"Much of the time I found him more sad than despicable; politicians who nearly reach the pinnacle of their profession while being manifestly awful at politics are a rare and curious breed."
Writes Paul Waldman at The American Prospect in a post titled "New Documentary Threatens to Make You Like Mitt Romney."
Here's the trailer:
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
"I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes."
"You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical."
"Duck Dynasty" star Phil Robertson talks about sin and logic. The line before the one quoted above is more graphic (and I didn't want to put it in the post title): "It seems like, to me, a vagina — as a man — would be more desirable than a man’s anus."
I note the ambiguity in what Robertson says about logic and sin. At first, I thought he meant that when he thinks about anatomy, the vagina makes more sense as a place to put a penis, if one has undertaken the reasoning task of determining the most desirable orifice. But there's nothing logical about that. There are unexamined premises: 1. that the penis be inserted somewhere, and 2. that the place should be the most desirable place. Even assuming those 2 premises, there's the obvious problem of the subjectivity of what is desirable, and Robertson admits that by saying "to me" and "I'm just thinking." In this interpretation, the word "logical" is effectively jocose.
Then, I saw an alternate meaning: The prefatory clause "But hey, sin" gives meaning to the repeated phrase "It's not logical." Sin is not logical. What impels us toward sin and what constitutes sin? These are not matters for logic. Perhaps we could reason logically about what sin is, but Robertson's approach is to accept the traditional Christian beliefs and this faith is not acquired through logic. In this interpretation, there's no logic in defining sin, and, too, there's no logic in a person's feelings that draw him into doing things that fit that definition of sin.
Of course, Robertson is getting criticism for these remarks, which are called "anti-gay," but he's rejecting all of what is traditionally understood in the Christian religion as sin, including adultery and fornication. In the process, he talks about his own natural sexual orientation and seems perhaps to concede that it's easy for him to avoid one sin that he knows other people feel drawn toward. But overall, his effort is to call people into traditional religion and to save them from what he believes is sin. Myself, I support gay rights, but I do not like the simple portrayal of traditional religionists as mean or bigoted (even though I do understand that it may be the most effective way to defeat them politically).
"Duck Dynasty" star Phil Robertson talks about sin and logic. The line before the one quoted above is more graphic (and I didn't want to put it in the post title): "It seems like, to me, a vagina — as a man — would be more desirable than a man’s anus."
I note the ambiguity in what Robertson says about logic and sin. At first, I thought he meant that when he thinks about anatomy, the vagina makes more sense as a place to put a penis, if one has undertaken the reasoning task of determining the most desirable orifice. But there's nothing logical about that. There are unexamined premises: 1. that the penis be inserted somewhere, and 2. that the place should be the most desirable place. Even assuming those 2 premises, there's the obvious problem of the subjectivity of what is desirable, and Robertson admits that by saying "to me" and "I'm just thinking." In this interpretation, the word "logical" is effectively jocose.
Then, I saw an alternate meaning: The prefatory clause "But hey, sin" gives meaning to the repeated phrase "It's not logical." Sin is not logical. What impels us toward sin and what constitutes sin? These are not matters for logic. Perhaps we could reason logically about what sin is, but Robertson's approach is to accept the traditional Christian beliefs and this faith is not acquired through logic. In this interpretation, there's no logic in defining sin, and, too, there's no logic in a person's feelings that draw him into doing things that fit that definition of sin.
Of course, Robertson is getting criticism for these remarks, which are called "anti-gay," but he's rejecting all of what is traditionally understood in the Christian religion as sin, including adultery and fornication. In the process, he talks about his own natural sexual orientation and seems perhaps to concede that it's easy for him to avoid one sin that he knows other people feel drawn toward. But overall, his effort is to call people into traditional religion and to save them from what he believes is sin. Myself, I support gay rights, but I do not like the simple portrayal of traditional religionists as mean or bigoted (even though I do understand that it may be the most effective way to defeat them politically).
NYT/CBS poll finds only 1/3 of Americans think the ACA will improve the health care system.
The full numbers won't come out until later today, so there aren't specific percentages at the squib just published at the NYT, and there isn't even a rough fraction to suggest how many of the rest thought things would get worse and how many took the neutral middle position. The headline is "Broad Skepticism on Health Care Law," and I'm just going to guess that the negative group is more than 1/3. Here's some teasing text:
The promise was that vast majorities of Americans would be helped, including nearly everyone with inadequate or no insurance, and that nearly all of the rest would remain [at worst] in a neutral position, keeping what they had if they liked it. So we are experiencing a monumental reversal of expectations. It's hard to fathom how crushed people feel, both in having the huge promise so badly broken and in having so much upheaval with such an effect on one's personal finances and physical well-being.
This is so different from other huge events in American politics. One political party chose to cause this great disruption. It's not like a terrorist attack or a war that demands that we change. It was chosen, and it was chosen with no decent understanding of how difficult a disruption it would be.
I think back to something Michelle Obama said in early 2008, which seemed ominous to some even then:
Among all adults, nearly half think the law will not affect them at all, while among uninsured adults, just over one-quarter say that. And while a nearly 4 in 10 plurality of uninsured Americans think the health care law will hurt them personally, they are twice as likely as the general public to say the law will help them.You can't figure out from that what either group said about thinking that the law would help them. I'll be interested to see how low those numbers are. It could be as high as 6 out of 10 and 3 out of 10 or much lower — 2 out of 10 and 1 out of 10 or worse. [ADDED: If 4 in 10 is indeed a "plurality," then 3 out of 10 for the uninsured think the law will help. You can figure that out. And that would mean that 1.5 out of 10 in the "general public" think it will help them. I guess the "general public" includes this uninsured, so the numbers of already-insured who think it will help them must be less that 1.5. I am relying on precision in the NYT language.]
The promise was that vast majorities of Americans would be helped, including nearly everyone with inadequate or no insurance, and that nearly all of the rest would remain [at worst] in a neutral position, keeping what they had if they liked it. So we are experiencing a monumental reversal of expectations. It's hard to fathom how crushed people feel, both in having the huge promise so badly broken and in having so much upheaval with such an effect on one's personal finances and physical well-being.
This is so different from other huge events in American politics. One political party chose to cause this great disruption. It's not like a terrorist attack or a war that demands that we change. It was chosen, and it was chosen with no decent understanding of how difficult a disruption it would be.
I think back to something Michelle Obama said in early 2008, which seemed ominous to some even then:
Barack Obama... is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.Maybe it's true that Barack has successfully prevented us from getting back to our lives as usual, our lives that many of us liked and wanted to keep. And it's true that he demanded that we shed our cynicism, and that was only the most ironic of the many way that he inspired our cynicism.
Conservative activist Larry Klayman — the victor the recent NSA case — tongue-lashes CNN's Don Lemon and Jeffrey Toobin.
The clip, below doesn't show the whole interaction, but the text at Politico does:
Klayman’s appearance Tuesday night on CNN was preceded by a profile of him that included a quotation from a former George W. Bush staffer saying his lawsuits were about “fighting for himself and his own, in my opinion, delusions of grandeur.”
When Klayman was brought into the conversation, he came out firing.
“I think it is important to note that you’re a big supporter of Obama,” Klayman said to Lemon. “That you have favored him in every respect. You have to try to do a hit piece to diminish a very important decision.... I’ve watched you for many years. You’re an ultra-leftist and you’re a big supporter of Obama.”
Panel of "distinguished historians" convened to find a President who had a worse Year 5 than Obama.
It's a history emergency over at Politico, where they've called out the experts to cast a better light on Obama than the light that's shining on him here in the present, where there are actual emergencies and the deficiencies of the experts convened to deal with them are glaringly obvious. But in the field of history, nothing occurs to expose the glitches and utter screwups. It's all already occurred and all that's left is to interpret what seems to have happened.
AND: I love the prominence of FDR and Ronald Reagan in this distinguished opinion-manufacturing. It's as if the experts know that their role in this history emergency is to boost Obama, and with that understanding, they find a way to say not only that there are Presidents with worse 5th years, but that having a wretched 5th year is the very mark of a great presidency.
AND: I love the prominence of FDR and Ronald Reagan in this distinguished opinion-manufacturing. It's as if the experts know that their role in this history emergency is to boost Obama, and with that understanding, they find a way to say not only that there are Presidents with worse 5th years, but that having a wretched 5th year is the very mark of a great presidency.
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
"Farms — complete with livestock, vegetables and fruit trees — are serving as the latest suburban amenity."
"It's called development-supported agriculture, a more intimate version of community-supported agriculture — a farm-share program commonly known as CSA."
In planning a new neighborhood, a developer includes some form of food production — a farm, community garden, orchard, livestock operation, edible park — that is meant to draw in new buyers, increase values and stitch neighbors together.What about the noises and the smell?!
"How George W. Bush Evolved From the Uncoolest Person on the Planet to Bona Fide Hipster Icon."
A Vanity Fair article by Juli Weiner:
But if you are younger than 24, you might not have attended anti-Bush rallies in high school and in college. You might not have pinned “SHRUB” buttons to your tote bag, and might not even remember Bush as a war-lovin’, vowel-droppin’, faux-folksy, ostentatiously religious Connecticut cowboy. This is because Bush has, quietly and wholly, ingeniously refashioned himself into an Internet-friendly, cat-loving, ironic-hat-wearing painter-cum-Instagram savant. Lately, George W. Bush is a hipster icon, and the Internet, unofficial Fourth Estate of the youth of America, is totally buying it.Rush Limbaugh was going on about it today.
By the way, folks, this Vanity Fair piece on Bush is really snarky. It's as snarky as anything else ever was about Bush. But the comments by readers to the Vanity Fair piece are really positive. I'll tell you, the media, it's under the radar right now, but the media is livid about this.... And they are frosted. They are livid.....
"We really didn't care for a PR pitch about how the administration is trying to salvage its internal health care tech nightmare."
Said an unnamed tech company CEO about a meeting with Obama that was supposed to be about the problem of government surveillance.
'He basically hijacked the meeting,' the executive said. 'We all told the White House that we were only there to talk about what the NSA was up to and how it affects us.'
The biggest Pinocchios of 2013.
WaPo's Fact Checker Glenn Kessler has a top 10 biggest lies list.
President Obama ended up with three of the most misleading claims of the year. But, despite the urging of some readers, his statement that “I didn’t set a red line” on Syria is not among them. We had looked closely at that claim and had determined that, in context, it was a bungled talking point, so that statement actually earned no rating.
Second term Obama is like second term Bush.
Ron Fournier makes 9 points of comparison.
