you have a distinctive voice, and not just if you have idiosyncratic attributes — like gay, English, Catholic, and heretically conservative. The form — the blog — was so great, so powerful, so liberating, that many, many writers said me too, often pushed by an old-style publisher like the NYT that needed to have blogs to seem up-to-date. What made the age golden was the greatness of some blogs, like Sullivan's, not the sheer number of blogs at any given time.
We will still have blogs, of course, if only because the word is flexible enough to encompass a very wide range of publishing platforms: Basically, anything that contains a scrollable stream of posts is a "blog." What we are losing is the personal blog and the themed blog. Less and less do readers have the patience for a certain writer or even certain subject matter.
Sullivan's blog was almost like a soap opera pegged to the news cycle—which I mean as the highest compliment.... A necessary byproduct was that even if you were a devotee, you were not interested in about half of their posts. You didn't complain, because you didn't have an alternative. Now, in the form of your Twitter feed, you do, and so these old-style blogs have no place anymore.So, when there were only blogs, one had no choice, but now that there are blogs and Twitter, no one will choose blogs anymore? That makes no sense. First, blogs were an alternative to old media. You could still read the New York Times and The Washington Post and provide your own operatic drama. There was a time when we read the newspaper and talked with family and friends about the stories over the breakfast table and in the coffeehouses. Later, it seemed cool to enlarge our circle of interlocutors with somebody from the internet, like Andrew Sullivan (or Glenn Reynolds). And if you got the nerve, maybe you'd offer yourself on a blog as somebody who was willing to be a virtual presence in other people's conversations. (And if you are me, you got one of those interlocutors to actually materialize at your breakfast table.)
Old media survived the onset of blogging, and blogging will survive Twitter, and Twitter will survive ???
Whatever comes along next will change what lives on from the old days. And the old folks will always tend to think that there was, not too long ago, a Golden Age.
ADDED: I think this is very relevant: "...the rise of the internet media and social media and all that stuff. He hates it. Okay. He hates this part of the media. He really thinks that the sort of the buzzification, this isn’t just about BuzzFeed or Politico, and all the stuff, but he thinks that sort of coverage of political media has hurt political discourse. He hates it." (That's Chuck Todd on "Meet the Press" yesterday, talking about Obama.)
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"He said that when he was starting his business in the late 70s, his accountant told him that if he just invests X percentage of his monthly income in an IRA, he will be a millionaire by the time he retires. My dad said to him, 'Bullshit. There is no way that the powers-that-be will let a poor schlub like me become a millionaire.' He was right, and will work until the day he dies."
I'm cherry-picking from a big discussion because of the way it's written, not to endorse the viewpoint.
I'm cherry-picking from a big discussion because of the way it's written, not to endorse the viewpoint.
Said Congressman Hank Johnson. "How can we make sure that the injustice of there being no helium for comedians to get that high-pitched voice that we all hold near and dear to our hearts."
He was, as the video at the link showed, mocking Republicans for wasting 2 days debating the Responsible Helium Administration and Stewardship Act (which passed the House on a nearly unanimous vote, 394-1). "Too often lately, this body has sat deflated — not for lack of hot air, mind you. But seriously, ladies and gentlemen, unlike a noble element, this House has failed to act on Americans’ real concerns."
Now, Hank Johnson is the Congressman who famously asked whether the island of Guam, if it gets over-populated, might "tip over and capsize":
On his Friday show, Rush Limbaugh played the old tip-over-and-capsize clip along with the new world-without-balloons clip. Rush derided Johnson for caring about helium as if he's some kind of nut:
And is Hank Johnson dumb? Surely, his world-without-balloons speech isn't dumb. He may be wrong to minimize the significance of the helium program, but Rush was deriding him for seeming to care about the program, which wasn't even what he was doing. Was Rush dumb to misunderstand the balloon quote and to present it along with the tip-over-and-capsize quote? Rush has his fun, but I don't think Rush knew much about the value of the helium program.
But if Rush has his fun, occasionally at Hank Johnson's expense, he (and we) ought to see that Hank Johnson also has his fun. Unquestionably, the world-without-balloons speech deploys sarcasm. It's time to ponder whether the tip-over-and-capsize question was deadpan humor.
ADDED: Back in 2010, at the time of the "tip-over-and-capsize" remark, Neo-Neocon said it was "deadpan humor"... but she was doing a big old April Fool's joke.
He was, as the video at the link showed, mocking Republicans for wasting 2 days debating the Responsible Helium Administration and Stewardship Act (which passed the House on a nearly unanimous vote, 394-1). "Too often lately, this body has sat deflated — not for lack of hot air, mind you. But seriously, ladies and gentlemen, unlike a noble element, this House has failed to act on Americans’ real concerns."