And a new poll at WaPo says:
And a new poll at WaPo says:
Obama ends his fifth year in office with lower approval ratings than almost all other recent two-term presidents. At this point in 2005, for example, former president George W. Bush was at 47 percent positive, 52 percent negative. All other post-World War II presidents were at or above 50 percent at this point in their second terms, except Richard M. Nixon, whose fifth year ended in 1973 with an approval rating of 29 percent because of the Watergate scandal that later brought impeachment and his resignation.I find the headline there painfully funny: "Obama suffers most from year of turmoil, poll finds." It's always all about Obama! Even the suffering. Poor Obama. What about all the people who are suffering as the malfunctioning Obamacare machine cranks into action? I know, the point is that he's doing the worst in the poll, but phrasing it like that — Obama suffers most — is absurd. And I assume they mean to help Obama, to inspire sympathy for him. It's patronizing to him, and it's unsympathetic to everyone else who is suffering.
Head injuries and suicide: It's not just for football anymore.
Now, playing baseball "with abandon" is connected (in the NYT) to suicide.
“There is no way to say [Ryan Freel's] neurodegenerative disease was the cause of his death or the tumultuous 10 years prior to his death,” said Dr. Bob Stern, a neurology and neurosurgery professor and a co-founder of Boston University’s Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy....Will parents overreact and take their kids out of sports? That would be stupid. I assume sports also alleviate depression and some of those sedentary kids, plunging their brains into computers and televisions, descend into suicide. The message is only: Don't get your head knocked hard.
The B.U. Center’s examination of athletes has focused on football, and research published earlier this year indicated that of 35 deceased players whose brain matter was inspected, all but one showed signs of C.T.E. Several were suicide victims. One of the most prominent players, Dave Duerson, had attained the third stage of C.T.E.
Stern said he was initially skeptical that a baseball player would develop the disease. Then he learned during the investigation not only about Freel’s history of collisions with outfield walls and other players but that his first of several concussions unrelated to sports may have occurred at age 2....
“I don’t think baseball is going to become a high-risk activity for C.T.E.,” he said. “I don’t think parents should immediately say: ‘That does it. My kid should not play Little League.’ ... [But] we need to pay better attention to our brains. Try to take the head out of these activities."
Monday, December 16, 2013
The drug consumption rooms of Denmark...
"... where adults with serious addictions can bring their illegal drugs and take them, legally, under the watchful eye of a nurse."
Inside, to the left, behind a huge window, is cluster of smokers with improvised pipes, enveloped in haze. To the right is a long, stainless steel table where several people sit, injecting themselves with heroin, cocaine or both. Some finish and leave quietly. A few slump over the table, asleep. One man gets up and paces frantically back and forth, swearing and shouting. In the middle of it all, sits a nurse in street clothes, calmly taking in the scene.
Every day, these nurses witness up to 800 injections.
"Doctors Save Severed Hand By Sewing to Man's Ankle."
Photo of the arrangement at the link.
Doctors, opted to graft the hand to Wei's ankle to prevent it from dying while they worked on his other extensive injuries. The doctors told Rex Features: “His injury was severe. Besides ripping injuries, his arm was also flattened. We had to clear and treat his injuries before taking on the hand reattachment surgery.”
"I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary’ invasion than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen..."
"... for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval... Surely, such a program infringes on ‘that degree of privacy’ that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment."
Wrote Federal District Judge Richard J. Leon, a Bush appointee, in a case brought by Larry Klayman, a conservative activist, who is seeking to represent a class of all Americans.
Wrote Federal District Judge Richard J. Leon, a Bush appointee, in a case brought by Larry Klayman, a conservative activist, who is seeking to represent a class of all Americans.
Similar legal challenges to the N.S.A. program, including by the American Civil Liberties Union and the advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation, are at earlier stages in the courts. Last month, the Supreme Court declined to hear an unusual challenge to the program by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which had sought to bypass lower courts.ADDED: Orin Kerr has some sharp analysis:
Judge Leon’s first and most fundamental move is to distinguish Smith v. Maryland, the 1979 case ruling that the Fourth Amendment does not protect numbers dialed from a telephone. I found Judge Leon’s argument on this point not only unpersuasive, but quite plainly so. I realize that a district court judge can’t just announce that he thinks a Supreme Court decision was wrongly decided. But there are plausible ways to write an opinion distinguishing Smith and implausible ways to do so, and Judge Leon’s opinion struck me as a surprisingly weak effort.Read the rest at the link.
Amazon.
If you're enjoying this blog, please think of it when you have some on-line shopping to do and enter Amazon through The Althouse Portal.
Thanks to all who've done this already. It's nicely encouraging as I begin the last month of the 10th year of blogging every single day.
Thanks to all who've done this already. It's nicely encouraging as I begin the last month of the 10th year of blogging every single day.
"National Security Agency officials are considering a controversial amnesty that would return Edward Snowden to the United States..."
"... in exchange for the extensive document trove the whistleblower took from the agency."
So the message is: If you take enough, you can get away with it simply by giving it back.
This is a variation on the big lie ("a lie so 'colossal' that no one would believe that someone 'could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously'"). Go big enough, and you can get away with what the small time liars/cheats/thieves/monsters must pay for.
Or what was it Donald Trump — I think it was Donald Trump — said? The bank turns down people who ask for small loans, but if you ask for a yoooge enough loan, they don't say no. Can't find the precise thing I'm looking for, but I did find:
"As long as you are going to be thinking anyway, think big."
Back to Snowden. I thought when he first took it on the lam, he said that there were copies distributed to various persons for safekeeping, so that if he were killed, it would all come out. How is the NSA to know whether all those copies are called back?
ADDED: Meade, reading this out loud, helping me proofread, said: "'a lie so colossal that no one would believe that someone could have the impudence'.... how about the audacity?"
I'm irritated for a second by his discontinuity and say "It's a quote," as if I think Meade is offering me writing advice and there's a better word than "impudence," and then I realize that Meade is gesturing at Obama — "Audacity of Hope" — and the colossal Lie-of-the-Year lie that Obama told.
"You do realize that's a Hitler quote?" I ask, unnecessarily.
So the message is: If you take enough, you can get away with it simply by giving it back.
This is a variation on the big lie ("a lie so 'colossal' that no one would believe that someone 'could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously'"). Go big enough, and you can get away with what the small time liars/cheats/thieves/monsters must pay for.
Or what was it Donald Trump — I think it was Donald Trump — said? The bank turns down people who ask for small loans, but if you ask for a yoooge enough loan, they don't say no. Can't find the precise thing I'm looking for, but I did find:
"As long as you are going to be thinking anyway, think big."
Back to Snowden. I thought when he first took it on the lam, he said that there were copies distributed to various persons for safekeeping, so that if he were killed, it would all come out. How is the NSA to know whether all those copies are called back?
ADDED: Meade, reading this out loud, helping me proofread, said: "'a lie so colossal that no one would believe that someone could have the impudence'.... how about the audacity?"
I'm irritated for a second by his discontinuity and say "It's a quote," as if I think Meade is offering me writing advice and there's a better word than "impudence," and then I realize that Meade is gesturing at Obama — "Audacity of Hope" — and the colossal Lie-of-the-Year lie that Obama told.
"You do realize that's a Hitler quote?" I ask, unnecessarily.
"The best argument for putting inequality on the back burner is the depressed state of the economy."
Concedes Krugman. "Isn’t it more important to restore economic growth than to worry about how the gains from growth are distributed?"
Of course, his answer is: "No." Or, to be precise (and to capture the Krugman condescension): "Well, no."
Of course, his answer is: "No." Or, to be precise (and to capture the Krugman condescension): "Well, no."
"All the apple-cheeked babies, captured for eternity in Creamsicle onesies three sizes too big, are nearly grown."
That's the first sentence of what?
The incredibly long and abstruse Sports Illustrated article about Peyton Manning, from which I was unable to extract the reasoning for choosing him as Sportsman of the Year (other than, looking at the sidebar of other possibilities, the lack of anyone more compelling).
When the hell did sportswriting turn into that sort of thing? Babies. Onesies. Should a man even use the word "onesies"? Creamsicle? Come on, people.
But if we're going to talk about football, let's talk about the Green Bay Packers humiliating the Dallas Cowboys last night. Wasn't that a highly emotive experience?
The incredibly long and abstruse Sports Illustrated article about Peyton Manning, from which I was unable to extract the reasoning for choosing him as Sportsman of the Year (other than, looking at the sidebar of other possibilities, the lack of anyone more compelling).
When the hell did sportswriting turn into that sort of thing? Babies. Onesies. Should a man even use the word "onesies"? Creamsicle? Come on, people.
But if we're going to talk about football, let's talk about the Green Bay Packers humiliating the Dallas Cowboys last night. Wasn't that a highly emotive experience?
"It took me everything not to cry," McCarthy said..... "I was drained. I don't think people realize what professional athletes put into a contest. Just to see the emotion of guys... what we overcame. I don't have the words. My vocabulary's stuck right now. It was incredible."Mars needs women. Women have the words. We're more verbal. We can say "onesies" and "babies" and "Creamsicle" and more. But I'll just say "the emotion of guys"... I love that. And... go, Packers, and good for you, Peyton Manning.
"But there is a reason Ayn Rand is considered a gateway drug to the right and [Adam] Smith isn’t..."
"... the 'greed is good' ethos, whatever else may be wrong with it, is much sexier, more rebellious, and thus more appealing than staid bourgeois morality. But more to the point, it’s interesting that both [The Daily Caller's Matt] Lewis and [Andrew] Sullivan consider Smith the fons et origo of fiscal conservatism, as defined by support for capitalism. I find it interesting because it’s mistaken, albeit a mistaken belief that is held almost universally."
Mytheos Holt, writing in The American Conservative, would like you to pay more attention to Bernard Mandeville and "The Fable of the Bees."
Mytheos Holt, writing in The American Conservative, would like you to pay more attention to Bernard Mandeville and "The Fable of the Bees."
Governor Walker's frosted pecans.
Here is a recipe for our frosted pecans: http://t.co/E89eTKqsje
— Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) December 16, 2013
"The People should never rise, without doing something to be remembered — something notable And striking."
"Last Night 3 Cargoes of Bohea Tea were emptied into the Sea. This Morning a Man of War sails. This is the most magnificent Movement of all. There is a Dignity, a Majesty, a Sublimity, in this last Effort of the Patriots, that I greatly admire. The People should never rise, without doing something to be remembered — something notable And striking. This Destruction of the Tea is so bold, so daring, so firm, intrepid and inflexible, and it must have so important Consequences, and so lasting, that I cant but consider it as an Epocha in History."
So wrote John Adams in his diary.
Today is the 240th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.
"Why Is Pope Francis Promoting Sin?"
There's a click-bait headline that seduced me. It's an op-ed at Bloomberg.com.
By dwelling on inequality, the pope is promoting envy. The Catholic Church, I had always understood, disapproves of envy, deeming it one of the seven deadly sins. I would have expected Francis to urge people to think of themselves in relation to God and to their own fullest potential. Encouraging people to measure themselves against others only leads to grief. Resenting the success of others is a sin in itself.Obviously, one can say the Pope is promoting virtue, notably charity. But the pitch comes from a Harvard professor, Lant Pritchett, whose expertise is in alleviating poverty, but hear him out. This next part may win over even the Pope fans:
While Jesus repeatedly preached against the love of riches, he was urging people to respond to a call to God and to become “rich to God.” It was not an appeal for people to resent the riches of others and obsess about material inequality. Jesus, when asked to remedy inequality, turned the focus back on envy and greed.Mere inequality is beside the point.
“Someone in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.’ He replied to him, ‘Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?’ Then he said to the crowd, ‘Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one’s life does not consist of possessions.’” (Luke 12:13-15)
I am all for reducing poverty... What I’m against is talking about “inequality” as if that term denoted any of those concerns. Poverty matters; injustice matters. Mere inequality is beside the point.
Sunday, December 15, 2013
Peter O'Toole has died.
Here's his IMDB page. I really haven't seen many of his movies. "The Last Emperor." "Lawrence of Arabia." I'm sorry to lose one of the great old actors. I see that he was going to play the role of Symeon in a 2014 movie titled "Mary," based on The New Testament.
“Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.”
“Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.”
"Don’t get me wrong — I’m still an atheist."
"But I will no longer be dragged into debates with theists who make a ludicrous claim, then base their evidence on the very book from which their ludicrous claim originates."
By the way, even in that little quoted squib, the guy is still being a jerk, likening religious people to a brick wall and being a bit of a brick wall himself about the possibility that religious people are seekers of knowledge and truth.
There is no point in it. All this back-and-forth sniping serves to do is to make us feel a sense of superiority to the person making the claims and does nothing for them except leave them with a smugness about their assumption that “atheists are all mean.” Faith overrides knowledge and truth in any situation, so arguing with a theist is akin to banging your head against a brick wall: You will injure yourself and achieve little.Why must an atheist bother with the subject of religion at all? If you think you're so rational, be rational about the reasons why people are religious, including many reasons that you could be empathetic about.
By the way, even in that little quoted squib, the guy is still being a jerk, likening religious people to a brick wall and being a bit of a brick wall himself about the possibility that religious people are seekers of knowledge and truth.
How to turn your face into an "anti-face" — a sight that surveillance technology cannot read as a face.
Don't imagine that sunglasses will work. You need things like dramatically asymmetrical bangs in multiple colors.
I think whatever we do, the robots will learn it and get out in front of us, but you can look quite foolish in your feeble effort to outsmart them. The linked article is more of an art-and-fashion project than a real defense against surveillance. Isn't it funny? Finding surveillance funny is perhaps the closest you can get to a defense.
I think whatever we do, the robots will learn it and get out in front of us, but you can look quite foolish in your feeble effort to outsmart them. The linked article is more of an art-and-fashion project than a real defense against surveillance. Isn't it funny? Finding surveillance funny is perhaps the closest you can get to a defense.
"I concocted a plan to prove how boring life would be if you were just nice all the time..."
"... how much more bracing it is to have sweetness laced with tartness. I told them I would be very, very nice until they asked me to stop, certain that they’d get sick of saccharine and syrupy in short order. Except they didn’t. They liked it."
Says Maureen Dowd, about her 10-year-old self.
People may be bored by all niceness all the time, but they still appreciate (and maybe take advantage of) those who opt to perform perfect sweetness. One can always find amusing edge in somebody else, even keeping the very nice person around for company and for snuggles later.
Says Maureen Dowd, about her 10-year-old self.
People may be bored by all niceness all the time, but they still appreciate (and maybe take advantage of) those who opt to perform perfect sweetness. One can always find amusing edge in somebody else, even keeping the very nice person around for company and for snuggles later.
Adderall for everybody. That's what the name means: A.D.D. for All.
"Modern marketing of stimulants began with the name Adderall itself."
Lots more at the link, including the 6 question test used to see if you're likely to have A.D.H.D. I scored 14, which put me in the "likely" category, even though on a daily basis, I lock into the work I need and want to do and continue with great concentration for many hours, often to great excess. But there was no question about that, and no questions that subtracted points, so I got 4 points for saying I "very often" "fidget or squirm" when I "have to sit down for a long time." Now, I don't fidget when I'm working on my own reading or writing, but I didn't think about that, because the question said "when you have to sit down," and when I'm doing my own work, I don't have to sit down. I can get up whenever I want, and I often motorize my desk into the standing position. I only have to sit down at a meeting or when stuck in a vehicle on a long trip, so in those situations I do rebel against the constraint.
But obviously, I could get this drug prescribed easily. And anyone can. Is it still a weight-loss pill? Is that part of what's going on with Adderall?
Mr. Griggs bought a small pharmaceutical company that produced a weight-loss pill named Obetrol. Suspecting that it might treat a relatively unappreciated condition then called attention deficit disorder, and found in about 3 to 5 percent of children, he took “A.D.D.” and fiddled with snappy suffixes. He cast a word with the widest net.And what's to stop the trend toward prescribing it for everyone… to take for the rest of their life?
All.
For A.D.D.
A.D.D. for All.
Adderall.
“It was meant to be kind of an inclusive thing,” Mr. Griggs recalled.
Lots more at the link, including the 6 question test used to see if you're likely to have A.D.H.D. I scored 14, which put me in the "likely" category, even though on a daily basis, I lock into the work I need and want to do and continue with great concentration for many hours, often to great excess. But there was no question about that, and no questions that subtracted points, so I got 4 points for saying I "very often" "fidget or squirm" when I "have to sit down for a long time." Now, I don't fidget when I'm working on my own reading or writing, but I didn't think about that, because the question said "when you have to sit down," and when I'm doing my own work, I don't have to sit down. I can get up whenever I want, and I often motorize my desk into the standing position. I only have to sit down at a meeting or when stuck in a vehicle on a long trip, so in those situations I do rebel against the constraint.
But obviously, I could get this drug prescribed easily. And anyone can. Is it still a weight-loss pill? Is that part of what's going on with Adderall?
"I feel like a jerk suspecting that they were all actors."
I said, and Will Cate said:
In real life, most people, even good people, think it's best to deploy cold silence as the social pressure against strangers who say things that aren't very nice. But you can't make a TV show out of assorted dirty looks, however sharp and well-aimed.
I think they were all actors, and I don't at all feel like a jerk for thinking it. It's television. That means it's almost certainly 100% fake. Look at all the different camera-shots, the lighting. I call bullshit on the whole thing.It was incredibly didactic and it played straight into the audience's desire to believe that good people are out there with the skill and the energy to lead us forward into racial harmony. Ah, well! It was a nice Sunday-school lesson in how to step up and speak out for what's right... if you believe.
In real life, most people, even good people, think it's best to deploy cold silence as the social pressure against strangers who say things that aren't very nice. But you can't make a TV show out of assorted dirty looks, however sharp and well-aimed.
About that "affluenza."
Those who think the rich teenager — who, driving drunk, killed 4 persons — should have gotten a harsher punishment than 10 years probation are focusing on the expert testimony he presented in his favor. A psychologist named G. Dick Miller testified that having grown up in affluence, "He never learned that sometimes you don’t get your way... He had the cars and he had the money. He had freedoms that no young man would be able to handle."
Miller used the term "affluenza" — a portmanteau of "affluence" and "influenza" — to refer to the young man's psychological deficit.
It's the judge's responsibility to give this testimony the weight it deserves. The problem here is not that rich people have money to dump into a strong defense in a criminal proceeding or that psychologists have coined a catchy/cutesy term for the woes of the rich. It is the judge — Texas State District Judge Jean Boyd — who is accountable for anything that went wrong in the case of Ethan Couch. And we don't know the weight she put on Miller's testimony or the notion of "affluenza."
I don't know how Boyd has treated other teenagers. Perhaps she's deeply informed about the deficiencies of the teenage brain and has shown mercy to a great many poor and working class teenagers and her sentencing of Couch is — within her record — a model of equal treatment of the rich and the poor. Maybe she knows the research that has led, for example, to articles like this — "Developmental Psychologist Says Teenagers Are Different" — in the New York Times.
That's a 2009 interview with Laurence Steinberg, "a developmental psychologist at Temple University in Philadelphia... one of the leading experts in the United States on adolescent behavior and adolescent brain biology." He says:
Speaking of brains: Let's try to think clearly about this case and the larger context. Don't get too distracted by the word "affluenza" — which no one said was an actual disease. Don't impulsively slot this into a class warfare template. Remember that the criminal defendant has a right to present the evidence in his favor. And the responsibility for sentencing lies squarely with the judge, but don't succumb to impulsive emotion as you judge the judge.
Miller used the term "affluenza" — a portmanteau of "affluence" and "influenza" — to refer to the young man's psychological deficit.
Affluenza, Miller acknowledged to CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Thursday, is “not a medical term.” The psychologist said that it means “You have too much and you don’t know how to distribute it.” At Cooper’s prompting, Miller acknowledged that the boy was “a spoiled brat.”Of course, psychologists will have a lot to say about the afflictions of rich people, since rich people are more likely to have money to throw into long, luxurious sessions with psychologists. And rich people have the money to put on a strong defense in a criminal trial, replete with expert testimony framing their deficiencies in the most compellingly sympathetic form.
The affluenza claim rightfully strikes the most absurd note since Dan White’s infamous 1979 “Twinkie defense.” Psychologists have loosely used the term for years to describe the emotional pitfalls unique to children raised in affluent settings.
It's the judge's responsibility to give this testimony the weight it deserves. The problem here is not that rich people have money to dump into a strong defense in a criminal proceeding or that psychologists have coined a catchy/cutesy term for the woes of the rich. It is the judge — Texas State District Judge Jean Boyd — who is accountable for anything that went wrong in the case of Ethan Couch. And we don't know the weight she put on Miller's testimony or the notion of "affluenza."
I don't know how Boyd has treated other teenagers. Perhaps she's deeply informed about the deficiencies of the teenage brain and has shown mercy to a great many poor and working class teenagers and her sentencing of Couch is — within her record — a model of equal treatment of the rich and the poor. Maybe she knows the research that has led, for example, to articles like this — "Developmental Psychologist Says Teenagers Are Different" — in the New York Times.
That's a 2009 interview with Laurence Steinberg, "a developmental psychologist at Temple University in Philadelphia... one of the leading experts in the United States on adolescent behavior and adolescent brain biology." He says:
I’m not one of those people who labels adolescence as some sort of mental illness. Teenagers are not crazy. They’re different.Asked whether the criminal justice system is "beginning to take these differences into account during sentencing," Steinberg says:
When it comes to crime, they are less responsible for their behavior than adults. And typically, in the law, we don’t punish people as much who are less responsible. We know from our lab that adolescents are more impulsive, thrill-seeking, drawn to the rewards of a risky decision than adults. They tend to not focus very much on costs. They are more easily coerced to do things they know are wrong. These factors, under the law, make people less responsible for criminal acts. The issue is: as a class, should we treat adolescents differently?