Now, Hank Johnson is the Congressman who famously asked whether the island of Guam, if it gets over-populated, might "tip over and capsize":
On his Friday show, Rush Limbaugh played the old tip-over-and-capsize clip along with the new world-without-balloons clip. Rush derided Johnson for caring about helium as if he's some kind of nut:
Did you know that helium was endangered or threatened? What, is the Hunt family trying to make a run on helium like they did silver? Or maybe the Koch brothers? The Koch brothers are trying to corner helium. That's what it is, so that kids can't have birthday parties. That's what it is. The Koch brothers are doing it! The Koch brothers are trying to corner the helium market. And Hank here was saying that he supported the Responsible Helium Administration and Stewardship Act. He's from Georgia.Well, every single Republican in the House who voted, voted yes, and the vote was 391-1, so you might want to educate yourself about what this program is about. When I blogged a Washington Post item about it — "Congress finds it hard to let Federal Helium Program run out of gas" — I got called out by a number of commenters, notably Carl, who said:
The issue is not nearly as picayune as this asinine article suggests. In the first place, helium is essential stuff for a number of high-tech, scientific, and medical uses. I said essential, as in completely irreplaceable, at least with present or foreseeable technology.I am pushed back. What seems dumb may not be dumb. It may be dumb to accept the prompt that something is dumb.
Second, it is a weirdly irreplaceable resource. When your liquid He boils off, it makes its way to the top of the atmosphere and drifts off into interplanetary space, because the Earth's gravity is too weak to hold it. It's gone for good. You will never be able to recycle it, the way you might think of recycling iron from scrap heaps, or even reconstituting oil from the CO2 and H2O in the atmosphere after it gets burnt.
Third, the only conceivable source is the underground decay of uranium and thorium, which verrrry slowly produce helium over millions of years, particle by particle. There is no way to hurry the process up, and the supply is obviously finite and decreasing remorselessly every year.
Fourth, the economics are stupid, because the 1990s Federal law said to sell off the reserve as fast as possible, so the Federal government has been dumping He at far less than the cost to actually supply it for years and years. Not surprisingly, all these wrong economic signals have built up a whole economic structure built on them -- built on sand, so that once those signals reset to reality, you are going to have significant disruption.
That's the difficult issue. There may be broad agreement that economic reality should take over, and the signals reset, but how and when to do that is a matter of debate, as well it should be, and for the admittedly narrow segments of tech for which this is relevant, hardly trivial. It is by no means something Senators and Representatives shouldn't be wasting their time upon. The Post could do its readers a better favor by explaining why this happened, and the strangely unique nature of helium, than by phoning in a cheap mindless story about how government programs live forever ha ha ha.
But that's modern journalism. It has decayed to formula so absurdly that I wonder whether someone with an actual original thought or story line could survive. I suppose it is conservatism born of their shrinking bottom line. Reminds me of Hollywood, similar[ly] threatened by cable and the Internet, which can only make Spiderman 8 and Star Trek: The Fourth Reboot because is timidity won't allow for any bolder essay.
And is Hank Johnson dumb? Surely, his world-without-balloons speech isn't dumb. He may be wrong to minimize the significance of the helium program, but Rush was deriding him for seeming to care about the program, which wasn't even what he was doing. Was Rush dumb to misunderstand the balloon quote and to present it along with the tip-over-and-capsize quote? Rush has his fun, but I don't think Rush knew much about the value of the helium program.
But if Rush has his fun, occasionally at Hank Johnson's expense, he (and we) ought to see that Hank Johnson also has his fun. Unquestionably, the world-without-balloons speech deploys sarcasm. It's time to ponder whether the tip-over-and-capsize question was deadpan humor.
This is a island that, at its widest level is, what, 12 miles from shore to shore, and at its smallest level, smallest location, it's 7 miles between one shore and the other. My fear is that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and, uh, and capsize.I say it was!
ADDED: Back in 2010, at the time of the "tip-over-and-capsize" remark, Neo-Neocon said it was "deadpan humor"... but she was doing a big old April Fool's joke.
"But if gay marriage becomes commonplace throughout America by the end of his second term, something that seems entirely possible right now, that could become an important part of his legacy as president."
Writes Perry Bacon Jr., in a piece written a month ago, which I ran across as I was researching the demographics of support for gay marriage. It's often assumed that black people oppose gay marriage. There's a delusion that the GOP has an opportunity to appeal to black people by leveraging this opposition. How much would black people need to loathe gay marriage to abandon the Democratic Party over this issue?
By the way, those who don't like seeing Obama get credit for anything should hope that the Supreme Court — which has 2 pending cases on the subject — finds a constitutional right to marry a person of one's own sex, because if the issue is left to political decisionmaking, we will end up in the same place and same-sex marriage will be inscribed in Obama's legacy.