It’s been coming up in cases. I went to Washington in November to watch the oral arguments in two related cases before the Supreme Court that ask: should someone who committed a crime as a teen be subjected to life imprisonment without a chance for parole, ever?At the link you can see links to the U.S. Supreme Court cases and descriptions of the neuroscience research about the teenage brain.
With these cases, and another in 2005 where the high court threw out the death penalty for adolescents, I was scientific consultant to the American Psychological Association on its amicus brief. What we said in the death penalty case — and now — was that we have considerable evidence showing that adolescents are different from adults in ways that mitigate their criminal responsibility. But since 2005, there’s been a lot of new scientific evidence supporting this position.
Speaking of brains: Let's try to think clearly about this case and the larger context. Don't get too distracted by the word "affluenza" — which no one said was an actual disease. Don't impulsively slot this into a class warfare template. Remember that the criminal defendant has a right to present the evidence in his favor. And the responsibility for sentencing lies squarely with the judge, but don't succumb to impulsive emotion as you judge the judge.
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Niceness.
Just noticed I have 2 posts in a row calling something "nice."
I have a "nice" tag, you know.
My favorite one is "My 2 favorite 'nice' songs." [ADDED: I redid the poll.]
And "When you're nice to someone else... that someone else is nice back to you, and suddenly two people feel good about themselves and each other, and spread their feelings."
"Nice" is an interesting word. As the (unlinkable) OED puts it:
I have a "nice" tag, you know.
My favorite one is "My 2 favorite 'nice' songs." [ADDED: I redid the poll.]
And "When you're nice to someone else... that someone else is nice back to you, and suddenly two people feel good about themselves and each other, and spread their feelings."
"Nice" is an interesting word. As the (unlinkable) OED puts it:
The semantic development of this word from ‘foolish, silly’ to ‘pleasing’ is unparalleled in Latin or in the Romance languages. The precise sense development in English is unclear. N.E.D. (1906) s.v. notes that ‘in many examples from the 16th and 17th cent. it is difficult to say in what particular sense the writer intended it to be taken.’The meaning "Kind or considerate in behaviour; friendly (towards others). Freq. in to be nice (to)" only goes back to the early 1800s. Example from F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise i. i. 38 "I'm tired of being nice to every poor fish in school." But the way I used it in the previous 2 posts is the meaning "Delicate or skilful in manipulation; dexterous," which goes back to the 1600s. Here's the poet John Donne, writing in 1633:
So kiss good turtles, so devoutly niceTurtles... fish...
Are priests in handling reverent sacrifice,
And such in searching wounds the surgeon is,
As we, when we embrace, or touch, or kiss.
Avoiding cat bites.
"When a cat throws itself on its side and shows its belly, most people misinterpret this behaviour and think that it wants its belly rubbed but will get grabbed by their hand and the cat will bite them."
What the cat is actually doing is showing a greeting behaviour and showing trust. It is actually an abuse of that trust to stroke its belly. What the cat would rather you do is to give it a slight head rub.Useful! That can not only help you avoid cat bites, it can help you avoid concluding that cats are evil.
Sylvester Stallone's union troubles.
Just another anecdote from "The Andy Warhol Diaries." This is from the entry for February 22, 1980:
It wasn't a Rocky movie they were filming. Don't be confused. It was "Nighthawks."
Stallone is so cute, so adorable. I guess he’s lost sixty pounds. He’s sexy. All the stars usually think they should have their portraits done free, though. He’s intelligent, he’s taken over directorship of the movie and now he’s in trouble because the union has a film of him saying, “Lights, action!” It’s going before a board. Stallone was telling stories about how much trouble he’s had with the union, how there’s this little Irish guy that he just wants to beat up so badly. He said he had this one shot all set up, everybody was in costume and makeup with blood and everything for a fight scene and it was snowing, just perfectly and they said, “Okay, stop, everybody break for dinner,” and he said he practically got down on his knees pleading, “Please, just let’s get this one shot, please, I’m a fellow worker, please, I’m Rocky!” and they wouldn’t let him. They broke for dinner and then he had to start all over again.Please, I’m Rocky! I love that. The workers should view the director as a proletarian because he played one in a movie. And meanwhile, he imagines he's so elite that the artist should provide him with portraiture gratis. But what kind of elite is that? Royalty patronizes the arts.
It wasn't a Rocky movie they were filming. Don't be confused. It was "Nighthawks."
Given the shocking lack of security at the Mandela memorial, why did the Secret Service allow the President to appear?
"The stadium's main entrance was 'completely unattended... There were no workers performing bag checks or pat-downs — there were no magnetometers to walk through, no metal detector wands being used — anywhere.'"
When South African security officials did perform security checks, they were often trying to restrain the bodyguards and entourage members of visiting dignitaries and celebrities. But conflicts seem to have been resolved by letting everybody in...
"He wasn't a violent person, he was just verbally aggressive."
Said of the latest school shooter.
And here's news of his Facebook postings:
And here's news of his Facebook postings:
"I was wondering to all the neoclassicals and neoliberals, why isn't the market correcting itself?" he wrote. "If the invisible hand is so strong, shouldn't it be able to overpower regulations?"
Pierson also appears to mock Republicans on another Facebook post, writing "you republicans are so cute" and posting an image that reads: "The Republican Party: Health Care: Let 'em Die, Climate Change: Let 'em Die, Gun Violence: Let 'em Die, Women's Rights: Let 'em Die, More War: Let 'em Die. Is this really the side you want to be on?"
"Adultery, including adulterous cohabitation, is not prosecuted. Religious cohabitation, however..."
"... is subject to prosecution at the limitless discretion of local and State prosecutors, despite a general policy not to prosecute religiously motivated polygamy. The court finds no rational basis to distinguish between the two, not least with regard to the State interest in protecting the institution of marriage."
Says federal judge Clark Waddoups in Brown v. Buhman, a case about the Utah anti-bigamy statute, which makes it a felony "when, knowing he has a husband or wife or knowing the other person has a husband or wife, the person purports to marry another person or cohabits with another person." From the first time I noticed this issue, I've thought the answer was obvious. You can't punish people for the ideas they happen to have about why they are living in a household with multiple sexual partners. Call it a marriage or call it a sandwich. Imagine that God blesses your relationship or imagine that your kitty cats brought you together. It's no proper concern of the government's.
Now, if you want to legally register your marriage and qualify for various marriage-connected benefits and privileges, it's a different matter, and Judge Waddoups makes that clear. This case was not about that. It was about people who live together and perform private marriage rituals and call themselves married. Prosecuting these people, while other married people are left alone when they commit adultery, is criminalizing their speech and beliefs. If you understand the issue, I think you'll see this must be the answer.
This does not lay the groundwork for finding a right to marry multiple spouses any more than it compels the government to prosecute adulterers.
Says federal judge Clark Waddoups in Brown v. Buhman, a case about the Utah anti-bigamy statute, which makes it a felony "when, knowing he has a husband or wife or knowing the other person has a husband or wife, the person purports to marry another person or cohabits with another person." From the first time I noticed this issue, I've thought the answer was obvious. You can't punish people for the ideas they happen to have about why they are living in a household with multiple sexual partners. Call it a marriage or call it a sandwich. Imagine that God blesses your relationship or imagine that your kitty cats brought you together. It's no proper concern of the government's.
Now, if you want to legally register your marriage and qualify for various marriage-connected benefits and privileges, it's a different matter, and Judge Waddoups makes that clear. This case was not about that. It was about people who live together and perform private marriage rituals and call themselves married. Prosecuting these people, while other married people are left alone when they commit adultery, is criminalizing their speech and beliefs. If you understand the issue, I think you'll see this must be the answer.
This does not lay the groundwork for finding a right to marry multiple spouses any more than it compels the government to prosecute adulterers.
"#NARRATIVEFAIL: Five Years Ago Today: Al Gore Predicted the North Pole Will Be Ice Free in 5 Years."
"Today Cairo had its first snowfall in 100 years."
Poor Al Gore. He almost — or must feel that he almost — got us panicked enough to quickly adopt new rules, and if we had, he could point to those reforms and express gratefulness that we'd heeded his warning and expect adulation for all the good that he'd done. But the very elements of his story that were needed for panic and quick action are exactly what exposes him as so terribly wrong.
He can retrench and say things like: The snow in Egypt is evidence of the truer, overarching narrative which was not so much global warming, but climate chaos. Or: The prediction was about the odds of something cataclysmic happening, the odds were high enough to justify immediate action, and we are lucky that we beat the odds, but we won't be lucky forever.
Poor Al Gore. He almost — or must feel that he almost — got us panicked enough to quickly adopt new rules, and if we had, he could point to those reforms and express gratefulness that we'd heeded his warning and expect adulation for all the good that he'd done. But the very elements of his story that were needed for panic and quick action are exactly what exposes him as so terribly wrong.
He can retrench and say things like: The snow in Egypt is evidence of the truer, overarching narrative which was not so much global warming, but climate chaos. Or: The prediction was about the odds of something cataclysmic happening, the odds were high enough to justify immediate action, and we are lucky that we beat the odds, but we won't be lucky forever.
Andy Warhol hated Frank Zappa.
From "The Andy Warhol Diaries," Thursday, June 16, 1983:
Frank Zappa came to be interviewed for our TV show and I think that after the interview I hated Zappa even more than when it started. I remember when he was so mean to us when the Mothers of Invention played with the Velvet Underground— I think both at the Trip, in L.A., and at the Fillmore in San Francisco. I hated him then and I still don’t like him. And he was awfully strange about Moon. I said how great she was, and he said, “Listen, I created her. I invented her.” Like, “She’s nothing, it’s all me.” And I mean, if it were my daughter I would be saying, “Gee, she’s so smart,” but he’s taking all the credit. It was peculiar.Here's Moon performing the old 1982 song "Valley Girl." Listening to that today is a completely different experience because back then talking like that was really weird and unbelievably stupid. Today, that kind of speech is so common, perplexingly common. I hear it all the time from people who completely intend to be taken seriously — mainstream journalists, law professors — female and male.
"Starting early next year, any adult with a craving or curiosity will be able to stroll into a strip mall or downtown shop in Colorado or Washington State and do what has long been forbidden..."
"... buy a zip-lock bag of legal marijuana."
No, not any adult. Only adults who think federal law that isn't being enforced still counts as law and who feel bound to follow the law. And, I, for one, feel that this discrimination against us rule-followers is unfair. Why are we — of all people — the last to be free?
I am the person who — when the fences were torn down at Woodstock and the hippies were declaring "It's a free concert now" — would have respected the rights of the landowners and the concert promoters.
If something is to be legal, make it truly legal, or explain to me why there is some special reason to fence out those who still believe in order.
No, not any adult. Only adults who think federal law that isn't being enforced still counts as law and who feel bound to follow the law. And, I, for one, feel that this discrimination against us rule-followers is unfair. Why are we — of all people — the last to be free?
I am the person who — when the fences were torn down at Woodstock and the hippies were declaring "It's a free concert now" — would have respected the rights of the landowners and the concert promoters.
If something is to be legal, make it truly legal, or explain to me why there is some special reason to fence out those who still believe in order.
"Two years ago, Richmond, Va., installed 17 markers delineating a slave trail, running past the sites of slave markets and a slave jail."
"A national slavery museum is being planned, said Delores McQuinn, a state legislator, who has led the slave trail project. Charleston, S.C., has moved away from its traditionally genteel approach to antebellum history to one that acknowledges the central role of slavery in the city’s development. An International African-American Museum is planned there as well and is seen as good business."
"Tourism audiences are changing," said Mary Battle, a public historian with the Avery Research Center for African-American History and Culture at the College of Charleston.
"Tourism audiences are changing," said Mary Battle, a public historian with the Avery Research Center for African-American History and Culture at the College of Charleston.
"iPad baby seat inspires campaign to stop the parenting apocalypse."
Check out the Fisher-Price the Apptivity Seat. Link goes to an article in the L.A. Times, not to Amazon, as you might suspect, but if you want to buy one, here's the Amazon link. The L.A. Times article includes some snark from comments at Amazon, stuff like:
Check out Infant Visual Stimulation By Think Design Studio and Early Sensory Stimulation for Your Infant. These things look better than the DVDs of Disney movies or episodes of "Sesame Street" that people put on the TV for babies, and they seem immensely better than those nightmarish mobiles.
Here's a NYT article — "New Milestone Emerges: Baby’s First iPhone App" — with some info on how much time babies spend in front of various screens. (American Academy of Pediatrics says the amount for children under 2 should be: zero.)
NOTE: If you told me it harms the development of the baby's eyesight, I would completely change my mind on this. Personally, I believe staring at the computer caused me to start to need reading glasses, but maybe that would have happened anyway, and I had the bad habit of locking on to the computer screen, for many hours a day, often more than 10 hours a day.
"This product is great. Exactly what I was looking for. Everyone should own one of these. Fisher-Price does it again. Hail Satan."But let's be fair-minded. Let's compare this product (with the iPad inserted) to the usual distract-a-baby devices. There's television and there are those horrible mobiles people hang over cribs. Here, for example, is the Fisher-Price Discover 'n Grow Twinkling Lights Projector Mobile. Why would we think that is better than an iPad? First, you need to ask, what are the iPad apps for babies?
Check out Infant Visual Stimulation By Think Design Studio and Early Sensory Stimulation for Your Infant. These things look better than the DVDs of Disney movies or episodes of "Sesame Street" that people put on the TV for babies, and they seem immensely better than those nightmarish mobiles.
Here's a NYT article — "New Milestone Emerges: Baby’s First iPhone App" — with some info on how much time babies spend in front of various screens. (American Academy of Pediatrics says the amount for children under 2 should be: zero.)
The survey found that children under 2, on average, spend an hour a day in front of screens — engaging in activities like watching television, using computers, viewing DVDs, playing with mobile apps. Children ages 2 to 4 averaged two hours a day, and those 5 to 8, two hours and 20 minutes.It seems to me, in the real world, an Apptivity Seat with a high-quality baby app is a pretty good idea compared to the alternatives, unless the alternative is holding the baby in your arms and talking and singing or whatever the real, old-time human interactions were. Of course, we still do that much of the time, but not all of the time. In that off-the-lap time, what's the baby supposed to do? Not for too long, of course.
NOTE: If you told me it harms the development of the baby's eyesight, I would completely change my mind on this. Personally, I believe staring at the computer caused me to start to need reading glasses, but maybe that would have happened anyway, and I had the bad habit of locking on to the computer screen, for many hours a day, often more than 10 hours a day.
"A day after the Associated Press dropped the bombshell news..."
"... that Robert Levinson, officially America’s longest-held hostage, was working for the CIA when he went missing in Iran in 2007, the reverberations were being felt across political and intelligence circles."
[O]ne by one, media organisations disclosed they had known about the story for years, but had acceded to government requests not to publish it....
Ali Alizadeh, a London-based seasoned Iranian analyst and commentator, said... “The admission that he was indeed working for the CIA somehow legitimises Iranian claims in recent years that Americans had been involved inside Iran and gives some credibility to Iran... This is why I believe it might open ways for his release if he is in fact still alive.”
... “Since the mid-90s, the agency has recognized that having analysts more involved in operational decisions and choices is a good thing, and enhances the finished product,” said Vicki Divoll, a former CIA lawyer. “However, if analysts get too far out in front, without the training necessary to successfully run operations, this could backfire. And a debacle such as this, if true, may set back internal agency co-operation 20 years."
"And for those of you who've been emailing me asking me why I didn't do more with the Screwtape Letters, more like Gatsby..."
"... my answer to that is that the lack of interest in the question asked in this post shows why that project doesn't fly. The Gatsby project flew. It turned on minds that accepted the turn-on and took off."
The last line of my comment explaining why I have yet to fulfill what may seem to be a promise to complete an assignment I really only gave myself.
And this post gets not only a Gatsby project tag, but also a written strangely early in the morning tag.
It's okay if you don't volunteer to sit for my outside-of-law-school exams. I have plenty of exams written by nonvolunteers that I am duty-bound to read. This post is about a duty I felt I had to write the answer to my own exam, which I only gave because I wanted to write that answer. But if the question inspired no one else, then I tend to think that my answer would only have seemed weird or annoying or — the worst — unreadable.
Or is that the worst? The devil nags me to ask. The devil says: Wouldn't it be a fascinating new project to write a blog called "Unreadable Things"?
The last line of my comment explaining why I have yet to fulfill what may seem to be a promise to complete an assignment I really only gave myself.
And this post gets not only a Gatsby project tag, but also a written strangely early in the morning tag.
It's okay if you don't volunteer to sit for my outside-of-law-school exams. I have plenty of exams written by nonvolunteers that I am duty-bound to read. This post is about a duty I felt I had to write the answer to my own exam, which I only gave because I wanted to write that answer. But if the question inspired no one else, then I tend to think that my answer would only have seemed weird or annoying or — the worst — unreadable.
Or is that the worst? The devil nags me to ask. The devil says: Wouldn't it be a fascinating new project to write a blog called "Unreadable Things"?
Friday, December 13, 2013
Amazon.
You can show your support for this blog by doing your Amazon shopping through The Althouse Amazon Portal. Thanks to everyone — for using that portal and also just for reading... and commenting. It means a lot.
"Many in New York’s professional and cultural elite have long supported President Obama’s health care plan."
"But now, to their surprise, thousands of writers, opera singers, music teachers, photographers, doctors, lawyers and others are learning that their health insurance plans are being canceled and they may have to pay more to get comparable coverage, if they can find it."
It is an uncomfortable position for many members of the creative classes to be in. “We are the Obama people,” said Camille Sweeney, a New York writer and member of the Authors Guild. Her insurance is being canceled, and she is dismayed that neither her pediatrician nor her general practitioner appears to be on the exchange plans. What to do has become a hot topic on Facebook and at dinner parties frequented by her fellow writers and artists.Isn't that cute? For it, but what is it? Dear, sweet, oh-so-creative Camille the Writer, seemingly flipping the old Groucho Marx lyric:
“I’m for it,” she said. “But what is the reality of it?”
"A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery."
No, but it might have something to do with gem-encrusted gold statues.
China National Radio says: "When the gold flashes, it captures the intense interest of the public."
China National Radio says: "When the gold flashes, it captures the intense interest of the public."
"When it comes to writing about anorexia, the only truly radical move, as far as I can tell, would be to show clearly just how profoundly boring it is..."
"... not sad or prurient or overdetermined," writes Alice Gregory in "Anorexia, the Impossible Subject," in The New Yorker (reviewing "How to Disappear Completely: On Modern Anorexia").
And yet... isn't Gregory is falling prey to the imitative fallacy?
The very premise is an unappealing one: we’d like to believe that such unhinged myopia would have psychological roots in trauma or in some sinister personal history, but usually it doesn’t.... [A] voluntarily isolated person choosing not to eat until she’s addicted to not eating doesn’t make for a very good story....But readers choose books because they are interesting, and so whatever is written about well enough to attract readers is going to make the subject absorbing, exciting, glamorous. What things other than anorexia are actually quite boring but written about in books as if they were not boring? When else do we worry that readers will be tricked into doing things they should not do because the book failed to depict the activity as boring?
If we really wanted to protect our supposedly susceptible youth, we’d paint anorexics as they are: slowly suicidal obsessives who avoid other people and expend ninety-five per cent of their mental energy counting the calories in green vegetables. We wouldn’t see them as worth reading about at all.
And yet... isn't Gregory is falling prey to the imitative fallacy?
Imitative fallacy is this: the mistaken notion that creating the feeling in the reader that is the same as the feeling in the character is the worthy intention of a story. That is my loose paraphrase of what is probably a lot of technical ancient Greek. Which means, we create an imitation of life, not a story. So, for example–if the character is bored, you bore the reader. Or the character is confused, you confuse the reader.The example of writing boringly to express boredom is such a typical way to explain the imitative fallacy that Christopher Lehmann-Haupt found this amusing and not boring way to talk about the imitative fallacy:
[T]he fallacy of imitative form... is the error of, say, writing chaotic prose in order to convey a mood of chaos: we were forever vigilant against this fallacy, although we often committed a variation of it, by writing boringly about interesting subjects!What are some interesting books about boredom? I think of Kierkegaard’s "Either/Or," written about and quoted here by Roger Kimball:
He was... an unusually exuberant writer, by turns gripping, caustic, and sentimental. He could be extremely funny: “All men are bores,” he wrote in “The Rotation Method” (a key essay in Either/Or).If everyone is boring, then all the characters in all of the books are boring, anorexics and overeaters alike. The authors may strain to depict them as interesting, but there are exceptions, where the author clearly shows you that the characters are boring, but the book is not boring. I'm sure you can name a few. I thought of "Madame Bovary." And so, I think I've established that Gregory was wrong to call anorexia "the impossible subject." I hope you won't be so boring as to contradict me. Eat a sandwich!Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore as to contradict me in this... . The gods were bored, and so they created man. Adam was bored because he was alone, and so Eve was created. Thus boredom entered the world, and increased in proportion to the increase of population. Adam was bored alone; then Adam and Eve were bored together; then Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel were bored en famille; then the population of the world increased, and the peoples were bored en masse. To divert themselves they conceived the idea of constructing a tower high enough to reach the heavens. This idea is itself as boring as the tower was high, and constitutes a terrible proof of how boredom gained the upper hand.