Writes Perry Bacon Jr., in a piece written a month ago, which I ran across as I was researching the demographics of support for gay marriage. It's often assumed that black people oppose gay marriage. There's a delusion that the GOP has an opportunity to appeal to black people by leveraging this opposition. How much would black people need to loathe gay marriage to abandon the Democratic Party over this issue?
By the way, those who don't like seeing Obama get credit for anything should hope that the Supreme Court — which has 2 pending cases on the subject — finds a constitutional right to marry a person of one's own sex, because if the issue is left to political decisionmaking, we will end up in the same place and same-sex marriage will be inscribed in Obama's legacy.
Sunday, 28 April 2013
A trend in the Bronx.
“You get more resistance in high-crime areas than low-crime areas,” [said Rajiv Sethi, a Barnard College economist]. “People who would not resist have left the areas. Those who stay can’t afford to leave or to give up the little property that they have in their possession.”...In the comments, someone from Cincinnati says:
“We are not under siege by the vigilantes and the criminals that come out at night,” said Andy King, a city councilman whose district includes the area. “The pride, the respect factor” takes hold, he said. “It’s a violation, and some people are at a stage in our communities that they will stand up for certain beliefs.”
I don't live in NYC and would never live in a city that prefers to allow armed criminals run free while disarming it's citizens. In the midwest city where I live, there were three recent attempted armed robberies. In all three instances, the robber got shot dead by the victim. No expensive trial or costly incarceration. Just dead criminals, each of whom was no stranger to the justice system....
Here are the things that jumped out as I watched "Meet the Press." this morning.
1. At the end of a discussion of the Boston bombing, David Gregory asks "[W]hat are you really focused on that you’d like the intelligence community and the FBI to answer?"
1. At the end of a discussion of the Boston bombing, David Gregory asks "[W]hat are you really focused on that you’d like the intelligence community and the FBI to answer?"
REP. PETER KING: I think it’s important to know are there other people involved in this threat? Are there others that are still out there?... Are there family members or people in-- in the community? That’s very important to find out. Also, what did cause them to radicalize? Was it done here? Was it done overseas? Was it done over the internet? What caused that to happen? How can we stop it in the future? Also ask why the FBI is not cooperating more with the law enforcement? Why they did not give vital evidence to the NYPD about another possible attack.2. Chuck Todd, talking about Obama's routine at the Washington Correspondents Dinner:
GREGORY: This is that you think a failure that needs to be learned from?
REP. KING: Absolutely. Absolute failure.
...I wonder how many people realized at the end when he did his-- you know, there’s always this part at the end where they get serious for a minute, and it’s usually the part where president say, you know, I think the press has a good job to do and I understand what they have to do. He didn’t say that. He wasn’t very complimentary of the press. You know, we all can do better. He was-- it did seem-- I thought his pot shots joke wise and then the serious stuff about the internet, the rise of the internet media and social media and all that stuff. He hates it. Okay. He hates this part of the media. He really thinks that the sort of the buzzification, this isn’t just about BuzzFeed or Politico, and all the stuff, but he thinks that sort of coverage of political media has hurt political discourse. He hates it. And I think he was just trying to make that clear last night.3. Gregory asks Tony Blair about his "now infamous meeting in the Azores" with George Bush, "at a very delicate time for [Blair] politically back home." Referring to the Iraq invasion, did Bush tell Blair: "back out if you need to, don’t do this, don’t stand by me when you have to go back and address parliament if it’s going to cost you your leadership"? Blair says:
He did say that. I mean, he-- he made it clear that, you know, he understood the-- the huge political difficulties I had and that-- that I shouldn’t, as it were, put my own premiership on the line. It was more important in-- in a way, to him, I think, that I stayed. But my attitude was that, you know, there are lots of things in politics where-- where you-- you’ll compromise and you’ll maybe back off exactly what you think you should do and, you know, these are often the run of the mill everyday types of issues. When it comes to issues of war and peace and-- and life and death, I think your-- your-- I came to the conclusion your proper obligation to your own country is to do what you think is right....4. I thought "toxic cocktail... of religion, politics, ethnicity, tribalism" was a very helpful phrase to those of us who shrink from criticizing anything that contains an element of religion (other than America's majority religion). Blair also used the phrase "an ideology based on a perversion of religion" and equated it to the violent political ideologies that are not religious and that we don't hesitate to criticize:
GREGORY: In this library, the president has decided not to separate Iraq-- out Iraq. Iraq is presented as part and parcel of the war on terrorism, which is how he saw it. But won’t history judge that as a false impression that this was a war of choice that became a misadventure in the eyes of so many?
MR. BLAIR: I think, you know, the controversy around that, I mean, around how you categorize it, will remain. But what I found was that, you see, removing Saddam happened within a matter of weeks. You then spent the next, you know, eight-- nine years in a different type of battle and that was a battle against precisely the forces that are trying to destabilize the Middle East today al Qaeda on the one side, Iran on the other side, and this toxic cocktail, if you like, of religion, politics, ethnicity, tribalism. So, I mean, I never said the two things were linked in that direct sense, 9/11 and Iraq, I think the difficulties we ended up encountering in Iraq were difficulties that arose from precisely this-- this force of terror unleashed by religious extremism and I think that’s the, you know, frankly, what we still face today...