The fake sign language interpreter from the Mandela memorial had faced charges of murder, rape, theft, breaking and entering, malicious damage to property, and kidnapping.
How was he hired? Was it sheer incompetence or something more sinister?
A government official said the Xhosa-speaking Jantjie also did not speak English well enough to interpret effectively and that the firm that hired him had “vanished into thin air.”Thanks for the info, government official. Vanished into thin air. That's incisive. Personally, I choose thick air for my vanishing tricks.
Enclothed cognition.
A term for "the mental changes that we undergo when we wear certain clothing."
What I think would be fun to talk about is articles of clothing that you have used to alter your perceptions. And have you rejected items of clothing that you thought would skew your perceptions in ways you didn't like? Remember to exclude the idea of how others perceive you and how their response to you will affect you. It's just you. You and that item of clothing. Like this:
ADDED: Here's an Amazon link to a page where you can buy a nice porkpie hat, like the one Walter White uses to achieve enclothed cognition in "Breaking Bad." I searched only for "porkpie hat" and did not mention anything more "Breaking Bad"-related than that, but the Amazon page showed not only other elements for a Walter White costume (jacket, glasses, yellow coveralls) but also packets of blue raspberry rock candy.
"It’s all about the symbolic meaning that you associate with a particular item of clothing," [Northwestern researcher Hajo] Adam said. And he thinks the study’s results can be applied to many more fields, including activewear and fitness. "I think it would make sense that when you wear athletic clothing, you become more active and more likely to go to the gym and work out."The linked article is almost entirely about athletic clothing, and there's almost nothing about the researchers' study and the term "enclothed cognition" which amused me enough to start this post. The insight seems so obvious — dressing the part will help you play the part — that it seems funny to have a term for it.
What I think would be fun to talk about is articles of clothing that you have used to alter your perceptions. And have you rejected items of clothing that you thought would skew your perceptions in ways you didn't like? Remember to exclude the idea of how others perceive you and how their response to you will affect you. It's just you. You and that item of clothing. Like this:
ADDED: Here's an Amazon link to a page where you can buy a nice porkpie hat, like the one Walter White uses to achieve enclothed cognition in "Breaking Bad." I searched only for "porkpie hat" and did not mention anything more "Breaking Bad"-related than that, but the Amazon page showed not only other elements for a Walter White costume (jacket, glasses, yellow coveralls) but also packets of blue raspberry rock candy.
Taking a ridiculous racial issue and making it more ridiculous.
For some reason — ratings? — Megyn Kelly was on Fox News arguing with some lady who thought Santa Claus should no longer be depicted as a white man. Sorry, I'm not going to figure out the whole context of that proposal, but at some point Kelly emitted the following quote:
So here comes Jonathan Merritt in The Atlantic, turning that nugget o' Fox into something that Atlantic readers might find tasty. Hey, everybody, some idiot on Fox News said something stupid.
What's the error? Merritt informs us that Jesus, being a first-century Jew, probably had dark skin. Jews are not white? One ceases to be white if one's skin is sufficiently dark? It may be silly to use the term "white" to label people by race, but white is a big category, and it includes a pretty broad spectrum of skin colors, such as, for example, the "white Hispanic" George Zimmerman. Maybe we should call Jesus a "white Semitic" to heighten the awareness of the subcategories of whiteness. Is that what Jonathan Merritt requires to avoid falling into "serious error"? Megyn Kelly was arguing for less racialism, and Merritt is arguing for more.
Merritt also casually implies that the TSA engages in racial profiling of those who look Semitic. It's a scurrilous charge, but, hey, it's a joke.
Merritt continues:
And we're subjected to the usual tripe about light and darkness — which correspond so strongly to the deeply emotional experience of day and night — being about skin color. Ever consider that Jesus looks the way he does in old paintings because the painter used models in his home town? That would mean the painter wasn't focused on race at all. But why not go with the idea that all those old painters were racists who lightened Jesus up to make him look like a better class of person? What's the point? And what the hell does it have to do with Megyn Kelly?
Merritt goes on to say:
"Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn't mean it has to change," Kelly said. "Jesus was a white man, too. It's like we have, he's a historical figure that's a verifiable fact, as is Santa, I just want kids to know that. How do you revise it in the middle of the legacy in the story and change Santa from white to black?"Well, that's silly, perhaps, but she's got a guest on the show who needs to be prodded with questions. And the assertion that Santa is a historical figure is jocose for adults, a sop for the kids. The question is simply the usual conservative appeal to tradition: Why change anything? There's a reference to the reason for the change: It makes some people "uncomfortable." Is that a good enough reason for changing something we've done for a long time? This is the same way you could bandy about the question whether the Washington Redskins ought to change their name. It's standard fare for the Fox News crowd.
So here comes Jonathan Merritt in The Atlantic, turning that nugget o' Fox into something that Atlantic readers might find tasty. Hey, everybody, some idiot on Fox News said something stupid.
Setting aside the ridiculousness of creating rigidly racial depictions of a fictitious character that does not actually exist—sorry, kids—like Santa, Kelly has made a more serious error about Jesus. The scholarly consensus is actually that Jesus was, like most first-century Jews, probably a dark-skinned man. If he were taking the red-eye flight from San Francisco to New York today, Jesus might be profiled for additional security screening by TSA.Kelly didn't demand "rigidly racial depictions." She was challenging her guest's attempt to turn the usual image of Santa into a racial problem. It's the guest who's yearning to impose the racial template. What's the "serious error" about Santa that Kelly is supposed to have made? None! But she made a "more serious error about Jesus," and I guess any error is a more serious error than no error.
What's the error? Merritt informs us that Jesus, being a first-century Jew, probably had dark skin. Jews are not white? One ceases to be white if one's skin is sufficiently dark? It may be silly to use the term "white" to label people by race, but white is a big category, and it includes a pretty broad spectrum of skin colors, such as, for example, the "white Hispanic" George Zimmerman. Maybe we should call Jesus a "white Semitic" to heighten the awareness of the subcategories of whiteness. Is that what Jonathan Merritt requires to avoid falling into "serious error"? Megyn Kelly was arguing for less racialism, and Merritt is arguing for more.
Merritt also casually implies that the TSA engages in racial profiling of those who look Semitic. It's a scurrilous charge, but, hey, it's a joke.
Merritt continues:
The myth of a white Jesus is one with deep roots throughout Christian history. As early as the Middle Ages and particularly during the Renaissance, popular Western artists depicted Jesus as a white man, often with blue eyes and blondish hair.Yeah, but Megyn Kelly didn't say Jesus had blond hair and blue eyes. Merritt's line is more erroneous, wafting the notion that white people must have light coloring. I'd say there are a lot more white people with dark eyes and dark hair than with blue eyes and blond (or "blondish") hair. So this is a completely screwy attack on Megyn Kelly, and it's actually pretty offensive to go out of your way to say that persons of Semitic ancestry are not white. Why go where Nazis have gone? What's the attraction? Because it's just so important to portray Fox News folk as idiots?
Perhaps fueled by some Biblical verses correlating lightness with purity and righteousness and darkness with sin and evil, these images sought to craft a sterile Son of God....Now, you are way outside of anything having to do with Megyn Kelly. This sounds like some lesson from a fourth-rate racial studies course. And by the way, Merritt, that writing is terrible. The subject of your sentence is "images," and images don't seek to do anything. Images are inanimate objects. And how do you "craft" Jesus? Human beings do the seeking and crafting. And the images are crafted. The images are of Jesus. A person might craft a sterile image of Jesus. But an image can't craft — or even seek to craft — a sterile Jesus.
And we're subjected to the usual tripe about light and darkness — which correspond so strongly to the deeply emotional experience of day and night — being about skin color. Ever consider that Jesus looks the way he does in old paintings because the painter used models in his home town? That would mean the painter wasn't focused on race at all. But why not go with the idea that all those old painters were racists who lightened Jesus up to make him look like a better class of person? What's the point? And what the hell does it have to do with Megyn Kelly?
Merritt goes on to say:
In Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Advice for Living” column for Ebony in 1957, the civil-rights leader was asked, “Why did God make Jesus white, when the majority of peoples in the world are non-white?” King replied, “The color of Jesus’ skin is of little or no consequence” because what made Jesus exceptional “His willingness to surrender His will to God’s will.” His point, as historian Edward Blum has noted, is that Jesus transcends race.Yes, Martin Luther King said some great things about getting past race. So could we? Here's what Merritt says next:
Those warnings hold just as true for believers today.What warnings? How is Jesus transcends race a warning? One could construct a warning: We'd better transcend race or terrible things will happen. But Merritt won't transcend race:
Within the church, eschewing a Jesus who looks more like a Scandinavian supermodel than the sinless Son of God in the scriptures is critical to maintaining a faith in which all can give praise to one who became like them in an effort to save them from sins like racism and prejudice.Only Merritt brought up the Scandinavian supermodel version of Jesus, but, yeah, it's critical to eschew making Jesus look like this. But who does that? If it's really so important to have the right colors to encourage everyone to identify, then a dark-haired, dark-eyed Caucasian is one of the best choices. But Martin Luther King said race is of little or no consequence, and Merritt said we were supposed to heed his warnings.
It's important for Christians who want to expand the church, too, in allowing the creation of communities that are able to worship a Jesus who builds bridges rather than barriers. And it is essential to enabling those who bear the name of Christ to look forward to that day when, according to the book of Revelation, those “from every nation, tribe, people, and language” can worship God together.He just cannot let it go. Megyn Kelly must be stupid. Fox News must suck. Jesus can wait and Martin Luther King's dream will need to be deferred for however long it takes to kick that right-wing news blonde around one more time over less than nothing.
Until that day arrives, though, can someone please tell Megyn Kelly that Jesus is not white?
"The U.S. government lobotomized roughly 2,000 mentally ill veterans—and likely hundreds more—during and after World War II..."
"... according to a cache of forgotten memos, letters and government reports unearthed by The Wall Street Journal."
Much more at the link. It seems that the government was looking mostly at men with what today we would call PTSD and taking advantage of a way to control intractable people. I'd like to see more details on how this related to homosexuals. Presumably, as Fink said "it was the behaviors." This was back in the days before Thorazine, so it's hard for us today to picture what these doctors were seeing.