[There] are various groups, Islamist groups, that I’m afraid don’t have the same concept of democracy or freedom that we do.... I'm afraid, that this-- this ideology is being pumped around websites, is being encouraged by people in many different parts of the world and it’s-- and it’s there and it’s very hard for us to deal with. The first obligation of a government is to try and protect its people, but then you’ve got to-- you’ve got to cast out this ideology. I mean, I think this is very similar to the fight we faced in the 20th century against first of all fascism and then revolutionary communism. You know, it’s an ideology. It’s not got one command and control center, it's not a-- you know, you’re not talking about a country, but you are talking about an ideology based on a perversion of religion... which has an enormous force. If you don’t deal with this issue, this long-term question, this ideology based on-- on a perversion of the religion of Islam, you are going to end up fighting this for a long time.5. And here's a nice tribute to Bush from Blair:
And President Obama actually put his finger on it when he said it’s impossible to know George Bush and not like him. So, you know, often people say to me back home, they say, come on, you didn’t like him really, did you? And I say, you can totally disagree with him but as a human being he is a someone of immense character and genuine integrity. So, you know, you can say-- people have different views about decisions, but there’s a very few people who-- who don’t like him and respect him as a person.
"... refused to let their children travel to the South Side for the game, saying they were worried about the safety of their kids."
"This is probably one of the most embarrassing moments I’ve had,” said [William] Wittleder, who has coached high school baseball for 10 seasons and is in his second year as Payton’s head coach. “It’s very heartbreaking. This is totally against what I believe in.”
Headline at Forbes, with the amusing correction:
An earlier version of this post quoted Beck saying the “Pit of Despair” was at Fox News. In fact, he was talking about his time at CNN when he made that remark. I’ve corrected both the article and the headline to reflect that.Ha ha ha. Would that have been the headline if the mistake hadn't been made?
Before coming to Fox, Beck worked at CNN, where, he said, he had an office that looked out on an open-plan office area where producers and reporters had their desks. “I used to call it the Pit of Despair because there are all these people plunking out stories like, ‘I just want to hang myself, I just want to hang myself,’” he said.*Even as Lucy wanted to get into show business, Glenn Beck wants to roam free.
Among his frustrations at both networks, he said, was the rigid, formulaic thinking about how to produce a talk show. “Most of what we do on television was developed by Desi Arnaz” in the 1950s, he said. “There’s no reason we still do it that way, except that it works. It drives me out of my mind that they are still using what’s called the Desi shoot, three cameras on the floor.”
For Beck, who loves to amble around as he talks, it was an unwanted constraint. “I moved, and they couldn’t follow me,” he said. “I said to them, ‘Get me a sports director, please. Get someone with experience producing sports. Just tell them I’m carrying a ball. I think they can do it.’ But everybody in news was saying, ‘You’re supposed to stay here.’”
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We moved beyond that, normalizing the sense of entitlement. But what if you wanted to restore that shame... some of it anyway?
Iain Duncan Smith says he “would encourage” elderly people who can well afford to pay for their their own heating bills, bus passes and television licences to return the money to the state.ADDED: Is shame something that can be re-instilled? It's common to generate shame about something we haven't previously felt shame about — like not recycling or thinking that gay sex is shameful. But when you've got something people used to feel ashamed of, and you've convinced them not to be ashamed anymore, I think it might be close to impossible to make them feel ashamed once again. I want to talk about the nature of shame. Is it subject to resurrection? Or, once dead, does it stay dead?
"The National Grid is demanding that all new appliances be fitted with sensors that could shut them down when the UK’s generators struggle to meet demand for electricity. Electric ovens, air-conditioning units and washing machines will also be affected by the proposals, which are already backed by one of the European Union’s most influential energy bodies."
"... because so many 'failed' terror plots are excluded from the nation’s terror attack databases, new terrorism research suggests."
“One finding from my research is that the terror threat within the US is higher than most Americans realize,” says Erik Dahl, an assistant professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, whose research has identified 227 failed domestic and international terror plots of all kinds (Islamic jihadist, right-wing extremist and others) against the US dating back to 1987 – the vast majority excluded from national “attack” tallies.There's so much room for cooking the numbers here. When we're talking about things that didn't happen and how to characterize those things, we're talking about the stuff of propaganda. Did Professor Dahl go looking for right-wing plots to up the percentage on non-Islamic terrorism? And what's with the phrase "including right-wing militias, anti-government groups"? It makes me suspicious that when something seems right-wing, it's called right-wing, but when it seems left-wing, it's called anti-government.
In his post-9/11 analysis, Dr. Dahl found that of the 109 failed attacks, 76 were inspired by radical Islamist beliefs. But the fact that the rest of the terror flops – 30 percent – were not inspired by radical Islam “might surprise some people and shows the importance of the domestic extremist threat, including right-wing militias, anti-government groups,” Dahl says.
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Said Obama last night, making funny at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. His comic routine lasts over 20 minutes. I just pulled that one line out because it actually almost corresponded to the truth about correspondents.
ADDED: Meade and I both said "wow" when he said "I remember when Buzzfeed was just something I did in college around 2 a.m."
AND: That's a long slog. Here's the 2 minute compression done by WaPo.
I wish they'd cut out part of the lengthy laughing at every effort Obama makes at humor. It's so dull watching the complacent folks in formalwear lolling about chuckling at the boss's jokes. Conan O'Brien seemed pretty awkward. He rolled out the old analogy that adult life is like high school. Fox is the jocks, etc. He included bloggers — the goths. (That was a meme around here 3 years ago.)
MORE: I really do find the shots of the audience quite sickening. Do they not realize how they look? It's an anti-advertisement for the services they'd like to sell us. They seem utterly unprepared to confront power. I'm thinking: This is something that should be done in private, like masturbation. Then I realize: This is the public show. Imagine what they do in private.
ADDED: Meade and I both said "wow" when he said "I remember when Buzzfeed was just something I did in college around 2 a.m."
AND: That's a long slog. Here's the 2 minute compression done by WaPo.
I wish they'd cut out part of the lengthy laughing at every effort Obama makes at humor. It's so dull watching the complacent folks in formalwear lolling about chuckling at the boss's jokes. Conan O'Brien seemed pretty awkward. He rolled out the old analogy that adult life is like high school. Fox is the jocks, etc. He included bloggers — the goths. (That was a meme around here 3 years ago.)
MORE: I really do find the shots of the audience quite sickening. Do they not realize how they look? It's an anti-advertisement for the services they'd like to sell us. They seem utterly unprepared to confront power. I'm thinking: This is something that should be done in private, like masturbation. Then I realize: This is the public show. Imagine what they do in private.
Saturday, 27 April 2013
"For decades, Bloomberg has made available to employees—at no charge—the entire contents of a convenience store. What started as coffee, chips, and cookies (snacks, not meals), quickly expanded to things that were like meals (fresh fruit, cereal and oatmeal for breakfast, cans of tuna fish, soup, and noodle packets for lunch)."
Writes Daniel Gross, in part of an argument that the IRS shouldn't add the value of food provided to employees to their taxable income. This food is "an instrument of social control."
Notice that this issue heated up because of the high quality of the food in Silicon Valley workplaces:
I've changed the topic, and I'd like to go on in this vein (duct?). Bodily fluids are a bit of a theme on the blog today, and the language of saliva is truly interesting. Drool and slaver. Did you know that drool is derived from drivel? And slaver and slobber are basically the same word. Drool and slobber — the words with the letter o — convey a childishness or mental incompetence, while the o-less drivel and slaver seem better for criticizing a competent adult who's wasting our time or is dangerously greedy.
So if you don't like the direction this post has taken, call itdrool, slobber, slaver, drivel.
Writes Daniel Gross, in part of an argument that the IRS shouldn't add the value of food provided to employees to their taxable income. This food is "an instrument of social control."
Companies use people’s basic needs and desire to consume calories as a way of channeling their efforts toward the greater corporate good.Does that really make food different from money, which is also used to energize and appease workers? One difference is that people eat different amounts of food and some — such as vegetarians — eat less expensive items. How would you calculate the value of the free food?
Notice that this issue heated up because of the high quality of the food in Silicon Valley workplaces:
A Gourmet magazine article last year raved about the "mouthwatering free food" at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. The article cited dishes such as porcini-encrusted grass-fed beef and noted that nearly half the produce was organic....By the way, how did "mouth-watering" ever come to be a standard way to describe something appetizing? It's an internally inconsistent word. It's not "mouth-watering" to picture a mouth watering. It's stomach-turning. Looking at the (unlinkable) OED, I see the word originally described the person who was slavering:
Facebook's headquarters in nearby Menlo Park, Calif., has two main cafes, plus a barbecue shack, a pizza shop, a burrito bar, and a 50s-style burger joint. Recent menu options at Facebook's Café Epic, which dishes up free food from morning until night, included spicy she-crab soup and grilled steak with chimichurri sauce.
1779 H. Downman Lucius Junius Brutus v. iv. 124 Conscientious, babbling, sniveling, Mouth-watering knaves, who envy every man The dainty morsel they can't eat themselves.In the early use as a description of the object of the drooler's desire, there is a connotation of disgust and disapproval: "1900 Speakers 3 Jan. 338/2 The White Star shareholders have made a most mouth-watering bargain."