The U.S. government lobotomized roughly 2,000 mentally ill veterans—and likely hundreds more—during and after World War II, according to a cache of forgotten memos, letters and government reports unearthed by The Wall Street Journal. Besieged by psychologically damaged troops returning from the battlefields of North Africa, Europe and the Pacific, the Veterans Administration performed the brain-altering operation on former servicemen it diagnosed as depressives, psychotics and schizophrenics, and occasionally on people identified as homosexuals....In a standard lobotomy, the surgeon opens the skull and severs the prefrontal part of the brain from the rest of the brain.
“Realistically looking back, the diagnosis didn’t really matter—it was the behaviors,” says psychiatrist Max Fink, 90, who ran a ward in a Kentucky Army hospital in the mid-1940s. He says veterans who couldn’t be controlled through any other technique would sometimes be referred for a lobotomy. I didn’t think we knew enough to pick people for lobotomies or not.... It’s just that we didn’t have anything else to do for them.”
Much more at the link. It seems that the government was looking mostly at men with what today we would call PTSD and taking advantage of a way to control intractable people. I'd like to see more details on how this related to homosexuals. Presumably, as Fink said "it was the behaviors." This was back in the days before Thorazine, so it's hard for us today to picture what these doctors were seeing.
During eight years as a patient in the VA hospital in Tomah, Wis., [Roman] Tritz underwent 28 rounds of electroshock therapy, a common treatment that sometimes caused convulsions so jarring they broke patients’ bones. Medical records show that Mr. Tritz received another routine VA treatment: insulin-induced temporary comas, which were thought to relieve symptomsMy mother, who is no longer alive, was a WAC who worked in wards like this in the 1940s, but I never heard her say anything about the treatments, only very general things about how the men suffered.
To stimulate patients’ nerves, hospital staff also commonly sprayed veterans with powerful jets of alternating hot and cold water, the archives show. Mr. Tritz received 66 treatments of high-pressure water sprays called the Scotch Douche and Needle Shower, his medical records say....
“You couldn’t help but have the feeling that the medical community was impotent at that point,” says Elliot Valenstein, 89, a World War II veteran and psychiatrist who worked at the Topeka, Kan., VA hospital in the early 1950s. He recalls wards full of soldiers haunted by nightmares and flashbacks. The doctors, he says, “were prone to try anything.”
Thursday, December 12, 2013
The Moon Museum.
A tiny little tile that might be on the moon.
The discovery of The Moon Museum by chance today — why hadn't I heard of it before? — got me searching for "moon" in Andy Warhol's diaries, and I found this about some party in Aspen in 1982:
There are six artworks located on the ceramic tile, each one in black and white only... [T]he last drawing in the upper left is by Andy Warhol. He created a stylized version of his initials which, when viewed at certain angles, can appear as a rocket ship or a crudely drawn penis. "He was being the terrible bad boy." says Myers. Warhol's work is covered by a thumb in the image often associated with Moon Museum, but other images with the drawing visible can be found.Forrest "Frosty" Myers, who came up with the idea to get six great artists together and make a tiny little museum that would be on the moon." I find it very amusing that a little tile — it's 3/4" X 1/2" of — should be called a "museum." For some reason, for the longest time, I've had a special love of humor that plays with or flips the largeness and smallness of things.
The discovery of The Moon Museum by chance today — why hadn't I heard of it before? — got me searching for "moon" in Andy Warhol's diaries, and I found this about some party in Aspen in 1982:
Buzz Aldrin came, from the moon. The astronaut. Took a lot of photographs of him. He’s aged but he was cute and glad to meet us. We decided to start lying that night— Chris told people he had a twelve-month-old baby and that he was watching it while his wife was back in New York and they all believed him. And I told them I was a deep-sea fisherman, and this lady invited me to Boca Raton. I haven’t been drinking at all.
"Embrace the suck."
This looks so wrong — over at Drudge:
But she said it:
But she said it:
“Embrace the suck,” House minority leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi told fellow Democrats Thursday morning... “We need to get this off the table so we can go forward,” she added. It’s a way of telling her colleagues the budget deal negotiated with Republicans is the best they can get.
"Without any training or experience, this guy applied for the job, got the job and fooled people for years by just putting on an elaborate show.."
"The fact that he was standing on stage next to a lot of important people put him beyond question in the minds of most people. Those who really understood that what he was saying actually made no sense were ignored. And now we have this South African interpreter doing the same thing."
ADDED: Also about the interpreter, from the same commenter (Bob Boyd):
ADDED: Also about the interpreter, from the same commenter (Bob Boyd):
He wasn't perfect, but his intentions were the very best.And:
His signs, though meaningless, were nuanced and brilliantly delivered.
He's obviously super smart, he has a palpable emotional connection with the common people and a true understanding of their struggle.
Certainly this man wasn't what we have come to expect, but perhaps its our expectations that we need to examine.
Rather than yield to the demands of convention, this unknown agent of wonder has jarred us out of our complacency and showed us possibilities that only yesterday did not exist. This is the hallmark of a truly great interpreter. We have only to recognize him for what he is.
Do we really need to see things done the way they have always been done? Can we really not move beyond the comfortable, the familiar?
We could ask ourselves.
"What the fuck?"
Or we could ask a question that may bring true understanding.
Let not our efforts on behalf of the deaf make us blind.
"For someone who has had such an impact on just the aesthetic of improvised music and guitar, as a total guitar hero, there was such a degree of humility..."
"... that — it wasn't that he downplayed what he did — he had this sense that it was part of something way bigger."
Jim Hall died Tuesday at the age of 83.
(Many video clips and quotes at the link.)
ADDED: "He said he would occasionally retune the strings of the guitar randomly, not even necessarily to exact pitches, just to force himself to be creative in a different way, without depending on his usual crutches."
Jim Hall died Tuesday at the age of 83.
(Many video clips and quotes at the link.)
ADDED: "He said he would occasionally retune the strings of the guitar randomly, not even necessarily to exact pitches, just to force himself to be creative in a different way, without depending on his usual crutches."
"There he was, back in high school, a fresh-faced member of the volleyball team and a student leader in Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution..."
"... ordering teachers to line up in the auditorium, dunce caps on their bowed heads. He stood there, excited and proud, as thousands of students howled abuse at the teachers."
Then, suddenly, a posse stormed the stage and beat them until they crumpled to the floor, blood oozing from their heads. He did not object. He simply fled. “I was too scared,” he recalled recently in one of several interviews at a restaurant near Tiananmen Square, not far from his alma mater, No. 8 Middle School, which catered to the children of the Mao elite. “I couldn’t stop it. I was afraid of being called a counterrevolutionary, of having to wear a dunce’s hat.”
"After bitching about and resisting nudging to watch the show, especially in the week leading up to the finale, I started watching one episode at a time."
I blogged on October 22. Last night, we finished it, the entire series, 61 episodes of "Breaking Bad." We were on a tear. We've been immersed in that world for the last 7 weeks.
ADDED: In the comments some people are asking if we liked it. Obviously, we liked it, or we wouldn't have marathon-watched it like that. Now, I'm interested to go back and see what I'd written when I first tried to watch it. Someone had prodded me in the comments about why the main character, Walter White, a school teacher who must have had good health insurance benefits, needed to become a criminal to pay for cancer treatments. I said:
Well, I know the answer to that from watching the first 22 minutes of the first episode.And later, I finished the first episode and said:
He's not about trying to get money to pay for treatments. He's an entirely listless, enervated man with nothing to live for, utterly empty and bland and beaten down with no love for anything (except maybe chemistry) and he finds out he's got inoperable lung cancer and at most 2 years to live.
He's so numb about all that the doctor wonders if he even understands. He tells the doctor there's a mustard stain on his jacket. He doesn't inform his wife about the diagnosis.
Then he's at his car wash (moonlighting) job and he's asked again to leave the cash register, which was supposed to be his job, and go out and put that sploogy stuff on the car tires, and he flips out.
He's had it with his bland old life which wasn't worth living even before he was dying. He's energized to go bad. He's finally alive.
This is a classic melodrama plot point: man who is about to die finally learns how to live.
He's been emasculated and suddenly he embraces manhood, which is saying "no" to all the crap he's had to eat, like vegetarian fake-bacon strips that taste like Band-Aids.
It's not about how hard it is to pay for health care. What a boring thing to think about the show!
Am I to believe that the people who love the show have less appreciation for its themes than I derived in 22 minutes before turning it off?
I'm about to scream NOOOOO at all this bullshit and pull the merchandise down off the wall and yell at my boss that I hate his mustache [ACTUALLY: eyebrows].
On which side of the screen is the storied vast wasteland?
It confirmed my understanding that Walt's breaking bad was the seizing of life that happened as he faced death.I maintained that idea of the character throughout the series, and the correctness of my understanding of the first 22 minutes was made clear in the final episode, when Walt put it plainly, explaining himself to his wife: "I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really… I was alive." I was alive… same as in the first episode: I'm alive.
At one point, he says "I'm alive."
It may be that in later episodes the story was changed to a desire to leave money to his family (or to get his own medical treatments), but I'm here to tell you that is NOT the story presented in the "Pilot."
I can't believe people who liked the show thought they were sort of rooting for a guy to get money for his family. What's the point of watching a made-up story on that subject? "Breaking Bad" was about crazy desperation to find — at the point of dying — what it means to be alive. All that destruction and that wild action — it was a man screaming from the not-yet-closed-grave: I am alive!
I predict we'll all — most of us — go to Helle.
You think she's off the norm — the gleeful, man-magnetizing Prime Minister of Denmark Helle Thorning-Schmidt, who took the famous funeral selfie with Barack Obama and David Cameron leaning into the shot.
But I think this is where we are going. Years ago, we scoffed or cried out in horror at the man who walked down the street talking on a cell phone. Why, he seemed like those crazy people who walk and talk to phantoms. Doesn't he know how ridiculous and presumptuous and into himself he looks? Can we even remember how intensely we experienced that disapproval of walking cell-phone talkers?
Helle Thorning-Schmidt — love the name! — assures us the mood in the stadium was "festive," and it was not wrong to take a selfie, and, indeed, she thinks all the fuss is "funny."
Thorning-Schmidt declined to talk about the way Michelle Obama looked. Me, when I look at the famous photo of the photographing — the second one down at the link — I see Michelle existing in the old world — where most of us are — and the other 3 having entered the next stage. Some day, we'll look back and think we're all relaxed and free to quickly record the occasion, even if it's a funeral. After all, lots of people come together at funerals. They are great reunions and celebrations of the life that has ended. We see the life in ourselves and in each other on these occasions, and perhaps this is the last time we will be here together like this. Take the selfie!
Picture yourself in the casket and: 1. Take a selfie now before it's too late, and 2. Ask yourself if you'd like the people who showed up for your funeral to feel they need to sit stiff and grim like poor last-century Michelle or if you prefer Helle?