1845 R. Ford Hand-bk. Travellers in Spain I. i. 67 The mouth-watering bystanders sigh, as they see and smell the rich freight steaming away from them.
I've changed the topic, and I'd like to go on in this vein (duct?). Bodily fluids are a bit of a theme on the blog today, and the language of saliva is truly interesting. Drool and slaver. Did you know that drool is derived from drivel? And slaver and slobber are basically the same word. Drool and slobber — the words with the letter o — convey a childishness or mental incompetence, while the o-less drivel and slaver seem better for criticizing a competent adult who's wasting our time or is dangerously greedy.
So if you don't like the direction this post has taken, call it
1852 J. S. Blackie On Stud. Lang. 2 As it begins with dreams, so it must end in drivel.Ah, that reminds me. We were talking about the government. The mouth-watering government.
From the April 26, 2013 Amazon Associates Report:
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"If you lined up 100 people I’m physically drawn to, maybe only 4 would be women, but the depth of attraction I’d feel for those women would be the same as for the men. This was true when I was 23 and entered my first romantic relationship (with a woman), and it’s true now that I’m 38. I do not think of myself as 4 percent lesbian but 100 percent bisexual."
Writes a woman named Wilson Diehl — op-edding in the NYT — who seems irritated that people won't believe her. She married a man named Jared:
Anyway, she's a stay-at-home mother (working on a book), and she doesn't use bisexuality as a reason to be nonmonogamous. Her "bi-ness seldom has occasion to come up organically," so she makes jokes like "I can’t pick a restaurant — I’m bisexual."
Writes a woman named Wilson Diehl — op-edding in the NYT — who seems irritated that people won't believe her. She married a man named Jared:
Jared contacted me on an online dating site, and before we had even met I told him via e-mail that I hate tofu, sausage and girlie cocktails; I’m sensitive about textures, depictions of violence and buzzing noises....Sensitive about textures.... presumably that explains scratchy ridiculousness.
Anyway, she's a stay-at-home mother (working on a book), and she doesn't use bisexuality as a reason to be nonmonogamous. Her "bi-ness seldom has occasion to come up organically," so she makes jokes like "I can’t pick a restaurant — I’m bisexual."
... and undergoes shoulder replacement.
It was the third biking accident for the justice, who two years ago broke his right collarbone after a fall near his home in Cambridge, Mass. He suffered more serious injuries in 1993 when he was hit by a car while biking across Harvard Square.
From the Reddit page devoted to "the creepiest thing your young child has ever said to you."
ADDED: "I want to peel all your skin off"... "what do you see through the black circles in my eyes when you're controlling me when I'm at school?"
AND: "When I was about 3 we had a cat that had still born kittens. I asked my father if we could make crosses for them, which he did. As he was making them I asked: 'aren't those too small?' Dad: 'What do you mean?' Me: 'aren't we going to nail them to them?' Dad: (after several moments silence) 'we're not going to do that' Me: 'oh.'"
AND: Then there's the 3- or 4-year-old who called his dad a "demented peon" and the 5-year-old who called her mother a "glassy-eyed, slack-jawed troglodyte!" (Rude... but admirable vocabulary.)
ADDED: "I want to peel all your skin off"... "what do you see through the black circles in my eyes when you're controlling me when I'm at school?"
AND: "When I was about 3 we had a cat that had still born kittens. I asked my father if we could make crosses for them, which he did. As he was making them I asked: 'aren't those too small?' Dad: 'What do you mean?' Me: 'aren't we going to nail them to them?' Dad: (after several moments silence) 'we're not going to do that' Me: 'oh.'"
AND: Then there's the 3- or 4-year-old who called his dad a "demented peon" and the 5-year-old who called her mother a "glassy-eyed, slack-jawed troglodyte!" (Rude... but admirable vocabulary.)
"... You make coffee, commute by car, attend meetings and answer e-mails, shop in certain stores, watch TV and repeat. It becomes effortless."
Also, I'd say: Wake up and pay attention. I love normal, routine days, but the pleasure of ordinary days is lost if routine equals "a collection of unconscious habits." Be conscious and notice the experience of the things you do habitually. Live. If you do that, you should notice the components of your routine that aren't worth having. Where are you spending money out of proportion to the good it does for you personally?
The linked article is about a personal finance blogger ("Mr. Money Mustache") who "retired" at age 30. What does "retirement" mean"?
So where will you cut back? It seems to me (and to Mr. Mustache) that eating out and traveling are highly questionable activities. Like us, he largely eschews restaurants and does big American road trips for vacationing.
Your brain goes into autopilot. Unfortunately, this also means it becomes hard to make changes.I think the key is to be selective about where to make the cuts. Where are the places where you can change the habits and actually improve your life? The $4 latte may be worth it to you if that's how you get yourself out of the house and into a public place where you encounter other people and moderate loneliness into manageable solitude. A month of daily lattes might correspond to one item of clothing that gives you a moment of manic elation but then gets lost in your closet amongst scarcely dissimilar items.