But I think this is where we are going. Years ago, we scoffed or cried out in horror at the man who walked down the street talking on a cell phone. Why, he seemed like those crazy people who walk and talk to phantoms. Doesn't he know how ridiculous and presumptuous and into himself he looks? Can we even remember how intensely we experienced that disapproval of walking cell-phone talkers?
Helle Thorning-Schmidt — love the name! — assures us the mood in the stadium was "festive," and it was not wrong to take a selfie, and, indeed, she thinks all the fuss is "funny."
Thorning-Schmidt declined to talk about the way Michelle Obama looked. Me, when I look at the famous photo of the photographing — the second one down at the link — I see Michelle existing in the old world — where most of us are — and the other 3 having entered the next stage. Some day, we'll look back and think we're all relaxed and free to quickly record the occasion, even if it's a funeral. After all, lots of people come together at funerals. They are great reunions and celebrations of the life that has ended. We see the life in ourselves and in each other on these occasions, and perhaps this is the last time we will be here together like this. Take the selfie!
Picture yourself in the casket and: 1. Take a selfie now before it's too late, and 2. Ask yourself if you'd like the people who showed up for your funeral to feel they need to sit stiff and grim like poor last-century Michelle or if you prefer Helle?
"Are the questions too hard? Are they too easy? Did I make all the studying worthwhile for them?"
The professor too is nervous about the exam.
On multiple choice exams:
On multiple choice exams:
“I have to make sure that the wrong answers are wrong in interesting ways, not in ‘duh’ ways... And that the right ones are really right.”
"Mandela Interpreter Says He Was Hallucinating/Says He Entered Altered State As He Took His Place on Stage."
That might excuse him, but it does not excuse whoever did the security check.
Thamsanqa Jantjie said... that as he took the stage within arms' length of Mr. Obama and other leaders at a memorial in a Johannesburg soccer stadium on Tuesday, he slipped into an altered state. He said he saw angels coming into the stadium.
"I don't know the attack of this problem, how will it come... Sometimes I get violent on that place. Sometimes I will see things chasing me."
"Microaggression" — the word that died.
I've been working on the theory that the term "microaggression" briefly spiked to prominence and then utterly crashed with the story of the professor who was accused of "microaggression" for correcting spelling and grammar errors. I picked apart some details in the way that story was told here, and then I began to Google "microaggression" every day or so to see what was surfacing in the world of microaggression. It's an interesting label, possibly useful, clearly abusable, and I wanted to see where it would get put. But all that came up, again and again, was that spelling-and-grammar-correcting professor. Hence the theory that the word died.
But today's search turned up something new over at Buzzfeed: "21 Racial Microaggressions You Hear On A Daily Basis." A photographer named Kiyun got her friends to "write down an instance of racial microaggression they have faced," so this is a series of people racially microaggressed against, holding signs. This is a pretty good-humored project, and the young people who went along with the photographer's idea object mostly to dumb remarks ("What do you guys speak in Japan? Asian??"), excessively personal remarks, ("What does your hair look like today?") and — here's something to hearten the John Roberts' fans — lack of color-blindness ("What are you?").
You know there's a color-blind way to fight against microaggression: Etiquette!
But today's search turned up something new over at Buzzfeed: "21 Racial Microaggressions You Hear On A Daily Basis." A photographer named Kiyun got her friends to "write down an instance of racial microaggression they have faced," so this is a series of people racially microaggressed against, holding signs. This is a pretty good-humored project, and the young people who went along with the photographer's idea object mostly to dumb remarks ("What do you guys speak in Japan? Asian??"), excessively personal remarks, ("What does your hair look like today?") and — here's something to hearten the John Roberts' fans — lack of color-blindness ("What are you?").
You know there's a color-blind way to fight against microaggression: Etiquette!
About that 6-year-old boy accused of "sexual harassment" for kissing his schoolmate's hand.
I heard Rush Limbaugh talking about this yesterday, and I see this morning that Glenn Reynolds — calling the boy "the littlest casualty in the war on men" — is linking to James Taranto — who's blaming Obama (because of a requirement that schools protect students from sexual harassment).
I agree that someone that young should not be labeled with an offense that contains the word "sexual." (The school district, barraged with criticism, has relabeled his offense "misconduct.") And I would locate the issue of suspending him within the larger problem of the "zero tolerance" approach.
But I do think that the school is right to forbid kissing. The boy's mother, who naturally wants to defend her child, tells us that the children were "boyfriend and girlfriend" and that the girl "was fine with it." That may make the misbehavior less severe, but it does not take it out of the range of what a school should forbid.
By the boy's report, it happened "during class, yeah": "We were doing reading group and I leaned over and kissed her on the hand." That isn't acceptable in-class behavior! The school should forbid that. I don't understand saying it's fine for boys and girls who like each other to freely express that affection with hand kissing during class. How about a little support for the school teachers who expect discipline during their lessons? You're not allowed to whisper back and forth or pass notes either. This is basic classroom respect. Have we all forgotten?
I agree that someone that young should not be labeled with an offense that contains the word "sexual." (The school district, barraged with criticism, has relabeled his offense "misconduct.") And I would locate the issue of suspending him within the larger problem of the "zero tolerance" approach.
But I do think that the school is right to forbid kissing. The boy's mother, who naturally wants to defend her child, tells us that the children were "boyfriend and girlfriend" and that the girl "was fine with it." That may make the misbehavior less severe, but it does not take it out of the range of what a school should forbid.
By the boy's report, it happened "during class, yeah": "We were doing reading group and I leaned over and kissed her on the hand." That isn't acceptable in-class behavior! The school should forbid that. I don't understand saying it's fine for boys and girls who like each other to freely express that affection with hand kissing during class. How about a little support for the school teachers who expect discipline during their lessons? You're not allowed to whisper back and forth or pass notes either. This is basic classroom respect. Have we all forgotten?
I was a casualty in the War on Christmas.
'Twas last night at the checkout counter at Whole Foods. As is our wont — or Meade's wont, anyway — we'd brought back Whole Foods shopping bags for refilling. One of the bags — probably reused 3 or 4 times — a handle had torn lose.
I said, "Foiled in our effort at recycling." Then — because I'm always looking for the positive side of things and noticing the red-and-green image of a string of Christmas lights on the new bag — "At least the new one is a Christmas bag."
The cashier said: "Holiday bag."
I said, "Foiled in our effort at recycling." Then — because I'm always looking for the positive side of things and noticing the red-and-green image of a string of Christmas lights on the new bag — "At least the new one is a Christmas bag."
The cashier said: "Holiday bag."
"Why should we continue to care about Guantánamo?"
A student asked Linda Greenhouse on the last day of the law school course she taught on the sole topic of Guantánamo. She doesn't mention that the law school is Yale, which is the most difficult law school to gain admission to and therefore the one with the most elite set of students. Odd to think that someone who got into Yale and elected to take a course dealing solely with Guantánamo — it can't possibly be a required course — endured the experience to the last day and still asked why should I care?
I wasn't there, so I don't know the tone of the question. Greenhouse gives the context the student presented — "the Guantánamo population has shrunk even as urgent human rights crises that place many more people at risk have erupted in other parts of the world" — and characterizes the question as "deliberately provocative and not entirely rhetorical." Greenhouse informs us that the class was provoked to "lively" "conversation" that "quickly" produced "consensus."
Of course, the intense activity of devoting a law school semester to one legal problem needs to make sense in the end. Simple human defensiveness could explain the quick trip to consensus. Why did we take this course instead of Information Privacy Law or Law and Regulation of Banks and Other Financial Intermediaries or whatever else might have captured our hearts on Yale Law School's rich menu of course offerings?
Here's how Greenhouse, in her NYT column, phrases the consensus:
And that place is: ME! This is about ME! This is US! This is WHO. WE. ARE. Ah, relief. So I haven't been staring for months into the dismal stories of 162 shady-but-perhaps-procedurally-abused characters. I've been staring into a mirror at myself. Ah! The relief! It was about me!
That was where the elite students quickly found relief from provocation. I suspect that practically any particular legal problem can support the claim that it's really about the legitimacy and principle of the entire legal system, so the quick consensus position — to me, seen from a distance — feels more like evidence of the students' desire to free themselves from the anxiety of having paid a semester's worth of attention to something they believed they would care about, because they liked the idea of being the sort of people who do care when others do not care, but then they saw that they did not really care at least not quite that much.
And then the relief comes, and it has sufficient resonance with the original choice of what to study: I am studying myself caring about the people I wanted to believe I cared about. I've been looking into the mirror to see if I care, and I must now see that I care, or it doesn't make sense to have chosen to stare for months into a mirror to see if I care. I do care. I care about me caring.
I wasn't there, so I don't know the tone of the question. Greenhouse gives the context the student presented — "the Guantánamo population has shrunk even as urgent human rights crises that place many more people at risk have erupted in other parts of the world" — and characterizes the question as "deliberately provocative and not entirely rhetorical." Greenhouse informs us that the class was provoked to "lively" "conversation" that "quickly" produced "consensus."
Of course, the intense activity of devoting a law school semester to one legal problem needs to make sense in the end. Simple human defensiveness could explain the quick trip to consensus. Why did we take this course instead of Information Privacy Law or Law and Regulation of Banks and Other Financial Intermediaries or whatever else might have captured our hearts on Yale Law School's rich menu of course offerings?
Here's how Greenhouse, in her NYT column, phrases the consensus:
We care because the Guantánamo saga isn’t only about the 162 men still held there, or the hundreds who have come and gone. It’s about the health of our own institutions, our own commitments. We look in the mirror of Guantánamo and see ourselves.From "isn’t only about the 162 men" I gather that the students got weary of caring about those 162 men. If they are the 162 who are left, they are there for a reason. Bush put them there, but Obama has kept them there. Must we really go over and over the question of whether it all was done precisely right? And then you see it: the place of refuge from this nagging doubt about whether these 162 men deserved all this elite law study.
And that place is: ME! This is about ME! This is US! This is WHO. WE. ARE. Ah, relief. So I haven't been staring for months into the dismal stories of 162 shady-but-perhaps-procedurally-abused characters. I've been staring into a mirror at myself. Ah! The relief! It was about me!
That was where the elite students quickly found relief from provocation. I suspect that practically any particular legal problem can support the claim that it's really about the legitimacy and principle of the entire legal system, so the quick consensus position — to me, seen from a distance — feels more like evidence of the students' desire to free themselves from the anxiety of having paid a semester's worth of attention to something they believed they would care about, because they liked the idea of being the sort of people who do care when others do not care, but then they saw that they did not really care at least not quite that much.
And then the relief comes, and it has sufficient resonance with the original choice of what to study: I am studying myself caring about the people I wanted to believe I cared about. I've been looking into the mirror to see if I care, and I must now see that I care, or it doesn't make sense to have chosen to stare for months into a mirror to see if I care. I do care. I care about me caring.
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