But different habits, while being equally effortless, tend to add up in a good way over time. If you have a $50,000 take-home pay but are in the habit of living on $25,000 and investing the rest, that will put you ahead by about $350,000 every 10 years after compounding. A habit of biking instead of driving can keep you lively and fit into your 80s while saving you hundreds of thousands of dollars as well.
The key thing to remember is once you establish the habit, it becomes effortless and even pleasant to stay in the groove — even while your friends think you are some kind of unimaginably frugal bike-riding superhero.
Also, I'd say: Wake up and pay attention. I love normal, routine days, but the pleasure of ordinary days is lost if routine equals "a collection of unconscious habits." Be conscious and notice the experience of the things you do habitually. Live. If you do that, you should notice the components of your routine that aren't worth having. Where are you spending money out of proportion to the good it does for you personally?
The linked article is about a personal finance blogger ("Mr. Money Mustache") who "retired" at age 30. What does "retirement" mean"?
According to me, retirement means you no longer have to work for money. You then proceed to do whatever you like, without regard for whether or not it earns you money.Some of what you do can be called "work," but the point is, you're not doing it for the money — and that kind of work is especially satisfying. You know you're doing it for its intrinsic value.
So where will you cut back? It seems to me (and to Mr. Mustache) that eating out and traveling are highly questionable activities. Like us, he largely eschews restaurants and does big American road trips for vacationing.
"According to a 2001 Institute of Medicine report, 600 mg of caffeine (or six cups of coffee) will bring on negative cognitive effects, otherwise known as the jitters, in most people — including Kramer from Seinfeld. And some people are so sensitive to caffeine that one cup will bring on nervousness and irritability, rather than the alertness that most of us feel. 'We also know that caffeine is bad for people with anxiety — for them, it's likely to hurt productivity... But for people on the more depressive end, caffeine would improve productivity. The effect of the drug really depends on the brain into which it's being infused.'"
Clarence Thomas wrote on Supreme Court letterhead to George Jones in 1993. (Jones had sent letters and cassettes to Thomas.)
I have listened to your music for over a decade. The lyrics so often captured just how I felt....
You may be interested to know that I used one of your songs to allay the concerns of my bride's mother. Prior to our wedding, she expressed some concern about this being my second marriage. At that time, I had been listening repeatedly to one of your albums which unfortunately is packed away. I believe it was entitled Wine Colored Roses. I apologize in advance if that is wrong. One of the songs contained the lyrics: 'I put a golden band on the right left hand this time; and the right left hand put a golden band on mine.' As I said before, your music has captured so much of my own feelings.
"... and coming back up with bottles of whisky which they would then hide from the customs."
The ship was the SS Politician. The islanders were from Eriskay, in the outer Hebrides. There were 100s of cases of whisky recovered and hidden from the authorities during WWII.
The link goes to a story about an auction of a couple of the bottles. There was a book — "Whisky Galore" (alternate title "Tight Little Island" — and then a movie by the same name that was made in 1949.
"For a true islander, life without [whisky] is not worth living."
The ship was the SS Politician. The islanders were from Eriskay, in the outer Hebrides. There were 100s of cases of whisky recovered and hidden from the authorities during WWII.
The link goes to a story about an auction of a couple of the bottles. There was a book — "Whisky Galore" (alternate title "Tight Little Island" — and then a movie by the same name that was made in 1949.
"For a true islander, life without [whisky] is not worth living."
"Scott Napper came up with the idea during a lecture on molecules in mucus....The scientist says that exposing the body to the germs caught inside mucus might help build immunity."
"It might serve as almost a natural vaccination, if you will,” Napper told CTV. "Simply picking your nose and wiping it away, or blowing your nose, you might be robbing it of that opportunity."I blogged about this topic years ago, but it's hard to find the old post because I avoided using any of the key words that would allow me to search for it now. Anyway, I'm surprised to see this presented as a new idea. I guess it's an idea that is continually contemplated and repressed. Plus it's hard to study. It's easy to come up with the hypothesis. But design the study and carry it out.
Said Earl Eutsler, of Washington D.C.’s Urban Forestry Administration.
Eutsler mapped requests to the city for trees along streets last year and found a heavy concentration in Northwest and Capitol Hill but merely a sprinkling in the city’s poorest wards.Environmentalists are pushing city trees, and that policy meshes with the values of the affluent, so that lots of trees make a neighborhood look affluent, and you might think it would be good to bestow trees on the poorer neighborhoods, but what if poor people don't like trees?
Doris Gudger of Anacostia is among those who see little to like about lots of trees. When city crews showed up one recent day and planted some in front of her rowhouse in Southeast Washington, she wanted them gone.
The pollen would aggravate her allergies, she said. The leaves would be a pain to rake. The shade would draw drug dealers. And, she feared, soon would follow affluent gentrifiers and higher taxes, pushing out older residents like herself.
"...but all she wants to do is put on a dress and dance around the house, and now she really, really wants Cinderella at her birthday party," the parents say to the professional Cinderella, who dresses like the Disney Cinderella and sings "A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes" at parties. Won't Disney come after her after this big profile in The Washington Post?
“I can say I’m Cinderella because she was around before Disney,” explained Russell, who has upgraded her outfits and now has five other performers working for her. “Rapunzel they don’t own, but ‘Tangled’ they do. Our Little Mermaid is not their Ariel. But we do look like them.”
Friday, 26 April 2013
"'Somewhere along the line, it began to freewheel out of control,' the renowned anchorman told Politico about the celeb-filled soiree, 'and the breaking point for me was Lindsay Lohan.'"
The trouble-making actress was invited as a guest of Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren at the 2012 dinner. Page Six’s Cindy Adams recalled how Lohan disappeared a few times to the bathroom for a cigarette and tipped a bathroom attendant a crumpled $100 and said, "You’re too old to be doing this."Hey, Lindsay's right. We're all too old.
"... , it granted independence to Guinea-Bissau on 10 September 1974."
Luís Cabral, Amílcar Cabral's half-brother, became President of Guinea-Bissau. Following independence local soldiers that fought along with the Portuguese Army against the PAIGC guerrillas were slaughtered by the thousands. A small number escaped to Portugal or to other African nations. The most famous massacre occurred in Bissorã. In 1980 PAIGC admitted in its newspaper "Nó Pintcha"... that many were executed and buried in unmarked collective graves in the woods of Cumerá, Portogole and Mansabá.Today's "History of" country is Guinea-Bissau.
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"... and constantly in the public eye. He doesn’t bitch that he can’t sell records, that the old model is broken, rather he explores the new avenues where money is available to be made. Piracy? Rip-offs? Imitation? That’s your greatest desire! Content ID will make it so you profit off all the imitators who cover your music! You don’t want to hold it close to the vest, you want to open it up to everybody. Which reminds me, ALWAYS SAY YES! You’re gonna get ripped-off anyway. If there are no barriers to piracy, let people do what they want. Your efforts are just fodder, starter material for others to bake their own bread. They’ll give you credit if you don’t antagonize them. And they’ll give you their money too. People like to pay those they believe in. Foster belief and you’ll get paid...."
Richard Prince used somebody else's photographs in his collages, and the court said it's enough that a reasonable observer finds the new work "transformative."
The photographer, Patrick Cariou, made "serene and deliberately composed portraits and landscape photographs depict the natural beauty of the Rastafarians and their surrounding environs," the court said. But "Prince’s crude and jarring works, on the other hand, are hectic and provocative."
There's a high art/low art issue here. There's the way that the snooty people who exhibit in an elite gallery think they owe nothing to the relatively low people who take sentimental photographs. But that's a topic for debate, not a reason for the photographer to hit up the high-class artist for money or — absurd! — claim a right to destroy the expensive articles of commerce.
The photographer, Patrick Cariou, made "serene and deliberately composed portraits and landscape photographs depict the natural beauty of the Rastafarians and their surrounding environs," the court said. But "Prince’s crude and jarring works, on the other hand, are hectic and provocative."
In her decision in 2011, Judge Batts gave Mr. Cariou the right to destroy the “Canal Zone” paintings that had not been sold to collectors, a remedy that was criticized by Judge Barrington D. Parker Jr. of the Second Circuit during oral arguments last year.Destroy?!! But look what Prince did with Cariou's photographs: here. And Prince sold the works for more than $10 million. And yet, don't you feel free to take a book of photographs you own, cut out the pictures, paste them onto poster-board, and scribble and scratch on them? If you made some creepy ugly image out of photos of beautiful models, wouldn't you feel that was yours all yours?
There's a high art/low art issue here. There's the way that the snooty people who exhibit in an elite gallery think they owe nothing to the relatively low people who take sentimental photographs. But that's a topic for debate, not a reason for the photographer to hit up the high-class artist for money or — absurd! — claim a right to destroy the expensive articles of commerce.
"In an open letter to UC President Susan Herbst, self-described feminist student Carolyn Luby wrote that the redesigned team logo will intimidate women and empower rape culture."
UConn basketball coach Geno Auriemma said the logo “is looking right through you and saying, ‘Do not mess with me.’ This is a streamlined, fighting dog, and I cannot wait for it to be on our uniforms and court.”Compare the 2 logos:
In response, Luby wrote, “What terrifies me about the admiration of such traits is that I know what it feels like to have a real life Husky look straight through you and to feel powerless, and to wonder if even the administration cannot ‘mess with them.’ And I know I am not alone.”
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